Cesses Cooker-Rama

Having posted several good grumps and moans over the past two months I thought it was time to get a little more constructive and get your gastric juices flowing by posting a couple of my favourite recipes.

Both I class as cheap peasant meals and remember them from the days of my Grandma’s cooking way back in the nineteen-fifties.

The first was my Grandpa’s favourite.

Good fresh white tripe and onions cooked in milk and thickened with a bit of cornflour. I have created my version and named it Mediterranean Tripe. The name is associated with the various ingredients I use but before we get into the detail I should perhaps deal with the cooking and preparation of the tripe.

You can buy either beef, sometimes called ox tripe, or if you wish lamb, both require more or less the same time to cook, unless you use, as I do, a pressure cooker.

This method reduces the four and a half hours of slow simmering to about one hour twenty minutes.

First the preparation.

Make sure you buy clean white tripe, in various countries across the world you can buy uncleaned tripe that looks blackish, this is the congealed blood, and this also produces excellent dishes, particularly favourable amongst the native population of Africa. I’ll post my version later.

The first thing to do is wash your tripe under running water and then inspect it and remove any fat using a very sharp knife which you can then use to cut the tripe into 2cm wide long strips. Place these strips into your pressure cooker, add a teaspoon of sea-salt, 2 teaspoons of crushed black pepper corns, one cube of diced oxtail stock or mutton, if you’re doing lamb, a cup of finely chopped organum, rosemary and thyme, cover the tripe with water.

Place the pressure cooker on preferably a gas stove with the lid closed and bring to the boil. When full pressure is reached turn down the heat to its lowest possible setting and let it cook for one hour twenty minutes.

Now its time to prepare all the other ingredients, 4 medium sized onions, 5 sticks of celery, 1 green capsicum, 1 red capsicum, 1 yellow capsicum, 3 medium carrots, 5 cloves of garlic, 2 potatoes, 3 parsnips, 2 small turnips or swedes, and any other root veggies you have. I really like black salsify but find it difficult to obtain unless I grow it myself.

All the above need to be washed, cleaned, scraped or peeled and chopped into medium sized bits. I go for approximately 3cm pieces, the garlic you crush with your presser. Of course, the capsicums must be de-seeded and sliced. I usually end up with about 10/12 slices per capsicum.

After the pressure cooker has been cooled and depressurized it can be safely opened and you then need to strain all the cooking liquid into a separate bowl and place the tripe also into a separate container.

Then put two tablespoons of olive oil with about a tablespoon of butter into the pressure cooker. Once the butter is melted add all your chopped vegetables and the garlic and gently stir fry them for a couple of minutes. Next add all the tripe and cover the lot with the saved cooking liquid. Add more water to cover all the ingredients if necessary and reheat the pressure cooker, bring to the boil and cook for a maximum of five minutes.

You can cook for longer if you wish your veggies to be a bit softer. I go for Parboiled or Al dente.

Once the pressure cooker is depressurized, it’s time to thicken the stew to your desired taste. I use two teaspoons of cornflour mixed with 3 tablespoons of cold milk and add it slowly to the boiling stew stirring constantly to get my desired thickness.

Your peasant food feast is now ready to be served either with couscous, mashed potatoes or if you prefer rice. The dish is excellently accompanied with several glasses of cold Sauvignon Blanc.

My Grandma’s embellishment of her concoction was three or four rashers of crispy streaky bacon placed on top of her mounded tripe atop mashed potatoes and Grandpa accompanied it with a pint of Guinness.

Enjoy.

My second recipe is Jerusalem Artichoke soup.

The Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus-Tuberosus) is an often-ignored vegetable and is known in the US of A as a sun-choke, a sun-root, or an earth-apple, because it is related to the sunflower. It grows below ground as a tuber and its leafy stem can reach over 2 metres in height with a small yellow flower.

It is always cropped in autumn and difficult to acquire in other months of the year. It is best to grow them yourself! They can be grown in any temperate zone across the globe. The tuber colour can be light brown to white and you can even get red and purple ones. Mine are light brown and they look almost like a ginger root.

Despite its name the Jerusalem Artichoke has no connection to Jerusalem. The origin of the Jerusalem part of the name is uncertain.

Some believe that Italian settlers in the USA called the plant girasole, the Italian word for sunflower, because of its familial relationship to the garden sunflower (Both plants are members of the genus Helianthus). Over time, the name girasole may have been changed to Jerusalem.

In other words, English speakers would have corrupted "girasole artichoke" (meaning, "sunflower artichoke") to Jerusalem artichoke. Another explanation for the name is that puritans, when they came to the New World named the plant after the "New Jerusalem" they believed they were creating in the wilderness.

A final explanation is that the Crusaders used them as forage for their horses as they crossed Europe to Jerusalem.

Back to the cooking.

Firstly, wash all your artichokes carefully to remove all soil, I use a toothbrush!

Place the 2kg of cleaned artichokes in large pan. Cover with water, a squeeze of lemon juice from one medium lemon and bring to the boil. Let them simmer for 20 to a max of 30 minutes till they can be pierced with a sharp knife.

In another large pan add three tablespoons of olive oil and a knob of butter for extra taste, add three large cloves of crushed garlic, two fine chopped onions, two finely chopped carrots, three finely chopped sticks of celery, tablespoon of mixed herbs. I use organum, thyme, rosemary and Italian parsley but the choice is yours.

Also, two parsnips can be added, they do have a distinctive taste, so it’s up to you. Also, the black salsify gives a marvellous added taste but again this vegetable is difficult to find as mentioned earlier.

Simmer all the ingredients for five to ten minutes.

Strain the boiled artichokes and keep the liquid!

Then comes the hard part!

Peel the artichokes. This is a finicky and tiresome job and requires dextrous fingers. If you’re into knitting, sewing, or fixing minute appliances like watches, it helps.

Once peeled of their thin skins chop the artichokes into 3cm pieces, and add to veggie mix, add the artichoke liquid from the previous boil, re-heat bringing to the boil and then simmer for fifteen minutes. A chicken stock cube can be added, but of course this is a No-no if you’re a Vegan. Add Salt and crushed black or green pepper corns to your taste

Simmer for ten/fifteen mins and then liquidize.

To thin add milk or yogurt or butter milk or cream, the cream gives a more velvety taste.

Serve with two teaspoons of sour cream plonked in the middle of your bowl and sprinkle chopped chives on top. This fantastic soup should be accompanied of course with a shot of iced Polish vodka!

Enjoy and stand downwind of any fellow eaters.

You’ll find out why once you’ve eaten this exquisite peasant’s soup that costs, I’m told, over ten dollars a bowl in the upmarket restaurants of Paris and London.