The joy of…
Discovery. There is a moment when you find a new piece of music by someone you have never heard of and realize that a whole new window has opened up for you; same goes for a new author. I just meandered through the web (thanks to Amateur Gourmet’s video where he interviews the librarian at The Food Network). AM asks awkward librarian-guy which three cookbooks out of the 5,000 in his library he would need on a desert island. Answer? Zuni Cafe because on his island there would be roast chicken (good thinking); anything by John Thorne because he’s such a tremendous writer (true dat); Nigel Slater because he makes you want to go into the kitchen and cook … hold on, never heard of the guy. So, off I go to Nigelslater.com where I read lovely bits about his kitchen garden and roam through some of his recipes. His bio says he is a cook who writes — not a cheffy-chef. Course that makes me pleased. Sort of a kindred spirit. And, apparently, he has a column in the Guardian.
I follow the link and begin to read his piece on fish stew. As soon as I read this I am hooked:
I have a way of starting off a fish stew that I thought I would pass on. I put a couple of timid splashes of ordinary olive oil in a fairly deep cast-iron pan, then drop in six anchovy fillets rinsed of their smelly oil and three chubby cloves of garlic, sliced as thin as paper. To that I add a whole bay leaf or sometimes two, a curl of orange peel and a couple of whole sprigs of thyme. I push the anchovies and garlic and woody herbs around in the warm oil with an old wooden spatula, then stand aside and give the anchovy time to dissolve to a sticky paste and the aromatics the chance to warm up. This is the point at which the base flavour of the soup is set - the backbone on which all the other stuff will hang. It gives the stew bigger balls than the usual mimsy kickoff with gently sweated onion or leek.
I feel a little ignorant never having heard of this guy (I try and console myself with the fact that he is British) but so happy that there are all these other columns to discover. I think I will try this technique/stew out on mom and dad when they are visiting this week.
The tuna daube that I improvised last night came out very well. This is my version of the recipe in Patricia Well’s Provence Cookbook.
And a quick note about the concept of the tuna daube, which is a riff on a type of french meat stew called a daube. As I was searching for the real recipe online (nowhere to be found, I might add), I came across some dubious posts in forums, all asking the same question. Will this be good? Will it ruin the tuna, which is supposed to be eaten rare?
It absolutely doesn’t and I haven’t done any research on this but I bet the rare tuna thing is a relatively recent food trend. On the contrary, tuna has the depth of taste and texture to allow it to both absorb and stand up to all the flavors in this dish which is a family favorite.