Action Cook Book

Bread Buttered Both Sides (#litres_trial_promo)

Cheese (#litres_trial_promo)

Where is the Coffee? (#litres_trial_promo)

How is the Coffee? (#litres_trial_promo)

Cigars (#litres_trial_promo)

Cuts of Meat (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

About The Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_fccc615f-50d8-5aa4-8ac6-3c03ed7881b0)

I am delighted to have Action Cook Book republished. Now I can have a fresh new copy to replace the dogeared old one that is on a shelf in our kitchen. Of all the books I have written none of them is dearer to me or more personal than this one. Although the ‘cook strips’ ran in the Observer newspaper for many years they were not created for publication; they were just my notes.

I grew up with an interest in food and cooking. My mother had been a professional chef and, during my six years as a student, I had enjoyed vacation jobs in the kitchens of some top restaurants. I had acquired a small library of cookery books, including some of the classic ones, and I didn’t want to see them become stained or gravy-spattered. It was for this reason that I never took them into the kitchen. Having carefully noted the details of each recipe, I pinned these up over the stove. I was an art student and it was inevitable that the notes included little diagrams and drawings. During a dinner party, Ray Hawkey, a graphics specialist who was at the time radically changing newspaper design, came into the kitchen and spotted the fluttering collection of recipe notes. He suggested that they could be published if they were more carefully drawn and my scribbled lettering replaced by that of a lettering expert. It was Ray who added the grid and generally supervised the improvements. Through Ray I found a lettering artist who was creative and resourceful. It was not an easy task for him, and I soon found that it was best to let him do the lettering first, and then fit my drawings into the spaces. This is why some of the pots, pans and basins are of unorthodox shapes.

The next hurdle was to convince the Features Editor of the Observer that he would get a reliable and continuous supply of the strips. I was not a journalist and had very little previous contact with newspaper people, who seemed to suspect that all artists were unreliable drunkards. To build up a credible supply of cook strips I retrieved old notes from where they had been stuffed behind the flour bin on the top shelf. For this reason the early recipes were mostly the ones that I liked best and had cooked regularly. And this is why Action Cook Book remains so personal.

But as the first set of notes was used, I became more systematic in selecting recipes and I devoted a lot of time to testing them in my cramped kitchen. I was dismayed to find how many well-established recipes simply didn’t work. They had been copied from cookbook to cookbook by writers and journalists who were too busy to put them to the test. I turned to cooks I admired, whether they were experienced professionals or accomplished amateurs; French, German or British. I was delighted to find that almost all of them were prepared to share their skills and secrets. My mother was a superb cook but never consulted recipes nor wrote them. The steak and kidney pudding and the English trifle are samples of my mother’s recipes and they remain favourites of mine. The Christmas pudding won the BBC Cookery Club prize when a Mrs Dashfield reintroduced the old idea of using soft breadcrumbs to lighten the texture and make a pudding which even foreigners enjoy. At the time this was a radical innovation but now almost all recipes use breadcrumbs. I remember that Mrs Dashfield expressed regret that I’d put the rum butter recipe into the same cook strip as she thought it did not go with the pudding. Mrs Dashfield was a purist.

Publication of the cook strips in the Observer did influence cooking, mostly by advocating better ingredients instead of the inferior wartime substitutes that were still widely used. For instance, the reputation of bread and butter pudding had sunk out of sight; it was the last resort of cost-conscious school meals and factory canteens. Tom Maschler—who later published Action Cook Book—first declined this pudding when I brought it to the table at a party. I was gratified later to watch him scraping the tin for his third helping, and hear him explain that at his school they had not included cream, eggs or real vanilla in the recipe. Crème caramel and many other traditional English milk puddings, restored to the glory they’d enjoyed a generation earlier, were always dinner party successes.

Although my interest in food preparation has always been grounded in the discipline of French cooking, these recipes do not reflect that. These are my old favourites. A fisherman in Portugal taught me how to cook squid. In the London suburb of Hampstead I watched a Viennese grandmother produce a superb cheesecake using a recipe from her childhood. (She made a Sachertorte too but I never attempted that.) While working as a waiter in Piccadilly, I learned from a Hungarian cook that making strudel dough was not a daunting task or even a very lengthy one. It was a French publisher who introduced me to cooking fish in red wine and, although it was a well-established method, I had more correspondence about that than about anything else. Not all of my readers were appalled but many were.

Ris de veau, tripe, brains, tongue and the rich fragrant stew that only oxtail produces were all dishes my mother had shown me how to cook, for during the war these were available in addition to the meat ration. I’ve always been enormously fond of eels and scallops. The huge cassoulet had been the subject of passionate disagreements between neighbours when I was in rural France. Mutton? Salt pork? The confit d’oie? Even the beans were disputed. Each one I served was substantially different. And still is.

Cooking, together with all other aspects of food, has always been a very important part of my family life. When my children were of pre-school age we taught them to make a loaf of bread. This meant learning about using weights and liquid measures and about the necessary temperatures for yeast and for baking. After the loaf of bread was eaten I challenged them to do the whole process again, this time after converting to metric measures. Recently one of my sons said that of all the things they learnt when young, nothing had been more interesting or more useful than learning to cook.

My entire family shares my great interest in food. I very much hope you will enjoy these dishes—cooking them, serving them and eating them—as much as I have done.

Len Deighton

In addition to ° F, temperatures are also listed in ‘Regulo’ (eg. ‘Regulo 3’). This is a trademark for a type of temperature control on some gas ovens.

READ THIS FIRST (#ulink_ab61b267-96c8-511f-ae7f-3b1ad7518027)

I have assumed little or no knowledge on the part of my reader; on the other hand I have learnt enough while doing the research for this book to claim that even the serious student of good food (only some of whom are cooks) will learn enough to justify reading it. Throughout this ACTION COOK BOOK I have given the classic recipes for the dishes without substitutes or short cuts except where I have stated otherwise. All I have cut out is the smoke-screen of mystique and witch-doctory; professional cooks have no time for that and neither, I suggest, have you. Everywhere I have suggested that the reader ask the shop to prepare food for cooking, e.g. fish, lobster, poultry, etc. This does not mean that the cook should not know how to do it; it means that watching an expert do it is the best way to learn. Things that I can’t get your local shopkeeper to show you (like making a roux) I have described. If you can find an expert at making pastry or a sauce, have them show you. If you can find an expert at all other aspects of cooking—who needs a book?

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NUTRITION (#ulink_bc5e9cb3-d0f7-5964-9dc1-c4d5e3d3796a)

With advice from Dr V. Radclyffe

Nutrition is something no cook can ignore. Here the subject is reduced to a few words but only by over-simplifying. In each group which I have mentioned, I have selected only the good sources and ignored the hundreds of foods with lesser amounts of nutrients. If a food is omitted from this list it does not mean that it is not necessary to a normal diet. These are the good sources of body-building foods. Remember them, buy them and eat them.

Protein. This is essential every day for the normal action of the body (movement, respiration, etc.). Animal protein is the best (beef, veal, etc.), but vegetable protein is also good in dried peas, lentils, haricot beans and nuts (especially peanuts). Fish protein is as rich as meat. Two other good sources are dried egg, dried skim milk.

You could live on meat alone, but you would need 17 lb. per day. So, instead, we turn to the high-energy foods (i.e. carbohydrates and fats); but neither of these are body-building foods.

Calcium. This is a builder of bones and teeth. It is vital during the first six months of life and remains important throughout life for replacement. Cheese (Cheddar-type) and whitebait (surprisingly) are the two finest sources. Next come sardines and the soft cheeses and condensed milk, with fresh milk, watercress and tinned salmon at about one-third of the value per ounce that Cheddar cheese gives.

Iron. This is important for haemoglobin (the red in red blood-cells). The best way to get iron is to cook in iron cooking utensils.

(#ulink_f40afab9-62bb-5392-af68-4607f317524c) Once a week you should have a portion of undercooked liver. If you don’t like it, get to like it—you need it. The sausage called ‘black pudding’ and any sort of kidney is a good source, so are cocoa and lentils. Curry powder is chock-a-block with it (21 mgs. per oz.), but an ounce of curry powder goes a long way, so it won’t give you so much per serving.

Vitamins. There is no need to take vitamin pills if you are eating well, for the body adjusts its intake to the correct proportions for health.

Vitamin A. Important for cell-growth, especially cells of eye, mouth and intestines. It aids the retina in vision. Best sources are undoubtedly fish-liver oils (which are sold in chemists’). Sheep and beef liver also contain Vitamin A, but only one per cent of the amount the best fish liver does (measured ounce for ounce). If your diet is Western and adequate, you are getting enough.

Vitamin B. A large complex, covering many groups of chemicals. It is vital for the working of all muscles and nerves, and is needed in large quantities when convalescing from influenza, colds, pneumonia. If you eat much starch and sugar, you use Vitamin B to convert these foods into energy. Therefore, you need even more Vitamin B. Eat liver, lean meat, peas, whole-grain bread or flour, and lentils.

Vitamin C. This is needed daily because it cannot be stored. It is important in forming the connective tissue between cells. Gums, joints and muscles weaken when there is a deficiency of it. The best sources in order of descending value are: blackcurrants, or blackcurrant juice, brussels sprouts, cabbage, watercress (and other green vegetables) and citrus fruits. Remember Vitamin C is washed away by water and destroyed by heat.

Vitamin D. Important in the formation of bone and therefore growth. It also keeps the bone hard in normal wear and tear. We make it in our skin in sunlight (but we destroy some Vitamin B), and therefore need more Vitamin-D-rich foods in winter. They are the fish-liver oils (especially tuna and halibut), with cod-liver oil also a source. Certain whole fish are also rich sources, namely herring, sardine, pilchard and salmon. There are two other sources, but they are comparatively poor (about one-sixtieth of the poorest of the above foods); they are egg yolk, and the type of margarine that has added vitamin.

Carbohydrates and Fats. The eating of these is proportionate to the sophisticated wealth (but not health) of a person. If you care enough to read this book, you are probably sophisticated and wealthy and already cutting down on these foods.

Our civilization has developed a craving for starches. Starch gives a fast lift, because it is the upper intestine where the enzymes act upon starches and give a rise in blood sugar with its allaying of appetite within twenty minutes. The digestive enzymes that act upon protein do it when the middle intestine is reached, thus it is slower in allaying appetite.

Salt is a mineral (NaCl) of which the sodium (Na) is the part the body needs. Sodium occurs naturally, by permeation through the land-mass, in any fish, vegetable or food that is produced within 200 miles of the sea. Therefore only people living in the centre of a huge land-mass need salt, and in these regions one finds salt-traders bringing this life-giving food. Most people in the world use salt only as a luxury.

Salt is one of the most important elements in complex actions in the blood, and although it is true that if you lose sodium you lose weight, salt-restriction must not be used in slimming diets. Any chemist will sell you KCl (potassium chloride) as a salt-substitute, but this is a dangerous expedient, for the body cannot distinguish between K and Na, and will excrete Na, creating a sodium lack and a potassium build-up, which can lead to serious disorders. Use ‘salt-free salts’ only under medical supervision, if at all. Cooks preparing salt-free food should step up herb and spice content to help cloak the blandness of such a diet.

If you want to lose weight. Starch foods are cheap foods. It is very expensive to eat a non-fattening diet. If you want to lose weight, remember these four points:

1Eat plenty of meat, fish and eggs, and you will find that (owing to specific dynamic action) you will be less hungry.

2When eating ask: ‘Am I hungry?’ When you are not, stop eating.

3It is hard, hard to remove fat once it has formed. On a good diet (i.e. not too quick) it is the fourth and fifth weeks which show the true loss of fat. The loss during the first two weeks is mostly fluid and is only too easily picked up again.

4Eat two good protein meals a day. Do not have tasters or snacks. Don’t cheat.

Construct your diet around things you don’t like. Don’t cut out things you are very fond of and tell yourself it’s only for a few weeks—it’s far better to guide your eating habits into more sensible patterns. The things you must not eat should be left unbought, otherwise they provide a constant temptation. Lastly, remember that most of the world have a diet problem of a different sort: they are hungry.

* (#ulink_5f59dd44-5aef-5060-ab19-7751ff2d0446)Strange but true.

WHO NEEDS A REFRIGERATOR? (#ulink_36107ec7-4cc3-5ca1-a40a-9b8d741b2e67)