How To Make Good Food Go Further: Recipes and Tips from The New English Kitchen

My father was very fond of savouries. These were small dishes, often on toast, served after the main course. They are out of fashion now, outside the gentleman’s club. His favourite was sardines on toast – and yes, they were from a can. We quaked with horror at the table, but out came the macho Worcestershire sauce: ‘They must have Worcestershire sauce!’ And he was right. They were very good after a liberal shaking.

Sardines on toast

I tried them again the other day, with very little modification, and liked them all over again. It is the same story of good and bad food in England. They do need good bread, good butter and good sardines. You can buy line-caught canned sardines from Spanish shops and delis. Ramon Bue is an excellent brand that has been around for ever – as long as Worcestershire sauce, in fact.

Serves 4

8 canned sardines

4 medium-thick slices of day-old bread

butter

Worcestershire sauce

chopped parsley

Pick over the sardines without damaging their silver skins. Where possible, remove the gritty spines or obvious bones. Toast the bread and spread it with butter while it is still hot. Lay fillets from 2 fish on top of each slice, skin-side up, and put under a hot grill for 2 minutes. Dress with Worcestershire sauce and sprinkle with parsley.

Dripping toast

When well-hung beef is roasted, it produces a full-tasting dripping with a jelly beneath that can only be described as nectar. Hot toast or Melba Toast, cut nicely into triangles, with a fifty-fifty mixture of dripping and jelly spread on top, finished by black pepper and maybe a watercress leaf, is a completely respectable thing to serve with drinks. It fed the poor for centuries, but was killed off by tasteless, poorly hung meat. It is not an everyday dish; a little dripping is good for you but too much is not. But on those occasions when you splash out on the best beef joints, make sure you collect the dripping to make Roast Potatoes, pilaffs (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) – and for toast.

More good things on toast

Melted cheese – Try some of the new British and Irish cheeses as well as traditional farmhouse Cheddar and Double Gloucester. Lord of the Hundreds is used often in this book – a hard ewe’s milk cheese that melts to a tart, white cream. Other good melting cheeses include Saval, Malvern and Coolea, plus the obvious European mountain cheeses, Gruyère, Cantal, Emmental and Tilsiter.

Fresh, young goat’s cheeses – Soft white goat’s cheese can be crumbled on to toast, with herbs, salad leaves and olives, and dressed with a few drops of those piquant oils you can buy, infused with chilli or aromatic herbs.

Cooled scrambled eggs – With added cream, scrambled duck or hen’s eggs on toast make a truly elegant starter or supper dish. If you like, you can add very thin, crisp bacon, fresh herbs or smoked fish, such as eel or trout.

Chicken livers and other offal (see here (#litres_trial_promo) and here (#litres_trial_promo)) – Chopped and fried with butter, chopped capers, anchovy and a little white wine.

Smoked fish – Organic smoked salmon or trout, mackerel or kippers, or perhaps the more unusual fish now being smoked by specialists, such as pollack and ling.

Herring – Filleted and fried in butter, then placed on hot toast that has been spread with a mixture of butter and mustard. Finish with lots of fresh dill.

North Atlantic or other cold-water prawns or Morecambe Bay grey shrimps – Dress with a few herbs and scatter a little cayenne pepper and ground mace over the top.

Fried tomatoes – Go a step further and fry the day-old bread, then cover it with sweet fried tomatoes. Add a blob of crème fraîche or soured cream and a few basil leaves for something richer.

Breadcrumbs

Like chicken bones, prawn shells and vegetable peelings, breadcrumbs are a gift to the cook. They are essentially ‘free’. The crusted end of a dry loaf or the cut-away crusts from Melba toast, once headed for the duck pond in the park, still form the basis of another meal. They can perform a variety of jobs, from making a filling winter pasta dish to becoming a summer salad, spiked with chilli and soaked with olive oil.

There are two ways to make breadcrumbs:

Simply put stale but soft bread into the food processor and whiz. These crumbs can be used for stuffings, bread sauce and meatballs, but if you want to dry them, put them on a baking sheet and place in a moderate oven until golden.

Or – dry out old bread slices and rolls in a moderate oven, then either whiz them in a food processor or put them in a strong, thick plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.

*kitchen note*

Dried breadcrumbs can be stored in an airtight container, where they will keep for at least three weeks. Fresh ones must be stored in the freezer.

Bread sauces for poultry and game

These absorb and flavour the juices of poultry beautifully. I prefer them to bread-based stuffings which can take ages to cook, drying out the birds as they do so.

Fried breadcrumbs with lemon

The pine nuts can be left out altogether, or replaced with pecans (for turkey), walnuts (for duck) or shelled unsalted pistachios (for partridge or pheasant).

Serves 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

4 heaped tablespoons fresh or dried breadcrumbs

zest of 1 lemon

4 sprigs of parsley, chopped

2 tablespoons pine nuts

½ teaspoon crushed pink peppercorns

Heat the oil in a small pan, add all the remaining ingredients and fry gently until golden. Serve with roast turkey, wild duck, partridge or pheasant.

*kitchen note*

Middle Eastern shops are the best places to buy dried nuts of every variety (and dried fruit, for that matter). Large bags of pistachios and walnuts are always fresh and cost about half the price of those found in conventional groceries and supermarkets.

Almond, sherry and clove sauce

An aromatic sauce with a crumb base.

Serves 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, chopped

4 tablespoons fresh or dried breadcrumbs

4 tablespoons ground almonds

8 sprigs of parsley, finely chopped