Stephanie Alexander’s advice on preparing and cooking chickpeas

In her book, or more accurately tome, The Cook’s Companion, Stephanie Alexander precedes each chapter (sorted by ingredients) with information on varieties and season, selection and storage, preparation and cooking. I am sharing this exert from the beginning of her chapter on chickpeas because I make reference to it in my post on her Morrocan-inspired chicken, but also because I think it will be of use more generally.

PREPARATION AND COOKING   As with most pulses, dried chick peas need to be soaked and cooked before further preparation is possible. However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the very popular Middle Eastern falafel.

TO SOAK AND COOK       Soak dried chick peas overnight, generously covered with cold water. There is no need to add bicarbonate of soda to the soaking chick peas (it was once thought it helped soften them). Next day, pour away the soaking water and cook the chick peas in fresh water with other aromatics according to the recipe. They will take about 2 hours to become tender. (It is best to add salt at the end of the cooking process, as adding it earlier can delay the cooking time; more importantly, the liquid will reduce substantially over the long cooking time, concentrating any seasonings.) When tender, allow the chick peas to cool in their cooking water. They will swell a little more as they cool, and can then be drained. One cup of dried chick peas weighs 200g, which becomes 2 ½ cups (400g) after soaking and 2 ¾ cups (450g) when cooked. 

Quick method   The soaking process can be hurried by pouring boiling water over dried chickpeas and leaving them to stand for 3-4 hours before cooking them as above in fresh water.

Timing roast lamb, some rules of thumb

In my post on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Roast breast of lamb with fennel salt I wanted to provide a rule of thumb for timing roast lamb, but the more examples I looked at, the more hesitant I became to provide something definitive.

In all of the examples I have seen, the cooking time is calculated based on the weight of the lamb, which is usually given in 1lb (450g) or 500g increments. But in each case both the timing and temperature varied, for example: 

• A Delicious magazine article on the subject suggested an initial blast at 230C for 15 minutes for larger joints, then 13 minutes per 500g for rare, 18 minutes per 500g for medium and 20-22 minutes per 500g for well done at 180C. For smaller joints they suggest roasting at the higher heat the whole time.
• An article in The Sunday Times suggests 20 minutes per 450g plus 20 minutes, with the first 20 minutes at 220C and the remaining time at 180C.
• Delia Smith suggests cooking the lamb at a consistent temperature (gas mark 5/375F/190C) for 30 minutes per lb (450g), but adds that those who prefer their lamb quite pink should give it 30 minutes less cooking time. She also suggests inserting a skewer to judge how rare it is based on colour of the juice that runs out.
• The United States Department of Agriculture provides the most comprehensive table I have seen, providing  different guidelines  according to the cut of lamb, size, cooking method and providing the optimum internal temperature and different cooking times depending on your preference for medium rare, medium or well done. 

As you can see, timing and temperature are not the only variables; the type of oven (fan, gas, electric), the joint you are using, whether you cook it from room temperature, how you like your meat, and whether you use a consistent heat or lower the temperature after an initial blast will all affect the outcome.

I have an electric oven. The element is on the top, which is not great when you consider that heat rises. It also tends to work like a grill, burning the top of almost everything before the middle has even begun to cook.  In addition, the thermostat is broken so I am only able to cook things at 200C plus, unless I open the oven door at regular intervals, in which case I can keep it down to about 180C. Bearing these extreme conditions in mind, I have found that the following rough guideline works for me: 20 minutes standard cooking time plus 20 minutes per 500g, with the first 20 minutes at 220C and the rest at 180C. I would suggest that you experiment with the different rules of thumb provided in the above links and find something that works for you.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments.

Selecting and preparing cultivated mushrooms

An exert from Mastering the Art of French Cooking

I am providing this scanned copy of the beginning of the chapter on cultivated mushrooms in Child, Bertolle and Beck’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking because the recipe for Champignons a Blanc provided in a recent post makes reference to ‘the preceding illustrations’.

Leaving aside the directions for how to make fluted caps, I think your average home cook today will find the instructions for how to slice mushrooms somewhat elementary. However, the introduction regarding how to select the mushrooms might be more enlightening. For example, I did not know that you should not be able to see the gills at all, which suggests that most of the mushrooms I have ever purchased in the supermarket have not been very fresh at all.

I must say that I do not agree that mushrooms need to be so thoroughly cleaned, or that they should even come into any contact at with water at all. Indeed, in an article on Girolles the worldwide gourmet goes so far as to say that “Mushrooms must not be washed at all”.

I find it interesting that Child et al. dedicate a chapter to cultivated mushrooms when Julia Child was such a proponent of sourcing the very best ingredients. I was just the other day reading an exert about wild mushrooms in Movida Rustica by Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish where they write:

Wild mushrooms are so different to their shed-raised cousins: they are rich, slippery and give so much more to a dish – almost like nature’s stock cube.

I agree. In my post on chanterelles a blanc I advise that the dish is almost not worth making if you cannot get hold of chanterelles (which will inevitably be wild). Mind you, Child et al. were writing for the average American housewife in the 1960s and took great pains to ensure that the ingredients for their recipes could be easily sourced by this demographic.

Nonetheless, the exert does provide some interesting reading and perhaps the more adventurous among you might even master the art of fluted caps.

Some things I learnt today

In writing my recipe for chicken, chorizo and cannellini bean casserole today, I learnt some interesting facts about terminology, which I thought worth sharing. Originally I had called the recipe ‘chicken, chorizo and cannellini bean stew’ but in comparing various methods for cooking stews and casseroles I discovered that this dish is actually technically classed as a fricassee. Child, Bertholle and Beck explain that,

To be technically correct, any recipe describing meat which is browned before it is simmered should be labelled a fricassee.

Thus, to be defined as a stew my chicken would need to be simmered in liquid from the start of its cooking. That said, Child et al. go onto explain that they do not always make the distinction since stew has become a catch all term in common usage. Nonetheless, I thought I’d best be safe and stick to the term ‘casserole’.

The other thing I learnt was that there are more varieties of pepper than I could have ever imagined and that trying to specify which type to use was futile, since even within the English language there are multiple names for the same thing. The pepper I used looked like this:

In Australia, this is called a bell pepper, but in England and America a bell pepper is your bog standard pepper, the type you get in the supermarket (in Australia we call this a capsicum). On most of the English and American sites, it seems to be referred to as a ‘sweet red pepper’. This is not very helpful because that term could be applied to your average pepper or capsicum, which is exactly the type I was trying to distinguish it from.

Of the varieties that sit under the capsicum annuum species, the Cubanelle pepper looked the most similar, but I thought it would be too prescriptive to recommend this; I am not even sure if they are widely available. Another name I came across was ‘sweet pointed peppers’, which sounded sensible, but only four sites defined them thus, so I did not have a lot of faith in the term’s authenticity. In the end I decided that, while I think the long peppers tend to have more depth of flavour when roasted, the difference is not so significant that it is worth all this trouble! 

Trimming a leek

When I was younger I used to like to sit on the kitchen bench while Dad was cooking and ask a seemingly endless stream of questions, which he did his best not to get fed up with. However, my favourite thing was to catch him out having contradicted himself, "but last time you said..." 

One of the earliest things I remember Dad teaching me was that the best leeks were those with the most white at their base, 

"Why are you throwing so much of the leek away, when yesterday you told me not to throw away the tops of the tomatoes? Isn't that being wasteful like I was, Daddy?" (I am even annoying myself in repeating this)

"Because the white part is the most flavoursome, Beano; you should only use the white part and a little of the pale green bit for colour. The other bit is chewy and doesn't taste very nice."

I was pleased to see that Wikipedia confirms his advice:

The edible portions of the leek are the white onion base and light green stalk. The dark green portion is usually discarded since it has less flavor. As the leek grows, this part becomes woody and very chewy. 

So when a recipe calls for 'trimmed leeks' this is what it means.