The Food Almanac: Recipes and Stories For A Year At The Table Volume 2

After much success of the first volume, Miranda York offers a second helping of The Food Almanac - Recipes and Stories For A Year At The Table, Volume 2, with the same amount of collaboration and food enjoyment. New contributors and new recipes fill the pages and months as it still retains much of the same focus on seasonal ingredients, monthly menus, spotlighting ingredients, food history as well as poetry, stories, culinary reading lists and culinary memories. 

As much as I liked the first volume I have throughly enjoyed the second volume and there is enough insightful information and new recipes to carry you throughout the year. It's eclectic, diverse and delightful with charming illustrations. A book to always come back and dive into. 

Since June is here, I thought I would share a fresh recipe selected for this month.

"The vibrant soup is just as great enjoyed curled up on the sofa as served at a dinner party. If you have pea shoots to hand, use them to adorn each bowl. Buttered, toasted naan or bread is a must." 

Spiced Pea Soup by Nik Sharma

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Serves 4

60g (2 1/4 oz) ghee or unsalted butter

1 large white or yellow onion, diced 

1 large carrot, trimmed, peeled and diced

1 celery stick, diced

1 tablespoon peeled and grated fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon Kashmiri chilli powder or 1/4 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

300g (10 oz) fresh or frozen peas (no need to thaw)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

Fine sea salt

1 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Pea shoots, to garnish (optional) 

Heat half the ghee in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 5 minutes until translucent. Add the carrot and celery and sauté until tender and the vegetables are just starting to brown. Stir in the ginger, garlic, garam masala and chilli powder and cook until just fragrant. Add the peas along with 840ml (28 fl oz) water, and bring to the boil. Cook until the peas are tender, then remove from the heat. Blitz in a blender until velvety smooth, then return the soup to the pan. Keep it simmering over low heat. Stir in the black pepper and season with salt.

Heat the remaining ghee in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the nigella and cumin seeds to the hot fat; they will sizzle and turn fragrant. Remove from the heat and drizzle over the pea soup. Serve warm, garnished with fresh pea shoots alongside buttered slices of naan. 

The Alice In Wonderland Cookbook ~ A Culinary Diversion

This is a slight culinary companion to Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Fans of Carroll will be delighted with this book and fans of illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, will be even more so. This cookbook is out of print and first editions are in limited copies. There are some circling out there and that is why I cherish the copy I have even more. Therefore I highly recommend this purely for collector purposes. Not to dishearten the recipes that are showcased on the pages. One does marvel over the Ambidextrous Mushrooms, Eggs Bonne Alice, Bread-and-Butter Fly Pudding and The Cheshire Cat's Cheese Whiskers. There is plenty of wit, prose and excerpts from Carroll's work to entice even the most lacklustre chef. There also seems to be a gastronomic motif  in earlier works of Lewis Carroll. Here are a couple of recipe to share...

Hot - Tempered Mustard - 3 tablespoons mustard powder / 1 tablespoon castor sugar / 1 beaten egg /  1/2 (half) pint pure malt vinegar / 1 tablespoon olive oil / 1 pinch of salt

Mix mustard, salt and sugar together in a basin. Stir in the beaten egg until smooth. Add the vinegar, beating until smooth. Transfer to a saucepan and stir over a gentle heat for five minutes. Leave to cool before stirring in the olive oil. Serve with your savoury dishes to make their appeal "otherwise" than what it might appear to have been.

The Cheshire Cat's Cheese Whiskers - 2 ounces flour / 2 ounces butter / 3 ounces grated Cheddar cheese / 1/2 teaspoon baking powder / 2 ounces grated breadcrumbs / 1/2 saltspoon salt /  1/2 saltspoon pepper / paprika 

Sieve flour, salt and pepper into a basin. Stir in the breadcrumbs and cheese. Rub in the butter with the fingers until you get a smooth paste, adding a little milk if the texture proves difficult. Dust work surface with flour and roll out pastry into a strip about 4 inches wide. one-eighth of an inch. Cut pastry into so many thin strips. Place on a greased tin and bake in a steady oven at 375ºF, gas mark 4 until crisp and brown. Serve hot, sprinkle with paprika. Then sit back and smile contentedly at your achievement, if only to remind yourself that long ago Cheshire Cheeses were moulded into the shape of a grinning cat prior to being sent to Bristol for export. Hence, maybe, the origin of the phrase " grin like a Cheshire cat " Perhaps Alice should have asked her question of the Duchess's cook?  

Hope you enjoy the few photos of Tenniel's illustrations that I included. - JW 

                                 Apparently Lewis Carroll drew this one of himself.