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

 

This is not a traditional almanac in the sense of providing the reader with sun and moon charts and phases, tide tables, astrology and astronomy occurances and garden tending tasks; The Food Almanac by Miranda York, is a collaboration on the pure enjoyment of food. With a focus on seasonal ingredients, and a monthly menu to help, it is a good culinary companion in your kitchen. One that will change month to month and with the seasons, providing you good recipes with good things to eat and a celebration of good food. Each chapter has an introduction for the month ahead, seasonal highlights for the pantry, spotlight on ingredients and passages on food history. The chapters end with a menu, that are selected recipes to get the best of each season and a comparable reading list to help you extent and explore ingredients and stories.

The contributors range from celebrated food writers, chefs, poets and novelists, making it engaging and entertaining, that at times reads more like book than a cookbook. Shared stories, memoirs, recipes, tips, discussions on a single ingredient and a culinary book reading list to accompany each month is appreciative, something any food lover and home cook can appreciate. Although this was a gift, I do know that this volume was hard to get a hold of... and yes, there is a volume two, which seems less so with the second volume. I enjoyed this book exceedingly as it brought together a few of my favourite things besides recipes and food but poetry, stories, art and more books. This is definitely a cookbook to consider for yourself or to be gifted as such.   

There are plenty of recipes too linger over and consider in a month or the months ahead. The recipe I am sharing from the book is one of the menu recipes for the month of February and is how it appears in the cookbook.  

Braised Shiitake, Tofu and Chai Choi - by Lap-fai Lee

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"Chai Choi is a traditional braised vegetarian dish that's eaten on festival days by those practising Buddhism. This is delicious medley of ingredients, full of sweet umami and comforting flavours."

groundnut (peanut) or vegetable oil, for frying

2 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped, whites and greens separated

3 slices of fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed

6 large shiitake mushrooms, soaked until soft, stems removed and quartered, soaking liquor reserved

A splash of Shaoxing wine

2 sticks of tofu skin, soaked until soft, cut into 4 cm (1 1/2 in) pieces

Small handful of dried lily flowers, soaked until soft

8 small cubes of deep-fried tofu

2 fingers' worth black sea moss

2 small cubes of fermented tofu, mashed into paste

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

25g (1 oz) yellow miso paste

20g (3/4 oz) caster (superfine) sugar

In a large frying pan (skillet), add the oil and fry the spring onion whites, ginger and garlic to release the aroma. Add the mushrooms and splash in the Shaoxing wine to sizzle off the alcohol. Add all of the other ingredients and top up with the soaking liquor from the mushrooms. There should be enough liquid to gently braise the ingredients together for 30 minutes. Garnish with the spring onion greens before serving. 

Cornish Fairings

 

Cornish Fairings are a biscuit to celebrate St. Piran's Day, on March 5th. St. Piran is one of three patron saints of Cornwall, St. Petroc and St. Michael being the other two. Delicately spiced with a crunchy, chewy texture; these gingery biscuits were originally sold at seasonal fairs and given by men to their sweethearts or to children as a treat. 

Cornish Fairings

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225g (1 cup) unbleached all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

3 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons ground mixed spice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

120g (1/2 cup) butter

120g (1/2 cup) caster sugar

5 tablespoons golden syrup

Preheat oven to 350ºF / 180ºC / Gas Mark 4.

Grease two baking trays or line baking trays with baking parchment.

Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger, mixed spice, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl and whisk together. 

Rub the butter into the flour mixture with your fingertips until it resembles a fine breadcrumb like texture; then add the sugar and stir.

Add the golden syrup and mix together well. Ultimately bringing the dough all together by using your clean hands to make a smooth dough.

Divide the dough in half; take one half and shape into 12 small walnut sized pieces, roll them into balls and place on the greased or lined baking trays with space between each ball as they will spread into shape.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until they have spread, turned golden brown and the tops have crackled.

Leave the biscuits to cool on the baking trays for 5 minutes before removing, carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Repeat with the other half of the dough or you may freeze it and use it at a later date. 

Biscuits will keep in a tin or air tight container for 3 to 4 days.