Latest news with #LarousseGastronomique
Telegraph
01-04-2025
- Telegraph
Men, this is how much culinary ignorance could cost you
You can count on the divorce courts for a sense of the frontiers of gender equality. Last month, Simon Entwistle found himself in the papers when he appealed the sum he'd been awarded following his split from his ex, Jenny Helliwell, on grounds of 'gender prejudice'. She is an heiress with an estimated fortune of £61.5 million. Entwistle's argument is basically that he is so useless he ought to be given lots of money. He tried hard in the original hearing. Glossing over his career as a City trader, his lawyers argued he was a kind of innocent fledgling, plucked from the nest and sold into gilded marital servitude. Having grown used to luxury, he could hardly be expected to support himself. He claimed for all sorts of spurious concessions; he wanted £36,000 per year for flights alone. Most outrageously, Entwistle wanted £26,000 a year for 'meal plans', as he was hopeless in the kitchen. 'I can't even cook an omelette,' he pleaded. Perhaps not, but you'd have thought he could run the numbers. Even given today's prices, £500 a week will buy a man a lot of breakfast. I realise it was for a noble cause, but in completely denying any kitchen prowess, Entwistle has let the man side down. Jamie Oliver has been on TV for a quarter of a century. As with tax fraud, ignorance is not an excuse. Nobody is saying you need to memorise the entire Larousse Gastronomique, but in 2025 every man ought to have at least seven pairs of pants and the same number of recipes up his sleeve. A minimum of two should be midweek dinners that do not involve piling up every pan in the kitchen and kicking back to glug the claret while one's partner sets about the washing up like Hercules approaching the stables. Speaking for myself, I have found cooking at home a good way not to feel like a spare part. This time five years ago, my wife and I had our baby daughter at home. Caring for a one-month-old in a lockdown was a good lesson in gender essentialism. Cooking was one of the few things I could do. (I am told 'making some money' would also have been popular.) And it is not hard. Put a chicken in the oven for 45 minutes*? Brownie points. Huge batch of pasta sauce? Brownie points. Bake some brownies? You guessed it – a pat on the back. An irony for Entwistle is that if he had bothered to get his head around a couple of one-pan dishes – and even washed them up afterwards – he might have come off better in the original ruling. Traditional divorce awards were a reflection of sacrifice as well as need. Women gave up their own careers to devote themselves to their husbands and children; it was right they shared the pot. Martyred apron guy is a more persuasive vibe than entitled whinger. Instead, the judge was having none of it, and awarded Entwistle just £325,000. It must have stung all the more given Helliwell had previously offered £800,000. Mr Justice Francis commented: '[Entwistle] said to me, 'I can't even cook an omelette.' Well, my answer to that is, 'Learn.' It is not difficult. You do not have to be a master chef to learn how to eat reasonably well.' And then there was this zinger: 'Being married to a rich person for three years does not suddenly catapult you into a right to live like that after the relationship has ended.' As Entwistle had spent £450,000 in legal fees, his pleading culinary ignorance left him down £125,000 net. I wonder how he likes them eggs.
New York Times
27-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
Our Ultimate Guide to Making Ratatouille
The traditional French dish is a classic for a reason. Melissa Clark will run you through its history, the equipment to use and making the perfect version. Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Published March 27, 2025 Updated March 27, 2025 [This article was originally published on Feb. 14, 2017.] The French have a genius for cooking with vegetables. Even the humblest onion is transformed into something glorious in the hands of a Gallic cook. Ratatouille, one of jewels of Provençal cooking, is a fine example of that tradition. This guide is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, the 10 definitive dishes every modern cook should master. Vegetables are the bedrock of French cuisine, the foundation upon which all is built. Although cooking bibles like 'The Escoffier Cookbook' and 'Larousse Gastronomique' may not have as many recipes centering on artichokes and carrots as they do on chicken or beef, it is only because vegetables suffuse the canon and the kitchen, from the broths and sauces that serve as the base of elaborate dishes, to the garnishes that finish them. But there are a handful of dishes where vegetables are the stars. Ratatouille is beloved for its silky, olive oil-imbued vegetables, which are saturated with the summery scents of garlic and herbs. By mastering it, you will gain not only deeper insights into how to cook the vegetables in the recipe, but you will also be able to apply that knowledge to other vegetables, making you a better cook all around. Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Unlike much of French cuisine, ratatouille does not have a set recipe or precise technique. There are as many versions as there are cooks, each slightly different in method and ingredients. The most traditional recipes call for cooking each vegetable separately in a pot on the stove until well browned, layering everything back into the pot with a generous amount of olive oil and some tomatoes, and then letting it all slowly stew. Most cooks agree that this is the best way to ensure that the vegetables are cooked to perfection before all are combined, and the flavors left to meld. However, all that standing at the stove stirring vegetables can become tedious. Even 'Larousse Gastronomique' discards that method in its official recipe, throwing everything into the same pan in stages without the benefit of that individual browning. But there is another, better way around the tedium: using your oven. This is what many contemporary French cooks do, and it's the method on which our recipe is based. All the vegetables are bathed in olive oil and roasted separately on baking pans until well browned. Then they're mixed together in one pan, covered with more oil and some tomato, and cooked again until everything condenses in flavor and practically falls apart, soaking up the good oil and tomato almost like a confit. That time spent steeping in good oil makes ratatouille one of the rare vegetable dishes that improves as it sits. It is best made in advance, and you can be flexible with the way you cook it, roasting the vegetables in stages as time allows, then combining them all even days later. It is also wonderfully versatile at the table, making a fine starter, side dish or main course, one that can be eaten warm, at room temperature or cold. 'Still Life With Flowers and Vegetables' by Caravaggio (1571-1610). Nimatallah / Art Resource, NY A slowly cooked stew of eggplant, onions, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes has been simmering on hearths around the Mediterranean since the 16th century, when tomatoes, peppers and squash from the Americas met the eggplant, onion and olive oil already in residence. This basic combination of summer vegetables takes different forms throughout the region. In Catalonia, it is simmered until it is almost jamlike and called samfaina. In Turkey, it is known as turlu and may also contain potatoes, okra and green beans. Lebanon, Egypt and Greece all have versions. In Provençe, it is scented with herbs and garlic and called ratatouille. The term, which came into use in the 19th century, is derived from the French verbs ratouiller and tatouiller, both meaning to stir up. And the pleasing, percussive-sounding word captures the essence of this dish: a stirring of several vegetables that have been cooked separately before being combined. Originally, a ratatouille could be any kind of simple or coarse stew. It could include meat, or it could do without it. Nineteenth-century French military slang referred to the dish as a 'rata.' The first written mentions of the all-vegetable stew from Nice that we know today, also called sauté à la Niçoise, came in the early 20th century. But by 1930, ratatouille had become entrenched in the Provençal repertoire. Henri Heyraud, the author of 'La Cuisine à Nice,' described it as a ragoût of eggplant, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes. The use of the word ragoût here is fitting; it means to revive the taste, which is exactly what ratatouille does, giving cooked vegetables and herbs new verve when they are combined and cooked again. As Provençal cuisine became fashionable all over France (and to a lesser degree in Britain and the United States) in the latter part of the 20th century, the popularity of ratatouille grew. It has since become a summer staple to serve with simple grilled meats, or as a main course in its own right, with the requisite bottle of rosé. You need a chef's knife and paring knife to prepare the vegetables. And a well-sharpened knife will make all that chopping go noticeably faster than a dull knife. The vegetables in this ratatouille are roasted individually before they are all combined. Ideally, you will have at least four large rimmed metal baking sheets for doing so. You can get away with fewer, but you will need to cook the vegetables in batches. You could heap all of the vegetables onto a baking sheet when it is time to cook them together. But a large, shallow, attractive casserole that can travel straight to the table is an appealing way to serve the dish. Ratatouille is a freer and easier recipe than much of what you'll find in the canon of French cuisine, requiring you to spend more time choosing the ingredients than actually fiddling with them. That said, there are some techniques that will help you get the most deeply flavored dish. Blanching and peeling tomatoes for ratatouille. By Meg Felling Blanching tomatoes helps loosen the skin, making them easier to peel without losing any of their precious, sweet juices. The trick is remove them from the boiling water before their flesh is cooked. You want to cook only the skin. Choose tomatoes that are ripe but still firm; soft tomatoes won't hold up to the peeling and blanching. You can use any variety as long as it is flavorful and sweet. However, using large round tomatoes rather than small plum tomatoes makes the blanching, peeling and seeding go more quickly. To begin, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. One at a time, drop the whole tomatoes into the boiling water. Cover and let boil for 10 seconds. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, immediately remove the tomatoes from the pot and plunge them into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Hold a cooled tomato in your hand and use a small paring knife to cut out the stem. From there, you can start to peel the skin. It should slip right off. Cut the peeled tomato in half around its equator. Set up a bowl with a mesh sieve sitting on top. Squeeze the tomato halves over the sieve so the seeds are caught in the mesh and the juices pool in the bowl. The seeds should slip out easily, but you can use your fingers to pry any stubborn ones from the tomato flesh. Discard the seeds in the sieve. Dice the tomato pulp and add it to the bowl with their juices. Repeat peeling and seeding with the remaining tomatoes. Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times When you are making ratatouille, the quality of the olive oil is as important as that of the vegetables. Make sure to choose a good extra-virgin oil, preferably from France. You'll be using a lot of it here. If you don't have four baking sheets, roast the vegetables on individual sheets in succession. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a bowl as they finish cooking. This takes longer, since you can't roast all the vegetables at once. (Likewise, if you can't fit all of the baking sheets into your oven at once, cook them in batches.) If your ratatouille emerges from the oven with a lot of excess liquid in the pan, pour the liquid into a saucepan and reduce it over the stove. Then add it back to the dish once it is reduced, to take advantage of its flavor. Instead of roasting each vegetable on baking sheets, cook them on the stovetop. Heat your largest skillet on the stove, adding a film of oil, and cook each vegetable separately (and the onions, smashed garlic and herbs together). Cook in batches if necessary, so as not to crowd the pan. (If you crowd the pan, the vegetables will steam rather than brown, and cook unevenly.) As the vegetables soften and brown, transfer them to a bowl. (You can add all the different kinds of cooked vegetables to the same bowl.) Add more oil with each batch of vegetables, and season with salt and pepper as you go. When all of the vegetables are cooked, transfer them back to the skillet, along with the tomatoes, grated garlic and a good dose of olive oil. Simmer, uncovered, until they meld together, about 30 to 45 minutes. You can make this dish in stages, if that suits your schedule. Roast the vegetables separately a day or two before combining them, and then refrigerate them. When you are ready to return to them, combine with the tomatoes, remaining herbs and oil and cook for at least an hour to finish. It is best to make your ratatouille one or two days before serving so the flavors have a chance to meld and mellow. Once the dish is cooked and cooled, transfer it to a container, adding a little oil if necessary, and refrigerate for up to five days. When you're ready to serve, bring it to room temperature (this takes about an hour) and drizzle with a tiny bit more olive oil. You can also reheat it on the stove or in the microwave to serve it warm.
