(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipes or Cultural Fun.)
Inspired by Kathy Slack and Mark Ridsdill Smith I am taking my veg-growing a little more seriously this year. Usually I just chuck some seeds about willy nilly, forget what I sowed where and fail to water anything properly. It’s fun when whatever pulls through turns out to be edible but this year I want to be a little bit organised. Not regimented but just enough to give things a proper chance.
Last year, following Mark’s advice to work out how much sun each area of the garden gets, I made a map. It totally explained why my tomatoes never ripen.
This year’s seedlings are going somewhere other than the container in the bottom left hand corner of this diagram…
My tomato seedlings are doing well so far and I’ve just planted some chilli seeds which I hope will bear fruit and become hot sauces later in the year. Until then, here is a hot sauce I made with chillies I bought from the supermarket but which turned out splendidly.
I just realised that In Good Taste turns two on Sunday. March 30th 2023 was when I posted a recipe for Pink Pickled Turnips and some digressions about oversized foodstuffs in children’s books.
So it seems apt that we are celebrating this milestone with another hot sauce, but this time somewhat fancier.
Before the recipe, a little news.
Give the gift of fermentation for Mothers Day
I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor that links motherly love and microbes but struggling a bit tbh. There are vinegar mothers but I’m not sure they get me where I want to go. Probably for the best. This newsletter already has Cultural Fun so I’m not sure it can stand any more laboured fermentary wordplay.
But if your mother likes cooking and/or kimchi you should totally get her a voucher for a private fermentation class, ideally so you can do it together. Use the code MOTHER15 before midnight on Sunday for 15% off any voucher from my shop: pasta classes and freezer filling as well as fermentation workshops.
Or, else why not gift a place on my June 6th field-to-ferment course in Oxfordshire? Use the code MOTHER15 before midnight on Sunday for 15% off and if you book and drop me a line before 4pm tomorrow I’ll send you a voucher you can print out and present with a card or else email onwards.
I’m delighted to be cooking at Lizzy’s on the Green again this summer. There are two consecutive dates: July 25th and 26th. The menu is TBC but will be my usual mix of seasonally-inspired snacks and sharing plates. The return of last year’s favourite kimchi devilled eggs is a strong possibility…
Tickets are on sale now and I would love to see you there.
OK. Let’s make some hot sauce. You’ll need a roughly 500ml jar for the initial ferment and these quantities make about 300ml of sauce (three of the little bottles from the picture). Or to make this andlast week’s beetroot number use a litre jar, double the chillis and add one more bulb of garlic.
For the ferment
200g red chillies
2 bulbs garlic (or more if you want to confit extra, see note)
5% brine
For the sauce
100ml olive oil
2 tablespoons preserved lemon purée
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Method
Prep the chillies and garlic. Remove the stems from the chillies and chop them into chunks. Maybe wear gloves if you have them? Or at least be careful not to touch your eyes afterwards… Separate and peel the garlic cloves.
Ferment the chillies and garlic. Put them in a scrupulously clean jar and make a 5% brine (ie. the amount of salt you use should be five percent of the weight of the water). 15g salt dissolved in 300ml water should be enough. Pour this over the chillies and add something to act as a pickle weight and keep everything submerged. If you don’t have glass or ceramic weights a sandwich bag filled with water (or brine) works well, as does half an onion. Seal the jar and leave to ferment, burping occasionally, until your desired level of funkiness has been reached. They can be ready in as little as a week but for me, this usually takes about a month.
Confit the garlic. Remove your pickle weight and drain the chillies and garlic, reserving the brine. Put the garlic in an oven-proof saucepan or dish and add the olive oil. It should cover the cloves (if it doesn’t, add a little more). You can either add a lid or cover the dish with foil and put it in the oven at 120°C or put the pan on the hob over a low heat. I usually prefer the oven as it’s easier to keep the temperature constant. You want the garlic to get sweet and completely soft but not to brown at all. This usually takes about an hour. Once done allow to cool completely.
Make the sauce. Put the chillies in a blender with 100ml of their brine, the confit garlic and its oil, the preserved lemon, vinegar and the spices. Blitz until completely smooth - about 10 minutes. Don’t breathe in too deeply whilst this is happening!
Taste and adjust. Add more brine, apple cider vinegar or lemon to taste and adjust with a little salt and sugar if necessary. Add more brine and blend again if you would like a looser, more liquid consistency. Then return to the jar or pour into bottles and keep in the fridge.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
You can get extra flavour into the confit by adding bay leaves, rosemary and thyme to the oil (remove them before blending).
It’s worth adding extra garlic cloves to the ferment and making loads of this confit as it keeps for a few weeks in the fridge and the sweet, mellow flavour of the cloves and the garlicky oil itself is good on all sorts. Smoosh the softened cloves onto toast, blend them into butter, use the oil in salad dressings or for cooking, etc. Non-fermented garlic is also delicious cooked in this way.
Recipe: Crab toasts with saffron and preserved lemon hot sauce
We had some friends to dinner on Saturday night and I made this for the four of us as a starter alongside some mozzarella, ham and other bits and pieces. But I would say it really serves two.
The ideal situation crab-wise would be if you were by the sea and got a lovely, fresh dressed one from a small hut on the harbour. But I just used a pot from the supermarket and it was fine.
For the pickled fennel
half a fennel bulb
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
For the crab and toasts
100g crab meat (half white, half brown, unmixed)
pinch saffron
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp preserved lemon & confit garlic hot sauce (or to taste)
1 couple sprigs parsley, leaves picked and finely chopped
2 slices sourdough bread
1 clove garlic
Method
Pickle the fennel. Slice the fennel as finely as you can. I used a mandoline. Put it in a bowl with the lemon juice and vinegar and toss to make sure everything is covered. Leave for an hour or so. You can do this a few days in advance if you like. It will keep in the fridge.
Make the mayo. Put the saffron in a glass and add 1 teaspoon boiling water. leave to infuse and cool. Meanwhile put the brown crab meat in a bowl with the mayonnaise and hot sauce. Add the cooled saffron water and mix well. Taste and add salt if necessary.
Mix the crab. Add the chopped parsley to the white crab meat and mix to combine evenly.
Assemble and serve. Toast the sourdough and, whilst still hot, rub each slice with a clove of garlic then cut it in half. Divide the brown crab mayo between the four pieces of toast and spread it evenly. Put a little pile of white crab on top and finish with a couple of slices of pickled fennel. Serve immediately.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
Obviously you can use any hot sauce here. Adjust the amount according to its heat. Lemon is good with crab though so, if not using a lemony hot sauce, add a little preserved lemon purée or a grating of lemon zest.
Keep the parsley stalks. I have a “stock box” in my freezer: a two litre tub into which go all veg trimmings, Parmesan rinds, chicken bones and herb stalks. When it’s full, I make stock.
Recipe: Slow-roast lamb with preserved lemon hot sauce
Serves two generously with leftovers but scale up or down as you wish.
Ingredients
half shoulder of lamb
50ml preserved lemon & confit garlic hot sauce
Method
Marinade the lamb. Put the lamb in a roasting dish, sprinkle it with salt and tip over the hot sauce. Massage well to coat evenly and leave to marinade and absorb the flavours for at least an hour. Overnight in the fridge would be great if you have time.
Cook the lamb. Cover the lamb with foil and cook at 150°C for two hours. Remove the foil and cook for another hour or until completely tender. Meanwhile prepare any accompaniments (see notes for suggestions).
Pull apart and serve. Pour off some of the fat in the roasting tray and allow the lamb to cool slightly. Pull it apart into chunks, discarding the bone, and serve.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
I served this on top of some cooked freekeh mixed with two chopped, sweated leeks and half a jar of Bold Bean Co butterbeans. Plus a fridge-raid pesto made from some parsley and tarragon going a bit floppy in the salad drawer blitzed up with oil. Preserved lemon yoghurt on the side and a little more hot sauce on top. It definitely needs something a little acidic to cut through the richness.
I think it would also go great with cumin-roast carrots. Pomegranate seeds sprinkled over the top would be a great addition.
Cultural Fun
The Tizah Garwood exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is lovely. The subtitle is Beyond Ravillious but Garwood’s more famous husband is one of my all-time favourite artists so I’m not sure I quite managed that. Her stuff is ingenious and enchanting in its own right though.
Three dimensional houses with trees made from leaf prints and slightly dream-like tableaus of toys in front of painted backdrops, familiar but eerie, reminded me slightly of the artwork in Siri Hustvedt’s novel the Blazing World.
There were also beautiful marbled papers and a running theme of trains in landscapes which recall those of her husband but were odder and less straightforward.
Garwood on the left, Ravilious on the right.
Very different in tone, I also saw Solid Light and Electric Dreams at the Tate Modern, a good combo as they were both tech-based art.
Antony McCall’s sculptures are made of light projected through mist and so seem, yes, solid. The sheets of light are marbled showing you a slice of swirling air. You’re surprised when you walk through the beam not to encounter resistance.
My favourite things in Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet were also playing with light and motion. Heinz Mack’s Light Dynamo was an aluminium disc moving behind fluted glass creating a mesmeric rippling effect (that I am now wondering if I can recreate in my bathroom):
Also Otto Piene’s “light ballets” was like the most magical night lamp:
But the early computer art has not aged well. Stuff which which must have been innovative when produced in the 60s now looks like rubbish screen savers. Paint survives the years much better…
I was thinking about McCall again when I saw Spiritualized at the Barbican last night. I’ve been an obsessive fan of Jason Pierce’s music since Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space came out in 1997. It gets me high. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Their bluesy spacerock makes me feel fuzzy round the edges, translucent almost.
It’s 30 years since the Pure Phase album came out so they played it through in it’s entirety and it was wonderful. Spiritualized aren’t exactly a visual band though: it’s mainly just shaggy-haired men standing very still and playing instruments. So, as I fell into a trance-like state I was mainly looking at the spotlights cutting through the stage fog. Less solid but still effective.
Bye! See you next week!
In the meantime, if you felt like sharing In Good Taste with friends or family who might enjoy it, you can do so with the button below.
Or upgrade to paid to support the work I do. Either would mean a lot to me. Thanks so much.
In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal. It’s free to subscribe and new issues will appear in your inbox every Thursday.
You can also access it via the Substack website or app where each issue remains free or a month after publication but older posts and archive access are for paid subscribers only. If you can afford it, do consider upgrading to paid to support my work - those vegetables won’t ferment themselves...
I also occasionally include affiliate links to Bookshop.org and will earn a small commission on anything purchased via a clickthrough.
You can also find me on Instagram or visit my website to find information about my catering work, cookery lessons and upcoming events.
Thanks for reading In Good Taste! Subscribe to receive new posts and support my work.
