The Rhubarb Fool

One charming aspect of visiting Guernsey, the island of a thousand greenhouses, is discovering the local custom of “hedge veg”.  Keen amateur gardeners sell their surplus produce in their front gardens or at the roadside, leaving out an honesty box.  You will find most often potatoes, tomatoes and French beans, also cucumbers, peppers and aubergines and occasionally melons and grapes too.  Shops are thin on the ground outside St Peter Port but during the summer months, thanks to hedge veg, you will find an abundant supply of fresh picked fruit, vegetables and salad wherever you are on the island.

Here’s a rather splendid example from the west coast:

The last day of our holiday came round on Saturday so I decided to to pick up some fresh Guernsey produce for a nostalgic supper at home that evening.  First stop was our local Vazon Bay roadside stall for some gorgeous glossy aubergines:

Next, a visit to the bustling Forest Stores en route to the airport to track down a locally made soft blue cheese called Fort Grey.  I’d spotted an article on this cheese in the Guernsey Evening Press a few days earlier.  It’s made by Fenella Maddison using local Guernsey cows’ milk from Torteval.  She made the headlines after taking a Silver award at this year’s Nantwich Cheese Festival held at the end of July.

Here’s Fenella’s cheese which made a lovely end to our meal back home later that evening.  It’s soft and creamy but with a distinct blue tang.  If you enjoy Gorgonzola dolce then I think you would enjoy this cheese too and I urge you to give it a try if ever you have the chance.

Savouring the cheese at the end of our meal the name Maddison suddenly rang a bell – Derek Maddison was a former colleague of mine at GEC’s Stanhope Gate head office in London some years ago.  I remembered he’d then moved to Guernsey to take up an insurance job.  The mental wheels kept turning and I remembered too that his girlfriend at that time was called Fenella… what a coincidence!  Clearly Derek and Fenella are married, living in Guernsey and Fenella is now an artisan cheesemaker.  Good on you Fenella!  I shall drop you a line shortly and let you know how much I enjoyed your cheese.

Before the cheese course, I turned the glossy Guernsey aubergines I brought home into one of my favourite pasta recipes – Spaghetti alla Siciliana – adapted from Marcella Hazan’s recipe.  I don’t salt and drain aubergines now but roast and squeeze out the bitter juices instead.

Here’s the finished dish ready for serving:

And here is the recipe:

Spaghetti alla siciliana

For 6 as an Italian style pasta dish; 2 for a generous main course dish

1 large or 2 medium aubergines baked for 45 minutes, cooled, squeezed, peeled and chopped into rough chunks
1        tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic peeled and chopped
14 oz 400g tinned plum tomatoes drained and cut into thin strips
freshly ground black pepper
salt
1lb spaghetti (wholewheat is good here)
3 tbsp grated mild pecorino cheese
1 oz fresh ricotta
8-10 fresh basil leaves roughly torn
freshly grated parmesan cheese for the table

 Add the olive oil to the pan along with the sliced onion.  Cook over medium/high heat until the onion becomes pale gold.  Add the chopped garlic and cook for a few seconds more, stirring as you cook.  Add the tomato strips, turn the heat up to high and cook for 8-10 minutes stirring frequently.  Add the aubergine, turn the heat down to medium and cook for a minute or two, mixing it with the other ingredients.  Season with pepper and salt, remembering that salty pecorino will be added subsequently.

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling water.  When still al dente, drain and mix with the sauce in the pan or in a warmed serving bowl.  Stir in the cheeses and basil and season once more.

Serve immediately with more parmesan cheese at the table.

 Details for Guernsey’s Forest Stores are:

Forest Stores
Le Bourg
Forest
GY8 0AW

01481 238 395

As far as I know, the only retail outlets for Fenella’s Fort Grey and Torteval cheeses are on Guernsey – either the Forest or Torteval stores.  You can read about Fenella’s cheesemaking exploits here:

http://a2guernseymilk.com/cm/latest-products/43-uk-latest-products/68-torteval-cheese-from-guernsey-island-an-introduction.html

The Big Day had dawned: I was going to prepare (euphemism of course for kill) my first lobster and then prepare the classic dish of Homard a l’Américaine for the very first time. I planned to follow the elaborate instructions given in classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck and Julia Child. Volume I of this magnum opus gives the recipe and Volume II gives magnificent anatomical instructions and drawings.

First catch your lobster.  Arthur and I checked the bus timetable and chose the 8.30 commuter service into St Peter Port, travelling with the pinstripe-suited bankers and back-office workers who make up a high percentage of Guernsey’s population.

We soon arrived in Town, as St Peter Port is universally known, and made our way to Seafresh Fishmongers where we were fast becoming regular customers.  We picked up our lively lobster, a good size weighing in at just over 3 lb, female.  We christened her Les (for the alliteration) and sadly she soon became known as Fat Les…

A request to have her packaged for our return journey resulted, in no-nonsense Guernsey style, in our being handed a second plastic bag.

We took the opportunity to enjoy a quick cappuccino on the harbourside and a read of the papers – full of coverage of England’s Ashes victory the day before – before hopping back on the bus with lobster quietly  on the seat beside us.

On our return back to the apartment, we unwrapped Fat Les from her inelegant double plastic bag and stowed her gingerly in the base of the fridge loosely wrapped in paper.  She seemed pretty calm.

After spending the afternoon on the beach, surf lesson and swimming, we returned to the apartment ready to do the deed and despatch Fat Les to the cooking pot.  She still seemed pretty lively after half a day in the fridge as the following video clip demonstrates:

The recipe I’d chosen, Homard a l’Américaine, didn’t allow for the cheat’s option of merely dropping the lobster into boiling water but demanded the Full Monty, severing the spinal cord with a sturdy kitchen knife.  I won’t dwell on the details but it wasn’t pleasant.  Intent on being certain that the lobster had been properly despatched, I nearly removed the poor creature’s head in an executioner’s strike.  Nevertheless the muscle spasms which followed (which Mastering the Art of French Cooking warns you to expect) were still alarming.

We’d done most of the advance preparation for the recipe, the mise en place as chefs call it, earlier in the day.  You can see from the following picture that we’d improvised with a couple of ingredients we come to hand.  Fish stock is hard to come by when you are cooking on holiday so we boiled up some winkles gathered the day before from Lihou island.  Wild fennel grows nearby in abundance and as its herby aniseed flavour works well with fish, I decided to flavour the sauce with it.

I can’t pretend this recipe is simple: it took an age to butcher the lobster and I learned that a bit of simple brute force is the best thing to crack those tough claws.  The claw crackers in the kitchen drawer  were feeble in the extreme and didn’t even make a dent.  A rock from the beach was an inelegant but effective substitute.

Following the admirably clear and detailed instructions in Mastering the Art of French cooking, the frankly rather disgusting looking grey green mush inside the lobster (which is in fact the liver or tomalley) was turned into a delicious enrichment for the sauce.  I was mystified at first by the abundance of a second type of gunge in the body cavity, this one a dark moss green.  I worked out that this must be the roe and confirmed this by heating a little in a small frying pan whereupon it was miraculously transformed by the heat into a familiar firm red form.  I was jubilant to have discovered a small mistake in the normally word perfect recipe – the recipe refers to the roe as being a bright orange red which of course is only true when it is in its cooked state.

An hour or so of chopping, frying, sieving and boiling later, the finished dish was ready, served with steamed long grain rice and lightly cooked French beans.  It was absolutely delicious but had been hard and harrowing work.  Here is the finished dish:

Here is the recipe taken straight from Volume I Mastering the Art of French cooking.  For the detailed lobster preparation instructions and wonderfully instructive drawings by Sidonie Coryn, you’ll have to get hold of  copy of Volume II for yourself.

Recipe for Homard a l’Américaine

For 6 people

Three 1 and 1/2 lb live lobsters

Split the lobsters in two lengthwise.  Remove sand sacs in the heads and intestinal tubes.  Reserve coral and green matter. Remove claws and joints and crack them.  Separate tails from chests.

2tbl olive oil  A heavy 12-in enamelled frying-pan or casserole

Heat the oil in the frying-pan until it is very hot but not smoking.  Add the lobster pieces, meat-side down, and sauté for several minutes, turning them, until the shells are bright red.  Remove lobster to a side dish.

1 medium carrot, finely diced            1 medium onion, finely diced

Stir in the diced carrot and onion, and cook slowly for 5 minutes or until almost tender.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., Mark 4.

Salt and pepper
3 tbl. chopped shallots or spring onions
1 clove mashed garlic
1/8 pt cognac
1 lb. fresh ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, juiced, and chopped
2 tbl. tomato paste
1/2 pt fish stock
3/4 pt dry white wine or 1/2 pt dry white vermouth
Optional: 1/2 tbl. meat glaze
2 tbl. chopped parsley
1 tbl. fresh tarragon

Season the lobster, return it to the frying-pan, and add the shallots or spring onions, and the garlic.  With the frying pan over moderate heat, pour in the cognac.  Avert your face and ignite the cognac with a lighted match and shake the frying-pan slowly until the flames have subsided.  Stir in all the ingredients and bring to simmering point on top of the stove.  Cover and place in the middle part of a pre-heated oven.  Regulate heat so that lobster simmers quietly for 20 minutes.

3 oz softened butter                 A 5-pt mixing bowl
The lobster coral and green matter

While the lobster is simmering, force the lobster coral and green matter with the butter through a fine sieve into the mixing-bowl and set aside.

When the lobster is done, remove it to a side dish.  Take the meat out of the shells if you wish.  Place frying-pan with its cooking liquids over high heat and boil down rapidly until sauce has reduced and thickened slightly.  It will acquire more body later when the butter and coral mixture is added.  Taste very carefully for seasoning.

(*) Recipe may be completed to this point, and finished later.

Return the lobster to the sauce and bring to simmering point to reheat the lobster.  Beat 1/2 pint of hot sauce by drops into the coral and butter mixture, then pour the mixture into the frying-pan with the lobster.  Shake and swirl the frying-pan over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes to poach the coral and green matter, but do not bring the sauce near simmering point again.

A ring of risotto or of steamed rice
2 to 3tbp. chopped parsley, or parsley and fresh tarragon

Arrange the lobster and sauce in the rice ring, decorate with the herbs, and serve immediately.

When we visited Guernsey the previous year (summer 2008) I had imagined eating spanking-fresh seafood daily, acquired after haggling with gnarled fisherman clad in salt-encrusted Guernsey sweaters down by the harbourside. Fish and shellfish were certainly available in abundance – there were lobster pot buoys off every rocky headland and lobsters featured on every restaurant menu – but where on earth did you buy the raw materials? We discovered the answer on the last day of our holiday – Seafresh Fishmongers on St Peter Port’s harbourside – “Guernsey’s only traditional fishmonger”. This year, I was determined to cook one, maybe two lobster dishes, a simple one  using cooked lobster to start and, if this went well, one of the classic lobster dishes such as Thermidor or Américaine. I’d pre-ordered a good sized cooked lobster whilst we were still in Sark to be ready for collection in St Peter Port as soon as we disembarked en route to our holiday apartment at Vazon Bay.

Here is Seafresh fishmongers, authentically situated right by the water on the approach to local landark Castle Cornet.  Refurbishment is under way hence the scaffolding:

Inside is a fantastic wet fish counter and a tank, replenished daily, for live crabs and lobsters. A magnet for small boys!

We collected our 3lb lobster, still warm from the enormous pot where the live shellfish are cooked on the premises each morning, and it shared a 20 minute taxi ride with us over to Vazon Bay on Guernsey’s west coast.

We collected the key to our apartment, unpacked our bags and then unpacked our handsome lobster, now christened Laura.  She was definitely female – you can tell both from the presence of roe and from the anatomy of the swimmerets:

A lobster is a challenging creature to prepare, even when it is already cooked, as most of us don’t eat them very often.

With this in mind, I’d brought a photocopy of the illustrated instructions from my trusty copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.  Mine is the Penguin edition (though the original first appeared in the US in 1961). I’ve had this book for ages and it has become the reference work I turn to for any aspect of French cookery or technical skill.  The text is clear, accurate but never dry.  The illustrations, black and white line drawings by Sidonie Coryn (what a wonderful name!) are so much more than a technical diagrams – they are beautiful in a botanical illustration kind of way.

The book didn’t let me down – within 20 minutes or so, the lobster meat was extracted and cut into chunky pieces and the greenish blue liver was reserved for enriching the sauce.  Sadly I had no use for the roe today.

I was now ready to prepare my recipe – spaghetti with lobster – a simple pasta sauce of my own devising, comprising lobster, garlic, chopped parsley and olive oil. It is a good way of making one lobster serve several people.

Here is the finished dish:

Recipe for Spaghetti with Lobster

For 4 generous main course portions

Ingredients

Meat from a 3lb cooked lobster cut into bite size chunks
If liked, 2 teaspoons lobster liver  to add to sauce
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried chili flakes
6 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Enough dried spaghetti for 4 people – best quality you can find to do the lobster justice

Warm 4 bowls.  Put the spaghetti into ample boiling salted water.  In the time it takes to cook (8 minutes or so) you will have time to prepare the sauce.  Fry the garlic in a sauté pan big enough to hold the cooked spaghetti with its sauce.  When the garlic turns golden and aromatic, add the dried chili flakes and the lobster liver (if using this) and let it all sizzle in the pan for a few seconds, then add the lobster pieces, parsley and seasoning to taste.  Turn off the heat and wait till the spaghetti is ready, maybe another minute or so.  Drain the cooked pasta, add to the sauté pan, toss, adding more extra virgin olive oil if necessary and a squeeze of lemon juice, then serve in the warmed bowls. Please, no parmesan which is not right with fish.

Finally, here are contact details for Seafresh:

Seafresh Limited
Castle Emplacement
GY1 1AG

Tel 01481 722707