Rose Prince - The New English Kitchen - Changing the Way You Shop, Cook and Eat

6 tablespoons olive oil

a pinch of sea salt

Cut off and discard the lower 5cm/2 inches of the watercress stalks. Either whiz the watercress with the oil and salt in a food processor or pound using a pestle and mortar until you have a smooth sauce.

Use in the same way as Herb Oils (see here). Good with roast beef, or zigzagged over toast spread with fresh cheeses or smoked fish.

Children once took watercress sandwiches to school, in place of real meat. They are, in fact, very good and, cut small, are nice to eat with drinks before dinner.

Spread slices of good brown or white bread with farmhouse butter, then sandwich with watercress, the lower stalks cut away.

Oranges and bananas, mangoes and papayas – I cannot do without them, and rely on a supply to cheer up fruit bowls when the English apples and pears have all been eaten, the berry season is over and soft orchard fruits are a memory in a pickle jar to eat with cold Monday leftover meat. I have travelled to Tobago twice and eaten so-called exotic fruits in their home – ripened in the sun and not in the hold of a ship – and was cheered to find that although they tasted better, it was only marginally so.

These fruits are made for travel. They ripen without sunlight in the dark, in our cold shops and quickly on our radiators. The gentle fingers that pack them in boxes in the Caribbean and Africa do so knowing how easily bananas bruise. I once asked a banana trader in London’s Nine Elms wholesale market why Caribbean bananas are small and curled and South American bananas long and straight. It was a conversation that has always stayed with me. ‘Ah, that is because there is less investment in the banana plantations of the Caribbean,’ he said, ‘and the bananas are picked before they grow to their full size.’ It was 1999 and we were talking about the World Trade Organisation’s decision to apply levies on certain European ‘luxury’ goods to the US, in retaliation for European loyalty to the Caribbean banana market over the largely American-owned plantations in South America/Costa Rica. ‘The Caribbean bananas,’ the trader continued, ‘are picked early because the farmers cannot afford to leave them on the trees even for another week. To me,’ he added, ‘they always look like small, hungry hands.’

This is an analogy of a worldwide problem for food producers. Lack of investment is the enemy of small food production. Along with coffee, tea, chocolate and dried fruits, Fairtrade bananas are now in most supermarkets. They are still small and curled but I am watching with hope.

This chutney can be made in half an hour or less. Eat with sausages or hot ham.

150ml/ 1/ 4pint white wine vinegar

3 cardamom pods

120g/4oz golden granulated sugar

1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped

3 mangoes, peeled, stoned and cut into 1cm/ 1/ 2inch cubes

1 tablespoon black onion seeds (nigella)

Put the vinegar and cardamoms in a small saucepan and add the sugar. Heat slowly, allowing the sugar to dissolve before the mixture boils. Simmer until the mixture has reduced in volume by about one-third and then remove from the heat. Add the chilli and stir. Pour the mixture over the mangoes and throw the onion seeds on top. You can eat it immediately or store it in the fridge for up to a week.

If you have never visited an Afro-Caribbean market, you are in for an experience. At Brixton Market in London, you will see some of the most demanding shoppers in action. African and West Indian women, and men, shout at market traders to push prices down and go for bulk deals. They pick up everything, squeeze it and smell it; they are terrific buyers of fresh vegetables and understand their true value.

Plantains are large, banana-like fruits that are eaten cooked. On my trip to Tobago, I ate them sautéed in butter or ghee for breakfast and they were wonderful. Their skins must be completely black before you cook them or they will have no flavour. Eat them with baked chicken legs and Corn Fritters (see here).

Serves 2

1 plantain, peeled and cut slightly on the diagonal into slices

1cm/ 1/ 2inch thick

ghee or butter mixed with vegetable oil

1 lime

Shallow-fry the plantain slices in the fat until golden on both sides and tender when prodded with a fork. Squeeze a little lime juice over them and serve.

Pomegranates are in Middle Eastern shops all year round, although they are particularly plump and fresh in late summer to autumn. They do keep a long time, though – I bought some for Christmas once and they were still there in April, albeit a little shrivelled, but the pips inside were red and juicy. Pomegranates appear frequently in Iranian cooking. I tend to buy them because I like the look of them, and then use only a few in a pilaff or a salad with oranges and spinach. What to do with the rest? What the Iranians do, of course. Make a pomegranate syrup to eat with roast poultry or game.

I am ever grateful to the exhaustive research of Claudia Roden for this recipe. This is an adaptation of her version.

4 pomegranates

juice of 2 lemons

1 tablespoon golden caster sugar

150ml/ 1/ 4pint water

a pinch each of salt and pepper

Cut the pomegranates in half and dig out the seeds. Put them in a food processor and blend for a few seconds – enough to break the skin that surrounds the seeds. Transfer the pulp to a sieve placed over a bowl and squeeze out the remaining juice by rubbing it through with a wooden spoon. Four pomegranates should yield about 300ml/ 1/ 2pint.

Put the pomegranate juice in a pan with the lemon juice, sugar, water, salt and pepper. Heat slowly and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook until the mixture has reduced by about a third. Add more lemon juice if it is too sweet. Pour into a jar and store in the fridge.

To eat pomegranate syrup with poultry or game, pour it over browned chicken, mallard or pheasant, then cover and simmer for 1–1 1/ 2hours, until the meat is tender. Thin the sauce with water if you wish.

Throw fresh pomegranate seeds over the pilaff on here 202– substituting pheasant or other game for lamb will be even nicer.

Dried fruit has gone though a renaissance and you can now buy wonderful, freshly dried soft pineapple, plums, figs, cherries and cranberries. I cook them with ordinary dried figs, adding them sliced to stock when braising partridge or pheasant. I make trifle with them too, having discovered by accident when short of fresh berries that they make a much more interesting pudding that is nice for Christmas meals.

Serves 8

480g/1lb dried fruit, such as figs, cherries, pineapples, plums and peaches, roughly chopped

2 glasses of marsala

2 glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice

6 sponge fingers, spread with any jam or Quince Cheese (see here)

1 quantity of Lemon Syllabub (see here)

dried rose petals and unsalted slivers of pistachio (optional – both

available from Middle Eastern shops) or flaked almonds

double cream, to serve

Soak the fruit in the marsala and orange juice for about 1 hour. Put the sponge fingers in the nicest glass bowl you own and pour over the fruit and liquid. Spread the syllabub on top and chill for at least 1 hour. Scatter the petals and nuts on top, then put the trifle on the table with a small jug of cream.