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

Cooled scrambled eggs (see here) – With added cream, scrambled duck or hen’s eggs on toast make a truly elegant starter or supper dish. If you like, you can add very thin, crisp bacon, fresh herbs or smoked fish, such as eel or trout.

Chicken livers and other offal (see hereand here) – Chopped and fried with butter, chopped capers, anchovy and a little white wine.

Smoked fish – Organic smoked salmon or trout, mackerel or kippers, or perhaps the more unusual fish now being smoked by specialists, such as pollack and ling.

Herring – Filleted and fried in butter, then placed on hot toast that has been spread with a mixture of butter and mustard. Finish with lots of fresh dill.

North Atlantic or other cold-water prawns or Morecambe Bay grey shrimps (see here) – Dress with a few herbs and scatter a little cayenne pepper and ground mace over the top.

Fried tomatoes – Go a step further and fry the day-old bread, then cover it with sweet fried tomatoes. Add a blob of crème fraîche or soured cream and a few basil leaves for something richer.

Melba toast is made by splitting a piece of toast apart and baking it in the oven. It has a lovely old-fashioned feel to it and is wonderful with those smooth duck liver pâtés from delis, finished with a slice of pickled cucumber. Use it also as a base for semi-dried tomatoes (sold as sunblush) and dress with virgin olive oil, or break it up and throw it into leafy salads with herbs, spring onions, lemon juice and olive oil.

The renowned chef, Auguste Escoffier, named Melba toast after the prima donna, Dame Nellie Melba, in 1897. But in her book, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (Allen Lane, 1977), Elizabeth David found an earlier recipe written by the Scottish home cook, F. Marian McNeill, proving that Melba toast belongs as much in our own kitchens as it does in the grand dining rooms of old hotels.

Serves 4

4 thin slices of white or brown bread

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Toast the bread on both sides, then cut off the crusts. Using a serrated knife, split the toasted bread apart into 2 sides; you will find it comes away easily. Cut each side into 2 triangles, place them on a baking sheet and bake in the oven until dry. They tend to curl up, looking lovely as you bring them to the table in a basket.

To make a rich toast that will not go soggy, brush each side of the Melba toast with melted butter before you put it in the oven. This will keep for a week in an airtight container.

Like chicken bones, prawn shells and vegetable peelings, breadcrumbs are a gift to the cook. They are essentially ‘free’. The crusted end of a dry loaf or the cut-away crusts from Melba toast, once headed for the duck pond in the park, still form the basis of another meal. They can perform a variety of jobs, from making a filling winter pasta dish to becoming a summer salad, spiked with chilli and soaked with olive oil.

There are two ways to make breadcrumbs:

Simply put stale but soft bread into the food processor and whiz. These crumbs can be used for stuffings, bread sauce and meatballs, but if you want to dry them, put them on a baking sheet and place in a moderate oven until golden.

Or – dry out old bread slices and rolls in a moderate oven, then either whiz them in a food processor or put them in a strong, thick plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.

Dried breadcrumbs can be stored in an airtight container, where they will keep for at least three weeks. Fresh ones must be stored in the freezer.

These absorb and flavour the juices of poultry beautifully. I prefer them to bread-based stuffings which can take ages to cook, drying out the birds as they do so.

The pine nuts can be left out altogether, or replaced with pecans (for turkey), walnuts (for duck) or shelled unsalted pistachios (for partridge or pheasant).

Serves 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

4 heaped tablespoons fresh or dried breadcrumbs

zest of 1 lemon

4 sprigs of parsley, chopped

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1/ 2teaspoon crushed pink peppercorns

Heat the oil in a small pan, add all the remaining ingredients and fry gently until golden. Serve with roast turkey, wild duck, partridge or pheasant.

Middle Eastern shops are the best places to buy dried nuts of every variety (and dried fruit, for that matter). Large bags of pistachios and walnuts are always fresh and cost about half the price of those found in conventional groceries and supermarkets.

An aromatic sauce with a crumb base.

Serves 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, chopped

4 tablespoons fresh or dried breadcrumbs

4 tablespoons ground almonds

8 sprigs of parsley, finely chopped

1/ 2teaspoon ground cloves

a pinch of ground cinnamon

1 glass of sherry

175ml/6fl oz chicken stock

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a pan, add the garlic and cook until golden. Stir in the breadcrumbs, almonds, parsley, spices and some black pepper. Add the sherry, bring to the boil and simmer for a minute. Then pour in the stock and simmer for a further minute. Season to taste with salt. Serve with rice, beside roasted poultry or game.

Serves 6

600ml/1 pint whole milk

1 onion, peeled and halved, studded with 5 cloves

a pinch of grated nutmeg

about 10 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon butter

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the milk in a pan and add the onion halves and nutmeg. Heat to boiling point, then turn off the heat and leave to stand for at least half an hour. Reheat, adding enough fresh breadcrumbs to form a thick sauce, then stir in the butter and season to taste. If the sauce becomes too thick, let it down with more milk.

In Italy, difficult food is made appetising for children by coating it in breadcrumbs: veal, chicken or lamb is hammered until thin, then concealed in a crust (see here). It is a proven means of getting children used to the flavour of real meat and away from fast-food nugget culture. You can also use the technique for plaice, prawns, green vegetables such as courgettes – in fact anything that you may not normally get past their suspicious minds on the basis that it is not chips. Crumbed food can be fried in a shallow layer of olive or sunflower oil. Keep an eye on the temperature; the food should emerge from the pan golden, not mahogany.

Bowl 1 – contains about 3 tablespoons of plain flour with a tiny pinch of salt. Dip the raw food in this first; it allows the egg to stick to the breadcrumbs and puff away from the meat.

Bowl 2 – contains 1 beaten egg. This is the glue, which firms up when cooking and prevents the breadcrumbs falling off. Dip the floured food in the egg, coating it fully. Use your fingers, tongs or 2 forks.