FOOD Beat the chill with comfort recipes

The chilly season


Redmond Cabot

February. It gets to us all. The cold is coming from all angles. The larder’s empty; last year’s produce is nearly all eaten; your jams and preserves are finished; root vegetables are finally starting to drive you crazy. And if some bloody chirpy, chipper chef is gonna tell me to lighten up and look at the positive side then maybe I’m just going to explode!
This month is the pits, no question. Deadest of dead. Cold everywhere, on the ice-capped hills, in the frozen puddles, in our houses. No much doing in the garden. Even the non-local and non-seasonal tomatoes I am occasionally buying from Holland are stretching credulity to call the colour of their skin ‘red’!

Keep eating carbs, sugar and fats
Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall says that the skill during this month is to feed ourselves so warmly so that the coldness of the month goes unnoticed. Sugar, fat and carbohydrates are fuel our internal central heating and provide comfort. And that is what the two recipes I give you this week are going to do – bump up the warming, feel-good factors of eating comfort food. If we use them as an excuse to gather round a table, they allow us to do what is most comforting of all: Sit, eat, talk and share together.
Think about the coming together that comes from putting down a big, steaming oven dish of the potato-and-celeriac gratin with bacon in front of your loved ones; dishing out huge, warming helpings; joking about how the nettles may sting you. And afterwards, dishing out a totally wholesome, sugar-rich dessert into warm bowls with a dollop of melting ice-cream oozing over a rhubarb and apple crumble…

Celeriac, potato and nettle gratin with bacon
Serves 4
Cooking gratins is like entering a new universe, you can do them so many ways, wetter, drier, with slices of red onion, white onion, drop a whole egg into cooking, grilled cheese on top or not, add pepper slices for colour. Wholesome, filling, and satisfying, there are a great recipe for the wild west here! The mixing of celeriac with potato gives a nutty flavour and adds something different. Or you could substitute the potatoes and celeriac altogether for gorgeous Jerusalem artichokes. If you prefer a veggie dish, just leave out the bacon.

Ingredients
1 tbsp sunflower oil
knob of butter
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp chopped thyme
5 streaky bacon slices, chopped
300g celeriac, 300g potato, both sliced to round discs
100g nettle tops (or spinach)
200ml cream
100ml veg stock
3 garlic cloves, sliced
seasoning.

Topping:
Handful porridge oats
3 slices stale bread broken up
Small handful of roasted nuts
25g butter
30g mature cheese.

Method
Sauté the onions, bacon and garlic gently in pan with oil and butter until soft.
Add the potatoes, celeriac and thyme, and season well with salt and pepper. Cook (while stirring) for about five minutes.
Pour cream and stock over the lot and keep cooking until the liquid is reduced by nearly half.
Stir in the nettles (or spinach) and transfer everything to a greased oven dish.
Mix all the topping ingredients together.
Sprinkle over the mixture and bake in an oven pre-heated to 190°C or Gas Mark 5 for about 25-30 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling

Rhubarb, apple and ginger crumble
Serves 4
Like the gratin dish, this is hearty and warming. The tart apple cooks into the sweet rhubarb like lovers falling for each other under a North African dessert sky. Also, like the recipe above, it’s a simple template that you can play around with. Add that bag of frozen blackcurrants you kept in the freezer from October, use custard or even coconut custard. Try mixing ginger with whiskey in the cooking. Or add some almonds. Or serve with sweet Mascarpone cream. The possibilities are endless.

Ingredients
8 rhubarb stems, washed
and cut
4 cooking apples
6 tbsp brown sugar
Pinch ginger and/or cinnamon.

Method
Cook the cut rhubarb in saucepan with the other ingredients for 8 mins, then transfer to oven dish.

Crumble:
400g plain flour (hippies use wholemeal)
400g butter
8 tbsp brown sugar
3 tsp ground ginger

Method
The traditional, family way to make crumble is to put softened butter in bowl and add flour as you rub, mixing it between your hands until it all separates into crumble balls, then add sugar and ginger. Get into it, feel the food. The modern way is to use a mixer!
Whatever way you do it, once you’re done, spread the crumble over the rhubarb in the oven dish. Bake for 15mins, 180°C or until the topping is golden and crisp.
Serve with custard.

Some wine with that?
This week I’m going to deviate from normal European wines and recommend a juicy new world Australian. This tasty Cabernet Merlot will complement all dinners and is a competition medal winner: De Bortoli, from Christy’s Harvest, Westport, €10.85.