The Sacred Art of Eating

 A stress-free feed with old friends, plus my first ever (intentional) cooking with fire.

• Cheese Fondue
• Crêpes Suzette

Both recipes from the Retro chapter of the book, which was nice as it served as an occasion for which to get my friends together. Without occasions I fear they’ll get going-to-Helen’s-for-dinner fatigue.

The night before, Dougal whipped up a pair of pain de Campagne. One was cut into chunks and left out all day to stale up. I also gave the chunks half an hour in a low oven just to really be sure.

We gathered around seven, and Dougal made folks a retro-cool White Lady to sup on while we ate cashews, chatted, and I made the fondue. By eight, the fondue was bubbling and brought to the table.

To dip in our cheesey pot we had the aforementioned pre-staled bread, as well as chunks of Granny Smith and batons of chicory. These were suggested by Nigella, and as one of the gang said, you know you’re doing a Nigella Challenge when you just happen to have some chicory in the fridge! We all had a grand time dipping into the thick bubbling cheese, dribbling juices across the table and then gobbling up the hot mouthfuls. One loaf of pain de campagne was the perfect amount, and we had just enough cheese to satisfy without weighing ourselves down too much.

A marvellous feast. The gorgeous fondue pot in the picture belongs to my parents, and may even have been a wedding present- although I may equally be making that up as I am something of a romantic fantasist. Regardless, it is a properly retro piece of kit. I enjoyed this meal (and enjoy fondue, generally,) so much that I will seriously consider investing in my own fondue dish in the future- perhaps when we have somewhere to store the blighter.

After a suitable mid-meal break (and a few games of Hangman and Pictionary on the blackboard) I got on with preparing the crêpes suzette. The (shop bought) crêpes were layered in a pan whilst I made an orangey syrup to souse them with. This syrup is not for those in the least bit concerned with their general health. What can I say, retro meal means retro health attitude?

Yes, that is a whole packet of butter…

Making the syrup took longer than expected but I think part of that was that I was expecting the juice to seem syrupy in the pan. I cooked it for easily twice as long as suggested in the book, but I think had I let it cool after the first fifteen mins it would have proved itself adequately syrupy. As it was, it didn’t fully penetrate all the crêpes, which may mean I had over thickened it. Horrors!

Once the crêpes were warmed in their sauce, it was time to add a little pazzazz to the mix. I heated up some Cointreau in the syrup pan and then poured it over the hot crêpe pan and then lit it with the blow torch, for want of anything better. Woomph! Up went the flame, the syrup pan went up too, and then, like that, it was gone. You can’t really tell in the photos, partly because Dougal claims I didn’t give him adequate warning, and partly because we got the lighting wrong. If you look closely though, there’s a blue tinge round the pan.

These weren’t especially pretty once served, but by golly did they taste good. This is not really surprising, given the volume of butter involved! Rich and creamy and zingy with orange. Definitely worth repeating. However, we have since had a look at the Delia Smith (1982) recipe for Crêpes Suzette….she uses about a third of the amount of butter. So perhaps we could rein it in a bit next time. For the good of our health!

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