Going, Going, Gondola

You know those days when you come in after a hard day at work, feeling more than a little lacklustre, hankering after something decent to nourish your mind, body and soul, but all you find when you open your neglected fridge is a desolate cucumber, a lonely potato, a few reclusive radish and a solitary red pepper. What on earth are you going to prepare to lift to you from your day of gloom with that motley crew of sadness?

On days like these, you need to TMLF. Think More Like Fanny. Would Fanny open the fridge and cry? Would Fanny reach for the phone to call a takeaway? Would Fanny give up and watch back to back episodes of the latest boxset instead? No. You need to TMLF. Where you see despair, she sees delight. Where you see misery, she sees merriment. Where you see a cucumber, she sees a Gondola.

You may not have booked a weekend away to Venice in a while, but if you TMLF you can be instantly transported there while you eat. You may never have been, may never have had the pleasure of a ride along the canals, and may never have clapped eyes on an actual Gondola in your life. If you TMLF this matters not one iota. Suspend your sorrow, open your lonesome fridge again, switch your mind to Fanny-mode and sail the waterways in style. That's what Fanny would do. TMLF.

Peel your potato with glee. Steam it with joy. Mash it with purpose. Grasp your cucumber with vigour. Slice it lengthways with vivacity. Scoop out the flesh with gladness. Mix with wth the mash while rejoicing. Add some mayonnaise with exuberance. Fill your hollowed-out-cucumber-cum-gondola with the mixture as if your life depended upon it. That's what Fanny would do. Think more like Fanny. Be more like Fanny. You know you want to.

Fanny of course, would not end there, delightful as the simple cucumber boat may appear. If we are to truly TMLF then we must prioritise garnish and presentation. It is the key to our own gastronomic gaiety, the answer to our dinners in the doldrums. Concentrate hard, TMLF. Take your red pepper and slice it into hooks to hang off your vessel, perhaps as oars. TMLF. Grasp your cucumber cut-offs and fashion them back onto the top of your creation, perhaps as seats. TMLF. Embrace your radish. Canelle them into flowers. Arrange them 'on board', perhaps as groups of shiny, happy tourists. Transport yourself to Venice. Think more like Fanny. Live like Fanny. Be Fanny!

Rock'n'Rissoles

Certain Fanny Cradock recipes just keep popping up time and time again. In different books, on different TV shows and in different newspaper columns. She does them slightly differently each time. I like to think it's less her recycling old ideas, and more about reinforcing a set of core recipes that can be used differently for different occasions. She wouldn't be taking shortcuts to fill a show, would she? It would never be that she had run out of ideas, would it? Surely she wouldn't think we hadn't been watching properly before, would she? Her Rissoles are one such recipe. They get everywhere.

In the partwork she also gives them her favourite proper name. They are Fondue Frites. She doesn't discuss them, just presents them, after all we have made them together before. Many times. She introduced them on TV as part of her Adventurous Cooking series in 1966 and again when she invited us to her Cheese and Wine Party in 1970. After showing us around her glorious kitchen bursting with young assistants, she gets straight on with this hardly extravagant form of 'hot cheese' which is ideal for informal parties and buffets. It's disputable if they are of French of Belgian origin, Fanny never really decides. She is too busy explaining to us the real nature of the word 'fondue' which, she says. is a classical cookery term and not just hot cheese. Except this one, which is hot cheese.

The ingredients are well known to viewers and readers alike. Duchess Potatoes. This time not dyed eye-popping green but simply steamed and sieved before butter is added. Fanny suggests chilling the mixture until it becomes stiff at this stage. At least in the partwork she does. On TV she just jumps straight in and adds the absolutely essential Gruyère cheese, for it must be Gruyère, eggs, salt and pepper. Except in the partwork it's two egg yolks only. In the booklets it is two egg yolks only. On TV it's one whole egg. Surely Fanny didn't get her own recipe wrong on TV, did she?

In print again she recommends chilling the mixture at this point. On screen she blobs the mixture into a dish of flour and shapes it very roughly into a 'fat sausage shape'. At least that's how she describes it. I follow the printed instructions of course, shaping my sausages when the cheese and potato mix is cool and firm from the fridge, not hot and sloppy. Or loose and flabby. Or however she is describing it at the time. And chill again. On TV when Fanny brings her shaped sausages out of ordinary refrigeration they are perfectly shaped anyway, so presumably it doesn't matter. Magic must be at hand in her kitchen.

The shaped and chilled rissoles are then dredged in flour, beaten egg and coated with fine breadcrumbs. On TV Fanny does this once and plops them straight into the fryer. In print she is at pains to point out that this procedure must be undertaken THREE times. For only a triple coating will give a suitable protective wall for the delicate cheese and prevent it oozing into a gooey mess in the fryer. This would be failure. The oil must be smoking hot, so as to almost blind you, apparently. Fried until just golden and then transferred to the oven to finalise the 'fondue'. At least on TV. In print they are fried and well, just served, but still gooey inside. There seems to be many ways to make rissoles the Fanny way. They are cheesy and gorgeous, so we can forgive Fanny for the repetition, and (perhaps) the errors. My rissoles are all goo inside and no escaped ooze outside. No failure. Just like Fanny's.

Baby, it's cold outside

Fanny Cradock has had us all thinking about Christmas for months now, getting a selection of teatime treats prepared and practiced for the Big Day. Finally the weather is starting to catch up. It's chilly. Before we move on to the next partwork, Christmas Drinks (yahoo!), Fanny provides a Bill of Fare to wrap things up, and hopefully keep us feeling wrapped up warm. What could be more comforting and cosy than a big bowl of freshly steaming soup followed and a belly-pleasing, fresh straight-from-the-oven Apple Flan. Maybe I'm not learning as much as I thought here though, or I have been incredibly bad at it. Or is Fanny paying me back for not following all the instructions as intended? Fanny certainly has something different in mind, and it's not going to keep me warm. Cold soup and cold flan.

Leek and Potato soup has always been a favourite of mine, but I never really knew if served cold it's called Vichyssoise. I'd always thought it was some kind of fishy soup (you'll gather that my grasp of languages isn't brilliant, surely if they sort of rhyme then that's a good translation, right?) so I've never gone near it. Have I been missing out on a favourite?

Fannys soups are normally much simpler and just as tasty as the ones I usually make. This Vichyssoise is no exception. It's packed full of leeks and potatoes, cooked in stock and that's about it. The finished soup is hearty and full of flavour. Once the leeks and potatoes are simmered until soft, Fanny suggests rubbing them through a sieve to break down. Perhaps this is Fannys way of keeping me warm after all, but instead of using a bit of vigorous elbow grease to pummel the cooked vegetables, I just whizz them up in the blender. I was tempted to leave a sieve sitting around the kitchen and pretend, you know just in case Fanny is watching me. It's possibly the lack of warmth addling my brain. Once 'sieved' some milk and cream is added to the soup. Then serve it icy cold with a few chopped chives. Simple. Or heat it up if Fanny isn't looking.

For pudding it's Fannys version of Tarte Tatin, or Upside Down Apple Flan, again something I've never tried to make. All the recipes I've seen require a heavy frying pan flung in the oven and I just don't have one. Luckily for me, Fanny doesn't seem to either as she uses a perfectly ordinary Victoria Sponge tin instead. Genius.

Fanny lines the tin with greaseproof paper, greases it with butter and sprinkles it with sugar. She then arranges a thin layer of very finely sliced Apple around the tin, and covers with a disc of perfectly ordinary shortcrust paste. Fanny suggests a complicated manoeuvre involving two metal fish slices (does anyone have TWO of them in their kitchen?) to lift and place the pastry. Sorry Fanny, I just lift mine up using my hands.

For how long to bake this is anyone's guess, all Fanny says is until it looks a 'strong biscuit colour'. Then, it should be covered in four layers of clean cloth (which seems very precise) and refrigerated until very cold. The Tarte Tatin should be inverted before serving, the greaseproof paper carefully peeled back and a very thick layer of icing sugar sifted generously over. As with all Fannys desserts. Under no circumstances should you eat it hot, oh no, it just won't be as good and Fanny will come after you. If you do, please be careful as the sugar-y sweet and sour, slight,y caramelised apples may burn the roof of your mouth. Not that I'd know you'd understand. Oh no.

Fannys Freeze Expertise for Canadian Fleas and Portuguese Soup devotees

Fanny Cradock's didn't use her weekly Cookery Programme partwork to update any of her recipes or styles for the modern age of the 1970's. Instead she reinforced her traditional, unwavering sense of 'proper' cooking and presentation, with little regard for how people were living or eating at the time. The partwork was her opportunity to collect together everything she knew and to show off to her readers her years of experience and skill, so that they too could in turn show off to their neighbours and husbands bosses. If ordinary housewives wanted to learn to cook then they should learn the Fanny way, and be grateful. However, some eight years after the series was published, Fanny released a book of freezer recipes in line with the then current boom in availability of home freezers. The recipes for Portuguese Potato Soup and Canadian Raisin Pie from the Bill of Fare, or menu, for the Jelly partwork appeared again.

The freezer cookbook, 'Cook First, Freeze Afterwards', aimed to do what Fanny had never done before - modernise. Fanny even proclaims within the pages that 'housewives' may be of either sex! Progress! It's a fascinating book. Not just for the recipes, but for the endless narrative that accompanies them. It doesn't appear as if Fanny had an editor, or anyone willing to cut a word out. On almost every page she spits out venom at the frozen food company that had engaged her to research and produce a range of meals for them, only, after several years and great personal expense, to renege on the deal. Fanny tells the readers that this resulted in her losing an annual income for £50,000 - a significant amount back then. But fear not, as Fanny has not wasted the endless rehashing and freezing of her recipes, they appear collected in the book of course.

The Portugeuse Soup, or Calde Verde, is a simple affair, using a technique I hadn't heard of before. The recipe calls for the juice of a small onion. Fanny doesn't bother with any instructions to obtain this juice, so I assume I should grate it, place it in muslin and squeeze the juice through. All I need is one teaspoonful which a small shallot seems to yield. It's a bit fiddly, so better be worth it.

Other than that, the soup, which even Fanny refers to as 'sounding dull', is made from simmering three large, old potatoes in a pot of stock until tender. The onion juice is added and stirred through, before hairlike slithers of cabbage are plonked in. The heat should then be raised to a fierce, noisy, bubbling boil, for only three minutes before serving. In the freezer book, the instructions don't vary too much - but the soup is frozen before the cabbage is added. Cabbage, says Fanny, does not like life in the deep freeze and is best added fresh once the soup is defrosted and reheated. So there you go, years of research led to this, and a small fortune lost.

Fanny tends to use the Bill of Fare that ends each partwork to introduce recipes from foreign lands that would no doubt wow even the most staid of dinner guests. The Canadian Raisin Pie is one of these. In Scotland, we'd call this a Flea Cemetery, but that wouldn't be nearly as exotic or sophisticated sounding enough. The raisins are cooked in water, with lemon juice, lemon zest and brown sugar until they are plump. Then a little bit of magic is added. Potato Flour. Fanny mixes it with a little water and instructs it to be stirred 'like mad' after which time the raisins will be swimming in a thickened, clear sauce. It's actually like a raisin jam, all gooey and sweet.

While the raisins are left to cool, I make some sweet shortcrust paste to line a pie dish, and a lid. I even have enough paste leftover to fashion (by hand) a Maple Leaf. How fancy, who wouldn't be impressed by that? The raisin mixture is piled into the pie dish, topped with the pastry lid, dusted liberally with icing sugar and baked for 30 minutes. The version in the freezer book is no different at all, Fanny just adds the instruction that it can be frozen after baking. Years of research. Bank accounts emptied. Freezers full. Both dishes are packed with flavour despite their sparse ingredients - the trickle of onion juice transforms the soup and the magical potato flour shifts the gears of the otherwise simple pie. I'll freeze some and see if Fanny is right. How wonderful would it have been to delve into the freezer aisle of the local supermarket and pick up some Fanny Cradock ready meals though - you can imagine the elaborate creations with lurid colours and ingredients. Forget Lasagne or Cottage Pie, Fanny would've given us rich Casseroles with Green Duchess Potatoes and a range of her famous filled savoury and sweet omelettes. I can't imagine why the frozen food manufacturer decided against it in the end!