juice this

I know, there’s noth­ing worse than a new con­vert to ANY­THING. I don’t care if it’s reli­gion, or Pilates, or the World Cup, or in our case, The World of Juic­ing. Con­verts are annoy­ing. So I promise to write only one post about our new addic­tion, and you can just pic­ture us the rest of the time, I’m not say­ing a word about it tomor­row, but you’ll know we’re… juicing.

First of all, no one can just con­vert. One must be con­vert­ed. In my case it was my tea at the Wolse­ley with my friend Twig­gy, who is so charm­ing and appeal­ing that any­thing she’s addict­ed to becomes, very short­ly, extreme­ly attrac­tive to oth­er peo­ple. This includes her hus­band Ed, who I met once in New York as a cowork­er of John’s at Reuters. He was love­ly, friend­ly, intel­li­gent. But it took meet­ing him again in Twig­gy’s pres­ence to see him as the absolute­ly full-stop Eng­lish charmer that he is. Why? Because Twig­gy was there to pro­vide the light in which he could prop­er­ly shine. Now, odd as it may seem, she had the same effect on the notion of juic­ing. I’m not a juic­ing vir­gin by any means. Many after­noons find me at the organ­ic shop in Mox­on Street on the way to school pick­up, car­ry­ing away a nice pear-apple-gin­ger-beet­root juice. But I was always hap­py to leave the actu­al process to oth­ers. In fact, I con­fess to going to that shop part­ly just to make con­tact with the Juice Boy, strung about in macrame bracelets and neck­laces, wear­ing a t‑shirt that said “Acai rocks,”, arm mus­cles rip­pling as he han­dled his cel­ery and pur­ple kale. I’ll have to find some­thing else like organ­ic quinoa that I can’t live with­out, so I can hear how it’s going with his attempts to dye his own fab­rics with the pulp he takes home. I’m not mak­ing that up.

But I am dis­tract­ing myself from the point. Which is, we are the proud own­ers of a Cham­pi­on 2000+ Juicer, and it turns out there’s just about noth­ing that does­n’t give enough juice for us to try it. Hav­ing nev­er tried to get blood from a turnip, I’m not going to put a stone from the gar­den through my Cham­pi­on just to see if it’s got what it takes, but we’re close. We came home from the farmer’s mar­ket (odd blog­ger’s note: be patient with this par­tic­u­lar link: you have to read through some real­ly quite good sto­ries to get to the farmer’s mar­ket, but I hope it’s worth the trou­ble, or you can just cru­el­ly scroll down) laden with things that we reck­oned had accept­able liq­uid con­tent, and John is sit­ting with a beet­root-car­rot-gin­ger-kale drink, while I opt­ed for the sweet­er choice and had beet­root-orange-pear-straw­ber­ry. I know we’ll get tired of it, but so far it is real­ly strange­ly enter­tain­ing. We made some Bram­ley apple juice for Avery, but last week she object­ed to the bub­bles on top. Hmm, qual­i­ty con­trol to the res­cue. I’m sure my 129-page “Instruc­tion and Recipe Book­let” will help.

Con­tin­u­ing with the “foods you can get through a straw” theme, I also came away from the mar­ket with some raw milk from the Guernsey cows at Hur­dle­brook Farm. Once you’ve had it, you wish you nev­er had to go back to the nasty homogenised, pas­teurised stuff you live on day in and day out. The cream actu­al­ly ris­es to the top like cows used to make it. And the fla­vor? It has actu­al taste, not just like white water. I remem­ber we got some at the Food Fes­ti­val of the Roy­al Wind­sor Horse Show last year, yum yum.

Before you get scared, though, that din­ner here next time you come will be in a glass and not on a plate, I also bought some organ­ic mince beef from Per­ry Court Farm in Can­ter­bury, which along with some onions, cel­ery, car­rots, white wine and toma­toes will become Bolog­nese sauce tonight. So all is not lost. You can still count on chew­ing when you’re at my house. But guard that bou­quet of ros­es and lilies you brought: I’ve heard they’re real­ly… juicy.

Bolog­nese (won­der how it would taste put through the juicer?)
(serves 4 easily)

2 tbsps butter
1 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medi­um onion, minced
3 stalks cel­ery, diced
2 medi­um car­rots, diced
2/3 cup white wine
2/3 cup whole milk
2 soup-size cans (400 grams) whole tomatoes
1/2 tbsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup grat­ed parme­san cheese

So, melt your but­ter and olive oil togeth­er in a heavy-bot­tomed saucepan. Add gar­lic, onion, cel­ery and car­rots and sweat till onions are translu­cent. Here’s a trick for OCD peo­ple dic­ing car­rots: you slice the car­rot in half length­wise, then lay it on its flat sides and slice each of the halves length­wise three times, then line those babies up and just slide your knife right down those lit­tle sticks. It’s so sat­is­fy­ing: the bits are almost exact­ly the same size, and by lay­ing the car­rot halves flat they don’t roll around.

When the veg­eta­bles are soft, add the beef and stir con­stant­ly until it is bro­ken up into a nice mince. Don’t over­cook, though. Add white wine and sim­mer until most of the liq­uid is absorbed, then add milk and let it absorb as well, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly. Add toma­toes and break them up with your spoon, then add nut­meg and parme­san and turn the heat down. This can con­tin­ue to cook for as long or as short as you like, but no less than half an hour. The longer the bet­ter, and it will be bet­ter the next day if you have any left. And if you have a lot left, or you made a dou­ble batch, you can have:

Cot­tage Pie (or Shep­herd’s Pie if you used lamb)
(serves six at least if you use a whole batch of Bolognese)

left­over Bolognese
4 medi­um pota­toes (my favorite this week is the Nico­la), peeled and quartered
1 tsp salt
1 cup light cream
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san cheese

Cov­er your pota­toes with water and add the salt, then bring to the boil and let cook for half an hour. Mash well with cream and but­ter. Set aside.

Spray a 9 x 13 glass dish with non­stick cook­ing spray. Then spread the Bolog­nese out even­ly, and cov­er with mashed pota­toes. Sprin­kle with cheese and bake at 400 degrees for about a half an hour, or until bub­bly and slight­ly browned on top. Serve with a good baguette for mop­ping up juices, plus a real­ly good sal­ad to salve your conscience:

Real­ly Good Salad

1 large bunch water­cress, washed thor­ough­ly and spun
1 large bunch baby rock­et (also called arugula)
1 large bunch spinach
1 large bunch lam­b’s let­tuce (also called mache)
a dozen tiny heir­loom toma­toes, halved

dress­ing:

1 cup olive oil
1/3 cup bal­sam­ic vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 clove gar­lic, minced extreme­ly fine
hand­ful curly pars­ley, fine­ly chopped
juice of half lemon
1 lit­tle hot red pep­per, fine­ly minced
1/2 tsp dried oregano, thyme or mar­jo­ram (or a bit less if fresh)
pinch salt

Mix all these ingre­di­ents togeth­er and set aside. Toss let­tuce leaves togeth­er and throw toma­toes on top. Just before serv­ing, pour as much dress­ing as you would like, but not to soak­ing point. Save the rest for tomor­row night.

Good­ness, it smells good in this house.