Consuming Interest
Christmas Mixture
By ELIZABETH DAVID A good method shown me by Charles Bdrot, chef-patron of the Escale Restaurant at Carry- le-Rouet near Marseilles, is to put the roe in a bowl with a little water (four tablespoons for the contents of a 6 oz. jar) and leave it over- night. Next morning you pour off the excess liquid and the paste is then easily malleable and somewhat desalted as well, which does no harm. M. Mot uses botargue, the compressed roe of a mullet which haunts inshore waters; it is an ancient product of the near-by dinians have a similar product, so do the Greeks; lagoon fishing village of Martigues (the Sar- the best of theirs comes from Missolonghi where the local name of this particular mullet is baphes; the roe, preserved in a casing of yellow wax, is known as avgotaracho), and is drier, harder and saltier than our cod's roe; he serves the paste as an hors-d'oeuvre although the moment when it seemed to me at its best was at eleven o'clock one morning, with hot toast and cold white wine on the Escale's terrace, a shimmery view of the Mediterranean far below. To make the paste, pound a very small piece of garlic, say half an average-sized clove; add to it the softened cod's roe and stir until it is quite smooth; gradually add, in alternating order, 2 oz. of olive oil, two tablespoons of water, the juice of half a lemon; finally, a sprinkling of cayenne. Some people add softened breadcrumbs or a mashed potato, and call the compound taramasalata, which it does indeed %ell much resemble, except that. as I remember. Greek cooks add an almost overwhelming quantity of garlic and lemon, no doubt because taramas, their version of preserved cod's roe, packed in barrels, is very salty and dry.
A fine last-ditch buy for one's own or some- body else's drink cupboard is a bottle of Sercial madeira. Preferable to sherry, I think, for flavouring, and to drink with, turtle, oxtail or any other consommé. If any is left, it is the most valuable wine for sauces, soups and all dishes in which the wine is added at the last minute. Its effect is extraordinarily subtle. An example: a tablespoon or two added to chestnuts sim- mered in stock and to be eaten with pheasant. Prices for a respectable Sercial are from about 16s.; for a fine old one, about 28s.
A modest treasure retrieved from oblivion by the original publishers, James Nisbet, and reissued as an eight-and-sixpenny paperback is The Pleasures of the Table, by the late Sir Francis Colchester-Wemyss. First published in 1931, the hook exudes a full flavour of the pre- 1914 English officer-and-gentleman's peculiar
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