Letter from Laura (November, 2024)

Braisin’ moves for stewy nights, perfect little daikon pickles for some light, embracing the dark, and more…

Checking for a fall rain.

I have just aborted a morning walk because about 15 minutes out of the gate it started to pour. Now I’m back home inside, sitting with the door open looking out at the relentless shower and listening to its sheets-blowing-in-the-wind sound effects and percussive drops hitting the stones of the walkway in the background. No excuses needed for staying inside today. In fact, I’m half tempted to crawl back into bed, but I’d better not because it's already hard enough dragging myself out of it these days, as slow as the sun itself crawling sluggishly up the globe from the southern hemisphere and arriving so late every day it should scarcely bother making the trip. Surely, it must be time to set back the clocks.

All that said, there is a certain glee that comes with having made a whole load of plans for a day that, suddenly, you realize you’d be better off abandoning. Such a gift of time! You can launch into things like cleaning out the desktop on your computer, where you might discover a goldmine of work you did a few years ago that you’d forgotten about and can now put to use. That happened to me yesterday, in fact, and it gave me such a lift and wave of motivation I think I’ll finally be able to finish the project I began way back when. All things in their own good time…

An unidentified braise from my photo archive.

Meanwhile, braising and stewing season has officially begun. At the supermarket the other day, we ran into an acquaintance and, upon inspecting one another’s carts, enquired what was on our respective menus. “Osso buco,” announced our friend. “Coq au vin,” said we. Next day, before 9 a.m., with our trusty Staub already simmering away on a back burner, someone else called and put forth, “I’m in a pinch. I need to borrow a bottle of red wine and your cocotte for braising ribs.” Alas, they were out of luck, we were using ours, but it prompted them finally to go out and buy their own braising pot (a Le Creuset in their case). “Geez, those are expensive,” they remarked to us later, and, yes, they are, but cocottes are the pot for the cold months. And, of course, they last forever. I remember someone telling me once that, to calculate the true cost of their clothes, they divided the price of any garment by the number of times they wore it. By those mathematics, you often realize that the things you’ve spent the most money on, whether clothes or pots or tech, turn out to be your best bargains.

By the way, the coq au vin we make in this house is from Anne Willan’s The Country Cooking of France, a book I helped work on all those years ago in Burgundy. The recipe is at the end of this very nice article in the LA Times, which came out when the book was released. And let me remind you that any leftover sauce from coq au vin or a boeuf Bourgignon or an osso buco, along with any garnish, makes a delicious supper with poached eggs on baguette toast. I might just have it for lunch.

Lunch from leftovers.

If you’re looking for a beef braise that strays a bit from the ordinary, you might like to try a perky Mexican number from Tu Casa Mi Casa that a friend served to us for Sunday lunch last weekend. The stew contained tomatillos, potatoes, and hot peppers, which really gave it kick. On the table with it were a bowl of plump beans, some rice, perfectly ripe avocados to slice in, and heaps of fresh coriander. Homey, comforting, and refreshing all at once. Incidentally, this book, my friend informs me, is her most used when it comes to Mexican cuisine, and she’s a good judge because she travels to Mexico all the time and is a superb cook.

Yet another example of fine comfort food that’s perfect for this time of year is pasta e fagioli, which of course appears in countless incarnations, some more complicated than others. I have made this delicious version from Bon Appetit magazine a few times, but there is a flaw in the recipe for me. Pulses cooked in salted water don’t soften properly. I’ve seen this point debated, but the proof, I’m afraid, is in the pudding. So, I suggest you follow this recipe but don’t cook the beans in the salted stock with the ham hock. Instead, stir in cooked beans from a jar at the end for better texture, or beans that you’ve cooked separately yourself in unsalted water.

A jar of daikon pickle, ready to eat.

On another note, today’s the day my daikon pickles are ready. I got the recipe for them from Jennifer McLagan’s husband, Haralds, who set them out with appetizers one evening. They are most delicious and just the thing to whet the appetite before moving on to something like a hearty braise. A bit of lightness in the darkness of stewy nights, you might say.

Daikon Pickle

For one large mason jar, you’ll need:

2 pounds/900 g daikon radish, peeled, quartered, and sliced

2 dried red chili peppers or a good pinch of chili pepper flakes

¼ cup/60 ml rice vinegar

¼ cup/60 ml sake

2 tablespoons crystal kosher salt

2/3 cup/140 g sugar

Pack the radish slices into your jar. Stir together the remaining ingredients to dissolve somewhat, and pour over the daikon. Screw on the lid and refrigerate for 3 to 4 days, giving the jar a shake whenever you think of it. The salt will gradually draw the liquid out of the daikon to cover the slices completely. Serve as an appetizer or as a condiment.

Well, it’s still pouring out and so I’m staying in. Luckily, I have an enchanting new book to read, called Night Magic: Adventures among glowworms, moon gardens, and other marvels of the dark, by American author (and I assume naturalist?) Leigh Ann Henion. I read the first few paragraphs a few days ago and was mesmerised, so now I’ll go curl up in a chair and immerse myself fully. According to the author, darkness is now its own endangered species, thanks to light pollution. What would happen, I wonder, if we just let it be?

Wishing you a snug November.

Laura