The Hammock Papers: Gunge.

16 March 2021

Gunge.

Fergus Henderson hints at Scotch Woodcock ...

Be gentle with your egg and hopefully it will be gentle to you. Scrambling, for example, should be a slow process, done on low heat with a good knob of butter in the pan. Crack your eggs into the melting butter and gently stir, breaking the yolks. Don't season with salt until the end - it will throw the scrambling out of kilter - and don't lose your nerve and turn the heat up to try to rush things; just stir them occasionally.

When they're cooked to a satisfactory state, you can't do much better than serving your scrambled eggs on buttered toast, but let's go a step further into the world of savouries. Traditionally, savouries were offered at the end of the meal - not a sweet, though, and accompanied by a glass of Port. My favourite savoury is Scotch woodcock. For ours at St John we make an anchovy gunge which is then spread on toast and topped with scrambled eggs. Some prefer the anchovies whole and the eggs poached. This neatly leads us into the world of the poached egg, a very useful culinary bubble on top of smoked haddock and steamed green asparagus and corned beef hash that magically creates its own sauce.

CONNECT

The proper recipe can be found in Fergus' latest, The Book of St. John ...

The "savoury" is a rather old-fashioned course, taken with a glass or port at te end of a meal. This family grouping includes not only the Scotch Woodcock but Welsh Rarebit and the Buck Rarebit, too, which is a rarebit with a poach egg on top. It's not often that you fancy such a thing after your dessert.

Throw away the shackles of antiquated convention! Liberate the Scotch Woodcock from its after-dinner perdition! Take a well-spread piece of anchovy toast -- a good white bread is preferable -- and cover with creamy, lightly-scrambled eggs. Your breakfast is ready.

The anchovy gunge.

INGREDIENTS

7 garlic cloves, peeled

a pinch of black pepper

1 tin of anchovies in oil (Ortiz)

225 ml extra virgin olive oil

a splash or red wine vinegar

PREPARATION

Place the garlic and pepper into a food processor (or use a pestle and mortar if you have time and energy), and crush to a fine purée, then add the anchovies and allow them to break down. Start to add the oil, then the vinegar to taste. Check flavour for seasoning.
This dressing, depending on how thick you make it, can have many uses.
With less oil and vinegar added you will have a very firm mix - the Anchovy Gunge - which you can use as a dip for vegetables (as here), or spread it on toast with sweet roasted or pickled shallots, or a boiled egg.
With a little more oil and vinegar added you should have a looser, though still emulsified mixture, which is ideal for dressing boiled greens or broccoli - which can be eaten on their own or with lamb or beef.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL