Christmas Austerity Cannon

A Christmas austerity cannon is made with the tube from a used cracker, and propellant made from three of the unused strips that go bang from same, loaded with plastic hair-slides, miniature packs of cards, and nail-clippers that break within a day. Alternatively it is a spelling error. Mea culpa, I blame it on Michael Gove because he has a face like a constipated frog.

Top leftover tip and compliments of the season to you: made some stuffing to go with chicken yesterday that used up several odds and sods. Three slices of bread past the first flush, four tiny sausages that should have been breakfast two days earlier, some walnuts (who ever finishes one of those string bags that are a legal requirement of the British Christmas?), a handful of dried-ish prunes and the one ingredient not on the to-do list, a big juicy onion. All zapped then moistened with oil and cooked in a dish alongside the bird, firstly covered with foil to keep it soft, then without to brown the top.

The oil I used was walnut, which doesn't sound like it is part of the austerity thing, but is relatively cheap and for me fits as it is one of the best bang-for-you-buck flavourings you can find. A few drops in dressings or as a flavour enhancer in cooked dishes is all that's needed.

Re-Train Your Gravy

Too convoluted a title?

A simple idea for using up surplus gravy - so about 12 million households currently then - beyond the traditional moistening of turkey sarnies.

On the 20th we committed a major sin against the austerity cannon by buying in Chinese - I can blame my visiting father whose idea it was. The next day, though we had imbibed very modestly, both my wife and I felt headachey, maybe the MSG at fault. So we prefer homemade, and a soup should always be part of any Chinese banquet (when you attend posh ones you get several), thus on the 27th I made the following as part of a full Chinese meal.

I had half a gravy-boat of beefy goodness from Christmas Day (as we had a small piece of sirloin to go with the turkey crown). A chopped onion and finely diced carrot were fried until the onion was taking on a hint of colour, then a huge clove of garlic in the thinnest slices was added along with a de-seeded chili, and the gravy poured over the lot. Topped up with water and spiced with plenty of star anise and 5-spice the soup was simmered for 20 minutes, then a handful of sirloin in cubes and the same amount of sweetcorn kernels dropped in, and finally some pre-soaked noodles.

It's a recipe with endless variations possible, but the core of the thing is the affinity of beef and star anise.

Secret Service Santa Stuff VIII

Yet another letter thanking Santa, written by a celebrity chef rendered anonymous. And I am willing to bet that it has the best pun on the words of a 15th century French poet that you have read all day. The worst too.

Dear Santa,

At this time of year with the last sad leaf clutching the rimed twigs I love to remember Christmases past as I look upon my little garden that produces miraculous quantities of different vegetables. Our quick lunch was Caramac, my favourite comfort food at this time of year, and those oh so 1970s tinned peas I still secretly adore. They are my favourite comfort food, the label promising the scents of summers long gone. We finished with some cheese from a shop that at this time of year only sells to you if you provide references. Cheese at this time of year is my favourite comfort food, especially on mashed potatoes. Mash is my favourite. Comfort food. Thanks for the hair-trimmers, their steely blades catching the glint of the sun. Low. In the sky. At this time of year I really needed them. I peeked coyly through my fringe and the frost bedecked window when you visited, but your reindeer no longer make a sound as they did in my childhood. Où sont les neighs d’antan? Reindeer are my favourite comfort food. At this time of year.

Yours ever,

Secret Service Santa Stuff VII

Strangely this letter to Santa Claus from a celeb chef (found on the train in a mislaid MI5 file) is written on a £20 note, the person involved must be minted. 

Wotcha San’a Mate,

Love me noo scoo’a, pukkah ain’t in it. Give me an idea for anuva noo book, ker-ching. Anyway, bang up job chap, hope Ruuds enjoyed the fried carrot wiv ’and-torn basil, and you got a kick outta your fried sherry. 

Cheerso cockie,

Top bloke chef

Secret Servile Santa Stuff VI

Celebrity chef letters to Santa. Check out the earlier ones for a more cogent explanation. 

Dear Santa Claus,

When I was a gel Christmas celebrations were so much better. We had servants and were really rather well orf as I may have mentioned previously, but so was everybody who mattered then. I spent this Christmas (as you know of course) with some friends in their house completely lined with oak, inside and out-. They are very well orf, but we had to drink port that was younger than me, things are slipping. My thanks then for the table reinforcer and the massive arse pants. 

Secret Service Santa Stuff V

Check out the intro on the others. It's nearly Christmas. Celebrity chef, thank you letters, inept security operative, you knows the drill.

Dear Santa,

Thanks for the Christmas challenge – accepted. Two whole roast reindeer (in habanero pepper dry rub with garlic then dipped in hot-enough-to-defrost-Mrs-Santa-chilli-sauce) in one hour in the best pig-out joint in Lapland. Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Oh! wow! They are delicious. I want to marry you and have your elf babies. I hope that the new stomach lining I asked for will arrive next year, the old one is all but chillied-thru.

Yours,

A damn fine fella

Secret Service Santa Stuff IV

Another in this blog's devastating revelations about the minds and activities of the celebrity chef. The world quakes. Again the signature on this thank you letter to Santa was illegible, but there are hints in the text that it could be someone I actually admire enormously. We may never know.

Dear Santa,

Here at Rubber Cabbage the Yuletide feasting was as ever perfect, thanks in no small measure to you. How you got past the ham from my own pig smoking in the chimney is beyond me. We love that pig so much that we had its leg amputated under anasthetic and sent it hopping happily back to the wilds of my estate. Delicious.

I can’t thank you enough for my Nobel Prize for vegetables - common people on building sites and so on really should know about them.  

Throughout Christmas the log fire crackled in the background wherever we were, even the bathroom. Hundreds of friends dropped by for spontaneous private celebrations with special home-brewed drinks prepared by some of my serfs, hastily foraged truffles and so on, though they thought what I did was best. Happily by complete chance a camera crew was present to record it all.

Thanks again old chap,

Secret Service Santa Stuff III

Another from the discarded secret service file of thank you letters to Santa from celebrity chefs. The world needs to know. Again there is no clue about the sender.

Dear Santa,

I really hope you enjoyed the sherry frozen with liquid nitrogen and covered in its Lapsang Souchong foam. If you did it is now available in my very favourite supermarket. Rudolph’s carrot, beef marrow and guava sorbet with 99 per cent cocoa and mahogany-bark infused biscuit was a little rushed, but I think he will have enjoyed it. It's the simple things at this time of year isn't it? Thanks so much for my new laser (my old one was wrecked with over-use). How can any kitchen function without such basic tools?

Yours, 

The Monetary Value of Time

That title one for the accountants and MBAs out there - a sort of pun on the time value of money - my how they didn't laugh. Net present value and all that. Never mind.

This post comes out of last night's meal, something very simple but I am sure hugely improved by the time factor involved. It was spaghetti with meat ragu, or as we called it in the 1970s spag bol. Too often it is something done rapidly, a standby that can with practice be on the table in edible form in 20 minutes. But the rapid version doesn't have the smoothness or the depth of something simmered for an hour or more, and food should be more than just edible.

Time is the magical factor in transforming mince (admittedly here Aberdeen Angus mince from the most excellent Henry Rowntree) from something a bit grainy into a tender and toothsome pleasure. Likewise in taking tinned tomatoes and rounding off their tartness, combining with the sweetness of the chopped onions to make a mellow vegetable (yes the tom is a fruit, don't care) base that can be called a sauce.

I cooked the ragu for about 90 minutes, on very low heat, and it was so much better for the extra time. Even before that simmer time played its part - the meat allowed to brown properly, caramelize in places, instead of being merely turned in a hot pan then moved hastily on.

Secret Service Santa II

The second missive found in the top-secret file of celebrity-chef thank-you letters to Santa carelessly left on the train. Again it is impossible to say who wrote this, though I have a feeling I really should know. It does sound as though this celebrity chef is not very concerned with austerity.

Darling Santa,

I adored the gorgeous gifts you brought me, and having them enrobed in thick, unctuous double cream folding into melted chocolate with extra dark chocolate squares was a marvellous touch. My husband loved his gifts too, especially that clever ‘Prams I Was Sick in’ installation. Arriving downstairs in my red silk décolleté nightwear to find such super things rather excited me, as you and a lot of other older men may imagine. Come again soon, 

Mmmmm, 

Yours,

[signature illegible]

Secret Service Santa Stuff

On the train the other day I pushed past the piles of laptops and disks left by government ministers and secret service operatives, then noticed an envelope marked 'Celebrity Chef thank you letters to Santa'. Apparently the government thinks it is necessary to monitor such communications for reasons of national security. Following the pattern set by The Daily Telegraph with MPs' expenses I am thus going to release the most informative of them in dribs and drabs over the Christmas period (not the supermarket period obviously or this would have begun in October). First off is a pithy little missive, redacted (when did we start using that word instead of censored?) because of the strong language in it. I have no idea who this could have been from, as the signature was blurred and scratched angrily into the paper.

Dear Santa,

When will you learn? The presents you delivered were useless, you are useless, now f--- off and get me what I asked for in the first place you total t---.

Yours,

[unknown]

I was a Norfolk Dumpling

I may have been born in Lancashire, and returned here in my twenties to work, but brought up in Norfolk I still feel that is my spiritual home. Thus the national dish of the Norfolker (say that in a hurry and cause consternation) is one to which I return as regularly as mutinous family and culinary pride will allow. That dish is of course the Norfolk Dumpling.

Dumplings of all sorts are definitely austerity fare: filling, cheap, and essentially satisfying. They are rarely subtle, though if you give them a French or Russian name they can seem a bit more exotic. Few words can be as demotic as dumpling, although if you think of the word as the gerund of the verb to dumple, which it isn't, some interest could be engendered.

The Norfolk Dumpling (which merits capitals) is very simply made if you have a bread-maker, which I do, as it is just bread dough allowed to rise then dropped into salted boiling water to bobble about and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. They are rarely light, for which read never, the surface takes on the appearance of wallpaper paste, and even if you include a flavouring like yesterday's dried sage they still taste predominantly of being full. But as that is their point, job done.

In my hometown, the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth, clever and careful guest house landladies would serve them at least three times in a week's stay, anything more frequent risking violence. A few pence worth of flour, a bit of fat, some yeast, salt and sugar, and plenty of elbow grease was/is what they cost.

Yet they enhance a stew wonderfully, once broken into soaking up the gravy like a sponge. Or like the bread they are. And the secret to them is not to cut the things, which crushes them and creates a lump of goo, but to pull them apart with two forks. Simple, as is the dumpling.

Ah! Sugar Sugar

Sugar, especially white sugar, has become one of the pariahs of contemporary food. We have various plant extracts and chemical substitutes offered in place of it; warnings about the damage it does to our teeth and our overall health; chefs finding ways to avoid it. This is very different from the way cooks a few centuries ago looked upon what was then a luxury item. And to me it seems as with so much in life moderation is the key rather than abstinence; and as a natural product I have more confidence in sugar than most alternatives, just as I prefer butter to processed spreads.

This thought came from reading Gervase Markham. I have doubts about his real culinary knowledge. Some of his pronouncements don't make much sense, but he like Elinor Fettiplace regularly used sugar as a spice, to perk up sauces, gravies, to prettify dishes and to correct seasoning generally. It remains a valid and cheap way of improving flavour - sweet after all is one of the basic tastes. Thus a spoon of sugar in a simple spaghetti sauce rounds it out, bringing the flavour of tomatoes to the fore. It doesn't hurt in many beefy or porky stews either.

I'm not advocating sugar butties or loading the stuff into everything as old Gervase seemed to wish, but it is not something we can afford to consign to the outer reaches because of fashion and our fears about obesity.

One Flame Pudding II - Something in Toast

Having finished Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book I have moved on to Gervase Markham, more or less contemporary with her. Early in the book Panperdy (Pain Perdu) features, which prompted me to cook a version of that treat for breakfast today - French toast in other words.

For such a simple dish it has many sides. It is something we know was popular in late medieval times if not earlier, the cinnamon and sugar used in it almost ubiquitous then, for the well-to-do at least. The way some Americans eat it, accompanying a meat element like bacon, is reminiscent of such days too. It is for the economical cook a way of using bread heading towards staleness, though as this morning I used four eggs (albeit two were tiny ones from our newest hen) it is stretching things to call it an austerity dish. And it is both a breakfast classic and a quickly made pudding as the case arises.

The secrets for me of decent French toast, and everyone has their own version, are: stretch the eggs with a splash of milk, which helps the beaten mix soak better into the bread; sugar and cinnamon (and a tiny pinch of salt) to be added with that mix and the first two sprinkled on the surface again after cooking; cut white bread into quite thin slices; allow at least five minutes for the bread to soak up the eggy stuff, turning it so both sides are coated; use unsalted butter and not too much for the frying; and a low-ish heat for the cooking. I don't toast the bread as some do, so my version is probably more accurately called eggy bread.

With a small glug of sweet sherry (sweet Vermouth, Marsala or Madeira would probably work too) added to the fluid this becomes the beautifully-named Poor Knights of Windsor, a pretty pudding that looks best if the bread is cut into fingers - soldiers perhaps the apposite term.

Like most cooking the worst thing to do is rush it - unless the egg mix has reached the centre of the bread it isn't right.

The Markham book is one of the excellent Penguin Great Food series, an extract from the original volume The English Huswife.

Capital Investment - The Vacuum Flask

We lashed out a possibly ridiculous £25 for a wide-mouthed vacuum flask on Saturday, the idea being that I can save/freeze and later use reheated for Ruth's lunches the small portions of leftover stews and soups that otherwise end up too often in the fridge for a week, then shifted to the bin. In this weather something hot is more welcome than any salad. It's a Stanley, tough as old boots - and like good boots should last a lifetime. Though 20 years ago she had another drinks flask by the same company that was also supposed to be unbreakable. She left it in a bag behind the car, forgot about it, for some reason reversed the car out of the drive... we did not claim on the guarantee.

I am less nervous about buying expensive things than cheap ones. Cheap usually means short-lived, expensive the opposite. Unless you back a car over something.

Pulled Pork - Thing du Jour

Every now and then you notice one food or another suddenly coming up time and again in conversation, the colour supplements, and on TV. The one currently making it big is pulled pork. The magnificent (or hated, depending on your viewpoint) Man v Food was where I first came across the dish. On a new Channel 4 programme tonight about spices - after an awkward start surprisingly interesting - the chef made it with chilli. Because my son and I love BBQ food I looked up some recipes two days ago with a view to making some soon. And by accident I made some today. Cooking by accident?

In fact it was pulled ham from the ham shank cooked yesterday in my Lancashire pea soup, simmered slowly with the peas for about three and a half hours until it was falling off the bone. Normally from my researches this is made with shoulder of pork rubbed with herbs and spices then roasted slowly, covered with foil to keep the juices in.

When Sternest Critic returned via Dad's taxi from his sleepover party he was hungry, so an instant filler-upper was a sandwich made with chunks of the leftover meat pulled into shreds with two forks then covered with cheating BBQ sauce. It went down very well. We have enough meat still for a dish of this, (so the £2.60 shank bought on Blackburn market really was a bargain), which I'll do tomorrow, spiced up to ring the changes.

Christmas Future - Sanity and Austerity

This is not the refrain of the middle-aged grump that Christmas starts earlier every year. Though it appears to do so - Miracle on 34th Street (the original, not the inferior Richard Attenborough version) currently on Film 4 while November is far from over. But as we seem to clutch on to Christmas as some sort of lifestyle lifeboat I was wondering what is to this generation what the giant turkey was to my mother's.


In the Seventies there was a mania at Christmas for having the biggest turkey as some sort of status symbol. Mad. People regularly found their ovens too small to cook the damn things, and had to remove the legs for cooking separately, mothers forced to rise before dawn to start the cooking if it was to have any chance of being eaten before nightfall. Turkey risotto, sandwiches, broth, curry, rissoles and cold cuts followed the big day's feast seemingly endlessly. Ad nauseam for sure.


I guess that the goose, rather a return to the 19th century perhaps, has become the contemporary equivalent - I must admit that I've never cooked a whole one, only a leg and a breast bought on different occasions (at Lidl btw). Two years ago I did a small sirloin, and have heard that it - or a rib of beef - is gaining in popularity. The pheasant has been mentioned in dispatches for the Christmas board, which seems more a nod to snobbery than enjoyment - I have never had one roasted in either domestic or commercial circumstances that was worth the effort of eating, however many slices of fatty bacon are wrapped over it. Dry and tough is invariably the rule that way; braised or stewed is another matter. The three/four/five bird roast is another option growing in favour. Never having tried this I can't comment on how they turn out.


Of course there are turkeys and turkeys - there's a world of  difference between a frozen battery-reared jobbie and a Kelly Bronze, for instance. The latter is expensive but worth it for a special occasion, which December 25th surely is.With austerity pushing cooks towards economy it's unlikely the behemoth bird will make a comeback.

My own prediction for Christmas future is the increasing importance of the stuffing, sausages, and other accompaniments meaty and vegetable. They show care and generosity (of time and effort). For us, though we remain in funds, I think the smallest turkey crown I can find and either a small beef joint or a goose breast again will feature. And possibly for variety, if I can get the timings right, a frozen pack of four quails that is already in the freezer (Lidl again), the antithesis of the titanic turkey of Christmas past.

One Flame Cooking Chapter 3 and a Bit

With Sternest Critic absent at a party I will be able to indulge a culinary passion that he frowns upon - kidneys. Sunday breakfast sorted.

Joyce's famous line: 'grilled mutton kidneys with a fine tang of faintly scented urine', is frequently quoted, but is no advert for what is one of the best things you can eat, and I'd always go for lamb's kidneys fried.

They fit the austerity bill - especially from a butcher's shop where they can often be had at bargain prices - and the health bill too, low fat and full of vitamins. If you go to some supermarkets you'd think that sheep had stopped growing kidneys.

Kidneys are ideal one flame cooking candidates too: sliced open and white gristle removed, fried gently in butter, the red juices mixing with the fat to make a simple sauce to which a good dab of mustard is added, with a spoon of stock and/or cream if available. Something more substantial evolves if quartered mushrooms are fried with them, their grey juices adding to the reddy-brown ones from the offal.

Served on toast (another of Alan Bennett's somethings on toast) or bread to soak up the gravy this is a dish for those who enjoy forthright tastes. Tunes can be played with paprika, Tabasco, or chili sauce providing extra layers of taste to the jus (I hate that word but it's useful), though plain and simple is good. One of my abiding childhood food memories is of eating kidneys on toast on my knees while watching the kids' cartoon Jonny Quest, the moment fixed by the flavour and scent.

And kidneys are very special too as regards texture, something we tend to ignore or relegate to an afterthought in British cooking. The Japanese and Indonesians cook with texture as much in mind as flavour. The feel of teeth penetrating a meaty kidney is about as good as culinary texture gets, for me at least.

Cuisine Lancastrienne

One post leads to another.

Black Puddings

Today I found the dried peas needed for proper Lancashire pea soup with ham hock, so Saturday's main meal is sorted. The tall box of bullet peas and soaking tablet brings back memories of childhood food - I still make it according to the instructions given to me by my late mother, duly written in a personal cookbook to keep in perpetuity.

Andy Holt's Chili Bomb Black Puds

Lancashire has some other wonderful dishes worth guarding from extinction: proper hotpot, made with stewing beef cut into very small pieces, good spuds, and onions, and little else - carrots an extravagance; lob scouse; the simple onions cooked in milk then enriched with grated cheese - I facetiously called this Lancashire Fondue in an earlier piece, though I also wanted to imply that with a sexy name it would get made more; and Bury (and Haslingden) black pudding.

Black Pudding Fancies

Black pudding well made - ideally IMHO by Andrew Holt of The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company - is a delicacy. I had the privilege of travelling to Mortagne-au-Perche with Andrew three years back, to attend what is effectively the world black pudding championship. Mortagne is nicknamed Boudinville (Black Pudding Town), its love for the stuff proven by finding it on pizzas in a local trattoria. At the contest - Austrian German, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Irish and of course French entrants vied for various prizes, Andrew taking a couple.

Puds awaiting judgement

There were black pudding chocolates, black pudding cakes, puds with lobster, puds in fantastic shapes - witness the various photos in this post.

Chocolate bunny sanguinacho

Black pudding with smoked salmon and lobster

Black Pudding Cake

 But in the end black pudding is a tasty, savoury, rich ingredient, not just something fried for breakfast. People are put off by the fact that blood is the main ingredient, but why this should be off-putting and flesh not is beyond me. I love them.

Cheese enrobed boudin noir pralines

Andy Holt (R)

Somebody should write a history of and guide to the Black Pudding, and another on Lancashire cooking. I'd love to if any publisher ever reads this. I bought The History of Lancashire Cookery by Tom Bridge, an Amazon second-hand bargain - except that even paying 1p and postage this was a waste of money, a litany of appallingly subbed anecdotes and recipes.

On Markets and Kicking Myself

Doing a piece for Lancashire Life (with a side one for Bass Guitar Magazine - the life of a freelancer) I was in Blackburn today. We lived in nearby Rishton for a few years, the only place I ever regret living. Blackburn has come up in the world since then, its local authority showing the oomph sadly lacking in my home city of Preston. Maybe Rishton has changed, I hope so.

One very clear sign of progress is the market, now beneath a huge mall, and open six days a week. It was always good for food, and now looks better. Markets can be a boon to bargain hunters, or just those seeking variety not found in many supermarkets. I picked up a huge ham hock for £2.60, which will be used on Saturday in a traditional Lancashire favourite - pea soup made with a packet of dried peas (if I can find them tomorrow). It's a one-pot dish, the lengthily soaked peas added to a big pot in which finely chopped onion has been sweated, hock buried among them, then just water added, the lot simmered gently on the stove-top for a couple of hours or more. With buttered bread to dip in the finished article and the meat broken up and returned to the pan it is a rib-sticking meal well worth the inevitable percussive repercussions later.

That butcher's stall also had bacon ribs, which are just as good in the same role, though the ribs cooked in the soup tend to be eaten separately. Something about them didn't grab me, though.

In my Norfolk childhood I remember my father (cooking runs in the family, my WWI-veteran grandfather did quite a bit too) asking a local butcher for bacon ribs, to be met with a blank stare. They thought he was after bacon scraps and bones for stock, so gave him a pile of them for free, which I don't think went to waste.

As I walked around the market I kicked myself for not shopping at such places more often. I was expecting a box of Aberdeen Angus beef today (now in fridge and freezer), otherwise I'd have bought some of the beef flatrib I saw, another bargain. Next time for sure - steamed slowly in the oven for several hours then finished with a BBQ glaze at a higher temperature. Another cut that fits the rule - long cooking means cheap and delicious.

Something on Toast

One of my favourite pieces of food criticism was an off-the-cuff remark by Alan Bennett. It is said that years ago when he saw the fancy salads and international cuisine in the BBC canteen he remarked in exasperation: "You don't want that, you want something on toast."

As with his plays there are layers of thought behind simple words. Simplicity is good; toast is comforting and provides a carb boost (though he would never stoop so low as to use the non-word carb); and there is something very British about 'something on toast.' Sardines, beans, egg, cheese...

My wife and I - before we in contemporary parlance 'hooked up' - both spent three months in what was then the USSR. She was in provincial Voronezh where food was scarce and facilities limited: the thing she still talks about craving was toast - bread, generally the black bread beloved of the Russians, was available if you looked, but no means of toasting it. She claims that dreams of toast haunted her sleep.

This morning, our youngest hen having kicked in at last with an egg, we celebrated the fact with scrambled eggs. A dash of milk, a lump of butter, and five eggs whisked together in the pan. I won't do them now in the microwave, as these invariably end up as a solid mass. So creamy scrambled eggs on wholemeal toast, and all is right with the world for a few minutes of satiety. It does not take much. Just something on toast.

Hot Under the Covers - Sandwiches as Art (And One Flame Opportunity)

San Francisco 1979

It wasn't as if I had never eaten a hot sandwich before going for the first time to the USA, but then again it was. Our sausage sandwich (Danny Baker's Saturday morning programme on Radio 5-Live reviving its fortunes), or bacon butty are all very good, but the Americans do the thing so much better. Which also means bigger.

The hot sandwich is of course a one flame cooking opportunity par excellence, and something that surely fits the austerity bill.

Travelling on Greyhound buses with an old school-friend, though by that time we were university students, covering vast distances with diners and bus-stations the only options at times to grab a quick bite, burgers quickly lost their attraction. An alternative on one menu was a chicken sandwich, duly ordered. I expected two slices of white bread with some dry chicken. I got a stack of moist chicken, salad, pickles, a serving of fries, some onion rings and some nicely toasted bread, if memory serves. A meal in itself, and it even had vitamins and fibre!

A Now Sad Reminder of a First Visit to New York

Further discoveries on that trip and others were the Philly cheese steak and the hot corned beef sandwich (is that the Reuben if it comes with sauerkraut?). Whether on a round roll, a sub roll, toast or bread the hot sandwich can be a wonder - and a rather blokey wonder too.

Last night with my wife returning late Sternest Critic and I had a simple steak sandwich, Topside from Waitrose a bit tough but very toothsome, with a couple of slices of bacon left in the pack from the weekend on top, mayo on mine, a thin onion slice or two, wholemeal bread, and a side salad (authentically with Iceburg lettuce, the least-worst looking in the supermarket) the meal was on the table in minutes, and very satisfying. The steaklets were I think £3.50 for 3, the third in the fridge to be part of a Chinese dish tonight), so it was not too expensive.

Ian and I up the empire State Building

 Man v Food has highlighted the joys of such simple feasts, though tending to gluttony too often. Some of the sandwiches Adam Richman gets to eat look magnificent, and the culinary tip (subject of a recent post) you pick up from the top places making such things is use the pan juices, don't waste that flavour. Some dip the entire sandwich in a pan of stock/cooking liquid.

I'll buy the steaks again, but next time slice them thinly post-cooking to build up some structure, make it easier to attack, and create some spaces for mayo to fill and to hold the pan-juices better.

One Flame Flambeing - Flash in the Pan

The recent post about pancakes set me thinking about the flambe (how do you do accents on this thing?). I was tempted when cooking crepes the other night to get showy and squeeze some more flavour in by using rum or brandy on a couple of them. As the late great Kenneth Williams sang "Ah, ma Crepe Suzette."

It's a good skill to have in your locker, especially if you are cooking on one burner and you want to do something special. But this is one to practice with very great care - 20 years back I nearly fire-bombed our neighbours' newly decorated kitchen when cooking pud for them - a foolish combination of too much alcohol in me and too much in the ladle I was using to warm the spirit. Flames a good four feet up. Happily they were out of the room and when they came back everything was under control.

For bedsit sophistication it is worth learning, though. On a single pancake I'd only use a tbsp of cognac, my method being to pour it in a metal ladle, warm that over the hob or flame, then either tip it to use that flame to light it, or use one of those lighters you have to ignite gas flames, or a long match (take care! do it from the side not above!). You get a nice blue flame on the liquid, which when you tip it in the pan - I guess suddenly increasing the surface area thus the oxygen - whooshes rather alarmingly and burns itself out after sending flames a foot or so up. Alternatively, and generally less dramatically, pour the spirit on the food in the medium-hot pan and ignite it in there. The benefits in culinary terms are some caramelization of the food's surface, and a residue of the spirit's flavour.

A pork steak lends itself to this method, and whisky, cognac or ideally Calvados all do nicely. Gin is great with seafood, but so more surprisingly is whisky. Steak Diane was a Seventies classic, beef fillet that was finished at the table by flambeing it in brandy. The waiter always had a moustache, and knew that to keep it the head needed to be well away from the flames.

If you want to try this, my suggestion is get someone who has it off pat to teach you in person, or at the very least study a few YouTube videos on how to do it. And on your own head be it by the way.

A few rules: you need a steady hand; never try it if you would not be fit to drive in blood-alcohol terms; you need less alcohol than you think;  for goodness' sake never try to be clever and contain the flames in a covered pan - think about it; and don't use spirits that don't suit the food. Fun though the technique is, you need to be serious when doing this, otherwise you are literally playing with fire.

Fashion in Food

Fashion in food is responsible for some vile things. Food presented on bits of slate - thank you Mr Flintstone but no. The word jus. Flavour combinations that were never meant to be, but which are supposed to have us saying: "How clever." Certain celebrity chefs.

Chefs take themselves very seriously, and rightly so as it is a real skill or set thereof, but some go beyond professional right back into their own rear ends, and few critics ever tell them so, thus we continue to be peppered with daft dishes, and new trends. One thousand ways to make cupcakes etc, when one is more than enough, cupcakes are dull.

The most ridiculous combination I ever ate was in 1989, I can still recall the precise day. At the time it was probably the epitome of food fashion. I had driven from Dusseldorf to a hotel in a village near Sneek in the northern Netherlands, and needed comfort food for a particular reason beyond the lengthy trek. The menu was in Dutch, my mind was elsewhere, so I ordered what I thought was simply steak. It was steak, but surrounded by blackcurrant sauce. The meat tasted of blackcurrants, the few veg likewise. I pushed the plate aside and moved on.

Food should lift us. But that day even the best steak in the world would have failed to raise my spirits. On the journey I'd tuned to BBC radio to listen to the football, the voice of Peter Jones normally so bright immediately registered as devastated. It was April 15th. He was commentating, if that is the right word, on the unfolding of the Hillsborough tragedy. I had to pull off the road as I started to sob. There are so many more things more important than provenance, jus, and cupcakes.

One Flame Pudding - Cheap and Cheerful

November is when I start to feel the need for a pudding to finish an evening meal, and not something like a pastry or a blob of ice cream either, it needs to be sweet and starchy. I put it down to the failing light - yesterday it felt as if the day were ending about 3:30, and when we ate at 6:30 (it would have been 7:30 in spring and summer) the world had closed around us, cold, dark, unwelcoming. The body craves supplies to get it through the winter.

Earlier we had warmed and cheered ourselves - and rewarded, as we'd just chopped down an unproductive tree at the allotment and dug several beds over - with my favourite winter-warmer, hot buttered rum. A measure of rum (Kraken spiced rum the first bottle to hand) pinch of cinnamon and mace, tsp of sugar, and three measures of boiling water in which a tsp of unsalted butter is melted and vigorously stirred. Cake in a mug. Toddy or pudding (and pudding), damp cold weather has its compensations.

Only having thought of the need for a pud as the main course neared readiness possibilities were limited, pancakes the obvious choice.

Everyone loves pancakes, and everyone should be able to make them. For student bedsits for example it seems the ideal standby, minimal ingredients, quickly done, and informal - they are best eaten hot from the pan rather than batched up to eat together, so traffic and conversation flows in and out of the kitchen.

Why in Britain many people don't eat them other than on Pancake Tuesday is beyond me. For a few pence you have something that carries savoury or sweet fillings, is rapidly made, and tastes great.

Plain flour, an egg, and milk are whisked until a single cream consistency is arrived at, a pinch of salt added, and for pudding ones a tsp or three of sugar. Non-stick pan barely greased and heated, just enough batter to thinly coat its surface is poured in (it's a big mistake to make fatter versions, they take longer to cook, and the middle ends up doughy while the surfaces overdo), and tossing or flipping with a spatula the pancake is cooked in a couple of minutes. As with all cooking, a decent pan - with a heavy base - makes life easier, but pancakes are more forgiving of thin pans than most things.

We had most of ours with ice cream and chocolate sauce, one with maple syrup. A couple last night were eaten as they were. Sometimes a squeeze of lemon or orange juice and sugar is preferable, sometimes butter and sugar. We all felt better for them.

Cheap Luxury Jacobean Style

My reading of the Jacobean lady housewife Elinor Fettiplace's receipt book sparked the idea for the starch accompaniment to yesterday's gammon. I had even thought this one through in advance, buying the sweet potatoes with such a dish in mind. I had not realised previously that the potatoes Raleigh brought over here were not the common spud, but said sweet potatoes.

Two huge tubers (cost 86p) were boiled whole for 15 minutes, then skinned - it just wrinkles off when pushed with the thumb. Sliced thickly they were put in a gratin dish into which was poured to come close to the top a mixture of hot ham stock, the juice of two oranges (rather sad overlooked specimens from the fruit-bowl), a tablespoon of rosewater, and a big lump of butter, all previously stirred together so the butter had time to melt. The surface was sprinkled with a little sugar, and the dish then cooked in the oven for about 45 minutes at 180C - until the top slices took a knife point easily, a question of judgement as they were slightly candied.

The colour was beautiful - I am not sure if the camera does it justice. The flavour too was excellent, a perfect match - contrast indeed - for the savoury-salty gammon.

A post some days back looked at the value in terms of nutrition and cheerfulness of colour in our food. This was the brightest thing we've eaten in weeks. And it had an almost restauranty touch of glamour and sophistication, the rosewater just a background hint to add extra interest.

Hilary Spurling suggested that modern American cooks do something not a million miles away from this at Thanksgiving Dinners, but never having attended one I cannot confirm that - if anyone reading this can offer confirmation and comment on that I'd be grateful.

Leftovers or Thinking Ahead?

When are leftovers not leftovers? When you cook with the deliberate intention of having something to use later on. Roast chicken always provides more than one meal (at the very least the carcass makes stock); indeed every Sunday roast should offer the basis of Monday's dinner. But it is not just meat that does the trick - think cabbage and mash making bubble and squeak; or just mash with a few strips of meat pointing the way to rissoles.

I rarely cook just enough rice for one dish, as there are so many ways to use a bowl of the stuff the next day. And even if I forget and it languishes unloved in the fridge the chickens will eventually be pleased to have it, though that is an extravagance.

Thursday's basis for the fried rice dish left plenty enough to make a simple stuffed yellow pepper each (how very Eighties), with a tin of anchovies, four cloves of garlic sliced thinly, lots of pepper and sprinkles of paprika and celery salt, plus a splash of olive oil and the juice of half a basics lemon. Stood upright in a metal cake tin, tops minus stalk back on, the filled peppers stopped one another from sagging and the filling stayed moist. They cooked for 40 minutes in the oven at 180C to a soft sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the anchovies, though Sternest Critic said I had overdone the latter.

In warmer times this with a salad would make a main meal, but yesterday they were served as a boost to our vegetable intake after the main course, and to brighten the meal with almost luminous yellow.

We still have enough rice left to make a ramekin each of cheesy rice - grated Parmesan, a dab of butter, spoon of boiling water, and some garlic, cling-filmed and cooked briefly in the microwave.

One Flame Chinese - Take-out Made in

Chinese food is one of my favourite cuisines, or several of them - there is, after all, not one single style of Chinese cookery. What I have eaten as Chinese food has changed over time and geography. In the Seventies when the first Chinese takeaways opened in my hometown there was a preponderence of really gloopy stuff, like sweet and sour sauce in which a spoon would stand. Today the dishes available from such places are - often - subtler. In the Gorleston of 1975 Peking Duck never featured on the menu.

I was lucky enough to visit mainland China about a dozen times and Taiwan far more often when I worked in industry, so had the opportunity to try authentic Chinese food. On the mainland I ate in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, the food in the latter - especially in the countryside beyond the city - very different from the first two. Taiwanese food was different again, perhaps for economic reasons then with meatier dishes to the fore, and fantastic seafood (barbecued chilli whelks one of the best things I ever tried). 

Travels in the USA meant trying their version, again with its own characteristics. I still don't get the point of fortune cookies. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I love food made in a Chinese style. So I make my own attempts at it. One of my favourites, and something that qualifies as austerity cooking and one flame cookery, is fried rice, which was the core of last night's meal, and we would not have been deprived had it been all of the meal. 

White rice carefully and lengthily washed in a fine sieve to ensure the grains keep separate later was boiled quickly (boiling water covering it and a half inch more, slow simmer in covered pan for five or six minutes, then taken off the heat and left to steam for another ten minutes). While it steamed finely chopped carrot, red onion, yellow pepper, and a red chilli seeds-and-all were fried gently in rapeseed oil, then the boiled rice was added with about three tablespoons of soy sauce, the mixture stirred together and allowed to fry again very gently for five minutes. Defrosted sweetcorn and peas, and a handful of basics prawns were thrown in, and two brutally crushed garlic cloves to max their impact. A shake of 5-Spice powder completed the flavour enhancement.

I did enough for six, and the three of us ate it. Which when you think about the millions who have to survive on a bowl or two of plain boiled rice a day gives pause for thought.

Another no-flame dish complemented this, a way of using a bit of leftover (uncooked) white cabbage - the Chinese love their brassicas. The thick stalky bits were removed, leaves rolled together like a cigar and chopped very finely, then with a few spoons of boiling water and another of soy added to their bowl along with another smashed garlic clove it was cling-filmed and cooked on medium-high in the microwave for a couple of minutes or so to steam it. Virtuous and delicious. 

The Juice on Jus - Maxing One Flame Flavour

An aspect of the post yesterday about cooking a steak or a lamb chop set me to thinking about how much flavour can be won or lost after the meat has been lifted from the pan. Unless you have cooked it too long you are likely to have some of the juices glistening in the skillet in front of you, and maybe some scraps adhering to the surface where the flesh caught briefly. The austerity cook, or any decent cook really, wants to make the most of these, and with just a tiny effort you can capture them in a simple sauce to accompany the meat. My apologies to anyone for whom this is second nature.

The first method is deglazing: add a good dash of alcohol to the hot pan, scrape the bits up and stir in the juices, then reduce for a second and pour over the chop. Wine is ideal, white or red, if you have some on the go, or the dregs of a bottle saved with a Vacuvin. Cider is good, and suits say thin pork escalopes done this way. From reviewing I have loads of brandies and rums that I find useful for this, though only a small amount is needed, the flavour being powerful - and take care you don't inadvertently flambe yourself. Best of all is dry vermouth with the bonus of herby notes. The resulting liquid can be thickened with butter, a dab of French mustard, a slurp of ketchup - tomato or mushroom - or a slurp of cream (not creme fraiche for me). If no suitable alcohol is to hand water's ok, but you gain no taste.

Bunnahabhain Distillery

Alternatively a pat of butter or some cream will mix with the juices, but be conservative as otherwise you'll not taste anything else, and here the pan must not be too hot or you'll waste juice and all.

It doesn't have to be just meat. During a press trip on Islay chef Francois Bernier seered locally dived scallops in a dry pan, then used Bunnahabhain whisky to stretch the juices, and in that case to flambe the scallops, with if memory serves a spoon of butter to bind the results together. This was one of the best things I have ever eaten, and with all due respect to Francois, so simple. He, by the way, was using a single Calor Gas burner to cook at the distillery.

One Flame Cooking Fang Man Style

This evening's meal includes the ultimate bloke-carnivore thing, the flash-fry steak. Sternest Critic likes his still capable of movement, oozing red juices that might put Dracula off, which means about 30 seconds each side on a very hot and minimally oiled pan. My wife and I both go for rare edging towards medium-rare.

Again when in France with just the one Calor Gas burner a small steak was frequently the protein component of an evening meal, some balance provided by carbs from the ubiquitous French stick, veg from the traiteur section of the supermarket - a small tub of celeri-remoulade, Russian or lentil salad or something similar - followed by a cake and some fruit and cheese. So a three/four course meal with only one thing needing heat. With a bit of forethought I'd have a few mushrooms to pop in the pan with the steak, broadening things a bit, or a drained tin (no freezer) of French beans. 

French beans cooked in the leftover meat juices from steak, with a knob of butter and a crushed clove of garlic, is something I'll still do for three of us now, good way to use the jus (a word that like pod people took over without us noticing) and no additional washing up, and it forces me to give the meat a couple of minutes' rest. We have a dishwasher but old habits die hard and the fewer times it runs the better, economically and environmentally.

De Pomiane takes such thinking further in his Cooking in Ten Minutes, dashing off a five course meal in that time, a trick that I'll try every now and then. It's not hard with some thought: starter some slices of salami or a pack of mixed charcuterie and a gherkin or two. Main course steak or lamb chop, both fine underdone though if you get the pan heating when the whistle blows you can have it well done, should you (why?) wish to do so, with said mushrooms or green beans as above; next a small pack of pre-washed salad (I never buy the big ones as they are too much for three people and the remains inevitably wilt and lose their attraction) with any suitable additions available from the fridge like cucumber and red pepper, dressed with my own vinaigrette (bought stuff is stupidly expensive and far too sweet), followed by a simple pud - bought pastry, ice-cream bought or homemade, or virtuously some fruit, with cheese after if we are going the full English route, or before if it's continental that night. You can argue either way and feel free to do so, just don't look down your nose at someone who orders it differently. 

The secret with such a meal is not to have too much of any dish. It's a taste of something and move on when you want to, though you have to time things around the steak. 

Colour? Bah! Humbug!

Forgive the title if you would, always the most difficult part of a post to write, and a longish life influenced by punning newspaper headlines makes it hard to avoid such tropes.

When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.

Even in the early years of James I's reign such artificial colouring (powdered sandalwood one of the ways of doing it btw for bright red) was thought to be 'countrified', yet we still do it, the worst offender that luminescent-yellow smoked haddock which hurts the eye when surveying the fish counter. Colour? Bah! Humbug! indeed. Sadly that is cheaper than the undyed version - a bit illogical other than on grounds of volume, so let's stop buying it. When I was a kid my local mini-supermarket, Taygreens, in an echo of an Arthur Lowe anecdote I love, sold two cheeses, cheddar and red cheddar. Even then I couldn't see why people wanted red cheese which looked like someone had mixed it with paint.

On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.



Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.

Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.

The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.

Starter, Side, or Supper? (and Inadvertent One Flame Cookery)

I had some kale from our allotment to use yesterday, so fell back on something mentioned on a previous post - remove the stems, wash (very carefully in salted water, it often harbours scale insects and the occasional tiny slug, though supermarket stuff almost certainly just needs a quick rinse) and steam the leaves, then cut them fine and add a boiled egg or two, a tin of anchovies and their oil, some crushed garlic, and a good grating of parmesan. All this chopped together and mixed up is put still warm on hot buttered toast. The flavours are not exactly subtle, but on a damp November evening robust is good.

When I was planning our evening meal I had this in mind, and tried to think of how to turn it from what is a good starter or maybe a side dish, into a main course. Potatoes, rice or pasta would be inappropriate. Another veg in it would be too much, even finely diced onion. A vegetable with it seems weird. The only thing that tempted me was adding a fried mushroom or two (with hindsight perhaps steaming one or two briefly would be better), but even that didn't get my vote. The only way I can think of (any ideas gratefully received) to make this a main course would be to do lots of it, but good though it is...

So some things are perhaps not meant to be a full supper, or dinner, or tea,  depending on how you style your main meal. Pity, as it is cheap, tasty, nutritious, and just takes ten minutes to knock up. I ended up making a small amount of spaghetti with meat balls (three sausages to use up) and mushrooms and a simple tomato sauce to follow it. 

Though it was not what I had in mind when actually making it, if you boil the egg first this is another one flame cooking thing (provided you have a toaster, though good crunchy bread would be equally good), and a very healthy one too. And there is a minimum of washing up, always a plus. 

Get Stuffing

Sunday's chicken was on the small side, so to bulk the protein out and complement it I made a quick stuffing.  This used half a pack of Sainsbury's Butcher's Choice Lincolnshire sausages, skins removed (they look a bit false but I prefer them for flavour to most of their Taste the Difference range), a big handful of white breadcrumbs, and a carrot and two small leeks zapped into tiny shreds in my 1980s food processor (it plays Duran Duran while chopping  stuff up and has massive shoulder pads). Moistened with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil and seasoned the mixture cooked in a separate dish alongside the chicken.

Even with the three of us having substantial helpings there was enough left to go in a chicken and stuffing sandwich for my wife's packed lunch, and the same for me. So you could say I gave my wife a good... sandwich today, if you were a comedian from when my processor was new.

The stuffing idea brings to mind a post I did on my Northern Eco blog a year or more ago, where something similar (then made with recipe bacon as the meat component if I recall correctly) was central to an austerity Christmas meal. If I remember I'll copy and paste that piece to this blog.

One Flame Cooking Part Deux

The post on my experience as a student in France, where I had one Calor Gas burner and a kettle as the only means of cooking, has generated some traffic, so maybe the topic is one of specific interest. I wonder if at this time of year students new to university and now coping with the colder weather are having minds turned towards culinary survival strategies? Whatever, I thought another idea I used at that time would be of potential value.

With the one burner and the need to minimize gas usage or face high costs a dish I developed was a quick soup. Not cuppa soup - though I did at times add one of those to the pot - but a proper soup rapidly cooked. The logic behind this is the same as for stir-fries - if things are cut small they cook quickly and retain good flavour. A pot of soup is also cheap and generally nutritious, and offers the chance to incorporate interesting ingredients, though when I lived in France my version varied little.

The basic idea was a potato, a carrot, an onion, garlic, and maybe a mushroom or two, all cut into tiny dice - really tiny, just 2mm or 3mm across. That takes time, but not too much, and I still find chopping veg to be therapeutic - when I worked in industry the more stressed I was the smaller the onions were cut. The tiny veg - and if you are cooking for one as I generally was you don't need much - are fried briefly in butter or oil, then a cup or two of boiling water from a kettle poured over them (my electricity was covered in my rent then, the Calor Gas I had to buy, and a kettle anyway costs about 1.5p to boil). A stock cube was added, or on occasion a cheapo cuppa soup packet, the lot simmered for a couple of minutes until the potatoes were done (no problem if the onion or carrot has a bit of toothsome  resistance still). A sort of (to echo 10CC for those of us old enough to remember) mini-mini-mini-minestrone.

It was nicer than a packet of soup, promised freedom from scurvy, and importantly made a great partnership with heavily buttered French stick. These days I'd hope to use my own chicken stock, though only saints never reach for a cube, and would cut the dice a bit chunkier, simmer the soup a bit longer. And when I did a variation on this the other day I added spag broken into tiny lengths and the still good remnants of a white cabbage cut very small.

One of my culinary heroes, Edouard de Pomiane whom I discovered much later, suggests something very similar to the bedsit soup in his Cooking in Ten Minutes, a witty and clever book written decades before Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver et al got onto the same topic.

Austerity Fillet Steak?

Fillet steak is far from my favourite cut - rump which has texture and flavour aplenty (and is at the cheaper edge of the scale) would get that accolade. But when I saw the fillet tails (the bit where the fillet tapers to thinness) at the excellent butchery at Tebay Services for just £12.90/kg I couldn't resist. The two pieces for £7.53 were a bargain, the slenderer and part of the fatter one made into beefburgers last night with a few breadcrumbs to bulk the meat out, an onion for flavour, and an egg to bind it all together. They were really excellent. The bulk of the fatter piece was sliced into three small but thick-as-my-thumb steaks that will form the luxurious protein component of a midweek meal. I have never seen fillet tails at a supermarket, yet another reason to favour the independent butcher using all of the carcass.

Meat counters for me can be a work of art, the meat - cuts, signs of being properly hung - and the way it is presented both requiring great care. Compare this one at Tebay with the sad stuff you find at too many supermarkets - though there are honourable exceptions like Booth's.

I went to the butcher's seeking beef short-ribs, another bargain cut. There were none this time, but I was more than pleased at my purchase. For someone who cooks from scratch the supermarket butcher is all too often disappointing - not necessarily in the quality, though it pains me to see the cheapest chicken which, pale and stringy, promises nothing for the eater. It is the variety that gets me, or lack thereof. What happens to the bony bits with so much flavour? The toughies that need slow-cooking?

To be fair to the supermarkets, who are great at reacting to demand and at regularly testing our wants, it is probably the Great British Public that is either content with a few simple choices, or incapable of dealing with  much beyond steaks, chops, and roasts. That's sad.

Winging It

There is no reason why an austerity cook should not find great ways to tickle the taste buds - survival is not enough. That is one of the gripes I always have with healthy eating gurus, who forget that a nutritious diet of brown rice and cabbage water (or whatever the current fad may be) is bloody miserable - the soul and spirit need nourishment too.

A regular treat for us is chicken wings done with various different sauces or marinades. Here btw is another point on which I agree with Nigel Slater, the wing for me is the best bit of the chicken. I ask for them rather than breast when we eat a roasted bird.

Last night's version was a £2.85 cartonful from Sainbury's cooked in a roasting pan that can go on the hob. I fried them in minimal oil, as the pan is non-stick and the chicken skin gives out plenty of fat. Once they had started browning I poured in a glug or two of soy sauce and a good shake of 5-spice powder, tossed the chicken in this and then put them in the oven (already had other stuff in it) at 180C for 30 minutes. They came out sticky, fragrant and sweet, the best finger-food there is, part of the treat being that we ate them in front of the TV instead of at the table.

A farm shop butcher I use sometimes, a bit out of the way so not as often as I'd like, gave me a whole bag of wings one time, must have been 30 in there, as they couldn't sell them (and I was buying a shipping load of other meats). Free is good. Another even more distant shop (was on my route home when I used to work in industry) threw in free ox kidney and liver, pig's trotters (wonderful things), and fat for use in making pate. Not something that many supermarkets will do.

Cheap Cuts - The Cheek of It

One truism of economical shopping is that meat needing longer cooking will generally be cheaper than something you can flash fry. The savings on the meat have to be balanced with the fuel used over two hours and more in the oven, but with a little planning several dishes can be done at once.

Two days ago I cooked a stew of ox-cheek, meat purchased at Waitrose (not famed for cheapness, but this was a fairly thrifty £6.50/kg). With carrots, onions, and a leek there was the basis of something nutritious, and I added a bowl of mango chutney to the liquid (leftover from a party) plus some of our own dried sage and a tea-spoon of Bovril, a magical meaty ingredient in beef stews and gravies. Cooked very slowly in the morning and into the afternoon (for four hours at 120C actually, while I was out interviewing someone for an article) and then cooled it was kept to mature in the fridge overnight - stews pretty much always benefit from this, the flavours developing and melding.

The result when reheated next day was very tasty: the meat could be cut with a spoon, the juices were sweet and unctuous, and there was next to nothing left. I added a tin of Heinz beans when reheating it, as the meat needed some bulk other than carrots to balance it.

My planning was a bit off, the only thing I 'cooked' with it some lemon and lime skins. After they are juiced don't throw them away, believe it or not once dried out they make very effective firelighters.

Lovefood.com £1 a Day Article

I write occasional pieces for the website Lovefood.com, which features reviews, opinion pieces, recipes and pretty much anything on food. The most fascinating and thought provoking piece on the site of late has been one written by Charlotte Morgan, about taking a challenge to live on £1 a day worth of food for five days. The link is http://www.lovefood.com/journal/opinions/18059/live-below-the-line-food-poverty.

If you go to the piece you'll see a lot of comments and tips (and sadly quite a bit of carping) about cheap food, and only a few contributors to the discussion grasping the point that those living on such a budget in the Third World have things very tough. I wrote an austerity cooking piece some time back, http://www.lovefood.com/journal/opinions/14049/family-mains-course-meals-for-under-3, about four family meals for under £3 each, not a stretch to cook on that budget, but not huge variety and they were carb heavy things in the main. I am tempted to try the £1 challenge, but wouldn't inflict it on my family.

A point I didn't make in my own comment on Charlotte's piece is that longer term economic convergence means our standard of living is likely to fall further in the West (competing with China and India - and they are already moving a long way from just low-skill labour roles - means falling wages here), so simple strategies like learning to cook from scratch, avoiding the shameful waste we see everywhere, and growing your own veg/fruit/herbs etc will become ever more important over the coming decades. I am teaching my son to cook for the sake of his independence and health when he flies the nest, but also with such a future in mind.

That said, food remains a joy for those of us with anything like a budget and the knowledge needed to make the best of it.

One Flame Cooking

A recent comment about having to cook on one burner while kitchenless made me think about my year living in France during my degree course - living in a disused school accommodation block at the Lycee next to the one where I worked, and cooking on a single calor-gas burner (with a kettle too). Youth of course made it easier to accept a restricted diet - often wine, cheese,  and fabulous French bread from a bakery 200m distant - but I learned a huge amount about food and cooking in that year. Austerity, restrictions, can teach us coping strategies and the value of what we have. Variations on beans with big thick smoked pork sausages when it was cold were great, the sausages already cooked, but benefiting from the heat, their flavour enhancing the beans (not at that time Heinz in France, but some sort of cassoulet flavoured versions, often with chunks of petit-sale in them.

The big thing that I learned there was the value of great bread. Sadly it is still, 30 years later, almost impossible to find really good bread in this country. Waitrose makes an effort, Booth's sadly has very expensive stuff without a hint of crispy crust, and Sainsbury's is a disaster zone. So I make my own when moved to do so, which at least is free of additives, and for a brief moment has a crust worthy of the name.

It is totally impossible to find good French sticks here. They need a Vienna oven, and should have both crispy crust and a very holey interior. Not one that supermarkets go for as they are stale within three hours at most, but when fresh there is IMHO no better bread anywhere. The stuff I bought when living in France was inevitably nibbled on the short walk home, nobody could resist that aroma surely?

Onions and Le Creuset - Both Bargains

We had our annual bonfire do last night, feeding I think 19 in all. The biggest culinary hit was a simple accompaniment to a big bit of plain boiled gammon, onions in a cheesy bechamel. The idea was lifted from Nigel Slater, though I think his version was without cheese. I love the breadth of his ideas, and his frequent focus on things other than meat, but can't abide his writing style as it has evolved over the last few books. Still, he is probably not worried given I have at least five of his tomes.

The dish was made by peeling medium-sized onions and cooking them in boiling water for about 25 minutes, then halving them, placing them like little domes in two Le Creuset cast iron oval dishes, and covering them in a bechamel sauce before finishing in the oven for half an hour at 180C, by which time the surface was starting to brown and bubble.

Milk for the bechamel was infused in the morning (thinking ahead as it was a party) with onion, carrot, bay and nutmeg, and the sauce made in the usual way, on the thin side as the cheese then added would give it extra body anyhow. At the end of the evening there was some gammon left, about half the pate (too much bacon in it, a sin Elizabeth David railed against), but not a scrap of cheesy onion (nor a single sausage, that standby of the bonfire party). Sternest critic rightly said later that the onion was a touch watery, so I'd probably cook them for just 15 minutes in future and rely on the oven to finish them off.

Ten onions cost about £0.75, the milk and cheese maybe £1, so it was a cheap and tasty success, a bargain. As were those Le Creuset dishes about 25 years ago. Good cookware lasts, and helps the cook. I have two sets of pans, one stainless steel, the other LC cast iron, both bought in the late 1980s, and both pretty forgiving of wavering attention. They cost quite a bit back then, but had we chosen cheapo options with thin bases and delicate lids they'd have died at best three years later, and would have burned half the things cooked in them.

Biggest firework hit btw was Molten Madness from Sainsbury's, brought by a friend. It was roughly the size and weight of a fridge, and effectively laid down an artillery barrage for five minutes. Le Creuset Soup Pot with Lid, 2-3/4 quart - Cherry (Google Affiliate Ad)

A Good Butcher is a Pearl Beyond Price

We just got back from visiting my father in rural Norfolk. His village is a sizable one, with two very small supermarkets and a variety of other shops. Happily for him and the rest of the village (or the carnivores at least) that includes two good butchers. A good butcher in my book can be judged on his (or her) sausages and minced beef (ground beef for our American friends). Simple things maybe, but they reflect the care and attitude of a skilled tradesman.

I live in a city, but the only butcher's shop nearby was not very good - mince gristly, sausages when I tried them tasteless - and unsurprisingly it closed some time ago. Strange how in this aspect of retail supply a city should be poorer than a village - maybe the supermarkets here the reason. One strand of my freelance writing work, however, takes me to towns and villages where there are still good craft butchers, a definite perk. A couple of years ago Roy Porter (picture) who has a shop near Clitheroe was very impressive, and recently Riley's in Crawshawbooth was equally good.

The difference between a butcher and the butchery at a supermarket seems to be mainly to do with the cheaper cuts - try to find them in your supermarket, where it appears animals no longer come with innards - rather than at the top end. Doubtless margins are lower on the cheaper bits than the expensive ones. At one butcher in the village I bought some excellent beef shin to make a simple stew for the four of us yesterday. Browned and then stewed for two-and-a-half hours with root veg and onions the meat made its own sauce, and even after seconds there was enough for my father to use as the basis of a meal today after we had gone. It cost about £2 each. There are exceptions to the supermarket butcher rule - Morrison's is good on offal and the tough bits that need slow cooking, and so (at the other end of the social scale perhaps) is Waitrose, where I bought ox cheek on Saturday.

The stew made with shin beef was another dish demonstrated to my son in preparation for his eventual escape into the big wide world as a student. He is learning the easy core skills of the home cook, in that case: brown the meat in small batches so it fries not steams; fry the onions before putting them in the stewpot (nobody likes boiled onions do they?); use some suitable liquid to deglaze the pan in which the meat browned (Adnams Broadside that time); cut the carrots and other root veg in good chunks so they retain their shape rather than disappear into the sauce; stew in a low oven for two hours or more. We sprinkled a bit of flour on the meat and veg before adding the beer from the frying pan and some boiling water. No stock cube, no stupid packets of casserole sauce mix. And it tasted great, because the meat was top notch. 

Austerity Action and Corporate Coffee

We are living through austere times. During this recession we expect to receive less from the government whatever anyone says, and know that we will have to contribute more. We understand that, and hope it is a temporary situation. 

I pay tax. I guess that just about everyone who reads this - if anyone does - makes their contribution to society by paying income tax and maybe corporation tax. Even if I could afford teams of clever corporate tax lawyers I would not wish to avoid tax, however pious that sounds. It is part of being a good citizen. Starbucks does not apparently share that moral position, finding legal ways to avoid paying corporation tax here of late. So I will not be buying any of their products until I am told that they have changed, learning the difference between legal and moral. Losing my occasional purchase won't make much difference to the company. But if we were all as individuals to take this stance, they would have to take notice. Jimmy Carr got the message about what we thought of his - again perfectly legal - tax wheeze very rapidly, and had the sense to act. No campaign was needed, no marches, he obviously felt the force of public disapproval. Why not Starbucks?

Do Flavours Become Old?

My bedtime reading currently is Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book. Elizabethan and Jacobean recipes are set out in the original flexible spelling, then explained and commented on by the erudite Hilary Spurling. The seasonality of cooking is one thing that hits you - Mrs Spurling set it out by month - but also the flavours that the cook in those times most leaned on, some of which we use very little today.

Is this a matter of fashion, availability, or does taste evolve in some way perhaps to keep pace with technological change - the fridge and freezer, rapid transport - and the 'new' ingredients that become available?

I like to think I use a wide palette of spices and other flavour enhancers, but some things that were central to old Elinor's culinary world are pretty alien to mine - I wonder who nowadays really uses the cloves they buy, for example? Even in bread sauce I would use nutmeg in place of the overpowering clove. But at least I have a little bottleful in my cupboard whereas rosewater  is absent - I  had a bottle years ago and think it disappeared through a temporal warp vortex, as one day it was gone though I'd hardly used a drop. Rosewater for the Jacobean cook was the stock-cube of today's, which says a great deal about our loss of subtlety.

A myth should be debunked here: spices were probably not then used much if at all to mask meats etc going off, they were far too expensive to waste thus, and those with the money to spend on exotic ingredients would not have been foolish enough to endanger their health with rotting flesh, or desperate enough to have to. Spices were used to produce food that tasted good.

Our contemporary love of nutmeg and mace links us with those times, even moreso perhaps cinnamon. I very occasionally use Orange Flower Water too. Cloves have a flavour that I associate with the cooking of relatives long deceased. But it is not just spices that seem to fade away in cooking. Take raisins: in my Sixties and Seventies childhood they were included in curries, cakes and pies, covered in chocolate as a special treat to be eaten in the cinema, the tough little buggers eaten I'd estimate twice a week. I barely use them now, and have to buy them in specially when needed. Elinor Fettiplace seems to have employed them for every other dish. As my son loathes all dried fruit perhaps they will fade out of the culinary picture entirely when his generation pushes mine away from the hob.

We should not forget such ingredients, so I am going to make an effort to use the occasional clove, hide raisins - one 'receipt' in the book for chicken cooked in mutton broth has raisins (later sieved out) to add depth and sweetness for example - and buy rosewater too. In austerity terms these things should attract the cook for giving loads of taste for very little money - a single clove makes itself known in a big apple pie. More bang for your groat as it were.