Nearly Vegetarian II

As stated previously, we are not vegetarians, though meatless days are part of our flexible culinary schedule. But is it vegetarian if we substitute fish for the meat? I'm sure real veggies would say no.

Last night's effort then was meatless but not vegetarian, a fish pie made with pollock (doubtless soon to join the poor mackerel on the at-risk list as every chef seems to be lauding it now) and a mushroomy bechamel. The top was a mash made with spuds and parsnips about 67/33. Weirdly the bechamel smelled exactly like Heinz mushroom soup, which it wasn't, but that reminded me of the 1960s and 1970s thing of using tinned soups in dishes - Batchelors made a big thing of it. Nothing too wrong with that I suppose, but for the same price we got no additives and I am sure far more mushrooms.

When I make mash it tends to be with parsnips added, or a few cloves of garlic, to give the flavour a boost and add a different vegetable without using another pan. One of the few British veg currently in season parsnips are cheap at the moment, though had we ventured to the allotment through the mud and floods we could have had some for free. It feels like the rain hasn't ceased since about June.

And another tangent, prompted by that endless downpour. We are as a nation to spend £33 billion on quicker trains. We spent £13 billion on the big school sports olympics. At what point will some meaningful money be spent on our food security? We will not be able to rely on food from the countries now coming up on the rails economically; and one of them China is busy buying chunks of Africa for its own food safety. Orwell in the 1930s pointed out that we had been incapable of feeding ourselves in WWI when he and Cecil Beaton worked together on their school allotments in the drive to produce a bit more, and the situation has worsened since.

Even Austerity Cooks Need a Break

Last night with wife returning home extremely fed up with work, and having said to SC that post exams we would take him out to his favourite restaurant, we went to East is East in Preston centre. And I was happy to suggest it, as even austerity cooks need a break.

It is not a curry house, it is a restaurant, and a very good one. Their menu features the Anglo-Indian stuff like Baltis (sadly on the list as Balti's) and so on, but with plenty of more exotic dishes - lamb's brains and lamb's trotters (their designation) in the Punjabi specialities section.

We go to East is East for several reasons. The service is always impeccable without being intrusive. The surroundings are many notches above the too frequent cod Raj stuff found elsewhere. For three of us last night, with a decent tip, it cost £75 (just poppadoms etc as starters, a curry each, one rice, one saag aloo, two naan breads about 45cm x 25cm, one fizzy water, one jug of iced tap water). The naan breads are the best I have ever come across, giant moist things with the perfect blend of crispy bubbly bits and soft doughyness. The rest of the food is always excellent. And from the cook's point of view, or this cook's anyway, 'Indian' food is the hardest to replicate in the home kitchen.

I can make French food (maybe spending so much time there helps) that I hope would please a Frenchman; my Italian stuff is (pizzas apart) as good as we'd get (sometimes better says he immodestly) as we'd be served at our local trattoria. When we eat Chinese food locally at least we feel hung over next day even if not a drop has passed our lips, maybe from the MSG, and the things I make are often slightly more adventurous than sweet and sour pork etc beloved of the mainstream Chinese restaurant (we have yet to try a highly recommended one near my wife's office, frequented by crowds of Chinese students studying at her university). But I have never come close to making curries anywhere near as good as East is East's, or a few other places we occasionally use.

Perhaps that is the spices and herbs they use (fresh fenugreek leaves in my chicken dish yesterday) not always being in a very English kitchen cupboard. The time and care taken to make the base of so many curries is another factor. We have no tandoori oven for the naan breads of course, and re-heated supermarket jobbies are universally poor. This is the only food where I have been at all tempted to buy ready-made, but I resisted the temptation on principle and because I'm a bit mean. So for a proper curry of the East is East sort, we will still have to make our way to East is East.

Don't Trim the Trimmings

I wrote a post the other day about a sprout not being just for Christmas, and this one is along the same lines - why should bread sauce only appear on December 25th, never to be seen again for the rest of the year?

I'm not sure if this is about leftovers - though the crumbs now waiting to be added to steeping milk were from a roll past its best - or about making the ordinary special with a bit of forethought. Today's main meal is to be roast chicken, with a few if not all the trimmings: gravy made from the meat juices, stuffing (cooked on its own not in the bird), and the bread sauce. I'll make roast potatoes too, with the fat skimmed off some beef stock as part of the cooking medium.

There is a pleasing continuity in this, with that beef stock and thus fat made from a previous roast; the use of the ageing roll; and the promise of chicken and bread sauce sandwiches tomorrow if as expected neither element is finished today.

Of course there is nothing wrong with throwing together a stir-fry when time is tight, or if it takes your fancy. But when as on a cold January Sunday one has time aplenty why not think ahead? A case in point is the milk brought to a near boil with a quartered onion and four bay-leaves, plus a chip or two of nutmeg (my bread sauce favours those flavours over the more traditional cloves) and some peppercorns, then removed from the heat to infuse for several hours. There will be glazed carrots, started a good hour before we sit down to eat. And the roast spuds, parboiled to near-doneness well before they are to be finished in a super-hot oven as the chicken rests.

Our Sunday is far from empty - two of us working, one doing homework, and various leisure pursuits pursued. Some in that position would rather graze, trying to fit more activities into an amorphous day (and avoiding others in the house). A Torygraph article yesterday (I became a convert to their crossword if not their politics during the MPs' expenses scandal) also made once more the obvious point that those eating together are likely to be healthier - grazing fodder not famed for its balance and nutrition. Sitting down together over our main meal (as we already did over brunch) punctuates the day, provides structure, and is in itself leisure. And we eat well.

The Joy of Stocks

Making stock is one of life's simplest culinary pleasures. It fills the house with a comforting smell (unless it's lamb, which I tend not to bother with), and as a near freebie warms the heart of the austerity cook.

Earlier in the week with son suffering with severe yoot flu I made a chicken broth for our evening meal having prepared the stock in the afternoon using the well-picked carcase of a roast bird. Anyone who believes there is no difference between real stock and a cube has yet to make the real stuff. Same son, aka Sternest Critic, can always tell if I make risotto with the cheaty option.

Yesterday I got around to making some beef stock with the bones and bits from Sunday's roast. It was getting near the time when I would no longer trust it, and Friday being shopping day we needed to clear some room in the fridge. Chicken stock I make in about an hour, as simmered too long it can go a bit gluey; beef can bubble modestly for three or four hours.

The bones were joined by four bay-leaves, a large onion quartered, two sticks of celery and the leaves of several more, a carrot in thick diagonal slices (to give plenty of surface area), with several cloves of garlic, about 12 peppercorns, and two flowers of star anise. Not sure if that is what they should be called but they look like it. Three hours - and a half-teaspoonful of salt - later we have the liquid makings of a Chinese noodle soup, kept in the fridge overnight so the beefy fat can be skimmed off (and probably used in cooking something else, or maybe just on a sliver of toast).

Years ago Chris Johnson, who in Ramsbottom since the 1980s has run the best restaurant in the North West under various different names - the original was The Village Restaurant - told us about a trip to I think a Paul Bocuse eaterie. He had been terribly disappointed, and was scathing about a soup tried there, with as he put it 'no depth' to the stock. He seemed saddened that such a hero of the food world should have erred in so basic a fashion. That depth is in fact really easy to achieve even in the home kitchen, so I can understand Chris's dismay, leaving aside what had been paid for the bowlful.

RIP Parson Woodforde

I finished reading Parson Woodforde's diary at the weekend, and was strangely moved as I saw the last words were about food, roast beef in fact. I have never read a more engrossing book, the little dramas, passing friendships, his mixture of charity and snobbery, were far more fascinating than television crime dramas or block-buster movies. I can almost (not quite) begin to see the attraction of reality TV. Except the people on those shows generally seem to be arses. Posh arses, common arses, celebrity arses, obnoxious arses. Arses.

From the austerity cook's point of view there is much to learn from the parson's household. Not of course the dinners he gave when entertaining, as he so often did (not in the party sense, but feeding friends, relations,  the squire and his wife, so rather than entertaining hosting may be a better word), which would feature several different meats - maybe roast leg of mutton, roast beef, boiled chickens, boiled roots and a variety of tarts and puddings along with fruit and nuts as what he then termed dessert. No, the things his cook prepared for him when it was just the parson and his niece-companion Nancy at home are of greater interest to the careful cook.

I am intrigued, for example, by how pig's face (a frequent dish at his table) was prepared. Giblet soup I can understand better. The bonier cuts too - breast of veal, neck of mutton and suchlike - were reserved for such ordinary meals. And the humble fish - flounders, mackerel, plaice and so on - that were fetched from market at Norwich - speak volumes about making the best of ordinary ingredients.

More unusual for our times, at least for native Brits if we can use the term, was his enjoyment of freshwater fish like tench, carp, eels, pike and perch. Our coarse fishermen tend to throw back their catch (probably best to do so with eels which are in decline here currently), but then a lot of sea anglers don't actually like to eat fish, which is decidedly odd.

I've eaten perch in France and Switzerland, and love pike quenelles when prepared by a good chef. Perch is actually quite tasty, slightly reminiscent of dab to my palate. Our dream once son has flown the nest is to downsize to a cottage with enough land for a small orchard, and to have a fishing pool - his at one time Woodforde's greatest diversion and almost obsession. Visiting religious houses like Furness Abbey always at some point leads to the spot where the monks kept fish in vast ponds and pools. Yet we now only keep Koi Carp and similarly decorative creatures, whose owners would blanch at the idea of eating them. As our population grows and our grasp on the world's resources loosens we may revert to such medieval models of self-sufficiency (or better, self-reliance), though as Woodforde's facility showed we were still keen on this just a couple of centuries ago.

Nearly Vegetarian

As posted previously, I am trying to fit in one fish and two vegetarian main courses into our week's eating. Or nearly vegetarian. Like tonight's offering, which will be mushroom risotto, maybe with some peas to give a contrast of textures and some more vegetable matter (yes, I watch QI too, fungi are closer to animals than vegetables, but for culinary purposes let's forget the DNA analysis). Except I have some ham stock to use in making the dish, and am probably going to use up the last little bit of a packet of 'recipe' bacon too.

So the definition is broadening to mainly vegetarian. True moral veggies would be horrified by this. I am not a vegetarian at all, certainly not by belief. I just know that too much meat is not good for us. And is weight-for-weight far more expensive than mushrooms or vegetables other than those wastefully (and given their loss of freshness pointlessly) flown in from Peru, Egypt etc.

The inclusion of bacon as above reminds me of a couple of incidents long past. In my Sixties and Seventies childhood one of our neighbours was a vegetarian. When she came over for a party my parents gave my mother cooked her a vegetarian dish - a pie - specially. Except she later admitted to having included "A little bacon, for flavour." And holidaying in Brittany with another couple who were vegetarians I carefully explained to a waiter in a little restaurant that our friends didn't eat meat. He suggested a salad, which duly came with lardons. When challenged about this he said: "But it is only a small amount." 

Good Filla for Good Fellas

We are in culinary winter mode, the threat of a chance that there may possibly be the potential for snow ("Britain Doomed to Snowy Hell" - The Daily Wail) meaning we stoked up the multi-fuel stove, lit a rare fire in the living room (in the fireplace rather than just generally somewhere in the room) and have been upping the solidity of our evening meal. Tonight's was particularly robust, a simplified version of pasticcio.

The simplification only came in the layering - instead of the cookbook version that cut through resembles a sedimentary cliff face this was just penne and cheesy bechamel, tomato sauce and meatballs, penne and bechamel and a good layer of cheese on top.

This was another Monday night supper inspired by Sunday's roast, a way of using some of the remaining beef rib in the meatballs, and doing a bit more fridge clearance with three uncooked pork sausages that were disdained on Sunday morning, and about a third of a pack of 'recipe' bacon (another third became the stuffing served at the same Sunday afternoon meal). Hugh F-W was the source of the idea. In matters of meat I tend to refer to his books, which mix sound sense, culinary knowledge, and environmental awareness. It was he too who called pasticcio Mafia food.

How many Monday meals are dictated by the weekend's feasts? The rib of beef was not as extravagant as it sounds, reduced at Waitrose, and I have a feeling the girl behind the butcher's counter made an error, as a hefty 1.7kg two-rib joint only (only) cost £13. Given it did the Sunday roast, today's meatballs, and the rest will make a salad (with the bones destined to become the heart of a stock) or maybe a spicy Chinese soup tomorrow, that is not bad value.

Another spur to making the pasticcio was our new food processor. Toys need playing with. I'm still in mourning for the old one, about to be tipped. It was a present on our engagement, so not far off 30 years old. Fittingly, rather poignantly, it merely seemed to die of old age: no bangs or rattles, no distasteful smell of burning, one minute it was working, the next gone. It would have wanted to go that way. The new one has variable speeds and more attachments than James Bond's cigarette lighter, but I am willing to bet it won't last five years, let alone 30.

Ribs, Deliciousness and Dignity

If I had to name my favourite meat it would be pork ribs. They tick several of my personal boxes: quite cheap, require care in cooking, and are something for relaxed dining - you have to eat them with fingers not fighting irons.

A digression: we have a little family game, if it can be called that, of creating a menu for the overly dignified. Imagine your particular hate figure of the day, say a pompous politician: what do you serve them that will bring them down a peg or two? Not nasty foods, but messy. Watermelon slices without cutlery. Spaghetti with a liquid sauce is a good choice; I think a whole crab or lobster takes some beating, cracking claws and sucking meat out of them; a soup I was given (hmm, thinks...) on my first trip to Indonesia, whose main component was fish heads. Pig's trotters. You get the idea. BBQ spare ribs fits that scenario too.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Mansion House Speech gathering was given such a menu? Politicians, bankers, media tarts and dignitaries with faces dripping with crab juices, stained with BBQ sauce, their court dress jackets or formal gowns splashed with ragu. Not going to happen sadly. Can you imagine the devastation Nicholas Soames and Eric Pickles could cause during that meal? Eating people is of course wrong, but it's hard not to think of either or both eyeing neighbours covered in sauce and not for a second being a bit tempted.

Tonight we are eating two racks of pork ribs, a reward for Sternest Critic in midst of exams, and for us all as we have managed the two veggie nights and one fish this week. They went into the oven to steam gently at two thirty, the smell of the meat and the spicy dry-rub (cumin, celery salt, fennel seed, two dried chilies, salt, pepper, juniper berries, smoked paprika thanks for asking) now permeating the whole house, and will have in total three hours of such treatment before being finished with a coating of sauce in a hotter oven.

Another hurrah for Morrison's on this too, they always have ribs on their butchery shelves, with Booth's it is about 50/50, Sainsbury's one trip in four or five unless you want to buy ready-processed pre-sauced ones, which I don't. Two substantial racks cost well under £6, the price of one half-decent sirloin steak but they'll make a feast for three of us.

Half the World's Food Wasted

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has garnered headlines with its report stating that up to half the world's food goes to waste. Some of the causes are beyond ordinary households to fix, but there are plenty of actions we can take to make some difference.

1: Buy local fruit and vegetables from local markets, where how a potato looks, or the size of a turnip, or  a little blemish on an apple, are not regarded as vital. If you buy from supermarkets, make a point of buying stuff like the 'basic' bags of peppers, which are misshapes and 'the wrong size' (what utter bureaucratic idiocy, wherever it comes from). They, like market produce, are cheaper and taste no damn different.

2: If you grow your own, use it. Either side of us neighbours have perfectly good fruit trees that over the years have been little picked if at all. Happily we have been allowed to harvest the damsons from a tree on one side and mirabelles from a much neglected tree on the other. New occupants of the damson side so I hope they make the best of what they have available fresh and free.

And strangely I have noticed how some fellow allotment growers don't harvest some of their crops, either because they are grown out of habit though not liked, or too much of something is grown (so gift them), or a touch of the can't be bothereds sets in.

3: Learn to use leftovers. All it takes is a little imagination: yesterday I was making a big omelette for our evening meal, into which cubed went three stovie potatoes left from the previous day, bulking out the onion, yellow pepper (yes, basics range) and Parmesan.

4: Don't buy on automatic. I wonder how internet grocery purchases are affecting wastage - we all tend to laziness, and not changing a list even if you go off something, or have plenty already, is going to lead to waste.

5: Learn to preserve stuff better. That may be simply keeping certain fruits and veggies in the fridge, or actually making pickles and jams. Last year was rubbish for apples, strawberries and raspberries here, what we got was eaten fresh or made into ice cream as regards soft fruit, so no jams or jellies made for once. But we have some from 2011 still good.

6: In a country where obesity is a major problem, think about portion size.

The economic benefits will be immediate if the shopping bill is reduced, as it can be for most of us. But longer term as demand drops here so should prices, and the developing world will get a better share of food resources. It won't cure the planet's ills, but every little helps.

Another action, not for everybody though: get chickens (who love leftover spuds, greens, stale bread, cucumber skin if you don't use it, any toms that have got mould, etc etc). One fine day we'd love to have a pig or two, though as our deeds say we can't that has to wait until we move sometime in the future.

Austerity, Tea, Moby, January

The on-the-wagon thing this month has meant I have been focusing more on tea, a drink that all right thinking people (definition: those who agree with me) love. In my previous industrial existence I tended to drink rubbish tea and coffee very quickly at work; the freelance life means that I can take a minute to savour a good cuppa, and have taken the time to learn a bit about the topic, and try new teas (not I hasten to add herbal infusions with vanilla etc). Current favourite is maybe Assam. Certainly not Darjeeling which is far too subtle for my palate.

My good friends at the US website Selectism commissioned a piece on the topic from me, the link is below:

http://www.selectism.com/2013/01/08/tea-draft/


I may end up cooking far more Chinese food this month - not a complete non-sequitur: green tea and white tea (the first person I ever heard mention that was Moby, who is a big tea fan) go very well with Chinese food, and this month being dry January we need something that is enjoyable to drink with our evening meal. Everything else tried thus far - bitter lemon, lime cordial with soda, ginger beer, water (I'm with W.C. fields on that one) has been a disappointment or worse.

Tea has the added benefit of being a very cheap gourmet experience, if you choose the tea wisely and make it well. Sensuality and austerity in one cup. As Lord Emsworth so rightly said: "Tea. Tea. Tea. Capital, capital, capital, capital."

A Sprout is Not Just for Christmas

On my hobby horse of food and fashion again. When was the last time you saw the words 'Brussels sprouts' in a restaurant review, or 'swede'? Parsley root (which used to be called simply Hamburg parsley until it became cheffy) perhaps, or pak choi; salsify and scorzonera on occasion. But not those humblest and most flavoursome of veg. The trouble is that with the swede there is not much to do with it beyond the default mash with butter (with or without carrots) and maybe a sprinkle of herbs; and the sprout has such a powerful flavour that it needs something robust as the core of the meal or it will dominate the plate. As lamb shanks are now in the foodie world snobbishly relegated to mere Gastro Pub fodder robust is not too frequently encountered in reviews either.

We had swede and sprouts with the beery beef and mushroom pie last night. They held their own, went well together and with the pie, and made it feel balanced somehow. Stuff fashion.

I like Gastro Pubs btw, the nearest thing we have to a proper bistro culture here; some of what pass for bistros in Britain tending to be so far up themselves they can see out through their own mouths. And you can usually get decent beer in GPs, which totally illogically you can't very often in a brasserie in the UK. The word means brewery. The otherwise brilliant Paul Heathcote had here in Preston what was called for a time a brasserie: the beers were (a few years back but think this is right) Heineken, Budweiser, and maybe Amstel. If his wine list had consisted of Bull's Blood, Liebfraumilch, and Mateus Rose he would have been ridiculed (except by someone who thought it was post-Modernist irony).

Dry January

As mentioned previously, we have decided albeit belatedly (started on the 5th) to do the dry January thing. For those who knew me in undergraduate times, I hope it helps both my livers (I still think one is a bad design fault). Happily no shakes, nightmare visions (beyond wife with foul coughing disease) or desire to sneak a quick one while nobody is looking.

In austerity terms it is a positive, as expenditure on alcohol is not strictly necessary. OK, not at all necessary. Maybe we'll put some coins in the Sealed Pot (see my other blog for explanation) to acknowledge that. But as regards our eating it makes a difference to the pleasure of the evening meal gathering. Wines and beers bring something extra to the taste of food, if chosen correctly they bring out the best in a dish; and I can't say that really about what we have substituted for them: ginger beer (no alcohol type) was refreshing, but overpowered what was on the plate; last night's lime cordial (Rose's - I look forward to making a Gimlet in February) with soda again slaked the thirst, but would not be my first choice to go with a beef and mushroom pie. Sainsbury's bitter lemon on another occasion was unpleasant.

Great British Pie II - Mushrooms are the New Meat

I'm defrosting some stewing beef that will be the basis of a pie tonight - my prediction for the food trend of 2013 is indeed the return of the Great British Pie big time, though they will be largely homemade as chef-restaurateurs will not be keen to make something that involves substance more than style. And the effete and fashion conscious crowd that writes restaurant reviews for the Sundays would probably pan them if they did serve something filling and tasty instead of chi-chi platters acceptable to anorexics.

I had to dash to Sainsbury's for some emergency Olbas Oil for my wife, currently suffering with woman-flu, and they had no decent stewing beef in - quelle surprise - to bulk out what I had already, so I opted to buy some mushrooms which weight-for-weight are a fraction of the cost, and will provide a nice difference in textures.

A digression. As with men not being able to multi-task, man-flu is a myth - my last illness was in fact Spanish flu with a touch of Ebola, Malaria, and SARS [whatever happened to SARS btw?] that I was lucky to survive. I nearly had to go to the doctor, that's how serious it was.

The pie tonight may well be cooked in Adnams Tally Ho, though that will be a sacrifice. We decided rather belatedly to do the dry January thing (after a convivial evening on Friday 4th, and a slight rise in weight over Christmas), so that's the closest I'm going to get to a beer for three weeks.

Along with Olbas Oil I picked up some flowers btw, which are probably about as effective.

One Flame Fishy Dish

My favourite evening meal fishy dish is the flexible fish pie, generally made with mash as a topping and with a mixture of white fish and tinned kippers (no bones, loads of flavour). Next to that comes tonight's fish fest, the equally flexible chowder, another one pot and thus one flame extravaganza.

As with just about every soup I make it begins with frying some chopped onion in butter, to which equally finely chopped veg as available in the fridge and shelves will be added: tonight I'd guess carrot, red pepper, and celery. As the garden still has a little stand of par-cel some of that will be chopped super fine with a mezzoluna to be added near the end of cooking. A mixture of chicken or veg stock (if I stir myself I can actually defrost some ham stock which goes equally well, otherwise it is from a cube today) and milk is added, then chunky diced potatoes (either waxy to keep the shape or floury to collapse nicely, it doesn't matter) dropped in to cook (best not to fry them even briefly with the veg, they seem to take longer to cook in the liquid that way) for about 15 minutes, along with defrosted pollack fillet and about a cupful of frozen sweetcorn. A crushed garlic clove gives a nice edge, and lots of pepper.

It is economical - I will only use about £1.25 of fish, and the rest of the ingredients won't take the total above £2.50 - and pretty virtuous, made with  semi-skimmed milk, but the juices are fabulous, perfect to soak up with thick slices - more like slabs - of buttered brown bread. Three of us will easily see off a small loaf, so add £0.50p (Morrison's offer on exceedingly tasty seeded wholemeal, £1 for two small loaves).

This will be the New Year's resolution (at least) once a week fish dish for our evening meal; as Saturday's homemade Chinese was veggie I only have one more non-meat dish to keep to my programme. We won't be short of protein, however, Sunday lunch was top rump wet roasted, and a turkey thigh joint (top bargain and very tasty) plain roasted beside it.

That latter meal was not exactly Parson Woodforde, who would regularly have rabbit smothered in onions, chicken, pig's face, a leg of mutton with caper sauce, and a piece of bacon or similar for workaday dinners, but two joints for £12 can seem more generous than one for £15. And we have the remains left for sandwiches, though the thicker of two leftover pieces of turkey removed from the table at the end of the meal didn't make it intact to the kitchen, mysteriously.

Cheapo Chinese

Saturday night as so often was Chinese feast night, but with a twist - it was the first of our campaign for two veggie evening meals (or nearly) a week. One of my favourite things from takeaway Chinese meals is stewed mushrooms which I reproduced as a dish last night, simplicity itself, also cheap thanks to a big buy of mega 'shroom box at Morrison's.

Quartered fungi lightly fried then finished in soy sauce and cheaty chicken cube stock, thickened with cornflour and pepped up with star anise, and stewed for ages on a very low heat to infuse the flavour. The lot cost maybe £1, which compares well with the £2.50 at least that it would cost if bought in.

I love mushrooms, and they are one of the few foods that don't seem to have shot up in price recently - homegrown, not very demanding, and doubtless hefty competition for the supermarket slot stopping producers from pushing prices upwards. Bought in big boxes they are a bargain too. Memo to self, eat more mushrooms on veggie nights, and not just risotto either.

The Opposite of Austerity Thinking

I am a confirmed observer of other people's trolleys in the supermarket, and of buyer behaviour. Something I saw recently rather bothered me, trying to work out what was going on in one young woman's mind. Not from the rest of her shop and her outfit well off, she was doing what looked like a weekly run, but included in it were several packs of sandwiches. She was obviously capable of making butties, and a pack of sandwiches isn't cheap - she could have bought the makings and made the same for half the price or less in minutes. I don't think I am mean, but I don't understand such thinking unless she was heading off somewhere immediately afterwards, but given she had shopping to unload her schedule can't have been that tight.

Are some of us now so alienated from the kitchen that a sandwich is beyond us? Sadly I can see the time when some perky celebrity chef has a series on how to make sandwiches, so we can relearn the lost art. To preempt that: take two slices of good bread, butter each of them on one side, put a filling of your choice such as cheese, or cooked ham, on the butter side of one, dab on mayo if liked, and then close the sandwich by putting the second piece of bread butter-side down on top of the filling. It's not too difficult is it? Next week's episode of 'Jamie's Italian-style Sandwiches': how to use salad leaves: "Nice bit of cheeaarghbaar'er. I like to dob on a bi'er rocket, bosh, like that. Pukkah." Book of the series available in all good stores for just £25. I despair. Not at someone who obviously cares about food making a fortune out of it (though am hugely jealous of course), but at our slide into a world where such books are needed.

Two Reasons for Shopping at Morrison's

My normal shopping run is done at Sainsbury's, merely because it's five minutes by car. I buy plenty of meat and good cheese at Booth's, paper-goods and Parmesan at Lidl, but don't often venture to Morrison's as it is  a 15-minute drive. As I was on another errand that took me near there today, however, I did my weekly shop in the store, and was again impressed.

It was not the fact that the end bill was definitely cheaper than I'd have paid at Sainsbury's, whatever their special offer guarantees say. It was the meat and veg that shone out as so much better.

As to the meat: their range of cuts is far wider, and the meat just looks better than JS's does. Lamb ribs, pork ribs in the piece, pork hock, ham hock, hearts, pig's trotters, crackling sheets, and plenty of other cheaper options that indicate they have confidence those shopping there know how to cook. 

I was sorely tempted by the trotters, one of my favourite things, but SC loathes them and Ruth doesn't care for them.  There is another cook book in that - in my business travel days I made a point of eating trotters whenever I saw them, which means I have fond culinary memories of a couple of Chinese versions (one of them another thing where star anise lifted a dish), one a stew thing, the other a dim sum platter; a Portuguese stew with chick peas; Ste Menehould breaded trotters in France (when I ordered these the French colleague dining with me accused me of not being English, which for the French is a compliment I think); and a spicy chorizo-enriched stew in Bilbao. 

The fruit and veg section has kept up the campaign started some time ago to expand the offer - lots of varieties of mushrooms, for example, along with a good selection of exotics. I didn't go mad, but along with the usual stuff bought frisee and plantain which would not normally feature on my list.  

I admire their courage, presenting the market with a chance to cook proper food, to try new things, and to enjoy cheap cuts along with the steaks and roasts. Two racks of pork ribs are now in our freezer for either a pig-out of BBQ ribs one night, or as starters for two different Chinese meals, and our Friday-night-is-steak-night for SC and self will be with two small but thick pieces of rump each (a bargain because of the size), bulked out with a lamb cutlet that the butcher cut from the carcase for me as they had none left when I asked. 

Cooking for Teens - No Flame Cooking

Cooking for teens and by teens. My son is more than capable of fending for himself now (as those who read a post some time ago will know, when I left home for university my repertoire consisted of badly made omelette and nothing else), but has to be bribed to do so unless he is close to fainting. Something I picked up from the site Lovefood.com caught his imagination, however, and he has now had three goes at it: Cake in a mug. And this goes beyond the one flame cooking thread of recent times - it is done in seconds in the microwave.

This is actually very close to the microwaved sponge that Ruth does every now and then, but the gimmick of the mug and the simplicity of the thing grabbed him. Here is the link in case anyone fancies a very quick chocolate pudding, or wants to interest his or her teenager in post-parental-home survival cookery.

http://www.lovefood.com/guide/recipes/16990/cake-in-a-mug-recipe

Sternest critic is not a fan of coffee (I had to buy some Nescafe for him to try it in the recipe, which demanded instant muck) so his second and third versions have reduced or omitted that flavouring and the chocolate in favour of jam. Their timing of 5 mins prep and 5 mins cooking is way out, it takes about 5 mins total now including a minute's wait for the pud to cool down.

New Year and Using Stuff Up

The usual suspect Christmas leftovers are long gone - a turkey crown means that the meat is a memory well before it becomes a recurring nightmare, and what was left of our sirloin transformed into the traditional cold cuts on Boxing Day, fabulous butties the next, and a stir fry and Chinese soup another. Others remain, or remained, yesterday's main meal a determined effort to make the best of them.

Thus a chicken carcase (am using the alternative spelling in the hope a friend keen to help me mend the error of my orthographical ways will correct it - curses, think she may spot that trap now) sitting in the fridge after a weekend festive meal with mates became stock yesterday afternoon that then made minestrone in the evening (the rest for tonight's risotto). And the dog-ends of cheese, some of it rather fine cheese, flavoured a sauce that helped stretch the tinned salmon (how very 1970s again) and kippers in a fish pie topped with mash from same weekend repast.

When the good-housekeeper stuff of using up Christmas bits before they are only fit for the bin is done I will turn to my foodie New Year's resolution, which is to have at least two vegetarian evening meals a week, and one based on fish. The inspirations behind this are several: environmental guilt about using too much meat and meat-farming using too many of the earth's resources; economy; health matters; and stretching my culinary abilities and repertoire - it is too easy to fall into the routine of planning a meal around a slab of bloody protein.

Parson Woodforde and the Great British Pie

Not that I am stuck in the past, but my new reading is Parson Woodforde's diary, or at least the Folio Society's selections from it. Somewhat less than brilliant observations: how did the middle classes and above actually manage to stand in the 18th century? The good parson drank vast quantities of wine, cider, beer, arack, punch, rum and brandy, yet it was his brother Jack who was the sot. And what did it do to their livers? One wonders if the frequent reports of deaths of apoplexy were the terminal points of organ damage caused by alcohol.

From the foodie point of view (or has foodie become as unacceptable and derogatory as luvvie now?) there is much to be gleaned from the pages of his journal. He lived well, and his guests could generally rely on a table laden with several major main-course components - a fowl, boiled pork, rost (his spelling) beef, perhaps a leg of mutton.

Somewhat inspired by this at the weekend I served visiting friends a roast chicken and a venison and beef pie, along with vegetables various. Not unsurprisingly the pie was the hit - everybody loves a pie. Please someone commission me for that TV series/book/world pie-tasting tour. Venison from Lidl, beef from Henry Rowntree, both meats cooked together in a low (125C) oven with bay, thyme, carrots and onions for two and a half hours, then freshly cooked onions, carrots and turnips added and the lot covered with cheaty Jus-Rol puff pastry. I am a fan of own brands, but for some reason the Jus-Rol stuff seemed better than the last lot of Sainsbury's I used - though they may be made together for all I know. The juice from the oven cooking was reduced and thickened with cornflour (how terribly unfashionable) then half of it spooned into the meat and veg before the pastry lid went on. About 30 minutes at 180C finished the thing off, the puff pastry lifting clear of the filling at the end. This was a pie, a Great British Pie.