Personal circs meant I had to cook us a quick meal last night, and having four small lamb chops to hand I resorted to a de Pomiane classic: he was a doctor, nutritionist and gourmet in Paris in the first half of the last century, and his books are a delight of unpretentious sense and no little style. Check out a dramatised series of his French cooking in 10 minutes on You Tube.
The dish is simple: heat a wide and deep frying pan; sear both sides of four lamb chops (not neck chops or chump, which need longer), then turn the heat down medium-low and add the drained and rinsed contents of two tins of flageolet beans, four cloves of garlic chopped finely, a few (several) dabs of butter and a small glass of liquid - white wine, cider, light stock or water all fine (not red wine). Let this cook through gently for five minutes or so, then season and serve. It needs no spices or fancy touches, it's perfect in itself, the liquid, meat juices and butter make a sauce that must not be left in the pan.
With a roll or some French stick to dip up that juice you have a sustaining and tasty main course. The same thing works with good pork sausages, though they need to be cooked through before you add the beans etc, and as there's less meat juice the banger version requires more butter. The lamb dish for four would be about £5.50, with a large pork sausage each just £3.50.
As de Pomiane writes (and the actor playing him in the series shows), while that is cooking through you can make a salad to follow it, dressed with salt, oil and vinegar, slice a little cheese for each diner, and wash some fruit for pudding. The French btw don't share our obsession with cheese biscuits, enjoying un fromage is just that.
Four courses in 10 minutes, or if you offered a few slices of salami and a handful of olives at the outset it would be five. With just one pan involved. We had Parma ham and olives, the lamb and bean dish, a tomato salad with basil, and cheese, which eaten outside in tropical Preston with a large glass of wine was thoroughly enjoyable thank you.
So that's French elegance with little effort, and something that a student who shopped intelligently could do for friends for a special occasion. They could (should) bring the wine, or chip into the kitty for the ingredients. Or both.
Thursday 18 July 2013
Thursday 11 July 2013
What Tastes Good?
Eating the last of the British asparagus I'll get to taste this year made me think about cultural taste differences, as the French, Spanish and Germans all go for the flabbier white asparagus, that has to my palate an insipid taste nothing like the green stuff. There are innumerable other such differences of national opinion: the various rotten fish dishes that Iceland and Scandinavia offer are at the extreme end of the scale - as far as this Brit is concerned anyway; but then I never liked the bitter gourds that I tried in the Far East either; or the nasty Japanese sweets made with bean paste.
That is not to say that they aren't good, just that I for reasons of custom, upbringing, and experience found those gourds and bean sweets unpalatable.
Our national tastes do change over time, however. Witness the shift from bitter to lager. Witness more pertinently as regards food at least the shift from salads where the only ingredients were lettuce, mustard and cress and cucumber, to the many bitter leaves you'll find in your supermarket pack today - endive, radicchio etc. Doubtless foreign travel has been one driving force; commerce another - add a bit of chicory to a salad bag and increase the price by 20p; simply being able to try these things is another factor.
Which makes me wonder what we will have in store, as it were, to taste in future. There are many vegetables and fruits never seen here: young coconut I've never seen in Britain; Durian (thank goodness, musky flavour but it smells of sewage); Kalamansi, lovely little limes with a bit of sweetness to them; so many varieties of banana.
Sadly as we add these exotics, and we doubtless will, we are losing much of our native produce. I'm working on a piece for Cheshire Life about local apples, and find there are at least 33 still around, though many lost already. Will I ever try a Withington Welter? Or a Millicent Barnes? In an ideal world we'd keep those and add the others. Variety is the spice etc. Happily some bodies are fighting to keep the old varieties, and more power to them. When we get to plant an orchard, as we one day hope to, it is the obscure ones - though those with reputedly good flavour - that we'll go for. Even there we have differences between nations, the Japanese fruit I've tasted so bland as to leave no taste memory at all - Golden Delicious (which the French actually like) a feast of flavour by comparison.
Tuesday 9 July 2013
It's All Kicking Off
From despair at how slow everything was in the kitchen garden and allotment to a sudden abundance in just two weeks. With the summer weather (worth noting again, summer weather) we are having to water lots of the crops, but that's a small price to pay for within the last two or three days a glut of strawberries and redcurrants - now seven jars of jam; the first small courgettes, tender enough to eat raw; loads of tiny turnips, our most under-rated vegetable; more lettuce than we can handle, so the chickens are happy; a pick of little artichokes for a starter; handfuls of spring onions nothing like the hard ones you get from supermarkets; and reasonable pickings of broad beans, again picked when small and tender and sweet. And above all, lots of new spuds.
We are not vegetarians by any means, but when you have veg that good there is less call for big lumps of meat.
We pick things young and tender, whereas commercial growers and outlets want to maximise the weight. Take those turnips: we have four varieties, each with their own characteristics. The purple top Milan are my favourites. Great raw in crunchy salads; as half-starch half-flavouring in last night's chicken dish; as a soup (creme a la vierge, lovely with small sweet roots, horrid with overgrown woody things that smell like school cabbage when cooked), or glazed to accompany a little lamb chop.
It's nice to have your menu dictated by the season too. A Navarin of lamb is now called for, with the broad beans instead of peas, and those little turnips stewed gently with new potatoes. Salads various, but the plain green (for which read green, red, bronze and pink with the different lettuces we grow) at least every other day. There is no reason to limit yourself to one salad with a meal when the crops are so full of flavour.
We are not vegetarians by any means, but when you have veg that good there is less call for big lumps of meat.
We pick things young and tender, whereas commercial growers and outlets want to maximise the weight. Take those turnips: we have four varieties, each with their own characteristics. The purple top Milan are my favourites. Great raw in crunchy salads; as half-starch half-flavouring in last night's chicken dish; as a soup (creme a la vierge, lovely with small sweet roots, horrid with overgrown woody things that smell like school cabbage when cooked), or glazed to accompany a little lamb chop.
It's nice to have your menu dictated by the season too. A Navarin of lamb is now called for, with the broad beans instead of peas, and those little turnips stewed gently with new potatoes. Salads various, but the plain green (for which read green, red, bronze and pink with the different lettuces we grow) at least every other day. There is no reason to limit yourself to one salad with a meal when the crops are so full of flavour.
Monday 8 July 2013
One Flame Super Student Soup
That's a soup for students, not made from, to be clear.
At a university visit with SC on Saturday the guided tour took in accommodation and a shared kitchen. I loved the community of the kitchen at my alma mater, though the very occasional disappearance of food from the fridge was annoying. As with my experience so today as regards the cooker - electric hob, doubtless to avoid yoots blowing themselves and others to bits.
A wonderful and easy shared meal if students band together to share cooking duties is a fish soup, easy, quick, nutritious and more than a bit virtuous. We had a version last week made with proper ham stock, but a chicken or ham stock cube (I avoid the fish and veg ones) is an OK substitute. Again this is really cheapo for four people, and there's just one pan to wash up.
In a large saucepan gently fry two chopped onions in oil. Don't let this brown. Chop the veg finely, they cook quickly and keep their flavour better. Add a selection of veg chopped finely: carrots are cheap and flavorful, so are turnips, maybe a Basics pepper or a courgette if there's a glut and they're cheap, plus two or three garlic cloves sliced thinly, and sweat them for two minutes. Boil 1.25l of water in a kettle and add this with two crumbled cubes (I like Knorr best), to the pan and up the heat until it reaches a bubbling simmer, then turn the heat down to maintain that simmer (easy with gas, a bugger tbh with electric hobs). Add either (or both) a couple of potatoes cut into small dice, or 100g spaghetti broken into very short lengths, and cook until they are just about done - about 10 minutes. At this point add your fish - cheapest in frozen packs of whitefish fillets or those bricks of pollock. When they are defrosted and cooked through, adjust seasoning and break up the fish into smaller chunks, then serve with bread and butter.
The economics: 520g pack of frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; vegetables if using Basics red pepper £1.25; spag 20p; stock cubes 20p. Bread and butter according to hunger, but you can get excellent bread from Morrison's really cheaply - two small loaves for £1 so you can have white for most of us and brown for the saintly. Even with a ton of butter that's still going to be well below a fiver for four people.
If you want to push the boat out or play tunes with the idea a pack of smoked salmon bits for £1.50 added at the very end of cooking, or frozen prawns £2.25 for a 400g bag bunged in with the fish make this into a feast (that would actually feed six with another turnip, carrot and spud and half a litre more water). Or cube some 'cooking bacon' and add with the veg. Or throw in a few frozen peas or sweetcorn. This is more an idea/method than a recipe.
I wondered about mentioning that a dash of leftover cider would be good, then I remembered that this is meant to be for students, who tend not to leave much cider.
At a university visit with SC on Saturday the guided tour took in accommodation and a shared kitchen. I loved the community of the kitchen at my alma mater, though the very occasional disappearance of food from the fridge was annoying. As with my experience so today as regards the cooker - electric hob, doubtless to avoid yoots blowing themselves and others to bits.
A wonderful and easy shared meal if students band together to share cooking duties is a fish soup, easy, quick, nutritious and more than a bit virtuous. We had a version last week made with proper ham stock, but a chicken or ham stock cube (I avoid the fish and veg ones) is an OK substitute. Again this is really cheapo for four people, and there's just one pan to wash up.
In a large saucepan gently fry two chopped onions in oil. Don't let this brown. Chop the veg finely, they cook quickly and keep their flavour better. Add a selection of veg chopped finely: carrots are cheap and flavorful, so are turnips, maybe a Basics pepper or a courgette if there's a glut and they're cheap, plus two or three garlic cloves sliced thinly, and sweat them for two minutes. Boil 1.25l of water in a kettle and add this with two crumbled cubes (I like Knorr best), to the pan and up the heat until it reaches a bubbling simmer, then turn the heat down to maintain that simmer (easy with gas, a bugger tbh with electric hobs). Add either (or both) a couple of potatoes cut into small dice, or 100g spaghetti broken into very short lengths, and cook until they are just about done - about 10 minutes. At this point add your fish - cheapest in frozen packs of whitefish fillets or those bricks of pollock. When they are defrosted and cooked through, adjust seasoning and break up the fish into smaller chunks, then serve with bread and butter.
The economics: 520g pack of frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; vegetables if using Basics red pepper £1.25; spag 20p; stock cubes 20p. Bread and butter according to hunger, but you can get excellent bread from Morrison's really cheaply - two small loaves for £1 so you can have white for most of us and brown for the saintly. Even with a ton of butter that's still going to be well below a fiver for four people.
If you want to push the boat out or play tunes with the idea a pack of smoked salmon bits for £1.50 added at the very end of cooking, or frozen prawns £2.25 for a 400g bag bunged in with the fish make this into a feast (that would actually feed six with another turnip, carrot and spud and half a litre more water). Or cube some 'cooking bacon' and add with the veg. Or throw in a few frozen peas or sweetcorn. This is more an idea/method than a recipe.
I wondered about mentioning that a dash of leftover cider would be good, then I remembered that this is meant to be for students, who tend not to leave much cider.
Thursday 4 July 2013
One Flame Student Survival - Curry for Pennies
The one flame idea partly comes out of my experience living in France for a year as an assistant, when I had a single Calor Gas burner on which to cook, and partly from the fact that the less washing up there is the more likely people are to make their own food, which means eating better than you would from the chippie, and brings a social aspect with it. So how about this for a student meal for three, a common number in shared houses?
Fish curry in 30 minutes, with the cost well below £1.50 each again. This hits the protein spot too, not easy for budget meals. It's not authentic, but it is tasty.
Use a large and deep frying pan, heated quite high. In a couple of spoonfuls of vegetable oil fry three sliced onions until they start to brown a little - don't turn your back - then add a red chilli cut fine (stand clear, it's pepper spray time), and an inch or so of root ginger cut into teenie strips, and turn the heat down to medium. After a minute for these to cook through add two cloves of garlic chopped fine, then pour in a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tsp of sugar, plus a tin of coconut milk. When this is bubbling gently add a pack of frozen whitefish fillets (cheapo and they're good, it's pollock - no honestly). Cook till they are beyond defrosted and into cooked, and gently break them up. At the end season with salt, pepper, and spices - buy a plastic packet of garam masala - nicer than 'curry powder' and it costs less - from the ethnic shelves for about 60p and it will last all year, this only needs a tsp. When it is all cooked through serve with basics pitta bread in place of far more expensive naan.
The economics: (all Sainsbury's unless stated, so Morrison's would generally be cheaper still) 520g frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; tinned toms (Lidl) 31p; coconut milk on offer now 50p; 3 onions 15p; garlic 8p; chilli 15p; ginger about 10p; 6-pack of Basics pittas 22p. Spices 3p. The lot for £3.29 give or take a few pence. And the fish alone gives you about three quarters of your protein GDA. A veggie version of this can be made easily and more cheaply still, substituting two 69p tins of chick peas for the fish (so for three that's less than £1 each).
Mean beast that I am I buy Lidl chopped toms in bulk - they won an Observer taste test a while back (or one of the other Sundays) and at 31p each are maybe 40 per cent cheaper than own brand elsewhere, and 1/3 the price of advertised stuff - and I dare you to find a difference in quality.
Fish curry in 30 minutes, with the cost well below £1.50 each again. This hits the protein spot too, not easy for budget meals. It's not authentic, but it is tasty.
Use a large and deep frying pan, heated quite high. In a couple of spoonfuls of vegetable oil fry three sliced onions until they start to brown a little - don't turn your back - then add a red chilli cut fine (stand clear, it's pepper spray time), and an inch or so of root ginger cut into teenie strips, and turn the heat down to medium. After a minute for these to cook through add two cloves of garlic chopped fine, then pour in a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tsp of sugar, plus a tin of coconut milk. When this is bubbling gently add a pack of frozen whitefish fillets (cheapo and they're good, it's pollock - no honestly). Cook till they are beyond defrosted and into cooked, and gently break them up. At the end season with salt, pepper, and spices - buy a plastic packet of garam masala - nicer than 'curry powder' and it costs less - from the ethnic shelves for about 60p and it will last all year, this only needs a tsp. When it is all cooked through serve with basics pitta bread in place of far more expensive naan.
The economics: (all Sainsbury's unless stated, so Morrison's would generally be cheaper still) 520g frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; tinned toms (Lidl) 31p; coconut milk on offer now 50p; 3 onions 15p; garlic 8p; chilli 15p; ginger about 10p; 6-pack of Basics pittas 22p. Spices 3p. The lot for £3.29 give or take a few pence. And the fish alone gives you about three quarters of your protein GDA. A veggie version of this can be made easily and more cheaply still, substituting two 69p tins of chick peas for the fish (so for three that's less than £1 each).
Mean beast that I am I buy Lidl chopped toms in bulk - they won an Observer taste test a while back (or one of the other Sundays) and at 31p each are maybe 40 per cent cheaper than own brand elsewhere, and 1/3 the price of advertised stuff - and I dare you to find a difference in quality.
Wednesday 3 July 2013
One Flame and Three Courses for under £1.50
Doing the university visit round with SC made me feel firstly terribly sad - it is only about three weeks since my first day at uni in 1977 - and secondly inspired to share a few things about student food survival learned - annoyingly - after my student days.
Student finances are tight. But however fun the cheapo fried chicken thing briefly is, most students not in fully catered accommodation want a proper meal now and again. There is something civilised and satisfying about sitting down at a table with cutlery and plates, the mealtime spreading before you. This got me thinking of how to do a de Pomiane (several courses very rapidly prepared) for not very much money, and with the one flame proviso. The first result is as follows, a three course meal for under £1.50, ready in about 10 minutes.
First step is get a big pan of hot water boiling - pasta for the main. Little pans don't do it. You want a big volume of water so when the pasta goes in the water is only below boiling-point briefly. Pasta done in water not yet boiling, or in too little, goes gluey.
Put spag for (hungry) one in the water, then prep your first course, tomato salad. One large tomato or two medium ones should be sliced quite thinly (easy with a serrated blade), the slices laid in one layer on a plate big enough for them all. Dress with just a couple of drops of oil per slice and a tiny bit of salt, plus pepper if you fancy. Add wafer-thin slices of raw onion, or garlic, to pep it up if you want, and to increase the vitamin C content. First course is done, but as the toms have probably been in the fridge, let them warm for a minute or two before eating, and this allows the salt to work too.
Grate a small amount of Parmesan - a little goes a long way. My tip is buy Lidl's for price and quality. This with a thin slice of butter and a crushed clove of garlic is your pasta sauce.
Eat the tomato salad, then when the spag is ready (don't buy quick cook, it's pointless and not as nice), about eight minutes, drain the water off (but leave it moist), and in the hot pan mix with your cheese, butter, and crushed clove of garlic (peel the clove, put it under a broad-bladed knife turned sideways, and thump it hard).
Pudding is an apple. Granny Smiths are tasty, crunchy, and you can get seven or eight for £1.50 if you look in the right place.
Not too much protein in this, though the cheese has about 7g, and the spag 11g, so roughly a third of our daily need, but I'll post another three-course cheapo menu later in the week to address that.
The economics: Two medium toms from Sainsbury's £1 pack with seven in cost 29p. 500g of own-brand spag £1, they suggest 100g for a main course, to fill up I'd say 150g at least so 30p. 10p for butter, and about 40p for Parmesan (200g for £3.75, so 21g for 40p - you need the flavour and the calcium). An apple for 22p. Garlic two cloves 4p. Half a medium onion 5p. Total £1.40.
Student finances are tight. But however fun the cheapo fried chicken thing briefly is, most students not in fully catered accommodation want a proper meal now and again. There is something civilised and satisfying about sitting down at a table with cutlery and plates, the mealtime spreading before you. This got me thinking of how to do a de Pomiane (several courses very rapidly prepared) for not very much money, and with the one flame proviso. The first result is as follows, a three course meal for under £1.50, ready in about 10 minutes.
First step is get a big pan of hot water boiling - pasta for the main. Little pans don't do it. You want a big volume of water so when the pasta goes in the water is only below boiling-point briefly. Pasta done in water not yet boiling, or in too little, goes gluey.
Put spag for (hungry) one in the water, then prep your first course, tomato salad. One large tomato or two medium ones should be sliced quite thinly (easy with a serrated blade), the slices laid in one layer on a plate big enough for them all. Dress with just a couple of drops of oil per slice and a tiny bit of salt, plus pepper if you fancy. Add wafer-thin slices of raw onion, or garlic, to pep it up if you want, and to increase the vitamin C content. First course is done, but as the toms have probably been in the fridge, let them warm for a minute or two before eating, and this allows the salt to work too.
Grate a small amount of Parmesan - a little goes a long way. My tip is buy Lidl's for price and quality. This with a thin slice of butter and a crushed clove of garlic is your pasta sauce.
Eat the tomato salad, then when the spag is ready (don't buy quick cook, it's pointless and not as nice), about eight minutes, drain the water off (but leave it moist), and in the hot pan mix with your cheese, butter, and crushed clove of garlic (peel the clove, put it under a broad-bladed knife turned sideways, and thump it hard).
Pudding is an apple. Granny Smiths are tasty, crunchy, and you can get seven or eight for £1.50 if you look in the right place.
Not too much protein in this, though the cheese has about 7g, and the spag 11g, so roughly a third of our daily need, but I'll post another three-course cheapo menu later in the week to address that.
The economics: Two medium toms from Sainsbury's £1 pack with seven in cost 29p. 500g of own-brand spag £1, they suggest 100g for a main course, to fill up I'd say 150g at least so 30p. 10p for butter, and about 40p for Parmesan (200g for £3.75, so 21g for 40p - you need the flavour and the calcium). An apple for 22p. Garlic two cloves 4p. Half a medium onion 5p. Total £1.40.
Monday 1 July 2013
Table of Content
My previous post was a whinge about how late this year's crops (excepting lettuce) have been, but this will be about success at last.
On Saturday we decided to have our first spuds of the year, just before June ended. It took several plants to make a dish of littlies, but the sacrifice in quantity later in the year was balanced by the fantastic taste of these blemish-free specimens. Simply boiled, salted and buttered they were perfect. No need to chew, they crumble moistly on the tongue.
In the same spirit we picked a few gobstopper-sized turnips and beetroot and had them raw with spring onion thinings, and raw broad beans the size of undernourished peanuts.
All that weeding is worth it. We have had nothing that tastes so good since last year's first crops.
First ice-cream of the season too, made with a sudden surge of gooseberries. The recipe was adapted from HFW's River Cottage Cookbook, and worked really well. Not one you'd want three scoops of, tart and strongly flavoured, but with a meringue to balance the sharpness the first tasting was lovely.
As per a previous post, I intend next year trying to calculate the cost of materials and rent etc on the allotment against the value of what we get from it, but how do you put a value on something as difficult to find and as delicious as gooseberry ice-cream? And on the lift such things give to your spirits?
On Saturday we decided to have our first spuds of the year, just before June ended. It took several plants to make a dish of littlies, but the sacrifice in quantity later in the year was balanced by the fantastic taste of these blemish-free specimens. Simply boiled, salted and buttered they were perfect. No need to chew, they crumble moistly on the tongue.
In the same spirit we picked a few gobstopper-sized turnips and beetroot and had them raw with spring onion thinings, and raw broad beans the size of undernourished peanuts.
All that weeding is worth it. We have had nothing that tastes so good since last year's first crops.
First ice-cream of the season too, made with a sudden surge of gooseberries. The recipe was adapted from HFW's River Cottage Cookbook, and worked really well. Not one you'd want three scoops of, tart and strongly flavoured, but with a meringue to balance the sharpness the first tasting was lovely.
As per a previous post, I intend next year trying to calculate the cost of materials and rent etc on the allotment against the value of what we get from it, but how do you put a value on something as difficult to find and as delicious as gooseberry ice-cream? And on the lift such things give to your spirits?
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