Now, where was I?

For many reasons I have not written anything on this blog for some considerable time. Blame in no logical order a) writing a contract magazine; b) too many holidays (I can feel the wave of sympathy already); c) finding there are many great English comic novels on Kindle for free (Surtees, HH Munro, the less well-known Jerome K Jerome stuff...); d) seeing Sternest Critic off to university (where he continues to prosper).

As this blog is ostensibly about food and its joys the first post (like the last post but not anywhere near as sad) of this new era (with new title suggested by a friend wise to the ways of the modern world) will be about the thing that has brought most culinary joy to the household of late, and we are convinced it is good for us. As so often, I need to take pictures - will do so the next time I make the simple but delicious dish/course - salade de crudites, which even without the accent sounds better than raw veg salad.

We grow a lot of beetroot, this year three varieties and in good quantity. Some is used in soups and stocks to give body and colour (especially if a little grated beet is added to a stock near the end of cooking, so the colour stays fresh and purple. Most is eaten raw in salads. Needing a first course to serve to some friends round for pot-luck, and with beet, carrot, red onion, a few leaves of rocket, one tomato and a kohl rabi to hand I thought about a plate of crudites (I wish yet again I could do the accent on this thing), then with a bit of a nudge from HF-W tried my hand at using different textures and a nice arrangement to prepare a pretty plateful. It worked well on that level, and was delicious when mixed up: kohl rabi peeled and sliced into discs piled at the bottom centre of the shallow bowl; strips of carrot peeled lengthwise and piled on top of the former; a rim of rocket leaves on which small chunks of tomato were placed, then coarsely grated beet of two varieties, one purple one pink and white rings, dropped on the carrot and similarly treated red onion atop the tomato. It was a little flower-arrangement of a thing that brightened the table beautifully, then when mixed and dressed with a mustardy vinaigrette tasted fresh and bright and healthy.

Variations on the theme have been eaten several times since then, with ingredients like avocado, little gem lettuce, boiled egg, and cucumber appearing and others like rocket if not to hand disappearing. It's just a salad, but the presentation (that takes mere seconds longer than lobbing everything together) makes it more special, and when mixed up in serving the textures remain as a reminder of the tiny bit of extra care and imagination.

This is now - until the debt mountains around the world bury us beneath an avalanche of demands for payment - a post-austerity blog. But that dish suits either tough times or good, costing pennies but looking like pounds.

Mother Knows Best

My son will learn his cooking from his dad, as I am the one who lives in and for the kitchen. I learned some of what I do from my mother, though far more was gleaned from books and (hard to admit) TV chefs, and from business and holiday travel. That imbalance means that I can sometimes be guilty of thinking we've moved beyond what my parents' generation did - and there are some horrors that reinforce that idea (Christmas turkeys weighing as much as Venus, for example). But often what she did is just how things should be done.

Take for example runner beans. I've tried various sexy ways to handle our glut, and with no great success. So at the weekend I did what she did, put them through a slicer lengthwise, steam, and serve with a dab of butter. They were superb, a vast quantity of them shifted with the beef.

As we don't manage to get to the allotment every day we end up with a rogue giant marrow now and then - the buggers can double in size if you turn your back for a minute. I've been feeling guilty about chucking them on the compost heap, as they don't fit in with any of the ways in which I do courgettes. So maybe it's about time I did the dedicated marrow dishes she used to bring to table. One method was to stuff and bake the marrow, the stuffing making up for the marrow's watery flavour; the other was steamed in cubes and served with a light and simple white or cheese sauce.

What a pity that for some kids now their memories of how mum 'cooked' will be limited to re-heating ready-meals and ringing for take-out, doing oven chips and micro-waving burgers.

So Many Vegetables

The end of July and the allotment is in top gear, so keeping my log of costs/benefits is getting tricky. One of the big successes this year has been our artichoke bed. There is a lot of plant for not much nutrition, but they are so easy once established (just water in drought, and lob a bit of manure round the bases early in the year) and the flavour of artichokes so sublime that I'd not be without them.

After nine years with a plot (for the benefit of MI5 and the CIA, that refers to my allotment not some scheme to bring Western Civilisation to its knees - Bush and Blair managed that quite well between them) it still amazes me how much can be grown on such a relatively small space. You live and learn - having suffered (?) gluts with various crops we now grow a range where possible within each, or plant in dribs and drabs so that harvests are spread out, but even with three different types of artichoke we seem to be getting all of them at once.

Is there a more beautiful vegetable than the artichoke? It is the flower of a thistle in essence, so no wonder it is a looker. It cannot hurt its glamour quotient that so many others are plug ugly: we also grow Chinese artichokes, that look like larvae, and Jerusalem artichokes, bigger larvae. Top weirdo may well be the Kohl Rabi with its alien protuberances.

Our Sunday harvest was courgettes, artichokes, broad beans, French beans, new spuds (nearing the end), fennel, a load of blackcurrants, last of the strawbs, beetroot, a massively long (grown in drainpipes) parsnip (about 75cm), a few sticks of par-cel and some lettuces. At this time of year we could survive on the produce from that small patch of land - no claret yet of course, but an experimental grape vine is showing the first signs ever of fruiting, which says something about this year's weather.

All those veg are helping our already unexpectedly successful Alternative Eating Programme. I have lost 22lb and have a quite different sideways silhouette. SC has benefitted even more, now a shadow of his still-eating-like-a-prop-but-too-shoulder-damaged-to-play self. The Capo di Tutti Capi had less to lose, but she too shifted that (with some grumbling and the occasional death threat).

The Maldives jaunt thus saw us unafraid to be seen in sexy beach gear. Healthy eating would seem to be a habit, as even with the potentially pig-out buffet breakfast and dinner we only gained a pound or two each. Not so I think the Russians and Chinese in the same facility. I swear one Russian chap attempted to eat his own weight in Danish pastries one day, and our Chinese neighbours in the restaurant seemed unaware that they need not grab everything in reach before it ran out - it never would run out. Twice I saw a full plate of bread rolls arrive at their table, for not one bite to be taken - guess they didn't like bread but wanted their idiotic money's worth. I became more convinced than ever that we need to improve food security in the UK after that trip: the Russians and Chinese are very peasant at heart still, and with hundreds of millions more coming into mindlessly greedy reach of available excess our overseas sources are going to be under pressure.

I Wish to Register a Complaint

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is one of my heroes, as I have said previously in this blog. That comes with a few caveats - for what I am sure are good-hearted reasons he has a habit in his TV programmes of being rather condescending to, as it were, the lower orders: wouldn't it be good if the world's workers discovered vegetables, for example?

That said, I admire his food and food ethics, love his writing style, he seems like the sort of bloke you'd enjoy a pint with (the highest of praise) and I have found his methodical approach with things like meat timings to be spot on. But. I recently tried his sourdough loaf recipe, making a starter with enormous care, feeding it, scooping the right amount off to make a loaf, kneading as per instructions etc etc. The results were uniformly disappointing, no great flavour, a sad waste of high-grade flour, and rubbish texture however carefully kneeded and risen the loaves were.

So I gave that up, and reverted to my standard method. Unfortunately I took his word as gospel that you can't make bread unless you bake it at a very high temperature, so I ruined another two loaves that were not burned but developed a leathery crust and unpleasant dryness.

When I went back to baking at 180C or 200C depending on style, it worked again. Good bread.

This had me thinking about how much we trust such experts, thinking that when things go wrong with their recipes it must be us/our ingredients/our equipment. The blessed Delia is not without the occasional fault (apparent lack of humour aside), as I twice tried an oxtail and bean dish in one of her books, convinced I must have erred the first time when it failed, only to find it was equally unpleasant the next however great the care with which her fiats were followed.

Other than on certain holidays and business trips (time was) I have cooked daily for more than 30 years. Really I should have the confidence to stick to my own ideas and recipes. There is one major reason why I continue to follow their strictures on occasion, and that is the desire to try new stuff. Left to myself I'd cook many different things, but they would be familiar favourites. So I'll continue to trust HFH and TBD, and if I can get past his annoying writer's tics Nigel Slater too who churns out excellent ideas, along with new demigods to be discovered. But not Jamie Oliver thanks. Nor Nigella Lawson.

That may well be the legacy of the age of the TV cook. Those of us who actually do cook frequently have added to our repertoires, while those who live on ready-meals and takeout limit themselves to enjoying cooking vicariously on TV (and via pristine coffee table tomes).

BBQ Beyond the Meat - or Around It

BBQs are about meat, there is no getting away from it - at least not in this household. But they don't have to be - shouldn't be - solely carnivorous affairs.

With the glorious summer thus far (surely high time that the word drought was heard?) we have wheeled out the charcoal grill half a dozen times or so and taken advantage of the sunshine. One thing that has worked superbly has been using roasting joints - stuff we had in the freezer - butterflied out and roasted in a retaining rack. Given that they were Henry Rowntree's 'best roasting' Aberdeen Angus joints we expected them to be good, and found them superb. Not surprising given they were probably sirloin in one case and rump in the other, effectively making 4cm-thick steaks, cut into slices charred on the outside and bleu in the centre.

What makes it much more of a meal for me are the accompaniments. Salad of course gets nowhere near the heat, but other vegetables do. A skewer with baby courgettes impaled lengthwise cooked in 10 minutes. Another of mushrooms rolled in a little oil did likewise. Sweetcorn cobs achieve caramelised perfection on a grill, but need watching closely as the window between underdone and burned is narrow.

Best effort on that front was new spuds, however. Salted, oiled, rolled in several layers of foil then dropped directly onto the charcoal they did in about 25 minutes, turned occasionially to keep the cooking even. I do whole heads of garlic in similar fashion, only needing a few minutes before they are as squeezy as toothpaste.

The recent weather has provided us with an early glut of fennel bulbs, another veggie that works well in foil on the rack, and is very forgiving in that even if left for 10 minutes more than done-ness requires they still taste great, and their water content keeps them moist.

Not so the aubergine. A cheapo one foil-wrapped and cooked like the spuds, but far far too long, was a disaster. What emerged from the aluminium looked like something from a CSI episode about fire deaths. Back to grilling slices on the steel rack.

It Takes Gluts

Growing a reasonable amount of our own food with less than perfect planning of same means we enjoy, the right word, the occasional glut. I've written here before about trying to make good use of courgettes, the allotmenteer's most frequent flood crop. Currently it is artichokes.

On a general level life can't be bad when one of your few worries is dealing with a load of artichokes. They have been both early and numerous this year thanks to the mild winter and spring and the already decent summer. The first as is usual were boiled to be eaten leaf base by leaf base dipped in mustardy vinaigrette as a starter, the meaty heart gradually revealed by the strip tease. There are few things as simple and delicious.

Last night having picked and cooked a bagful of smaller ones (to keep the flush of thistly flowers going) the too fiddly leaves were discarded and just the hearts used, cut into little chunks and mixed with boiled egg, very thinly sliced onion and prawns. How much would that have cost had a 'celebrity' chef's name been attached to it in a recently re-designed eaterie?

It takes gluts like that to give me the freedom to do a bit of experimenting. Had I shopped for the artichokes a) I would have just bought three; b) the cost would have pushed me to play it safe.

Sadly we don't grow our own asparagus - we tried and lacking sandy ground failed - so I will not be doing much other than steaming it, but then something so good doesn't need mucking about. Same goes for the bucketfuls of new spuds currently hitting the kitchen, though some cold leftovers made it into a pickled herring salad yesterday. You can tell how many we have currently by the fact that there actually are leftovers.

Freshness is one of the benefits of GYO - our eggs are rarely more than a day or two old for example, a world of difference to shop bought; lettuces are crisper and tastier eaten within minutes of cutting; stawberries can't be beaten snaffled straight from plant to mouth (checking for slug-basts on the way). But the king of the fresh-is-best world is the new spud. Jersey Royals in the supermarket - they beat us by weeks - are bought in expectation and eaten in resignation. Our own dug, wiped, boiled and scoffed in short order are softer, the texture almost gelatinous for some varieties. And they have so much flavour that the merest wipe of butter and a few grains of salt are called for. Still, having had our fill several times over by now I'm looking to do some other dishes for variation. I have in mind to do something spicy to enhance the flavour without masking it. All ideas gratefully received.

Worth and Cost Aren't the Same

Our new potatoes have started, and they are by my reckoning a good fortnight earlier than last year thanks to the mild winter and spring. The flavour is like nothing you will ever find in a supermarket.

In the journal I'm keeping of the costs and benefits of our allotment and kitchen garden I assign monetary values to the produce. But good food goes way beyond pounds and pennies. New spuds eaten within a couple of hours of digging are pretty much priceless, such is the ephemeral nature of their perfection - leave them a day and the difference is considerable, leave them two and there is a feeling of guilt for wasting such a boon.

Spuds are not the only such item for the kitchen gardener: the best of sweetcorn is perhaps even more fleeting, something to be picked and rushed back to the pot within minutes if possible. Peas likewise - which is why I'll never buy 'fresh' peas in the supermarket, not a patch on the best frozen ones (thanks Clarence).

We had artichoke bottoms in our salad yesterday (they are likewise well ahead of last year's schedule), something else where picked small and cooked fresh from the plot the flavour and textures are a million miles from the mealy monsters available from Mr Sainsbury (if and when he actually offers them - not seen any recently). Even the humble radish, ridiculously easy and quick to grow, is crunchier and fierier by far than the plastic bagged red jobbies (which is another thing - we grow red, yellow, white, purple, red and white etc etc).

In that profit and loss calculation I'm attempting in the journal should I assign a value to the health benefits of digging, watering and weeding (about my only serious physical labour/exercise)? And the health benefits too of the variety of our diet and its superiority in terms of vitamins and maybe even minerals to what we can get from the shops? How to calculate the financial value of great flavour?

The value goes further. When Nepalese politicians  (I think it was in Nepal anyway) tried to monitor Gross National Happiness as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product etc the newspapers and other media outlets here generally took a condescending standpoint. I'm far more interested in GNH than GDP. If more of us grew our own spuds Britain's GNH would rise significantly.

Smaller Giant Beans

I love Greek food, the simpler the better. A plateful of char-grilled lamb chops with dried origano, lemon and garlic eaten with chilled wine at an outdoor taverna is pretty close to perfection. To round the meal off a little I'd order potatoes baked in chunks with the same flavourings as an accompaniment, Greek salad, and gigantes beans.

The latter can be bought at the supermarket in rather stingy jars that cost about £2.50. Very nice, very easy to present as part of a mezze, but given it's a few beans and some tomatoey sauce Jack's bargain with the family cow was not much worse, so I had a go at making my own. They turned out to be, if not magical, pretty delicious.

The tomato sauce was just a tin of pulped toms, 35p from Lidl, some ground cumin and pepper, dried origano, 1/2 tsp of smoked paprika and 1/2 tsp of sugar, plus four cloves of garlic bashed under a wide knife-blade and added to the pot to bubble gently for 10 minutes. Two tins of butter beans were needed to retain the right bean/sauce ratio, heated through in the same pot then seasoned before serving. That gave us a warm version with Saturday's BBQ and cold with Sunday lunch. Butter beans at 55p a tin, so the full cost of the two servings (both more generous than one of those jars) was say £1.60.

They were not exactly like the shop-bought ones, as butter beans are not gigantic, but were still reminiscent of taverna offerings, especially as an accompaniment to lamb chops on the barbie. I'd use less sugar next time, and add some thyme leaves, but there will definitely be a next time.

It Was the Best of Pies, It Was the Worst of Pies - Anticipation as Appetiser

Our healthy eating programme has been very successful, to the extent that I've overshot my target and am sneaking the occasional treat to rebalance things.

Like all right thinking people I love pies. I had not eaten one in over two months when I bought a Holland's steak pie the other day. It looked incongruous in a trolley of lean meat and fresh fruit and veg, the contrast no doubt adding to its allure. Once heated its aromas wafted through the kitchen, demanding instant consumption. Thoughts of finding the pie of my dreams flooded my little brain.

The rarity value gave me a bit of a thrill, as the only pie indulgence for months it had to be welcome. But it served as a reminder of just how poor so much 'shop-bought' food is. Meat in small pieces, pastry floppy, gravy all mouth and no trousers. It was then the best of pies (in recent times) and the worst of pies (likewise, and because it was a major let-down). 

Culinary anticipation is not always rewarded with the supreme pleasure hoped for. I went on a tour of Michelin-starred restaurants in Southwest France last year (life is hell etc), the food in one was superb, in two pretty good, and the others disappointing (in one the food was actually nasty except for the cheese that was bought in). That may have been because of the power of that star. Time and again I have eaten venison with images of Friar Tuck and medieval feasts in mind, only to find it has been dry, chewy and lacking in flavour (whether I or a chef has cooked it). Years ago I was given Durian in Malaysia, Durian being the fruit that smells, to put not too fine a point on it, like crap. Promised a marvellous experience if I could get past that I found the actual taste was a bit like mucal mango, but not as good as that sounds. 

However often I'm disappointed I hope that I still have such anticipatory experiences to come. It's like Christmas morning as a kid, the moment before the presents are opened is generally better than the presents turn out to be, but if you think about it that still means the morning is hugely pleasurable. I will eat steak tartare one day (if courage doesn't fail me yet again). Maybe fugo too, though I have heard the taste is as exciting as whiting. And maybe I will meet two personal needs and find a venison pie that would have made Tuck beam. 

White Supremacy - Except for the Other Colours Being Great Too

Back to the question of colour in food. Not food colouring, something almost always to be avoided, but the colours on our plates. And the wonders of raw food.

For the hard of reading I should start taking photos again, it would help with posts like this.

Yesterday, prompted by a remark by the Dear Leader earlier in the week (I follow behind with a notebook to jot down every word of her infinitely wise remarks), we had raw cauliflower as part of what our American cousins would call a 'dinner salad'. I've also heard the phrase 'garbage salad' used for something similar, though there is a notable difference between them - the former more refined and planned, the latter a way of using anything and everything (within reason) to hand.

The cauli was bought that day, was a fine shining white, and looked beautiful on the plate - thanks in particular to the contrast with red pepper and cherry toms, and the green mixed leaves. It was superbly crunchy and crisp, and had all the flavour without that unpleasantly lurking reek of the cooked version. As we don't grow caulis (too much faffery) we don't eat many, but when we do I love them raw like that, something I first came across in a mid-range restaurant in the USA (California if I'm not mistaken, spiritual home of the big salad).

It is not the only vegetable that I prefer raw. Give me coleslaw instead of cooked white cabbage (memories of school dinners) any day. Grated carrot rather than boiled (though I do like glazed carrots). Raw beetroot over boiled or baked. Crisp uncooked celery sticks instead of soft casseroled chunks. The purity of flavour is one part of those preferences, but the brightness of colour is as significant.

White - rather than very pale green, or dull gray/grey - is a rare thing in the kitchen unless significant quantities of dairy fat are involved. That scarcity made the raw cauli all the more enticing. But in case anyone wants to draw a point of political philosophy (or bigotry) out of that, alone it looked boring, only coming to life when set beside the vibrant red tomatoes and pepper.

Healthy Austerity?

I have of late posted little that would qualify as austerity cooking, partly as much of what we are eating is so simple - griddled meat, lots of salads, steamed veg - that it hardly qualifies as cooking (though Jamie Oliver could probably get a book out of discovering griddling as a fantastic new technique and teaching the mindless about it).

Yesterday I made one dish that definitely fits the bill as cheap and cheerful, and decidedly healthy to boot. It also reminded me of (and was inspired by) happy times driving around France on business in my past life (not the one where I was an Egyptian princess). I made a point of eating in Relais Routier restaurants or similar places, rather than as I could have done heading to posher and fancier spots: stuff the foam I'll have tete d'agneau. A frequently encountered starter was mackerel in white wine served with potatoes, a take on which I served up as an hors d'oeuvre yesterday.

Ingredients to hand suggested the dish anyway - some leftover steamed new potatoes and a tub of Scottish pickled herring (£1.09 from Booth's, so much flavour for not very much dosh). Slice the spuds, add very thinly sliced raw onion, the herrings cut into bite-sized bits, and a mustardy dressing, and the starter was done in three minutes. It met the current health regime requirements too, as the dressing was lo-cal with a bit of extra mustard, the spuds were in their skins so low GI with raw (vitamin rich) onion weighing in on that side too, and the fish was of a so-jolly-good-for-us oily variety.

The French tend to serve the classic version warm, but my dish did not lack flavour for being cold. It was in fact delicious.

It struck me too that this would be another good student standby for communal weekend eating - three of us had two helpings, so for a single plate for six (with a few more spuds, and they don't need to be new ones either) I can't see it costing more than say 25p - 30p a head. Which along with the excellent flavour and quick prep is another reason why Relais Routier cooks serve it so often. With the carbs taken care of too it means the main can be as ours was yesterday protein and veg (griddled turkey breast steak, griddled mushrooms and steamed mange tout). Pukka (go away Mr Oliver).

Smooth and Delicious

There is not enough written about breakfast. Look at the food sections in your Sunday papers and the foods discussed are almost invariably at home in lunches and suppers - especially on-trend (vile vile phrase, individuality is precious) suppers (darling everybody in London is going mad for Herzogovian these days). Given we all trot out the cliche about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, that seems somewhat odd.

I have a small collection of books about breakfasts, none of recent vintage however, so their ideas tend towards the heavier and the more complicated. Of late we, by way of contrast, as part of our sickeningly successful health regime (for which read pre-hols weight-loss regime), have gone pretty simple - wholemeal toast with some protein and/or preserves, coffee, and either a fruit yogurt plus a fruit platter, or the last two combined in a smoothie.

When did the smoothie hit these shores? Not milkshakes with a bit of fruit, but the full-on smoothie (a delightful misnomer given any interesting ones have bits aplenty in them). My wife, not normally allowed in the kitchen, made a wonderful new variant the other day without any milk, the flesh of a sizeable slice of watermelon providing the liquid. The rest was a load of grapes and one peach yogurt. The result was runnier than normal, but down-in-one delicious.

On the GI front that would be a bit frowned on, as strangely watermelon is high GI, and blending fruit breaks down the fibre so moves everything up the scale regardless of where it starts. But the toast and protein balance it out, and anyway I wouldn't care as it tasted great and provided at least one of our 103 each a day. These things are complicated though: watermelon per an article noticed the other day helps speed fat through ones system (though not with the occasional distressing effects of certain tablets if the stories are true). I'd rather eat watermelon than take tablets. Especially if it tastes as good as that smoothie did. And anyway, I'd rather watch Ipswich than use tablets like that.

The Egg Bonanza Dilemma

Two egg bonanza dilemmas actually.

We have a somewhat deranged chicken called Steve, named after the star of The Great Escape (Donald Pleasence - she's that strange). She has no motorbike that searches of the chicken hutch have yet revealed anyway, and since we took away the pot-bellied stove that hid their tunnel entrance that route has not been a problem, but Steve escapes from their compound on an almost daily basis. They have a nice sturdy Omlet run for night-time security, and during the day roam inside another Omlet product, a great big net/fence that gives them room to wander, peck, and take time out from their hectic lifestyles. We have pegged the net carefully, so figure she launches from the roof of the hutch to get over the wire, as it were. Wasn't there an episode of Colditz about building a glider in the castle? I knew letting them have the box-set was mistaken.

Yesterday when searching for her in the garden I discovered she had made a nest of sorts under bags of wood in a little lean-to behind our shed. When I moved the bags I found nine eggs. Dillemma one: how to tell they are fresh? The old trick of putting them one by one in a glass of cold water is neat and simple: if they remain horizontal they're fresh. If they tip up a bit - not so fresh. Stand upright - downright stale. Easy peasy squeezy lemons.

Six turned out to be fresh, three stale - we have chickens so our eggs will be fresh and lovely, so very unpeasantly I threw out the three past their best.

Now comes the second dilemma: how best to use a sudden eggy glut? My immediate thought was scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow, but as the Dear Leader is taking a train before six even her most devoted underling (me) is unwilling to cook them at five. Next thought was a big Spanish omelette tonight, something that appeals for getting them used rapidly and as it's a fine dish. SC is a big fan of egg mayonnaise, rather perversely given he is not keen on boiled eggs and on other foods shuns mayo. Another Spanish dish, onions, peppers, beans and garlic with halved boiled eggs on top (or for the bold eggs broken into hollows in the top then cooked in the oven) also appeals. Other suggestions gratefully received.

ps I'm not sponsored by Omlet. Though if they'd like to I'd not say no.

Intravenous Pies

Two months ago we started on what was euphemistically dubbed our Alternative Eating Programme, having determined en famille that we all needed to lose a few kilos.

There were in my case numerous reasons to think it necessary to do so - in no particular order: 

1. Some Type 2 Diabetes in the family history; 
2. My father, whom I resemble in many ways, is nowadays significantly overweight, and I have started to think about such long-term health issues; 
3. I was developing a belly that same father told me once begun could never be lost;
4. A friend, a year younger than I, died suddenly last year;
5. We are heading for the Indian Ocean this summer: surfer shorts with beer-gut  - not a good look.

I read around the subject, and it made sense to follow GI dietary guidelines, i.e. reduce fats and oils in cooking, go big on fresh fruits and veg (with exceptions - no dates, no big loss, beetroot and broad beans, more of a blow); all starches to be wholemeal; no frying unless unavoidable; grill meats. Add to that the use of plenty of chilli (it supposedly speeds the metabolism); plus zero-fat yogurts (calcium helps bind fats and rushes them through the system).

We have eaten really well since this began: no missed meals, Friday still brings plebean (alternative spelling to irritate Ms B) steak night, puddings aplenty (but fruit-based). In austerity terms it has cost more (though had we been doing this between June and September it would have been far cheaper, our allotment and garden providing masses of F&V then). I felt a bit hungry on two occasions at the day's end, but otherwise no lethargy (important given SC is entering exam period) in fact quite the opposite, no stomach complaints, nothing much to report. We feel reasonably full, our diet is balanced and varied, calorific intake probably a couple of hundred below the norm (if there is such a thing). But the weight has dropped off.

Actually I have overshot my target and am considering using pies intravenously to rebalance things. 

Apparently women do reduce more slowly than men, but The Dear Leader - less in need than her subjects - has likewise clearly slimmed down (for reasons of state security her weight is kept secret from us). Which all makes me wonder: how come slimming is such a massive industry? Is it a similar thing to processed foods - there because so many are incapable of doing the work themselves?

Gray (or Grey) is not the New Red

I've written here before about the positive aspects of colour, but yesterday I produced something that, while delicious (even if I say so etc) was not a delight, as it was gray. The gray of John Major's skin in Spitting Image. The gray of a naval vessel too long without a re-coat.

Doubtless whole bookshelves of scholarly stuff must exist on why we react as we do to colour (I wonder if it is the same, as regards food anyway, across cultures?). Gray is so unappetising.

The colour came about as I used the insides of a previously roasted aubergine (now there is a beautiful colour) along with a tin of anchovies, plus garlic and red chilli, zapped in our smoothie maker with stock as the basis of a fish soup. Basa fillets poached in it remained pleasingly white. Large prawns added some vivid coral. More chilli cut into rings flecked it with bright red. But the whole was inescapably gray.

That said, the flavour was deep, and the aubergine did the job I wanted of thickening the soup without the need for cream or carbs. It was moreish enough for two bowls apiece to disappear before it had cooled beyond the tongue-burny. But our conversation, just like this piece, was littered with the word 'gray'.

I tried to think of other gray foods, and only really came up with coley, not the most enticing of fish, and mushroom soup (not mushrooms raw or cooked, just the result of mixing the dark fungi with white cream), though acceptable enough not the favourite of many I'd hazard.

So negative was the reaction to the aubergine-enriched potage that next time I do something along those lines I'll have to add to the stuff to be blended tomato, or more chillis, or maybe some orange or red peppers. Contrary to Spike's assertion in Notting Hill, chicks don't like gray, and nor do chaps.

Allotments and Pickles

Our allotment association just sent a mail around warning us that Eric Pickles is considering removing the obligation for councils to provide allotments. Were that to come about cash-strapped local authorities would leap at the chance to grab back urban land to sell for development. End of a wonderful British tradition. Start of a few more superstores. The relevant department has since denied that any such plans exist. I wonder still, though the idea of governments not telling the truth is clearly ridiculous.

Mr Pickles of course looks like he deep fries lettuce and serves it with a cream sauce, so perhaps his personal agenda pays little heed to healthy eating. But government agencies are continually sending us warnings that unless we eat vegetables constantly we will all die horrible and imminent deaths. For hundreds of thousands of [cliche alert] hard working families allotments provide fantastic fruit and vegetables for a small rental, a few pounds for seeds, and (as per the group label) some hard work.

I wrote a piece for Hortus a while back on George Orwell and his belief in the practical values of allotments: he once suggested they would help the dispossessed of his day feed themselves. That has not changed. I've written here previously about how spending a small percentage of the billions that went into the Olympics on providing more allotments would have done a great deal more for our national health than watching fat blokes throw lumps of lead. And the benefits would have lasted generations not weeks.

Food and Exams

SC has his first A level exam (of sorts, it's a physics practical) today. As a concerned parent (far more nervous than he appears to be) I want to help in every way possible. Though his school is older, he doesn't go to one of those privileged establishments where rumour has it a certain amount of clandestine assistance is given to candidates, thus help here in large part means giving him a good breakfast.

So what is a good exam breakfast? Thinking it through I failed to come up with anything terribly revolutionary, but then most nutritional thought in the end seems to come down to common sense. He will benefit from slow release carbs, to give energy through a good part of the day, so a couple of slices of wholemeal bread (he isn't keen on toast). Protein with that to slow the digestion of the starch into sugar, spreading the energy longer (the exam late in the school day), so some low fat ham with his bread (and scrape of butter). Such protein is supposed to be good for concentration too. I sneaked some fish into yesterday's mezze for a similar reason, and because as a true believer in Wodehouse I hope that what Bertie felt made Jeeves so brainy will work on SC.

Fresh fruit and veg seems to help our moods, the vitamins perhaps giving us a boost, so a fruit platter - orange, apple, peach, blueberries - shared between us, and some cloudy apple juice to wash everything down. To finish a zero fat vanilla yoghurt not for any real scientific reason, but because it tastes like ice cream and makes one happy (longer term of course it's good for his bones, but the danger of osteoporosis is a few decades off for him yet).

In the end however balanced such a start may be, when the papers are opened it's down to other factors. But when the course of someone's life can vary because of just a single mark tipping them up or down a grade, you want to give them every chance.

Buying Memories

Whether it's something to do with a growing realisation that ones time on this earth is not unlimited, or the remnants of a sense of adventure I know not, but I do like to take culinary opportunities to buy memories. For those with deeper pockets than mine (though happily they remain far from empty) such memories may include meals cooked by major chefs with major egos and international profiles. I'm happier to settle for simpler things.

One such last year was what felt like an investment in three T-bone steaks that were barbecued to perfection and gnawed until nothing of their fleshy deliciousness remained. The cost was more than £30, if memory serves, but I'm certain that it will be the yardstick against which any future T-bone indulgence is measured by our small son (a mere 6' 2.5").

On our break in Norfolk last week another such - though far cheaper - chance arose. Driving back from Potter Heigham we spotted a fisherman selling freshly boiled Cromer crabs from a trailer parked in a lay-by. Noting exotic about any of that, clearly. And why should it need to be exotic? What was marvellous was that we got to eat a whole superbly fresh crab each (the vendor removed the dead-man's fingers as we waited), the cost for the three just over £8. I guess that doesn't qualify as austerity cooking on two levels - no cooking involved, and £8 could pay for several meals if you tried.

There is something extraordinarily satisfying about eating a crab as they should be: cracking the legs and claws, poking the innumerable cavities to get the last bits of meat. That is perhaps austerity thinking in a way.

A crab and a couple of slices of brown bread and butter each were the sole components of our lunch once we had returned to my father's house (he'd lunched already and anyway hates all seafood). It needed no wine, no sauce, no cooking beyond the boiling done that morning. The taste made me happy, and so too did the way we all tackled the task. It took several soapings to get rid of the crabby scent, all adding to the memory.

Better Bread Better for Us

The healthy eating programme has pushed me into even more bread making than usual, partly as the wholemeal offerings at the supermarkets are less than tasty, partly as it saves me going back for another loaf and ending up spending £20 on other stuff.

Yesterday's rolls were so good that even SC complimented them. They were not in truth wholemeal, as my 100 per cent wholemeal attempts have yielded somewhat dense results. Tasty but dense. Think any number of celebrities.

Reading about healthy eating has convinced me we need to eat more seeds, so armed with flaxseeds from Holland and B and sunflower seeds from Booth's I mixed dough per the following recipe:

1 cup s/s milk
0.25 cup lukewarm water
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp avocado oil
1 tbsp walnut oil
0.5 tsp salt
1.5tbsp sugar
0.25 cup seeds (mainly linseed)
0.75 cup wholemeal flour with seeds
1 cup wholemeal spelt flour
2 cups unbleached white flour
7g dried yeast sachet

Mixed and raised in the bread-maker, then knocked back, formed into rolls and left on a floured baking sheet in a warm place to rise for two hours they more than doubled in size before being put in a cold oven turned on to 200C and left to bake for about 25 minutes.

The results are soft crumbed, really tasty (in spite of the reduced salt), and satisfyingly bitty with seeds throughout. A perfect breakfast roll with coffee.

Using flaxseed reminded me of something from my childhood. The grandfather of my best mate of those days, at whose house in the depths of Norfolk I was sometimes invited to stay, used to take a teaspoonful of linseed oil (aka flaxseed oil) every evening. I can remember thinking this odd, and mentioning it to my parents who said something rather deprecatory about old country remedies. We now know linseeds are packed with antioxidants and Omega-3. Not for the first time we find that such remedies had real benefits. But I won't be following my Gran's advice and putting a clove of garlic in my sock the next time I get a cold.

Today's Food Bargain - Yesterday's Status Symbol

I invested £1 in a small pineapple at Sainsbury's more than a week ago. In the 18th century the wealthiest of the wealthy in this country actually rented out pineapples to the merely exceptionally well off, according to one account I heard raking in the equivalent in today's money of £6000 for doing so - the fruits forming the centrepieces of grand banquets before being returned to the ultra-grandees who were the only ones who got to taste the things then.

Pineapples were of course extremely scarce in England at that time - they could not be imported, as picked anywhere near ready they would rot long before any sailing ship made it to our shores. So they had to be grown in our temperate if frequently bloody miserable climate, requiring special skills, loads of labour, and a massive capital investment.

A fortnight ago I visited Tatton Park and went round the pinery there, rebuilt in 2007 on the footings of the mid-18th century original, and with the benefit of the architect Wyatt's plans. As anyone who has more than just dipped into this blog will know, I like growing stuff to eat - not really bothered with flowers (even the edible ones are not up to much). But I would take a lot of persuading to give pineapple growing a go.

The glasshouse is kept between 70 and 80 Fahrenheit, and with high humidity, both provided in part by rotting oak leaves, though hot-water pipes and steam blowers are used too. A lot of money on heating then, to produce about 300 fruits a year (cleverly spaced out over the months, not in one glut), but I salute the National Trust for reviving the art - rebuilding the pinery cost I believe £600,000.

My £1 bought a fruit that per the supermarket label would need eating before April 8th. We ate it last night, the 12th, when finally a leaf from the crown came away with a very sharp tug, the way to tell if it is ready for the plate. You can do clever things with peeling the bumpy exterior (two interlocking helices of eight and 13 bumps - nature is as they say wonderful, and the fact that those two numbers are part of the Fibonacci Sequence is intriguing if you like that sort of thing), but it is far easier just to saw off the skin, top and tail, then cut and core slices.

SC hates pineapple, so the Dear Leader and I got half each. What pudding could you possibly get that is so delicious for just 50p each? Don't say tinned pineapple, though that is pleasant in its way: there is a world of texture and taste between them.

Savour Every Morsel - Upside to Imposed Austerity

In the post Upside to Austerity  back in December 2011 I wrote about how tougher times could prove to be a plus in culinary terms if we were pushed into valuing our food more. We had in times of more than plenty overindulged, and I felt that had made us blase (still can't do accents on this system) about what we ate. I'm feeling a similar thing on our alternative eating programme (and still refusing to use the D-word).

Not that we have been going hungry, or decided to live on crispbread and gravel. But taking into account each part of a meal in terms of its nutritional elements makes one value, say, mushrooms as a source of chromium (and they are far more delicious than car trim); or the multiple virtues of green leaves.

As second and third portions are perhaps what led to us needing to stick to the AEP for a while I'm being careful with quantities in my cooking. If you have one plateful you tend to make it last longer, and to savour what you have. So this just may be imposed austerity.

There are upsides to this version too. Considering our regime more closely has led to some interesting new finds. Black rice is probably top of that list: not an austerity item as a small box cost £2.50, though that will do the carbs for three of us for at least three meals. It's actually more purple than black, that colour showing it has the same antioxidants as blueberries, blackberries etc. The gourmet benefit is that it has a fine flavour, far more interesting than plain white long-grain. The AEP benefit is that it has a lower GI rating than said white rice. I'm guessing the Emperors and tyrants who 1000 years ago kept it all for themselves (or is that marketing tosh?) were more interested in how it tastes.

One definite austerity aspect to the so-called programme is that we are eating vast amounts of fruit, so I can't remember having to throw away a single soft apple, or any rotting oranges found at the bottom of the fruit bowl (a fruit bowl rather than the fruit bowl to be more accurate) for weeks. Another is that my bread-making has been to the fore, to ring the changes with plain supermarket wholemeal. It is possible to buy a loaf for less than one of my homemade efforts costs, but the cheapo bought version would be pasty and flabby and rubbery, the admittedly less than perfectly symmetrical loaves I turn out have become lighter and tastier as I've gained experience.

Several of Your 103 a Day

We love our fruit and veg in this household. I'd rather eat a mixed salad than a plate of chips, especially if they are the soggy ones that chip shops now seem to specialise in (what used to be a treat at the Norfolk seaside has become something to avoid of late).

It's just as well we like them, as our alternative eating programme (SC and I have both lost 9lb or so) majors on F&V. Even we would struggle under normal circs, however, to get to what one fears is rapidly heading towards a dietary requirement of 103 portions a day. It was scary, btw, to hear during the recent spate of stories about such intakes that many Brits, and not just the economically challenged, don't manage a single portion in their normal daily routine.

Yesterday's pudding stood us in good stead for some sort of campaign medal. As we were eating lamb (slow roast in a raised rack to let the fat drip out) as main I made a fruit salad for pud. Not something I do often, as childhood memories of tinned versions - nasty plasticky cherries and all - served up at school and on occasion at home have left a scar. This was all fresh - half a tray of blueberries that needed using up, ditto strawbs, some oranges and satsumas, grapes, apples... all in orange juice not the vile syrup that accompanied 1970s versions. It was so good we ended up drinking the remaining juice.

When you do the sums that treat - for such it was - cost I think less than a carton of the beloved Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream. Say 90p for the blueberries, same for the strawbs, £1.30 for the citrus, 25p for the apple and 20p the grapes, then 30p the juice. So £3.85 for something really delicious that also made us feel a teensy bit virtuous. Or smug.

I have no intention of posting a video online, leaving the beneficial effects on ones digestion this morning to the imagination. And stating that we have no need of colonic irrigation here thanks very much. Too subtle?

Austerity and Healthy Food

Over recent years one of the regular excuses voiced about poor eating habits is that healthy food costs more than unhealthy. Since we decided on our alternative eating programme [yes there is a deliberate hint of silliness in the name] I have made one major discovery in that regard: by spreading butter thinly, and almost banning it from cooking, one uses less and thus spends less. Who knew?

Same applies to oils and dressings. I think a general rule can be discerned here: if you use thus buy less of something, it is cheaper than buying and using lots.

As we are eating less meat and more veg, the sums are in our economic favour there too.

Last night's meal was pork tenderloin marinated in ginger, cumin, pepper and cassia bark all ground up, the six little slices (£3.15 for the piece) popped in a sealable bag with that mix and some scrunched up bay leaves and lime leaves from our own trees, then left in the fridge for about seven hours before being beaten with a mallet and griddled. Result: loads of flavour to make up for the relatively small amount. It was as the divine HFW says 'meat as spice.'

What was more important to the meal was the brown rice (I used to hate it, but this stuff is almost perfumed - and I swear it used to be browner, but then Wagon Wheels used to be bigger, and all this used to be fields too) served mixed in with a pile of lightly steamed veg - carrot, mange tout, frozen broccoli, ditto peas, ditto okra, doused in soy sauce and pepped up with five-spice. Say 35p for the rice, £1.65 for the veg and soy, so the meal for three of us £5.15. Not cheap, not dear.

I'll do the same thing without the meat next time, but adding a few mushrooms and more veg - a pepper, and definitely garlic. The substitutions would bring the cost down to about £3. Which to fill three stomachs healthily (three people rather than one ruminant - or do they have four?) seems like a bargain.

The Fire Still Burns

First BBQ of the year yesterday at the suggestion of our Dear Leader, and an excellent suggestion it was too.

The leg of lamb I was to roast was instead butterflied and cooked over the charcoal, having spent a couple of hours in a garlic and garlic marinade. Not a complex recipe, you crush six cloves of garlic and rub them over the non-fatty bits then leave for as long as is prudent. With the meat varying in thickness between say three inches and half that there was something for everyone in there. Everyone who doesn't like lamb horribly overdone.

The meal fitted the health kick we're on at present. I didn't use any oil in cooking the lamb, nor a parcel of prawns steamed in their own juices and given an edge with lemon-grass, chilli and cumin. Patatas Bravas (nothing if not eclectic this) or Braves if you are Catalan had a few drops of the chilli-infused stuff that packs a massive punch, and the skewers of mushrooms and peppers needed none either.

In fact cooking over charcoal is a good way to remove fat from meat, so is healthy. Yet you'll see a regular summer story run in the papers that eating BBQ food is akin to signing your own death warrant. Only if you burn stuff badly, or underdo pork or chicken. But why spoil a good scare with conditions?

A barbie in March. Salad from the garden in there too, or the green house to be accurate. March.

Small son and I have lost half a stone and more each with what we have now officially dubbed the alternative eating programme. It basically has involved avoidance of frying, keeping oil and butter to a sensible minimum, no sweet stuff except at the weekend, and going for good carbs, lean meats, and loads of raw or steamed veg.

I can see my feet again when standing upright. We feel better generally, and felt wonderful in the sunshine of semi-tropical Fulwood yesterday, glass of Rioja in hand, the scent of meat (and, well, garlic) wafting across from the BBQ, and the knowledge that our Dear Leader had made another brilliant call.

The Taste-Calorie Equation

There is no equation.

What I mean is if you are being a bit more careful with the calories, what you do eat needs to be good and extra tasty. The lamb chops - one apiece whereas previously I'd probably have done two - last night were a case in point. Henry Rowntree's meat tastes so much better than even the generally good stuff from Booth's, and certainly better than what JS have to offer. Bone-suckingly excellent.

More tasty means more satisfying. Less temptation to eat crisps and chocolate to fill a sensation gap.

There are substitutions involved here too - but still not a formal equation. Instead of the butter that would normally have moistened the flageolet beans accompanying the lamb I used a small amount of cheaty stock, and two cloves of garlic crushed to max their flavour.

And a subtraction - the meat griddled on a ridged pan allowed some of the fat to run off, whereas my normal method with this would have been to fry the chops and use the fat to give some flavour to the beans in the same pan, a dollop of butter to finish and give a nice gloss.

Somewhere in 'An American University' (the source quoted for most stupid survey results) a dweeb in a lab-coat is even now trying to work out the formula. While eating a massive sandwich filled with reformed ham and turkey and drinking gallons of the appalling dishwater that passes for coffee in that otherwise generally blessed country. Forget the figures, find the flavour.

Colour Counts

Having written about how we are taking the health - and calorie - side of our eating more into account currently, a bit of balance. Away with the brown rice (not that I have any in the house) and the wholemeal bread (actually we had that toasted at breakfast), in with the bright celebratory colours to mark the most glorious day of the year so far, more like late May than late March here in semi-tropical Preston.


Not that colour is to be ignored as regards the healthy side of eating - the more colours, or so I reason, the broader the range of nutrients we're likely to get. It's the impact on the mood that colour brings that's more important at present though. Judge for yourselves if the main dish was colourful enough - for once I remembered to take some pictures.

I've posted before about paella as a Sunday special. We had a good friend coming round to eat with us, so an additional cause to do something a bit different.

And with the oil reduced to a minimum, none of the big cubes of bacon I generally like in my paellas, and seafood rather than chicken (it's the skin that gets you) as the protein elements, it was pretty healthy.

But it was the colour that probably did us most good. The tomatoes cooked into the rice helped, so too the sofrito that had yellow and red pepper. The saffron-infused stock added a touch of sun on what was a superbly sunny day. Even frozen peas did their bit. It was a thing of beauty to which my photography skills don't do justice.

Walnuts are the New London Buses

A skim through my calorie counter book yielded a few surprises. Take for example walnuts, at 50 kcals for one large nut. Which means that a smallish grilled rump steak is just about equivalent to four of them. My wife is now cursing me, as walnuts have been a regular feature in her packed-lunch salads for years.

Four teaspoons of oil have the same calorific value as that steak/those nuts too. Weird.

The nice surprises (and the steak thing counts as one of those, let's look at and possibly through half full glasses) include water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, where a small can of each runs to a total of roughly 50 kcals (one walnut - now to calories what the London bus is to height, or the area of Wales to disappearing rainforests). And a generous portion of coleslaw made with light mayo is round about - yes, you guessed, a walnut of calories. I love coleslaw.

Mushrooms, another favourite, are deceptive. Just 13 kcals for 100g raw or boiled (I guess I've done that in stews, but never on their own), they shoot up to 157 when fried in oil.

Happily eggs are pretty austere on the calorie front, at about 80 when poached or boiled. Happily, as our four hens produce enough for cooking and for our breakfast every other day.

We refuse to use the dreaded D word and to go on one, so tonight's meal will be our usual Friday fare of steak for males and fish for the supreme leader. They will, however, be carefully cooked and served with super healthy stuff again: steamed French beans and mushrooms (done in a way yet to be decided, but microwave-steamed may work), steamed new spuds. With a salad to start our virtue will be assured. Then sod it, and glory be, a Magnum - it's the weekend, and the dear leader in particular deserves a treat - Magnum Classic being five walnuts of calories.

Not That I'm Obsessive

Our decision to trim a kilo or two before jetting off to the sun had me reaching for the calorie counter - bought when wife and heir abandoned me to go diving in Egypt with their club and I tried the 5/2 diet for its anti poorly badness benefits rather than for weight loss. I used that to sort out what I could have for 600 kcals: answer 4/5ths of bugger all. Looking at packet info too - hastily put Doritos back when I saw what that said, and more surprisingly Special K with red berries.

Unsurprising but comforting is the fact that fresh vegetables, with a few exceptions (avocados stick in the mind) are very low calorie, especially if steamed. Egg noodles far fewer cals than rice, even boiled rice, so our Chinese tonight will have them for bulk (with prawns, another surprisingly low calorie ingredient), turkey with mange tout (for some reason super cheap yesterday at the supermarket), steamed pak choi, and a mushroom, water chestnut and bamboo shoot (both delicious and negligible kcals) and bean sprout stir fry in a tsp of sesame oil. Soy sauce is another winner.

What I found from that brief flirtation with the 5/2 diet (I learned afterwards that you don't need to do the two days at 600 kcals together) was that raw veg and fruit fill you up, I normally go way over the top with dressing, it's flavour as much as volume that I missed, and with a target like 600 kcals I became even more obsessive about food than normal. Food is one of life's great pleasures and a boiled egg (about 75 kcals) shouldn't be the culinary highlight of the day.

Austerity Light

I often wish I had not used the title The Austerity Cook for this blog, as in truth we have never had to face real austerity in this household. Never mind. Would Frugal of Fulwood have been better?

Currently a distant relative of austerity, the controlled regime (I refuse to use the D word) is in my culinary brain. We are looking forward to a summer holiday in the sun, the Indian Ocean sun in fact, and such thoughts have concentrated the mind on us toning up a bit before donning the beach gear.

One ruse to fool the body into feeling full without all those wonderful fats and starches is to eat raw food, so last night we started with a huge salad, to be followed by far smaller portions than normal of risotto. It was mushroom risotto made with my own herby vegetable stock, about five per cent of the usual butter used to give it a gloss at the end, and minimal olive oil to saute the chopped onion and celery. Just using the word saute surely must mean fewer calories are involved than if I called it frying?

The mushrooms that I would normally fry in oil or butter were merely cooked in with the rice and stock, and didn't suffer from that at all, in fact they were possibly moister than would have been the case cooked separately. Small things, and they will not be every day either, but if we all lose a kilo or two before flying off it will be worthwhile.

Such a programme if it can be dignified with that title is far easier and somehow more rewarding now we have started getting our own salad through. As last year (thanks to the idea stolen from neighbour Louise) we are buying 'living salad' from Sainsbury's and planting the lettuces out. A box that costs about £1.20 (I think) contains 30 or so plants, all of which have done well in the greenhouse in a big trough filled with compost. We went to a garden centre on Sunday (how grown up is that? - well, I had been allowed to watch all three rugby international the day before) and far fewer tiny and rather weedy looking seedlings - not at all tempting - cost £3.49. Definitely for ladies who garden in white gloves, so much better for indicating which bed the staff need to focus on.

Happily we all love green salad, whether it be as a starter, or to follow the main and mop up juices. Easy on the dressing. For the austerity cook (hmm) knowing that salad costs just a few pennies makes it more pleasurable.

Roast Beef Rides Again

One of the supermarkets has been running a campaign - actually a rather laudable one - showing people that a roast will do more than the Sunday lunch for which it was bought. Roast chicken is an austerity staple, as a decent bird will give you the roast, a curry/risotto/wrap/sandwiches, and broth or at least stock made with the carcase. Beef is no slouch on the second coming front either.

Tonight we will be having one of my takes on leftover topside, and almost as importantly on the gravy that graced it. We ate this a fortnight back and it was enough of a hit for there to be requests for it to be repeated with the excellent beef (Henry Rowntree's superb Aberdeen Angus, and no he doesn't sponsor me, it's just that even a teenager notices the difference) remaining after we feasted post the England - Wales match.

The gravy (ultra-garlicky as I roasted a whole head with the beef, and squidged the soft contents into the meat juices) will be flavoured with smoked paprika, a chilli chopped very finely, Worcestershire sauce, some ground cumin, cayenne, and plenty of pepper. The beef, chopped into 5mm dice, is mixed with its gravy and a tin of Heinz beans, and the resulting mass used to fill wraps that fill a 300mm x 200mm cast iron dish perfectly. Atop this goes a sauce made with tinned toms cooked with a chopped onion and flavoured like the filling, with loads of grated cheese - cheddar and Parmesan - on top.

Cooked in a 180C oven for 30 - 40 minutes (when the cheese is browning it's ready, though I tend to warm the Le Creuset cast-iron dish over a low flame first to speed things up and ensure it is piping hot inside as well as out-) it has the added benefit of looking rather lovely.

The result is filling, rich in vegetables, and tastes good. But then in our family lore most things taste good with Parmesan. And it doesn't need a £1 packet of ready-mix fajita magic dust to give it a Tex-Mex touch.

I'll try to remember to take a photo or two.

Bread, Toast and the Meaning of Life

Fed up with the poor quality of bread available here I've experimented with recipes of late to make my own, resulting in one that's tasty, has yet to fail, and looks rather lovely. The one thing lacking is a crispy crust.

Bread-making is an area where bucket-cookery won't work, so I have a precise recipe:



1.25 cups water
2 tbsps olive oil or walnut oil
a beaten egg added to the water
1.25 tsp salt
2.25 tbsps sugar
2.25 tbsps milk powder
4 cups strong white flour
7g sachet of fast acting yeast

I use a bread-maker on its dough setting to mix and rise the bread, then knock it back and kneed it briefly. That quantity makes two good-sized loaves, the top slashed in three or four places with a thin-bladed knife to make a pretty surface and a different texture when the cuts expand.

The loaves on a flat griddle are left to rise in a warm cupboard for at least two hours, then put in a cold oven and the oven turned on to 200C. They're cooked in about 25 - 30 minutes, then left on a cooling rack (fresh out of the oven, smelling wonderful, it's a tempter, but until the crumb has formed they are not right).

As far as austerity is concerned it's not a bad deal either, our eggs free, or sort of, from our chickens, and if I use Sainsbury's white bread flour at £1 for 1.5kg I reckon I get six of those loaves from one bag. Add 14p for a yeast sachet and pennies for the rest and a life-enhancing and delicious loaf costs, even with the energy needed, less than 50p. As regards those energy costs, I'm careful to make the bread before or with something else, so they're not extravagant.

But it's really not the cost that is paramount, but having bread that looks good, smells good, tastes good. Bread is such a fundamental thing to so much good eating. Soup with nice bread becomes a meal, for example. And toast at breakfast should be a basic human right.

The egg in this recipe gives the crumb a faint yellow tinge that becomes more obvious when the bread is toasted (and it toasts superbly). On Sunday morning drinking good coffee, eating toast and jam after bacon and egg, all was right with the world. Ours anyway.

One Day a Year - and Quite a Few Others

It's not exactly a national scandal that pancakes now seem to be ghettoised to their own Tuesday and nothing else. But it is bloody silly.

I love them. Cheap, tasty, light or substantial, sweet or savoury, American or crepes (will someone tell me how to do accents?), innumerable fillings opening up gastronomic potential. What's not to love?

We had the thin French-ish ones as a makeshift pud last night. I regularly do the fluffy American version taught me by a US-based friend for breakfast.

When I said to my son they were something I had to teach him before he flies the nest he joked about buying ready-made mix. Apparently hanging 17-year-olds upside-down from an upper floor is frowned on by the authorities.

You hear blokes boasting about being able to do their 'signature dish,' quite often a green Thai curry. As intelligent as saying you have got your time for sex down below a minute. Rather than learn one fancy dish to be repeated for friends ad nauseam, between times re-heating ready meals, it seems far more intelligent to learn a few core dishes. Pancakes - certainly the thin ones - should be one of those.

I don't bother to measure the ingredients these days, blending an egg, flour and milk (with a big pinch of salt, sometimes a tsp or two of sugar, and a slick of melted butter) with an electric mixer until the consistency of single cream. It's best left in the bowl for 30 minutes or more (I am not sure of the science, but it works) before frying in a non-stick pan greased with butter.

It made me wonder what are the other 'core' dishes or similar? A stew I guess. A simple soup. A curry (green Thai or otherwise). Salad dressing. Roast chicken. A tomato-based sauce for pasta. Chops various (technique same but degree of cooking different depending on meat). Work a few variations for each and you won't have to live on ready-meals. And gentlemen should never boast about sex - though I have my time up to over a minute. Cue old Woody Allen joke for fans of his earlier films.

The More the Merrier - Within Reason

Earlier this week we had a short break in Anglesey, taking a tiny cottage for four nights. One night was supposed to feature a pub meal, but lovely though the seaside village was its two central pubs were less than inviting: in one you seemed to be near the toilet wherever you sat, not a great boon to appetite; the other could have made a Hammer Horror setting - dark, empty, silent, creepy.

So with few supplies to hand it was make-do time in the kitchen. That great stand-by the omelette provided the first course, made with two peppers, some garlic, and a load of chorizo. It got me thinking about how certain dishes are so amenable to kitchen sink cookery - the stew and the curry to name but two. The pizza is another obvious contender.

But as so often in cookery, there is an indefinable but readily appreciated limit beyond which a dish shifts from interesting to messy and confused. Had I added another meat - ham say - that omelette would have indeed been messy. Another vegetable - onion or potato - would have worked. Why is that? Am I judging by a standard of meals eaten in my past? Or do the putative ham and actual chorizo clash?

The pizza case is an intriguing one here: we eat four thin home-made ones on our regular pizza nights. Put too many ingredients on one and it doesn't work at all. But it seems fine to have cheese and tomato and anchovy on one, chicken and sweetcorn on another, peppers, pepperami, ham and garlic on a third, etc etc. All the ingredients end up mixed in ones stomach. Eaten slice by slice the different toppings follow one another closely. So is this just a question of taste, keeping flavours more or less discernible, and a momentary question at that?

Finger Fun

I have posted before about not liking recipe books, or rather of much preferring food books that focus on the history and culture of food. It's not just that the recipe ones are dull - and they are - but that I don't believe (other than in very exceptional circs) that a recipe is ever 'done'.

My continual tweaking of the pizza recipe given to me by Ron Mackenna is a case in point. The basics (for four thin crust bases) are still there - 500g flour, 325ml water, 13g salt, 7g yeast - but I have added two tbsp of olive oil to make the dough more elastic. And I now put the naked pizzas in the oven as it is turned on, giving them 10 minutes pre-cooking to ensure they cook through once the toppings are added, and by forming a skin the toppings don't soak in as much. And the flour is now 200g plain 300g white bread flour, the plain making the cooked base crisper.

The toppings have evolved too. I use a tin of toms mashed up and cooked so some of the liquid is steamed off. That's enough to coat two bases, the next stage being to cover the tomato with loads of grated Parmesan. This has the double boon of making the paste dryer still, so it doesn't ensoggify the bread, and is an excuse for using the world's greatest cheese.

OMG as I would say were I not far too old mature. This has become a recipe. So to sidestep that fate I'd ask a question: is there any better finger food than pizza? Anyone eating pizza other than in a restaurant too posh for pizza anyway should be shot for using a knife and fork with this. It's meant to be eaten with the hands. The bread cools more rapidly than the topping (a generalisation but like most generalisations, including this one, true) so you can hold the thing without burning, but get a hot mouthful. With the basic cheese and tomato version you have a balanced mini-meal with carbs/protein/veggie fibre, anything else being a dietary bonus.

All that said, my home-cooked version is still not up to the standard of a good pizzeria pie. My wife frowns on the idea of spending £500 on a pizza oven for the garden. So the next step is to invest in a pizza stone as an approximation. And if that doesn't do the trick, I'll try the man-stuff route and see if a mate or two will help me build my own with fire-bricks and clay. Or we could walk down the road to Checco's.

How Much Garlic is Too Much?

I'm a great reader of old cookery books. Or maybe food books is a better description - I find those with a succession of neatly laid out recipes and no intellectual exploration dull in the extreme. If you read any from the 1970s and earlier you'll see garlic given as an optional ingredient 'if liked'. We like.

Yesterday I roasted a chicken (not one of our garden variety) atop a whole bulb of the stuff, each clove carefully skinned before use. It was garlic as vegetable (eventually incorporated in the whooshed sauce) rather than flavour enhancer. As I wet roasted the bird the cloves softened in the liquid, leaving them incredibly sweet without caramelising at all. The bottom floor had a nice garlicky aroma, but this morning that had gone as you'd expect, and none of us had garlic-breath, that maybe you wouldn't.

In my extremely late thirties health and food have become closely linked. A friend with whom a fortnightly pint was shared died suddenly last summer, bringing such matters into stark perspective. I often wonder about our diet - wide variety of styles and ingredients, nothing deep fried, moderate drinking (though while we're on the topic, which bastard thought up Dry January btw?), lots of home-produced veg, etc etc. Garlic is one thing I have upped since such thoughts became more focussed. As garlic is supposed to work wonders on the blood, and on blood pressure, I'd love to know the before and after BP readings for the three of us - but save me from becoming Glenn Gould - he kept a diary of his, genius and madness near neighbours there.

Rich and Austere

When early in the day offered the choice of an evening meal based on bangers and mash with onion gravy, or pasta with meatballs (made of the defrosted sausages) SC chose the latter. I wanted to do something different - see Serendipity and the Death of Creation - so ended up making Pasticcio. And bloody lovely it was too.

Thanks to the divine HFW for the basic recipe, though I have eaten this before (in Greece rather than Italy as might be expected), and made it a year or so back.

It was a great example of really good food not costing a fortune: meatballs were made from the meat taken out of £2 of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference sausages; £1 packet of salami; two cloves of garlic, an egg, shallot and some Parmesan. Two 35p tins of toms and some onions, a carrot plus herbs from the garden and more garlic made a rich tomato sauce; 70p of milk and butter plus pennies of flour (and some onion, herbs and a bit of carrot for the infusion) made a bechamel. Two thirds of a 90p pack of penne provided the pasta.

What it did cost was the time I was happy to give it, breaking up my writing for magazines, and what it could have cost had we not possessed a dishwasher was my marriage. Pan for infusing milk for bechamel. Pan for bechamel. Pan for tomato sauce. Griddle for tiny meat balls. Huge pan for assembling the lot: al dente pasta pre-mixed with bechamel on the bottom, tomato sauce with meatballs in the middle, another layer of pasta and bechamel, then a load of cheese (end of some cheddar, about 75p of Parmesan, and a 55p basics mozarella.

Tot all that up and it comes to about £7.00, quite a bit for a midweek supper. But there was enough to feed at least six people, eight if they were polite. Except it was so good three of us demolished the lot. I will do it again without leaving it a year, same quantities, but to feed friends as well as us - as it looked great too which is important when being hospitable. I was glad that I did it in the wide pan with just those three layers, rather than building up what sounds like seven in HFW's recipe - everybody loves cooked cheese and that gave us plenty.

Stevie Wonder

Many chance occurrences can change the way we eat - dishes discovered on our travels, health fads, finding intriguing new ingredients. We had a strange one this weekend.

One of our two chickens (the third suddenly turned up its toes several months back), named Steve as a homage to her youthful tendency to do a runner (think The Great Escape), after not having tried to make a break for it since November disappeared completely after we left her foraging for worms for a few minutes. We have foxes over the brook at the bottom of our garden, so after ages searching we figured one way or another she was a goner. With no signs at lunchtime on Sunday we went and bought two replacements. At four, checking on the newbies, Ruth found Steve happily pecking at the lawn.

So now we have four, and are averaging three and a bit eggs per day. Poached egg for breakfast is always a winner, but not every day. Thus I am thinking about ways to use the surplus creatively: I made onion bread (half a pack of dried onion per big loaf) two days in a row, using an egg to enrich the dough, the results very tasty and with a lovely pale yellow crumb. We may end up as we have previously giving some away, if only to avoid cholesterol poisoning. But I'm loath to do so - the eggs are so much better than any supermarket organic version, and offer so many fine dishes.

Best of all these is the simple omelette. Simple if you get it right, which for me means using great eggs (no problem there then), nice unsalted butter in which to fry them, and if adding any flavourings erring on the side of caution as regards quantity. The cheese, for example - Parmesan always a favourite - is there to enhance the flavour not dominate.

It was, as I have said before, reading An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David that was a turning point in my culinary life. My life. The eponymous essay is a joy to read still, and full of good sense - keep things simple, use good ingredients, and find great matches like those two. With a green salad and some decent bread a six egg omelette (and a glass of wine) is a perfect midweek supper in the warmer months. At Sainsbury's half-a-dozen large free range eggs cost £1.75. Add a few pence for butter, £0.50 for half a cos lettuce, a few more pennies for oil and vinegar, and £0.80p for a small loaf of crusty bread, and supper for three would be about £3.25. Now here comes the even smugger than normal bit - if you have your own hens, make bread, and grow lettuce, the cost for the same meal would be about 75p. Worth thinking about. Especially as it leaves more to spend on buying a half decent wine to top it all off.

Gravy - Artform and Austerity Weapon

At first blush there is nothing austere about a rolled rib of beef joint that cost £25. And very delicious it was too. But the gravy that accompanied it is another matter.

Our national inferiority complex about food has, happily, been weakened over the last two or three decades. We still tend to think though of e.g. French sauces as things of artistic beauty, and dismiss gravy as very basic and unworthy of consideration. Nonsense, a well made gravy is a joy. It lifts the potatoes that go with a roast, and moistens the meat if it needs that treatment. Given the basis is what you scrape off the roasting dish it gladdens the austerity heart too.

I cheat a bit, using a tsp of Bovril to add extra meatiness. Yesterday's version had a cm of white wine left from the previous day to loosen the thickened juices and de-glaze the dish, then some vegetable water, and included a finely chopped shallot for some texture. For me, though the meat was very good (farm shop, a proper mature brown not pink), the gravy and mash were the best bit of the meal.

Later in the week I'm going to do bangers and mash. Again a gravy will make the thing moist and interesting, and as it will be onion gravy an extra vegetable will be smuggled in - my onion gravy involves very slow melting of four or five finely chopped onions until they start to caramelise. It takes a good 25 minutes or more, but it's worth the wait. Thickened thereafter with plain flour, then made into a luscious liquid with potato water and that magical tsp of Bovril added to give extra flavour, it's not far off very thick French onion soup by the end.

Six fat 'taste the difference' sausages from Sainsbury's cost £2 the other day; spuds for the mash maybe 50p; onions 25p; with in all likelihood peas and steamed carrots for more veg the lot will come to at most £3.25 for three of us. Which makes £25 for the beef joint a little less painful (though it must be said the leftover meat will make hot beef sandwiches tonight - my own bread, some lettuce and cucumber piled on top, thin raw onion rings, and a knife full of mustard). And just one slice saved for another day will make a starter of lentil and beef salad with gherkin and raw onion chopped in, so the £25 does stretch to three meals).

How Hot Are You?

My palate is definitely changing as I speed through the third decade of my thirties. It's clear that my taste buds are not as sensitive (and discerning?) as once they were (and I believe they are not as numerous, which somehow seems weird). Yet at the same time they appear less able to bear spicy heat.

That's not to say that I have abandoned hot foods. I hope that day never comes, as I've always loved foods with bite. Not, however, in the macho show of strength that some feel necessary - years ago I watched with awe then amusement as a very dear friend and another acquaintance ordered Phal with extra chillies. Or is that Fal? Or Phall? Or Phaal? Transliteration is a bugger. They ordered Phal. With extra chillies. After two bites their faces were purple, foreheads beaded with sweat, and within minutes you could actually see lips blistering.

In my business travel days I ate some very hot foods - soft-shelled crabs in Ipoh was one memorable feast; a Shabu Shabu in Taipei another (the stock was bright pink with chillies). That chilli heat is for me life-enhancing, a jump-start for the entire body. Which is why I never want to give it up.

The spices in your cupboard are a wonderful austerity tool. The curry about which I posted the other day proved delicious, thanks largely to the spices in it: cardamom and cumin to perfume; fenugreek and coriander seeds as a solid foundation and cassia something subtle in the background; and of course lots of pepper and some chilli for the warmth that lifts a dish and the spirits. If the lot cost 10p I would be astounded. Yet they transformed what could be extremely bland ingredients (the bulk was white fish, rice, coconut milk, onions) into something so good plates were scraped clean.

Austerity cook hat (toque - I don't think so) on: the supermarkets have shelves full of packet mixes that on a good day are 50p, generally more than £1. Schwarz keep playing tunes with pots of this, packs of that, thimbles of the other, again around the £1 mark or worse. It's a small investment to buy from the ethnic shelves half a dozen packs of whole seeds (so they will have more of their aromatic oils remaining than ground stuff) that will last a year or more, cost perhaps £6, and do 50 meals plus - you do the financial comparison. Yes you have to grind them one way or another, and it may take a few goes to get the feel of things (I still sometimes overdo pepper) but it is well worthwhile. And can be adjusted to individual dishes, and your own palate as it changes.

No Bones About It

I am an angler, at least a sea angler, and while not claiming huge technical expertise, not a bad one either. Currently I'm 50,000 words into a book on the topic, a future orphan as I've not even started looking for a publisher. I go sea fishing (almost always from boats) for innumerable reasons - buy the book if it ever gets finished, as it is more about such things than the dull minutiae of rigs and tactics - but the biggest is that we eat some of what we catch, and it's delicious.

One of the many skills I could do with honing is the art of filleting. Clumsily done it leaves too much flesh on the bones, good for stock but a bit of a waste; or leaves bones in the flesh, missing the whole point of the exercise. Supermarket fishmongers are not great at it either. Add to that the scandal about re-dating fish on those counters a year or two back and I am wary about buying their offerings. Thus I have a fondness for frozen fish: don't turn your noses up, if from a reputable source with the right green credentials it's a winner, retaining flavour and very rarely containing any bones at all. Remember Robert in the Onedin Line? Probably not. He choked on a fish bone, put off a generation of British telly watchers.

I regularly make fish chowder, like most of my cooking not so much a recipe as a few basic ideas to follow; and fish curry is another favourite. The latter is this evening's main course, the principal ingredient being the dubiously-named 'white fish fillets', actually quite nice pollock when you look further. Half a pack will provide the protein, with some onions, garlic, and for colour a bit of bell pepper. The veg are fried gently until very soft, then a freshly ground spice mix with cassia, dried chilli, pepper, cardamom, fenugreek, coriander and cumin seeds added and cooked for a minute before the still frozen fish fillets and a tin of coconut milk are put in the pan. When the fish is cooked through it's ready.

And yes it does need rice, or naan, or my homemade flatbreads, to bulk it out and soak up the juices.

Half a pack of the fish costs £1.50, the veg maybe 60p, spices bought in big packs from the ethic shelves at Sainsbury's a few more pennies, and the coconut milk from our local Chinese store 89p. So with the rice it is going to be way under £3.50 to feed three of us. I buy rice in 5kg bags, again ethnic shelf jobbies, on a price per kg basis so much cheaper than 1kg versions.

Bargains like that make me feel better about splashing out on stuff like the obligatory roast for a winter Sunday, but even in a relatively affluent household the prices of lamb and beef are getting to be eye-watering. It's almost enough to turn us vegetarian. But not quite.

One Flame Feast - Lamb Boulangere

Taking SC to one of his potential university choices at the weekend made me think about communal student life again.

Musing afterwards on what would make a great student Sunday meal Lamb Boulangere came to mind. In the current cliche it ticks all the boxes (except vegetarian, sorry): almost no fail; can be made to feed six or eight with ease; just one pot to wash up; can be left to its own devices (if you have good security in the flat).

Some cooks suggest pre-heating the meat at high temperature, but the original idea was that in the days before working class homes in France had ovens they benefited from their neighbourhood baker's, after it had done the Sunday bread, the dish cooking slowly in the cooling oven.

There are few ingredients: for six people 1kg to 1.5kg of potatoes, peeled and cut into slices about 3mm thick; 0.5kg to 1kg of onions cut into very thin slices; between 3 and 12 cloves of garlic depending on your taste, thickly sliced; a boned shoulder of lamb (boned makes carving thus life easy) weighing 1.5kg to 2kg; water and salt and pepper (you can use a chicken stock cube to make the liquid more interesting, but it's not needed as the lamb cooking slowly oozes its juices and fat into the veg and the water).

Wipe a roasting tin with butter or oil, then layer up the spuds and onions, with garlic slices and seasoning every now and then. Finish with a layer of potato slices. Pour in boiling water to about 10mm below the top of the veg, then lay the meat on top, cover the lot with foil, and put in an oven at 140C and leave it for at least four hours, preferably six, and if it fits your life better, up to eight will do no harm

Twenty minutes before you want to eat take it out of the oven, remove the meat to rest (rolled in the foil to keep warm, with a tea-towel or two on top for extra insulation). Turn the oven up much hotter, 220 to 230C, and let the top layer of spuds crisp up - this is the only time it needs an eye on it, as soon as the edges start to go from golden brown to black, it's ready.

The spuds and onions are dished up with plenty of juice, and chunks of meat (not slices) placed on top. If you get the last 20 minutes right you'll have a few crispy bits as a pleasant contrast to the melting mass.

Though it is perfect in itself, some peas, carrots or even baked beans would bulk it out a bit if youthful appetites demanded. With 1.5kg of spuds, 1kg of onions, and a whole garlic bulb the veg component would be about £2.80. A 1.5kg rolled shoulder of lamb is about £12.50. So for six people for a Sunday lunch it would be £2.55 each. Go wild with a whole bag of frozen peas and you're still under £3 per head, cheaper than an espresso and a brownie at Costa Fortune.

One Pot Two Dishes - One Flame Rides Again

My son, aka Sternest Critic, has some quirky dislikes. One is that he likes meat that is stewed (let's face it he likes meat), but hates it to come with the liquid in which it cooked. A neat solution to this enjoyed last week was a version of the French Pot au Feu, where the liquid is served as a soup before the rest makes it to table as a main course. Two courses, one pot.

It helped the soup part that the dish was made with stock prepared previously using free bones from the butcher (I've taken to doing this when buying a load of meat, and never get any hassle) and another from the freezer, the penultimate bit of our Serrano ham bone. Those had cooked with some veg and other flavour enhancers, so the stock itself would have done as a soup (some more in fact did at the weekend, with mushrooms, noodles and star anise). But after it had in addition been the cooking medium for chuck steak and shin, with more veg, it was excellent - served without any thickening, likewise sans meat and veg, it was a really really good beef consome.

The original stock benefited btw from a beetroot being one of the vegetables, giving an earthy depth, but more importantly a fine colour.

The solid components were tasty enough, the beef not needing a knife to cut it, but not in the same league as the soup.

I've been trying to think of similar two-dishes-one-pot stuff, with little success. The only one that sprang to mind could in fact be a threefor, doing a similar stew for the soup and solids, but cooking a sweet dumpling or several in with the savoury bits. To modern eyes that may seem odd, but to cooks of centuries past (including the last one) with limited cooking equipment it made sense, and our contemporary separation of sweet and savoury would seem weird to medieval cooks in particular, but even our grandmothers (for those of us in the third decade of our thirties) were not averse to such things.

I have made apple dumplings in this way to eat as pudding, the edge with its meaty tang not putting anyone off devouring them.

Right and Wrong

One of my favourite food writers was, is, Elizabeth David. This in spite of her undoubted snobbishness, and her highly prescriptive thoughts on certain foods. She, though not with 100 per cent consistency, believed in authenticity. Pizza was one such food she tended to see as to be done in a particular way or not at all. It was right (her way) or wrong (any other way).

I can agree that the dumping ground pizza - anything and everything added to one - is horrible. Again my kindergarten kids mixing paint analogy, you add too many colours and you just get muddy brown. But as the pizza base is such a great carrier of toppings I don't see it should be limited to tomato, mozarella and maybe an olive or three.

The smell of pizza dough is drifting through the study door even now, ready to form four bases. Just 500g of flour, 325ml of water, a sachet of dried yeast, 13g of salt and two tbsps of olive oil so the cost is well under 50p. A Sainsbury's basic mozarella (I've tried others, and only the pizza mozarella from Waitrose makes any real difference, and that's a trek across town) is I think 45p, to be used on two of the four, along with to be spread as taste fits: five or six cloves of garlic, a small red chilli, an onion, and a basic red pepper, another 45p the lot, and a tin of chopped toms 32p.

We have a small amount of turkey-breast leftover from Sunday's crown, that with some defrosted sweetcorn will add a few more pennies. A £1 taster-pack of peperone will make the basis of another topping, with three or four mushrooms, and an 80p tin of anchovies plus a few leftover olives a third. A few leaves from a £1 bag of baby spinach leaves will find a home on one of them, probably the turkey jobbie, the balance to make a small salad to assuage the guilt. So three pizzas, a garlic bread, and a small salad will set us back under £5.

None of those is going to be authentic, in Elizabeth David's terms, except maybe the garlic bread. But my son when we go out for pizza often goes for chicken and sweetcorn; and spinach with cheese of any sort is great. Plus an Italian peasant of yore would have done the same thing - it is pan y companatico, bread and something that goes with bread - when we had the whole Serrano ham slivers of that went perfectly.

Authenticity be buggered, this is just the best thing to eat on our one night where we slob out and dine in front of the TV.

Sources of Inspiration

Cooks can get ideas from numerous sources (and sauces - so sorry, couldn't stop myself). The cooking of one's childhood; travel; books; TV programmes - the good ones (so IMHO forget anything with Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Too Fat Bikers and The Hairy Women survivor, and generally the artful Jamie Dodger - a bit woo, a bit wah, a bit wey, know what I mean? amen); meals in restaurants; seeing fine ingredients...

Two recent meals have been inspired, if that is the right word, by my shopping shortcomings: risotto is hard to make without risotto rice; and a potato gratin for three needs more than a spud each. So what was to have been turkey risotto turned into chunky turkey broth (hence lack of spuds next day); and the gratin to accompany lamb chops became savoury (basmati) rice.

The rice thing was of course not any sort of innovation, indeed it's a real standby (though the quantity we had would have required about six of the packet varieties). But it was satisfying to produce something that met our needs, was tasty, and actually looked lovely (a handful of corn kernels, another of peas, some fried onion, green pepper and a red chilli for colour).

Without blowing my own trumpet (I have neither the wind nor the flexibility) the near seamless change was because I know how to cook. One of the few sensible educational measures introduced in recent years has been funding to teach kids cookery. Again, not exactly an innovation. But it will, we can but hope, inspire a generation of home cooks rather than another wave of self-adoring chefs, and mean that the hypnotic power of the ready-meal is broken.

Not So Bare Bones

The aroma of ham stock pervades the house. A month to the day since I bought the Serrano ham from Aldi its remnants have this morning been hacked from the bone and frozen, to enrich stews and soups in months to come. In good Ba Ba Blacksheep style we got three bags full, plus the knuckle wrapped up separately.

The ham was advertised as 6.5kg, though I didn't weigh it, and cost £40. Those remains must total a good 750g, and even the main bone isn't going to waste, simmering with stock vegetables and herbs various in a pot with the capacity of a cricket club tea urn. When the stock is right - as soon as I finish this - I'll pour it through a sieve into a cold metal bowl to cool before skimming, which given there is a load of fat and skin in the makings may well account for 10 per cent of the volume. Some will go in the fridge for imminent use, some freeze for future value.

As I do whenever I see those annoying TV adverts for stupid piddly stock pots I'm tempted now to say balls to Marco Pierre White. That idea that a magic bought ingredient will make your cooking cheffily brilliant is just so wrong. Good ingredients can help, but a miniscule plastic pot of jellied goo probably doesn't qualify, and is not going to turn a thin ragout into a rich and fragrant feast. A properly - lovingly - made stock just may. Thus tomorrow's turkey risotto made with some of the ham stock has a decent chance of being really flavoursome, the meat and bones backed up by carrots, onions, garlic, bay, pepper, cassia bark, celery and thyme. 

On Friday I asked the Booth's butcher for some beef bones for another stock, and was surprised that he fished out two short bones from what may have been flat-rib, very meaty indeed. No charge - I heard someone say the other day that butchers pay to have the bones taken away, so welcome such requests. That price definitely fits the austerity remit. Again simmered (and carefully skimmed of gunk), but this time with lots of star anise and chillis along with the stock vegetables, they made the basis of a fine noodle soup (per SC damp noodles, though I notice that he had no problem downing plenty). Naturally both of these exercises took a lot longer than peeling the lid off a Knorr potlet, but it's worth it. One more chorus of balls to Mr W.