Simply (Sometimes) the Best

Given my undoubted obsession with variety, and ensuring our nutrition is tickety boo, main course dishes here accordingly tend to include quite a few different veg etc. Sometimes it's good to focus on one thing, however, to give it due respect and a chance to shine.


Last night's main course, with The Dear Leader still struggling with her jaw (a corn cob injury, weirdly) and needing softish foods I went with something from the classic repertoire - a fancy version of French onion soup (think the posh French name is Panade). It is my kind of cooking anyway, in several ways - onions are, like me, cheap. It requires slow cooking and a lot of therapeutic peeling and slicing (without tears for once), and watching carefully until it achieves that perfect mahogany shade of brown. And this version entailed opening a bottle of wine that forms part of the cooking liquid, (along with beef stock), so we had to finish off the rest. Thickened with flour (darling, nobody does that these days), then enriched with loads of grated Gruyere and a good slug of Cognac (best thing for it, I'm a (married) single malt man), it was the ideal thing for a gloomy autumn evening.


That approach, focusing on one big element, is suited to soups, though I'm a fan of the French hotel using-up-bits-of-leftover-veg option too. Recently we had an enjoyable Jerusalem artichoke soup, though that had the backing of carrots and onions, with the fine flavour of those tubers given free rein; and on Saturday a pumpkin was very much to the fore in another potage (not so fine, but TDL like it). Having mistakenly overdone the carrot purchasing we're likely to have Potage de Crecy this week too. I need to go to my favourite Asian supermarket to buy another net of their excellent and incredibly cheap garlic, to go for a Spanish sopa de ajo, using three or four heads of the stuff. All this veg may be good for us (and especially our blood apparently, as far as the garlic and onions are concerned), but it is just as well we have the heavy winter duvet on the bed. Enough said.

Old Friends

Yesterday was - whisper it gently - the sixtieth birthday of a friend from university days, now living in Texas. Yee, and indeed, ha. I ordered as a gift for him - and in spite of the company saying it took about three days to deliver the goods, they are only due to arrive at the end of the month, making it nine to get there - something rather sentimental.


That gift - he doesn't read this as far as I'm aware - comprises foods that are reminders of home, and in two cases of undergraduate times. Amazing - or not - how often food is at the forefront of memories. In that case it was Jammie Dodgers, a very seventies biscuit somehow, and the ginger biscuits he took to buying when he realised they were not my favourites, so I'd be less likely to take any when (if) offered. There's other stuff in the package, all of it the sort of foods that make dentists rich.


Some of my strongest childhood memories are likewise linked to food. Watching a cartoon while eating creamed kidneys on toast (still love them); freaking out when I found at one restaurant that the fish I had chosen from a tank was going to be killed for my meal (doesn't stop me loving fish now, though); discovering real fondue at a café while on a camping holiday in Interlaken; the gargantuan turkeys we had for at Christmas, lasting well into January and not lamented once finally finished; warm-from-the-oven real Cornish pasties on holiday there... I hope and expect that Sternest Critic will have his own versions, and that they will mostly be of stuff he will want to eat again in his later years, as I do with mine - except those stupidly huge turkeys.

The Chosen Ones

Looking at the post I wrote yesterday focussed on the threatened fiasco of Brexit, what it may mean to our food supplies, and similar woes, all the good stuff I feel about matters culinary was squeezed out. That's sad. As I hope is evident, food, cookery and all related matters actually bring me enormous pleasure. The resilience of providing some of our own food and the economy of using what we have intelligently, and what can be the joy of food, can be closely linked.

One of my food habits illustrates that. When we are at home I try every day, year round, to pick something from the garden, the (soon to be vacated) allotment, greenhouse or conservatory that we will eat that day. There is a comforting, or perhaps complacent, pleasure in choosing what to gather in. In the autumn it's very easy: fruit from our growing collection of trees; the remaining salads; crops various, and so on all need picking and using. In the winter it gets tougher, and often I'm limited to picking a herb or two - bay, sage, rosemary... But they're still fresh additions that perk up innumerable dishes. They are in their own tiny way life enhancing, and certainly flavour enhancing - sage picked seconds before going in the pot is vastly superior to the musty leaves sold in supermarkets, and I resent being asked to pay £0.75 for the privilege of using them.

Similarly one of today's culinary tasks, baking bread, fits both the careful husbandry (how apt) and the epicurean sides of my existence. It started yesterday with the preparation of a biga - the Italian version of a (very much sort of) sourdough starter, that isn't sour (unless forgetfully you leave it much more than 24 hours before using). This afternoon I'll be making dough - rather a sensual process in itself - to which a ladle of the biga will be added, and cooking it up for the evening meal, fresh, warm and scenting the whole house, with a loaf or two for the freezer as well. Sadly, as the currently absent Sternest Critic is wont to point out, I never manage a decent crusty crust, in spite of which only crumbs remain when I do have time to bake my own, which will cost a lot less than £2.50 for a Waitrose grand pain, excellent though they are (and with a good crust). And baking is far more fun than the work to which I'll now return.

Necessity, Simplicity and Invention

Returning from Anglesey yesterday to an under-stocked fridge I had to rely on the garden, what little we had left by way of supermarket veg, and the store cupboard. I enjoy such petty challenges, making something with not very much to hand. It also seems healthy, using what is in season, and enjoying (relative) simplicity.


What resulted was what we decided was a sort of Mexican bean soup. Onion, garlic and carrots as the major part, Swiss chard (I guess not very Mexican at all) stalks and leaves, and a big handful of herbs - basil, parsley, sage, tarragon and chives - plus what was the defining ingredient, a green chili picked fresh from the conservatory. It was surprisingly hot, maybe because unlike previous pickings from that plant the chili was used in seconds, rather than kept for later. Liquidised carefully to make a satisfyingly velvety bowlful, and eaten with that staple of serving suggestions, good bread, the meal only needed a bit of cheese to round things off.


Prompted by the Dear Leader, we again discussed cooking and education, this time musing that given our litigious culture it would be very difficult now to teach large groups of kids the basics of cookery, even were the schools to have the teachers required, and the facilities. Little Jimmy gets a minor burn from a hot pan and his parents see the prospect of a six figure payout. Sad. So school reports will feature media studies instead of meal-making skills.


I missed a trick with that soup, I decided today. The fridge did (and does) have a packet of cooking chorizo tucked away at the back, and still in date. Adding fried slices of that as croutons would have finished it nicely, added to the nutritional range, and been in keeping. As my own school reports so often said, must try harder.

Barra Could Do Better

The Dear Leader and I spent a few days in Barra last week. Well, we arrived Monday and left Saturday. The people were lovely, those working in our hotel very helpful and friendly. But our culinary experiences were decidedly mixed.


This is an island that sends truckloads of fish and shellfish to the mainland, and to Spain and France, just about daily, weather permitting, yet not a crab, lobster, cockle or mussel was to be seen on the menu of four different establishments. Crab being absent maybe was down to seasonality, but not so lobster or the bivalves. Like the décor in our hotel (big on brown) and the offerings of the Craigard Hotel, the one next doorish to ours, that seems to reflect a 1970s mindset. The Craigard's menu included prawn cocktail, breaded mushrooms, Scotch broth and a few other dishes entirely lacking in inspiration, straight out of the Berni Inn cookbook 1973. Like the journalists of the little missed News of the World, we made our excuses and left, happy to eat again in The Castlebay.


The Castlebay was far better (with a good beer list, hurrah), but still needing some oomph. Hats off to them for our last dinner there, huge scallops simply cooked with pancetta and served with (our addition) chips and salad. Scallops also featured at the best, brightest and most imaginative place (by far) we tried, The Café Kisimul, which serves Punjabi cuisine, with simple pasta dishes as the alternative for those who shrink from spice. Scallop pakoras were fab, and the prawn bhuna a delight. Sadly out of season it only opens Fridays and Saturdays, or we would have returned. And they played Doobie Brothers, The Doors, The Beatles and similar relaxing and enjoyable stuff, instead of the bloody loop of There Was a Soldier, a Flamin' Scottish Soldier, to be heard elsewhere. And they acknowledged the existence of colour, with blue walls and bright artwork.


Barra is out of the way, no doubt, but that probably means those who travel for pleasure there will be better off and with better educated palates than average. People who would happily pay premium prices for fresh local lobster and crab, simply presented or done with cheffy cleverness. Even frozen local crab used in crab cakes or soup would have been welcome. Walkers (even on the rainy Tuesday we got our hike in) enjoy filler-uppers, so the steak and ale pie one night and haddock and chips another were pleasant enough, and well cooked, but not the sort of fare that would make real food lovers want to return. It doesn't have to be Michelin-starred stuff (in fact, I'd rather it were not), but make the most of great local resources for goodness' sake. As an example of that unadventurous attitude, what well-run Scottish hotel bar has just three or four single malts?

Red in Tooth and Jaw

I had to apologise to Sternest Critic this week. When we were talking about making risotto he asked if red wine could be used at the start of cooking the rice, rather than the standard white. Out of prejudice rather than knowledge I said probably not. Days later I came across, by chance, a risotto recipe using red wine.


The picture accompanying that recipe was so strikingly colourful, and having some cooked beetroot (a main ingredient) to use up, I tried it, or my own version at least. The taste was good (infusing the oil for it with rosemary, sage, bay and peppercorns helped hugely), but the colour was amazing.


That beetroot was to hand as I'd made a sort of borscht the day before - The Dear Leader, clearly targeted by the GRU or CIA, strained her jaw eating corn on the cob several weeks back when we had a bunch of friends over for a mezze-type meal, so she's to avoid chewing until it's better. That too was vibrant, the trick being to simmer the raw veg various (beets, turnip, onion, the last of our summer squash) together, then when it is liquidised add a cooked beetroot. Followed by a leafy salad with tomatoes, roasted pumpkin, and avocado (guess which wasn't home grown) that was equally bright, it has been a good couple of days at the table for the eyes as well as the taste buds.


My pretend borscht wouldn't have suited one good friend of ours, who dubs beetroot 'the devil's vegetable', and dislikes soup as a concept. We could never have made a couple. Beet at a pinch I could forego; soup never. I'm not a big fan of chilled soups, maybe making them once or twice at most through the summer. But autumn, winter and spring in this household will see three or four a week served up.


Perhaps the problem with her dislike of soup, and we're back to the colour thing again, is that so often it can be murky brown, camouflage green, or vaguely red. In another post somewhere I have written about French hotel soup, delicious and economic (stock from the previous day's or days' meat leavings and bones, and veg a little past their best), something I love but which it has to be admitted is never a delight to the eyes. But it doesn't have to be that way, surely? So my tiny personal task over the next few weeks is to make Technicolour soups. First idea - avocado and green chili. We'll see.

Another Damn Glut

Quinces, apples, courgettes, beetroot, lettuce... and the latest in the line of our gluts is pumpkins. Not the ginormous ones really only good for carving at Halloween, and maybe for feeding the five thousand, but Uchiki Kuri, Turk's Turban and another whose name escapes me, though it may be Tom Thumb. The Uchiki Kuri in particular is just the right size, providing enough sunburst flesh for a dish for two to four people.

As with the other gluts, there's great pleasure to be had in making the best of the plenty while it lasts, though with pumpkins - for accuracy I should be saying 'winter squash' - they keep very well if dry and clean, lasting into the spring.

Their iron skin (especially Turk's Turban, which has all the give of a battle tank) is doubtless what keeps them from going off, but can be a hard slog to cut through to get at the good stuff inside. The cooked flesh, by way of contrast, is melting and delicate. Thus far into pumpkin season we have had pumpkin in soup, risotto, mixed roast vegetables, and tea bread with walnuts.

No repetition needed in the next few assaults on the orange stockpile, either, as I've made pumpkin curry and (an HF-W idea) pumpkin-centric salad in the past, and in the dim and distant pumpkin pie (which was delicious).

I can't help feeling virtuous when eating them, as they are chock full of fibre, beta carotene, and a spread of vitamins. But I trust that health remains a secondary, if important, consideration in my cookery. They are above all tasty. Sternest Critic, when visited at our flat in Trearddur last week, cooked us an absolutely superb mushroom and pumpkin risotto, roasting slices of an Uchiki Kuri we had taken with us, then cooking the flesh stripped from the skin down further in the rice until it was almost part of the stock, but not quite. The flavour was wonderful, and the mouthfeel very satisfying and sensuous. Healthy can be delicious.

A side-note here: much though I love mushrooms, I find their colour - that flat grey - somewhat dispiriting to look at. The pumpkin-flesh orange in that risotto, not in your face but a background to the dish, was far more pleasing. And given we're now being told to have a rainbow on our plates (will the gold at the end be a problem?) it covers the 'of' bit of the old spectrum jingle nicely.

I just counted up our resources, and there are 16 of the things left. Writing this has made me think I really need to cook another one tonight. At this time of year, and pretty much only this time, you don't need to grow your own to enjoy pumpkin. In Morrison's the other day they had bowls wood sized ones (so manageable) for, I think, £0.70p, which if they're anything like as good as ours is a bargain.

Quinces Galore

Anyone who has read a few of my posts will be aware that we grow a lot of our own food, and that the inevitable gluts that come along provide me with enjoyable challenges.

Maybe some of the gluts are not totally inevitable, with successional planting of veg etc, but big fruit trees suddenly yielding huge crops are another matter. The most interesting of these recent gluts has been the bumper harvest from a quince tree we planted about 15 years ago. Last year we got three fruits, the previous year we had a good haul, enough to give some to friends. This year is undoubtedly its biggest ever effort, with quite a few given to friends and our own diet enhanced by them.

What to do with quinces? I tend to think that membrillo is best left to the Spanish, pleasant though it is on occasion, and we don't use much jelly either. I have trawled through quite  few cookbooks for ideas, and those that appealed most have been explored, along with old favourites from harvests past.

The most accommodating in terms of using up a lot of fat fruits (they are things of beauty btw, or our variety - name long forgotten - is; there's something very Beryl Cook about their plump pear shape and blowsy yellow colouring) has been to add cubes to a lamb braise, then 20 minutes before the end of the cooking time throw in a load of slices. The cubes perfume the juices, and thicken them as they dissolve, the carefully cored slices keep their shape and yellow hue (gaining a hint of orange to be totally accurate), looking very lovely when served on a plain plate.

That dish was a big success, and I'm sure the fruit would work well with pork, ham and maybe Guinea fowl.

We've also had several variations on the theme of quince slices poached in syrup, with cinnamon, allspice, pepper, nutmeg, and coriander and fennel seeds adding weight, as have one-at-a-time  Marsala, white wine, and cider brandy. They've been stewed with apples (our variety cooks down as quickly as apples, contrary to the indications of most cookbooks) for breakfast, and even used - successfully - in a mixed vegetable stock for soup.

Again, contrary to several written sources, ours don't look like they'll store, though we have tried to keep them dry and separated. But that's part of the fun of the glut for the cook, making use of a fine ingredient while it lasts, and in many different ways so the rest of the family, while fed well with them, don't get fed up of them.