I love many things about food and drink at Christmas. For a start it's the only day of the year when we drink at breakfast - a glass of champers with our bacon butty (egg butty for the newly vegetarian Dear Leader (eternal sorrows to her enemies) this year). We eat too much on the big day, but this is balanced by making good use of leftovers for a week thereafter. We buy special foods, we cook special meals, we drink special bottles.
It's lovely, but these days a dark cloud looms even as we feast - January has become the hair shirt month. Dry January. Veganuary. There are doubtless more such in preparation, or whose existence has not filtered through to Darkest Lancashire yet.
Firstly, bollocks to Veganuary, it is not natural to need B12 supplements. And half-bollocks to dry January - we do a weekend and the surrounding weekdays either side without a tipple, New Year's Day onwards, so this year about 10 or 11 days.
These events are joyless, so I've come up with my own idea - spread the word, and mention my name in despatches: here's to Funbruary. February is probably the most depressing month of the year weather-wise, a long way into Winter, a long way from decent light again. We need something enjoyable about it, so I propose a month in which we make an effort, resources allowing, to eat chocolate every day; to ask for white toast in hotels even if the waiting staff raise their eyebrows now; food will be chosen to match the best bottles in the cellar (well, cupboard), not the other way round; we'll have friends in to enjoy those bottles of fine Port, Madeira and Sherry that we buy in for Christmas and don't get round to drinking. And we'll not feel guilty. Is that too much to ask for one month, and the shortest at that?
Postscript: having written this I googled Funbruary, and others got there first. Damn. But good on them all the same.
Thursday 26 December 2019
Tuesday 10 December 2019
Ready, Steady, Curry
While I enjoy making dishes with posh ingredients, it makes my peasant heart happy to do so with common stuff.
On the posh side, we had a simple pasta course at the weekend, just ribbed (for your pleasure, and to pick up the sauce) tubes and a small but expensive tin of black truffle slices in olive oil. Add grated Parmesan and that's it. Delicious.
On the simple side, a recent curry made with dried lentils, loads of sliced onions and garlic, a grated thumb of ginger, and a tin of coconut milk. With spices to perk it up of course. It was slurpy (the lentils cooked to dhal doneness), filling and of course cheap(-ish), and for once I got the spice balance right - a hint of heat, a lot of taste.
As so often the difference in kitchen terms between the two was time. The pasta and truffle thing took 10 minutes. The curry in all needed over an hour - 10 mins to boil the rinsed lentils, 35 more to simmer them, add to the sauteed onions and mix with the coconut milk then bubble gently away for another quarter of an hour to let the ginger, garlic and spices blend in and flavour the whole pan.
I loved both meals, but maybe because I enjoy the faffery, or possibly because the curry cost by my reckoning £2.50 (coconut milk from the Indian supermarket undercuts Messrs Sainsbury and Aldi by about 33%) it was the latter that pleased me most.
On the posh side, we had a simple pasta course at the weekend, just ribbed (for your pleasure, and to pick up the sauce) tubes and a small but expensive tin of black truffle slices in olive oil. Add grated Parmesan and that's it. Delicious.
On the simple side, a recent curry made with dried lentils, loads of sliced onions and garlic, a grated thumb of ginger, and a tin of coconut milk. With spices to perk it up of course. It was slurpy (the lentils cooked to dhal doneness), filling and of course cheap(-ish), and for once I got the spice balance right - a hint of heat, a lot of taste.
As so often the difference in kitchen terms between the two was time. The pasta and truffle thing took 10 minutes. The curry in all needed over an hour - 10 mins to boil the rinsed lentils, 35 more to simmer them, add to the sauteed onions and mix with the coconut milk then bubble gently away for another quarter of an hour to let the ginger, garlic and spices blend in and flavour the whole pan.
I loved both meals, but maybe because I enjoy the faffery, or possibly because the curry cost by my reckoning £2.50 (coconut milk from the Indian supermarket undercuts Messrs Sainsbury and Aldi by about 33%) it was the latter that pleased me most.
Wednesday 27 November 2019
Food Bank Bankers
Every month I do a shopping run for our local food bank, two in December, August and July when the need is apparently at its greatest. I feel more involved actually buying three or four bags of shopping (at Aldi - not mean, I do half of our own shopping there, the core bits) and taking them in, rather than just giving a few quid. A load of thoughts pass through my tiny mind as I'm doing this - why in a world of billionaires such things need to exist; how it must feel to be a parent forced to resort to such support; what people would like to see, or need, in their lifeline bag of groceries.
As someone obsessed by food I reflect on the culinary aspects of this too, and what will stretch through the week. Thus I always buy some 500g bags of rice, and of penne, along with tinned toms or sauces that will help form the basis of several meals. I hope it's not too condescending that I worry some people needing these goods may prefer the canned stuff I include, as it can be cooked in seconds - just warmed through - or even eaten as it comes if they've been cut off, or have no working cooking facilities; and that some may not have the culinary knowledge to cook pasta so it's palatable, as successive governments have reduced cookery teaching to next to nothing in our schools, and fast food culture has done its worst too.
Monday's run included some pudding stuff - rice pudding, custard, tins of fruit - as food should be about lifting the spirits too, and a sweet treat is great at that. In case anyone is thinking ill of me, I don't do this for any feelings of innate superiority, or that it makes me feel good. It actually doesn't. Softie that I am, after every run I feel down that such places and services are necessary. But that's no reason to stop trying to help, even if it's only a tiny bit. Atheist that I am, I commend the Salvation Army to anyone reading this, and hope if you have the means you will make the occasional food bank donation to them, or their equivalents.
Tuesday 26 November 2019
Super Stock
I love making stock so much that it's probably the most enjoyable part of cooking a chicken. It's cheap, delicious, can be altered in a thousand ways so it's never dull, and is the basis of innumerable great dishes.
With the carcass of a roast chicken to use up last week it actually fell to the Dear Leader (may her detractors shrivel like salted slugs) to start the stock off, a rare foray into the kitchen other than in an advisory capacity. To the carrots, onions, ginger and bay leaves she had incorporated I added a few rather tired but usable sticks of celery, a head of our own garlic, one of the few left from a disappointing season, and a load of spices - black cardamom pods, red and black peppercorns, some coriander seed, a star anise, some allspice berries... The more flavour you put in, the more you get out.
Once the initial albumen scum has been cleared from the surface, watching it give occasional little blips is a therapeutic exercise, repeated over a good two and a half hours as the liquid simmers ever so gently to maximise the flavour without clouding up. The aroma wafting up through the house is another mood lifter. And of course the end product is life-enhancing - tasty, complex, savoury, like a good wine but without the after-effects. As soon as the cooking is over I like to strain the liquid off the veg and bones, as left to cool on them it can develop some stale undertones.
As you'd expect with an ingredients list like that, the first use I made of the finished article was in a Chinese dish, a mushroom and vegetable-rich noodle soup-cum-stew into which, inauthentically, we stirred spoonfuls of the Mexican-inspired chili sauce made by Sternest Critic to preserve our bumper chili crop remains. A good soup needs a very good stock - I recall (probably not for the first time, my apologies) Chris Johnson, then owner of The Village Restaurant in Ramsbottom, being very upset that having paid £20 (and this in the early Nineties) for a bowl of soup in an extremely famous French restaurant owned by an extremely famous French chef, the stock was watery and boring. It spoiled what should have been - if critics were to be believed - the meal of a lifetime.
No such problem with our bowl of Chinese-y goodness. It was warmly spicy, onion sweet, and deep in colour and flavour. Satisfying to the palate, soothing on the stomach, and warming for the soul - and for pennies.
With the carcass of a roast chicken to use up last week it actually fell to the Dear Leader (may her detractors shrivel like salted slugs) to start the stock off, a rare foray into the kitchen other than in an advisory capacity. To the carrots, onions, ginger and bay leaves she had incorporated I added a few rather tired but usable sticks of celery, a head of our own garlic, one of the few left from a disappointing season, and a load of spices - black cardamom pods, red and black peppercorns, some coriander seed, a star anise, some allspice berries... The more flavour you put in, the more you get out.
Once the initial albumen scum has been cleared from the surface, watching it give occasional little blips is a therapeutic exercise, repeated over a good two and a half hours as the liquid simmers ever so gently to maximise the flavour without clouding up. The aroma wafting up through the house is another mood lifter. And of course the end product is life-enhancing - tasty, complex, savoury, like a good wine but without the after-effects. As soon as the cooking is over I like to strain the liquid off the veg and bones, as left to cool on them it can develop some stale undertones.
As you'd expect with an ingredients list like that, the first use I made of the finished article was in a Chinese dish, a mushroom and vegetable-rich noodle soup-cum-stew into which, inauthentically, we stirred spoonfuls of the Mexican-inspired chili sauce made by Sternest Critic to preserve our bumper chili crop remains. A good soup needs a very good stock - I recall (probably not for the first time, my apologies) Chris Johnson, then owner of The Village Restaurant in Ramsbottom, being very upset that having paid £20 (and this in the early Nineties) for a bowl of soup in an extremely famous French restaurant owned by an extremely famous French chef, the stock was watery and boring. It spoiled what should have been - if critics were to be believed - the meal of a lifetime.
No such problem with our bowl of Chinese-y goodness. It was warmly spicy, onion sweet, and deep in colour and flavour. Satisfying to the palate, soothing on the stomach, and warming for the soul - and for pennies.
Thursday 14 November 2019
The Fixings
Strange, or maybe not, how 'the fixings' are so often the elements of a special meal that stand out. It's a cliche, but people at Christmas are wont to say if asked to choose between the meats and the accompaniments it's the gravy, bread sauce and stuffing that they'd prefer. Maybe that's because we're too lazy or busy to do them as frequently as we'd like. I swear blind every December 25th that I will make bread sauce more often, and here we are in mid-November and I haven't made any since that date. With The Dear Leader (tremble before her power) now 98.75% vegetarian I must make some veggie-friendly stuffing with bread sauce as a Sunday special, maybe with onion gravy, something we enjoyed last night and that I do cook several times a year. The urban peasant side of me relishes the thought that such a spread is very cheap, too.
Any excuse for onion gravy. Having come across two recipes for celeriac 'steaks' in the past week I decided to give the idea a go myself, but with the twist of aiming for (pretend) steak and (real) onions, a childhood favourite.
One of said recipes boiled thick slices of celeriac for 20 minutes before frying them in butter to finish, the other roasted them, so as I had the oven on to bake bread (I'll make someone a lovely wife) I opted for the latter route, coating the 10mm-thick slices in olive oil and a dusting of smoked paprika before sliding them in with the bread. They cooked at 190C, turned once, for about 30 minutes, till starting to show charring at the edges.
The celeriac was pleasant, strangely enough still tasting of celeriac rather than braising steak, though the texture was not far off, but the onion gravy with which they were covered on the plate - a load of red onions sweated, reduced and slightly caramelised for 45 minutes - was the star of the show. Some tawny port added sweetness, plain flour thickened things, half a tsp of Marmite gave it umami depth (stop showing off, Kyle), and a knob of butter added gloss at the end.
Heston B would doubtless wish to add a vanilla pod, eyebrow trimmings and donkey cheese to give it a lift (and justify charging the price of a high-end bicycle for a jar). He'd be wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix the fixing.
Any excuse for onion gravy. Having come across two recipes for celeriac 'steaks' in the past week I decided to give the idea a go myself, but with the twist of aiming for (pretend) steak and (real) onions, a childhood favourite.
One of said recipes boiled thick slices of celeriac for 20 minutes before frying them in butter to finish, the other roasted them, so as I had the oven on to bake bread (I'll make someone a lovely wife) I opted for the latter route, coating the 10mm-thick slices in olive oil and a dusting of smoked paprika before sliding them in with the bread. They cooked at 190C, turned once, for about 30 minutes, till starting to show charring at the edges.
The celeriac was pleasant, strangely enough still tasting of celeriac rather than braising steak, though the texture was not far off, but the onion gravy with which they were covered on the plate - a load of red onions sweated, reduced and slightly caramelised for 45 minutes - was the star of the show. Some tawny port added sweetness, plain flour thickened things, half a tsp of Marmite gave it umami depth (stop showing off, Kyle), and a knob of butter added gloss at the end.
Heston B would doubtless wish to add a vanilla pod, eyebrow trimmings and donkey cheese to give it a lift (and justify charging the price of a high-end bicycle for a jar). He'd be wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix the fixing.
Wednesday 13 November 2019
Gratifyingly Good Gratin
Nigel Slater is a cookery writer I find both helpful and annoying. His prissy style gets right up my nose, but he has some excellent ideas. Reading his recipe for baked onions with miso nudged me to make something with onions prepared in the same way - boiled for 40 minutes till soft (he said 25 - 30). My version then diverted from his entirely. Halved across the equator the onions were placed cut side up in a gratin dish, moistened with a dash or six of vermouth, then covered with a heavily peppered gruyere-and-brown-breadcrumb mix, dotted with butter, and baked in a 190C oven for 25 minutes or so (until the top crisped and browned). Does anything smell more appetising than cooking cheese and onions?
The Dear Leader (eternal damnation to those who oppose her) and Sternest Critic both approved, though both later blamed the need to extinguish naked flames in the house on the alliums.
The gratin is one of those culinary joys that seem to have been pushed aside as old fashioned - 'so eighties darling [bro?].' As someone who is a dedicated follower of anti-fashion I prefer, greedily, to keep it in my ever-expanding kitchen vocabulary. Perhaps restaurants avoid them as needing too much checking on, and for the time it takes, though as with the example above you can often pre-cook the vegetables and just need to slide the dish in a hot oven to finish.
It is also a great way of making something substantial that costs very little - especially economic if the oven is used for something else as the same time (the onion gratin was followed by a fish pie of modest size). Some years ago I wrote a paid piece for a culinary website where a cheesy potato gratin was one of (I think) four dishes to feed a family, each with ingredients costing under £2. No cream in that one then, but a stock cube, some dried herbs and a couple of cloves of garlic make a decent moistening, an alternative to milk, and supermarket cheddar browns as nicely as posher gruyere. You can save on pre-cooking too if, like in one cooked last week by Sternest Critic, you slice the spuds and onions to see-through thickness.
That use of vermouth, by the way, is something I'd recommend. I sometimes buy a cheapo bottle just for used in cooking - it gives a herby flavour, keeps better than wine, and makes you feel somehow more generous - as I only had some rather high end Dollin to hand, doubly so then. And its pairing with gin is as sublime as cheese with onions.
The Dear Leader (eternal damnation to those who oppose her) and Sternest Critic both approved, though both later blamed the need to extinguish naked flames in the house on the alliums.
The gratin is one of those culinary joys that seem to have been pushed aside as old fashioned - 'so eighties darling [bro?].' As someone who is a dedicated follower of anti-fashion I prefer, greedily, to keep it in my ever-expanding kitchen vocabulary. Perhaps restaurants avoid them as needing too much checking on, and for the time it takes, though as with the example above you can often pre-cook the vegetables and just need to slide the dish in a hot oven to finish.
It is also a great way of making something substantial that costs very little - especially economic if the oven is used for something else as the same time (the onion gratin was followed by a fish pie of modest size). Some years ago I wrote a paid piece for a culinary website where a cheesy potato gratin was one of (I think) four dishes to feed a family, each with ingredients costing under £2. No cream in that one then, but a stock cube, some dried herbs and a couple of cloves of garlic make a decent moistening, an alternative to milk, and supermarket cheddar browns as nicely as posher gruyere. You can save on pre-cooking too if, like in one cooked last week by Sternest Critic, you slice the spuds and onions to see-through thickness.
That use of vermouth, by the way, is something I'd recommend. I sometimes buy a cheapo bottle just for used in cooking - it gives a herby flavour, keeps better than wine, and makes you feel somehow more generous - as I only had some rather high end Dollin to hand, doubly so then. And its pairing with gin is as sublime as cheese with onions.
Monday 21 October 2019
Simplicity Itself
A year or so back The Dear Leader (cursed be her detractors) bought me a vegan cookbook. It was written by the chef who catered for a week-long event she attended. Interested though I may be in the topic, I have not cooked a single thing from it, as just about every recipe requires 20+ ingredients, several of which I've never heard of. I prefer to keep things simple.
Take a dish we ate yesterday: pasta with unpasteurised butter and a load of grated Parmesan. Ready in about 10 minutes, and delicious. We love pasta putanesca too - crushed garlic and chopped chili warmed in oil, with plenty of salt. Another 10-minute wonder. Given we have a healthy crop of chilies this year, we'll be revisiting that plenty of times.
Simple does not have to be quick, of course. I am writing this while waiting for some bread dough to finish rising for the second time. That was made with flour, water, yeast and salt, basic ingredients, but it takes time and patience and a bit of experience to avoid disaster.
As I've written before, it's sad that a life-skill as important as cooking isn't included in the education of many (all) our kids in the UK. It would take just a few lessons a year to teach them some building-block recipes. How to make a soup from scratch; pancakes, great for a quick pud, but the basis of some fine savoury dishes too; a simple tomato sauce for pasta, and the proper way to cook the pasta itself; maybe how to cook (without buying the sauce) a potato and veg curry; how to make an ordinary vinaigrette dressing for salad...
Simplicity itself, and satisfying to the soul and the stomach. Not to mention the benefit to the national purse of reducing what appears to be our growing reliance on unhealthy takeaways and ready meals, so saving the NHS billions from their long-term effects.
Take a dish we ate yesterday: pasta with unpasteurised butter and a load of grated Parmesan. Ready in about 10 minutes, and delicious. We love pasta putanesca too - crushed garlic and chopped chili warmed in oil, with plenty of salt. Another 10-minute wonder. Given we have a healthy crop of chilies this year, we'll be revisiting that plenty of times.
Simple does not have to be quick, of course. I am writing this while waiting for some bread dough to finish rising for the second time. That was made with flour, water, yeast and salt, basic ingredients, but it takes time and patience and a bit of experience to avoid disaster.
As I've written before, it's sad that a life-skill as important as cooking isn't included in the education of many (all) our kids in the UK. It would take just a few lessons a year to teach them some building-block recipes. How to make a soup from scratch; pancakes, great for a quick pud, but the basis of some fine savoury dishes too; a simple tomato sauce for pasta, and the proper way to cook the pasta itself; maybe how to cook (without buying the sauce) a potato and veg curry; how to make an ordinary vinaigrette dressing for salad...
Simplicity itself, and satisfying to the soul and the stomach. Not to mention the benefit to the national purse of reducing what appears to be our growing reliance on unhealthy takeaways and ready meals, so saving the NHS billions from their long-term effects.
Wednesday 16 October 2019
Not Vegetarian Exactly
Since The Dear Leader (may those who oppose her crumble into dust) became 98.75% vegetarian I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of cooking what I hope is interesting food that fits the bill. Given the alternative was banishment to the ice planet Hoth, that's good.
Our regular 600 kcals Monday is a reminder of the bang you get for your vegetable (and fruit) buck. One dish in the evening was a real winner, roast butternut squash with orange segments and thinly sliced onions, served as a warm salad with the orange juice and two teaspoons of olive oil as a dressing. It will appear again on a non-fast day.
I often now envy what TDL gets served as a vegetarian when we are out and about: last weekend at Higham Hall the food I had was well cooked but frankly rather dull - basically meat and gravy, two veg, spuds; on the Saturday she had a nut roast that smelled wonderful, receiving the thumbs up from the supreme ruler. This evening she is at an event in Manchester complete with full fig dinner, and I'm fascinated to find out what they will give her, partly because it's often so much more imaginative than the corporate rubber chicken or overdone beef; partly because I am happy to nick good ideas for the future.
That said, Sternest Critic and I will be having a very blokey blowout tonight - well-matured Aberdeen Angus ribeye; mushrooms; corn on the cob; peas; tomatoes; and an avocado as a starter. I don't want to give up the pleasure, and the health benefits (B12 fix, zinc, etc), of occasional carnivorous indulgence. But it will be noted that where once we'd also have been enjoying sausage, kidneys and a chop with our steak as a mixed grill male meal the bulk of what we're getting outside tonight is vegetable - and if you're picky about toms and avos, fruit. And grain for the corn. And fungi for the 'shrooms. It isn't meat anyway.
Our regular 600 kcals Monday is a reminder of the bang you get for your vegetable (and fruit) buck. One dish in the evening was a real winner, roast butternut squash with orange segments and thinly sliced onions, served as a warm salad with the orange juice and two teaspoons of olive oil as a dressing. It will appear again on a non-fast day.
I often now envy what TDL gets served as a vegetarian when we are out and about: last weekend at Higham Hall the food I had was well cooked but frankly rather dull - basically meat and gravy, two veg, spuds; on the Saturday she had a nut roast that smelled wonderful, receiving the thumbs up from the supreme ruler. This evening she is at an event in Manchester complete with full fig dinner, and I'm fascinated to find out what they will give her, partly because it's often so much more imaginative than the corporate rubber chicken or overdone beef; partly because I am happy to nick good ideas for the future.
That said, Sternest Critic and I will be having a very blokey blowout tonight - well-matured Aberdeen Angus ribeye; mushrooms; corn on the cob; peas; tomatoes; and an avocado as a starter. I don't want to give up the pleasure, and the health benefits (B12 fix, zinc, etc), of occasional carnivorous indulgence. But it will be noted that where once we'd also have been enjoying sausage, kidneys and a chop with our steak as a mixed grill male meal the bulk of what we're getting outside tonight is vegetable - and if you're picky about toms and avos, fruit. And grain for the corn. And fungi for the 'shrooms. It isn't meat anyway.
Tuesday 15 October 2019
Exotic Preston
OK, so Preston is not exotic. But in our Preston garden (and greenhouses) we are growing things that some in the UK would consider exotic. We do this for the sheer fun of it, the challenge without danger, and the pleasure of eating, fresh, things that normally come from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
This morning we ate the first of our Physalis/Cape Gooseberry) 'crop.' We had one each in our morning bowl of fresh fruit. One. Like the dolts who win the lottery and change nothing, we are not going to let it affect our lifestyle. Doing this (not just the Physalis, but the other exotics we grow) clearly is not in any way economically viable (that plant cost quite a bit), though by (minutely) reducing our carbon footprint it may be environmentally so. But even with just one apiece it was worth it in taste terms - they were sharper, 'fruitier,' simply better than what we buy from the supermarket.
The same thing most definitely applies to the lemons we grow. Though this year it was lemon, singular. Used in G&Ts it was zingier, several steps up the citric ladder. A friend and neighbour has been doing this for longer, and her harvest is a good bagful of fruits every year, so we hope our tree will become more productive in the not too distant.
It has to be acknowledged that some of the fun of growing such things is the showing off. So I'm going to do a bit (more) of that now by listing a few: we will shortly be harvesting a few tomatillos; the next flush of Physalis will be ready in a week or thereabouts; though this year we have had no fruits, we have had limes and apricots in the past, and the trees are looking healthy; we had one delicious fig a month back. If chilies count as exotic (and they probably don't) then we can add them to the list - this year, starting from seed, we have grown a dozen plants or so and harvested scores already (some dried for later, some eaten fresh) with hundreds to come. They're the exception to the economic viability rule, a £1 pack of seeds yielding several pounds-worth of fruits. But they also demonstrate the culinary advantages of this activity - we have purple, red, yellow and green ones; some are fruity and mild; some hot as Hades; and some have rather thicker flesh than anything in the supermarket packets, tempting you to damn the burn and just eat them like fruits.
Ever the optimists we have other projects on the go: Morels and truffles (though they may never appear) in two spots of the garden; two Szechuan pepper plants looking very healthy indeed; and our Kiwis. Ah, our Kiwis. One vine is about 12 feet high, has been established for maybe eight or nine years, looks great, and has never yet produced a fruit. It was sold as self-fertile, but clearly isn't, so we've now bought two others (belt and braces) of different types in the hope that one day... Ever the optimists indeed.
This morning we ate the first of our Physalis/Cape Gooseberry) 'crop.' We had one each in our morning bowl of fresh fruit. One. Like the dolts who win the lottery and change nothing, we are not going to let it affect our lifestyle. Doing this (not just the Physalis, but the other exotics we grow) clearly is not in any way economically viable (that plant cost quite a bit), though by (minutely) reducing our carbon footprint it may be environmentally so. But even with just one apiece it was worth it in taste terms - they were sharper, 'fruitier,' simply better than what we buy from the supermarket.
The same thing most definitely applies to the lemons we grow. Though this year it was lemon, singular. Used in G&Ts it was zingier, several steps up the citric ladder. A friend and neighbour has been doing this for longer, and her harvest is a good bagful of fruits every year, so we hope our tree will become more productive in the not too distant.
It has to be acknowledged that some of the fun of growing such things is the showing off. So I'm going to do a bit (more) of that now by listing a few: we will shortly be harvesting a few tomatillos; the next flush of Physalis will be ready in a week or thereabouts; though this year we have had no fruits, we have had limes and apricots in the past, and the trees are looking healthy; we had one delicious fig a month back. If chilies count as exotic (and they probably don't) then we can add them to the list - this year, starting from seed, we have grown a dozen plants or so and harvested scores already (some dried for later, some eaten fresh) with hundreds to come. They're the exception to the economic viability rule, a £1 pack of seeds yielding several pounds-worth of fruits. But they also demonstrate the culinary advantages of this activity - we have purple, red, yellow and green ones; some are fruity and mild; some hot as Hades; and some have rather thicker flesh than anything in the supermarket packets, tempting you to damn the burn and just eat them like fruits.
Ever the optimists we have other projects on the go: Morels and truffles (though they may never appear) in two spots of the garden; two Szechuan pepper plants looking very healthy indeed; and our Kiwis. Ah, our Kiwis. One vine is about 12 feet high, has been established for maybe eight or nine years, looks great, and has never yet produced a fruit. It was sold as self-fertile, but clearly isn't, so we've now bought two others (belt and braces) of different types in the hope that one day... Ever the optimists indeed.
Monday 14 October 2019
Wild, Go Wild, Go Wild Mushrooming in the Country - and at Higham Hall
The Dear Leader (may her enemies dissolve into the earth) and I just spent a very pleasant weekend at (and around) Higham Hall in the Lakes. For years we've been saying we'd like to know more about the fungi we see on our walks, and finally got around to doing something about it with an introductory course on the topic.
Knowledge of both what and where is clearly vital with this, and course leader Paul had both. He took us to three sites in all, where - with care being taken to be environmentally friendly about the gathering - we picked a surprisingly wide range of fungi, edible and otherwise (though I do like the proverb that all mushrooms are edible, but some only once...). We learned how to identify the genus, and from that to refer to textbooks and identify precisely which fungi we'd found. It was a treasure hunt and a field trip. Given we picked and later identified examples of several fungi that could potentially kill anyone eating them, it was a stark reminder of how dangerous a field (and forest!) this can be.
On the Saturday evening we tasted four of the best edible fungi found that day, suitably prepared by the Hall's cook, and very enjoyable they were too: best for me the chanterelles; then the shaggy inkcap (before it had chance to turn unpleasant), the hedgehog fungus, and a poor last some chunks of puffball.
In future I'll be confident of identifying the chanterelle in particular, if we come across them (and we will be looking), having had the chance to compare it with the species with which it could most easily be confused (the false chanterelle - and that at worst would cause a bit of tummy upset, and learning what nasty others could be taken for it), and to cook and eat them. Probably the hedgehog and the shaggy inkcap too - I wouldn't bother with the puffball again on culinary grounds. If you have not both been on such a course and got the right books to hand, you should not even think of trying to do the same. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SOMETHING TO JUST 'GIVE A GO'!!!
Knowledge of both what and where is clearly vital with this, and course leader Paul had both. He took us to three sites in all, where - with care being taken to be environmentally friendly about the gathering - we picked a surprisingly wide range of fungi, edible and otherwise (though I do like the proverb that all mushrooms are edible, but some only once...). We learned how to identify the genus, and from that to refer to textbooks and identify precisely which fungi we'd found. It was a treasure hunt and a field trip. Given we picked and later identified examples of several fungi that could potentially kill anyone eating them, it was a stark reminder of how dangerous a field (and forest!) this can be.
On the Saturday evening we tasted four of the best edible fungi found that day, suitably prepared by the Hall's cook, and very enjoyable they were too: best for me the chanterelles; then the shaggy inkcap (before it had chance to turn unpleasant), the hedgehog fungus, and a poor last some chunks of puffball.
In future I'll be confident of identifying the chanterelle in particular, if we come across them (and we will be looking), having had the chance to compare it with the species with which it could most easily be confused (the false chanterelle - and that at worst would cause a bit of tummy upset, and learning what nasty others could be taken for it), and to cook and eat them. Probably the hedgehog and the shaggy inkcap too - I wouldn't bother with the puffball again on culinary grounds. If you have not both been on such a course and got the right books to hand, you should not even think of trying to do the same. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SOMETHING TO JUST 'GIVE A GO'!!!
Friday 4 October 2019
Jamie Oliver Has Good Idea Shock
There are some TV chefs (cooks is a more accurate word for most) I actually like - HF-W, for one. There are others - Nigella 'another bucket of cream please' Lawson, and Jamie 'fry it pukka fella' Oliver - I cannot abide. Strange then that reading a recent JO recipe gave me a headstart on what proved to be an excellent dish.
Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).
Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.
Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?
Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).
Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.
Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?
Friday 27 September 2019
Real Fast Food - Without Drama
Last night, because we're having some work done in the kitchen, and The Dear Leader (all hail The Dear Leader) got back from a work trip late on, I decided to make a rare foray to the local Indian (actually Bangladeshi) takeaway. The curries are good, you can watch them being cooked, but given the walk there and back (I refuse to have anything to do with Just Eat etc) and their cooking time, it was not fast food. Enjoyable, but not quick - from decision to eating a good 30 minutes. And two curries, one rice, one naan cost £16.
Compare that with a recent meal praised by The Dear Leader (may her enemies shrivel in shame) when again she returned late-ish, and I made a rapid (and filling) noodle dish. It took perhaps 15 minutes, the various veg prepped while the noodles were simmered prior to joining the stir fry. Using a load of the fresh ginger we both love, lots of different fresh vegetables (and one tinned), and some mushrooms, two platefuls cost at most £3 (the tinned bamboo shoots accounting for £1 of that).
I worry that with the inexorable rise of Just Eat and its rivals even something as basic as a stir fry will seem onerous to some families. Add to that the trend for cooking to be seen as drama, or even a spectator sport (the rise of the celebrity chef, Masterchef, GBBO and so on) rather than a basic life skill, and the concern deepens. I'm delighted that Sternest Critic has developed (inherited?) a love of cooking, and curiosity about new ingredients and dishes. It will serve him well, and save him a fortune.
Compare that with a recent meal praised by The Dear Leader (may her enemies shrivel in shame) when again she returned late-ish, and I made a rapid (and filling) noodle dish. It took perhaps 15 minutes, the various veg prepped while the noodles were simmered prior to joining the stir fry. Using a load of the fresh ginger we both love, lots of different fresh vegetables (and one tinned), and some mushrooms, two platefuls cost at most £3 (the tinned bamboo shoots accounting for £1 of that).
I worry that with the inexorable rise of Just Eat and its rivals even something as basic as a stir fry will seem onerous to some families. Add to that the trend for cooking to be seen as drama, or even a spectator sport (the rise of the celebrity chef, Masterchef, GBBO and so on) rather than a basic life skill, and the concern deepens. I'm delighted that Sternest Critic has developed (inherited?) a love of cooking, and curiosity about new ingredients and dishes. It will serve him well, and save him a fortune.
Tuesday 10 September 2019
The Feelgood Factor
There is something strangely addictive about rubbish food. Since changing careers I've spent less time driving around the country (and the continent), and eat far less manufactured pappy crappy food. In fact our diet is extremely healthy. Yet still I can be tempted by what I know in advance will be, say, a tasteless and hugely over-priced sausage roll (I ate one at lunchtime yesterday on what proved to be a painfully long car journey).
For a minute, however, it's enjoyable. Same with chocolate and sweets. But the sugar or salt or fat rush is inevitably followed by a down. A down that I know is coming.
By way of contrast, the fruit- and vegetable-rich regime we enjoy - and enjoy is the word - normally does not give that very brief intense high, but makes me feel good through the day. It's even more noticeable the morning after on the rare occasions when I'm too tired to cook, and so buy us a takeaway. Next day I feel hungover, regardless of whether I had anything to drink with the meal or no. Too much salt, too much saturated fat, and heavens know what additives and preservatives.
I'm reminded of something I read years ago about a simple test that predicted a child's future success: put a sweet on the table in front of them, and say they can eat it now, or if they leave it for five minutes you'll give them another so they can scoff two. Bright kids (who followed up later in life had bright futures) waited. But too many of us can't control our impulses, and our need for instant gratification. People still smoke, knowing how bad it is for them. I still enjoy a drink - at a level that even ten years ago would have been thought abstemious, but that now is more than doctors recommend (I read recently that just seven units a week is considered alcohol abuse by some health professionals now).
Maybe it is growing maturity - about time some may say - but my drift is towards the longer-term feelgood factor. One major problem remains - jelly sweets. I have asked The Dear Leader to keep me away from them, and them from me. But I will miss them.
For a minute, however, it's enjoyable. Same with chocolate and sweets. But the sugar or salt or fat rush is inevitably followed by a down. A down that I know is coming.
By way of contrast, the fruit- and vegetable-rich regime we enjoy - and enjoy is the word - normally does not give that very brief intense high, but makes me feel good through the day. It's even more noticeable the morning after on the rare occasions when I'm too tired to cook, and so buy us a takeaway. Next day I feel hungover, regardless of whether I had anything to drink with the meal or no. Too much salt, too much saturated fat, and heavens know what additives and preservatives.
I'm reminded of something I read years ago about a simple test that predicted a child's future success: put a sweet on the table in front of them, and say they can eat it now, or if they leave it for five minutes you'll give them another so they can scoff two. Bright kids (who followed up later in life had bright futures) waited. But too many of us can't control our impulses, and our need for instant gratification. People still smoke, knowing how bad it is for them. I still enjoy a drink - at a level that even ten years ago would have been thought abstemious, but that now is more than doctors recommend (I read recently that just seven units a week is considered alcohol abuse by some health professionals now).
Maybe it is growing maturity - about time some may say - but my drift is towards the longer-term feelgood factor. One major problem remains - jelly sweets. I have asked The Dear Leader to keep me away from them, and them from me. But I will miss them.
Wednesday 4 September 2019
The Charm of Culinary Chance
I wish I had invented the term 'clean eating.' Since The Dear Leader (may her enemies be forever cursed) and I became an item in the late 1830s I've been doing what I'd term cooking from scratch - buying, or increasingly now growing - good ingredients, and making them into what I always hope will be successful meals. And unlike those zealots who communicate clean eating's precepts as a near fascist ideology, I love food.
Say it though I shouldn't, over more than three decades I've developed some skill. But it is one of the many charms of such cooking that things can go wrong, to varying degrees, or if you're lucky, they go very very right. Different atmospheric conditions; the age of ingredients; slight variations in measurement; the power reaching the oven...
Last weekend I made some bread, using my patent recipe, an amalgam of HF-W's magic bread dough and Ursula Ferrigno's biga starter/enhancer. It is consistently good, but for some reason - our new oven perhaps - this time the three loaves came out crustier and lighter and tastier. Same yeast, same flours, different result. Sternest Critic often takes me to task about my inability to bake crusty bread. This came out crusty, remained crusty, even defrosted crusty. SC is currently 2000 miles away, so presenting him with the evidence was impractical. I was so proud I gave one of the three to a friend eating with us that evening.
Last year I was obsessed with making gnocchi and similar creations. The first effort, a dough rich in ricotta, was stunningly good, little pillows of deliciousness, so good I tried to repeat the exercise a few days later when a friend (by coincidence the same one) was with us. Same ingredients, same recipe, same method, but the gnocchi were that bit tougher and denser. Tasty, but not as fine. A third effort months later was in-between.
I celebrate such unpredictability. Naturally I'd prefer it to be degrees of wonderfulness, but I don't want production line soulless regularity. As I write a batch of dough is rising in the warm conservatory. The bread it will produce later today will almost certainly not be as crusty as the previous stuff. But maybe it will be richer; or with larger bubbles; or somehow more savoury. As long as the results are not downright bad, I'll be content, and if they are excellent I'll be delighted.
Say it though I shouldn't, over more than three decades I've developed some skill. But it is one of the many charms of such cooking that things can go wrong, to varying degrees, or if you're lucky, they go very very right. Different atmospheric conditions; the age of ingredients; slight variations in measurement; the power reaching the oven...
Last weekend I made some bread, using my patent recipe, an amalgam of HF-W's magic bread dough and Ursula Ferrigno's biga starter/enhancer. It is consistently good, but for some reason - our new oven perhaps - this time the three loaves came out crustier and lighter and tastier. Same yeast, same flours, different result. Sternest Critic often takes me to task about my inability to bake crusty bread. This came out crusty, remained crusty, even defrosted crusty. SC is currently 2000 miles away, so presenting him with the evidence was impractical. I was so proud I gave one of the three to a friend eating with us that evening.
Last year I was obsessed with making gnocchi and similar creations. The first effort, a dough rich in ricotta, was stunningly good, little pillows of deliciousness, so good I tried to repeat the exercise a few days later when a friend (by coincidence the same one) was with us. Same ingredients, same recipe, same method, but the gnocchi were that bit tougher and denser. Tasty, but not as fine. A third effort months later was in-between.
I celebrate such unpredictability. Naturally I'd prefer it to be degrees of wonderfulness, but I don't want production line soulless regularity. As I write a batch of dough is rising in the warm conservatory. The bread it will produce later today will almost certainly not be as crusty as the previous stuff. But maybe it will be richer; or with larger bubbles; or somehow more savoury. As long as the results are not downright bad, I'll be content, and if they are excellent I'll be delighted.
Monday 2 September 2019
The Opposite of Glut
I've written here before about how the kitchen gardener copes with gluts. Last year one of those, for us at least, was quinces, used with apples in pies and breakfast purees, added to lamb stews, poached in sweetened wine, baked... But sometimes the opposite happens, with a crop failing, as indeed is the case in 2019 with.. quinces.
Our tree had a few small fruits visible in early summer, but one by one they've dropped off, or more accurately been washed off by the heavy and all too frequent showers of August, or been blown away by this summer's equally prevalent gales.
It's not disastrous, as quince is hardly an essential in the kitchen. But one of our major reasons for kitchen gardening is growing things that are either absent from the shops, or rarely seen and very expensive. Things that improve our quality of life; fruits and vegetables that make cooking and eating a pleasure.
My apologies for widening this out, but our agriculture is fragile: weather extremes happen all too often; industrial farming is weakening the soil; the B word threatens to hit the sector from all sides. The British Retail Consortium just said Michael Gove's statement that Brexit would not bring any fresh food shortages was categorically wrong. We may find that the opposite of glut is not just a gardener's problem soon.
Our tree had a few small fruits visible in early summer, but one by one they've dropped off, or more accurately been washed off by the heavy and all too frequent showers of August, or been blown away by this summer's equally prevalent gales.
It's not disastrous, as quince is hardly an essential in the kitchen. But one of our major reasons for kitchen gardening is growing things that are either absent from the shops, or rarely seen and very expensive. Things that improve our quality of life; fruits and vegetables that make cooking and eating a pleasure.
My apologies for widening this out, but our agriculture is fragile: weather extremes happen all too often; industrial farming is weakening the soil; the B word threatens to hit the sector from all sides. The British Retail Consortium just said Michael Gove's statement that Brexit would not bring any fresh food shortages was categorically wrong. We may find that the opposite of glut is not just a gardener's problem soon.
Wednesday 14 August 2019
Sooo Beige
Somewhere in this blog there's a post about grey/gray food, and how that colour is thoroughly unappetising. Last weekend I cooked a curry that was the epitome of beige, and it had the same result in terms of appeal to the eyes.
Once beige gets control, like corrupt politicians, it's extremely hard to dislodge. This was, oxymoronically, a beige black hole, the taupe singularity at its heart drawing in and destroying all other colours. I added jade frozen peas to try to brighten the thing, and seconds later they'd lost their sheen and were more brown than green. Basil and coriander went in at the last second, but they too succumbed.
Strangely the root cause of the beige was bright yellow turmeric root, that dazzling hue combining with coconut milk to end in the B word. It didn't help that the curry was bulked out with cubes of peeled aubergine, and a lot of cashews, neither of which added to the non-existent rainbow on my plate. My turmeric-dyed fingers, briefly as yellow as a lifelong smoker's, mocked the dullness of the dish.
The flavour was fine, excellent even, enlivened with a big nub of ginger (more beige) grated in, and spices various. Without a red or yellow pepper to hand, however, and tomato being wrong for it, beige the thing was. Served on beige wholegrain basmati rice. Accompanied by a pleasant hock that matched it nicely, but made me wish I'd opted for a red just to brighten our evening.
No restaurant chef would have served such a dish. At the very least it would have been garnished with something green on the side, and sweet peppers added to the ingredients list. You (and they) can take the look of dishes too far. The pointless foam. The ubiquitous single physalis, or three redcurrants, with puds. A thin squiggly line of sauce too meagre to bring flavour. Curly parsley atop steak and fish. But annoying though they be, they're better than beige.
Once beige gets control, like corrupt politicians, it's extremely hard to dislodge. This was, oxymoronically, a beige black hole, the taupe singularity at its heart drawing in and destroying all other colours. I added jade frozen peas to try to brighten the thing, and seconds later they'd lost their sheen and were more brown than green. Basil and coriander went in at the last second, but they too succumbed.
Strangely the root cause of the beige was bright yellow turmeric root, that dazzling hue combining with coconut milk to end in the B word. It didn't help that the curry was bulked out with cubes of peeled aubergine, and a lot of cashews, neither of which added to the non-existent rainbow on my plate. My turmeric-dyed fingers, briefly as yellow as a lifelong smoker's, mocked the dullness of the dish.
The flavour was fine, excellent even, enlivened with a big nub of ginger (more beige) grated in, and spices various. Without a red or yellow pepper to hand, however, and tomato being wrong for it, beige the thing was. Served on beige wholegrain basmati rice. Accompanied by a pleasant hock that matched it nicely, but made me wish I'd opted for a red just to brighten our evening.
No restaurant chef would have served such a dish. At the very least it would have been garnished with something green on the side, and sweet peppers added to the ingredients list. You (and they) can take the look of dishes too far. The pointless foam. The ubiquitous single physalis, or three redcurrants, with puds. A thin squiggly line of sauce too meagre to bring flavour. Curly parsley atop steak and fish. But annoying though they be, they're better than beige.
Tuesday 6 August 2019
First fruits and no fruits
In a previous post I wrote about how rather than the standard winter, spring, summer and autumn a kitchen gardener enjoys a lengthy series of seasons, their starts marked by picking and eating the first of a particular fruit or vegetable. Last week we had the first of our delicious Discovery apples, eaten straight off the tree they are somehow far more appley than shop bought, and the reddy-pink blush brighter and more alive. That's the good side of growing your own.
There is, then, a bad side too. We dashed off for a few days away recently, having inspected the produce close to readiness. A tiny greengage tree had seven or eight fruits just on the verge of ripeness, so we left them, anticipating a mini-feast on our return. The squirrels had other ideas - all bar one sorry specimen left broken on the ground had gone when we returned. We shared our strawberries with the little grey monsters too, the netting meant to protect the plants no barrier to these furry thieves, and a few well-bitten apples can be seen littering the ground in the orchard bit of the garden - we leave them in the hope that, easier to get at, they'll keep them off the rest for a time. Some hope.
I googled 'legality of shooting grey squirrels' and learned that you probably need a licenced shooter, and the preferred RSPCA method is catching them and getting a vet to put them down at £30 a pop. Only if you can guarantee a clean kill can you shoot them yourself (I have an old air-rifle that could possibly be of value, if they'd hold still until I was within three feet), so they will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labours undisturbed. No need I guess to go into detail of what happens to the bulk of the walnuts we grow.
Our interaction with the resident fauna is not all negative. We feed the birds partly because they put on a fine show, but also because in a largely organic set-up they are very helpful, for example eating loads of caterpillars. And we have a lot of flowers that attract hover-flies, which do a fine job on white fly and other pests. Thinking along those lines, what we really need is a resident raptor capable of taking squirrels. We don't have that, but hear owls aplenty, and The Dear Leader was buzzed a few weeks back by a Nightjar while she was on a dusk inspection tour of the crops. I now have to google 'how to attract Golden Eagles to your garden.'
There is, then, a bad side too. We dashed off for a few days away recently, having inspected the produce close to readiness. A tiny greengage tree had seven or eight fruits just on the verge of ripeness, so we left them, anticipating a mini-feast on our return. The squirrels had other ideas - all bar one sorry specimen left broken on the ground had gone when we returned. We shared our strawberries with the little grey monsters too, the netting meant to protect the plants no barrier to these furry thieves, and a few well-bitten apples can be seen littering the ground in the orchard bit of the garden - we leave them in the hope that, easier to get at, they'll keep them off the rest for a time. Some hope.
I googled 'legality of shooting grey squirrels' and learned that you probably need a licenced shooter, and the preferred RSPCA method is catching them and getting a vet to put them down at £30 a pop. Only if you can guarantee a clean kill can you shoot them yourself (I have an old air-rifle that could possibly be of value, if they'd hold still until I was within three feet), so they will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labours undisturbed. No need I guess to go into detail of what happens to the bulk of the walnuts we grow.
Our interaction with the resident fauna is not all negative. We feed the birds partly because they put on a fine show, but also because in a largely organic set-up they are very helpful, for example eating loads of caterpillars. And we have a lot of flowers that attract hover-flies, which do a fine job on white fly and other pests. Thinking along those lines, what we really need is a resident raptor capable of taking squirrels. We don't have that, but hear owls aplenty, and The Dear Leader was buzzed a few weeks back by a Nightjar while she was on a dusk inspection tour of the crops. I now have to google 'how to attract Golden Eagles to your garden.'
Thursday 18 July 2019
More than a baked potato
When I was at university in the late 1830s a couple I knew, flatmates of a friend of mine, decided to turn vegetarian. Which is to say she decided, and he acquiesced. Sadly neither of them had a clue about cooking, or diet, and so every meal I saw them eat, and others reported by my friend, consisted of baked potato with a bit of cheese and/or butter. Within a few weeks they both looked distinctly ill, pale and blotchy, irritable, tired... It's such people who in times past gave vegetarian diets a bad reputation.
I hope that the multitudes nowadays turning to vegetarianism and veganism have far better culinary skills. I worry about that, though, and about the rapid rise of ready-meals to cater for new converts to those causes. I've tried a few of them, including one well-known brand name, and have not been impressed. I'll make my own bean-burgers thanks.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies be trampled beneath her feet) and I are not vegetarians, and I for one have no intention of ever being so. But as noted before we eat far less meat than was once the case (in a £120+ shop yesterday I spent £3 on some cooking chorizo, the only meaty item in my trolley). That's for environmental and health reasons, but increasingly for reasons of flavour too, and, linked to the latter cause, thanks to our kitchen garden providing some great ingredients, none of which is steak.
The very excellent Ursula Ferrigno has been a particular inspiration in that regard, her Italian-focused cooking simple and delicious: yesterday the DL picked and blanched some frisee chicory, I cooked and pureed cannellini beans with loads of garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, and a good handful of oregano fresh from the garden, with a few pitted and chopped black olives to garnish it. The warm puree on top of the drained green leaves made a very fine dish indeed. And so simple.
Our health, already good, has I think improved with the change, though as over the last few years we've also increased our exercise levels it's hard to say what has been most important in that regard.
We eat a huge variety of fresh vegetables, salads, herbs and fruits, many of them home-grown but others sourced in SE Asian and Chinese stores as well as three or four different supermarkets. I wonder how many new vegans are just cutting out foods, and not adding to what they ate before? So meat and two over-cooked boring veg becomes two over-cooked boring veg, or worse still burger and fries becomes fries. I know we are lucky to have the space, but as importantly we have the DL with the skills to grow such excellent produce, and me with the experience and curiosity to transform it into a huge range of different dishes. I really hope that this generation of newbie vegans has the oomph to do more than reheat packet-meals, or try to live on baked potatoes - without even the cheese or butter if they're true to their principles.
I hope that the multitudes nowadays turning to vegetarianism and veganism have far better culinary skills. I worry about that, though, and about the rapid rise of ready-meals to cater for new converts to those causes. I've tried a few of them, including one well-known brand name, and have not been impressed. I'll make my own bean-burgers thanks.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies be trampled beneath her feet) and I are not vegetarians, and I for one have no intention of ever being so. But as noted before we eat far less meat than was once the case (in a £120+ shop yesterday I spent £3 on some cooking chorizo, the only meaty item in my trolley). That's for environmental and health reasons, but increasingly for reasons of flavour too, and, linked to the latter cause, thanks to our kitchen garden providing some great ingredients, none of which is steak.
The very excellent Ursula Ferrigno has been a particular inspiration in that regard, her Italian-focused cooking simple and delicious: yesterday the DL picked and blanched some frisee chicory, I cooked and pureed cannellini beans with loads of garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, and a good handful of oregano fresh from the garden, with a few pitted and chopped black olives to garnish it. The warm puree on top of the drained green leaves made a very fine dish indeed. And so simple.
Our health, already good, has I think improved with the change, though as over the last few years we've also increased our exercise levels it's hard to say what has been most important in that regard.
We eat a huge variety of fresh vegetables, salads, herbs and fruits, many of them home-grown but others sourced in SE Asian and Chinese stores as well as three or four different supermarkets. I wonder how many new vegans are just cutting out foods, and not adding to what they ate before? So meat and two over-cooked boring veg becomes two over-cooked boring veg, or worse still burger and fries becomes fries. I know we are lucky to have the space, but as importantly we have the DL with the skills to grow such excellent produce, and me with the experience and curiosity to transform it into a huge range of different dishes. I really hope that this generation of newbie vegans has the oomph to do more than reheat packet-meals, or try to live on baked potatoes - without even the cheese or butter if they're true to their principles.
Monday 15 July 2019
Seasonality for the Common or Garden Cook
A major benefit of growing your own food is that it brings you closer to natural seasonality - for me that being the sort defined by things appearing ready to eat in the kitchen garden, rather than the new series of some reality TV programme starring the tattooed brain dead, or the first fixture of a sporting calendar. It is a more nuanced seasonality than Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn (I actually prefer the more descriptive word Fall, once general in Britain).
Among the more notable dates of the produce seasons is New Potato Day, when the very first tiny new spuds are rushed from soil to pot with the minimum delay between. I've noted elsewhere here, I'm certain, that there is no comparison between such sprint-to-table potatoes and even the very best the shops or market can provide. It is - for me at least - interesting that the gardener can influence seasonality in this regard: we grew two huge black plastic potfuls (filled with our home-made compost) of spuds in a greenhouse, so that New Spud Day was at the very end of May, while the ones grown in the kitchen garden proper were only ready in the second half of June. An admission: the flavour of the ones grown in the kitchen garden was notably superior.
Other such events are First Strawberry Day, and First Courgette Day - that latter a week ago, though it was first two courgettes day, as two were ready together (used in a veggie sauce for pasta). There are less joyous seasonal dividers too, such as when we say goodbye to the last of many crops, but there again we can influence things a bit in our favour: by protecting some courgette plants we managed to have the last of them in early November one mild year, and not under glass either.
Hard though we try, however, there is much beyond our control, and that makes it all the more engrossing (again, for me). Two months ago I prepared a 1m x 1m patch to grow, fingers crossed without much hope of success, morels. A blend of sand, home-made compost, bonfire ash courtesy of a kind neighbour, decayed and decaying fragments of wood, chips of charcoal, rotting leaves, and some morel stuff bought from a reputable supplier, was mixed together and used on a square of ground beneath our oldest apple tree (morels are said to grow best in apple orchards, on ground where there has been a recent bonfire). I have kept the patch weeded if not overly so, moist to ensure the spores or seeds or whatever they be are not dessicated, and put the odd fallen young apple on there too. In May, we can but hope, we could just have our First Morel Day.
Among the more notable dates of the produce seasons is New Potato Day, when the very first tiny new spuds are rushed from soil to pot with the minimum delay between. I've noted elsewhere here, I'm certain, that there is no comparison between such sprint-to-table potatoes and even the very best the shops or market can provide. It is - for me at least - interesting that the gardener can influence seasonality in this regard: we grew two huge black plastic potfuls (filled with our home-made compost) of spuds in a greenhouse, so that New Spud Day was at the very end of May, while the ones grown in the kitchen garden proper were only ready in the second half of June. An admission: the flavour of the ones grown in the kitchen garden was notably superior.
Other such events are First Strawberry Day, and First Courgette Day - that latter a week ago, though it was first two courgettes day, as two were ready together (used in a veggie sauce for pasta). There are less joyous seasonal dividers too, such as when we say goodbye to the last of many crops, but there again we can influence things a bit in our favour: by protecting some courgette plants we managed to have the last of them in early November one mild year, and not under glass either.
Hard though we try, however, there is much beyond our control, and that makes it all the more engrossing (again, for me). Two months ago I prepared a 1m x 1m patch to grow, fingers crossed without much hope of success, morels. A blend of sand, home-made compost, bonfire ash courtesy of a kind neighbour, decayed and decaying fragments of wood, chips of charcoal, rotting leaves, and some morel stuff bought from a reputable supplier, was mixed together and used on a square of ground beneath our oldest apple tree (morels are said to grow best in apple orchards, on ground where there has been a recent bonfire). I have kept the patch weeded if not overly so, moist to ensure the spores or seeds or whatever they be are not dessicated, and put the odd fallen young apple on there too. In May, we can but hope, we could just have our First Morel Day.
Saturday 13 July 2019
Differences over Soup and Services, and Losing a Friend
Yesterday the Dear Leader and I attended the funeral of a very dear friend, for me of I think 38 years' standing, for the DL someone she'd known and loved since the first day of senior school. As Mary was a very devout Catholic the funeral service took the form of a requiem mass, and sadly until the eulogy by her brother-in-law it missed out almost entirely on the personal - for a convinced atheist it seemed like men in expensive dresses doing things by numbers, but I'm sure her family felt differently, and if it was a comfort to them, all to the good.
The DL was, however, so upset by how impersonal the priests made things - the brief show at the crematorium was worse still - that she refused to shake the monsignor's hand. As I say, Mary was a strong catholic, so each to their own, but she was also a force of friendship nature, something that the haughty coutured ones only really touched at a tangent. After the mass and the crematorium the family had arranged what Mary's husband Mike would disarmingly call 'a nice ham tea,' in fact a very generous and enjoyable buffet where the many different circles of her friends mixed, and we chatted with old friends and exchanged stories of meals and meetings past. That was, for me, so much closer to representing Mary and her gift of friendship.
Over the years we ate many meals together, at one another's homes and a couple of times when we holidayed as two families in France. There was a certain amount of rivalry, and all dietary health concerns were put to one side in the pursuit of flavour bonus points over the other as we took it in turns to prepare meals. As an example, I can still recall almost 20 years on one of my efforts being freshly-peeled prawns in cream flambeed in Calvados, and Mary producing pork with cream and apples cooked with cider - we were in Normandy as might be guessed from that. She beat me hands down on culinary kit kudos, bringing her own set of posh kitchen knives in a ninja-black cloth roll.
Mary was an absolute original, enormously generous of her time and her table - the meals she served to a huge circle of friends over the years would have paid for several ridiculous Italian sports cars, though she would never have wanted one. We differed on quite a few things - not least the spelling of the word grey/gray in this blog - some of them culinary: she didn't, for example, see the point in soup; she called beetroot 'the devil's vegetable,' and she rarely made pudding, but then her guests (expected to bring dessert if they wanted it) would be so full with starter, main, salad and cheese that it was superfluous.
The first time I met Mary was when she visited the DL (merely then an object of unspoken admiration on my part) at university. Mary enjoyed enough Guinness for two that evening, and we had innumerable convivial soirees in the following years. For about 25 years the DL and I were members of an exclusive wine society she formed, those wishing to join having to prove their knowledge by identifying red wine from white by sight alone. Doubtless the visually impaired would have been given several guesses. The DL and I will have a particularly good meal tonight in her honour, and open the best bottle to hand (with the proviso that the sluicing must fit the browsing, as it always did with Mary and Mike's events) to toast a special person, and an unsurpassed hostess.
The DL was, however, so upset by how impersonal the priests made things - the brief show at the crematorium was worse still - that she refused to shake the monsignor's hand. As I say, Mary was a strong catholic, so each to their own, but she was also a force of friendship nature, something that the haughty coutured ones only really touched at a tangent. After the mass and the crematorium the family had arranged what Mary's husband Mike would disarmingly call 'a nice ham tea,' in fact a very generous and enjoyable buffet where the many different circles of her friends mixed, and we chatted with old friends and exchanged stories of meals and meetings past. That was, for me, so much closer to representing Mary and her gift of friendship.
Over the years we ate many meals together, at one another's homes and a couple of times when we holidayed as two families in France. There was a certain amount of rivalry, and all dietary health concerns were put to one side in the pursuit of flavour bonus points over the other as we took it in turns to prepare meals. As an example, I can still recall almost 20 years on one of my efforts being freshly-peeled prawns in cream flambeed in Calvados, and Mary producing pork with cream and apples cooked with cider - we were in Normandy as might be guessed from that. She beat me hands down on culinary kit kudos, bringing her own set of posh kitchen knives in a ninja-black cloth roll.
Mary was an absolute original, enormously generous of her time and her table - the meals she served to a huge circle of friends over the years would have paid for several ridiculous Italian sports cars, though she would never have wanted one. We differed on quite a few things - not least the spelling of the word grey/gray in this blog - some of them culinary: she didn't, for example, see the point in soup; she called beetroot 'the devil's vegetable,' and she rarely made pudding, but then her guests (expected to bring dessert if they wanted it) would be so full with starter, main, salad and cheese that it was superfluous.
The first time I met Mary was when she visited the DL (merely then an object of unspoken admiration on my part) at university. Mary enjoyed enough Guinness for two that evening, and we had innumerable convivial soirees in the following years. For about 25 years the DL and I were members of an exclusive wine society she formed, those wishing to join having to prove their knowledge by identifying red wine from white by sight alone. Doubtless the visually impaired would have been given several guesses. The DL and I will have a particularly good meal tonight in her honour, and open the best bottle to hand (with the proviso that the sluicing must fit the browsing, as it always did with Mary and Mike's events) to toast a special person, and an unsurpassed hostess.
Monday 24 June 2019
Original Sin - Pasta Caring
As anyone who has read a few of these posts will have gathered, I may not be hidebound, but I'm packing for the journey as it were. My preference has always been in food terms for the authentic, so what was a passing fad a few years back - fusion cuisine - didn't really work for me. Which is not to say that I won't try new things, or enjoy tweaks to recipes and dishes that don't rip the heart out of the original.
The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.
I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.
In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.
The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.
I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.
In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.
Thursday 6 June 2019
Is It My Imagination, or...
Two weeks ago we ate our first home-grown new potatoes of the year, rushed from the pot in the greenhouse that had protected and warmed them to the pot in the kitchen where they were simply boiled. Some things need nothing fancy doing to them, indeed are better off served as simply as possible. Yesterday we ate our first new potatoes fresh from the kitchen garden, same speed of processing. Unless my taste-memory is playing tricks, or I'm simply imagining it, yesterday's were vastly superior in flavour.
I guess the difference is the growing medium. The ones grown under glass (well, polycarbonate) were in compost with a tiny bit of soil, the ones in the kitchen garden enjoyed a richer environment with plenty of manure and topsoil. When we buy lettuce (not from the start of May to late October) it is stuff raised in industrial polytunnels, in industrial growing media, and while welcome then it cannot hold a candle to our own for crispness and taste.
Some crops, however hard we try are not actually as good as the best (generally organic) locally grown stuff, tomatoes a case in point. But for the majority of things we can grow without major problems the effort is repaid on the plate, if not always in the purse. Too often, however, what is grown for its shelf-life and yield, and how it performs under glass and in compost, is third rate.
Along with the small picking of spuds yesterday we had our first broad beans of the year, pods no thicker than my middle finger, and only an inch or so longer. Too good to cook, the minute beans were eaten raw, with all that's best and sweetest about them to the fore, and almost none of the bitterness that like the rest of us they'd inevitably succumb to when more mature.
A cook's daily task is helped enormously by having even a few freshly dug/picked/cut veg to hand every evening - choose what is at its best and prepare it in a way that plonks its charms front and centre. It can only be a week or two before the first tiny courgettes are begging to be eaten. And they, more than anything else, prove that home-grown in good rich soil outdoors, and on the table within an hour of being harvested, is so much better in most cases than the supermarket can ever provide. These days you can, sometimes, find small courgettes in the supermarket, worth it if you don't have your own. Forget their swollen, watery, leather-skinned brethren, however. At least you would if you had ever tasted how good a small courgette, cooked within minutes of being cut, actually can be. Sad that only a small percentage of the population will ever know that pleasure.
I guess the difference is the growing medium. The ones grown under glass (well, polycarbonate) were in compost with a tiny bit of soil, the ones in the kitchen garden enjoyed a richer environment with plenty of manure and topsoil. When we buy lettuce (not from the start of May to late October) it is stuff raised in industrial polytunnels, in industrial growing media, and while welcome then it cannot hold a candle to our own for crispness and taste.
Some crops, however hard we try are not actually as good as the best (generally organic) locally grown stuff, tomatoes a case in point. But for the majority of things we can grow without major problems the effort is repaid on the plate, if not always in the purse. Too often, however, what is grown for its shelf-life and yield, and how it performs under glass and in compost, is third rate.
Along with the small picking of spuds yesterday we had our first broad beans of the year, pods no thicker than my middle finger, and only an inch or so longer. Too good to cook, the minute beans were eaten raw, with all that's best and sweetest about them to the fore, and almost none of the bitterness that like the rest of us they'd inevitably succumb to when more mature.
A cook's daily task is helped enormously by having even a few freshly dug/picked/cut veg to hand every evening - choose what is at its best and prepare it in a way that plonks its charms front and centre. It can only be a week or two before the first tiny courgettes are begging to be eaten. And they, more than anything else, prove that home-grown in good rich soil outdoors, and on the table within an hour of being harvested, is so much better in most cases than the supermarket can ever provide. These days you can, sometimes, find small courgettes in the supermarket, worth it if you don't have your own. Forget their swollen, watery, leather-skinned brethren, however. At least you would if you had ever tasted how good a small courgette, cooked within minutes of being cut, actually can be. Sad that only a small percentage of the population will ever know that pleasure.
Monday 29 April 2019
Veggie Barbies
The title is in fact a lie, if only partially, given that at both of our recent barbecues we ate meat, but we did manage to enjoy loads of vegetables done over the coals, and indeed in them.
I'm taking a wild guess that this is not news to those of a true vegetarian persuasion, but vegetables respond as well to the BBQ treatment as meats do. The best veggie thing we did - both times as the first was so enjoyable - was sweet potatoes, double wrapped in foil and buried in the very white hot ashes. The best results were with medium sized tubers, cooked in that way for a good 45 minutes. The skin was somewhere between burned and caramelised, but once cut into the flesh, with a bit of butter and salt, was totally delicious.
Those sweet spuds however, didn't benefit from the smoke and grill elements of the process, which mushroom kebabs (brown shrooms with garlic cloves between them) did, likewise courgette kebabs done with bay-leaves as separators.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd like a totally veggie BBQ, but neither these days would I fancy one of the total meat-fests of the not too distant past. Another veggie winner was whole medium-large onions left in their skins and slotted on a metal skewer to help the heat get to the middle. The skin was charred, the next layer overdone and not worth eating, but the rest was - again - sweet and delicious. I tried white onions and red, and the latter was the tastier.
We love garlic, and had a head each done in foil on the grill, with a few herbs and a bit of oil to keep them company. The cloves could be squeezed onto the meaty bits for an instant sauce, and the second time I did enough to have some left over to make a sauce - with leftover onions too - that two days post-BBQ went with some roast chicken. Magnificent, but one of the most fart-inducing concoctions known to man.
Even Swiss chard, one of those things that we kitchen gardeners grow and end up not using all of, was a winner, cooked in foil with some butter and crushed garlic - I said we like it - leaf and stem.
We owe some vegan friends - health rather than conviction I think - a BBQ, so with a little tweaking I'm confident we can feed them well without too much need for bought-in veggieburgers. Up the mushroom quotient, and with a few more different varieties added, and it should be proof positive that Fascinating Aida were wrong with their classic lines 'Inviting a vegetarian to a barbecue, it's taboo, it's taboo, it's taboo.'
I'm taking a wild guess that this is not news to those of a true vegetarian persuasion, but vegetables respond as well to the BBQ treatment as meats do. The best veggie thing we did - both times as the first was so enjoyable - was sweet potatoes, double wrapped in foil and buried in the very white hot ashes. The best results were with medium sized tubers, cooked in that way for a good 45 minutes. The skin was somewhere between burned and caramelised, but once cut into the flesh, with a bit of butter and salt, was totally delicious.
Those sweet spuds however, didn't benefit from the smoke and grill elements of the process, which mushroom kebabs (brown shrooms with garlic cloves between them) did, likewise courgette kebabs done with bay-leaves as separators.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd like a totally veggie BBQ, but neither these days would I fancy one of the total meat-fests of the not too distant past. Another veggie winner was whole medium-large onions left in their skins and slotted on a metal skewer to help the heat get to the middle. The skin was charred, the next layer overdone and not worth eating, but the rest was - again - sweet and delicious. I tried white onions and red, and the latter was the tastier.
We love garlic, and had a head each done in foil on the grill, with a few herbs and a bit of oil to keep them company. The cloves could be squeezed onto the meaty bits for an instant sauce, and the second time I did enough to have some left over to make a sauce - with leftover onions too - that two days post-BBQ went with some roast chicken. Magnificent, but one of the most fart-inducing concoctions known to man.
Even Swiss chard, one of those things that we kitchen gardeners grow and end up not using all of, was a winner, cooked in foil with some butter and crushed garlic - I said we like it - leaf and stem.
We owe some vegan friends - health rather than conviction I think - a BBQ, so with a little tweaking I'm confident we can feed them well without too much need for bought-in veggieburgers. Up the mushroom quotient, and with a few more different varieties added, and it should be proof positive that Fascinating Aida were wrong with their classic lines 'Inviting a vegetarian to a barbecue, it's taboo, it's taboo, it's taboo.'
Tuesday 16 April 2019
Breaking My Fast
As these days the Dear Leader and I undertake a 600 calorie fast every Monday we actually do break a more meaningful fast than normal on a Tuesday morning. Strangely we neither of us wake up ravenous, nor horribly early, on the morning after the slight deprivation before. In fact what we have on the Tuesday is only a variation on the Monday fast breakfast (and yes, it is fast to do as well) of a boiled egg and a bowl of fruit.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Wednesday 3 April 2019
Changing Tastes
Now in my very, extremely, exceptionally late thirties I find that my tastes have changed. Or has the taste of the things I taste changed?
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Monday 11 March 2019
Long-term Planning - Where Can I Hire a Truffle Hound?
In contrast to the appalling shower currently in government (and by the same token, Corbyn's cretins in opposition) the Dear Leader and I have been doing a bit of thinking beyond the next news bulletin, or even the next election. As noted previously here, we have planted what amounts to an orchard; have set out a good-sized kitchen garden; and invested in some relatively exotic trees (lemon, lime, mulberry, cherry, apricot...) to be kept in pots for winter storage under glass. Partly done for fun, partly for flavour - truly fresh lemons, for example, are streets ahead of shop bought ones - partly to give us an insurance policy in hard times - either our own, the country's, or the climate's.
Some of that forward thinking began a long time ago, and has paid off: we planted a quince maybe fifteen years back, and last year enjoyed our best crop ever; even earlier in our time in sunny Fulwood we put in a walnut tree, finally producing enough last year to make nocino. Thanks to a very generous gift by Dr Paul Thomas, whose company leads the UK in its field, we have just planted three tiny hazels - not for the nuts, though they will be welcome, but for the possibility that six years hence we will have out own truffles. Not the chocolate version, but the enormously expensive fungi. I met Dr Thomas on Saturday, to interview him for Lancashire Life Magazine. His company inoculates a range of trees with the seeds/spores, and works with estate owners, restaurants etc to see them through to production, something that takes at least six years.
Fingers crossed we make it to summer/autumn of 2025 unscathed, by no means a given of course. Similar digit crossing that the delicate and apparently temperamental truffles take in our soil (specially limed and lightened in their particular patch). I'm really looking forward to being able to cook with our own home-grown truffles; but I am really, really, really looking forward to casually dropping into some future dinner party conversation 'Oh, the truffles? Yes, we picked them earlier today. Did you like them? This year's crop has been exceptionally good.'
Some of that forward thinking began a long time ago, and has paid off: we planted a quince maybe fifteen years back, and last year enjoyed our best crop ever; even earlier in our time in sunny Fulwood we put in a walnut tree, finally producing enough last year to make nocino. Thanks to a very generous gift by Dr Paul Thomas, whose company leads the UK in its field, we have just planted three tiny hazels - not for the nuts, though they will be welcome, but for the possibility that six years hence we will have out own truffles. Not the chocolate version, but the enormously expensive fungi. I met Dr Thomas on Saturday, to interview him for Lancashire Life Magazine. His company inoculates a range of trees with the seeds/spores, and works with estate owners, restaurants etc to see them through to production, something that takes at least six years.
Fingers crossed we make it to summer/autumn of 2025 unscathed, by no means a given of course. Similar digit crossing that the delicate and apparently temperamental truffles take in our soil (specially limed and lightened in their particular patch). I'm really looking forward to being able to cook with our own home-grown truffles; but I am really, really, really looking forward to casually dropping into some future dinner party conversation 'Oh, the truffles? Yes, we picked them earlier today. Did you like them? This year's crop has been exceptionally good.'
Friday 8 March 2019
Something Old, Something New, Something Delicious
The old tradition of Pancake Day presented a slight challenge for the current healthy/weight-loss kick, but a bit of creativity resulted in something really rather good, with loads of flavour to it.
Time was - especially as a greedy and - in spite of that - almost painfully thin child - when pancake day meant about eight of them, made by my mother with all white flour and served with sugar and butter, or sugar and lemon. Or jam. Lovely, but not exactly great on the GI spectrum. So I made mine this year with half white flour and half wholegrain buckwheat (giving the resulting pancakes a nicely nutty hint), plus a good handful of leftover dried onion flakes stirred into the batter. They added far more onion than you'd expect, and as a bonus filled the kitchen and dining room with appetising oniony aromas to get the gastric juices flowing. I even got a compliment from Sternest Critic.
Clearly (I hope) savoury, they were stuffed with chopped mushrooms and chopped spinach that had been cooked beforehand, and a dollop of ricotta (plus a grated dog end of grana Padano). Reheated in a hot oven with the juices from the mushrooms poured over to keep them moist, and a sprinkling of grated parmesan more for decoration than anything else, the dish was filling, full of flavour and pretty virtuous.
They will be made again in a few weeks, I'm sure. Healthy doesn't have to be just salad and fruit, fine though both may be.
Time was - especially as a greedy and - in spite of that - almost painfully thin child - when pancake day meant about eight of them, made by my mother with all white flour and served with sugar and butter, or sugar and lemon. Or jam. Lovely, but not exactly great on the GI spectrum. So I made mine this year with half white flour and half wholegrain buckwheat (giving the resulting pancakes a nicely nutty hint), plus a good handful of leftover dried onion flakes stirred into the batter. They added far more onion than you'd expect, and as a bonus filled the kitchen and dining room with appetising oniony aromas to get the gastric juices flowing. I even got a compliment from Sternest Critic.
Clearly (I hope) savoury, they were stuffed with chopped mushrooms and chopped spinach that had been cooked beforehand, and a dollop of ricotta (plus a grated dog end of grana Padano). Reheated in a hot oven with the juices from the mushrooms poured over to keep them moist, and a sprinkling of grated parmesan more for decoration than anything else, the dish was filling, full of flavour and pretty virtuous.
They will be made again in a few weeks, I'm sure. Healthy doesn't have to be just salad and fruit, fine though both may be.
Tuesday 5 March 2019
A Lemon Tree, My Dear Watson?
It was brought home to me this morning how important the seemingly humble lemon actually is in culinary life. I'm not talking about fancy dishes with lemon as a major ingredient - ah, childhood memories of lemon meringue pie, and childhood nightmares of the school version possibly made with a by-product of petrol refining.
As is normal here we had a bowl of fruit as part of breakfast. Having shopped yesterday at my favourite local Asian supermarket dragon fruit was part of that. The last time we had it thus the flavour was almost non-existent; today, with a big squeeze of lemon it was brought forward hugely. Guava benefitted too, its strange (and enjoyable) man-sweat quality enhanced by the citrus. I always prepare papaya with a similar dash of lime juice, which raises its game greatly. The list goes on, and includes lemon as an acid helping reduce the GI value of certain foods, which is great long term for the waistline.
I also recalled that imported supplies of citrus fruits are expected to be hit by the looming no-deal Brexit. Dover, apparently, accounts for 80 per cent or so of imports, and will be a car park if general expectations of government planning come about. With Chris Grayling (I have complete confidence in... per the marvellous Mrs May's sell) in charge of transport what could possibly go wrong?
We have grown our own - yes we have a lemon tree, my dear Watson, and a lime - with somewhat limited success for a few years now. I hope that the couple of lemons and one lime expected as our annual crop will not have to suffice this summer. The Dear Leader's G&T needs a slice. And so do a vast range of salads, fish dishes, fruits and sauces. We're buggered, aren't we?
As is normal here we had a bowl of fruit as part of breakfast. Having shopped yesterday at my favourite local Asian supermarket dragon fruit was part of that. The last time we had it thus the flavour was almost non-existent; today, with a big squeeze of lemon it was brought forward hugely. Guava benefitted too, its strange (and enjoyable) man-sweat quality enhanced by the citrus. I always prepare papaya with a similar dash of lime juice, which raises its game greatly. The list goes on, and includes lemon as an acid helping reduce the GI value of certain foods, which is great long term for the waistline.
I also recalled that imported supplies of citrus fruits are expected to be hit by the looming no-deal Brexit. Dover, apparently, accounts for 80 per cent or so of imports, and will be a car park if general expectations of government planning come about. With Chris Grayling (I have complete confidence in... per the marvellous Mrs May's sell) in charge of transport what could possibly go wrong?
We have grown our own - yes we have a lemon tree, my dear Watson, and a lime - with somewhat limited success for a few years now. I hope that the couple of lemons and one lime expected as our annual crop will not have to suffice this summer. The Dear Leader's G&T needs a slice. And so do a vast range of salads, fish dishes, fruits and sauces. We're buggered, aren't we?
Thursday 28 February 2019
Strange Times
To balance recent posts that have been about the health side of food, this is about pleasure.
As the weather at the end of February - February - has been so warm and sunny, and given the Dear Leader (may her critics shrivel like salted slugs) and I are both freelances, and Sternest Critic is marking time to his departure to Gozo, we actually had a barbecue on the 26th. A barbecue in Preston in February. Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change, but I do.
Given we are avoiding processed meats there were no sausages or burgers, but that was no loss as we enjoyed turkey steaks and langoustines for all, plus lamb chops (for SC and me) and fillets of sea bass (for the Dear Leader). All of that balanced with a green salad, a tomato salad, griddled mushrooms, and both asparagus and (our own freshly picked) fine leeks baked over the coals in foil.
We cooked and ate slowly, so the meal lasted a good two hours. We talked, we watched the birds feeding in the garden, and we relaxed. Not a single spoonful of raw cacao powder passed our lips, though a glass or two of Beaujolais did. It was life enhancing.
Barbecuing well is not easily done. We went a year or so back to eat with some friends somehow new to the idea who, no exaggeration, lit the coals/firelighter, and put the food straight on. It was fireplace smoky and with a hint of plastic. On the way home we discussed forming a survivor group. SC got our fire going more than an hour before we thought of putting anything over the ashy-grey fuel. Timing is not easy either, though lamb is forgiving, so a skewer to test turkey doneness came in handy. I wouldn't bother with chicken joints. The fish you can just tell by looking and a bit of a poke with a knife-tip, the langoustines by the charring of the shells and the smell.
I feel we need a BBQ challenge. It's long been my ambition to do a whole (gutted and skinned of course) lamb over a fire pit, but DL forbids it. So this summer I aim to do beef short rib in the piece, with some strong flavours in the marinade to make it even more special. Prepare then for a wet summer wash out.
Pioppi-cock
We're on a health and weight-loss kick at the moment, Sternest Critic wanting to get fit and ready for his summer sojourn diving in Gozo. Inevitably that has meant reading up on the subject, in my case focusing on two books in particular: The Pioppi Diet; and The Clever Gut Diet.
Michael Moseley, as ever, is readable and makes some very good sense in the second of those two volumes, though there was not much really sparkling new in there for anyone who has watched Trust Me I'm a Doctor, or read other recent books by him. He has the advantage of being amusing, and educational, and it at worst reinforced some ideas.
The Pioppi Diet, however, was a let down. Again the science stuff - rather dryly presented - was not exactly new - a very long-winded way to say stay off white carbs, intermittent fasting is a neat trick, and olive oil and intensive exercise are good for you. But along with a tendency in both writers to self-aggrandisement there was something that got my goat about the premise, which is that if we all follow the diet and lifestyle of a particular Italian village we'll all be better off. Fine, the stats show these peasants live longer, are fitter, etc etc. Then they put forward on the food side of the equation a lot of stuff like yoghourt, coconut oil and turmeric that would be alien to those particular Italians. And the thing that really annoyed was sweeping aside the totally demonised pasta - something I'm willing to bet Guiseppe and his mates live(d) on pretty much daily - as only eaten as a starter in small portions so we'll sort of ignore it.
Every such book I read does provide some useful insights, and The Pioppi Diet is no exception - I've cut back for all of us even more than before on white carbs, replaced largely with more fruit and veg and lots of high quality olive oil (so a tweak rather than a revolution), but I'm basically back to my own simple philosophy of diversity in fruit and veg and protein sources, and above all enjoy my food - the recipe stuff in The Pioppi Diet largely sounds like fuel and a penance. I'm pretty bloody sure one of the things that made or makes the people of that village live longer will be taking great pleasure in eating and drinking. And scarfing spoonfuls of raw cacao powder with cinnamon doesn't seem like the sort of thing they would even dream of doing. I'm not about to either.
Michael Moseley, as ever, is readable and makes some very good sense in the second of those two volumes, though there was not much really sparkling new in there for anyone who has watched Trust Me I'm a Doctor, or read other recent books by him. He has the advantage of being amusing, and educational, and it at worst reinforced some ideas.
The Pioppi Diet, however, was a let down. Again the science stuff - rather dryly presented - was not exactly new - a very long-winded way to say stay off white carbs, intermittent fasting is a neat trick, and olive oil and intensive exercise are good for you. But along with a tendency in both writers to self-aggrandisement there was something that got my goat about the premise, which is that if we all follow the diet and lifestyle of a particular Italian village we'll all be better off. Fine, the stats show these peasants live longer, are fitter, etc etc. Then they put forward on the food side of the equation a lot of stuff like yoghourt, coconut oil and turmeric that would be alien to those particular Italians. And the thing that really annoyed was sweeping aside the totally demonised pasta - something I'm willing to bet Guiseppe and his mates live(d) on pretty much daily - as only eaten as a starter in small portions so we'll sort of ignore it.
Every such book I read does provide some useful insights, and The Pioppi Diet is no exception - I've cut back for all of us even more than before on white carbs, replaced largely with more fruit and veg and lots of high quality olive oil (so a tweak rather than a revolution), but I'm basically back to my own simple philosophy of diversity in fruit and veg and protein sources, and above all enjoy my food - the recipe stuff in The Pioppi Diet largely sounds like fuel and a penance. I'm pretty bloody sure one of the things that made or makes the people of that village live longer will be taking great pleasure in eating and drinking. And scarfing spoonfuls of raw cacao powder with cinnamon doesn't seem like the sort of thing they would even dream of doing. I'm not about to either.
Monday 25 February 2019
Aubergine is not the Oily Fruit
I like aubergines. They have a very individual, earthy taste, and the skin of the purply ones is supposed to be jolly good for you. Over the years I've tried many different ways to cook them, settling generally now for either a) baking them whole in the oven until they collapse, then using the mushy flesh for dips etc and discarding the skin; or b) putting them on a hot griddle pan greased with a wipe of olive oil. Frying them, however they are treated beforehand, always leaves them too oily. Even the griddling tends to the oleaginous.
Yesterday, however, I more or less followed an Ursula Ferrigno recipe for aubergines baked in tomato sauce, with a cheese topping - a parmigiana in other words. Her instructions were to slice them fairly thinly, sprinkle the slices with rosemary leaves, then bake them on a lightly greased metal tray for 10 minutes or so in a 200C oven. It worked a treat (though they needed more like 15 minutes), and they were not at all greasy. You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Aubergines are yet another vegetable (fruit actually) that our supermarkets pretty much restrict to one style, i.e. the over-sized purple sort which can be somewhat woolly. My local Indian supermarket has at least four varieties in stock every time I go in, which is with increasing frequency. The ones used for the dish above were the size of a large hen's egg (large enough to make it walk funnily after laying), with a mottled pinky-white-purple skin. Next time I'll go for the short and slender all purple ones; or the white ones that evidence why the Americans call them egg plant.
I may have mentioned my annoyance recently at Sainsbury's labelling their non-standard fruit and veg as 'greengrocers'. If you can still find an old-fashioned greengrocer, they will almost certainly stock more varieties than the supermarket does. And they'll be locally grown quite often. The Asian supermarket is fast replacing such places. They'll continue to get my custom, as I don't want 10 years hence (fingers crossed) to find F&V restricted to bananas and potatoes, which would suit their bigger rivals.
Yesterday, however, I more or less followed an Ursula Ferrigno recipe for aubergines baked in tomato sauce, with a cheese topping - a parmigiana in other words. Her instructions were to slice them fairly thinly, sprinkle the slices with rosemary leaves, then bake them on a lightly greased metal tray for 10 minutes or so in a 200C oven. It worked a treat (though they needed more like 15 minutes), and they were not at all greasy. You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Aubergines are yet another vegetable (fruit actually) that our supermarkets pretty much restrict to one style, i.e. the over-sized purple sort which can be somewhat woolly. My local Indian supermarket has at least four varieties in stock every time I go in, which is with increasing frequency. The ones used for the dish above were the size of a large hen's egg (large enough to make it walk funnily after laying), with a mottled pinky-white-purple skin. Next time I'll go for the short and slender all purple ones; or the white ones that evidence why the Americans call them egg plant.
I may have mentioned my annoyance recently at Sainsbury's labelling their non-standard fruit and veg as 'greengrocers'. If you can still find an old-fashioned greengrocer, they will almost certainly stock more varieties than the supermarket does. And they'll be locally grown quite often. The Asian supermarket is fast replacing such places. They'll continue to get my custom, as I don't want 10 years hence (fingers crossed) to find F&V restricted to bananas and potatoes, which would suit their bigger rivals.
Thursday 21 February 2019
A Rainbow on Your Breakfast Plate - and in Your Gut
We - the Dear Leader, the temporarily-home-before going-off to-Gozo Sternest Critic, and your humble servant - are on a weight loss quest for a time. Well, weight loss and health drive. That means the occasional 800 calorie day, and generally eating somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories, with a day off every now and then. That may sound restricting, and in the mathematical sense it is of course, but to be doable without becoming boring it does mean getting creative.
Our breakfasts, except when staying in hotels or at Christmas when bacon and sausages rule, are usually pretty healthy. Currently they are - thanks Donald - bigly so. And not in a bad way - no kale smoothies, in fact given we learn from Michael Moseley that smoothies go straight through the gut and mean a sugar rush, no smoothies at all. But every morning for the past fortnight we have enjoyed a bowl of fruit (along with e.g. poached egg on wholegrain toast of some sort). Again I've tried hard to avoid that being dull, leading to me hitting the local Asian supermarket, and looking out for what's good in Morrison's, Waitrose and Sainsbury's.
Today, for example, we had cherries, kiwi, blueberries, and golden plums (£1 for a punnet of eight or ten), with a squeeze of perfumed Egyptian lime, tiny little fruits that lift flavours even more than ordinary lemons do. Tuesday we had dragon fruit and guava with some more workaday stuff. I love guava, in spite of ripe ones smelling like men's locker room sweat. The local Chinese shop had durian in, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and fruit that smells like poo is one good place.
What is austerity in this? Eating fruit is not expensive. It takes a bit of effort to seek things out, but Morrison's wonky blueberries that contributed to two for the three of our breakfasts cost 84p. I defy anybody to explain how they were wonky too. Wonky kiwis (maybe 1.358mm shorter than non-wonky?) I think were 70p for a pack of eight. I use one sliced into six to add luminous green to the plate. Little oranges another bargain; likewise grapefruit reaching its sell-by-date and no different to full price ones in feel or as it turned out flavour for 25p. I buy full price stuff too, and dragon fruit are not cheap, but overall breakfasts for the week don't break the bank.
It's cheering to see something so lovely on the morning platter. Great for the body too, with loads of fibre (kiwis for me qualify as superfoods, though shops aren't allowed to use that word now) and vitamin C, and stuff that is good for the eyes but I can't spell. Blueberries are supposed to help the memory, per clinical tests, but they taste fab with lemon or lime on them. Cherries have some special phytonutrients that you don't find in many other foods. It won't harm your - what a very British word - regularity either.
Reading Michael Moseley's Clever Gut Diet book - he is to diet and health what HFW is to ethical food - as part of the current drive to lose a bit of weight one tip was to help your biome's diversity by eating 30 different fruits and vegetables in a week. We did that in two days, and after three are on 42 and heading ever onward. Tinned stuff in there for pennies; our own veg still (PSB, swiss chard, sprouting seeds, kale and leaks at present, we had too the last of our stored squash on Monday and some of our own stored garlic, along with loads of herbs that I haven't counted in the total); wonky or (per Sainsbury's) greengrocers' F&V are super cheap. And some fruits are reduced in price (like cheese) when they are approaching ripeness.
[Standing up] I am not Spartacus. Nor am I vegetarian. Friday's evening meal will be steak for SC and me, fish for the DL. But for our own good, and with more than a nod at helping the only planet we have to live on, and because they are so tasty, F&V make up the bulk of our nutrition. If that sounds poncey, my apologies. Lunch today will be baked beans on toast. Demotic and delicious.
Our breakfasts, except when staying in hotels or at Christmas when bacon and sausages rule, are usually pretty healthy. Currently they are - thanks Donald - bigly so. And not in a bad way - no kale smoothies, in fact given we learn from Michael Moseley that smoothies go straight through the gut and mean a sugar rush, no smoothies at all. But every morning for the past fortnight we have enjoyed a bowl of fruit (along with e.g. poached egg on wholegrain toast of some sort). Again I've tried hard to avoid that being dull, leading to me hitting the local Asian supermarket, and looking out for what's good in Morrison's, Waitrose and Sainsbury's.
Today, for example, we had cherries, kiwi, blueberries, and golden plums (£1 for a punnet of eight or ten), with a squeeze of perfumed Egyptian lime, tiny little fruits that lift flavours even more than ordinary lemons do. Tuesday we had dragon fruit and guava with some more workaday stuff. I love guava, in spite of ripe ones smelling like men's locker room sweat. The local Chinese shop had durian in, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and fruit that smells like poo is one good place.
What is austerity in this? Eating fruit is not expensive. It takes a bit of effort to seek things out, but Morrison's wonky blueberries that contributed to two for the three of our breakfasts cost 84p. I defy anybody to explain how they were wonky too. Wonky kiwis (maybe 1.358mm shorter than non-wonky?) I think were 70p for a pack of eight. I use one sliced into six to add luminous green to the plate. Little oranges another bargain; likewise grapefruit reaching its sell-by-date and no different to full price ones in feel or as it turned out flavour for 25p. I buy full price stuff too, and dragon fruit are not cheap, but overall breakfasts for the week don't break the bank.
It's cheering to see something so lovely on the morning platter. Great for the body too, with loads of fibre (kiwis for me qualify as superfoods, though shops aren't allowed to use that word now) and vitamin C, and stuff that is good for the eyes but I can't spell. Blueberries are supposed to help the memory, per clinical tests, but they taste fab with lemon or lime on them. Cherries have some special phytonutrients that you don't find in many other foods. It won't harm your - what a very British word - regularity either.
Reading Michael Moseley's Clever Gut Diet book - he is to diet and health what HFW is to ethical food - as part of the current drive to lose a bit of weight one tip was to help your biome's diversity by eating 30 different fruits and vegetables in a week. We did that in two days, and after three are on 42 and heading ever onward. Tinned stuff in there for pennies; our own veg still (PSB, swiss chard, sprouting seeds, kale and leaks at present, we had too the last of our stored squash on Monday and some of our own stored garlic, along with loads of herbs that I haven't counted in the total); wonky or (per Sainsbury's) greengrocers' F&V are super cheap. And some fruits are reduced in price (like cheese) when they are approaching ripeness.
[Standing up] I am not Spartacus. Nor am I vegetarian. Friday's evening meal will be steak for SC and me, fish for the DL. But for our own good, and with more than a nod at helping the only planet we have to live on, and because they are so tasty, F&V make up the bulk of our nutrition. If that sounds poncey, my apologies. Lunch today will be baked beans on toast. Demotic and delicious.
Friday 11 January 2019
It's Too Darn Hot, and Culinary Art
We actually had a frost yesterday, the first in ages here in semi-tropical Fulwood. The weird winter warmth does have its pluses, however, not least in the kitchen garden here. I wrote in a previous post about liking to pick something every day from garden, conservatory or greenhouse, and a few days back had a field day with parsley, bay, oregano and sage all to hand, Swiss chard, leeks and chilies all made good use of. I worry about climate change, and parsley surviving in the depths of our supposed winter should be enough to convince even the most sceptical - though apparently Trump, surviving on burgers and fries, would need an explanation of what parsley is. And that plants grow. And where Britain is.
On a totally separate topic, though if I wished I could do a cheesy segue by saying 'and talking of hot weather, we had a meal a week ago straight out of sunny Spain...' We did, and the main course was paella, served up to a bunch of friends at the table straight from my battle-blackened paella pan. It was so beautiful, even if I say so myself who forgot to photograph it, that it could have qualified as an ephemeral work of art. Chicken pieces red with paprika oil in which they roasted before being added to the saffron-tinted rice; fresh parsley (see above); green peas contrasting with the pink prawns. Of course as it was a thing of constructed beauty it would not be acceptable to the art establishment - though I could have let it rot for a month and then maybe it would have qualified for an Arts Council grant. A chap can dream. Then wake up screaming.
People talk glibly of 'the culinary arts', but for me that's a real thing, and something to aspire to. I cook from fresh all the time, and we live well - both in terms of nutrition and flavour. But only rarely do we get to enjoy something so visually stunning. For me that is where professional cooks - for whom nutrition is a side issue at best - stand apart from worthy amateurs. I'm not going to be making sugar baskets anytime soon, or cutesy waved drizzles of sauce, let alone pointless foams, but certainly the next time we have friends round I am definitely aiming to - on purpose this time - produce something that gives people eye orgasms. The two topics - climate and food beauty - actually do come together, strangely enough, in that we are now awaiting delivery of a load of saffron crocuses, as we've decided it's warm enough these days to give them ago in suburban Preston.
On a totally separate topic, though if I wished I could do a cheesy segue by saying 'and talking of hot weather, we had a meal a week ago straight out of sunny Spain...' We did, and the main course was paella, served up to a bunch of friends at the table straight from my battle-blackened paella pan. It was so beautiful, even if I say so myself who forgot to photograph it, that it could have qualified as an ephemeral work of art. Chicken pieces red with paprika oil in which they roasted before being added to the saffron-tinted rice; fresh parsley (see above); green peas contrasting with the pink prawns. Of course as it was a thing of constructed beauty it would not be acceptable to the art establishment - though I could have let it rot for a month and then maybe it would have qualified for an Arts Council grant. A chap can dream. Then wake up screaming.
People talk glibly of 'the culinary arts', but for me that's a real thing, and something to aspire to. I cook from fresh all the time, and we live well - both in terms of nutrition and flavour. But only rarely do we get to enjoy something so visually stunning. For me that is where professional cooks - for whom nutrition is a side issue at best - stand apart from worthy amateurs. I'm not going to be making sugar baskets anytime soon, or cutesy waved drizzles of sauce, let alone pointless foams, but certainly the next time we have friends round I am definitely aiming to - on purpose this time - produce something that gives people eye orgasms. The two topics - climate and food beauty - actually do come together, strangely enough, in that we are now awaiting delivery of a load of saffron crocuses, as we've decided it's warm enough these days to give them ago in suburban Preston.
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