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.
Thursday 18 July 2019
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.
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