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.
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