End of the Allotment

Now, where was I? The answer to that is in a rather more (but by no means strictly) vegetarian place than before.

For health reasons more than economy (though I love a bargain), and because we produce a lot of our own fruit and veg, I have over the last two or three years cooked far fewer meat-based dishes than used to be the case. I have a new hero too, the cookery writer Ursula Ferrigno, who appears to be of a similar mindset given I have two books of hers that are solely vegetarian, and a third on trattoria cooking that has plenty of meaty stuff in it.

As the Dear Leader (may her enemies perish in despair) and I near our second 30th birthdays anno domini looms far larger in the imagination, so we pick up more readily on the health-page articles than previously, and getting five-, seven-, ten-a-day is a fixation there, and thus now with us. We have also both made successful efforts to lose weight, part and parcel of the new view of our diet.

The big thing, however, as ever as far as I am concerned, is taste and pleasure. The two big things. Amongst our weaponry. It is now mid-July, our soon-to-be abandoned allotment (fed up with people nicking stuff, have lost strawbs, broad beans and blackcurrants this year already) is producing loads of wonderful and next-to-free produce, and our garden likewise. The broad beans (we have still had the majority of what we grew, but I hate being abused by thieves) are picked small and some eaten raw they are that good. Our fennel, likewise picked when tiny, is packed with more flavour and of a texture that is silk to supermarket worsted.

There are gastronomic possibilities too in growing your own that are pretty near impossible in this country otherwise. We have for example had lots of artichokes already, again taken small and sweet. And for the first time ever we have beaten those far more relentless produce-thieves, the squirrels, to our walnut crop, still only perhaps a dozen picked green, but now macerating in a Kilner jar with spices and a bottle of unwanted clear spirit, nocino for Christmas 2019.

The Dear Leader (may those who fail to bow before her suffer endless agonies) is expanding our kitchen garden, already quite a size, we spent a happy Sunday last week building a second small greenhouse (my how they laughed at the instruction book, apparently a surrealist statement of merely possible realities) and we have plans for more trees - this morning's smoothie contained three of our homegrown plums - to add yet more unbuyable varieties to our basket. We seem to be looking forward to the best ever quince harvest too.

I will miss the allotment, and wish the two users who will inherit our ground (and trees, and artichokes, and fruit bushes, and...) well of it. But I fear that as we head into uncertain political times, and very probably poorer economic conditions thanks to a generation of politicians of all stripes who couldn't organise a fart from a can of beans, we will see more and more desperate people reduced to raiding allotments to keep from hunger. I'd prefer it if they had an allotment of their own though.

In case anybody thinks I'm a heartless sod begrudging food to the desperate, I regularly donate a bag of tins and packets to the Sally Army. I do wonder if those stealing things are desperate, or just greedy idle bastards - a while back the plot next door lost a giant pumpkin just before Halloween; and another guy had an entire row of spuds dug up.

Good Stuff

Much to SC's annoyance I make the same pronouncement at every Christmas lunch: I'd rather have the accompaniments than the meats, if it came down to a choice. Not that it did, this year we got outside much of a turkey crown and a double wing rib of beef (the latter supplied from the fine Aberdeen Angus cattle of Henry Rowntree). Both were excellent, but it was the stuffing and the bread sauce that will live long in the taste memory.

Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.

The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.

To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.

Duck - no Grouse

When I invested in the Aldi Serrano ham I also bought and put in the freezer a stuffed duck that if memory serves cost £8.99. It was a standby, and a way of avoiding the shops as much as possible over the Christmas and New Year hols. I hate that mad crush, the irrational belief that the supermarkets may never open again, contrary to all experience and the message of major ad campaigns, so illogically you need to shop every day. 

It proved a luxurious bargain. With bread sauce (better than the version I made on Christmas Day), glazed carrots and a mash of spud and parsnip it was the basis of a good meal for four. But the bonus was the cereal-bowlful of duck fat that has since enriched several soups, and last night (a week on) made crispy golden cubes of potato. Only goose-fat can rival it for that quality of crisping stuff up. 

Half the bowl remains - a little goes a very long way, and it keeps for several weeks. So midweek we'll have a crispy potato gratin, not even needing cheese or onions, though I'll be tempted to slip some shavings of the enduring Serrano ham in there for interest and protein, and a thinly-sliced sliver or two or garlic. The spuds need to be cut as thinly as possible, probably on the blade on the grater, then fried quickly in the fat and tipped into a gratin dish and mixed with the garlic and ham to finish in a hot oven - it's done when it's brown on top. 

Served with a green salad or some home-made coleslaw and followed by the survivors from the box of Christmas mandarins it's a moderately healthy supper for pennies. Fewer than 250 pennies if you reckon on 60p of spuds, 2p of garlic, 50p of ham, 75p for the salad element (over-costed as a cos lettuce now £1 in the shops and half of one will suffice) and 50p for three mandarins. A bit more if I go for the slaw.

Over Christmas the most frequently spotted dish here was said coleslaw. There is a small bowlful in the fridge now. What can be easier than grating a big carrot and an apple, plus half a small onion for bite, cutting some white cabbage very finely, and mixing with Helmann's? We ate it alongside sarnies, with the inevitable (and wonderful) cold meat aftermath, and at a small party after New Year's Eve. We'll have more this week one way or another. By my reckoning a big bowlful costs say 10p for a carrot, 30p an apple, 30p for the cabbage, and 5p for the onion. Two big spoons of mayo runs to maybe 20p. So 95p for roughly five times the volume of a supermarket carton that costs more than that, and isn't as fresh by a long chalk. 

And the Winner Is...

Not the Oscars, but my thoughts on the best food of the Christmas break, from which I am returning today.

Of the bought-in stuff there is no debate, the bargain Serrano ham from Aldi at £39.99 including stand, knife and sharpening steel was clearly the best. When we first cut into it my heart sank, as those two or three initial slices were not tasty. It improved after a day or so, and is now (kept in a cold conservatory) deeply salty-meaty.

As it won't last forever ham has of late been included in numerous recipes, like last night's chicken in wine (dry January so party leftover finding a home too) and cream, and our pizza-fest. Such luxury.

Is it strange or not that the best thing I cooked was one of the simplest, done in haste? Returning from picking up my father to spend Christmas with us I was allowed three minutes to sit down, then asked what was I going to cook. As a restorative and with an eye on the upcoming relative lack of veg I did a take on Jane Grigson's classic curried parsnip soup, or maybe an unnatural union between that and potage bonne femme.

My version was a curried vegetable soup, with just one (very big) parsnip though that did dominate the flavour. As ever chopped onions were sweated in a little butter, to which four large carrots, that parsnip, three potatoes, two leeks, and several cloves of garlic were added, all chopped or chunked. Hot water and a cheaty spoonful of Swiss vegetable bouillon powder went in, plus - and this was not planned, I found a dearth of ready-made curry powder - my own version ground from pepper, cumin, fenugreek, a tiny bit of star anise, a tsp of turmeric and more of coriander seeds. Simmered for 20 minutes until the veg were beyond soft it was finished with a little cream then zapped with the stick of ultimate power. It was warming, tasty and even a little virtuous.

If you cost it out the veg maybe ran to £1.50, the cream 25p, and the curry ingredients 10p. So four fed for well under £2, and it kept us going (in two senses) until the evening when the chocolates, snacks and other indulgences kicked in. They cost a bit more.

Why Turkey?

Like Santa Claus I have been making my Christmas list, though mine is concerned with stuff I need to get for our family celebrations. Top of that list is a turkey crown. Not a whole turkey, and certainly not a giant turkey that needs to have its legs removed if it is to fit in the oven (Pilkington family in Gorleston circa 1972). I go for a crown as we don't like turkey enough to face the revisits for a whole week after the big day. So why do I then buy turkey at all?

Tradition comes into it of course. We had turkey as kids, so it wouldn't feel like Christmas without it. But goose is far more traditional in the historic sense (happily, with two of my magazine articles currently in print on that topic, ker and indeed ching). In the USA a big ham is the done thing, turkey there being reserved for Thanksgiving (for those creeps trying to make it a British event, drop it please).

Maybe as happened with the move from goose in the late 19th century we will evolve away from turkey. We in this household also tend to have a small sirloin joint, done so the centre is still red raw. Other foods have come in as rather oxymoronic new traditions during my lifetime: panetone, panforte, and Stollen cake to name but three.

Happy those like us who don't have to endure real austerity at Christmas. But to go full circle, a whole turkey can be an austerity boon: sarnies, broth, curry, risotto, gratin, more sarnies, fricassee, stir fry, rissoles (so much nicer if called by another name - turkey cakes perhaps), soup... A freezer full of saved meat means it doesn't have to be an endurance course but can be spread over months. Almost makes me want to buy a big bird. Almost.

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity

I am re-reading Walden. Not a Scandinavian bloodfest (though like many my age I always suspected something deeply wrong about the Muppet Swedish chef) but Thoreau's account of and musings on his time spent in a cabin a mile or so away from his home-town.

Something in that struck a particular chord with me - his calculations about the food he grew and ate. As mentioned some time back in this blog, I am keeping a record of expenditure on and estimated value of food grown in our garden and allotment. Thoreau's was calculated to the nearest half cent, somewhat improbably. But what hit home from that information was how simply he lived - growing rye, potatoes, a little beet and so on, plus catching the occasional 'mess' of fish in Walden Pond, and a dish of purslane picked from the land on which he was squatting.

His calculations were as much concerned with how little time it took to earn or through his own labour to grow enough to live on, happy as he was to survive on a basic diet. The time left allowed him to think.

The title of this post is perhaps the most famous quotation from his book, a line I read last night that immediately made me think of the exact opposite that so many will be living through this Christmas.

We won't be having an austere Christmas in any sense, but I do intend to keep things simple. The traditional British turkey assault course on Christmas Day naturally, but otherwise keeping to the sufficient and unadulterated: an air dried ham that can be picked at for weeks (Aldi advertising a Serrano ham for £49.99 I think) kept in the cold of our conservatory; a cliche but still wonderful, Stilton and Port of an evening to stretch the time and conversation at the dinner table; my own bread; plenty of fruit; simple salads quickly made.

Thoreau was most contented when alone, feeling solitude facilitated his thinking. I love the company of my family and our friends (real friends, not FaceBook ones or similarly vague acquaintances). Talk - notoriously cheap I'm glad to say - with them over the table is a real luxury, and unlike Thoreau I feel such company engenders thought, which just as it was for him is another luxury for me.

Unreal Christmas Cookbook IV

According to the publishers this is one of the culinary events of the decade, the book the most anticipated tome of the year. The owner and inspiration behind Boshbolics, the already legendary chain of Carolingian  restaurants with outlets that now spread from Chelsea to Chiswick, has finally after weeks of pressure agreed to provide her army of fans with the secrets of this magnificent cuisine.

A few selections from the book tell the story.

'When I first has a stopover at Carolingia's airport and tasted the food I knew I would have to dedicate my life to bringing this cuisine to Britain. It was a struggle until my husband who is a merchant banker gave me £1m as seed capital.'

'I'd like to dedicate this book to all the people who have helped me on this journey since mid-April, especially the design team.'

'For me it is still incredible that it's taken so long for Carolingian peasant classics like lamb's heart boiled with dried cod and preserved lemons to become established in this country. Bitkrep is just a wonderful blend of textures and flavours, and at only £35 for a portion with grey rice is a great way for ordinary people in Chelsea to get a taste for this unbelievable cuisine.'

The Complete Boshbolics Cookbook is now on sale for £45.

Unreal Christmas Cookbook III

Victoria Beckham’s Food for the Stylish

We’re pretty sure this is unreal (it’s utterly unreal), just as we are generally convinced that anything where the word celebrity is used is the fantasy of some PR creative committee (do those last three words go together?). Perhaps like so much of Dallas (takes you back) and indeed celebrity culture (now those words are really incompatible) this is all a bad dream. But here goes. As the blurb promises, for just a few tens of thousands of pounds you can eat like multi-talented Victoria and other such multi-talented celebrities.

Multi-talented Victoria’s secret (hmm) is a disarmingly simple one: she employs a team of talented chefs (poor things, only one talent) who for example hand carve a variety of lettuce leaf, chicory and celery salads to her precise instructions, blending four drops of single estate Tuscan olive oil and one of rare vintage balsamic vinegar personally blessed by Pope Francis to dress them. A stylist then arranges each leaf according to a plan devised by the multi-talented Victoria herself! Start your meal with her fabulous pea soup, made with the freshest pea in Harvey Nicks and mineral water flown in from Switzerland, and end it with her witty take on the chocolate fudge sundae, a sun-warmed Revel garnished with half a cashew nut.

The beautifully photographed non-existent tome has images detailing how each dish is constructed, and is ideal for the hard of thinking, using less ink than one of multi-talented hubby David’s tattoos. This could completely change the way we think about food, or it could be so ridiculous that even the British public won’t go for it in spite of the planned TV series and the exclusive launch in Fatuous! Puerile! Vapid! and Brain-Dead! magazines this December. Like this book they don't exist either, but it's just a matter of time. 

New Year and Using Stuff Up

The usual suspect Christmas leftovers are long gone - a turkey crown means that the meat is a memory well before it becomes a recurring nightmare, and what was left of our sirloin transformed into the traditional cold cuts on Boxing Day, fabulous butties the next, and a stir fry and Chinese soup another. Others remain, or remained, yesterday's main meal a determined effort to make the best of them.

Thus a chicken carcase (am using the alternative spelling in the hope a friend keen to help me mend the error of my orthographical ways will correct it - curses, think she may spot that trap now) sitting in the fridge after a weekend festive meal with mates became stock yesterday afternoon that then made minestrone in the evening (the rest for tonight's risotto). And the dog-ends of cheese, some of it rather fine cheese, flavoured a sauce that helped stretch the tinned salmon (how very 1970s again) and kippers in a fish pie topped with mash from same weekend repast.

When the good-housekeeper stuff of using up Christmas bits before they are only fit for the bin is done I will turn to my foodie New Year's resolution, which is to have at least two vegetarian evening meals a week, and one based on fish. The inspirations behind this are several: environmental guilt about using too much meat and meat-farming using too many of the earth's resources; economy; health matters; and stretching my culinary abilities and repertoire - it is too easy to fall into the routine of planning a meal around a slab of bloody protein.

Christmas Austerity Cannon

A Christmas austerity cannon is made with the tube from a used cracker, and propellant made from three of the unused strips that go bang from same, loaded with plastic hair-slides, miniature packs of cards, and nail-clippers that break within a day. Alternatively it is a spelling error. Mea culpa, I blame it on Michael Gove because he has a face like a constipated frog.

Top leftover tip and compliments of the season to you: made some stuffing to go with chicken yesterday that used up several odds and sods. Three slices of bread past the first flush, four tiny sausages that should have been breakfast two days earlier, some walnuts (who ever finishes one of those string bags that are a legal requirement of the British Christmas?), a handful of dried-ish prunes and the one ingredient not on the to-do list, a big juicy onion. All zapped then moistened with oil and cooked in a dish alongside the bird, firstly covered with foil to keep it soft, then without to brown the top.

The oil I used was walnut, which doesn't sound like it is part of the austerity thing, but is relatively cheap and for me fits as it is one of the best bang-for-you-buck flavourings you can find. A few drops in dressings or as a flavour enhancer in cooked dishes is all that's needed.

Re-Train Your Gravy

Too convoluted a title?

A simple idea for using up surplus gravy - so about 12 million households currently then - beyond the traditional moistening of turkey sarnies.

On the 20th we committed a major sin against the austerity cannon by buying in Chinese - I can blame my visiting father whose idea it was. The next day, though we had imbibed very modestly, both my wife and I felt headachey, maybe the MSG at fault. So we prefer homemade, and a soup should always be part of any Chinese banquet (when you attend posh ones you get several), thus on the 27th I made the following as part of a full Chinese meal.

I had half a gravy-boat of beefy goodness from Christmas Day (as we had a small piece of sirloin to go with the turkey crown). A chopped onion and finely diced carrot were fried until the onion was taking on a hint of colour, then a huge clove of garlic in the thinnest slices was added along with a de-seeded chili, and the gravy poured over the lot. Topped up with water and spiced with plenty of star anise and 5-spice the soup was simmered for 20 minutes, then a handful of sirloin in cubes and the same amount of sweetcorn kernels dropped in, and finally some pre-soaked noodles.

It's a recipe with endless variations possible, but the core of the thing is the affinity of beef and star anise.

Secret Service Santa Stuff VII

Strangely this letter to Santa Claus from a celeb chef (found on the train in a mislaid MI5 file) is written on a £20 note, the person involved must be minted. 

Wotcha San’a Mate,

Love me noo scoo’a, pukkah ain’t in it. Give me an idea for anuva noo book, ker-ching. Anyway, bang up job chap, hope Ruuds enjoyed the fried carrot wiv ’and-torn basil, and you got a kick outta your fried sherry. 

Cheerso cockie,

Top bloke chef

Secret Servile Santa Stuff VI

Celebrity chef letters to Santa. Check out the earlier ones for a more cogent explanation. 

Dear Santa Claus,

When I was a gel Christmas celebrations were so much better. We had servants and were really rather well orf as I may have mentioned previously, but so was everybody who mattered then. I spent this Christmas (as you know of course) with some friends in their house completely lined with oak, inside and out-. They are very well orf, but we had to drink port that was younger than me, things are slipping. My thanks then for the table reinforcer and the massive arse pants. 

Secret Service Santa Stuff V

Check out the intro on the others. It's nearly Christmas. Celebrity chef, thank you letters, inept security operative, you knows the drill.

Dear Santa,

Thanks for the Christmas challenge – accepted. Two whole roast reindeer (in habanero pepper dry rub with garlic then dipped in hot-enough-to-defrost-Mrs-Santa-chilli-sauce) in one hour in the best pig-out joint in Lapland. Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Oh! wow! They are delicious. I want to marry you and have your elf babies. I hope that the new stomach lining I asked for will arrive next year, the old one is all but chillied-thru.

Yours,

A damn fine fella

Secret Service Santa Stuff IV

Another in this blog's devastating revelations about the minds and activities of the celebrity chef. The world quakes. Again the signature on this thank you letter to Santa was illegible, but there are hints in the text that it could be someone I actually admire enormously. We may never know.

Dear Santa,

Here at Rubber Cabbage the Yuletide feasting was as ever perfect, thanks in no small measure to you. How you got past the ham from my own pig smoking in the chimney is beyond me. We love that pig so much that we had its leg amputated under anasthetic and sent it hopping happily back to the wilds of my estate. Delicious.

I can’t thank you enough for my Nobel Prize for vegetables - common people on building sites and so on really should know about them.  

Throughout Christmas the log fire crackled in the background wherever we were, even the bathroom. Hundreds of friends dropped by for spontaneous private celebrations with special home-brewed drinks prepared by some of my serfs, hastily foraged truffles and so on, though they thought what I did was best. Happily by complete chance a camera crew was present to record it all.

Thanks again old chap,

Secret Service Santa II

The second missive found in the top-secret file of celebrity-chef thank-you letters to Santa carelessly left on the train. Again it is impossible to say who wrote this, though I have a feeling I really should know. It does sound as though this celebrity chef is not very concerned with austerity.

Darling Santa,

I adored the gorgeous gifts you brought me, and having them enrobed in thick, unctuous double cream folding into melted chocolate with extra dark chocolate squares was a marvellous touch. My husband loved his gifts too, especially that clever ‘Prams I Was Sick in’ installation. Arriving downstairs in my red silk décolleté nightwear to find such super things rather excited me, as you and a lot of other older men may imagine. Come again soon, 

Mmmmm, 

Yours,

[signature illegible]

Secret Service Santa Stuff

On the train the other day I pushed past the piles of laptops and disks left by government ministers and secret service operatives, then noticed an envelope marked 'Celebrity Chef thank you letters to Santa'. Apparently the government thinks it is necessary to monitor such communications for reasons of national security. Following the pattern set by The Daily Telegraph with MPs' expenses I am thus going to release the most informative of them in dribs and drabs over the Christmas period (not the supermarket period obviously or this would have begun in October). First off is a pithy little missive, redacted (when did we start using that word instead of censored?) because of the strong language in it. I have no idea who this could have been from, as the signature was blurred and scratched angrily into the paper.

Dear Santa,

When will you learn? The presents you delivered were useless, you are useless, now f--- off and get me what I asked for in the first place you total t---.

Yours,

[unknown]

Christmas Future - Sanity and Austerity

This is not the refrain of the middle-aged grump that Christmas starts earlier every year. Though it appears to do so - Miracle on 34th Street (the original, not the inferior Richard Attenborough version) currently on Film 4 while November is far from over. But as we seem to clutch on to Christmas as some sort of lifestyle lifeboat I was wondering what is to this generation what the giant turkey was to my mother's.


In the Seventies there was a mania at Christmas for having the biggest turkey as some sort of status symbol. Mad. People regularly found their ovens too small to cook the damn things, and had to remove the legs for cooking separately, mothers forced to rise before dawn to start the cooking if it was to have any chance of being eaten before nightfall. Turkey risotto, sandwiches, broth, curry, rissoles and cold cuts followed the big day's feast seemingly endlessly. Ad nauseam for sure.


I guess that the goose, rather a return to the 19th century perhaps, has become the contemporary equivalent - I must admit that I've never cooked a whole one, only a leg and a breast bought on different occasions (at Lidl btw). Two years ago I did a small sirloin, and have heard that it - or a rib of beef - is gaining in popularity. The pheasant has been mentioned in dispatches for the Christmas board, which seems more a nod to snobbery than enjoyment - I have never had one roasted in either domestic or commercial circumstances that was worth the effort of eating, however many slices of fatty bacon are wrapped over it. Dry and tough is invariably the rule that way; braised or stewed is another matter. The three/four/five bird roast is another option growing in favour. Never having tried this I can't comment on how they turn out.


Of course there are turkeys and turkeys - there's a world of  difference between a frozen battery-reared jobbie and a Kelly Bronze, for instance. The latter is expensive but worth it for a special occasion, which December 25th surely is.With austerity pushing cooks towards economy it's unlikely the behemoth bird will make a comeback.

My own prediction for Christmas future is the increasing importance of the stuffing, sausages, and other accompaniments meaty and vegetable. They show care and generosity (of time and effort). For us, though we remain in funds, I think the smallest turkey crown I can find and either a small beef joint or a goose breast again will feature. And possibly for variety, if I can get the timings right, a frozen pack of four quails that is already in the freezer (Lidl again), the antithesis of the titanic turkey of Christmas past.

Alternative Austerity Christmas

Not sure how alternative or austere this really is, but Lidl have frozen goose breast in stock, enough meat to feed four, and so rich that it really does fill you up. You'll not have much meat left over afterwards as it isn't a huge slab - is that a plus or a minus? I bought one for about £8, which is a fraction of what a turkey crown sets you back (am sure of that as I just bought a free-range one of those too from M&S as it was the best I have seen). Will cook both on the day, and with a bit of careful timing have the goose fat in which to make crispy roast spuds (saving £2.40 or so for a jar of that marvellous stuff). The goose breast must be lifted above the dish in which it roasts, to let the fat drip off and keep the meat out of it, otherwise you end up eating something like meaty lard (mmmmm, meaty lard - Homer).

Lidl is excellent for continental stuff like this - their chorizo is really good, and cheaper than other supermarkets, parmesan is actually the best packet version I've found and is cheap too, and they sometimes have pheasant at bargain prices. Pheasant always stewed or braised btw, I am yet to eat a roast pheasant that was worth the effort. I'm happy to shop in slightly less cheerful surroundings for such savings, though they could do with improving their veg, not often tempting enough.

As regards pheasant, I have childhood memories of my father occasionally being given a brace which he would hang in the garage. Once he went further than was sensible, the result (or one mouthful) being perhaps the vilest thing I ever ran to the toilet to spit out.