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.

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.

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.

The Ham Diet

The Dear Leader and I have just returned from Bologna, where we spent a long weekend being a bit cultural and very greedy. Given that ham, mortadella and salami nearly always featured at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and watching the Bolognese themselves consume vast platters of ham in the restaurants we used, I am struggling to understand how so few people we saw were fat.


It may be that such meat feasts are for dining outside the home, while vegetable-rich meals are enjoyed in the home. There were more grocers than butchers to be seen as regards shops, and the former had fantastic variety on display, not least the radicchio that seems to have gone out of favour with our  supermarkets (so we are growing plenty to make up for it).


Another theory is that they walk so damn much, as we did, though we had the excuse of being visitors intent on seeing the sights (again in some cases, given we made a similar trip last November). All Saturday and Sunday the streets in the centre were thronged with families and groups of friends just strolling about, working up an appetite (or indeed an appetito).


The culinary highlight of the weekend, for me at least, was tripe in the Parma style, which was tripe stewed with tomato and a rich stock. I am a massive fan of tripe, both for its flavour and its texture. Interestingly (well, for me) that tripe dish was, in comparison to my own standby of tripe and onions, on the underdone side; just so the various pastas we had over the four days of dining, all of them done very much al dente. I will learn from that and not always think 'I'll just give it another minute.'


I've made a resolution to make use of my pasta machine again, the particular aim being to make some ravioli (tortelli etc look far too complex for my folding skills to manage). What I have in mind are some very large ravioli, stuffed with things like ricotta and parmesan, but also I am keen to try pumpkin - though not flavoured with crushed amaretti biscuits. I had that combination in one restaurant, and it was intriguing - a traditional dish of the Veneto apparently - but however interesting and (to me) new, a little went a long way.

Rich and Austere

When early in the day offered the choice of an evening meal based on bangers and mash with onion gravy, or pasta with meatballs (made of the defrosted sausages) SC chose the latter. I wanted to do something different - see Serendipity and the Death of Creation - so ended up making Pasticcio. And bloody lovely it was too.

Thanks to the divine HFW for the basic recipe, though I have eaten this before (in Greece rather than Italy as might be expected), and made it a year or so back.

It was a great example of really good food not costing a fortune: meatballs were made from the meat taken out of £2 of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference sausages; £1 packet of salami; two cloves of garlic, an egg, shallot and some Parmesan. Two 35p tins of toms and some onions, a carrot plus herbs from the garden and more garlic made a rich tomato sauce; 70p of milk and butter plus pennies of flour (and some onion, herbs and a bit of carrot for the infusion) made a bechamel. Two thirds of a 90p pack of penne provided the pasta.

What it did cost was the time I was happy to give it, breaking up my writing for magazines, and what it could have cost had we not possessed a dishwasher was my marriage. Pan for infusing milk for bechamel. Pan for bechamel. Pan for tomato sauce. Griddle for tiny meat balls. Huge pan for assembling the lot: al dente pasta pre-mixed with bechamel on the bottom, tomato sauce with meatballs in the middle, another layer of pasta and bechamel, then a load of cheese (end of some cheddar, about 75p of Parmesan, and a 55p basics mozarella.

Tot all that up and it comes to about £7.00, quite a bit for a midweek supper. But there was enough to feed at least six people, eight if they were polite. Except it was so good three of us demolished the lot. I will do it again without leaving it a year, same quantities, but to feed friends as well as us - as it looked great too which is important when being hospitable. I was glad that I did it in the wide pan with just those three layers, rather than building up what sounds like seven in HFW's recipe - everybody loves cooked cheese and that gave us plenty.

Creative Austerity

Is it possible to be both creative and economical? Stupid bloody question really, as some of the world's great dishes are peasant in their roots, and thus made using the simplest ingredients. The mushroom lasagna I cooked the other night was not exactly simple, but it was economical, and it was the tastiest thing I have put on the table in months.

Mushrooms in place of a meaty ragu was an idea I'd been mulling over for a while, partly because I've committed to doing more vegetarian dishes. An interview with a vegetarian chef (she was making Christmas dinner lasagna) was another spur. Even plain button mushrooms are moist enough to help with cooking the pasta, a nice protein boost, and both cheaper and healthier than using beef. 

The milk for the bechamel was flavoured as ever with onion, carrot, pepper and herbs - bay, thyme and sage - so was packed with flavour already. I made the sauce, though, with about 50g of Stilton. Blue cheese goes well with mushrooms, and this made the sauce - stiff as behoves bechamel for lasagna - really special. 

The market-bought 'shrooms were just sliced and sweated in vegetable oil (plus a teeny bit of truffle oil from a bottle someone kindly bought for us last Christmas), then the lasagna was layered sauce, pasta, sauce, fungi, grated cheddar, pasta, sauce, fungi, cheddar, pasta, sauce, grated Parmesan. 

It cooked to cheesy brownness in 40 minutes at 180 Celsius, filling the bottom two floors of the house with appetite-inducing aromas, within which the few drops of truffle-oil played a surprisingly big role. Ruth was out at a leaving do (plenty of those at the university currently), but SC and I, having already prepared a plea in mitigation with a tomato and cucumber salad, finished all bar a mouthful, both of us tempted to seconds and thirds.  

Back-of-the-envelope calculations make the cost well under £3, and it was good enough and solid enough (unlike my ragu version) to have graced at least a gastro-pub table, if not somewhere more upmarket. It would have fed four with ease too. 

So yes, sometimes you can be creative and economical. Long-winded answer really. 

The Vital Ingredient

If there is a secret society dedicated to rewarding the makers of superb lasagne I am in for a major windfall. I've not heard about such a group, but if it's secret I wouldn't have. Last night's effort was per Sternest Critic, not easily pleased in such matters, a personal best. And the ingredient that made it so was time.

I can make a lasagne from scratch in an hour, 40 minutes of that time being what it spends in the oven. But then the meat ragu has not had time for the flavours to cook down and blend, and the bechamel is not going to be bechamel but a plain white sauce.

Yesterday's schedule gave me free time in the middle of the day, when I prepared the milk for the sauce, heating it with a quartered onion, bay leaves pepper and nutmeg, plus chunks of carrot and celery, then leaving the lot to infuse for another four hours. After basic browning the ragu was simmered for about 45 minutes to dry it out - one recent version of the dish was more soup than solid - and again left for the flavours to mix and mature.

Time is clearly something in short supply for many - working from/at home and my own boss (if Ruth says so) I'm lucky - but surely not so rare that the vile Just Eat (fast food dross) campaign can be excused? Is it over the top to suggest our society is doomed if the fast-foodsters win? Yes. But still.

My conscience pricks me: there was another vital ingredient in the probably-not-award-winning lasagne, about 150g of cheese. Cheese in the bechamel, cheese on top of the meat layers, and a thick layer of finely grated parmesan on the top that came out of the oven at the Goldilocks moment.

All Together Now or One at a Time

With good weather we have the opportunity to eat outside, and our favoured way of doing this is for me to prepare a mezze, that is have a variety of dishes ready to bring to the table in one lot, to avoid traipsing in and out of the kitchen with floor cleaning and atmosphere breaking consequences. Behind that is perhaps the additional motivation that this manner of eating reminds us of Greece, hot sunshine and great simple food.

Yesterday, partly because we were too hungry to wait while the roast chicken rested, we opted for a la Russe, i.e. the more conventional series of dishes: pate on toast starter, stuffed peppers as a vegetable course, then the chicken with rice and mushrooms. The day before we had gone for the mezze, with about eight different things on the table at once, albeit in relatively small quantities, though the beef stiffado (that's posh for stew with peppers, paprika and oregano) was substantial.

So I had the chance to compare. The mezze was by far the more enjoyable meal, even though the chicken with rice was really tasty. It's the exchange of plates and bowls, the sharing aspect, and perhaps the informality that comes perforce with such activity, that makes the difference to mood. Of course that preference probably depends on personality. On business travels in my old career I loved visiting mom and pop and middle range restaurants, where there was no danger of maitre D snobbery and whispered conversations. Phillip's Foote restaurant in Sydney where you not only serve yourself but cook your steak yourself is one of the few places visited in those years whose name I recall.

A la Russe as the norm here only dates from the mid-19th century. It has practical benefits with hot food that you want really hot - if soup, casserole and some steaming baked pudding are all brought out together something will go cold before it's eaten. But if the heat of dishes (something about which we British can be maniacal) is not vitally important as is the case in summer, then for me it's all together now.

Lidl Wonder

The supermarket Lidl gets lampooned by comics, though I wonder when for example multi-millionnaire Russell Howard last shopped in one. It's an easy target, the focus being on value rather than looks and gimmicks so attracting the less well-off as a large part of the clientele. Food writers, however, have a lot of positives to say about the store: on my recent press trip to SW France the topic came up and they received nothing but praise, with one of the five almost in need of counselling for an addiction. On last year's jaunt to Parma (never did get the freebie ham I was promised, never mind, life is a veil of tears etc) the same thing was discussed, with similar pluses (one wine highly recommended by a guy who knew his stuff).

It is the 'continental' goods that get the thumbs up from foodies: their Parmesan is absolutely excellent and inexpensive; lardons are equally good, chunky with a smoky flavour; and Black Forest ham is superb. On a mission to get their super-cheap and high quality paper goods yesterday I bought among other things the ingredients for tonight's aubergine parmigiana, so pretty healthy, great flavours, and economic.

2 x aubergines @ 40p each (top bargain)
1 x tin of chopped toms 31p
1 tray lardons (of 2 tray pack for £1.79) so 90p
Parmesan 50g (200g pack £2.89) 72p

Added to this will be a tsp of sugar, an onion or two finely chopped, several cloves of garlic likewise, and a spoon or two of olive oil. The lot still coming in at under £3 by my reckoning. If it is preceded by pasta with chilli, garlic and olive oil (I love the way Italian household meals tend to comprise two complementary dishes like that), the three of us will feed well, with three fine contributions to our five- for which here read seven-a-day.

The method is simple for anyone who cooks at all: peel and slice the aubergines quite thinly, salt if you wish but often these days that's not needed, bitterness in the fruits now much reduced. Blanch the slices for a minute in water acidulated with either a squeeze of lemon or a glug of wine/cider vinegar. Make a sauce by frying the lardons and onion, adding garlic as they are nearly done, then stirring in chopped toms and a tiny bit of sugar, cooking for at least 15 minutes, preferably a very slow simmer for 40.

In an oven-proof dish assemble: thin layer of sauce, layer of aubergine slices, grating of Parmesan, repeated until finishing with a good layer of Parmesan. Pop in a medium/low oven say 160 centigrade for about 80 minutes, though it is flexible and could cook (well watched) at say 220 centigrade in 35- 40 minutes, though the flavours won't have developed as well.

The Hungry Gap and One Flame Pasta

For those unfamiliar with the term, the hungry gap is the time of year when the winter crops have pretty much ended and the spring plantings not reached maturity. We have shops to get round the starvation problem these days, but for food gardeners it's an annoyance.

There are things like the pea-shoots mentioned the other day that will grow under cover year round, but you really crave fresh stuff smelling of outdoors if you love veg. Yesterday we had a dish that we made in our first home in Norfolk in the mid-eighties, when we had even less spare cash than today. It's just pasta (ideally penne or similar with a bit of substance) cooked al dente then drained (but leave a spoonful or two of liquid behind) and mixed while still hot with a good serving-spoon of butter and a load of freshly picked herbs from the garden.

We gathered little leaves of new-growth sorrel, a few sprigs of rosemary, some crispy tubes of Welsh onion, plus chives, sage and marjoram and a handful of over-wintered parsley, cut them fine with a mezzoluna, mixed into the pasta along with the butter and a good grating of Parmesan (Sternest Critic asked the other day is there any vegetable that doesn't go with Parmesan?), seasoned with crunchy salt and wolfed it. Still cheap, still good, still very quick and easy, ideal after a tiring day.

On Sunday a similarly rapid restorative dish met with approval, pasta puttanesca - pasta whore-style, so called apparently because it could be made on one burner (hmm) in minutes as trade allowed, though the strong flavours and smells masking others is an alternative explanation. This for me needs spaghetti or linguine, cooked until right at the point of being ready, then well drained. To the pasta pan add a few good glugs of basic olive oil (extra virgin somehow inappropriate) that has had a load of crushed garlic and a finely chopped chilli or two infusing in it for a few minutes or an hour if you think ahead. Stir together over a very low heat (don't fry the spag) until the garlic scent rises and the chilli fumes make your eyes water, then season with plenty of salt and lots of pepper. It is coarse and satisfying and the perfect thing to serve with a glass of ropy red wine - you could be drinking the finest Barolo for all your taste buds will be able to tell.

Store-cupboard Necessities

Last night's main course made me think about what things are the absolute store-cupboard necessities in this household. That was because I was making fish pie, one component of which for me has to be smoked fish, tinned kippers the easiest way of doing that (cheap, no bones worthy of note, bags of flavour).

Tins of anchovies would have to be up there too: to make my own pizza or add to bought-in; in fish soups to give background; used in a stuffing for veg like peppers; and with discretion in salads. Baked beans another: tonight we are having a rib-fest, so a tin of Heinz with some spice and BBQ sauce will fill out the meal, but they are great added to stews at the end of cooking to sweeten and bulk out, and have numerous other uses though please not the 1970s thing of serving them cold as a salad. Bleaugh. Green lentils in a tin, however, do make a fine salad with some not very delicate slices of onion, a load of crushed garlic, and if to hand some tomato and cucumber, the lot doused in a mustardy vinaigrette.

And no cupboard of mine would ever be without pasta and rice, both the basis of rapid and good meals. In fact I have at least three of each so the changes can be rung.

Ah! and tinned tomatoes, how could I forget? The sauce (with a bit of fiddling) for that pasta, an enhancement to stews and curries, a topping (once reduced) for a pizza...

Some look down on tinned food, and of course fresh is very desirable. But on a wet Thursday when you have forgotten your fridge was nearly empty they are a godsend.

What would you not be without in the larder?

Peasant, Classic and Austere

Last week on a press trip to Parma - the details to feature on The Culinary Guide and Selectism - I tried as ever to eat things that seemed rooted rather than the product of a cheffy imagination. It has to be said that Parma is a great place to carry out such searches.

The most memorable of the dishes digested on the all too brief trip was anolini in brodo, which was gloriously simple and second-helping moreish: curved and rather cute little ravioli filled with Parmesan, served in a broth that reflected the care of the kitchen and respect for the dish's origins.

The representative of the Parmesan Consorzio with us at the restaurant said it was a beef broth, but I remain convinced that this was chicken, with the depth added by the generous use of vegetables including celery. Generous but not overwhelming. It had loads of flavour, but at the same time was restrained, nothing bullied its way to the front (hence the debate, beef or chicken).

For the first bowlful I followed instructions and added Parmesan aplenty (the cheese one of the reasons for the trip), but more was less, so for the second only a few diplomatic strands were lobbed in. 

I haven't made my own pasta in ages, but this has prompted me to do so again. Making pasta is one of those things like making your own bread, and producing a good stock from bones and a few veg - the cost is negligible except in time, and the reward in flavour is great.