Obsessed with Onions

I go through phases when certain ingredients grab my attention to the point that they for a while become obsessions. These may be triggered by food I'm served, by a TV cookery show, something read in a cook book (the most frequent source), or by an aspect of a dish I've prepared, as was the case last week.

A biryani made with loads of onions in the sauce/body of the dish was finished with some caramelised and slightly crispy fried onions on top of the rice. Biryanis, btw, give the lie to an advert about takeaways where a supposed law of the curry is that the sauce always goes on top of the rice. Onions for that dish provided the deeply savoury flavour at the heart of the sauce, whilst onions from the exact same bag gave it a sweeter finish, the same ingredient made entirely different by different cooking methods.

Other things enriched that curry - potato, pumpkin, peas, plus ginger and spices. But it was the onion that caught the palate's notice. No wonder there were riots in India a few years ago when onions were in short supply - what would we do without them? I love raw onion in salads; baked onions; in cheesy potato grattins; onion gravy... but most of all I love fried onions, mahogany to black, the way mobile burger bars get them - you fear for your health on so many levels, but what a wonderful flavour.

On Lancaster market this Saturday I bought a 5kg bag of white onions for £2, ridiculously good value (the delightful examples within are a bit undersize for the supermarkets' cretinous policies). As an aside, my £10.10 worth of fruit and veg purchased there would probably provide the vegetable matter (and much of the starch) to get us through the week if we wanted to be frugal - 3 persimmons, 4 giant baking spuds, 5kg white onions, 2 avocados, 15 clementines, 1/2lb mushrooms, 4 limes, a mango, a papaya, 2 bags of tiny sweet peppers, a big swede, a head of celery and a cucumber. I may have missed something else out [I had as I discovered when checking this - add three pomegranates and the same number of sweet potatoes].

With a stock of sharply tasty onions to hand (they rate about Brief Encounter on the peeling tears scale, happily not The Railway Children ending though) I've begun a campaign to make the best of them. Yesterday was French onion soup, cooked slowly for about 90 minutes. I guess around 30 or so onions went into the pot, cooking down to creamy khaki before being thickened with flour ('Daaarling, nobody uses flour to thicken nowadays' - sod off), perked up with a glass of white wine, let down (physically rather than morally) with some ham stock, and finished with a dog end of a French cheese whose name escapes me grated in. It was wonderful, a gloop rather than a liquid, and begged for a glass of roughish red to accompany it. We had two, one for each bowlful. The Dear Leader (may she rule 1000 years) was gracious in her praise.

That barely made a dent in the onion mountain. Tomorrow (man cannot live by onions alone) will be - so very Northern I want to say 'hey up lad' - tripe and onions. Anyone who has never tried it, I pity you.

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. 

Student Survival - Shopping Tips

I am making a sort of personal cookbook for my son in the fervent hope he gets his grades and starts at university next year. The thought struck me while starting on that that shopping tips would be even more useful, given he can do quite a few dishes already, but has never yet done a supermarket (or other) shopping run.

So for what they are worth, and in no particularly logical order, my top tips for student shopping survival:

1. In supermarkets check out the 'ethnic' food shelves. You'll find rice, coconut milk, spices and plenty more that is appreciably cheaper than the same foods (different brands) on the next aisle.
2. Recipe bacon aka cooking bacon is a wonderful deal - the ends, off-cuts and errors not suitable for pretty packets. Same bacon, and often with big chunks perfect for stews. And who cares if their bacon butty is made up of mis-shapes?
3. Tinned tomatoes - buy the cheapest - basic, value, whatever they call them in your store. Some colour variation, maybe a tiny bit of skin, but no difference in taste or standard. Which price sounds better, 31p or £1?
4. Don't be put off by Aldi and Lidl's lack of fancy decor, they do good food and at low prices. Lidl's Parmesan is the best supermarket one I've found, and it is between 35% and 50% cheaper than the stuff from certain other big name places.
5. Markets can be brilliant for fruit and veg, much cheaper than supermarkets and ethically often great as veg tends to be local.
6. Chinese supermarkets are another source of good and cheaper ingredients. When I get the chance I buy noodles in them for about a quarter of the Sainsbury's price, and tins of bamboo shoots and water chestnuts for 60p to 65p compared with 90p.
7. 'Basic' peppers again are a bargain, just more interesting shapes than the dearer ones. They don't come from bad plants. They are not 'off'. 
8. If you buy veg etc in supermarkets, a quick glance at the bagged up price and the loose price per kilo is worthwhile. Mushrooms you pick and put in a paper bag are a good 10% cheaper than the plastic boxes. 
9. For meat if you can find a butcher's shop (or stall on the market) use it. They will do small bags of mince (ragu, chilli con carne, etc) where supermarkets tend to do 250g minimum. Meat as spice in a ragu needs 100g or less.
10. Don't buy the cheapest bread. Bread should be a pleasure, and the crappiest sliced rubbish is not. Same thing with 'mild' cheddar - and with the latter you need twice as much to get the same flavour as you have with strong stuff, so it's a false economy.
11. Buy in season, when gluts mean cheap prices. The other side of this is don't buy stuff flown half-way round the world - food-mile guilt and the freight adds to the price. 
12. Some 'specials' are worth going for, others not. BOGOF fresh foods risks the 'free' one (not free) going off, so you wasted money and resources. Tins, however, are good value as they keep.
13. Own brand works for simple things like rice, pasta and bread. A brand's price includes a hefty proportion of advertising spend and something for sharper packaging. Who cares?
14. Protein isn't just found in meat. Mushrooms, tofu, Quorn, and beans are good alternatives, and a lot cheaper.  

Any other suggestions?

Missing, Presumed Dead Good

I could recite a litany of tasty and tasteful products that I or my whole family have come to love, but that have been removed from the shelves in one way or another. Yet vile perversions like cheese with candied mango remain. When I see shoppers buying such things I give them a cold stare that would have made Paddington Bear envious.

Take for example Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire Cheese in my local Booth's supermarket. It is one of this country's finest cheeses, and beyond sensible argument its best Lancashire. Yet the shop, perhaps eight miles from the farm where it is made, has dropped it, presumably because of poor demand.

Or the giant Greek beans in sauce that were sold by Sainsbury's, expensive but delicious they were a perfect part of a mezze.

It is tempting to resort to thinking along the lines of the mother at the passing out parade: 'Look at all those soldiers out of step with my son.'

There are ways round the problem. For Mrs Kirkham's I will try the local Waitrose, or call on the farm myself - Graham Kirkham is a top bloke, great storyteller, and cheese genius, I'd hope he'd sell direct if asked.

For the beans I have just made my own, taste-memory harnessed to try to mimic the ingredients of their sauce, and butter beans the nearest equivalent of the gigantes ones in the long lost jars. SC tried some, and thought them good, but the bean texture wrong. So the next step is grow our own. Maybe.

Update: the gigantes bean jars are back in Sainsbury's, not on the fancy gourmet shelves but with various preserves. Excellent.

Improve Your Pizza

The blessed Hugh of crackling fireplace in every room including the loo fame is actually one of my favourite food writers - certainly of contemporary exponents of the art he is in my opinion the best, not least for his ethical stance which it is clear is not a marketing-man's afterthought.

I frequently refer to HFW's books for tips and enjoyment. Browsing through The River Cottage Fish Book looking to glean a few ideas for my smoker project I noticed two ways to improve my homemade pizzas: a 50/50 mix of plain and bread flour (I've used all bread flour previously), and pre-heating the pan in the oven. The results were definitely far less soggy in the centre, and the edges were beautifully crisp (but then I do make them very thin).

Other posts have sung the praises of homemade pizza but the message bears repeating. Setting aside the fun of making them... no, I won't, that really should be a big part of cooking. Putting together your toppings, watching and smelling your creations progress, all adds to the joy of snacks (yes I know Terry Pratchett got there first). And for the austerity cook they're a boon, and I'll dare say far healthier than shop-bought options. Last night we had plenty of onion, a whole red pepper, a drained tin of chopped toms and half a pack of mushrooms incorporated in the toppings, along with a head of garlic. The protein was largely oily fish too, viz a tin of boneless sardines and another of anchovies.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation has the cost of three pizzas and one big garlic bread yesterday at under £5. You could buy very nasty supermarket cheapies for less, but shame on you for doing so unless absolutely forced by circs, or you could buy half-decent ones for twice that (four times if you go for delivered-to-your-door-and-god-have-mercy-on-your-soul). But you'd miss out on all the fun.

Upside to the Horsemeat Scandal

The good news from the horsemeat scandal is that butchers, properly trained old-fashioned stripy-aproned butchers, are seeing a boost in trade. The logic is inescapable: people know that major supermarkets, however much they protest, are about price, price price. We now have an example of where that leads. Processed food cannot it seems be trusted, so the alternative is for people to return to cooking for themselves. And for trustworthy ingredients I'd rather go to Jack Jones Butcher than any massive corporation.

Sadly I don't think this will last. There are people so lazy and incapable they keep a hopeful eye out for a microwavable boiled egg. And it seems MacDonald's have avoided any taint in this scandal, so the hordes of ready-meal addicts will doubtless make their way there more frequently. That vile ad campaign at present - 'Don't Cook, Just Eat' (I keep looking for the sub-title 'If you are sad, have no taste, wish to be spotty and obese and smell of rancid fat' but I keep missing it) - is a measure of things to come.

Horse Meat Good News for MPs

Am I too cynical to conclude that the spate of (plate of?) scandals about horse meat and other contamination of processed foods will have MPs patting their tummies? The lobbying firms will now be in overdrive, and instead of the big hitters enjoying the big dinners, the largesse will have to pass lower down the political food chain.

Among those defending themselves will be supermarkets showing that it was nothing to do with their grinding downward pressure on suppliers that has led to corner cutting. Step forward too a crowd of the giants of the food processing world, out to demonstrate how it wasn't anything to do with them, guvnor, they thought the extraordinarily cheap meat they were buying was kosher - bad choice of words - fine then. The inevitable conclusion must surely be the third plea in Scottish law: 'A big boy done it and ran away.'

It will not just be MPs at the trough, either. Their parties (and it will be all the major parties) will have a boost to funding from some of the big food fish, by which I don't mean halibut. Halibut smells better. So the result of the debate will be 'It's a bit of a pity but we are sure it won't happen again. Honest. Delicious foie gras by the way. And the Yquem with the brulee was wonderful.'

My approach to processed food is - by and large - avoid it. Fresh meat needs care too - I try my damndest to buy from sources I trust, which includes a local Aberdeen Angus farmer, top man Henry Rowntree, for a regular delivery of meat that tastes great, is from beasts that enjoyed a good life, has not been up and down the country to save 2p per animal on slaughter fees, has been hung properly, is tender, and is actually at a very good price as the middle man has been cut out. Of course that means I have to cook it and turn it into ragu etc myself, but as cooking is one of life's great joys why would I want someone else to do it (badly) for me? Why would I indeed get someone to charge me for removing a pleasure from my life? I don't hire someone to drink my wine for me and tell me how good it was.

Austerity Fillet Steak?

Fillet steak is far from my favourite cut - rump which has texture and flavour aplenty (and is at the cheaper edge of the scale) would get that accolade. But when I saw the fillet tails (the bit where the fillet tapers to thinness) at the excellent butchery at Tebay Services for just £12.90/kg I couldn't resist. The two pieces for £7.53 were a bargain, the slenderer and part of the fatter one made into beefburgers last night with a few breadcrumbs to bulk the meat out, an onion for flavour, and an egg to bind it all together. They were really excellent. The bulk of the fatter piece was sliced into three small but thick-as-my-thumb steaks that will form the luxurious protein component of a midweek meal. I have never seen fillet tails at a supermarket, yet another reason to favour the independent butcher using all of the carcass.

Meat counters for me can be a work of art, the meat - cuts, signs of being properly hung - and the way it is presented both requiring great care. Compare this one at Tebay with the sad stuff you find at too many supermarkets - though there are honourable exceptions like Booth's.

I went to the butcher's seeking beef short-ribs, another bargain cut. There were none this time, but I was more than pleased at my purchase. For someone who cooks from scratch the supermarket butcher is all too often disappointing - not necessarily in the quality, though it pains me to see the cheapest chicken which, pale and stringy, promises nothing for the eater. It is the variety that gets me, or lack thereof. What happens to the bony bits with so much flavour? The toughies that need slow-cooking?

To be fair to the supermarkets, who are great at reacting to demand and at regularly testing our wants, it is probably the Great British Public that is either content with a few simple choices, or incapable of dealing with  much beyond steaks, chops, and roasts. That's sad.

A Good Butcher is a Pearl Beyond Price

We just got back from visiting my father in rural Norfolk. His village is a sizable one, with two very small supermarkets and a variety of other shops. Happily for him and the rest of the village (or the carnivores at least) that includes two good butchers. A good butcher in my book can be judged on his (or her) sausages and minced beef (ground beef for our American friends). Simple things maybe, but they reflect the care and attitude of a skilled tradesman.

I live in a city, but the only butcher's shop nearby was not very good - mince gristly, sausages when I tried them tasteless - and unsurprisingly it closed some time ago. Strange how in this aspect of retail supply a city should be poorer than a village - maybe the supermarkets here the reason. One strand of my freelance writing work, however, takes me to towns and villages where there are still good craft butchers, a definite perk. A couple of years ago Roy Porter (picture) who has a shop near Clitheroe was very impressive, and recently Riley's in Crawshawbooth was equally good.

The difference between a butcher and the butchery at a supermarket seems to be mainly to do with the cheaper cuts - try to find them in your supermarket, where it appears animals no longer come with innards - rather than at the top end. Doubtless margins are lower on the cheaper bits than the expensive ones. At one butcher in the village I bought some excellent beef shin to make a simple stew for the four of us yesterday. Browned and then stewed for two-and-a-half hours with root veg and onions the meat made its own sauce, and even after seconds there was enough for my father to use as the basis of a meal today after we had gone. It cost about £2 each. There are exceptions to the supermarket butcher rule - Morrison's is good on offal and the tough bits that need slow cooking, and so (at the other end of the social scale perhaps) is Waitrose, where I bought ox cheek on Saturday.

The stew made with shin beef was another dish demonstrated to my son in preparation for his eventual escape into the big wide world as a student. He is learning the easy core skills of the home cook, in that case: brown the meat in small batches so it fries not steams; fry the onions before putting them in the stewpot (nobody likes boiled onions do they?); use some suitable liquid to deglaze the pan in which the meat browned (Adnams Broadside that time); cut the carrots and other root veg in good chunks so they retain their shape rather than disappear into the sauce; stew in a low oven for two hours or more. We sprinkled a bit of flour on the meat and veg before adding the beer from the frying pan and some boiling water. No stock cube, no stupid packets of casserole sauce mix. And it tasted great, because the meat was top notch. 

On Variety - but not Brucie's Version

Variety is the spice of life, and of food. That less than spectacularly original thought came to mind after I noticed someone pushing yet another wonder-super-magical-anti-everything food the other day. Cranberries or blackberries I think, but couldn't swear to it as my mind switches off as soon as these items appear on radio, TV or in an article. Eat tonnes to live forever or something. The dull truth is that the body needs a load of different minerals, vitamins and other components, so the best health policy for those not afflicted with allergies is eat as many different things as you can, not focus on the properties of one, however beneficial to certain conditions.

That translates in shopping terms into not just buying the same old same old every weekly trip to Tesco/JS/Waitrose etc. I am as guilty as the next man or woman, my basket generally contains carrots, onions, peppers and mushrooms. We all have staples, habits, tropes. Admittedly we have the allotment for other stuff (still picking Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, kale, runner beans and  red cabbage), but I am going to push myself to add different fruit and veg, different colours of the same veg and fruits, and different ways of preparing them.



I already have an unofficial policy of not having the same starch-base two days in a row, or the same meat if meat is used, but that won't be enough.

Variety in cooking styles too can't be a negative - Ruth pointed out the other day that though not on a weekly cycle repeats or close-to-repeats have of late come up every fortnight or so - Chinese, a braise, casserole, steak night, pasta with sauce, risotto, gratin, paella all favourites. So we are agreed variety is a good thing. A boring conclusion but not as boring as the the supposed king of Variety (and actual emperor of self-regard), Bruce Forsyth.