Strange Times

To balance recent posts that have been about the health side of food, this is about pleasure.

As the weather at the end of February - February - has been so warm and sunny, and given the Dear Leader (may her critics shrivel like salted slugs) and I are both freelances, and Sternest Critic is marking time to his departure to Gozo, we actually had a barbecue on the 26th. A barbecue in Preston in February. Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change, but I do. 

Given we are avoiding processed meats there were no sausages or burgers, but that was no loss as we enjoyed turkey steaks and langoustines for all, plus lamb chops (for SC and me) and fillets of sea bass (for the Dear Leader). All of that balanced with a green salad, a tomato salad, griddled mushrooms, and both asparagus and (our own freshly picked) fine leeks baked over the coals in foil. 

We cooked and ate slowly, so the meal lasted a good two hours. We talked, we watched the birds feeding in the garden, and we relaxed. Not a single spoonful of raw cacao powder passed our lips, though a glass or two of Beaujolais did. It was life enhancing. 

Barbecuing well is not easily done. We went a year or so back to eat with some friends somehow new to the idea who, no exaggeration, lit the coals/firelighter, and put the food straight on. It was fireplace smoky and with a hint of plastic. On the way home we discussed forming a survivor group. SC got our fire going more than an hour before we thought of putting anything over the ashy-grey fuel. Timing is not easy either, though lamb is forgiving, so a skewer to test turkey doneness came in handy. I wouldn't bother with chicken joints. The fish you can just tell by looking and a bit of a poke with a knife-tip, the langoustines by the charring of the shells and the smell.

I feel we need a BBQ challenge. It's long been my ambition to do a whole (gutted and skinned of course) lamb over a fire pit, but DL forbids it. So this summer I aim to do beef short rib in the piece, with some strong flavours in the marinade to make it even more special. Prepare then for a wet summer wash out. 

Old Friends

Yesterday was - whisper it gently - the sixtieth birthday of a friend from university days, now living in Texas. Yee, and indeed, ha. I ordered as a gift for him - and in spite of the company saying it took about three days to deliver the goods, they are only due to arrive at the end of the month, making it nine to get there - something rather sentimental.


That gift - he doesn't read this as far as I'm aware - comprises foods that are reminders of home, and in two cases of undergraduate times. Amazing - or not - how often food is at the forefront of memories. In that case it was Jammie Dodgers, a very seventies biscuit somehow, and the ginger biscuits he took to buying when he realised they were not my favourites, so I'd be less likely to take any when (if) offered. There's other stuff in the package, all of it the sort of foods that make dentists rich.


Some of my strongest childhood memories are likewise linked to food. Watching a cartoon while eating creamed kidneys on toast (still love them); freaking out when I found at one restaurant that the fish I had chosen from a tank was going to be killed for my meal (doesn't stop me loving fish now, though); discovering real fondue at a café while on a camping holiday in Interlaken; the gargantuan turkeys we had for at Christmas, lasting well into January and not lamented once finally finished; warm-from-the-oven real Cornish pasties on holiday there... I hope and expect that Sternest Critic will have his own versions, and that they will mostly be of stuff he will want to eat again in his later years, as I do with mine - except those stupidly huge turkeys.

Right and Wrong

One of my favourite food writers was, is, Elizabeth David. This in spite of her undoubted snobbishness, and her highly prescriptive thoughts on certain foods. She, though not with 100 per cent consistency, believed in authenticity. Pizza was one such food she tended to see as to be done in a particular way or not at all. It was right (her way) or wrong (any other way).

I can agree that the dumping ground pizza - anything and everything added to one - is horrible. Again my kindergarten kids mixing paint analogy, you add too many colours and you just get muddy brown. But as the pizza base is such a great carrier of toppings I don't see it should be limited to tomato, mozarella and maybe an olive or three.

The smell of pizza dough is drifting through the study door even now, ready to form four bases. Just 500g of flour, 325ml of water, a sachet of dried yeast, 13g of salt and two tbsps of olive oil so the cost is well under 50p. A Sainsbury's basic mozarella (I've tried others, and only the pizza mozarella from Waitrose makes any real difference, and that's a trek across town) is I think 45p, to be used on two of the four, along with to be spread as taste fits: five or six cloves of garlic, a small red chilli, an onion, and a basic red pepper, another 45p the lot, and a tin of chopped toms 32p.

We have a small amount of turkey-breast leftover from Sunday's crown, that with some defrosted sweetcorn will add a few more pennies. A £1 taster-pack of peperone will make the basis of another topping, with three or four mushrooms, and an 80p tin of anchovies plus a few leftover olives a third. A few leaves from a £1 bag of baby spinach leaves will find a home on one of them, probably the turkey jobbie, the balance to make a small salad to assuage the guilt. So three pizzas, a garlic bread, and a small salad will set us back under £5.

None of those is going to be authentic, in Elizabeth David's terms, except maybe the garlic bread. But my son when we go out for pizza often goes for chicken and sweetcorn; and spinach with cheese of any sort is great. Plus an Italian peasant of yore would have done the same thing - it is pan y companatico, bread and something that goes with bread - when we had the whole Serrano ham slivers of that went perfectly.

Authenticity be buggered, this is just the best thing to eat on our one night where we slob out and dine in front of the TV.

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.

Bad Workmen Good Cooks

Something cooked yesterday made me think about how hard it is to cook with bad equipment, and easy with good. I breaded some turkey breast steaks and baked them in a hot oven in a sturdy non-stick roasting dish that has lasted years and will probably outlive me. They worked really well. Try that on a thin version and you'd burn them and/or the coating would stick and be lost.

Same with pans, moreso maybe. Try making an omelette in either a warped pan, or one with a thin bottom (the two faults usually go together), and tears will follow.

I pull back in horror in supermarkets when passing their 'bargain' cookware. If you can waft a pan like a table tennis bat it is too light. And they are not bargains, as the thin base will be ruined in weeks, the food cooked therein often burned and buggered, and you'll have to replace them. Message to those starting out in life, buy the best you can afford and save money in the long run. Or as I did originally, 'borrow' a few good pieces from parents.

One Flame Fishy Dish

My favourite evening meal fishy dish is the flexible fish pie, generally made with mash as a topping and with a mixture of white fish and tinned kippers (no bones, loads of flavour). Next to that comes tonight's fish fest, the equally flexible chowder, another one pot and thus one flame extravaganza.

As with just about every soup I make it begins with frying some chopped onion in butter, to which equally finely chopped veg as available in the fridge and shelves will be added: tonight I'd guess carrot, red pepper, and celery. As the garden still has a little stand of par-cel some of that will be chopped super fine with a mezzoluna to be added near the end of cooking. A mixture of chicken or veg stock (if I stir myself I can actually defrost some ham stock which goes equally well, otherwise it is from a cube today) and milk is added, then chunky diced potatoes (either waxy to keep the shape or floury to collapse nicely, it doesn't matter) dropped in to cook (best not to fry them even briefly with the veg, they seem to take longer to cook in the liquid that way) for about 15 minutes, along with defrosted pollack fillet and about a cupful of frozen sweetcorn. A crushed garlic clove gives a nice edge, and lots of pepper.

It is economical - I will only use about £1.25 of fish, and the rest of the ingredients won't take the total above £2.50 - and pretty virtuous, made with  semi-skimmed milk, but the juices are fabulous, perfect to soak up with thick slices - more like slabs - of buttered brown bread. Three of us will easily see off a small loaf, so add £0.50p (Morrison's offer on exceedingly tasty seeded wholemeal, £1 for two small loaves).

This will be the New Year's resolution (at least) once a week fish dish for our evening meal; as Saturday's homemade Chinese was veggie I only have one more non-meat dish to keep to my programme. We won't be short of protein, however, Sunday lunch was top rump wet roasted, and a turkey thigh joint (top bargain and very tasty) plain roasted beside it.

That latter meal was not exactly Parson Woodforde, who would regularly have rabbit smothered in onions, chicken, pig's face, a leg of mutton with caper sauce, and a piece of bacon or similar for workaday dinners, but two joints for £12 can seem more generous than one for £15. And we have the remains left for sandwiches, though the thicker of two leftover pieces of turkey removed from the table at the end of the meal didn't make it intact to the kitchen, mysteriously.

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.

Umami - Not Uvavu

My recent trip to Parma revived my interest in both Parmesan cheese and the taste for which we use the Japanese term umami. Last night's meal was turkey and mushroom risotto, which was enlivened by the use of a fair sprinkling - more like covering - of Parmesan. I had tasted the risotto before and after the addition, and  can say for sure that it wasn't just an addition. There is a culinary magic at work that, as with the best food and wine pairings, produces a third flavour out of the ether. The dish became far more savoury, the mushrooms and bacon cubes (recipe bacon cut by me, as ever) altered in taste too, and there was a richness well beyond what you'd expect from the weight of the grated cheese included. 

So reaching for the cheese is not uvavu - for those of a very young persuasion check out Shooting Stars with the wonderful Vic and Bob. It is umami.