Market Forces

A timely reminder yesterday that supermarkets are not the only, or the best, places to food shop. The Dear Leader took me to Preston Indoor Market while we were in town, and it was worth the detour. Two best buys were duck-egg-sized cream aubergines from the Asian veg stall, and un-vinegared whelks from one of the fish stalls (it also yielded some fine naturally smoked haddock enjoyed for breakfast this dreary Bank Holiday Sunday). Not only was the fish stall offering a wider range than Sainsbury's or Booth's, but it appeared better kept/more freshly sourced. And the prices on both were competitive - a huge bunch of coriander for 70p for example, easily four times what you'd get for the money at JS.

We'd invited some friends for a pretty impromptu Chinese-y meal, so most of the market finds were included in that, the little aubergines (the Americanism egg-plant in their case would have been perfectly valid) in a Thai green curry with other veg, the whelks as one of the starter dishes.

In my old life I travelled frequently in Taiwan, several times taken to one of those fish restaurants with stalls outside displaying the available ingredients. Asked what I fancied one time I opted for the whelks, partly because I love seafood, partly to see what Chinese cookery would do with them - this proved to be a simple dish of just the whelks barbecued with chili aplenty, and it proved a revelation.

I rinsed our £2.50 worth, then marinated them for three or four hours in a paste made with red and green chilis and coriander, a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Stir fried with some more green chili, soy, and sping onion they were lovely rather than rubbery as it were.

Whelks are, if not a superfood, a terrific one. Stuffed full of protein, minerals, vitamins and a little carbohydrate they're little packets of goodness. But equally importantly, they bring a taste of the sea in the way the more revered oyster does - and at a fraction of the price.

How Fast is Fast Food?

With the Dear Leader away at a conference of super villains - she's giving a paper titled 'When Minions Betray Us - Towards a Theory of Creative Executions' - I was only cooking for two last night, Sternest Critic being home for Easter. The temptation was to do steak as we're blokes. Actually, if I understand the TV adverts, real men don't cook even that, they only ring for takeaway.

I made us some Chinese-ish food, (having travelled many a time and oft in China, and worked with Chinese businessmen throughout South East Asia, I know that a) there is no such thing as 'Chinese food', and b) My version of what I've eaten there is not at all authentic) as I'd been busy doing stuff and it was getting to the point that post-gym SC was turning a cannibal eye on me. Dinner was ready in about 15 minutes, 20 tops. On the very rare occasions we do dial for 'fast' food they always say 'about half an hour', and it takes closer to 60 minutes.

Anyone brave enough to have read early posts on this blog will perhaps recall that my favourite ever cookery programme was a dramatised take on de Pomiane's finest work, French Cooking in 10 Minutes. Think Jamie Oliver, but avec charm and sans annoying Essexisms. And half a century before the pukka prat was the first person ever to discover rapid cookery. The book and the programme show how you can produce four and five courses in 10 minutes (charcuterie starter, fruit as pud, cheese, there's three with no cooking needed). You're limited (no roasts, bakes, slow simmers etc), but it's not the idea to do this all the time.

Our two substantial dishes took twice de Pomiane's target, but for something with plenty of healthy protein and veg, and a bit of carb, not one morsel of which remained uneaten, it's still not a bad effort. Thanks for asking, stir-fried chicken with mushrooms and broccoli, and prawn and crab (tinned white meat) with bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, sweet pepper and fine egg noodles. The former had chili added, the latter plenty of garlic, both had soy sauce and sesame oil.

I could have griddled the chicken thighs and served them on tinned lentils perked up with mushrooms and garlic, with a green salad to follow and cut the time down below 10 minutes. Or done a chicken salad in the same time. Or any number of other possibilites.

My point is that to have something toothsome on the table rapidly need not involve a phone call and paying a small fortune for what may well be cook-chill stuff. So to the Just Eat campaign we say Just Piss Off.

Not That I'm Obsessive

Our decision to trim a kilo or two before jetting off to the sun had me reaching for the calorie counter - bought when wife and heir abandoned me to go diving in Egypt with their club and I tried the 5/2 diet for its anti poorly badness benefits rather than for weight loss. I used that to sort out what I could have for 600 kcals: answer 4/5ths of bugger all. Looking at packet info too - hastily put Doritos back when I saw what that said, and more surprisingly Special K with red berries.

Unsurprising but comforting is the fact that fresh vegetables, with a few exceptions (avocados stick in the mind) are very low calorie, especially if steamed. Egg noodles far fewer cals than rice, even boiled rice, so our Chinese tonight will have them for bulk (with prawns, another surprisingly low calorie ingredient), turkey with mange tout (for some reason super cheap yesterday at the supermarket), steamed pak choi, and a mushroom, water chestnut and bamboo shoot (both delicious and negligible kcals) and bean sprout stir fry in a tsp of sesame oil. Soy sauce is another winner.

What I found from that brief flirtation with the 5/2 diet (I learned afterwards that you don't need to do the two days at 600 kcals together) was that raw veg and fruit fill you up, I normally go way over the top with dressing, it's flavour as much as volume that I missed, and with a target like 600 kcals I became even more obsessive about food than normal. Food is one of life's great pleasures and a boiled egg (about 75 kcals) shouldn't be the culinary highlight of the day.

Fresh is Best But...

We eat lots of fresh veg - types and in terms of weight. Our allotment and several beds in what could laughingly be called our kitchen garden provide us with fresh stuff in season, and I buy much more from shops and markets. But it is convenient to have frozen too. I have been surprised how good frozen broccoli is, if treated well. And pleased by how cheap it is - Sainsbury's always seem to have an offer of buy two bags of Birdseye Frozen veg for a knockdown price.

Last night doing a celebratory Chinese feast I made a pretty and very tasty dish, idea courtesy of an old M&S cookbook: broccoli stir-fried with a chopped red chili, spread in a ring on a heated plate around mushrooms and prawns with soy sauce which were done in the wok after the florets had vacated it. The look of the thing was great, it was a bit fiery and very satisfying, and it accounted for two of our seven or more a day. And it was another one flame dish, though as we had another four to accompany it the meal was not in the same category.

Had the meal not been a celebration I'd have omitted the prawns, and the look of the thing may have been even better - minimalist with green and browny-grey. The Chinese don't eat with their eyes as much as the Japanese do (some of their food definitely better to look at than eat), but the feel of a meal is not hurt by a splash of colour and a dash of contrast.

One Flame Chinese - Crab Omelette

Our eggs are not of the hundred year old variety (but then, paradoxically, nor are hundred year eggs), but fresh from our own hens. I make a point of using up all we have in the basket every now and then to ensure what we have is always less than a week old. they are, then, a wonderful ingredient for any cook with half a brain - and I nearly qualify.

In many of the Chinese banquets I enjoyed in my previous career omelettes were a feature, and why not - they are quickly made, nutritious, and very adaptable. One that left an impression on me was with crab, and I have since made versions of this with - sorry but it's convenient - tinned crab meat. Not too austere really as the white meat stuff with some texture left is more than £2 a tin, but given the eggs are near as dammit free I don't feel guilty.

The usual method applies - beat the eggs really well with loads of air, but instead of the breakfast or lunch omelette cooking medium of butter for the Chinese dish I use vegetable oil with a dash of toasted sesame oil. Start the omelette cooking, wait till nearly done then add the drained crab meat and a teaspoon of soy sauce, a shake of 5-spice powder, and we're done once they've heated through.

This is a light meal in itself, but better as a dish in a banquet, thin wedges cut ready to be taken by diners.

One Flame Cooking Fish Soup

Fish soup, or fish stew? The terminology is not really important, though the different words trigger different responses and attitudes. So if served as a starter or accompaniment to an oriental meal say soup, if it is supper or lunch on its own go with stew.

An acknowledgement here to Nick Fisher (now there's a name that helped determine a career) whose River Cottage handbook on fishing inspired a change to a recent version of my own one-pot oriental fish soupy-stew, namely the addition of miso paste, which worked beautifully to give a bit of depth to the broth.

In a medium/large saucepan fry a chopped onion and a carrot cut into small dice, plus a chili in the thinnest possible rings - a minute or so is enough to give them a bit of a start on cooking and a touch of the caramelised surface that adds flavour. Add about a litre of light chicken stock. I am not a huge fan of fish stock, hitting the golden moment between insipid and gluey is not easy. If I want some fishy depth I'd add a tin of anchovies to the onion and carrot at frying stage. Or you can use boiling water and a cube if that's what you have to hand, but then a tsp of miso paste is extremely useful to make the stock more interesting.

Simmer for a couple of minutes only, then lob in noodles that can cook this way - one purchase made during my recent expedition to the local Chinese supermarket - Preston has a big Chinese student population - was a big packet of flat wheat noodles for £2.25, a steal compared to Sainsbury's. How many noodles depends on your needs and space in the pot. Use your imagination.

When the noodles are just about cooked add your fish - I used tilapia but pollock would be fine too, or any other good firm white fish that is from a sustainable source - in large chucks, you want it to hold together and be recognizable.

Season with soy sauce, pepper, and a dash of sesame oil if you have some. Five spice powder helps too. Taste to see if it is interesting enough, and if not add more of those enhancers, and maybe a touch more miso if you feel it is needed. But be quick, the fish should be just done, not overdone - once it is nicely opaque you are there, but taste a bit to be sure.

This is more method than recipe. There are innumerable tunes to be played on it - the most recent version had at the noodle stage half a tin of matchstick thin bamboo shoots added and the whites of six very thin leeks cut into thin rings, and with the onion-carrot-chili mix I added an inch of ginger cut into thin slivers.

I made this as one of three dishes for our evening meal, but had we not just had brunch that day it would have done on its own.

Noodles btw are a wonderfully social ingredient to a dinner: you cannot eat them stuffily. Slurping is the order of the day; spillage and shirt-stains are unavoidable. I would not like to know someone who could eat them and remain entirely dignified.

Austerity, Tea, Moby, January

The on-the-wagon thing this month has meant I have been focusing more on tea, a drink that all right thinking people (definition: those who agree with me) love. In my previous industrial existence I tended to drink rubbish tea and coffee very quickly at work; the freelance life means that I can take a minute to savour a good cuppa, and have taken the time to learn a bit about the topic, and try new teas (not I hasten to add herbal infusions with vanilla etc). Current favourite is maybe Assam. Certainly not Darjeeling which is far too subtle for my palate.

My good friends at the US website Selectism commissioned a piece on the topic from me, the link is below:

http://www.selectism.com/2013/01/08/tea-draft/


I may end up cooking far more Chinese food this month - not a complete non-sequitur: green tea and white tea (the first person I ever heard mention that was Moby, who is a big tea fan) go very well with Chinese food, and this month being dry January we need something that is enjoyable to drink with our evening meal. Everything else tried thus far - bitter lemon, lime cordial with soda, ginger beer, water (I'm with W.C. fields on that one) has been a disappointment or worse.

Tea has the added benefit of being a very cheap gourmet experience, if you choose the tea wisely and make it well. Sensuality and austerity in one cup. As Lord Emsworth so rightly said: "Tea. Tea. Tea. Capital, capital, capital, capital."

One Flame Chinese - Take-out Made in

Chinese food is one of my favourite cuisines, or several of them - there is, after all, not one single style of Chinese cookery. What I have eaten as Chinese food has changed over time and geography. In the Seventies when the first Chinese takeaways opened in my hometown there was a preponderence of really gloopy stuff, like sweet and sour sauce in which a spoon would stand. Today the dishes available from such places are - often - subtler. In the Gorleston of 1975 Peking Duck never featured on the menu.

I was lucky enough to visit mainland China about a dozen times and Taiwan far more often when I worked in industry, so had the opportunity to try authentic Chinese food. On the mainland I ate in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, the food in the latter - especially in the countryside beyond the city - very different from the first two. Taiwanese food was different again, perhaps for economic reasons then with meatier dishes to the fore, and fantastic seafood (barbecued chilli whelks one of the best things I ever tried). 

Travels in the USA meant trying their version, again with its own characteristics. I still don't get the point of fortune cookies. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I love food made in a Chinese style. So I make my own attempts at it. One of my favourites, and something that qualifies as austerity cooking and one flame cookery, is fried rice, which was the core of last night's meal, and we would not have been deprived had it been all of the meal. 

White rice carefully and lengthily washed in a fine sieve to ensure the grains keep separate later was boiled quickly (boiling water covering it and a half inch more, slow simmer in covered pan for five or six minutes, then taken off the heat and left to steam for another ten minutes). While it steamed finely chopped carrot, red onion, yellow pepper, and a red chilli seeds-and-all were fried gently in rapeseed oil, then the boiled rice was added with about three tablespoons of soy sauce, the mixture stirred together and allowed to fry again very gently for five minutes. Defrosted sweetcorn and peas, and a handful of basics prawns were thrown in, and two brutally crushed garlic cloves to max their impact. A shake of 5-Spice powder completed the flavour enhancement.

I did enough for six, and the three of us ate it. Which when you think about the millions who have to survive on a bowl or two of plain boiled rice a day gives pause for thought.

Another no-flame dish complemented this, a way of using a bit of leftover (uncooked) white cabbage - the Chinese love their brassicas. The thick stalky bits were removed, leaves rolled together like a cigar and chopped very finely, then with a few spoons of boiling water and another of soy added to their bowl along with another smashed garlic clove it was cling-filmed and cooked on medium-high in the microwave for a couple of minutes or so to steam it. Virtuous and delicious. 

Star Star Anise

Home-made Chinese food too often focuses on stir fries to the exclusion of many more interesting methods and recipes. In my past life I got to travel in China, Taiwan and various Asian countries where the Chinese tended to dominate business (as they soon will around the world). A frequent favourite dish on those travels was variations on beef soup flavoured with star anise, the best being made with oxtail.

I have since found that a passable imitation can be made with leftover beef gravy (real gravy, not the stuff made with powder) or the juices from a beef stew. On Saturday we had one such, started as ever with a gently fried chopped onion, to which a finely chopped red chilli was added before the sieved juices of a stew from two days earlier were poured in and two whole star anise and a couple of big chunks of ginger were plopped in to simmer nicely for the best part of an hour (the few scraps of meat added at the last minute to avoid them going stringy along with a ready softened nest of noodles).

Not haute cuisine, but a good element of a Chinese meal that had the twin virtues of tasting great and costing next to nothing. Made with leftovers but there were no leftovers afterwards this time.