A Rainbow on Your Breakfast Plate - and in Your Gut

We - the Dear Leader, the temporarily-home-before going-off to-Gozo Sternest Critic, and your humble servant - are on a weight loss quest for a time. Well, weight loss and health drive. That means the occasional 800 calorie day, and generally eating somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories, with a day off every now and then. That may sound restricting, and in the mathematical sense it is of course, but to be doable without becoming boring it does mean getting creative.


Our breakfasts, except when staying in hotels or at Christmas when bacon and sausages rule, are usually pretty healthy. Currently they are - thanks Donald - bigly so. And not in a bad way - no kale smoothies, in fact given we learn from Michael Moseley that smoothies go straight through the gut and mean a sugar rush, no smoothies at all. But every morning for the past fortnight we have enjoyed a bowl of fruit (along with e.g. poached egg on wholegrain toast of some sort). Again I've tried hard  to avoid that being dull, leading to me hitting the local Asian supermarket, and looking out for what's good in Morrison's, Waitrose and Sainsbury's.


Today, for example, we had cherries, kiwi, blueberries, and golden plums (£1 for a punnet of eight or ten), with a squeeze of perfumed Egyptian lime, tiny little fruits that lift flavours even more than ordinary lemons do. Tuesday we had dragon fruit and guava with some more workaday stuff. I love guava, in spite of ripe ones smelling like men's locker room sweat. The local Chinese shop had durian in, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and fruit that smells like poo is one good place.


What is austerity in this? Eating fruit is not expensive. It takes a bit of effort to seek things out, but Morrison's wonky blueberries that contributed to two for the three of our breakfasts cost 84p. I defy anybody to explain how they were wonky too. Wonky kiwis (maybe 1.358mm shorter than non-wonky?) I think were 70p for a pack of eight. I use one sliced into six to add luminous green to the plate. Little oranges another bargain; likewise grapefruit reaching its sell-by-date and no different to full price ones in feel or as it turned out flavour for 25p. I buy full price stuff too, and dragon fruit are not cheap, but overall breakfasts for the week don't break the bank.


It's cheering to see something so lovely on the morning platter. Great for the body too, with loads of fibre (kiwis for me qualify as superfoods, though shops aren't allowed to use that word now) and vitamin C, and stuff that is good for the eyes but I can't spell. Blueberries are supposed to help the memory, per clinical tests, but they taste fab with lemon or lime on them. Cherries have some special phytonutrients that you don't find in many other foods. It won't harm your - what a very British word - regularity either.


Reading Michael Moseley's Clever Gut Diet book - he is to diet and health what HFW is to ethical food - as part of the current drive to lose a bit of weight one tip was to help your biome's diversity by eating 30 different fruits and vegetables in a week. We did that in two days, and after three are on 42 and heading ever onward. Tinned stuff in there for pennies; our own veg still (PSB, swiss chard, sprouting seeds, kale and leaks at present, we had too the last of our stored squash on Monday and some of our own stored garlic, along with loads of herbs that I haven't counted in the total); wonky or (per Sainsbury's) greengrocers' F&V are super cheap. And some fruits are reduced in price (like cheese) when they are approaching ripeness.


[Standing up] I am not Spartacus. Nor am I vegetarian. Friday's evening meal will be steak for SC and me, fish for the DL. But for our own good, and with more than a nod at helping the only planet we have to live on, and because they are so tasty, F&V make up the bulk of our nutrition. If that sounds poncey, my apologies. Lunch today will be baked beans on toast. Demotic and delicious.

Another Damn Glut

Quinces, apples, courgettes, beetroot, lettuce... and the latest in the line of our gluts is pumpkins. Not the ginormous ones really only good for carving at Halloween, and maybe for feeding the five thousand, but Uchiki Kuri, Turk's Turban and another whose name escapes me, though it may be Tom Thumb. The Uchiki Kuri in particular is just the right size, providing enough sunburst flesh for a dish for two to four people.

As with the other gluts, there's great pleasure to be had in making the best of the plenty while it lasts, though with pumpkins - for accuracy I should be saying 'winter squash' - they keep very well if dry and clean, lasting into the spring.

Their iron skin (especially Turk's Turban, which has all the give of a battle tank) is doubtless what keeps them from going off, but can be a hard slog to cut through to get at the good stuff inside. The cooked flesh, by way of contrast, is melting and delicate. Thus far into pumpkin season we have had pumpkin in soup, risotto, mixed roast vegetables, and tea bread with walnuts.

No repetition needed in the next few assaults on the orange stockpile, either, as I've made pumpkin curry and (an HF-W idea) pumpkin-centric salad in the past, and in the dim and distant pumpkin pie (which was delicious).

I can't help feeling virtuous when eating them, as they are chock full of fibre, beta carotene, and a spread of vitamins. But I trust that health remains a secondary, if important, consideration in my cookery. They are above all tasty. Sternest Critic, when visited at our flat in Trearddur last week, cooked us an absolutely superb mushroom and pumpkin risotto, roasting slices of an Uchiki Kuri we had taken with us, then cooking the flesh stripped from the skin down further in the rice until it was almost part of the stock, but not quite. The flavour was wonderful, and the mouthfeel very satisfying and sensuous. Healthy can be delicious.

A side-note here: much though I love mushrooms, I find their colour - that flat grey - somewhat dispiriting to look at. The pumpkin-flesh orange in that risotto, not in your face but a background to the dish, was far more pleasing. And given we're now being told to have a rainbow on our plates (will the gold at the end be a problem?) it covers the 'of' bit of the old spectrum jingle nicely.

I just counted up our resources, and there are 16 of the things left. Writing this has made me think I really need to cook another one tonight. At this time of year, and pretty much only this time, you don't need to grow your own to enjoy pumpkin. In Morrison's the other day they had bowls wood sized ones (so manageable) for, I think, £0.70p, which if they're anything like as good as ours is a bargain.

Hops Are Not Just for Beer

As someone deeply in love with beer I find the title of this post slightly apostatic (can you be slightly apostatic? I guess the Inquisition in such cases would singe people alive), but it fits. A week back I cooked a risotto using hop shoots from the plant we put in a decade ago at the end of the garden. Every year I say I'll do it, every year I forget. Till now.

In Norfolk where I spent my formative years you'll see loads of wild hops in the hedgerows, or at least the few that have not been grubbed up by the greedy bastard corporations that own the ever-expanding prairies there. Yet I never enjoyed hop shoots as a food in the six-fingered county; I came across it thus in Italy on my business travels, then researched the stuff here. Oddly the only shop I ever encountered them in was a Morrison's near Bury in the Nineties, bought and used never to be seen in store again.

The risotto also included wild garlic from the edge of the stream that marks the southern border of our vast estates. The smell in situ is stronger than the flavour, but the wide leaves added colour and a bit of texture, backed up with some peas and wilted spinach. Very green all round.

Sadly I over-cooked the shoots, not having done any for about 20 years. Happily by way of contrast there are plenty more on the way, so I will learn from my error and improve.

The free of charge bit delights me, naturally, but so too does the addition of something new to our diet, albeit fleetingly seasonal. My aim in cooking for pleasure and for health is to use a wide range of fruits and vegetables, and of funghi, meats and fish, the logic being that we are omnivores designed for such a diet. There is more chance of getting all the micro nutrients you need if you eat a bit of everything except people.

I've just ordered a book by Tim Spector (who should be a secret agent with that name, but is a professor of interesting things to do with genes and our tummies at UCL) that looks at the same idea from a different angle, namely that the vital microbes in our lower gut need variety, and they largely determine our digestive health, our weight, and even mood if I understand aright. Can't wait to read it. Men and their fixation with bowels, hey?

Crackling Good Value

On the general theme of getting something for next to nothing, and making the most of ordinary ingredients.

For years I struggled to make decent crackling. My secret (or not in fact) shame. My late mother-in-law was not a very good cook, but when she roasted pork it came with skin that snapped between the teeth like a Crunchie bar. It pleased and annoyed me every time.

I still cannot do crackling on the joint, but have learned from seeing friends in Sheffield who took the pre-crisping crackling off the joint when the meat was done and off to have a good lie down, then returned the basted skin to a very hot oven. Sunday's joint was done this way, and again it worked. There is a bit more to it than that of course - it is dried and scored before cooking, with an unhealthy amount of salt rubbed into the surface, and is basted at least once while still on the joint.

Little things that make a difference. It turned a good meal into a more enjoyable one, with that extra dimension.

I have on occasion bought from Morrison's sheets of skin to make into crackling (Morrison's the only supermarket that I have yet found that does this, but as I avoid Asda on personal ethical grounds I can't vouch for them). For about 75p you get a couple of rolls of skin that are really easy to make into massive amounts of crackling. If there were a way of comparing fun per penny values in food, that would rate alongside cracking the surface of proper creme brulee or crema catalana (I still can't do accents on Blogger) and biting into a really fresh and very crusty French stick. What is it about that snapping/cracking sensation that makes it pleasurable?

Nearly Vegetarian III

On Thursday I did another vegetarian meal. Nearly vegetarian. As the intention is to cut down on meat rather than cut it out, it passes my personal test.

This, a cheaty mushroom tart, was one of the best things I've done in a while. Even SC said it was not at all bad, a paean of praise from him. Some bought puff pastry rolled out to fit my flat griddle pan, which cooks pastry nicely, was covered with a grated mozzarella, a couple of slices of Parma ham in thin ribbons, about 75p of mushrooms (and given they were bought from Morrison's this meant a lot of mushrooms) previously cooked in a little butter and a lot of garlic, then drained to keep the sogginess to the minimum. The whole thing was covered in grated Parmesan, and cooked in a hot oven (220C) for about 15 minutes.

What made it look nice was having the filling inside a margin about 2cm from the edge, the surface of the puff pastry barely cut through with the tip of a sharp knife. This rises up to make a neat wall that keeps the filling from spilling out at all.

Served with a green-ish salad (strips of red pepper perked up the colour) it was at least three of our five a day. Five minutes of prep, five to cook the 'shrooms, 15 to cook the pastry itself. It would have taken that to do a packet pizza, which for anything half-way acceptable would have cost the £4 that I reckon that set us back. And packet pizza would not have tasted half as good.

Ribs, Deliciousness and Dignity

If I had to name my favourite meat it would be pork ribs. They tick several of my personal boxes: quite cheap, require care in cooking, and are something for relaxed dining - you have to eat them with fingers not fighting irons.

A digression: we have a little family game, if it can be called that, of creating a menu for the overly dignified. Imagine your particular hate figure of the day, say a pompous politician: what do you serve them that will bring them down a peg or two? Not nasty foods, but messy. Watermelon slices without cutlery. Spaghetti with a liquid sauce is a good choice; I think a whole crab or lobster takes some beating, cracking claws and sucking meat out of them; a soup I was given (hmm, thinks...) on my first trip to Indonesia, whose main component was fish heads. Pig's trotters. You get the idea. BBQ spare ribs fits that scenario too.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Mansion House Speech gathering was given such a menu? Politicians, bankers, media tarts and dignitaries with faces dripping with crab juices, stained with BBQ sauce, their court dress jackets or formal gowns splashed with ragu. Not going to happen sadly. Can you imagine the devastation Nicholas Soames and Eric Pickles could cause during that meal? Eating people is of course wrong, but it's hard not to think of either or both eyeing neighbours covered in sauce and not for a second being a bit tempted.

Tonight we are eating two racks of pork ribs, a reward for Sternest Critic in midst of exams, and for us all as we have managed the two veggie nights and one fish this week. They went into the oven to steam gently at two thirty, the smell of the meat and the spicy dry-rub (cumin, celery salt, fennel seed, two dried chilies, salt, pepper, juniper berries, smoked paprika thanks for asking) now permeating the whole house, and will have in total three hours of such treatment before being finished with a coating of sauce in a hotter oven.

Another hurrah for Morrison's on this too, they always have ribs on their butchery shelves, with Booth's it is about 50/50, Sainsbury's one trip in four or five unless you want to buy ready-processed pre-sauced ones, which I don't. Two substantial racks cost well under £6, the price of one half-decent sirloin steak but they'll make a feast for three of us.

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.

Cheapo Chinese

Saturday night as so often was Chinese feast night, but with a twist - it was the first of our campaign for two veggie evening meals (or nearly) a week. One of my favourite things from takeaway Chinese meals is stewed mushrooms which I reproduced as a dish last night, simplicity itself, also cheap thanks to a big buy of mega 'shroom box at Morrison's.

Quartered fungi lightly fried then finished in soy sauce and cheaty chicken cube stock, thickened with cornflour and pepped up with star anise, and stewed for ages on a very low heat to infuse the flavour. The lot cost maybe £1, which compares well with the £2.50 at least that it would cost if bought in.

I love mushrooms, and they are one of the few foods that don't seem to have shot up in price recently - homegrown, not very demanding, and doubtless hefty competition for the supermarket slot stopping producers from pushing prices upwards. Bought in big boxes they are a bargain too. Memo to self, eat more mushrooms on veggie nights, and not just risotto either.

Two Reasons for Shopping at Morrison's

My normal shopping run is done at Sainsbury's, merely because it's five minutes by car. I buy plenty of meat and good cheese at Booth's, paper-goods and Parmesan at Lidl, but don't often venture to Morrison's as it is  a 15-minute drive. As I was on another errand that took me near there today, however, I did my weekly shop in the store, and was again impressed.

It was not the fact that the end bill was definitely cheaper than I'd have paid at Sainsbury's, whatever their special offer guarantees say. It was the meat and veg that shone out as so much better.

As to the meat: their range of cuts is far wider, and the meat just looks better than JS's does. Lamb ribs, pork ribs in the piece, pork hock, ham hock, hearts, pig's trotters, crackling sheets, and plenty of other cheaper options that indicate they have confidence those shopping there know how to cook. 

I was sorely tempted by the trotters, one of my favourite things, but SC loathes them and Ruth doesn't care for them.  There is another cook book in that - in my business travel days I made a point of eating trotters whenever I saw them, which means I have fond culinary memories of a couple of Chinese versions (one of them another thing where star anise lifted a dish), one a stew thing, the other a dim sum platter; a Portuguese stew with chick peas; Ste Menehould breaded trotters in France (when I ordered these the French colleague dining with me accused me of not being English, which for the French is a compliment I think); and a spicy chorizo-enriched stew in Bilbao. 

The fruit and veg section has kept up the campaign started some time ago to expand the offer - lots of varieties of mushrooms, for example, along with a good selection of exotics. I didn't go mad, but along with the usual stuff bought frisee and plantain which would not normally feature on my list.  

I admire their courage, presenting the market with a chance to cook proper food, to try new things, and to enjoy cheap cuts along with the steaks and roasts. Two racks of pork ribs are now in our freezer for either a pig-out of BBQ ribs one night, or as starters for two different Chinese meals, and our Friday-night-is-steak-night for SC and self will be with two small but thick pieces of rump each (a bargain because of the size), bulked out with a lamb cutlet that the butcher cut from the carcase for me as they had none left when I asked. 

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.