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?
Showing posts with label Norfolk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norfolk. Show all posts
Monday, 18 May 2015
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
Buying Memories
Whether it's something to do with a growing realisation that ones time on this earth is not unlimited, or the remnants of a sense of adventure I know not, but I do like to take culinary opportunities to buy memories. For those with deeper pockets than mine (though happily they remain far from empty) such memories may include meals cooked by major chefs with major egos and international profiles. I'm happier to settle for simpler things.
One such last year was what felt like an investment in three T-bone steaks that were barbecued to perfection and gnawed until nothing of their fleshy deliciousness remained. The cost was more than £30, if memory serves, but I'm certain that it will be the yardstick against which any future T-bone indulgence is measured by our small son (a mere 6' 2.5").
On our break in Norfolk last week another such - though far cheaper - chance arose. Driving back from Potter Heigham we spotted a fisherman selling freshly boiled Cromer crabs from a trailer parked in a lay-by. Noting exotic about any of that, clearly. And why should it need to be exotic? What was marvellous was that we got to eat a whole superbly fresh crab each (the vendor removed the dead-man's fingers as we waited), the cost for the three just over £8. I guess that doesn't qualify as austerity cooking on two levels - no cooking involved, and £8 could pay for several meals if you tried.
There is something extraordinarily satisfying about eating a crab as they should be: cracking the legs and claws, poking the innumerable cavities to get the last bits of meat. That is perhaps austerity thinking in a way.
A crab and a couple of slices of brown bread and butter each were the sole components of our lunch once we had returned to my father's house (he'd lunched already and anyway hates all seafood). It needed no wine, no sauce, no cooking beyond the boiling done that morning. The taste made me happy, and so too did the way we all tackled the task. It took several soapings to get rid of the crabby scent, all adding to the memory.
One such last year was what felt like an investment in three T-bone steaks that were barbecued to perfection and gnawed until nothing of their fleshy deliciousness remained. The cost was more than £30, if memory serves, but I'm certain that it will be the yardstick against which any future T-bone indulgence is measured by our small son (a mere 6' 2.5").
On our break in Norfolk last week another such - though far cheaper - chance arose. Driving back from Potter Heigham we spotted a fisherman selling freshly boiled Cromer crabs from a trailer parked in a lay-by. Noting exotic about any of that, clearly. And why should it need to be exotic? What was marvellous was that we got to eat a whole superbly fresh crab each (the vendor removed the dead-man's fingers as we waited), the cost for the three just over £8. I guess that doesn't qualify as austerity cooking on two levels - no cooking involved, and £8 could pay for several meals if you tried.
There is something extraordinarily satisfying about eating a crab as they should be: cracking the legs and claws, poking the innumerable cavities to get the last bits of meat. That is perhaps austerity thinking in a way.
A crab and a couple of slices of brown bread and butter each were the sole components of our lunch once we had returned to my father's house (he'd lunched already and anyway hates all seafood). It needed no wine, no sauce, no cooking beyond the boiling done that morning. The taste made me happy, and so too did the way we all tackled the task. It took several soapings to get rid of the crabby scent, all adding to the memory.
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
Better Bread Better for Us
The healthy eating programme has pushed me into even more bread making than usual, partly as the wholemeal offerings at the supermarkets are less than tasty, partly as it saves me going back for another loaf and ending up spending £20 on other stuff.
Yesterday's rolls were so good that even SC complimented them. They were not in truth wholemeal, as my 100 per cent wholemeal attempts have yielded somewhat dense results. Tasty but dense. Think any number of celebrities.
Reading about healthy eating has convinced me we need to eat more seeds, so armed with flaxseeds from Holland and B and sunflower seeds from Booth's I mixed dough per the following recipe:
1 cup s/s milk
0.25 cup lukewarm water
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp avocado oil
1 tbsp walnut oil
0.5 tsp salt
1.5tbsp sugar
0.25 cup seeds (mainly linseed)
0.75 cup wholemeal flour with seeds
1 cup wholemeal spelt flour
2 cups unbleached white flour
7g dried yeast sachet
Mixed and raised in the bread-maker, then knocked back, formed into rolls and left on a floured baking sheet in a warm place to rise for two hours they more than doubled in size before being put in a cold oven turned on to 200C and left to bake for about 25 minutes.
The results are soft crumbed, really tasty (in spite of the reduced salt), and satisfyingly bitty with seeds throughout. A perfect breakfast roll with coffee.
Using flaxseed reminded me of something from my childhood. The grandfather of my best mate of those days, at whose house in the depths of Norfolk I was sometimes invited to stay, used to take a teaspoonful of linseed oil (aka flaxseed oil) every evening. I can remember thinking this odd, and mentioning it to my parents who said something rather deprecatory about old country remedies. We now know linseeds are packed with antioxidants and Omega-3. Not for the first time we find that such remedies had real benefits. But I won't be following my Gran's advice and putting a clove of garlic in my sock the next time I get a cold.
Yesterday's rolls were so good that even SC complimented them. They were not in truth wholemeal, as my 100 per cent wholemeal attempts have yielded somewhat dense results. Tasty but dense. Think any number of celebrities.
Reading about healthy eating has convinced me we need to eat more seeds, so armed with flaxseeds from Holland and B and sunflower seeds from Booth's I mixed dough per the following recipe:
1 cup s/s milk
0.25 cup lukewarm water
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp avocado oil
1 tbsp walnut oil
0.5 tsp salt
1.5tbsp sugar
0.25 cup seeds (mainly linseed)
0.75 cup wholemeal flour with seeds
1 cup wholemeal spelt flour
2 cups unbleached white flour
7g dried yeast sachet
Mixed and raised in the bread-maker, then knocked back, formed into rolls and left on a floured baking sheet in a warm place to rise for two hours they more than doubled in size before being put in a cold oven turned on to 200C and left to bake for about 25 minutes.
The results are soft crumbed, really tasty (in spite of the reduced salt), and satisfyingly bitty with seeds throughout. A perfect breakfast roll with coffee.
Using flaxseed reminded me of something from my childhood. The grandfather of my best mate of those days, at whose house in the depths of Norfolk I was sometimes invited to stay, used to take a teaspoonful of linseed oil (aka flaxseed oil) every evening. I can remember thinking this odd, and mentioning it to my parents who said something rather deprecatory about old country remedies. We now know linseeds are packed with antioxidants and Omega-3. Not for the first time we find that such remedies had real benefits. But I won't be following my Gran's advice and putting a clove of garlic in my sock the next time I get a cold.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Suffolk Smoked Sprats
During our Norfolk break we spent half a day over the border in Southwold. The idea had been to fish off the pier, but as the wind was blowing directly from Siberia and we had not taken our sumo suits (far more descriptive than flotation suits) we walked down to the river instead and bought cockles and some smoked sprats. For some reason the latter have never, unless I missed it, enjoyed foodie fame. Pity, they deserve it, though if they came into vogue doubtless the extremely reasonable price would rocket. Like rocket.
The fish can be cooked if you must, but the perfect way to eat them is as they come, with fingers, stripping the oily flesh from bones and if you must from the skin too, only brown bread and butter to accompany the feast. Another entry to our family game of messy menus for pompous prigs. I am sure this has featured in a previous post, so just a recap: imagine you are feeding someone whose dignity exceeds their charm. What do you put on the menu to bring them down a peg or two? Crab from the shell; spaghetti; prawns that need to be peeled; corn-on-the-cob with loads of dripping butter. Add your own ideas at liberty.
We bought about 15 for just over £2, so they're an austerity treat too. And 50 times better value than the sandwiches later in The Lord Nelson, Adnams you should be ashamed: £6.95 for a butty and a handful of chips, and the bread was close to stale. If it hadn't been for the Jocastas, Gileses, Indias and Quentins five-deep at the bar I'd have complained. And I'll take a wild guess that none of those chinless second-homers had a smoked sprat that weekend, especially when there is a lovely little place they know here that sells the most divine olives daaahhling.
The fish can be cooked if you must, but the perfect way to eat them is as they come, with fingers, stripping the oily flesh from bones and if you must from the skin too, only brown bread and butter to accompany the feast. Another entry to our family game of messy menus for pompous prigs. I am sure this has featured in a previous post, so just a recap: imagine you are feeding someone whose dignity exceeds their charm. What do you put on the menu to bring them down a peg or two? Crab from the shell; spaghetti; prawns that need to be peeled; corn-on-the-cob with loads of dripping butter. Add your own ideas at liberty.
We bought about 15 for just over £2, so they're an austerity treat too. And 50 times better value than the sandwiches later in The Lord Nelson, Adnams you should be ashamed: £6.95 for a butty and a handful of chips, and the bread was close to stale. If it hadn't been for the Jocastas, Gileses, Indias and Quentins five-deep at the bar I'd have complained. And I'll take a wild guess that none of those chinless second-homers had a smoked sprat that weekend, especially when there is a lovely little place they know here that sells the most divine olives daaahhling.
Cowboy Hotpot - Historic One Flame Ingenuity
Just back from spending a few days with my father in Norfolk. As tradition demands we were met after our horrible A17 journey with plates of cowboy hotpot. This is a dish of family legend, though it only dates back one generation.
My mother was an infants' school teacher who would rope my father in to help with school trips various. On one brief camping expedition he was volunteered to do the cooking, and faced with limited resources (big pot and big camping stove) came up with the ideal meal for kids, or at least kids 30 or 40 years ago. Ideal in both its name and consistency. He had as ingredients potatoes, onions, corned beef, carrots, and baked beans, plus some stock cubes. The veg were diced very small - say 5mm wide, the corned beef likewise, and the lot simmered briefly in not a great deal of stock before the beans were added to warm through.
Kids are picky, especially away from home, but my father overcame all such thoughts by dubbing it when asked 'Cowboy Hotpot'. The reflected glamour and adventure of the food, surely cooked over open fires in the Badlands by John Wayne and James Stewart, saw it eaten - with spoons - to the last morsel. And the moist, almost sloppy consistency is great for kids too, they tend to hate dry foodstuffs.
Since then it has more often than not been made with fresh beef rather than corned. What would Randolph Scott have said?
What name for the plateful would have the same effect today? Sadly the horrific 'Celebrity Stew' springs to mind.
My mother was an infants' school teacher who would rope my father in to help with school trips various. On one brief camping expedition he was volunteered to do the cooking, and faced with limited resources (big pot and big camping stove) came up with the ideal meal for kids, or at least kids 30 or 40 years ago. Ideal in both its name and consistency. He had as ingredients potatoes, onions, corned beef, carrots, and baked beans, plus some stock cubes. The veg were diced very small - say 5mm wide, the corned beef likewise, and the lot simmered briefly in not a great deal of stock before the beans were added to warm through.
Kids are picky, especially away from home, but my father overcame all such thoughts by dubbing it when asked 'Cowboy Hotpot'. The reflected glamour and adventure of the food, surely cooked over open fires in the Badlands by John Wayne and James Stewart, saw it eaten - with spoons - to the last morsel. And the moist, almost sloppy consistency is great for kids too, they tend to hate dry foodstuffs.
Since then it has more often than not been made with fresh beef rather than corned. What would Randolph Scott have said?
What name for the plateful would have the same effect today? Sadly the horrific 'Celebrity Stew' springs to mind.
Thursday, 13 December 2012
I was a Norfolk Dumpling
I may have been born in Lancashire, and returned here in my twenties to work, but brought up in Norfolk I still feel that is my spiritual home. Thus the national dish of the Norfolker (say that in a hurry and cause consternation) is one to which I return as regularly as mutinous family and culinary pride will allow. That dish is of course the Norfolk Dumpling.
Dumplings of all sorts are definitely austerity fare: filling, cheap, and essentially satisfying. They are rarely subtle, though if you give them a French or Russian name they can seem a bit more exotic. Few words can be as demotic as dumpling, although if you think of the word as the gerund of the verb to dumple, which it isn't, some interest could be engendered.
The Norfolk Dumpling (which merits capitals) is very simply made if you have a bread-maker, which I do, as it is just bread dough allowed to rise then dropped into salted boiling water to bobble about and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. They are rarely light, for which read never, the surface takes on the appearance of wallpaper paste, and even if you include a flavouring like yesterday's dried sage they still taste predominantly of being full. But as that is their point, job done.
In my hometown, the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth, clever and careful guest house landladies would serve them at least three times in a week's stay, anything more frequent risking violence. A few pence worth of flour, a bit of fat, some yeast, salt and sugar, and plenty of elbow grease was/is what they cost.
Yet they enhance a stew wonderfully, once broken into soaking up the gravy like a sponge. Or like the bread they are. And the secret to them is not to cut the things, which crushes them and creates a lump of goo, but to pull them apart with two forks. Simple, as is the dumpling.
Dumplings of all sorts are definitely austerity fare: filling, cheap, and essentially satisfying. They are rarely subtle, though if you give them a French or Russian name they can seem a bit more exotic. Few words can be as demotic as dumpling, although if you think of the word as the gerund of the verb to dumple, which it isn't, some interest could be engendered.
The Norfolk Dumpling (which merits capitals) is very simply made if you have a bread-maker, which I do, as it is just bread dough allowed to rise then dropped into salted boiling water to bobble about and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. They are rarely light, for which read never, the surface takes on the appearance of wallpaper paste, and even if you include a flavouring like yesterday's dried sage they still taste predominantly of being full. But as that is their point, job done.
In my hometown, the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth, clever and careful guest house landladies would serve them at least three times in a week's stay, anything more frequent risking violence. A few pence worth of flour, a bit of fat, some yeast, salt and sugar, and plenty of elbow grease was/is what they cost.
Yet they enhance a stew wonderfully, once broken into soaking up the gravy like a sponge. Or like the bread they are. And the secret to them is not to cut the things, which crushes them and creates a lump of goo, but to pull them apart with two forks. Simple, as is the dumpling.
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