Given my undoubted obsession with variety, and ensuring our nutrition is tickety boo, main course dishes here accordingly tend to include quite a few different veg etc. Sometimes it's good to focus on one thing, however, to give it due respect and a chance to shine.
Last night's main course, with The Dear Leader still struggling with her jaw (a corn cob injury, weirdly) and needing softish foods I went with something from the classic repertoire - a fancy version of French onion soup (think the posh French name is Panade). It is my kind of cooking anyway, in several ways - onions are, like me, cheap. It requires slow cooking and a lot of therapeutic peeling and slicing (without tears for once), and watching carefully until it achieves that perfect mahogany shade of brown. And this version entailed opening a bottle of wine that forms part of the cooking liquid, (along with beef stock), so we had to finish off the rest. Thickened with flour (darling, nobody does that these days), then enriched with loads of grated Gruyere and a good slug of Cognac (best thing for it, I'm a (married) single malt man), it was the ideal thing for a gloomy autumn evening.
That approach, focusing on one big element, is suited to soups, though I'm a fan of the French hotel using-up-bits-of-leftover-veg option too. Recently we had an enjoyable Jerusalem artichoke soup, though that had the backing of carrots and onions, with the fine flavour of those tubers given free rein; and on Saturday a pumpkin was very much to the fore in another potage (not so fine, but TDL like it). Having mistakenly overdone the carrot purchasing we're likely to have Potage de Crecy this week too. I need to go to my favourite Asian supermarket to buy another net of their excellent and incredibly cheap garlic, to go for a Spanish sopa de ajo, using three or four heads of the stuff. All this veg may be good for us (and especially our blood apparently, as far as the garlic and onions are concerned), but it is just as well we have the heavy winter duvet on the bed. Enough said.
Showing posts with label carrot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carrot. Show all posts
Monday, 29 October 2018
Monday, 27 October 2014
Now, where was I?
For many reasons I have not written anything on this blog for some considerable time. Blame in no logical order a) writing a contract magazine; b) too many holidays (I can feel the wave of sympathy already); c) finding there are many great English comic novels on Kindle for free (Surtees, HH Munro, the less well-known Jerome K Jerome stuff...); d) seeing Sternest Critic off to university (where he continues to prosper).
As this blog is ostensibly about food and its joys the first post (like the last post but not anywhere near as sad) of this new era (with new title suggested by a friend wise to the ways of the modern world) will be about the thing that has brought most culinary joy to the household of late, and we are convinced it is good for us. As so often, I need to take pictures - will do so the next time I make the simple but delicious dish/course - salade de crudites, which even without the accent sounds better than raw veg salad.
We grow a lot of beetroot, this year three varieties and in good quantity. Some is used in soups and stocks to give body and colour (especially if a little grated beet is added to a stock near the end of cooking, so the colour stays fresh and purple. Most is eaten raw in salads. Needing a first course to serve to some friends round for pot-luck, and with beet, carrot, red onion, a few leaves of rocket, one tomato and a kohl rabi to hand I thought about a plate of crudites (I wish yet again I could do the accent on this thing), then with a bit of a nudge from HF-W tried my hand at using different textures and a nice arrangement to prepare a pretty plateful. It worked well on that level, and was delicious when mixed up: kohl rabi peeled and sliced into discs piled at the bottom centre of the shallow bowl; strips of carrot peeled lengthwise and piled on top of the former; a rim of rocket leaves on which small chunks of tomato were placed, then coarsely grated beet of two varieties, one purple one pink and white rings, dropped on the carrot and similarly treated red onion atop the tomato. It was a little flower-arrangement of a thing that brightened the table beautifully, then when mixed and dressed with a mustardy vinaigrette tasted fresh and bright and healthy.
Variations on the theme have been eaten several times since then, with ingredients like avocado, little gem lettuce, boiled egg, and cucumber appearing and others like rocket if not to hand disappearing. It's just a salad, but the presentation (that takes mere seconds longer than lobbing everything together) makes it more special, and when mixed up in serving the textures remain as a reminder of the tiny bit of extra care and imagination.
This is now - until the debt mountains around the world bury us beneath an avalanche of demands for payment - a post-austerity blog. But that dish suits either tough times or good, costing pennies but looking like pounds.
As this blog is ostensibly about food and its joys the first post (like the last post but not anywhere near as sad) of this new era (with new title suggested by a friend wise to the ways of the modern world) will be about the thing that has brought most culinary joy to the household of late, and we are convinced it is good for us. As so often, I need to take pictures - will do so the next time I make the simple but delicious dish/course - salade de crudites, which even without the accent sounds better than raw veg salad.
We grow a lot of beetroot, this year three varieties and in good quantity. Some is used in soups and stocks to give body and colour (especially if a little grated beet is added to a stock near the end of cooking, so the colour stays fresh and purple. Most is eaten raw in salads. Needing a first course to serve to some friends round for pot-luck, and with beet, carrot, red onion, a few leaves of rocket, one tomato and a kohl rabi to hand I thought about a plate of crudites (I wish yet again I could do the accent on this thing), then with a bit of a nudge from HF-W tried my hand at using different textures and a nice arrangement to prepare a pretty plateful. It worked well on that level, and was delicious when mixed up: kohl rabi peeled and sliced into discs piled at the bottom centre of the shallow bowl; strips of carrot peeled lengthwise and piled on top of the former; a rim of rocket leaves on which small chunks of tomato were placed, then coarsely grated beet of two varieties, one purple one pink and white rings, dropped on the carrot and similarly treated red onion atop the tomato. It was a little flower-arrangement of a thing that brightened the table beautifully, then when mixed and dressed with a mustardy vinaigrette tasted fresh and bright and healthy.
Variations on the theme have been eaten several times since then, with ingredients like avocado, little gem lettuce, boiled egg, and cucumber appearing and others like rocket if not to hand disappearing. It's just a salad, but the presentation (that takes mere seconds longer than lobbing everything together) makes it more special, and when mixed up in serving the textures remain as a reminder of the tiny bit of extra care and imagination.
This is now - until the debt mountains around the world bury us beneath an avalanche of demands for payment - a post-austerity blog. But that dish suits either tough times or good, costing pennies but looking like pounds.
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Fresh and Nearly Free
People struggling with food bills often complain that vegetables are expensive and that they have to buy processed rubbish on their budget, so salads are beyond their means. Given that a 1kg bag of carrots at Sainsbury's cost me 90p the other day, that is at best moot. Carrot sticks, grated carrot, and various cooked carrot salads - though these tend to need spices - and all for pennies.
Even better is salad grown for free, or very nearly. Not everyone is lucky enough to have land for growing salads. But this simple alternative is possible for just about everyone.
You can buy seed trays from Wilkinson's very cheaply, or if you have left over plastic trays (with drainage holes in the bottom) from bought fruit and veg you can use them. A bit of compost to fill it to within about 2cm of the lip. Buy a seed-pack of peas (the best are sugar snap and mange tout but ordinary Feltham First etc would be fine), push the peas a cm below the surface, add a little water, and if the tray is near a source of natural light - the kitchen window, a bedroom windowsill... and they are kept just moist not wet, within a week or so you have peas shoots ready to pick - just the end couple of leaves and the little wispy tail between them, but as you will have planted 100 or more peas you will have plenty. This is cut and come again, so another few days and you have another little crop. In all you can rely on three crops, four if you are lucky. then root out the remains, refill the tray and start again - you should get two plantings from a pack of seed-peas.
Two days ago we had a salad of two boiled eggs with a tiny bit of mayo and two spring onions cut into rings, served on a bed (how chefy) of pea shoots with just a sprinkle of salt and a few drops of oil. The shoots had been cut about 5 minutes before we ate them. Simple, quick, fresh, cheap.
Completely free would be the dandelion leaves growing on what should be our lawn. I feed these to the chickens at night, but in France salade de pissenlit - pissenlit translates as wet the bed, referring to the diuretic properties of the leaf (in Welsh likewise I believe one name - forgive the spelling - is pi-pi in gwelli) - often appears on country restaurant menus. The leaf is slightly bitter but very tasty. It's high time I tried a full salad foraged from our garden - dandelions, wild garlic, maybe a few rose petals, the hop shoots from a plant curling up a tree... Watch this space.
Even better is salad grown for free, or very nearly. Not everyone is lucky enough to have land for growing salads. But this simple alternative is possible for just about everyone.
You can buy seed trays from Wilkinson's very cheaply, or if you have left over plastic trays (with drainage holes in the bottom) from bought fruit and veg you can use them. A bit of compost to fill it to within about 2cm of the lip. Buy a seed-pack of peas (the best are sugar snap and mange tout but ordinary Feltham First etc would be fine), push the peas a cm below the surface, add a little water, and if the tray is near a source of natural light - the kitchen window, a bedroom windowsill... and they are kept just moist not wet, within a week or so you have peas shoots ready to pick - just the end couple of leaves and the little wispy tail between them, but as you will have planted 100 or more peas you will have plenty. This is cut and come again, so another few days and you have another little crop. In all you can rely on three crops, four if you are lucky. then root out the remains, refill the tray and start again - you should get two plantings from a pack of seed-peas.
Two days ago we had a salad of two boiled eggs with a tiny bit of mayo and two spring onions cut into rings, served on a bed (how chefy) of pea shoots with just a sprinkle of salt and a few drops of oil. The shoots had been cut about 5 minutes before we ate them. Simple, quick, fresh, cheap.
Completely free would be the dandelion leaves growing on what should be our lawn. I feed these to the chickens at night, but in France salade de pissenlit - pissenlit translates as wet the bed, referring to the diuretic properties of the leaf (in Welsh likewise I believe one name - forgive the spelling - is pi-pi in gwelli) - often appears on country restaurant menus. The leaf is slightly bitter but very tasty. It's high time I tried a full salad foraged from our garden - dandelions, wild garlic, maybe a few rose petals, the hop shoots from a plant curling up a tree... Watch this space.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
One Flame Demitarian?
I heard someone from the World Food Programme (I think) this morning on Today, talking about the need to reduce our use of animal protein, indeed animal products, to slow our damage to the environment. He used the term 'demitarian', to convey the idea of cutting meat/milk/cheese etc consumption, but not stopping it. Not sure if I like the word, but the sentiment is good.
Other posts have covered how I am trying to reduce our meat usage. It is not hard, except in terms of breaking a habit - meal plan so often starts with a lump of protein. Last night's meal probably didn't quite fit the demitarian party line, but came close. It was a meal that de Pomiane would have smiled at too, ready in 20 minutes but with only five minutes' work involved. Good one for the student and austerity cook too, cheap and cheerful, one-pot cooking, and pretty healthy: first course a mix of hors d'oeuvres, second linguini with Parmesan and butter.
The idea for the hors d'oeuvre-fest came from the almost summery weather: grated carrot (squeezed to get rid of excess moisture, it makes it fluffier) with tiny rings of spring onion and flecks of Maldon salt; a tin of good sardines in oil; a few slices of salami; some olives; fingers of cucumber and yellow pepper, and a load of tiny tomatoes that wonder of wonders actually tasted of tomato, and they were only £1 for a bag at Sainsbury's, enough for three or four such servings.
Two large platefuls ready in three minutes, lots of colour and a feeling of virtue. It's a sociable course too, diners reaching over for a bit more of this or that, pass the mayo or pepper.
Two large platefuls ready in three minutes, lots of colour and a feeling of virtue. It's a sociable course too, diners reaching over for a bit more of this or that, pass the mayo or pepper.
Second course was cooking while we tucked into our starter, and again it is a friendly dish, twirling of pasta on fork and slurping of the dripping threads.
Grated carrot btw is one of my favourite standby things when a meal needs a salad. Last night two carrots was plenty, but another one or two, dressed with oil and lemon and crunchy salt makes a rapid salad on its own. The vibrant orange brightens any table too, and for pennies - about 20p I guess, with 5p for olive oil, and another 10p for a wedge of lemon.
When people say cooking is a chore, I wonder have they ever tried it. And how can anyone not have five minutes spare to do something fun in their day that feeds the family?
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Colour? Bah! Humbug!
Forgive the title if you would, always the most difficult part of a post to write, and a longish life influenced by punning newspaper headlines makes it hard to avoid such tropes.
When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.
Even in the early years of James I's reign such artificial colouring (powdered sandalwood one of the ways of doing it btw for bright red) was thought to be 'countrified', yet we still do it, the worst offender that luminescent-yellow smoked haddock which hurts the eye when surveying the fish counter. Colour? Bah! Humbug! indeed. Sadly that is cheaper than the undyed version - a bit illogical other than on grounds of volume, so let's stop buying it. When I was a kid my local mini-supermarket, Taygreens, in an echo of an Arthur Lowe anecdote I love, sold two cheeses, cheddar and red cheddar. Even then I couldn't see why people wanted red cheese which looked like someone had mixed it with paint.
On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.
Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.
Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.
The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.
When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.
On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.
Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.
Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.
The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Cheap Cuts - The Cheek of It
One truism of economical shopping is that meat needing longer cooking will generally be cheaper than something you can flash fry. The savings on the meat have to be balanced with the fuel used over two hours and more in the oven, but with a little planning several dishes can be done at once.
Two days ago I cooked a stew of ox-cheek, meat purchased at Waitrose (not famed for cheapness, but this was a fairly thrifty £6.50/kg). With carrots, onions, and a leek there was the basis of something nutritious, and I added a bowl of mango chutney to the liquid (leftover from a party) plus some of our own dried sage and a tea-spoon of Bovril, a magical meaty ingredient in beef stews and gravies. Cooked very slowly in the morning and into the afternoon (for four hours at 120C actually, while I was out interviewing someone for an article) and then cooled it was kept to mature in the fridge overnight - stews pretty much always benefit from this, the flavours developing and melding.
The result when reheated next day was very tasty: the meat could be cut with a spoon, the juices were sweet and unctuous, and there was next to nothing left. I added a tin of Heinz beans when reheating it, as the meat needed some bulk other than carrots to balance it.
My planning was a bit off, the only thing I 'cooked' with it some lemon and lime skins. After they are juiced don't throw them away, believe it or not once dried out they make very effective firelighters.
Two days ago I cooked a stew of ox-cheek, meat purchased at Waitrose (not famed for cheapness, but this was a fairly thrifty £6.50/kg). With carrots, onions, and a leek there was the basis of something nutritious, and I added a bowl of mango chutney to the liquid (leftover from a party) plus some of our own dried sage and a tea-spoon of Bovril, a magical meaty ingredient in beef stews and gravies. Cooked very slowly in the morning and into the afternoon (for four hours at 120C actually, while I was out interviewing someone for an article) and then cooled it was kept to mature in the fridge overnight - stews pretty much always benefit from this, the flavours developing and melding.
The result when reheated next day was very tasty: the meat could be cut with a spoon, the juices were sweet and unctuous, and there was next to nothing left. I added a tin of Heinz beans when reheating it, as the meat needed some bulk other than carrots to balance it.
My planning was a bit off, the only thing I 'cooked' with it some lemon and lime skins. After they are juiced don't throw them away, believe it or not once dried out they make very effective firelighters.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Everyone Loves Noodles
I was going to call this post something like 'a quick supper', which the dish was, but that would have been too Nigel Slater - good ideas, prissy-fussy writing style.
Those nearly straight to wok noodles - softened in boiling water for a minute or so - are a godsend when you need to get food on the table quickly. Work had kept me from preparing anything, and both Joe and I were hungry, so a noodle dish was the simple solution. Or as Nigel would write: Work had kept me at my desk facing a pale antique-ivory screen, looking out over the trees shedding their leaves of medieval gold. Both Joe and I were hungry. So a noodle dish made a quick and comforting supper. At this time of year noodles call to me etc.... And we're back again.
Quick tends to mean with little or no meat, thus cheap-ish. In this case I defrosted a bag of tiny prawns for the protein component, so not for pennies but still economical. Chopping veg into matchsticks in order that they cook at the same speed is easy when they are peppers and carrots, but onions are trickier, a case for judgement - you want a bit of browning, thus thin half-moons here. A red chilli cut into fairly wide slices perked the dish up, and added a touch of colour.
Thursday and not a lot of fresh veg in the kitchen, so I defrosted some broccoli florets (top bargain by the way and these were not mushy as I had feared when buying as an experiment) and when drained added them to the stir-fry that with soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil had a touch of braise about it at the end. Not a scrap left over.
Those nearly straight to wok noodles - softened in boiling water for a minute or so - are a godsend when you need to get food on the table quickly. Work had kept me from preparing anything, and both Joe and I were hungry, so a noodle dish was the simple solution. Or as Nigel would write: Work had kept me at my desk facing a pale antique-ivory screen, looking out over the trees shedding their leaves of medieval gold. Both Joe and I were hungry. So a noodle dish made a quick and comforting supper. At this time of year noodles call to me etc.... And we're back again.
Quick tends to mean with little or no meat, thus cheap-ish. In this case I defrosted a bag of tiny prawns for the protein component, so not for pennies but still economical. Chopping veg into matchsticks in order that they cook at the same speed is easy when they are peppers and carrots, but onions are trickier, a case for judgement - you want a bit of browning, thus thin half-moons here. A red chilli cut into fairly wide slices perked the dish up, and added a touch of colour.
Thursday and not a lot of fresh veg in the kitchen, so I defrosted some broccoli florets (top bargain by the way and these were not mushy as I had feared when buying as an experiment) and when drained added them to the stir-fry that with soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil had a touch of braise about it at the end. Not a scrap left over.
Friday, 2 December 2011
Love, Money and the Packed Lunch
Several years ago Alvin Hall on one of his life-and-money-coaching programmes highlighted the cost of lunches at work. I used to spend £3 or more a day on a sandwich and other bits (ok, a pie) from a shop near my office, and my wife did likewise, though her choice was more salady. Work that out over the year and we were spending about £1.5k annually on not great quality food - lovely though S+K pies are, I guess most use mechanically recovered meat - not pleasant; and shop salads tend to focus on the bulk of boring iceberg lettuce.
Since I changed career and don't have to rush off at 7:15 every day I have made a point of preparing a salad for my wife's lunch. It's a gesture of love as well as economy. Like too many women she is convinced she needs to lose just another pound, just another, while loving good food.
It really is economic. Today she will be tucking into what was facetiously - it is December - dubbed a sunshine salad. Costs are a rough guestimate, but won't be far out - I really don't spend all day weighing produce and calculating costs to the nearest tenth of a penny. Matchsticks of carrot (5p), ginger (2p), half a yellow basic-range pepper (13p), plus the skinned segments of two satsumas (25p - extravagant fool that I am), dressed with the squeezed juice from the satsuma remains, a dash of olive oil (wonderful stuff from Aranda, only used for dressings), a sprinkle of salt (it is a salad), a few cumin seeds for interest, and a dusting of cinnamon. Say 50p for the whole thing. Her university canteen would charge £2.30, M&S probably £3 or more for the same thing if they had anything like that. With a banana and a yogurt it is near as makes no odds £1 for her lunch. Economy needn't be unhealthy or life-sappingly boring.
With my eco-hat on the salad is carried in a click-sealed container washed and re-used, rather than several layers of disposable plastic packaging, another reason of course for it being cheaper. and this salad could even make us money if it wins the lovethegarden.com Christmas Carrot recipe comp!
Since I changed career and don't have to rush off at 7:15 every day I have made a point of preparing a salad for my wife's lunch. It's a gesture of love as well as economy. Like too many women she is convinced she needs to lose just another pound, just another, while loving good food.
It really is economic. Today she will be tucking into what was facetiously - it is December - dubbed a sunshine salad. Costs are a rough guestimate, but won't be far out - I really don't spend all day weighing produce and calculating costs to the nearest tenth of a penny. Matchsticks of carrot (5p), ginger (2p), half a yellow basic-range pepper (13p), plus the skinned segments of two satsumas (25p - extravagant fool that I am), dressed with the squeezed juice from the satsuma remains, a dash of olive oil (wonderful stuff from Aranda, only used for dressings), a sprinkle of salt (it is a salad), a few cumin seeds for interest, and a dusting of cinnamon. Say 50p for the whole thing. Her university canteen would charge £2.30, M&S probably £3 or more for the same thing if they had anything like that. With a banana and a yogurt it is near as makes no odds £1 for her lunch. Economy needn't be unhealthy or life-sappingly boring.
With my eco-hat on the salad is carried in a click-sealed container washed and re-used, rather than several layers of disposable plastic packaging, another reason of course for it being cheaper. and this salad could even make us money if it wins the lovethegarden.com Christmas Carrot recipe comp!
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