My palate is definitely changing as I speed through the third decade of my thirties. It's clear that my taste buds are not as sensitive (and discerning?) as once they were (and I believe they are not as numerous, which somehow seems weird). Yet at the same time they appear less able to bear spicy heat.
That's not to say that I have abandoned hot foods. I hope that day never comes, as I've always loved foods with bite. Not, however, in the macho show of strength that some feel necessary - years ago I watched with awe then amusement as a very dear friend and another acquaintance ordered Phal with extra chillies. Or is that Fal? Or Phall? Or Phaal? Transliteration is a bugger. They ordered Phal. With extra chillies. After two bites their faces were purple, foreheads beaded with sweat, and within minutes you could actually see lips blistering.
In my business travel days I ate some very hot foods - soft-shelled crabs in Ipoh was one memorable feast; a Shabu Shabu in Taipei another (the stock was bright pink with chillies). That chilli heat is for me life-enhancing, a jump-start for the entire body. Which is why I never want to give it up.
The spices in your cupboard are a wonderful austerity tool. The curry about which I posted the other day proved delicious, thanks largely to the spices in it: cardamom and cumin to perfume; fenugreek and coriander seeds as a solid foundation and cassia something subtle in the background; and of course lots of pepper and some chilli for the warmth that lifts a dish and the spirits. If the lot cost 10p I would be astounded. Yet they transformed what could be extremely bland ingredients (the bulk was white fish, rice, coconut milk, onions) into something so good plates were scraped clean.
Austerity cook hat (toque - I don't think so) on: the supermarkets have shelves full of packet mixes that on a good day are 50p, generally more than £1. Schwarz keep playing tunes with pots of this, packs of that, thimbles of the other, again around the £1 mark or worse. It's a small investment to buy from the ethnic shelves half a dozen packs of whole seeds (so they will have more of their aromatic oils remaining than ground stuff) that will last a year or more, cost perhaps £6, and do 50 meals plus - you do the financial comparison. Yes you have to grind them one way or another, and it may take a few goes to get the feel of things (I still sometimes overdo pepper) but it is well worthwhile. And can be adjusted to individual dishes, and your own palate as it changes.
Showing posts with label spice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spice. Show all posts
Friday, 31 January 2014
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Malaysian Cooking
As part of my day job last Saturday I attended the Ning cookery school in Manchester's trendy Northern Quarter. For full details if anyone is interested check out Lancashire Life's April edition, and maybe their website in the fullness of time, but a couple of things were of particular interest to the austerity cook so I'll include them in this blog.
Firstly was how to use lemon grass. I had always thought that trimming and then bashing the moist core with the flat of a knife was the way, removing the fibrous bits after they had given up their flavour: not so as Norman Musa demonstrated. We trimmed the pieces are I had previously done, then cut them in short lengths and zapped them with water in a food processor. Wonderful smell, maximum flavour and fragrance, most bang for your ringgit.
The other was the power of toasted spice. I sometimes do this, in a hot dry pan with one whole spice. Norman had us measure decent quantities of several: cumin, pepper, cinnamon bark, cardamom and star anise (broken into small bits), then got us toasting them gently for a couple of minutes before grinding them finely. The mixture of spices again filled the room, and there was certainly more flavour imparted to the food because of this technique.
I'm off to my local Chinese supermarket tonight to buy some supplies. Fresh and relatively simple street food (this was for beginners) it was nonetheless delicious, and even in the Far East in my previous career I never smelled anything so mouth-watering.
Firstly was how to use lemon grass. I had always thought that trimming and then bashing the moist core with the flat of a knife was the way, removing the fibrous bits after they had given up their flavour: not so as Norman Musa demonstrated. We trimmed the pieces are I had previously done, then cut them in short lengths and zapped them with water in a food processor. Wonderful smell, maximum flavour and fragrance, most bang for your ringgit.
The other was the power of toasted spice. I sometimes do this, in a hot dry pan with one whole spice. Norman had us measure decent quantities of several: cumin, pepper, cinnamon bark, cardamom and star anise (broken into small bits), then got us toasting them gently for a couple of minutes before grinding them finely. The mixture of spices again filled the room, and there was certainly more flavour imparted to the food because of this technique.
I'm off to my local Chinese supermarket tonight to buy some supplies. Fresh and relatively simple street food (this was for beginners) it was nonetheless delicious, and even in the Far East in my previous career I never smelled anything so mouth-watering.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Do Flavours Become Old?
My bedtime reading currently is Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book. Elizabethan and Jacobean recipes are set out in the original flexible spelling, then explained and commented on by the erudite Hilary Spurling. The seasonality of cooking is one thing that hits you - Mrs Spurling set it out by month - but also the flavours that the cook in those times most leaned on, some of which we use very little today.
Is this a matter of fashion, availability, or does taste evolve in some way perhaps to keep pace with technological change - the fridge and freezer, rapid transport - and the 'new' ingredients that become available?
I like to think I use a wide palette of spices and other flavour enhancers, but some things that were central to old Elinor's culinary world are pretty alien to mine - I wonder who nowadays really uses the cloves they buy, for example? Even in bread sauce I would use nutmeg in place of the overpowering clove. But at least I have a little bottleful in my cupboard whereas rosewater is absent - I had a bottle years ago and think it disappeared through a temporal warp vortex, as one day it was gone though I'd hardly used a drop. Rosewater for the Jacobean cook was the stock-cube of today's, which says a great deal about our loss of subtlety.
A myth should be debunked here: spices were probably not then used much if at all to mask meats etc going off, they were far too expensive to waste thus, and those with the money to spend on exotic ingredients would not have been foolish enough to endanger their health with rotting flesh, or desperate enough to have to. Spices were used to produce food that tasted good.
Our contemporary love of nutmeg and mace links us with those times, even moreso perhaps cinnamon. I very occasionally use Orange Flower Water too. Cloves have a flavour that I associate with the cooking of relatives long deceased. But it is not just spices that seem to fade away in cooking. Take raisins: in my Sixties and Seventies childhood they were included in curries, cakes and pies, covered in chocolate as a special treat to be eaten in the cinema, the tough little buggers eaten I'd estimate twice a week. I barely use them now, and have to buy them in specially when needed. Elinor Fettiplace seems to have employed them for every other dish. As my son loathes all dried fruit perhaps they will fade out of the culinary picture entirely when his generation pushes mine away from the hob.
We should not forget such ingredients, so I am going to make an effort to use the occasional clove, hide raisins - one 'receipt' in the book for chicken cooked in mutton broth has raisins (later sieved out) to add depth and sweetness for example - and buy rosewater too. In austerity terms these things should attract the cook for giving loads of taste for very little money - a single clove makes itself known in a big apple pie. More bang for your groat as it were.
Is this a matter of fashion, availability, or does taste evolve in some way perhaps to keep pace with technological change - the fridge and freezer, rapid transport - and the 'new' ingredients that become available?
I like to think I use a wide palette of spices and other flavour enhancers, but some things that were central to old Elinor's culinary world are pretty alien to mine - I wonder who nowadays really uses the cloves they buy, for example? Even in bread sauce I would use nutmeg in place of the overpowering clove. But at least I have a little bottleful in my cupboard whereas rosewater is absent - I had a bottle years ago and think it disappeared through a temporal warp vortex, as one day it was gone though I'd hardly used a drop. Rosewater for the Jacobean cook was the stock-cube of today's, which says a great deal about our loss of subtlety.
A myth should be debunked here: spices were probably not then used much if at all to mask meats etc going off, they were far too expensive to waste thus, and those with the money to spend on exotic ingredients would not have been foolish enough to endanger their health with rotting flesh, or desperate enough to have to. Spices were used to produce food that tasted good.
Our contemporary love of nutmeg and mace links us with those times, even moreso perhaps cinnamon. I very occasionally use Orange Flower Water too. Cloves have a flavour that I associate with the cooking of relatives long deceased. But it is not just spices that seem to fade away in cooking. Take raisins: in my Sixties and Seventies childhood they were included in curries, cakes and pies, covered in chocolate as a special treat to be eaten in the cinema, the tough little buggers eaten I'd estimate twice a week. I barely use them now, and have to buy them in specially when needed. Elinor Fettiplace seems to have employed them for every other dish. As my son loathes all dried fruit perhaps they will fade out of the culinary picture entirely when his generation pushes mine away from the hob.
We should not forget such ingredients, so I am going to make an effort to use the occasional clove, hide raisins - one 'receipt' in the book for chicken cooked in mutton broth has raisins (later sieved out) to add depth and sweetness for example - and buy rosewater too. In austerity terms these things should attract the cook for giving loads of taste for very little money - a single clove makes itself known in a big apple pie. More bang for your groat as it were.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Chicken Burgers Needn't Be Sad
Saturday's evening meal here tends to be a bit more relaxed, finger food stuff, and this week we went down the burger route. That need not mean some vile mechanically recovered slurry dried and reprocessed with 50 per cent salt. I used £3 worth of Sainsbury's chicken thigh fillets zapped to a coarse consistency, with some onion, a whole red chilli for a bit of kick, parsley and par-cel from the allotment, and freshly-ground spices -pepper, cumin and fennel, the lot held together with a large egg and seasoned with salt.
The only drawback to cooking these is that unlike say lamb or beef burgers you really need to make sure they cook all the way through - raw chicken is not good for you. So they were made as flat as was practical, and then fried over a medium heat in a bit of olive oil and turned regularly until the outside was crisping up nicely. I have to admit to putting them in the microwave for a couple of minutes at the end to make sure any nasties had been killed off.
Served in the flat-breads about which I wrote some time back, and with a simple salsa of tomatoes, green chilli, parsley and onion turned into mush by the spice grinder there was plenty of flavour and the crispy outside was a treat.
The only drawback to cooking these is that unlike say lamb or beef burgers you really need to make sure they cook all the way through - raw chicken is not good for you. So they were made as flat as was practical, and then fried over a medium heat in a bit of olive oil and turned regularly until the outside was crisping up nicely. I have to admit to putting them in the microwave for a couple of minutes at the end to make sure any nasties had been killed off.
Served in the flat-breads about which I wrote some time back, and with a simple salsa of tomatoes, green chilli, parsley and onion turned into mush by the spice grinder there was plenty of flavour and the crispy outside was a treat.
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