There are other things in my life apart from food. Fishing for one - if anyone out there is interested in publishing a book on sea fishing by someone who can actually write (that's me btw), get in touch.
Music is another. Here there's a link with food, however (but then I guess the fishing is partly to do with eating the occasional catch), as my tastes in both are decidedly broad - I really hope that the 'People who bought this also bought...' bit on i-Tunes reflects my recent purchases of clarinet and piano music by Dame Elizabeth Maconchy and Fast Shadow by the Wu Tang Clan (because I love the movie Ghost Dog, but also because it's a terrific piece of music). Both ways - fans of hard rap or whatever it wishes to call itself shouldn't shut their minds to classical stuff, nor the other way around. And Gravel Pit is also highly recommended.
And while we're on music: to my tiny little mind there is only one answer as to what should replace God Save the Queen (atheist republican here who hates that dirge for its unmusicality apart from everything else). Let's begin the campaign to select (We Don't) Need This Fascist Groove Thang by Heaven 17 as the new national anthem. It makes a political statement about our attitude to extremism; while enjoying a great beat it is relatively slow, so easy for even footballers to sing; it is anti-pompous - every other bloody national anthem is po-faced and humourless; and I would love to see the great and the good having to mouth the word 'thang' at gatherings of the greedy. You saw it here first.
Tuesday, 2 February 2016
Monday, 25 January 2016
What Do You Cook?
At a social gathering some time back it came out that I am the family cook. Someone of the female persuassion very patronisingly thought that meant I'd mastered one or two dishes for when The Dear Leader was taken up with plans for world domination and didn't have time to fend for us. This person asked the stupid (in the circs) question: 'What do you cook?' Inevitably my reply was sarcastic, but a more considered one would have been that I cook from a repertoire learned over years, to which new things are occasionally added.
Yesterday's main meal was from the tried and tested list, stuffed cabbage Troo style (there should be a circumflex over the first 'o' btw, but I can't figure out how to do them on this). Slice a savoy or similar across as thinly as possible, plunge the greenery into boiling salted water for five minutes, drain, then layer cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage in a buttered casserole with a good lid and cook at 140C - 150C for 120 - 150 minutes. Each layer of cabbage is seasoned; I add a clove or three of garlic; and the top is dotted with butter before cooking. But it is essentially simple (thank you the late great Jane Grigson).
Such dishes allow me, immodestly, to consider myself a cook (and specifically for that one, an austerity cook once again). In that case it is justified by the making of something really good (there are never any leftovers) for a small outlay (£2 for Sainsubury's Toulouse-style sausages, carefully skinned, 69p I think for the cabbage, pence for the butter and garlic. Cookerhooddomness is reniforced by the fact that I only make it once a year, or even every other year - contrary to that lady's thought, my repertoire consists of hundreds (thousands? I never counted) of dishes. It's something that satisfies in more ways that one - quite filling, but also (contrary to what might be expected of slow-cooked cabbage) enticing beforehand, the savoury sausagey smell filling the ground floor.
It's good, and healthy, to add new stuff to the list too. Midweek I made us something that definitely gets added to the roll of honour for repeating. It was essentially a salad, with rocket as the leaf, plus toms, spring onions, and yellow pepper to bulk it out. To make it more fillling and interesting I added little scallops fried in salty butter, and chunks cut from half a Galia melon. Dressed with lime juice and olive oil, and seasoned with the emphasis on pepper, it was delicious, the salty seafood and sweet melon a lovely match. Not exactly an austerity plateful, though the melon and rocket needed using up and the bag of frozen scallops set up back £4, cheaper than a burger meal for one. And, perhaps because it was so flavoursome, we needed nothing else afterwards.
Yesterday's main meal was from the tried and tested list, stuffed cabbage Troo style (there should be a circumflex over the first 'o' btw, but I can't figure out how to do them on this). Slice a savoy or similar across as thinly as possible, plunge the greenery into boiling salted water for five minutes, drain, then layer cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage in a buttered casserole with a good lid and cook at 140C - 150C for 120 - 150 minutes. Each layer of cabbage is seasoned; I add a clove or three of garlic; and the top is dotted with butter before cooking. But it is essentially simple (thank you the late great Jane Grigson).
Such dishes allow me, immodestly, to consider myself a cook (and specifically for that one, an austerity cook once again). In that case it is justified by the making of something really good (there are never any leftovers) for a small outlay (£2 for Sainsubury's Toulouse-style sausages, carefully skinned, 69p I think for the cabbage, pence for the butter and garlic. Cookerhooddomness is reniforced by the fact that I only make it once a year, or even every other year - contrary to that lady's thought, my repertoire consists of hundreds (thousands? I never counted) of dishes. It's something that satisfies in more ways that one - quite filling, but also (contrary to what might be expected of slow-cooked cabbage) enticing beforehand, the savoury sausagey smell filling the ground floor.
It's good, and healthy, to add new stuff to the list too. Midweek I made us something that definitely gets added to the roll of honour for repeating. It was essentially a salad, with rocket as the leaf, plus toms, spring onions, and yellow pepper to bulk it out. To make it more fillling and interesting I added little scallops fried in salty butter, and chunks cut from half a Galia melon. Dressed with lime juice and olive oil, and seasoned with the emphasis on pepper, it was delicious, the salty seafood and sweet melon a lovely match. Not exactly an austerity plateful, though the melon and rocket needed using up and the bag of frozen scallops set up back £4, cheaper than a burger meal for one. And, perhaps because it was so flavoursome, we needed nothing else afterwards.
Sunday, 3 January 2016
Good Stuff
Much to SC's annoyance I make the same pronouncement at every Christmas lunch: I'd rather have the accompaniments than the meats, if it came down to a choice. Not that it did, this year we got outside much of a turkey crown and a double wing rib of beef (the latter supplied from the fine Aberdeen Angus cattle of Henry Rowntree). Both were excellent, but it was the stuffing and the bread sauce that will live long in the taste memory.
Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.
The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.
To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.
Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.
The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.
To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
A Composition
I think last night - with reference to the subject of the previous post - that I actually composed a dish, rather than conducted another person's recipe/score. Certainly I had no written source to work from, nor experience of eating a similar dish.
With some white and rather pappy hot dog buns to use up to make room in the freezer I decided to make a bread and butter pudding, but had none of the dried fruits or peels that would usually go in one. What I did have was plenty of walnuts, so I went with them.
Butter was mashed up with the walnut oil normally reserved for salad dressings, and two tbsps of Tia Maria (one of those things that seem to turn up in the drinks cabinet with nobody aware whence they came) to make it a coffee and walnut version. Walnuts broken into small nibs were put between the two layers of buttered bread, some of the liqueur poured on the upper layer of bread, a Tia Maria rich custard mix poured over the lot, and the top sprinkled with sugar and a bit more cinnamon. Cooked at 180C for 45 minutes it came out beautifully risen and browned.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in agony) was kind enough to say it was good, and after a pico second's persuassion graciously accepted a second helping. We'd only eaten a salad as the first part of the meal, so little or no guilt was suffered.
It would be (and will be) improved with a very strong expresso used to up the coffee flavour (like a tiramisu), and next time I make it I'll pound some walnuts to add to the custard (just milk, beaten eggs and some sugar with a tsp of cinnamon) and thus increase the walnut flavour too - what we ate last night was rather too genteel, but it was also extremely enjoyable: the texture of the slithery base contrasted as it should with a B&BP with the slightly crisp top, and the flavour was very coffee and walnut cake.
Conductor and composer. Where's my bloody knighthood? Maybe I need to work on my orgasm-while- smelling-a-fart face.
With some white and rather pappy hot dog buns to use up to make room in the freezer I decided to make a bread and butter pudding, but had none of the dried fruits or peels that would usually go in one. What I did have was plenty of walnuts, so I went with them.
Butter was mashed up with the walnut oil normally reserved for salad dressings, and two tbsps of Tia Maria (one of those things that seem to turn up in the drinks cabinet with nobody aware whence they came) to make it a coffee and walnut version. Walnuts broken into small nibs were put between the two layers of buttered bread, some of the liqueur poured on the upper layer of bread, a Tia Maria rich custard mix poured over the lot, and the top sprinkled with sugar and a bit more cinnamon. Cooked at 180C for 45 minutes it came out beautifully risen and browned.
The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in agony) was kind enough to say it was good, and after a pico second's persuassion graciously accepted a second helping. We'd only eaten a salad as the first part of the meal, so little or no guilt was suffered.
It would be (and will be) improved with a very strong expresso used to up the coffee flavour (like a tiramisu), and next time I make it I'll pound some walnuts to add to the custard (just milk, beaten eggs and some sugar with a tsp of cinnamon) and thus increase the walnut flavour too - what we ate last night was rather too genteel, but it was also extremely enjoyable: the texture of the slithery base contrasted as it should with a B&BP with the slightly crisp top, and the flavour was very coffee and walnut cake.
Conductor and composer. Where's my bloody knighthood? Maybe I need to work on my orgasm-while- smelling-a-fart face.
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Composer or Conductor?
It struck me recently that as cooks we fulfil one of two roles: we are the equivalent in music of the conductor, or the composer. Both are honourable occupations, though I think most of us would hold the composer in higher regard. I get the impression few conductors would share that opinion, however.
When I follow a recipe (I rarely weigh out every ingredient, but use recipes as guidelines) I am being a conductor, taking the ideas of another person and making the best of them, putting my own personal twist on them. I have to balance the ingredients, as the conductor balances the sections, though at the end of the meal I don't do my Mark Elder last chord face - think having an orgasm and simultaneously smelling a particularly noxious fart.
It is far, far tougher being a composer. There are very few new things in food. Many that are claimed as new are either a) not; or b) bloody awful - some of the now long past nouvelle cuisine horrors for example. When I started to consider this topic I tried to think of any dish I had actually created, and even those that may fit the bill, like a crab and pumpkin soup, tend to have been a variation on a theme, as it were.
Looking again at the comparison of music and food I've come up with some matches:
Beethoven: A huge rib of beef, satisfying, timeless, done to perfection.
Tchaikovsky: Poire Belle Helene (named for an Offenbach opera btw) with much too much chocolate.
Boulez: Fish heads with asparagus, mango and porridge prepared in a concrete mixer then thrown at a wall by a blind man wearing boxing gloves - and if you don't like it you are clearly a useless idiot.
Back to being a conductor tonight. I must dig out my mutton dressed as lamb black polo neck.
When I follow a recipe (I rarely weigh out every ingredient, but use recipes as guidelines) I am being a conductor, taking the ideas of another person and making the best of them, putting my own personal twist on them. I have to balance the ingredients, as the conductor balances the sections, though at the end of the meal I don't do my Mark Elder last chord face - think having an orgasm and simultaneously smelling a particularly noxious fart.
It is far, far tougher being a composer. There are very few new things in food. Many that are claimed as new are either a) not; or b) bloody awful - some of the now long past nouvelle cuisine horrors for example. When I started to consider this topic I tried to think of any dish I had actually created, and even those that may fit the bill, like a crab and pumpkin soup, tend to have been a variation on a theme, as it were.
Looking again at the comparison of music and food I've come up with some matches:
Beethoven: A huge rib of beef, satisfying, timeless, done to perfection.
Tchaikovsky: Poire Belle Helene (named for an Offenbach opera btw) with much too much chocolate.
Boulez: Fish heads with asparagus, mango and porridge prepared in a concrete mixer then thrown at a wall by a blind man wearing boxing gloves - and if you don't like it you are clearly a useless idiot.
Back to being a conductor tonight. I must dig out my mutton dressed as lamb black polo neck.
Monday, 23 November 2015
A Matter of Tripe and Death
A matter of tripe and social death to be more accurate.
With flat cap on head, whippet down my trews, and clogs on my feet I cooked tripe one night last week. It is something that I make infrequently, though the Dear Leader (may her reign of terror never end) enjoys it as much as I do. Perhaps it is tripe's association with poverty that we'd prefer to detach ourselves from.
For the record the tripe I used was the prepared version sold in Booth's, supplied by Andy Holt's Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company, and very good it is too. The recipe I used was my standard one for the stuff - for two of us I prepared about a pound and a half of chopped onion, three quarters of a pound of that tripe cut into commemorative stamp rectangles, lots of pepper, a bit of salt, a grind of nutmeg (posh aren't we?) and a pint of milk all in one pan brought to a simmer and cooked very slowly thus for about an hour. The cooked milk, an antique ivory (who let Nigel Slater in here?), is thickened with a roux before being returned to the tripe and onions and the lot served with buttery mash.
The result is delicious, almost too sweet for a savoury dish. It slips down the throat beautifully, the tripe with a texture/feel like oysters, the onions melted into the sauce until their presence is hard to detect. This is something that merits inclusion in a meal with friends, but I would not dare to because of its poor origins.The French are far less class conscious about their food, indeed they are proud when dishes have peasant origins, but we still seem intent on following their haute cuisine rather than cuisine paysanne or even bourgoise. In this context a typically British saw springs to mind - it is social death to serve offal at a dinner party.
Why is that?
I would welcome a plate of kidneys devilled or otherwise at some social troughing. I think there are few meats as delightful as lamb's liver, if it is cooked so the inside remains pink and moist. Of all the beef stews (casseroles or perhaps ragout, surely - Mrs Bottomley-Smythe) oxtail is the most unctuous and satisfying. Do sweetbreads, horribly expensive and hard to source, still count as offal? As with the lamb's liver, cooked with a gentle hand they are sublime. I love pig's trotters cooked to jellied perfection.
Will I then have the courage of my convictions (I rarely do) and get around to serving say a tripe amuse bouche or hors d'oeuvre (there we are again, as so often in culinary matters we slip into French to 'raise the tone,' as per Mrs Bottomley-Smythe) to dinner party guests? Probably not. In Britain even in 2015 it would still be social death. So in a French saying of which Mrs B-S would not approve, vive la revolution! Aux tripes, concitoyens.
Monday, 16 November 2015
Obsessed with Onions
I go through phases when certain ingredients grab my attention to the point that they for a while become obsessions. These may be triggered by food I'm served, by a TV cookery show, something read in a cook book (the most frequent source), or by an aspect of a dish I've prepared, as was the case last week.
A biryani made with loads of onions in the sauce/body of the dish was finished with some caramelised and slightly crispy fried onions on top of the rice. Biryanis, btw, give the lie to an advert about takeaways where a supposed law of the curry is that the sauce always goes on top of the rice. Onions for that dish provided the deeply savoury flavour at the heart of the sauce, whilst onions from the exact same bag gave it a sweeter finish, the same ingredient made entirely different by different cooking methods.
Other things enriched that curry - potato, pumpkin, peas, plus ginger and spices. But it was the onion that caught the palate's notice. No wonder there were riots in India a few years ago when onions were in short supply - what would we do without them? I love raw onion in salads; baked onions; in cheesy potato grattins; onion gravy... but most of all I love fried onions, mahogany to black, the way mobile burger bars get them - you fear for your health on so many levels, but what a wonderful flavour.
On Lancaster market this Saturday I bought a 5kg bag of white onions for £2, ridiculously good value (the delightful examples within are a bit undersize for the supermarkets' cretinous policies). As an aside, my £10.10 worth of fruit and veg purchased there would probably provide the vegetable matter (and much of the starch) to get us through the week if we wanted to be frugal - 3 persimmons, 4 giant baking spuds, 5kg white onions, 2 avocados, 15 clementines, 1/2lb mushrooms, 4 limes, a mango, a papaya, 2 bags of tiny sweet peppers, a big swede, a head of celery and a cucumber. I may have missed something else out [I had as I discovered when checking this - add three pomegranates and the same number of sweet potatoes].
With a stock of sharply tasty onions to hand (they rate about Brief Encounter on the peeling tears scale, happily not The Railway Children ending though) I've begun a campaign to make the best of them. Yesterday was French onion soup, cooked slowly for about 90 minutes. I guess around 30 or so onions went into the pot, cooking down to creamy khaki before being thickened with flour ('Daaarling, nobody uses flour to thicken nowadays' - sod off), perked up with a glass of white wine, let down (physically rather than morally) with some ham stock, and finished with a dog end of a French cheese whose name escapes me grated in. It was wonderful, a gloop rather than a liquid, and begged for a glass of roughish red to accompany it. We had two, one for each bowlful. The Dear Leader (may she rule 1000 years) was gracious in her praise.
That barely made a dent in the onion mountain. Tomorrow (man cannot live by onions alone) will be - so very Northern I want to say 'hey up lad' - tripe and onions. Anyone who has never tried it, I pity you.
A biryani made with loads of onions in the sauce/body of the dish was finished with some caramelised and slightly crispy fried onions on top of the rice. Biryanis, btw, give the lie to an advert about takeaways where a supposed law of the curry is that the sauce always goes on top of the rice. Onions for that dish provided the deeply savoury flavour at the heart of the sauce, whilst onions from the exact same bag gave it a sweeter finish, the same ingredient made entirely different by different cooking methods.
Other things enriched that curry - potato, pumpkin, peas, plus ginger and spices. But it was the onion that caught the palate's notice. No wonder there were riots in India a few years ago when onions were in short supply - what would we do without them? I love raw onion in salads; baked onions; in cheesy potato grattins; onion gravy... but most of all I love fried onions, mahogany to black, the way mobile burger bars get them - you fear for your health on so many levels, but what a wonderful flavour.
On Lancaster market this Saturday I bought a 5kg bag of white onions for £2, ridiculously good value (the delightful examples within are a bit undersize for the supermarkets' cretinous policies). As an aside, my £10.10 worth of fruit and veg purchased there would probably provide the vegetable matter (and much of the starch) to get us through the week if we wanted to be frugal - 3 persimmons, 4 giant baking spuds, 5kg white onions, 2 avocados, 15 clementines, 1/2lb mushrooms, 4 limes, a mango, a papaya, 2 bags of tiny sweet peppers, a big swede, a head of celery and a cucumber. I may have missed something else out [I had as I discovered when checking this - add three pomegranates and the same number of sweet potatoes].
With a stock of sharply tasty onions to hand (they rate about Brief Encounter on the peeling tears scale, happily not The Railway Children ending though) I've begun a campaign to make the best of them. Yesterday was French onion soup, cooked slowly for about 90 minutes. I guess around 30 or so onions went into the pot, cooking down to creamy khaki before being thickened with flour ('Daaarling, nobody uses flour to thicken nowadays' - sod off), perked up with a glass of white wine, let down (physically rather than morally) with some ham stock, and finished with a dog end of a French cheese whose name escapes me grated in. It was wonderful, a gloop rather than a liquid, and begged for a glass of roughish red to accompany it. We had two, one for each bowlful. The Dear Leader (may she rule 1000 years) was gracious in her praise.
That barely made a dent in the onion mountain. Tomorrow (man cannot live by onions alone) will be - so very Northern I want to say 'hey up lad' - tripe and onions. Anyone who has never tried it, I pity you.
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