A Deer Friend

We are not on, but occasionally do, the 5 - 2 regime, reducing our calorie intake on two days in a week to just 600.

I first tried this in 2014 I think, having watched a programme (by the ever excellent Michael Mosley) that recommended it more for its anti-cancer etc properties than for any help it gives in reducing weight, though that has been of value too. That time I gave it a go when the Dear Leader and SC were away diving in Egypt. Foolishly I did the two days together, and on one of them decided it was a good idea to use up my calorie allowance in one giant bowl of coleslaw, munched through the day. A box set of party political broadcasts would bring more pleasure.

Since that time I've learned how to make the 600 calories more enjoyable and more filling, or capable of fooling our systems into believing we are fullish. Last night I made SC and myself (the Dear Leader away in the Galapagos Islands ostensibly diving, though probably scouting out another secret submarine base for her evil empire) a dinner that included a small sirloin steak of venison. It had to be cooked far longer than we would beef (nearing 10 minutes), but with a seared surface and a bit of pinkness left in the middle, and having been given five minutes resting time, it was delicious - and as the packaging claims each 100g steak is just 106 calories it allowed us to have various steamed veg (asparagus in particular being low calorie and gustatorily rewarding), and a starter of samphire (again, loads of flavour for stuff all calories) with chili, garlic and brown shrimps and a squeeze of lemon, with a banana for pud, and still fall within the 300 calories we had left for the meal.

That is, I have to admit, the first time I have ever cooked venison and really enjoyed it. Stews various have been ok, but never memorably good or even any sort of a match for beef. The seared steak was meaty and slightly gamey and very tasty however, and having something to chew and savour for a few minutes made the glum fact of our reduced intake fade into the background.

What I would love to try as regards deer meat is their kidneys, of which I have read great things. As an offal lover (perhaps that's why the Dear Leader is more than one ocean away) lamb kidneys are near the top of my ultimate breakfast wish list, and venison kidney is supposed to be superior to them. Having failed to source them from butchers previously my new plan is to win the lottery, buy a Scottish shooting estate, get a rifle licence, learn to shoot, stalk and kill a stag, let a minion do the gralloch, and then while the kidneys are still warm pop them in a buttered pan and have them minutes later on toast. If only every ambition were so simple.

Donald Trump and the Truth About Soup

The wise, lovable, thoughtful and humble Donald Trump, unknown to many commentators from the biased liberal pinko lefty America-hating political elite scumbags of the biased liberal pinko lefty America-hating political elite media, owes so much to soup. We can reveal the top 10 totally fictitious facts about Trump and his debt to potage.

1. He will, at some future date, publish his favourite Trump soup recipes, though the Trump time is currently not right to do so, quite understandably.
2. It is not known if Trump borscht features on his Trump list of favourite Trump soups, and it is of little Trump consequence if it does.
3. Many Trump experts, or more probably none at all, have wondered if his Trump trademark hairstyle is achieved with the aid of spray-on ultra-sticky Trump chicken soup, binding those central Trump whisps at the Trump molecular Trump level.
4. When tasked about why fewer and fewer Americans are enjoying Italian white bean soup he is thought by nobody at all to have explained it is down to not using Parmesan - he wants to make America grate again. Incidentally, given the effects of the soup, wouldn't it be fitting to call it Trump Soup? Or Trump Trump Trump Soup?
5. At Trump Tower you may be able to enjoy said Trump Trump Trump Soup in the Trump Restaurant using a Trump Spoon sitting at a Trump Table. Or not. 
6. There is no truth in the story that his latest Trump wife has borrowed whole sections of Elizabeth David's recipe for tomato soup and used them in her speeches supporting the great Trump man.
7. On an earlier post we noted Mr Trump is rumoured to have Trump promised to ban Potage de Crecy for being too French. His campaign managers have backtracked slightly on this, saying it may be renamed Freedom Carrot Soup. 
8. When asked about how he got his start as a brilliant Trump amateur Trump gourmet Trump chef, Trump said that it was only helped slightly by a Trump loan of 10,000 gallons of excellent Trump beef Trump stock from his Trump father. 
9. He has promised to end the nightmare of people being burned by hot soup on his first day as Trump President in the Trump White Trump House, though how this is to be Trump done is not yet clear.
10. In his Trump honour the celebrated Mexican Muslim chef Pancho ZB Ali has developed a soup that uses bitter gourd, duck bile, a lot of fat and angel hair, served topped with a foam that when pricked with a fork disappears magically. 

You've got to love him, haven't you?

Old but New

I was lucky enough to be paid for many years to travel to places most Brits will never get to. There was work involved, but far more interestingly there was contact with different cultures and cuisines. Far more interestingly.

My favourite memories of those times are of Indonesia, where I worked with the wonderful Agus Sutono (sadly I lost contact when my job change coincided with his rapid departure from the country during one of its regular anti-Chinese spells). The food was a revelation, from street fare to very posh places. Common to both was satay, probably the flavour that I most associate with the country. Last weekend, in need of a quickly made starter, the freezer yielded jumbo prawns, and a quick scan of the fridge prompted the idea of trying to replicate a simple satay sauce to go with them. It proved easy and delicious.

Defrosted prawns were fried in sesame oil, with the juice and zest of a lime added along with two tablespoons of unsweetened smooth peanut butter and a dash or two of soy sauce. The cooking took at most three minutes, as was generally the case with roadside places where we'd stop for a lunchtime bite. The flavour took me straight back to Jakarta, Medan and Surabaya. It was a hit with the Dear Leader too, may her enemies perish in intriguing ways.

I never cease to be amazed at how easily memory is triggered by taste, but was my enjoyment of those prawns greater because of it, or the same as DL and SC experienced? There is no objective measure of enjoyment, but I tend to think that having a backstory on a dish or a flavour adds to the pleasure - unless that backstory is of the Dear Leader and the French oysters variety, that with hindsight can only be seen as an attempt by filthy foreign powers to nip her nascent dictatorship in the bud.

Something New

It is always a pleasure to come across a new combination of ingredients, a new dish, that works, especially if it is simple. With a glut of broad beans from our allotment (no complaint there, just an observation) I was looking for a way to do something different with this vegetable that doesn't lend itself to all that many exotic uses. There are dips and hummuses (hummi?) that suit it well, but none met our needs on Friday. As so often the divine Hugh F-W offered a direction, if not the solution itself.

HFW suggests zapping the cooked older beans (once the grey and bitter skin has been removed) and mixing with a little garlic and a thrutch of ricotta. He may not have used the word thrutch. I had ricotta in the fridge, and am never without garlic, but as our beans are fresh and young making a puree of them didn't appeal, indeed it seemed just wrong, so I warmed six thinly sliced cloves of garlic (HFW suggested two) in a little butter and olive oil, added a heap of the jade gems, and stirred in half a container of ricotta (about 125g).

When the lot was well mixed and warmed through it was piled on a toasted flatbread and became the nearest thing we had to a main course that evening. All three of the ingredients (discounting the flatbread) married beautifully, the garlic was very present but not dominant, the texture moist and toothsome, and The Dear Leader (all hail our Dear Leader, ever vigilant guardian of the homeland) fulsome in her praise.

The combination was so good that to demonstrate it to the returning Sternest Critic I repeated the exercise and served the beans as an accompaniment to the customary fatted calf (thick steak) enjoyed when he is just back from university. He is not a big fan of the broad bean, but made short work of these.

Only one thing bothers me slightly about the dish, and that is the thought in the back of my mind that it is not a million miles from The Fast Show's cheesy peas.

Ten Facts About Soup and the EU Referendum

1. According to the Leave campaign, the EU soup lake now contains enough garlic consomme to fill 12,000,000,000 olympic sized swimming pools, and costs each British family (sorry, hard-working family) £4756 a year.
2. According to the Remain campaign, if we quit the EU our children will all be forcibly drowned in soup.
3. If we leave the EU the price of tomato soup will more than double overnight.
4. If we leave the EU we will be free to import cheap tomato soup from Peru, halving its price.
5. UKIP has pledged to make Brown Windsor Soup great again if we leave.
6. It was an accident during testing of the Euro-soup working party's proposed recipe that gave Nick Clegg his superhuman powers of shinniness.
7. The European Central Bank recently announced that the value of British stocks for soup would fall by at least 25 per cent in the event of Brexit.
8. Soup farmers reliant on EU subsidies predict leaving the EU will lead to envirnomental disaster, with soup fields left unpicked for generations to come.
9. France and Spain have both indicated that they will place an immediate ban on Cullen Skink in the event of Brexit.
10. Creme de Jacob Rees-Mogg or Veloute George Osborne. Can you spot the difference?

Ten Things They Don't Want You to Know About Soup

1. In the 1950s government instructions in case of nuclear attack included 'prepare some soup - soup makes everything feel better.'
2. The brief advertising career of Franz Kafka ended after he suggested the slogan 'Brotschka's soup - endless misery and pointless longing.'
3. In the 1930s engineer Dwayne Q. Snetterton devised a car engine that ran on chicken stock, clocking 2500mpg, but Big Oil murdered him and supressed his invention.
4. The Duke of Windsor believed he could cure his syphilis by dipping his gentleman's sausage in a bowl of piping hot cock-a-leekie. He was misinformed.
5. America lost the Vietnam War because their troops ran out of those little crackers they serve with soup for no obvious reason.
6. Shortly before Ronald Reagan was elected President the CIA is known to have carried out experiments on mind-altering soups. 
7. Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first soup back to England from the New World.
8. There is more potential energy in a litre of cabbage soup than a kilo of plutonium.
9. It is rumoured that Prince Charles has a man to blow on his soup for him.
10. It is rumoured that Prince Edward has a man to explain what soup is to him.

Ten Facts About Soup That Will Change Your Life

1. Jason Statham's favourite soup is Kalashnikov.
2. As an exercise before a university drama production Hugh Grant was asked to pretend to be a bowl of soup. It is feared nobody ever told him to stop.
3. Nigel Farage MEP is rumoured to be the secret architect of the groundbreaking European Directive on Tinned Soup (Safety in Transit Regulations - Interim Agreement 17.5 part 4(c)).  It has saved countless thousands of lives. 
4. During the reign of Henry VII a tax was imposed on ladles, but poor drafting meant that if used left-handed owners avoided the need to pay. A treasury team is still working on the re-draft.
5. After a five year programme of study researchers at an American University found that if spilt on exposed flesh boiling soup may cause burns.
6. For perfectly legitimate tax reasons David Cameron's father could only eat soup in Belize.
7. Only a few close friends of Boris Johnson are aware that his great-great-grandfather was a bowl of vegetable soup.
8. Elvis once had his private plane fly Heinz tomato soup, heated up by his chef in Graceland, to Las Vegas. It arrived cold, and he is thus credited with inventing gazpacho.
9. Tins of Scotch Broth more than four years past their sell-by-date are so explosive that they feature in the UN's list of items that may not be exported to North Korea.
10. It is estimated that House of Lords debates on soup cost UK taxpayers more than £12 million last year alone.