A friend of mine who lives nearby is often having gifts pressed on her by clients (not that kind of client). Around Christmas pheasant and champagne characterised our Sunday lunches. She often brings over home made soda bread and her Mum's jam to nibble on while we gossip.
A couple of weeks ago, a client brought a crop of asparagus from his gloucestershire farm, and this friend generously gave me half. What to do with uber fresh asparagus? As it happened, I had been subject to rather a glut of the stuff that week, and wanted something more creative than simply roasted with olive oil and lemon or blanched and dipped in hollandaise.
So it seemed that hoovering up the other contents of my larder might create quite a nice risotto, and I could introduce you all to my somewhat unorthodox, yet surprisingly tasty, risotto-making method.
I have been told that my order of play, ie cook the flavouring ingredients, then add the rice, then the stock, is sacreligious, but only, in my opinion, if you overcook the main ingredient. Also, my disdain for arborio risotto rice and love of basmati for keeping the risotto a meal instead of a soup has raised many eyebrows.
So, I bung asparagus, peas, and broad beans in with some softened onions and garlic, and sweat briefly before adding a handful of rice per person (I have quite small hands). I then stir the rice in with the other ingredients, essentially frying the basmati, making all the starch break down to help the sauce get properly risotto-like. Add boiling stock, and let simmer, adding stock until the rice has fluffed up but is still covered. Then leave until the rice is cooked. I stirred in some leftover goats cheese, which made it extra yummy and creamy without swamping the asparagus flavour.
This resulted in a very delicious amalgam of spring vegetables, but sadly, as ever, I have created a vegetable dish unsuitable for vegetarians because I just don't believe vegetable stock has the same emulsifying qualities of chicken stock, which are required for this most unorthodox of risottos.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
SO skanky
Dear foodies,
Forgive me for I have sinned. Yes, I did want an easy way out of having chips with my Borough market steak. Yes, I did think buying oven chips would be more economical than buying a deep fat fryer.
Please forgive me. I have been punished enough. By the smell of SO urine that came off those SO skanky chips. By the SO industrial grease that seeped from them onto my beautiful baking tray. By the SO flaccid excuse for fried potatoes, with a lumpy interior and a soggy skin.
They were SO bad.
Sniff.
Forgive me for I have sinned. Yes, I did want an easy way out of having chips with my Borough market steak. Yes, I did think buying oven chips would be more economical than buying a deep fat fryer.
Please forgive me. I have been punished enough. By the smell of SO urine that came off those SO skanky chips. By the SO industrial grease that seeped from them onto my beautiful baking tray. By the SO flaccid excuse for fried potatoes, with a lumpy interior and a soggy skin.
They were SO bad.
Sniff.
S&M Night - not what you may think
When we were meandering around tower bridge recently, we came across the refurbished ex-camel pub, now called the Bridge Lounge & Dining room. As the camel had been quite a favourite of mine (lots of organic wines that were surprisingly tasty), we decided to pop in to see what had become of the venue.
I must say the inside doesn't look much different than before. Still quite dark and mellow, a whiff of local pub mixed in with the vibes of a bar displaying a hint of trendiness without the footless tights, skinny jeans & stripy tops. Not over-run, a nice selection of "alternative" city types that managed to venture beyond the Barrow Boy & Banker, and some locals & a sprinkling of students. An allround pleasant experience.
We settled down with our drinks (pretty decent views of tower bridge I must add). A couple of sips later we regretted not having chosen the table by the door. We had only just spotted the extensive number of signs advertising "S&M Night". Tonight. Now. Aaaaah.
But fear not - it actually turned out to be Sausage & Mash night, amazing stuff. Every Monday this incredible pub serves 7 different types of sausages (even catering for the strange species of vegetarians) with 4 different types of mash and a selection of gravies to go with it. For £5 you get 3 enormous sausages, a huge pile of mash and lashings of delicious gravy. Mmmmmm......
The sausages were all of exceptional quality, delicious flavour, cooked to perfection and served in a very appetising manner. We were also very impressed with the mash (tasted like home-grown, organic potatoes hand mashed with love in a Hugh FW-esque environment) and gravy (mmmm...). The service was friendly & efficient, the cutlery was clean (yes you may mock but on far too many occasions I have discovered previous guest's dinner remains nestling cosily between the prongs of my fork - not something to wet your appetite) and the experience exceptionally pleasant.
In conclusion - this is the best sausage & mash I've had in a long while, especially at such a great price & so conveniently located. Yummy.
I must say the inside doesn't look much different than before. Still quite dark and mellow, a whiff of local pub mixed in with the vibes of a bar displaying a hint of trendiness without the footless tights, skinny jeans & stripy tops. Not over-run, a nice selection of "alternative" city types that managed to venture beyond the Barrow Boy & Banker, and some locals & a sprinkling of students. An allround pleasant experience.
We settled down with our drinks (pretty decent views of tower bridge I must add). A couple of sips later we regretted not having chosen the table by the door. We had only just spotted the extensive number of signs advertising "S&M Night". Tonight. Now. Aaaaah.
But fear not - it actually turned out to be Sausage & Mash night, amazing stuff. Every Monday this incredible pub serves 7 different types of sausages (even catering for the strange species of vegetarians) with 4 different types of mash and a selection of gravies to go with it. For £5 you get 3 enormous sausages, a huge pile of mash and lashings of delicious gravy. Mmmmmm......
The sausages were all of exceptional quality, delicious flavour, cooked to perfection and served in a very appetising manner. We were also very impressed with the mash (tasted like home-grown, organic potatoes hand mashed with love in a Hugh FW-esque environment) and gravy (mmmm...). The service was friendly & efficient, the cutlery was clean (yes you may mock but on far too many occasions I have discovered previous guest's dinner remains nestling cosily between the prongs of my fork - not something to wet your appetite) and the experience exceptionally pleasant.
In conclusion - this is the best sausage & mash I've had in a long while, especially at such a great price & so conveniently located. Yummy.
Fine beans and mushrooms - a quick side dish
Very quick one here. I wanted something a little tastier than plain veg to accompany some roasted chicken pieces, so undertook the following as a side for two...
• Four large flat mushrooms, each cut into medium chunks
• A generous handful of fine green beans, topped, tailed and cut into quarters
• Fresh thyme leaves stripped from the stalk
• A couple of squeezes of lemon juice
• A little olive oil and a knob of butter
Boil the beans in water for four or so minutes - so they're about half-cooked. Drain and keep on the side.
Melt the butter and olive oil in a frying pan. The butter gives the mushrooms that lovely dark colour; the oil stops the butter from burning. Then in with the mushrooms for a few minutes until they're brown and starting to soften. Then chuck in the beans and toss around a bit. Another few minutes over a moderate heat and then finish off with the thyme and lemon juice. Give it a final minute or so for the flavours to mix and then serve. Simple!
• Four large flat mushrooms, each cut into medium chunks
• A generous handful of fine green beans, topped, tailed and cut into quarters
• Fresh thyme leaves stripped from the stalk
• A couple of squeezes of lemon juice
• A little olive oil and a knob of butter
Boil the beans in water for four or so minutes - so they're about half-cooked. Drain and keep on the side.
Melt the butter and olive oil in a frying pan. The butter gives the mushrooms that lovely dark colour; the oil stops the butter from burning. Then in with the mushrooms for a few minutes until they're brown and starting to soften. Then chuck in the beans and toss around a bit. Another few minutes over a moderate heat and then finish off with the thyme and lemon juice. Give it a final minute or so for the flavours to mix and then serve. Simple!
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Bolognese - definitely tasty
So, my writing on here hasn't really gotten off to a very 'regular' start (I should eat more prunes), hopefully that will improve soon enough!
Some thoughts on Bolognese: few tomatoes and a long time cooking. To explain, I try to add very little (if any) tinned tomatoes, instead using a few chopped fresh ones, and always cook for at least an hour and a half. I find the following makes a good sauce in a quantity that will serve three hungry or four average:
• 500g good beef mine. This HAS to be GOOD mince, and none of that lean crap. As Fitz suggests, the description 'steak mince' should get the right thing from the Butcher, or buy the organic stuff from the supermarket
• A couple of medium carrots, chopped not too finely
• A dozen or so good sized mushrooms, quartered
• Half a large onion, chopped finely
• Half a dozen tomatoes, quartered
• A third of a bottle of red wine
• 200ml Double cream (optional)
• Beef or vegetable stock (make up a litre and see how it goes - you'll need more if cooking for a long time)
• A couple of Bay leaves
Use a good dish for this - something like a Le Cruset is perfect.
Brown the onions in some olive oil, then lightly brown the mince. No need to cook the mince all the way through - it's going to cook for quite a while! Then add the carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes and Bay leaves and give it a good stir. Salt, pepper and a few herbs can be added here to taste. Finally, add stock to cover and the wine.
You'll end up with a lot of liquid in the pan - don't worry. Leave bubbling gently (I find a diffuser helps) on the heat with the lid off. Check back every twenty minutes or so, stir and add more stock if the sauce is drying out - you want to keep it pretty liquidy until about 20 minutes before you're ready to serve. At this point just keep the heat on, don't add more liquid and stir more frequently to prevent burning. There should be very little liquid left just before serving.
As a final touch - and this is optional but recommended - stir the cream a minute or two before before serving. Makes a wonderfully rich sauce. Enjoy!
Some thoughts on Bolognese: few tomatoes and a long time cooking. To explain, I try to add very little (if any) tinned tomatoes, instead using a few chopped fresh ones, and always cook for at least an hour and a half. I find the following makes a good sauce in a quantity that will serve three hungry or four average:
• 500g good beef mine. This HAS to be GOOD mince, and none of that lean crap. As Fitz suggests, the description 'steak mince' should get the right thing from the Butcher, or buy the organic stuff from the supermarket
• A couple of medium carrots, chopped not too finely
• A dozen or so good sized mushrooms, quartered
• Half a large onion, chopped finely
• Half a dozen tomatoes, quartered
• A third of a bottle of red wine
• 200ml Double cream (optional)
• Beef or vegetable stock (make up a litre and see how it goes - you'll need more if cooking for a long time)
• A couple of Bay leaves
Use a good dish for this - something like a Le Cruset is perfect.
Brown the onions in some olive oil, then lightly brown the mince. No need to cook the mince all the way through - it's going to cook for quite a while! Then add the carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes and Bay leaves and give it a good stir. Salt, pepper and a few herbs can be added here to taste. Finally, add stock to cover and the wine.
You'll end up with a lot of liquid in the pan - don't worry. Leave bubbling gently (I find a diffuser helps) on the heat with the lid off. Check back every twenty minutes or so, stir and add more stock if the sauce is drying out - you want to keep it pretty liquidy until about 20 minutes before you're ready to serve. At this point just keep the heat on, don't add more liquid and stir more frequently to prevent burning. There should be very little liquid left just before serving.
As a final touch - and this is optional but recommended - stir the cream a minute or two before before serving. Makes a wonderfully rich sauce. Enjoy!
Monday, 21 May 2007
Port and fruit jelly
Just what can you do with 2/3 of a bottle of port that will soon go off, when your hangover prevents the obvious solution? Make it into a childrens’ dessert, of course! Well, a version of the kids’ classic anyway. Port jellies were apparently popular in the good old days (I have no idea when), so I decided it could not be too hard, and went with the following:
About half a bottle of port (350ml)
About 150ml of orange juice
A little water (100-200ml)
Sugar (to taste, you won’t need much, if at all)
A cinammon stick
7 or 8 gelatine leaves
Fruit – I used grapes and strawberries
Mint leaves
First I filtered the orange juice through a clean tea towel, so the jelly would be clear. Then I put the port, juice and water in a pan with the cinammon stick, and very gently heated it, making sure not to boil. Meanwhile I prepared the gelatine (soaked it), then added it to the mix. I tasted the liquid, I did not add sugar, but you could if you wanted. I then put some of the fruit in glasses, poured the liquid to the top, and put in a couple of mint leaves in for flavour and garnish. Then in the fridge for a while (12 hours or so). That is about it.
It was pretty good – rich and spiced (like sweet mulled wine), which went well with the fresh summery fruit and mint. However, the jelly process cunningly disguises the fairly potent alcohol content, so beware!
About half a bottle of port (350ml)
About 150ml of orange juice
A little water (100-200ml)
Sugar (to taste, you won’t need much, if at all)
A cinammon stick
7 or 8 gelatine leaves
Fruit – I used grapes and strawberries
Mint leaves
First I filtered the orange juice through a clean tea towel, so the jelly would be clear. Then I put the port, juice and water in a pan with the cinammon stick, and very gently heated it, making sure not to boil. Meanwhile I prepared the gelatine (soaked it), then added it to the mix. I tasted the liquid, I did not add sugar, but you could if you wanted. I then put some of the fruit in glasses, poured the liquid to the top, and put in a couple of mint leaves in for flavour and garnish. Then in the fridge for a while (12 hours or so). That is about it.
It was pretty good – rich and spiced (like sweet mulled wine), which went well with the fresh summery fruit and mint. However, the jelly process cunningly disguises the fairly potent alcohol content, so beware!
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
That's some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks...
What is more American than pie? As in "motherhood and". From Dale Cooper's damn fine cherry pie to Fox Mulder's gorging on sweet potato pie in episode 20 of series 3 (am I confirming your stereotypes of bloggers yet?), from politicians to preachers, aligning yourself with a fruit filled baked good always put you on the side of the good guys on that side of the pond.
Image source
In Britain, however, we do things differently. Pies are generally savoury. What's more, we can spell savoury. And being a lavish consumer of pies doesn't necessarily make you popular with the electorate. In all seriousness, one is assuming that in a couple of months' time we shall be addressing the current, beleaguered Deputy Prime Minister as Lord Prescott of Melton Mowbray.
Like John, I have spent a fair amount of time living among Americans, enjoying their hospitality, and my first Christmas with a kitchen of my own seemed a good time to repay their generosity. In the interests of preserving my dear friends' concept of what is British (we all own horses, say, and love the Queen) I threw a Christmas tea party. Being but a poor student, people were invited to bring their own baked goods, riffs upon our transatlantic culinary traditions, to share.
Where one runs into problems with such a strategy is that you are somewhat hostage to another's self-assessment of his or her cooking ability. Like a visitor at an Abstract Expressionism exhibition who has never seen the still life and landscape tableaux the artists created before leaving figurative art behind, the "intuitive" cook looks at Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith and thinks "I can do that" without ever learning to follow a recipe.
One guest had made shepherd's pie before, tasted pork pie and even heard of what those poor benighted souls insist on terming "steak and kidney pie"*. She was therefore accustomed to the British habit of calling meat filled pastry "pie". However, she had also heard of our traditional Christmas foodstuff: mince pies.
While these two facts combined to create something containing enough minced beef to adhere to the historical purity of mincemeat pie, the real issue lay in the fact that suet is unavailable in North Carolina. If you should find yourself in the old north state any time soon around the holiday season, I have one word of advice on the subject of suet: Crisco is no substitute.
*Warning, do not confuse Americans, even well-travelled ones, with words like "pudding". No matter how cringeworthy you find the term, stick with "dessert." In the US, pudding is not the sweet course at the end of a meal, but the gloopy custard-like banana or chocolate flavoured stuff you get at school. To introduce the concept of a whole course devoted to pudding, especially a savoury one like "steak and kidney pudding" would cause a minor international incident. Corollary to this: my fellow Britons, note that it may say "entree" but they mean main course.
Image source
In Britain, however, we do things differently. Pies are generally savoury. What's more, we can spell savoury. And being a lavish consumer of pies doesn't necessarily make you popular with the electorate. In all seriousness, one is assuming that in a couple of months' time we shall be addressing the current, beleaguered Deputy Prime Minister as Lord Prescott of Melton Mowbray.
Like John, I have spent a fair amount of time living among Americans, enjoying their hospitality, and my first Christmas with a kitchen of my own seemed a good time to repay their generosity. In the interests of preserving my dear friends' concept of what is British (we all own horses, say, and love the Queen) I threw a Christmas tea party. Being but a poor student, people were invited to bring their own baked goods, riffs upon our transatlantic culinary traditions, to share.
Where one runs into problems with such a strategy is that you are somewhat hostage to another's self-assessment of his or her cooking ability. Like a visitor at an Abstract Expressionism exhibition who has never seen the still life and landscape tableaux the artists created before leaving figurative art behind, the "intuitive" cook looks at Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith and thinks "I can do that" without ever learning to follow a recipe.
One guest had made shepherd's pie before, tasted pork pie and even heard of what those poor benighted souls insist on terming "steak and kidney pie"*. She was therefore accustomed to the British habit of calling meat filled pastry "pie". However, she had also heard of our traditional Christmas foodstuff: mince pies.
While these two facts combined to create something containing enough minced beef to adhere to the historical purity of mincemeat pie, the real issue lay in the fact that suet is unavailable in North Carolina. If you should find yourself in the old north state any time soon around the holiday season, I have one word of advice on the subject of suet: Crisco is no substitute.
*Warning, do not confuse Americans, even well-travelled ones, with words like "pudding". No matter how cringeworthy you find the term, stick with "dessert." In the US, pudding is not the sweet course at the end of a meal, but the gloopy custard-like banana or chocolate flavoured stuff you get at school. To introduce the concept of a whole course devoted to pudding, especially a savoury one like "steak and kidney pudding" would cause a minor international incident. Corollary to this: my fellow Britons, note that it may say "entree" but they mean main course.
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Smiths of Smithfield - go for brunch!
Just a quick one: Susy & I recently discovered the joy of brunch in the downstairs bar of Smiths of Smithfield. Awesome. Rock up any day of the week and you can enjoy brilliant traditional breakfasts (all under seven quid). At weekends, there are some more interesting brunch specials such as corned beef hash and eggs Benedict. All washed down with good mugs of tea (or a Guinness). Excellent.
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