Mostly Concerning Food
We’ve had a couple of weeks of lazing about and doing things at our own pace. One of the real perks of a teacher’s job are the holidays. Let’s face it, they’re a big reason why I joined the profession in the first place. So I don’t see any reason why retirement from the classroom should stop me enjoying the fourteen weeks of getting up late, reading the papers, walking the dog and digging the garden that gave my academic year some balance. As the current Mrs Johnson celebrates another holiday I leave my plough shares where they stand in my non pedagogic furrows and I join her.
It’s been an unusually early Easter. For those unaware of the discussions at the Whitby Synod of 664 AD, the date of Easter is fixed at the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Our current archbishop of Canterbury, a man with a small head that is full of vague fancies, thinks we should have a fixed date and this would suit Thomas Cook and Sons. For myself I like the movable feast. The one disadvantage is that an early Easter is often a cold one in these northern latitudes. This one has been particularly chilly.
Porridge has been the favourite breakfast but there are only so many dishes of hot oatmeal that you can photograph. No matter how warming the fare, a bowl of porridge looks like a bowl of porridge. No wonder the marketing people settled for a jolly eighteenth century fellow of Swarthmoor or a Highland hammer thrower. An occasional grapefruit has added zest to breakfast time and warded off scurvy for the 57th year in a row. Preparing a grapefruit is an absorbing and satisfying task. If done well it takes a little time but this is proper cheffing. The result are segments of morning freshness that slide easily onto the spoon. If done lazily, then the eating can be a tedious affair.
I’ve continued with the sourdough. Every now and then the starter beckons to me and I make up a loaf or two or a couple of pizzas. Still a way to go before I feel I’ve got it just the way I want it but everything so far has been very eatable and reasonable looking. Bread, cold meats, cheese, tomatoes and a cup of decent coffee. It’s what holidays were meant for.
Soup is another perfect accompaniment to good bread. This is a simple tin of chicken and pasta soup from Lidl. Unlike Heinz and Campbells it does actually look and smell like chicken soup made at home. It isn’t anything special but makes a tasty lunch with the sourdough loaf.
My new favourite. And this is from a supposed budget supermarket. The yoghurt is wonderful and the jarred plums are as sweet and tasty as if I’d picked and stewed them myself. The difference is that I couldn’t have done it for the price. It’s part of a steady transition from winter eating to summer. Always nice to follow the seasons.
Kippers are an all year round treat. Preserved fish used to be a huge part of the British diet. Entire populations used to follow the herring shoals around the coast. Not just the fishing boats and fishermen, but coopers, rope makers, smokers and entire armies of girls and women who gutted and cured the fish. I’m reasonably adept at preparing round fish (as opposed to flat fish) for the pan. It takes me under a minute to head, gut and de-fin a herring. In the same time a fish girl would have done half a dozen. These days the herring fleet has practically disappeared from our shores and there are only a handful of real smokehouses left. They’re worth looking for. The kippers, smokies and cured fish from them are a world away from the dyed product I have on my plate above. It was fine, a decent breakfast, but left me ultimately dis-satisfied and longing for the real thing.
My first attempt at a sourdough pizza. Passata, Wensleydale and anchovies. The sourdough makes a difference. A good contrast between the crispness of the base near the edges and the doughiness nearer the centre. Very tasty.
Sourdough loaf and rolls. There are a lot of skills involved in making sourdough bread that don’t concern the yeast baker. I’m delighted with taste and texture but intend to put some time in on presentation. You need an extremely sharp blade to score the loaves before baking. I’m talking razor blade sharp and I’m reluctant (with my record of clumsiness) to have such a blade hanging around the kitchen.
My casual (point and press) method of photography doesn’t do justice to this steak sandwich. Here I’ve captured the benefits of three things if going for a delicious and easy to eat treat of a sandwich. First to ensure the Maillard reaction to create that crispy, almost flame grilled texture on the outer. It’s done by high heat in the pan and leaving the steak long enough to cook the outer layers thoroughly and change their chemical composition. Second is to do what the French have always done better than the English, which is to leave it rare and third to let it rest for long enough for the juices to re-distribute throughout the meat. In England we used to talk about sealing in the juices. We were just plain wrong in this. Browning the outside does increase flavour, and range of flavours but it doesn’t seal anything in. Quite the opposite in fact. Conducted and radiant heat drive the juices out and evaporate them in equal measure. Far more juices are preserved in the centre of the steak and these will spread through the meat when resting giving the steak a tenderness to the teeth as well as pleasure to the tastebuds. (For further details see Molecular Gastronomy by Hervé This Chapter 48. It’s a book that gets almost as much use in my kitchen as the Goodhousekeeping Cookery Book I bought in the 1970s.)
A quick beef stir-fry. Onions, slivers of carrot, savoy cabbage, bean sprouts and even some sweetcorn kernels served up with noodles and coated with a sweet and sour sauce. Chunks of left over roast beef added towards the end of cooking. Served with rice crackers and decent soy sauce. Very easy, very tasty.
Another spring time breakfast, another generous bowl of yoghurt with bottled plums and slices of orange and banana. It feels healthy as I eat it and it tastes wonderful.
Some macaroni cheese served up with sausages and a baked potato. Perfect reward for a day spent cutting down a twenty five year old Leylandii hedge that had grown out of control.
Easter means roast leg of lamb in many English homes. We have taken to enjoying vegetarian food for the big feast days, so the roast lamb was moved to a few days after. Generously studded with fresh rosemary from the garden and accompanied in the oven by songs on the ukulele. The Marmite jar has nothing to do with the meal. Must have been left over from breakfast time.
Roast lamb with mint sauce (also fresh from the garden), new potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower with a cheese sauce…and gravy. A lot going on on this plate and I’m sure purists may say that there are too many conflicting flavours. All I can say is that it didn’t feel that way when I was eating it.
When David is home we try to have a different breakfast every day. The traditional breakfast is always among the most popular. Here mushrooms and asparagus balance out the fat and salt of the bacon. The eggs are lightly fried. These are from Frances and Steven’s chickens and are far too nice to over cook.
A big joint of beef goes a long way. Some roast, some sandwiches, some stir fried and some made into a beef curry. Recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey. Pickle, chutney and raita are all shop bought. As are the poppadums. We have a couple of good restaurants where we have our Indian food cooked by people who know what they are doing but I do enjoy making a good curry every now and then. The house smells great for days as well.
My third batch of sourdough. As you can see I’ve invested in a rising basket. Like the sharp blade, it makes a big difference.
Another stir-fry. This one used a couple of rashers of bacon as the main feature, a bag of pre-prepared vegetables from the supermarket and some quickly boiled noodles. About 15 minutes from packaging to plate. I always make too much and always eat it anyway. I’m working hard on the house and in the garden. Calories get burnt up.
We went a little daft over Christmas puddings after we bought a microwave oven in November. It is such an instant and tasty treat. Five minutes from packaging to dish and the cream comes straight from the fridge. It’s almost easier than opening a bag of crisps and a hundred times nicer. I used to make Christmas puddings but do so very rarely these days. A heck of a lot of work. They are much better than the bought ones but the bought ones are quite good enough.
Thanks to investment in a range of rising baskets I have made my first ever baguette. It’s a sourdough loaf and was absolutely the best baguette I have ever had.
The results of the sourdough baking so far have been fabulous. And I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. Thank you once again to Foodbod, Master of Something Yet and e-Tinkerbell (fantastic bloggers all) for inspiration and ideas.
Bon appétit.
Simon
Chicken and vegetable soup to fight off the January colds. I’m touching wood while I type but feel bold enough to say that I haven’t had a bad cold since I gave up smoking over six years ago.. They used to hang around from October to March. I can’t say that it is any more than coincidence. I’ve made a lot of other changes in my life during that time. One thing that doesn’t change is my love of a home-made soup. It’s like bread in that it is simple, wholesome, and as much fun to make as it is to eat. I prefer to keep it brothy rather than blend it. Sometimes it improves it to blend it, mostly, it seems to me, to be making it into baby food. I like to be able to enjoy the different elements. Not that there are too many here; onions, leeks, carrots and chicken stock with any meat that had been left on the carcass after it had already served as main course for two meals.
These are my secret treats. (Not so secret now as T reads these blogs). Bacon, fried eggs and fried potatoes with a mug of black coffee. This is a Hemingway style writer’s breakfast. I face it without Papa’s hangover and talent. The tray cloth suggests that I had minor aspirations to grandeur that morning. The plastic sauce bottles help to keep me grounded.
This used to be a real treat as a boy and a starter in restaurants that had heard of three course meals but didn’t really want to offer the customer too much in the way of clever cooking. Inexplicably people chose to have it. Some restaurants still try to get away with it, cutting it thin and fanning it out. Now that melons are available for under a pound all the year round it is the equivalent of being offered an apple. Very nice but not at £25 a head.
I try to finish whatever work I am doing by 4 o’clock and have a meal ready on the table for when T gets home. I’m currently going through bit of a chop phase. All of this plateful is nice. The Bramley apple sauce is but five minutes effort and adds so much. Freshness is all. The best part of the meal isn’t actually the chops but the baked potatoes with real butter.
The last of the chops pan fried with a couple of sausages (hence the black flecks on the chop) re-heated baked tatties and a greedy helping of grated cheddar cheese. My lunch the following day.
As you can see giving up cigarettes has not left me vice-free. I like my food tasty and I tend to enjoy a generous portion. In my defence (does pleasure need a defence?) my working day does consist of plenty of strenuous labour at the moment. And I don’t eat much for the rest of the day.
This is one of a dozen (at least) meals that I would call my favourite. Some crackers, some good Stilton cheese and some pears. Heaven on a plate.
Hotel room. Not sure why the shaving brush and bowl are there but there is limited space in a hotel room. We share a Danish pastry and an almond croissant. On their own they are nice. With a decent apple, they are even better.
One of my great regrets on leaving Exeter 20 years ago was that we were leaving behind a wonderful parade of shops on Magdalen Road. Some of the best have gone and been replaced by cafes run by people who are about as qualified to run cafes as I am to exhibit at the Tate. The best greengrocer in the West of England has closed since I was last there and that is a nail in the coffin as regards it being a world class shopping street. Happily the bakery is not only still there but hasn’t followed the trends into sourdough and wholesome or fancy. (I like sourdough and fancy, my gripe is against a particular type of cafe and bakery). They bake good bread and sell the same choice of cakes and puddings that they did in the eighties (and probably the fifties). Here we have a plum and almond cake and a lardy cake. Lardy cake was a fantastic treat as a boy and now has almost disappeared. This bakery has stuck by its guns and will outlast all of the fashion following rivals. I like my poetry written by poets, my food grown by farmers and my bread (when I don’t bake it myself) baked by a baker.
Not a traditional way of eating lardy cake. Ayrshire cheese, pears and figs. I don’t care, this was delicious.
These Buxton fish and chips were just about as good as they appear: more filling and thrilling. No complaints but no rush to go back for more.
But here is a fish meal that would tempt me back. Made by David and Melissa and the highlight of our visit to the South West. Baked smoked salmon with potatoes and a really delicious combination of vegetables flavoured with honey, balsamic and other ingredients. Very special indeed.
I’m not against well-meaning middle class people with the ability to bake from opening their own cafe. Amongst the many dreary efforts in Exeter are one or two that are superb. One goes under the cheerful but corny name of Cake-a-Doodle-Doo! It is on the Palace Gate end of Cathedral Green and is everything you want in a cafe. A limited choice of first class cakes and simple but tasty meals. (Too much choice is a great mistake in small cafes). All freshly made and served in a cheerful and tasteful atmosphere by the people who baked them. I was halfway through my coffee and walnut cake before I remembered that T had a camera on her phone. Also on view are the remains of a rich chocolate (gluten free) cake and the bottom third of a slice of Victoria sponge. Imagine you are able to sample the wares on the final day of the Great British Bake Off and you won’t be far out. Oh, and they served proper tea as well not a bag seeping in an aluminium pot.
Another meal that is a contender for my very favourite. Good bread, butter, cheese, ham, tomatoes and nothing else. Scientists have recently concluded that vanilla yoghurt is the food of happiness. I can only presume they forgot to test this plateful.
A bought Christmas pudding. One of many I’ve eaten this year. This one is made to look fancy by being topped with lots of glacé cherries and whole almonds. The almonds are ok but glacé cherries are no longer anyone’s idea of a treat. Just give me more plum pudding and don’t stint.
I’m not the biggest fan of supermarkets. I can’t see the little bits of good they may have done, in widening tastes and making foods available, has even come close to cancelling out the huge harm that they are responsible for. But they are here now and they aren’t going to go away. (Though I’m proud of the efforts of British people, in protesting about the market leaders showing that all they really care about is profit and dividends, and giving them a bloody nose). Tesco and Sainsbury’s have pretty much lost my trade until they show that service (to both supplier and customer) comes before the balance sheet. Waitrose bribes me (successfully) with free tea and coffee to go with a decent range of treats in their cafe as well as a free newspaper, but if their shelves didn’t hold better food than their bigger rivals I don’t think I’d bother. I’m still with the new guys. Not simply because they are cheap but because they have more exciting products. My current favourite is Lidl. The one I go to is in a run down part of Sheffield and my fellow shoppers are the displaced from the UK and all over Europe and beyond. It is the friendliest shop I know. It never fails to give me something I’d be prepared to travel a long way for if it wasn’t on my doorstep. Here are some delicious crayfish tails. I’m the only one in our house who likes shell fish. It allows for feastly portions. I made up a little creamy dressing to complete these sandwiches. I must have been a good person in a previous life.
Lidl also provided a tray of venison for the price of a pint of Guinness in a London pub. I know which I’d prefer. They were packaged as if they were steaks but on cooking they fell into these lumps. It said haunch of venison on the box but was more like hunks of venison inside. Still very tasty but not quite the Robin of Sherwood feast I had in mind.
Everything goes well with new potatoes and peas. No fruit and very little fat (venison is an extremely lean meat) to finish the post.
Wraps, tortillas and other flatbreads are now so popular in England that it is difficult to remember that they are a recent addition. You simply couldn’t get them in the sixties. In the seventies and eighties you needed a specialist food store. By the nineties supermarkets stocked them in most stores. Today there are racks and racks of them. Another new item are the bags of ready prepared salad. This is a tuna wrap. The tortilla takes a minute in a dry frying pan. A handful of leaves, a forkful of tinned tuna, a few slices of tomato and spring onion and a squirt of mayonnaise. Roll cut and serve. Tuna never was the food of poor farmers but was a staple during my younger days in bedsits and draughty, shared houses.
A rib-eye steak, flash griddled and sliced into strips, piled on top of salad leaves. Tomatoes and English mustard were added before the upper crust. This was my treat. There was no reason for the treat other than I fancied it. If my ancestors could have afforded to give themselves a good steak dinner I’m sure they would have. I’m certain they wouldn’t be-grudge me.
The sausages are from an independent farmer. The bread is a multi grain loaf from Lidl. Lidl is about the best of our supermarkets for quality and range of bread. This sausage sandwich looks good, tasted good and by golly I’m sure it did me good.
Slices of fresh baguette and Orkney crab paté with some grapes and some walnuts. All supplied by Lidl. It is a budget supermarket but it turns up trumps for tasty treats. This terrine might not be as good as you’d make for yourself but you’d need pretty advanced taste buds to tell the difference.
My favourite Sunday tea. Soft boiled eggs, good bread, real butter and mugs of tea. All that is needed now is a traditional Sunday cake.
Coffee and walnut cake. Walnuts are plentiful and cheap these days. It would be a pity not to take advantage.
Another Lidle treat. These are little ramekins filled with scallops and prawns in a white sauce. I wouldn’t serve them to guests but for a mid-morning snack when working in the office they are perfect.
Most of the sauce is hidden in this photograph. It’s made of onions, peppers, celery and mushrooms all sweated down. Add a big dollop of creme fraiche, season and serve with spaghetti and parmesan. Impossible not to have a second helping.
Ah liver. Lots of iron in it they say. In fact it is highly rated by nutritionists. This is my preferred method of cooking. Simply flash fry it in a hot pan and serve on toast with mushrooms and sprinkle with Henderson’s Relish and Tabasco.
The tortilla is made by mashing some left over new potatoes with a fork together with some cooked green cabbage. Beat in an egg and fry lightly for five minutes each side. The mixed grill is completed with flash fried liver, rashers of bacon and good sausages.
The very best part of a bowl of porridge is watching the demerara sugar melt on top, I prefer this to a creme brûlée. The perfect winter breakfast. This particular bowl was made in a microwave.
All that remains of a once thriving weekly market in our village is a visiting fish van. It loads up on the fish docks at Grimsby every day and has a weekly routine. Thursday is our day. The haddock was caught off the Faroes, the smoked haddock is cured in Grimsby. The eggs come form the chicken who live in Frances’ and Steven’s back garden. The parsley is from my window sill and the potatoes are from Aldi. A contender, along with rice pudding, for the title of the greatest known comfort food. Perfect at any time of year but even better in the winter.
Stew and dumplings is the most farmhouse of English farmhouse dishes.. The browning on the sides of the pan is the result of 10 hours cooking in a 100 degree oven. The dumplings get added in the last 20 minutes when the oven temperature is turned up. They rise into the lightest and most perfect accompaniment for slowly cooked meat. (In this case stewing steak and lambs kidneys cooked with carrots, onions and leeks.)
You have to have green vegetables with stew.
The final slice. Photograph taken within 24 hours of the cake coming out of the oven. A true sign of a happy home is a cake under a dome. Ours is a very happy home.
I felt I deserved more than one treat this week. Is there a more tempting sight to a meat eater than a plate of steak and chips? Asparagus is another vegetable that used to cost a king’s ransom and was only available in exclusive stores. Today it is cheap, plentiful and every bit as tasty as it was when it was considered a rich man’s delicacy.
To finish with, the ultimate poor person’s treat that has found itself shooting up market. Here is haggis (Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race). I have never been to a Burns’ Supper. I don’t drink whisky (in fact I don’t drink anything stronger than tea) and I don’t like bagpipes. I do like the poet though and have chosen to celebrate his birthday with a breakfast of haggis, beans and egg with toast. Haggis is made with every part of the beast that didn’t make the laird’s table. It is an almost perfect example of something special made from the cheapest ingredients.
Note the mugs of tea. The only way to toast a birthday!
The only slice of Christmas cake I got this year. I didn’t bother making one. This is shop bought and tasted like it. Still it was Christmas cake.
