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Tag Archives: lidl

In the Spring an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of food

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by simon682 in Mostly Concerning Food

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

Hervé This, lidl, Molecular Gastronomy, roast lamb, sourdough, stir-fry, yoghurt

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.

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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.DSC_0002

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.DSC_0003

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.DSC_0004

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

If It’s Good Enough For The Birds…

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by simon682 in Mostly Concerning Food, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Cake-a-Doodle-Doo, chicken soup, crayfish, Exeter, lardy cake, lidl, venison, Waitrose

Mostly Concerning Food

I’ve noticed the birds in the cherry tree, where I hang my feeders, have taken a strong interest in the fat balls this month. They get largely ignored (except by the squirrels) in the warmer seasons but at the moment they need replacing every few days. They know instinctively when they need to change their diet. Soon it will be nesting time and all the feeders will empty daily as they build themselves up for the eternal circle. For the moment, keeping warm is their top priority and they are eating a lot of fat and a lot of fruit. I’m doing the same and for pretty much the same reasons. One, it keeps out the cold and two, I’m programmed to do it. My parents, grandparents and great grand parents did the same. It’s in the blood.

DSC_0065Chicken 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.

DSC_0066These 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.

DSC_0068This 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.

DSC_0069I 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.

DSC_0071The 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.

DSC_0074As 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.

DSC_0077This 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.

DSC_0083Hotel 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.

DSC_0112One 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.

DSC_0114Not a traditional way of eating lardy cake. Ayrshire cheese, pears and figs. I don’t care, this was delicious.

IMG_0396These 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.

IMG_0411But 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.

IMG_0418I’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.

DSC_0117Another 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.

DSC_0120A 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.

DSC_0010I’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.

DSC_0012Lidl 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.

DSC_0013Everything goes well with new potatoes and peas. No fruit and very little fat (venison is an extremely lean meat) to finish the post.

Bon appétit!

Great Chieftain O’ the Pudding-Race

25 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by simon682 in Mostly Concerning Food, Uncategorized

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

asparagus, Burns Night, coffee and walnut cake, haggis, lidl, porridge, Risotto, stew and dumplings

Mostly Concerning Food

I’m seasonal in my tastes. It isn’t just that I associate stews and oatmeal with cold weather, I actually find myself yearning for them. As a concerned and, I would like to think, caring member of the race, I increase the proportion of vegetarian dishes every year. On top of that, as a meat eater I believe in the maxim that all of the animal should be used. Lions and tigers and other carnivorous hunters prize the organs on the prey above all else. Animals like the cheetah, who are likely to be driven away from the kill by stronger predators, are quick to feed on liver, kidney and heart. There is a school of thought that says if we think ourselves entitled to eat meat than we must be prepared to consume the whole beast. In China they say that the only part of a duck not eaten is the quack. In Britain it was a philosophy championed by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall in the 80s. He’s made a good living out of it but I think he is reasonably sincere.

It’s ironic that offal, traditionally a meat that the poor could afford, is now on the menus of expensive restaurants and rarely in corner cafes.  So much of what was once the daily lot of the rural poor is now gracing the eating houses of the rich. This post’s offerings include quite a few of these. Porridge, risotto, dumplings, tortillas, pasta, liver, potatoes were all everyday staples for my ancestors (no-one in my family made the big house in any thing other than a serving capacity until the second half of the twentieth century). Today they are served up more often by parents with university degrees and pension plans (guilty of both) than by those on tax credits. There is a move towards trying to turn the clocks back on this but unfortunately it is being done in such a patronising way by affluent chefs that it is likely to fail.

My love of peasant food is in celebration of two things; a warm sense of family continuity, of communion with my forebears, and the fact that the food is superb. You can make a delicious, filling and warming pan of risotto in half an hour using an onion, a stock cube, some arborio rice and a pint or so of hot water. By adding a pepper and/or some celery or an off cut of chorizo you have a meal fit for a special occasion. Especially if served with a generous grating of parmesan cheese.

Cheese itself was found (and often made) in the poorest homes. In his superb history of Italian food ‘Delizia‘, John Dickie observed that the poor farmers were selling their delicious home made cheeses and home grown pears to the rich so they could afford a scrap or two of meat from the rich man’s larder. If only they had realised that cheese and pears was one of the greatest of all food combinations then the entire history of Europe might have been different.

Here is my take on winter foods that might have graced an English smallholding, a Scottish croft or our kinfolk from further afield. I didn’t set out to do this. It was only when I downloaded the photographs that I recognised a pattern. I’ve always been seasonal in foods. This is what we eat in the winter.

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This risotto is made from arborio rice. The colour is from chunks of chorizo giving off its oil and spices. There’s a good gating of parmesan stirred into this one at the end of the cooking and another generous grating about to be added. A growing debate in our house is to whether or not it is better fresh from the pan or re-heated the following day. It’s different both ways but I couldn’t say which I prefer other than the one I am currently eating. According to Dickie many of our favourite Italian dishes were essentially vegetarian for the simple reason that the people eating them couldn’t afford meat. A little meat was seen as a treat to pep the dinners into something very special. The same thing works today. You don’t need very much in any Italian dish.

DSC_0041Wraps, 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.

DSC_0039A 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.

DSC_0031The 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.

DSC_0024Slices 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.

DSC_0026My favourite Sunday tea. Soft boiled eggs, good bread, real butter and mugs of tea. All that is needed now is a traditional Sunday cake.

DSC_0030Coffee and walnut cake. Walnuts are plentiful and cheap these days. It would be a pity not to take advantage.

DSC_0040Another 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.

DSC_0027 DSC_0018Most 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.

DSC_0017Ah 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.

DSC_0013The 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.

DSC_0008The 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.

cplAYzagl9zn6rW1C79mWig7dl7Y1+VAll 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.

cplAZAcmiu+xOfQUH2STX2fY3xKvSiCStew 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.)

cplASyoeni9yasuYJm3K1Eg5j4RgzVlYou have to have green vegetables with stew.

DSC_0035The 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.cplAYSfbIrc4J2aodB9LaamHkjGp0y_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.

DSC_0009To 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.

Here’s to your honest, sonsie face.

 

Happy Burns Night. Eat well!

When I Remember the Camera

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by simon682 in Mostly Concerning Food

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

Aldi, battenberg cake, caviar, christmas pudding, great britsih bake off, lemon drizzle cake, lidl, macarons, nadiya

Mostly Concerning Food

I’ve been very lax over the last couple of months. We’ve eaten really well over that time but I’ve rarely reached for the camera. At first this was deliberate. It was nice to settle down to a meal without having to photograph it first. Then it became laziness. I was going to clear all my food and travel posts off the blog. It seemed like a good idea at the time. (I can’t remember why.) Over Christmas I spent an afternoon looking at them and it suddenly seemed that I had a first class food diary. Like most diaries the fun is in putting it together. No-one expects them to be read. It would be a pity to destroy them after two years. Equally it would be a pity not to keep them going.

I’m busier now than I was two years ago. And two years ago I had a full-time teaching job. The blog was a daily thing then. Now it’s growing into an occasional thing. Things get published as and when they feel ready. These are photographs from a selection of meals from the end of November to this afternoon. I’m not altogether certain I can remember each one so its a good thing I don’t often bother with recipes. Hope you enjoy them.

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Here we have two slices of granary toast (bought bread rather than home made from what I can see). On top is a sauce I made to serve with pasta. It comprises onions, peppers, celery, mushrooms, chillies and creme fraiche. Over the top is a generous serving of char-grilled asparagus. It’s coming back to me. It was a first class breakfast. 100% vegetarian and very, very tasty.

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Poached eggs on toast are my idea of heaven. This is a real indulgence with crispy bacon and a bunch of boiled asparagus. I can remember when asparagus and smoked salmon were by-words for the food of the very rich. They don’t cost a lot these days, are invariably good quality. I feel very rich indeed every time I eat them.

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I have a new favourite supermarket. Tesco is still another word for “couldn’t care about the customer” and they wonder why they’ve lost so much good will. I haven’t been into Asda or Sainsbury’s in the last year. Not a boycott. They just haven’t tempted me. I go to Waitrose each time we fancy a Saturday morning in Sheffield and find it a perfectly good supermarket. (Though the one in Sheffield is full of Northern aesthetes, all extra keen to let anybody and everybody know that they know their valençay from their fougasse. Nothing wrong with that but they do rather stand in the way.) Aldi remains my corner shop of convenience but its German cousin “Lidl” has become the place to get an unexpected treat. Their Mediterranean platters (olives, hams, salamis, sun-dried tomatoes, Feta cheese) are almost perfect for watching a movie. The lobsters and crabs  are as good as you’ll get without going to a proper fishmonger and this little box of fun  (macarons) was about a third of the price you’d pay elsewhere. I used to love going to supermarkets in France and Spain. This is the nearest you can get to the continental experience in the East Midlands of England.

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A spread for my birthday. I spent a lot of time baking cakes and a couple of onion quiches but the latter seem to have missed out on the photograph. The food on the table is partly supermarket with some quickly knocked up salads. With the exception of the plate of sliced ham, it’s mostly vegetarian.
DSC_0009Note the mugs of tea. The only way to toast a birthday!

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A close-up on hard boiled eggs, a decent potato salad, a crunchy home-made coleslaw (coleslaw is like sponge cake: you’ve got a choice of making it yourself or doing without), the rice dish is a pillau with peppers and duck breast. That was seriously tasty.

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I didn’t have time to ice it properly so I just poured the still-slightly warm dark chocolate ganache over the top and smoothed it as best I could. This is effectively a battenberg cake but it is a rather splendid battenberg. I cannot remember which book the recipe came out of. Unusually for me, I actually followed it closely. It’s a good cake. Think it was called a checkerboard cake.

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A lemon drizzle cake that I was going to ice with fondant icing in acknowledgement of Nadiya’s winning entry in the Great British Bake Off. In the end a combination of running out of time and remembering the golden rule of not messing with something good. Lemon drizzle cake isn’t broke…doesn’t need fixing! (I wasn’t going to watch it this year but got drawn in).

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Why it is called a checkerboard cake. There is a thin layer of white chocolate ganache between the layers of cake. The layers are piped alternative vanilla and chocolate sponge. A lot easier than you’d imagine if you’ve never done it before.

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It was my birthday. I had two slices of each cake. I believe this guarantees good luck for the coming year. At least the good luck of starting the year with a lot of very good cake.

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At the cinema you get a choice of food: popcorn (which I have never liked), the worst sort of hotdogs (mechanically recovered meat) or the sort of nachos that look like someone has been ill on a small tray. (In support of Cineworld cinemas, the Baskin Robbins ice cream is rather good). At home the food is much, much better. Here is a typical plate. I enjoyed this watching the movie Shane. Melba toasts coated with cream cheese (Lidl sell some cream cheese that tastes like it used to do in the 60s) topped with some pickled peppers and lumpfish caviar. And it works out a good deal cheaper than anything you can buy at the cinema.

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Something similar for a ‘nibbles’ course at the start of Christmas dinner. This year we went vegetarian for the entire feast and had the best Christmas food I can ever remember. Of course I forgot to photograph any of it. Well. It was Christmas. I had other things on my mind. These are similar to my movie snacks but this time using oat biscuits and leaning towards vegetables for those who won’t eat fish. For those who do eat fish, more lumpfish caviar and some very good smoked salmon from a local smoke house.

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Here’s something I was brought up with. Each generation finds at least one food, that their parents eat, disgusting. My children won’t eat offal. Actually Frances won’t eat meat at all. I love liver. Here is a Friday  teatime plate of liver casserole with spinach and new potatoes. Worth waiting for Friday for.

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Cocoa coated chocolate almonds.

DSC_0031The 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.

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Simple breakfast of courgette (zucchini) pancakes. Delicious with either brown sauce or ketchup.

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Smoked duck breast from the local smokehouse and some chorizo.

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Very nice with a spinach and watercress salad.

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And a Christmas pudding to finish. Happy New Year and here’s wishing you a fabulous year of food. Simon

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Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

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