Chorizo with a ‘th’

Monday 3 August 2015
Sprouts
Spanish sprouts

I don’t know if the Spanish actually eat sprouts but if they do, I’m sure this is how they would cook them.

Last Christmas I saw Mary Berry pan fry sprouts with pancetta, tried it, thought it a great idea but decided that using chorizo would be better, and it is.

Chorizo is one of the most exciting ingredients ever;  it has the ability to utterly transform anything to which it’s added.  It adds a delightful splash of colour, reminiscent of  cranberries, a wonderful flavour, and the hot version packs a powerful punch.  I can’t think of much that wouldn’t be improved by its addition.

I add it to a potato omelette or any dish involving fried potatoes, ANY green vegetable (not just sprouts), beef mince dishes – think of it as a more exotic kind of alternative to bacon or pancetta.

Or just slice it thinly and nibble it with a glass of wine or serve it on thin slices of French bread.

But just one thing, please, oh PLEASE, pronounce it ‘choritho’ like the Spanish, and never ‘choritso’, which would be OK if it were Italian or German, but it’s not.  And you can’t justify it by saying it’s how it’s pronounced in English  – there are no words in the English language where a ‘z’ is pronounced  ‘ts’.  We don’t, for example got to see the animals at the tsoo, or see what’s on TV by looking in the Radio Times magatsine.

If you can’t manage ‘choritho’, try ‘choriso’ (like the Portuguese), or if you have to pronounce it in English, it’s ‘choriZZZZZZo’  (but 1 Z will suffice, thanks!), but NEVER ‘choritso’ (unless you’re Italian, German, or just very pretentious!

Where4 art thou 4?

Sunday 2 August 2015
Garnishing knives
Set of 4 Joie Garnishing Knives

In the kitchen section of a department store recently I came across a set of 4 ‘Garnishing knives’.  These are said to be very sharp with highly flexible blades.  They looked very useful but I couldn’t understand why anyone would require 4 of them.

I concluded that there must be more to garnishing  with a garnishing knife than first meets the eye and decided to buy a set – only £3 for the 4 so not a huge decision.

Having got them out of the packaging I found that they are indeed very sharp and highly flexible.  But there were no instructions included so I was not sure what to do with them.

I was certain there must be more to garnishing than the tomato wedges shown on the packaging (which had to be destroyed to get the knives out so could not photograph it – don’t you just hate that?)

A search on the internet produced a few suggestions for things to try and these included the aforesaid tomato roses, radish florets and carrot flowers, but I still found myself wondering why anyone would ever need 4 of the knives unless one were to undertake production line methods of turning out such delicacies.

Guess what my son and daughter will be getting for Christmas this year?

 

A culinary challenge

Saturday 1 August 2015

Chilli
Beef Chilli

The apartment we stayed in in Aberdeen claimed to have a ‘fully-equipped kitchen for those that like to cook’.  It looked a bit basic to me but I thought I should at the very least put it to the test.

I chose something intrinsically simple and very familiar so I could improvise/cut corners if need be – a beef chilli.   I bought the ingredients at Marks & Spencer so no issue with the qualiy.

The first challenge was chopping an onion.  There were no kitchen knives of any kind but there were some steak knives with brutal, serrated edges.  I thought these would do a better job than the ordinary ‘eating’ knives so had a go.

Peeling it was OK, as was ‘topping and tailing’ – the main challenge was getting it into pieces of a size that would cook.  The steak knife seemed to have a mind of its own and attempting any kind of precision cutting out of the question so I decided to just slice (rather than chop) it.  I tried very hard to slice it thinly but ended up with irregular strips.

Choice of pans was a huge saucepan or a reasonably-sized frying pan so the frying pan it was.  At this point I realised I had omitted to buy oil of any kind.  There’s usually some of some kind in any apartment one rents as an oily bottle is not ideal for taking home after a short break, but here there was nothing.

I could have dry-fried them, which would have worked after a fashion but decided to fry off the mince in the pan first thereby releasing its fat in which I would fry the onions – brainwave!

This worked and having fried the onions, I added a teaspoon of the ‘easy’ garlic I had bought, having decided that while I might get away with cutting up an onion with a steak knife there was no way it would achieve anything with a clove of garlic.

Next I added a hacked up green chilli and a ‘chunked’ (rather than cubed) red pepper.  After letting these fry for a couple of minutes, I put the fried mince back in the pan and added a tin of tomatoes.  Having brought it to the boil, I turned it down and let it simmer for about 15 minutes, at which point I mixed in the tin of mixed beans I had bought.

About 15 minutes later it seemed ready to eat.  It looked a bit crude but edible – ‘chunky’ may work with chips but definitely leaves sliced onions looking the worse for wear.

It was OK – I was hungry which always helps when trying something a bit ‘different’ and I ate it, but I think I would have got fed up with chilli, as cooking anything else would have presented just too many problems.

. . . . . Something new

Tuesday 28 July 2015

CuminTandoori
.            Dal          matter paneer     panchmishali

When we came to Aberdeen together for the first time nearly three years ago, our flight from Gatwick had been considerably delayed which meant that we did not arrive in the city centre until after 11pm.

Desperate for something to eat, we tramped the length of Union Street to be told by restaurant after restaurant that they were closed or had passed last orders until we came to one called Bollywood Tandoori, a lovely tandoori restaurant.  Not only were they open but the meal was memorable, so good in fact that we were very keen to go back last night.

We got there, went downstairs into the dining room to find it nearly empty with only one table occupied.  We asked for a table to be told we could indeed have one but they could not serve wine or beer as their licence had ‘expired’.

Tough choice as we loved the food but did fancy a glass of wine with it so left.  We had however noticed a huge ‘Tandoori’ sign not far down the street so went there to find a new restaurant called ‘Cumin Tandoori’.  It looked very nice with a very modern décor and when we asked, yes it was indeed quite new, having opened about a year and a half ago.

Food was excellent, service solicitous, and prices reasonable so well worth a visit.  Particularly nice was the Panchmishali, a dish made with lamb, chicken, prawns, tomatoes and mushrooms (pretty sure ‘panch’ means 5)

 

 

 

Something old . . . .

Sunday 26 July 2015

LaLombarda1
La Lombarda Aberdeen

Yesterday we flew north to Aberdeen.  After an effortless flight from the new Heathrow Terminal 2 (which was surprisingly devoid of people for a Saturday afternoon in July), courtesy of Virgin Atlantic, we reached the city of my youth.

We had arranged to meet an old friend for dinner and he had proposed La Lombarda, a hostelry close to here we were staying.  Imagine our surprise when we sat down at our table to find we were in the oldest Italian restaurant in the UK and one of the 5 oldest restaurants in the UK.

Older is ‘Blackfriars’ in Newcastle, which was literally the refectory of a monastery, ‘Rules’ in Covent Garden, London, famous for its game, and Tibits, the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe.

Started in 1922, La Lombarda is even older than Veeraswamy’s the oldest Indian restaurant in the UK (1926).  It has changed ownership and so is now no longer in the hands of the original family that started it, and has been refurbished a coupe of times, but is still a very pleasant place to eat.  Good food, staff friendly and helpful, and reasonably priced – what more could one want?

Viva La Lombarda!

. . . . . to Frozen Liabilities

Thursday 23 July 2015

If all you have in your freezer is half a loaf and the remainder of the sprouts from last Christmas then you probably don’t have to think too much about it.

But freezing leftovers and/or impulse ‘bargain’ buys can of course place great strain on the capacity of a freezer and that can entail considerable management.

Freezing food in plastic containers is optimal for organisation as, while the food inside freezes into the shape of the box, the box  itself does not change shape and it is easy to take out and replace.

But if, as I do, food is frozen in freezer bags then it is a whole different matter.  The food in the bag (say, stock – never throw bones/carcases away; always boil them down into stock and then freeze), prior to freezing in a packed freezer, can take the shape of the available space and often, once removed from that space can be the devil’s own job to get back in.  Remove a number of such items and it can be a veritable jigsaw puzzle getting them all back in, if it is at all possible.

It is easy to get to a point where a load of stuff has been removed to find one specific item lower down and it won’t go back in.

A full freezer requires management – rotation of items so that older items are consumed before new ones added.  It is also important not to forget the freezer – very tempting to nip to the shops to buy something for lunch but there may be something in the freezer that would do.

And that’s exactly what happened today – some roast chicken and chicken stock from the freezer with the addition of some fresh bacon bits, mushrooms, peppers and crème fraîche made a superb pie filling which was topped off with some ready-rolled puff pastry.

Absolutely lovely, . . . . . . . or should I say ‘cool’?

Frozen Assets

Tuesday 21 July 2015

I used to know someone who would, at every mealtime, dish up  identical, huge platefuls of food for everyone present, despite the fact that her children were 2 and 4.  These would look in horror at the gargantuan (by their standards) heap of food placed in front of them, pick around at it and then leave most of it. utterly daunted  by the task of trying to eat it.

When the table was cleared at the end of the meal, everything remaining, including the heaps of leftovers on the children’s plates as well as everything else left in the kitchen and not served up, would be thrown away – literally binned.  And often this was in vast quantities.

I used to ask her why she did not keep it for use on another occasion – most of the time there was the makings of another meal for the family, and she had both fridge and freezer.  Her reply was that she did not think it hygienic, and that she believed uneaten food should always be thrown away.

But in large measure this is precisely what modern cooling appliances are for.  In general terms, anything left over from any meal in my home is judiciously transferred to some kind of fridge/freezer-friendly container and preserved either for consumption later the same week (in the fridge) or at some indeterminate point in the future (in the freezer).

Putting left-overs in the freezer in single portion plastic bags is a great way of providing a nutritious meal for one when unable or unwilling to cook on any occasion.

My reason for writing about this is that I have just had for dinner some lovely chicken curry left-over and frozen 2-3 weeks ago.  It was excellent and had, if anything, improved with age.

Baked? I’ll ask ‘er

Sunday 19 July 2015
Banana Loaf
Banana Loaf

When ah were a lad, Sunday afternoon meant baking – not as folks do nowadays sitting out in the sun covered in oil, but cakes and cookies hot from the oven.

Now if you’re not much of a baker like me, I recommend a Banana Loaf.  If you ever wonder what to do with those over-ripe, blackening bananas you forgot to eat, this is for you – I’m told that over-ripe bananas for use in cake-making freeze magnificently so don’t have to be used immediately.

This is very simple and pretty well fail-safe.  The recipe came from a friend and worked first-time (for me); the raisins are my idea and I think they enhance the basic product.  I’ve also tried chocolate chips but was less happy with that result.

I’ve also tried it without the sugar (by accident it has to be said, if I’m honest!) and it was very nice – much more like a loaf than a cake (and none the worse for it) so the basic recipe is capable of considerable variation.

So next time you feel like baking but are not sure how to, get a couple of bananas and have a go.

 

And then later that day . . .

Friday 17 July 2015

. . . . . we went to The Rockfish.  Jury was out for a long time on it or The Start Bay Inn but in the end Rockfish won on mileage – i.e. we’d done enough driving for one day.  Both do magnificent fish and chips, the difference being in the style of the restaurant, and so either would have been welcome.

We had a couple of starters that we shared, salt & pepper prawns and calamari, and then the wonderful cod and chips.

RFPrawns       RFCalamari
Salt & pepper prawns                      Calamari

RFFishChips1
Cod and chips

All are served on crumpled paper on the plate – possibly saves on washing up.

Anyway, we loved it and it was a splendid way to wrap up our little break in Dartmouth.

We drove home on Thursday – pretty effortless run until we got to Lower Thames Street in London, when we were held up by roadworks which cost us nearly an hour.

Anyway, we’re home and normal service will be resumed ASAP (although what normal service is I’m not quite sure!)

Saving The Best till Last

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Panorama2
View from the allotment (click to enlarge)

Still in Dartmouth we decided to go for breakfast at Alf Resco’s, an outdoor (note the cunning play on words!) but covered café serving only breakfast and lunch (i.e. not dinner).

It was very busy but we got the last table.  We were told to peruse the menu then go to the counter to order, which sounded fair enough, but the young lady who was taking the orders was also dispensing drinks.  There were two in front of me: the first was ordering for 8 people, each of whom wanted something different to drink (i.e. 1 latte, 1 cappuccino, 1 banana milkshake, etc.)  so that took nearly 15 minutes to serve up, after which she took his food order – it seemed to me that it would have made more sense to order the food first so that the chef could crack on with it while she sorted out drinks.  The next person in front of me was ordering for 6 so again it took ages.

When I had been waiting for about 20 minutes, it did occur to me that I might leave the queue and we could then take our custom to another establishment where they knew how to look after their customers, but I decided to hang on.  My tea and coffee were quickly dispensed but when I ordered our breakfasts (and after I had paid!), the young lady told me the food might be some time as they were very busy.

Back at the table we waited and eventually a server came by calling out my name whereupon we were given toast, expecting our food to arrive imminently.  Having eaten most of the toast we suddenly realised we were in serious danger of running out before our breakfast arrived and how can one eat fried eggs without a bit of toast, and nothing on earth would persuade me to go back into the queue to order more.   The dichotomy was of course that by waiting, the last bits of toast would get cold, equally bad.

Anyway, like the cavalry in all good westerns, our breakfasts arrived in time to save the day ( but only just).  The food was good and pretty inexpensive so hard to complain but the whole experience could be so much better with a rather less chaotic efficient system for ordering.

Later we went to our friends’ allotment to relieve some of the plants of their harvest burden as our friends were away.  While picking raspberries I was stood on one of the broad steps in the allotment when the fascia board supporting the step gave way and I found myself standing on air, clutching at nothing in an attempt to stop myself falling over.  I overbalanced and found myself, as if in slow motion, toppling backwards to the ground.

My limited experience of previous topples (and not a tipple in sight!) told me that when  one reaches the ground there is a tendency for the fall to stop, but in this case because of the steepness of the terrain, I kept on tumbling over.  I succeeded in stopping myself on about the third step down and lay there momentarily doing a quick audit of the various bits of my body looking for pain, but incredibly, I couldn’t feel any.

Standing up proved challenging as I was lying on a slope, albeit a sloping step.  When eventually I did, I was muddied but not bloodied so considered myself very lucky with scarce an ache or a pain.

Some time later with a bit of time to kill, we stopped at a hostelry we’d passed a number of times to have a quick ‘coffee’.   The Turtley Corn Mill markets itself as ‘not a pub with a garden’ but a ‘pub IN a garden’ and so it is – beautiful gardens with a lovely pub (former corn mill) in the middle.

We asked about coffee . . . Yes . . . then tea . . . still Yes . . . . we asked about cakes. . . scones OK? so two teas and scones ordered.  When they arrived, each tea was in a little individual cafetière-style teapot.

But then, the scones arrived and we were dumb-struck – scones still hot from the oven with more raisins than I’ve ever seen grace any scone; a huge ramekin of jam and another with clotted cream, garnished with a couple of strawberries and a sprig of mint.

Any meal should be more than the sum of the components and this was – possibly (and one can never be totally sure about this) the best by far cream tea we’d ever eaten.  It was as close as one could get to perfection in a cream tea.

We told them; they seemed pleased to be told; we paid; we left totally fulfilled.

And then later that day . . . . . . . . . .  (to be continued)