Quantity has a Quality All its Own

Monday 13 July 2015

Today’s caption was said by Joseph Stalin during World War 2 when it was pointed out to him that the Germans made tanks that were of much higher quality than Russian ones but could not manufacture nearly as many).

I’m not sure how one gets from Russian tanks to Asian food but I just did!

Much as I enjoy cooking it and happy as I may be with the results, it’s always a pleasure to visit an Indian restaurant (actually we refer to them as Indian but they’re nearly all Bangladeshi serving Punjabi food) to see how the professionals do things.

Sometimes it wants to be a really good restaurant like the 29029 in Sandford (written about a couple of weeks ago), but sometimes what I want is quantity and I get a hankering to do a  buffet.

I’ve had this hankering for a couple of weeks now but last night I indulged it; the Spice Bazaar restaurant in Dartmouth does a wonderful buffet every Sunday evening – £11.95 for all you can eat.

Starters were some lovely Malabar chicken pieces and onion bhajis (not one of my favourites but more than compensated for by the chicken) served with a salad.

To follow were Kashmir chicken, garlic lamb, a fish curry (and exceptionally nice it was too), potatoes and chick peas (channa aloo), dal and pilao rice.  Freshly made naan breads were brought to the table separately.

What I like is the variety which is why when  I make Asian food, I usually make 6-8 (at least) dishes, which of course feeds us for he next week or so.  To order that many dishes in a normal restaurant would cost a fortune and so we get back to the buffet.

Only criticism might be the choice of vegetable dish – something more ‘vegetably’ would have suited us better but it was very good to eat, excellent value, served by very pleasant local staff (unusually NOT Asian), and fulfilled my longing (well, hankering – ‘longing’ maybe a bit strong) for lots of different dishes.

Highly recommended (as indeed I did to the couple gazing at the menu outside as we were leaving).

 

Up the Lazy River

Sunday 12 July 2015

Allotment
(Click to enlarge)

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

Kenneth Grahame was spot-on in Ratty’s words of wisdom to Mole in ‘The Wind in the Willows’.  The only way in which his words could be possibly improved on would be to add “followed by a decent lunch”.

Which is exactly what we did on Friday.  Thursday had seen us driving to Devon beyond Exeter then up the hilly lanes  which lead to Dartmouth at the mouth of the river Dart (oddly enough!) to spend a few days with some friends.

Which is how on Friday we came to board their little boat and make our way upriver to the delightful village of Dittisham (pronounced Ditsum).  We disembarked on the little jetty there and soon found ourselves in the wonderful Anchorstone Café, an eclectic assortment of sheds, lean-tos and a large marquee, which overlooks the river and Agatha Christie’s summer retreat Greenways, serving the most magnificent food and excellent wines (including the local, very good Sharpham variety).

I partook of their prawn cocktail which, unlike most sitting tidily in a bowl or glass, sprawls inelegantly all over a large dinner plate and somehow tastes the better for it; followed by their take on a moûles frites (mussels in cider with cream with some skinny chips in a tin mug on the side).

Suitably refreshed, we reboarded the little boat and wended our weary way back to Dartmouth, whence we had come.

There’s just something special about boats and lunch!

Just Desserts

Wednesday 8 July 2015

Tiramisu
Tiramisu

Although I am very partial to a bit of the sweet stuff, I don’t ‘do’ many desserts.  In fact the number of desserts I do make can be quite probably counted on the fingers of one hand.

One to which I am very partial is the Italian favourite Tiramisu with the stress on the last syllable (and which means in Italian literally ‘pick me’ (tirami) and ‘up’ (su), so ‘pick me up’ – possibly a reference to the quantity of strong coffee in it!)

I used to make a kind of ‘diet’ version of this transcribed from an old BBC Food Program recipe substituting Greek yogurt for much of the mascarpone, but I decided recently that I really ought to up the ante on my desserts.

The new recipe is much better (old one was OK but that is not good enough for a dessert) and also based on a BBC recipe but this time it is claimed as the ‘ultimate’ tiramisu – I don’t know about that but it is very good and moreover, much easier and quicker than my original ‘diet’ recipe, so it scores on all counts.

Another I like to make because it delivers huge bang for buck is Eton Mess.

Eton Mess

Traditionally, this is made with strawberries, but, while I have nothing against those, they’re just not one of my favourites.  Perhaps it’s my Scottish blood, but raspberries, on the other hand, are very much a firm favourite and I like to use those, although it can be made with any red fruit.

Dead easy, incredibly delicious and fun to make, serve and eat, Eton mess ticks all the boxes for a good dessert.

www – the Wickedly Wonderful Web

5 July 2015

Spiced Aubergine
Spiced aubergine

I have a vast number of cookery books and magazines, easily numbering in the high hundreds with recipes from the far corners of the world (and a few from my own doorstep) that must number in the tens of thousands.

The other evening I was making a lamb shashlik (See recipe for Chicken Shashlik and substitute lamb for the chicken) and wanted to do something similar with an aubergine I had in the fridge.  Now I’m sure that if I looked among the recipes in my vast stock of cookery books I would have found something suitable; the only problem is that it could have taken me a week (or even more) to go through them, by which time my lamb would probably have given up the ghost.

But a cursory search on the Wickedly Wonderful Web revealed a number of possibilities from which I selected this Spiced Aubergine dish of Moroccan origin.  This ability to find virtually instantly almost anything without limitation on the web must be one of the blessings of modern living (although I’m sure there are many reasons why it is equally a curse – don’t you just love a good dichotomy?)

Some of my favourite dishes are the result of web searches and I eagerly look forward to finding many more going forward.

Vive Le Web!

Heaven on a Plate

3 July 2015

Tartiflette
Tartiflette

A few years ago I would regularly head up to Camden Lock market on a Sunday morning, not because I felt myself short of a leather jacket, pashmina, or candle, but just to help me decide what to have for lunch.

I would walk round all the food stalls, having a good look and an even better sniff, getting the hang of what was on offer and that would typically include Indian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Spanish, etc.then when I’d decided what it was I wanted, I’d leave and go home and make it – or have a good stab at it, and it was usually OK.

It was on one of these forays that I first met Tartiflette.  Imagine a metre-diameter paella pan full of potatoes, bacon and onions, bubbling away in a creamy cheese sauce – it was food Heaven, if ever I saw it.  The expression ‘Love at first sight’ springs to mind but that could possibly be too clichéd to use right now.

I hastened home, dug around on the internet and found a recipe (note that I say ‘a’ recipe rather than ‘the’ recipe, as I’m not sure the latter exists), and had a go.  It was wonderful – everything I’d hoped it would be.

The dish originated in the Jura, that mountainous region of south-east France, and the correct cheese to use is called Reblochon, a gutsy, creamy cheese local to those parts.  actually the name itself is interesting , being derived from the old French word rebler meaning to steal – many moons ago, the region was under the heel of the Austrian empire who taxed extortionately everything that anyone made or needed.  The locals would hold back some milk, thus evading  the tax thereon, and make this cheese, which became known as Reblochon because the milk was effectively stolen.

I used to think Tartiflette was the kind of dish that would have seen the hardy French mountain types of yore through the toughest of winters, but apparently not.  It is no more traditional food of the country than the humble Ploughman’s Lunch, that staple of the English pub, is of England.  If you had visions of centuries of ploughmen homeward plodding their weary way with a plate of bread, cheese and a bit of pickle at the end of the road, then you are seriously deluded.

During World war 2 only 1 type of reddish, Cheddar-type cheese could legally be made for reasons of efficiency of production, but certainly not because of the taste.  When this situation ended in 1954, the Milk Marketing Board, in order to sell more of the new types of cheese that could now be made, invented a marvellous new vehicle for this and christened it The Ploughman’s Lunch.  It was enormously successful.

Tatiflette may be considered similar as it met the same objectives for French cheese as the Ploughman’s did for English cheese, so not traditional peasant food at all!

Reblochon, although perfect in a tartiflette, is a tad on the expensive side and so one may resort to other creamy French cheeses, like Camembert/Brie or grated Emmental instead.

 

 

New month – new system?

2 July 2015

Always one to experiment, I’m going to change the modus operandi of this blog to be one post per day rather than just continuing the same post with a new date – don’t know if that will be better or worse or just different, but feel that I should give it a go.  Let’s just try it and see.

ColeSlaw
Coleslaw

So it looks like summer’s here at last and what could be more summery than coleslaw?  It’s something we usually buy in tiny tubs from supermarkets so that any substantial quantity starts to get expensive.  There are of course giant tubs but generally the larger the quantity of coleslaw purchased, the lower the quality gets.

But it’s incredibly easy and cheap as chips to make and I don’t know why more people don’t do it.  I recommend using an electric shredder (accessory for food processor) rather than a normal manual grater but if you don’t have one, then just be careful – it doesn’t matter if you have to chuck away the few last bits of cabbage or carrot but don’t let your fingers get too close to the cutting edges, PLEASE!  Shredded knuckles can be very painful.

Blades need to be coarse as you don’t want it too fine.  I’ve tried making this with a sharp knife but find that it’s impossible to get the right texture in that way so I reckon it has to be a shredder of some kind.

Once everything’s shredded, the job’s nearly done – just mix up the dressing, stir it in and that’s it.

And there endeth the post for 2 July!

Food Glorious Food!

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Granola
Granola

Most people think of granola as something healthy to have for breakfast.  Personally, I see it more as a nice, sweet-ish, tasty treat for those little moments of temptation that cannot be resisted – not at all without sweetness, but infinitely better than almost anything you could think of (e.g sweets, cakes, chocolate, etc.) .  .  .  .  .

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  that is, of course, if you make it the way I do – big problem with most commercially available cereals (including muesli and granola) is that they are over-sweetened with far too much added sugar.  The big advantage of making your own is that you can put into as much or as little of anything you like.  I tend to put a little honey and maple syrup into granola and leave it at that, so that it is sweetened, but only just.

As far as recipes go, there would be as many as those who make it, none of them right and none of them wrong. All you need are guidelines for the proportions of the ingredients and even those may be almost infinitely varied.

So have a go using the proportions in the recipe then next time you do it, adjust to suit your own taste accordingly.

Monday 29 June 2015

It’s funny how things work out!

We were going to a large event down in Dorset this weekend.  Everything had been booked for months but a final check of the hotel booking showed that we had a twin room – not our favourite sleeping arrangement – and so I suggested a quick call to see if we could change it to a double.  Imagine our shock to find that the booking had apparently been cancelled by hotels.com about a month after we made it and that they, in their infinite wisdom, had failed to inform us.  They seemed completely unconcerned by this and reassured us repeatedly, as if it made any difference, that we would not be charged for the accommodation.

Well, when there is a major event on in somewhere like rural Dorset, hotel rooms go like hot cakes and so, in a state of near panic at suddenly finding we had nowhere to stay over the weekend, we started frantically ringing hotels and B&Bs.   Amazingly, and against all the odds, we found somewhere – a lovely B&B just outside Wareham where our original hotel was.

Much relieved, we set off on our journey down there.  On arrival we ventured into Wareham to check out some local restaurants and made a booking for the Saturday evening.  On the way back to our B&B we passed an inauspicious looking restaurant which said above the door ‘The 29029 Restaurant – Contemporary Indian and Nepalese Cuisine’.  As it was close enough to walk from our accommodation, we decided to do just that so we could enjoy a glass of wine with our meal.

It’s odd how sometimes the outside of a restaurant gives no clue as to the delights that lie within.  The wooden exterior might reasonably be described as a large wooden shack.  We were pleasantly surprised to find a) that it was indeed open, and b) that the inside was splendidly opulent – a kind of culinary ‘tardis’.

Pleasant surprise c) of course was the menu – most Asian restaurants have the usual suspects, i.e. the kormas, madrases, vindaloos, etc. plus a few specials.   The 29029 has a menu full of specials with the usual suspects added as a footnote if you really want them, and what specials they are!

We had delightful little crab cakes and mo-mo for starters.  Mo-mo are a fusion of Chinese dim-sum and Asian spiced meat so effectively tiny Indian dumplings.  I had seen them mentioned in a recent food program on TV but had never before encountered them in a restaurant.

Main courses were a divine Avocado-Stuffed Roasted Chicken Mosala and King Prawn Delight – 5 gi-normous king prawns in a Rajastani sauce flavoured with saffron and almonds and served with Lemon Rice and Parsnip shavings.  Absolutely stuffed, we didn’t even dare look at the dessert menu.

They’ve been there a few months and business they say is good.  Trust me, it would be well worth the trip to Dorset just to eat there.

As an aside, the taxi we took to our event the next morning cost a whopping £40 – a bit high we thought for a 5-6 mile journey.  However, when the return journey cost only £20 we asked our driver (same cab company different driver) why the morning’s run would have cost twice as much, and he said we had been robbed and very graciously refused to take any money from us, saying he would get his £20 from the other driver.  Full marks to him and many thanks.

We ate on Saturday evening in a lovely gastro-pub called ‘The Old Granary’ overlooking the river Frome (large prawns in garlic and fish and chips served in paper).  Also very good but without wishing them any disrespect, nothing like the same dining experience as Friday in The 29029 (which incidentally is the height of Mount Everest in feet in case you were wondering.)

So there you go – they say every cloud has a silver lining and if Hotels.com hadn’t fouled up with our booking, we would never have discovered The 29029, but not even that would be enough to persuade us to use Hotels,com again.

Thursday 25 June 2015

I went to a reception kind of thing last night – too many people in too small a space with no sound deadening so that every conversation roared off the ceiling like a waterfall.  There was background music playing and I was just about to ask them to turn it down when they turned it up – apparently the organisers had requested it!

So unwilling to endanger my vocal chords by yelling inane platitudes at any more people than necessary, I took over a small corner of the bar and got on with my crossword as I waited for the speeches, which were after all the point of the event.

Almost everyone was male; almost everyone ridiculously young (or looked it!); and almost everyone looked marginally less interesting than a stone on a beach.

A more mature-looking man (well, the grey, thinning hair could have been a wig!) came up to the bar next to me and ordered a drink.  In the way that one does at such events, I said, “Hello”.

He asked me what I did so I said I build sophisticated automation systems in Microsoft Excel using Visual Basic (VBA) with Access databases behind them, adding “and you?”

He replied with a flourish, “I am an Excel guru!”  “Wow!” I said, “does that mean you’re a consultant or the like?”  He replied that he was but spent most of his time just writing programs, and then he left, presumably finding me about as interesting as I did everyone else, or maybe I just represented the competition.

I had previously noticed an Asian looking lady in a white jacket wandering around looking nervously lost (though not sure how one could be in such a small space).  The next thing I knew, she came up to the bar next to me, still looking nervous and lost.

My appetite for mild conversation whetted, I asked if she was OK, adding that I was asking because she looked troubled.  She said she was.  I asked what she dd.  She said, in a very quiet voice so it was difficult to hear, that she was the Microsoft Marketing Manager whose event it was.

I asked hesitatingly whether in that case she should really be wandering around looking lost, or whether she should be rather strutting around as if she owned the place.  She smiled, left and carried on wandering around still looking lost.

A couple more clues later (in the crossword), and I had another visitation – this time from a delightful young woman who informed me that she was the only black person in the room and asked me why I thought that might be, adding that she found the testosterone flying around the room quite overwhelming.  I pointed out that were a number of Asians and some Orientals but had to agree that she indeed  appeared to be the only Afro-Caribbean.

She told me she was a stand-up comic looking for material.  It struck me that she could well be in the right place.  A brief life history later (hers, not mine) and she went off in the pursuit of material.

My final visitor was a man who turned out to be a financial planning consultant.  One has to wonder how they market these events.

When the speeches did finally materialise, we could not actually see the presenters as they had not thought to put in any kind of staging to raise them above those standing next to them, thus rendering them visible, and we could not really hear them as the PA wasn’t up to the job, so all in all, a bit of a waste of time.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering what all this has to do with food, the answer is nothing, which is precisely what we were given to eat, despite the invitation offering free food and drink.  Alcohol there was aplenty but nothing to soak it up, which struck me as somewhat irresponsible given that all these people had come straight from work and presumably had not eaten.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow

Wednesday 24 June 2015

In the way that one does, I was chatting to my hairdresser today about the Indian meal I cooked on Friday evening, and she told me she doesn’t cook Indian food – wouldn’t know how to begin!

I would imagine that’s a pretty common view – my expectation would be that many people are a little nervous of doing it, believing it to be difficult, and possibly afraid of getting it wrong.  Many others possibly do curry by making a ‘normal’ stew of some kind and just stirring in some curry powder, which is fair enough.

But I would urge anyone with a taste for spicy food to have a go as it is incredibly satisfying to get it right.  I shall return to the wherewithal for cooking Indian food in a future blog, but for now, do have a look at the recipe for using the MDH spice mix (or equivalent) and give it a go – I promise you will not be disappointed!

More on this subject later!

Tuesday 23 June 2015

Aubergine curry Chettinad
Aubergine Curry Chettinad

Still working my way through Friday night’s recipes and still with aubergine, generally hugely under-rated in the west as an ingredient in Asian food.  Most restaurants will have only a Brinjal Bhaji which does little justice to this wonderful vegetable (actually it’s apparently technically a fruit!)

Aubergines are native to the Indian subcontinent and are known as Baingan in the south.  The other word Brinjal rather bizarrely comes from the Portuguese (big influence in Goa – check out Vindaloo!)  Beringela (like Spanish Berenjena).

Chettinad is a village in the Tamil Nadu region (down at the bottom of the pointy bit on the right next to Kerala which is on the left) and well known for its excellent cuisine.

The area is particularly famous for chicken and crab dishes but I rather like this aubergine dish which is substantial enough for a main course.

Although it contains no meat, don’t think of it as only fit for vegetarians – it’s a lovely dish in its own right to be enjoyed by anyone.

Monday 22 June 2015

Badin Jaan
Badin Jaan

Badin Jaan is the signature dish of the Dum Pukht, one of the top restaurants in Mumbai.  It is served as a starter and if you can stack it a bit better than I did for my photo, looks very elegant.

I like it because a) it’s delicious, b) it’s vegetarian but so nice that your guests would hardly notice, no matter how much they like their meat, c) you don’t get it in any restaurants that I know of in the UK so has a bit of cachet, and d) it’s incredibly simple.

Before anyone asks, I have never eaten in the Dum Pukht, or even been to Mumbai.  I came across this dish on a cookery program in which an American TV chef went to India and, in the bizarre way everyone seems to these days, became embroiled in one of these odd cook-off type competitions so beloved of indifferent cookery programs.  The head chef at Dum Pukht made Badin Jaan while the American made a rather ordinary-looking aubergine-based pasta dish, and became quite incensed when he lost, seeming to just not understand India and its food.

I liked the look of the dish, found a recipe on the internet, tried it, and was not disappointed.  It now starts nearly every Indian meal we eat at home with guests.

Sunday 21 June 2015

Chicken Shashlik2
Chicken Shashlik

Apologies if anyone thought this Blog had, like Napoleon 200 years before,  met its Waterloo on Thursday – just have not been able to get time to sit at my PC and write anything.

On Friday evening we had friends coming for dinner and I spent the whole day cooking;  I had visions of being finished by mid-afternoon and then spending some time photographing and writing about what I had done, but, alas, it was not to be.  The cooking went right to the wire.

Managed to grab a few quick mugshots of some of the dishes just before we set about them but that’s about it.

My two favourite cooking ethnicities are Indian and Spanish, not necessarily in that order and not necessarily not.  Friday evening was to be Indian – more of Spanish later.  The plan was

The lamb curry Nalli Gosht, which I had not previously made, is meant to be made with lamb shaNKS but as I had some lamb chuNKS in the freezer I decided that that was close enough and so used them, following the same recipe.

The only other item I had not cooked before was the kulfi.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother with a dessert but recipe success with condensed milk-based, no churn ice cream led me to want to have a go.  Much simpler than I expected and, if I’m honest, much nicer, so I guess that answers the age-old question, “What’s it all about, Kulfi?”

When I plan a meal of this type, logistics is paramount – looking at the stages of each dish and planning when to do each so that the whole thing comes together at the end.  For example, I started the lamb and chicken marinating on Thursday evening and put them in the fridge overnight.

On Friday morning, I simmered the milks for the kulfi with cardamoms so they had plenty of time to cool before the next stage; made a mint dip and red onion salad (kachoomber) to allow them to mature; made the naan dough so it could rise splendidly; started soaking the rice; and made the tomato sauce for the Badin Jaan.

As soon as the  milk mixture was cool enough, I made the kulfi as it needs several hours to freeze.

Thereafter it was jus a case of knocking out each dish, getting it to a point  where it could be re-heated at the last minute prior to serving.  It helps to have lots of pans (leaving each partly completed dish in its pan till ready for the next stage of cooking) and small-to-medium-sized woks are best for this kind of food.

it will not surprise those that know me to learn that I use a spreadsheet for the logistics planning as I find it easier, but if you’re more comfortable with bits of paper or gifted enough to do it all in your head, then do it how it works best for you, but it is the secret of this kind of cooking.

Off soon to my favourite Chinese restaurant to meet up with the family and celebrate Father’s Day so no cooking today!

Thursday 18 June 2015

My other great passion (apart from food) is history and it’s not often one gets the chance to combine the two but today’s the day.

It may (or may not) have escaped your notice that on this day 200 years ago in 1815 near the village of Waterloo in Belgium, an army under the Duke Of Wellington defeated the mighty French army under none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, thereby sowing the seeds for Europe as we know it today.

So first things first, Happy Birthday, Waterloo!

Tonight’s supper is a dish supposedly created during the battle of Marengo in Italy on June 14, 1800. It was an important battle for Napoleon and led to the Austrians being driven out of Italy   Legend has it that he refused to eat before the battle and came off the battlefield halfway through, starving.

Apparently his chef created this dish from the only ingredients he was able to forage that day: a chicken, some bread, oil, garlic, tomatoes, eggs and, of all things, crayfish.  Napoleon devoured it hungrily, and then returned to the field to win the day triumphantly.  Being somewhat superstitious he came to associate this dish with victory, and supposedly insisted on having it prepared whenever he went into battle thereafter.  It is thus highly likely that he ate it on 17th June 1815, the night before Waterloo.

Napoleon was anything but a bon viveur and had little time for haute cuisine, eating most meals on the fly. He suffered throughout his whole life from notoriously bad digestion. However he liked eating this dish served on a bed of grilled bread and topped with a fried egg. Nowadays it is usually served without the bread, egg . . . . . . . . . . . . . or crayfish.

Chicken Marengo

Chicken Marengo

As a dish, it’s OK, but doesn’t do much credit to Napoleon’s chef.  Most reasonable cooks, faced with the same ingredients could well come up with something similar so it gives away nothing of the potential talent of the chef.

On the other hand if the requirement is to feed a hungry soldier, it’s spot-on and I guess that part of being a clever chef is to know your customer and cook accordingly.

Vive l’Empereur!

Wednesday 17 June 2015

Lasagna
Lasagna

I hope no-one has been waiting for this lasagne recipe promised since Monday, but if so, must be pretty hungry by now!

Lasagna is a perfect example of food componentisation – you take a few things that you’ve made previously (I.e. Bolognese sauce and Béchamel Sauce) and assemble them into a meal.

The most important thing to remember about lasagna is that it is a pasta dish not a meat dish and like all pasta dishes, the pasta is what matters. so in assembling it into your dish, make the layers of Bolognese as thin as you can so you get more layers of pasta, and you should be aiming for 4, 5 or even 6 layers.

Finish with a top layer of pasta.  It’s quite a nice effect to daub little nuggets of mozzarella over the top, before adding the béchamel sauce and parmesan.

When cooked it can rapidly become a family favourite and made like this, is infinitely cheaper (and nicer) than any shop-bought version.  If you have any left over, it freezes really well.

Tuesday 16 June 2015

Bechamel sauce

Béchamel Sauce

The second component for a Lasagna is a lovely, creamy, white sauce.  It’s amazing how many people buy this ready-made in supermarkets when it’s so easy and quick, not to mention CHEAP, to make.  And you can flavour it just the way you want it rather than the way they made it.

I normally just add a pinch of nutmeg to flavour it but by all means do it with onion, cloves and bay leaf (see Flavourings at the end of the recipe).  I also like to add something to make it a bit creamier and more velvety such a carton of ricotta cheese or mascarpone.  There are others, I know, who prefer to use a full cheese sauce.

This needs to be made just before you make the lasagne so it can be hot when poured on the top.

I’m hoping you can’t wait until tomorrow when  the rest of the Lasagna recipe will be revealed!

Monday 15 June 2015

Bolognese Sauce
Bolognese Sauce

One day last week my friend Olivera sent me a text message asking me to remind her how I make lasagna (I think I’m right in saying that the dish is lasagnA with an ‘a’ but the pasta sheets are lasagnE with an ‘e’, the latter being in Italian the plural of the former.  So I’m sure that’s clear as mud to everyone).

Lasagna is actually a really interesting dish which combines a couple of basic components which, once mastered, give access to a great many lovely dishes.

The first thing needed is a Bolognese Sauce.  As usual there are probably as many recipes for this as there are people who make it, and while there is no right or wrong way, merely different ways, some of them quite complex and involved, I like this method because of its simplicity.

I came across the recipe on an early program by Antonio Carluccio and he assured us, the viewers, that this is an authentic Bolognese Sauce, and I guess he should know!

One can use beef mince, pork mince or any combination of the two but he cautions against over-flavouring with too many other ingredients.  The single most important requirement is slow, gentle simmering for at least 3 hours.

That’s not to say that if you only cook it for half an hour it will be disgusting, because it is after all only mince, which cooks really quickly, and if half an hour is all you’ve got then so be it, but the secret of really good Italian cooking is thinking like a ‘nonna‘ or grandmother (not that I’m either Italian or a grandmother, or have/had a grandmother that is Italian).

These wonderful ladies can spend all day preparing a meal for the family and it’s not the ingredients that make their food taste so good (although it helps), it’s the love, care and attention to detail that goes into it.

An Italian friend of mine who spent a number of years when young living in Sicily with his nonna told me he cannot now eat Minestrone Soup as any he could now get would simply pale into insignificance when compared to his nonna’s magnum opus.

She would spend ages lovingly grating onions by hand, then cooking each vegetable individually (none of this chucking it all in one pot) and so on.

So to get the best from Italian food, just give it that most precious of ingredients, time!

Something else I’ve noticed when in Italy is that this kind of meat sauce is usually a lot runnier than we would typically make it in the UK so I’ve upped the quantity of tomatoes in my version of the recipe to achieve this.

Once you’ve made this you can have it with some pasta (but in Italy apparently, NEVER spaghetti). or save it for a couple of days to go into the lasagna I’ll be telling you about on Wednesday.

Sunday 14 June 2015

Potato Salad
Potato Salad

“Now, ” you might say, “Why would anyone need or want a recipe for potato salad?  Surely you just take a load of cooked potatoes and smother them in mayonnaise?”

Well, in a sense, I guess you do and if you’ve never known anything else, would probably think that’s OK, but with just a little more imagination, it can be made wonderful.

I often wonder what the mayonnaise brigade make of a shop-bought or professionally-made potato salad, which is always cleaner tasting and whiter than one with just mayo.  Its amazing the difference a drop of white wine vinegar and crème fraîche makes.

Greek Salad
Greek Salad

In the good old days a Greek salad was just cucumber, tomato and feta with a few olives scattered over, served with lashings of oil and vinegar (and probably still is in the small villages).

In these days of continuing affluence it is increasingly normal to find additional ingredients like onion and peppers.  Sometimes lettuce is added but it could be contended that the moment lettuce is added, the salad ceases to be Greek.

The best fresh salad I know is in a restaurant near the Mikrolimano (literally Little Harbour and it is just like the kind of little harbour you find on the islands) in Athens called ‘Doumbareis’ (assuming that in these days of Greek austerity it is still there!) which presents it as an ‘English’ salad (rather than their Greek variant) and uses ultra crisp gem lettuce as its basis, along with all the typical Greek components excepting feta.

And if you get it right, you can say it is a ‘feta-compli’

By the way, for those who might be interested, Porsche took 1st and 2nd places in the Le Mans 24 Hours

Saturday 13 June 2015

Quiche Lorraine
Quiche Lorraine

Second weekend in June means only one thing for me – it’s Le Mans!

If you don’t know, the Le mans 24 Hours is a motor race that starts on Saturday afternoon and ends on Sunday afternoon, 24 hours later, so winning is not just about being the fastest, it’s also about being able to keep going.  So as you go to bed on Saturday night it’s worth thinking about these drivers hurtling on into the night.  Actually, they don’t drive for 24 hours as each team has 3 or 4 drivers (pilotes in French) who take it in turns to keep their machines going.

It’s the only sporting event I watch on TV in any year and because of the wonderfully memorable weekends I spent there many years ago, for me it says picnic – actually not just picnic, but French picnic.  While that means French bread and pâté/cheese, it also means that most French of picnic fare, Quiche Lorraine (not, as some people apparently think, pronounced Quickie!)

It’s been my intention to make one of these for as long as I can  remember so I thought that today should be the day!

This recipe originated, I believe, with Rachel Khoo and I can’t believe how easy it was, not to mention how wonderfully delicious.

As I write the cars have been going for about 8½ hours, the fastest of them getting up to about 330 kph in places so the race is certainly no picnic.

 Friday 12 June 2015

Coronation Chicken
Coronation Chicken

While I have for a long time now cooked all my own food, the decision on what to eat on any given day was always purely random and based on a whim, often something that took my eye in the supermarket or even what was reduced or on offer.

But recently I decided to take a more strategic approach to what I eat, for example not having red meat more than once a week (and that includes things like mince and sausages).   So the diet needs to be mainly chicken, fish and/or vegetables.

Eating lots of chicken is all very well but while plain roast or grilled chicken can get a bit tedious after a while, there are many different and interesting ways to prepare it with each new recipe seemingly more exciting than the last.  While, like everyone, I have a few ‘staples’ – dishes I cook on a regular basis – it is always fun and interesting to try something new.

When you buy chicken, you should always buy a whole bird. The price of chicken virtually doubles every time someone in a shop touches it, so while a whole chicken might be £x per kg, chicken breast might be £2x and diced, probably £3x or even £4x. Since every chicken, by definition, includes 2 breasts, and the whole bird costs the same as (or even less than) 2 breasts, that means you get everything else for free, i.e. 2 legs, 2 wings and a carcase, all of which can be cooked straight away or frozen for later.

Never throw the carcase away (whether raw or roasted); pop it in a pot, cover it with cold water and boil it for an hour or so, turning and mashing it down now and again so that as much of it as possible is in the water. When cooked, drain it thoroughly and glean as much meat as you can from the carcase.  This can be the basis of a free meal – soup, pie, etc.  and chicken stock freezes really well.

If you don’t like touching the raw chicken, wear rubber gloves, but whether or not you do, ALWAYS wash thoroughly afterwards as raw chicken may contain some quite harmful bacteria.

I try to have a roast chicken in the fridge at all times as it makes for easy lunching and healthy snacking, should the need arise.

On the subject of lunching, one of my favourites is Coronation Chicken.  First made in 1953 for the Queen’s Coronation (never!), the most surprising thing I find about that is the availability of curry powder in 1953!

Coronation Chicken Sandwich

Coronation Chicken is something I’ve made for a long time now with my recipe variyng over time and this is its present manifestation.  I love it for lunch in a sandwich but it is equally wonderful as a salad, and particularly good heaped on top of half an avocado. Cut everything very finely and use it to fill vol au vents or little pastry cases for beautiful canapés, or pile it on thinly sliced French bread for a lovely tapas dish.

I used to travel a lot on business and, in particular spent about a year to-ing and fro-ing to Wisconsin in the USA. During one visit to Milwaukee, I had occasion to spend a pleasant summer weekend and was invited to a barbecue on the Sunday. As is my wont, I decided to make something to bring along and decided on Coronation Chicken on the basis that no-one else would bring it and I should be able to obtain everything I needed locally.

While there, one of my colleagues commented to me, ”Ken, the chicken salad is awesome!”. I was surprised because I’ve never really thought of Coronation Chicken as just ‘chicken salad’, but I guess it is really.

Again, simplicity itself to make (with a few specialist ingredients) and a sure-fire hit every time.

Thursday 11 June 2015

Chicken Shashlik
Chicken Shashlik

Chicken shashlik is a great dish if you fancy something a bit spicy but are trying to lose weight – lots of taste and highly satisfying, but very low in carbohydrates and fat, being just meat and vegetables.  It is also incredibly easy

Shashlik is actually just a Middle Eastern/Eastern European word meaning skewer ( like Shish in Turkish or Souvla in Greek) and traditionally the meat and vegetables would be threaded onto skewers and cooked on the barbecue (always an option) but I find it more convenient to use a hot frying pan for everyday use.

This recipe is based on what is served up in Asian restaurants, often sizzling on a hot plate and generally either chicken or lamb.

GingerGarlic

Incidentally, when cooking in this way, I tend to use ginger/garlic paste (above) instead of the fresh products, which I would normally use.  My understanding is that this is what is used in Asian homes (they certainly seem to sell enough in Asian shops) and if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me.  Use roughly a heaped teaspoonful per clove of garlic and cm of ginger.

Ginger paste and ginger paste are also available separately and useful standbys, although if only one is required I would tend to use the real thing.

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Pulao Rice
Pulao rice

If, like me, your impression of pulao rice in a restaurant is that it’s basically boiled rice flecked with a bit of food colouring, for which you pay a substantial premium. then you need to try this out.

Imagine for a moment rice so good that you just want to shovel it into your mouth as fast as you can, ignoring everything else on the table – that’s MY kind of pulao rice; that’s this kind of pulao rice; that’s a proper pulao rice.

Coming from Kashmir in the north of India where breads are the more usual staple, it is flavoured with the delicate fragrances of cinnamon, cardamoms and cloves and lightly coloured with turmeric (saffron infused in a little milk is better but MUCH more expensive – did you know that saffron is  the most expensive substance on earth?  If you buy a typical supermarket ‘jar’ containing an almost unbelievable 0.4 gm for, say, £3.99 that works out at £99.75 for 10 gm or a whopping £9,975 per kg (Yes, that’s just £25 short of £10,000 per kg!) .  There are cheaper brands and it certainly gets much cheaper if you buy larger quantities; on eBay you can for example buy 12g for£18.99 which makes it by comparison an absolute snip at a mere £1,582.50 per kg).

Anyway, as I said, saffron is better but you may need a second mortgage!

Most important part of making this is thoroughly washing/soaking the rice to remove excess starch so that, when cooked, it is soft and loose.

You can also add nuts (e.g. cashews) and /or raisins to it, but if you do, just make sure you remove all the whole spices first as these are not so nice if bitten into.

Do try this and you’ll never have boiled rice with curry again!

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Chicken curry
Chicken Curry (Quick)

A couple of years ago I was visiting an Indian friend when she invited me to stay for dinner.  Well, you don’t often get the chance to have a home-cooked, ‘proper’ Indian curry so I readily accepted.

It was fabulous and I asked her if she would mind letting me have the recipe.  Imagine my shock when she took a small blue packet off a shelf and said that the recipe was on the back of the packet!  This was my first introduction to packet curry mixes.

Many years ago I had shared a flat with a couple of Indians who taught me how to make a really good, albeit basic, curry using garlic, ginger, ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, chilli, etc.  From that I had developed a passionate interest in food from the Indian sub-continent and now make many different dishes from many different regions and they are as different from each other as, say, Spanish food is from Italian – they use many of the same ingredients but they assemble it quite differently.

My impression had been that all Asians cooked their own curries from scratch, mixing their own spices so this packet spice mix was a bit of a revelation to me.

Anyway I decided that I must have some.  It wasn’t hard to find and in fact many supermarkets now stock this kind of product.  If you can’t find it there, then your local Asian grocer will have this or something similar.  Whatever you buy, just follow the instructions on the packet.  My recipe is just that – the instructions off the MDH packet in a size that can be read without a magnifying glass.

While you’re at it, pick up some Kashmiri Mirch (also known as Deggi Mirch) – this is a vivid red but quite mild chilli powder so you can afford to be generous with it, ensuring a rich red colour, without taking the roof off your mouth.

MDH

The MDH Chicken Masala makes a very quick curry that’s at least as good as you can get in a restaurant at a fraction of the price, so a very useful standby, to which I resort frequently.  And if you’re not comfortable with having lots of individual spices around, the use for which you’re not sure of, it’s an easy solution to making a good curry.

There are a whole range of different spice mixes for different curries and they’re very cheap so have a good look at what’s available and buy a couple of others to try as well.

Get some and impress your family/friends

Monday 8 June 2015

Barbecue beans
Barbecue Beans

I’ve long had a fascination with barbecue beans, a side dish commonly available in hamburger restaurants, and a kind of baked beans on steroids.   They are available in tins from Heinz (usually small tins but I note recently that they now have large tins presumably for the summer season) but I’ve always had a hankering to make them.

I’ve tried various ways from simply squeezing bottled barbecue sauce into ordinary baked beans (which is actually OK) to doing the whole soak/cook/make thing with dried haricot beans (this weekend for Olivera’s barbecue yesterday result shown above), which was good but took an astonishing 8 hours of cooking to get the beans soft enough to eat.

Given that, my preferred method is to use the attached recipe but with tinned beans instead of dried ones – just make the sauce, tip in 3-4 drained tins of beans (and do drain them – you do not want to eat the liquid from the tins) and let them cook for an hour or so to let the sauce develop (longer is better for the sauce).  Haricot beans are traditional but I quite like using a larger bean, either cannellini or pinto, which have a nice colour.

Also at the barbecue yesterday I produced some of my recently discovered no-churn ice cream and was asked to put the recipe on this site.  I’m passionate about vanilla ice cream but less so about the palaver of using a double boiler to make an egg custard which is then churned/frozen to make an (admittedly) lovely ice cream so imagine my delight when I found a wonderfully easy alternative.

Do try this as it really is easy, produces a fabulous result, and is much cheaper than buying good-quality ready-made ice cream.  For a splash of extra luxury have a go at the salted caramel version – also very easy and nothing like as daunting as it sounds.

Saturday 6 June 2015
As it’s the 70th anniversary of D-Day I’ve taken the liberty of adding a poem dedicated to this momentous event – BLOODY OMAHA

Russian Salad
Russian Salad

I hate to think I might be starting another Cold War, but next time you’re tempted to make that great American classic Potato Salad, try a Russian Salad instead.

On a couple of occasions recently I have served this up as part of a meal to people who have never tried it, and both times at least one person at the table has declared it their favourite food.

There’s something perfect about Russian Salad as it seems to tick every food box – it’s easy to eat (not quite nursery food but heading in that direction); highly nutritious; lots of fibre; incredibly yummy, and seriously moreish (very difficult to stop eating it); and from the cook’s point of view, ever so simple.

It’s eaten all over Eastern Europe, hugely popular in Spain, whence it was carried to the New World, so appears all over Latin/South America.  In a Tapas Bar where I meet a good friend every few weeks, I observed to a waitress that this was the only tapas bar I know NOT to have Russian Salad on the menu.  Well, within a few weeks it was!  Initially they made it with not just tuna but mashed up ‘boquerones’ (marinated fresh anchovies) as well.  I was not keen on that and so next time we went, I declined the Russian Salad because of the boquerones, only to be told that they no longer added them as they themselves thought it didn’t work.

There are as many recipes for this dish as there are people who make it (and I understand from a recent Russian cookery program on TV that EVERY Russian family eats it and EVERY Russian cook has their own recipe.  Interestingly (well, I think so), in Russia, it is known as Olivier Salad since it was created by the famous Belgian chef (not French à la Poirot!) Lucien Olivier, although his version apparently included grouse, tongue, caviar, crayfish tails and smoked duck, which makes my recipe but a pale shadow of his.  At one time it was the most popular dish in Tsarist Moscow!

My friendly Spanish waitress told me that as long as it contains potatoes, eggs and mayonnaise, it can reasonably be called Russian salad, everything else being optional.

I couldn’t recommend having a go at it more highly – it’s fabulous.

Thursday 4 June 2015

Western Omelette CW
Western omelette

For cowboys, apparently the big difference between being on the trail with the ‘Chuck’ wagon and being back on the ranch was the availability of eggs.  Not surprisingly chickens were not taken with them on the trail so while they may have had some eggs for the first few days of a roundup, after they had gone, the diet would consist of the inevitable beans with whatever  the cook could knock up – this presumably being the difference between a good cook and an indifferent one.

But back on the ranch and all that changed with all kinds of exciting goodies turning up on the table, not the least of which was this kind of omelette containing easily available ingredients.  Very much like a Spanish tortilla, it ticked lots of boxes like delicious, nutritious, easy, filling, etc. – many cowboys would be able to make it themselves.

For me it’s a useful standby which can be quickly and easily made if there’s not a lot of anything else available.  Depending on how hungry you are, either scoff it straight from the pan with ketchup squeezed over it or turn it out onto a plate for a more genteel approach.

While the recipe given uses bacon, onion, peppers, potatoes and chilli, use more or less whatever is available, omitting meat if vegetarian.  It never fails to delight.

Wednesday 3 June 2015 Piri-piri chicken
Piri-Piri chicken

My dear friend Olivera is having a barbecue on Sunday to celebrate her daughter’s birthday.  I’ve done a couple of barbecues this year so far and had told Olivera that one of my favourite ways of doing chicken for a barbecue is piri-piri.  She said she liked the sound of it and asked if I used a bottled piri-piri sauce, to which I replied that I (of course) did not.

I found this recipe on the internet (can’t remember exactly where) but it knocks spots off any other piri-piri chicken I’ve ever had.  It’s dead easy, very quick and wonderful as part of a barbecue or just served for supper with some chips.

Ordinarily I would send Olivera the recipe but I decided on this occasion to dedicate the next page of my blog to her and her barbecue and place this recipe on there so she can find it any time she needs it (as she has a habit of losing the recipes I give her!) .

The ‘Blog’ Blog

10 June 2015

Parent/child relationship between pages working well and, being multi-layered probably going to suffice for my needs

8 June 2015

Still not cracked menus but found that pages can be structured into a hierarchy by adding a ‘Parent’  so for the moment this will suffice.  I shall revisit menus if, as and when I run out f hierarchical capacity doing it this way .

6 June 2015

Tried adding Menus to side bar (following directions in a web tutorial) – everything happens as it should except that menu doesn’t appear on the side bar.  Back to drawing board!

After menus, need to address Twitter and Facebook issues looking at marketing Blog

4 June 2015

Today’s post was the easiest so far – obviously getting the hang of things.  Haven’t yet got to grips with menus – saving that for another day, but we’ll get there

3 June 2015

Getting the hang of it now – it’s a bit like trying to use a map to get somewhere, the precise location of which you’re not exactly sure of.

OK with the basics of blogging and setting up pages now.  Also OK with creating links to other pages, but interestingly it seems that in order to create a link to a specific part of a page, it is necessary to do a bit of programming, which I’ve managed but may be beyond the average blogger (not suggesting I’m an above-average blogger, but I do know how to write programs, if not in the language of websites).

But I think it’s falling into place now and while, to use my analogy of a map, I’m still not 100% sure where I need to end up, I am at least getting clearer on the direction I should be going in!

Struggling to get my Blog to open up where I want it to.   The default is the last blog posted (not updated  but created).  I found some instructions on the internet on how to set up a Home page but not quite where I want it to be yet.

I tried setting up a couple of menus and when I revisit them, they’re there but haven’t yet figured out how to access them from the site.

Also managed to set up and apply Categories/Tags to my posts

Onwards and upwards (as my English teacher used to say)

2 June 2015

Having previously used Microsoft FrontPage for my websites (the old-fashioned DIY type of web software, I was expecting great things of WordPress which I understood to be an automated, easy-as-pie, sit-back-and- relax, only-take-you-an-hour type of web builder, but oh boy, am I disappointed?

I thought first of all that I would install the product on my own PC (as I did with FrontPage), create my pages (as I did with FrontPage), then upload them to my hosting provider (as I did with FrontPage).

WRONG!  Couldn’t figure out how to install it – managed to download the programs into a folder, but with no guidance as to what to do next, didn’t manage to get it installed.  Being a Scot I took a leaf out of Robert the Bruce’s book (except I’m not totally sure books as we know them had been invented then) and tried 3 times but unfortunately my spider didn’t make it (if you’re baffled by the historical references look them up – they’re interesting!).

Decided to give up on WordPress and try a couple of other similar products; ditto with those – couldn’t get them installed and judging by the correspondence on the internet, I’m in good company.

So decided to go with the flow and use WordPress (again) on my host, which proved easy enough.

Got Blog up and running, got a recipe onto a ‘Recipes’ page, managed to add an image (Yum!) and a Link (which used to be called a Hyperlink) but not quite yet in the way I would like in that I managed a link to a page but not to an item on a page so shall have to do a bit more work on that.

Now started this second parallel Blog so let’s see what tomorrow brings!

 

We’re off (but not to see the wizard, one of which I could use right now)


Monday 1 June 2015

The hardest part of doing anything is usually starting it – knowing how to get going.  Once that’s done, it’s generally pretty straightforward, but with regards to kicking it off, as the great bard once said, ‘Aye, there’s the rub’.

Another famous, oft-quoted wordsmith (among other things), Mao Tse Tung, famously said ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’, which I suppose is fine if you’re going for a walk (albeit a very long one), but doesn’t appear to help much in starting to write something in a way one’s never tried before (i.e. this blog!).

But anyway, in exploring the issues in relation to getting this off the ground, I have effectively done so, but only in a modest way – in terms of a journey of a thousand miles, perhaps only halfway up the garden path, perhaps not the best analogy.

Which brings me to cooked chicken, or to be more precise, left-over roast chicken – something a great many families must surely have on a Monday.  The problem with a chicken is of course that the poor thing doesn’t amount to much to start with, so not much chance of doing an awful lot with the remains of a decent Sunday lunch.

But let me introduce Stockmeyer.  One day a number of years ago while perusing the shelves in my local Waitrose (‘Sad! Sad!’ I hear) I came across interestingly-shaped cans of soup.  They were kind of barrel-shaped with the swollen-waisted appearance of what we now recognise as a ‘traditional’ soup kettle.

As a Scot and so automatically a proponent of soups, I looked at the cans with interest.  There were a couple of varieties but the one that caught my eye was called ‘Chunky Potato Soup’.  When I tried it, I found it to be a thick, creamy, chicken-based potato soup with vegetables – heavenly!

Cheap they were not, but this soup became a regular part of my diet for a while until one day, horror of horrors, I went to top up my depleted supplies to find the supermarket shelf filled with something else.  Stockmeyer was gone.  It did pop up subsequently in a couple of other supermarkets, albeit briefly, and then nothing nowhere – it was gone, verschwunden! However, much as it was to my taste, it is of course entirely possible that I was the only person buying it – or at least in a sufficiently small minority to remove the justification for any supermarket stocking it.

Not to be defeated, I decided to have a go at making it to see if I could get even close to replicating its creamy sensuousness. It didn’t take long to get on top of it and I reckon that what I now make would stand up well to the original.

And this is where the left-over chicken comes in.  You don’t need lots of meat, just the carcase to boil up to make the soup base, and then whatever oddments of chicken you can glean from it.  At a push, use chicken bouillon.

It’s anything but difficult, doesn’t take a long time to put together and, served with some crusty bread, provides a wonderfully nourishing, comfort-filled, cheap-as-chips, one-pot feast for the family.

Go on, give it a try

Potato soup
Chunky Potato Soup

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