Pressing the 'reset' button

To all intents and purposes, we live in the countryside. We may be but a short hop to the nearest town and only an hour from London but it is large fields and big skies that form our surroundings.

But sometimes it is easy to overlook that. Or at least develop a complacency.

As silly as it sounds, occasionally I forget that we are living life in the slow lane complete with vegetable patches, miles of hedgerows and an abundance of wildlife all around us.

Perhaps it is something to do with the weather. During the spring, summer and even into autumn I spent a significant amount of time outside. Digging over the soil to make room for vegetables. Sat in the sun eating a fresh salad for lunch. Lying on the lawn and writing. Picking blackberries from beyond the sharp thorns of the brambles or scrumping apples from the abandoned orchard next door.

But come the chill of winter, the rain, the frost and the wind, spending time outside has not been an appealing option. The world seems to have narrowed to the point that, now that January is here, the only thing that really exists are the four walls of my office.

Then something will happen to remind me why we moved here in the first place, something presses my reset button and allows me to open my eyes for a brief moment and actually see.

I was in the kitchen making some breakfast when I heard a faint knocking at the back door. Too quiet to be a neighbour or the postman I looked out of the window to see that the hens’ run was empty.



Sure enough, there they were, the three of them waiting by the back door for handful of something tasty – dried fruit or some seeds.

I sent them on their way with a handful of chopped dates whilst I made do with a toasted hot cross bun and a mug of steaming tea, consumed in the garden with the sun just beginning to peep over the skeletal trees. Certainly worth braving the cold for.

Meringue

Now that we have more eggs than we know what to do with we can afford to start getting a little more adventurous when it comes to all matters ova.

Of course, a still warm egg brought in from a frost kissed garden is at its best cracked into a pan sizzling with a shiver of hot oil or poached in gently boiling water but there is so much more that can be done with them.

Dessert features rarely on the menu, especially midweek when we tend to crash out with a bowlful of something tasty and gorge on one of many US television series. More often than not a handful of dried fruit is enough to dispel any sugar hankerings that might follow a meal.

But last week we had some friends over for dinner and felt that offering a plate of dates or prunes might not go down too well. So while I was busy faffing over the main course (venison with port and lingonberry sauce) my girlfriend set to making a crème brulee – a recipe that we were both familiar with but neither of us had cooked.

It was a real success (despite the lack of a blowtorch) and the egg yolks gave it a gorgeous richness, both in flavour and colour. But as with any custard based dessert we were left with three surplus egg whites. Needless to say, they didn’t stay surplus for very long.

Feeling little desire for an egg white omelette (why? Why? Why?), I got busy with the whisk trying to create a voluptuous cloud of voluminous egg whites to which I could add a significant amount of sugar. After a mere three minutes I was sweating and my wrist aching thanks to the overly enthusiastic whisking method I had foolishly chosen.

Time to dust off the Kenwood. It made short work of the egg whites and within only a couple of minutes they’d reached the desired consistency. In went the sugar, a mere dribble of vanilla extract and the slightest drop of vinegar (I think I remember reading something about vinegar helping to set meringues).
After spooning them onto a tray they went into a low oven for about an hour. Time up and the oven was turned off and the little nuggets of sweetness were left to cool. Hot sugar really hurts.

Once cool, I left half as they were and dusted the remainder with a little finely ground cinnamon to add a slightly warm note. They were exactly as meringues should be – a bursting, crunchy exterior shell, that exploded as you bit into it, housing a tooth-achingly sweet and sticky inside that clung tenaciously to my molars. Simple, sweet and ever-so-slightly sinful.



P.S. Couldn’t possibly post without including this little joke (which should be read in a Scottish accent)

A man walks into a baker’s shop, points to the counter and says:
‘Is that a cake or a meringue?’
To which the baker replies:
‘Ai, you’re quite right, it’s a cake.’

Could you eat an elephant?

Occasionally there is a metaphorical planetary alignment of the sort that can make you exceedingly and effortlessly happy. The best of these are also staggeringly simple and serve to reinforce your general outlook on life. Eating a freshly barbecued cob of corn with my girlfriend whilst sat on a piece of driftwood, with sand between my toes and the Andaman Sea easing into the distance was one such example from last summer.

Other times, these moments of simple happiness are closer to home and more easily attainable as shall be witnessed, no doubt, on Wednesday evening.

I’ve written much about a chap called Fergus Henderson, a rather eccentric London based chef (and qualified architect) who has single-handedly managed to transform the culinary landscape in this country by making offal and other parts of animals ‘beyond the fillet’ not only accessible but also desirable and uber-chic (you don’t see a Franco-Germanic verbal alliance like that every day).



(Photo taken from New York Magazine)

I own both his books (not just wonderful cookbooks, but also excellent reading material) and am hoping to make a pilgrimage to his restaurant at some point in the near future. In short, he is a hero.

Secondly, I have a slightly bizarre penchant for the unusual and an adventurous palate, especially when it comes to the exotic. I am fully aware that we are unwillingly penned in by our own cultural sensibilities and the food we grew up with is the food that feels comfortable and right. In an effort to try and side-step this culinary prison, I make every effort to try things that sound odd, strange or even disgusting.

Somewhat inspired by intrepid adventurers like Anthony Bourdain (my other great food hero and something of a role-model) I make every effort to put aside my own prejudices and chew down the unusual with an open mind and receptive mouth. As a result I love seeing others do the same.

So it was with great glee and delight when I discovered that Channel Four, here in the UK, will be showing a new series entitled ‘Could You Eat an Elephant?’ in which Fergus Henderson and Jeremy Lee (head chef at the Blueprint Café) travel the world in search of the foods that make us pull a face like a child eating Marmite covered cabbage at the mere mention of them. Maggot infested cheese, dog, horse and snake heart all feature on the menu at some point, not to mention the eponymous elephant.

Those expecting voyeuristic simplicity, of the sort seen in ‘I’m a Celebrity’s’ infamous bush-tucker challenge, will (hopefully) be disappointed. This should be anthropology in action with two intelligent (if slightly eccentric) characters at the helm who are trying to find their culinary ceiling as well as taking a serious look at the culinary norms of cultures and societies all over the world.

A planetary alignment of the sort that is making me as excited as an obese child at a Pizza Hut lunchtime buffet.

Could You Eat an Elephant? Channel 4, Wednesday 14th January, 10pm.

Which came first?

A few months back we bought two chickens, Marx and Eggels in the hope that they would provide us with a near endless supply of fresh, delicious free range eggs. Sure enough by the end of November, just as we were giving up hope that either would ever provide us with anything other than vague entertainment, Marx started to lay and we have had an egg every day since then.

The excitement of opening the hatch every morning and finding a perfectly formed egg sitting atop a pile of straw hasn’t dulled. Nor has the novelty of eating them freshly poached, happy in the knowledge that they have travelled no furter than ten metres in their journey from chicken to plate.

But it soon became obvious that Eggels was something of a late developer. Her comb hadn’t grown, she didn’t seem to be putting on any weight and she spent a long time seemingly imitating John Cleese doing a Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. We contacted Cambridge Poultry, where we bought our two revolutionary chicks, and the conclusion was that we had invested in an ‘odd-bod hen’ who didn’t seem destined to lay anything other than epic amounts of chicken poop.

As such, we were offered a replacement, free of charge. Perhaps replacement is the wrong word because there was never any question that Eggels would be returned to sender or end up in the pot. She’d become a pet quite rapidly and we couldn’t even consider the possibility of turning her into food. We’d just let her peck her way around the garden, enjoy our hospitality and generally live the good life.

Just after Christmas we finally got round to picking up chicken number three, Poulet, or Pou, for short. She’s a feisty little chick with a revolutionary zeal stronger even than the other two. So much so that I’ve nicknamed her Henin (in order to keep up the Communist theme).



But then something odd happened. I noticed this:



An egg sitting merrily in our recycling box. I had no idea how long it had been there - whether it was freshly laid or if it had survived three or four frosts but either Marx was laying more than her fair share or Eggels, spurred into action by the threat of a new arrival, had finally started to fulfil her destiny.

And I wasn’t sure which until yesterday when I looked out of the office window and saw Eggels sitting in her newspaper nest looking very pleased with herself, something distinctly egg-shaped underneath her feathery bottom. After she’d got bored and flown off to try and find some bugs to eat I went out to confirm my suspicions and there it was. An Eggels egg.

It may have taken a while, but it was definitely worth the wait.

With Pou due to start laying in the next few weeks I dare say that we will have more than enough to keep us in delicious breakfasts with plenty left over to make sweet tasty items like crème brulee and cinnamon meringues (more on those to follow). I might just have to start baking…

Welcome to 2009

Happy New Year to you all. Christmas came and went with a rapidity not seen since Usain Bolt jogged to victory in Beijing. Then 2008 limped into the vast unshakeable void of history giving way to a pristine and virginal ’09 just waiting to have its clean slate sullied by time and memories. Naturally, food and drink were consumed with appropriate abandon.

But now, as we rub the sleep from our eyes and wake, blinking, into the new year, reality once again begins to claw at our consciousness and offers us another twelve months to approach, each in our own inimitable way.

It will be an interesting one, that’s for sure, no doubt full of surprises, disappointments, excitement, boredom, smiles, tears, peaks and troughs. But that’s what makes everything so exciting – were it not for the lack of certainty, life would be a long, dull ride – much like driving up the A1.

One thing, however, is certain: we all have to eat. And with the full reality of the current economic malaise due to bite hard some time within the next couple of months, it looks like we are all going to be eating in more often and living on more beans, seeds and pulses than we have become accustomed to.

Say goodbye to midweek fillet steak and pork loins and hello to skirt and belly. Time to wave a farewell to all those exotic must have ingredients that have been damn near rammed down our throats by chefs and pretentious foodies for the last decade and welcome to the stage low-cost, low carbon and local alternatives.

In my book this is no bad thing and a food philosophy I have been trying to embrace for quite some time. There are many things I won’t miss and many more that I am very excited about seeing on menus again thanks to the increasing popularity of local shops. Yes, the supermarket may still rule the vast majority of households in this country but try asking the student behind the meat counter for half a kilo of beef skirt, a pork knuckle or a brace of oven ready rabbits and you will likely get a look more vacant than a soiled nightclub toilet at 2am.

Request these from the butcher, however, and you will be welcomed in with open arms and embraced like an old friend. You can apply the same thing to the greengrocer, the fishmonger or even the baker (although don’t forget to substitute meat requests for the appropriate items, else you’ll just look silly).

I hear the sound of a thousand over-priced restaurants closing their doors for the last time. The silence of self-important ‘food fanatics’ who only buy their flour from a convent deep in the Appalachian Mountains is blissful. No more shall we be made to feel nutritionally inferior, like a Victorian street child, just because we can’t afford to buy the latest must-have kitchen ingredient according to the weekend newspapers’ food editors.

So, here’s to 2009 – a year of health, frugality, simplicity, locality and appreciating the little things, the things that really matter. And for that I am deeply, excruciatingly, tinglingly, ball-bouncingly excited.