Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Loafing about
I did it, I finally did it. I baked bread. Proper tasty, delicious bread with a light and fluffy interior and an incredible crust. I managed to exorcise my demons and banish the bread gremlins to the proverbial dustbin (along with the many corpses of failed loaves past) so from now on we’ll be able to have the freshest bread whenever we want. Which is a good job really because it seems as if I won’t be able to afford to buy it for much longer considering the price of bread appears to be rising faster than the one I baked this morning. So to every failed loaf, every sunken effort, every chewy, dense and inedible example, each loaf that dripped with vindictive scorn as it steadfastly refused to behave in the manner in which it should – you’re toast. Metaphorically, at least.
Friday, 9 May 2008
Making a right (and left) pig's ear of it
There is a truly wonderful cookbook called ‘Nose to Tail Eating’ by a chap called Fergus Henderson who is the chef/owner of the famed St. John restaurant in London. His philosophy runs as follows ‘Nose to tail eating means it would be disingenuous to the animal not to make the most of the whole beast; there is a set of delights, textural and flavoursome, which lie beyond the fillet’ (Henderson, F. 1999). And he is right. Within the pages of this delightful monochrome tome are such gastronomic adventures as Duck’s Neck Terrine, Pot Roast Brisket and Pheasant and Pig’s Trotter Pie with Suet Crust all of which will grace our table at some point. By the time I finally bought it I felt as if I’d already read it several times over due to the number of times I’d flicked through it in bookshops and so when I learned that there was a follow up on the way I was overjoyed, and with chapter titles as gloriously simple and intriguing as ‘Pig’s Head’ how could a budding foodie adventurer fail to get excited?
The first step was to procure some of the more interesting ingredients that you won’t find behind the butcher’s counter at Waitrose and so a trip to somewhere with slightly less squeamish and sanitised attitudes to food was in order. Cambridge’s Mill Road is a multicultural melee of shops, cafés, bars and restaurants with Middle Eastern eateries squeezed next to Chinese supermarkets, sheesha bars and independent bookshops. Consequently, it is one of my favourite places. At the far end of the road is an Asian supermarket where, towards the rear of the shop tucked behind the brightly packaged noodles, fresh vegetables, Thai curry sauces and frozen seafood, is a freezer section for bold gastronome. Hand written signs, predominantly in Cantonese, offer tantalising clues as to the contents of each section. A block of what looked like locusts turned out to be a hefty chunk of about a hundred duck tongues, next to those a lurid red mass was labelled simply as ‘lung’ and there was no mistaking the bag of chicken feet or the, now standard, trotters. It wasn’t all like Dr. Frankenstein’s deep freeze – liver and oxtail were also sat happily alongside the more exotic cuts – but it was the pig’s ears that I was most interested in. So with a degree of what could be termed, in hindsight, foolhardy hubris I bought four, each the size of a large hand. The small Asian man at the till looked at me with a mixture of surprise and delight that this farang was willing to explore the gastronomic delights that, in the words of Fergus ‘lie beyond the fillet’. Granted, I wasn’t jumping straight into pig’s uterus or cow tendon, but it is still quite a step to go from juicy, tender sirloin to the slightly less juicy and more cartilaginous ear.
On returning home I proudly showed my purchases to my girlfriend who was strangely excited by them, although less sure as to why I bought four. I struggled to find an answer that sounded reasonably coherent and sensible so I shrugged and muttered something about how they ‘might be really nice’. She looked less than convinced but left me to carry on regardless.
Step one was to wash them. Thoroughly. Why? Because, and I wish I was joking when I say this, because pigs get earwax too and no-one, not even the Chinese, eats earwax. Once they’d been completely cleaned they went into a pot, complete with a healthy selection of stock vegetables, onion, garlic and a bay leaf, to cook for three or four hours over a low heat. The smell was good, not unlike trotters – distinctly porky with a homely warmth added by the veggies and as they cooked I was feeling more confident about the prospect of giving them a go and perhaps even getting through all four. Eventually.
After four hours cooking they become well and truly floppy so they were left to cool whilst we decided what to do with them next. Our new bible, the River Cottage Cookbook, suggests barbecuing an entire ear and eating it with tartare sauce but after careful consideration we felt that this might be little too adventurous for first timers so we went for the ‘slice, smother in butter, mustard and breadcrumbs and bake’ option. After half an hour they’d taken on a tempting golden brown colour and occasionally jumping off the tray so the consensus was that they were ready. And they were good. Not so good that I felt the need to eulogise about them, taking a plate of them into the street with a megaphone and attempting to convince innocent passers by that the crunch of porcine ear is a treat to behold, but good in a way that they were akin to slightly tougher pork scratchings – crunchy, salty and with a definite piggy taste. Of course the generous helping of pungent aioli helped and we didn’t manage to chow down all four but they remain in the freezer, ready to be roasted and passed off onto unsuspecting guests as a gourmet treat. You might not be able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear but you can certainly make a tasty snack.
The first step was to procure some of the more interesting ingredients that you won’t find behind the butcher’s counter at Waitrose and so a trip to somewhere with slightly less squeamish and sanitised attitudes to food was in order. Cambridge’s Mill Road is a multicultural melee of shops, cafés, bars and restaurants with Middle Eastern eateries squeezed next to Chinese supermarkets, sheesha bars and independent bookshops. Consequently, it is one of my favourite places. At the far end of the road is an Asian supermarket where, towards the rear of the shop tucked behind the brightly packaged noodles, fresh vegetables, Thai curry sauces and frozen seafood, is a freezer section for bold gastronome. Hand written signs, predominantly in Cantonese, offer tantalising clues as to the contents of each section. A block of what looked like locusts turned out to be a hefty chunk of about a hundred duck tongues, next to those a lurid red mass was labelled simply as ‘lung’ and there was no mistaking the bag of chicken feet or the, now standard, trotters. It wasn’t all like Dr. Frankenstein’s deep freeze – liver and oxtail were also sat happily alongside the more exotic cuts – but it was the pig’s ears that I was most interested in. So with a degree of what could be termed, in hindsight, foolhardy hubris I bought four, each the size of a large hand. The small Asian man at the till looked at me with a mixture of surprise and delight that this farang was willing to explore the gastronomic delights that, in the words of Fergus ‘lie beyond the fillet’. Granted, I wasn’t jumping straight into pig’s uterus or cow tendon, but it is still quite a step to go from juicy, tender sirloin to the slightly less juicy and more cartilaginous ear.
On returning home I proudly showed my purchases to my girlfriend who was strangely excited by them, although less sure as to why I bought four. I struggled to find an answer that sounded reasonably coherent and sensible so I shrugged and muttered something about how they ‘might be really nice’. She looked less than convinced but left me to carry on regardless.
Step one was to wash them. Thoroughly. Why? Because, and I wish I was joking when I say this, because pigs get earwax too and no-one, not even the Chinese, eats earwax. Once they’d been completely cleaned they went into a pot, complete with a healthy selection of stock vegetables, onion, garlic and a bay leaf, to cook for three or four hours over a low heat. The smell was good, not unlike trotters – distinctly porky with a homely warmth added by the veggies and as they cooked I was feeling more confident about the prospect of giving them a go and perhaps even getting through all four. Eventually.
After four hours cooking they become well and truly floppy so they were left to cool whilst we decided what to do with them next. Our new bible, the River Cottage Cookbook, suggests barbecuing an entire ear and eating it with tartare sauce but after careful consideration we felt that this might be little too adventurous for first timers so we went for the ‘slice, smother in butter, mustard and breadcrumbs and bake’ option. After half an hour they’d taken on a tempting golden brown colour and occasionally jumping off the tray so the consensus was that they were ready. And they were good. Not so good that I felt the need to eulogise about them, taking a plate of them into the street with a megaphone and attempting to convince innocent passers by that the crunch of porcine ear is a treat to behold, but good in a way that they were akin to slightly tougher pork scratchings – crunchy, salty and with a definite piggy taste. Of course the generous helping of pungent aioli helped and we didn’t manage to chow down all four but they remain in the freezer, ready to be roasted and passed off onto unsuspecting guests as a gourmet treat. You might not be able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear but you can certainly make a tasty snack.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
A sting in the tale
A while back I went an entire year without having my hair cut. It wasn’t a concerted effort to release the inner hippy or have an instant ‘Neanderthal man’ costume should I be invited to any fancy dress parties, more a result of circumstances – those circumstances being a product of having more important things to spend my money on, like rent, bills and food. It crept up on me and went through a rather wild phase that required a significant amount of hair stuff and even an alice band to prevent it from springing out into a large bouffant before it could finally be tamed into pony tail and eventually loose curls that hung down rather than out. I was content with my general look but it was a comment from my grandmother that finally convinced me that I should probably pay a visit to the hairdresser: ‘ooh, you look just like that Hugh Fearnley chap’, she said on seeing me for the first time in a couple of months. I glanced into the mirror that adorns her lounge wall and could see that it was an uncomfortably accurate observation. I duly trudged off to the barber before she could say ‘Whittingstall’.
Aside from the aforementioned similarly unruly hair, dark rimmed glasses and a fondness for cooking and writing I’d not thought of myself as bearing any other similarities to HFW, I didn’t go to public school for a start, but I’m gradually realising that this situation is changing. At a slightly unnerving pace. For the last 24 years I’ve viewed nettles as a pain in the arse, or arm or wherever they happen to sting you. Between the ages of about four and twelve I reckon the average child is stung approximately ten thousand times by nettles lurking furtively in bushes, ready to attack as soon as a hand moves in to retrieve a lost tennis ball and every child knows someone who knows someone whose cousin ‘fell into a whole bunch of them and ended up having to go to hospital. Honestly, I’m not lying, you can ask my mum’. They are like the tabloid paedophile of the plant world. But now that I am a paid up, card-carrying, straw-chewing, welly-wearing resident of the countryside, nettles are no longer a menace, they are a bountiful, tasty and free foodstuff residing in large colonies around every corner just waiting to be transformed into something delicious and full of vitamins.
With this in mind my girlfriend and I embarked on our first foraging mission armed with scissors, gloves, a plastic bag and visions of a vivid green nettle risotto as a reward. Neither of us had ever tasted nettles and my decision to wear jeans with gaping holes in the knees proved to be a little foolish, but good intentions are important as are the valuable lessons learned from experience. And, apart from forgetting that I was wearing wholly (holey?) unsuitable jeans and kneeling into a healthy pile of the vindictive weeds, it was an excellent experience. There is something gloriously gratifying about gathering your own food, especially with someone as wildly and unashamedly enthusiastic about it as I am. After no more than ten minutes picking we’d gathered a generous half bag of young leaves from the top of the nettles lining the country road and were on way back home to attempt an almost alchemic transformation. Granted, there are few foodstuffs that cannot be improved with the addition of a generous amount of butter and cheese but nevertheless, nettle risotto is a triumph.
After a thorough wash and wilting in a pan, the nettles were sautéed over a high heat in a little butter, just enough so that the edges were tinged with a gentle brown colour and taking on a slightly caramelised quality. The smell was fresh, deeply redolent of the countryside with a jumpy vibrancy and grassy softness and stirring them into a rich risotto at the last minute was a great way to make the most of them.
Since then we’ve been foraging again – with more substantial trousers – and made skate with wilted nettles and cinnamon and, of course, nettle soup although I haven’t yet been able to pluck up the courage to munch down a nettle salad, as recommended by a number of ‘raw food’ websites.
Seen as the recipe for nettle risotto is virtually complete above, I thought I’d include my recipe for making nettle soup. If you want to attempt this, be quick – nettles aren’t good eating after they begin to flower, usually sometime in June.
Nettle Soup (approximate ingredients)
One small onion, finely chopped
Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Four or five generous handfuls of washed nettles (don’t forget to use gloves)
Two medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced
One vegetable stock cube
One litre of water
Olive Oil
Salt and pepper
Gently fry off the onion and garlic in a generous glug of olive oil in the bottom of a saucepan large enough to take all the ingredients. After ten minutes over a gentle heat, add the nettles and wilt slightly. Pour in the water, add the potatoes and stock cube and leave to simmer for about twenty minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked. Blitz it up then return it to the pan. Check for seasoning and serve with crème fraiche or natural yoghurt stirred through. And plenty of warm bread, of course.
www.justcookit.blogspot.com
Aside from the aforementioned similarly unruly hair, dark rimmed glasses and a fondness for cooking and writing I’d not thought of myself as bearing any other similarities to HFW, I didn’t go to public school for a start, but I’m gradually realising that this situation is changing. At a slightly unnerving pace. For the last 24 years I’ve viewed nettles as a pain in the arse, or arm or wherever they happen to sting you. Between the ages of about four and twelve I reckon the average child is stung approximately ten thousand times by nettles lurking furtively in bushes, ready to attack as soon as a hand moves in to retrieve a lost tennis ball and every child knows someone who knows someone whose cousin ‘fell into a whole bunch of them and ended up having to go to hospital. Honestly, I’m not lying, you can ask my mum’. They are like the tabloid paedophile of the plant world. But now that I am a paid up, card-carrying, straw-chewing, welly-wearing resident of the countryside, nettles are no longer a menace, they are a bountiful, tasty and free foodstuff residing in large colonies around every corner just waiting to be transformed into something delicious and full of vitamins.
With this in mind my girlfriend and I embarked on our first foraging mission armed with scissors, gloves, a plastic bag and visions of a vivid green nettle risotto as a reward. Neither of us had ever tasted nettles and my decision to wear jeans with gaping holes in the knees proved to be a little foolish, but good intentions are important as are the valuable lessons learned from experience. And, apart from forgetting that I was wearing wholly (holey?) unsuitable jeans and kneeling into a healthy pile of the vindictive weeds, it was an excellent experience. There is something gloriously gratifying about gathering your own food, especially with someone as wildly and unashamedly enthusiastic about it as I am. After no more than ten minutes picking we’d gathered a generous half bag of young leaves from the top of the nettles lining the country road and were on way back home to attempt an almost alchemic transformation. Granted, there are few foodstuffs that cannot be improved with the addition of a generous amount of butter and cheese but nevertheless, nettle risotto is a triumph.
After a thorough wash and wilting in a pan, the nettles were sautéed over a high heat in a little butter, just enough so that the edges were tinged with a gentle brown colour and taking on a slightly caramelised quality. The smell was fresh, deeply redolent of the countryside with a jumpy vibrancy and grassy softness and stirring them into a rich risotto at the last minute was a great way to make the most of them.
Since then we’ve been foraging again – with more substantial trousers – and made skate with wilted nettles and cinnamon and, of course, nettle soup although I haven’t yet been able to pluck up the courage to munch down a nettle salad, as recommended by a number of ‘raw food’ websites.
Seen as the recipe for nettle risotto is virtually complete above, I thought I’d include my recipe for making nettle soup. If you want to attempt this, be quick – nettles aren’t good eating after they begin to flower, usually sometime in June.
Nettle Soup (approximate ingredients)
One small onion, finely chopped
Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Four or five generous handfuls of washed nettles (don’t forget to use gloves)
Two medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced
One vegetable stock cube
One litre of water
Olive Oil
Salt and pepper
Gently fry off the onion and garlic in a generous glug of olive oil in the bottom of a saucepan large enough to take all the ingredients. After ten minutes over a gentle heat, add the nettles and wilt slightly. Pour in the water, add the potatoes and stock cube and leave to simmer for about twenty minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked. Blitz it up then return it to the pan. Check for seasoning and serve with crème fraiche or natural yoghurt stirred through. And plenty of warm bread, of course.
www.justcookit.blogspot.com
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Time for a change...
Discovering new foodstuffs is a constant source of delight for me. I remember the first time I tasted Manchego cheese, the salty, almost fudge like quality of it balanced by a tiny square of quince jelly. My introduction to the soft, fluffy cumulo nimbus like qualities of sweetbreads, sweetly caramelised on the outside proved to be equally enlightening and I remember the slight frisson of trepidation the first time I sucked a brackish oyster past my lips and straight down my throat, the hefty shake of Tabasco sauce catching the inside of my lips and the sharpness of the fresh lemon juice heightening the whole experience with a raw, but expected, sourness. Incidentally, I still think that this is the best way to eat oysters, a supreme combination that offers a surge of heat, the salty hit of the oyster itself and the finishing notes of sharp citrus which leaves the eater with a delicious mixture of flavours and sensations rolling around the palate and lips. There is certainly an excitement about tasting things for the very first time.
Equally satisfying though is the realisation that one’s tastes have changed and a flavour that once provoked face-pulling and potentially even feelings of nausea ensuring animated and enthusiastic raptures of derision for the coming years has become not just palatable but pleasurable. Whilst tasting new and exotic items of food for the first time might provoke slight fear, being offered something that you know you do not like is entirely different. At least with unknown quantities there is a chance that it may taste good but with tastes one has experienced already this chance is removed. Which merely serves to heighten the pleasure on learning that it now tastes good.
I vividly remember the first time I tasted coffee. We had come to the end of a family holiday in a converted barn in northern France and were invited to enjoy a final drink with the aging proprietors who remain etched in my memory as the most French people I have ever met. I think the male half of the couple may have even worn a beret without displaying even the merest speck of irony. A small outhouse on the sprawling and mismatched property contained little more than a minimally fitted out kitchen and a mottled oak table large enough to comfortably seat 12. We sat there, talking in pigeon French and English about how much we had enjoyed the fortnight and nodded promises that we would return the following year, whilst the unmistakable aroma of freshly brewed coffee began to dominate the air. I accepted the offer of a steaming cup of mirrored black liquid and waited for the steam to subside before raising it to my lips and taking a tentative sip. I was astounded that anyone in a semi-sensible state of mind could actively enjoy the harsh acridity of such a drink but tried my best to make encouraging noises and not let my distaste register on my young face. Taking leaf from the others sat round the table, I reached for the two ceramic containers in front of me, thankful that I had only been given half a cup full and could fill the remaining space with a mixture of white sugar and rich, creamy milk. It turned the drink from something utterly unpalatable to one that I could taste without pulling my lips in and breathing in sharply with shock. But things change and since then I’ve graduated onto pungent ristretto style espresso, an intense coffee hit with a taste that lingers in the mouth long after the drink has been drained. Having said that, I am something of a coffee purist and I cannot abide the synthetic taste of instant coffee. There are some tastes that will never change.
I’ve had similar experiences with tomato juice and cheese. Though not together. Far from being the over-powering flavour I remember from my youth, tomato juice, liberally sluiced with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, a squeeze of lime, topped off with a generous grind from the pepper mill and perhaps even a splash of vodka is a great way to start the day, especially if is a Sunday. And despite my love of all things cheese-related, it is only recently that I have graduated from the milder varieties and been able to see the delicious appeal of those tasty examples studded throughout with a delectable and salty mould. Tastes change. Palates develop and the experience of eating is much more pleasurable because of it.
www.justcookit.blogspot.com
Equally satisfying though is the realisation that one’s tastes have changed and a flavour that once provoked face-pulling and potentially even feelings of nausea ensuring animated and enthusiastic raptures of derision for the coming years has become not just palatable but pleasurable. Whilst tasting new and exotic items of food for the first time might provoke slight fear, being offered something that you know you do not like is entirely different. At least with unknown quantities there is a chance that it may taste good but with tastes one has experienced already this chance is removed. Which merely serves to heighten the pleasure on learning that it now tastes good.
I vividly remember the first time I tasted coffee. We had come to the end of a family holiday in a converted barn in northern France and were invited to enjoy a final drink with the aging proprietors who remain etched in my memory as the most French people I have ever met. I think the male half of the couple may have even worn a beret without displaying even the merest speck of irony. A small outhouse on the sprawling and mismatched property contained little more than a minimally fitted out kitchen and a mottled oak table large enough to comfortably seat 12. We sat there, talking in pigeon French and English about how much we had enjoyed the fortnight and nodded promises that we would return the following year, whilst the unmistakable aroma of freshly brewed coffee began to dominate the air. I accepted the offer of a steaming cup of mirrored black liquid and waited for the steam to subside before raising it to my lips and taking a tentative sip. I was astounded that anyone in a semi-sensible state of mind could actively enjoy the harsh acridity of such a drink but tried my best to make encouraging noises and not let my distaste register on my young face. Taking leaf from the others sat round the table, I reached for the two ceramic containers in front of me, thankful that I had only been given half a cup full and could fill the remaining space with a mixture of white sugar and rich, creamy milk. It turned the drink from something utterly unpalatable to one that I could taste without pulling my lips in and breathing in sharply with shock. But things change and since then I’ve graduated onto pungent ristretto style espresso, an intense coffee hit with a taste that lingers in the mouth long after the drink has been drained. Having said that, I am something of a coffee purist and I cannot abide the synthetic taste of instant coffee. There are some tastes that will never change.
I’ve had similar experiences with tomato juice and cheese. Though not together. Far from being the over-powering flavour I remember from my youth, tomato juice, liberally sluiced with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, a squeeze of lime, topped off with a generous grind from the pepper mill and perhaps even a splash of vodka is a great way to start the day, especially if is a Sunday. And despite my love of all things cheese-related, it is only recently that I have graduated from the milder varieties and been able to see the delicious appeal of those tasty examples studded throughout with a delectable and salty mould. Tastes change. Palates develop and the experience of eating is much more pleasurable because of it.
www.justcookit.blogspot.com
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Normal service will be resumed forthwith
Having just moved house, things have been a shade on the manic side of late. Now that we've managed to wrestle our cottage into the 21st century and have become connected to the global-hyper-mega-interweb, the usual array of disparate musings will re-appear shortly with renewed vigour. There are tales of nettles, pigs' ears, milk jam and vegetable patches to follow anon.
Until then, a bientot. x
Until then, a bientot. x
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