Great Chieftain O’ the Pudding-Race

Tags

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

Mostly Concerning Food

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wraps, tortillas and other flatbreads are now so popular in England that it is difficult to remember that they are a recent addition. You simply couldn’t get them in the sixties. In the seventies and eighties you needed a specialist food store. By the nineties supermarkets stocked them in most stores. Today there are racks and racks of them. Another new item are the bags of ready prepared salad. This is a tuna wrap. The tortilla takes a minute in a dry frying pan. A handful of leaves, a forkful of tinned tuna, a few slices of tomato and spring onion and a squirt of mayonnaise. Roll cut and serve. Tuna never was the food of poor farmers but was a staple during my younger days in bedsits and draughty, shared houses.

A rib-eye steak, flash griddled and sliced into strips, piled on top of salad leaves. Tomatoes and English mustard were added before the upper crust. This was my treat. There was no reason for the treat other than I fancied it. If my ancestors could have afforded to give themselves a good steak dinner I’m sure they would have. I’m certain they wouldn’t be-grudge me.

The sausages are from an independent farmer. The bread is a multi grain loaf from Lidl. Lidl is about the best of our supermarkets for quality and range of bread. This sausage sandwich looks good, tasted good and by golly I’m sure it did me good.

Slices of fresh baguette and Orkney crab paté with some grapes and some walnuts. All supplied by Lidl. It is a budget supermarket but it turns up trumps for tasty treats. This terrine might not be as good as you’d make for yourself but you’d need pretty advanced taste buds to tell the difference.

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

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

Another Lidle treat. These are little ramekins filled with scallops and prawns in a white sauce. I wouldn’t serve them to guests but for a mid-morning snack when working in the office they are perfect.

Most of the sauce is hidden in this photograph. It’s made of onions, peppers, celery and mushrooms all sweated down. Add a big dollop of creme fraiche, season and serve with spaghetti and parmesan. Impossible not to have a second helping.

Ah liver. Lots of iron in it they say. In fact it is highly rated by nutritionists. This is my preferred method of cooking. Simply flash fry it in a hot pan and serve on toast with mushrooms and sprinkle with Henderson’s Relish and Tabasco.

The tortilla is made by mashing some left over new potatoes with a fork together with some cooked green cabbage. Beat in an egg and fry lightly for five minutes each side. The mixed grill is completed with flash fried liver, rashers of bacon and good sausages.

The very best part of a bowl of porridge is watching the demerara sugar melt on top, I prefer this to a creme brûlée. The perfect winter breakfast. This particular bowl was made in a microwave.

All that remains of a once thriving weekly market in our village is a visiting fish van. It loads up on the fish docks at Grimsby every day and has a weekly routine. Thursday is our day. The haddock was caught off the Faroes, the smoked haddock is cured in Grimsby. The eggs come form the chicken who live in Frances’ and Steven’s back garden. The parsley is from my window sill and the potatoes are from Aldi. A contender, along with rice pudding, for the title of the greatest known comfort food. Perfect at any time of year but even better in the winter.

Stew and dumplings is the most farmhouse of English farmhouse dishes.. The browning on the sides of the pan is the result of 10 hours cooking in a 100 degree oven. The dumplings get added in the last 20 minutes when the oven temperature is turned up. They rise into the lightest and most perfect accompaniment for slowly cooked meat. (In this case stewing steak and lambs kidneys cooked with carrots, onions and leeks.)

You have to have green vegetables with stew.

The final slice. Photograph taken within 24 hours of the cake coming out of the oven. A true sign of a happy home is a cake under a dome. Ours is a very happy home.I felt I deserved more than one treat this week. Is there a more tempting sight to a meat eater than a plate of steak and chips? Asparagus is another vegetable that used to cost a king’s ransom and was only available in exclusive stores. Today it is cheap, plentiful and every bit as tasty as it was when it was considered a rich man’s delicacy.

To finish with, the ultimate poor person’s treat that has found itself shooting up market. Here is haggis (Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race). I have never been to a Burns’ Supper. I don’t drink whisky (in fact I don’t drink anything stronger than tea) and I don’t like bagpipes. I do like the poet though and have chosen to celebrate his birthday with a breakfast of haggis, beans and egg with toast. Haggis is made with every part of the beast that didn’t make the laird’s table. It is an almost perfect example of something special made from the cheapest ingredients.

Here’s to your honest, sonsie face.

 

Happy Burns Night. Eat well!

Day 230: I Saw Good Strawberries in Your Garden There

Tags

asparagus, bread flour, cauliflower cheese, celery, Cheese, Chesterfield, cream buns, Domino Pizza, fresh yeast, homemade jam, hot cross buns, strawberries

Mostly Concerning Food

 

There were good strawberries on Chesterfield market, and good value too. I bought a kilogram for £3 and an awful lot of oranges and mineolas to make up a fiver. Chesterfield has a good market for fruit and vegetables and the stall at the top corner has had at least two generations of loud voiced traders barking out, “Seven seedless oranges a pound. Just a pound your oranges.” It either attracts or repels depending on your mood but there is no disputing the quality. This stall-holder must be right at the front of the queue at the wholesale market in the early morning.

I take a perfect cauliflower and a bunch of asparagus both of which practically smell of the field they grew in. That vital period of field to table is much shorter if you go to a good market than if you use the supermarket route. Within 24 hours all bar a few oranges have been cooked and either eaten or turned into jam.

 

I like making jam. It has that lovely combination of history, simplicity and family. My grandmother made jam and so did my mother and her sisters. I’m sure great grand parents did but I’ve never traced the family back that far.

It’s all so simple and full of good feelings and delicious smells that fill the whole house.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made strawberry and it’s late by the time I set to. I simply halve the fruit once I’ve trimmed the tops. Then they go into the jam pan with the same weight of sugar. You can get special jam sugar but I’ve never found it worth the fuss and always use granulated. I can’t resist adding the juice of a lemon because I always add the juice of a lemon to jam. It’s partly tradition, partly that cooking with lemon makes me happy and partly that I have never bought jam better than the jam I make so why change a winning formula?

Bring it to the boil. I don’t bother mashing the fruit (I rather like finding a substantial piece of strawberry in my jam) and I stir occasionally. Spotting the setting point is the skill or knack. I use well chilled saucers. I have a sugar thermometer but I don’t use it very often. My advice is to err on the side of too runny. If you let it go too far you will have produced a strawberry toffee that is almost impossible to get out of the jar.

The whole process takes about 40 minutes and I’ve got two and a half large pots of strawberry jam all nicely jarred by bedtime and ready for my breakfast toast.

Before I get to the jam and toast I use the asparagus. I poach the eggs and the asparagus in the same water; the asparagus for five minutes, the eggs for less than three. The toast takes three and the sauce is the remaining cheese sauce that wasn’t used when the market cauliflower became my all time favourite dish; cauliflower cheese. The breakfast is even better than the supper dish. I used to think that cauliflower cheese needed a rasher or two of bacon. Not true. Bread and butter is the perfect accompaniment; and someone you like a lot is the perfect company.

It’s been a while since I made bread. Discovering a good bakery in the village has both spoiled me and denied me the opportunity of doing something I simply love doing. I don’t abandon the bakery entirely. I buy my bread flour there (and it is fabulous) and I buy my fresh yeast there as well. It is years since I’ve used fresh yeast and I want to punch myself. Instant yeast is pretty good these days but it isn’t as good. Fresh yeast is also easier to use.

Another benefit of fresh yeast from our bakery is that they haven’t gat a scale and two ounces paid for is often nearer six ounces in the bag.

One day last week we see a mature couple sitting on the bench on our dog walk eating rather good looking pizzas from their cardboard boxes. Domino has just opened a branch in the village and we thought we’d save ourselves some cooking. The sun was shining, the garden felt inviting, we’d got cans of coke in the fridge for when Charlie and David come round. It is the first time I have ordered pizza from a well known firm and (unless someone tells me they have connections with organised crime or are ripping down the rainforest (both of which are all too possible)) it won’t be the last. T has Vege-Roma and I have Anchovy and Jalapeño. It is the start of five hours in the garden eating, drinking fizzy pop and reading in the sunshine.

One of the reasons I gave up the pay-roll and started working for myself is so I can take off all the sunny days as holidays. I’ve started very well.

Chesterfield also served us up a decent vegetarian cooked breakfast. It’s up one of the many little alleyways that add such character to the town centre and gave us good cheer as well as well cooked mushrooms and eggs.

Hot rolls very rarely last long in our house. These are exceptionally nice. The flour from the bakery makes brilliant bread. The fresh yeast rises well and you can just about taste it in the bread. The bakery is good; these are better.

A simple snack.

The fresh yeast rises better and faster than dried or instant yeast. The end product is much superior as well.

Mind you, the bakery has no competition from me when it comes to iced cream buns. I used to want a cigarette with my morning mug of tea. I think I must have been a bit stupid in those days. Cigarette or cream bun? No contest.

Devilled mushrooms on toast to an original recipe.

An instant devilling kit.

Thursday sees us back at the bakery for elevenses. I have the eclair, T has the doughnut.

In his book on the history of Italian food John Dickie asks the question of what would have happened if the thirteenth century peasants had realised just how wonderfully well pears goes with cheese? The peasants grew the pears and made the cheese and sold them to buy the tiniest scrap of meat. The aristocracy in the meantime were eating the cheese and pears. Marx would have something to say about it. I simply indulge my passion.

The challenge is simple. To find out which goes best with cheese; pears or celery. I eat for quite a while and consume more than my share of all three and conclude that I’ll just have to try again some other time.

On Good Friday I’m up early to make hot cross buns. I’ve never made them before and follow Paul Hollywood’s recipe. At least I do for a while. He’s a heck of a good baker but his recipes are too fussy for me. I also cannot keep stopping to read  the next bit. At the end I compare what I made with what he wrote and would be prepared to give him a 50% credit for the end product.

They are superb. Four of us sit down to tea and not many hot cross buns survive the meal. It’s the start of the Easter weekend. We’ve got one child (hardly a child, he’s 24) back home and the other two coming round with partners. Plenty of good food on offer and the end of the Lenten fast. I’m rather looking forward to it.

 

Day 209: Neither Flesh Nor Fowl

Tags

asparagus, Aye-up, chocolate cake, Derbyshire, fruit scones, gingerbread men, paella, Prestat, scones, smoked salmon bagels, The Oven Door, Werther's Original

Mostly Concerning Food

Saturday morning is developing a new and rather pleasantly nostalgic touch. Once Jolly has been walked and the first cup of tea has been drunk, we wander round to the bakery and the sweet shop. We haven’t got the finest range of shops in the village. We’re not short of places to get take-away food, of a quality you would be wise to avoid rather than question, and we’ve got plenty of places that will cut your hair or polish your nails. At one time we had five butchers, two greengrocers and two bakers. Of these one bakery remains and we’ve become regular customers. I love baking, especially bread, but this shop is so convenient and so good. The bread and cakes taste like the bread and cakes of a south lakeland childhood. The women who work there are fabulous; funny, cheerful, down to earth and Derbyshire. Be prepared to be called “Duck” and be aware that “Aye-Up” is a first rate greeting.

An iced cream bun has become the finishing touch to Saturday breakfast or a perfect mid-morning treat once the washing is on the line and the vacuum cleaner has done at least half a lap of the house.

Charlie comes round and while we’re talking about the week, Frances rings up. Before long one has driven off to collect the other and we are four. Four is a long way short of five  but it’s pretty darned wonderful.

For lunch T prepares home made cheese scones and fruit scones to add to chocolate cake, carrot cake,  cherry Bakewells and gingerbread men from the shop. It’s a two times treat. Always special to have the children round and the meal is that perfect balance of simplicity and delight. I eat too much. How can you leave scones uneaten when you know that, within an hour, they will have lost their magnificence?

Just when the horn of plenty seems to have given out its best, a tray of biscuits comes out of the oven. T has created her own recipe and flavoured these with “The Maharajah’s Chai Hot Chocolate Flakes” from Prestat. As a drink it disappoints. As a flavouring for biscuits it is superb.

I’ve always liked the idea of sweets far more than the reality. Increasingly though, I have taken to them. I’m probably entering the Werther’s Original stage of life and ought to consider taking up fly fishing or making model aeroplanes. I’ll leave them on hold for…ever… but settle for becoming something of a lover of sweets.

This week it’s midget gems, bonbons and raspberry fizz balls. It’s nice to re-visit childhood. There are a lot of forgotten memories and eating sweets helps them to re-emerge.

     

That’s the Saturday indulgence. The rest of the week is a continuation of the no meat, healthy Lenten diet we have set ourselves. There is no sense of doing without. We are eating in a different way. Never greedily but always with savour and enjoyment. Fruit, Shredded Wheat or toast and marmalade make up almost all the breakfasts. Apples are plentiful and cheap in the shops. Conference pears are very good indeed this week. I don’t know if they have been stored or imported but they are first rate. Bananas have become an absolute necessity.

It is no bind at all to swap puddings for fruit and we both feel the benefit.

Asparagus is coming. The early stuff is grown under polythene and some say that it lacks the true flavour. I am not discerning enough to be able to tell. What I do know is that we have had a lot of asparagus already and will continue to enjoy it as long as it remains on the shelves. It was practically unknown when I was growing up. Along with smoked salmon it has been passed down from the high table to be enjoyed by anyone who cares for good flavours and textures.

This is a simple soup but neither of us can remember enjoying a soup more. Onion, celery, unpeeled new potatoes, garlic, pepper and a bunch of asparagus are sweated down (I reserved the tips). Add water and a teaspoon of good vegetable bouillon powder and simmer for twenty minutes. Blitz with a hand blender and add the tips. Simmer for a further five minutes. It’s nice to be cooking again and this tastes of spring when served with bread and a swirl of double cream.

Pudding comes in attractive bio-degradable packaging

I’m getting used to the routine of not going out to work. I write for about three hours a day, read for a further two, walk Jolly (the time when I do my best thinking), and find time to enjoy both the process and product of some simple cooking at lunch time. T doesn’t like seafood much, so lunch is an ideal time to make things like this seafood paella. I’m learning to cater for one (100g of rice is plenty). The prawns, squid and mussels come pre packed and frozen from the supermarket. It’s an economical way to enjoy the taste of the sea.

Tuesday night is cinema night this week. Simple red salmon (tinned) and lettuce sandwiches make a quick and easy tea before we go. We see Labor Day and wonder if we missed something. It has the makings of a good film but the elements don’t adhere. It drags and leaves us unimpressed.

Wednesday we do without the main course and just have pudding. Vanilla ice cream with some Italian biscotti and a banana. If this is fasting for Lent then we are fasting in a palace of luxury.

 

I like noodles. I like the name and the reality. I was reminded of a favourite noodle bar in Greenwich recently. Going there for my lunch used to make me feel very happy. We’d all pitch in together and sit around big wooden tables and eat huge bowls of tasty noodle dishes topped with prawn crackers and spring onion. On Thursday I recreate the experience at home and two cats and a dog help the communal spirit. These noodles are fully vegetarian. Who needs meat when you can get mushrooms? The sauce is an experiment but works superbly. A mix of balsamic, soy and toasted sesame with a small squirt of tomato ketchup.

Monday had been cream cheese and bagels. The first ones had smoked salmon. That had all gone but capers make a tasty alternative. (If you like capers).

It’s quite a while since I made anything spicy. Not only does spicy food excite the tastebuds but I’m sure it has a good affect on health. Here a tin of little chickpeas forms the centrepiece for a curry that is served with some flatbreads and nothing else. No effort, no fuss, no leftovers.

From the back of a cupboard come a box of Milk Tray. They had been bought on special offer and put on one side. They are not the greatest chocolate selection if you are after sophistication. They are exactly the chocolates I would have wanted as a twelve year old. We’ve been dipping into them since Wednesday and are not yet down to the second layer.

The local bakery has some special cupcakes for Mother’s Day. I’m not over-impressed with cupcakes. The ratio of icing to cake is preposterously out of balance but they do look splendid; and it’s only once a year.

 

Day 195: Vegetable or Mineral

Tags

asparagus, baked beans on toast, boiled eggs, cornichons, gardening, Lent, pancakes, Risotto, stilton, The Nun's Priest's Tale, vegetarian

Weekly Food Round-Up

I cut the grass this week. And managed a few hours sitting out. It’s keep your shirt on and well buttoned up weather but it feels so nice to sit out and get the feeling of sun on my face. It’s all a bit desolate out there. I dug up the front in order to rebuild the walls and dig some goodness into the soil. All the plants worth saving were potted to survive the winter but most haven’t survived the extreme wet. A couple of blackcurrant bushes and some daisies. A real pity as a lot of the plants that perished were taken as roots and cuttings from my parents’ garden. It was a link that meant a lot to me. I have a few left. I’ll cherish them, grow them, split them and coddle them. Both my mother and father were good gardeners and the sense of continuity is important as well as the sentimental value.

Have I kept up the ‘no meat in Lent’ regime? You bet I have. I’ve always known that middle aged people should eat differently but had been too keen to go on a binge celebration of leaving bad things behind that I thought of the net gain rather than the common sense. Old Benson retired from farming when his son took over the reins. This didn’t stop him walking three miles up Furness hills to the farm each day, putting in  a full shift and walking home again. He did this into his eighties. He was a phenomenal man and he said (back in the sixties) that you don’t eat red meat once you are past fifty. Modern science, as is so often the case, is catching up with long held wisdom.

Carl (a fellow blogger and a darned good cartoonist) comments that it is how long food stays in the gut that makes the difference. Up to eight hours is fine. Over that and it starts producing toxins. Beef, in particular, takes two hours longer than other foods to digest. It makes a big difference to a middle aged body.

I won’t go vegetarian this year but I may well have left beef behind. It’s not such a daft idea to drop one type of flesh each year until I’m meat free. During my heavy smoking days I always knew I wouldn’t die a smoker. I’ve long had a feeling that I will end up a vegetarian. At the moment, I am. It’s only for Lent but I’m enjoying it and not missing meat in the slightest.

A piece of stilton and a few crackers in the garden start the week off nicely. Stilton is one of many cheeses that don’t require anything else on the cheese board. We’ve got too used to the horn of plenty. Time to change back to having one good cheese rather than a choice.

If you add pickles (and here we have some cornichons and some pickled chilli peppers) a strong cheddar is perfect.

Strict vegetarians might forego eggs. We’re not strict anythings and are certainly not going to miss out on the first eggs from the chickens in Frances and Steven’s garden. The treat of the week. (I was given the honour of naming one and chose Pertelote after the hen in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale).

Percy checks the ingredients to make sure I’ve got the ratios right. He doesn’t like pancakes much but he does like being involved.

 

I’d mis-judged the calendar and got caught out. I thought pancake day was going to be the 11th so I stick by the plan. I can remember making pancakes for T during our courting days back in the seventies. I think this week was the first time I’d made pancakes for two in all that time. Well it would have been for two but a friendly sheepdog positioned herself under the table and was a willing recipient of one or two pancakes of her own.

We have some maple syrup on the table. Good maple syrup. It gets used but sugar and lemon is still the favourite way of eating pancakes in this house.

I could eat risotto for every meal for a month and not complain. This one follows the simple method. I don’t have any vegetable stock or stock cubes. I do have some sachets of Ainsley Harriott’s soup in a mug. I use one of roasted peppers and tomato in this as well as adding a couple of frozen white fish fillets. It’s such a simple dish to make and is so useful. Even without a microwave it is so easy to heat up, it is delicious cold and it packs into a tupperware container for the most convenient of packed lunches.

Muesli and banana has been my default breakfast this week. Dorset Cereals provide the muesli and a very good start to the day it is. On Wednesday I have a yearning for beans on toast. Who needs bacon or sausages? It’s a classic dish in England (not sure about anywhere else) and gets the midweek off to a flying start.

By Thursday I need a substantial meal I need the preparation as much as the meal itself. I enjoy fish however it is served but, given the choice I would opt for it to be shallow fried with a cornflake crust on the flesh side. Always buy fillets of cod or haddock with the skin on. Even if you don’t eat the skin it holds the fillet together and adds enormously to the flavour. Dredge the white side of the fillet in seasoned flour. Dip it into beaten egg and then into cornflakes which you have rolled fine with a rolling pin. (You can buy crumbs made like this but they don’t improve for keeping and you deny yourself a few minutes of fun. It’s worth t for the sound alone!).

Asparagus, spinach and Charlotte potatoes complete the dish. I was going to make a parsley sauce but was more than happy to settle for some knobs of butter meting on the asparagus and potatoes.

 

On Friday I’m not feeling well. I’d managed to get myself invited to spend the day at Oxford University. I simply can’t go. It seems cruel. I don’t get ill often and it was a day I was looking forward to enormously. I may not be one of the great academics of England but I’m clever enough to enjoy being among people who are.

I stay at home and don’t eat very much. As simple salad with olive oil, pepper and lemon juice does well enough.

 

 

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