Day 237: Wearing White For Eastertide

Tags

A Dance to the Music of Time, bacon and eggs, Easter, Easter eggs, Emmy Lou Harris, Fish pie, homemade bread, roast lamb, roast leg of lamb, Trifle, vegetarian, Yorkshire puddings

Un Adieu à L’Agneau

Lent finished and for the first time I haven’t missed meat at all (For some years now I have given up eating meat as my Lenten fast). We eat meat this week but are at least three solid steps closer to becoming vegetarians. I’m following the same route, but more slowly, that left first alcohol and then smoking behind. The route of knowing that you want to be without them more than you want to be with them and then, very slowly and sustainably, changing habits.

We’ve long planned to have a roast leg of lamb for Easter Sunday. It was a tradition in T’s side of the family and I like to embrace those traditions (as well as celebrating the Johnson legacy) and we’ve got all three children for dinner and two of their partners.

Having said that, the first thought we both had was: when can we do this again? Soon is the answer. May has been designated a vegetarian month: “No Meat in May” is the slogan and our Eastertide roast will be the last time we buy lamb for eating. I’ve had a photograph I took a couple of weeks ago of three lambs in a Staffordshire field as my seasonal masthead. You cannot look into the eyes and not feel a sense of guilt.

It was always the intention to shed one of the main meats from our diet this year, and the others will follow year by year. I hope this approach doesn’t lose me any vegan and vegetarian readers. (In the same way as my holding a quiet and sincere faith is put up with by my non believing friends). I have been inspired by so many of your blogs and recipes. I know if I go ‘once at a crash’ then I will probably fail.

On Saturday I’m delighted that there is still some fish pie. This one may not look too spectacular but, by golly, it tasted fabulous. I cannot currently contemplate giving up meat and fish. This is comfort food of the highest order. The mashed potato is floury, the sauce creamy and the fish and hardboiled eggs are like the very food of the gods.

I don’t think we’ve had a roast dinner since the epicurean festival that was Christmas. The classic roast with potatoes and two vegetables sometimes appeals to me as the very finest of eating and at other times seems a huge interaction of disparate and different flavours and textures piled high. This one works very nicely. The meat is well cooked in that is carves, eats and tastes well.

I’m proud of knowing how to correctly carve all the different joints. What will I do with these skills once I have become a meat free eater? All knowledge is useful. Even if it’s just nice to know things.

The Yorkshire puddings don’t traditionally accompany lamb but we like them and I’ve got a new tray that cooks 24 of them at a go. It isn’t over successful as it restricts the natural expansion and produces a chewy rather than airy pudding. It suits the Yorkshiremen in the family. It fills people up nicely.

Seven sit down to dinner. Along with mint sauce I use the crab apple jelly I made from crab apples my cousin Peter picked for me from his Staffordshire garden. It goes perfectly, and looks rather lovely…a perfect orange/pink.

Two puddings were on offer. Easter biscuits made with raisins because not everybody likes currants. The rest of the cakes are shop bought.

It wouldn’t be  a Johnson family feast without a trifle. Why does it work so well? It shouldn’t. But it does.

Even though the children are now all in the second half of their twenties, some traditions must continue. When I was little Easter eggs were rather expensive. I’m one of seven children and I only ever got an egg on one occasion. T was the same. Because of this we like to over-indulge everyone.

On Monday morning we take David to the station and contemplate a full breakfast. We compromise and go for what I call a Moreland breakfast (after the character Hugh Moreland from Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time) of simple bacon and eggs. The bacon is dry cured and red tractored. The eggs come from Frances’s chickens. Bread and butter is the only accompaniment for this meal except a mug of tea…and then another mug of tea.

I’m back to baking most of my own bread. This batch seems to have got a bit of an air bubble. Probably down to a minute’s too little kneading. This bread was kneaded to three Emmy Lou Harris songs. My rule is three songs for white bread, two for brown. Blame Emmy Lou. The bread tasted excellent and the rising dough (made with fresh yeast) filled the house with a smell from a different era.

The rising loaf was left covered by a clean damp tea towel. After an hour it was doing very well. After ninety minutes it seemed to have a bit of a dent in it. On lifting the tea towel the dent looked about the size of a cat’s paw. Percy was looking out of the window denying all knowledge. A further hour semi-solved the problem. The bread was delicious.

The sun shone and we continue a cream cakes taste challenge. Marks and Spencer, Waitrose and the Coop’s cream cakes have been tried over the last week or so. The winners, by a long, long way, are the local bakers.

I saved two pieces of dough and popped them in a dish in the fridge where they rose slowly over twenty four hours before being rolled into pizza bases. I’ve long wondered how the very best pizzas are supposed to turn out.

They simply couldn’t be much better than these. The base goes from biscuit cracker crispy at the edge to foldable and gorgeous in the middle. The mix of Wensleydale and Mozzarella give taste and textural contrast. I’ve decided (after forty years vacillation) to have all the toppings above the cheese and this combination of onion, yellow pepper, fresh cherry tomato and anchovy works a treat. I just keep eating and though it is a meal for two, I have slightly more than my fair share.

  

The rest of the roast lamb makes a simple and tasty biryani on Wednesday. I enjoy roasting and grinding a spice mix in the mortar and pestle. The photograph doesn’t do it justice. It is tradition and spice and tasty rice cooked to a treat. It will be the last time I ever eat lamb. Of course I’ll miss the flavour and the smell of it cooking. There is no other meat that absorbs spices as well. I’ll stick to it. In contrast to my younger self, if I say I’m going to do something these days then I generally do. It was a return to form with the spice mix and a fitting way to sign off.

 

My problem with lamb.

Day 223: Who Needs Meat?

Tags

cherry pie, Cooperative Bank, creme fraiche, falafel, hard boiled eggs, kedgeree, Lent, Marks and Spencer, muesli, tagliatelle, vegetarian

Mostly Concerning Food.

 

Another week of Lent and another without eating meat.  I’ve  had vague feelings of missing it. Thoughts of shepherd’s pie and ham sandwiches fluttered through my mind and fluttered out again and off into the distance. I’m not a vegetarian and won’t become one for a little while. But the day is getting closer. I always knew that I’d stop smoking one day and I’ve long been of the feeling that I’ll end up a non-meat-eater: just not yet. It’s with a sense of drawing a little closer rather than with simple good intentions that I come towards the end of the six week Easter fast. It’s supposed to be forty days and forty nights but there are actually 46 days between Ash Wednesday (March 5th this year) and Holy Saturday (April 19th). As part of the Catholic liturgical calendar, Lent actually finishes before the mass of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday. I keep Lent in the same way as I keep Christmas; broadly in line with the church but with a little room for manoeuvre.

I’ve been good with the Christian fasting season for a number of years now. At first I gave up things I could quite easily manage without such as coffee or chocolate. Until packing in smoking I was never very fond of chocolate so it was only a step or two up from giving up watching Norwich City play football. For the last few years I’ve given up meat. It’s a challenge and, somewhat in keeping with the spirit of Lent, a preparation.

I saw an old friend the other day; one I hadn’t seen for quite a few years. He was fulsome in his praise for how well I was looking. “You don’t look a day older.” he repeated several times. I’m not sure how I compare. I’m pleased with how I feel and (if you take a creaking back out of the equation) actually feel younger, healthier and more athletic than I did in my forties. Giving up smoking is huge (you could tell I was a smoker from my skin alone), not drinking alcohol has saved me more than a pocket full of cash, and a decent varied diet has served its purpose.

I don’t think I could ever give up meat and fish though. There wasn’t much fish in these sushi from Marks and Spencer; a little tinned tuna in the California roll. The rest were all vegetable. T went to Meadowhall on Sunday and came back with a basketful of teatime after finding that the person in charge of the discount labeller had discounted just about everything. These sushi were really very nice. I’m the only one who eats it so it simply isn’t worth making my own. The M & S stuff is every bit as good (actually a good deal better) than the stuff you get from Yo Sushi. And a a lot  cheaper.

Also in the M & S hamper was a rather good muesli. I’m getting very fond of muesli and have rapidly moved in a health food direction. Not out of diligence to well-being. Simply because it is more enjoyable. I don’t want to be chewing on raw grains of wheat and barley but I do like a cereal where you can actually taste the ingredients and savour the texture. The more commercially successful mueslis are over sweetened and over processed. This one is a little more like listening to Merle Haggard than Miley Cyrus. A little rougher and not quite so instantly appealing but a thousand times superior.

One salmon sandwich and one falafel in a flat bread feels like a perfect combination for Sunday teatime. The chick pea is one of natures big hitters. There isn’t much made with chick peas that fails to score the maximum points. We don’t often think of them as high health food but they make up a tasty one of your seven a day. (Used to be five a day but our government have just upped the advice).

The simplest meals still make the most enjoyable. Monday tea was a cheese sandwich on brown bread with tomato and rocket. Eating well might not be rocket science but it may well be rocket salad.

I love kedgeree and marvel at the mind that decided one day to mix rice, boiled egg and smoked fish. There are a huge number of variations of recipes. They all date back to the days of the Raj. (Britain’s imperial control of India). Many are creamy or even wet dishes and most are spiced. I like all of them but have a preference for the way my mother used to make it. The three main ingredients are spiced only with black pepper and a great big handful of chopped parsley.

I normally cook rice perfectly but this time I use the method of boiling the (Basmati) rice in a large volume of water with the intention of draining it as soon as the first grains are ready. This time I leave it while I check emails and somehow 10 minutes disappear. There was plenty of water so no danger of it burning dry. It was rather overcooked but no less delicious. It isn’t a matter of getting it wrong. It simply has a different texture. Having said that, I have no plans of cooking the rice that way again.

Tagliatelle with peppers and mushrooms in a crème fraîche sauce. I like to have a simple pasta dish at least once a week. It takes so little doing and tastes wonderful. Surely this is a contender for the least expenditure (in time and money) for the maximum eating pleasure.

Even better when piled high with plenty of freshly grated parmesan cheese. I keep thinking I’ve cooked too much (I still make the same amount as when the children were at home) but we never have any left beyond the following day.

The two fillets of smoked haddock that didn’t go into the kedgeree make a real feast for me on Thursday (On Wednesday I went to Ashby de la Zouch and am preparing a separate post on that). New potatoes and leeks form the base of this dish. Fish is the star of the show and the poached egg is the cherry on the cake. It’s not quite as greedy a portion as it looks. The plate is medium sized and the potatoes are cut quite small.

My favourite tea is what we refer to as a cold collation. Here two variations of green salad go alongside a simple potato salad and they accompany a range of cheeses, bought as a selection for only £4, and that emblem of a summer dish; the hard boiled egg.

All the dish requires is a good dressing and here a mixture of salt, pepper, sugar, lemon juice and olive oil provides a sparkle to the eye as well as the tastebud. Without a doubt the best meal of the week. As I’ve asked a time or two over the Lenten period; who needs meat?

This is a shop bought cherry pie with some home made vanilla ice cream. The pie comes from The Co-op. The poor old Cooperative movement is going through a hard time at the moment having handed over the reins to a bunch of incompetents. Most banks have suffered through greed and over weening ambition. The Coop bank has risked 150 years of ethical service in an unethical world by appointing men who couldn’t oversee heavy drinking on a brewery trip. They hold the Johnson pennies so hope they come through. We buy a pie to help profits. Two days later they declare a £1.3 billion loss but the pie went very well with the ice cream.

 

So good that I photographed it twice.

 

 

Day 202: Meat Free and Easy

Tags

Aldi, Buxton, Café Néro, Lathkill Dale, Peak District, smoked salmon bagels, tagliatelle, Tideswell, vegetarian, yoghurt

Mostly Concerning Food

I’ve mis-laid the camera three times this week. Each time has been the same. I download photographs and instead of leaving the camera by the computer where I am bound to look for it, I decide that it would be better somewhere else. Twice that somewhere  has been a pocket (it’s a little point and shoot camera) and the third time remains a mystery. This is a pity from a visual point of view, as we have just enjoyed a most delightful Saturday breakfast of creamy scrambled eggs on bagels with some grilled asparagus. It would have looked nice in the photograph. It certainly looked nice on the plate; and tasted even nicer.

I can’t even go back into the photo library. We haven’t had scrambled eggs with asparagus before. We’ll have it again and hopefully I will have discovered the safe place.

The healthier diet continues with occasional treats. The important thing is that no meat has been eaten and temptation has been resisted. The health lessons seem to have been heeded. I don’t really want to think that I’m hauling a hunk of half digested meat around in my gut for so long that it has begun to give off toxins. I’m enjoying feeling healthy and allowing my middle age discovery of cakes and sweets to act as sufficient treats.

A mushroom tagliatelle begins the week. Because vegetables cook so much quicker, and because pasta dishes require very little meat even at carnivore times of year, a tagliatelle is not only a most enjoyable Monday evening meal, it is also really quick and easy to make.

Aldi is good for pasta. They are having a little Italian season and have a choice between two tagliatelles that both look good. We go for the one that has a nice serrated edge. It isn’t necessarily any better and it takes longer to cook. The pasta is thicker and the eating experience is a different one. It is fabulous as an evening meal to celebrate another good start to the week.

And it tastes even nicer for an easy lunch on a busy Tuesday. Lots and lots of freshly grated parmesan. Pasta always sits lightly on the tummy, even when generous portions are involved. I can manage long periods without other ways of eating carbohydrates; I wouldn’t want to be without pasta for too long.

I’m going through something of a phase where I don’t want to do much to good ingredients. A little gem lettuce, sliced tomato, cucumber and chopped scallions have a dribble of olive oil and a squirt of lemon juice. It’s a good enough meal in its own right. (That makes a good sentence for practicing apostrophes).

I rarely have a fruit yoghurt. I’m a little bit on the side of those who prefer plain yoghurt with fruit. I’m the same with cheese. I’m not a great one for cheese where the added ingredient has already been added. This raspberry yoghurt from the nation’s favourite discount supermarket makes a welcome pudding to my solitary lunch. Once in a while.

Picking up on the ready meal theme, I try out Aldi’s tomato and basil soup. Good soup is so easy to make that this is the first ready made fresh soup I have ever bought. T’s work colleagues have given it a good reference and I must admit it serves to make a very acceptable lunch for one. I like to stop what I’m doing and have a proper lunch at the table even though it is only me (with three pairs of eyes watching). I’ve had a lot to do this week and it’s good to know that there are standbys that don’t take a lot of making but serve a proper feeling of celebrating lunchtime.

There is no excuse on Tuesday night. I’m still sitting at the keyboard when T gets in from work. Neither of us fancy cooking. Who needs meat when you’ve got a chip shop just round the corner. It is years since I deep fried anything at home. I agree that there are no chips like home made chips but the downside is too great. What do you do with that pan full of oil? The smell from frying (even in new oil) is strong and persistent. The danger of accident is high and there is a man a hundred and fifty yards away who fries fish and chips really well. They are perhaps the only meal that I much prefer to have made for me.

Fish and Chips Edinburgh style with salt and sauce. (Except I don’t bother with the salt)

Wednesday is an away day. Not one for the blog. Just a day out in the peak district and the chance to catch up with a friend I have not seen for fifteen years. I start my day in a chain coffee bar in Buxton along with a dozen other early retirees. There’s a way of being part of the leisured silver generation. And there is a uniform. I’m not sure I have passed the entrance exams yet. I still feel like I’m playing truant.

Even though I’m meeting up for lunch I find myself in Tideswell at ten o’clock with a pie shop selling some very nice looking pies. I can’t resist a cheese and potato pie and a cup of tea.

A little further down the village another rather good food shop sold me a slice of Victoria sponge cake. It was an extra breakfast and was very nice indeed. Suitably loaded, I parked up an hour early in Lathkill Dale and took a walk up a valley I haven’t walked up since we used to take the children camping.

It’s the most glorious walk and the weather couldn’t have been kinder. I want to write more fully about this side of Derbyshire in future blogs. For now I leave you with a few photographs. Everyone you meet is retired, well kitted out and very very happy. At weekends and during the holidays these walks are busy with families and groups. On working days there are only those who have worked hard to have time to see things the way they wish to see them. They are unfailingly courteous and are there for the simple and honest reason that they want to be there.

I meet my friend at 12.30. It is one of the most enjoyable two hour conversations I have had all year. The food is fine but the company and views out of the window make it an occasion. For the sake of completion, I had a smoked trout salad.

On Friday I mostly write about rugby league. I’ve a little bet going with myself to try and get an article published before the end of the summer. If I do I will treat T to a day trip to Scarborough. If I don’t, I will have watched and awful lot of rugby league matches as an end in itself. Sometimes life is enough. A toasted bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon is quite a good accompaniment to a life well appreciated.

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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