After four days of quite ridiculous overeating in Canada (involving at least two multi-course meals every day) it was good to be home again. Although it’s exciting, flashy restaurant food palls after a while so it was lovely to eat a dish as straightforward as penne with a simple tomato sauce and a green salad tonight.I don’t know why we don’t value such dishes more. The Italians are certainly happy enough with them but we (and I include myself in this generalisation) too often seem to feel the need to fiddle about with recipes that are best left alone. And the more ingredients you add, of course,...
Monday, 30 March 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
Lapin à la moutarde
My weekend visit to the butcher (the one who was down in the dumps) yielded a wild rabbit which I decided to turn into the great French bistro dish Lapin à la moutarde. There are two ways of making it - smothering the pieces with mustard then roasting them or cooking them in stock then adding the mustard - and cream if using - at the end, a technique favoured in my battered copy of Poor Cook. As I wasn't sure how tough or tender the rabbit was I decided on a halfway house, pot-roasting it in a relatively small amount of liquid to get a nice caramelised effect than adding more stock and the mustard....
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Fairtrade should apply to our producers too
My visit to the farmers' market this morning has left me feeling quite depressed. Apart from one stall whose produce is always snapped up the moment they start trading there are signs that producers are struggling. Independent shops too. The nearby organic butcher admitted sales were down and that the farm from which his meat comes had had to lay off workers.But a new Italian-style café nearby was buzzing with people out for breakfast and brunch. What to make of it all? Obviously some people have money but don't choose to spend it on organic food - or even on cooking from scratch. If half of the...
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Irish-style boiled bacon
We had friends round to supper last night, two of whom were chefs which sounds a bit daunting. What I've learnt over the years though is that they're the easiest people to please. For a start they never get invited out as everyone is terrified of messing up and what they really like to eat is simple home-cooked food.As it's St Patrick's Day today (a happy one to you all!) I thought I'd make boiled bacon. This in itself was a bit of an epic struggle - you can't find a bacon joint for love or money other than one of those odd cylindrical moulded ham joints which oddly cost about twice the price...
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Ahdaf Soueif's koshari
It's been a while since I tried a new recipe - as opposed to inventing my own - but when I saw Ahdaf Soueif's recipe for koshari in the G2 recipe swap in the Guardian the other day I was immediately intrigued. I'd recently got some feedback from the visitors to my student website beyondbakedbeans.com that they wanted some more lentil recipes and thought it would fit the bill perfectly.In fact I changed it quite a bit. I didn't have any vermicelli and thought it would be hard for students to find so I left it out. I used ordinary long grain rice instead of Egyptian rice (brown rice would be good...
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Chicken and 'cep' risotto
I decided to make a risotto last night to use up the chicken stock and a few leftover bits of chicken. As already reported the stock had (accidentally) been in the Aga simmering oven for 40 hours so the risotto needed to be an intensely flavoured one. I added a few mushrooms but, more importantly, a teaspoon of poudre de ceps, a magic ingredient I bought at a French service station a year or so ago. It wasn’t that expensive - about 5 or 6 euros but makes ordinary mushrooms taste like ceps. You can buy a similar product in the UK with the appalling name of Shake-O-Cini.The recipe, which tastes...
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Storecupboard soup
I had a bit of a shock yesterday afternoon when I remembered that the stock I was making from Thursday's leftover chicken carcass was still simmering away in the lower Aga oven. Panic call to my husband who had thought of it a minute earlier and removed it (how's that for telepathy?)I thought there would be just an inch or two of liquid left and that the pan would be totally destroyed but not at all. What I found was an unbelievably concentrated dark stock, almost more like a veal stock than a chicken one.It was too strong for the delicate vegetable soup I was planning for today's lunch however...
Friday, 6 March 2009
Lemon-apple compote
Some of the best recipes - if you can call this a recipe - happen by accident. I was cooking up some Bramley apples yesterday for our morning fruit compote (sounds so much sexier than stewed fruit) and chucked in a quarter of a lemon that happened to be lying around. I left it in the pan while the apples cooled then, when I found that it had an interestingly lemony zing, left it in the bowl in which I refrigerated them. When we ate the compote this morning it had a lovely bitter lemon edge that went perfectly with the dollop of yoghurt and honey we drizzled on top. I've also found a good way of...
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Frugal blogs and turkey legs
I just had an email from an American cookery school blog from the Culinary School Guide which has drawn up a list of the top 100 blogs for the frugal gourmet. It's certainly a sign of the times that there are as many as that. Frugal Cook comes in at no 61 in the leftovers section which I don't really know whether to take as a slight or a compliment ;-)I was amused though at the description of my student site Beyond Baked Beans which comes in at no. 45 in the student eating section. "This blog offers some great, cheap alternatives to crappy, pre-packaged foods common with college students." I like...
Monday, 2 March 2009
Sneaky supermarket pricing strategies
Remember a time - not so long ago - when the standard advice on how to save money on fruit and veg was to buy them loose? And that the best bargains were on the bottom shelf? I've trotted those tips out myself more times than I care to mention but have to tell you now they're out of date. Pre-packed veg can be cheaper than loose ones. The best bargains can be at eye-level.Here's an example from Somerfield just now. Loose potatoes, sold down on the bottom shelf are £1.65 a kilo or 75p a lb. (That's not new potatoes which are £2 a kilo) If you buy a pack of four, which I'm guessing would come to...
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