Monthly Archives: January 2012

Whiter Than White

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bibendumThose who have been to the U.S. before will know them as the country of superlatives: strawberries are larger and sweeter than elsewhere in the world. Coffee cream is whiter, roads are wider, cars are bigger, supermarkets are larger (and so are the steaks), people are louder, portions are bigger and petrol is cheaper. In fact, the list of superlatives is longer than anywhere else.

When shopping for food in a local supermarket, I found another peculiarity previously unknown to me: eggs are white.

Back home in Britain, you’d struggle to find a white egg on the shelves; the vast majority of chicken eggs sold are brown eggs. Over here, I found a few brown ones on a specials shelf, but hundreds of cartons of white eggs.

I haven’t cracked a white egg in a long time, so I conducted an experiment over the weekend. This took the shape of Tagliatelle Carbonara with smoked salmon, with sauteed spinach and Shitake mushrooms on the side, and a soft boiled egg for Sunday morning.

The world is in order and I am at peace. The American white egg is just what it claims to be: an egg.

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A Cook, an Artist, And a Poet

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DSC_0738-largeA cook, a visual artist and a poet are among the professions required for a great chef.

Have you seen Claire Hutchings’ menu for an event at The Bunk Inn, Curridge Village, Thacham, 28th & 29th of February? Probably not, but if you want to, here is it:  http://pic.twitter.com/ZoT3p0Uf.

I don’t mean to be picking on Claire. I am certain her food looks stunning, and tastes every bit as good as it looks. I liked her on Masterchef Pro and even thought she could win it. I also don’t mean that she’s alone in this, but seriously? This is not a menu. It’s a list of ingredients. Maybe Masterchef spoilt her, since they seem to do this forever and ever: I made you a blah-blah-blah on whatnots, accompanied by this, that, and something else, with a jus from something and other and a foam made from whatever, topped with a shard of…

This is where the chef needs to put her poet hat on for a while, and invent a name of a meal, and a menu, that is not a list of ingredients or preparation methods. Something intriguing, something that arouses curiosity and imagination alike, something amusing. Maybe there’s a job opportunity here for someone with inspiration, language skills and a good understanding of food and cooking.

I am not offering my services here, and I am not claiming that my Christmas 2011 menu sets a standard, but honestly, I find it much more appealing to read and look at, and much more intriguing. Honest.

Would all aspiring chefs please give this more thought and come up with more original menus?

Thank you.

 

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This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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DSC_0246 - CopyFresh woodfire-smoked peppers filled with a spicy spread made from feta cheese, garlic and lots of dill, with fresh sourdough bread (a by-product from my smoked pork belly experiments).

Venison shanks, braised with root vegetables in red wine, served with aromatic Elfe potatoes. Lovely, on both accounts: the Venison shanks were as tender as a dream, yet wonderfully game flavoured (sourced at West Ealing farmer’s market), and Elfe potatoes (sourced at Tesco) are a really tasty variety of potatoes. I hope they keep Elfe on the shelves, they are a strong reason for shopping at Tesco.

Cream of avocado soup, fillet of pork medallions a la forestiere (‘coz I love mushrooms), served with sage butter fettuccine, followed by Pudim Flan.

Lemon and Black Pepper Tuna with Lambs lettuce. The tuna was cooked sous vide – interesting. The lemon was a mistake, as it added a bitter note. Did I like tuna sous vide? Hmm, not sure. Was good, but not mind-blowing, but definitely different. This requires more experimentation.

Confit de Canard, cooked sous vide, served with green beans and fondant Charlotte potatoes. I told you about this (click).

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Confit de Canard Sous Vide

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confit-de-canardI am experimenting with sous vide cooking (cooking with a vacuum bag in a low temperature water bath), and I like Confit de Canard. So, let’s bring the two together!

Get a couple of duck legs. Trim excess skin and excess fat. Cut the loose small bits of meat and feed to the cat. Cure (the duck! not the cat!) with salt, thyme and black pepper over night, then rinse and dry (ignore the cat from now on, OK?). Put one or two legs into a vacuum bag and add one or two tablespoons of duck fat or goose fat per leg. Vacuum-seal the bag.

Don’t melt the fat first. Use cold or cool fat. Melted fat floats around in the bag and glues the open end together, making it difficult to accomplish a good vacuum.

Place flat into a deep baking or roasting tray, and fill up with warm water until the packets start floating. Put into the oven at 90C.

Come back 5 hours later.

Remove the bags from the water bath, and let cool down. I re-sealed mine after cooling down, as I had trapped some air. Otherwise, you shouldn’t have to open the bags at all.

Kept cool, this will keep for weeks.

To prepare, remove the duck leg from the fat, and re-heat in a frying pan such that it browns on both sides. The remaining fat and juices are great for making fondant potatoes, which in turn are a great accompaniment to this dish. Maybe add some green beans or just a salad, and you have a new household favourite. It takes quite some while to make, but very little effort.

I found out later that I am not the first to make Confit de Canard using the sous vide method. This does not reduce my joy. I don’t claim to be the first, but this was a first for me. And a lovely discovery it was. It was bang on.

This is just the kind of food that I like. There’s a lot of hoo-ha about dishes like that when you’re a cooking magazine or food television addict in the U.K., but over in France, you’d get Confit de Canard as a lunchtime prix fixe menu in most Bistros now and then, and many French people consider Confit de Canard the lazy quick supper option when one doesn’t want to prepare a proper meal.

This dish now also has the official stamp of wife approval, hurrah! It was worth the effort after all!

Note that sources on the Internet vary widely with regards to temperature and duration. Temperature advise ranges from 65 to 120C, and duration ranges from 2 to 12 hours, so go figure! I am comfortable in the middle. 90C for 5 hours seems to work for me.

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A Butcher’s Life

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DSC_0224Soon. Very soon: home cured, hot smoked and wind dried pork belly. We took a little sample and found it a little on the salty side. We also found that I didn’t wait long enough for the smoker to cool down, so that it is appears almost cooked around the edges. Finally found it surprisingly chewy, but this was based on an impatient first sample of an outer rim slice.

Beech wood courtesy of the Chilterns near Watlington, Oxfordshire. Smoker courtesy of Webber’s fine barbecue equipment.

It look gorgeous, doesn’t it?

Will experiment again some time soon.

Update: since writing the draft version of this post, we have sampled and enjoyed most of this piece. It’s succulent, tender, and fine in taste. Its brilliant! Anything we could have hoped for, and half an inch more. It’s lovely, and I will make more just as soon as I get a chance.

This is out of the experimental stage with the first attempt, and I can only recommend that you give it a try.

 

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This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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DSCF2791A rich chicken soup with mixed vegetables. You know the kind: plenty of chicken, as little water as possible, and all the leftover vegetables. Just the right thing for the season, heartache or not.

Egg pancakes with a spicy mince beef filling and cucumber salad. A household favourite going back to the beginning of time.

A ragout of venison (personally shot by a friend, who gave us a very generous neck piece), served a la Forestiere (meaning: with mushrooms) with Spaetzle (a type of fresh pasta found in the South-west of Germany), red cabbage, roasted and honey-glazed parsnips and carrots. A freshly churned vanilla ice cream with hot caramelized apples for pudding.

Pot au Feu de Lentilles (lentil hot-pot) with plenty of Swiss Chard and root vegetables, served with pork and venison sausages. Perfect for the cold season, healthy, low in fat and high in yummy.

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The Masterchef Challenge Challenge

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DSCF3904One of the dreadful American TV Food Channel cookery competitions (I forget which one, but I haven’t seen any that wasn’t dreadful) delights itself in challenging the contestants with seemingly impossible tasks. Contestants are asked to use a combination of Leberwurst, Chocolate and Shark Steaks in a fine two-course meal, if I may give one hypothetical example. Thankfully, the trusted and beloved Masterchef (UK) program doesn’t do this, but they have challenges, such as the invention challenge, too. This got me thinking about other cooking tasks which provide a genuine challenge without entering the realm of sensationalism and …. ah, I can’t even find the words for my disgust of these US programs.

Anyways. Suggested challenges include these:

  • Design an economy-class in-flight meal, complete with strict budget limitations and tin-foil serving tray.
  • Create a dish called Spaghetti Don Alfonso (or any other name both unbiased and raising certain unconscious expectations). Contestants have to produce something that suits the name, a dish that could have been plausibly served in a restaurant under that name.
  • Serve Lamb Madagascar (or any other region which isn’t widely known for its cuisine). Contestants have to be truly inventive about the recipe.
  • Prepare a meal together with a group of children. Teach them, inspire them, and delight the pallet.
  • The copycat challange: Present the contestants with a dish. They can sample it, touch it, smell it, look at it, but they aren’t given the recipe or any information about it. They are then asked to reproduce this dish.

How would you challenge your contestants?

P.S. The Masterchef 2012 series starts tomorrow, January 16th, 2012, 21:00 on BBC1

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Toys for Grown-ups

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DSCF0377I am pleased to report that I am working on a little arts and crafts project right now. The missus is even more pleased, I think. It’s one of those crazy ideas that might just be a lot of work and might just take some while, but with luck, it will be worth the effort.

So, without giving too much away, I wanted to tell you that I am now a very happy and very proud owner of a Dremel 300 multitool; the Swiss army knife of rotating electric tools. One of those little hand-held motors with tens of attachments for cutting, sanding, polishing, grinding, cleaning, …. It is just a.m.a.z.i.n.g. It even includes a flexible shaft, which I find even a.m.a.z.i.n.g.e.r.

I think this will be an enormous help with this little project. I have now stopped counting the “oh, I wished I had one of those when I did this or that” thoughts, too. My life would have been easier, and the results much better (and faster, and neater) many times. I wished I had bought one much earlier. This tool seems perfect for little jobs around the house and garden, and certainly is perfect for many jobs in craft and hobby affairs.

I can’t wait to take it to stone, too, but one thing at a time.

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This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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DSC_0084Over the extended Christmas season, we’ve been eating at other people’s houses more than usually, so I thought this week’s I’ve Been Mostly Eating might list some of the meals we enjoyed on those occasions:

A winter warmer, consisting of a Spanish-style chicken, chorizo and beans hotpot, served with baked potatoes, and finished with a fruity Pavlova.

A beautiful and traditional roasted fore rip of beef, served with all the trimmings and Yorkshire Puds, and a lovely apple ice cream with caramelized apples for pudding.

An orange-infused chicken liver pate with mixed herbal salad, followed by a roasted cured rack of pork, served with Sauerkraut and pommes dauphinoise, and a rice pudding tartlet with tropical fruits for dessert.

Last week, we also went to explore the Persian cuisine of West Ealing at long last. There are two (three?) Persian restaurants, always very busy, and we have always wanted to go. We ended up in the Shalizaar, and enjoyed that the Persian cuisine appears to be right in the middle between Greece and India. Interesting. We loved the grilled Aubergine starter (Mirza Ghasemi), and a green pepper stuffed with spiced-up rice. For the mains, we received a heap of rice sufficient to feed a family of four (each!), and a nicely done lamb kebab, accompanied by a disappointingly burnt tomato. The second mains was a braised lamb shank, served in a pomegranate sauce – not quite my cup of tea, but nice and worth a try. Quite oily though. Not licensed (also nice), serving Doogh, a minted yoghurt drink similar, but more flavoursome, than Indian Lassi.

(This post’s picture: a hotpot of lentils, Swiss chard and wilted salads, served with smoked duck breast, one of my own making and very much one to my own liking. T’is yummy!)

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Counting the Days

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DSC_0188I am counting the days, and the tally stands at 40, counting down: I got my sausage-making kit out last Friday, and made my first attempt at a fennel-infused Salami sausage (shown on the left). The augurs say it takes 42 days to mature, or until it lost a third of its initial weight, whichever comes first.

This is just an initial experiment, two sausages, weighing 450g and 350g, in natural beef (“middle”) casings with a diameter of approximately 5cm (2″).

50 yards of pig intestines and a few yards of beef intestines are awaiting their filling in the fridge (preserved in a salt cure). Plans include fresh Bratwurst-style sausages and, subject to the outcome of the current experiment, more Salami. I also had some left-over belly of pork, which I hope to turn into wind-dried (possibly lightly smoked) bacon.

Exciting!

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The Wheel

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japanese-garden-sfAs some of you may know, I’ve been busy reading Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic Wheel of Time for a while, which comes at approximately 11000 pages in print (or a few Megabytes in Kindle). I am now half way into volume 10 of 14, Crossroads of Twilight. I haven’t read much else in quite a while, and I am ready for a break.

These are fine fantasy novels, and I applaud anyone capable of writing a tale of enormous proportions well enough that I, after finishing each of the previous nine volumes, immediately wanted to continue reading with the next one. Since the Wheel of Time is often compared to the other fantasy epic, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, praise should be given to Wheel of Time for coming closest to Song of Ice and Fire. Closest, mind you, but not close.

The trouble with Wheel of Time is that each volume follows the same pattern: a necessary but tedious prologue is followed some building-up of action and conflict. The centre 65% of the book tell the tale without much significant progress, and events spiral to high speed and conclusions in the last 20%.

I find the central tedium increasingly hard to get through, especially since a friend made me aware of Haruki Murakami’s latest offering, 1Q84. I have now put the Wheel of Time aside and started on 1Q84. I’m still in the first of three books, but already love it. Haruki Murakami is the master of the modern surreal, and the translation is beautiful as far as I may be able to judge beauty in a foreign language.

All I need now is those extra 4 hours per day, and the skill not to fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

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Who’s Done It?

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2011-04-17 095Much hailed, much praised, much awaited: the new and modernized adaptation of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson on BBC Television.

The adaptation sticks closely to the original, in the sense that Watson is clueless and Holmes arrogant and disagreeable, pulling solutions out of the hat, reluctantly providing retrospective explanations. Sex and jokes are added to the plot for increased viewing pleasure. However, the authors didn’t think we were capable of following a coherent plot, or that we were planning to work out who’s done it, so they didn’t bother providing us with a coherent plot, or any form of a story line such that we could play couch detectives.

No He’s done it! I recognize the pattern of his shoes for us, just an occasionally amusing mambo jambo of scattered plot fragments, interspersed with nudity, arrogance and conspiracy theory, in a video cut fit to make a sensitive viewer seasick. We should have been warned by the BBC’s tag line, describing the remake as fast-paced.

This being a modern tale, the Internet, email and text messages feature prominently. The film makers have found a nice way to visualize these through a screen overlay text display. Praise for that, and praise for the jokes. Not the worst in TV entertainment, but certainly far from the best, and disappointing as a mystery tale.

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