Category Archives: Food and Drink

This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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404533_10150616991189629_510874628_8755423_179769866_nAh, not a bad effort this week:

Pork loin medallions, served with freshly made egg fettuccine and a mustard and white wine reduction. Just a good excuse for getting the pasta maker out of the cupboard.

Fresh tomato soup with poached egg, spiced yogurt and fresh sourdough bread. Not terribly exciting when made with winter tomatoes, but gave a promise of summer.

Grilled feta cheese with chorizo, tomatoes, onions and jalapeno peppers. Just another excuse to eat more of our own sourdough bread, which pleases us tremendously these days.

Calves liver, complete with caramelised apples, potato mash and gravy.

Oh, and this: a five course Italian meal. Begins with a welcome of a shot of tomato essence, served with fresh focaccia and a sample of salami and other meat produce. Then, a bread soup (will post the recipe soon), followed by three types of fresh ravioli (spinach and pine nuts, goats cheese and mushroom, and egg yolk) topped with a sage butter. This was followed by a sous vide cooked and pan-seared butterflied quail, served with fried cabbages and a fondant potato. To conclude, a Lemon Tarte and a Cream of Zabaglione ice cream.
All was lovely and much praised, but I will admit that this menu was a bit of a palaver to prepare, more than usual even by my standards. Worth it though.

(With thanks to Jane for the photo. Her complete gallery from the evening is online. Click!)

 

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This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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DSC_0294This week, we’ve been eating a mixed bag of mostly simple meals. I am restricted by other commitments, but with Masterchef 2012 and Raymond Blanc’s lovely The Very Hungry Frenchman…. OK, I’ll tell you about this TV program some other time. So, here are this week’s meals:

Seafood Spaghetti, served with a creamy white wine sauce. A yummy quickie.

Pot au Feu aux Lentilles a l’Anglaise, because this is a very rewarding and warming meal, and I was cold with a bad cold, and with very low outside temperatures. I’ll post the recipe to this some time soon, as it is one of my all-time favourites.

Steak Tartare and fresh bread. What could be simpler? What could be more delicious? Hardly anything, really. Raymond argues that an omelette takes only three minutes, and that your life is seriously screwed if you can’t afford those three minutes for a simple yet delicious omelette, but you know what? Steak Tartare doesn’t take much longer, and when push comes to shove, I prefer it to an omelette.
Which reminds me on those lovely one-egg omelettes I did for starters some while ago… Time to revive those! Onwards:

Lechon a Cubana; slow-cooked juicy pork, complete with spicy beans, rice, caramelised pineapple and plantains (see picture). Not quite a 3-minute dish (the pork takes 10 hours), but it worked out really nice. Everybody in the household liked it. Well, OK, all two-legged members of the household.

We finished the week by going out and enjoying a wonderful Vietnamese meal in Saigon, Saigon, King Street, Hammersmith. (See here for my review.)

Not so bad after all, upon reflection…

 

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Saigon, Saigon

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DSC_0940I promised a friend and member of the Sunday Night Curry Club to tell about our trying out of Saigon, Saigon, a Vietnamese Restaurant in Hammersmith’s King Street, so here goes:

We loved it.

We arrived at 7pm on a Saturday evening to a pre-booked table for four, and it quickly turned out that pre-booking seems essential: the place was packed, and the downside was that we had a slot from 7 to 9pm.

Staff was friendly and efficient though, and overall noise levels were pleasantly low, inspite of the many diners in the room.

For starters, we enjoyed fresh salad rolls with sliced shrimp & pork in soft rice paper, char-grilled quails marinated with honey, minced garlic & five spices and a sliced beef steak salad (medium-rare) with mixed herbs in fresh lime juice. All three dishes were so nice that none of us could pick a favourite.

For the mains, we had stir-fried spicy beef with morning glory, stir-fried chicken in a fruity tamarind sauce, shredded pork with lemon grass and black mushrooms, served in a clay pot, and seafood “on fire,” all accompanied by fried rice, sparkling water and a Sauvignon Blanc.

Maybe one of quieter nights will allow for more time. While we didn’t feel rushed through the meal and our 2 hour slot, in the end we were declined a coffee and asked to vacate the table for the 9pm batch. I think this is just acceptable given the overall quality to price ratio; they’d probably have to raise prices across a magical threshold in order to run the place at a single seating per table. Maybe 2 1/2 hour slots would be clever compromise move though.

The food was great. Prices are very reasonable for the area; we paid approximately £30 per person, which included a bottle of wine shared between four. The only downside is the two hour table slot business.  We’ll be back for sure, but maybe not on a Saturday night.

 

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A Butcher’s Report

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DSC_0187Here’s a follow-up on the earlier report of Salami making:

We have now sampled and enjoyed the first of the two pork salami made in early January. I declare it a victory with reservations: I used too much fat. The mix is too salty (as expected, due to an Oops! when preparing the mix). I also used a “salami spice mix” which came as part of a pack deal (which also included beef ‘middle’ intestines, curing salt and starter ferment) – this mix makes it taste like a box-standard salami. Boring.

All in all, however, it looks like a salami, feels like a salami and probably smells like a salami (a cold blocks my sense of smell right now), so on an overall verdict, we felt encouraged.

Thus enthused, we have now made four beef salami, two with a spicy paprika and chilli flavour, two with fennel. I also made three pieces of smoked belly of pork and two pieces of cured beef (topside), all of which are dangling from the box room ceiling right now.

We are now looking forward to February 15th (belly of pork), 20th (cured beef) and some time in mid March for the salami.

 

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This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Eating…

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DSC_0249This week, or some time not too long ago, I’ve been mostly eating crispy parcels of filo pastry, filled with goats cheese, chestnut mushrooms and dill, served with roasted pistachios and poached pear. For the main course, a braised shank of lamb was served with a rich thyme jus, saffron rice and spiced yoghurt, followed by yet another instalment of freshly churned vanilla ice cream and caramelized apples.

Chicken thigh fillets, filled with a salsa from coriander greens, anchovy, capers and black olives, wrapped in home-cured, home-smoked and home-dried pancetta, served with sage butter fettuccine.

Lechon a la Cubana at the Habana Cuba Restaurant in San Jose, CA. This is slow-cooked pork (which was aromatic, satisfactory juicy, and not dry), served with back bean soup, rice, and plantains. Very rich for lunch, but very enjoyable. Cooking this meal is very high on my priority list now, I just hope that I don’t have to travel all the way to Brixton just for two plantains.

The welcome back home to the good wife, to civilization and, well, home meal was a tray of Paella, followed by Pudim Flan. Both are easy enough to make even with a worn-out body and jet-lagged brain, and both are easily among the tastiest dishes possible.

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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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