The Week of no food and my ultimate weird combination.

It really does upset me when I don’t have a chance to cook.  My reasons for this are three fold.  1.  Food goes off. 2. I feel like I haven’t eaten properly. 3. I feel like I haven’t had any time for myself.  I genuinely cook to relax and it bums me out when I can’t.

This week I haven’t cooked because. Tuesday - went round for more delicious haggis at my big bro’s house.  It was amazing.  Wednesday - I would have been cooking for one as Barny wasn’t around so I ended up going out and ‘eating’ a bottle of wine. Thursday - Surprise birthday party at a friends house. Friday - working.  Saturday - working.  Sunday - Birthday Dinner in Suffolk. (n.b. a hell of a lot of birthdays going on in January)

So what can I write about.  Well it dawned on me that I haven’t shared my favorite toast topping.  For me, you cannot beat the hot, yeasty, sugary topping that is:

HONEY & MARMITE

I kid you not.  With the right amount of butter (don’t even continue reading if you’re a margarine person), a layer of Marmite and a layer of Honey its the best combination you never thought you’d like.  Try it.

Day Off

I put a little bit of ground cinnamon in with the egg mix for the french toast and streaky bacon. This would not have tasted as good if it wasn’t for the half pint of maple syrup, the cinnamon and syrup made it particularly wintery. 

I also made a pizza, on it went porcini mushrooms and spinach. Obviously made with my pizza sauce and some creamy mozzarella.  I make pizza bases in big baches then freeze them and I've recently discovered that the best way to cook them in the oven is on a upside down roasting pan.  An oven will never be as hot as the wood burners in a pizzeria, so you need to cook it from the bottom as much as you do from the top.  The best way is to heat the upside down metal roasting pan in the oven, sprinkle with flour, put your pizza on and then pop in the (really hot oven).

I didn’t cook that night as we went out for Haggis for Burns’ night and a friends birthday.  The conclusion is I LOVE HAGGIS and next year I intend to have a go at making my own. 

Meatballs

Had some friends for dinner last night but I didn’t have time to start cooking until about 7ish.  I decided to make spaghetti and meat balls, not massively refined but they were very tasty and I even got a quote for the blog from Justin: "These meatballs are really f*&!%ng good and you can quote me on that".  Which was nice.

The meatballs were a mixture of pork and beef, with lots of herbs, egg, breadcrumbs, shallot and smoked paprika.  The sauce was going for about and hour and a half. Celery, shallot and carrot very finely diced and softened for 20 mins.  Then wine, tinned tomatoes, water, sugar, salt pepper and finely diced mushrooms.  Then I coloured the meatballs in a frying pan, chucked them in with the sauce and let them cook through.  At the last minute stirred in basil and spinach.  Served it in a big dish in the middle of the table so everyone could help themselves to more.

Risotto

I so enjoyed this risotto and I wish that I had a camera to do it justice.  I had a load of leftover roast chicken in the fridge, dried woodland mushrooms and a butternut squash.  I rehydrated the mushrooms for an hour then drained and squeezed out the excess.  Boiled the butternut squash. Once it was cooked, put it through a moule, seasoned, added butter and then squeezed through a sieve to make a puree.  Then made risotto the usual way, stirred in the chicken and the mushrooms 5 mins before the rice was done.  Then loads of parmesan, butter and yeah as you can see served with a blob of sweet and silky butternut squash puree on top which mellowed the earthy-ness of the mushrooms and chicken.

Day Off

and what a day it was, lots of The Antiques Roadshow and food. I am stuffed.

Feta Hash Brown, (cook hash brown normally, then in the last 5 minutes crumble feta and fold over to melt). We had it with crispy streaky honey drenched bacon and a poached egg.

Thai Curry Paste for the freezer: Green chilli’s, shallots, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, kafir lime leaves, fish sauce, ground corriander, ground cumin, paprika, chopped coriander stalks, sweet basil, oil, galangal, kitchen sink, limes & black pepper. 

Reblochon cheese, salami and wine.  

Udon Noodles, with a hot dressing of mirin, wasabi, chilli, garlic, ginger and soy (plus a pinch of sugar).  Its was served hot (and probably too spicy - too much chilli) with pak choy, edamame beans, spring onion, nori seaweed strips and lovely pink pickled ginger.

Its not exciting but it is food.

and this is a food blog after all.  Its been a hectic week, so not as much (exciting) cooking as usual. Its all going to start again tomorrow.  Promise.

Dinner for 4

Rolled shoulder of lamb, stuffed with feta, lemon zest, parsley, oregano, garlic, black olives & bay. Cooked slowly for 4 hours with a load of red wine. I lost the other photo’s, but it got served with new potatoes baked in chicken stock and thyme & lemony courgettes.

Herby Chicken, Creamed Kale & Salisfy

I’ve never eaten or cooked Salisfy before.  Its a root covered in dirt and it looks like something Ray Mears digs out of the ground and tells you is full of nutrition but actually just tastes like soil.  Thankfully salisfy is delicious.  We had it roasted in oil, garlic and a bit of ground coriander.  Its sweet and creamy and there wasn’t anywhere near enough.

I’ve also accidently bought two huge bags of oregano the other day so I made a very herby (oregano, bay, fennel seeds etc) crust for chicken breasts in a bid to use them up.

Curly Kale is probably one of the best vegetables in the world. 

Teamwork Bolognese

Barny doesn’t cook, its suits me this way for obvious reasons.  The few times he has cooked its been a success, which is probably why I don’t encourage him to do it more.  Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the shop I wrote out some very detailed instructions for him on how to get the Bolognese started so that it has had long enough to bubble away before dinner last night.  When I got home I was greeted with the best version of bolognese I’ve ever had.  Not only was it intensely savory, the colour of it was treacle burgundy and although it carried the tang of a tomato based sauce, it did not really resemble anything I’ve had before.  It probably wasn't very Italian.  While we inhaled it we dissected the main points that attributed to it being so awesome.

1. Soffritto Anise - As usual we slowly softened the onion, carrot and celery in a pan.  But this time, a-la-Blumenthal we crushed a little corner of Star Anise and added this and the other herbs, bay & oregano to it.  For some reason fried onions and Star Anise takes meat to another level.  Only the tiniest bit though.

2. Dried woodland mushrooms - After rehydrating the mushrooms in a mug of boiled water, the water was reserved.  This dark and smoky mushroom water was added to the meat, soffritto, tinned toms and red wine.  So 50% mushroom water and wine, 50% tomatoes.

3. Almost burnt meat - The mince was cooked in a separate very hot pan before it got added to the soffritto and I told Barn to let it really colour by not moving it so that the meat caramelised, he let it do that nearly to the point of too much, but it gave it a really good flavour.

4. At least 3 hours - It needs to cook for aaaages. As soon as it starts to look dry pop a glass of water in it. Oh check seasoning every hour.

I only have the pictures from when I got in and it didn’t hang around for long.

Day Off

The shop is closed on a monday, its our only day off together, so we spend most of it eating.  Breakfast is wilted spinach, with mashed boiled egg and chilli piled on seedy bread with loads of olive oil.  He has two boiled eggs, soldiers and a cup of joe.

A swiss way of Rarebit

I have considered and amalgamated the best parts of the following two points into a breakfast cheese rarebit moment.

1. I like fondue, I like the cloud of Gruyere stink that happens to a room when there’s a fondue going on. 

2. Everyone likes melted cheese and everyone loves cheese on toast. 

Grate gruyere cheese and another cheese, like emmental.  Gently fry onion and garlic in a small amount of butter and oil in a small pan. In a bowl mix together an egg, the cheese, dijion mustard. I put the mix in the small pan with the onion and garlic and a small teacup cup of vermouth (white wine good too).  Keep on a low heat so the egg doesn’t scramble and stir until smooth.

Spread on some good quality bread and put under the grill to brown.

Breakfast Frittata

Breakfast is important.  After 9 hours of sleep, I’ve technically been fasting, some people can’t think about food and eating in the morning, I find this ludicrous. 

Sunday morning in January, the start of the year, the start of the month, we still haven’t done a shop and I therefore decide to use up all the ingredients we do have. Eggs being one of them. Spinach, onion, chilli, a sausage and new potatoes being the rest.

The trick to frittata is to use waxy potatoes.  You need to use the right sized frying pan, one thats not too big so that the frittata is deep, like cake.  After you’ve cooked the sliced new potatoes in the stock and its all evaporated, the oil goes in with the onions to fry, as does red chilli, and whatever ingredients your fridge is willing to surrender.

Then goes in the beaten, seasoned eggs and spinach. Its topped with parmesan, cooked on the hob from the bottom, then pop under the grill to cook the rest of the way through from the top.  It will brown in places and some of the Parmesan and spinach will go crispy, this is good.  I eat it hot with some of my mums Green Tomato Chutney.  You should eat the rest cold three hours later for lunch or however many hours you can hold out.

My kitchen herb drying line

When I get chilli’s and herbs fresh I rarely use all of them in one go.  The window above my sink gets all the sun and to avoid them rotting in the fridge I use it to hang them out to dry.  Its particularly useful for the chilli’s when a dish calls for a bit of heat.  Plus it looks like year through christmas decorations.

Pizza Sauce

Its nothing particularly revolutionary but every time I make it people comment on it.  Its very rich and savory you’d hardly need cheese.  This isn’t the war though, no need to ration, do the cheese.

Heat a frying pan and into it add olive oil, add chopped garlic, basil stalks, some sprigs of thyme or rosemary and a couple of bay leafs. Don’t let the garlic brown. Allow the ingredients in the pan to flavour the oil then add a tin of chopped tomatoes, hopefully the oil will start to fry the tomatoes slightly around the outside of the pan.  For some reason this makes it taste really good.  Then give it a stir so that the whole thing is mixed and it will start to simmer.  I add some balsamic, to take the edge of the tomatoes.  Salt, pepper and some white wine if you have it to hand.  Then turn it right down and leave it to reduce.  It gets to a compote consistency with large chunks of tomato, something you can spread that isn’t watery.  Sometimes when its reduced I add a cup of water and reduce again.  Whether this has any bearing on intensifying all the flavours I don’t know, but I do it anyway.