Foodless Feast

No food to talk of this week, instead a smorgasbord of moving pictures to tickle your tastebuds....




Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.



Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Celebratory Spring Sausagenese

As the name suggests it’s basically Bolognese but the beef has been swapped for sausage meat. I know that doesn’t sound as good as the Bolognese you probably make, but that is kind of the point. I have learnt that you must not mess with other people’s Bolognese. Bolognese for a lot of people is like a Yorkshire mum’s Yorkshire pud; sacred and untouchable and definitely not something you should dare to recreate.  So instead, I have created a sister to the mighty Bolognese, a different supper altogether. Related, of course, but with a distinct genetic different – sausage meat rather than mince. Sausage meat is obviously just minced pork, but with much more flavour, almost sweet, so the chilli is important. It’s cheap, easy, and most importantly its not competing with your Bolognese. And if you still want a Bolognese ask my friend Bert.

4  Sausages (they should really be good butcher’s bangers whatever flavour you like)

2 large onions finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic crushed

Not quite a whole tin of chopped tomatoes

A squidge of tomato puree

Worcestershire Sauce, however much you like

3 – 4 Anchovies chopped finely

Big dollop of French mustard

A few drops of Tabasco / a couple of dried chillies

A handful of fresh herbs – basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, whatever you can lay your hands on

Parmesan

And if you want to show off, a few bread crumbs toasted with some lemon zest to sprinkle decoratively on top.

Just think Bolognese: Soften the onions and garlic in a heavy based sauce pan until soft and see-through. Whilst they are cooking, slice open the sausages and scoop out the meat and drop soft little lumps of it into the pan with the onions to sizzle. It has a tendency to clump together so break it up a bit as you’re dropping it in. Fry off the meat until its sealed and golden, then add all your other ingredients. Give it a stir an leave to bubble quietly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Boil up some pasta of your choice- in the name of tradition I normally go spaghetti, drain it and dress with a generous slick of olive oil. Toss your sauce through the spaghetti using a big fork-ish spoon and serve with some parmesan and if you’re doing the fancy bit sprinkle over your zesty breadcrumbs any other left over herbs. 

Chubby Cuppy Cake Boy

Aside from the fact that the poor child is about to have a cardiac arrest, this is just amazing.... "You're my yummy yummy yumkin..." Check out the eyebrows at the end.

Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb

Rhubarb is my favourite fruit (or, to be pedantic, deceptively fruit like vegetable). Except for gooseberries. However rhubarb, unlike his socially inept friend, is much quicker to cook (excellent for Impatient People like myself) and less of a faff to prepare (again good for I.P.’s like me). And I think they are in season, just.

So this is a little rhubarb number I dreamt up lying in bed fretting about my six month review at work. Six month review now over and it turns out that it wasn't worth fretting about (phewf), but the upside of the fret was this.... please welcome in to your world the rhubarb upside down drizzle cake. Think lemon drizzle meets apple upside down in a big warm cake tin of rubarby almondy loveliness.

Baking and me don’t always get on; my first cake recipe, the indominiable Victoria sponge, was based on each ingredient being “the weight of two eggs” and I have never really moved on from this rather quaint, if unsophisticated method of measuring ingredients (largely, I should add, because it is fail safe, if a little one dimensional). But my hero, the rhubarb, is a complicated soul with his soft texture and tangy dark side, and he really does deserve a softer touch, so on this occasion I have dusted off my old iron weights and done things by the book. 

This is how it goes:

500g – 600g of Rhubarb (about 5 long sticks)

150g ground almonds

150g Self Raising Flour

300g caster sugar

2 eggs

100g thick full fat plain yoghurt

125g lightly salted butter, softened

Teaspoon of Vanilla Essence

Flaked Almonds

A spring-form cake tin, 23cm - sounds pernickerty but I think is the standard size

Pre-heated oven to 180 degrees

Start by washing and drying young rhubarb then chopping into one inch bits. Cover with a third of the sugar and leave to one side – the chemistry behind this is slightly lost on me, but I do know it is important – Rhubarb can be a little tart when he wants to be, so sugaring at this early stage just jollies him up a bit before the big bake.

Next cream your butter and remaining sugar until it is smooth, pale and soft. Beat your eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl and slowly add to butter and sugar taking care to avoid the dreaded curdle (if you do find yourself in curdle territory don’t fret pet, I am not sure curdling is nearly as bad as everyone says it is. In mayonnaise yes, but in cakes I think its fine).  Next up is the dollop of yoghurt – add to the mix.  Finally the ground almonds and flour (sieved) need gently stirring into the mixture. Don’t go crazy here, just enough of a stir to mix it all together. Then in your cake tin (which you have obviously greased), put your rhubarb in first, then dollop your mixture on top.  Shake it about a bit so it all levels out and then in the oven for about an hour. Keep checking it, you may need to cover it a bit so it doesn’t catch.

When it is done (best test is putting a knife in through the top and if it comes out almost clean, you’re cooked), leave to cool for a little while in the tin. This is the tricky bit I know, but if you don’t, upon unleashing your bundle of joy from its tin, it will all collapse and you will cry. When you can wait no longer, tip him out onto a plate and sprinkle with flaked almonds (gently toasted) and serve with a high calorie dollop of something.  

Listen and Wiggle

Thai Meat Balls

Now the name is deceptive – meat balls suffer badly from school-food-syndrome and arouse years of dormant retrospective revulsion, the foundations of which were probably laid in a school dining room. However a quick switch of the Italian ingredients for their Thai counterparts and the humble meatball can be transformed from the kid not picked for teams to blossoming Prom Queen. The only slight snag is getting your hands on pork mince which is not as readily available as you might think. When you do happen across it however, a) make sure it is lean and b) marvel at what good value it is.

I personally need no persuasion at all on the meatball front; aside from being perfectly formed little mouthfuls making for very easy dishing out duty, in my peculiar little head there’s something kind of gangster-retro about them, the sort of thing Michael Corleone might ask his Mama to cook for him having just come back exhausted after dispatching his twenty least favourite people – he would then sit at a little table with a little red and white table cloth, napkin tucked into collar, maybe even a rose on the table and some shady character in a trilby lurking in the background.... This is an absurd conversation, all I am saying is that whoever has been doing the PR for meatballs recently has not been doing a very good job and I think this recipe might amend your old school memory and with any luck could have you batting for the home team.

You will need (4 people)

500g Pork mince

2 Shallots / one small onion finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic finely sliced / grated

3 red chillies, de-seeded and finely sliced

big knob of ginger finely chopped

Stick of lemon grass / Kaffir lime leaves if you have them

One carton of coconut cream (not milk)

500mls of chicken stock

Large bunch of fresh coriander

A lime or two

Sesame oil

Fish sauce

White rice for four people (for rice and my relationship with, see Pot Curry)

Oil (any)

Salt and Pepper

To make meat balls that stay in their shape you have to get your hands dirty and really mush them. In a big bowl mix together the pork mince, shallots/onions, garlic, 2 chillies,  2/3rds of the ginger, a slosh of fish sauce and a shake of sesame oil. With your hands really bind all the ingredients – all the pork needs to be broken down from its minced curls into a pliable, almost paste like consistency. Once satisfied, roll the mixture into balls the size of prize conkers with your hands, patting down any stray bits of chilli or shallot/onion.

In a big frying pan, heat enough oil to cover the base, and begin to colour the meat balls – you don’t want to cook them, just a minute or two of rolling around in the pan should be enough to brown and seal them. Transfer them to an oven proof saucepan and pour over the coconut cream and chicken stock, the remaining chilli and garlic, and lemon grass and Kaffir lime leaves if using. Give the liquid a little stir, season with salt and pepper and cover. Cook in a hot (about 180 degrees) oven for 20 minutes. While the meatballs are doing their thing in the oven you could cook the rice and then serve with a decorative but essential, generous sprinkling of coriander and a wedge of lime.

Ugly Beautiful

Celeriac may be the ugly duckling of the vegetable world but with a gentle nudge in all the right places, she scrubs up rather well. I find she looks particularly good mashed with large dollops of cream or butter but unlike her infinitely more popular friend the ubiquitous spud, she has one extra little trick up her sleeve - celeriac tastes pretty darned good raw.

Following yet another week of mono-chrome weather and binging on butter laced carbs in a bid to turn my February frown upside down, I thought it time to rein in a bit… a week on and the sun now shining this is a perfect inbetweeny salad to see me through to Daffodil season. It has a enough stodge to satisfy but not enough to bring on the bikini sweats and is the perfect thing to sex up weekend left overs, especially meat. Also pretty good eaten straight from the bowl in a greedy hurry, or in a lunch box.

You need:

Big hunk of celeriac, maybe half of one, with all the unsightly dry skin warts and knobbles trimmed off, then grated

1 largeish apple / 2 small (I am a Cox girl myself but Russets would also be good – nothing too sweet), grated (skin on is fine).

Dollops of: Crème fraiche, horseradish, French mustard, good mayo (you can adjust the ratio to suit your tastebuds, - I personally prefer big on horseradish and crème fraiche, less on the others, but up to you) – you need enough to coat, but not drown the celeriac and apple

Lemon juice, a gutsy squeeze of

Salt and Pepper

Barely need to explain what to do – mix it all together and see how pretty she looks. Eat.

Other ugly beauties I found this week.....

Woof Woof

Went to a very cool little pop-up bar slash cabaret last night… hard to imagine I know, I too was a little bemused but by jove it was fun. I shall set the scene: snuggled atop the Bumpkin on Westbourne Park Road a wee little den that goes by the name of Maison de Chien has quite literally popped up. Higgledy piggledy tables and chairs, crazy flock wall-paper adorned with poodles and a well stocked bar selling canine cocktails for knock down prices (may I recommend the Chihuahua – a sooped up caipirinha muddled by a real life Brazilian). Its is run by Medium Rare (“pioneers of modern variety” http://mediumrare.tv/mrare.html) but fronted by Poodle and her sister Kitten (easy to spot, she’s the smiley lady with the big blonde barnet and slightly grubby nails – she’s a lady-bird breeding gardener by day) and they are on the first leg of their mission to introduce London to the pop-up cabaret-bar. At circa 10pm every night the lucky guests are treated to a cabaret by one of a number of fearless fruitcakes (in the nicest possible way) who last night had the whole room in fits before you could say woof woof. And the best thing about it is that you need not part with a penny, (except to quench your thirst). How the finances work is totally beyond me, it all just seems to darned good to be true. But its not. Open 6pm – til midnightish Wednesday– Saturdays, until end of March, when they will be popping up elsewhere. So very worth a visit.

21st Century Takeaway

This is a real quickie, but I just wanted to copy, paste and post it because I think it really is awesome. It is called the Instructables Restaurant (www.instructablesrestaurant.com), “the first open sourced restaurant in the world”. Ok its not a very catchy name, but the idea is super cool. Everything in the restaurant has been crowd-sourced from instructables.com (note to self must use it more) and everything can be downloaded to take home and make yourself, from your lunch to the chair you sat your pretty little toosh on. Its a whole restaurant built on free, happy, share-y, care-y loving, you scratched my back so I am happy to scratch yours and I just think we would all be much happier (and cleverer) if everything worked like this. And they have some pretty funky toasters too. Only downside is that its in Amsterdam. The Dutch are very good at things like this.

Oxtail

Until a couple of years ago, nobody under 40 really seemed to know about oxtail, resigned to the yellowing pages of dated cook books and plagued by memories of “harder times”... But thanks to a pesky dip in the global economy and an insatiable appetite for all things retro, oxtail has made one hell of a comeback as the saviour of frugal feasting, the one nominated for every penny pinching prize going and it now reigns supreme as king of kitchen economy. But until last weekend, I am ashamed to say I had never actually cooked it. Eaten yes, many a time, and many a time vowed to go home and recreate the thrifty masterpiece, but somehow I have never got round to it, until now. My grandmere, a grande dame of the highest order, bought a whole oxtail for my student brother who forgot (I suspect on purpose) to take it back to university with him. As luck (or fate) would have it, I became the proud owner our home-grown hero and this is what I did with it. It is an attempt to recreate I delicious oxtail number I had last week at Albertine, (1 Wood Lane, W12 7DP, 5 stars from me), and it was a pretty good replica. I served mine with mushed up butter beans, shallots, cream and spring onions, but any anaemic looking carb would do just as good a job methinks, if not better.

Braised Italian Oxtail

What you need:

Oxtail, about 2kg / 10 pieces – looks a lot, but 90% is bone, chopped into chunks

A couple of some, or all of these: carrots, onions (essential), celery, shallots all peeled and chopped into manageable chunks

Tomato puree, about a third of a tube

6/7 garlic cloves

Chicken stock, maybe a litre (whatever you have and then just top up with water, nobody will know)

Good slosh of red wine

1 tin of tomatoes

Chilli flakes, teaspoon

French mustard

Thyme

Plain flour

S+P

Patience

A big pot, preferably heavy based and oven proof.

And whatever you want to serve it with – spud, butter beans, polenta, big hunk of bread

Heat a little oil in the pan, and when beginning to sizzle, brown your oxtail chunks. When browned, set aside and sauté your veggies. They don’t have to totally soften, because my word there is plenty of time for that later, but just warm them up, point them in the right direction. Then introduce tail to veggies, and veggies to tails. Now I think its about now you do the flour bit, but flour is a bit controversial. This next sentence may well banish me from certain cooking establishments for life (my grandmother’s for certain), but I think its fine... so now sprinkle your happy veggie-tail party with maybe two tablespoons of plain flour, just so it coats them all in a light but sticky floury mess– this is to thicken things up a bit so you have more of a stew than a soup. Next up are the cloves of garlic (whole and with skin on is fine), thyme, chilli flakes, massive dollop of mootard, healthy slosh of red wine, tomatoes, and chicken stock – all in the pot. The idea is that everything is submerged so if you need to add a bit of water from the kettle in order to hit the plimsoll line, do it. On the hob bring to a gentle simmer then, if you are using an oven proof pot put into a pre-heated oven (sorry forgot to say – preheat the oven to 160 degrees), and if you don’t have an oven proof pot then you will have to do it on the hob – very low temperature and the occasional stir. Now all you have to do is wait. And wait. For about 2 ½ hours. I am sure you are more than capable of entertaining yourself but may I suggest that alongside watching the next three episodes of Mad Men you listen to this:


So great.

In the near 3 hours past, your funny looking lumps of cow tail should have morphed into the holy grail of frugal feats…soft, tender meat that Falls. Off. The. Bone. Very easy to verify – hoik one out and have a pick at it with a fork. If it flops off lazily, you my friend are at the last hurdle, you may pass go and you may collect £200. If things are still looking a bit tough and chewy then I’m afraid its back of the queue for you and another half an hour. However hungry / bored of waiting you may be, I think you really have to stick it out – tough oxtail is not something you want to be wasting your precious time on, in fact I think it would be hard to over-cook it as long as there is sufficient liquid (oh that’s another thing I forgot to say– check liquid levels are high throughout).

Almost there, but one last kind of fiddly hurdle. The picking off of the meat. This is optional, but you are going to have to do it either way, you’ve already spent a day on this, so whether you do it now or later when its on your plate andallyouwanttodoisshovelinamounthful, is really neither here nor there, but I’d do it now. So it is a bit of a faff, not sure what the accepted method is, but I just took the lumps out, left them too cool for ten minutes and then picked the meat off with my (clean) hands. In the ten minute wait you could scoop off the excess fat from the sauce left in the pan. Return picked meat to sauce and reheat.

Et voila, there it was - my very first oxtail supper. Delish. Think I'm going to try an oxtail curry next time.

Pot Curry

Chicken + spices + lack of dishwasher + idle streak = Pot Curry. Chicken, curried, and with rice, in one pot. It really is a stroke of genius, although I say it myself and one of the more fruitful consequences borne of my loathing for washing up. All you need to buy is a chicken and the rest is usually lurking on the shelves at home. There is one small technical issue that I should mention – the cooking of the rice.

Rice, like poached eggs, is one of those things that I have never quite got the hang of. I mean I can cook them, but you know some people seem to just have the knack; a blasé slosh of water and a vague mention of about ten minutes and what do you know, they lift the lid on perfectly steamed white fluffy rice or a pert little poached egg with a wobble in all the right places. The how-to of these culinary basics gets an inordinate amount of air time; everyone professes to have their own little secret which they are willing to impart on a strictly tit-for-tat basis, as if they are about reveal the path to eternal youth. Well let me tell you, I have tried them all – rinsing the rice, swirling the water, vinegar in the water, oil in the (rice) water, cold water, lots of water, an inch of water, barely any water, and I have concluded it is pot luck, quite literally, nothing more than a big watery game of chance. When you next see someone nail it, rather than letting that jealously bubble up inside, remember - they have merely happened upon the winning ticket following an unseen but lengthy run of less-impressive losses. Anyone that can do it twice in a row, answers on a postcard please.

So you will need:

1 healthy looking chicken

Cumin seeds, coriander seeds, chilli flakes/dried chilli, a couple of teaspoons of each

4 cardamom pods

3 or 4 onions

3 or 4 cloves of garlic and a big hunk of ginger chopped roughly (you can keep that fiddly skin on).

1 lemon

Basmati rice for 4/5 people (quanitites of rice is another enigma I am yet to solve, I shall leave it up to you)

Raisins or sultanas

Fresh coriander

Spring onions (not essential)

Flaked almonds (not essential but nice)

Olive oil

S+P

An oven proof pot / pan / dish or relatively deep roasting tray and big enough to fit a chicken and the rice.

Chop up the onions into quarters and put them, the garlic cloves (whole), cardamom and ginger in the bottom of your receptacle of choice with a little olive oil. Crush your coriander and cumin seeds and chilli in a pestle and mortar and with a bit of oil rub over your chicken, halve the lemon and put it inside the chicken. Sit the chick on the onions and garlic and pour in a little water, a couple of eggcup-fuls, to the bottom of the tray/pot. Roast in the oven like you would your average chicken for about an hour at about 180 degrees.

Now is the tricky bit – the rice. Rinse it (I think with basmati this is important), and carefully put it around the chicken. Pour as much boiling water as you deem fit over the rice, (but not the chicken) - the water needs to be hot otherwise you really muddle the oven temperature. On my last go at this, I poured enough water to cover the rice with maybe an inch of water. This may seem a lot but the complex chemistry of rice gets (even more) complicated when its sharing its bed with a chicken and in an oven rather than on a hob. Gently stir the rice to lift the onions / garlic and ginger off the bottom of the pan and return to the oven for 30 minutes. Again this sounds a lot, but as I said rice is tricky.

Whilst waiting for the rice to do its thing, you could toast your almonds in a dry pan, roughly chop your coriander and if you really want to show off, soak your raisins in some hot water. This isn’t so essential if you are using sultanas as they tend to be softer anyway, but raisins can sometimes be a bit chewy which is great in muesli but not so good in rice. Pouring hot water over them and leaving them to soak for ten minutes softens the little blighters up a bit. You might also want to check up on your rice occasionally – we all know how difficult it be sometimes.

After half an hour, your rice should be looking like you’re one of those people with the knack. Not only that but the rice will have made friends with all the other stuff in the pan and be bursting with chickeny spicey goodness. Lift the chicken out of the pot and let him rest for 5 – 10 minutes. If, for some totally inexplicable reason your rice isn’t quite ready, this is the ideal opportunity to surreptitiously pour in a bit more water and give it another few minutes.

When all parties are ready decorate your rice with raisins/sultanas, almonds and coriander, give it a bit of a stir to mix in the onions, garlic and ginger and carve your chicken. Serve with a dollop of yoghurt, a green salad and some mango chutney.

Hello Blog

So I’m a beginner here, and not entirely sure what I am doing… it all looks so fun and easy, so romantic, so foot loose and fancy free when you’re reading everyone else’s, and now doing mine its really difficult. I feel a bit of an idiot; I tapping away frantically, the delete button mostly, struggling find anything to say about my most specialist and favoured subject. Its even more ridiculous because part of the reason why I’m finding it so hard is because I am imagining an audience that doesn’t even exist. I am, in fact, writing to myself. This whole thing is bizarre.

Sod it, carry on, I’ve started now…

So the plan is, to write down some of my thinkings on food. Frugal food. I, like lots of people, love food but I am economically shackled by a student-esque budget, yet not willing to succumb to more traditional budget solutions that normally arrive in a tin. Pocket friendly food is what I spend my thoughts on, and I have decided to write some of them down. Maybe they will be useful for other greedy people who have to put their pennies elsewhere, but I also hope people who have the luxury of not worrying might have a gander too. That is of course assuming anyone will ever read this. I still haven’t worked out how people come across these things….

Anyway, that is my plan. I have broken the ice. Still feel like I am talking to myself though.

p.s. look at my perfect breakfast