The Common or Garden Cook

Success and Failure

2020-03-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

Last Friday with The Dear Leader (confusion to her enemies) off diving, and Sternest Critic starting his new job, I had the house to myself with my last commission in hand despatched to the editor the previous day. Being 84.7 per cent retired is enjoyable, or at least it is for those of us with some resources financial and personal. I'd not want every day to myself, but the occasional one is a rare treat. Naturally I chose to spend the majority of it in the kitchen.

Of late I've been baking a lot of bread, in fact I haven't bought a loaf for I'd guess three weeks. I got fed up with either tasteless dross or stupidly expensive 'artisan' offerings (that may not be very artisan). With the freezer stocked there was no need for standard stuff, so I opted to go the more exotic route and try two of Ursula Ferrigno's Italian recipes for richer loaves. One succeeded, one failed - my fault not hers.

The success was an egg-enriched flatbread, flavoured with vanilla extract (not essence, crude oil derivatives don't tempt me) and as I lacked one stipulated ingredient, with rosewater. It rose nicely, came out golden and with a pleasing texture between chewy and soft, and was very tasty. The failure was fig bread, a bit like a pannetone. It was a salutary lesson in not just following the instructions, but thinking them through. It came out claggy, far too dense at the bottom, because I used some home-made figs soaked in alcohol, but still included the juice of three oranges the recipe included for wetting dried figs. It has actually improved over the days, probably drying out a bit, and toasting helps, but I'm annoyed at not seeing the problem coming.

You live and learn. I will give the fig bread another go, maybe near Christmas. The flatbread, and others in the same vein, will appear on our table shortly. Anna del Conte's book on Northern Italian cooking features a savoury one with walnuts and rosemary; Ursula Ferrigno has others that intrigue. I've improvised my own with spare dough, baked with loads of fried onions and some herbs on top, Not that I'm obsessing, but I'm about to re-read Elizabeth David's huge tome on English bread and yeast cookery with an eye to making some enriched breads and rolls of more local heritage. We're lucky that filler-upper bread is not a major component of our diet, but good bread - from the smell as it bakes to the taste as you get outside it - can be such a joy.

Ribbons on a Bashed up Pair of Jeans

2020-01-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

My Christmas reading of Anna del Conte's tome on Northern Italian cookery has helped add a few new standards to my repertoire. One of these is such a simple way of making roast vegetables a bit more interesting and a lot more appealing to the eye than normal, and I've made it twice in the last fortnight, once more or less to her instructions, once tarted up a bit.

Her dish uses courgette, potato, aubergine and red pepper, all of them cut and sliced into neat pieces then laid in stripes on a bed of finely chopped onions, with a few blobs of passata on the onions then on the upper veg. With seasoning and a drizzle of olive oil it is quickly prepared, then left to cook - it doesn't even need the recommended occasional basting at a pinch - at 160C for 90 minutes it comes out looking colourful, smelling appetising, and giving cook and diner alike a feeling of virtue. I won't buy courgettes in winter, and had no decent spuds to hand, so my version used aubergine, red peppers, and sweet potato.

The second effort a week or more on used the same vegetables, but I couldn't leave well alone, so added a dividing strip of green chili rings, a load of garlic cloves peeled but whole, and another dividing strip of cherry toms. It worked again, but was not as satisfying as the original, simpler dish. Sometimes embellishments work, sometimes they don't. These didn't: the tomatoes - strange given the passata that's part of the original - jarred, and the chili felt out of place. The garlic, sweet and tender, fared best of the three additions. But overall it felt like I'd added ribbons to a pair of comfortably worn in jeans.

Cooking, domestic and professional, should be about trying things, making changes here and there. I dislike those interminable arguments about the one true recipe for xyz, where departure from someone's fixed idea of what's right is deemed heretical... Paella is one example where such debate seems particularly fatuous, given there are many regional and local variations, and the Valencian original began as a peasant dish where people used - and still use - what they had/have to hand. And Paella, like that roast veg idea, invites experiment. That said there are limits: I'm no fan of 'fusion' cookery, partly because it can seem false, forced, and worse, arch. So the bad boy/girl chef who uses AdC's idea and introduces coconut milk, curry spice and guavas won't get my applause. That would be like ripping big holes in the knees of those old jeans, and who'd be daft enough to do that?

What Makes a Good Cookery Book?

2020-01-03T03:41:00.000-08:00

Mentioning yesterday Anna del Conte's book The Classic Food of Northern Italy got me thinking about what actually makes a good cookery book.

I have a bad feeling that photography is for many a decisive factor. The bookshops are full of glossy tomes illustrated with images that make the mouth water. But having once looked at the sexy pictures, do people cook from these books? Do they learn anything from them other than how a finished dish, well lit, oiled to glisten, on carefully chosen crockery and perched on perfect furniture, will look? Or do they go to restaurants where such ideally plated dishes can be obtained?

A few years ago I wrote a piece for Lovefood about cookbooks I wouldn't be without. It was easy to choose most of them, as I just went to the shelves and selected the most beaten up, sauce stained, fat splashed volumes. Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, Alan Davidson's North Atlantic Seafood, Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cookery and HFW's work on meat caught the attention first. Backs broken or even missing; dog-eared pages; forgotten bookmarks poking out; the occasional loose page. The first three of those books have at most pencil drawings; the fourth has some good images, but is text heavy. So I want text.

Food, and food writing, should also at its best and most worthwhile be an exploration of cultures. Davidson and David both do that with great learning, one focusing on a single country (but several cuisines and cultures); the other covering pretty much every country with an Atlantic coastline. As a read David's book is hard to better, full of anecdote, history and literary links, the fruit of half a lifetime's experience. I want to be entertained and educated by a good food book. I want it to be so packed with information that new discoveries are made - noticed - every time the pages are dipped into.

It may seem high falutin', but a bit of philosophical reflection doesn't go amiss either. So HFW scores highly - all his work explores morality and ethics around food, no bad thing.

Of course, they should also make me want to cook and eat. I still return to all four of those volumes (less so the meat one, given The Dear Leader's (hail the Dear Leader) meatless diet now) for inspiration and for guidance.

In the end, I guess, a good food book is one that endures - not a beginner's guide to some fad; not all teeth and no knickers as my late mother would have said (I am thinking of two celebrity cooks/chefs when writing those words, one male, one female). They should be destined for the bedside table and the kitchen table, not the coffee table.

Reading (and Viewing) and Cooking, and My Bread Recipe

2020-01-02T08:23:00.002-08:00

Reading and cooking are two of my favourite things, so an informative and literate cookbook is always a joy. Like the wonderful Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe I can read such works as if they are thrillers. This Christmas The Dear Leader (lingering agony to her enemies) bought me Anna del Conte's tome on the cooking of Northern Italy, and it has duly been read cover to cover.

With that AdC book it has been the baking that has grabbed my attention the most. I've pretty much given up buying bread from the supermarket: sourdough that uses vinegar; leathery, pappy French sticks whose production should be punishable by death; Sainsbury's 101 ways to present tasteless white rubbish. Instead I bake batches two or three times a week, freezing the spare stuff for later. That fascination has now extended to other baked goods: yesterday I made some onion 'biscuits' from one of her recipes, and very good they were too. Biscuits, however, is a misnomer, as they are more like tiny scones, and only baked once to boot.

For many people these days I imagine TV is more likely to be the spark to ignite their culinary creativity. I've never watched GBBO, and probably never will, but I'm glad that for a very small percentage of its fans the programme has led to actual cooking at home. The shops have far more bakery equipment of a practical nature on sale; supermarkets are stocking a huge range of ingredients for fancy cake making etc. A quick scan of the shelves at one supermarket today suggests that the look of the thing, and sweet items, are what has grabbed the attention most - far more variety in cake decoration than in bread flour as a yardstick. But I really hope that, the bug having bitten, people who have not done so already will move on to making their own bread, pizzas, rolls... Sadly, however, it is probably not yet the moment to sell off your shares in Deliveroo.

For what it's worth, here's my infallible recipe for making two large loaves, or one large loaf and about 10 small rolls. It uses a lot of yeast, but as I buy mine from Aldi for 59p for 8 sachets, and it has yet to fail me, no matter.

Just in case this is needed: hot ovens can burn you; so can heated baking sheets. Use oven gloves (and common sense) to protect your hands from such hot surfaces.

1: In a large mixing bowl make a 'sponge' with 125g strong white flour (though plain would be ok), 150ml hand-hot water, and two sachets of dried yeast. Stir them together and leave for one to two hours, covered with a tea-towel, in the airing cupboard or another warm spot. The messy putty-looking mix you put in comes out more or less flat, pocked with bubble holes.

2: To that sponge add 300g of strong white flour, 300g of wholemeal or seeded granary or similar flavoursome flour, two more sachets of dried yeast, 2.5tbsp of olive oil, 2 tsp of fine salt, and 425ml of hand-hot water. Mix it, then plop it out on a floured work surface, flour your hands, and knead for about five minutes. If you knead too much the flavour suffers; too little and the texture is wrong. I go by the dough feeling 'silky' and stretching nicely to the hand - sorry there is no more scientific way of putting it.

3: When the dough is right, put it back in the mixing bowl, pour a tbsp of olive oil over it and turn so the surface gets a sheen, though there's no need to be too fussy, and then cover with the tea towel again and put it in the warm spot to rise for another hour to two hours. It has to double in size, more or less.

4: Dig your fingers into the risen dough to knock it back (get the air out of it), form into whatever loaf shape you want and put these on a floured baking sheet, or put some half way up a greased loaf tin, and again give it two hours to rise. Again the loaves or rolls should double in size.

5: Pre-heat the oven (here's where it gets difficult - everybody's oven is different, conditions and ingredients likewise), I bake at 210C, in a fan oven, it works for me. When I've gone hotter the bread's surface has been tougher but not crusty; cooler and the texture is denser. Slide the baking sheet with the loaves on onto another that has heated up in the oven (so you have one baking sheet on top of the other), and leave for 15 minutes for rolls, 25 to 40 minutes for loaves, depending on their size.

6: When they are done (looks, smell, their bottoms giving a nice hollow sound when tapped) put the bread/rolls on a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes (it helps the finished texture) before succumbing to temptation.

There are few culinary pleasures to match eating fresh, hot-to-warm bread spread with butter that melts into the crumb as you watch. I tend to use organic flour, no additives, so while the bread is good for a day or two, it doesn't keep like commercial stuff. But then it generally doesn't get the chance.

Burn the Hair Shirts

2019-12-26T03:21:00.000-08:00

I love many things about food and drink at Christmas. For a start it's the only day of the year when we drink at breakfast - a glass of champers with our bacon butty (egg butty for the newly vegetarian Dear Leader (eternal sorrows to her enemies) this year). We eat too much on the big day, but this is balanced by making good use of leftovers for a week thereafter. We buy special foods, we cook special meals, we drink special bottles.

It's lovely, but these days a dark cloud looms even as we feast - January has become the hair shirt month. Dry January. Veganuary. There are doubtless more such in preparation, or whose existence has not filtered through to Darkest Lancashire yet.

Firstly, bollocks to Veganuary, it is not natural to need B12 supplements. And half-bollocks to dry January - we do a weekend and the surrounding weekdays either side without a tipple, New Year's Day onwards, so this year about 10 or 11 days.

These events are joyless, so I've come up with my own idea - spread the word, and mention my name in despatches: here's to Funbruary. February is probably the most depressing month of the year weather-wise, a long way into Winter, a long way from decent light again. We need something enjoyable about it, so I propose a month in which we make an effort, resources allowing, to eat chocolate every day; to ask for white toast in hotels even if the waiting staff raise their eyebrows now; food will be chosen to match the best bottles in the cellar (well, cupboard), not the other way round; we'll have friends in to enjoy those bottles of fine Port, Madeira and Sherry that we buy in for Christmas and don't get round to drinking. And we'll not feel guilty. Is that too much to ask for one month, and the shortest at that?

Postscript: having written this I googled Funbruary, and others got there first. Damn. But good on them all the same.

Ready, Steady, Curry

2019-12-10T06:24:00.000-08:00

While I enjoy making dishes with posh ingredients, it makes my peasant heart happy to do so with common stuff.

On the posh side, we had a simple pasta course at the weekend, just ribbed (for your pleasure, and to pick up the sauce) tubes and a small but expensive tin of black truffle slices in olive oil. Add grated Parmesan and that's it. Delicious.

On the simple side, a recent curry made with dried lentils, loads of sliced onions and garlic, a grated thumb of ginger, and a tin of coconut milk. With spices to perk it up of course. It was slurpy (the lentils cooked to dhal doneness), filling and of course cheap(-ish), and for once I got the spice balance right - a hint of heat, a lot of taste.

As so often the difference in kitchen terms between the two was time. The pasta and truffle thing took 10 minutes. The curry in all needed over an hour - 10 mins to boil the rinsed lentils, 35 more to simmer them, add to the sauteed onions and mix with the coconut milk then bubble gently away for another quarter of an hour to let the ginger, garlic and spices blend in and flavour the whole pan.

I loved both meals, but maybe because I enjoy the faffery, or possibly because the curry cost by my reckoning £2.50 (coconut milk from the Indian supermarket undercuts Messrs Sainsbury and Aldi by about 33%) it was the latter that pleased me most.

Food Bank Bankers

2019-11-27T03:31:00.000-08:00

Every month I do a shopping run for our local food bank, two in December, August and July when the need is apparently at its greatest. I feel more involved actually buying three or four bags of shopping (at Aldi - not mean, I do half of our own shopping there, the core bits) and taking them in, rather than just giving a few quid. A load of thoughts pass through my tiny mind as I'm doing this - why in a world of billionaires such things need to exist; how it must feel to be a parent forced to resort to such support; what people would like to see, or need, in their lifeline bag of groceries.

As someone obsessed by food I reflect on the culinary aspects of this too, and what will stretch through the week. Thus I always buy some 500g bags of rice, and of penne, along with tinned toms or sauces that will help form the basis of several meals. I hope it's not too condescending that I worry some people needing these goods may prefer the canned stuff I include, as it can be cooked in seconds - just warmed through - or even eaten as it comes if they've been cut off, or have no working cooking facilities; and that some may not have the culinary knowledge to cook pasta so it's palatable, as successive governments have reduced cookery teaching to next to nothing in our schools, and fast food culture has done its worst too.

Monday's run included some pudding stuff - rice pudding, custard, tins of fruit - as food should be about lifting the spirits too, and a sweet treat is great at that. In case anyone is thinking ill of me, I don't do this for any feelings of innate superiority, or that it makes me feel good. It actually doesn't. Softie that I am, after every run I feel down that such places and services are necessary. But that's no reason to stop trying to help, even if it's only a tiny bit. Atheist that I am, I commend the Salvation Army to anyone reading this, and hope if you have the means you will make the occasional food bank donation to them, or their equivalents.

Super Stock

2019-11-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

I love making stock so much that it's probably the most enjoyable part of cooking a chicken. It's cheap, delicious, can be altered in a thousand ways so it's never dull, and is the basis of innumerable great dishes.

With the carcass of a roast chicken to use up last week it actually fell to the Dear Leader (may her detractors shrivel like salted slugs) to start the stock off, a rare foray into the kitchen other than in an advisory capacity. To the carrots, onions, ginger and bay leaves she had incorporated I added a few rather tired but usable sticks of celery, a head of our own garlic, one of the few left from a disappointing season, and a load of spices - black cardamom pods, red and black peppercorns, some coriander seed, a star anise, some allspice berries... The more flavour you put in, the more you get out.

Once the initial albumen scum has been cleared from the surface, watching it give occasional little blips is a therapeutic exercise, repeated over a good two and a half hours as the liquid simmers ever so gently to maximise the flavour without clouding up. The aroma wafting up through the house is another mood lifter. And of course the end product is life-enhancing - tasty, complex, savoury, like a good wine but without the after-effects. As soon as the cooking is over I like to strain the liquid off the veg and bones, as left to cool on them it can develop some stale undertones.

As you'd expect with an ingredients list like that, the first use I made of the finished article was in a Chinese dish, a mushroom and vegetable-rich noodle soup-cum-stew into which, inauthentically, we stirred spoonfuls of the Mexican-inspired chili sauce made by Sternest Critic to preserve our bumper chili crop remains. A good soup needs a very good stock - I recall (probably not for the first time, my apologies) Chris Johnson, then owner of The Village Restaurant in Ramsbottom, being very upset that having paid £20 (and this in the early Nineties) for a bowl of soup in an extremely famous French restaurant owned by an extremely famous French chef, the stock was watery and boring. It spoiled what should have been - if critics were to be believed - the meal of a lifetime.

No such problem with our bowl of Chinese-y goodness. It was warmly spicy, onion sweet, and deep in colour and flavour. Satisfying to the palate, soothing on the stomach, and warming for the soul - and for pennies.

The Fixings

2019-11-14T05:43:00.001-08:00

Strange, or maybe not, how 'the fixings' are so often the elements of a special meal that stand out. It's a cliche, but people at Christmas are wont to say if asked to choose between the meats and the accompaniments it's the gravy, bread sauce and stuffing that they'd prefer. Maybe that's because we're too lazy or busy to do them as frequently as we'd like. I swear blind every December 25th that I will make bread sauce more often, and here we are in mid-November and I haven't made any since that date. With The Dear Leader (tremble before her power) now 98.75% vegetarian I must make some veggie-friendly stuffing with bread sauce as a Sunday special, maybe with onion gravy, something we enjoyed last night and that I do cook several times a year. The urban peasant side of me relishes the thought that such a spread is very cheap, too.

Any excuse for onion gravy. Having come across two recipes for celeriac 'steaks' in the past week I decided to give the idea a go myself, but with the twist of aiming for (pretend) steak and (real) onions, a childhood favourite.

One of said recipes boiled thick slices of celeriac for 20 minutes before frying them in butter to finish, the other roasted them, so as I had the oven on to bake bread (I'll make someone a lovely wife) I opted for the latter route, coating the 10mm-thick slices in olive oil and a dusting of smoked paprika before sliding them in with the bread. They cooked at 190C, turned once, for about 30 minutes, till starting to show charring at the edges.

The celeriac was pleasant, strangely enough still tasting of celeriac rather than braising steak, though the texture was not far off, but the onion gravy with which they were covered on the plate - a load of red onions sweated, reduced and slightly caramelised for 45 minutes - was the star of the show. Some tawny port added sweetness, plain flour thickened things, half a tsp of Marmite gave it umami depth (stop showing off, Kyle), and a knob of butter added gloss at the end.

Heston B would doubtless wish to add a vanilla pod, eyebrow trimmings and donkey cheese to give it a lift (and justify charging the price of a high-end bicycle for a jar). He'd be wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix the fixing.

Gratifyingly Good Gratin

2019-11-13T03:19:00.000-08:00

Nigel Slater is a cookery writer I find both helpful and annoying. His prissy style gets right up my nose, but he has some excellent ideas. Reading his recipe for baked onions with miso nudged me to make something with onions prepared in the same way - boiled for 40 minutes till soft (he said 25 - 30). My version then diverted from his entirely. Halved across the equator the onions were placed cut side up in a gratin dish, moistened with a dash or six of vermouth, then covered with a heavily peppered gruyere-and-brown-breadcrumb mix, dotted with butter, and baked in a 190C oven for 25 minutes or so (until the top crisped and browned). Does anything smell more appetising than cooking cheese and onions?

The Dear Leader (eternal damnation to those who oppose her) and Sternest Critic both approved, though both later blamed the need to extinguish naked flames in the house on the alliums.

The gratin is one of those culinary joys that seem to have been pushed aside as old fashioned - 'so eighties darling [bro?].' As someone who is a dedicated follower of anti-fashion I prefer, greedily, to keep it in my ever-expanding kitchen vocabulary. Perhaps restaurants avoid them as needing too much checking on, and for the time it takes, though as with the example above you can often pre-cook the vegetables and just need to slide the dish in a hot oven to finish.

It is also a great way of making something substantial that costs very little - especially economic if the oven is used for something else as the same time (the onion gratin was followed by a fish pie of modest size). Some years ago I wrote a paid piece for a culinary website where a cheesy potato gratin was one of (I think) four dishes to feed a family, each with ingredients costing under £2. No cream in that one then, but a stock cube, some dried herbs and a couple of cloves of garlic make a decent moistening, an alternative to milk, and supermarket cheddar browns as nicely as posher gruyere. You can save on pre-cooking too if, like in one cooked last week by Sternest Critic, you slice the spuds and onions to see-through thickness.

That use of vermouth, by the way, is something I'd recommend. I sometimes buy a cheapo bottle just for used in cooking - it gives a herby flavour, keeps better than wine, and makes you feel somehow more generous - as I only had some rather high end Dollin to hand, doubly so then. And its pairing with gin is as sublime as cheese with onions.

Simplicity Itself

2019-10-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

A year or so back The Dear Leader (cursed be her detractors) bought me a vegan cookbook. It was written by the chef who catered for a week-long event she attended. Interested though I may be in the topic, I have not cooked a single thing from it, as just about every recipe requires 20+ ingredients, several of which I've never heard of. I prefer to keep things simple.

Take a dish we ate yesterday: pasta with unpasteurised butter and a load of grated Parmesan. Ready in about 10 minutes, and delicious. We love pasta putanesca too - crushed garlic and chopped chili warmed in oil, with plenty of salt. Another 10-minute wonder. Given we have a healthy crop of chilies this year, we'll be revisiting that plenty of times.

Simple does not have to be quick, of course. I am writing this while waiting for some bread dough to finish rising for the second time. That was made with flour, water, yeast and salt, basic ingredients, but it takes time and patience and a bit of experience to avoid disaster.

As I've written before, it's sad that a life-skill as important as cooking isn't included in the education of many (all) our kids in the UK. It would take just a few lessons a year to teach them some building-block recipes. How to make a soup from scratch; pancakes, great for a quick pud, but the basis of some fine savoury dishes too; a simple tomato sauce for pasta, and the proper way to cook the pasta itself; maybe how to cook (without buying the sauce) a potato and veg curry; how to make an ordinary vinaigrette dressing for salad...

Simplicity itself, and satisfying to the soul and the stomach. Not to mention the benefit to the national purse of reducing what appears to be our growing reliance on unhealthy takeaways and ready meals, so saving the NHS billions from their long-term effects.

Not Vegetarian Exactly

2019-10-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

Since The Dear Leader (may those who oppose her crumble into dust) became 98.75% vegetarian I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of cooking what I hope is interesting food that fits the bill. Given the alternative was banishment to the ice planet Hoth, that's good.

Our regular 600 kcals Monday is a reminder of the bang you get for your vegetable (and fruit) buck. One dish in the evening was a real winner, roast butternut squash with orange segments and thinly sliced onions, served as a warm salad with the orange juice and two teaspoons of olive oil as a dressing. It will appear again on a non-fast day.

I often now envy what TDL gets served as a vegetarian when we are out and about: last weekend at Higham Hall the food I had was well cooked but frankly rather dull - basically meat and gravy, two veg, spuds; on the Saturday she had a nut roast that smelled wonderful, receiving the thumbs up from the supreme ruler. This evening she is at an event in Manchester complete with full fig dinner, and I'm fascinated to find out what they will give her, partly because it's often so much more imaginative than the corporate rubber chicken or overdone beef; partly because I am happy to nick good ideas for the future.

That said, Sternest Critic and I will be having a very blokey blowout tonight - well-matured Aberdeen Angus ribeye; mushrooms; corn on the cob; peas; tomatoes; and an avocado as a starter. I don't want to give up the pleasure, and the health benefits (B12 fix, zinc, etc), of occasional carnivorous indulgence. But it will be noted that where once we'd also have been enjoying sausage, kidneys and a chop with our steak as a mixed grill male meal the bulk of what we're getting outside tonight is vegetable - and if you're picky about toms and avos, fruit. And grain for the corn. And fungi for the 'shrooms. It isn't meat anyway.

Exotic Preston

2019-10-15T03:06:00.000-07:00

OK, so Preston is not exotic. But in our Preston garden (and greenhouses) we are growing things that some in the UK would consider exotic. We do this for the sheer fun of it, the challenge without danger, and the pleasure of eating, fresh, things that normally come from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

This morning we ate the first of our Physalis/Cape Gooseberry) 'crop.' We had one each in our morning bowl of fresh fruit. One. Like the dolts who win the lottery and change nothing, we are not going to let it affect our lifestyle. Doing this (not just the Physalis, but the other exotics we grow) clearly is not in any way economically viable (that plant cost quite a bit), though by (minutely) reducing our carbon footprint it may be environmentally so. But even with just one apiece it was worth it in taste terms - they were sharper, 'fruitier,' simply better than what we buy from the supermarket.

The same thing most definitely applies to the lemons we grow. Though this year it was lemon, singular. Used in G&Ts it was zingier, several steps up the citric ladder. A friend and neighbour has been doing this for longer, and her harvest is a good bagful of fruits every year, so we hope our tree will become more productive in the not too distant.

It has to be acknowledged that some of the fun of growing such things is the showing off. So I'm going to do a bit (more) of that now by listing a few: we will shortly be harvesting a few tomatillos; the next flush of Physalis will be ready in a week or thereabouts; though this year we have had no fruits, we have had limes and apricots in the past, and the trees are looking healthy; we had one delicious fig a month back. If chilies count as exotic (and they probably don't) then we can add them to the list - this year, starting from seed, we have grown a dozen plants or so and harvested scores already (some dried for later, some eaten fresh) with hundreds to come. They're the exception to the economic viability rule, a £1 pack of seeds yielding several pounds-worth of fruits. But they also demonstrate the culinary advantages of this activity - we have purple, red, yellow and green ones; some are fruity and mild; some hot as Hades; and some have rather thicker flesh than anything in the supermarket packets, tempting you to damn the burn and just eat them like fruits.

Ever the optimists we have other projects on the go: Morels and truffles (though they may never appear) in two spots of the garden; two Szechuan pepper plants looking very healthy indeed; and our Kiwis. Ah, our Kiwis. One vine is about 12 feet high, has been established for maybe eight or nine years, looks great, and has never yet produced a fruit. It was sold as self-fertile, but clearly isn't, so we've now bought two others (belt and braces) of different types in the hope that one day... Ever the optimists indeed.

Wild, Go Wild, Go Wild Mushrooming in the Country - and at Higham Hall

2019-10-14T07:52:00.003-07:00

The Dear Leader (may her enemies dissolve into the earth) and I just spent a very pleasant weekend at (and around) Higham Hall in the Lakes. For years we've been saying we'd like to know more about the fungi we see on our walks, and finally got around to doing something about it with an introductory course on the topic.

Knowledge of both what and where is clearly vital with this, and course leader Paul had both. He took us to three sites in all, where - with care being taken to be environmentally friendly about the gathering - we picked a surprisingly wide range of fungi, edible and otherwise (though I do like the proverb that all mushrooms are edible, but some only once...). We learned how to identify the genus, and from that to refer to textbooks and identify precisely which fungi we'd found. It was a treasure hunt and a field trip. Given we picked and later identified examples of several fungi that could potentially kill anyone eating them, it was a stark reminder of how dangerous a field (and forest!) this can be.

On the Saturday evening we tasted four of the best edible fungi found that day, suitably prepared by the Hall's cook, and very enjoyable they were too: best for me the chanterelles; then the shaggy inkcap (before it had chance to turn unpleasant), the hedgehog fungus, and a poor last some chunks of puffball.

In future I'll be confident of identifying the chanterelle in particular, if we come across them (and we will be looking), having had the chance to compare it with the species with which it could most easily be confused (the false chanterelle - and that at worst would cause a bit of tummy upset, and learning what nasty others could be taken for it), and to cook and eat them. Probably the hedgehog and the shaggy inkcap too - I wouldn't bother with the puffball again on culinary grounds. If you have not both been on such a course and got the right books to hand, you should not even think of trying to do the same. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SOMETHING TO JUST 'GIVE A GO'!!!

Jamie Oliver Has Good Idea Shock

2019-10-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

There are some TV chefs (cooks is a more accurate word for most) I actually like - HF-W, for one. There are others - Nigella 'another bucket of cream please' Lawson, and Jamie 'fry it pukka fella' Oliver - I cannot abide. Strange then that reading a recent JO recipe gave me a headstart on what proved to be an excellent dish.

Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).

Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.

Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?

Real Fast Food - Without Drama

2019-09-27T02:17:00.000-07:00

Last night, because we're having some work done in the kitchen, and The Dear Leader (all hail The Dear Leader) got back from a work trip late on, I decided to make a rare foray to the local Indian (actually Bangladeshi) takeaway. The curries are good, you can watch them being cooked, but given the walk there and back (I refuse to have anything to do with Just Eat etc) and their cooking time, it was not fast food. Enjoyable, but not quick - from decision to eating a good 30 minutes. And two curries, one rice, one naan cost £16.

Compare that with a recent meal praised by The Dear Leader (may her enemies shrivel in shame) when again she returned late-ish, and I made a rapid (and filling) noodle dish. It took perhaps 15 minutes, the various veg prepped while the noodles were simmered prior to joining the stir fry. Using a load of the fresh ginger we both love, lots of different fresh vegetables (and one tinned), and some mushrooms, two platefuls cost at most £3 (the tinned bamboo shoots accounting for £1 of that).

I worry that with the inexorable rise of Just Eat and its rivals even something as basic as a stir fry will seem onerous to some families. Add to that the trend for cooking to be seen as drama, or even a spectator sport (the rise of the celebrity chef, Masterchef, GBBO and so on) rather than a basic life skill, and the concern deepens. I'm delighted that Sternest Critic has developed (inherited?) a love of cooking, and curiosity about new ingredients and dishes. It will serve him well, and save him a fortune.

The Feelgood Factor

2019-09-10T06:24:00.001-07:00

There is something strangely addictive about rubbish food. Since changing careers I've spent less time driving around the country (and the continent), and eat far less manufactured pappy crappy food. In fact our diet is extremely healthy. Yet still I can be tempted by what I know in advance will be, say, a tasteless and hugely over-priced sausage roll (I ate one at lunchtime yesterday on what proved to be a painfully long car journey).

For a minute, however, it's enjoyable. Same with chocolate and sweets. But the sugar or salt or fat rush is inevitably followed by a down. A down that I know is coming.

By way of contrast, the fruit- and vegetable-rich regime we enjoy - and enjoy is the word - normally does not give that very brief intense high, but makes me feel good through the day. It's even more noticeable the morning after on the rare occasions when I'm too tired to cook, and so buy us a takeaway. Next day I feel hungover, regardless of whether I had anything to drink with the meal or no. Too much salt, too much saturated fat, and heavens know what additives and preservatives.

I'm reminded of something I read years ago about a simple test that predicted a child's future success: put a sweet on the table in front of them, and say they can eat it now, or if they leave it for five minutes you'll give them another so they can scoff two. Bright kids (who followed up later in life had bright futures) waited. But too many of us can't control our impulses, and our need for instant gratification. People still smoke, knowing how bad it is for them. I still enjoy a drink - at a level that even ten years ago would have been thought abstemious, but that now is more than doctors recommend (I read recently that just seven units a week is considered alcohol abuse by some health professionals now).

Maybe it is growing maturity - about time some may say - but my drift is towards the longer-term feelgood factor. One major problem remains - jelly sweets. I have asked The Dear Leader to keep me away from them, and them from me. But I will miss them.

The Charm of Culinary Chance

2019-09-04T02:39:00.000-07:00

I wish I had invented the term 'clean eating.' Since The Dear Leader (may her enemies be forever cursed) and I became an item in the late 1830s I've been doing what I'd term cooking from scratch - buying, or increasingly now growing - good ingredients, and making them into what I always hope will be successful meals. And unlike those zealots who communicate clean eating's precepts as a near fascist ideology, I love food.

Say it though I shouldn't, over more than three decades I've developed some skill. But it is one of the many charms of such cooking that things can go wrong, to varying degrees, or if you're lucky, they go very very right. Different atmospheric conditions; the age of ingredients; slight variations in measurement; the power reaching the oven...

Last weekend I made some bread, using my patent recipe, an amalgam of HF-W's magic bread dough and Ursula Ferrigno's biga starter/enhancer. It is consistently good, but for some reason - our new oven perhaps - this time the three loaves came out crustier and lighter and tastier. Same yeast, same flours, different result. Sternest Critic often takes me to task about my inability to bake crusty bread. This came out crusty, remained crusty, even defrosted crusty. SC is currently 2000 miles away, so presenting him with the evidence was impractical. I was so proud I gave one of the three to a friend eating with us that evening.

Last year I was obsessed with making gnocchi and similar creations. The first effort, a dough rich in ricotta, was stunningly good, little pillows of deliciousness, so good I tried to repeat the exercise a few days later when a friend (by coincidence the same one) was with us. Same ingredients, same recipe, same method, but the gnocchi were that bit tougher and denser. Tasty, but not as fine. A third effort months later was in-between.

I celebrate such unpredictability. Naturally I'd prefer it to be degrees of wonderfulness, but I don't want production line soulless regularity. As I write a batch of dough is rising in the warm conservatory. The bread it will produce later today will almost certainly not be as crusty as the previous stuff. But maybe it will be richer; or with larger bubbles; or somehow more savoury. As long as the results are not downright bad, I'll be content, and if they are excellent I'll be delighted.

The Opposite of Glut

2019-09-02T02:50:00.000-07:00

I've written here before about how the kitchen gardener copes with gluts. Last year one of those, for us at least, was quinces, used with apples in pies and breakfast purees, added to lamb stews, poached in sweetened wine, baked... But sometimes the opposite happens, with a crop failing, as indeed is the case in 2019 with.. quinces.

Our tree had a few small fruits visible in early summer, but one by one they've dropped off, or more accurately been washed off by the heavy and all too frequent showers of August, or been blown away by this summer's equally prevalent gales.

It's not disastrous, as quince is hardly an essential in the kitchen. But one of our major reasons for kitchen gardening is growing things that are either absent from the shops, or rarely seen and very expensive. Things that improve our quality of life; fruits and vegetables that make cooking and eating a pleasure.

My apologies for widening this out, but our agriculture is fragile: weather extremes happen all too often; industrial farming is weakening the soil; the B word threatens to hit the sector from all sides. The British Retail Consortium just said Michael Gove's statement that Brexit would not bring any fresh food shortages was categorically wrong. We may find that the opposite of glut is not just a gardener's problem soon.

Sooo Beige

2019-08-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in this blog there's a post about grey/gray food, and how that colour is thoroughly unappetising. Last weekend I cooked a curry that was the epitome of beige, and it had the same result in terms of appeal to the eyes.

Once beige gets control, like corrupt politicians, it's extremely hard to dislodge. This was, oxymoronically, a beige black hole, the taupe singularity at its heart drawing in and destroying all other colours. I added jade frozen peas to try to brighten the thing, and seconds later they'd lost their sheen and were more brown than green. Basil and coriander went in at the last second, but they too succumbed.

Strangely the root cause of the beige was bright yellow turmeric root, that dazzling hue combining with coconut milk to end in the B word. It didn't help that the curry was bulked out with cubes of peeled aubergine, and a lot of cashews, neither of which added to the non-existent rainbow on my plate. My turmeric-dyed fingers, briefly as yellow as a lifelong smoker's, mocked the dullness of the dish.

The flavour was fine, excellent even, enlivened with a big nub of ginger (more beige) grated in, and spices various. Without a red or yellow pepper to hand, however, and tomato being wrong for it, beige the thing was. Served on beige wholegrain basmati rice. Accompanied by a pleasant hock that matched it nicely, but made me wish I'd opted for a red just to brighten our evening.

No restaurant chef would have served such a dish. At the very least it would have been garnished with something green on the side, and sweet peppers added to the ingredients list. You (and they) can take the look of dishes too far. The pointless foam. The ubiquitous single physalis, or three redcurrants, with puds. A thin squiggly line of sauce too meagre to bring flavour. Curly parsley atop steak and fish. But annoying though they be, they're better than beige.

First fruits and no fruits

2019-08-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I wrote about how rather than the standard winter, spring, summer and autumn a kitchen gardener enjoys a lengthy series of seasons, their starts marked by picking and eating the first of a particular fruit or vegetable. Last week we had the first of our delicious Discovery apples, eaten straight off the tree they are somehow far more appley than shop bought, and the reddy-pink blush brighter and more alive. That's the good side of growing your own.

There is, then, a bad side too. We dashed off for a few days away recently, having inspected the produce close to readiness. A tiny greengage tree had seven or eight fruits just on the verge of ripeness, so we left them, anticipating a mini-feast on our return. The squirrels had other ideas - all bar one sorry specimen left broken on the ground had gone when we returned. We shared our strawberries with the little grey monsters too, the netting meant to protect the plants no barrier to these furry thieves, and a few well-bitten apples can be seen littering the ground in the orchard bit of the garden - we leave them in the hope that, easier to get at, they'll keep them off the rest for a time. Some hope.

I googled 'legality of shooting grey squirrels' and learned that you probably need a licenced shooter, and the preferred RSPCA method is catching them and getting a vet to put them down at £30 a pop. Only if you can guarantee a clean kill can you shoot them yourself (I have an old air-rifle that could possibly be of value, if they'd hold still until I was within three feet), so they will continue to enjoy the fruits of our labours undisturbed. No need I guess to go into detail of what happens to the bulk of the walnuts we grow.

Our interaction with the resident fauna is not all negative. We feed the birds partly because they put on a fine show, but also because in a largely organic set-up they are very helpful, for example eating loads of caterpillars. And we have a lot of flowers that attract hover-flies, which do a fine job on white fly and other pests. Thinking along those lines, what we really need is a resident raptor capable of taking squirrels. We don't have that, but hear owls aplenty, and The Dear Leader was buzzed a few weeks back by a Nightjar while she was on a dusk inspection tour of the crops. I now have to google 'how to attract Golden Eagles to your garden.'

More than a baked potato

2019-07-18T03:58:00.001-07:00

When I was at university in the late 1830s a couple I knew, flatmates of a friend of mine, decided to turn vegetarian. Which is to say she decided, and he acquiesced. Sadly neither of them had a clue about cooking, or diet, and so every meal I saw them eat, and others reported by my friend, consisted of baked potato with a bit of cheese and/or butter. Within a few weeks they both looked distinctly ill, pale and blotchy, irritable, tired... It's such people who in times past gave vegetarian diets a bad reputation.

I hope that the multitudes nowadays turning to vegetarianism and veganism have far better culinary skills. I worry about that, though, and about the rapid rise of ready-meals to cater for new converts to those causes. I've tried a few of them, including one well-known brand name, and have not been impressed. I'll make my own bean-burgers thanks.

The Dear Leader (may her enemies be trampled beneath her feet) and I are not vegetarians, and I for one have no intention of ever being so. But as noted before we eat far less meat than was once the case (in a £120+ shop yesterday I spent £3 on some cooking chorizo, the only meaty item in my trolley). That's for environmental and health reasons, but increasingly for reasons of flavour too, and, linked to the latter cause, thanks to our kitchen garden providing some great ingredients, none of which is steak.

The very excellent Ursula Ferrigno has been a particular inspiration in that regard, her Italian-focused cooking simple and delicious: yesterday the DL picked and blanched some frisee chicory, I cooked and pureed cannellini beans with loads of garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, and a good handful of oregano fresh from the garden, with a few pitted and chopped black olives to garnish it. The warm puree on top of the drained green leaves made a very fine dish indeed. And so simple.

Our health, already good, has I think improved with the change, though as over the last few years we've also increased our exercise levels it's hard to say what has been most important in that regard.

We eat a huge variety of fresh vegetables, salads, herbs and fruits, many of them home-grown but others sourced in SE Asian and Chinese stores as well as three or four different supermarkets. I wonder how many new vegans are just cutting out foods, and not adding to what they ate before? So meat and two over-cooked boring veg becomes two over-cooked boring veg, or worse still burger and fries becomes fries. I know we are lucky to have the space, but as importantly we have the DL with the skills to grow such excellent produce, and me with the experience and curiosity to transform it into a huge range of different dishes. I really hope that this generation of newbie vegans has the oomph to do more than reheat packet-meals, or try to live on baked potatoes - without even the cheese or butter if they're true to their principles.

Seasonality for the Common or Garden Cook

2019-07-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

A major benefit of growing your own food is that it brings you closer to natural seasonality - for me that being the sort defined by things appearing ready to eat in the kitchen garden, rather than the new series of some reality TV programme starring the tattooed brain dead, or the first fixture of a sporting calendar. It is a more nuanced seasonality than Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn (I actually prefer the more descriptive word Fall, once general in Britain).

Among the more notable dates of the produce seasons is New Potato Day, when the very first tiny new spuds are rushed from soil to pot with the minimum delay between. I've noted elsewhere here, I'm certain, that there is no comparison between such sprint-to-table potatoes and even the very best the shops or market can provide. It is - for me at least - interesting that the gardener can influence seasonality in this regard: we grew two huge black plastic potfuls (filled with our home-made compost) of spuds in a greenhouse, so that New Spud Day was at the very end of May, while the ones grown in the kitchen garden proper were only ready in the second half of June. An admission: the flavour of the ones grown in the kitchen garden was notably superior.

Other such events are First Strawberry Day, and First Courgette Day - that latter a week ago, though it was first two courgettes day, as two were ready together (used in a veggie sauce for pasta). There are less joyous seasonal dividers too, such as when we say goodbye to the last of many crops, but there again we can influence things a bit in our favour: by protecting some courgette plants we managed to have the last of them in early November one mild year, and not under glass either.

Hard though we try, however, there is much beyond our control, and that makes it all the more engrossing (again, for me). Two months ago I prepared a 1m x 1m patch to grow, fingers crossed without much hope of success, morels. A blend of sand, home-made compost, bonfire ash courtesy of a kind neighbour, decayed and decaying fragments of wood, chips of charcoal, rotting leaves, and some morel stuff bought from a reputable supplier, was mixed together and used on a square of ground beneath our oldest apple tree (morels are said to grow best in apple orchards, on ground where there has been a recent bonfire). I have kept the patch weeded if not overly so, moist to ensure the spores or seeds or whatever they be are not dessicated, and put the odd fallen young apple on there too. In May, we can but hope, we could just have our First Morel Day.

Differences over Soup and Services, and Losing a Friend

2019-07-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Dear Leader and I attended the funeral of a very dear friend, for me of I think 38 years' standing, for the DL someone she'd known and loved since the first day of senior school. As Mary was a very devout Catholic the funeral service took the form of a requiem mass, and sadly until the eulogy by her brother-in-law it missed out almost entirely on the personal - for a convinced atheist it seemed like men in expensive dresses doing things by numbers, but I'm sure her family felt differently, and if it was a comfort to them, all to the good.

The DL was, however, so upset by how impersonal the priests made things - the brief show at the crematorium was worse still - that she refused to shake the monsignor's hand. As I say, Mary was a strong catholic, so each to their own, but she was also a force of friendship nature, something that the haughty coutured ones only really touched at a tangent. After the mass and the crematorium the family had arranged what Mary's husband Mike would disarmingly call 'a nice ham tea,' in fact a very generous and enjoyable buffet where the many different circles of her friends mixed, and we chatted with old friends and exchanged stories of meals and meetings past. That was, for me, so much closer to representing Mary and her gift of friendship.

Over the years we ate many meals together, at one another's homes and a couple of times when we holidayed as two families in France. There was a certain amount of rivalry, and all dietary health concerns were put to one side in the pursuit of flavour bonus points over the other as we took it in turns to prepare meals. As an example, I can still recall almost 20 years on one of my efforts being freshly-peeled prawns in cream flambeed in Calvados, and Mary producing pork with cream and apples cooked with cider - we were in Normandy as might be guessed from that. She beat me hands down on culinary kit kudos, bringing her own set of posh kitchen knives in a ninja-black cloth roll.

Mary was an absolute original, enormously generous of her time and her table - the meals she served to a huge circle of friends over the years would have paid for several ridiculous Italian sports cars, though she would never have wanted one. We differed on quite a few things - not least the spelling of the word grey/gray in this blog - some of them culinary: she didn't, for example, see the point in soup; she called beetroot 'the devil's vegetable,' and she rarely made pudding, but then her guests (expected to bring dessert if they wanted it) would be so full with starter, main, salad and cheese that it was superfluous.

The first time I met Mary was when she visited the DL (merely then an object of unspoken admiration on my part) at university. Mary enjoyed enough Guinness for two that evening, and we had innumerable convivial soirees in the following years. For about 25 years the DL and I were members of an exclusive wine society she formed, those wishing to join having to prove their knowledge by identifying red wine from white by sight alone. Doubtless the visually impaired would have been given several guesses. The DL and I will have a particularly good meal tonight in her honour, and open the best bottle to hand (with the proviso that the sluicing must fit the browsing, as it always did with Mary and Mike's events) to toast a special person, and an unsurpassed hostess.

Original Sin - Pasta Caring

2019-06-24T05:12:00.003-07:00

As anyone who has read a few of these posts will have gathered, I may not be hidebound, but I'm packing for the journey as it were. My preference has always been in food terms for the authentic, so what was a passing fad a few years back - fusion cuisine - didn't really work for me. Which is not to say that I won't try new things, or enjoy tweaks to recipes and dishes that don't rip the heart out of the original.

The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.

I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.

In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.