My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...

Pears of Granite

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:22:23 +0200

Eddie Izzard was right. Pears really are "gorgeous little beasts", although I have severe doubts about whether I will actually get to eat one this year.

I love citrus fruits and berries but I don't normally buy apples, pears and the like because you tend to have to make a commitment to eating a whole one. If you open a satsuma you can eat the segments slowly without worry that they'll go brown from oxidisation and berries, of course, are perfect little self-contained wonders. Not so with an apple: leave it for five minutes while you take a phone call and you come back to something that looks like it's already decomposing.

Which is why I was glad to see some small pears in the supermarket when I grabbed some groceries before my evening calls last Thursday. Of course, they were hard when I got them but I was hoping that they'd ripen up over night and that I'd be able to have one for breakfast the next day, or over the weekend, or maybe on Monday. But by Tuesday morning they still felt like they'd been carved from jade.

That was a little disappointing as I had to go away for a couple of days and I expected that I'd return to a bowl of liquid pear goop. But no. This evening I returned home and found the pears are still giving me a nine or 10 on Mohs scale. So maybe I'll get to have pears for breakfast and maybe they'll have their moment of ripeness overnight and they'll be "dead pears" in the morning.

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Wild Asparagus

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:12:44 +0200

It's asparagus season. I know it must be because you couldn't move for special asparagus menus in restaurants in Berlin last week.

I like asparagus a lot and try to make good use of it in season. I used to buy a lot of 'baby' asparagus spears and nibble on them raw as a snack while watching TV, sprinkle them on home made pizzas, toss them in salads and put them in sandwiches. I also love using the big, thick asparagus spears in soups, although I think they tend to be a bit too chunky to make a good vegetable side.

So I was delighted to see these beautiful wild asparagus spears this evening. They remind me of the seed tops on the summer grass on the village green by my primary school.

As you'd expect, I tried them raw. After all, almost all good ingredients can be eaten raw and lots of them actually taste really great that way (lamb, beef, salmon, tuna, onions, mushrooms, cauliflower, peas etc...). These wild asparagus spears are lovely raw and gently cooked. I par boiled them for a minute and tried them with a little olive oil and grated goats cheese.

The verdict? Whether cooked or raw they have a lovely gentle flavour, are crisp and fresh and just different enough from the regular commercially farmed asparagus to make an interesting change. But, one punnet of asparagus was far too much for me for the next couple of days as a vegetable side so I think I'll try and make a soup from the rest tomorrow evening and chill it down to be served as a summer soup.

Raw Wild Asparagus

Par Boiled Raw Asparagus

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Can't cook, will eat

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:34:30 +0200

I don't have a kitchen to cook in at the moment, so I bought a different set of foods than I would normally choose at the Santa Monica farmers' market, this morning.

As I've said, the really good ingredients don't need much in the way of cooking, anyway. So while it would be nice to experiment with some of the vegetables I saw there and don't have at home I wasn't too worried. I started off buying 2oz of sliced, dried persimmons. They're not too sweet, chewy and don't have that mouth drying effect you sometimes get from a raw persimmon. But they definitely have the fragrance and perfume you get from the fresh fruit.

Then the chap running the fresh fruit stand gave me a Fuji apple to test. I did and I liked it. Sweet and crispy, it was a great breakfast and most likely more healthy than a muffin or a pastry. I got half a dozen to take back with me so that I have something healthy to start the next few days with.

If it hadn't been so hot I'd have stayed longer. But it's still April and I'm not yet ready for 90°F, so I made a hasty exit and did a very un-English thing and found some shade.

Dried Persimmons and Fuji Apples

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Looking forward to pea dumplings

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:01:52 +0200

I'm not normally a big fan of dumplings. Possibly because I look a little bit like one and possibly because I'm always a bit wary of any kind of food that comes with a 'wrapping' or sauce. Surely, if the ingredients are good, there's no need to coat them in pastry, dough, batter, bread crumbs or thick syrupy, creamy, unctuous sauce?

So I was surprised to find myself thinking how delicious the dumplings, that Filiz just showed me, look.

Peas? I love peas. Cheese? I love cheese. Lemon. Salt. Olive oil. It looks so simple and good. I am now a little bit disappointed that I'm leaving in the morning and won't be able to cook them for a fortnight. But it's something to look forward to when I get back home.

I looked for a photo of some peas to go with this post and could only find this picture of a strange plant I found when I went to Mt Vernon in Virginia. I'm not sure if these are actually peas or whether they are something poisonous. In any case, they look interesting.

Pea_pods

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Last of the cold weather alliums

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:57:12 +0200

I love alliums. Leeks, onions, shallots, scallions and garlic; I love love them all. So, much as I'm happy to see that spring weather is arriving, I miss the hearty allium bases to soups, stews and roasts in the warmer months. So today I made my farewell meal: slow cooked alliums, served on a split bread roll that had been covered in grated cheese.

Allium Sandwich

Apart from making toast, this is the simplest cooking you can do. For each person, you just take about a quart of sliced onions, leeks and shallots in whatever proportions you like, add a bit of garlic, put them in a heavy pan with two spoons of olive oil, set the heat low and cover them with the lid. Set the heat very low. It should take more than five minutes for them to start heating through, because you want them to sweat and to soften, not to caramelise and burn.

Alliums

Sliced, Gently Cooking

Stir them every 10 or 15 minutes. You shouldn't need to touch them more frequently as they should take at least 90 minutes to cook, and anything up to three hours is fine. This isn't a race. After 45 minutes they should have started to soften and become pliable but should not be cooked all the way through.

After 45 minutes

After 90 minutes or more the volume taken up by the alliums should have reduced by about 75% and they should still be translucent and soft. They are ready to serve as is, or you can turn the heat up a bit and and caramelise a few to add a little colour.

It's simple (delicious) food and they're great as the main flavour in a dish. Alternatively, they make a great vegetable for a more substantial meal.

Alliums Two Ways

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Mjukt Tunnbröd med Råg. Mmmmmmm

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:32:38 +0100

It's that part of the year when the US has moved from winter time to summer time and Europe hasn't. That means my regular evening call is an hour earlier than normal and so I'm a little more rushed in the evening. So rather than shop for raw cooking ingredients I popped into the English/Irish/Swedish shop and picked up some things that didn't need preparation.

I came away with some cereal and some super soft, Swedish flat bread: mjukt tunnbröd med råg. Nurani tells me that it translates as "soft thin bread with rye" and is normally served with meats, like reindeer.

I didn't have any reindeer at home. In fact, I didn't have any meat at all, so I had two cheese sandwiches: one was humous and English stilton and the other was Spanks' sweet shallot and balsamic vinegar relish with parmesan cheese. Both were excellent, although I think I prefer the shallot and parmesan.

Mjukt Tunnbröd med Råg

This bread is much better than most tortillas, because it's so soft and because it's oblong shape makes it really easy to roll up into a sandwich. I'll be buying Swedish bread again.

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Cup of Tea Cake

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:59:01 +0100

When I was a child, my mum used to make a fantastic cake that I called "Cup of Tea Cake" because it's made with a cup of tea. When I visited her in London last weekend she had made one of those cakes for a tea party she hosted. She sent me the recipe and I made one for myself this morning. Frankly, I'm quite impressed with the cake and will be sharing it at work tomorrow.

Cup of Tea Cake - Just Out the Oven

The recipe is very simple and unlike most baking, the exact amounts aren't terribly important. It's the proportions that count. So the cups you use just need to be the same size, they don't all need to be eight US fl. oz.

You will need:

1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of dried fruit, like raisins
1 cup of good, strong tea
2 cups of self raising flour
1 egg
1 pinch of nutmeg

Start off by making a good strong cup of tea. Ideally, use a really good tea and make it stronger than you would normally drink it. Remember, it's going to be mixed up with a lot of other ingredients, so you don't want the flavour to get lost.

Soak the dried fruit and sugar in the cup of tea overnight. In the morning, pre-heat the oven to 325°F (435K if you use metric) mix the flour, egg and nutmeg into the soaked fruit. Grease a bread shaped dish, fill it with the batter and pop it in the oven.

I baked the cake for about 1¼ hours and then turned off the heat and left it in the oven for another few minutes. Every oven I've ever used has cooked at a different speed from all the others, so I expect the time it take to cook will vary. Especially if you use an Aga.

Cup of Teak Cake (Slice)

Serve the cake with a cup of tea. It's really great if you spread some butter on it, too.

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I'm sorry, I have a cold

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:33:17 +0100

Despite copious amounts of Emergen-C in the last few days I have a cold. When I woke up today, my nose felt drier than a box of tinder, although that changed as soon as I'd had another glass of Emergen-C.

I looked in my fridge and realised I very little that was suitable for curing colds, so I turned my store cupboard and decided to make a soup with my last few shallots and red onions. I sliced them thinly, added in half a bulb of garlic (peeled but not chopped) and gently sweated them in a pan for 20 minutes or so. Then I added half a mug or orange lentils and a few mugs of water and cooked it all at the lowest heat on my stove-top for another couple of hours.

Soups are always better the next day as the flavour in them takes time to develop. But I wanted to eat something that might help fight my cold and so I tried a bowl of onion and lentil soup for lunch. It was remarkably good for something that hasn't had a chance to mature.

I'll be making this one again.

Onion Lentil Soup

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Garlic and Cheese Omelette

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:07:59 +0100

Garlic Omelette

I had the idea of adding gently simmered garlic to an omelette earlier today.I thought the softened tones of slowly cooked garlic would work really well with the eggs and cheese. I can report that it was great. Probably not suitable for breakfast as it takes too long to prepare, but it would be superb for a small lunch, with a green salad and a mug of strong tea.

The garlic doesn't dominate. It's a soft, background flavour, which lifts the meal from a boring cheese omelette to something different and tasty.

You will need

2 or 3 eggs, depending on their size
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, depending on their size
1oz of a mild cheese that melts well
1 knob of butter or shake of oil
1 pinch of salt
pepper to taste

You may want to add

2 soft bread rolls, slices of toast or warmed muffins
some chopped parsley

Method

Bring a small milk pan of water to the boil, add your peeled garlic cloves and simmer them until they are soft and change shape when pressed with a tea spoon.

Remove the garlic from the water and let it cool on a chopping board. Chop the garlic into small pieces and then smooth them into a paste with the flat of the knife.

Chop the cheese into small pieces that will melt nicely.

Crack the eggs into a bowl or glass and beat them gently with a fork. Don't beat them too much or you'll get lots of air into them and your omelette won't be able to support the weight of the cheese and garlic. You risk a pan with fried cheese stuck to it and a lot of time cleaning up.

Heat the pan so that it's warm enough to melt the butter but not much warmer.

Melt the butter and then add the egg to the pan. It will cook slowly so you will need to wait a little bit before adding then cheese and garlic.

When it has cooked enough that you can draw the edges into the centre you can dot the cheese and garlic all over the disk of egg. You may need to continue drawing the egg mixture into the centre. Frankly, it depends on how runny you like your omelette.

When you're happy that the egg mixture is mostly cooked, fold it so that you have a half-moon shape, leave it for 30 seconds, so that it can seal itself and then deliver the omelette to the plate (which might already be covered in bread of some kind).

Season the dish with salt and pepper. Garnish with the parsley if you like.

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Five a day

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:52:12 +0100

As I waited to pay for my groceries this evening, I noticed that the young girl in front of me was just buying six bars of dark, organic chocolate. You go girl! Chocolate is made from beans and so 100g of chocolate presumably counts as one of your five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Beans can only count as one portion, though, so I suppose she'll need to mix the chocolate with something else to get a well balanced meal.

I was buying something a little different, though. I noticed these vegetable caviar things a few weeks ago, tried one and decided I like it. They all seem great and so I'm having some griddled veggies with a dollop of these caviar things on the top. Mmmm.

Vegetable Caviar

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