Category Archives: Cookery

Thoughts on Fashionable Illness

14 Replies

If I don’t write this now, I will never get it done. If I do write it now I won’t get something else done. It’s a dilemma and it may also be a symptom of adult ADHD. However, although it’s fashionable for media personalities to have adult ADHD, it’s less fashionable for us ordinary folk, so I’m not going to worry about it. Though they idea I might be able to take a pill and become organised is attractive.

However, I have to be careful of wanting a bright and shiny (and fashionable) affliction, when I am merely lazy and disorganised (the symptoms are much the same) and am looking for a convenient excuse. It’s easy to jump on a bandwagon.

Soda bread

It used to be the same on the farm – people in baking classes claiming to be suffering from coeliac disease or gluten intolerance. When I read up on it I found that many cases were self-diagnosed and were simply Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I have IBS. It was originally caused, according to my doctor, by life as a salesman – stress, cigarettes and irregular meals. He told me that if I gave up smoking my stress levels may rise so there wasn’t much he could do for me.

So I became an antique dealer. Less stress, regular meals – it went away. It comes back from time to time if I have too much cheese but over the years even this hasn’t been a problem.

Wheatsheaf Loaf

I sympathise with anyone who has coeliac disease or gluten intolerance. I have sympathy for people who have IBS. It can be debilitating. But I have no sympathy with people who claim to have a problem with gluten, and disrupt an entire class with claims of gluten intolerance, when they don’t actually have it. If you have a problem with gluten you shouldn’t be in a room with flour in the air. Hence my reluctance to jump on a fashionable health bandwagon.

 

 

 

Thoughts of New Recipes

8 Replies

We’ve not had pilaff for years and I, personally, haven’t made it for probably 40 years. It just faded out of my repertoire and never made it back. A lot of things are like that. At any one time I probably only use about half a dozen recipes, with a few variations to ensure we don’t eat the same thing too often.

We tend to eat a similar menu most weeks, with just a gradual change as the seasons move on. I have just started cooking quiches again now that summer is here, and vegetable stew has disappeared from the menu as root vegetables don’t seem so appealing in summer. We did have carrot in the coleslaw we had with the quiche earlier in the week, but that’s about it.

I’ve been looking up pilaff recipes today, as they seem to be a useful way of making a rice dish that uses stuff up. It’s a bit like Chinese rice, but over the years I’ve finally begun to get bored with it.

One of the recipes involved exotic mushrooms, dried mushrooms and mushroom powder. Another involved whatever mushrooms you had to hand and a stock cube. Guess which one we are trying next week?

Malta

Part of the problem is that every time I try something new, I fail to adopt it, even if it is nice. It’s much easier just to go into autopilot and make the same old thing, or a version of it, rather than doing something new.

Yes, I did make Chestnut and Mushroom Pie, and enjoyed it, but it involves dried mushrooms and chestnut which I don’t normally have in the cupboard. And the Woolton Pie was good, but the stew version is easier.

I really should try to do better.

But then, I should try to improve my blogging and poetry writing too.  They are both more interesting than filling quiches and steeping dried mushrooms.

Cactus hedge Malta

 

The Pie Report

26 Replies

The pie on the website

The recipe I based the pie on was a Hairy Biker’s recipe called Vegetarian Chestnut and Mushroom Pie. It is available here on the BBC website. I followed the recipe almost to the letter, but substituted white wine for the marsala (it had been hanging round since Christmas) and used English mustard instead of Dijon. I always like to follow the recipe first time round, then you know if i works or not. It did. Everyone liked it and when I discussed making it simpler and cheaper Julia has suggested trying it without chestnuts but keeping the rest of it the same. Time for a costing and an evaluation.

The filling

The dried mushrooms cost £100 a kilo, which sounds a lot. However, the  recipe only calls for 15g, which is £1.50. I used fewer chestnuts than recommended but there will still plenty and I have enough to sir-fry some with brussels at the end of the week. Call that £1.50 too. Wine? We usually have something around that will do, so by the time you add pastry (60p), leeks and mushrooms you have a pie which cost us around £5 and served three.

A “good” supermarket pie will cost about £4 and serve two, and won’t be a patch on this one, so I’m going to stop worrying about cost.

My version, showing contents

I still need to try a cheaper version as an alternative for when I want something and don’t have dried mushrooms and chestnuts in the cupboard but I’m not going to mess around just to reduce costs.

Cocaine costs about £30,000 a kilo (according to a website I found whilst researching prices) and Chinese meals, even when divided into two in a frugal manner, still cost more than this pie so I really need to take a look at my attitude to food and life in conjunction with the cost of pies. I don’t, in case you are wondering, advocate cocaine, or any illegal drug, as a substitute for a good wholesome pie, but just thought (having been horrified by the cost of dried mushrooms per kilo) that it would make an interesting comparison.

Once again my vision is not quite borne out by the photo

Rhino Horn is about £44,500 per kilo in China and has no proven scientific value, in case you were wondering how it compared.

The internet is a wonderful thing, as I have said before. A very tasty pie recipe, a quick look at illicit drug prices and an overview of rhino poaching countermeasures – where else can you get all that? Even modern TV doesn’t have that variety to offer within 20 minutes.

I am going to resist putting “”cocaine” and “rhino horn” in the tags, as I don’t want to attract unwanted attention.

The pie before cutting

 

Friday I’m in Love

9 Replies

Tearing, sharing cheese and seed scones

We go to The Cure for this one – not my natural territory, but the song seems to have hovered at t5he back of my mind for years, a truly haunting song. After posting the Thursday post, I had second thoughts about the baking plans. I had enough trays to bake scones, I decided, and the oven wouldn’t be on for long. Above all, Julia had said when would like scones and I always think that it’s a good thing to do what your wife wants.

It turned into a bit of a disaster while I was getting the ingredients out of our badly stacked and over-stuffed cupboards. They are very deep cupboards and hard to stack in an accessible manner. It’s not helped by the fact tat we are starting to buy the Christmas staples The first problem was a jar of cranberry sauce fell out. I could feel the vibrations from impact, but it, fortunately, missed my toes. The jar also survived. The same spillage meant we ended up with curry powder spilled on the floor. The dustpan doesn’t meet the floor well and fine powders tend to miss the pan so I went to get the small vacuum. This needed emptying before I could use it. Twenty minutes later, needing a new bag of flour after making the fruit scones, I needed more flour.

Scones at Minsmere

An open bag of sugar came off the top shelf as I took a new bag of flour. It hit one of the lower shelves on the way down. It split, and opened up, somersaulted, and came to rest on the floor. There was sugar in the cupboard from the shelf collision, sugar (extensively) on the floor and the small vacuum came into play. For a moment I toyed with the idea of putting teh sugar back in the bag as Julia had cleaned the floors that morning, but civilisation won and I hoovered it up and emptied it into the bin.

Now, I employ a simple system when baking. I put the bowl on the scales, tare it back to zero and add the ingredients. Liquid measurements, in the metric system, are easy and I just change millilitres of liquid into grams. I jsut keep adding stuff until it is all in the bin. Sometimes I use mental arithmetic to get a cumulative figure, sometimes I tare the scales again. However, after cleaning up the sugar, I found the scales had automatically switched off and I could only vaguely remember it was on about 160 when I stopped. Though it might have been 180. They look similar whe you aren’t really watching. Added to the uncertainty of the recipe (I’d altered the fruit scone recipe to accommodate cheese), I ended up adjusting the dough with a little more milk at the end.

Scones – John Lewis

And I had to use made mustard instead of the powder. That actually mixed well and worked better than the mustard powder.

The cheese scones were very good and rose quite well. The fruit scones didn’t rise as they should have done. I’m not sure what happened. The old recipe I used had oil in it and worked fine. I have to use oil because I can’t work butter in with arthritic fingers, so I don’t want to look for a different recipe. I did see one on a website that reputedly produced nice light scones and used oil but it’s an American recipe and will need converting from cups. IT also uses twice as much flour and will make too many scones. Two pensioners and a visiting sister don’t need that many scones and I don’t want to start freezing them as I always forget to defrost in time.

More did happen, but will leave that for another post. Or forget it.

Before batching – Date and Stilton Scones – like the seeded cheese scones in the header picture, these were from the Homegrown Cereals Authority recipe booklet I have mislaid and were baked together so they formed a batched scone suitable for “tearing and sharing”. They were quite easy to form by hand and I am thinking of going back to that as using cutters can cause problems.

Scones are from previous posts.

Bad Start to the Day but Things are Looking Up

10 Replies

I unwillingly made my way downstairs this morning. Though I had an ambition to do some work, I had a conflicting ambition – I would have quite liked to stay warm in bed. It was a chilly night. This summer is taking me back to the summers of the late 60s and early 70s. I remember that some of them were quite poor, and all the talk at that time was about climate cycles and a new Ice Age. How things change.

It started badly in the kitchen when I tore a pair of  teabags apart to make myself a cup of tea. One tore and released a cloud of tea powder all over the floor. This is doubly depressing – a whole teabag wasted, and its contents revealed to be a long way from the lovely tea leaves of my youth. I always joke about the contents of teabags being low quality floor sweepings, but what I saw today seems to confirm that.

Broccoli Soup taken on “Food” setting

I’m probably wrong. I’m sure that tea merchants across the world will tell me they use the best ingredients in their teabags, but it just looked depressing.

I have just made broccoli soup, as you can probably guess from the pictures. It came out quite green compared to the yellowing florets that actually went into the pot. The Food setting on the camera didn’t do it justice this time, I had to use the Landscape setting. That enhances green but the soup is still actually greener in real life than it is in the pictures. I may go back to photographing flowers. At least the colour rendition is accurate.

I used a stock cube today, as Julia complained about the lack of seasoning in last night’s pasta bake. As a result, the soup tastes quite salty. This is annoying. After 30 years of not using salt in cooking I have grown quite sensitive to salt in things like this. In general though, it tastes quite good and I am about to have it for lunch.

Pale grey version

 

Almost off white

Once again, the camera fails to render the colour accurately.

 

My Day in Vegetables

12 Replies

The day comes, the day goes. In the kitchen I cut carrots, potatoes and parsnips, slice leeks and spring greens and consider if I can force more vegetables into my diet. I have already had blueberries and raspberries in my porridge and had beans on toast for lunch. That comes to eight, against a target  of five a day, so I decide I have done enough.

It is a confusing time of year. My head tells me it is five pm, but the clocks, having gone forward last week, tell me it is six pm. Sometimes, despite all the clocks, instinct still governs my thinking. We still haven’t worked out why the clock on the Tv is still an hour behind as all other devices have set themselves to the new time. Perhaps the TV, like me, prefers the old ways. Viewing was, as I recall, much simpler when we had two black and white channels. Then there were three, and then we had colour.

After that, the floodgates opened. Four channels, five channels, daytime TV . . .

I could, I suppose, put sweet potatoes in with the roast vegetables, but if I do that it will have almost exactly the same ingredients as last night’s vegetable stew. This isn’t a problem for two meals in a row but as tomorrow’s evening meal is going to be vegetable soup it could be. The soup, you see, will be the blended leftovers from the stew. There are many complexities in life, and menu planning on a budget is one that gets little notice. If TV journalists and politicians were forced to work for minimum wage I’m sure we would see many more stories about this sort of thing.

Anyway, I’m off to finish cooking tea. I will probably come back for a second post later as i have something to moan about, and Julia has had to listen to me moaning all day.

Oddly shaped, but grown with love

 

 

32?

22 Replies

This morning I remembered that the dried fruit in the Easter Cake we had from a neighbour counts as one of the thirty. Had nothing extra at breakfast, but managed an apple and some sort of small citrus thing (probably a satsuma) for lunch. Fried rice for tea (wholegrain) so added that plus bean sprouts, sesame, peas, chilli and green beans to the total. That’s 30 already. It’s slightly harder as you get into the third day as we’ve already counted bran, berries, peppers and mushrooms in previous days. I used lemon juice and soy sauce too, so that might already be 32, now I come to think of it.

We have sweetcorn, baked beans and lentils in the cupboard and courgettes and aubergine in the fridge. This is all the sorts of stuff we normally eat, so thirty hasn’t been too hard. Strangely, five a day can be tricky at times.

Mint Tea

This evening I had an acceptance from one of the submissions I sent out on 31st, and a second email from an editor asking if I would be willing to make a couple of alterations. I’m nearly always happy to make alterations, as they generally improve things, so that’s good.

I woke at around 5.30 this morning (that’s the morning of the 2nd, even though I will be publishing on the 3rd) and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with moving. However, worry never solves anything so I suppose I’d better do it by starting and carrying on until I’ve finished. It’s generally the best way.

Easter Buns

 

 

Like Cookery, but with More Swearing and Less Finesse

14 Replies

I spent the afternoon cooking after I blogged. We now have a sweet potato and chickpea curry and a corned beef hash with mixed vegetables. neither reflects much credit on me as a cook, but at least we have two evening meals available.

The curry, with chickpeas, sweet potato and onions, also has a tin of chopped tomatoes in it. Served with rice, that will take care of the five a day. Since I discovered rice is allowed as one of the five a day, I have been quite excited.  I always assumed that like potatoes, rice was excluded. If garlic counts, it will be six. I’m going to start concentrating on my vegetables a bit more.

The hash contains carrot, parsnip, sweet potato and potato. It will have leeks too, when I put it all together. I’m considering serving it with cabbage to boost it to five. And corned beef. I like corned beef in a hash. At one time I just used to do it with potatoes and onions, but even I have moved with the times.

I was going to do a vegetable stew as well but I ran out of clean pans. It’s the same ingredients as the hash, but I add garlic and a stock cube. I will do it later in the week.

Then, in a few days time, we will be looking at soup – probably curried vegetable soup.

When I retire, I intend batch cooking one or two days a week and just warming stuff up on the other days. It’s so much simpler and it avoids the temptation to get a takeaway. This is bad, bot6h on the grounds of economy, and the grounds of health. Having lost two stone (or 28lbs for you Americans) whilst ill, I want to keep it off this time, as I’m feeling so much better.

Iranian Vegetable Stew – one of Julia’s recipes

Rice + Marketing = Special Fried Rice

13 Replies

We have a dish in the UK, found in all Chinese Takeaways, called Special Fried Rice (or variations on the name). Americans may call it something different (though on checking, I found that you don’t), and anyone of Chinese ancestry may not even recognise it as Chinese cuisine. However, like Chicken Tikka Masala, it is now part of British life.

I made a version of it last tonight. It features the three inch end piece of a wrinkly courgette, a half red pepper with a couple of black spots on it, last week’s mushrooms, some green beans I found while looking for the courgette and, finally, some prawns with freezer burn. Yes, It’s a bit like my soup recipe – loads of imperfect ingredients in a random order – but you add rice instead of blending it all. It has garlic, mango chutney and chilli in it. It was going to have chilli jam, lemon juice and soy sauce, but I seem to have used the chilli jam, the soy sauce bottle turned out to be empty and the lemon, which was actually just a half lemon, proved to be too far gone even for me. I’m hoping to fool Julia into thinking I actually used a recipe.

I just had a look at recipes and find that Americans do have it, and that they use SPAM in it. As Number Two Son’s partner is from the Philippines I know about SPAM (a food I haven’t eaten for 50 years), so I wasn’t too surprised. However, I was surprised to find that they add MSG. I didn’t even know it was possible to buy it, let alone that you would want to add it.

Naturally, my mind then drifted onto the possibilities for a literary twist to end the post. Something along the lines of my life being like Special Fried Rice – a random mix of imperfect ingredients that isn’t really Special, just leftovers with a sheen of marketing. But I decided that was too cynical, even for me.

Mouse on Wheatsheaf Loaf

The photos? I have one, unattractive, photo tagged “rice” but these were in the same month so I used these.

Day 121

12 Replies

I finally got round to soup making. It was going to be roasted sweet potato soup, but as I lined up a group of hapless sweet potatoes, I noticed a bag of carrots lurking at the back of the veg rack. The trouble with my grocery ordering is that it can be a bit unadventurous and if, for instance, you get bored of carrots, but carry on ordering, you soon end up with a sorry-looking assortment. Add that to the bag of wrinkly ginger and my course of action became clear.

I now have a pan of carrot and ginger soup waiting for tomorrow’s lunch. and  a pan of roasting vegetables, mostly carrots, in the oven. As a result of ill-advised handling of my stick blender I also have some new colours on the wall and on my jumper. Fortunately, it will wash. Luckily I had not added turmeric.

As I say, unadventurous.

In a moment I will be warming a few greens and making some gravy. It will be made using gravy granules as I am lazy and have no pride in my cookery. In an ideal world I would be wearing an apron and making gravy from scratch as a cheerful family gathered round. That is how gravy is so often portrayed. You don’t often see gravy adverts where a single man in a bedsit makes a pan of gravy, livens it up with a good slug of cheap vodka and sits down to eat amongst the dust, regrets and tortured memories of times with his family . . .

Julia says I am no loss to the world of advertising.

In actually started off in quite an upbeat mood and intended talking about poppies. I am going to serve up now and think about a second post.