I don’t particulary recall eating macaroni cheese as a child not from a Heinz tin, not lovingly made by mother or grandmother, its simply not a dish that springs to mind as something we ate often. I don’t know why. So when Fiona Beckett started the idea of the ultimate mac n’ cheese (as our friends in the US of A call it) I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to create my own version. Fiona’s competition started out simple and then got lots of categories (best this, best that, best other and so on) and I toyed with the artisanal cheese category for quite sometime knowing which cheese I would choose. And then Fiona announced the prizes and my mind was made up I had to have the Emma Bridgewater macaroni cheese dish come what may. So my entry is for the most original recipe.
Starting with my artisanal cheese idea and then spooling it out into the dish my mother or grandmother could have made I decide this had to be a dish based in the foods of Lancashire (well apart from the macaroni of course). I played with adding things like vimto or tizer, might they be secret umami giving ingredients, unlikely, so they were consigned to the ‘too original’ slot. Some researching in Laura Mason and Catherine Brown’s Traditional Foods of Britain (if you don’t have this book and you love British food just get it) led me to two possibilities: potted shrimps or bury black pudding. A tough one a really tough one. So I flipped a coin and it came down on the side of the black pudding.
Here’s what I did (its in old measures in honour of my Grandma):
Ingredients (for 2 hungry people):
1 bury black pudding (the sort in a hoop shape and of about 1” diameter)
3-4 oz dried macaroni each – depending on your greed
¾ pint full fat milk
1 oz flour
1 oz butter and some for frying
4 oz Sandhams Tasty Lancashire cheese*
2 oz Booths** Special Reserve Tasty Lancashire Cheese*, grated/crumbled
salt
pepper
pre heat oven to R4/180C
Method:
Cook the macaroni in boiling lightly salted water as per the instructions on your packet (mine said 8 minutes). When cooked drain and keep on one side.
Slices the black pudding into ½” rounds and fry quickly on either side in a small amount of butter. You are aiming for the outside to be crispy and the middle still soft. Removes the skin from the pudding and crumble the slices.
Make a white sauce of a thickish consistency (between coating and panada) using the ‘all in one’ method. So put the flour, milk and butter in a pan and heat gently stirring continouosly until it thickens. Add the 4oz of Sandhams Tasty Lancashire cheese and season to taste.
Toss the crumbled black pudding in with the cooked macaroni, stir in the cheese sauce. Tip it all in the buttered dish.
Sprinkle with the 2oz of Booths Special Reserve Tasty Lancashire.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
Eat and dream of Lancashire.
* If you don’t know that there’s more than 1 version of real Lancashire cheese then watch out for my tasting of seven types coming soon. I’ve picked these two examples because like all Lancashire they melt beautifully and because they differ in strength, the Sandhams is slighty milder (but still with a good tang) the Booths** has a strong tasty Lancs hit.
** Booths is a small supermarket chain based in the North West of England. If all supermarkets were like Booths it would be a good thing.
You’ve turned it over in your hands. Admired the neat hand(man)bag size. Fondled the paper. Scanned through quickly. Wondered where to start. Felt a curious warm feeling. Loved the retro design and adverts. Touched the paper (again). Mulled over the contents, undecided whether to read from front to back, dip in randomly, pick the most enticing item first, or save it until last. You’ve held it close to your face; breathed in the wonderful print and paper aroma. Given thanks that the editor and publisher (one Mr T Hayward) had the idea in the first place AND upgraded the paper beyond the bounds of known gsm ratings (did I mention the paper already) to bring you the ultimate in new geeky food writing.
Touch it, smell it, read it.....
BUT.
Well, its only going to last a certain time. You can devour it voraciously. You can eke it out article by article. You can re-read. But there’s only so long 108 pages can last. And its not the 3 months until the next issue is due.
So what are you going to do in the meantime? You could watch the F-Word. Or various Jamie or Hugh identikit TV programs. Flip through Olive or BBC Good Food or……you could read recipe books and blogs. But I know you’ll feel bereft. Because you’ve found something slightly offbeat, quirky, interesting. You might not have loved every article but they were all good. That’s not to say that other glossier publications, books and TV shows don’t have a place. It’s simply that sometimes you want real far out there food geekery.
Fear not. There are more quirky publications than you might imagine. Here’s some thoughts on things to try whilst you wait for the next issue of Fire & Knives. And a little tale of how one thing leads to another.
It’s all Elizabeth David’s fault….
Ah good old ED...
The first vaguely food geeky thing I read was Elizabeth David’s An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. OKAY. I know. Cue eye-rolling all round. Well hang on there. Its not like I’m talking last week. And I know its tedious and a well worn path to cite ED as an inspiration blah blah blah. I didn’t learn to cook from ED; I didn’t learn to love food from ED; I had already learnt plenty of that elsewhere. What I did find was writing that made you wish you’d been there too and writing that added that extra geeky layer of information about food, its history, its provenance. Why did X do this, why was Z traditional and so on. And at the back of the book a reference to a journal dedicated to food studies and food history….
So of course I subscribed, I wanted to know everything there was to know about food. Back then, and I’m only talking the late 80s, there was no blogging, no twitter, no internet community, no easy way to find other people obsessed with food. So I subscribed and I read, avidly, and I still do. PPC is a curious mix of learned border-line academic articles and good stuff written by mates (not my mates, the publishers mates), and a few things you wonder what they are doing in there. And then you realise the same people are also involved in two other off the wall food things….
Prospect Books was (and is) the publisher of PPC. But they also publish delightfully quirky and sometimes completely nutty books. Over the years I’ve found treatises on trifle and on marmalade, facsimiles of Hannah Glasse, whole books devoted to the Mallorcan dish pa amb oli (bread and oil), or Afghan food and much more besides. Prospect books was started by the Alan Davidson with his wife. It’s now run by Tom Jaine and it’s as wonderfully quirky as ever.
this is about as fascinatingly quirky and geeky as it comes in the food world. Again inaugurated by Davidson with the likes of ED, Anne Willan and Nicholas Kurti being in there from the beginning, it set out to provide a place for those interested in food to discuss it in a relatively academic way. This is way way way before degrees in Gastronomic Arts started to appear. It was a curious meeting of all those who loved food and had a deep interest in it whatever their background. It wasn’t an academic conference in the sense that anyone could go (the same is true today), you pay your money you get to turn up. Along the way I’ve heard the likes of Margaret Visser, Claudia Roden, Raymond Blanc, Paul Levy, Heston Blumenthal and many others. The food has always been fantastic, how could it not have been. Its sad that H&S regs stopped the ‘bring and share’ lunch but with the likes of Fergus Henderson, Bompas & Parr and Raymond Blanc cooking up a feast this year why would you want to miss out. In my experience its pretty hard to get to present a paper unless you are in the know, but if you are after an uber eclectic experience then this is the place to find it. The papers that are presented are collected and published the following year. They are a mine of information but are not for the faint hearted.
So as I’ve delved deeper and wider into the world of food geekery I’ve come across other things worth reading too. I’ve harboured a desire to really understand and explore all aspects of food and meaning and that’s meant I’ll read everything and anything once and also means I’ve devoted more of my free time than I can count to reading about so many aspects of food. Its lead me to quite academic places, ending up with deciding to do an MA (nearly there on that with just my dissertation to complete very soon). But its been great fun. Here’s some of the other things I’ve found:
Going to the Oxford Symposium and reading PPC lead me to a lot of the other things on this list, but I spotted this annually published collection on a holiday to the States and I’ve been buying it ever since. Its been another way I’ve found out about good writers and publications. Its been published since 2000 and you can still get all the back copies if you trawl around on Amazon. You’ll find some of the other people I mention here rubbing shoulders with a range of writers from primarily, but not exclusively the US. Its like reading the great writing from lots of magazines and newspapers and tends to send you out on a flurry of subscribing to RSS feeds, adding too many things to your Amazon list and the like. And I believe that the 2009 edition includes an article by the aforementioned Mr T Hayward – I am awaiting delivery of my copy any day now – hey it just arrived whilst I was loading this post
This is about as home spun as it comes. Its charming and informative. John Thorne knows his stuff and is always keen to investigate the whys and wherefores of recipes, try out knew things and share what he found. Its almost blog like in the way its written, except he’s been doing this since before any of us had the internet, first in print and now in a choice of print of PDF download. Although many of the dishes are American, John eats his way round the world from his home in Massachusetts. To help you catch up there are a number of books of John’s collected writing though for me they don’t have quite the charm of receiving an email saying the next issue is ready to download and then reading from cover to cover (well actually there aren’t any covers but you know what I mean).
Another US production, this time from Edward Behr who is based in Vermont. It ranges from in depth articles on produce to restaurant and book reviews. Its primarily North American and European based in terms of cuisines but the articles and reviews are insightful, thorough and its on very nice paper.
Steingarten has been the food writer at Vogue since 1989 and before his first collection of pieces (The Man who ate Everything) was published in 1997, I used to buy US Vogue just to read him, tearing the pages out to keep and throwing away the rest. He is detailed, obsessive and humorous by turns, bent on finding ways to make wonderful food at home. It’s always amazed me that Vogue was prepared to have his writing sit alongside the fashion and fluff. This is a man who blocks up the vents on his oven in an attempt to get it to proper pizza oven temperature and who talks in graphic detail about the killing of a pig in his quest to make the perfect boudin. Always interesting, always quirky. The man is brilliant. I just wish US Vogue didn’t cost about £5 a month to buy.
Ok we are getting quite hardcore geeky with this one. Published by the University of California Press this is starting to get fairly academic in style. Mind you its got a good line in glossy paper and provocative covers. It’s a range of social science type articles but I’d mostly say its social science ‘lite’. You don’t have to be a fully paid up anthropologist, sociologist or cultural studies person to be able to get where it’s coming from but it’s not light and fluffy either. The articles aren’t academic papers but I suspect stem from academic research. It covers a lot of ground from offbeat food related art works, old cookery books to traditional foods, issues of food supply and technology and more.
This is Alan Davidson’s magnum opus. It’s a great reference work on so many aspects of food, wonderful for dipping in and out of when you think, “I just wonder where/what/how…”. Its great but there are gaps and that’s part of the appeal, its not as all encompassing as you might like but for me that spurs the imagination to go and find out more from other resources. Of course if you don’t have all of AD’s books on fish then you should get them too, they are fascinating studies by a man who’s day job was as a diplomat and then spent his spare time being passionate about food and becoming esteemed in his own right, finally winning the Erasmus prize in 2003 for his contribution to the birth of Food Studies.
Surrounded by groaning bookcases....
There’s so much I’ve missed off. I could go on and on and on. My bookcases are stuffed full of books about food and I reckon that less than a ¼ are what most people would think of as recipe books. The rest are a combination of reference books, books about a specific ingredient, or region, or country, there’s food history, food science, food culture, out and out academia, pictures and humour. Old books, new books, books for reading cover to cover, books for dipping in and out of. Biographies, magazines, journals, facsimiles, originals, unread and well thumbed. All in all I’m surrounded by in excess of 800 food related books and counting.
So that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about food writing. Go on release you inner geek and try something new this Christmas.
Go on admit it. You did, didn’t you? Yes really you did. I know you did. What? Missed me, of course. That’s nice. Its nice to know someone spotted I wasn’t around. Cared what I have to say. Missed my amazing blog posts. Oh you didn’t. Right. Surely you did. Well I missed you at any rate. Is that enough or do I have to apologise as well. Okay I know I was absent without leave so to speak. But you know sometimes these things happen. What, you don’t just want an apology you want to know what I was up to as well. What every last minute of the 36 days I was gone for? You sure you won’t get bored, after all it might not be that exciting might it. Or you might find out something you don’t want to know or…..
Well okay here you go….
Blogging is a curious thing and I’m sure we all have ideas when we set out blogging about how often we want to blog and the kinds of things we want to talk about and then some kind of reality hits us. Blogging is quite time consuming. To write a reasonable post of any length takes time and a certain amount of care. That’s not say its not fun but sometimes the ideas dry up or more often there are so many ideas and not enough hours in the day to write about them all. So those well laid intentions go a bit skew wiff and sometimes the blogging just has to take a back seat to the rest of the stuff.
So for 36 days the blogging took a back seat – well probably worse than a back seat, more a didn’t really get a spot in the car and stayed at home sulking seat but anyway. It was definitely a case of too many ideas and not enough time. I already had a huge backlog of things I wanted to talk about and then a whole bunch of deadlines kind of came rushing up close together.
For the record here are some of the things I got up to:
I took 20 trips to the supermarket, 4 ocado deliveries and 2 trips to the farm shop. Yes really. I’ve embraced the idea of regular day-to-day food shopping I’ve just failed so far to translate it properly into local, artisanal, whatever, whatever.
Look an Ocado van (copyright Ocado.com)
I ate three meals every day, many based around cheese and pickles; twenty of them in cafes or restaurants. None of them at my desk.
I went on a photography workshop at Scandinavian Kitchen with a whole load of other food bloggers and tried to concentrate on learning about good composition. This was not that easy with Food Urchin chomping on hotdogs in the background.
Dan & hotdog (copyright Dan's wife)
I immersed my self in data. I thought. I analysed. I described. I drew funny spider diagram thingies. I went off on tangents only to return by another route. I read more social science theory than is good for one person in a week. And then wrote 5000 words of my dissertation. Fortunately its all about twitter and food and blogging, how handy ;0
I went to a wonderful gin cocktail evening at the Dorchester with the very lovely Sipsmith’s maker of fabulous gin. I compared notes about making flavoured vodkas at home with cocktail and spirits maestro Jared Brown. I now have a whole new batch of gins and vodkas to get on the go and a dangerous desire for a still.
I did two sets of financial statements for clients. And three VAT returns. It’s a good job they are truly lovely clients. I don’t do that just for anyone.
Me looking curiously like Winona Ryder....
I went and had my hair cropped sort of a la Winona Ryder. It must have worked I’ve been asked for my autograph several times in the street.
I celebrated 3 birthdays with people, one of them my own.
I blagged and blagged for goody bags. I ferried the entire contents of Sainsbury’s dairy dept from Scandilicious flat to Hawksmoor. I stuffed goody bags. I went on the hunt for missing ingredients. I served food. I worked on the pass. I dried dishes. I handed out goody bags. I made donor lists. YES I was part of the wonderful Blaggers Banquet.
Blaggers Banquet Goody Bag
I spent 3 days in the Marriot Northampton with 15 lawyers. I tried to get them to understand what blogging was. And Facebook. And LinkedIn. And Flickr. And Twitter. And why it was important to have worked out how they would or wouldn’t use it and why. I think they understood.
I allowed myself 2 weekends of R+R in the lovely Suffolk countryside. I ate. I picked sloes and rosehips. I ate some more. I brought back bootfuls (that’s car bootfuls not any other kind of boot) of some of my favourite Suffolk foods. Pinneys. Purely Pesto. Lane Farm/Suffolk Salami. Maple Farm eggs. Peakhill farm veg. And on. And on. (Please see the side bar for links to some of these).
I went to a wonderful cooking with tea workshop run by Teanamu.
I slept, sometimes.
And amongst all that work levels started to pick up with more new jobs coming in, more marketing opportunities and more interest. Lots of really exciting possibilities. Starting up a business a few months before the recession has been an interesting ride but being your own boss is wonderful. Even if it means blogging has to stop now and then you still have the freedom to juggle how each day looks and that is priceless.
I’ll be blogging some of the things I got up to separately (I hope), especially the 20 trips to the supermarket, and also plenty of other things. The blogging isn’t going to stop this was just a temporary hiatus.
I know I’ve been gone a while but hey now I’m back! First post after 5 weeks is this Fresh From the Oven Challenge that I hosted. I am going to do a post about going AWOL so watch out for that coming up in the next few days, but here to whet you appetite for upcoming posts is some delicious bread I can highly recommend.
Here's one I made earlier
Although I’ve made this loaf a lot of the past few months either white or a 50:50 white-wholemeal mix I still thought I’d do one especially for the challenge. Unfortunately the day I was baking it I was in the the final stages of web project and wasn’t really concentrating properly. It was also quite a cool day so the 2nd rise seemed to be taking for ever so I put it in the oven regardless (it was no where near the top of the tin!) . I got okay oven spring but in the first 10 minutes of cooking I lost track of time as the client called to sign off the website ready for go live and to say how pleased they were. Result a rather dense chewy loaf, with a very crusty crust and a borderline burnt top. Still tasted better than anything you get in most bakers….
Less than perfect but still very tasty
Here’s what I said to the Fresh from the Oven group when I set the challenge:
I’ve done lots of um-ing and ah-ing about what to pick for the challenge, I wanted something where I could show you the kneading technique I learnt from the Dan Lepard course I went on, something that seemed specifically English and something not so time consuming that you all decided not to participate. Crumpets and pikelets were out on the basis they don’t require kneading, sourdough on the basis that you might not all have starter so that would be a week of building one. Stotties were almost in but the recipe I found had potato in and that’s not how I remember them. Staffordshire oatcakes popped up but they don’t have to be kneaded either and so on and so forth.
At last I decided to keep it simple but still English. There is lots of talk of how bad English bread is (and it is when its made on an industrial scale using the Chorleywood process) but then everyone decides to ignore all thought of English bread and fall into the arms of French and Italian and other baking heritages. I love all these other breads but I also love a good old fashioned properly made tin loaf that is soft but slightly chewy, has a nice medium crust, that toasts brilliantly and makes a mean sandwich. The secret of course is in using milk for part of the liquid this gives a softness that’s just right without making the loaf a full on slightly sweet milk loaf (although when I found this on the Lakeland site I did nearly decide to do milk loaf).
If you don’t fancy doing a tin loaf then perhaps you can take part by using the kneading technique for your favourite loaf because it seems to work for everything from sourdough to rolls to pizza base and more.
First the technique:
Dan Lepard says he developed this when he was working full time in commercial kitchens (that made artisan hand kneaded bread) because there wasn’t time for full 10 minute knead of all the different bread batches so he switched to short kneads spaced out and found it works just as well, part of the development of a good gluten structure is dependent on the time elapsed not the vigorous kneading. I liked the idea because I’d not been getting good textures with either a machine or a normal hand knead. I am now a wholesale convert.
Note:
You must use oil not flour on the kneading surface and your hands. Something like vegetable oil is good.
The dough must be quite sticky and soft to start with. It will firm up when kneaded and as time progresses.
Steps:
Once you have soft sticky dough leave it covered in the bowl for 10 minutes.
Now oil your kneading surface and hands and tip the dough out.
Knead for about 12 seconds by folding in the edges to the centre, a bit like shaping a round loaf, rotate the dough as you go.
Flip the dough over, leave it on the surface and cover with a cloth. Wash out the bowl and then oil it lightly. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover.
Leave for 10-15 minutes and then do another 12 second knead. You will notice the dough is already less sticky and firmer.
Leave for 20 -30 mins and repeat the fast knead. You are aiming to have kneaded the dough 3 times in the first hour.
Leave covered to rise until at least 50% larger but not more than double in size (kneading once per hour if it takes more than hour to increase in size).
Tip out onto the oil surface and press the air out of the dough using the tips of your fingers so its square-ish in shape. Repeat the fast knead process (or fold in to thirds then rotate through 90, flatten again and fold into 3rds again).
Shape the dough as required for the particular loaf you are making. Put it in a tin, or supported in a floured cloth in a bowl.
Leave to rise until at least 50% larger and preferably almost double in size.
Slash top and bake as per your recipe.
White Tin Loaf (based on Dan Lepard’s Quick White Loaf, p63 of the Handmade Loaf)
2lb loaf tin greased and floured or lined with baking parchment (no need to line the short ends just oil them).
Oven to be pre-heated to its maximum setting (R10/250C) and with a tray of water in the bottom to create steam.
Ingredients:
200g semi skimmed milk at room temp (Dan uses whole milk but semi skimmed seems to work fine)
150g water at room temp (remember 1g = 1ml but its easier to be accurate weighing fluids)
Mix the water and milk together in a separate bowl and whisk in the yeast.
Add the liquid to the flour and mix with the fingers of one hand to a soft sticky rough dough. You may need to add a little more liquid do this a teaspoon at a time until you have a soft sticky dough.
Follow the kneading instructions above.
The first rise will probably take about an hour from the last knead.
To shape for a tin loaf, flatten the dough to a square about the same width as your tin. Roll the dough into a cylinder and press the seam firmly, fold under the two short ends and place in the tin seam side down.
Allow to rise (covered) to 1 ½ to 2 times volume i.e. to the top of the tin.
Slash the top of the loaf along it length and put it straight into the oven for 10 minutes at maximum temperature. After 10 minutes check how it’s browning and drop the temperature as follows (these baking guidelines are from the River Cottage Bread Book):
R6/200C if the crust is pale
R4/180C if crust is noticeably browning
R3/170C if crust is browning quickly
And cook for a further 40-50 minutes.
I usually check again part way through this time and either adjust temperature again or cover the top with foil if it’s brown enough. Also note that with a traditional gas oven (i.e. one without a fan) the top may brown far too quickly on the side near the heat at the initial temperature so you might want to start at a lower setting of R8/9 for the first 10 minutes. Adapt the setting for what you know about your oven and how things usually bake.
When it’s cooked turn it out of the tin and allow to cool.
Then when it’s cooled cut a big huge doorstop of a slice, toast it and slather with lashing of butter. Yum.
The recipe also works well with a mix of 50:50 wholemeal and white bread flours. You’ll probably need 2-3 tbps extra water.
Matching food to wine or wine to food? Well normally I decide what I want to eat and then I think about what wine might go with it. I’m no expert at all, I stick mostly to ‘standard’ rules and also to wines I like. Occasionally I’ll go a bit off-piste, or someone will introduce me to something different, then I’ll revise my rules a bit. But its always the food first and the wine second.
In the last few weeks there’s been chance to turn this on its head. Try the wine and then wonder what to eat with it. Maybe if you have an extensive cellar this is a game you can play regularly….
“Darling I’ve found another bottle of that Puligny-Montrachet 1978 stuff, do you think it would be best with ……”.
These weren’t quite those kind of chances. Instead they were regular priced wines looking for new partners. First there was the Casillero cook off, great fun, great recipes and finding out that a wine I probably wouldn’t have looked at (I often avoid big brand names) was actually eminently drinkable. And now Niamh over at Eat Like a Girl is luring us with the possibility of prizes to try our hands at matching prosecco to food. Specifically Bisol Jeio prosecco and a chance to eat at the chefs table at Trinity.
Prosecco isn’t something I know much about and tempted by the possibility of a free tasting to help inspire food choices I popped over to Niamh’s (almost an institution) stall at Covent Garden on Thursday to see the lie of the land. I had a chat with Niamh about doing the stalls (hard work, great fun) and sipped the prosecco. Pears, peaches, off dry – but what to make to go with it. In my books prosecco, like most sparkling wine, makes a lovely aperitif but its maybe not quite so easy to have with food.
A little bit of googling and reading and a few thought came to mind…..pears…well they go well in salads with blue cheese and often walnuts. Pears and peaches…sometimes served with air-dried hams. A sweetish fruit and salty theme was emerging. I’d also got a hankering for something autumnal, earthy…
On the day I decided to experiment my husband turned out to be having beer in Bath, that’s the town in Avon and glass after glass of hoppy malty brown liquid, rather than any other beer/bath combination that might spring to mind. This meant that I had been abandoned/left to my own devices/was delighting in the perfect moment to do exactly as I wanted* (please delete as applicable). This was fortuitous, mostly he’s not a fan of sparkling wines, of blue cheese, or sweet/tart combinations and that’s right where I was heading.
Off to purloin ingredients from the local, erm, (super)market to combine with some goodies I already had in the fridge. I was aiming for English meets Italian. Italian wine, English inspired dish. This is where I ended up:
Goodshoeday’s autumnal sort of salad (for 2 people as a light meal or starter)
6 small beetroots
½ small squash
2tsp salsa di mostarda (I actually used some of the sweet pickle juices from my pickled cherry plums)
extra virgin cold pressed rapeseed oil (I like Hill Farm – and no they haven’t sent me any for free) Blacksticks Blue cheese
Smoked cured ham (I used Richard Woodhall Black Combe Ham)
¼ savoy cabbage
Roast the beets in their skins for 1*1 ½ hours at R6/200C covered in foil. Top and tail, peeland cut into quarters (remember to wear rubber gloves), and keep war
Peel and core the squash and cut into small chunks. Roast in rapeseed oil for 40 minutes at R6/200C.
Shred the cabbage fairly coarsely and steam for 3-4 minutes so it retains some crunch.
Toss the beetroot and squash in the salsa di mostarda and some rapeseed oil.
Arrange 3 slices of ham on each plate with a gap in the centre. Pile the steamed cabbage in the middle then add beetroot and squash, add slivers of cheese and serve.
It was delicious though I have no idea whether it goes with prosecco of any type let alone the Bisol Jeio – the supermarket was clean out of prosecco all the other bloggers must have got their first.
Wonderful. Amazing. My taste buds and brain are in overload.
I’m at Paul A Young. I’m tasting chocolate. Beautiful chocolate. I’m riding on taste sensation after taste sensation. I thought I knew chocolate but I didn’t know all of this. It’s a whole new set of experiences. How to convey it all to you?
Its passion, its craftsmanship, its huge knowledge. It’s wanting to save the world from bad chocolate and show everyone the way of good chocolate. Its superhero time. Okay so as far as I know Paul doesn’t zoom about wearing a cape and mask, or his pants over his trousers, but like Desperate Dan has his cow pie, Paul has his sea salted caramel. Like Batman he has his underground cave and his estimable sidekick. Like, erm, well lets just get on with it shall we. But be certain, very certain, he’s going to try to save as many as he can from the evil of things masquerading as chocolate that are merely confectionary.
Paul takes us on a journey through chocolate. We start by tasting different chocolate bases and bars as a route the greater understanding of the bean, the terroir, the blending and the nuances of the taste and aroma. We go from raw cacao beans, through malty milk chocolate via milk chocolate some would shun as dark to a range of every increasing cocoa content choices (11 different samples in all). We end at 100% Valrhona Manjari pate. Mind blowing. Delicious, fruity, intense. Mind blowing. Oh I already said that. There’s lots of opinion in the room about which is the best moment and everybody finds out something new about their chocolate tastes. We are educated and excited about really good chocolate. We are slightly frightened by the prices of some bars but we know there’s probably no turning back, in a short time our palates have experienced the wonders to truly beautiful chocolate from some of the worlds finest makers (Amedei, Cluizel, Valhrona). And really we could stop there and go home happy. But we don’t. Oh no there is more to come.
Paul, and his business partner James, tell us about a new brand from America they are stocking (currently they are the only UK stockist). Tcho has a Silicon Valley high tech start up approach to top quality chocolate. It’s a blend of science, art and craftsmanship. They have analysed chocolate’s components and characteristic flavours and built bars to accentuate some of these. Their commitment to sourcing fairly purchased beans is admirable. Paul and James are animated and enthusiastic about the products. We sample each of the “Chocolatey”, “Fruity”, “Nutty” and “Citrus” bars and admire their rather lovely packaging. I’m somewhat underwhelmed. The chocolate is good but it doesn’t seem startling, the key characteristic comes through well in each but I think my head, heart and stomach are still with the Valrhona Manjari hit. As part of our end of evening goodie bags we each get a bar of Tcho. Mine turns out to be the “Citrus’ bar, which I good because I’ve just established a love affair with Madagascan citrusy chocolate. When I try it over the next few days I like it much more and can see why Paul is excited about the product. I guess on the night it was overwhelmed by the preceding wonderful sensory overload.
And still we aren’t finished. Its time to bring on the truffle type things. Paul doesn’t make chocolate from raw cocoa beans he takes some of the worlds finest chocolate and then blends some of his own bars and also crafts beautiful looking truffles and filled chocolates.
Now a confession. When I was a kid I recall I loved the filled chocolate selections at Christmas. Roses. Quality Street. After Eight. I’d fight anyone for the last caramel barrel. But as time has marched on I’ve become a bit a chocolate purist. I like my chocolate dark and in bars, fillings and truffles are mostly not my thing. You can’t beat a good bar of chocolate; the joy of the snap as you break off a few squares, the taste of simply the chocolate. Unadulterated pleasure. When people buy me filled chocolates, even good ones I mostly pass them on to my husband. I make exceptions for delicately flavoured bars but that’s about it. Give me a bar any day and others can fight over the filled chocolates.
So could Mr Young convince me otherwise? His chocolates are award winning. The sea salted caramel is renowned as a thing of beauty, a multi award winning one at that and his marmite truffle is reputed to be an amazing umami-lovers nirvana. So we proceed to the chocolates as opposed to the chocolate.
First the sea salted caramel. It’s domed, its very glossy. I think food porn may have been in someone’s mind when they designed it. I pop it in my mouth. It explodes in, well a sea salty caramel type way. Its sweet, very sweet. Its good. If you like caramel then this is likely to be the best you’ll ever eat. But for someone who left behind the sweet side of chocolate at age 12 there is no turning back. Its good but I’ll generously leave it to others to oooo and aaaaa over.
So to the marmite truffle. Now I’ve never knowingly eaten marmite before. Ever. No really, never ever. Its brown, its gloopy, its smells bleugh. But I’m being offered a marmite truffle in a very upmarket chocolate shop, now is not the time to do an eight-year old style tantrum. In it goes. Oh and actually it’s rather nice. Chocolatey and erm well sort of rich and savoury all at once. I’m not sure you’d know it was marmite if you hadn’t been told. This of course, any real marmite lover will inform you is the true genius of marmite, its adaptability, its umami-ness, its ability to not taste of itself. Anyway I’d eat this one again, I might even shove someone out of the way to get one. But I’d still prefer a big bar of Madagascan chocolate.
Finally on the chocolates front we have the port and Stilton truffle. This is a seasonal special for the autumn and Christmas. Paul’s quite keen on doing specials as it gives him chance to play with new flavours and push the boundaries of the regular collection. He’s not a man who wants to stick with the known and the easy. Last year he did a Stilton only version but it dried out to much so the addition of port is partly to capture that classic English combination and partly to try to make the chocolate work better. Its pretty good though the port seems to lead a little too much.
Finally we nip down to the underground den and see where the chocolates are crafted. The marble slabs, the raw cocoa butter, bag loads of Valrhona, handmade moulds. It’s tiny and brightly light. I don’t spy a batmobile but I do think I catch a glimpse of the cape and face mask, or maybe the theobromine has got to me and I’m hallucinating.
A big thank you to Paul, James and Kate for inviting me to experience the chocolates (for free) with a group of other food bloggers.
Paul A Young regularly does tutored tastings at his Camden Passage store (price £45/head).
Last month I schlepped in right at the last minute with my Fresh from the oven challenge, this month I did better – hey I was there a whole week before the deadline baking away. How organised and complaint of me. Erm, well, maybe. Those who know me well know that doing what I’m told when I’m told is something I have mastered the art of mostly avoiding. So this month instead of taking the deadline to the wire I thought I’d ignore some of the very specific instructions and freeform the recipe a bit even though it wasn’t something I’d ever tried before. Did this lead me on a route to disaster – lets see……
I was pleased when I saw that Ria (of Ria’s Collections) had picked what she calls stuffed buns, because I quick glance though the recipe suggested that these were going to be like the legendary curry buns I ate at a hill station in Malaysia with my husband on our very first holiday together. Wow. We have often reminisced about these little buns, which were wonderfully soft and had a lovely curry filling. We’d never tasted anything like them before and since I’m talking quite a few years back when only the (un)lucky few had email and the internetsuperhighwaythingy was in its very early infancy we never tracked down a recipe. They became a kind of mythical dish. Could Ria’s recipe live up to all this?? We both had very high hopes.
Curry buns right out of the oven
The recipe basically seems to be one for a kind of brioche type dough made with milk, a fair bit of sugar and also egg. Ria is very clear that it MUST be kneaded for 10 minutes to achieve the right consistency. The filling is a mild chicken curry, Ria suggests paneer can be used for vegetarians. And this is when I start to freeform. I happen to have some lamb curry leftover so I decided I’m going to use that as a filling – can’t go far wrong surely. The dough just sounds too rich – I quite like brioche but since this is a joint memory we are trying to live up to here and Ian doesn’t like sweet dough’s I cut back on the sugar a bit and swap the egg for the same volume of milk. Then I just go for it and ignore the 10 minute knead instruction as well. I blame Dan Lepard for this entirely. He doesn’t do a long knead and since learning his method in mid June I’ve become a bit of a convert…you make a rough dough, leave it for about 10 minutes, come back, 10 seconds of folding, repeat this rest and knead 3 times in the first hour and then once per hour during the first rise. It’s worked well on every loaf so far I can’t see why it won’t work here. The theory is that it’s not so much the vigorous kneading but the elapsed time that creates a good network of bubbles.
The dough is quite soft and a little sticky but not too difficult to work with as it has oil in it which makes it pliable. It rises quite quickly but it is a fairly warm day. After the first rise you divide it up and shape it into rounds put some curry mix in the middle and then shape rather like a round bread roll. It has a 20 minute rise like that and then it’s in the oven. You have to be careful because the richness of the dough means it browns very quickly – they are cooked in 10 minutes.
mmmm look at that delicious
So were they any good? Absolutely yes. They had a good soft texture and certainly lived up to our memory from Malaysia. Even with my changes the dough was still rather rich and sweet for our liking so when I try them again I’ll cut back on that further. It was a good way to use up some leftover curry and I don’t think they suffered from all my meddling – of course I might be wrong, the real deal might be even more delicious, but I’m more than happy to have found a way to recreate a happy food memory.
Thanks Ria for the recipe and I’m not sorry I meddled with it :0
Recipe for dough (I used the cup measures in Ria’s original):
1 tsp dry yeast (I used fast action yeast)
2 tbsp warm water
1/2 cup milk
salt to taste
1/2 cup oil (I used rapeseed)
2 cups all purpose flour (I used strong bread flour)
1/4 cup sugar (I sued about 1/3 cup and the dough was still too sweet I thought)
1 egg beaten (I used another couple of tablespoons of milk)
egg white and sesame seeds to decorate if you wish (I didn’t)
dissolve yeast in warm water with 1/2 tbsp of the sugar and 1/2 tbsp of flour. Leave for 10 minutes.
Boil the milk and allow to cool (gosh I didn’t do this either). Once cool add sugar oil and salt and mix until the sugar dissolves.
Add 1 cup of flour and mix to a smooth paste.
Add the egg and also the yeast mix then the rest of the flour and mix to form a soft dough.
Knead using your preferred technique.
Rest and when its doubled in volume shape into flat rounds, fill and shape into buns by folding the the sides of the rounds to the centre. Decorate with egg and seeds if you wish.
Leave to rise for 20 minutes covered with a cloth then bake at 200C for 10 minutes. I actually did them at R6/180C and they took 10 minutes. Be careful they brown very quickly.
I love going away on holiday. I love the different sights and sounds and tastes. And in particular I love the supermarkets. Yes that’s right the supermarkets. Not the food shops or markets but the supermarkets. The specialist food shops and markets are good too but you have to know a modicum of the language in question or be a dab hand at gesticulating to get something close to what you want and I mostly got stuck at “dos cervezas por favor”. So I say bring on the exploration of another nation’s food culture through it supermarkets (or indeed lack of them). They can even act as handy research libraries ahead of a trip to a real food market. After all it really helps to know that salt cod looks a lot like chunks of smashed up concrete….
So without further ado here is a foray around two (yes two) supermarkets in Bergen, Norway.
Look its actually called Safari – brilliant!
First up some potatoes with nice Aztec styling:
Ah look no beers for us today its the wrong time on Saturday afternoon so the beer is all hidden away:
Fiskekaker, fiskeboller, fiskepudding…..fiske pretty much anything. Wonder if its as good as the ones down at the fish market in town……
And erm……fløtepudding (apparently its an extra creamy fish pudding kind of thing)
Oh and some sild, sild and more sild (herrings marinated any which way you choose)
Look lomper (potato cakes) – apparently the wrapper of choice for your hot dog!
And more Roses cordials then you’d ever see in the UK:
Ah, excellent, Lapskaus…..
Right lets try another supermarket (apparently this one is posher than Safari!)
Blimey reindeer stew – tons of the stuff
Oh and a different kind of baller (potato dumplings I think)
Blue cheese (a Norwegian take on gorgonzola I think we can safely assume)
oh and some frozen reindeer meat
and last but not least weird kaviar spread stuff….
Fascinating
See how much more you now know about Norwegian food. Always explore the supermarket before making a a fool of yourself in a real shop.
Back in the mid 1980s we had Maggie bent on breaking the unions, the birth of the Apple Mac and The Young Ones on TV. In their different ways all three have had a hand in where we are today, and where we are today when it comes to being a student is a very long way from 1984 (the year, not the Orwell novel).
Although the food in The Young Ones might have been a little bit exaggerated its highly probable that it’s much closer to what students were eating in the 80’s than the things students cook up now, or so it would seem from my review of The Ultimate Student Cookbook.
I have to confess here that I managed to get through college without haven’t to cook much at all. I had the good fortune to go somewhere that had a great kitchen and we could live-in for the whole three years. We were pampered. It was kind of like a Holiday Inn but with better food. You could have cooked breakfast every day if you wanted and boy was it good cooked breakfast. Huge salads for lunch or hearty stews and curries and then proper evening meals and that’s before the special events where it was rumoured the salmon and crayfish had perhaps not been acquired through the usual university purchasing channels. And this was not Oxbridge. I shudder to think how many calories we consumed, we were well fed though we learnt very little about cooking on a budget, that came later, after we left when it dawned on us how very lucky we’d been.
Food, like everything else, has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 80s with a proliferation of ingredients and a widening experience of world cuisines. And it’s the same for students, their expectations are higher but they’ve still got to cook on a budget (at least I assume they have, I don’t know many actual real live students).
So to The Ultimate Student Cookbook, which is a gathering together of the best recipes of The Beyond Baked Beans books and website that Fiona Beckett has developed over the last six years with additional insights from real students who really cook. And they do really cook, like really rather frighteningly well. In fact on my first flick through the book I thought ‘uh-oh these people might actually be off putting for the average student cook’. After all one of them has done a 3 month stint at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck experimental kitchen (Sig), one has honed his skills at Ballymaloe AND has his own catering company (James) and the third grew up travelling round Europe and thus sampled rather a lot of good food (Guy).
Blimey.
I’m a bit in awe of them.
And I’m probably just about old enough to be their mother, and I count myself as a pretty good cook, what’s an inexperienced 18 year old going to think? I sort of wanted there to be a cooking ‘rags to riches’ story, someone who’d learnt about good food and how to cook from The Beyond Baked Beans books but that was not to be.
Along with the students awesome level of food experience there was a bit too much of an English counties middle class feel running through the lists of kitchen kit and essential ingredients which was quite off putting, in fact almost irritating. It felt a bit like: “don’t bother reading this unless your parents kitchen was hand built by Smallbone, about as large a football pitch, stuffed full of must have gadgets and probably located south of Watford Gap….”. Didn’t they know that in plenty of places fresh coriander is still hard to come by, nam pla would be expected to be a violent video game and a real coffee maker a fanciful dream.
But I persevered and once I got into the core of the book this sense began to dissipate. Yes the three students clearly know their stuff, as of course does Fiona, but when you get to the recipes their voices start to work well together; a kind of conversation between some of your mates and the coolest mum on the block. The students come across as happy to eat fish-fingers gussied up 4 different ways, student classics such as Bolognese and Chilli, or frankly much more adventurous stuff and they are hugely genuinely enthusiastic about food in all its many guises, including I suspect the odd kebab van special when needs must. Fiona is like the best of guides, there when you need her to be firm and always quietly in the background letting things progress at their own pace the rest of the time.
Look: cheese on toast AND cheese toastie!
After much to-ing and fro-ing through the book I decided it was time to try some recipes; I had to keep diverting my husband from the idea of the fish-fingers, that being his student staple. I think he’s disappointed that none of the four ways is a 2009 take on a fish-finger sandwich, no doubt he’ll be perfecting one and logging onto Beyond Baked Beans to tell the student populace all about it. Instead I chose to do the pan-fried toastie for a solo lunch one day and the umami salmon for a dinner later the same week. The pan-fried toastie because I love toasties but don’t make them often at home and I think this technique might be the answer, the umami salmon because it sounds a bit off the wall and it contains just about every single one of my husband’s favourite condiments all mixed together.
Looks pretty studenty to me....
First up the toastie. I freewheel this a bit because I don’t fancy onion in it and I don’t have any cheddar to hand so I adapt Guy’s additional suggestion of blue cheese and bacon to blue cheese and salami. It’s really easy to make and quick and very tasty and probably simple to do for two with a big enough pan. Back in the day I used to do toastie making duty at the college shop – we had a proper grill and lovely metal cages to hold the toasties together, the bread would toast just right and the filling be just gooey enough without being too gloopy. I don’t think those funny little toastie makers that seal the bread together do anything like the same thing and its too easy to burn your mouth on the lava hot cheese. The pan-fry technique gives as good as result as those uni toasties I remember in. Some things never change – you can’t beat a good toastie. This recipe is a big win.
Umami in the making
Next it the salmon – I’m a bit suspicious of the curious list of ingredients but Sig’s treatise on umami is fascinating and, having by this time, met Sig very briefly to do a cheese swap (via the curious power that is Twitter and the meeting point of the UKFBA food bloggers stall in Covent Garden), I feel I really need to give the recipe a go. So I knock up a batch of the umami mix, slather it on some salmon fillets and shove them in the oven as the recipe instructs, serving it with boiled new potatoes and spinach. The umami mix packs a reasonable punch although I think I may have added a little too much lemon juice and one of the ingredients dominates. The umami cuts through the oiliness of the salmon and the plain vegetables balance the whole meal nicely. It gets scored 7/10 and is deemed a good addition to the regular repertoire though we both think the umami needs a little adjusting, less mustard more of the other ingredients.
The rest of the book contains a good mixture of recipes from the basic to the more fancy and groups them as quick/easy for 1 &2, cheap/tasty for 3 & 4, flash/show off and dessert things, with some cocktails chucked in for good measure. They are a sophisticated lot these students cocktails I ask you! Each recipe is also clearly badged for vegetarian friendly, price, prep time and cooking time, these are one of the really useful features because being at the top right of the page you can quickly flick through for ideas that match your budget and time frame. There are clear pictures of pretty much every recipe so you can see what the finished dish should look like (they do look pretty real rather than glossy magazine styling) and throughout there are useful sections on basic techniques such as stir frying, making cheese sauces as well as how to make your food look good and whether measurements matter.
A quick search of Amazon reveals that there are a few other books you could choose from if you or your loved one(s) are off to college in the next few weeks and rather curiously they nearly all have ‘ultimate’ in the title! So which might be the ultimate of all these ulitimates? We’ll I’ve only had the chance to take a peek at one of the others (and to be fair in far less detail) it covers plenty of the same ground and although the title suggests it might be a carb-fest I’m sure there’s more to it than pasta and pancakes….the cartoon strip style layout is a bit odd and more likely to appeal to parents or grandparents than actual students. All the books seem to be pretty much the same price.
If you can’t reorganise your college place so as to get away with not having to cook for a further three years then I suggest you take three real students and one friends mum into the kitchen with you rather than a someone styled as a celebrity chef….because these Students Can Cook.
I really did start off by not liking the book but was won over which just goes to show that first impressions might count but often turn out to be misleading – so remember that during Fresher’s Week.
Absolute Press for providing me with a review copy of the book.
My husband Ian for his insights into his student cooking days (frighteningly like The Young Ones, it seemed).
Matt Inwood, Absolute Press’s Art Director for answering my many questions about how the student contributors were selected. Sig and James for impromptu discussions on the making of the book generally and the umami salmon in particular.
This is my first ‘Fresh from the oven’ bread baking challenge. I missed out on the first two because, well because, I was just too slow off the mark signing up. Anyway I’ve joined up now and I’m hoping its going to a be a fun way to do some different breads and also chat with other food bloggers and improve my breadmaking.
As soon as I’d signed up and logged on I took a look at the challenge and thought ‘hmmmm interesting, not tried that before, best do some reading round the matter’. This is a technique I term displacement activity i.e. read up on things rather than getting on with doing them, instead why not mull them over, learn something new, contemplate different angles, ponder, maybe be buy a new and, of course, necessary piece of kit to aid the process.
Cooking on the griddle
And then….
I was sitting around on Wednesday thinking:
‘um must be time to do another loaf of bread what shall I try?’, and
‘hmmmm haven’t written a blog post for ages AND haven’t blogged any of my bread exploits’
Anyway very fortunately for me, Claire over at Purely Food, who set this months challenge, had picked English muffins and a quick squint at the recipe revealed that it didn’t require any exotic ingredients – in fact I had everything I needed right there in the cupboards. So I was sorted for a day of bread making yesterday. There’s nothing like taking a project to the deadline I always say…..
The recipe Claire had given us was from the River Cottage Handbook (#3 Bread) (see it here) but we are free to use other recipes or adapt as we see fit, all in the spirit of experimentation and sharing tips and techniques. I decided I’d stick pretty much with the recipe but halve the quantities as it said it made 9 muffins and that seemed rather too many for two people one of whom remains to be convinced that muffins are worth the fuss (lets hope these homemade ones are a hit). I also adapted the kneading technique to the one I learned from a 1 day Dan Lepard masterclass I attended back in June.
Here’s my thoughts on the recipe and how things went:
halving 325g makes it difficult to weigh out on lovely old-fashioned balance scales – I think I really do need electronic scales
I always weigh the water – weird but more accurate; remember from at school 1ml = 1g
I should have used 5g of yeast but the sachet was 7g so I put the lot in
I used extra virgin rapeseed oil instead of sunflower – because that’s what was to hand
the dough wasn’t as sticky as I expected initially so I added another splash more water – kind of undermines my accuracy of weighing the first bit as I don’t know how much a splash is
I used the Dan Lepard kneading technique – i.e. several short kneads spaced out
it was a warm-ish day so the dough seemed to rise quite fast, it only took about an hour to double in size
halving 9 gets 4.5 you can’t make 4.5 muffins I chose to make 4 instead
I cooked it on an oiled flat cast iron griddle
the muffins came out pretty giant
it’s hard to tell how brown or otherwise they should be on the outside as there’s only a picture of one split and toasted – I think mine are probably too brown
All that remains is to test them at breakfast in a bacon and egg McMuffin style. I shall report back.
UPDATE 30/08/2009:
The McMuffin style breakfast worked really well. We toasted the muffins lightly then buttered them, added 2 rashers of bacon (unsmoked), dolloped on some ketchup and topped with a fried egg (easy -overed) then popped the top of the muffin on and munched away. I was so busy eating I forgot to take a picture (ddoh). They tasted really good although we didn’t wrap them in greaseproof as Mathilde had suggested (see her McMuffin brunch post here),Ii might do that for extra fun if I had guests staying.
Overall I’ve been really pleased with the muffins and I’ll do them again, its nice to try something different. The texture came out nice and even and they stayed good for 3 days – don’t know if they would last longer if I’d made the bigger batch. Curiously the semolina flour on the outside makes them taste slightly salty even though they aren’t. They made a tasty change from soft rolls and they were scored 7/10.
The remaining two muffins have also been eaten at breakfast; yesterday with blackberry curd:
So to 
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