Just a quick update on the gooseberry liqueur I mentioned the other day. I have strained out the fruit and bottled the liqueur.
As you can see, it’s a very pale yellow; if anything it’s just slightly greener than it looks in this picture. And it’s very pleasant — gooseberry tasting, in fact — though it’s definitely better [...]
Much as I like cooked gooseberries, I was trying to think what I could do with some gooseberries that would keep that sharpness and fragrantness that they have when they’re raw. So I thought I’d try making gooseberry liqueur. I couldn’t actually find any recipes for it, but the basic principle of making fruit liqueur [...]
Watching Chelsea get knocked out of the FA Cup by Barnsley, followed by a big plate of ribs, greens and Hoppin’ John.
My version of soul food wouldn’t pass the Southern Grandmother Authenticity Test, btw, but it was pretty tasty though I do say so myself.
Because the tomatoes at this time of the year are so watery and tasteless, I thought I’d try this trick to perk them up a bit.
oven-dried tomatoes, originally uploaded by Harry R.
The recipe is based on one from Madhur Jaffrey. The tomatoes are halved, de-seeded, sprinkled with salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic, chilli and [...]
Cheese on toast is about my favourite comfort food, and today I had the urge to make Welsh rarebit [i.e. Welsh rabbit]. I couldn’t remember exactly what was in it, except that it’s a tarted-up version of cheese on toast. When I found a recipe for it I wasn’t terribly excited, though: it didn’t seem [...]
I cooked a ham over Christmas so I had ham stock in the freezer; which means pea soup. But I didn’t have many peas in the freezer so I added some Puy lentils (those little tiny green French ones). And it was very nice. The earthiness of the lentils and the freshness of the peas [...]
This year I made the usual chestnut stuffing and also some with apricot, cherry, almond and ginger.
The robust London sense of humour was on display at Borough market last week, courtesy of the bloke selling Christmas trees.
Also of interest at the market, some fine-looking fungi for sale. I have no idea what puffballs are like to eat—mushroomy, probably—but they look impressive.
These pictures are hosted on my Flickr account. And it seems [...]
Because there’s nothing more restful than a West Country accent. From the British Library collections, listen to a recording from 1956 of Fred Bryant, a retired farmworker from Stogumber in Somerset, talking about making cider.
The picture is from the V&A: Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, ‘Apple’ (Malus pumila Millervar), watercolour, 1568-1572.
I was picking a few herbs to put in a stew earlier and realised I’d picked parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Yes, I do know that the song is a traditional one, but it’s completely associated with S&G in my head. Despite the fact that they pronounce Scarborough with an ‘o’ on the end.
The stew was [...]
It’s a measure of how thoroughly miserable the weather has been that I just used the barbecue for the first time this year. But today it feels like summer.
I just did some lamb, tomato salad and potato salad. The lamb was marinated in olive oil, garlic, lemon and oregano for that Greek flavour. I came [...]
This recipe is my attempt to reconstruct a dish I had in Crete. I don’t know if it would pass the Greek grandmother test, but it’s probably close enough that she’d recognise what it was attempting.
Kolokithokeftedes [courgette balls/fritters/croquettes]
4 courgettes (zucchini)
3 spring onions (scallions), including most of the green bit
a clove of garlic
fresh dill
fresh mint
100g feta [...]
Well, I’ve been to the Hania Archeological Museum, the Cretan Folklore Museum and the Byzantine Museum this morning, so I’m all cultured up good. The Archeology is not doubt a pale shadow of what iwould have seen if the Heraklion museum had been open, but they had some nice stuff. The Folklore Museum was probably [...]
Let me just make it clear, in case any of the lawyers from Marvel Comics (soft drinks division) should happen to be watching: by using the phrase ‘Incredible Hulk’, I’m not claiming that Marvel Comics endorse, recognise, or know of the existence of, this drink. Or indeed that it gives you a short temper or [...]
I made ‘rechad’ spice paste today. It’s a recipe from Goa; Goa was a Portuguese colony, and the name is apparently from the Portuguese recheado, ‘to stuff’, because the Goans use it to stuff fish*. I used some of it tonight to make a particularly good Goan seafood curry called ambot tik which uses the [...]
BBC News has the story of a hunter who shot a duck, and took it home and put in the fridge thinking it was dead. According to the BBC:
The plucky duck was taken first to a local animal hospital, and then to an animal sanctuary for more specialised treatment. A veterinarian at the sanctuary said [...]
I’m just reading a book by Alice Thomas Ellis called Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring: A Gallimaufry. It’s a book about the history of food and it’s both very entertaining and extremely annoying. Annoying because it is indeed a gallimaufry (’a confused jumble or medley of things’). The book is loosely organised into themed [...]
Well, both stuffings were good. The (more experimental) ginger one tasted great, though a little unexpected in an otherwise very traditional Christmas meal.
The local Great Spotted Woodpecker was drumming this morning. They are always a very early sign of spring, but December still seems freaky. It’s been a weird old winter, weatherwise, and my woodpeckers [...]
I’ve been making stuffing for Christmas lunch today. So since it’s practically traditional (i.e. I did it last year), here’s what I’ve made: some chestnut and prune stuffing and some ginger and almond. Both are loosely inspired by reipces I’ve seen somewhere but with a bit of tweaking by me. Both are made with a [...]
Travelling in the Galapagos and Ecuador, obviously a large proportion of my shipmates and lodgemates were from the US. While I’m on the subject of transAtlantic foodiness: when did Americans all become such wine-buffs? I appreciate that the section of American society that turns up on Galapagos cruises and in Ecuadorian ecolodges is a fairly [...]