Another thing I wish someone had told me when I first started cooking: you should cook potatoes in cold water. Obviously you do need to apply heat, otherwise you just get wet potatoes. The idea is to put them in a pan of cold water and then bring it up to the boil.
I think I learned [...]
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Cooking tips: boil potatoes in cold water
15 March 2010 – 6:06 pm
Everything I Know About Cooking, I Learnt From Making Stew (addendum)
28 February 2010 – 8:58 pm
Just another thought that occurred to me while I was cooking this the other day:
Food isn’t fashion.
I’m always annoyed by the way they present food products in the style section of the Sunday paper: a stylish-looking package of olive oil/chocolate/wine floating in white space to tempt shoppers as though it was a new pair of [...]
Everything I Know About Cooking, I Learnt From Making Stew (part two)
18 February 2010 – 1:21 pm
The first part was very broad-brush stuff: here I get (slightly) more specific.
Learning to cook is a lifelong project.
Learning to cook is a cumulative process. Some bits of it are widely applicable, but there are also many small pieces of specific knowledge. They aren’t generally complicated or difficult, but there are a lot of them, because [...]
Everything I Know About Cooking, I Learnt From Making Stew*
15 February 2010 – 1:57 pm
These are some general thoughts about cooking; things I wish someone had told me when I first started. If you’re wondering about my credentials to be handing out that kind of advice… well, I don’t have any. I’m just a keen home cook. So take it with a pinch of salt.
Cooking is easy.
This is how [...]
The 5th annual Christmas stuffing post
24 December 2009 – 3:30 pm
As usual, I’ve made a base of sausagemeat, onion, celery and breadcrumbs, and split it into two batches.
To one I added dried apricots and dried barberries which I reconstituted in champagne (but only because there was half a bottle of flat champagne in the kitchen). Then a pinch of mixed spice.
The second stuffing had pistachios, [...]
Mmmm, cured pork products
23 December 2009 – 8:41 pm
This is what I have been doing today (well, that and wrapping presents):
The ham is from Sillfield Farm, but I steamed and glazed it myself. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, although I know it’s not the most flattering photograph.
4th annual Heraclitean Fire Christmas stuffing post
24 December 2008 – 4:17 pm
Because arbitrary traditions are important at Christmas.
As usual, I made a base of sausagemeat, celery, onion and breadcrumbs, and also as usual half of it is chestnut stuffing. But this year’s second, ad-libbed recipe has toasted almonds and dried apricots and peaches soaked in amaretto.
Now I ought to get on with roasting the ham [...]
Gooseberry liqueur, again
3 September 2008 – 4:07 pm
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 nice — gooseberry tasting, in fact — though it’s definitely better [...]
Gooseberry liqueur
31 July 2008 – 3:03 pm
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 [...]
Uncomplicated pleasures
8 March 2008 – 8:24 pm
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.
Oven-dried tomatoes
28 February 2008 – 10:12 am
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 [...]
Welsh rarebit
18 January 2008 – 9:03 pm
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 [...]
Puy & pea soup
2 January 2008 – 2:41 pm
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 [...]
The 3rd annual Heraclitean Fire Christmas stuffing post
24 December 2007 – 10:01 pm
This year I made the usual chestnut stuffing and also some with apricot, cherry, almond and ginger.
Ho Ho Ho!
12 December 2007 – 10:29 am
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 [...]
Cider
2 December 2007 – 1:41 pm
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.
Simon and Garfunkel sausage stew
18 October 2007 – 8:06 pm
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 [...]
Barbecue weather and frozen breakfast
4 August 2007 – 3:01 pm
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 [...]
Kolokithokeftedes (sort of)
14 May 2007 – 8:03 pm
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 [...]
Hania, still.
19 April 2007 – 10:17 am
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 [...]
The Incredible Hulk smoothie
21 February 2007 – 12:00 am
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 [...]
Doublehard Goans
14 February 2007 – 12:16 am
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 [...]