I was watching Antiques Roadshow at the weekend and some chap brought in an C18th* English silver sauce boat. The expert got excited because it was a rare early example; apparently before that point English food rarely had sauces but it was about then that some people started employing French cooks.
So far, reasonable enough and [...]
Posts tagged with ‘food and drink’
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More ethnic food slurs
15 November 2006 – 4:28 pm
British food
15 November 2006 – 2:34 pm
I’m always somewhat irritated when someone from The Land of Industrial Food is rude about British cooking. If it comes from one of the great foody cultures (the Italians, the French, the Indians, the Japanese…) I’m willing to admit they’re talking from a position of strength. But the country of processed cheese, marshmallow fluff, and [...]
Chicken a l’estragon
3 August 2006 – 9:00 pm
I don’t normally give French names to dishes I chuck together, but apart from the fact that this is very French-inspired, ‘estragon’ is such a good word. And it always makes me think of Waiting for Godot, a play I’ve never seen but which is quite famous.
Of course ‘tarragon’ is also a lovely word. Quite [...]
simple pleasures
24 July 2006 – 8:22 pm
A good-quality chicken breast, sliced nearly through and opened out like a book. Oil it and place it between two sheets of clingfilm, then beat it flat with a rolling pin. It doesn’t have to be carpaccio thin, just flat enough to cook through quickly.
Season with plenty of freshly ground black pepper and salt and [...]
Scallops with serrano ham and sherry
16 July 2006 – 10:20 pm
Based loosely on ‘angels on horseback’ and a Spanish dish. No pictures, I’m afraid.
Mix up a little olive oil, lemon juice and pepper. Dip each scallop in the mix and wrap it in a narrow strip of ham. Fry the hammy scallops until just done. Deglaze the pan with dry sherry and pour over the [...]
World Cup food blogging – Sweden
20 June 2006 – 11:28 pm
I’ve been trying to keep optimistic about England’s chances in the World Cup, but it’s not easy. Michael Owen was the only forward in the squad with a history of scoring lots of goals, so that injury is a real blow. Crouch actually did OK today in midfield areas, but I just don’t think he’s [...]
World Cup food blogging – Trinidad and Tobago
15 June 2006 – 11:01 pm
Thankfully, we did manage to beat T&T, despite the fact that Peter Crouch just isn’t good enough to play for England and Sven seems to have sucked all the creativity out of the players like some Swedish football-vampyr.
Anyway, I cooked some Trini food today to mark the occasion. The recipe was from Madhur Jaffrey’s World [...]
it feels like years since it’s been here
6 June 2006 – 10:05 pm
What could be better than a sunny day and ice cream in a cone?
Bomb-sniffing flowers
15 May 2006 – 10:22 am
Scientists in Denmark, the US and Canada have all been working on producing a genetically-engineered plant whose flowers will come up red instead of white in the presence of underground explosives. The idea, of course, is that you can use them to to test for the presence of landmines by dropping the seeds from the [...]
Menu drollery
4 May 2006 – 10:56 am
An Indian takeaway menu put through my door had this:
Biryanis
This elaborate form of cooking involves baking layers of meat or vegetables such that the flavours and aromas enthuse the rice; enhanced with saffron and spices.
Which reminded me of a couple of phonetic attempts at English from a menu in Spain. Since I can speak, read [...]
Figgy Dowdy, Sussex Pond Pudding and English food
26 April 2006 – 10:34 pm
I got back to England to find, appropriately enough, that some food blogs, English or otherwise, celebrated St George’s Day (Apr 23rd) by cooking English puddings, cakes, biscuits and other sugariness.
Why British food has such a bad reputation, and whether it’s deserved, is a question for another day. One kind of British food that has [...]
Sevilla
16 April 2006 – 12:45 pm
Seville! City of tiny platesful of food!
The food has indeed been yummy. Garlic prawns, morcilla (the local version of black pudding), scrambled eggs with garlic shoots and ham, etc etc. I haven’t been getting my 5 servings of fruit and vegetable a day, mind you. Even if you count bread and breadsticklets as seperate vegetables. [...]
Government ‘harassment’
2 April 2006 – 10:26 am
I came across an animal liberation website which stated that “government harassment of activists has continued to increase this year”. Harassment in this case seemed to mainly consist of people being convicted of arson, criminal damage, blackmail and so on. Describing that as ‘harassment’ just seems so… whiny. Sometimes it’s right to decide that you [...]
Salsa di Speck
18 March 2006 – 10:11 pm
I made spaghetti with a speck sauce today. Speck is a kind of Germano-Italian lightly smoked dry-cured ham. Similar to prosciutto, but the smoking just gives it a slightly different flavour.
Anyway, the recipe was from Gastronomy of Italy by Anna del Conte, a book I would generally recommend. Not that I’ve tried any of the [...]
Homemade bacon
3 March 2006 – 5:01 pm
I’ve been enjoying Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Big Book Of Meat. It’s incredibly thorough in giving you all the information you need to understand how to buy, prepare and cook meat for the best results; even without any recipes it would be worth owning. I’ve just tried his recipe for curing your own bacon.
Basically, you make [...]
Burns Night
26 January 2006 – 3:00 pm
I’m convinced that Burns Night is Scotland’s practical joke on the world. If you were writing a list of three ways to spoil a perfectly good dinner party, it would be hard to beat:
1) serve haggis and swedes
2) recite incomprehensible poetry
3) have bagpipe music
No wonder people drink whisky with it - it’s the only thing [...]
RSPCA ‘Freedom Food’
12 January 2006 – 12:31 am
I was reading about meat labelling in The River Cottage Meat Book (which I’d recommend, so far, though I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes yet). He mentioned that meat labelled as ‘RSPCA Monitored Freedom Food‘ wasn’t, as you might expect, free range – just produced with slightly more regard for animal welfare than [...]
Rewarding recipes - pasta with garlic, anchovies and capers
30 December 2005 – 11:28 pm
The more I cook, I the more I think of recipes in terms of the amount of work involved relative to the result - not just in terms of how good the food tastes, but how much the people you serve it to appreciate it. Two examples of things that score very badly on this [...]
Stuffing update
26 December 2005 – 9:44 am
My apricot, cherry and almond stuffing worked out well. If anything it slightly removed the need for cranberry sauce - the sour cherries have a similar fruity/sour thing going on, so you don’t really need both.
Today I shall mostly be making wild mushroom soup.