A chicken is really just a duck
who makes the lifestyle choice to cluck.
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Tag: food and drink
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.
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Oven-dried tomatoes
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 fresh thyme, then cooked in the oven at 70C for about 7 hours. They have an intense, tomato-y flavour but still have a bit of squish to them: they’re not as chewy as sun-dried tomatoes usually are.
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Welsh rarebit
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 like the extra fuss would be justified by the result. But I made it anyway, and it was nice. The version I made was like this:
Toast four slices of bread on one side under the grill.
In a saucepan, melt together 8oz (220g) of grated cheddar, 1oz of butter, 1 tbsp of English mustard, 4 tbsp of brown ale, a dash of Tabasco and some black pepper.
Put the cheese mixture on the untoasted side of the bread and grill until brown and bubbling.
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Puy & pea soup
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 worked well together.
I chopped up a potato and an onion and sweated them down for a bit, then added the ham stock, brought it up to the boil, added the lentils and simmered them for about 40 minutes. Then I added some frozen peas, simmered it for another 5 or 10 minutes, and blitzed it with a blender. It will probably be improved with a little seasoning, but bear in mind if you’re using home-made ham stock it may be a bit salty already.
I would have added some chunks of ham if I’d had any left, but it didn’t need them. And if you were being really perfectionist for some reason—like the Queen coming to dinner—you could pass the soup through a sieve before serving; but again, it was fine as it was.
This year I made the usual chestnut stuffing and also some with apricot, cherry, almond and ginger.