A Lot On My Plate

All diets work...

2010-01-20T12:13:00.021Z

Tikka Mackerel on Salsa with Bombay Wedges

In this, my latest, attempt to lose weight, I am not following a particular diet plan. I am counting no points or calories, and I won't cut out any food groups. So, certainly no 'just eat xyz for a week'.
What am I going to do then? - you might well ask.

Well, I think: ALL DIETS WORK.

If you stick to them, that is. Some people claim that they did and still didn't lose weight. That's not my experience. I always did lose weight, although sometimes not as much as the diet promised.
I think what doesn't work is the maintenance. Once you've achieved your goal weight, the old bad habits creep back in, you lose the impetus to keep up the exercise, and before you know it, you're back to square one.
As I said before, one overweight person isn't like the next. I can only talk for myself, really. Even with the best intentions, there comes a point when I can't be bothered to count and weigh and add up. There comes a point when I just haven't got the time. There comes the point when I'm grateful when HE offers to cook...

After numerous attempts of losing it and putting it back on - I refuse to call it yo-yo - I have come to the conclusion that, basically, I need to stay on a diet for the rest of my life. That I have to see the whole thing as a handicap, as a dear friend of mine called it recently.

There are many, many reasons why this is difficult, one of them:

Healthy/Diet recipes are not suitable for the whole family

Of course, some of them claim to be - and maybe they are, somewhere in the universe - but they're usually not suitable for MY Family.

But if I want to keep this up indefinitely, and don't want to cook several meals, then they have to be not only suitable, but actually LIKED by my family. So, my very personal, tailor-made plan is:

I will draw on all the recipes that I have liked from any of the diets I have been on in the past
I will test out recipes that may fit in, i.e. suitable for all of us, and ideally, under 400 calories for the main meal

My men will give each main meal a rating of up to three stars.

no star = don't cook it again
1 star = we will eat it again
2 stars = we LIKE this one
3 stars = we LOVE this one

This is an adaptations from a recent Tesco magazine recipe:

(Serves 4)

4 mackerel, filleted (I bought just 3 fillets)
1 Tbsp Tikka curry paste (I used Pataks)
juice of 3 limes (I used half lime, half lemon)
1 red chilli, chopped
3 tbsp fresh coriander

For the Salsa:
1/4 cucumber, peeled and diced
4 plum tomatoes, diced
1/2 small red onion, very finely chopped
1/2 tsp toasted cumin seeds
1 Tbsp fresh mint, chopped

For the Bombay Wedges:
As many small new potatoes as you allow per person, scrubbed and cut into wedges
1 - 2 tsp Bombay spice
1 - 2 tsp olive oil

1. Soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes
2. Skewer the mackerel and place into a shallow dish
3. Spread with the tikka paste
4. Add chopped coriander chilli to lime juice and drizzle over the fillets, leave to marinate for 10 minutes
5. Boil water and blanch wedges for 2-3 minutes, then pat dry
6. Pre-heat the oven for 10 minutes to 2oo C
7. In a small plastic bag, combine olive oil, Bombay Mix and wedges, mix well
8. Spread wedges out on a non-stick baking tray and season. Bake for ca 20 minutes
9. Mix all the ingredients for the salsa and arrange on the middle of your plates
10. Pre-heat the grill for the mackerel, grill for 3 - 4 minutes

I served ours with Bok Choi, but Savoy Cabbage would have been equally nice. My men gave it 2 stars, so this will become one of my staple oily fish dishes. The original Tesco recipe had no extra stodge or veg but salad leaves added to the salsa and came - at 2 fillets per person - to 255 calories.
As you can imagine, my men cannot start to comprehend the idea of 'no stodge', so I added the potato wedges. Not sure what the exact calorie count would be for my version. I didn't have the wedges, and I was perfectly full and satisfied.

Tesco's were selling mackerel fillets which were already marinated, and although I did go through the trouble of following the recipe, my verdict is that you could use them straight away without the bother, especially as all that good marinade is tipped away.

At £1.77 for the three fillets, it was also incredibly cheap.

Losing it Again...

2010-01-19T10:02:00.001Z

Water after blanching red cabbage

The first kilo has gone, and I'm already feeling:

lighter
brighter
more energetic
less moody

I still don't sleep soundly, mainly because of lots of aches and pains, and I still wake up with pins and needles.

I have started on some light exercise, but I haven't managed to drink any more water, really. I usually try and do this with herbal teas, as straight cold water isn't very appealing in the winter, but I don't think I've managed the required minimum of 2 litres. Maybe keeping the 2 l bottle at room temperature will help.

Why is water so important? Apart from keeping our vital juices going (saliva, mucus, digestive), it regulates the body temperature, it "maintains blood-glucose levels by releasing sugar from the cells as needed" (Suzi Grant, 48 hours to a healthier life, penguin). Apparently, it even helps prevent allergic reactions, so really important for hay fever and asthma sufferers like me.

But fizzy water encourages cellulite, apparently!

Snowdrops Keep Falling On My Head

2010-01-13T13:13:00.001Z

January's birth flower, according to Wikipedia, is the carnation or the snowdrop. The little snowdrop fairy above is an approximation of what I must have looked like for Carnival. In several areas of Germany, dressing up for Carnival on Rose Monday (the Monday preceding Shrove, i.e. Pancake, Tuesday) is very popular (more about that in due time). My Mum made that costume for me when I was eight maybe, and my legs were never that thin, even then. Nonetheless, everyone was always on about what "a bad eater" I was, and on paper at least, I was always underweight.

They needn't have worried. Now, some 40 odd years later, with a BMI of 30 or 31, I'm considered obese. The struggle to get down to at least 25 has been going on for a long time, and while I managed to get even further down at some point, it has always crept back up. Whatever anybody comes up with in terms of explanations why some of us face this life-long battle, I usually just want to scream.
Why can't they see what is blindingly obvious to me? The overweight, the obese, the clinically obese are not one big group, all with the same problem(s) and the same underlying factors!!! Of course there are people who have the most outrageous diets, who totally gorge themselves on an epic scale. Of course there are people with a fully fledged eating disorder.
But anyone who was perfectly within the norm as a child and teenager (or even below, like me) may simply be a victim of a cluster of factors from within the unhealthy Western life-style. And yes, a predisposition to put on weight is another factor. Some people live that same life-style without putting weight on. Maybe some, but not anywhere near 3 stone in a year. They are, of course, the 3 stone I had lost before - as the saying goes: I keep losing weight, but it keeps finding me - and it is a sad truth that 90 % of people who lose weight put it back on!!! (No, I cannot tell you where I've got that figure from, I didn't record that.)

What makes it so much worse is:

When you lose weight, you lose weight and muscle, when it goes back on, it usually goes on in fat!

So, I'm all blubber now, and the only way to change that is the dreaded E-Word: EXERCISE.
It is the only way to increase muscle, after all. The good thing about it is:

The more lean muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate!! For every pound of muscle, your body uses around 50 extra calories per day.

But, luckily, snowdrops keep falling, which gives me the excuse for not getting into the car and to the gym...

El Dia de los Tres Reyes

2010-01-06T15:52:00.009Z

is what the Spanish speaking countries call Epiphany, and this is what we saw in Spain - the three kings entering the house, very much in the same fashion as Father Christmas/Santa (who could be seen alongside climbing the walls).

I have written about the feast of the three kings before when I made the French Kings' Cake. It was very nice but also very rich, so this time I'd like to make one which is more bread than cake. See here for an overview of kings' cakes from different countries.

The Spanish Rosca de Reyes and the Portuguese Bolo Rei both fall into this category, but it is the New Orleans version that takes my fancy. First of all because the King Cake has a complete season there - namely between Epiphany and Mardi Gras - and secondly because this connection is responsible for its Carnival colours, purple, gold and green.

See here and here for more information and recipes. I'm probably going to end up with a combination recipe.

Happy Twenty Ten!

2010-01-04T18:08:00.002Z

I got this in card form for my birthday. I believe it's a Banksy. So fitting. A lot of the time, I don't manage beyond the above - and sometimes, even getting dressed lies well beyond my capabilities... No, I kid you not. Today is the first day of the new year that I have achieved as much, and apart from a handful of e-mails it has been my only form of action No, hang on, I've done a little clearing up in the front room, and I've emptied the dishwasher. My only other contribution has been in a consultancy role with regard to a painting in the style of Klimt. I even provided just the right sort of golden paint. I knew where that was, you see, as opposed to far more important things such as passport photograsphs for Ben's term time bus pass...
So, it seems this year has begun as so many others before, with me out of action due to a cold, and other members of the family as disorganised as usual...
BUT, as I am out of bed and dressed, I shall call today a successful day! Maybe, if I keep my expectations low, I can actually try and attack one or the other thing on my plate!!!

Balls-Up and Bollocks!

2009-11-11T21:29:00.001Z

Lantern Procession on St. Martin's Day

If you've seen my last entry's title and now this one, you must think I'm deliberately and unnecessarily rude (and you'd probably be right... I'm Continental and therefore of a more robust ilk in terms of coarseness, much to my kids' embarrassment), but there is actually a rationale behind this one: two recipes I tried out happened to be balls of one kind or another, and neither of them worked out. So there, that's my justification for the profanities.

My pumpkin pie at Halloween didn't work out either; and ok, I always called it the penultimate recipe - implying that there was certainly something still in need of improvement ... but, my, this time it hadn't even set properly, and the crust was far too hard... I felt completely defeated. What on earth was I doing writing a food blog? It's not as if I have to add anything special to the world of food blogging anyway, and now it seems I've lost my cooking mojo completely. Today, I even managed to mangle a bought-in pie!

The heart seems to have dropped out of my cooking world. I've got a backlog of photographs and recipes, and I certainly need to record my favourite slimming recipes, but I really don' t know when that 'll be. The sooner the better, my jeans seem to say, stretched as they are, to bursting point, and yes, St. Martin (Martinmas, today) would be a good day to start, with six weeks leading up to Christmas. Maybe I'll actually get round to roasting a goose on Sunday, and then we can all start to 'de-grease' after that . The goose is as traditional as the lantern procession for the kids (see above) . I'll try and remember to tell you more about it next year...

A Cock-up on the Catering Front

2009-09-21T14:24:00.000+01:00

Example of a Cock-up on the Linguistic Front (1)

For further explanation, go to footnote 1, for my story of a cock-up on the culinary front, read on:

You would have thought that someone with a food blog would want to cook for their friends, especially those they don't see all that often, those who have to travel a fair few miles, friends like my 'girls': 'my College friends'. -- 'College' and 'girls' both being somewhat misleading, as the place where we met was a Polytechnic, and the time so long ago that none of us fit the description of 'girl' anymore (though some of us try...).

I can't even start to express how much I wished I had cooked.

But as soon as we approached Monday, I knew I'd be working flat out just getting the rooms sorted. Somehow or other, I have never actually defined "A lot on my plate" in terms of the long list of items that I should be doing, or more precisely, should have been doing for quite some time. For quite some decades!
Without going into the question which mental condition this is symptomatic for, beyond straight-forward procrastination, suffice it to say that the list has never got any shorter, or the plate any emptier. Empty, in actual fact, does not seem to be in my user manual - every room of the house is so crammed full of stuff that only on a good day may you venture from one end to the other and open the curtains or the window. (It isn't yet quite a case of "tunnels only"(2), but we're getting there.)

Now, instead of getting on with it immediately, Monday was dedicated to mourning the Crown Prince's departure, which prompted me to start a new blog. The usual delaying tactic of rather writing about your inadequacies than doing anything about them. To cut a long story short, it wasn't before Wednesday that I started attacking Ben's filthy room (I gathered 2 washing baskets full of dirty clothes in the process), and with a whole day spent at Aston University for the Matthew Boulton lectures on Thursday, it wasn't until the arrival day itself that I managed to cut trenches into the jungle that is Dom's old room.

There was no time to shop, let alone cook. A take away it was going to be. We ventured out and had a look at the plethora of restaurants/take-aways in walking distance (3 Chinese, 2 Pizza places, 2 Indian restaurants, and a Fish & Chips). We chose Chinese and ordered 3 Vegetarian dishes and one with King Prawns. To our utter shock and horror, when we got home and opened the dishes, we found that all of the Vegetarian options contained meat - chicken, beef, prawns, all thrown in, as if to say - you didn't specify which, so we've given you a mixture. It was awful, because our Vegetarian friend now didn't have anything to eat other than egg fried rice and noodles. What on earth were they thinking? It was very late and we were very hungry, so we didn't even take it back.
Has anybody else ever had such a strange experience?
_____________________
(1)
For the derivation and meaning of 'cock-up', see here.
For 'Lost in Translation in Swansea', see here.
(2)
For further reference, see here and here.

RIP Keith Floyd

2009-09-16T12:47:00.011+01:00

Choucroute d'Alsace

I wonder how many of my fellow food bloggers in the UK felt the urge to cook something special last night in memory of Keith Floyd, the incorrigible cook and TV presenter, who had died the night before. It was a particular shock as on that very night, the BBC had broadcast a programme about him. I couldn't help wondering whether watching it had given him the heart attack - Floyd had looked frail enough during the filming, and I don't think the Keith Allen led documentary did him any favours.

Let's rather remember his larger than life exuberance, his lack of reverence, and the abundance and abandon he brought to British cooking. I got out Floyd on France, cracked open a bottle of wine, and Choucroute d'Alsace is what I ended up with.

"Trust you to hone in on a region the Germans invaded", was Mr ALOMP's reaction to the rather Teutonic, meat and Sauerkraut dominated dish. Hmm, yes, apparently due to domestic pulling powers, such as 'what do I actually have in?' (I'm German, so I always have Sauerkraut in) and 'what needs to be used up?' (smoked ham, smoked sausage - both Polish, but then, so were the ancestors if you go back far enough), I had to forego Floyd's maxims "careful shopping" and "fresh ingredients", and decided on an approximation of the dish featured on page 227. But maybe there was more to it? Maybe all that talk of good, honest, hearty home cooking had me salivating for childhood fare? (Come to think of it - at the Malmö Food Festival, of all the international dishes I could have gone for, I had plumped for Bigos - the Sauerkraut based Polish Classic, interestingly sometimes referred to as Silesian Bigos, Silesia being the area my Mum is from.)

In any case, it had made me block out the fact that neither of my remaining men (D eventually off to explore the Capital of the fatherland, or rather, in our case, the motherland) like Sauerkraut, a fact which wasn't helped by the only one of Floyd's maxims I adhered to - "an unhurried approach" - which resulted in the food being served very late. They ate it all but they didn't love it. Whereas I have to admit, I did. In rather colloquial German, "Ich hätte mich da reinsetzen können" - roughly translated, "I could have settled in it".

Oh yes, there was plenty of Riesling in the Sauerkraut and I also made Poires au vin rouge (p 33). Needless to say copious amounts of red and white were also imbibed. Ah, no one quite like Keith Floyd! I very much hope that he ended as he did in the epilogue of Floyd on France:

"And me? I am sitting - another fallen star - waiting for the early train. But happy."

Eurofret #1

2009-08-24T20:09:00.021+01:00

Spaghetti con Aglio e Olio

We're back from our holidays, and I'm very pleased that my contribution for Dinner and a Movie went out as scheduled. It's the first time that I left a blog entry to be published in absentia. (Ironically, the deadline was extended to today!) But that is not what the fretting is about. "Eurofret" is a sign somewhere around the ferry port of Dunkirk, and each time we go that way, it strikes me as an ideal title for a TV show where people can complain about Europe.
Well, we've been to Germany, Denmark and Sweden, and I've got a lot to fret about. So I thought I 'd start a little series. I'll make it food-related if I can.
That shouldn't be too difficult - with the pound so weak, everything was astronomically expensive, so, lots to fret about. The above dish, re-created today, was one of the exceptions, a mere 6.50 € I think, which is nearly £ 6.50 now. But if you think how little goes into it...

My 'version' came with cherry tomatoes and 'Pepperoni'. On the Continent, those are types of small, spicy pickled peppers (often known as peperoncino or peperone piccante in Italy and pepperoncini or banana peppers in the U.S.), not the spicy variety of salami in Italo-American dishes. However, when you look up the recipe, the 'classic' one would not feature anything much besides the oil and garlic in the title.

But what the heck, I liked the addition of tomatoes and spicy peppers. I also liked the use of red chillies, as opposed to chilli flakes, which I found in online recipes. Everyone seemed to agree on the use of parsley - but I didn't have any. I had bought 'sun-kissed oregano' at Waitrose instead (because I'm a sucker for 'romantic marketing'). So, this is what I did:

Spaghetti, enough for x people
1 tbsp of olive oil per person (I used a very special one, 'Colonna Gran Verde', with the zest of organic lemons, which I bought in a delicatessen in Henley-in-Arden, because the addition of lemon juice and zest was also recommended in a number of recipes)
1 large clove of garlic per person, cut into slivers
2 cherry tomatoes, halved, per person
1 fresh red chilli per person
2 yellow pickled peppers per person (mine were from Lidl; very mild)

Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente.
In a large pan, heat oil and add the garlic slivers, keep stirring. It's important the the garlic doesn't turn brown. Add chillies, peppers and tomatoes.
Add the drained spaghetti to the pan and mix well.
Season liberally with salt and pepper.
Add finely cut oregano right at the end.

I served it with a mixed salad and a glass of red wine. Grated parmesan is optional.

I had this first in the port of Husum, Germany.

Dinner and A Movie: Wall Street

2009-08-20T13:09:00.002+01:00

Micaella's Dough

It seems like I don’t get round to anything else these days, in blogging terms, other than the beloved cinematic food event that is Dinner and a Movie.

Joint hosts are Marc (norecipes) and Susan (stickygooeycreamychewy), and they take it in turns to select the film and organise the round-up. This time, it was Marc's turn, and he chose the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street for the month of August. As most people probably know, it features Michael Douglas as a ruthless corporate raider, Charlie Sheen as a young man (Bud Fox) desperate to be a player in the cut-throat world of international finance, and Martin Sheen as his Union leader father who has rather different values.
Douglas, who wasn’t Stone’s first choice, won the Oscar for his portrayal of the unscrupulous Gekko who corrupts the young Fox. (Who doesn’t remember the line, "Greed is good"?) The latter eventually does not even shy away from insider dealings and a quasi betrayal of his father.

Other memorable lines are, “There is no nobility in poverty”, “You’re not naïve enough to believe we live in a democracy, are you?” and “It’s all about bucks, kid.” It’s this all encompassing theme of money which inspired my food choice: DOUGH.

Dough is only one of the numerous food-related synonyms for money:
beer tickets, bread, cake, cheddar, cheese (and variations such as gouda & veeta for velveeta), cream, lolly, chips, gravy, roll, bacon, beans, berries, cabbage, kale, lettuce, sugar, and clams were all amongst those found in my online search.

In German, the only one with food associations is Eier – eggs. Well, one of those went into Micaella’s dough, as did some cheddar (for other ingredients, see below). To obtain a dough, you have to knead (kneten) your ingredients, and Knete, interestingly, is German for plasticene/play-dough and happens to be another colloquial term for money.

My dough was not turned into a loaf sized bread, but little breads – Brötchen = rolls. Which, I believe (though his fate remains open at the end of the film), is what Gekko will have to bake smaller ones of…
Confused? “Kleine/kleinere Brötchen backen” is a frequently used idiom, which means

to become more reticent; aim lower; take a backseat; to economize; become subdued after initial bragging; become more modest; conduct business with less voracity...

as in:
"BASF muss kleinere Brötchen backen. Die schlechtere Konjunktur lässt die Gewinne des Konzerns schwächer fließen als erwartet" -
“BASF has to retract. The economic down-turn has meant lower profits than the company expected.”

How fitting… but for the time being I’ll leave it to somebody else to comment on the total insanity that is the world’s betting shop, also known as the Stock Exchange, and just concentrate on how to make cheesy dough for little rolls:

Micaella's Dough

1 egg
lukewarm water
3 3/4 cups of strong bread flour
1 1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of sugar
2 tbsp of soft butter
1 tsp dried yeast
2 cups of grated cheese

Put the egg into a measuring jug and beat lightly. Add lukewarm water to make up to 300ml, mix. Pour into a large bowl. Add the flour and completely cover the liquid. Add the salt, sugar and butter in three different places around the edge. Make a small indentation in the middle into which to sprinkle the yeast. Start kneading (or use kneading implements, or use a bread maker), then add the cheese and continue until everything is well mixed. Set aside to rise. (A warm place is always recommended, which is sometimes not as easy as it sounds. I cover the bowl with a shower cap - a trick I picked up from the Hairy Bikers - and put the bowl in the top oven without switching it on. It'll get a bit warmer once the bottom oven is being pre-heated.) After about an hour, your dough should look a bit like mine above. For a loaf, put the dough into a bread tin and set aside to rise again (ca 45 minutes), then bake in a pre-heated oven at C200 for about 40 minutes on the middle shelf. For rolls, divide the dough into about 8 portions and form into rolls. Place on to a baking sheet lined with baking paper, set aside to rise for about 45 minutes and bake for about 25 minutes.

Cheesy Rolls

Dinner and A Movie: Breakfast at Tiffany's

2009-07-20T14:50:00.000+01:00

Picture a Yellow NY taxi

Holly:

People don’t belong to people. I’m like cat here. No-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us, we don’t even belong to each other.

Paul:

You know what’s wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You’re chicken, you’ve got no guts, you’re afraid to stick out your chin and say, ok, life’s a fact.

People do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.

For my favourite on-line foodie event,

organised jointly by Susan and Marc, Susan chose an absolute classic this time: Breakfast at Tiffany's. The film, with its innovative costuming by legendary designers Edith Head and Givenchy, predominantly in black and white, produced some of the most iconographic images ever, thanks to Audrey Hepburn’s elegant beauty.

She plays 19-year-old Holly Golightly, a self-declared wild thing who abandons relationships and responsibilities when they threaten to jeopardize her freedom. Her desire for "breakfast at Tiffany's” (absurd, as Tiffany's do not serve food) symbolises in its unattainability her struggle against conventional constraints such as settling down in a stable relationship. (Oh, I’m so with her!! She’s 19, for heaven’s sake!!!)

Apart from the fashion, and the equally famous music by Henri Mancini (Moon River), one of the most striking aspects of this 1961 film is the perpetual smoking and cocktail drinking. Clear evidence, if any was needed, that drinking yourself into a comatose state wasn’t invented in the 90s. It just wasn’t called binge drinking.

There is no food to speak of at these parties, so no inspiration there. We do see a pressure cooker exploding, but I really had no wish to repeat this experience, I vividly recall the eruption of my lentil soup some years ago, with the tiny legumes reaching even the most remote corners of the ceiling.

Another draw-back this time was the circumstance that the list of ingredients I am allowing myself, after being seriously ill, drastically reduces my range of recipes. Just as I felt I couldn’t possibly invent something that would be good enough to reflect this superb film, it came to me in a flash: The Little Black Dress Diet!

Not only does it have Holly Golightly on the cover, it’s also contains really healthy diet meals. I opted for a breakfast (of course), and decided to serve it in a cocktail glass (of course, again).

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

(adapted from Michael van Straten’s The LBD Diet)

Fresh pineapple (representing gold)

Cinnamon

Cardamom seeds, pounded

Coriander seeds, pounded

Honey

Blueberries, redcurrants (representing rubies and sapphires)

Cut up your pineapple into bite-sized pieces, put on a foil covered baking sheet. Pound the spices with pestle and mortar, and sieve the husks out. Mix with cinnamon and honey, then spread the mixture on top of the pineapple pieces and grill until golden brown. Serve in a cocktail glass together with the rubies and sapphires.

The original recipe uses only cinnamon and brown sugar. I used local honey instead as that is supposed to be good when you're a hay fever sufferer.

The film is of course based on the 1958 novella of the same name by Truman Capote, whom Norman Mailer described as "the most perfect writer of my generation". When the story was adapted for a mainstream audience by scriptwriter George Axelrod, it was to lose its obscene language and explicit sexual references, and the plot and character details were drastically changed, the most striking of which was to turn the relationship between Holly Golightly and Paul (George Peppard in the film) into a conventional heterosexual love story.

Never mind, it’s a glorious film, and I’m reading the book right now, so I’m divinely happy, darling! Thank you Susan for another inspired choice!!

Foovolution

2009-06-26T10:59:00.000+01:00

Aku Shaak - Stuffed Vegetable Curry
(A Gujarati speciality from South Africa, from Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible )

Maybe, if you're not a scientist, you are not aware of this: 2009 is Darwin Year. Without Melissa, over at hecticium, I probably wouldn't know either. Melissa, also being a foodie, had this great idea to start January off with a dish, which would evolve into something slightly different every month. I volunteered for June, and as we're past the longest day now, and therefore half way through the year (frightening, isn't it?), I'm going to take the opportunity to sum up the evolutionary development so far.

In the ancestral ingredients pool were aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, Provencal herbs, olive oil, marscapone cheese, salt and pepper in a layered dish called Baked Provencal Vegetables, made by the initiator herself.
In February, onions, garlic, peppers, carrots, chilli flavoured oil, pesto and wholemeal wraps had been added to the original configuration, and Muireann replaced the marscapone and Provencal herbs with cream cheese and dried basil respectively.
Naomi introduced meat (minced beef) into the recipe, as well as crackers, egg, spinach leaves, soy cream, hazelnuts, mushhrooms, and a handful of mange-tout, while removing the aubergine and peppers, and replaced the wraps with Spaghetti, and the cream cheese with ricotta and quark for March's meatballs with spaghetti.
In April, the aubergines (1) made a come-back, while the courgettes dropped out, the beef was replaced by minced lamb, and a whole array of new ingredients were added: potatoes, mint, parsley, oregano, cinnamon, tomato puree, milk, flour, a bay leaf, and red wine for the Hunt family Moussaka by Laura. She also came up with the great term foovolution that I use in the title of this post.
Ricotta proved an ingredient well suited to the environment as it still features in May's recipe by Kira, who took the foovolution to another level: the ricotta went into Ricotta and Dill Bread (adapted from The Art of Handmade Bread by Dan Leopard), and the aubergine went into everything else, a Baba Ghanoush, Baked Aubergines with Coriander Yogurt Dressing, and Aubergine, Halloumi and Asparagus, with Lemon/Oil Dressing, all looking absolutely delicous, see for yourselves here.
New 'traits' to draw from in June were plenty: tahini, coriander, paprika, lemon, couscous, apricots, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, spring onions, natural yogurt, ginger, dry yeast, flour, bread flour, dill, halloumi, asparagus tips, chilli flakes, honey, whole grain mustard.

Now, evolution is the product of two opposing forces: processes that constantly introduce variation, and processes that make variants become more common or rare. Adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of the variants best-suited for their environment.
I have also learnt that natural selection has no long-term goal and does not necessarily produce greater complexity. In that vein, my main ingredients are the ones which have become the most common traits: aubergine, onion and tomato. From May, I will carry over coriander, lemon, ginger, and the yoghurt for an accompaniment. I will also draw on earlier variants for potatoes (new, in season, and therefore an environmental force), peppers and mint. And the nuts, which appeared earlier as hazelnuts and pine nuts make a come-back as peanuts and coconut. There will be no meat or cheese (the environmental force here could be the credit crunch, or it could be the more personal, domestic one of heart disease and diabetes in my family demanding less meat and dairy intake and an increase in the consumption of vegetables), and my spices and my flour will be Indian, because another environmental factor in this house is the fact that my son Ben will eat only vegetables which are heavily disguised or heavily curried.

Madhur Jaffrey recommends using the small egg-shaped aubergines you can get at Asian markets. Living in Birmingham, that is not problem for me. As an alternative, she suggests long ones sold as Dutch or Italian ones. Well, as you can see, I had a 'normal' fat one. I cut one big slice of about 5 cms, which I then cut into quarters, and I used those alongside some of the small ones.

Aku Shaak - Stuffed Vegetable Curry

(serves 8)

You will need a large, deep frying pan for this.

vegetables:

6 small round aubergines, or chunky pieces as described above
4 onions
4 tomatoes for stuffing
255 g tomatoes, grated (or tinned chopped tomatoes)
3 medium boiling potatoes, peeled and quartered lengthways
1 green pepper, cut into squares

for the paste:

4 tbsp chickpea flour (gram flour)
2 tbsp roasted peanuts, ground (I reckon you could just as well use smooth peanut butter and omit the tbsp of oil)
2 tbsp desiccated coconut
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
4-5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 1/2 tsp hot green chillies, finely chopped
2 tsp of salt
1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp of jaggery or soft brown sugar
a handful of coriander leaves, chopped
2 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp of ground cumin
olive oil
1 tsp of lemon juice

Also:

1 1/2 tsp whole brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp ground asafetida
4 whole dried, hot red chillies

Put all the ingredients for the paste into a bowl, mix, and add 1 tbsp of oil and 1-2 tbsp of water to get a crumbly paste.
Cut deep crosses in the bottom of the aubergines, or into the cut ends if using chunks. Stuff some of the paste into them. Cut crosses into the tomatoes and onions and also stuff them. Set aside the stuffing that's left.
Fill the frying pan with oil to a depth of 1 1/2 mm and set on a medium heat. Add the mustard seeds, asafetida and chillies when it's hot. A few seconds later, add the potatoes, stir for 30 seconds, cover and cook for 3-4 minutes. Stir from time to time.
Carefully put the onions and aubergines into the pan, cut side up. Cover and continue to cook on medium heat for 7-8 minutes.
Add 4 tbsp of water, move the vegetables about. Put the lid back on, reduce the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes.
Move the vegetables around again, then add the tomatoes, and scatter the pepper pieces.
Add the grated tomatoes to the stuffing you set aside, mix well and pour the mixture over the peppers. Cover and continue to cook for a further 20-25 minutes, until the tomatoes are just done.

We had a raita with this, made from yoghurt, garlic, some grated cucumber, mint and cumin seeds.

Delicious and very filling, if you cook the above quantity and you're just 3! Mind you, it wouldn't be enough for 8 as a full meal.

And here for those who would like to contemplate evolution, natural selection and Darwin's role in this a bit more, a link to an essay in the New York Times: Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live
__________________________

(1) Did you know that aubergine production is quite concentrated with 85 percent of output coming from only three countries? The UK is No 10 on the list.

Dinner and A Movie: Monsoon Wedding

2009-06-21T15:32:00.001+01:00

Chicken Tikka

I am a day late with this, but sometimes you just have to let go. I was nursing myself (again!) all day yesterday and simply couldn't do the write-up. A shame, really, because I could have had this ready to go, but as so many things this June so far, it simply didn't get done...

But, without further ado: Dinner and a Movie is the brainchild of Susan at stickygooeycreamychewy, and Marc of no recipes, and is an event that combines two major indulgences: watching a film and eating a meal inspired by it. This time, the event was hosted by Marc, and the chosen film was Monsoon Wedding. (I think Marc is getting himself a bit of a name here, having chosen a film with a wedding as its theme for the second time running!!)

I hadn't seen this film before, or even heard of it, and I loved it. It's a feast for the eyes in vibrant orange, and I'm not just talking about the abundance of marigolds!

Director Mira Nair, whose debut film was Salaam Bombay!, set her tale of chaotic wedding preparations in New Delhi just before the start of the monsoon season.

The groom, Hemant Rai, is an Indian who flies in from Texas, and other family members also arrive from distant places like Australia to attend the wedding of Aditi to this man she has known for only a few weeks. Her father, Lalit Verma, is trying to arrange the enormous and expensive wedding with the help of an increasingly more frantic and frazzled wedding organiser.
In the relentless summer heat, five intersecting tales unfold, revealing secrets and hopes, and the crossing of boundaries, not only of continents, but also of class and morality. So when it finally comes, as it must, the heavy monsoon rainfall is a cathartic downpour indeed.

For the best dance scenes, see here, the night before the wedding.

As a linguist, I was particularly fascinated by the use of 'na' in place of the usual English tags such as, "isn't it" (or 'new' English: "innit"), and even 'nee, nee, nee' (pron.: ~ nay) for "no, no, no", both of which sounded extremely 'homely', as those are linguistic features of the region in Germany where I come from - the Ruhrgebiet.

But let's come to the culinary creations inspired by the film! My feeling is that Marc would like us all to think a bit outside the box, in other words, not to be quite so linear and obvious. (He must have been very pleased with Kris's sorbet , prompted by the seduction scene in The Wedding Crashers...)

In this instance, we should probably have thought of something representing the monsoon rain, or matching up two ingredients that 'don't know each other', as in an arranged marriage, or at least something that represents the clashes of old and new, of cultures, of continents.
But I'm afraid, I'm a predictable Pavlovian dog; one twang from a sitar, and I'm salivating for Turmeric, Coriander and Green Chillies...

Mira Nair's background is Punjabi culture, and the main masala (= the mixture of dried/dry-roasted spices, or a paste, combining spices and other ingredients) in a Punjabi dish consists of onion, garlic and ginger. In fact, a lot of the most popular elements of current Anglo-Indian cuisine derive from the Punjab:

Chicken Tikka
Rogan Josh
Tandoori Chicken
Tandoori Fish
Keema Naans

A tandoor is a clay oven the shape of a horizontally sliced pot, so tandoori food is hard to replicate. We have tried before, with the help of a marinade made from ready mix tandoori masala powder and yoghurt, which is nice but only an approximation. I have recently come across a recipe which I might give a go soon, and I'm toying with the idea of making naan bread more authentically by sticking it to the sides of my German clay pot (Roemertopf), but for the time being, on this occasion, I've stuck to Chicken Tikka.

Not only because because it's more orange than tandoori chicken, or because it's easier, and tried and tested. No. The perfect reason is the fact that Chicken Tikka is the starting point for Chicken Tikka Masala: a hybrid dish (1), which has not only marched to the top but beyond. According to wikipedia, one in seven curries sold in the UK is chicken tikka masala. It is also widely regarded as Britain's National Dish now, and has produced other interesting off-shoots. In the UK, you can find chicken tikka in sandwiches and baguettes, on pizza, or on tagliatelle. For all I know, Blumenthal does a Chicken Tikka ice-cream or granita. Oh yes, cross-cultural merging and melting of cultures indeed.

I won't say: and this is how you do it, for obvious reasons. This is the easiest way:

chicken breasts, cut into cubes
plain yoghurt
Patak's Tikka Masala Curry paste (there is a mild version or a medium one)*

Mix yoghurt and paste in equal proportions. You need enough to cover the chicken pieces completely. Leave to marinate overnight.

* You can also buy Tikka Masala powder, or if you want to make your own spice mixture, try the following:

Tikka Masala

1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala (see below)

You may also add some lemon juice and tomato puree.

The next day, thread the meat on to skewers and grill for about 6 minutes on each side, or longer depending how 'charcoaled' you like it.

After that, it's up to you how you want your chicken tikka. You can eat it just like that, hot or cold, with a salad and maybe a yoghurt raita. You can mix the chicken pieces with mayonnaise for tomorrow's sandwiches.
If you want a curry sauce to go with your meat, you could do the following:

Start with oil, and fry onions and garlic. Later, you add ginger, coriander, turmeric, cayenne, paprika, 3 green chillies (if you like it hot), or you could use more of the Patak's curry paste. Then add either passata, or tinned tomatoes and stock. You can also add yoghurt or cream, plus salt if needed. Garam masala is again a key ingredient.

According to Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible, there are hundreds of recipes, probably a different one in every family. In the UK, you can easily obtain bags of garam masala, alternatively, it can be ground if you have the following ingredients and a coffee or spice grinder:

Garam masala, for 3 tablespoons:

1 tbsp cardamom seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp black cumin seeds
1/3 of a nutmeg
a medium stick of cinnamon, 2-3 inches, broken up

Grind as finely as possible and store in a tightly lidded jar. (Cf, p. 327, op.cit.)

I decided to serve mine in a curry sauce on Salmon Tagliatelle (Taglione al salmone)!

Here is the round-up by Marc:

And here are some bits and pieces I have found on Punjabi Wedding Traditions.

Apparently, crude teasing songs are part of the celebrations, and incense is used liberally. Henna designs (mendhi) are painted - most ladies get it done only on their hands but the bride gets it done on both hands and feet.
Before departing for her husband's home, the bride must tap her unwed female friends or cousins with her kaliras. Kaliras are silver, gold or gold plated traditional ornaments that are tied to a set of red and cream ivory bangles (chuddha) which are touched by all present to signify their blessings and good wishes for the bride. According to tradition, if any of the kaliras fall on her friends' heads, it is believed that those friends will marry next.
Vidaai marks the departure of the bride from her parental house. As a custom, the bride throws phulian or puffed rice over her head. The ritual conveys her good wishes for her parents. Her brothers accompany the bride, and her other relatives throw coins in the wake of this procession.

________________________________
(1) Madhur Jaffrey says, the idea of folding the grilled cubes into a curry sauce was most likely developed by Indian restaurateurs in the UK; wikipedia states it was invented in the 1960s in a Bangladeshi London restaurant, but they concede that this is hotly disputed, meaning that there are probably thousands of places which claim to be the original inventors .

Flaming June

2009-06-01T23:46:00.012+01:00

Flaming June

is the name of a painting by British Artist Frederick Leighton (1830 - 1906), which is also known as The Mona Lisa of the Southern Hemisphere on account of its residence in the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted to buy the painting in the early 60s, but being only 15 years old couldn't come up with the £50 asking price. He has since offered six million for it but the Puerto Rican authorities will not sell the painting (click on the Webber link to read the whole story). You can currently see the painting at the Prado in Madrid, where it is on loan until June 21st.

June 21st, fittingly, is also the longest day of the year, and the celebrations for the Summer Solstice (Winter Solstice in the Southern hemisphere) or Litha, or Midsummer Night, or St. John's Night take place around this time. (June 24^th is the birthday of St. John the Baptist, which used to be the longest day before the Gregorian calendar.)

And, fittingly again, Midsummer's Eve celebrations, pagan as they were in origin, involved bonfires. They were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southwards again. In later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other evil powers.

The lighting of bonfires is still part of the festivities in many countries, such as Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, and Estonia. In some rural spots, these bonfires are occasionally lit on hilltops, and the ritual of jumping over it in order to guarantee prosperity and avoid bad luck, is also still part of the celebrations in some areas, a pagan fertility rite, which has been accepted into the Christian calendar. How much it has been 'Christianised', can also be seen in the naming of the fires after St. John (for instance le feu de la Saint-Jean; Johannisfeuer), as well as the naming of the eve/day:

St. John's Eve (Britain), Jonines (Lithuania), Jonsok/Sankthansaften (Norway), Noc Swietojanska (= St. John's Night; Poland), San Juan (Spain), Ivan Kupala (= the old Russian name for St. John; Russia), Juhannus (Finland), Sankt Hans Aften (Denmark), Jaanipäev (John's Day; Estonia), Jani (Latvia), Gol-Jowan (Feast of St John; Cornwall)

According to Wikipedia, where I got most of this information, in Finland, Estonia and Sweden, Midsummer's Eve/Midsummer's Day (Swed.: Midsommarafton/Midsommardagen), is considered the greatest festival of the year, comparable only to Walpurgis Night, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve.

Some believe that Midsummer is a very potent night, one of the times of the year when magic is strongest, and it has certainly proved inspirational.

Gogol wrote a short story called St. John's Eve (1831), which inspired Modest Mussorgsky to create his Night on Bald Mountain, and Shakespeare gave us Midsummer Night's Dream, which in turn sparked numerous adaptations:

The Fairy-Queen (1692) by Henry Purcell is a set of baroque masques, or semi-operas, metaphorically related to the play.

Felix Mendelsohn composed the incidental music for a German stage production, which includes his famous Wedding March (1842/3).

Carl Orff wrote another piece for the play, Ein Sommernachtstraum (performed in 1939; re-worked '52 & 62), after Mendelssohn's music had been banned by the Nazis.

Ibsen wrote a drama, also called St. John's Eve (1852/3), influenced by the earlier play and the fairy-tale comedies by the German Romantics.

The choreographers Marius Petipa, Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine all created ballet versions. In fact, Ashton's The Dream is being shown this month at the Birmingham Hippodrome as part of a Triple Bill called Love & Loss.

Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears turned it into an opera in 1960,

and progressive Rock guitarist Steve Hackett, best known with his work with Genesis, made a classical adaptation of the play in 1997.

Then there are the FILM versions... One of them, directed by Peter Hall, in 1968, features a nearly naked Judi Dench as Titania opposite Ian Richardson as Oberon, with Ian Holm as Puck - all of them painted green.

This list is of course not at all exhaustive. For even more information, see here.

If you've managed to bear with me so far, you might be in need of a drink by now, and what could be better than Pimm's on a First of June, which has been flaming indeed.

You have seen it before, I'm sure, but just as a reminder, this is how you make your own version of the alcohol content of the Pimm's:

Cheat's Pimm's

1 part gin
1 part red vermouth
1/2 part Bols Orange Curacao/Cointreau/Grand Marnier

Then use 1 part of it to at least 3 parts of lemonade, plus apples, strawberries, cucumber and mint, and start enjoying the longer evenings! Cheers!

Tried and Tasted: Susan's Lite Goddess Dressing

2009-05-31T18:27:00.004+01:00

Susan's Lite Goddess Dressing

Tried and Tasted is a popular event started by Zuzana of Zlamushka's Spicy Kitchen. It is an event that celebrates fellow bloggers by re-creating their recipes and writing about them. This month, it is hosted by Vaishali of Holy Cow!, and the blog to be scoured for recipes is the fabulous FatFree Vegan Kitchen.

You would have thought I could have found something more challenging than a sauce from the vast array of recipes on Susan's site, but - I came across it, it appealed instantly, I had most of the ingredients, so there you are!

Susan's Lite Goddess Dressing (click to see the recipe) is a low-fat version of Annie's Goddess Dressing.

Not being au fait with Vegan alternatives to sauces and dressings which normally contain animal products such as eggs and cream, this did not actually mean anything to me. But judging from the many comments to Susan's recipe, the original condiment is divinely tasty but also very fattening. This is where this light version really comes into its own. 2 tbsp of the dressing only have 19 calories!!! And judging from the rave reviews, Susan nailed the taste, too. Now, I can't comment on how close it is to the original, and to some extent, I can't even comment that much on the proper taste of this recipe (see below), but I know that this will feature in my household from now on. The combination of silken tofu, tahini, sesame oil, garlic and herbs was thick and smooth, supremely tasty, and also extremely versatile.

I first tried it out on a salad:

The thick sesame sauce on the buttery taste of the lambs' lettuce made this combination feel wickedly naughty. And did I mention that 2 tbsps only amount to 19 calories?

Then I used the goddess hot on the King of Vegetables, asparagus:

The effect was like a hybrid between a Hollandaise and a Béarnaise sauce, which I attribute to the use of dill and lemon thyme, which together worked like a milder version of tarragon. Better, in fact, than tarragon, which I find too overpowering for asparagus. And while both the above classic sauces contain butter and eggs, and are therefore not only unsuitable for Vegans but also a big no-no for anyone concerned about their cholesterol and/or their weight, one serving of 2 tablespoons only comes to 19 calories, as opposed to about 130 - at least.

It also worked a treat as a lo-cal, no-egg mayonnaise substitute in a potato salad:

I have mentioned that 2 tablespoons only come to 19 calories, haven't I?

I also made a coleslaw with it - which worked up to a point. It was great when I tasted it, but I put it in the fridge and by the next day, the cabbage and carrot had soaked up all the liquid and it seemed far too dry. So, if you are going to use it for this purpose: only mix it together just before serving. (Which I did for the potato salad - just in case!)

Now for the 'changes'. If you had a look at Susan's recipe, you'll find that her sauce looks almost white, whereas mine looks yellow. Well, when I came to add the tahini, I found that my rather large container was hopelessly out of date. Nothing particularly unusual in this household..., where such recommendations are considered only rough guidelines, mainly designed to encourage you to discard perfectly acceptable foods and support large supermarkets with outrageous profit margins. My tahini was a very dense paste and it was probably darker than it normally is. My soy sauce was also the dark variety, and so was my sesame oil. That's my explanation for the more buttery rather than creamy appearance of my dressing.
Incidentally, there was someone else reporting that they had used almond butter as a substitute for the tahini, so that's something else to try, and made me think that maybe peanut butter would also produce an interesting variant. And that's before you've started experimenting by adding other ingredients, such as different herbs, or mustard, or capers and gherkins for a sauce tartare.

This turned out a perfect recipe for me to try out, so thank you Zuzana for organising this event, and thank you Susan for inventing the divinely dressing!

Waiter, there's something in my... The Bistro Edition

2009-05-30T19:00:00.003+01:00

Salade Provençale

Red choice tomatoes*, crispy Cos lettuce, crunchy French beans, slivers of garlic, shallots and black olives are complemented by sea salt capers, cucumber chunks and slices of marinated artichoke hearts. The salad is tossed in our very own Vinaigrette Niçoise and topped with pan-seared, line-caught tuna, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, surrounded by Old Cotswold Legbar eggs durci à point** and served with crusty baguette bread.

If you thought that was a rather OTT and pretentious description of that old staple, Salade Niçoise, you'd be absolutely spot on. It is my first contribution to a blogging event called

"Waiter, there's something in my..."

This time, it was hosted by Johanna, the passionate cook, and the theme was "bistro food".

Jean Béraud, Au Bistro

According to Wikipedia (where I also got the above image), a bistro is a small, unpretentious restaurant, serving moderately priced simple meals, with an emphasis on foods that could be prepared in quantity and would keep over time: slow-cooked foods like stews.
Hmm, doesn't sound like the dishes you've seen on bistro menus lately? Thought not. This could easily change in the current economic climate (cf here), but up to now, I'd say one of the defining features of current bistro food is its emphasis on being " innovative"... or being clever with words... strong on the marketing side of things: the verbal and visual appeal.

The cuisine is 'eclectic' and 'fusion': baby vegetables may be glazed, caramelised or candied; there is nothing that can't be pureed and spiced with a hint of Asia, or laced with Wasabi for that Japanese touch; meat and fish is braised, roasted or pan-seared, or better still, served as a confit; it's de rigueur that salads are tossed and drizzled, and let's not forget that everything must be plated on white porcelain and feature citrus zest, a dipping sauce (preferably sweet chilli or gingered), or something that can be "frenched up". More often than not, they get it wrong, either in terms of spelling or the dish it self. When you order Chips & Aioli you're probably going to be served chips with a garlic flavoured mayonnaise. It's highly unlikely that German is ever going to be perceived as a sexy language (for food or otherwise), but should it ever happen: Pommes Rot-Weiss are just chips with both mayonnaise and ketchup. Don't say I didn't tell you.

In short, bistro menus read as if written by frustrated English graduates. It's a little known fact that this practice was first used at Essen University's mensa, where the epitome of the eternal student, a middle-aged, bearded man in Birkenstock, Germanistik im 15. Semester, spruced up even the most modest canteen offering to such an extent that you weren't just hivering and hovering as to which option to go for, you were positively drooling over all three 'menus'. Just thinking about their Westfälischer Sauerbraten mit Rosinen makes me quite peckish, and they certainly did do the best chips ever.
Ah, "There is no seasoning quite so tasty as nostalgia"! Nigel Slater wrote this, and he did so, supremely fittingly, in a feature on Salade Niçoise.

Before I started to research it, I had no idea how much the 'true' ingredients are debated. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, green beans, tuna, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, no? Apparently not.

First, there is the shocking assertion, "...la salade niçoise ne contient pas de légumes cuits" from a Nice site. What, no green beans??!!
Then there is Heyraud's 1903 recipe in La Cuisine à Nice, which stipulates " ...quartered artichoke hearts, raw peppers and tomatoes, black olives and anchovy fillets (...) parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon" (quoted from Slater, op cit), but not a single lettuce leaf or tuna flake!
On the other end of the scale, you find numerous recipes which even include potatoes!

I certainly didn't want to add those. After all, I had opted for a salad so that I could avoid "Event Fat Gain" (that's when you cook/bake something for a blogging event that contains far too many calories; EFG for short; I appropriated this term for my specific use from Rob Poulos). I also wanted to incorporate fresh tuna, even if, according to some, all Niçoise salads are made with canned tuna (cf here).

And let's face it, at the end of the day, whatever the arguments for or against ingredients and their treatment - the Niçoise site is wonderfully poetic about the dead colours of cooked vegetables versus the vivid colours of Southern France, which ispired Cezanne, Renoir and Matisse - they're often simply a reflection of individual taste. Nigel Slater leaves out green peppers because they don't agree with him. Ditto. Other people might omit black olives, or even, shock, horror, anchovies.

For the latter, I may have stumbled across the ideal solution. I agree with Slater: "To be true to its name this salad must be true to its geography - it must reek of olives, garlic, anchovy and tomatoes", but I found myself near enough out of anchovies. That is to say that my little jar contained only crumbly remains which would not have graced the salad. So I minced them into the vinaigrette. This method of incorporating the anchovies (anchovy paste would be an alternative) might work for people who do not like to bite into the fillets as such. It is one of the reasons why I called my dish Salade Provençale, and the Vinaigrette Niçoise.

Ingredients

Salad:

tomatoes*, quarters

Cos lettuce

cucumber

shalotts

capers

garlic, slivers

black olives

boiled eggs**

marinated artichoke hearts, sliced

green beans

Vinaigrette:
olive oil
Dijon mustard
red wine vinegar
salt, pepper
parsley, chives
minced anchovies

Plus:

1 fillet of fresh tuna, pan-seared and cut into thin slices.

Mix the salad ingredients with the vinaigrette, pile on to a plate, arrange the tuna slices so that they lean against the salad mound, garnish with the egg halves, black olives and chives, drizzle with some more olive oil.

Red Choice Tomatoes, exclusively for Waitrose, from the Isle of Wight, with the leaf emblem (Leaf = linking environment and farming)

Clarence Court Old Cotswold Legbar free range eggs, beautiful eggs with a touch of blue, available at Waitrose; cooked to a medium point (lit.: hardened)

The eggs provide proteins and vitamins, the tuna and anchovies contain omega-3 fat, and the olives and olive oil supply mono-unsaturated fat. All this plus fibre and antioxidants from the vegetables.

Thank you Johanna, for organising this event! I can't wait to see everyone else's take on this topic!

Heart-of-the-Matter #26: The Locavore - Pink Green

2009-05-28T19:54:00.010+01:00

Heart-of-the-Matter is a monthly healthy heart food event hosted by Ilva at Lucullian Delights and Michelle at The accidental scientist, and this month was dedicated to the LOCAVORE. See the round-up here.

When I first saw the word, I thought it was an Italian term, and in my mind, I still pronounce it that way - to rhyme with amore - whereas here in Britain, it would rhyme with carnivore or omnivore. Which, in turn, gives you a clue as to its meaning, too: eat locally. Ah, don't you just love the unifying traits of the old lingua franca?

But let's see what the actual definition is. According to Wikipedia:

Those who are interested in eating food that is locally produced, not moved long distances to market, are called "locavores," and the word "locavore" is the word of the year for 2007 for the Oxford American Dictionary.

Some people consider food grown within a 100-mile radius of their location local, while others have other definitions.

Sustainability and eco-consciousness have become increasingly important, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, too. In the UK, the 100 mile radius is often seen as too vast in a small country. Consider the central position of Birmingham, right in the heart of England, in the West Midlands:

Can't find it? In the mid-west, just before Shropshire (Shrops) and Herefordshire (Here's) border Wales, there is a blank patch nestling between Worcestershire (Worcs) and Warwickshire (Wars) in the south, and Staffordshire (Staffs) in the north. The only area not being named, that's the West Midlands. (1) West Midlands, as in county, not region, that is. As a region, the West Midlands cover Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, and all of the above mentioned rural shire counties. So, that's already quite a few counties to choose from. If you apply the 100 mile radius (which you can do for your own area here, by the way), I could buy virtually anything that is produced in England, from southern parts of Yorkshire to northern parts of Hampshire, plus most of Wales.

This would not really constitute 'locally sourced' for a lot of people on this small island. For instance, my son works for the Kitchen Garden Cafe, featured on the Big British Food Map, and I think their definition is very narrow indeed, something like 10 miles. Then again, come to think of it, how does 'locally sourced' differ from 'locally produced'? Could be two different things...

Anyway, even though I bought quite a few food items from Warwickshire and even picked some of my own in Warwickshire, all in all, the dish which emerged for this HotM, does only comply with the 100 mile radius, as the strawberries came from Berkshire. It is called Pink Green because of the pre-dominant colours, and because I noticed a sign for it on the way back from my excursion to Coughton Court. It leads to a cul-de-sac, that much I could tell; there is nothing on the net about it, but I imagine that it might be a nice picnic site. I immediately knew that those would have to be the colours of my creation, as I had already earmarked rhubarb and asparagus, both of which display beautiful hues of the pinks and greens of spring.

Asparagus is low in calories (20 per 100g), contains no fat or cholesterol, and is very low in sodium. It is a good source of folic acid, potassium, and dietary fibre. So, very healthy indeed - unless you suffer from gout, that is, because it has a high level of purins. Due to its short season, it often features highly on restaurant menus and kitchen tables alike. In Germany, it is absolutely ubiquitous in May, in a way hard to imagine here (2). Having said that, there are Asparagus Festivals in this country, for instance in Worcestershire’s Vale of Evesham (3). For even more information on the green spears, see here and here.
Rhubarb also has virtually no calories (21 per 100g), and is also extremely low in fat, cholesterol (none), salt, and sugar, but provides you with a surprising 7% of your daily fibre requirement per 100g (cf here for more stats).

There are loads of opinions as to how best to cook your asparagus but I have found the English variety pretty resilient, so I don't take any sort of precautions. Ever since Jamie Oliver showed this on one of his programmes, I find the easiest way is to simply bend the asparagus spear at the bottom end, upon which the inedible end snaps off. The rest can go straight into salted boiling water, or a steamer, if you have one - no peeling required.

For this particular meal, I have paired the asparagus with dipping sauces in three shades of 'pink' and drizzled it with an Elderberry Vinaigrette.

Dipping sauces in three shades of 'pink'

(1) Strawberry Béchamel

Puree half a punnet of strawberries.
Make a roux with 1 tbsp of rapeseed oil (4) and 1 tbsp of flour.
Add milk and strawberry puree, whisk.
Add seasonings, e.g. salt, pepper, celery salt...

(2) Savoury Rhubarb and Strawberry Sauce

This was going to be a straight forward rhubarb sauce but the one I did just wasn't the right shade of pink, in fact, not pink at all, rather yellow. As I was also making a rhubarb and strawberry vinaigrette at the time, I saved the purée as a replacement.

Rhubarb and strawberry vinaigrette

1 C chopped fresh rhubarb

1 1/4 C chopped fresh strawberries

3 large shallots, coarsely chopped

1 T local honey (5)

1/3 C red wine vinegar

Simmer in small non-reactive saucepan until tender, about 10 minutes.
Purée, strain into large bowl, and cool. Reserve the liquid for a vinaigrette (just add your favourite
oil and a bit of mustard). Retain the purée as your dipping sauce. 

(recipe from: http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/; I used honey instead of sugar)

(3) Balsamic Strawberry Reduction

Sauté 2 shallots.
Add 2 tbsp of white balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp of local honey, and 2 - 3 tbsp of strawberry purée.
Bring to the boil and reduce.
Add salt, plenty of black pepper and some chopped basil.

This reduction results in a very jammy texture, and like chilli jam or red pepper jelly, goes terrifically well on a bit of goat's cheese.

Elderberry Vinaigrette

I bought a small bottle of sparkling Elderberry pressé at Coughton Court and was thinking of an elderberry foam, but then I saw the vinaigrette in the Waitrose magazine, and adapted that one instead because a vinaigrette is such a classic with asparagus.

3 tbsp Elderberry pressé 1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp rape seed opil
salt & pepper
parsley & mint

Parsley, mint and chervil are in season in England, but as usual, I couldn't find any chervil. I think I'll have to plant my own!!

Now for the verdict:

All of the tastes and textures brought together in this dish worked for me. The emphasis here is on brought together.
The Strawberry Béchamel, on its own, tasted too much like a strawberry milkshake for my liking. I deliberately didn't go to town in terms of seasoning because I wanted to retain the delicate fruity flavour, but mixing the purée into a milk-based sauce took away too much of the tartness. I shall try it again as a velouté (using broth/stock/asparagus liquid) next time (which would also make it Vegan friendly).
The Rhubarb and Strawberry Purée was perfectly balanced on the tart to sweet scale to complement the fresh grassy taste of the asparagus, but minus the vinegar (which had been syphoned off), somewhat lacking in base notes. That's where the reduction came into its own: after a surprisingly strong top note of sweet berry, it mellowed into a rich savoury concentrate of gutsy baked fruit, with a satisfying spicy finish of black pepper.
The vinaigrette could have been zestier, and chervil or even lemon thyme would have provided more interest to an otherwise possibly too delicate taste. None of the sauces, on their own, would have been sufficed as a worthy partner to the green spears, but in combination, they worked a treat.

That strawberries and asparagus are a great combo, I've known since I first encountered food blogging when I stumbled across Tarte Asperge et Fraise on Chocolate and Zucchini.

Now I need to work a bit more on the rhubarb front. The sauce I originally made is now waiting to pair up with an oily fish, most likely mackerel. So, watch this space!

This locavore edition of HotM has been great fun, so thank you Michelle for the idea and for organising it. I'm looking forward to the round-up!

______________________________

(1) It's even more complicated than this, and in the past, this part of Birmingham where we live, being South-East, has, from what I recall, been part of Worcestershire and Warwickshire at different times. And don't get me started on rugby or cricket... Warwickshire's cricket ground, is, after all, in Edgbaston, a very short bus ride from here, on the No 1 bus!
(2) If I go over next year for the half term, I must write a feature about the pre-dominantly white 'variety' (which is quite different, in my opinion) and the asparagus madness that goes along with it!
(3) Based at the historic Fleece Inn (NT), in the tiny village of Bretforton, the Festival has grown out of the historic asparagus auctions, apparently. You can even take a guided ‘Asparabus Tour’ - the next (and last one this year) will be running on 3rd June. But the festival stretches into June to includehe Vale Morris, Ale and Cider Weekend on the 20th-21st June.
(4) Farrington’s MELLOW YELLOW®, available at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, from Bottom Farm in the Northamptonshire village of Hargrave. I already had this in store, and it is gorgeous. It makes a nice change from olive oil which has a very strong own taste. Rapeseed oil has less of a taste and is therefore ideal for substituting butter, particularly in non-savoury dishes. I found at Coughton Court that there is also a Shropshire brand available.
(5) Mine came from the Solihull Apiaries. I don't know whether there is any evidence for it, but there are claims that local honey helps hayfever sufferers in their annual spring and summer battle.

Dinner and A Movie: Shirley Valentine

2009-05-17T23:27:00.041+01:00

Moschári Stifado

This time, Susan had chosen Shirley Valentine for

See here for the brilliant round-up.

It's hard to imagine anyone who hasn't yet seen this film; we certainly had seen it at least twice when they showed it on ITV in February. Not being one for watching films ad nauseam, I wasn't going to, I only wanted to relish the beginning again, when Shirley shares her woes with us - and the kitchen wall:

“I’ve been a wife and Mum for so long, I’ve forgotten what I wanna do. Isn’t that right, wall?”

Of course, this beginning is only a taster of what this quirky comedy about a middle-aged woman's journey to self-discovery has in store. Willy Russell's brilliant script kept me glued - not all that surprising, when it contains unforgettable dialogue nuggets such as this one,

“Yes, Milandra, I’m going to

Greece

for the sex. Sex for breakfast, sex for dinner, sex for tea and sex for supper!”

“Sounds like a good diet to me”

“Haven’t you heard of it? It’s called the F-plan!”

The acting is a treat, too, from Shirley's husband Joe (Bernard Hill), whose dinner is literally in the dog, to her friend Jane, played with the usual fervour by Alison Steadman, and Tom Conti's portrayal as smooth talking Greek restaurateur Costas. Pauline Collins, however, following on from her success in the stage version, surpasses them all in the lead role.

What sort of recipe would they inspire?
Midlife Crisis. Former Selves. New Horizons.
Mykonos. A mountain piled high with brilliant white houses. Flecks of intensely blue and turquoise woodwork. Splashes of Mediterranean sky and sea.
The table, only a couple of steps from the beach, set for one. The sunset. The infamous boat journey.

It probably should have been something symbolic of transformation and renewal, but all I could think was: Greek Food! Stifado!! We had discovered it either in Crete or Corfu, brought back a cookery book from there, and cooked this dish frequently for a while. And then we forgot about it again. Strange, how that happens. Slipping into routines, getting stuck in a rut. Forgetting all the other things you used to love. A little bit like Shirley.

So, out came the book - Greek Cooking, Editions Dimitri Haïtalis - and off we went. -- I say "we", because I did the shopping and invited the rest of the family, but my BH did the cooking. I thought that was only fitting. After all, if Shirley's husband had been able (and willing) to cook, then maybe, just maybe, she would have had more me-time to stay in touch with her real self.

Here's the recipe as it appears in the book. Note the italics! It goes without saying that we used a lot less than a teacup of oil. The gloriously unspecific "an amount of water" also needs interpreting!! As you can see above, we used rather a lot. Of course, my BH isn't happy unless the pot, however large, is nearly full. One of the reasons why I had to invite additional eaters!!

Moschári Stifado

Beef Ragout with Onions, Vinegar and Tomato Sauce

Serves 6

1 1/2 kg of beef
1 kilo small onions (pickling onions)
1 teacup vinegar
1 teacup olive oil
2-3 ripe tomatoes, finely diced
rosemary
1 bay leaf
2 cloves of garlic
salt
pepper corns

Cut the beef into bite-sized pieces, peel the onions. Heat the olive oil in a pan, and brown the meat, add the onions (you probably have to do this in batches) and sauté for about 5 minutes. Add the vinegar, the tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and an amount of water. Simmer for about 2 hours, either on the stove or in the oven.

We had the stifado with new potatoes and lots of vegetables,

and the infamous Greek wine, Retsina - the only table wine made from real tables, as the saying goes.

Cheddar Gorge*

2009-05-15T15:13:00.035+01:00

1050g of Mature Cheddar

Yep, this is what I'm up against. I'm on a diet, and he should be, and he should not eat cheese anyway on account of his heart and the diabetes! And this is what he does. There's still half the cheese in the first pack, i.e. 250g, and he buys 2 more large packs because they came as a 2 for the price of 1 offer. Of course, I also can't resist a special offer, that goes without saying, but a kilo of the stuff???
I have before frozen pieces of cheese, the more unusual ones especially. When served at book group or other gatherings, at least there are plenty of people helping you to demolish them. And there is always frozen Stilton in the freezer, slivers of which are immensely successful in the broccoli soup I make from the stems which would otherwise be discarded. (You can't escape German frugality...)
But our default cheese? Our staple? If it disappeared, he'd just go out and buy more, even when nobody eats it. The Boy, who insists he wants to be fully identified as Ben now, doesn't like his cheese extra mature, for instance. He always acts as if there is nothing to eat in the fridge, if there isn't any salami or other cold cut equivalent. He'll probably tolerate it in the form of cheese on toast, but that's it. And I'm not going to eat it now, and my BH shouldn't. So this time, I feel like taking it down to the Mission. Would he learn then? Would he heck! Is it possible to be addicted to cheese? Or come to think of it, to dairy products? Or fatty substances in general? The other day I nearly fainted when I saw him spread butter AND peanut butter on his toast. Who does THAT? The kids have been known to come back into the kitchen and scrape off excess amount of butter from their sandwiches if he had made them. Is it possible to be a fat junkie? Is it another variant of the slow suicide syndrome? (I just made that up - but I have seen arguments that smoking can be seen like this, an essentially suicidal tendency, a suicide in instalments, so-to-speak.)

Anyway, if you were looking for Britain's second largest natural wonder, see here:

According to Wikipedia, the gorge in the Mendips in Somerset attracts about 500,000 visitors per year. Most of them come for the geology, I should think, the caves with their gorgeous stalagtites and stalagmites, not necessarily for the cheese. Although, cave and cheese can be combined, for instance at the caves with the great name Wookey Hole:

Cheddar cheese maturing in the caves at Wookey Hole

It's a beautiful and interesting place, almost illustrious, I'd say, after just finding out that some scenes in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the TV shows Robin of Sherwood and Dr. Who were filmed here. (Cf here.)
If you ever venture here, or get lost on your way to Glastonbury, there's a great little camp site in Wookey Hole. But only if you don't have small children (or any, I suppose) - apparently too dangerous because of the river that runs past (the Axe, I presume). This is why we ended up camping in a field, the only illuminations being provided by the car's headlights..., not the best pre-conditions in the rain, with a borrowed tent we hadn't bothered to try out before. Just one of those stories which are only funny in retrospect.
The camp site hadn't always banned children, after all, this was the site where we didn't get much sleep at all, because a certain very young baby couldn't cope with the walls apparently caving in, and we all ended up on a car park in Wells. Ah, happy days!
__________________________
*gorge, n, means, a.o.th.: a narrow passage through land
gorge, v, means: to consume greedily or to repletion, to stuff to capacity, to fill completely or to the point of distension
I could have called this entry Cheddar Man, too - this is what the pre-historic (appr. 7150 BC) male skeleton found in one of the caves is commonly referred to. Pre-historic, eh? It's all starting to make sense.

Hake - impaled at last!

2009-05-13T12:03:00.029+01:00

Hake & Tuna Kebabs with Tomatoes on the Vine and Grilled Hampshire Asparagus

Tuesday is 'white fish night' because the bin men come on Wednesday morning. I was going to bake monkfish parcels wrapped in parma ham, but Waitrose didn't have any yesterday, so I grabbed the chance to Deal with Hake.
The rather drastic way of expressing myself faced with this fish has a specific reason. Many years ago, a person of not dissimilar a name, wreaked havoc in our family's life, and that of many others. I came close to plotting semi-criminal revenge on him at the time. Reason prevailed, but the wish to inflict unspeakable deeds in a sinister ritual manner upon hake remained. Alas, there always seems to be a more alluring alternative to hake. Fast forward to the Bank holiday weekend, when, by sheer chance (1), the man was talked about twice within 48 hours. My anger resurfaced with the kind of bile and venom normally reserved for a certain Mrs. T. So I impaled him, err, it. He, err, it, was too weak to withstand the grilling though. No surprise there. Wrapping it in parma ham could have prevented its predictable flakiness (2) but that would have been too good for him.

I devoured fish and vegetables with a salad, and The Boy had pasta with gorgonzola sauce - the superquick one that comes straight from the freezer (Lidl, excellent value). Very useful when you haven't got ANY time to get the food on the table. Again, super easy and super quick, and definitely heart-healthy as most of the chilli and garlic oil I brushed everything with remained on the foil.
_______________________________
(1) Or is it? My friend B. and I used to maintain that there is no such thing as a coincidence.
(2) 'flaky'- bei Fisch so etwas wie flockig, locker; also wenn er zwar noch bissfest ist, aber in Stücke zerfällt; bei Menschen, vor allem AE = merkwürdig, verdreht, skuril, exzentrisch, leicht verrückt, nicht ganz da, launenhaft, unberechenbar, wankelmütig, labil

Marinated in Smugness?

2009-05-12T11:07:00.001+01:00

Grilled Salmon on a Bed of Spinach and Black Beluga Lentils

This is my first instalment of How I cheat on my husband, and this recipe was inspired by what I had l had to use up in the fridge and what I found in the cupboard when searching for something else. You know how it is...

Serves 2

bag of spinach (250g?)
small onion or 2 spring onions
olive oil, garlic, freshly grated nutmeg, salt & pepper

2 salmon steaks
dash of lemon juice
coarse black pepper

1/2 pepper, orange
1 spring onion
100g of black Beluga lentils (1/2 cup)

(I don't know the calorie count or points; it's at the higher end as far as diet meals go because salmon is an oily fish, of course. The lentils add 150 calories for each person.)

As you can see, the lentils are tiny in comparison to green ones, and in their dried state certainly do make you think of Beluga caviar.

There's no need to pre-soak, you simply rinse them in water, then bring to the boil and simmer for 15 - 20 minutes or so. For a few more vegetables and colour, I added the spring onion and the pepper during the last 5 - 7 minutes (add them earlier if you don't like them crunchy). In the meantime, salt the fish, then give it a squeeze of lemon juice and add plenty of pepper. Put under a pre-heated grill.

Wash the spinach and remove as much water as possible. Heat the oil and fry the onion and garlic, add the spinach in batches. Once wilted, add more. Season with plenty of nutmeg and some salt and pepper. Assemble when the salmon is ready. Wait for the response.

This is so tasty! This is the nicest piece of salmon I have eaten for ages!

I kid you not. Of course, I hadn't done much to the salmon at all. In fact, I had simply treated it in the heart-healthy fashion. I told him that it was probably the quality of the fish: line-caught, from Waitrose.

"Ah," he said, "marinated in smugness for a few weeks!"

But so was I...
Sure, he felt he needed a couple of mandarins straight after, he also ate an apple and a banana later - but that's what we want: more fruit and veg. If he hadn't then made himself a sandwich after midnight, we would have been winning.

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry...

2009-05-11T13:07:00.023+01:00

... red thread, yellow thread.

A tongue twister is a Zungenbrecher in German, which translates as 'tongue breaker' -- quite a bit worse than a twist. Well, that makes up for their version of the credit crunch not being quite so harsh (a word currently en vogue with my boys), namely: Kreditklemme, from 'klemmen', which means being jarred, or jammed. I suppose they wanted to keep some form of alliteration.

The red thread (der rote Faden) is a figurative term which may be translated (ha!) as leitmotif, or central/recurring theme. My recurring theme on this blog has been rugby for the last 4 months, and today is no exception. The last game has been played, so yesterday's Gala Day was The Boy's last act as captain of the under 14's, as the club operate a rotating captaincy.

Two Bees Shaking Hands (1)

And time for me to sum up. At school, the season finished back in April. The Boy was named Player of the Season in his year (I think that's three successive years now), and he was awarded the second set of 'colours'. These are awards which are sewn on to the school blazer. This time the badge was yellow, which resulted in the Hunt for the Yellow Thread. When he was picked to play for his county (unfortunately, 'Greater Birmingham' doesn't quite sound as good as the Shires they play), he was also allowed to wear a different tie in school (referred to as the county tie). With its Tudor shields (as on the blazer, above the Tudor Rose), it looks noticeably different from the usual striped tie, and is therefore supremely coveted.

It isn't the only rugby related tie he acquired this season. After the match against Staffordshire (2), the team were all presented with the Greater Birmingham tie, and after the surprising win of the Bees' u-14s against Redruth (3), who came top of the league in Cornwall, he received their club tie. (Just to avoid confusion, there's no causality. Redruth were on tour, and as captain, he would have received the tie anyway, win or lose.)

Redruth RFC, School's County tie, Greater Birmingham tie, Birmingham & Solihull RFC (Bees') tie

Our u-14s were on tour, too, over the Bank Holiday Monday, but I'm in no position to divulge anything about that - and this is not just due to heavy drinking! All in all, a very successful season, with more and more matches being won. I thought I'd shout 'freedom at last' after yesterday's last rugby obligation until September, but I feel strangely bereft. The Boy will, no doubt, not cease to talk about rugby in all its facets (in the vain hope that I will understand, one day).

U-14s on tour, in Bees' Away kit, The Boy is the face in the middle

The worries about his height - or rather the lack of it - will most certainly continue. When he started out, in Yr 7, he had this enormous height advantage, coupled with his early maturity, i.e. muscular strength and broad shoulders. We all stopped growing at 14 (his Dad, his brother, and I), so he's been convinced for some time that this is also going to happen to him. His friends have been catching up and overtaking him, and he's gone from 'big for his age' to being one of the smaller ones on the pitch, as can be seen above. On the other hand, it'll be some time until they match him for strength:

Greater Birmingham, match against Shropshire

_________________________________________
(1) The fully grown bee is Rod Petty.
(2) While that was a disappointing defeat, they won their next match against Shropshire.
(3) I nearly forgot: due to the single try by The Boy, perfectly placed, which was then perfectly converted by his extremely able team-mate W.

The buck stops here*

2009-05-08T15:15:00.027+01:00

My BH, although having had two heart operations in the past (I think he's got 5 stents altogether now), has not changed his diet or life-style because he thinks that taking an array of tablets in different colours and shapes is enough. You would have thought that approaching the 'morbidly obese' category would be enough to make anyone, let alone a heart patient, re-assess what they are doing. To be fair, he did give up smoking after the first operation. As that is such a big thing for someone who smoked for about 34 years, and had never tried to give up before, I did not want to diet-lecture him at the same time.
But, that first angina attack, which led to the first operation, happened during the May half term of 2004, on the way up to the William Wallace Memorial, to be precise. In fact, this is me, sitting on a bench because we had to stop half way up.

As you can see, I don't look overweight, and even my BH (cropped out of the picture), looked a lot better than he does now. We had been dieting, and I was down to what I'd call my perfect 10, a BMI of just under 23. Since then, however, it's been up and down for me, and simply up for him, I think. At a guess, from BMI 30 to BMI 39.
After the second op, he did declare that the weight was the next thing to address, but it never went further than that. After all, when you give up smoking, you can give it up altogether, you don't have to smoke just to keep yourself going. That's why dieting is so much harder - you still have to EAT.
And apparently, 90 % of people who lose weight put it back on!!! In other words: only 10 % succeed!
Of course, I never thought ours was an unusual story. There are plenty of people out there, who are permanently involved in the Battle of the Bulge.
I certainly have been involved on and off since puberty (more about that maybe some other time), and I had always managed to stay between BMI 20 and 22, before I got married at 28. Since then, the fluctuations have been a lot bigger, with the usual yo-yo effect of ending up half a stone (~3 kg) heavier than you started out with. Last year, I set the record, ending up 30 kg heavier than my lowest weight as an adult, and 18 kg over the BMI of 25. What makes it worse, was just how rapid it was: I managed to put on 17 kg(nearly 3st) in one year, 9 (1.5 st) of which in less than 4 months!! My thighs are now fatter than my waist used to be! Okay, so a 24.5 inch waist (62 cm) is never going to happen again, but I do need to get back to at least a healthy weight.

How this is going to happen this time, I do not know yet, especially as I need to have my BH in tow this time. If my fitness levels are minus 2 (that's what it feels like when it takes me 5 minutes to straighten out after sitting on the settee for too long - which is always...), then his are in double negative figures. He is exhausted after tying his shoe-laces!
Now, I have taken positive action and had a re-induction at my gym (where I have just been lounging in the sauna for the past 2 years...), and I had my first work-out (minimum of 3 times 60 minutes of exercise) yesterday.
And this is is what I had for breakfast today:

Mixed melons (reduced to 65p, at Tesco's), with natural yoghurt (0.1% fat), honey and mixed seeds.

This is what I had for lunch:Not very photogenic, but my, it was tasty! Chestnut mushrooms, fried in a little oil, with 1 spring onion, parsley, garlic, a splash each of Worcestershire and soy sauce, black pepper, and 2 eggs scrambled into it.

And now I'm planning to stroll over to Waitrose for salmon steaks, which will probably feature apple and mint, or spinach, or cabbage... I've got quite some fridge clearing to do, so the outcome will be a surprise even to me...

But I like surprises, and my BH doesn't. He also doesn't like to think 'diet', and I quote:

"I don't want to think of food in this way: How many calories does it have? Am I allowed to eat it? Is it good or bad for me?"

Hmm, quite the opposite! I'm convinced that the label 'healthy' and 'good for you' is a definite turn off for him. While 'bad for you' and 'fattening' is instantly enticing. In fact, he's said it himself - he is convinced that it is the calories which make food tasty. I really don't agree, but of course, according to him, I'm not normal. He finds any of my forays into unusual combinations highly suspicious, he thinks I'm on a quest to find the most inedible ingredients... (this includes beetroot, radishes and chicory, by the way...).

To cut a long story short: whichever way he wants to twist and turn it, he needs a complete life-style overhaul; not least of all because of the latest diagnosis of Diabetes type 2.
So, I need to create dishes that he won't recognise as healthy, lo-cal, lo-carb, lo-salt, lo-sugar, lo-cholesterol...

Watch this space for my attempts at cheating on my husband...
_________________________________
* This expression, according to phrases.org, goes back to U.S. president Harry S. Truman, who... “ had a sign with this inscription on his desk. This was meant to indicate that he didn't ‘pass the buck’ to anyone else but accepted personal responsibility for the way the country was governed. Truman didn't originate the phrase, although it isn't likely that we would ever have heard of it had he not adopted it.” To ‘pass the buck’, is of course already a strange idiom. 'Buck' turns up as a dozen of assorted nouns, verbs and adjectives in the dictionary. Here, it's 'buck - an article used in a game of poker': "The person who was next in line to deal would be given a marker. This was often a knife, and knives often had handles made of buck's horn - hence the marker becoming known as a buck. When the dealer's turn was done he 'passed the buck'."(Cf phrases.org)

Summer is a-comin' today

2009-05-01T13:26:00.032+01:00

The Temperance Horse

Summer is a-comin' is the "powerful" May song which dominates the May Day celebrations in Padstow, Cornwall. The Padstow Hobby Horse ('Obby 'Oss') festival takes place every year to drive out winter and welcome in spring. The originally pagan celebration (Beltane) normally (see below) starts on the eve of April 30th and proceeds for the duration of May Day. This kind of tradition is said to go back to at least the 16th century (cf here), and in Padstow, there is the 'Old 'Oss', and, since the late 19th century, its rival, called the 'Blue Ribbon Horse', or 'The Temperance Horse', and more recently 'Peace Horse'.
The temperance movement was "...trying to discourage the consumption of alcohol associated with the "old" 'oss followers. After the first world war the imperative of temperance was lost, and the 'oss became known as the Peace 'Oss. Each 'oss has a "stable" (in the case of the Old 'Oss, the Golden Lion Inn and the Blue Ribbon 'Oss, the Institute), from which they emerge at the start of the day's proceedings and retire at the end. Some time in the late afternoon the 'osses may meet at the maypole and dance together" (quoted from here).
Either horse is led by a teaser who carries a stick or a club, and followed by their supporters, dressed in white and their appropriate colour, red or blue, dancing and generally making a racket with accordions and drums. (See here and here for more descriptions and the song lyrics).

The photograph above, of the Blue 'Oss, was taken a couple of years ago, when, much to our annoyance, the festivities weren't held on May 1st, because it fell on a Sunday. Luckily, we were staying closeby, at Sandymouth, and were able to come back later. My BH, already miffed that his birthday isn't celebrated in style in the UK anyway - half the world (1) celebrate May 1st in its modern day re-incarnation as Labour Day, or International Workers' Day - later had the chance to bemoan the fact that moving a festival, which is essentially pagan, was if nothing else farcical, when he was interviewed by local radio. (They swiftly moved on, and we don't think they broadcast it!)

Right, we didn't dance with witches on the Blocksberg (2) or into May (3) last night, we didn't go all orange for Koninginnedag (4) (like we did last year in Amsterdam), and neither did we 'bring in the may' (hawthorne, sycamore, rowan or mountain ash') this morning, bathed our faces in dew, or danced around a maypole, but we did listen to the Padstow May song!

Happy May Day, wherever you are and whatever it means to you!

_______________________________________
(1) 80 countries, according the Wikipedia
(2) Blocksberg = Brocken = the mountain, where, according to legends, the witches congregate for WALPURGISNACHT.
(3) Tanz in den Mai = dancing into May; still popular in Germany, I believe
(4) = Queen's Day in the Netherlands, a huge festival, when everything in Amsterdam seems to be painted Orange!

Away With the Fairies!

2009-05-01T13:16:00.000+01:00

Fairies were said to be summoned by the ringing of bluebells, and if you're looking for them, this is the time! Bluebell woods can be found in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. In fact, if you find yourself admiring the magical blue flowers, you're probably standing in a woodland dating back to at least 1600, as bluebells are a common indicator species for ancient woodland (1).

The photograph above was taken in the Lickey Hills, south west of Birmingham, just over the Worcestershire border. As it was rather sunny, my friend D.S. and I decided ad hoc to move our walk to Wednesday (even though I had to be in Shropshire by 6:30, -- oh, the stress of a scrummy mummy!), which is just as well, as it rained again on Thursday. We didn't quite have the time for the longer route but we did find this spot. There are lots of National Trust properties with bluebell walks, check it out here. (2)

____________________
(1) I can't remember where I got that from, presumably Wikipedia.

(2) From Birmingham, try Brockhampton Estate, Herefordshire, Tel: 01885 488099, and take one of the waymarked woodland walks through some of the finest selection of trees in the county, past intriguing wooden sculptures. Or take a stroll through the carpets of bluebells in Coughton Court's bluebell wood, Coughton Court, Warwickshire, Tel: 01789 762435.

Pickled Pink

2009-04-27T13:51:00.008+01:00

Red pickled onion

As soon as I saw the deep pink ringlets on top of a dish, I needed to know what they were, how to get hold of them, or better still, how to make them. Turns out that this eye catching magenta tuft is made by pickling slices of red onions, which renders them translucent, yet opaque, soft, yet crunchy, sweet, yet spicy. I consulted google, of course, and by comparing the first 5 which came up (1), I concluded:

All of the recipes use red onions, obviously, the amount of which ranged from 1- 1 ½ large ones to 1 ½ lbs. Vinegar is another must, with most recipes using white (pickling) vinegar, and only one opting for cider vinegar. Most use sugar and salt, with one each either forsaking the salt OR the sugar.

Four out of 5 used sugar and salt, 2 out of 5 added water.

Beyond that: simply spice it up with whatever you’ve got: allspice berries, bay leaves, black pepper corns, coriander seeds, cloves, cinnamon sticks, chillies, ginger, garlic, juniper berries, lime juice, oregano, thyme, star anise.

This is what I used:

Red Onion Pickle (G & T recipe #4)

2 red onions

Cider vinegar

3 tbsp of honey

Pinch of sea salt

1 tsp of black peppercorns

2 bay leafs

5 allspice berries

5 juniper berries

1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced

5 whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick, broken into pieces

1 dried chilli, broken into pieces

½ teaspoon of dried oregano

1 cup lemon juice

1 tsp of coriander seeds

1 star anise

Thinly sliced pieces of ginger

The methods described varied quite a bit, and I opted – surprise, surprise – for a straight forward, simple one:

I heated the herbs, salt and spices in a non-reactive pan, stirring them with a wooden spoon.

After a minute or two, I added the vinegar and honey and brought the mixture to a boil. Then I added the onions slices, lowered the heat and simmered the mixture for 2 or 3 minutes.

When the pickle is cool enough, it can be filled into jars. It seems to be received wisdom to let it mature for a while. As long as it’s covered by the vinegar, it will probably keep indefinitely.

This vivid pink pickle doesn’t just look spectacular, it is also incredibly versatile. I’ve eaten it with a nice mature cheddar, I bet goat’s cheese is fabulous with it, and I’ve seen pictures where it accompanies roast pork, grilled steak, burgers, Mexican food, and as a side dish to kebabs with a horseradish cream sauce. D.L. even recommends it chopped into potato salad, and he uses the liquid to add tang to a coleslaw. The Boy thinks it’s the delicious pink stuff he had on a noodle dish at Wagamama.

____________________________________

(1) Rachael's site ; Global Gourmet, where they use Mollie Katzen's recipe from Vegetable Heaven, Epicurious, David Lebovitz, Orangette

Heart-of-the-Matter #25: Flowers

2009-04-25T19:51:00.010+01:00

Edible Petals, or: Yes, they're edible, petal!

Heart-of-the-Matter is a monthly healthy heart event promoted by Ilva of Lucullian Delights and Michelle of The Accidental Scientist. And even though my BH has a heart condition (5 stents), this is actually the first time that I am participating.

The theme for this month's recipe was 'flowers'. What a splendid idea, I thought: unusual, and also immensely fitting for a spring month like April!
Then, when I started my research - always the best part of a recipe activity for me - and looked at all those delicate petals, the thought of digging my teeth into violets, pansies, marigolds and chrysanthemums made me feel a bit queasy. It seemed almost barbarian - a somewhat strange sentiment for a carnivore, granted. And quickly dismissed when considering candied flowers, hibiscus jelly and lavender infused maple syrup.
But then I found that hay fever and asthma sufferers should not eat flowers at all. I think this warning came from Cathy Wilkinson Barash's book Edible Flowers.

So I decided to make food in the shape of a flower. (Which is probably just as well, as all my previous ideas involved a form of sugar, and my BH has recently also been diagnosed with the early stages of type 2 diabetes.)

The 'big petals' are chicory leaves, which I filled with a bean paste made from kidney beans*. In the middle is a mozzarella ball, topped by a sliver of red cabbage. The swiggle is a thin peeling of courgette, the orange and yellow accents are provided by pepper and sweetcorn respectively.

The middle part is a roasted slice of sweet potato, topped with kiwi. The star/flower in the middle is an orange pepper cut with a pastry cutter. The asparagus was fresh and English, though it did surprise me that it was already in season (it was very thin though, as you can see). The pinkish swiggle on top is a slice of pickled red onion, which I made before Easter (recipe to follow).
As you can see below, I laid the flower out as part of my Wedding (crashers) inspired display. Unfortunately, I've done something stupid to my camera again, so the photographs haven't come out too well.

* Any bean paste recipe will do - I blitzed one can of kidney beans with a little bit of olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and a sprinkle of cumin seeds. Of course, dried and soaked kidney beans would have been even healthier. I used kidney beans to achieve a pale pink paste - a taramasalata would have done this job better though, the kidney bean paste is more pink marble than powder pink!

Thank you, Ilva, for organisising, and I hope to be back on a regular basis!

Still No Baps and Buns...

2009-04-21T04:50:00.000+01:00

...for my growing lad...

because this is what it currently looks like when the bread-maker considers a bread made: I don't know what's wrong with it - if anybody out there has any ideas, please let me know.

Well, this is my lame excuse for not having baked for The Boy on his training days --- I am the Queen of Lame Excuses after all. The worst of which was my recent: "I can't start the diet because I can't get to the scales..."

It is true, they were hidden away behind mountains of boxes ... under a settee which had been rendered inaccessible by the Cardboard Dolomites ... but still ... pathetic or what?

None of you daring bakers would be put off by the bread-maker being out of order anyway, would you? But oh, all the kneading and proofing, far too time-consuming for me!

Of course, if 'Poor-little-me-tied-to-the-PC' weren't quite so busy consulting google as if it were THE ORACLE, she could actually get on with the arduous task of cooking and baking.
Likewise, if the 'I'll-just-check-my-mail-snail' could just spend one day out of seven on cutting a path through the jungle (1) , she probably could have put her grubby mitts on the big plastic container which she knows she has somewhere. Yes, the big plastic container which would be absolutely ideal for Joanna's latest experiment with no knead bread.

But even without gargantuan tupperware, there is now no more running away from it.

The last BBD yielded more than 70 quick breads (i.e. without yeast as its agent), of which 26 alone were savoury. Look for yourself:

Incidentally, the next theme has been announced as 'Spring Country Breads'. For more information, click on the badge/gadget/widget (yeah, thanks to Ivy I can finally display them!!) on the left.
The deadline is May 1st... significant in so many ways..., not least of all being my BH's birthday, which always seems to creep up on me... May seems so much later than April..., you know what I mean? Talking about birthdays, today is my MIL's, and I mustn't forget to phone her. It is also EARTH DAY.

It seems to me that it's a predominantly US-American day, although, self-evidently, it's about the whole planet, which we have been polluting forever and a day. This site reminds us of 10 easy steps to take. The one which states, that "every drop counts ..." is not, as I was hoping, about my red wine consumption helping the planet.
However, it seems that The Boy is single-handedly doing his bit, saving copious amounts of water by not having very many showers per year. And that includes slipping straight into clothes after very muddy rugby matches... Ah! The sacrifices one makes for the sake of the planet!

Well, there might not be any parties for Earth Day going on in this vicinity (I checked the net!), but there will certainly be celebrations going on the next day, which happens to be both Shakespeare's birthday, and St. George's Day.

When my Eldest was still in the Scouts (and I was Secretary of our local branch just round the corner), the St. George's Parade was de rigeur, St. George being the Patron Saint of Scouting and England (inter alia, for instance Portugal -- the fascinating country we recently visited). And of course, in Stratford, just a few stations down the line from round the corner, there are quite a few things going on between Thursday and mid of May, in order to celebrate their most famous son.

As every year, thousands of people will participate in the events, which include a parade, traditional dancing, a marathon, street entertainment, the ceremony of the unfurling of the flags and many special birthday events to honour one of the world’s greatest playwrights. Amongst the events this year, local girls will be holding a Shakespeare themed picnic with as many of their friends they can rustle up to dress as a food mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays and Sonnets. -- The mind boggles!

Having thus tied in Shakespeare with food, I am happy to go further and announce the opening of the 2009 British Asparagus Festival on the very day. A team of relay runners & the Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire (following in a vintage Morgan car) will arrive in Stratford to present a giant round of asparagus on a Royal Worcester platter to the Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire, Martin Dunne and Stratford’s mayor, Joyce Taylor who will accept the Round on behalf of the town. This fascinating ceremony should happen at 12.00 noon in Henley Street.

And if you're too far away from Stratford, there's always The Globe, which celebrates Shakespeare’s birthday with a series of events marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The 2009 Theatre Season will open with Romeo & Juliet on Thursday 23 April. (Have I mentioned that we saw this at Stratford? And that The Boy remarked mainly on the different styles of menswear by which you could recognise their clan/family/allegiance?)
_________________________
(1) Did you know that this is a chapter heading in "Modern Social Theory: From Parsons to Habermas" by Ian Craib? Interestingly, its cover shows snakes and ladders, a game just made for defeatists who take one look and know they're going to climb up high and fall the furthest - hybris probably not being the only reason - slipping down the longest snake, which incidentally, not that you need to know this, is not called 'Schnecke' in German, although it clearly should, but Schlange. Whereas 'Schnecke' is a snail (or a slug, thye're all equal, own property or not), which brings the loop nicely back. As you probably will have to read the originalsentence again from the beginning, you'll see what I mean in a moment.

Dinner and A Movie: Wedding Crashers

2009-04-20T22:05:00.030+01:00

In this month's film, "Wedding Crashers", charismatic divorce lawyers John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) have made a hobby out of gate crashing receptions. The idea is to charm their way into lonely ladies' bedrooms - a plan which works a treat. Until they bend the one-night-stand-rule, that is....

Marc chose this film for the April edition of "Dinner and a Movie" because it's not an obvious "foodie" film, and he had all sorts of great ideas of how to interpret the task. So, why did I end up with canapes? Why so predictable? Well, the first thing that attracted my attention was actually the trellis at one of the wedding settings. Then I noticed that the lavish events invariably seemed to take place in spring, and that the pastels of the bridemaids' gowns reflected this. And it was actually the delicate spring colours, the silks and chiffons, the extravagance of the details on dresses, hats and fascinators which inspired the above 'creations'.

It doesn't really come across in the photo, but I was mainly guided by keeping each canape in one colour only. This in itself lead to some oddball combinations. The Boy and my BH asserted that it works better for painting than cooking..., but I dare say, as with everything else, it's a matter of taste, so let me talk you through them:

trellis: strips of leek
green: cucumber, avocado and Philly extra light mousse, topped with basil pesto, strips of courgette, a twig of dill and sprinkles of ground pistacchio
yellow: tip of chicoree, filled with grapefruit segments, sweetcorn and a zigzagged slice of bamboo shoots
orange: grilled slice of sweet potato, with a mousse made from Philly extra light, chargrilled orange pepper, sweet corn and crab meat, topped with smoked salmon and a strip of orange pepper
pink: pickled red onion on a square slice of celeriac

Oh yes, did I mention that I was also trying to make it heart-healthy, low-cal and low-sugar?

Thanks Marc, for organising and doing the round-up!

And here
it is!

No Hot Cross Buns...

2009-04-18T03:36:00.000+01:00

on Good Friday...

...quite a different Holy Saturday...

... and Sunday

... we didn't really miss the Easter Eggs in the Algarve...
... there was enough to find...
... and discover...

Rubbing Shoulders, Or: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

2009-04-08T04:01:00.000+01:00

Shoulder of Lamb with Garlic and Mint and Caper Sauce

Well, it could have been the plural if I hadn't cut into my last £1o note... Two pieces of lamb shoulder were on offer for £10 pounds at the market, but I had bought ribbons and other things that would come in useful.... (some day... surely...), so I didn't have enough cash left. Still, I bought one shoulder, rubbed it with salt and put it into the oven.
I basically followed the recipe by self-declared mummy's boy Alex Mackay from Sainsbury's magazine, March 2009. I was quite sceptical as to the mint and caper sauce, but it really worked a treat, the lemony mint complementing the sweetness of the roasted lamb and vegetables. And with its 3 hour braising method it was just the sort of recipe I was looking for. Something to put in the oven, ready to eat when we come back from rugby matches on a Sunday.

So, this is how I am going to record it for myself.

Saturday night:
vegetables:
500g+ potatoes (Charlotte), halved
200g shallots, peeled
9 medium carrots, peeled and halved lengthways
broccoli spears, cut up
keep in a sealed plastic bag until needed

2 heads of garlic, peeled

gravy:
650ml lamb or chicken stock
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
bring to the boil and reduce by half; add the cloves of garlic for 5 minutes, then remove and keep aside

mint sauce:
25 g mint, leaves only
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp capers
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
pich of sugar
blitz in a food processor, season with salt and pepper

1 tbsp of lemon juice

Sunday morning:

pre-heat the oven to 220°C/gas 7; put 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a roasting tin, heat it in the oven for at least 5 minutes. Rub the shoulder of lamb with salt, place it, fat-side up, in the tin and roast on the middle shelf for 45 minutes.

This gives you time to make yourself that much-needed bucket of strong coffee, after which you might be able to face the shower.

Transfer the lamb to an oven-proof plate, put the potatoes, carrots and shallots in the tin, tossing them in the fat. Place the lamb on top, cover tightly with foil, place on the middle shelf of the oven and braise for 3 hours at 160°C/gas 3.

Put on the skiing jacket, the hiking boots, the supporter's scarf, the hat, the gloves, and head for the coldest place known to men in Middle England. My BH reckons that temperatures at Portway drop well below its surrounding environment, and he's most surprised that there aren't any natural history programmes made about this phenomenon.

On coming home, all muddy and rosy-cheeked, hopefully revelling in dump tackles "the little one" has administered to the opposition, a glorious smell of roasted vegetables and lamb will greet you.

You now have to:

boil salted water for broccoli
start simmering the reduced stock
when roasting time is up: remove the tin, turn temperature up to 240°C/gas9; transfer the lamb to the plate, cover with foil, put into top oven to keep warm
drain 3/4 of pan juices (this is tricky) and add to simmering stock;
add poached garlic to vegetables, put tin on the top shelf of the oven for 15 - 20 minutes
bring the reduced stock and lamb juices to the boil, mix 2 tsp of cornflour with water, add and stir in well; bring back to the boil, stirring constantly until thickened.
Put the roast lamb on top of the vegetables, stir the lemon juice into the mint mix, pour the gravy into a gravy boat, serve.

As far as I'm concerned, the taste was out of this world - but I'm not used to this 'never mind the calories' cooking, so I'm probably no good as a litmus test.

The Saturday Night and Sunday Morning reference, is of course, to Alan Sillitoe's novel, famous in the 70s. Sillitoe adapted the screenplay for the 1960 film adaptation himself, and the film was directed by Karl Reisz. Featuring Albert Finney as the protagonist Arthur Seaton, the film is considered to be the first of the social-realist or 'kitchen sink dramas' of the 1960s. It was at the forefront of films dealing with working class issues in a serious manner, and portraying a more realistic side of everyday issues such as sex, unwanted pregnancy and abortion.
It was also the main piece of work that my friends W. and M. chose as their exam topic for English literature. For the record: I chose G.B. Shaw, not 'early' or 'late' Shaw, no. All of his plays. The words 'over' and 'ambitious' come to mind? Not good in combination with the procrastination of the peripatetic mind. ... Story of my life.

Kraut Rocks!

2009-03-31T23:45:00.009+01:00

Krautwickel mit Kichererbsen
(Cabbage Leaves Stuffed with Giggly Peas)
for Bloggeraid

It has bothered me for quite some time that here we are, blogging away in foodieland,not just feeding ourselves and families (too much in my case), but arranging food, photographing it, celebrating it as an art form, and virtually sharing it and our food-related verbosity, when out there – in the real world – people are still dying of starvation. According to Wikipedia, there was an increase of 80 million since 1990, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone - 6 billion people - and could feed double . Every second, 1 person dies as a result of hunger, which accounts for a staggering 58 % of all deaths. Every 5 seconds, 1 child dies as a result of hunger - 60% of all child deaths.

(I'll let you digest that for a moment)

So, I was more than pleased when I stumbled over an organisation called Bloggeraid.

This international group of food bloggers - the brainchild of Ivy, Val and Giz - is trying to address the problem of World Famine by raising awareness as well as money throughout the food communities and beyond. One of the ways to achieve their mission of "helping to make a change in a world where starvation affects such a profound number of people" is to publish a cookbook, the entire profits of which will be directed to the School Meals programme of the World Food Programme (WFP - the UN's front line agency).The School Meals programme does not just target the issue of famine, it simultaneously addresses poor school attendance. How? The chance of at least one meal per day will, it is hoped, motivate parents to send their children to school, rather than keep them at home to work. Girls in particular are often relied upon to look after younger siblings and thus denied a chance to obtain an education. The "take-home ration" - for instance a sack of rice or a can of cooking oil - which the pupil can take home for the family, benefits particularly such girls. Programmes such as this one can double the attendance in Primary Schools in the poorest countries in the world.

What an absolutely marvellous campaign to be involved in! Ivy, Val and Giz have been extremely busy collecting fellow bloggers' recipes since January, in order to have the Bloggeraid cookbook for sale at Amazon by November/December 2009. Today is the deadline, so let's see, why I have chosen cabbage for my recipe.

Well, the call was for an original recipe, maybe inspired by your home country. I am originally from

Germany

, and what could be more fitting than something made from 'Kraut', i.e. cabbage? Stuffed Cabbage Leaves are very traditional, typically served at home, or, if you're lucky, at lunchtime (the usual time for a hot meal in

Germany

) as one of the hearty dishes on the specials menu of a pub or restaurant. However, this is normally a meat dish, and I had long wanted to create a vegetarian version, in particular one where the stuffing did not include rice, which The Boy does not eat.

So, this was the outcome:

The stuffing

... made from chickpeas and mushrooms. The irony being: he doesn’t eat mushrooms either, and isn’t too fond of chick peas (not even the translation to “giggly peas” made him feel more inclined towards them).

The 'olives'/'roulades'/'parcels'

Unaware of the ingredients (oh, you have to be so crafty with teenagers sometimes...), he rated them as ‘very good’, something I have never achieved with a Vegetarian dish before!

This is all I am going to say about the recipe at this point. If you want to know exactly how it is done, you will have to wait for the cook book.

PS: Thank you to Angela who reminded me only recently that chickpeas are funny in German, on Lola's site.

Your garden or mine?

2009-03-31T12:20:00.011+01:00

Well, clearly yours, as mine is
a) only a stretch of grass to be used for rugby in winter and cricket in summer, and
b) right at the moment even less inviting, as the neighbours can walk straight into it, because yet another couple of fence panels have been blown over.

So, hopefully, you are, what I am not: a giardiniera. -- The Italian word 'giardiniera' is derived from the root giardino ("garden"), and literally translates to "female gardener."

Giardiniera

And this is what has been said about the condiment called giardiniera , which I mentioned in my last post:

from a Q answered on taste of home:

Giardinera is a wonderful Italian sandwich topping made from olives, cauliflower, carrots and peppers packed in a mixture of oil and vinegar (mostly oil.) It can be mild or hot. Sometimes you can find it chopped and it may be called muffalata. (1)

From Kyle Phillips, Your Guide to Italian Cuisine:

This is what most Italians think of when they hear the words Sotto Aceti, a collection of mixed pickled vegetables. The standard Italian antipasto misto wouldn't be quite right without these, and they also work very well with boiled meats in the winter months.

from Garrett's table:

... For many Italian beef eaters in Chicago, a lode [sic] of giardiniera atop the beef is as essential as the beef itself. ... giardiniera should not be mild!

from roadfood:

This Italian condiment is a Chicago staple. It’s a mixture of pickled vegetables and hot peppers that’s marinated in olive oil and vinegar. Refrigerated, it’s [sic] shelf life is practically unlimited. It’s the best on an Italian beef sandwich but I put it on everything from toast to pasta.

My recipe, once again, is an amalgamation of many. Googling and comparing 7 recipes, the following standard ingredients were revealed and ranked in descending order:

Olive oil: 7/7

Onions*: 7/7

Olives: 4/7

Cauliflower: 6/7

Carrots: 6/7

Peppers: 6/7

Vinegar: 5/7

Garlic: 5/7

Peppercorns: 4/7

Oregano: 4/7

Salt: 3/7

Jalapenos: 2/7

Red pepper flakes: 2/7

Lemon juice/caper brine: 1/7

* Pickling/yellow/red

Other possible vegetables include baby mushrooms, celery, green beans, zucchini, baby cucumbers, or artichoke hearts. It's clearly a recipe for experimentation.

Giardiniera (G&T recipe #3)

Blitz:
1 tbsp green olives
½ cup cauliflower florets
1 carrot
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
½ onion
½ zucchini
1 stick celery
1 green hot chilli
Boil:
1 cup white vinegar
Add:
Blitzed vegetables and
1 bay leaf
tsp pepper corns
1 tbsp dried oregano
Boil for 15 minutes Add:
2 tbsp of chopped capers
1 tsp of dried chillies and
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup of olive oil

Fill into sterilised glass jars. Don't put it all into one big jar, you'll be better off using several smaller jars because the contents of an open jar lose their freshness. As I wanted to keep the mix indefinitely, I topped them up with more vinegar, so that everything was well covered. Most recipes will advise you to leave the giardiniera to mature for 48 hours to 1 week before using.

Mine is pretty vinegary, which I love, but some people would probably be happier with less vinegar and more oil.

PanNan on Recipezaar recommends giardiniera with cream cheese on a cracker. I tried it with mine but found it's too vinegary for that.

PS: The photograph of the flowers along the garden path was taken in Monet's Garden.

__________________________
(1) I mentioned it as 'muffuletta' here (Feb, 17th) - see more here about the bread, salad and sandwich, and the endless spelling variations.

BBD#18: Nothing but Waffle...

2009-03-30T12:56:00.000+01:00

Mediterranean Waffles with Olives and Herbs

...wouldn't quite do. So I served them with tomato salad and various antipasti, such as pickled red peppers, artichoke hearts, asparagus spears, green olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and my own home-made giardiniera (recipe to follow). The waffles I made were adapted from "Waffeln und Crêpes, knusprig, süß oder pikant" (waffles and crepes, crisp, sweet or savoury) by G. Poggenpohl (bought in Germany for the princely sum of €5, back in the good old days when the £ was worth something).
This is my contribution to BBD#18, the theme of which was Quick Breads. The event was hosted by Mansi of Fun & Food this time. Thanks, Mansi!

Mediterranean Waffles with Olives and Herbs
NB: You need a waffle iron to make these.

Ingredients:
70ml olive oil
4 eggs
100g corn flour
100g plain flour
120 ml milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
4 cloves garlic
50g olives
3 tbsp mixed herbs (or whatever is at hand, I used lemon thyme)

Method:
Mix plain and corn flour with baking powder and salt. Mix eggs and olive oil. Using one spoonful at a time, add egg mixture and milk to the flour mix and stir until smooth. Chop the olives, garlic and herbs and add to the dough. Heat the waffle iron and bake. I set mine to mark 5.

Makes about 6 rounds of hearts.

I thought they worked really well with the tomato salad (mine was very basic, I just added a few capers; a tomato, mozzarella and basil version would have been good, too), and the giardiniera. The waffles enable you to mop up all the tasty liquid, so they'd make a great accompaniment to all sorts of dishes, especially as so many variations are possible. I think I'll get that waffle iron out more often now. I can see waffles as an alternative to bread with soups, and even a quick solution if The Boy finds himself without a Naan for his curry. I'd like to work on a potato version and also on cutting out eggs and eventually dairy, too, for a Vegan-friendly waffle.
They can be eaten warm, straight from the waffle iron, kept warm as a stack in the oven, or cold. They also freeze well and can be de-frosted/heated in the toaster.

Dinner and A Movie: Moonstruck

2009-03-28T09:07:00.009Z

Steak Diane

As explained here and here, and here, Marc and Susan run this brilliant event, called Dinner and a Movie.

This month's film was MOONSTRUCK.
An exuberantly Italian romantic comedy, it immediately - immediamente (1) - conjured up a quintessential Italian family meal. In particular one I've been meaning to cook for ages: Ossobuco. But you have to be fast (i.e. early) at Birmingham's market to get hold of the right cut of meat, and, yes, you've guessed it, 'fast' and 'early' are not in my active vocabulary.
So, back to my BH's suggestion of Steak Diane.
WHY? Well, the MOON, as in the title, plays an important role in the film, in particular the effect a full moon (2). Here, "she brings the woman to the man", which ties in with lunar deities being female in the Romance languages (3). Amongst the Roman Moon goddesses is not just Luna, but also Diana, hence Steak Diane.
As she is also known as the goddess of the hunt, I expected Steak Diane to feature a sauce containing mushrooms. But only 3 of the first 5 googled recipes did. Otherwise, they only differed in terms of quantities, herbs and methods used.

This is my amalgamation: (G & T Recipe #2)(4)

Steak Diane (Serves 4)
Ingredients:

4 small fillet steaks (5)
2 -3 banana shallots, finely diced
100g button mushrooms
1 fat garlic clove
Worcestershire sauce, splash
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp brandy
150 ml single cream (6)

1 tbsp chives, snipped (7)
lemon juice, splash; optional
olive oil
salt, pepper

Method:

Season the steaks on both sides and smear with some of the mustard. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the steaks for 1-2 minutes, then set aside. In the same pan, saute the shallots, minced garlic, and mushrooms. (I sliced mine finely because The Boy hates them, but I think you could leave them whole if they're tiny.) Cook for 2 minutes, tossing and stirring. Add the remaining mustard, Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice. Season. To add the brandy, you tilt the pan slightly away from you, and keep it at the far side. Ignite the brandy and wait until the alcohol has burnt off before incorporating it into the mixture. Pour in the cream and stir carefully , then heat steaks in the sauce for 2-3 minutes (or longer, depending how thick they are and how you like them).

I served them with potatoes sauteed with rosemary, and a lamb's lettuce salad with balsamic vinegar and hazelnut oil. (I have to add: nice as it was, the taste was too overpowering for the more delicate flavours of the Steak Diane.)

A steak was, of course, fitting because it is what Loretta (Cher) cooks for Ronny (Nicolas Cage) in the film when they first meet. Earlier, however, we see her in the family kitchen where her mother makes something that inspired my (strictly no-diet) starter.

Ciabatta Breakfast Starter

I used ciabatta bread slices, and immediately found that they had to be much larger for this fried bread-cum-egg. With larger slices, one could probably have used a circular cutter for the hole that is needed for the egg. As it was, a lot of the egg-white was left on top of the fried bread, and I had to stick it under the grill to finish it off. Apparently, this is called 'One Eye' (un occhio?), and you need the right kind of bread (which??) and you butter it before it goes into the pan (this information is from You Tube comments).

Having a starter, I felt I needed a dessert as well. With both dishes being highly calorific, this had to be low in calories. I like to experiment with Müller light for such desserts, and I chose their new Vanilla with Chocolate, which made me think of Stracciatella ice-cream. Espresso Dessert

To stay with the Italian theme, I also incorporated Espresso, coffee liqueur, ratafias and toasted hazelnuts. What's Italian about hazelnuts, I hear you ask. Ah! They remind me of a visit to Napoli, and our friend R.'s lovely parents. R's Mum had baked the nuts in their shell, which gives them this intense flavour of roasted, toasted hazelnuts without any burnt surface area. An absolute revelation!

I'm not going to add the recipe of the above dessert because it still needs further experiments in terms of quantities, textures, and - as you can see - presentation.

I can't wait to see everyone else's ideas! Thanks, Susan, in advance, for the round-up!

Alla Familia. Salute!

____________________
(1) No, I'm not trying to show off, I don't actually speak Italian; if anything I want to show off the usefulness of the old lingua franca Latin, and how a word derived from it, spoken in another language, can help with the spelling obstacles in English.
(2) There are a number of effects attributed to a full moon, see here under 'lunar effect'. In Germany, the full moon is also referred to as 'Säufersonne', the drinkers' sun.
(3) Mani of the Germanic tribes, Nanna or Sin of the Mesopotamians, Thoth of the Egyptians, the Japanese God Tsukoyomi, the Finnish Rahko and the Aztec Teccizacatl, are all male moon gods. Typically, these cultures feature a female sun goddess. Which explains why it is der Mond(m)/die Sonne (f) in German, but la luna (f)/il sole (m) in Italian (la lune/le soleil in French).
(4) = googled and tested; i.e. the essence of the recipe after googling, comparing the constituent elements, and tweaking them to our taste/requirements. Also, see January 22, Burns' Treatment here .
(5) Most of the recipes suggested sirloin but personally, I'd rather have a small fillet than a larger sirloin.
(6) Most of the recipes used double cream but I found single cream quite sufficient.
(7) Alternatives: (flat-leaf) parsley, none

And this is what he made for Mothers' Day

2009-03-24T11:55:00.000Z

It's apple and yellow plum compote with sultanas and cinnamon on a Scottish pancake, served with vanilla ice-cream and apple wedges. He did this without a recipe, simply inspired by watching masterchef. (I think 'au pif' will be his method of choice, don't you?) It was delicious, and sweet enough without the addition of any sugar. The Boy said knowingly that he had used good quality apples! The photograph (1) was taken by Dopey who, on Friday night, had agreed to make a starter, but arrived on Sunday, asking: What starter? (See what I mean??!!!)
Ah well, he's made me a music compilation, and two of the bands even have food related names: Farmers' Market, and Charming Hostess. And my BH cooked us a chicken curry of such gigantic proportions that I felt forced to ask how many other mothers he had invited. (I know, I know, what else is new? After all, he is the reason that there is frequently A Lot On My Plate!)
________________________
(1) To quote him verbatim: You take crap photos, Mom! (PS: This is not a spelling mistake, in the Midlands, you're a Mom!)

And these are his muffins!

2009-03-19T13:21:00.004Z

Raspberry, Strawberry and Blueberry Muffins

I had fresh blueberries in but just blueberries, that was not unusual enough for The Boy (see below), so we de-frosted some 'summer fruit'.

This is what he had to bring to his Food Technology (1) class:

280g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
100g sugar
1 egg
240 ml milk
85g butter
140g fruit

My guess is that they were baked in a pre-heated oven at around 180-200 degrees C, for about 20 minutes.

I thought they were very nice but he was disappointed. Not sweet enough, not quite as sensational as he'd hoped for. But believe me, had I not taken these pictures immediately, there wouldn't have been anything left to photograph.

I'm wondering whether I can enter this for BBD # 18 over at funandfood , because right at the moment I can't see myself getting round to making the savoury waffles as there are so many deadlines looming. But I suppose 'guessing' a recipe isn't quite on!
____________________________
(1) Technology! I ask you! First they pretended they were actually teaching you something about household management - Home Economics - then they wanted to be associated with even more serious subjects by calling it Domestic Science, and now it's technology! For a linguist, the naming and re-naming processes which are going on in the world are a matter of never-ending amusement! My favourite in terms of school subjects, however, has to be Resistant Materials!!

That's My Boy!

2009-03-18T13:30:00.002Z

My little one in his Greater Birmingham kit. It's a shame you can't see his team-mates (I didn't want to ask for permission, so I cropped the photo) because without the comparison, you can't quite appreciate his thighs, which are almost double the size of theirs.
What might be part of a 'great physique' on a rugby player, used to look seriously out of place on the girl he inherited these from (poor little me!). Their circumference was only a few inches short of that of my waist, and my calves were equally 'impressive', giving rise to my Dad gleefully referring to them as footballers' legs. - He was equally charming about my backside, but that's another story (1). - As there was no girls' team in our area, their usefulness in this respect was never further tested than playing on an open field with the neighbours' son (who, nonetheless, became a professional footballer later). Since my main sporting outlet is pushing a trolley along food aisles as fast as the other shoppers will allow, a less muscular outfit would have sufficed. However, all the years of distress over my deformity melt away when I see The Boy putting his physical inheritance to such good use in the pushing and 'driving' required in scrums and what I have recently found is called a 'ruck', not a 'rook' as I erroneously called it here. Well, I had never seen it written down, and believe me, the way they say it in this region, it sounded like the latter. Still does.
'Ruck', of course, makes far more sense, being a nice Anglo-Saxon word. Apparently, it is believed to be of Scandinavian origin, meaning a pile of combustible material! In German, 'der Ruck' is a jolt, jerk, tug or yank, and 'Hau ruck' means 'heave ho!'
What a shame I've been banned from shouting anything from the side-lines...

___________________________

(1) My behind, apparently, was as broad as the Krämpfer Tor. No, this didn't mean anything to me either. In fact, it is only now, courtesy of the weird and wonderful web, that I have found what it refers to.
Once upon a time, in the days of the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, there was a town called Erfurt. This town, in existence since the 8th century, was keen on defending itself, building massive city walls in 1066 (had they by any chance heard of William the Bastard?!), and by the 15th century, the walls had several gates. The Krämpfer Tor is one of them, and I guess it was big.
Considering that I fitted into a size 8 at the time (which would probably be a 6 these days - UK sizes), I daren't think what he'd say now - Marble Arch? Arc de Triomphe?
Come to think of it, had he not been quite so unsupportive... - maybe, just maybe, I would never have tried to weigh as little as a waif and therefore wouldn't have had any weight problems later. (More about that some other time...)