The aftermath

The sherry party is becoming increasingly popular, for it has a leisurely and gracious atmosphere which many people find attractive.

Oh, how times have changed. Something that was becoming increasingly popular has faded away almost completely, and I’ve never even been to one.

So, if we wanted to bring this great concept then what do we need to do?

I dug out my 1956 good housekeeping guide to find out:

Not everything changed ..

It is advisable to serve both a sweet and a dry sherry, and, if possible, a medium type also. True sherry is made from white grapes grown in the Jerez district of southern Spain; the best pale, dry sherries are usually sold under the names of Amontillado, Manzanilla and Vino de Paso, while the best of the rich, full, dark sherries are Amoroso and Oloroso. Also available are very good South African and Australian sherries, which are considerably cheaper.

Now here is something that hasn’t changed too much, Jerez still makes the best sherries in the world.

Dry sherries are at their best when served slightly chilled (stand them for a short time either on ice or in a refrigerator); the flavour of the sweet sherries, on the other hand, is best appreciated when they are served at room temperature.

This hasn’t changed either, except for the fact that nobody uses the word “refrigerator” anymore.

.. but enough has

Just in case you think that sherry is a bit of a girly drink, then don’t worry. In the fabulous 50′s they had an answer for that as well.

Some of your men guests may not particularly care for sherry, so if possible have a bottle of whisky available, also one or two refreshing “soft” drinks, especially in the summer.

They also apparently had a bit of a shortage of glassware.

If you have only just sufficient glasses, and do not wish to hire extra, it is a good idea to stick a small named label on each, so that your guests will keep the same glass the whole time.

The titbit was alive and well, and not only as a sexual diversion.

Serve titbits and savouries as for a cocktail party- have an abundant supply, and keep them small and dainty, so that they can be easily handled.

Oh, and another slight change, smoking was cool and fashionable.

Have supplies of cigarettes available at several points. in addition to well-known brands, you may like to offer the gay coloured cigarettes obtainable from the bigger tobacconists. It is a good idea to have several cigarette lighters in readiness, in preference to matches, which very quickly make the room look untidy. And finally, do have plenty of good-sized ashtrays, if you value your furniture.

My plan

There can only be one plan, I am going to revive the sherry party concept, starting right now. I’m going to plan a sherry party of my very own, and encourage others to do the same, it’s going to be huge!

So, anyone want to come?

If only they were ever this empty

Three minutes later I left the shop without any milk, partially because I had to be somewhere else and didn’t have time to queue, and partially because I had come to a sudden realisation.

Recently I have been hugely disturbed by the feeling that I might just be falling out of love with food. While I was waiting in a painfully slow line towards the checkout, I worked my way through a little mental checklist:

Do I still love eating food? ✔
Do I still love cooking food? ✔

and then the problem became clear:

Do I still love buying food? ✖

There it is then, I have had become complete disenchanted with the act of shopping for food.

A plan of action

Having come to this realisation and still being without milk (and having a five year old who loves the stuff), I decide that a plan is needed. I have to do something to change my food shopping habits so that I can start to enjoy it again. It’s been a few years (and a few countries) since I really loved shopping for food, it is just that I haven’t noticed that something has been lacking until this particular morning.

So, a plan is needed, and preferably a radical one, something that will create real change and not just a temporary buying of milk in a different place. Something a bit extreme, maybe.

NO SUPERMARKETS

I’m not about to go on a big tirade about how supermarkets are evil, because they aren’t. I’m not about to launch into a vitriolic attack on big businesses taking away custom from family businesses, etc. I believe that supermarkets have their place, and that they are bloody useful actually, I’ve just decided that I am going to try and do all of my shopping without going to one.

Day one – The quest begins

Not surprisingly given the way that this whole episode started, my first problem lay with milk.

Meat you buy in a butchers, veg in a greengrocers, wine in a wine shop, etc. but where do you get milk? I ended up getting it in the butchers of all places, but I did pay almost 30 cents a litre more than I would of in the supermarket, which was a bit painful.

The second problem was in buying anything at all. I can wander up to the checkout in any supermarket with whatever cash I happen to have and not have a problem. My local little fruit and veg man on the other hand couldn’t change my €50 note, neither could the bakery just down the road from him. Temporarily thwarted I retreated home to look for small change and contemplate which shop might be able to break my fifty for me.

A few hours later I was out on my mission again. In the off license I picked up the first Spanish chardonnay that I’ve ever tasted, which is fantastic and cost no more than anything I might of grabbed in the smarket. In the grocers I spent 10 minutes discussing different varieties of orange and came away with a big bunch of fresh mint for free (since used for Moroccan tea). I bought green assam tea in the tea shop, and got beautiful fluffy warm baguettes from the bakery just down the road.

After siesta I went on the hunt for some olive oil, I’d planned to buy some fantastic locally produced oil in a vegetable shop that I know not too far away, but when I got there they didn’t have any of that wonderful honey-yellow goodness, so I ventured just across the road to a shop specialising in ‘productos ibericos’, where after a bit of a chat and tasting of a couple of different extra virgins I came away with something fantastic, with a very mellow start and a lovely bitter aftertaste.

In less than 12 hours I had realised what it was that I was missing about food, and had enjoyed my daily shopping more than I have for months or even years.

Coming soon: Day two – the juice hunt

Anchovy fuelled Spanish cat

There are days though when the more frivolous part of your brain, along with your heart, beats all of that logical stuff into submission. It’s good that there are such days, because what kind of life would it be without them.

It was on one of these days not too long ago that I first idled the afternoon away in the best of ways. Sitting on the decking of a little seaside shack. I ate, drank, dug holes in the sand, all whilst watching the waves and enjoying light but inspiring conversation. What more could someone want?

Where I live, the temperature is dropping now, but the autumn climate means that you still get a fair few days where you can sit on the beach. The sea is just as blue as it was in mid Summer, and the burning sand feels just as hot as well. If you are willing to put up with the occasional vastly overweight and disturbingly underdressed tourist strolling past then the view is spectacular as well.

We found this little place (cafe? bar? restaurant? shack?) by accident. All that it asked of me was a willingness to overlook the fact that the toilets were last cleaned, don’t even think about refurbished, when General Franco was sill alive and kicking. For this selective blindness, I was richly rewarded.

I was born by the sea, and every time that I have lived inland, I have found that I miss it horribly. Anywhere that offers me a bit of decking and a wonky bar right on the beach sand, where I can look out to the and see all the way to the point where the blues of the sea and sky merge, has a piece of my heart from the first moment. I also love Belgian beers, and old faded signs advertising a variety of different ones can only add to the allure of a place.

Settling in with a glass of Kriek, I surveyed the random components of a touristy beach: huts, parasols, discarded cigarette ends and crisp packets, red and freckly Northern Europeans. None of the components sounds overly appetising, but it shocking how quickly this activity makes a man hungry. This man got hungry, and had no choice but to send his more linguistically gifted companion to see what can be done about something to sate his emptiness.

It turns out that the lunch on offer is a platter of tapas. Partially due to a lack of other options, the decision for tapas is a simple one, and it is duly ordered. What arrives is a surprise, a huge platter, piled up with interesting goodies: Calamari and gambas, anchovies and tortilla, olives, pieces of fried chicken, and breaded pieces of succulent white fish that Emma likes to call “proper fish fingers”. Everything is fresh and well cooked, and yummy, and is perfect washed down with a bottle of local white wine. At the end the platter for two has fed three humans and the beautiful shiny beach cat, who had been letting her appetites and desires known in a discreet yet very persistent vocal manner throughout the meal.

I’ve since learned that the cat is the resident quality control expert in this part of the beach. She has a bed on the outer ledge of the kitchen window which she regular keeps watch through, and is regularly passed ingredients to test by the chef. Highly industrious, she also undertakes wandering patrols along the other bars in the area. This fish freshness expert is more than slightly picky, and you can test if your fish or seafood is fresh by offering a piece for inspection. If she deigns to eat it, then you can be sure that it is from today’s catch, and cooked only moments go.

After coffee for adults and ice cream for the child came the moment to head back to home and desk. I’d happily wasted away four and a half hours achieving nothing, except for some serious cleansing of the soul. I’d also learned to speak a bit of Spanish cat, and can now miaow ‘anchovy’ perfectly.

I’ve been back for similar afternoons a few times since, and I’ll make sure to find the time for plenty more of them. I suggest everyone else should do the same whenever they can.

The answer to all troubles?

The perfect example is that on the day that I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, the immediate reaction to the news from my grandmother was “I’ll put the kettle on, I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea”. Right at that moment there were actually few things that I desired less than a cup of tea, but I just didn’t have the heart to say so.

It may well be a national stereotype and a horrible cliché, but I have to admit that it really is hard to think of many things that are as calming, as satisfying, and as easily affordable as a good cuppa.

A ‘good’ cuppa

Herein lies the problem, whilst a good cup of tea is a wonderful thing, I have also been socially conditioned to never drink a good cup of tea.

With the exceptions of India and Kenya, wherever I travel, the tea that I am offered invariably comes from a tea bag, which is full of a dust that gives itself up easily when submerged in water, but really doesn't taste of anything much at all.

Despite the fact that they proudly proclaim themselves as a nation of tea lovers, the English are the worst of all, supermarket teabags generally bought because they are the cheapest are the order of the day, and they often taste quite appalling.

The strangest thing is that I've either never realised, or never stopped to think about the fact that what I drink is actually total crap. The reason that it is strange, is that I spend a fortune on shopping for food and drink, and I pay very careful attention to every ingredient that I buy.

I read about and go to speciality shops to buy coffee. I can taste the difference between good and bad coffee, as well as more subtle variations from different regions, and if it isn't great, then I don't want to drink it. Why is it then, that I don't have the same pickiness, why actually do I have total indifference to the quality of the tea that I buy.

I'm not alone, apparently the population of the UK drank more than 200,000,000 cups of tea a day last year. That's a hell of a lot of tea, and I really wonder how much of it is actually worth drinking. Approximately 3% of the tea sold in the UK is loose leaf, the only way to make a really decent cup, which means that the vast majority of people settle for tasteless and uninspiring brews like I have.

My resolution

My tastebuds have recently had some decent tea passing over them, and they have dictated that I have to do something, so I’m making a simple resolution.

From now on I’m going to apply the same rule to tea as I do to everything else that I put in my mouth. Get the best that I can afford, and if it doesn’t taste fantastic then don’t bother with it at all.

The answer

In my quest for the perfect cuppa, I should start out by avoiding all of the Tetley and other supermarket bought teabags, because teabags are evil, and no matter how good the quality of tea inside them will never make a good cup because they do not let the leaves swell and expand.

I then need to start making tea properly, and since I’ve consistently bought and drunk crap tea throughout my adult life, I am probably not the best person to tell anyone how to do that.

The lovely Henrietta Lovell, aka the rare tea lady, is the perfect person to provide some answers, as you can see in the following video, with written instructions on her website here.

Where to buy good tea

I currently live in Spain, and I’m going to have a good search around my local area for a decent tea supplier.

For anyone living in the UK, it’s fairly easy. You could do a lot worse than pointing your web browser at Henrietta’s company website: Rare Tea Company, or Postcard Teas, and having a look through their wide selection.

You don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune to get better quality tea, if you don’t want to splash out on one of the speciality teas on those websites, then you will already see an improvement in taste by buying loose leaf tea from the supermarket.

I’ve recently subscribed to a new website which gets people to record what tea they are drinking and then give it a rating and tasting notes. Checking what other people are saying about the taste is always a good idea before buying anything new. You can find the site at steepster.com, it’s free to join and really quite fun.

This is not a meal.

The topic of this particular little expulsion of vitriol though, is something that bothered me for as long as I remember.

Saladpushers

Maybe it would be good to start by defining what I mean by the term.

I’m not talking about the people who try to use some kind of health guilt trip to make you order/eat a healthy salad instead of a juicy bloody steak served with potatoes drowning in butter (although they also bother me).

What I’m talking about is a certain section of the female population (this is not sexist, just observation) who go out to places where they could have the most fantastic food and order a ‘light’ or ‘healthy’ salad. They then don’t actually eat any of it except for one lettuce leaf, but spend the next half an hour using their cutlery to manoeuvre the rest of the food around the plate. They don’t choose the restaurant, they generally don’t pay for the meal, and they don’t enjoy it, so why are they there?

Now…

Healthy eating is good.

Sensible portion control is also good.

But…

The whole point of going out for a meal is for pleasure, it’s not about sustenance, it’s about enjoyment.

It might be lovely to have a very slim sexy girlfriend who never eats, but don’t take her out to dinner and waste the time and money. Instead, keep her at home, feed her salad leaves like an overgrown rabbit and spend the time that you would normally allocate to going out and enjoying a lovely meal to shagging like overgrown rabbits.

An insult to the kitchen

When you are going to a restaraunt, you should order something that you wouldn’t or couldn’t make at home. That could be because you don’t have the skill, or because you don’t have access to the range or quailty of ingredients, or because you don’t have the specific equipment needed to make a dish. Or, it could simply be because you don’t have the time.

You should order a dish that thought and care has gone into creating, and then, then you should eat it. You should savour every flavour and every texture, you should appreciate the quality of the produce, the thought that has gone into the development of the dish, and the skill and sweat of everyone in the kitchen that it has just come out of.

What you should not do is look at it, push it around your plate a bit, find a fake reason why you don’t like it and return it to the kitchen where the chef will immediately launch a huge inquisition into why the dish wasn’t good enough, and some poor commis will probably get a heap of shit for absolutely no reason at all.

An insult to the starving

Personally I’m quite often struck with a major moral dilemna. If I go somewhere to eat and the portion of food is larger than I would normally choose to eat, then what should I do?

I don’t want to eat too much for a couple of reasons.

Firstly I don’t like the physical feeling of being stuffed with food, it’s not comfortable, and why would I want to pay for sitting there feeling bloated and slightly sick.

Secondly I don’t want to gain weight and be fat. I know that I drink too much and the calories in wine are already expanding my waistline, and I don’t want to compound that expansion any more than I have to by eating food that I don’t really want.

On the other hand, I hate leaving food on the plate when there is nothing wrong with it. I’ve lived and worked in Africa and I’ve seen people literally starving to death. I find throwing food away, whether it is half a portion left on a plate, or even worse because you have bought more than you needed and it goes off in the fridge, highly offensive.

What might be a bit of greenery that you aren’t paying for to a saladpusher, is the difference between life and death to some people.

Is it just me?

No, it would appear not to be just me being all twitchy and moody.

Here’s another (female) point of view, that agrees with mine:

“I grew up in communism. I was never hungry but food was scarce to come by and was to be respected as it represented hours and hours of somebody’s time given to standing in a queue or standing over a stove in order to prepare that jam.

Next time, suggest the gym, hey?”

Inflight food as complex as the plane.

There is nothing really new here, my job means that I travel around a lot. I’m used to spending far more time than I’d really like in passport control queues and in horribly air conditioned compartments.

The one thing that is new is that this time while I was deciding that I wouldn’t eat the limp looking roll that appeared in front of me, I actually bothered to read the packaging.

Kessler(Ham) & Cheese Roll

Manufactured by Flight Catering Co.Ltd. Malta

Crustaceans? Sulphites? Is there anything that it might not contain?

Now, I do appreciate that some people have allergies, and that therefore labelling like this is a good thing, but it seems a bit strange to me that they didn’t bother to mention the gluten in the bread.

Tasty desert or a masterpiece of evil?

And I quote:

“Trifle looks like something designed for fucking you up!

I think trifle is bad!”

I’m not really a big trifle person myself, but I’ve never really considered it to be the work of the devil either.

Every part of the above statement does seem to be true, so maybe I have always underestimated the nastiness of trilfe, I might have to have a deeper think about it now though.

Then again, I might not.

The centre of my world of despair

This evening I stumbled across a report entitled ‘The emergence of the gastrosexual’.

This is a serious piece of market research commissioned by PurAsia (they make curry paste and the like), and carried out by Future Foundation (a very proper research company).

The central premise of the whole thing is the fact that men aged 25-44 are cooking more than they used to. PurAsia want to find out what they cook, what they eat, and how much disposable income they have, so that they can skew their marketing towards that audience.

It’s 30 pages long, there are some interesting bits, and there are some very long uninteresting bits, the survey questions and answers are generally pretty predicatable, but then I came across the following, and I despaired.

The survey asked 1005 people, aged over 18, the question:

Of the following list who would rate as your biggest food hero?…

… and our survey said:

Now, before I get started, let me just point out that I have nothing personal against Jamie Oliver (or at least nothing printable), but…

What the fuck is going on? How can it possibly be that good old Jamie, and I quote here from BBC, ‘the street-talking, cheeky Londoner’, can be anybodys biggest hero of any kind.

I’m not going to go on a huge rant, spewing vitriol and bile across this page, because surely I don’t need to. Anyone discerning enough to be reading this must surely know what I’m on about already.

As if Mr Oliver sitting proudly on the top of the list wasn’t bad enough, there is worse to come.

Ainsley Harriot is apparently a far bigger food hero than either Marco-Pierre White or Heston Blumenthal. How can this be?

I really do despair.

The one saving grace of the whole thing, is the wave of joy that washed over me when I saw good old Gillian hanging down there at the bottom of the list!

The time until it drives me mad?

I don’t know if I am unusual in this, but in my adult life I have never owned, or used a microwave oven.

This has never bothered me, I’ve never been tempted to run out and buy one. I have never despaired because there was something that I wanted to do in my kitchen and couldn’t because of the lack of a microwave.

In fact, if anything I have felt quite happy and proud to not have a microwave. I have looked down snobbishly on people who used them, and I have chuckled to myself in a superior way as I read recipes that called for microwavery.

Imagine my horror then, when recently I was forced to spend a week with no oven, no hob, no grill, no open fire. A week with no heat source other than a microwave, and a toaster that didn’t work properly. .

To my surprise and despite all of my prejudices I have found that there are a few things that I could do with a microwave, and even one thing that it does very well.

I have managed to…

… make tea and instant coffee, because anything that generates heat will suffice to boil water.

… heat up frankfurter and bockwurst sausages.

… make scrambled eggs (overcooked and lumpy).

… cook a couple of really not bad at all risottos.

… reheat a ‘premium’ microwave meal bought from the local supermarket.

… sweat some onions with lardons of bacon to later throw in a salad.

… sweat some onions without bacon (the microwave was really really good at this!)

… melt cheese over tortilla chips.

… melt camembert

… warm up slices of pear to put in a salad

… cook microwave popcorn.

What I’ve learned

I’ve learned quite a lot actually, and none of it makes me change my mind about microwaves one little bit.

I have, for example, discovered that it takes longer to make a risotto using a microwave than it does on the hob. This seems strange to me, since the sheer speed of the thing is supposed to be one of the most compelling reasons to use one.

I also learned that premade ‘microwave meals’ taste like dog food, even if they are ‘premium’.

Most importantly I have realised that they are possibly the worst kitchen invention ever (except for serrated knives).

Quite simply, if the only cooking device you have access to is a microwave, then it is really better to make salads and sandwiches, and to go out and eat as much as possible!

Chanel, or frying bacon?

Everyone has their own favourite food scents. Some of them are intertwined with memories, and can send us back to other times and places, while some are merely aromas that turn our noses on.

Here, in no particular order, are 15 of my personal favourites.

The list

1. Fresh citrus zest

   It could be orange or grapefruit, but especially lemon or lime. Citrus zest smells divine. Fresh, summery and invigorating, this is the kind of smell that makes you really feel alive.

2. Roasting chestnuts

   One of the scent highlights of walking through a city centre in the winter are the roasted chestnut sellers. I’m not actually a big fan of eating them at all, but the smell always makes me smile.

3. Freshly baked bread with oodles of butter

   I don’t know how anyone can work in a bakery and not be clinically obese. The aroma that rises off of freshly baked bread makes me just want to shovel it into my mouth.

4. Real vanilla

   It’s a sad fact that vanilla pods are hideously expensive. If you can’t afford to cook with real vanilla, then use vanilla extract, but keep one vanilla pod in a sealed tin and just open the lid and sniff it every so often, it’s amazing.

5. Peking duck

   I start salivating when the first hint of Peking duck passes underneath my nose. It must be partially the anticipation of the taste to come, but the smell stands up on it’s own as well.

6. Ardbeg whisky

   It smells of the sea and of hospitals. That doesn’t sound too appealing, but sometimes the best things don’t, and the aroma of Ardbeg is one of the very best things.

7. Garlic frying in butter

   Not all of the way through the frying process, but just at that moment when the butter is foamy and the garlic starts to turn that beautiful golden colour.

8. Ripe strawberries

   Not the horrible hydroponic strawberries that you get in winter, they have no smell at all. Good in-season ripe strawberries, the kind that you can smell long before you can see them.

9. Bacon cooking

   It doesn’t matter if it is grilled or fried, the smell never changes. It’s instantly recognisable and it carries on the air for what seems like miles. Surely, only the most strong willed vegetarian can not feel hungry when it catches them.

10. Bitter chocolate truffles with lavender

    This is much more subtle than everything else on this list, you have to actually have a sniff to get the aroma out of them. Once you do though, it’s mesmerising, it’s almost a hard decision whether to eat them or just keep on breathing in.

11. Crushed fresh mint

    Mint leaves broken down in a cocktail like a mojito, or just torn up to be used in cooking. As soon as you break them, they let out that amazing pefume that hangs enticingly in the air.

12. Cloves

    I don’t even know why I like the smell of cloves, is it something Christmassy perhaps, or just that comforting and warming spiciness that makes you feel homely and safe?

13. Coffee brewing

    Freshly ground coffee as steam passes through it at high pressure, forcing all of the flavour and aroma out of that little nozzle into your cup and up to your nose. Somehow the scent can instantly make your kitchen feel much warmer on a cold winters morning.

14. Cinnamon

    It had to be on the list somewhere, cinnamon is just one of those smells that (almost) everyone adores. It’s exotic and spicy, and transports you off to spice markets on tropical islands.

15. New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc

    It’s summer in a bottle, it’s berries and vine fruits, it’s citrus and grapes, it’s sheer joy. Just for the record this one also absolutely tastes as good as it smells.

Your turn

You can use the comment form below to let us know what food smells make you go all warm inside.

Pasta - so simple, so good!

It’s been a long and hectic week.

There hasn’t been a lot of posting on this site, because I’ve been too busy with other things, work, life and spending as much time as possible in the kitchen.

Adventures in Pasta

Quite a lot of the kitchen time has been spent playing with our new pasta maker, and then finding things to do with the mountains of pasta that I’d produced.

The dough recipe that came with the pasta maker was completely useless, it gave a dough that was far too dry and inflexible, you could always add some water to it, but then you end up with pasta that tastes waterlogged and overcooked. I’ve found that to make a good basic pasta, you need about 100g of flour, 1 large egg, and a teaspoon of olive oil per person.

Some very simple tagliatelle with nothing more than a good olive oil, some freshly ground black pepper, and oodles of freshly grated parmigiano was a great midweek meal. Stupidly simple, but when you have good ingredients then why mess about with them.

The second big pasta triumph of the week was a vegetarian lasagne, with alternating layers of carrot/tomato and courgette/yellow pepper.

Pretty Pork

Apart from the pasta, the food highlight of the week was yesterdays Pork belly.

I love my local butcher (no, not in that way), he can tell me where each piece of meat comes from, what it was fed on, how long it has been hung for, and pretty much anything else that I want to know about it. If I tell him what I want to do with a piece of meat, he advises me on the best cut for the job and cooking times, etc.

If you currently but meat in the supermarket, then I strongly advise leaving the meat out the next time you do a shop, and calling into a good butchers. It will probably be more expensive because the meat is probably of higher quality, but personally I’d rather eat less meat in the week and eat some vegetable based meals in between, than eat lower quality meat.

Yesterday morning I came home from the butcher with a beautiful piece of pork belly, bought because I fancied pork, and it looked like a nice piece of meat. The problem was that I didn’t really have a clear plan of what to do with it.

Unusually for a Saturday afternoon, I had nothing important that I had to do, and I had the house to myself. I sat down with a cup of coffee and a bit of paper and had a think and a doodle, then went to the kitchen to play and experiment a bit.

What I came up with was crispy roasted pork belly, crushed potato cakes with capers, caramelised apples, roasted baby shallots and balsamic beetroot, served with a cider reduction, and pork gravy.

Overall, the whole dish worked fantastically well, it’s full of classic combinations with nothing too unusual going on. There are just a couple of little changes that should be made, and I’ll put these in the recipe when it is posted during the week.

Very berry

After quite an elaborate main course, it seemed like a good idea to stick to something nice and simple for desert. Raspberries and strawberries are both still in season and I love them both, I could happily eat them straight from the punnet, but we had them with some lovely thick and creamy custard.

Last night I had the uncontrollable urge to bake. 

The baking of Babka

Since we already had some fresh bread at home, there didn’t seem to be much point in creating anymore, so instead I decided to bake a Babka. 

It’s probably a pretty safe assumption that the majority of readers won’t have a clue what Babka is. It’s a Polish word meaning ‘little grandmother’, but it is also a fantastic yeast dough cake. Traditionally baked and served at Easter, nowadays Babka is eaten all year round. It’s a delicate light and fluffy bread/cake with fruit running through it, I use raisins and mixed peel, but you could really substitute virtually any fruit that won’t exude too much juice while it is cooking. 

There is also a Babka in Jewish cuisine, but this is a different thing altogether, it’s a twisted plait of yeast dough filled with chocolate or cinnamon.

Breakfast this morning consisted of a cup of good strong coffee and a big slice of the Babka that I’d baked last night. Cake for breakfast probably isn’t the healthiest thing in the world, but it does make me smile.

An Italian ensemble

I was busy doing various things throughout the morning, but home for lunch, and decided to go on a bit of a mission to use up random things that had been lurking around the fridge. What started out with no direction at all soon turned into a sort of Italian mix. 

A couple of small pizza bases that were looking for a home, became (suprise, suprise) some small pizzas. A couple of tins of plum tomatoes from the cupboard combined nicely with some shallots, garlic and white wine vinegar to make a simple and quick tomato sauce, topped with some bacon, olives and capers, and finished off with some grated cheese. What could be easier?

There were also two sweet Corno Di Toro peppers that were in danger of being left behind in the bottom of the fridge. The shallots and garlic came out again, this time combined with some minced beef, finely chopped cubes of bread, some vegetable stock and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. This was all fried together, and then stuffed into the deseeded peppers and put in the oven to roast at the same time as the little pizzas went in. 

Just because I’d got myself into an Italian mood, I thought I might as well use up the last few spinach and ricotta ravioli that were left at the back of the middle shelf. Throw them into boiling water for 4 minutes, reduce to a simmer, and then add some nice olive oil and some grated parmesan. 

A selection of (not quite traditional) Italian dishes to feed four people, using all of the random leftover bits in the fridge, and on the table in next to no time.

This is the first post in what is a bit of a new direction for this site, my very own ‘food diaries’. It’s not set in stone, I’m not going to be here at the end of each evening meticulously cataloging what I have eaten throughout the day. It’s much more loose than that, it’s just my way to inject a bit more of me into this site rather than just offering instructions and recipe ideas.

Without further ado then, let’s get started with…

Saturday 2nd August 2008.

One of the more unique things about living in Brighton is ‘Pride’. Not being proud about the city that you live in, but the UK’s biggest gay event. I’m heterosexual, but that doesn’t stop me from going along to see the Pride parade and then heading up to Preston Park for the rest of the event.

From the moment that I woke up on Saturday morning it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be a glorious sunny day for this years event. I had a few things to do in the morning, and so was up and out early, wandering around the city in the cold grey drizzle. After a couple of hours of getting damp and chilly it was time to head back home for breakfast.

The biggest problem with breakfast was always going to be the fact that both the fridge and cupboards were pretty devoid of interesting content. Without going on a big loop out of the way, there wasn’t much chance of passing by any interesting shops, so I settled on popping into whatever local shops I might pass, and hunting down any ingredients that I could find to construct the kind of warming hearty breakfast that you need before you face a long chilly day spent outdoors.

What I actually ended up with was a completely random collection of items, some of which made their way into breakfast and some that didn’t. Those that did came together to form something probably horrifically unhealthy, but tasty and warming and just right before heading back out into the damp air to spend a day being amazed by semi clad people bouncing around a park on spring propelled fawns legs.

It’s painfully simple, toasted muffins filled with bacon, eggs and tomatoes. You will notice that there are no quantities in this recipe, as you just need to put in as much of each item as you like.

Bacon and Egg Muffin

1. Cook the bacon however you prefer to do it, I’d recommend either grilling it or baking it in a hot oven, as frying will leave it a bit greasy and you will end up with a soggy muffin.

2. While the bacon is cooking, slice the tomatoes reasonably thinly, and heat up a little oil in a frying pan to fry the eggs.

3. Split and toast the muffins until they turn golden brown, and spread them with salted butter

4. Fry one egg per muffin, until the white has set well but the yolk is still liquid

5. Remove the bacon from the grill/oven and drain on a piece of kitchen paper

6. Layer the bacon, tomatoes and egg onto the bottom half of each toasted muffin

7. Season with just a touch of sea salt, and some freshly ground black pepper, and pop the top on the muffin

We ate lunch out, in the nearest pub to the park that wasn’t completely swamped and looked like it might be able to deliver some food within any kind of semi-reasonable amount of time. From a pretty traditional pubby menu, I chose a ‘home made’ burger with chunky chips and a mixed leaf salad, and whilst nothing to write home about it, it wasn’t too bad at all.

In an attempt to appear modern and funky, the burger was served in ciabatta rather than just a bun, and the salad was decidedly Mediterranean. The chunky chips were great, the salad was nicely dressed, and the caramelised onion relish and slightly spicy salsa that came above and below the burger were all tasty, I didn’t eat the ciabatta. It’s just a shame that the burger itself didn’t live up to the rest of the plate, not just under seasoned but positively bland, it tasted more of onion than anything else, and still trying to work out why why when I could clearly see that it was made of beef.

We got home in the early evening and I really didn’t feel like a meal of any kind. Instead, I spent most of my evening grazing on bits of cheese, cold meat and pickles, with a bit of crusty bread. Why bother to cook when you have things like brie, stilton, some goats cheese and a nice crunchy pickled onion?

What was a bit unusual was the marketing term that was so proudly displayed all over the breads packaging:

‘Artisan Inspired Bread’

It’s one of those utterly bizarre terms that actually means absolutely nothing. Being inspired by an artisan doesn’t mean that you bake like one, any more than being inspired by Miles Davis suddenly makes you musically gifted. ‘Artisan baked bread’ would definitely inspire me more to buy it.

Not that this particular term is any worse than a plethora of others though, the most prolific offender obviously being ‘Organic’, or it’s frequently cropping up cousin ‘Natural’.

Now, I’m not saying that organic food can’t be a good thing for all number of reasons, but it doesn’t have to be. The term ‘Organic’ without any further clarifying information doesn’t actually mean all that much about the quality of the food you are getting.

My wife’s grandmother grows what she thinks of as organic vegetables on her allotment, she is very proud of the fact that she doesn’t use any chemicals fertilisers or pesticides on them, and makes a big point of letting you know about it. She doesn’t mention or even seem to think that it is vaguely important that her allotment is about 500 metres away from one of the biggest chemical factories in Central Europe. They could very accurately be described as being organically grown, but I’d rather not eat them if I have any option!

It’s been pointed out to me that in most of Europe, the USA and Japan, foods that are produced and sold commercially must meet strict conditions in order to label themselves as organic. As far as I’m aware, foods labelled as ‘Natural’ have no such criteria to meet, and this really is a completely nonsense term.

The fact is that I actually buy quite a lot of organic foods, but it is not my only criteria when selecting them. Seasonality, sustainability and local production are just as, or more, important to me. There are a huge number of variables that aren’t covered by organic certification, and it’s quite possible that a good grass fed free range cow will produce a better beef than anything organic in the same butchers shop.

There are fantastic organic foods out there, that are full of taste and nutritionally brilliant, and then there are some that are less great, that are produced without passion or care for the end product, but simply because the producer realises that he can charge a huge premium if he does the things necessary to reach the certification.

Freshly baked bread is comforting, reassuring, it’s as if it cuddles you from the inside as you are eating it. Bread isn’t sexy, but it feels like a food that wants to make you safe and happy. Eat it warm from the oven and spread thickly with butter, and for me it’s the ultimate comfort food.

The great thing is that I’m not alone in my love of all things granary (or wholemeal, or spelt, or… ), there are plenty of highly influential foodie people who share my view, like:

“It is true that man does not live by bread alone, he must eat something with it”
Pellegrino Artusi – God of Italian cookery

“Quite apart from the enjoyment you get from the flavour of a good bread (and the danger is that if it is too good, you eat too much of it!), the action of chewing wakes up the taste-buds, excites the saliva and generally heightens your gastronomic awareness.”
Pierre Koffmann – 3 Michelin Starred Chef

“Serve good bread and butter before the meal and all will be well”
Marco Pierre White – 3 Michelin Starred Chef

There are hundreds more such quotes that I could post here, but I simply don’t have the time, I’m off to the bakery!