Proving a point

I'm involved at a cafe designed for international students to meet and get to know people. More and more often on Wednesdays this is involves food from various countries, depending on who fancies cooking. This clearly inspires conversation about how that food is made, and what food is like in people's home countries (further proof, incidentally, that food allows people to connect together on a really basic level).

Anyway, all too often, people wonder at my extolling the virtues of good British food, given its inherent blandness, and my obvious enjoyment of the Chinese/Spanish/Japanese/Persian/Indian/etc food I've just eaten. (Although I think some people assume I enjoy it so much because the concept of flavour in my food is a new one for me...)

Now, I've long suspected that so many of them believe this because of a couple of reasons:
a) what people think of in other countries when they think of British food is fish and chips, full English breakfasts* and not much else
b) the fact that so many British students can't/won't/think they can't afford to/think they don't have time to cook decent traditional meals.
c) if they aren't fed by friends who can cook british food, they might decide to try it at a restaurant. Unfortunately, most "British" restaurants are pubs, thereby immediately counting that out for an awful lot of my friends, especially the muslim ones. Those that do go might try something at Wetherspoons or similar, which, although it has its place, is hardly a great place to go for really excellent cuisine. Very few would even know where to look for decent pub grub.

I also have theories on the development of food, and cookery in this country that I feel probably do not help matters - e.g. the fashion for low-fat cooking that hit from (I think) sometime around the 80s, the increasing popularity of supermarkets, and the increasing detachment and squeamishness about food.

However this impression has been formed, I set out to prove to some of these people just why I love good, home cooked, British food, and most of all, to prove that the one thing it is not, is bland.

N.B. From this point onwards when I refer to British food, I mean British food cooked well. As with any food, it is entirely possible to do it badly.

British food at its best for me is about using simple, fresh, local ingredients, wasting as little as possible (hence sausages, stew to use the tougher cuts, crumble, corned beef hash...) and cooking them in a simple, unfussy way. It should be flavoured and seasoned well to encourage the flavours of the meat and veg, but not overpoweringly.

This does not mean I don't use non-native ingredients. But British cooking has long relied on imports of ingredients, especially spices. It's been limited at times by the cost, but, for example, ginger, black pepper, mace pepper, black and green cardamon, nutmeg, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and myriad other spices would have been easy to get for those that could afford it since at least the time of the Roman empire. That's a good 2000 years. And if it's available, people are going to use it.

We also have, of course, many herbs, including many that, I bet, 100 years ago would have been commonly foraged but now have fallen out of use because we have no idea what they are.With all these sources of flavouring available to us, the idea that British food is bland is, frankly, ridiculous.

So, to prove all my hypotheses, I designed a British menu for today's Global Cafe, that used mostly ingredients that have been available in the British Isles for hundreds of years to a greater or lesser degree. The exception is things like oxo cubes, marigold vegetable stock powder, and Bisto gravy powder. I think that most of it has been widely availabe for at least the last 30 years. I had to provide for vegetarians, and I also wanted a dish to prove the heritage of British cooking, as well as a (relatively) more recent dish, the sort of thing that is absolutely classically British.


The menu was as follows:

-Beef stew
Using cubed stewing steak, fresh rosemary, garlic, onion, swede, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, mushrooms, leeks, and probably some other bits of veg I've forgotten about.
-Rosemary Dumplings
I use Jamie Oliver's recipe from Jamie cooks, which is great because it doesn't use suet and therefore I always have the right ingredients in. Makes great dumpings though.
-Potato Mash
With whole grain mustard
-Mashed Celeriac
Those that don't know - this is the root of the celery plant. I like it mashed with a little milk, and a lot of pepper and butter.

-Spicy yellow vegetable soup
Including squash, sweet potato, swede, carrot, onion, garlic, grated ginger, and again, probably some more veg I've forgotten about.

-Medieval Gingerbread
Made of breadcrumbs, honey and spice. Don't get me wrong, it might have been around since before the 15th C, but this amount of spice and honey would have been expensive. This is a dish for showing off your wealth, not for the commoners. None the less, shows the heritage of gingerbread.

It's not a great pic, especially of me, but it's the best I've got. As I didn't actually sit down until I ate I wasn't able to take any myself.

 


I'm glad to say I convinced most people, in particular two of the guys that were most convinced that British food is bland. The day has been a success!



It's just a shame I couldn't introduce people to British beer while I was at it, but you can't have everything.



*The two things listed by my spanish friend Juanmar when I asked him what he thought of when British food was mentioned, confirming my suspicions for a few people at least.

My perfect crumble recipe

Folowing a scrumptious dinner of beef stew, roasted veg, broccolli and cabbage last Saturday, I made a delicious apple and blueberry crumble for pudding. It turned out to be so good that Chris and I ate the entire thing in one sitting, so I thought I'd make another with the second tub of blueberries, and show you the recipe.

I also noticed this article in the Guardian last week. It seems there is much debate about the perfect crumble.

It must be said at this point that crumble is something that I make entirely by look, feel, and taste, and so the following measurements really are estimates.

Apple and Blueberry Crumble

4 medium cooking apples (we had been donated some by a friend who had a tree in the garden)
1 large punnet of blueberries (about 3 large handfulls)
1 tbsp brown (usually demerrara) sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice


3 tbsp plain flour
1 1/2 tbsp rolled porridge oats
2 tbsp caster sugar
3 tbsp butter (you can use margerine if you really want, but real butter gives it a much nicer flavour, and, I think, texture.)


Preheat the oven to Gas mark 5/190C.

Peel, core and 8th the apples, and mix with the blueberries, brown sugar and lemon juice in the dish in which you are going to cook the crumble:

Put the flour, oats, sugar and butter in a seperate bowl.  Rub in using your fingers (or do all of this in the food processor - I haven't got room for such a luxury item in my kitchen). You will have to keep adding things until you get the right proportions. It should look like this:

taste like shortbread biscuits, and feel, in archaeological site terms, like a friable, clayey sandy soil with frequent small oat inclusions. For the non-archaeologists among us, this means if you were to press it into a small ball it would just about do it, but as soon as you poke it it would fall apart again, be a little bit gritty when you rub it between your fingers (but not so much as if you were rubbing beach sand. If it feels like that you may want to check you've added the flour, oats, and butter...), and have enough oats that you feel them and see them each time you pick some up in your fingers, but without it being the main constituent of the crumble.

Make sense? Excellent.

So, you have your crumble, and you have your filling. Here's the most important thing you ever need to know about making crumble:

Do NOT under ANY circumstances press the crumble topping into the filling. Instead, lightly shake on top, and push heaped areas gently into gaps from the side of the heap. I would go for a depth of aproximately 3 cm. Do not be tempted to attempt an absolutely even top. You will not achieve this, and will lose some of the light, crumbly texture by squashing some of the crumbs together into larger pieces. If you have underestimated the amount of topping needed (the proportions above are, after all, both estimates and for a relatively small dish) now is the time to make some more. If you make too much, I have been told it freezes quite well, which would make sense, or I might splash a little cold water in to bind it together, and turn it into a couple of biscuits.

By now, your oven should be well heated, so put your crumble in on the middle shelf. Cook for 30 minutes, or until the fruit is soft, and the topping a light golden brown.

Serve with custard, ice cream, plain yoghurt, or whatever you like best. I'm a fan of extra thick double cream when I'm feeling like treating myself.

As per usual, I have gotten too excited about the eating of the food to remember to take a photo of the finished product, but I assure you it was delicious, and had a bright purple filling. The colour of the filling is not entirely relevant, but it was pretty.

Custard v.2: Eggnog without the alcohol

Among other foody things I did yesterday (which I would have posted about yesterday, but was in deep mourning for the teapot), I made my second attempt at custard.

It was an improvement, it didn't curdle - I think the use of the electric whisk, and the bain marie were good ideas. Still tasted good, but still didn't thicken properly. I also used a mixture of cream and full fat milk this time.

We ate it as a "warming winter drink". I've never had eggnog, but I imagine it to be somewhat akin to an alcoholic version of yesterday's custard. I haven't inserted a picture of the final product partly becasue it didn't look much different at the end than it does in the picture above, but mostly because I forgot to take one.

Version three soon...I have no compunctions about this as I bought 30 free range local farm eggs for £1.15 at the farm shop I went meat shopping at yesterday afternoon.

RIP teapot

I dropped a bottle of vinegar on it from the top shelf of my cupboard:

Farewell, my teapot. You have served me well and faithfuly every morning for three years. May you rest in peace, with the memory of the last cup of Ceylon Blue Sapphire you served a fitting tribute to your memory.

The most amazing cake ever

I just wanted to share a picture of the birthday cake that Nicky made for my party on Saturday. I do cake, but I don't decorate them, not like this. I think she is actually a genius. (The cake was pretty good too).

As you may be able to guess, I am a bit of a knitter, hence the theme of the cake.

Lentil Curry

I love my slow cooker. Here is one of my favourite recipes, which went down very well at my birthday party on Saturday. As with most things that are spiced, in reality I throw in whatever and however much I feel like on the day, but the following is a pretty good guide to how much.

Serves 5000 (well, it feels like it). I honestly wonder if this is how Jesus fed the masses sometimes after I've well fed a group of mates and then am eating it for lunches the next week as well.

2 mugs of dried red lentils - about a pint.
1 tin chopped tomatos
A couple of potatos, cubed very small.
A green pepper, cubed
A red pepper, cubed
A large handful of chestnut or closed cup mushrooms, quartered
A small onion chopped finely
Half a bag of spinach
Plenty of garlic, finely chopped
Large bunch fresh corriander, stems trimmed and chopped, leaves reserved.
4 or 5 green cardoman pods
1 star anise
6 cloves
1 tsp ground cumin or cracked cumin seeds
1 tsp ground corriander or cracked corriander seeds
Chille powder or chille seeds to taste
2 tsp Marigold vegetable stock powder
Salt and pepper

Optional: Cubed lamb.

Throw all ingredients apart from the spinach and coriander leaves in a 3.5 L slow cooker or crock pot. Mix, and then fill up with boiling water. Turn to high and leave to do it's thing for about 3-4 hours, until the veg is cooked and the lentils have disintegrated. Throw the spinach onto the top, put the lid back on and let it steam and wilt down, then stir in. Stir in the chopped corriander leaves just before serving, check spice and seasoning and adjust and serve.

Mix a little bit of hot water in when reheating to loosen it up again as the lentils will absorb any moisture that is left over time.


Serving suggestions: With brown rice for a really healthy and filling main course/ on it's own for a lighter meal/ with a buttered plain bagel or english muffin and a poached egg.