Category archive: food and drink

Today the French are electing their new president. I hope they make a good and wise choice (hint: she would be France's first female president), I fear they won't.

Update: the French elected Sarkozy instead.

In their honour, here is a simplified version of my favourite dessert. I made it last night to celebrate one year exactly since we moved into the new flat.

It is taken from this list of tarte Tatin recipes. Quantities are for 6 to 8 persons.

Ingredients

• 12 small apples
• 250g puff pastry
• 90g unsalted butter
• 210g sugar
• 2 large pinches of cinnamon

Preparation

1. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and refrigerate it
2. Peel the apples
3. Cut out the cores
4. Cut them in quarters
5. Put 75g of sugar in an oven mould and melt it on the stove
6. When it is dark brown, add 30g butter
7. Cool down and remove excess butter
8. Line mould with apple quarters (base and sides)
9. Cover with the remaining 90g of butter cut into thin slices
10. Sprinkle with the remaining 135g of sugar mixed with the cinnamon
11. Bake at 190C until a sharp knife falls into the apples under its own weight (approximately 30 minutes)
12. Cover with the rolled-out pastry, trimming away the excess and tucking it into the sides of the mould
13. Cook for a further 30 minutes
14. Let it cool as long as you can before turning it out on a serving dish
15. Serve with a dollop of double cream, crème fraîche, clotted cream or vanilla icecream

A few weeks ago I got into the habit of picking up a Del Monte ice smoothie on the way to work every morning. The perfect refreshment after a stifling tube journey.

'Only 96 calories', it says on the packaging, as well as 'No artificial colours, flavours, preservatives or sweeteners'. Well, they had me at '96 calories'.

Then last week I looked at the ingredients.

Water, Raspberry Puree (25%), Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Blackcurrant Puree (3.7%), Lemon and Lime Juice from Concentrate (3.2%), Colour (Anthocyanins, Beetroot Red, Curcumin), Stabilisers (Methyl Cellulose, Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Pectin, Sodium Alginate), Citric Acid, Natural Raspberry Flavouring.

I consulted Dr B. (who is a Doctor in Chemistry) and he confirmed that none of the colours, flavours, preservatives or sweeteners above are artificial.

However, one may notice that the packaging does not claim 'no artificial stabilisers', and I am not totally sure that Methyl Cellulose and Carboxy Methyl Cellulose are the most natural ingredients you can find.

And even if Mr Del Monte himself came to see me and convinced me that not a single ingredient is artificial, I would still not trust a product that lists 17 individual ingredients.

So now I have a banana instead.

My ex-flatmate is coming to dinner tonight.

My ex-flatmate is a chef. I should therefore probably be all stressed out and produce a repeat performance of our recent overcomplicated dinnerparty that was not particularly successful taste-wise.

Maybe I should worry, but I don't. You see, I lived with that man for two and a half years and I know what he likes, so it's going to be easy:

• a selection of Italian hams;
• my Thai beef salad;
• and I wanted to make a trifle (my ex-flatmate favourite dessert) but last night when I shopped for tonight's dinner party I felt a bit intimidated by a Sherry trifle recipe listing fifteen different ingredients (two of which I could not find). So there will be a Tesco Finest Raspberry & Choc Truffle.

I am sure anything will be appreciated; after all, my ex-flatmate cooks for a living, so probably the last thing he wants to do when he gets home is prepare a meal.

It's as if somebody who builds websites for a living spent most of their spare time on the web updating their weblog.

Oh wait. Wrong comparison, I guess.

I always happily give away any pretense of privacy and let people access my data for a quid or two.

It is therefore hardly surprising that I always, always use my Tesco ClubCard, even when I but a stick of chewing-gum at a gas station. Then, every three months Tesco points turn up on my doorstep as vouchers that give me money off on next purchases (1 penny for each pound spent, I think).

In return, I let Tesco know exactly how many sheets of toilet paper I use every time I wipe my butt. Seriously, this should give Tesco enough information to fire off some powerful algorithms to lure me into buying more stuff by presenting me with offers I cannot refuse.

However, I would recommend they add something that says

'IF

> 75% of items purchased

=

skimmed
low-fat
fat free
diet
light
extra-light
super-light

THEN

do not send the chap a voucher that
offers 100 extra points when you buy
Nuts or Loaded magazine'.

'cause you see, T&A? Not much popular round here, no.

I always find that whenever I put together a meal with the only few ingredients I can find at home, it turns out quite well.

So on Friday night, after a short but hard week at work, the last thing I wanted to do was to fight for a trolley at Tesco. I knew we had fresh milk at home, so tea could be made.

I also knew that we had frozen blocks of cod, a can of beer, some flour and a bunch of potatoes that were starting to get a bit old, so…

… fish and chips!

I quickly looked up a recipe for batter and I was on a roll.

Ingredients

• Two blocks of cod per person (or any other fish, frozen or fresh, for that matter)
• 1/2 pint of beer (can be replaced with fizzy water if you do not drink)
• 125g flour
• 400g potatoes per person
• Oil (I only had olive oil so I used that for frying – you pick your favourite)

Preparation

1. Peel potatoes and cut into your favourite shape. I go for cubes/pyramids by simply slicing medium-size potatoes in eight
2. Soak potatoes for about fifteen minutes in salty water. My mother claims it makes them go crispy outside, and considering that roast potatoes is the only thing she cooks that is barely edible, I swear by it too
3. Put the potatoes in a greased oven tray and stick in the oven at, uhm, high for, er, as long as it takes to cook them. Sorry, next time I'll pay attention to the settings. Let's say it was around 200 C degrees, for 30 to 40 minutes. So do that well in advance. Also, move them around half way through so that they cook evenly.
4. Defrost fish in microwave (my mistake was pinging it for too long, which made it break up)
5. Mix beer and flour slowly, to stop the beer from going flat. Reserve a bit of beer for later
6. Heat enough oil in a pan for shallow frying
7. Test oil temperature by dropping a tiny quantity of batter in it. If it floats and cooks rapidly it is ready. If it sinks, the oil is not hot enough.
8. Carefully blend in the beer you had left aside into the batter. This will make it fizz and puff up nicely when fried
9. Coat the fish with flour, then roll it in the batter and fry it until the batter is golden and crisp

Serve with plenty of vinegar and a dollop of mushy peas – or, as they are pompously called at our local Riverside pub, 'Pea velouté'.

A word of advice: while the fish is cooking (it won't take very long), quickly wipe your kitchen surfaces and rinse the bowls where you had the flour and the batter. Do not leave them until the next morning. Flour and water equals glue equals a very grumpy me on Saturday morning scraping gunk off the counter with a knife.

But man, the meal was absolutely worth it.

Three days ago (April 5th) was Dr B.'s birthday and I made him a cake in the shape of a Dalek.

By coincidence a few days earlier I had come across a BBC Blue Peter Dalek cake recipe that was just perfect, as it involved no cooking. All you have to do is stick a couple of Swiss rolls together, make some chocolate butter icing and cover them, and then stick Maltesers, all sorts and liquorice strings on it.

I made the plunger with a birthday cake candle and a wine gum.

The eye was a birthyday cake candle holder.

It looked wonky and not very much like the "real" Dalek, 2005 redesign that inspired it, but it make Dr B. squeal with delight when he opened the fridge and saw my little surprise cake. I guess I managed to achieve the ultimate feat of making a Dalek look sweet.

When I sliced through the Dalek cake I felt I was avenging all the thousands of children that spent part of their childhood hiding behind sofas during the scariest Doctor Who episodes. I also felt my thighs expanding just by looking at the chocolate richness, but that's a different story, not entirely unrelated to the fact that I went running yesterday.

Dr B.'s Dalek birthday cake, originally uploaded by bitful.

I have received an email from New Yorker K. who googled 'coffee with a straw' and found my post about coffee which mentions my inability to drink coffee through a coffee shop sipping lid without burning my palate/dribbling/staining my shirt, and therefore always stick a straw through it.

Not only did K. feel less isolated (she does not know anyone else who does that), but she also took the time to contact me to tell me she was impressed. It's just a nod of the head, the equivalent of a polite smile from a stranger on the train home from work.

And then they say technology drives people apart.

We recently acquired a new dining table (our first) and can now finally have people over for proper sit-down meals.

As a first dinner party, I insisted that the five friends who helped us move come round. We are very grateful to them and pulled all the stops to make this a memorable dinner.

We dusted off Dr B.'s Jamie Oliver cookbook that had been hiding, completely ignored, in the back of a cupboard for the four years I have known Dr B.

We spent Monday night selecting recipes and making a shopping list.

Tuesday night we shopped for all the ingredients we needed.

On Thursday we bought a new microwave oven and then we spent three hours cooking everything that could be prepared in advance, and preparing a spreadsheet with details of all the actions to be performed on the night.

On Friday night we hosted, we cooked, we ate. But, most importantly, we realised that you should never, ever serve something at a dinner party that you have not tried before. This was a lesson we learned the hard way:

• the ciabatta, buffalo mozzarella and pancetta threaded on rosemary sprigs were too fatty
• the marinated pot-roasted beef was too dry
• the potato and horseradish cake was unsavoury and crumbly
• the tomatoes with baby leeks and bay leaves slow-roasted in vinegar tasted of, well, just vinegar
• the clementines with fresh mint, flaked almonds, dark chocolate shavings and syrup had too many ingredients and the syrup was just sugary water
• the pomegranate gin shots looked amazing on paper, but the gin was not cold enough, it overpowered the pomegranate and who on earth can stomach a shot of gin anyway?

Our guests glossed over the imperfections more or less graciously, and I bear no criticism to the recipes per se. However, if we ever made them again, we would most certainly alter some ingredients. quantities and cooking times.

Before agreeing to have a 100% Jamie Oliver dinner, I had consulted with a friend who suggested a few tried and tested, simple light recipes. Oh, how I wish I had listened to her.

• Our first dinner party, 30 March 2007 – a photoset on Flickr

I have given up eating between 11pm and 7am for Lent.

I forgot to update last week, or better there was nothing to update. Week four went without a glitch.

Not so week five, I'm afraid. It was all going well until, on Monday night, I was feeling a bit tense and in need to wind down, so instead of going to bed straight away I sat in front of the TV, turned it on and started following the story of Bethany, the 34-stone teenager. One stone is about 6.5 kilos (or 14 pounds). Can't be arsed to multiply for you, sorry. Oh, alright then: 34 stone is 476 pounds, or about 216 kilograms.

Half an hour into the documentary, I looked at the clock (half past eleven) and bit into an apple. I knew I was not going to kid myself with that, so pretty quickly I gave in to the siren song of a left-over bag of tortilla crisps that was calling from the kitchen cupboard. And then two packets of udon noodles. Raw. Well, pre-cooked probably, but cold and congealed together.

And then, just when Bethany was presented with 96 packets of lard that represented half the weight she had shed during the year following her stomach being stapled to one tenth of its normal size, I finally called it a day and went to bed with a happy tummy.

I have given up eating between 11pm and 7am for Lent.

Week three of my abstinence from food at night is now complete. Pretty uneventful if you ask me, even boring. So this is how normal people live. Yawn.

The only highlight was last Saturday. I was up at 2am, no idea why, but I decided not to comfort-eat myself back to sleep. I stayed up until the early evening, then went for a nap.

Next thing I knew, it was 1am on Sunday and Dr B. was at a friend's. I was wide awake and I turned the oven on to bake a pizza that was meant to be for Sunday night's dinner.

Five minutes later, I realised it was the middle of the night and that I'd have to wait until 7 in order to eat. And so I turned the oven off and put the pizza back in the fridge.

No biggie.