Ginger Tablet

Food is for losers with normal disgetive tracks - TV is for everyone

Food is not my number one best friend at the moment and I'm not going to be spending loads of time in the kitchen cooking nice things. I will be eating plain and boring things and I will be grumpy about it. I will also be watching television and without a doubt, I will be watching a programme about the dangerous state of the British diet. There's no way to avoid it. When I first moved here every television show seemed to be about renovating your new holiday home in Spain. Now everything is about the crap you put in your mouth. British television does little by half measures.

With that in mind, here's an article that Zoe Williams wrote a couple of weeks ago. I think there are a couple of good points in it. Hugh and Jamie were being pretty patronizing and seemed to be avoiding some points that would have made their arguments a lot more interesting. If Hugh had emphasized the taste, health and environmental advantages of free range chicken, and not just their less-bleak lives, maybe he would have been more convincing. I assume that these benefits exist, but the fact that he never seemed to raise them made me suspicious that the birds were perhaps more similar to the intensively reared ones than I thought. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2241274,00.html

Two notes:

1) I didn't watch Jamie Oliver's show because it was on a Friday night and I was too busy being fabulous away from my television. I did see a couple of minutes of his Eat to Save Your Life show where he poured oil over a lady sitting in a tub to show her how much fat she eats in a five-year period (I'm sorry - even for an anorexic that would be a gross amount) and then the next night I noticed that he was back to his "Jamie at Home" series cooking fried bread crumb and bacon pasta. It looked delicious, but the contrast was ridiculous.

2) Tonight Gillian McKeith is going to be continuing her efforts to Ban Big Bums. I am taking personal offence to this. She is a hateful wee woman and when I am strong enough, I will tear a strip off her mean little frame.

Haggis

I am not going to be celebrating Robbie Burns Night in any great fashion this evening. I'm already tired and I have to be 100% productive and 90% not hungover tomorrow so festivities are out. I am going to strongly encourage you to eat haggis over the next little while, especially if you've never tried it before. Go on. You don't eat the stomach part, I promise. You just scoop out the good stuff in the middle. Both the veggie version and the meaty original are lovely. I hope to make one on Sunday and eat it with loads of mashed potato and some turnips and some whisky. This is a food that in no way deserves its poor reputation. We all eat way grosser things all the time.

 

Oatcake Buddy - Peppered Date Mash with Parsley and Parmesan

The other momentous event at J's party was that B won the Food Description of the Week award.

His winning entry went something like this:

(Setting - a near-empty plate of dates stuffed with parmesan and flat-leaf parsley lies on the table. All of the guests had ingested serious amounts of alcohol. Much cake had been eaten.)

B: Katie, these dates are a phenomenal new taste sensation.

K: I know. It's weird; you wouldn't think that the parsley would make such a big difference in there, but it's really holding everything together.

B: Yeah! The parsley is like a GPS for your tongue.

Blank, glazed stares ensue.

B: It let's you know where you're at. It's a little palate cleanser between the sweet date and the salty cheese.

Ah yes. That made more sense. At least it did that night after a few glasses of Pimm's and ginger beer (a very, very fine cocktail for winter, by the way).

To recreate this taste sensation in an oatcake form, I took a couple of dates and smashed them up into a paste with olive oil and loads of black pepper. This was spread on the oatcake and then a pile of cheese and parsley followed, topped with a drizzle of oil and some more pepper. This is a hefty snack. You could get two well-dressed cakes out of this, and I would be surprised if you could finish them both.

Rhubarb and Lemon Cake Pudding - A recipe for too many cakes

In Yorkshire they grow rhubarb in dark sheds throughout the winter. This forced crop is harvested by candlelight and each stalk wrapped in protective plastic to keep it safe. They are delicate shoots and all of the articles I've read talk about how you can actually hear them growing in their cozy winter shelter. While their small, pale leaves have all of the verve of endive, their fleshy stalks are deep crimson and are supposed to be sweeter and more delicate than the outdoor crops of the summer. Currently there are 12 farmers who still grow rhubarb in this traditional manner in the region, a method that used to ensure at least one kind of fresh produce during the winter months until the outdoor rhubarb began to grow again in April. These farmers are working to get their crops a protected status in the face of competition from apparently inferior Dutch varieties (I do not have enough information to wade into this debate).

It is images such as these, dedicated farmers harvesting long and pink stems magically by candlelight, that make me want to pack up and move to the country. These thoughts are generally quickly followed by my reluctant acknowledgment that I am a city girl and would almost certainly lack the disposition for this kind of work. Work that is undoubtedly far more arduous and unpredictable than my romanticized daydreams could anticipate.

If I can't grow it, I'll just have to eat it. I had a hankering for stewed rhubarb to accompany the very local and prodigious crop of cakes that my flat has been producing this past week. You see, J turned 40 on Saturday and I threw a party. A funny, drunken affair that seemed to be one-part kids' party and one-part grown-up gathering. Amid some talk of mortgages, kitchen renovations and career development, the boys would sneak off to play with J's new remote control helicopter. While there were excited and nervous chats of weddings and pregnancy, balloons were also gleefully popped and silly dancing went on until I couldn't stand up anymore (I truly apologize to the longsuffering people who live below us). I bought a lot of candy and paper masks as if anticipating six-year-olds, but also placed fresh tulips in the bathroom. There was an inordinate amount of alcohol and too many cakes. A huge Chocolate Stout one (taken from this recipe - it has something like 280 positive reviews. It's ridiculous, but the cake deserves it.), a chocolate chip, pecan and Jack Daniel's cake with a caramel glaze and a lemon pound cake. These were some nice pieces of baking if I do say so myself, but despite force-feeding the guests, I had too much left over (especially since I technically made two of the Jack Daniel's cake as the first one didn't come out of the pan properly and was too ugly to serve, but too tasty to throw out and was therefore snacked on at odd moments for a couple of days before being sacrificed to the tea room at work. Nothing makes it out of there unconsumed.) The morning after, there were only small pieces of the chocolate/beer and JD ones left, small enough that they could be discretely eaten over the next week without much issue, but the lemon cake, the least sexy, but arguably the most satisfying, was left mostly untouched. It had quite a firm texture that I though would be a perfect candidate for recycling as its eating days were likely to be numbered and were sure to pass before I managed to eat it all. It was in need of a new life, a different path, some cake redemption.

 

So I made this. A bread pudding strewn with rhubarb and with a lot of lemon zest and juice. But, of course, instead of bread I used the languishing lemon cake. I served it with stewed rhubarb, and breaking with the British convention of serving everything with custard, put a little heap of sweetened sour cream on top of the messy pile. This a recipe for January, I think. When you need bright and magically local produce and when having more cake than one can eat actually seems like a possibility. At other times of year, times that don't follow the gluttony of Christmas quite so closely, complaining about a bounty like that would be akin to asking for just a bit less money on your paycheque.

On a side note: I have no idea if the rhubarb I used was from the growers of Yorkshire or the devious Dutch. When I asked the girl at the counter of my very lovely fruit and veg shop she said "I don't know". When I asked if there was anyone around who could tell me she laughed and said no. I'm going to believe that it was because it was perfect and very dark red and had tiny pale leaves just like it should. If it was Dutch, then perhaps I do have an opinion about this issue after all...

Orzo in a Deep Tomato Sauce with Spicy Zucchini

 This is the list of food items I brought home with me to Glasgow after Christmas (not including edible presents):

* one kilo of chocolate chips

* four boxes of PC Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese

* two kilos of orzo

* fluorescent food colouring

* Hibiscus and Rosehip tea  (J noted that bringing tea back was "like bringing coal to Newcastle", and while I agree in principle, the British seem to currently have an obsession with making all of their herbal teas flavoured like sickly sweet fruit. I don't want Strawberry Lychee Pineapple Sparkle Sensations, I just want a standard, respectable herbal tea.)

And even though I cleverly brought an empty suitcase with me, when this haul was combined with the spoils of Christmas and my other shopping binge (~2 kilos of fake pearls), not everything fit in my bag. I had to very, very sweetly (for what else is in my nature?) ask J if he would mind terribly carting the orzo and chocolate chips with him in his bag. He was obliging, but not thrilled. It did look like a pretty grotesque amount of chocolate and pasta. And really, pasta and chocolate are both available in Glasgow on almost every corner of the city.

"But not in these shapes!" was the eternal cry echoing through the Gatineau hills.

Shape matters. Every now and then one would like to make a faster, brothy and light orzo risotto to accompany a nice piece of chicken, or turn the grains into a pasta salad that is actually of a palatable consistency and hardy enough to pack for lunches or a picnic. No, these are not daily urges, but they may strike half-a-dozen times or so in a year and wouldn't you be pleased to see the little pasta guys waiting for you in the cupboard when that happens? The answer is yes. Yes you would.

And sure I can chop up a bar of dark chocolate to throw into some cookie dough, but sometimes you want the uniformity that the chips provide. Sometimes you don't want the chaos of the chocolate shards popping up here and there in your baked goods. Sometimes you just want everything in its right place. You need chocolate pieces that know how to behave properly! (Now smooth your apron. Pin your hair back up. Good. Phew.)

A few days after we returned home, I clearly needed to make something that would convince J that his efforts had not been in vain, so I cooked up this dish. I had been thinking about Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce for some time now after reading about in a couple of blogs. It really is that easy: butter, half an onion and a couple of cans of tomatoes. For a couple of years this sauce was a standard in my father's repertoire and although he is a cook capable of great finesse, I think he relished the idea of just throwing a couple of things in a pot roughly and letting them cook. I remember the first time I witnessed this I asked when the garlic or the basil would be entering the equation. "This sauce doesn't need it. It's just the simplicity of the butter, tomatoes and onion cooking together for a while" was his (paraphrased) reply. And he was absolutely right and I ate it pretty regularly for the next couple of years.

So I had this idea to use that same sauce as a rich base for an orzo risotto. The sauce was started in the usual way except I never took the onion halves out. Normally you do this before serving, but the really soft and buttery onions were always my favourite element of this sauce. I would sneak pieces of them out before they were thrown away. In my sauce, the onion stays. While it's still in a rather large pieces, if it cooks for long enough all of the layers separate and become more manageable to eat. I then added some white beans, some orzo and a couple of finely chopped sage leaves for a bit of depth. Then a lot of stirring happened. When it started to look a bit less soupy, a bit more gloopy, I added some stock and kept on adding some at intervals until it was perfect.

While all of this was going on, I sliced some long lengths of zucchini on my new and trusty mandolin. The first zucchini was sliced on the finest setting and the second one on a wider setting. This way, the two thicknesses cooked at different rates and the skinnier ones got sweetly browned while when the thicker ones were supple and succulent. They were sauteed in olive oil, salt, garlic, pine nuts and chili flakes. You want these puppies to be a bit spicy because the sauce, especially if you leave the onions in, will be quite sweet. 

And then everything was ready. The pasta was cooked, still still firm, the zucchini were spicy and juicy and golden. Everything was just waiting to be served up and enjoyed. And then J was 45 minutes late for dinner. Jerk. Sure he had a good excuse, but still everything had to be turned off and then re-heated while I made indignant huffing noises. In the end, the dish was so flavourful, especially with grated parmesan and some pepper, that I forgot all about J's tardiness and he forgot all about carting my weighty goods across the ocean. Aww. Food bribery; the pathway to forgiveness and emotional eating.

      

Sugar Mice

Dear Pink Sugar Mouse,

I wanted to eat all of you, but I had to trade your head for a yellow one instead. I am still thinking about the raspberry sugar that your brain would have contained.

I wish I could have loved all of you.

Katie

Dear Yellow Sugar Mouse,

I secretly liked your tang better. You know how sensitive Pinkie is, though. Don't tell her.

Faithfully yours,

Katie

Smug Oatmeal vs. All Day Breakfast in a Can

On Sunday morning I cooked pinhead oatmeal in some newly steeped chai tea, milky and sweet. I threw in some raisins, and topped our bowls with some perfectly ripe (and well-selected) pears courtesy of J's run to the store. The pinhead oats became a something like a gutsier rice pudding; spicy, hearty and soothing, with the added goodness of a stimulant. Good for a drizzly day when I want to be reading under the covers but instead have to drag myself into the studio to make work for a deadline that is closer than I like to admit. I was pretty smug about this complete-breakfast-in-a-bowl, but it immediately brought to mind a food item I had always been sickly curious about:

 

Yup.

I know.

This can compacts beans in tomato sauce with chopped pork, button mushrooms and egg, bacon and cereal nuggets. I bought it for the sake of a scientific experiment and made a D help me eat it while we watched six hours of period drama on BBC1.

The first thing that struck me when I opened the can was overwhelming nausea.

The little cresting sausages and mushrooms just looked too much like guts. I was expecting more visible beans.

After cooking it until it was warm, I made up some bowls. Despite having a number of elements, the can isn't chock full of different stuff. Each bowl got one mushroom, one sausage, half a pork disc and one egg/bacon/cereal nugget with a scoop of beans on top. I think one could have honestly expected a couple more mushrooms at the very least.

These are our tasting notes:

The Beans

I thought they tasted pretty normal. Beans cooked in tomato sauce don't really do it for me. I like the maple kind with pork products better, but they didn't make me gag.

D thought they tasted a little meaty and weren't the best out there.

The Chopped Pork Disk

Sort of like thick and cheap salami, this was definitely the winner in terms of flavour and texture. Too bad there was also the least amount of it in the can.

The Mushroom

Was not messed up, but was ruined by the rather rank tomato sauce that everything was brined in.

The Sausage

Perhaps one of the grossest things I have ever put in my mouth. Tasteless and almost white, but with a texture akin to very soft and moldy foam. If you pressed down on this sausage, your fingerprints would have been visible in its horrifyingly yielding surface. I spat out that one mouthful with all of the dignity of a celebrity chef consuming the food of the latest loser they are trying to convert.

D ate his quietly, but acknowledged that the texture was absolutely unacceptable in a food.

The Egg/Bacon/Cereal Nugget

I like that they say 'cereal' in the description of this nugget. It made me think of some kind of toothsome wholegrain that would be snug in there with the fluffy egg and bacon bits. Instead, this tasted like...a matzoh ball. In fact I think some people would kill for their matzoh balls to be so light. It's incomprehensible how something so very, very far away from kosher could bear such a resemblance. Once again, though, in case you were contemplating it, don't be tempted to cook your matzoh balls in rank tomato sauce.

Once everything had been tried, I ate another perfect pear to get rid of all of the icky tastes. My bowl was left mostly full. D's was empty, but after he reasoned that you could get beans and actual sausages that would taste better and last longer for not much more money, he was officially not a fan.

In summary,

Breakfast-in-a-can wins for:

- Convenience

- Ability to Make a Smiley Face while Cooking (much stronger features than one with raisins would have produced)

- Novelty

Smug Oatmeal wins for:

-Taste

- Health Benefits

- Ability to Satisfy Addictive Dependencies

- Ability to Make You Feel Smug

They came out pretty even for cost.

Please take this to heart if you are ever wandering the tinned food aisle of the local grocery store desperate for a all-inclusive meal. This can is not your friend.

Oatcake Buddy of the Week: Mango, Cheddar and Chipotle

You can bet your bottom dollar that I didn't eat any oatcakes while I was back home in Canada. That's a cracker best eaten in its proper cultural context. Scottish food items are appropriate and necessary here, in Scotland, but don't really grip one with lingering desires that persist across trans-atlantic flights. Aside from a very early and very quiet bowl of oatmeal with my Dad to ready us for the farmers' market the Saturday before Christmas, and a couple of whiskies before a couple of dinners, I didn't even think about Scottish food. I thought about cookies, and all of the amazing meats that my parents were cooking and how I managed to consume quite so much Bailey's and just how many practices I would need before I pulled off a classic Christmas dinner as flawless as my mom's. I thought about excursions to fondly missed restaurants and bars and about laughing and dancing and snow.

But now I'm back to dark, working afternoons in Glasgow and between 4pm to 6pm, my daydreams return to oatcakes. This was Monday afternoon's snack and it comprised of some rough oatcakes, some old (Canadian) cheddar, a bit of mango, some strong turns of pepper and a dusting of chipotle powder. This tin of red and smokey heat was a stocking stuffer from my father Christmas, and I was more than happy to add it to my already huge amount of luggage. Remember when people discovered chipotle and everything started to get flavoured with it? I just started to miss those rosy days of 2003, I think. Anyway, now I can make up a chipotle mayonnaise any time I want to indulge in it, or anytime I want to remember Taco Bell commercials.

Watercress Bread and a Bowl of Softly Breathing Mussels

As much as the anticipation of changes and shifts dominates this time of year, there is also the surprise of just getting back to simple routines that were forgotten in the gloom of November and the chaos of December. On Sunday I found myself sitting at the only place I go for brunch, chosen both for its proximity from my bed and for the fine quality of its french toast, maple syrup and bacon. J was sitting across from me at our wee table by the window eating exactly the same thing. We always talk about ordering something else this time, but we never make good.

The day thought about being sunny for a couple of hours, but was having pangs of heavy spitting rain, so instead of a walk through the park, we bought some provisions and went home for movies and cooking. It was brunch, but I was already thinking about dinner and a lovely, soothing and clean meal. Mussels with leeks and white wine and a green loaf of watercress bread. A menu that met two of my rules for new years: 1) do things that scare you a bit (like cooking mussels and making bread) and 2) eat food that reminds you that you like living. January provides enough punishment without having to subject yourself to a guilt-inducing and joyless diet.

There is no reason why anyone should be scared of mussels. I am not entirely sure where my own anxiety stemmed from. I was definitely queasy at the thought of cooking something that was still alive, a lingering trace of my numerous vegetarian years. Not that the killing was so much of a problem, I was more afraid that I would mess it up somehow and the mutilated mussels would be inedible and resigned to a horrific life as maimed, partially cooked critters. They would look up me from between their gleaming dark shells and gurgle a plea for mercy, for a quick and effective death. I would never sleep through the night again.

Less dramatically, I was nervous that I would mess up a meal that I really like to eat.

It turns out that mussels are the easiest thing in the world to cook. Maybe you already know this, but I didn't understand just how simple it was. All you do is clean them of their beards (these are the strands they use to anchor them to things) and barnacles (which can be arduous I guess, but mine were pretty clean already). Make sure they close if you tap on them (they don't close immediately, it could take them a minute of two. I think mine were drowsy), or you feel some mussel-y resistance if you force the shells together. When that's done, you'll have a bowl of dark blue shells that are slowly and quietly clamping and gurgling. A low breath that you can just hear. Then you put leeks, garlic, shallots, whatever, in a pot with butter, stir for a bit, throw in the mussels, and dump half a bottle of white wine on top. Top them with a little splash of cream. You cover them to steam for 3-5 minutes until they open up (throw out any that don't open). And then you eat them.

And you should eat them, especially the ones that have been farmed, and especially if they've been farmed in Scotland. These guys are good for you. Loads of Omega 3s, and B vitamins, high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol. They don't have a high mercury content, they aren't fed anything weird, and they are reared in an ecologically friendly/neutral way. Here's Hugh's article about how they grow. Basically big ropes get lowered into Scottish lochs and teensy baby mussels start to grow on them.  They live on these ropes, eating whatever comes their way, and encouraging the ecosystem around them for 3-4 years. Then they are harvested and then you get to eat them. That's it. Farmed Scottish mussels are renowned for being delicious and have a higher meat-to-shell ratio than wild varieties. Plus they're cheap and local. I think a bag of these guys will make its way into my kitchen often this winter. 

To go with them, I tried out a recipe for Watercress and Nettle Bread from Britain: the Cookbook by Phil Vickery, a new Christmas acquisition. This was one of the more alluring recipes and a good excuse to try and make bread again, another thing that makes me nervous. Unfortunately, it's not nettle season so we had to make the recommended spinach substitute. Nonetheless, it was delicious and pretty simple to make. This dough is kneaded for ten minutes, which is a lot longer than I thought it was. But while I was pushing and twisting it, I could feel it puffing up a bit, all of the tiny yeast particles sighing their little sighs. Another reminder that not everything is dead and sad at this time of year. These tiny indications of life make me feel brighter. Just like the knowledge that we are gaining a minute or two of daylight again, that at 4pm today it wasn't truly dark.

I added too much salt to my loaf; it didn't ruin the bread, but I would stick to the amount recommended. It meant that I didn't have to season the sandwiches I made with its slices later on (p.s. beets get on really well with this bread). I think I would also add more watercress than spinach, but I like thing peppery. Otherwise, this recipe is solid.

(To view it a bit bigger, just double click on the picture. It should open in a new window and you can then print it off if you want. This is a new system. Tell me if it sucks.)

A Glasgow Farmers' Market Page - and more to come

Over the next little while I am going to start adding reference pages to this blog, mostly about finding food stuffs in Glasgow. The first one of these is a schedule of the Glasgow Farmers' Market for 2008. Because the vendors alternate between locations in the West End and the (much cooler) South Side, it's useful to have a schedule. I know that I always forget where it's going to be on any given week. You can find this page either just to the right of this entry, or at this link:

http://gingertablet.typepad.com/gingerblog/glasgow-farmers-market-sc.html

I'm also hoping to start a shopping directory of hard-to-find ingredients. If there's anything that you're struggling to locate, let me know.