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Sunday, January 30, 2005
what I ate last: seafood heaven What can I say, but when good food comes along it sure does it in quantity. A last minute invite to my friend Butch's house turned out to be definitely a food highlight of my year so far. We arrived just after dark to have oysters thrust in our open mouths, and that was only just the beginning. One of his brothers, who works in a restaurant in Florida, had driven up with an entire carfull of seafood - oysters, green-lipped mussels, crabs, bay prawns, the stuff I dream about here. So we had: 
ridiculous numbers of oysters, raw and smoked on the grill, 
mussels steamed with rosemary and garlic with plenty of bread to soak up the juices, 
and the highlight, a huge cajun seafood boil of crab, prawns (shrimp to you Americans, I know), sweetcorn, carrots, red potatoes, onions and smoked sausage, flavoured with masses of herbs and spices thrown in the pot. The entire 5-gallon pan was drained and tipped out onto the table and we ate, and ate, and ate. So incredibly fresh, so real, so good. 
Then we had cake made by Butch's mother, which was absolutely delicious and turned out to be another of those strange American recipes (I asked and it contained a packet of yellow cake mix, a pack of lemon Jell-O and four eggs, the 'just follow the rest of the instructions on the back of the cake pack'), and on the side there was his father's home-made barbeque pork and special sauce, and in the morning we had golden scrambled eggs from his hens. Why can't I eat like this all the time! 0 comments permalink  
Friday, January 28, 2005 what I ate last: things from my freezer I never really kept a well-stocked freezer in London. Sure, I had frozen home-made stock and frozen peas, and some tomato sauce, but it was never really full. Here, however, it's another matter. I don't know whether it's my solo status here, the lack of a real social scene, the lack of food shops or what, but I've really discovered the uses of a freezer. I never have time to really shop and the shopping here is so uninspiring as to make that after-work visit to the Pig a chore rather than a delight. But with occasional gluts of produce finding their way into my hands, odd forays into the world of real shops and so forth, I now find myself more often than not cooking up at the weekend a whole array of things to decant into tupperware and serve in the week, and freezing many other things to boot. The contents of my freezer at the moment are: Tomato sauce (about 8 servings). Pumpkin soup (about 2/3 servings) Split pea soup(2 servings) Fish stew (1 serving) Fish stock (2 pints) 2 whole chickens 2 ribeye steaks 1 pack 'Italian' sausages venison ribs venison stewmeat ground venison venison cut for roasting green peas spinach okra french fries (for when all you want is a steak frites salade) I surprise myself. Some might say, I'm old before my time. But, when most nights I eat alone and really all I want is something simple and fast, I'm so pleased to be able to give myself something homecooked and nourishing rahter than reaching for the cereal packet, like others I know. 0 comments permalink
Monday, January 24, 2005 what I ate last: megadarra Well, this I guess will have to be my entry for the beans IMBB. It's a simple dish, but given that the temperature today in my kitchen is around freezing point, it was about all I could manage, and exactly what I wanted to eat. It also sums up the essential qualities of the bean family - cheap, nourishing to body and soul, homely and divine in their simplicity. It's the poor man's food of the Middle East, known as megadarra, or mujadarra, or many variants of that word. Nothing could be simpler - lentils, brown rice, onions, some spices. Sounds pretty boring - yet somehow it's one of the best foods. The key is the caramelized onions on top which somehow lift this dish to the sublime with their soothing sweetness, texture and intensity. Basically, you put some brown rice on to cook with a bay leaf and salt, then finely chop an onion and some garlic and soften, adding plenty of ground cumin and coriander seed. Then add your lentils (ideally puy lentils, but ordinary brown ones will do), water in proportion (around twice as much water as lentils) bring to the boil then cover to simmer. Meanwhile chop up more onions into thin crescents (around half an onion per person) along with a bit more garlic, and saute slowly with salt in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. There's no way you can use a thin-bottomed one for this, much less a teflon monstrosity. They will cook down to a beautiful golden colour, sweet and soft. When the lentils and rice are nearly done, add the one to the other to finish cooking (add more water if neccesary) and to blend the flavours. I tend not to cook them together from the start as they've got different cooking times, but they can be done together if you want to save washing-up. Serve with the caramelized onions on top and a bowl of yoghurt mixed with peppermint on the side. It's so simple, yet somehow, for a cost of about a dollar per person, I can't think of something I'd rather eat on a cold Sunday evening. 
PS. This dish is also really good as a side to grilled spiciy lamb chops, or just about any other grilled meat. It's also great the next day cold as a salad, with a bit of fresh coriander stirred in, for example. 2 comments permalink
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 what I ate last: fajitas...it's the local Mexican again, open for business It's a very small world out there. I tend to forget it is, because in Greensboro, Alabama, I never meet anyone who knows anyone I know. And whenever they ask me if I know such-and-such, I normally have to admit defeat. But in the world of blogging...it's quite a different matter. No sooner do I sign myself up for 1000 recipes' little black books than I find out that we have a friend in common, who was here at the Rural Studio a few years ago. In the world of food, meanwhile, tonight we retreated to the Mexican as our 'house' (big tin warehouse) is sub-zero. Which means this blog entry will be pretty short as I've got to return my fingers to the warmth of my bedroom (only heated room). Actually the fajitas were pretty good tonight. Did the job, along with the huge margaritas. 0 comments permalink
Sunday, January 16, 2005 what I ate last: pork and beans Well, the 'bean' theme is taking off and I couldn't pass by the opportunity to make real pork'n'beans - good American food with a nod to the St John cookbook which I got for Christmas. Plus it was a pretty chilly night and this kind of food is exactly what was needed. This really is an amalgam of the 'beans and bacon' and the 'pork belly with lentils' recipes in the St John cookbook. I really wanted to follow the instructions for one of these dishes precisely but a lack of ingredients meant it was improvisation time. My only regret was that I wasn't organised enough to used dried beans soaked overnight, as the beans you get in cans here tend towards the mushy, but I restrained myself from stirring them in order not to break them up. Also, I have no idea what American names for beans really mean (navy beans? great northern beans?) so it was guesswork about that too. But it turned out pretty damn fine at the end of the day! The recipe went something like this: Roughly chop one onion, peel a head of garlic (I like to keep the cloves intact so you get gorgeous gooey garlic nuggets), saute in the bottom of a big pan with olive oil. When they are softening and translucent, add a large tin of chopped tomatoes, a couple of bay leaves, some thyme and oregano, salt and pepper. Meanwhile drain and rinse your beans (in my case, a can each of pinto, navy and great northern beans but I think the great northern beans dissolved too much), and brown your pork. I used pork neck that I got in the Piggly Wiggly, which worked really well as it had the requisite layering of fat and meat, and was really cheap which seems to me to be in the spirit of the dish. Don't chop up the pork, leave it in as it comes (trimmed if necessary) and just brown it with a bit of salt while the tomatoes reduce to a thicker sauce. Then add the beans to the sauce, heat through, nestle your pieces of pork in the pan, then cover and leave on a very low simmer for 1 1/2 hours. If I had my le Creuset casserole dish I would put it in the oven for this stage, but as I only have the biggest pan to be found in the Dollar General which has a thin base and plastic handles, it sat on top of the stove. 
By the time it's done, the meat will be wobbly and tender and beautiful, and the beans will hopefully still retain some bite. A bit of parsley on top does wonders and a green salad wouldn't go amiss for afters. Check out the thrift store crockery.  1 comments permalink
Saturday, January 15, 2005 what I ate last: fried chicken and fries from Crispy Chick It's as bad as it sounds. Actually, it sounds like it should be good, in a retro backwoods Alabama way. But no, Crispy Chick is a bad idea. It wasn't my choice - but Mustang Oil was vetoed by today's lunch companion, the venerable Johnny Parker, for reasons he did not care to share. I don't understand why Crispy Chick is black Greensboro (and white JP's) eating venue of choice, as it's truly horrible hormonally enhanced frozen and fried chicken, manky fries, nothing good at all apart form the fact that their sweet tea doesn't taste awful. I gave most of my chicken to Johnny's dog, Doofus, who ate it in the truck and slobbered all over me. Nice. And it looks like there ain't going to be no Taco Tuesday for a while, as the local Mexican suffered this morning from one of their employees not knowing how to drive a stick-shift truck and putting it right through the front wall and plate-glass window. Pretty amusing. Especially when I went by later and saw they had all the tables and chairs out front and all the employees were sitting around drinking beer while some hapless workmen mates of theirs tried to sort out the mess. I should have got a photo but Johnny wouldn't stop the truck. 0 comments permalink
Wednesday, January 12, 2005 what I ate last: Last night, following up on the bean theme I did make one of my favorite things, the spinach and chickpea spaghetti I've blogged before here. I thought of it as an entry to IMBB but alas, my camera ran out of battery just at the moment of photographing my plate, and you know that pasta can't wait to be eaten. So it's going to have to wait. The history of this dish lies somewhere in the Southern Mediterranean. In Spain you often find spinach and chickpeas on the menu as a dish of its own. I don't know where my mother got the recipe from, but I do remember the first time it turned up on my plate and that she said she had just discovered it somewhere (as opposed to one of those dishes that's been part of your diet from birth). If you have left-over sauce from this, it's really great the next day as the filling for a frittata/tortilla/spanish omelette/whatever you like to call that dish. 0 comments permalink
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 what I ate last: toast and peanut butter with tea The theme for the next Is My Blog Burning?, in which I've always meant to participate but somehow always missed the deadline, is beans. Oh no. How to choose between the multitude of wonderful dishes involving any kind of legume at all? Is it megadarra, the Middle Eastern 'poor man's food' that is one of the great comfort foods ever? or cassoulet, daring the multitude of hardened opinions over how it should be made? or the green bean and rare seared tuna stir-fry I encountered once in Biarritz? or my mother's lentil soup? her butter bean soup? any of her soups (they all seem to include a bean)? or St John pork and lentils? or japanese sweet aduki bean soup and dumplings? or any of the million good things to do with a chickpea? The list goes on but I'm almost daunted by the size of the field. Beans are great, beans are cheap, beans are nutritious, yet I'm irresistibly reminded of the song of the chefs in Britten's opera Paul Bunyan, where the two cooks can only do soup (Sam Sharkey) or beans (Ben Benny) and the whole camp becomes utterly tired of them... 0 comments permalink
Monday, January 10, 2005 what I ate last: As an aside to the last post, see this post from Jane Galt and the inane comments about food poverty that follow. I put my oar in, of course, but some people had better get out of NYC and see how the rest of America has to shop and cook. 0 comments permalink
what I ate last: spaghetti with raw tomato and garlic sauce I went shopping today to stock up for the new semester. Super Target, I have to guiltily confess, but look here, there's no ethical shopping to be done around here for 100 miles. And even Super Target, which is the doyenne of the West Alabama shopping scene, is totally miserable. Not even free-range eggs, which every corner shop in London now sells. No free-range chicken, much less any other free-range/organic stuff. A meat section the size of a Tesco Express [extremely small, if you're unfamiliar with English superstores] and an even worse fish section with evil-looking, glowing, vacuum-packed prawns. Weirdly, no real parmesan although they sell rather horrible-looking pecorino, and in general, totally miserable American versions of European cheeses, all plastic and inedible. And I don't understand what happens to the rest of the sheep when the only cut of lamb they sell is a loin chop. Of course, if you want it frozen in a cardboard box ready to go in the microwave, you can get it. America really needs to get its food situation sorted out. Nowhere in England are things this bad. Even a Tesco in Middlesbrough [grim town in the North of England] has a whole aisle of fresh vegetables, not just a miserly little corner. It's not rocket science why you're all obese, when even the well-meaning and food-obsessed like me have to try so hard to get anything real on my plate, that I almost give up and subsist on barbeque sandwiches. It makes cooking really boring, too, when you're never surprised by a new seasonal thing turning up in the shops. Sigh, moan, gripe, yawn. 0 comments permalink
Sunday, January 09, 2005 what I ate last: it's back to the local Mexican... Back to Bama, and goodbye to fresh fish, varied vegetables and ethnic restaurants. For old time's sake, we go to El Tenampa for our back-home dinner, say hello to Jesus (the manager), Blair (the waitress) and the other staff. Then it's back home for green tea made in a saucepan (why doesn't rural America do teapots?), blogging and bed for my jet-lagged little self. 0 comments permalink
Wednesday, January 05, 2005 what I ate last: pot-roast chicken with winter vegetables and aioli, green salad Yesterday was a grim and miserable day - cold and rainy. Plus we were going to the football game in the evening so we needed a post-match meal that would warm us up again and could sit happily in the oven for the couple of hours we were going to be gone. Hence this sort-of amalgam of a St John-y boiled chicken with a more traditional pot-roast, the principle being to brown the bird all over, stuff it in a big pan, surround it with vegetables, almost-cover with water and lay two strips of bacon on its breast, leave in a medium oven for 2 1/2 hours. Actually the weather wasn't that cold at the game, but we nearly lost (just salvaging a draw). Coming home, unfortunately the bloody thing wasn't actually cooked. I blame it on my boyfriend's oven, in my one it would have been done. But in his it was too low a heat (his isn't as fan-assisted as mine) so we had another half-hour of drinking beer and post-match deconstruction while we whacked the heat up for a bit. As a result it wasn't quite as perfect as it should have been, but nevertheless warming and soothing as only moist, poached-ish chicken can be. And turnips...what a joy. The aioli is the most obvious debt to St John where they always serve it with their boiled chicken and it goes very well indeed. Plus it's a great excuse to make mayonnaise, one of the most satisfying culinary alchemies to create. 0 comments permalink
Tuesday, January 04, 2005 what I ate last: rillettes d'oie, coquilles St Jacques aux champignons sauvages, un petit cafe Another meal with a bunch of wonderful food enthusiasts, this time in a restaurant in London. The company was assembled informally in honour of Sybille Bedford, legendary writer and in the best tradition of eccentric, forthright English women travellers, and consisted of her and her French companion, the actress Aliette Martin, and Jill Norman, formerly in charge of the food list at Penguin, and her husband Paul, along with my parents and me. Old-fashioned French food, old-fashioned French waiters such as I haven't seen for a long time (dinner jackets and bow ties and all), very good wine (ah, a 1990 Margaux, mmmm...) and lots of food talk chez Le Colombier in Chelsea. Sybille has just completed her latest (and possibly last) book, and Jill also has just finished a book on winter food. A sneak preview: apparently snails with spinach are the latest discovery. My father met Sybille without knowing who she was over dinner a long time ago, and their shared love of travel and food has kept them going ever since. If anyone hasn't read The Legacy or A Visit to Don Otavio, you must. I was hugely flattered when she said that she had read what I had written on this website about eating alone, and that she felt exactly the same way about the joys of solo eating in strange places. My breast swells with undeserved pride. 0 comments permalink
Sunday, January 02, 2005 what I ate last: potato, pea and courgette soup, cumin-crusted lamb, roasted tomatoes, aubergine sauce, roast fennel, couscous, sweet potato mash, pear tart It's really fantastic to go to dinner with friends who are also amazing cooks and excited about food. Last night at dinner with old Suffolk friends, so much of the conversation was about food - not just the fantastic spread that they produced for us but also food in America, food in the South, previous meals we'd had together, recipes we'd traded and their subsequent development, family trade secret recipes (being a Jewish family, it's cheesecake) and the famous Chestnut Cake Incident. The Chestnut Cake Incident occurred when these friends came to dinner at my parents' house, when I was approximately four years old. The husband is a fantastic dessert and cake cook, and would always bring some amazing concoction to any dinner with us. This time it was a sweet chestnut and chocolate cake. I can remember it vividly, sitting on a plate on the chest in the hall where we eat, the pale-ish brown colour, the light smooth texture, the smell, the taste... It made such an impression on me that I had to write a thank-you letter afterwards, and on it I smeared a little bit of the left-over cake to remind them how good it smelt. They still have the letter, but somehow Peter never found the recipe again for this orgasmically brilliant cake. So the search for the holy grail continues, and last night another version of the same cake appeared, that they had made the day before. It wasn't the same, we all agreed, although close...but a bit too chocolatey and not enough chestnut, a bit denser, a bit darker. But maybe with a bit of tweaking... 0 comments permalink
what I ate last: lamb and quince tagine, vegetable hotpot, couscous, salad and pumpkin pie The above was the menu for our New Years Eve party (blogged in full on my other blog here). Most of it, I hate to say, was cooked not by me but by my parents and my neighbours. However, the pumpkin pie was entirely the work of me and my boyfriend, faithfully following my instructions in the kitchen. We actually made two with a little bit of experimentation going on: the first exactly as the recipe said (mixing pumpkin puree, milk and spices with three eggs beaten whole) and the second with the eggs beaten separately - the yolks mixed in with the pumpkin and the whites beaten very stiff and folded in. The conclusion was that the second method is by far superior. Everyone at the party thought one pie was mine and one my boyfriend's, trying to play us off each other, and I was very proud to be able to say that no, we collaborated! Unheard of in my kitchen-control-freak world, and no fights occurred either. It's fine when someone just does what you tell them to do... PS. Witness the washing-up. Are we the only people left without a dishwasher, and am I the only person who rather enjoys bouts of drunken washing-up at 1am? 
PPS. Another excitement: I got given the famous St John cookbook for Christmas. I can't wait to get cooking with it in Alabama, where weird bits of pig are easier to find than common vegetables... 0 comments permalink
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