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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
what I ate last: tea and cake Today I indulged a long-standing request from certain American friends to show them what a 'real English tea-party' is like. So, I gave a tea-party like no-one actually does any more...Since when has anyone in England actually had a tea-party that includes cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sandwich cake and jam tarts? Oh, but it was sooo fun...Yes, three types of sandwiches, scones, and the above-mentioned cake and tarts. I don't think I've eaten a jam tart since I was about five years old. They were good. So retro. So what you made when you had a doll's tea-party as a child. Altogether the whole affair was like a kid's drawing of a house with a door, three windows, pitched roof and smoke coming out of the chimney - houses don't really look like that, ever, but it's so fun to play dress-up and pretend that's what life is really like. The only gripe I had was that my part of the US of A doesn't sell the kind of bread you really need to make those little sandwiches. But it was really funny to lay out such an absurdly elaborate spread for absolutely no reason and also, now I get to eat cake for breakfast for the next few days. (Which is a habit that reminds me of staying with Daniel in Israel, because for Shabbat breakfast there we always eat cake.) The only recipe I'm going to write down here is for the scones, because I had to email my mother and ask for her recipe and I know that I have asked her for it in the past at least three times and somehow managed to lose it every time. So, from the horses mouth: 1) 8 oz self raising flour 2) about 2 oz vegetable margarine (which roughly is 2 of our serving spoonful) 3) one big or 2 small nice as possible apples (of course we use ours, but this time I had hard quite nice organic apples which I used) Chop to quite small pieces. I sometimes put them rough chopping the magimix, but yesterday I chopped, thinking that you might not have that sort of equipment. 4) Milk [she actually wrote 'yogurt (I use sheep's one)' which is a sort of weird genetic habit to do with my dairy allergies, but just use milk] 5) pinch of salt and may be a desert spoonful of sugar (I don't use it at all sugar, since we expect to have it with hedgerow jam or whatever) and 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon 6) sesame seeds 7) handful, I mean palmful currants or raisins or even sultanas if you can't find any other ones or nothing if they are not handy.... start by turning the oven to VERY hot temperature, something like 450/500. This is essential for any scone making, it's got to be very hot. put 1 in a mixing bowl with pinch of salt (people sieve those to fluff up, if you have a sieve) and cinnamon, add the margarine, rubbing in as you know you do the same way when making crumble top. Then add 3, 7 and about 5 fluid oz or half our mug amount of [milk]. Now, the dough is not very hard at all. kind of soft dough but not runny, you just have to see it is just about handlable, so careful about the water amount. You sprinkle the flat surface with some flour, and you put out the soft dough on, I think you must have seen me doing, I make a longish log shape, and cut into 2 long things, and cut from the edge one by one and make whatever size you like, Then put them out on oiled (olive oil, margarine) and floured baking tray. Brush them with leftover [milk], or beaten egg, or olive oil (this is for sesame seed to hang on the top) and sprinkle the seed on top. Put them in HOT oven about 10 minutes. These apple scones are the best thing ever. You will notice that the recipe is a bit japan-ified with the sesame seeds but that makes them really good. Cheese scones are another variation - replace the apple with grated cheese - and smell just amazing when they come out of the oven. They are totally nostalgic of my parents' kitchen in the winter. Sigh. Tea-parties are fun. I have photos but due to continued absence of digital camera they will be posted later when I get the film developed... 1 comments permalink  
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 what I ate last: Santos has probably thought I got drowned in the Black Warrior along with my little black book. Because to my eternal shame, I have been holding on to it for over two months when I was meant to write in it and pass it on in two weeks. Bad Hana. But now...I've done it, it is scanned in and will be in tomorrow's post off to Italy. Hooray. And here it is, for those of you who are curious.    1 comments permalink
Monday, June 20, 2005 what I ate last: mackerel, and homemade pesto Fish...ah, fish... One of the things I can't get hold of here at all is fish. So when I go out of town to somewhere with Big Shops I get very excited and buy lots of fish and stick it in the freezer because I never have time to cook it just then. And then I usually don't get round to cooking it for ages because I never have the foresight to take it out of the freezer in time to defrost for supper. And thus it was with the two mackerel I bought at the temple of Whole Foods in New Orleans. Finally, however, on Friday I cooked my two mackerel. Now, I know they weren't at their best being frozen, and also I really wanted a proper grill to cook them on but I don't have one, so I roasted them instead. But still...they were good. I ate the first one as it was, simple with lots of lemon and a tomato salad, and I made the second one into fishcakes with mashed potato and some finely chopped onion. Yum. Fishcakes are good. They keep, too, and do mature a little with age (in a good way) so today when I had the leftovers, heated up in the oven, they were the perfect panacea to the rather alcoholic overindulgence that had occurred this weekend. Then later today I made a little batch of pesto. I have a little basil plant, you see, which also journeyed back from Whole Foods with me. I can't stand shop-bought pesto (it's on the level of the shop-bought mayonnaise hate) but the real thing is obviously like manna from heaven. I remember the very first time I ever had real pesto, about four years ago, and realising that pesto is actually meant to be bright emerald green, not that puke colour that it is in those little jars. And that it's meant to be so intenesely scented that it practically knocks you out and you only need a spoonful to coat a whole pan of pasta. (And yes, I have pine nuts here, and real pecorino to put in it...) 1 comments permalink
Saturday, June 11, 2005 what I ate last: cabbage salad I wish I wasn't so forgetful. It's all too easy for me to forget about certain ingredients that I really like and to think that my meals have become rather boring, without realising that for some reason I'd just completely forgotten that things exist out there that I like to eat but haven't bought for a while. Today, I had even forgotten about something I had bought from the shops - a cabbage. I really love cabbage. Someone had better keep reminding me of this, though, as the humble, self-effacing vegetable has a habit of disappearing from my diet. This particular cabbage I bought a few days ago because I had bought some real sausages at Whole Foods in New Orleans and I remembered that cabbage and sausages go rather well together. Then I put it in my fridge, ate nothing but toast and pasta for a few days and forgot about it...until today I got out those sausages, wondered why I didn't have anything to go with them, rooted around fruitlessly among old potatoes and turnips, and then a little lightbulb went off above my head. Ah, the absolute bliss of that first mouthful of finely shredded raw cabbage, tossed with lots of lemon juice, a little olive oil, salt and a sprinkling of caraway seeds. I intended only to have a taster and eat the rest with the sausages (which as I write are sizzling in the pan) but it tasted too good and I have just polished the whole lot off. Welcome back, cabbage. 0 comments permalink
Monday, June 06, 2005 what I ate last: sweetcorn and a bacon sandwich It's good to know that maybe I'm an authority on something - someone searched for "my mayonnaise got runny" on Yahoo and got me! 0 comments permalink
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