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Wednesday, December 28, 2005
what I ate last: soup and mochi At lunch today my mother made a very traditional japanese New Year's food, which nevertheless I'd never had before. Mochi is a kind of rice cake that you get either fresh or dried - and traditionally is apparently eaten in soups around New Year. The dry stuff, which is what we had, looks like an inedibly rock-hard, dry square of fudge but then you put it in the oven or grill it, and it magically softens and puffs up, becoming something like a gooey ball of cheese with air inside it in texture, but obviously nothing like it in taste, which is a comforting toasted rice taste, a bit like the lovely sticky bits at the bottom of the pan when you burn it accidentally-on-purpose. Altogether it looks quite strange - but is really delicious in soup, when you put it, a bit like a croute, in the bottom of the bowl before the rest of the soup is poured on. It is quite sticky and apparently, every year in the papers you hear about lots of old people who choke on their mochi. Today we had it with a sort of Japanese variant soup with the strange furry potato-like things, carrots, tofu all diced, slivers of raw leek, ginger and fennel and little bits of toasted orange zest on top as a garnish. It was thoroughly heart-warming stuff before we set out for a good walk in the snowy fields. We didn't make our own mochi, of course, although I found lots of interesting links on my google search about how to make it and all the rituals. My mother bought it at Fresh & Wild... 0 comments permalink  
Tuesday, December 27, 2005 what I ate last: turkey, turkey and more turkey Cooking with one's parents is always a difficult task, and for me one of the most taxing things about Christmas. I start off with all good intentions abou being a co-operative, silent helper, but the combination of that parental trait to always treat your offspring as though they are five with my generally bolshy kitchen persona is never a comfortable one. I started off well, replacing any thought of Christmas presents with a basket full of food from London - cheeses from Neal's Yard (where I endured a 20 min long queue - why didn't I order in advance, given my office is literally above the shop?), Pierre Marcolini chocolate from Verde & Co (Jeanette Winterson's shop), coffee from Monmouth, potted shrimps from the market, oranges, pomegranates and sharon fruit from my local Bangladeshi grocers, and my mother's special request - the small furry potato-like vegetables whose name I know not, but which are common to both Bangladeshi and Japanese cooking. I even brought down one silly-but-actually-useful kitchen gadget for them - the mini Koala juicer for which I braved John Lewis on Oxford Street (better than Borough Market, surprisingly!) But then, of course, I was incapable of doing anything else right. Being charged with helping make the stuffing for the turkey, I first of all took the approach of asking instructions for absolutely everything (how big to chop the onions, how many leeks to use) but even that couldn't protect me from being micro-managed over the production of breadcrumbs in the blender, and ticked off that I hadn't chopped up the apricots fast enough to add them at precisely the right point (not my fault! the crusader inwardly screams - as I had to chop up all the vegetables for HIS batch of stuffing as well). Then, the next day it was my potato peeling technique that came in for unnecessary scrutiny. Then, I had a go at him for changing the traditional Christmas starter to something that I thought inappropriate and inadequate in quantity (two quails eggs per person, if you please. Two? at Christmas?). By the time that crusade had reached a grumpy truce (after obligatory Christmas door-slamming) it was time to eat... Since then, the rest of the holiday has (touch wood) gone fairly peacefully as regards kitchen politics. I've basically tried to stay well clear, merely eating myself silly and not commenting on the slightest thing. Not even when he added coriander leaves to stewed mushrooms at dinner today (I have strong feelings about the correct use of coriander) or his (to my mind) over-wasteful trimming of the turkey leftovers. Two opinionated cooks. One kitchen. Best shut up and keep munching. 0 comments permalink
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 what I ate last: After America: Coffee I just realised that I haven't posted a thing on this blog since I returned from the States. Today I just got an urge to write about one little food-related thing and perhaps it is apt, for my first post-USA post, that it should be on American coffee. When I returned to England, I had a coffee soon after and it made me go crazy. I hadn't drunk a coffee that strong (and it was only a good filter coffee, not even an espresso) for so long, I got minor palpitations and felt rather light-headed. No wonder those early explorers were excited to discover this new drug. So I didn't drink any coffee at all for perhaps the first month, instead becoming a very Englihs tea-drinker, with a cup every couple of hours some days. But as my life got busier and I got more tired, I started to consider the amount of caffeine in tea to be a bit inadequate, and began thinking about coffee. I started having the odd filter from the wonderful coffee house just below my office - but they almost always remained half-drunk although I stopped feeling light-headed from this and they certainly worked, in terms of my alertness. Then, the other day I went to a meeting, was offered coffee and got crap instant coffee - weak and watery. I loved it. I have a confession to make. I actually like American coffee better than the European stuff. Today, working at home, I've made two pots so far of watery coffee to glug down, like a continuous and mild drip, while I work. It's really great. I feel like a foodie heretic and I'm waiting for y'all to burn me at the stake. 0 comments permalink
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