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Sunday, January 15, 2006
what I ate last: Roast pheasant with wild mushroom sauce, mash and puy lentils
 Sunday evenings should be all about digging in the freezer and cupboard and finding tasty things to cook up while lazing around in the pajamas that one still hasn't quite gotten out of. Especially if, like me, you're struggling with having horrible deadlines which are chaining you to your laptop and eating is pretty much the only thing (well, apart from impromptu drinking sessions after your football team wins 7-0) that makes life still worth living.So I was really happy to remember that I still had a pheasant in the freezer. Perfect winter Sunday food. Time enough to defrost it, find a whole load of dried wild mushrooms that just needed to be eaten up, three large potatoes in the bottom of the fridge that also required consuming, and thank my domestic instincts for having lots of jars of pulses around. It was a supremely good, simple and satisfying meal. Roasted the pheasant for half an hour, made a good wild mushroom sauce (sauted onion, mushrooms, mushroom juice, seasoning) and mustardy mash, dressed the al dente puy lentils with a little lemon and olive oil while the bird rested for ten minutes, adding the roast juices to the mushroom sauce, and voila. Salad for afters, soaking up the gravy left on the plate. And the best thing is, I was on my own, so I get the leftovers for a Monday supper - mash into potato cakes, cold partridge with hot reheated mushrooms, lentils as a salad with loads of parsley if I remember to buy any - I can't wait. 0 comments permalink  
Thursday, January 12, 2006 what I ate last: Leek and potato soup Why is it that home-made soups are always better than even the most superior restaurant/shop versions? I often get soup for lunch near work and (although it comes from Konditor and Cook) it is distinctly underwhelming almost all the time - too thin and too salty, as if to make up for the lack of substance in it - and also with way too much of whatever herb they decide goes, for the same reason. There is never any texture, which for me is the key thing about soup. Sometimes the soup tastes like it is just salt, pepper and herb. I think they cheat in ways that they would never do with their superb cakes, and use crap out of a tin for the rest, although I have no proof. They should have more pride. Anyway, today I am working at home, so I got to make myself soup for lunch. Ah, how nice. It was so simple, and so good. How can anyone make those leek and potato soups that are all smooth and bland, when a semi-chunky textural one is so much better? and why do people feel the need to load the thing with cream and even cheese, until the fact that it actually has delicious potato and leek in it gets completely lost? My version went like this: Finely slice a small onion and a couple of garlic cloves into thin crescents, and start to sweat in a saucepan while cutting up a couple of large potatoes into decent cubes (without peeling. I like the taste of the skin). When the onion is translucent, add the potato and sweat for a few minutes until the potato starts smelling nice and sweet, then add water, some Marigold powder, a bay leaf and a little black pepper. Bring to the boil, then simmer until the potato is pretty much cooked. Meanwhile, cut up a leek along the diagonal roughly every half-inch or so. Add to the soup, but reserve a little bit of the leek to add raw at the end as a garnish. Simmer gently until the leek is soft. Then I just crushed most of the potato (which is already collapsing) against the side of the pan with the wooden spoon, so it thickens the soup but there are still some chunks around. If you were making a larger quantity you could blend it really quickly before you add the leek, just one or two pulses so it is still textural. While the leek is cooking, finely chop up some raw ginger and the left-over leek as a garnish. I also found a small left-over smoked kabanos (Polish sausage) in the fridge, sliced that up and added it to the soup to bring a bit of smokey depth, which was really nice. When you are ready to serve, check the seasoning, then sprinkle the ginger and leek on top of the soup once you've dished it into the bowl. Delicious, homely, warming, textured, filling - what more do you want for a January lunch that takes about 20 mins from start to finish? 0 comments permalink
Monday, January 02, 2006 what I ate last: Christmas debauchery I never got round to, at the time, blogging the most extravegant meal that occurred over the Christmas break. It was a fantastic mixture of the rustic and the astronomically decadent - and what more does one really want from a meal? I have to admit to not having actually read any food blogs for a while (lack of time, whatever) and having a browse this evening I was struck by how fussy so many people are with their home cooking. It's home, guys, not a restaurant! why not cook the kind of stuff you never eat in a restaurant rather than create over-the-top confections that will never be as good as the real thing in whatever fancy joint you are imitating. I'm not going to name names (or, in the way of blogging, link links) as that would be mean, but I'm sure y'all know what I mean... So, our rustic-decadent feast. What can you say to a meal where you start off with half a pound of two different kinds of caviar. Yes, that's one whole pound of caviar between four of us. Iranian Oscietra vs. some farmed French caviar. A tasting. On home-made blinis (my mother triumphed; they were light and fantastic) with nothing else. Just a tiny blini, a gloriously heaped spoonful of ice-cold caviar, into mouth, minor orgasm and repeat. Until you are reduced to licking the spoon and passing fingers around the tin. Washed down with neat Stolichnaya all gloopy from having been in the freezer. In the interests of anyone's research into caviar, the Oscietra was lighter in colour and subtler in taste, the French very black, tangier and stronger. All I can say is thank you to the nameless and incredibly generous friend of ours who brought the goods. We, quite obviously, don't have that kinda cash lying around. But what we do have, hiding away in the cellar, is some damn fine wine. So, the next course; the rustic, in the form of boiled salt beef, a mound of crunchy quick-sauted shredded cabbage, and potato latkes, alongside the sublime (again, a double tasting) - a 1970 Chateau Montrose, and a 1983 Grand Puy Lacoste. Life is tough. Again, we tasted, savoured slowly, measuring the astonishing depth and fruit that both wines (especially the Montrose) still had. They were both still dark in colour and long, full without losing good leanness and acidity, complex, changing as time went by and absolutely delicious. We were quite astonished at how youthful they still tasted. My father, true to form, started telling tales of his old days roving around Bordeaux in search of fine wine for Adnams - including a lunch at one chateau with a group of friends, where course followed course and wine followed wine, until it had grown dark but the conversation still flowed. Apparently, noticing the time, the owner said something along the lines of why stop now and called out to his housekeeper 'Hortense, serve dinner!'. And the night carried on. We finished with a fantastic fresh apricot crumble. Coffee, dark bitter chocolate. We joked about calling for breakfast, but in truth we were sated, savoring the tastes left in our mouths, ready to crawl into bed. I certainly had sweet dreams. Who needs fancy dishes and pretty drizzles of sauce when you can have a plateful of salt beef and a glass of 1970 Montrose? Update: Good job we ate all that caviar. It's now been banned! 1 comments permalink
what I ate last: Pumpkin and split pea soup
 Back after the traditional Christmas over-eating and New Year's debauchery, it's a pleasure to get back to homely winter food. This soup is one of my favorites, but in the way of these things I'd somewhat forgotten about it until I was at my parents' house over the holiday and my mother made it. It's a recipe from Claudia Roden's book of Jewish food - a fantastic volume of ethnography as much as cuisine, delving into the history and myths of Jewish cooking from all over the world, each recipe accompanied by wonderful and scholarly notes. This soup is, apparently, a traditional Sephardic New Year's soup - appropriate perhaps for this time of year, although obviously the Jewish New Year is in October not January. It is traditional to eat sweet things to wish in a sweet new year - honey, tzimmes, apples - and this soup is sweet and fragrant, warming and comforting, and festive to look at too. It's an easy dish to make. Simply saute some onion, garlic, fresh ginger until soft, then add the split peas and plenty of water (though not too much - the soup should be fairly thick and you can always add more later), bring to the boil then simmer until the peas are pretty much cooked. Then add the cubed pumpkin (use a small, hard, sweet one with green skin, not a watery halloween-type one), a fairly generous amount of saffron, a cinnamon stick (or powder if that's what you've got), seasoning (a bit of Marigold powder doesn't go amiss) and a tiny bit of chilli, and simmer until the pumpkin is collapsing but not yet mushy. It's good with coriander or spring onions as a garnish. The best bit about this soup is its texture - the bite of the peas and the soft dissolving chunks of pumpkin. You can squish some of the peas against the side of the pan if you prefer it to have a slightly smoother consistency. It's a thoroughly satisfying dish and I'm looking forward to having the leftovers already. 0 comments permalink
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