Rachel Khoo's Little Kitchen in Paris

Life has been fantastically busy for me in recent weeks. I’m only comforted by the fact that this seems to be commonplace in my social circles at the moment. My diary has been filled up with scribbled times and places and the coming months look even worse. I have resolved to find time to chill out and do very little but I’ve found this rather difficult given my cumbersome schedule to date. I had a moment to reflect on this while I sat on the Tube, zipping from one engagement to another and realised that I’m not actually very good at stopping. I find it difficult to close the door on life and focus on relaxing; it seems like my ‘to do’ list has grown limbs and is incessantly tapping at the door, tapping its foot impatiently. 

Anyway, I did find time to sit still for thirty glorious minutes and decided that it would be a good time to watch something. In the mood for some light relief and some culinary inspiration, I watched The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo on BBC iPlayer. 

As you know, I’m not the biggest fan of food programmes (am I, Sophie Dahl?) but this was… okay. Better than most, I would say, mainly because she’s cooking in unchartered territory – a real kitchen. A refreshing contrast to the airy loft conversions and country farm kitchens (complete with wood-fired oven) that are the backdrops to most ‘sleb cookery programmes. I’m pretty tired of aspirational kitchens on TV; gimme real any day. Kitchen aside, Khoo is a curvy thirty-something with Hepburn-eque cheekbones who hails from Britain and has since made a name for herself in Paris.  She’s likeable and has less of the smug sheen that I’ve come to associate with TV chefs. As a Brit in France, her mission is to simplify French cookery for the masses.

Despite laying it on thick about her tiny kitchen, I feel like the producers could have made more out of the whole cooking in a confined environment concept. It may be no bigger than your average bathroom but Khoo somehow manages to squirrel a vast selection of tins, baking trays, food processors et al away somewhere. I’d love to try her madeleine recipe but I simply don’t have the space for another tin in my shoebox kitchen. Maybe they should have given us an insight into Khoo’s magic powers of storage?

The recipes are a little hit and miss but on the whole, I like them. She’s a trained pastry chef á La Cordon Bleu so needless to say her sweets look glorious. The chocolate mousse looks to die for though not all of the recipes are available on the BBC website; doubtless because they want to flog you the accompanying book to the series. During the episode that I watched, Rachel made a sumptuous looking stock (Fantastic, I thought. Real stock!) for her Bouillon de Cassolet. I found myself bristling -waste martyr that I am - as the cute and bubbly Rachel merrily discarded a huge hunk of back bacon and a handful of sundried tomatoes as they were apparently only for flavour. So they’re good for flavour but not for eating? Surely not. 

Anyway, little gripes aside, I quite liked The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo. If nothing else, the transitional clips of beautiful Paris kept me happy.Worth a watch if you like that kind of thing.

If you're curious, check out The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo on BBC iPlayer here or watch it as a chaser to Saturday Kitchen at 11:30am on a Saturday morning.

2012 budget and your food bill

All of my channels of news are filled to bursting point with one word: Budget. While the financial types are frantically forecasting for the coming year, my thoughts turn, predictably, to my belly. If you’re wondering how the newly announced budget will affect how much you spend on food, read on.

I’ve always thought that VAT – particularly when it comes to food - is a complex concept. You only need to look to the McVities Jaffa Cake Biscuit controversy to realise that the supermarket is a veritable minefield when it comes to tax. You can release your death grip on the biscuit/cake tin for the moment though as the budget has savoury morsels in its sights for the moment. Many large supermarkets now have a hot counter where you can select a rotisserie chicken or hot sausage roll. Several times, I’ve lost The Boy only to find him rooted to the spot, transfixed by the teasing sight of juicy hot poultry spinning away like a baby staring intently at the whirrings of its wind-up mobile.

Currently, supermarkets are able to sell hot food – like the aforementioned chooks and pastry-clad animal offcuts – sans tax because they claim that they’re not designed to be eaten immediately and instead keep the produce hot to improve its appearance. The government plans to tighten up the loop hole that allows this; basically, if anything is sold above “ambient” air temperature, the government wants a slice of the price. The only exception to this rule is freshly baked bread. Although retailers have refused to speculate on future price rises, many expect that they will pass the extra costs on to consumers. This might also cause headaches for sandwich outlets that sell their offerings fresh or toasted as the hot variety – despite having the same ingredients – will cost more. Greggs are up in arms.

For those that like to live on chemicals, sports nutrition and body building drinks are going to be grouped with fizzy drinks to make them VAT-payable. This doesn’t bother me too much for two reasons. Number one: I’m not a huge fan of those types of drinks unless they’re used as a mixer (protein milkshake white Russian anyone? No!?). Number two: I’d rather eat real food than substitute them with the adult equivalent of formula milk.

Alcohol duty will remain the same, much to the disappointment of pubs and bars everywhere. There is no planned change to the escalator which rises the duty paid on beers, wines and spirits at the rate of 2 per cent above inflation until 2015. The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) claims that this will lead to the average cost of a pub pint of lager rise to £3.17 and that beer tax has risen by 42 per cent since the policy was introduced four years ago.

Until this point, readers who don’t indulge in alcohol, protein gloop or ready-cooked chicken might have been feeling smug however don’t get too complacent yet. Filling your car might well be painful now but fuel duty is set to rise by 3p (per litre?) in August which will have obvious knock on effects to the cost of running a vehicle. However, this is likely to hit households twofold in a financial double whammy as fuel costs are linked to food costs. All of the food that we buy in the supermarket is transport by road at some point during its journey to the shelf so as fuel prices rise so do distribution costs – a bill that is picked up by the consumer.

How will the budget be affecting what you eat and drink? Let me know your thoughts on the 2012 budget.

Fairtrade Fortnight 2012

Guess what? It’s fairtrade fortnight! Did you know that three in every ten bananas bought in the UK are fairtrade? Sainsburys have taken the radical step of only selling fairly traded bananas - even their 'Basics' economy bananas bare the mark.

Fairtrade has always been close to my heart after having the concept drummed into me while at university, which happened to be the first fairtrade university institution. I am passionate ensuring that producers and growers get a fair price for their wares - in an ideal world, all of my foodstuffs would come from the UK but this simply isn't possible (I love rice and sugar... Mmm, rice pudding!). Buying products with the fairtrade mark assures you that you're buying ethical produce and it's on a huge variety of products - from tea and coffee to chocolate and clothes.

Get involved!
Wondering what is fairtrade?

Fairtrade is a term that defines a product which has been bought from a famer or producer who works in decent conditions for a reasonable wage.

Read more about Fairtrade here.

Fairtrade Fortnight runs from Monday 27th February until Sunday 11th March 2012. You can find out more about this years campaign here as well as more details of events near you.

Telling porkies

You're aware of my love affair with Stylist magazine after their Nigella-edited caramel issue. Well, Stylist's brother title (one for the boys) is Shortlist which is another fab weekly free paper. They write about lots of fun stuff including the very best in gadgetry, entertainment and male style. Having been something of a tom boy growing up, I like to pluck a copy out of the arms of the newspaper fairies that stoically brave the streets and underground during it's busiest periods to bestow us with light entertainment on our travels.

They have various "Instructions for men" ("an instruction manual worth reading"!) and the above diagram grabbed my eye while I read about how not to be conned online and other useful stuff. Accompanying their "How to make a proper pork pie from scratch" article, Dave Hopkins beautiful illustration harks back to the good ol' days of black and white etchings. I adore the detail; it reminds me of some of the worn cookery books that live on my parent's kitchen shelves.

Phone Stacking: Modern table manners

You're absorbed in an animated conversation with your friends or loved ones over a well-earned meal. The atmosphere is warm and friendly until a beep or "comedy" noise rings out among the chatter and a member of your party fumbles their phone from their pocket. Before you know it, the conversation has dissolved as everyone around the table, inspired by the black sheep of the group, decides to check their phones. Food goes cold and conversations run dry as the majority "quickly" check their messages, facebook, twitter and emails. Does this sound familiar?

Mobile telephone are awesome. I'm a huge fan; they're great! But they're also incredibly disruptive at the dinner table. I stumbled upon Telephone Stacking, the ingenious etiquette game for the dinner table. When your group sits down to eat, each person in turn places their phone facedown one on top of the other. If anyone breaks the stack by checking their phone has to pay the bill for everyone. The entire table! If everyone resists temptation, everyone pays their own share. Good eh?

Brothers that bake and other manly stuff

I don't watch much TV - somehow I don't seem to find the time - but I did catch a little of the new Channel 4 series last night, The Fabulous Baker Brothers. I had just finished my dinner and switched on the box as I sat down to eat. I channel hopped until my screen was filled with a masculine pair of hands enthusiastically kneading bread. Knowing that The Boy and I were in synch and that he was just sitting down to a meal in Somerset, I called to let him know that there was something food-orientated that might be worth a watch. Our conversation went something like this:

The Boy: Hello?
Me: Hello! If you're watching TV, you might want to switch to Channel 4. There's a food programme that I haven't seen before... It's got boys in it.
The Boy: *switching channels* Ah yes, I see. They look smug.
Me: Well, they've been giving some interesting advice about homemade bread so far so you might be interested.
The Boy: *distracted by TV* Because everyone has a stone oven in their corner of their kitchen...
Me: Enjoy!
The Boy (by text message): Kinda like them but they are also kinda annoying. Or at least the way its cut is. Also, who has beef dripping!? Xxxx
Sometime later...
The Boy (by text): I've just realised this is Nigella for women!
Me (by text): I think you're their target audience actually. Bloke recipes with few measured ingredients. A few snazzy gadgets but no pie tins or specific equipment needed. Not v healthy. Boy food!

You may know of my contempt for TV chefs as I've vented my spleen about Sophie Dahl and tried to convert to Nigella's wiles but I didn't mind this. My main bug bear with the programme is one that can be swung at most TV cookery right now - the food isn't particularly healthy. Doughnut sticks, chip butties, pies and steak sandwiches don't make for a very nutritious diet but the Brothers aren't as bad as some, I suppose. The faux sibling rivalry grated on me too - "Now, don't tell Henry but..." acommpanied by a sly glance at camera - come on, boys! You're on TV; don't be silly now.

Saying that, Tom's tips for pastry and bread-making were helpful and seemed to offer a good starting point for first timers as well as hints and tips for the more experienced. Despite The Boy's comments, I really do think that this is one for the boys. There were no lingering finger-to-lips camera shots to get our pulses racing (shame...) and the format, to me, is pretty masculine. The camera shots were fast and choppy and the recipes were firmly in the comfort food/tasty-stodge-and-screw-the-calories category which appeal to the majority of my male, rather than female, friends. Channel 4 bills the series as "Two brothers - one a baker, the other a chef and butcher - unlock the trade secrets of baking, and without a cupcake in sight." And girls, don't let me put you off; these guys are still pretty easy on the eye!

Although I don't approve of the food for every day, its nice to see 'proper' cooking on TV - starting from scratch with raw ingredients rather than combining ready-made elements and calling it cooking. It would be nice to see more programmes doing this. I don't mind cutting corners where necessary but tasty (healthy!) food really can be achieved quickly with fresh ingredients.

Not everyone liked the programme but I'll certainly be tuning in when I can. Check them out and let me know what you think.

The Fabulous Baker Brothers can be found on Channel 4 on Wednesday's at 8:30pm or you can catch-up on 4oD here.

Snapshot: Christmas is over...

Into the bargain bin go the mince pies, brandy cream and fruit cake. No more brandy truffles or turkey until next year. But no need to be sad! You can stock up on Easter eggs instead. It's not even 2012 yet!

Takeaway's to save drunken Londoners

A drink after work turns into a few and then a few more "because its Christmas". For many, the Christmas season is all about indulgence in food and drink but for some, it turns into a serious issue. The festive period sees such a significant rise in drunken kitchen incidents that the London Fire Brigade have launched an ad campaign that specifically targets those who might consider cooking while under the influence. The campaign, which is occupying pages in newspapers as well as billboards around the capital, features a photograph of a burger with the caption "Last night a burger saved my life". Their research shows that a quarter of accidental house fires in the capital are caused by 18 to 35 year olds when attempting to cook at home when drunk. Its hoped that, by encouraging merry makers to opt for a takeaway rather than conjuring up a drunken snack, it will cut the number of fires in the capital. 

It goes without saying that I am in agreement with any campaign that is primarily aimed at saving lives. However, the link with takeaways bothers the health-obsessed part of my brain. Why a takeaway? Why not a sandwich or a bowl of cereal? The Christmas season is generally pretty decadent for the majority of people but surely our society doesn't need any encouragement to turn to their local takeaways?

Still, I would urge you to deny your chip pan cravings after a few too many glasses of vino. Just think of the resulting mess if nothing else!

Caramel Convert?

It seems that I'm not the only one who's converted by Nigella Lawson's salted caramel recipe - the Evening Standard is raving about it too! They review Nigella's piece on the "Class A foodstuff" and provide a run down of the best salted caramel confections too. With all of this publicity, I'm betting that anything salty and sweet will be dashing off the shelves so stock up if it's your latest obsession.

Click here for a readable version that you won't need a magnifying glass for.

Make your own Christmas cake "kit"?

On my adventures in supermarket-land, I’ve noticed that many of them are selling kits for making the traditional Christmas cake. Now, on the one hand, I’m happy that they might encourage festive cake virgins to give the stodgy fruit slabs a try, which has got to be a good thing. One the other hand, the pointless packaging (individual sachets of spices? Really?) immediately gets my back up and leaves me wondering: is it really that hard to weigh out a few ingredients? It seems like commercialised “convenience” to me. It's been quite the cookery conundrum for me.

The kits themselves aren’t cheap – convenience, after all, costs – and aren’t a complete cake package. Each “kit” contains pre-weighed flour, sugar, almonds and spices as well as ready-soaked dried fruit .You’ll need to add butter and eggs which come at an additional cost. The kit itself will set you back anywhere between £7.50 - £15 depending on if you get one when its reduced. Now that the furious run-up to the big day has begun in earnest, they are discounting them left, right and centre. Assuming that you use free range eggs, you’ll need to fork out at least an additional £3. With your average home baked cake coming in around the £7.50 mark, you’d do better to make your own from scratch if you’re watching the pre-Christmas pennies.

The only thing that these kits seem to offer is convenience in the form is pre-weighed and pre-soaked ingredients as well as a tried-and-tested recipe. I suppose it could be helpful if you really don’t know where to start and probably scores highly in the supermarket impulse buy league tables. For a few of my friends, 2011 has been the year of the first Christmas cake. Instead of turning to the supermarkets for assistance, they got together and made a night of it. All newbies together; no pressure to impress, just cake baking at its best.

Let’s face it; we all know how to weigh out ingredients and there’s nothing out of the ordinary in a Christmas cake. The most difficult part is remembering to soak the fruit before you make the cake but this could be done overnight if you’re really running short of time. As far as tried-and-tested recipes, you have the internet at your fingertips! The world is your cakey (Noro-free) oyster. Plus, I’m sure there’s someone – whether it’s a parent, grandparent, friend or kindly colleague – who would lend you their trusty recipe.

So please don’t be fooled into getting one of these kits. Sure it’s probably better than buying one readymade but making one from scratch – which, in this case, basically involved getting the scales out – isn’t much harder.

Complete first-timer? Not sure where to start? The first thing you need to do is soak your fruit!

Food on the Brain

An amusing article in the Metro made me snort into my morning cup of tea. Apparently a study in the US has been evaluating the male mind. (Sometimes I toy with chucking in my job and becoming one of these mysterious “researchers” – how do you become one? It sounds like great fun!) I’ll side-step the predictable sexist remarks about there not being much to study, etc  and skip straight to the punch line. According to this study, men think about sex 19 times a day on average. That’s good and all but the interesting bit for me was that this only just trumped food (at 18 times a day) in their thought league table.

Now, you may have noticed that I’m not a boy (really really – verified by medical professionals and everything) which made me wonder a) how often to girls think about food in a day and b) how often to I think about food in a day? I’m tempted to keep a running tally on my hand though I think I’d probably skew the statistics as I tend to think about food rather a lot…

The question that dwarfs all others though, is what do men think about the rest of the time? My suggestions are detailed above!

Fat-Free Gloop

Fat free yogurt. When will I ever learn? One word. Bleugh! Okay, so maybe it’s an onomatopoeia. Either way, it was grim and I couldn’t bring myself to finish. This was mainly down to the strangely chalky and bitter aftertaste which crept in after the (equally bitter) disappointment at the lack of any kind of flavour had subsided. I double-checked the packaging and confirmed to myself that, logically, there should be at least three flavours present – yogurt, vanilla and chocolate. Alas, all that my taste buds found was an assault of sickly sweetness as the gloop covered my tongue. I’ve said it once but I’ll say it again: bleugh.

My bad experience drew me to consider the ingredients listed on the side of the offending tub. I’m assuming that vanilla comes under the blanket term “flavourings” but I was pretty bewildered by some of the other (alien) components catalogued in micro-lettering.

Acesulfame K and Aspartame are both artificial calorie-free sweeteners which is 180-200 times sweeter than table sugar which, individually, can have a bitter aftertaste. In combination with the other sweetener listed, Aspartame, it takes on a more sugar-like taste where each one masks the others aftertaste and tastes sweeter than the sum of its component sweeteners. Clever but a little Franken-food to me! Especially as it obviously hasn't worked in this case. Both sweeteners have obviously been approved for general used by the powers that be but some critics claim that they haven’t been tested adequately enough. Some suggest that artificial sweeteners of this ilk may be carcinogenic but this has been dismissed by the governing bodies.

You may recognise pectin on the list which will, I think, have been used as a thickening agent. Pectin is the lovely stuff that makes your jam set and occurs naturally in varying amounts in fruits like apples and oranges. In Europe, you'll sometimes see pectin on ingredients lists as E440 (or E440(i) or E440(ii). Strangely, the yogurt also contains gelatin, which would also act as a thickener. Animal skin and bone with your yogurt? Mm-mm! Tastes like mammal! Needless to say, this "delicious dessert" isn't vegetarian.

There's a little note saying “A source of phenylalanine” too which after some quick research tells me that the yogurt is fortified with an essential amino acid which acts as a building block for proteins in the body. Our bodies break aspartame down into its components including phenylalanine. This is good for the majority (as it is an essential amino acid which our bodies can’t make and we have to find through our food) but bad news for people with phenylketonuria, a rare genetic disorder which means that the body can’t metabolise phenylalanine.

I don’t like my food to be fooled around with though I'm aware that the only reason many of us are here today is simply the fact that we can process and keep food for distribution around the country or even world. I like to limit my processed food intake and generally make most things from scratch (as you can probably tell!). I haven't taken this to the level of my parents - my Dad makes his own yogurt! Maybe this is the kick start that I need to try it! Next time, I'll definitely be going for full fat yogurt and adding my own chocolate sprinkles (more than 0.5% too!). No matter what you eat, take the time to become familiar with what's actually in it.

'Sell By' Dates set to expire?

There's a lot of hoo-ha going around the newspapers today regarding the dates that appear on the packaging of boxes, cartons and wrappers that go in our baskets and trolleys. You know how those reporters like to make mountains out of molehills! Some of the headlines make my blood boil - "Sell-by dates to be scrapped to cut food waste" is a prime example from the BBC News website today - as they don't make it clear enough that, although some of the advisory dates are changing, there will still be dates on food wrappings.

Headlines aside, there seems to be a tug of war going on between the government who wants to cut the amount of edible food that we throw away and the food companies and supermarkets who are petrified of getting sued after consumers eating gone off produce. I can see where both are coming from - as a nation, we throw away the equivalent of £12 million a year in food which we've bought but don't eat and during 2010, there were over 84,500 cases of food poisoning in England and Wales. We need to find a happy medium that, at the end of the day, benefits us 'normal folk' as consumers.

Dates on food packaging can be useful; they're used by the supermarkets for stock rotation (whereby the seller takes measures to ensure that the oldest stock is sold first which in itself reduces waste) and many consumers use them as a guide when planning how to use the contents of their fridge or larder. Having a 'Used by' date on packaging for food which is deemed perishable (foods which need to be kept refrigerated) is actually a legal requirement in the UK in order to ensure that the food that we buy is 'safe' to eat.

The change in guidelines which are being publicised will banish 'Expiry' dates on items which won't actually become hazardous to health after a certain date and replace it with a 'Best Before' date. This would apply to things like vegetables, dried pasta or jam and it's like saying "you'd like to enjoy this item to the max, you're better off eating it before Tuesday when it won't make you ill but might not taste quite as good".

Any changes to the way we perceive food is a positive in my book but, to me, this doesn't go quite far enough. Although some bacteria that is present in food that has 'gone off' doesn't change the smell or appearance of the food, I do think that a little common sense and knowledge does go a long way. I feel like this needs to be taught, along with nutrition and cost effective cooking measures, in schools while children are still developing their relationship with food and their ideas about meals. There are a few ways that I would test an apple, onion or cucumber, for example, to see if they were past their best.

Craving more information about cutting down your food waste? Check out Love Food Hate Waste for hints and tips on everything from cutting down the amount that you buy to canny uses of those pesky leftovers.

Silver Spoon Plant Markers

Image from Shrimp Salad Circus

So there I was, enthusing about herbs when I happened across this amazing how-to for character-full plant markers. I love the idea of using old utensils to mark out plants that will eventually end up in the kitchen and then on your plate.

I’m something of a hoarder by nature, which probably drives The Boy crazy. I do my best to keep it under control and I’m much better than I used to be. I think this is something to do with the terror of moving in with someone and realising that they’re going to see how many boxes you bring through the front door. They have to live with your junk (as well as any emotional baggage you’re carting around) and you with theirs. It might also be something to do with the fact that I’ve moved at least four times in the last five years and lived out of a suitcase for around six months of that. It certainly teaches you something about travelling and living light...

Anyway, on seeing this, my hoarder tendencies have been whispering to me; encouraging me to buy up antique spoons from ebay and to make a little trip to our local charity shops in search of unusual cutlery. Surely one or two spoons or a funky spork wouldn’t hurt, says the little voice. But no. I’ll be good (I can hear The Boy breathing a sigh of relief).

Still, if you have the space, time and ability, why not make a few of these beautiful markers? A treat for the eyes and reusable too. And while you’re at it, be a doll and make me some too?

If you don’t have the space, time or ability (or maybe you don’t have the equipment or inclination), you can recycle your old butter or ice cream tubs that aren’t being used for growing herb seedlings. They can easily be turned into simple but effective plant markers that can be cut, labelled and put to good use in less than five minutes flat.

Simply wash out your old tub with warm soapy water and dry. Then cut out as many long strips of plastic as you need – I’d recommend making them at least 1cm wide so that they’re easy to write on but go as creative as you like. The top moulded edge makes an ideal top to the marker as the cut plastic can sometimes be a little sharp. Don’t forget to cut a point into the bottom of the strip for easy insertion into the soil.

One side will have the butter or ice cream branding or packaging colours on but if you turn it over and voila! You’ll have a nice white or cream blank canvas to write on. Use a permanent marker to mark on your plant names then just place in your pot and get growing. You can even reuse your marker when you’ve planted out your seedlings or eaten your herbs by removing the writing with a plastic scouring pad. Super thrifty recycling!

Bakers and Shakers

Are you a baker? Or a shaker?

We went to see the hilarious Dylan Moran of Black Books fame last night. He posed an interesting question: Are you a baker or a shaker? Namely, do you bottle things up that annoy you (a 'baker') or do you react to anything and everything (a 'shaker'). He generalised that most Britons were bakers; revolution in England, he claimed, would take thousands of years. The first few hundred years would be marked by putting your coffee cup hard on your desk and would culminated with an angry outburst of "You know, he really gets on my wick!" Italians and Arabs, for example, are shakers says Moran. Passionate, expressive, unpredictable and hyperactive people. I found this very funny. Being raised by an English rose of a mother and an Arab camel of a father, what mixture am I?

When you consider our traditional foods, you can see where he's coming from. Comparing, say, Britain's classic toad in the hole with a Moroccan tagine is quite a contrast. Both great in their own way but two ends of the spectrum flavour-wise. Cosy, comforting-if-a-little-bland stodge on one hand and fragrant, spicy juicyness on the other.

Foodwise, I love to bake in the literal sense. I'm not sure why as I'm not a huge fan of sticking to recipes or measuring things out accurately (prefering the more slap-dash, bung-it-in-and-see-what-happens approach), both things that are required of baking as, at the end of the day, the successful rising of a cake seems to come down to chemistry. I do love sweet things though and I think that this is the key to my love affair with the oven.

In terms of flavour, I'd like to be a shaker. I like to try new combinations of spices and am pretty confident when it comes to adding them to meals though I often come back to similar flavours. I love how cocktails (shaken, not stirred naturally!) taste but I'm not such a fan of their effects. Maybe it's a taste thing... Or maybe I'm just boring!

Desert Island Herbs

I was perusing my usual culinary sources today and came across this lovely article by Alys Fowler. In it, she ponders what she would grow if she didn't have a garden - her desert island plants, as it were. This sparked my interest as I've had to come at it from the opposite angle - namely, "I don't have a garden so what can I grow?"

Both of us, it seems, have decided that we can't live without the wonders that are herbs. For Alys, the essentials are mint, coriander and lemon thyme. These are a great resource when it comes to Mediterranean and Eastern cooking; the scent of lemon thyme and mint remind me of Greek holidays while fresh and dried coriander feature in all of my Indian curries and oriental dishes.

My driveway garden lives in pots and includes a motley crew of rosemary, sage and thyme as well as a tub of lemongrass (transplanted from a colleagues garden for tea) and a few sprigs of parsley that have lived on through the winter. My window sills are currently home to basil and oregano seedlings as well as some baby lettuces (another present from a colleague). Next on my list are:

- mint: wonderful in a warm aubergine salad, a perfect pairing with roasted lamb and essential in tzaziki.

- coriander: fantastic on chilli con carne, brilliant blitzed into guacamole and delicious in dhal.

- tarragon: tasty in a sauce for chicken, marvellous when paired with mushrooms and a scrumptious flavour with salmon.

- dill: fabulous with fish, rather lovely in ratatouille and stirred into a herb mayonnaise.

With herbs on my mind, I happened upon an advert in a cookery magazine which hit the mark. The image above is from a Lurpak advert. "Kings of the Kitchen", how apt! Turns out that Lurpak are giving away seeds with packs of Lurpak spreadable. Whether you like their margarine or not, their website gives some great information on growing and cooking herbs. How about keeping your old margarine or yoghurt tubs, popping a few holes in the bottom and filling it with compost to grow your herbs in?

Colds and Cake Failure

I’m feeling rather sorry for myself – I have a cold and I feel rotten. The Boy was away last week so I kept myself busy with the following:

Monday: several hours ceroc/modern jive with a little salsa thrown in for good measure.
Tuesday: prework swim followed by post-work pole fitness.
Wednesday: pilates and my weekly fix of core-strength building and gossiping with the local WI.
Thursday: cycled 16 miles.
Friday: yet more ceroc/jive.

Unfortunately, I have been paying for it since by (carelessly) losing my voice and having terrible trouble with my sinuses. I’m starting to realise that I’m not superwoman. This is the price I pay for fitness.

Preparing the marinade

Despite this, we held a big barbecue on Saturday with friends old and new paying us a visit. I marinated chicken thighs and drumsticks for throwing on the grill; some were ‘chinese-style’ with soy, five spice, and ginger while the others were smothered in pounded red onion, parsley, chilli and lemon juice. Both varieties were part baked and then grilled over the barbie to ward off any nasty raw chicken bugs. Despite their double cooking, both flavours came out nicely moist and deliciously smoky from the barbecue. The spicy marinade was particularly good and so simple – just pound half a finely chopped red onion, a whole sliced red chilli, a tablespoon of lemon zest and a tablespoon of parsley in a pestle and mortar then add a glug of oil (I used sunflower).

My best friend decided to pay me a visit on Sunday so, in anticipation, I decided to make some little cakes and try out a new recipe. Egg-free banana and honey cup cakes with chopped walnuts. They were not what you’d call a resounding success...

Oops...

They sunk. Damnit! This might have been something to do with over filling the cake cases - school girl error! The finished cakes were extremely sweet and sticky, stubbornly bonding themselves to their cake cases. I think the recipe still needs some work! With half an hour to spare, I was still determined to have something sweet to put on the table. We were house-sitting for The Boy’s parents so I had their kitchen - and their gadgets - at my disposal. I knocked up a quick chocolate sponge with the help of their Kenwood chef (one day, I will have one!) which was ready just in time.

Now, back to my steamy cave (namely a bowl filled with boiling water and a blob of Vicks with a towel over the top) for more recuperation!

Herbacious Healing

Click the image for a full-size, readable-with-out-a-magnifying-glass version

Did you know that the lovely little jars of herbs and spices could do much more than just flavour and fragrance your meals? As a doctor's daughter, I'm naturally cynical of anything that claims a certain food or drink can work miracles or, equally, lead to a painful death. This is mainly because we get so much conflicting information on the subject of health and because our overly keen media likes to jump on any study that might scare people and drag it kicking and screaming into our consciousness.

Anyway, I found this article interesting (even if it is cods wallop*).

*Not that I'm saying that it definitely is, of course...

Point of Interest: What's in Worcestershire Sauce?

A friend of mine is a fellow designophile and subscribes to Wired magazine. He very kindly passed on his recent cast-off in the shape of the June addition. I've heard of Wired before but haven't had a chance to give it a proper read. It's certainly interesting stuff - a mix of a little bit of everything with a tilt towards the world of digital/science/design geekery. Needless to say, this floats my boat rather well.

I'm a publication behind the cool kids but I thought that this article about the ingredients of Worcestershire Sauce is interesting. Shamefully, somewhere down the line, I'd assumed that Lea & Perrins was an almost exclusively English affair but it turns out that they have it across the pond too. This article sites high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetening ingredient but, as this is from the US version, I doubt that this is found in the UK bottles. Still, a little food geekery for your Monday afternoon...

Festival of Delights - Bath Food & Drink Festival

You may know Bath for it's beautiful architecture or the healing steamy waters of it's spa. This weekend, Bath's historic Royal Crescent was awash with colour, the promising sound of sizzling and a cocktail of mouth-watering smells. Producers, purveyors, chefs and performers (sometimes the same thing, it seems) happily rubbed shoulders and vied for the attention of the ticket-holding foodies.

The city’s picturesque country-side surroundings were reflected in the mix of stalls that were neatly squeezed into the park. Amongst the real ales on offer, the increasingly trendy ciders were well represented (though I wasn’t impressed by the Gaymers stall) and the Pimms tent was predictably popular as the hot and balmy Saturday wore on.

The Cosmic Sausages

The festival atmosphere was fed by the live music performed on and around the music stage; the musical highlight of our afternoon was the quirky (and rather aptly named) Cosmic Sausages. Jarvis of St James had picked a prime spot to set up shop as their cute teak be-parasoled tables and chairs had a great view of the stage - great for sipping a glass of bubbly and enjoying the chaos unfolding before you.

The main food tent was a feast of interesting chutneys, crusty bread and sweet things. We were disappointed by Med Food UK; despite their fantastic selection of olives and antipasti, everything we tried tasted as if it was from a jar, overly salted and was all incredibly expensive. Still, everything else looked so wonderful that it was hard to know where to start. We'd arrived at lunchtime and eventually started with a chicken wrap from Natural Game. We were very glad that we did - food festivals can be wallet emptyingly expensive (stall holders know they have a captive and enthuastic audience) but for £5 we had lunch for two in just one wrap.

Antonio Carluccio

Once we were suitably fed, we headed to the Chef's tent to see Antonio Carluccio do his thing. Now, Antonio might be 73 but he certainly doesn't act it. He's very much full of the joys of spring and in rather rude health. Half an hour in his company was filled with giggles (he tells the most wildly outrageous jokes!) and smiles as he whipped up some simple, hearty food. He told us that he has just returned from filming a food documentary for BBC 2 out in Italy which will be out sometime next year so keep your eye out for that.

Me and another unsuspecting audience member with Richard Bertinet

Later, we had the pleasure of Richard Bertinet's company. Richard is probably best known for his baking skills and we were treated to a live demonstration of how to knead dough in the traditional French way. It's mesmerising to watch but certainly not easy as proven by an innocent audience member who was tugged out of his seat to help with the proceedings. It just so happened that I put my hand up to the wrong question (or should that be right question?) and ended up on stage cooking a smoked fish chowder with the man himself. I've got to say that the recipe was surprisingly simple and, with some freshly baked bread to dunk, absolutely heavenly.

We ended our day with a cookie sandwich from Mendip Moments - a generous scoop of honeycombe icecream crammed between two freshly baked chocolate cookies! Bath Food & Drink Festival was a fantastic day out and comes highly recommended when planning your trips for next year.