Category Archives: Food

A valuable extra perspective

For the last *ages* I have been assuming that they put more things in packets than they say on the outside. This time last year when making elderflower cordial, I noticed that the 50gram tube of citric acid I bought had 75grams in it when I weighed it out for a recipe.

Today, I was weighing for elderflower cordial again and I noticed that the 1 kilo bag of sugar I’d bought clocked in at 1400 grams – like the citric acid, almost half again free!

Now I know that when it says “1 kg e” on the outside it means “more or less 1kg” – sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But how lucky I am that most of the time much of what I buy is so generous!

Weights and measures

P was passing, so I called him in to share my excitement and he looked at me puzzled, and I realised it was one of those many times when he sees the world differently.

“Um.” he said. “Could it…?”

Could it just be the scales?

Ah. Yes. Yes indeed it could. And in fact it might explain a lot about my various successes and lack thereof, kitchen wise, in the last few years.

So, we devised a little bit of an experiment. A millilitre of water weighs a gram, a litre weighs a kilo. So 500mls of water should be 500gram.

And it wasn’t:

Weights and measures

Bah.

Your gardening suggestions please…

… for things you can plant, that need next to no looking after, that yield an edible crop, year after year.

Rhubarb would be an obvious one, I think. Both of us think we don’t like rhubarb, but it could just be we didn’t like it as children and haven’t properly revisited our opinion in adulthood. Then there’s the worry of the “poisonous” leaves – Wikipedia says it would take the average adult 5kg of disgusting bitter leaves to get a lethal dose.

Raspberry canes might be another? I think you’re supposed to cut them down at the end of the season, but I’m sure I remember some self-seeded ones in my grandfather’s garden that did nearly as well as the highly-attended-to ones in the fruit cage.

We do have an elder tree which yields lovely flowers for elderflower cordial around this sort of time each year. This year, I’m also planning to have a go at elderflower vodka as well for something tasty to last a little longer.

We’ve no room for any more trees, and we have far more shaded parts of our garden than sunny, because of all the trees around the edges.

We have a few seedlings that have been kindly donated this year, which is more than we have managed in the past. If we manage to get them past the highly dubious stage where the local slugs eat out all the growing shoots, that will be a minor miracle.

Strawberry sauce / jelly

A few months ago I somehow got suckered into subscribing to the BBC “Olive” magazine a cooking mag, I think, with easier recipes than BBC Good Food – and in the three months it has been added to my poor overworked postie’s bag, there have been a number of interesting things I’ve tried.

Last month’s had this recipe for strawberry griddle cakes with a rosé / strawberry sauce. When I was making dandelion pancakes ((of which, more another time)) for a Pudding Club evening last week, I thought I’d use up the surplus batter making the strawberry griddle cakes, rather overlooking the fundamental fact that the dandelion batter was completely different to the griddle cake batter.

So, although I didn’t get the cakes to work, the accompanying sauce was definitely a keeper.

200mls rosé wine (I used the last of a half case of something intended for quick drinking that has been knocking around the house for at least five years)
50 grams sugar
Vanilla essence (original recipe says a vanilla pod, but that gets expensive)
400 grams strawberries, hulled and halved

Put the sugar, vanilla and wine into a pan and bring to the boil, and dissolve all the sugar.

Remove from the heat and add the strawberries. Allow to cool to room temperature, then chill before serving.

Tasted delicious – and our friends suggested we try it again, but make it a jelly. The gelatine I have in stock is sachets that set a pint, so upping the ingredients a bit, that led to:

600mls rosé wine
200 grams sugar
pint sachet of gelatine
vanilla
strawberries

Boil the wine, sugar and vanilla, then remove from the heat, add the strawberries and allow to cool to room temperature. (Since my strawbs weren’t entirely ripe, I actually boiled them very slightly to soften them and get more of their flavour into the sauce)

Remove the strawberries from the sauce using a slotted spoon and divide between 4-6 serving bowls.

Bring the sauce back to the boil, and add the sachet of gelatine (agar for veggies) and whisk until the cow hoof / seaweed extracts are dissolved. Pour the jelly mixture over the berries and chill to set.

Delicious.

Rice pudding

In recent times, I’ve neglected the food blogging a little – there are at least three episodes of Pudding club to record for posterity. My diet has been a completely unhealthy mix of not cooking for myself and not eating the expensive Misery Pouches which are beginning to build up into a huge avalanche of misery in boxes in the pantry.

But before we go into all that, first, a little treatise on Rice Pudding.

I haven’t made this for Pudding Club, because when canvassing for views on rice pudding there, it transpired that at least half of the regular attendees did not like it, with poor memories of school dinner stodge as their reasoning.

That said, I have cooked and eaten two rice puddings of the “serves four” variety myself this past week.

And there are two myths of rice pudding that I’d like to scotch today, and for both, my thanks to Nigel Slater’s “Real Fast Puddings“:

It takes forever to cook

Slater includes Rice Pudding in a book whose raison d’être is about puddings that take less than 30 minutes to get to table. Most people see rice pudding as something that needs two hours in the oven, but it’s perfectly possible to make it on the stove top in 20 minutes, much like a risotto.

Slater’s basic recipe is half a pint of full cream milk, half a pint of cream, butter, 8 tablespoons of pudding or risotto rice, 4 tablespoons of sugar, 6 tbsp water, a vanilla pod.

Boil the rice gently on the stove top with all but the sugar and butter until the rice is cooked and the liquid absorbed. Remove the vanilla podd, add the sugar and “no more than an ounce” of butter and stir over the heat until both are dissolved, serve.

It doesn’t need stirring as much as you’d think to prevent it sticking, provided you have it on a really gentle heat.

Whilst unsurprisingly it’s not quite so amazingly creamy, you can also make a moderately more healthy version with plain milk and no butter or cream.

Slater even has a technique for getting a skin on a ricepudding that has been made on the stovetop, but you will have to use the link above to buy the book for yourself to be let into the secret.

It has to be plain

Another myth is that rice pudding is just rice, cream, sugar and no depth of flavour.

Again, Slater has interesting things to do with rice pudding to make it more tasty, including flavouring the milk with rose- or orangewater, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, pistachio or orange zest and juice as well as the more traditional dollop of jam.

I’m also mulling over a coffee/chocolate flavoured version. (I’m a complete sucker for coffee flavoured desserts, but don’t cook them too often as P is a caffeine refusenik.)

The second version of the pudding I made myself this week, was an oven based recipe, but one that had a good blast on the stovetop before being baked, meaning that the oven time was reduced to 30 minutes. It was a version of the recipe from the Kwiksave “BBE 2006” packet of pudding rice, and was particularly evil, calorie-wise.

It needed 110 grams pudding rice, pint full milk, half a pint cream, quite a lot of sugar. It got you to boil all that on the stove top for 10 minutes, then allow to cool before beating in 3 eggs and finishing off in a buttered dish in an oven at 150 deg C.

I flavoured it with everything in the kitchen I could throw at it, by first simmering the milk with cardamom, spices like ginger, cinnamon and mace, and orange zest and saffron. Then I sieved the milk and carried on as per recipe.

If you are going to add eggs for richness, I think 3 is over the top for this quantity. The finished pudding was rather too much scrambled egg to be worth sharing with anyone else. Still delicious. And it certainly seems to have been edible to people in this household who profess not to like rice pudding.

Diet derailed

Of course, it had to happen. Get too happy about talking about the diet in public, mention a few successes, and you know you’re setting yourself up for a slightly more embarrassing post in a few weeks’ time when things have not gone quite so well.

A few days ago, I went to the doctor for a drug review on my repeat prescription, and got on the surgery scales while I was there. I could also ask for what my weight was last time the surgery recorded it. And for all I was feeling good about the loss, it turned out that all I had done was get back to more or less the weight I was the last time I hopped on the scales at the doctor’s.

And so yesterday I popped down to Boots to fill my prescription and hopped on their scales while I was there. I’m still not weighing myself at home because the temptation is too much to hop onto the scales every second hour to see how it’s going. So sporadically I go to the supermarket or the chemists and put 20p into a slot of a machine that will weigh me and provide a print out. The print outs give me something tangible to pin to my noticeboard.

Weight loss data

And yesterday’s weight was back up – by a whole kilo. 94.6kg went back to 95.7.

Now if it had been a week when I had been being “good” and sticking to the diet, this information would have been particularly upsetting, but it has been a week when I’ve been a long way away from the pared back approach to nutrition. It’s been Easter – I’ve resisted almost but not quite all the chocolate, and I have had a fair few days away from the diet over the bank holiday. The only hot cross buns I ate were the ones I made myself. And in the last week, I’ve also had quite a lot of beer, first at Lib Drinks then at a friend’s birthday. Those “caloires” (a typo I liked) from beer are quite considerable if you drink more than you planned. And once I had the weigh-in there was a little slip up in terms of popping round the supermarket after they’d reduced their ISB items. Almost as many calories from doughnuts as from beer this weekend! (Huh. Just done the maths. 9 pints of beer and 5 doughnuts have as many calories as I am supposed to eat in two days.)

So, to get the diet back on track, I need to return more closely to the plan. This we can do. Two pouches, a snack, a shake and a cereal. Fresh and frozen fruit and veg. And sugar free, calorie free, nutrient free jelly and fizzy drinks.

Sourdough continues

So, this year, apart from odd days away at Conference or in Scotland, I’ve made almost all of our bread, keeping alive a sourdough starter made following S John Ross’s starter page and from various other sources since. My first steps are here.

Since the diet began, I’ve had to cut back on bread quite significantly. You know, it’s been one of my biggest learning points, just how many calories are in bread, pasta and rice. I’ve been pooh-poohing for years any dieters who talk about cutting back on carbs, assuming them to have been misunderstanding how Atkins and other high protein diets work. In fact, it seems you barely have to blink at a packet of rice to have 300 calories on your plate before you even start adding the nice stuff.

But I am still eating some bread, and so I am still making bread.

My parents, who have made all their own bread since time immemorial, use a Kenwood Chef to batch make 48 rolls, which are then baked and frozen and defrosted as necessary. I haven’t been doing this because a) my tiny freezer is full b) no Kenwood chef, and without it, that’s an awful lot of dough and c) I’d get bored of rolls!

What I have been doing is making a huge variety of loaves. With just a few bags of different flour, and a few store cupboard ingredients and a few interesting baking tins, you can have an almost infinite variety of different loaves and rolls.

The early version of the recipe made an awful lot of washing up, so I’ve made some simple changes, and changed my tools a bit.

I no longer wake the starter up by pouring it into a bowl. It’s plenty enough just to bring it back to room temperature in the jar it lives in, and top up the same jar.

When I’m ready, I pour 2 cups of starter/sponge, 3 cups of flour, some sugar, salt and EVOO into the breadmaker I pretty much forgot about when starting down the sourdough route. The breadmaker makes a dough and lets it rise for an hour, then beeps. Halfway through the initial knead you have to check the dough – if it looks like crumbs, it wasn’t wet enough, so you stop the machine, add more water, and start it again. When it’s ready, I give the dough another knead and shape it for the final loaf – in the banneton for a round loaf, knocked square and rolled for a ciabatta type loaf, or divided into two, stretched and rolled for baguettes, or divided into 12 for rolls. Allow to rise for as long as necessary – and this time has shortened as the sourdough mix has got stronger. Now it can fully raise a loaf overnight – even if you leave it in the fridge for a cool, retarded rise.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 200 degrees. I think I get a better rise out of the mix when the fan in the fan oven is off, and when the oven has definitely properly preheated. I almost think a cooler oven is better.

In terms of variety – there are all the exciting different sorts of shapes, from challa to fougasse. Most supermarkets have a variety of flours, and we’ve had wholemeal, granary, malthouse flours, always mixed with strong white flour. Then there are different grains, like spelt and rye. Then there’s additives: spices, herbs, sundried tomatoes, other fruit and veg, yoghurt, tomato purée, butter and egg yolks for brioche, whole eggs and spices for hot cross buns. Then there’s coatings – eggwash, large grain salt, flour, oats, more herbs and spices.

Slightly misshapen sourdough batons that kinda rose sitting on the boiler. Today's bread is wholemeal sourdough rolls and the soup is hearty italian vegetable. Tomorrow's bread will be sourdough granary baguettes

As I said before, it is possible to make bread without shopping, but I have bought the following things to make breadmaking easier and more fun:

Some books

And some things I might be buying soon

Amazon is evil

A few days ago, writing a pudding club blog post, I mentioned our friends’ stand mixer, a fancy, expensive Kitchen Aid jobbie, looking a little like this

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=nileshomepag&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=0M5A6TN3AXP2JHJBWT02&asins=B000744SZW

And because I mentioned it, I though I would have an Amazon linkie to go with it. I’m with Amazon Affiliates, which means I occasionally get an Amazon voucher in return for plugging their website. High ticket items like this would mean big vouchers even if only one person ever bought one as a result of the link.

All I did on Amazon was search for the mixer and take a copy of the link it generated. I didn’t put it in my wish list and I didn’t tell it I liked it or anything like that.

But Amazon got the hint just from the one search, and since then, I’ve had three emails all along a subtle variation. “Look at our special offers in stand mixers!” / “Stand mixers, big reductions” / “Ooh, your credit card doesn’t seem to be totally maxed out, and you have just had those shelves put in the kitchen, so you probably have space now? Right?”

My parents have a Kenwood chef that they use mainly for bread making, but Kenwoods have lots of different attachments including bean slicers and sausage makers. They look like this:

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=nileshomepag&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=0M5A6TN3AXP2JHJBWT02&asins=B000Q7ZCFK

But the thing Amazon keeps telling me about most of all is this surprisingly affordable Andrew James (whohe?) stand mixer, with oodles of really positive reviews:

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=nileshomepag&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=0M5A6TN3AXP2JHJBWT02&asins=B001KO187O

Not that I actually need a stand mixer.

But with emails like these, it’s only a matter of time before I succumb.

Tonight I’m baking an apple for pudding, but I really wish I were cooking Chris Noth Raymond Blanc’s mother’s tarte aux pommes.

How’s the diet going?

When I started on t’diet, I mentally thought to myself that I wouldn’t be doing the dieting quite so publicly as much of my life.

But I can’t really resist talking or tweeting about it, so people know what’s going on.

And I’ve been doing it for a month now, with a variety of days from very strict to very liberal in the interpretation of what’s allowed. Some days I am more hungry than others. And actually, my weight is falling consistently and my clothes are feeling loser. I’ve had to start wearing a belt again for the first time in years just so that I don’t lose my trousers whilst leafleting.

I don’t actually weigh myself at home, although we do have a set of scales. I’ve been using “Healthy Weight Machines” at supermarkets and Boots. I’ve not been too conscientious at using the same machine all the time – it rather depends where I am.

In the last four weeks, my weight has dropped from 102kg to 95kg. The better part of 7kg or 14lbs or one whole stone. My waist, neck and chest measurements have all fallen. Go me!

Pudding club: Apple soufflés

Previously on Pudding Club: Chocolate mousse / Pear and Ginger cake / Chocolate/Chestnut torte / Beef Wellington canapés / Crème renversée au caramel

So last night at pudding club, I opted for a new tactic – take ingredients and use our friends’ large well equipped kitchen to assemble a pudding on site.

A tactic with varied results. I was making soufflé, which you really need to know your oven for, and have a bit of a practice. My practice run earlier in the week had gone reasonably well:

Possible next Pudding Club: Eric Lanlard's apple snuffle

This is based on Eric Lanlard’s recipe from the series Glamour Puds

Soufflé, like chocolate mousse, is one of those things that looks really impressive, but is made with very few ingredients and is quite easy to make, particularly with an electric whisk. Unlike chocolate mousse, you have to get the oven timings right, which needs a little practice. And preferably, the same oven when practising as on the night.

So, the night before, I peeled and cored 6 cox apples, sprinkled with cinnamon and a small amount of water, and roasted in a fairly hot oven for 45 minutes. Push the roasted apples through a sieve. (peeling them first makes it much easier to get them through the sieve, and adding a little water means you don’t leave half the apple as burnt bits on the roasting tin)

Come the evening itself, prepare 4 large ramekins: line with sponge fingers and sprinkle a little calvados over them. We have some fab calvados, bought directly from the farm in Normandy where it is distilled, so we always have a story to tell about the spirit.

Separate four eggs and mix the yolks in with the apple purée, and beat the whites to stiff peaks. Once the whites are ready, slowly add 200grams muscovado sugar whilst continuing to whisk. Then take a third of the egg white and mix well with the purée/yolk mix before folding the in the rest of the egg whites carefully to preserve the air. (This thing about adding in a third and mixing well, and carefully folding in the remaining amount is a new thing to me – but I have now seen it on several different cooking programmes in the same week.)

Pour the mix over the sponge biscuits and bake in a hot oven, 210 deg C for 9-12 minutes. It’s a soufflé, so don’t open the oven door until they are cooked. Hope you have an oven with a window! When they are cooked, the soufflé will rise quite considerably in height, and a skewer should come out clean.

My effort last night wasn’t quite cooked enough, but still a little tasty.

Apple soufflé

I think it could probably have stayed in another five minutes without burning too much on top.

Another similar Eric Lanlard recipe is “Soufflé Pompadour” – which uses oranges instead of apples, and is cooked in the hollowed out orange shells, which are place in teacups to serve.

Advantages of using friends’ kitchen and equipment?

Recipes which might make an outing for a future Pudding club:

Eric Lanlard / Glamour puds:

  • Galette des rois (looks relatively simple, but relies on good presentation, which always lets me down)
  • Tarte borguinione – which looks pretty similar to this old favourite, but with the welcome addition  of chocolate and red wine…

Raymond Blanc recipes

  • Délice au chocolat – fiddly, much?  But a biscuit base made from praline and bran flakes?!

PS, is it just me, or Raymond Blanc – Chris Noth – separated at birth?
Chris Noth / Raymond Blanc

I’m on a diet

This is a decidedly odd post to write as a follow up to one about chocolate mousse, but I am currently dieting.

A good number of reasons have prompted me to do this. Only one is the upcoming nuptials – amongst the many others are how many of my close colleagues and internet acquaintances have recently been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease like diabetes and heart attacks. Another is that my clothes don’t fit, and if I get any bigger, I’ll have to leave the high street behind. Yet another was a recent internet chat with friends across the planet. I was kvetching about being overweight and heading for early death and there being little I could do about it – only to discover the two svelte hunks with web cameras have both been heavier than me in the past and both lost the weight.

I kid myself that it doesn’t show too badly. There are many people my weight who look a lot worse, I think anyway. My last, pre-diet weigh-in tipped the scales at 16 stone 1lb, which made my BMI a scary 33 or so. I’m aiming for 12 stone at the least, hopefully even down to 11. That’s going to take months.

For a kick start, I have chosen Diet Chef, a method with pros and cons.

Advantages of Diet Chef

You go on the internet, plug in your height, sex and weight, and they recommend a nutrition plan. You plug in your credit card and within a few days, huge cardboard boxes they laughably call “hampers” arrive, containing almost all the food you are supposed to eat.

Breakfast is porridge or granola, in a variety of different flavours.

Lunch is a soup in a pouch.

Dinner is a casserole, stew or curry, also in a pouch.

In addition, you also get a snack – either a low calorie sawdust bar or a pack of two oat cakes, in an assortment of flavours. There is also a daily milkshake.

The cereal, soup, shake, snack and stew between them average out at 1500 calories per day. You’re supposed to add one piece of fruit and veg a day too, as well as half a pint of semi-skimmed milk. Since I’m a man, and since I have so much weight to shed, I’m allowed an additional 300 calories a day to make it up to 1800. The booklet you get makes suggestions like rice, pasta, slices of bread and additional veggies, but I have on occasion resorted to making it up with 6 rich tea biscuits.

It’s basically a slop-based diet. It is however, pretty tasty slop. The soups are mostly excellent (Thai Chicken was horrible, however). The evening casseroles are also on average pretty good, although not as good as the soups.

Tomorrow's misery pouches

The main advantage is not having to think too hard. At meal times, you wander into the conservatory and sift through the boxes, make a choice, bung it in the microwave for two minutes, and eat it. If you know you’re going to be out over lunchtime, put a pouch, a shake, a snack and an apple in your bag, and that will more or less keep you going through the day.

It fits very well into my chaotic lifestyle.

You get a lot of choice – when you’re deciding what goes in your “hamper” you can choose from a fair variety of soups and meals. The shakes, snacks and breakfasts are more limited, but there’s nearly a month’s worth of different evening meals.

They suggest you give up caffeine. Out of my cold, dead hands, DietChef!

I’ve made almost all of my own bread this year – I have to cook and eat less bread while I’m doing the diet.

Disadvantages of Diet Chef

It’s not exactly sustainable – once I finish, after months of microwave ready meals, I will just have to go back to the ordinary eating that got me fat in the first place, without having learned a whole new set of eating habits.

It’s not exactly cheap – the cheapest deal is 35 days’ food for over £200, and on top of that you need to buy fruit, veg and milk. Even with my extravagant supermarket and alcohol habits, I don’t think I was spending that much on just my food. If we both go on the diet – P has less to lose than me – it will really hit us in the wallet.

You could easily make up most of the food yourself – the cereals in particular, and also the low-cal veg-based soups either from scratch or from tins or packets. The evening meals would be a bit trickier. That would require thinking, though, and the main benefit of DietChef is not having to do that too much.

Until the diet, milkshakes were not really something that featured in my food habits. Each milkshake is 300 calories – but also a lot of vitamin supplements. I am fast learning that 300 calories is easily found and wondering if there are better ways to do it – order the 1200 calorie version without the milkshakes and have 600 calories a day for free choice. Again, more thought needed.

Slop based food has meant lots of stains on clothing. Must eat more carefully.

Early successes

In my first 10 days on the diet, I have lost 7lbs, which is far better than I dared hope. Oodles of caveats for that: I know the first week of any diet almost always sees a higher loss than can subsequently be sustained. I didn’t use the same scales (not sure we own scales – I’ve been using Boots’ “healthy weight” machine – in different branches of Boots).

But to get there, I have not been too rigorous about the diet. I’ve had more than one portion of fruit and veg – although tapering off from 5 on the first few days. I had a day off when we went to London to see a show and get a meal. I might be able to get to a microwave at work, but there isn’t much chance of that on a train.

I’ve been jokingly referring to the food as “misery pouches” – in fact it’s not miserable. Most of it is tasty. It’s reasonably filling – although I do want to snack as much as I did before. There are long periods of the day when I am thinking about food.

The first week success has persuaded me to keep going, and I have signed up for two more whole months of this. Wish me luck. If you hear no more on this, assume I’m still fat.