No plaice like home

I went to Suffolk at the end of last week with my daughter to visit my mother. Suffolk, or at least the bit where my my mother lives is blessed by a plethora of great restaurants and fine pubs. So we were happy to walk a short way to 'The Crown' on Friday evening for a much-anticipated meal. I've eaten there before and had some great food but uh - oh here's a warning. Last time we went I just wanted a straightforward meal so ordered a rib-eye steak rare. It came medium. Other guest's soup was dull and it just didn't rock like it has done in the past (The Crown, that is) although my fresh oysters on the shell were sublime, but I imagine it must be very difficult to mess up oysters. I think that sometimes good places to eat get complacent and don't give the food they serve the attention they did when trying to make a rep. So the other night I ordered a simple dish, pan-fried plaice and chips with a side of baby vegetables. Awful. The plaice was so over-cooked it was soggy, the chips looked lovely but were underdone and the vegetables not al dente, but almost raw and cold. I wish I'd sent it back, but didn't because I took my mum who is frail and hates a row as does my daughter. But I'm thinking about posting the name and address of the place if it happens again. Wine was good though - although they didn't do half- bottles, so I ordered a whole one and took it home with me.

I do sometimes think that if you cook well at home - or at least aspire to as I do, you can get picky about eating out. Although it's great to eat in good surroundings and be served, it's crapola if the food could have been cooked better at home. Poo Bah.

Chicken Soup is sometimes right.

Now, everyone has their own recipe for chicken soup, even if it's out of a packet. But you can even smarten up packet soup by adding a splash of milk when its warmed up.

I mentioned my wife is ill but she'd tottered downstairs for an hour or two today and made some excellent chicken stock. So I cooked up chicken soup this evening at her request as she was desperate for comfort food. It was so simple and easy and such a pleasure to make. I like slow cooking where I listen to the radio, enjoy a glass of wine and chat to the family as they come in and out of the kitchen. It took about an hour and a half from start to finish and both the preparation and the eating were great. Nothing spectacular, just filling comforting soup accompanied by some good, local fresh bread from our corner store - cheese and pickle for the hungrier on the side. Magic on a wet October Monday night.

Stock and Cold

My wife has a cold. Not a go to bed and stay there cold but a cold nonetheless. She feels rotten. So we had a chat in bed this morning about the comforts of broth and soup when you're poorly. I made a broth last night with fresh chilies, ginger and noodles. I thought she might like something hot - in both senses of the word to cut through the fog of cold. And she did. But we both agreed that if you're feeling really bad then chicken soup is a must - and for that you need chicken stock.

You can make stock from cooked chicken carcass or fresh bits from the butcher, I usually ask for chicken wings if the latter. But mostly I use leftover roast chicken. Put it in a big pot, add enough water to almost cover, put in aromatics - a celery stick, a carrot and an onion plus a bayleaf and some peppercorns, 6 or so. Bring it up to the simmer and let it do that for a couple of hours on the top of the stove and covered. Let it cool.

Drain in to a large bowl keeping the carcass in the colander - you can then pick the chicken bits off to go in to the soup. The stock can go in to the fridge where it will keep for a couple of days until you want the soup or you can freeze it. Now, where's that soup recipe?

'Slaw

Re-reading my first few posts I've realised that with the exception of the baked potatoes and cottage cheese, most of the stuff I've written about is heavy on the meat - bacon sarnies, roasts and Macdonalds. So in order not to give the impression that I am a sole carnivore I want to write about that lovely salad - Coleslaw.

Now it's possible to buy Coleslaw in the supermarket, pre-prepared but I find that it can be rather acidic to the taste, so I've taken to making my own, fresh version. It takes just a few minutes and can be delicious. The trouble is that everyone has their own recipes for it and it can range from the simple carrots, cabbage and mayo through to a huge thing that invloves apples, sultanas, onion and anything else you feel like throwing in. Which is ok by me but this is how I like it.

1 small - medium white cabbage, with the heart or stalk cut out and quartered.
2 medium carrots - peeled, ends removed.
1 small apple, cored and peeled.
Jar of mayonnaise.
White wine vinegar.
Olive oil.

Grate the cabbage in to a good size bowl (you can just chop it but my family prefer it grated). Ditto with the carrots. Add a dessert spoon of oil and same of the WW vinegar. Then introduce a large tablespoon of mayo and mix it all together with a fork. Keep adding the mayo until it's right for you - I like coleslaw quite moist and the oil and vinegar give it a tang. Add the apple after chopping it in to very small dice. Mixing the apple in at the last minute stops it browning. Mix it all again and place in a serving dish. It can then be saved, covered in the fridge until you are ready to serve it with whatever. Weirdly, it goes incredibly well as a side salad for Chilli con Carne. True.

Maccy D's

Ok, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Well actually I'm not really. But yes, today I went and bought a Macdonalds take-out. My excuse? Two really. Firstly I'd completely forgotten to make my lunch at home last night and secondly - here I must confess - about once every three months or so I just fancy a fast food hit. A quarter-pounder with cheese dripping with that sweet sort of tomatoey goo they put on the burger with a slice of dill pickle, crisp hot fries and extra ketchup on the side plus a coke to drink. It does hit the spot and all my ethical and moral thoughts disappear.

In my defence I only eat fast food from time to time, indeed my kids view a Macdonalds or BurgerKing as a treat, not something we do three or four times a week and I think that's ok. The occasional fast-food burger or pizza or other take-out is, I think acceptable. And of course, like many other people I wonder about the companies that produce this stuff. But a Big Mac does taste so good every now and then.

The Joy of Garnish

What transforms an ordinary meal in to something that looks special and appetising? Some chopped parsley. True.

I was at my local pub the other day, which does a good line in straightforward pub food. It's not a Gastropub by any means (and I suspect some of the meals are provided by a caterer having been cooked in a big factory and trucked to the pub only requiring re-heating) but they do make some good, cooked from scratch-on-the-premises meals. One of which is the ever-popular ham, egg and chips. But here's the thing. The ham is sourced locally and is a lovely thick sliced chunk, the eggs (two per serving) are free-range and also local and the chips chunky and golden. Then, on to this simple meal is chopped a good sprinkling of parsley. Suddenly an ordinary meal looks so good, prepared with thought and care and you can't wait to eat. Lovely.

The Glory that is the Bacon Sandwich

There's nothing quite like it. I was up early this morning and got my teenage son up too, as he's off to the V & A today. He has a huge appetite so I made a couple of bacon sandwiches, one for each of us. It takes about two minutes. 4 slices of smoked back under the grill, turn once and meanwhile butter 4 generous slices of bread. When the bacon's done and only you know how you like it, slap two rashers between 2 slices of bread and tomato sauce on the side. Serve up with a mug of steaming tea. Hello trees, hello sky...

Curry lunch munch

It’s ok, as I said before to eat prepared stuff from time-to-time. I cooked a major league meal yesterday (Saturday) lunchtime, all from fresh, and although I felt like cooking a nice meal for Sunday lunch today I couldn’t be bothered to do the whole thing from scratch.

We had a farmers’ market in my town last week and I spotted a sauce emporium selling home-made curry sauces. I’ve had them before but not for a while so I bought a spicy Korma sauce – in a jar.

I fried off some large dice chicken breasts after covering them in flour and seasoning with pepper (no salt) until the were a nice nutty brown, cooked through but tender, then set them aside on some kitchen roll to drain and dry. Meanwhile I warmed up the sauce in a saucepan and also fried off a few chopped red onions slices (about one whole onion). When the onions were ready – nice and soft – and the chicken drained I put it all in to the sauce and added a cup of water. Then it just bubbled quietly away for an hour or so on a very low heat. Meanwhile, towards the 45 minute mark I boiled up some water and cooked the rice ‘till tender.

I’d heated the eating plates and chopped some tomatoes in to a couple of bowls with a generous small bunch of coriander, just to cool things down and then spooned out the boiled rice and laid on the curry in to the plates.

With mango chutney as a side and some warmed naan bread it was great, especially with a pleasant bottle of Cabernet.

Great stuff.

Saturday Lunching

We had the in-laws over for the first time in a long time today. Brother-in-law, his partner and their very new daughter (only 3 months). So as they haven't been here for a while I decided to push the boat out and cook a full-on lunch; like a Sunday lunch, but today on Saturday. Which actually is a nice thing to do for lots of reasons. One of them being that whilst Sunday lunch is a great institution, you always end up tidying and clearing away on Sunday evening, full, replete and so on but bored by the knowledge that it's back to work tomorrow. Manwhile, having Sunday lunch on a Saturday - as it were- leaves you free to enjoy Sunday too. Ramble, ramble....

I got the boned, rolled shoulder of pork from our fantastic butcher. It's a real treat going to the shop;black and white tiled sawdusted floor, a rail with meat on hooks hanging around the walls behind the counter, and a huge butchers' block and marble prep area for the chopping and cutting of what you want. Ok, if you're a vegetarian you'll find it awful but for omnivores like me it's a magical place. AND I know having talked to the guys behind the counter that the animals they use were well and happily looked after and dispatched humanely.

The 2 kilo (4lbs) joint in to the oven on the highest heat possible for 20 minutes then got knocked down to gas mark 5 ( about half - heat) for 35 minutes per pound. I collected some windfall apples from our little apple tree and after peeling, coring and slicing put them in a small saucepan with a little water and a tablespooon of caster sugar and cooked them for about 45 minutes until they were fluffy and soft and - hey!! Apple sauce. Roasted butternut squash and potatoes for 45 minutes or so ( rememberingto par-boil the pots - but -NOT the sqaush) plus some leeks - pork and leek is classic as well as the apple and it was done. I let the meat rest out of the oven for the 45 minutes the vegetables were cooking, knocked up the gravy and we ate.

My lovely bro-in-law said itwas the best roast dinner he'd had ever in his life. Which was a true compliment and much appreciated.

What's the recipe today Jim?

Those of you old enough and sad enough like me, will remember that in the sixties and seventies BBC Radio One (the hip, happening young people's pop station) hosted the dreadful 'Jimmy Young Show'. He was an ageing crooner who somehow landed the R1 gig. Every morning his pretend companion/sidekick, a fake Chipmunk would intone in a jolly, fake voice,'What's the recipe today Jim?' And Jim would then proceed to read out some horrible recipe for an even more horrible dish, I don't know and have probably deliberately forgotten what, but it would have been something like peanut and sump oil delight or similar. What on earth made him or his producer think that this would keep the kids glued to the set I don't begin to understand.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of me saying that I'm not going to do a recipe a day or simply arrive at the computer each day to tell you what we had for supper last night - I hope. But, I am quite interested in our plans for this evening's meal.

A few months ago on holiday in France, over a huge bowl of freshly cooked Langoustine, mayo for dipping (and French bottled Mayo is a delight - more of which some other time) a simple red onion and tomato salad and a load of fresh crusty bread, my wife and I reached a food agreement. For some reason which neither of us understand she had been doing all the food shopping and I had been doing the cooking. She, it turned out had found thinking of and planning meals a terrible strain and I had found myself cooking with whatever she had bought. So we agreed that I would shop for main meals for each week and would ( I don't believe I did this) stick to a budget of £50 ($80) per week - to feed four healthy people. I ought to add that the family consists of me, my wife and two teenagers, the latter needing constant re-fuelling. The remainder of our weekly domestic budget would go on household goods, snacks, basic foodstuffs like breakfast cereals and the usual stuff you need to run a home. So I had around £6.30 ($9?) a day to feed us our main meal plus bits and pieces. I don't know how this compares to most food budgets but it seems quite modest to me in a western democracy. So, in order to say, enjoy a relatively expensive Sunday lunch including a good cut of meat means coming up with much cheaper but satsifying meals at other times. So tonight we are having...... Baked Potatoes with Cottage cheese and salad.

We bought a huge bag of potatoes from our local greengrocer a few weeks ago which is a very economical way of buying spuds in winter so that was them organised. I got some cottage cheese from the supermarket as part of the weekly shop plus a good bag of salad. So tonight we'll eat well and inexpensively. Here's how to do it.

You'll need:

Good size baking potatoes - one for each person.
Cottage Cheese - a tub big enough for each person to get two good tablespoons each.
Butter or olive oil spread.
Olive Oil (not vital but nice) and other salad dressing e.g. vinegar.
A bag of green salad (or you can make your own) - they cost about 99p here ($1.60).
Some nice pickle if you want - Branston's is a favourite in our house.

Equipment:

Metal Skewers (enough to fit the potatoes on to, although again this is optional).
Plates
Knives and forks etc.
Spoons for serving up.

What you do:

Heat the oven to quite a high temperature, about Gas mark 7 or electric equivalent (I must publish a link to gas/electric equivalents).

Wash the potatoes but leave the skins on and skewer them. Alternatively prick the skin quite hard all over. Rub in olive oil if you wish. Place in the oven on a high shelf. They cook faster if you use skewers.

Lay the table or trays if you prefer TV dinners (I don't but we'll talk about them some other time). Depending on the size of the potatoes - the bigger they are the longer the cooking time and give them a prod with a fork or small sharp knife. If they look brown and slightly crispy on the outside but the fork slides in easily they're done. They should take an hour or so to cook so you can go and do other stuff whilst this is happening.

Plonk the salad in to a serving dish and add olive oil and a drop or two of vinegar depending on your taste with a serving spoon. Get the cottage cheese out of the fridge.

Get the potatoes out - they'll be very hot so use gloves and put the skewers in cold water, and on a chopping board slice each potato almost in half and transfer to a plate for each person. Put some butter or equivalent on each half followed by a generous spoonful of the cheese, again one on each half. Take to the table and add the salad to the plates and any salad dressing you want. Eat. This looks and tastes especially lovely if you add fresh, chopped parsley or chives to the cheese but it's not vital. For those who want a bit of extra, a lttle pickle on the side is great.

I'm going to cook it and eat it now and what's more the whole meal costs about £3 ($5) not including the gas or electricity and tastes suprisingly wonderful.

Why adventures in home cooking?

I'm 49 years old, a bloke and I have eaten a lot. Some of it I cooked myself, some of it cooked by friends and family, some by people I have never met and some who cook for a living in restaurants, takeways and fastfood places. Mostly I have enjoyed the experience, sometimes I have needed to leave the room or the meal or both, but I do love to eat and cook.

This blog is about the domestic side of cooking and eating. I have huge respect for many professional cooks/chefs/cooking writers who've turned their hands and their careers in to brilliant cookbooks or TV shows or both or brands or - I don't know, all of the above and more. Some of them - Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein, the sainted Delia (no surname required for that brand name) have helped me enormously as I have stumbled through the lifelong art or science of learning to cook. But I somehow feel that many professional cooks forget that the rest of us cook quickly, between the demands of family, work, tiredness and so on and don't cook for a living.

Also my Mother and father. My mother - still with us at 82 is a great cook and taught me a lot of the basics - how to cook chips (fries) in a deep golden oil and that neat trick of drying them quickly in kitchen paper and popping them back in to the smokingly hot oil for a few minutes so they come out with crisp outsides, floury on the inside and delcious. I used to ring her when I was a student nurse:

Me: 'Mum? How do you roast a chicken?'
Her? Provides instant verbal recipe and advice which I write down and bloody hell! It works.

My dad just liked to eat - a lot, and taught us to love food too. Lucky us.

So this blog is about food, eating, families and friends, some recipes and I hope over-all a chance for others to enjoy and share in meals. Especially to escape the tyranny of food fads and nutritional Nazis. Yes... it is ok to buy a readymade meal at the supermarket every now and then or eat Pizza or whatever. And it's also nice to get home and cook a simple, delicious meal from scratch in 30 minutes. It's a blast to spend all day shopping, preparing and cooking a meal for those special friends and, when it works ok seeing them appreciate the tastes, textures and sheer yumminess of it all. But, if you haven't got the time or the money to do that - and I didn't at one time (note the earlier reference to being a student nurse) then I hope you'll find stuff in here which will help you eat reasonably cheaply and well. It's also about cock-ups, sauce exploding and dribbling down the kitchen wall, a terminal inability to poach eggs and my dog who is a gourmet Lurcher and loves the leftovers.