cooking

Cooking In The Alps

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It is no secret among my friends and family that I do like to do a bit of cooking and so although I am ruthless about throwing away donated and dated cookery books, old and interesting ones do catch my attention.

So, fellow ordinary cooks – no special stuff here – you might want to read on and be entertained by David de Bethel (the cook book writer and illustrator) as he spends time in the Tyrol oscillating apparently between pestering Anna the cook at a rather posh schloss called ‘the Castle with the Little Red Tower’ and the Knapp’s ‘peasant house.’

Before we start, this was published in 1937 ( there are no mentions of what would have been the political ‘issues’ of the time but plenty of references to the mores of the time.) 

I have no idea who he was except to have a quick search and find he wrote other cookery books from his travels in France and perhaps he ended up involved in the New Zealand Players Theatre Trust with his wife Joan who was a potter.

But I haven’t confirmed he is the same man, so let’s just go with the cookery writer.

So here is why he went:

And it must be said, though he is not complimentary about all Austrian cooking, he is later equally willing to report the disdain of Anna for, as he described, the type of English cook who has ‘damned forever the character of the English on the Continent’ by their appalling cooking.

It is a characteristic of old cookery books that they just don’t have the detail you would expect from a Jamie, Nigella, Nigel….

If you bear with me, there will be another piece on a similar vein of ‘Ok if you regularly cook and potter in the kitchen over the years/tears and work out what works with what and how, then you can work this out but if you are not that person, you need a lot more advice on how that recipe is going to work.’

I think it must be that in those days, cooking was much more ‘if you had a cook, they knew how to do it, and if you didn’t, you knew how to do it.’

Prepared meals? What??

Now David, I have to say that stuffed cabbage leaves was one of my specialities in lockdown and my Austrian-born neighbour liked them.

But essentially the cabbage ( and I used Savoy as a much better alternative to white cabbage) was the easy bit – it was the filling and sauce which made the food interesting. 

So to have a recipe which is largely about cooking cabbage and only a brief mention of the stuffing, I have to say, sorry, is pretty rubbish.

Mince, rice and parsley could be good but only with a lot more thought and action.

(Happy to supply a better recipe, though I say it myself, if called on to do so.)

David, yes we are on first name terms now, interspersed his recipes with a (slightly florid and Disney-like, but rather charming and interesting diary about the seasons and weather and customs.)

If you are wondering about the recipe for bilberry fritters, essentially it is: make some fritters and add bilberries.

There are times when his recipes have more detail but I have to say a) I would never use the time I have left in life to make a strudel and b) if I should somehow change my mind on that one, I would not be relying on David to tell me how to do it – great read though and love the love letter thing AND CAPITAL LETTERS.

Fungi foraging is much more of a thing now but I remember my grandmother soaking button mushrooms to make sure they were safe to eat and anything other than those white things were never to be countenanced, so I understand David’s comments on this.

By the way, Sarah Gamp was a ‘dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk’ character in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit who always carried an umbrella, so an umbrella became called a Gamp. I am assuming that is what David is referring to.)

I am not sure that ‘most people’ hunt foxes but could tell you a tale of being at a pre-Vienna ball dinner (in my posh days) where talk was of the days they went hunting around the cemeteries of the city….. just saying.

So, thank you David.

I am not sure that I will be doing that many of your recipes (though being a potato fan, Sauerkraut with potato pancakes might feature one day) but it was a great read.

Pickles – well just a few

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I do like making a pickle, preserves, chutney – but it has to be said, we are not great eaters of any of these.

There are a few exceptions – homemade pickled red cabbage is a must with a cottage pie – meat or vegetarian.

Now, I am sure I have mentioned this before, and I know people (maybe you, dear reader) may sneer at that suggestion but bear with me again and give it a try – not the bought stuff though because it is too vinegary.

And I do like a Kilner jar of confit tomatoes in the fridge – lush and sweet and great with all sorts when you need a taste of summer in the winter.

If you make it to the end of this, there will be recipes.

Having said that, I still have a freezer drawer with cooked down crabapples waiting to go through the faff of turning them into crabapple jelly – its a two day operation and involves hanging muslin bags on broom handles, enough said.

But I have just found a book in the shop which makes me think of more pickle, preserves activity – making things we should but probably won’t eat, and will give to (hopefully) more appreciative friends, family and neighbours.

Today, I have made preserved lemons not least because we both have some covid-like lurgy and so are in a mini-lockdown – afternoon television beckons but a few things have to be done first, hence the lemons.

( And a roast chicken with tarragon sauce because I feel like making it but probably not so much eating it….. we shall see.)

So recipes;

Preserved lemons from this:

We have a great rosemary bush.

And you will notice tomato plants growing along side and they are earmarked for some confit assuming they are prolific – and given they are grafted plants they should be.(Gardening advice here, always buy a grafted tomato plant to ensure lots of fruit.)

So, you need a Japanese rice vinegar. ( I have to say that Waitrose in Petersfield only had Chinese rice vinegar so that is what I used, hey ho.)

I used less sugar – about 250g – just saying.

Cut up lemons, add your rosemary and you are done – about two weeks later admittedly.

Pickled red cabbage:

So, you shred ( don’t worry you don’t have to do it too finely and I rather prefer to cut with a knife not shredding in a food processor) a red cabbage. Not the hard stem – just the leaves.

Put it in a bowl and sprinkle salt over it and leave it in the fridge overnight.

Also, put a litre of distilled vinegar in a pan, add 200g ( or less if you prefer) of sugar, a teaspoon each of cloves, peppercorns, coriander seeds or juniper seeds ( I do like a lot of flavour but you can be more minimalist if you like) and a couple of cinnamon sticks. Warm up until sugar has dissolved – a bit of stirring here.

Cool and put in the fridge.

Next day, take the cabbage out of the fridge and rinse the salt off. Leave to dry, or pat dry with kitchen paper – though beware, you don’t want bits of kitchen paper in your pickle.

Put in sterilised jars – see here how to do it 

https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/how-to-cook/how-to-sterilise-jars

And pour over the liquid.

And this will keep happily for a year or two if you don’t eat that much cottage pie.

Meanwhile, confit means basically slow cooking in a lot of olive oil.

So, take some tomatoes – small ones I would recommend. Don’t both with cutting up or pricking the skins, or taking them off their stalks.

Put them heaped if necessary as they will cook down, into a roasting tin with whatever herbs or spices you fancy – garlic, oregano, thyme, chilli flakes, rosemary – a good grinding of salt and pepper, and enough olive oil to come at least half way up small tomatoes.

Put in the oven at a low temperature – say 100 in a fan oven for a couple of hours, or if you are a lucky Sussex housewife, in the bottom Aga oven – but do check if you are using  fan oven which can dry things out more quickly.

You want them well-cooked.

Cool, then squash into jars and use leftover olive oil to top them up.

They will keep in the fridge for a year or two and ignore the rules which say you can only keep for a week after they are opened.

They will make a good ‘sauce’ for spaghetti, or a quick supper, serve well if warmed under fish, in fact anything you like with tomatoes will work with these.

Off now to feed my tomato plants and then a relapse on the sofa.

Carrots, Onions, Celery and Potatoes

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‘Soffitto, is an aromatic mix of onion, carrot and celery, is the base for most sauces, soups, stews and braises in Italian cuisine. A ratio of 2:1:1 of onion, carrot and celery is generally agreed on, but some regions of Italy prefer to include other aromatics such as garlic, parsley, rosemary and bay. In some instances, bacon or pancetta is also added for an even richer flavour base.

Soffitto is the Italian word for ‘fried slowly, as after the vegetables have been finely diced they are then gently cooked in a generous amount of olive oil and sometimes butter. Traditionally chopped with a mezzaluna and stirred with a wooden spoon, the soffritto should be cooked until dorata (golden brown). Doing so releases all the flavours from the vegetables, resulting in a rich basis to begin any dish.’

Well, thank you Great British Chefs website.

( I just want to say that I cut and pasted that from their website but might like to point out that whilst soffritto means sauted slowly, soffitto means a ceiling. I am nothing if not a bit slapdash, but just saying.)

Now, I am a huge fan of soffritto and indeed, sorry to admit this but I stole a mezzaluna from a rented apartment in Brussels owned by an Italian woman, and I use it all the time – even now in Deepest Sussex.

I have to say in my defence, she was getting in house clearers after we left, and her corner bath with jacuzzi jets was rubbish. Just saying.

In case you need to know, a mezzaluna is a curved blade with handles either end and very useful for chopping things finely – herbs for example, but in this case onions, celery and carrots for home-made soffritto.

I might get back to making my own soffritto in large and time-consuming batches and freezing them, but for now Waitrose is a great help.

There isn’t a meal of the right sort which can’t be improved by some soffritto.

Any stew/casserole, stuffed cabbage leaves, soup, the alarming-sounding but actually very good lentil cottage pie….

And, whilst on the subject of there is the soffritto passata which also comes ready made.

I am sure that there is a reader or two out there, sucking their lips with disapproval at the thought of processed food, but on the health stakes, we are not talking a frozen deep fried mars bar here, people.

These are the bases for some good home-cooked food.

Chop up some celery and carrot and slowly sauté it gently in some olive oil, not too much because you want it to caramelised not stew. Peel and chop up some potatoes. When the celery and carrot are slightly carmalised, its takes say half an hour, add in some onions and garlic and, oh a bay leaf or two, some oregano and you could add a sachet of ready-done soffritto, just to add even more depth and body but you don’t have to.

Add in the bottle of passata and the potatoes and cook until the potatoes are soft, and you have a soup.

I add in some stock made with Marigold bouillon powder to thin it out a bit. Maybe a slurp of chilli flavoured oil. One way or another, you will need to add some seasoning.

And should you have some leftover greens they can go in, or indeed finely sliced raw greens put in when the potatoes have cooked for a bit but still need a few more minutes.

If you are in a hurry, you can skip the caramelising half hour, but it does make a difference.

Or you can just add a sachet of the ready made soffritto to the passata, add a bit of water and you are done.

Whilst we are on the subject of potatoes – well I am anyway – my life would be very sad indeed if potatoes were not around.

All shapes and sizes, all flavours, endlessly useful, cheap, versatile and yes I know, heavy on the carbs but until I am diagnosed with diabetes or a strange allergy to potassium, they will stay well up my favourite foods list.

( I may have mentioned before but one of my desert island meals would be a good salad and chips. Indeed, it might be the meal I rescue from the waves.)

Anyway, I could bore you with potatoes recipes but before I do that, I was interested to find out that Maris Piper, a very useful and easy to please variety is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular variety in Britain.

I was hoping the name had some romantic history but apparently, the Maris came from the Maris Lane where the plant breeding institute which had spent many years making sure this new high yield, disease -resistant potato variety, was located.

The Piper was suggested by the main scientist’s son – and he, the main scientist, won The Queen’s Award for Technology in 1982 for his potato. Who’d have thought?

Wrongly but entertainingly, the slang word for potato, spud, was said to have originated in the initial letters of the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet.

Apparently, but boringly, it is more likely to be based on derivations of the word for a small knife/dagger/blade which was used to dig a hole in which to plant the potatoes.

As for King Edwards:

‘It was bred by a gardener in Northumberland who called it ‘Fellside Hero’ and passed into the hands of a grower in Yorkshire and in turn a potato merchant in Manchester who having no use for it passed it onto John Butler of Lincolnshire. He in turn purchased all the seed stocks available and multiplied the variety on 50 acres of land before renaming the variety King Edward on the advice of a potato merchant.’ Wikipedia

I do wish I was buying Fellside Hero rather than a dead rather uninteresting monarch….

I am writing this on a wet and dark February evening in Derbyshire, so the sweet, just-harvested-from-the-garden, first early potatoes feel like a long way away.

A bowl or Rockets, or Jazzy or Vivaldi – bring on early summer.

And the idea of nipping back to France and having lovely yellowy Ratte potatoes in a little bistro somewhere also seems unlikely – not that they are not grown but ‘nipping to France’ is a much more laughable idea than it used to be what with one thing (Brexit) and another….

I think I have said this before but there is little better than mint butter with new potatoes and it has amazed me during my many years on the planet, there are people out there who have never heard of this.

So good salted butter left out of the fridge to soften. Fresh mint (from the garden if you can) chopped with a mezzaluna or sharp knife. Mix two together and slather on the freshest new potatoes you can lay your hands on.

Meanwhile, on dreary Sundays, bubble and squeak.

My friend Wikipedia, says the name derives from the noise the frying ingredients made in the pan – but when it was first named that, in the 17th century, and the ingredients were beef and onions.

My friend Wikipedia, also gives you a whole page on recipes and recommendations from chefs. The twentieth century , based on potatoes, recipe started when rationing meant potatoes were a more likely ingredient than lots of leftover beef. And cabbage is the traditional vegetable.

But, potato cooks, feel free to use what you fancy. As long as you start with mashed ( quite coarsely ) with butter but no milk or egg, potatoes, feel emboldened.

My grandmother always called spring onions scallions and they were always added – not raw you understand but cooked. Some pre-fried bacon or leftover meat, chopped up brussel sprouts, herbs like dill or parsley and roasted garlic,…. I have, though only once, used gently sauted red peppers and won’t be doing that again – wrong vibe all round.

However, some variations would be considered heresy and do you know what, I don’t care.

Some cooked cauliflower mixed in and then some cheese.

Yes I know that does not count as bubble and squeak, but with a little grainy mustard in the mix and should you be of that disposition, a slice of good ham underneath, who’s going to quibble on names?

So, make your potatoes and whatever you are putting in with them. Make them into fishcake sized patties, put in the fridge until you need them, but at least 30 minutes.

Heat some olive oil and if you like, a dollop more butter, and fry until brown and then turn over and again fry until nicely, deliciously, crisply browned.

You have your Sunday supper – Antiques Roadshow or The Great Pottery Throwdown, fire lit, and all is well with our world.

.

Eating Out

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Whist we could not make it to Northern Majorca this month ( again – and yes I know this is a rich person’s whinge), we have made it lovely West Wales.

Well, it is lovely but it is also cold with a very brisk northerly ‘breeze’ as the weatherman called it, and not much in the way of sun.

Still and all, it is somewhere other than home, and it came with a promise.

I had promised myself and the Best Beloved had also promised, that we would eat out – no cooking for me and the chance to have our first meals out since before Christmas.

So, not being a great researcher, I had pottered around on the internet looking for good places to eat on the locality, and thought I would leave the fine tuning of my potential choices until we got to our rented cottage and read the inevitable visitors’ book – that which always tells you where to go and where to avoid.

Ah well, the visitors book was scrapped as a Covid measure.

And the wifi connection in this part of very rural West Wales is pretty rubbish. After half an hour of one/off connection, I discovered that St Davids is not a place of culinary excellence. 

There are a couple of highlights but the BB balked at the innovative Grub Kitchen where you eat the insects bred by the chef’s wife in her ‘grub’ farm – he was not further enamoured by the news you can also visit it and see what you are about to eat before it is mashed, fried, griddled etc. 

I would have gone for it as I remember fondly the salty crunchiness of deep fried crickets in Thailand many moons ago.

He said he would go with me but be very, very careful about what he chose off the menu. And would probably stick to a beer.

The one posh place in St David’s doesn’t allow dogs and the cottage owners don’t allow you to leave them alone in the place, so that was out.

Anyway, I had found Mrs Will The Fish which is apparently an unassuming bungalow in Solva where you can pre-order and collect a platter of locally caught fish and shellfish, so that is hopefully happening tomorrow.

But today we decided to have a late lunch in one of the local pubs which I gathered after half an hour of waiting for reviews to come up on my weary, wifi-deprived laptop, did good food and was popular.

We booked for 2pm, went in and were seated and they were happy to have the dog along, so all looked good.

I went for the mussels – but the mussels were off.

Then what I really wanted was one of those orders that Americans do.

‘Please can I have a small size greek salad, not a main size, alongside a starter possibly the duck or maybe the potted pork what do you recommend? Both at the same time you understand, and a small side order of chips?’

The BB said he was having a burger. I watched the service and the harassed and no doubt short-staffed comings and goings and decided I too would have a burger but without the bread.

Not too complicated/American a request but it threw the waitress – her revenge would come later.

Meanwhile and I have to say, it had been a long meanwhile so far, a couple sat down next to us.

They had walked 6 miles of the Coastal Path and were looking forward to a justified late lunch.

‘Food service has been suspended,’ they were told by the waitress.

‘Until when?’ they asked.

‘What time is it?’

‘2.30’

‘Oh, then we have stopped serving.’

They had to settle for crisps and peanuts and by that time, I was beginning to envy them. 

They finished their snacks, and a couple of lagers and set out to find a bus back before our waitress appeared again.

‘Sorry she said, you burgers got dropped so there will be a delay so they can cook them again.’

Yes it was the same waitress who was less than impressed by the idea of a burger without bread, ‘You mean all the stuff but not in a burger. No bun??’

I was, at that point very glad, I had not asked for anything more complicated.

Any by ‘got dropped’ she later admitted she had dropped them……

They were good homemade burgers, and indeed grit free, and the chips were excellent – mine arrived in a bun as it is clearly beyond comprehension that a burger doesn’t belong in a bun. And I get that up to a point – a scotch egg without the egg… but anyway.

And though the more than generous helpings it meant there was no need for supper, I was somewhat at a loss about what to do come early evening and got rather nostalgic about the night before when I had rustled up crushed Pembrokeshire new potatoes with mint butter, asparagus and some thick cut local ham with background Radio 4.

This eating out business might be a bit over-rated.

So, I think I am planning to save my BB’s promise tokens for eating out – much like the old green shield stamps – until I can book a place which will serve food I really enjoy and could/would never cook at home.

And, tomorrow there is Mrs Will The Fish eaten at ‘home.’ Fish fingers crossed.

Squid and Friends

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Apparently, hearing is the last sense to leave the body. Well, for me the last activity to leave the Covid lethargy, is cooking.

No surprise there then for anyone who knows me.

Meanwhile, it takes days to actually get round to cleaning the kitchen floor, I have been dithering and dathering about which Coursera course to sign up for – even though they are free and only require a minimum of concentration…..

All those things I did in April, have not been done since. 

I have no pictures of my culinary disaster so here are a few winter pictures.

So this, dear reader, if you are still with me and not off to do something more interesting, is a story of squid and friends.

Squid is cheap, and is best if you cook for a few seconds or a really long time, or both. ( I am sure there are other such ingredients but none spring to mind – mind you, not much ‘springs’ to mind these days.)

The Best Beloved was not a squid fan when he met me – mind you he was not a Labour voter, good at buying jewellery, hoovering, putting the washing on, enjoying long lunches with friends.

I converted him to squid stew with various adaptations of a Hugh Fearnley-Wittingtstall recipe.

You make a tomato sauce – a good one – fry the squid for seconds and put in the sauce and then both of them on a long slow cook. (Bottom of the Aga for those of us who live in Deepest Sussex).

You can add potatoes and fennel an hour or so in. 

I have made this, with variations, loads of times and so it counts as easy, familiar, comfort, not meat, cheap, flexible, appreciated – and most importantly to this story, whilst you are doing something else.

So, all was in hand when I realised I was approaching the time for a family call and went into the oven to check the stew.

Well the squid was nicely meltingly ready, but the fennel (always a tricky ingredient) was a bit hard.

(Dear reader, I know this is going on rather long, but there will be a nicely uplifting bit about friends soon-ish.)

So, I decided to take out the squid and put the rest back in the oven, though this time in the top (hot) oven of the Aga and get on with the call.

Call took longer than I thought and so it was the charred remains of a tomato sauce I pulled  out of the oven. Inedible, no I mean it, not possible to rescue.

I had squid, and a memory.

My lovely sis had returned from living in Milan.

She had spent time with staying with my ex-boyfriend, and various other people and then pitched up in Leeds to stay with me for a week. 

(She is still in Yorkshire – some many years later.)

If you are lucky, there are times in your life when you have a special group of friends. You spend time together, you do things together, you get along brilliantly –  you are caught up in a delightful web of friendship.

It has happened to me three times in my life, and I celebrate each of them.

This time was in Leeds and my sis was a pivotal part of it.

And, among many other things she brought us group of friends, a recipe.

Squid and peas and pasta.

In my memory it was summer and there were back doors open, our friends drinking wine and gossiping around the kitchen table whilst my sis cooked her meal.

So, here in winter, and lockdown, I looked at my cooked squid. Got some peas. Melted some butter and cooked the peas in it. Swirled them with the squid and the clinging bits of non-ruined tomato sauce and added them to some cooked spaghetti – using, of course, a splash of the spaghetti cooking liquid to meld the sauce.

I have to say at this point, this was not my sis’s way of making the dish but hey ho, I did what I could under the circumstances.

My BB duly appreciated supper – but I was back in a house in Leeds with my amazing friends, laughing, letting dogs run round the garden, swapping journalistic stuff, discussing politics, hearing stories of life in Millan, music on in the background.

There were BBQs, there were loves lost and gained, there was a sunny summer, and that was that very special time.

And no we are not all still in contact, but at the time I was pretty convinced I was living a very good life – and indeed, dear reader, I was.

Snobbery and Frugality

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Dear reader, this is a post which comes with one of those warnings – this is a blog that contains food snobbery in quite large quantities.

There are some recipes I avoid every time I see them – especially anything titled ‘pasta bake’ or ‘vegetable curry’.

Personally, I can’t imagine the day when I am going to look forward to making or, indeed and especially, eating a tuna and broccoli pasta bake even if it ‘comes bubbling from the oven to the table.’

Broccoli is not a suitable partner for pasta. There, that is it, I said it.

(Now I do realise, I am not having to try to get fish and vegetables into resistant children who will, however, eat anything with pasta. 

Either sell your children, or give them fish fingers, peas and spaghetti hoops.)

Chicken and pasta bake – not really. Chicken and pasta don’t go together and certainly not baked in the oven with cheese.

And the idea of brussel sprouts and pumpkin pasta bake makes me want to weep.

I do realise that lasagne and cannelloni are pasta bakes but not as we know the term and tell me, hand on heart, when did you eat a really delicious lasagne outside of Italy – or even in it, for that matter.

The exception I will make is macaroni cheese – up there with cauliflower cheese as one of the very, very good comfort foods.

The pastas I prefer are long strips of varying width – spaghetti, tagliatelle, pappardelle etc – which don’t lend themselves to baking as far as I know.

A recipe for four cheese baked spaghetti is not convincing me that I am wrong, but in case you differ: https://www.foodandwine.com/pasta-noodles/baked-pasta/baked-pasta-dishes?slide=c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99#c079c521-8907-4786-a70e-e9fbc1b88b99

The long pastas remind me much more of good Italian meals and I am very prepared to spend time thinking of how to ‘dress’ them – crab and lemon zest, artichokes and olives (both from cans I have to say), squid, peas and tomato sauce ( actually very cheap to make), I could go on….

My sister’s friend’s sister apparently makes the most delicious pasta sauces from all sorts of simple ingredients and I always like hearing the stories of what they ate whilst on holiday – mind you any stories of holidays and good food are at a premium these strange days. 

I salute that woman’s cooking but am pretty sure a pasta bake was not included.

Wondering whether the Italians would also sneer at a pasta bake, I Googled about and found indeed there are all sorts of pasta bakes but they are not called that.

It is all a question of language…….but a closer look does not fill me with delight, pasta bakes with a posher name.

Meanwhile, likewise with anything described as a vegetable curry gets a stiff ignoring from me, as the Best Beloved would say.

This is not because I don’t eat or make them – sag aloo is a delight, dal with crispy fried onions, cauliflower masala, mushroom and pea keema ( thank you Meera Sodha for that and other lovely recipes)……

It is because all those recipes you come across have carrots in them, and I am not a big fan of a carrot – and other root vegetables. (Honourable exceptions include potatoes, of course, fennel and the occasional turnip but never found in any of my ‘curries’.)

The idea that you can curry chunks of carrot and parsnips and sweet potatoes is not getting a toe over my threshold.

I am not saying this is not a good vegetable curry for the people who like that sort of thing, but this is not happening in this part of Deepest Sussex, along with, and I am sorry if I offend anyone, beetroot and aubergine curry. I may rest my case at this point.

I am sure that there is an Indian cook out there who could make me sit and eat a meal with carrots in it which I would then describe as delicious. But that cook is not me.

And, finally on this, ‘curry’ is just too a generic term – it signals to me that the recipe is not going to be great.

( I did warn you about snobbery……)

So, I can happily ignore recipes for vegetable curry and flick past them, but as for pasta bakes the search is on.

We have a lot of none strip pasta. 

This is not as a result of panic buying in March or November or now ( the year marked by panic buying outbreaks, who would have thought?) but because too much pasta was brought into the Free Shop and some ‘shoppers’ suggested I could make some pasta bakes for following week – they apparently had a soft spot for a pasta bake.

You can imagine my delight.

As it happens, I am not volunteering there any more so not cooking for it, but am left with a lot of pasta. (Don’t worry, I have not deprived people of pasta, the Free Shop gets more pasta than it can shake a hat at.)

My plan is to find something I can call something other than ‘pasta bake ‘ and which tastes good but is nevertheless baked in the oven. 

There is already the aubergine pie recipe ( see a previous blog) but there must be more out there which will convert me.

I am not falling for Pasta Al Forno which is basically a bolognese sauce baked with pasta. Come on, there must be something better than that…….

So, in yet another lockdown with weather not conducive to gardening, temperament not conducive to nothing more than necessary when it comes to cleaning, upholstery on hold, dog walking not taking up all of the day, BB working on his great thoughts about the Bexit deal, news of record numbers of Coronavirus cases, my project may well be to find/create a ‘decent’ pasta bake.

Dilemmas and Bread and Butter Pudding

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There weren’t many moral dilemmas when I was at the Oxfam bookshop. Once you got over the difficulty of throwing away books – and you had to – it all fell into place.

Sell books, make money for a good cause, go home.

The Free Shop turns out to be a minefield of such dilemmas, and Christmas is bringing more and more of them.

The Free Shop was initiated, planned, and runs as an anti-food waste project. So, we get leftover food from local supermarkets, allotment growers, those with too many apples, and we offer them for free to anyone who wants them.

We are not a food bank and we do not ask for anyone to prove they are in need. 

But when I turn up on a Saturday morning with some soup I have made from some of the (rather surprisingly) 20 celeriacs we had donated last week, to find 15 people queuing up in the pouring rain half an hour before we open, you know they are not there to polish their eco credentials.

One of the local pubs, shut obviously, has turned its kitchen over to making food and I have to tell you it looks a whole lot more professional than the savoury bread and butter pudding I have made this week. (But more of that later.)

I am in the shop on a Wednesday afternoon.

Ostensibly, we are open from 2 to 3.30 but often my lovely colleague and I, have ‘sold’ out by 2.45.

So, back to the dilemmas.

If you are anti food waste, can you/should you ration what someone takes?

Do you make judgements about the person who comes in with two really big carrier bags and literally sweeps food into them? 

What do you think of the man who walks three miles to get to us along the main and rather dangerous road? Well, you get the best beloved to print off an ordnance survey map and highlight how to walk off road. When the man says it will be muddy and points to his loafers and you ask what size feet he has so that you can ‘source’ some wellies, and he says he wouldn’t be seen dead in wellies and by the way do you still not have any decent green tea available? Do you laugh and save him the only packet of green tea we get that week. Well that is what I did.

When you have five packs of cornflakes donated one week, and one person takes four of them, do you ask her to just take one as there are other people with kids in the queue, well I did.

Do you get just a bit cynical when people say they are ‘shopping’ for their neighbour as well as themselves. I do. If every person who said that in our ‘shop’ was actually doing that, then there are a lot of well fed neighbours.

Yes, I am not proud of those reactions and I know that I, as an extremely privileged person, can know nothing of what it is like to try and make very thin and far away ends meet.

I am just explaining that, for me, it is very hard not to make judgements.

So, Christmas.

I was charged with making a Christmas happen in the ‘shop.’ 

Being me, I flapped my hands and asked for help and contacted my sewing group ( the people who made a sterling amount of headbands and scrub bags during lockdown – I didn’t sew I need to make clear.)

I asked for those gifts that people have given you and they are perfectly good quality but you are not going to use them.

Anything they fancied making.

I was clear that everything had to be good quality – just because you are poor or you have found yourselves falling from ‘just managing’ to not, or you both worked in hospitality on a zero hours contract and those not longer exit, you shouldn’t be expected to be grateful for a half empty bottle of body lotion.

As ever, I have been so impressed by what I have received. 

Handmade stockings and puddings and teddy bears, a chess set, endless good quality ‘smellies’, candles akimbo, there is Christmas bunting on the way, lavender bags, a pristine Paddington, and so on.

One of ‘my’ sewing group said although she did sew, she was really a potter and would make some porcelain tea light holders. And she has.

And there is more to come.

My dilemma is how to sell/distribute these lovely things.

This is not anti-waste. This is re-distribution of wealth and luck.

Do we ration? Yes. 

How – not sure. 

Should you be interested, I will let you know what we do.

Meanwhile, one thing we are never short of is bread. The local Tesco in particular, is rubbish at the bread baking and ordering so there is always lots and lots and lots.

What can you do with stale bread.

Well you can make savoury bread and butter puddings which seem to be popular and when I do them, they fly off the shelves – all so very gratifying.

So, take some stale bread. Make some garlic butter. Cook some mushrooms, chopped and cook in oil and a knob of butter for quite a long time ( say half an hour).

Add some defrosted spinach or fresh spinach cooked down you fancy it.

Either make a ‘sandwich’ of bread and butter and mushrooms ( spinach maybe) and top with tomatoes. Or do them in upright triangles with mushrooms and tomatoes scattered.

Of course you can add ham, or whatever you fancy.

Mix some milk and eggs together and pour over. Scatter with grated cheese and put in the oven ( 180 degrees) until cheese is bubbling.

Yes I know it is not a proper recipe but for me, it is not full of moral dilemmas.

Chafing with Frank

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It has been a while since I sat down to write something which wasn’t an application for money.

Before you think that Deepest Sussex and its reluctant housewife have been plunged into penury, roasting badgers and growing lentils, I would like to say that this is money for a work project.

And that is something I have not been able to say for some years.

So along with all the usual stuff of life I, maybe, just maybe, be about to embark on a lovely, sparkly new work project- but there is many a slip between cup and research funding so will be biding my time and just hoping.

Meanwhile, the Oxfam bookshop carries on and I cook, and the two sometimes come together.

The aga is back on – though the weather has hardly justified it up until the last few days, I don’t care.

And when stuck on how to construct just the right paragraph for the money proposal, I will always go and rustle up a soup, or a supper, and sometimes will rustle among the dead geraniums and prop up a dahlia or two.

I have a lot of cook books and they fall into categories:

Ones I use a lot

Ones I use one recipe from 

Ones I used to use a lot

Ones I would like to cook from but am intimidated by ( see also Yotam Ottalenghi’s Guardian recipes for which buying the ingredients in Petersfield is a hopeless task. Think Odysseus or The Lord of the Rings in terms of difficulty and length of mission.)

Impulse buys from Oxfam – which tend to sit there for a bit then get taken back to the shop and re-sold.

And a grey folder with all those recipes I have ripped out of magazines, sent to be by my mother, scrawled on a envelope by a friend, wrestled from a chef in a restaurant…..

But I am a sucker for a cookery book and a great book title.

This is written by a man, Frank Schloesser, and brought to the public by the delightfully named publishers Gay and Bird in 1905.

( Apparently they published 113 books which included Frank’s other book, The Greedy Book, but also such interesting titles as Japanese Girls and Women, The Arab, The Horse Of The Future, Penelope’s Irish Experience and then her Experiences in Scotland – the mind boggles.

My favourite title is a book by one John Cutler: On Passing Off. The Illegal Substitution Of The Goods Of One Trader For The Goods Of Another Trader. Splendid! )

Back to Frank and his plans to convert the world to cooking with chafing dishes.

( From Wikipedia:

A chafing dish (from the French chauffer, “to make warm”) is a kind of portable grate raised on a tripod, originally heated with charcoal in a brazier, and used for foods that require gentle cooking, away from the “fierce” heat of direct flames. The chafing dish could be used at table or provided with a cover for keeping food warm on a buffet. Double dishes that provide a protective water jacket are known as bains-marie and help keep delicate foods, such as fish, warm while preventing overcooking.)

He explains that a chafing dish means that you have more in the way of tasty morsels than huge helpings of food, and quotes a Chinese proverb which says that ‘most men dig their graves with their teeth, meaning thereby that we all eat too much. This is awfully true and sad and undeniable, and avoidable.’

I have to say it is both undeniable in our house and we haven’t got round to the avoidable bit yet.

He doesn’t take his light suppers lightly and quotes Ruskin ( who knew Ruskin knew anything about domestic cookery.)

There is a chapter on Preliminaries which includes not only the recipe for Jellied Ham but an idea of what you should eat before and after different kinds of theatre experiences:

I am at a loss to know whether and East Room menu might be Indian food? And as for an A.B.C shop, I need a friendly food historian to tell me.

And Frank is a friendly food historian. His recipes are peppered with interesting historical references.

But he is also stern:

‘ By the way, in cooking soups, as indeed in all Chafing-Dish cookery, I cannot too earnestly insist upon the use of wooden spoons for all stirring manipulations. Metal spoons, even silver, are abhorrent to the good cook.’ 

And insists on ‘ the most scrupulous cleanliness…..

‘The Chafist who neglects his apparatuses unworthy of the high mission with which he is charged, and deserves the appellation of the younger son of Archidamus III, King of Sparta.Cleanliness is next to all manner of things in this dusty world of ours, and absolutely nothing conduces more to the enjoyment of a meal that one has cooked oneself than the knowledge that everything is spick and span, and that one has contributed oneself thereto by a little extra care and forethought.’

( And, no I have no idea what Achidamus’s son’s appellation was.)

I have looked through Frank’s recipes and although I am tempted by some including The Alderman’s Walk ‘a very old English delicacy, the most exquisite portions of the most exquisite joint in Cookerydom, and so called because, at City dinners of our grandfather’s times, it is alleged to have been reserved for the Aldermen. ( It is a saddle of Southdown mutton done in a sauce with bread.)

I am less entranced by the idea of eels with nettles though Frank assures me that ‘they give a peculiar zest to the dish which is quite pleasant.’

As for Frank himself, I can find nothing about him. 

I know he went on to the write The Greedy Book and they are both still around in second hand book sites, but of Frank there is nothing in Wikipedia or easily found.

I am sure there are food historians who know all about his Gallimaufrey and Ham in Hades, and love his short essay on the merits and otherwise of sauces, and could tell me everything from his boyhood onwards and if so, could they let me know.

Frank and I are cookery friends though I am not about to invest in a chafing dish however a useful present it would be.


Phones and Faff

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I do realise that you, dear reader, may wince at the mention of Christmas but for those of us beavering away at the retail of second-hand books, things need to be started on that front.

For some years, I have been telling you about how we start stockpiling books in exceptionally good condition to boost our Christmas trade and that means lots of crates around the upstairs room with notes on them saying they need to be left well alone until I decide we need to start putting them out.

Well, last week, another volunteer and I decided we needed to clear some space to slot empty, waiting crates into.

The shop manager is nothing if not a man to throw anything away or deal with anything today when several months hence might do just as well.

(I have this feeling that if you dig hard enough under bottom shelves, behind boxes, at the back of etc etc you could easily find a mummified body of an apparently unmissed volunteer.)

However, what we found most of during this clear out, was lots and lots of mobile phones. 

People can, and apparently do often, donate old mobile phones and Oxfam has some system of getting them re-used or their innards taken out, or whatever.

But to do that they need to be sent somewhere. Only the manager knows where, and he had clearly decided that there was no rush. 

There were about three carrier bags and a sizeable box of them.

So, we pulled them out of their dark corner – where there was also a hoover which to the best of my knowledge has not be employed for the past say two or three years, a 1960s box for carrying records which had been stashed with out of date cameras and lenses…..

Anyway, we put the phones into crates and put them in the other room, not too far from the kettle, so they couldn’t be ignored.

Next time I went in, the manager had put them all into cardboard boxes, neatly labelled as mobile phones for re-cycling and put them back where they were before!

And they will probably be there next Christmas.

In that clear out/up, I also found a box of Coalport houses – I had checked them and priced them and put them back in the box and promptly forgotten about them – though I do remember thinking they would work on a Christmas table, so all is not lost.

This time of year also means the annual ritual of crab apple jelly.

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I am sure I have said before that what was once a nod towards earth mother meets Sussex housewife, lost much of its charm on the basis it is a faff to make and we don’t eat it/remember to give it away over the year, and so is now in a stash in the cellar.

Anyway, this year we have, for the first time, a quince harvest and if anything quince jelly is even more of a faff, but it has the advantages novelty and you can make membrillo from the left over pulp.

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So, I put a notice in the village shop window offering our crab apples to any takers and this afternoon, as I sit writing this, a family are doing their best to clear the tree and are raking up the windfalls in the process.

Excellent.

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Artichoke Hearts

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There are times when you just have to admit to yourself that you are a Sussex housewife.

I was in Waitrose the other day – other supermarkets are available, and I can be found shopping thriftily in Petersfield’s Lidl and Tescos, especially at the end of the month, but Waitrose has stuff that they don’t.

Tinned artichoke hearts, for example.

Now I am a big fan of the above. There is a great Cranks recipe for a pie which is artichoke, green olives and potatoes – which I roll out frequently to vegetarian and omnivore guests alike and it goes down a treat.

Tinned artichoke hearts can also be drained (well they need to be drained and rinsed gently) fried in a little olive oil with parsley and lemon and then be the basis for supper – with salmon, with finely sliced fennel, with pasta, with saute potatoes etc etc – you get my drift.

Anyway, I was shocked to see an empty shelf when I had gone to stock up. ( Lidl and Tescos, good though they are on other stuff, do not see fit to stock artichoke hearts.)

Seeing the Waitrose floor manager I approached him and said. ‘This is a very Waitrose customer question, but have you decided not to stock tinned artichoke hearts any more? If so, I will be heartbroken’

( I was laying it on a bit thick, but I do rely on those tins.)

There are a few other thing which are always in my cupboard but I am afeared that I might sound even more Sussex housewife than I can bear.

But, for example lentils, I am a big fan, and can give you any number of lentil recipes should you be in need – and really, really they don’t need to be Puy lentils….)

His colleague ( who I gathered was an area manager ) said, in a very Waitrose manager way, ‘It could just be a supply issue. We have a rather erratic supply.’

All three of us walked to the empty shelf spot and looked at it mournfully. The area manager produced his tablet, checked it and reported that indeed it was a supply issue and once there were supplies, Petersfield Waitrose would stock tinned artichoke hearts again.

‘ We do have them grilled in oil in a jar, in case of emergency,’ he told me.

I am not enough of a Sussex housewife to have an artichoke ‘emergency.’

And, I said to him, ‘ I am not enough of a Waitrose customer to not notice the difference in cost between the posh jars and the ‘frugal’ tins.’

In a hurry to get milk for the Oxfam shop’s tea the other day, I whizzed past the relevant shelf and saw, yippee, they had the tins in again – I am now the proud owner of seven tins of artichoke hearts.

So, should some Sussex siege suddenly arrive, I will be able to knock up a tasty supper.