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Writing At The Kitchen Table Writing At The Kitchen Table Because Writing About Food is Almost as Enjoyable as Eating Food! Articles
Duckanoo - A Jamaican Dessert
2007-03-19 08:07:00 Duckanoo. With a name like that it could have been sugar-coated tripe and I still would have made it.Fortunately, whilst it does have sugar in it, it is a happily tripe free dish, and a traditional Jamaica n sweet.What intruiged me about Duckanoo, other than the adorable name, is the fact that it is cooked much like Tamales, which is to say, wrapped in a husk or leaf and steamed (although the Duckanoo are actually boiled to retain moistness and I used tinfoil husks due to lack of banana leaves in my local supermarket ? ever).I recently discovered an company called Malik who sell West Indian food produce, at really reasonable prices, and with exceptionally fast delivery so I have been reading up about Jamaican and Barbadian delicacies, of which there are many. I purchased some Cassava Flour from them, along with some tinned Callalloo and Salt Cod. Suffice to say, I am hugely excited about cooking with these items, although I?m not sure where to start!But back to the Duckanoo. Duckanoo... More About: Dessert , Esse , Duck , Kano
The Pork and The Beans
2007-03-16 08:15:00 Baked Bean s . My favourite accompaniment to Baked Potatoes, Egg and Chips, Fish Fingers or a Fat-Saturated Fry-Up. I love the sweet, tomato-y sauce and the way that they taste just as good straight out of the can, standing next to the sink at midnight.And of course, I particularly revelled in the Baked Bean Renaissance of 1992, when the humble saucy bean was placed on top of a pizza. I have always been advocate of baked beans with pizza anyway, so this was an affirmation of my slightly odd tastes.However, I knew that whilst tinned beans are great, homemade beans must be greater still so I set to work on finding a recipe that could put their canned cousins to shame.The first thing I considered was what bean to use. The traditional British Baked Bean is made with Haricot (Navy) Beans, which is a small, firm white bean with a slightly mealy texture. I didn?t have Haricot Beans in the cupboard so opted for a larger bean, the Cannellini bean which is creamier, although Butter Beans would ... More About: Pork , The Bean
Cornbread - It's Just Savory Cake Really
2007-03-15 08:38:00 Meeta at Whats For Lunch Honey loves to set us a challenge. Her Monthly Mingle is always great fun to take part in though; last month we had to make sweets for our sweeties and previous months have seen us Giving Thanks and using two notable ingredients.This month she has excelled herself with her ingenuity and is making us work hard for her. This months theme? Savoury Cake s! That title certainly set my mind whirling. I couldn?t even remember having ever eaten a savoury cake. Surely cake is for pudding or Sunday Tea? Or when you?re craving the consolation of a sugary Victoria sponge cake after a hard day at work?Well, apparently not. There have been various impressively imaginative entries already, ranging from Courgette Cake to a Tourtiere Bon Femme to a Bacon and Prune Cake.I?m sure that this had a lot of people scratching their heads, me included, but after toying with the idea of a savoury cheesecake, I finally settled on a cake by any other name: Corn bread.But not just any old ... More About: Just , Read , Savory
HHDD #10 Cheesecake or rather Yorkshire Curd Tart
2007-03-14 08:03:00 Cheesecake. It seems to be almost everybody?s favourite dessert (or snack or breakfast treat) yet there was a time when neither myself or Paul could eat it. Mine was simple; super tasters taste things much more prominently when they are younger (before the taste buds get numbed by alcohol and other adult pursuits) and I could not bear that tangy flavour. Luckily, I grew out of that particular affliction by my late teens and I adore cheesecake now.As for Paul, he used to get violently sick when he ate cream cheese (and that included all soft cheeses except for Ricotta). I remember once serving him Tiramisu and the ensuing sickness was not a pretty sight. Fortunately for both of us, that affliction passed too. Now, if I can just get him to overcome his garlic sickness...In the past, I have made a number of variants on the cheesecake, using both ricotta cheese and Philadelphia (cheesecake is ALWAYS a hit at dinner parties). However, I prefer to use Philadelphia as it gives that desirab... More About: Hire , York , Cake , Cheese , Yorkshire
Unusual Ingredient of the Week - Mutton
2007-03-13 07:56:00 That?s right, mutton, the meat that your grandparents used to have for Sunday Lunch. Call it Mutton , Hogget or a grown up Lamb, after years of being relegated to your grans dining table, this meat is bound for a revival.Mutton is highly esteemed in North African, Mediterranean and Indian cuisine but curiously went out of fashion in the UK, along with whitebait and sherry served in the hollow of an avocado, some time in the 70s.Fortunately though, there is a small but ever increasing group of organic farmers who are leaving the lambs to graze on pastures green for much longer than has been typically traditional: hogget for a year and mutton for 18 months. Not only this but a new campaign, spearheaded by Prince Charles, called Mutton Renaissance is also causing major ripples within the restaurant industry.What this extra time spent grazing and growing in lush green fields achieves is a fattier meat that is much darker in colour and much richer in flavour. It is best suited to long, ... More About: Week , Ingredient
Pizza & Baked Alaska
2007-03-11 17:36:00 PAUL WRITES: When I began my new job as a roof designer I was immediately involved in a little contest. The office staff were looking for a patsy to keep the boss in a good mood for the sake of a pleasant working environment. Unfortunately I drew the short straw. Being the new guy, I was a bit sceptical of the regulatory measures in place to ensure the fairness of the competition. You must admit, it does seem suspicious, especially considering the casting of lots just happened to coincide with my first day at work. Cheated or not, however, I have endeavoured to do as instructed and last night was just another attempt at elevating Kens mood.We hosted another such event a while back if you remember correctly, but the preparation that day was highly disorganised and the food wasn?t good enough to feed to prisoners. Good enough for Ken, but definitely not good enough for his wonderful wife Karen and not worth blogging about for that matter.Last night was a different story. I kept things... More About: Baked , Alaska , Pizza
Korean Hot Beef
2007-03-10 10:12:00 Now that I?ve gotten your attention with mention of food, I will browbeat you with my take on political correctness, the media, and the potential danger of global polar reversal for the next dozen paragraphs.Not really. But I had you scared anyway. No, I?ve been given strict orders to keep this all amiable and sweet. This isn?t easy for me. In fact, it?s just not my style. You know it, I know it, DOGS know it! (our Canadian friends might recognise the reference). I have a long history of ?rabble rousing? in the literary sense. I have written decent poetry and fictional prose, but it?s not my forte. I was even forced to write about a sporting event for my high school paper just to break character. They didn?t bother running it if I remember, or, if they did, they removed the part about tax money subsidising football uniforms while I was paying full whack for Graphic Arts fees.Joking aside, I don?t know where it comes from because I?m the nicest guy to talk to. I still lect... More About: Korea , Korean , Beef , Kore
Sometimes you know something isn?t quite right but...
2007-03-09 09:18:00 Sometimes you know something isn?t quite right but the little cooking demon whispers in your ear: ?no, this is just fine, keep going. You don?t want to miss the Barefoot Contessa do you??Yesterday, when I removed this bundle of thin sheets, sans box, from the freezer, I told myself it was Filo Pastry. Even when I was separating the thawed sheets and finding them to be a bit curlier than usual, quite a bit smaller, a bit thicker and a bit more translucent, I still continued to spread melted butter over the sheets and layer them up. The normally silky texture of Filo wasn?t there and when I folded the slightly coarse sheets around the salmon, it didn?t hold in place as readily as it normally should.At some point I yelled downstairs to Paul (who was watching Battleship Galantica) ?Am I using Egg Roll wrappers instead of Filo Pastry??He bolted upstairs to check: ?No.?Me: ?Thank God!?Paul: ?Nope, those are Spring Roll Wrappers.?Well, thanks for that Mr Semantics!The oven was on high, the... More About: Time , Methi , Times , Know , Right
Wait...Is That A Pigs Trotter?
2007-03-07 20:52:00 Last night I cooked a pigs trotter.There. I feel much better now. I know that you won?t all sit in judgement of me, particularly after your bolstering Tapioca comments.The thing is, I have this nasty habit of buying offal based products, cooking them but being too squeamish to eat them. I have chicken livers in the freezer. I actually like liver but I haven?t ever eaten chicken livers and now I?m worried that they?ve been in the freezer for too long and that they?ll be all desiccated.To be fair, I did think that the pigs trotter would be a little more appetising than it actually was. I could get over the little bristles on its ankles and the gelatinous rind if there was actually any sweet morsel of meat underneath. But there was nothing. Just gristle and bone. I know. I?m a coward but so is my husband! I put the trotter on his plate and I saw him just looking mournfully at it, thinking ?I have to eat some of this to save face but I don?t think I can.?And, he poked at the trotter and... More About: Hat , That , Otter , Pigs , Wait
Best read by 28/02/2007
2007-03-07 19:24:01 As if I don't have enough to do with my time and now I'm supposed to do another post for Freya because she got the new Phoenix Wright game for the Nintendo DS. I won't be seeing much of her for a few weeks and neither will you probably. And I have mentioned to her that I am at least as busy as she. I spent an hour working on the Victory today and only managed to add three pieces. It's not the gluing or the nailing, but the endless sanding that seems to take the most time. My boss Ken says it will take me about 150 lunch hours to finish the timber portions and then another 100 to do the rigging. I guess that equates to exactly one year. I don't mind; it appeals to my meticulous nature, but the fact is I don't have the room on my desk for the thing with all the drawings I'm supposed to be doing as well. And all my jobs lately have looked like this:Well, I hope that whomever moves into this penthouse apartment appreciates the headache caused to the poor truss designer wh... More About: Read , Best
A Glorious Risotto - In Theory
2007-03-07 19:24:01 Picture courtesy of Susan BlaxhillFirstly, can I just say that I haven't taken a Nintendo-related hiatus from blogging. I simply hadn't cooked anything worth writing about, whereas Paul loves to pontificate about his food. He thinks though that he may have driven people away with his lecturing and that he is better suited to sociological writing, rather than culinary. I told him that the two are intertwined and besides, there'd be a riot if he was to stop his always entertaining posts! Secondly, I like colourful food, like Pauls? stir-frys, but I rarely cook food that has much colour. It could be because I?m addicted to carbs, and most carbs are pale, as if to demonstrate how virtuous they are. Rice, potato, bread, pasta. All pale and interesting. I might add the odd splash of colour with some green beans or carrots but a tomato sauce is about as bright as my culinary spectrum goes.That is, until last night. We are now in a state of financial crisis. The bank has cancelled our de... More About: Theory , Risotto , Riso , Theo
A Healthier Way to Serve Cauliflower
2007-03-07 19:24:01 Cauliflower. A bland, flabby, insipid vegetable, redolent of disappointingly (but unsurprisingly) awful school dinners. Always cooked to the point of absolute collapse, it simply tastes like gone-bad cabbage (and leaves a lingeringly whiffy smell in the kitchen for hours too).The only way you could get me to eat cauliflower was in one of two recipes:1) Smothered (read disguised) in a cheese sauce and baked in the oven. Yes, the archetypal Cauliflower Cheese or2) Pureed to within an inch of it's life and served as soup.One masks its delicate flavour, the other enhances it, both deliciously.However, since last night, all this has changed.I had bought a cauliflower a couple of weeks ago and it still looked and felt and smelt not too bad (which is testament to the longevity of the cauliflower - more so than a post-apocalyptic cockroach). I had planned on making soup with it as part of my five day soup campaign but that fell by the wayside. Instead, it lingered in the fridge, rolling ou... More About: Health , Cauliflower , Lower , Lowe , Flow
Gougeres!
2007-03-07 19:24:01 Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, I promise!This weekend has been hectic. Firstly we have been filing our papers for the court case against the bank and this is no small feat in itself. Secondly, Paul has been ill with a small bug that my Mum has also been inflicted with, so I have been tending to two migraine ridden patients with upset stomachs but raging appetites. It seems that I am impervious to this stomach bugs and rightly so; after suffering with stomach issues for all of my adult life, I feel that I should be given a break somewhere along the line.Anyway, our diet has been mostly tea and biscuits (me), cereal (Paul) and popcorn and BLTs (both of us). Not the healthiest of diets but sometimes life gets resolutely in the way of living.But. The case against the bank is being officially filed at the court today and Paul has made an almost complete recovery, so hopefully things can get back to normality or, at least our skewed version of it.This started last nig... More About: Gere , Eres
Fish and Quips - Kedgeree
2007-03-07 19:24:01 Cooking on a shoestring budget is actually not so bad. It forces you to assess the ingredients of your freezers and cupboards and to utilise them in the tastiest possible way.I am lucky. I have a drawer full (literally) of spices, which I have named my Spice Drawer. Ok, so no points for originality. I won?t tell you what Paul calls it, but it usually involves a four letter expletive every time he tries to open it and finds that it has gotten jammed up, once again ?and this time it?s the Taco Seasoning AND the dried Chipotles in the way!?He might well complain when the drawer won?t open but he complains a lot more when we?ve run out of Cumin or peppercorns, hence it is my duty to provide a well stocked spice drawer.Actually, with just a few choice spices and some dried produce stored in dusty old jars, you can make a really a substantial meal that doesn?t taste meagre.Kedgeree is one of my favourite rice dishes that uses very few ingredients. The name is derived from an Indian dish c... More About: Fish , Edge , Gere
It's Just Tapioca!
2007-03-07 19:24:01 With Thanks to Chez BettayHonestly, it won?t bite.The stuff that children?s worst nightmares are made of, Tapioca has had a bad press almost certainly since it was first invented.My mother refers to it as slime, frog spawn or slimy frog spawn. It is an old fashioned Tom Brown's School Days type pudding that seems to send people spiralling back into a yawning nightmarish chasm of overcooked cabbage, watered down ketchup, grey, gristly mince and teachers standing over you whilst you finished every scrap of foul tasting food.Fortunately for me, whilst I too suffered the indignation of degrading school dinners, I wasn?t exposed to Tapioca so it has no horrible connotations for me. Therefore, I was quite excited to prepare Tapioca after seeing a delicious looking recipe in the Latin American Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard.I have always had a rather strange desire to try these tiny, dazzlingly white spheres. I couldn?t possibly imagine what could be so disagreeable about them. What I was int... More About: Just
Skating On Thin Ice
2007-02-28 01:21:02 I know, it's a cute but corny title. However, it sums up my feelings about this unusual fish. Skat e is not like cod or salmon or kippers. It is flat, very flat, like a one-dimensional diamond, with creamy white flesh on either side of a zither type central bone structure.I had a craving for Skate Wings when I saw them on the fish counter. They looked pinkly pearlescent amongst the silvery grey bream and the brown prepared crabs ? somewhat ethereal and, as I thought, quite tasty too.I shoved them in the freezer for a rainy day (and we?ve had plenty of those to choose from recently) and decided yesterday to haul them back out again for supper.There are a couple of traditional ways of preparing skate wings: both involve butter but one is black butter and the other is a caper butter. I unwittingly made a combination of the two after taking my eyes of the prize (or butter) for more than a couple of minutes whilst chopping vegetables.Skate is no hassle to cook. It simply requires flourin... More About: Skating
Now We Are One...
2007-02-27 13:21:01 And what better to way to celebrate such a momentous occasion than by baking a batch of Hummingbird Muffins...But firstly, here is a reminder of my first, slightly gauche post, back in the days before I even used photography to illustrate my writing!So much has happened in the last 12 months or so. Paul has become a fully fledged, paid up in advance, badge-wearing member of WATKT (and some might say the superior writer; the Batman to my Robin if you will) and now has his own fan club (comprising three members: Paul, me and his Mom).Last year was spent with the two of us flailing around in a cloud of financial and emotional despair. Two characters who were very important to us passed away. Benji, the spearhead of this blog, the canine gourmandiser, was the original influence for WATKT. Sure, you might say he was just a dog, but he was much more than that and anyone who has had a pet will understand. His picture remains on our overloaded kitchen shelves as a constant reminder of the l...
When Was My Last Bread Post?
2007-02-26 01:20:01 (Freyas Note: I've passed on Weekend Herb Blogging responsibilities to Paul this week. WHB is hosted by Anna at Annas Cool Finds this week.)Occasionally I encounter a fellow American while I?m ?out and about? (how Midwestern). It?s usually hard to pick out the accent in a throng of people as there are certain British dialects which sound similar, Irish for example. Today I had one such encounter. This time it wasn?t the accent that gave it away, but rather the vocabulary. The word that piqued my interest was zucchini.The equivalent here is courgette and while I occasionally hear eggplant instead of aubergine, I never hear the word zucchini. I personally prefer zucchini to courgette because it?s just more fun. Ironically I was looking for courgettes (thinking zucchini) when I heard this woman say zucchini.In my current bid to recapture my childhood, a recurring theme in my posts on Freyas blog, I had decided to make zucchini bread. I had everything in the cupboard to do a gr... More About: Post , Read , Last , Bread , When
Soup - Day 5 (at last!)
2007-02-26 01:20:01 I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a bit sick of soup now. For five days straight we have eschewed regular meals in favour of liquefied meals. I know that you have all enjoyed reading about our five days of soup, but really. Imagine eating just soup for 120 hours. Not literally 120 hours, obviously that would surely give us some kind of Guinness Book of Records award, but every, single night for five days! What was I thinking? Last night all I wanted for dinner was Mashed Potato. ?Can?t we have mashed potato?? I begged Paul, imploringly. ?No! We said five days of soup and that?s what we?re gonna do.?"Mashed Potato Soup ?""No." And now, here I sit, Friday night beverage in hand, ice cubes chinking, writing about our final soup of the week. Surely, I hear you cry, you must have made something startlingly brilliant and original, like lobster bisque with a crabs roe foam or Foie Gras Consomme garnished with the corneas of a Wagyu Cow. Actually, we went for something far hearti...
Yet Another Meme
2007-02-26 01:20:01 Memetics has been labelled by critics as cocktail party pseudo science. The kind of thing the middle class discussed to sound intellectual. When I first read about Memetics I saw it as an interesting analogue of existing sociological principles which have fascinated me for years. Memetics did for sociology what A Brief History of Time did for astrophysics, making it accessible to those who otherwise would have a rough time conceptualising some of the fundamentals.The greatest failing of Memetics is that it is simply a metaphor and not a new science. As such, it will never develop a following in any professional circles and is doomed to be a relic of pop-culture. Now as passé as membership in the Church of the Sub-Genius, Zendik Farm, or New Labour, Memetics has followed its? own prescribed path and mutated to assure its? own self-replication. It now takes the form of blogging ?memes?, sort of a 21st century chain letter for exhibitionists and voyeurs. Naturally we?re happy to... More About: Meme , Other , Another
Soup - Day 4 (Paul's Back!)
2007-02-26 01:20:01 That?s right! I got home late, took the kitchen over, made up a brand new soup on the fly, and only missed ten minutes of Battlestar Galactica (War of the Gods Pt. 2). Freya was sending me text messages all day with soup suggestions in a desperate bid to dissuade me from cooking tonight. I told her that I was determined to make dinner and nothing would stop me.I didn?t have much time to think about soup at work. I had some big quotes and redesign work due out not to mention the planking to glue on the scale model of the HMS Victory. My boss did have a look in my office to make sure I was busy and he pointed out that drilling the holes for the masts will prove to be a bit of a pain. ?And don?t even get me started on the rigging!? I only knew that the soup should have beans and tomatoes as they have been conspicuously absent from the rest of the soups this week.I stood in the middle of the kitchen while Freya finished off the batter for some Hummingbird Muffins, which I was sur... More About: Soup , Back , Paul
Soup - Day 3
2007-02-26 01:20:01 As far as I?m concerned, a week of soups must include French Onion. It is one of our favourite soups and one that I have made for many years.Onion Soup can be tricky though, despite its seeming simplicity. My mother-in-law referred to it once as tasting like beef consommé and there is certainly little point in eating the tinned stuff, which is basically beef stock with some token onion flakes sprinkled in it for good measure.I have made onion soup without stock and with stock and, providing you cook the onions slowly, over a low heat, you can be guaranteed of a rich flavour that tastes not one bit beefy.Of course, as far as I?m concerned, the soup merely exists to mop up the delicious Gruyere encrusted croutons that float on the top. As you can see, I like my croutons large. I just get great pleasure from tearing into the bread which has a soggy underbelly from the soup, the strands of cheese drooping over the side of the bowl, to be peeled off with your fingers once the soup has al...
Soup - Day 2
2007-02-26 01:20:01 Last nights soup was a complete transgression from the soothing broth. Last nights soup was big, bold and punchy, a real Wintery soup (although it was actually quite mild). It was also fun to make and was in the bowls and our mouths with pleasing rapidity. In fact, we had to eat whilst watching Battleship Galacticon. Normally it has finished by the time Supper is ready. I believe that they were in space this episode and that Starbuck had some chicks fall in love with him.Again with the blathering, I hear you cry. Just tell us about the soup!Bu-ut, I thought it was the blathering that you came here for? It?s not? Oh. Ok.Well the soup was Curried Parsnip with Bacon Croutons and Parsnip Crisps. It is cooked in much the same way as Potato Soup and Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, which is to say that the vegetable in question is sweated down with some onion, stock and then puree'd in the blender.The main difference between Potato Soup and this soup is the intense flavour of curry and lemon j...
Soup - Day 1
2007-02-26 01:20:01 Call me crazy but I love watching food cook. I enjoy seeing raw meat turn from crimson to a rich mahogany, I love to see apples caramelise in brown sugar and Calvados and I am always amazed when I watch fish curling up as it broils. I am also fond of watching cheese on toast cook; the rubbery pieces of cheese slowly liquefying and then starting to brown and bubble.Sometimes I?ll just stand and watch a pan of water come to the boil. Last night I spent 20 minutes gazing into my pan of chicken stock as I watched the slices of garlic bobbing around, the chicken slowly turning a pale ivory colour, the onion slowly disintegrated as the rings puffed up and fell apart.Don?t panic. I?m not about to start scrawling on the walls with crayons like Paulina Porizkova in in the video for Drive by the Cars.After a long (very long it seems sometimes), stressful day at work, standing by the cooker watching the fruits of my labour slowly finish off what I?ve started is just a wonderful way to unwind.... More About: Soup
A Week of Soups. And a Recap. And the Secret to Roasting a Chicken
2007-02-26 01:20:01 You read it right. A week of soups ahead. Actually five workdays. I?m omitting the weekend because, well, because it?s the weekend!The reason for this social and culinary experiment is two-fold:1) Still on our healthy eating kick, I need to detox Paul from the Sloppy Joes that he ate yesterday (note to Paul: the salad doesn?t make it healthy, it just (admittedly) makes it very pretty) and the Southern Comfort that we consumed Friday and Saturday Night (note to self: corn nuts and Southern Comfort don?t mix).2) Soup is not just healthy (and sometimes not healthy at all), but nourishing to the body and the soul, it is easy to make and can be filling. But mostly it?s easy to make.Ok, so that?s more than two reasons but cut me a little slack here, it is Monday! The days of Sloppy Joes are gone now for the week, more is the pity (though Paul had COLD Sloppy Joe mixture on toast for his breakfast today!). Tea and Biscuits replaced by Cereal. Ice Cream binges relegated to...well, I?m only ... More About: Chick , The Secret , Chicken , Secret
A Sandwich is just a Sandwich, but a Manwich, that?s a Sunday Meal!
2007-02-18 19:18:01 I know a roast dinner is standard fare for Sunday lunch and that to avoid serving lamb, chicken, or beef ribs today is the British equivalent of an American missing church. I also know that in a country seemingly less and less concerned with ?family values?, the Sunday Roast is the last bastion of home and hearth. So, it would be a bit stupid for me to insult a great tradition of my host country, but stupid is my middle name!Roast dinners bore me. It?s not the meat element, or the potato, or the stuffing, carrots, parsnips, Yorkshire pudding, and gravy that put me off. It?s the amalgamation of everything on one heaping plate. Each element individually is great, but I go into a bit of sensory overload when I?m presented with so many things mixed together. I try to isolate the elements and just enjoy them individually, but my taste buds are not adequately refined and the whole mess just tastes like a bland soup.I think it might have something to do with life experience. To me a... More About: Just , Hat , Sand , That
PIZZA AMORE!
2007-02-18 01:16:02 I have been asked to submit a posting for Writing at the Kitchen Table. Over the past four years, I have served as spouse of the author and more recently as food critic, sous chef, and blog editor. In all respects I have performed admirably. As spouse because I?m one heck of a great guy and as food critic because I?m a glutton.What occasionally comes out in the blog is the fact that I?m also a decent cook in my own right. I tend to play it safe, but this may be due to my Midwestern upbringing. The result of this will be that my postings will not be considered gourmet, but will, nonetheless, be yumaroo.Pizza is one of my oldest childhood memories. There were several delicious pizza places near my parents? home in LaCrosse. Rocky Rococo has already received mention in this blog, but I will expound. Affectionately known as Rocky?s, this pizzeria is a third of a ?triumvirate? (My brother Lee?s word for it) of cheap food joints one must visit while in LaCrosse (The other two being Taco J... More About: Amor , More , Amore
Those Poor Elizabethans...
2007-02-17 13:16:01 Shepherds Pie is an old English dish. If you are British you will have always been served Shepherds Pie as a child(or a vegetarian variant of it, if you are a non-meat eater). At Primary School we were served up Synthetic Mashed Potato served on top of a grayish brown meat sauce (origins of meat unknown), padded out with marrow fat peas and tinned carrots. I still shudder at the thought of it. I remember on more than one occasion unscrewing the lid of the ketchup dispenser so that when I went to squirt 'just a little' tomato sauce on my plate, everything was flooded with watered down sauce. "Miss, I can't eat this, it's covered in ketchup!"My first culinary Get Out Of Jail Card.The true origins of Shepherds (or Cottage) Pie go back even further than my own schooldays (and that was sometime in the 1980s!), although it is not as archaeic as I had expected. Of course, the Spanish brought potatoes to Europe in the 15th century but those choosy Elizabeth ans and the so-hard to please... More About: Those , Hose , Poor , Beth
Picassos Bream
2007-02-15 19:13:01 I enjoy cooking fish. It makes me feel like I?m a competent cook if I can remove fish from the oven, with a flourish, and reveal a moist, flaky, flavoursome dish. I haven?t cooked fish all that often, short of fish fingers or prawns because I?ve always found it to be daunting. Silly really, because if you take the proper precautions ? keeping the fish moist during cooking, not overcooking and using the right flavours for the type of fish ? you will always have a successful meal.As you gain experience in the kitchen, you also gain confidence and, more importantly, knowledge of the food you are cooking.The daily chronicling of my cooking endeavours has also helped me to become more diligent in the kitchen, more adventurous and more conscientious. For someone who has been hitherto unable to keep a journal for more than a week, to keep posting at least five times a week is remarkable. I have previously flirted with all sorts of interests hoping to find something to keep me stimulated fo... More About: Assos , Picas , Picasso , Brea , Pica
Blog Party #19 - A Digression From Diet
More articles from this author:2007-02-15 07:12:01 Today seems like it?s going to be one of those days: it will either make or break the diet. If I can stay strong and stay off the Super Noodles at lunchtime and leave the unopened Green and Blacks chocolate in the bread bin alone, I might just be able to survive until 5 O?Clock without junk food. After then, we have another fishy experiment on the books: Sea Bream cooked in what can only loosely be referred to as Provencal Style. This roughly translates to fish with tomatoes and some other stuff.In the meantime though, feast your eyes on these tiny beauties, made before we banished cakes and cookies (only temporarily mind, they?re in a box in the basement and can be let out without a moments notice) to the ?bad? corner.An event that I have enjoyed but never taken part in is held by Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness. Every month or so she holds a Blog Part y which is themed in various ways. The one interjoining link between all of her parties though is the word ?Bitesize?. It?s a word... More About: Diet , Sion 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
