Recent Food Outings

Well, a pub and resto really; I've been eating my way through the contents of the cupboards and freezer, and have only really gone out socially lately.

The restaurant: Chez Gerard in Guildford. Lovely; attentive non-servile staff who know how to keep just the right amount of attention going; good steak served in gorgeous slices with a decently firey pepper sauce, and a little pot of yummy anchovy butter with the bread (and a second pot delivered after we devoured the first one). Credible wine and a 'licious tarte citron to finish; all in all a most civilised experience, marred only by the difficulty of finding a pub in the centre of Guildford afterwards (we eventually found a really local local which itself would have been acceptable to eat at with a pint or two of beer, and warmed outselves with JDs before heading back out into the night. It can be cold out there without one's shoes on - high shoes, cobbles, tired feet, bad combination, especially when we headed back and found a disguised-in-black good-looking pub just down the high street from Chez Gerard).

Finding a pub was no problem the day after though; my friend S and I postponed a wild trip to Brighton (she was still tired from a wild trip to London; I was virtuous and had been pointed towards the train before 10pm in Guildford) in favour of a late working session and dinner at the Gatwick Manor. Now I know this is part of a big chain (Chef & Brewer) and the menus are meant to be the same everywhere etc etc but it's really not true: the GM kitchen staff turn out some damn fine meat courses, and the service is much better and friendlier than you'd expect from a pub of this size (it's huge). Mine was Pork Chops; fatless but succulent chops on a big bed of non-fatty bubble-n-squeak (delicious); S had the sausages and mash ('comfort food' said the girl with the hangover bigger than herself). I don't think I'll be trying that week's special beer again though. Now, if I could just remember what it was called...

2 recipes: chocolate bavarois (p47) and piedmontese peppers (p149)

Medium time no see... sometimes we all need time away, a period of adjustment to the things we cannot change, often whilst being blind to the things we can. So no cooking: I had thinking to do that it would have interrupted, and I needed to decide whether that was part of my old life or could continue into the new. And since I'm sat here looking at a trayful of naked peppers, I think we can safely say that it's continuing.

There were 3 simons booked for last friday; salmon, chocolate and creme anglais. In the end, the local fish suppliers beat me and Hwngo came too late, too tired and too hungry for me to justify going to the next town for supplies. So, fried duck breasts and onions (it would have worked better if they'd been the steaks that we thought we'd taken from the freezer, but it was still a surprisingly good combination), and the chocolate bavarois I'd made earlier. Hwngo looked appalled at the mussel soup; I had totally forgotten his revulsion at seafood, mainly because it is so out of character for his type of adventurer.

Anyways, the bavarois. Started early; finished just in time to get to Hwngo's train. Everything behaved fine except the cream: try as I did, I just couldn't get it to do soft peaks, so I whipped it as long as I could, shoved it into the mix then the mix into the fridge and ran off to fetch Hwngo. The result was a lovely chocolate erm soup. Three hours after finishing, it still wasn't set, so we ate it anyway. It was gorgeous; chocolately and milky but not in that 45% if you're lucky English candy bar way. And the next morning, when we had it again for breakfast, it had set into the sort of deep chocolate mousse that only a good French chef (and amazingly, the one at the Brest Flunch but that's another story, one with good steaks a point in it even) can make. Well worth trying again, but best accompanied by lots of exercise.

And today: the Piedmontese Peppers. Pretty easy, but two things to muse on. One, there is a lot of freedom in a recipe, which is both a good and a bad thing. I can slice garlic to sub-millimetre thicknesses, but I'm not sure if that's what "slice thinly" really means. And two, there are some tricks in cooking which one is incredibly grateful to have learnt. In this case, how to get the skin off a tomato, which is something that the person who first taught me how to make salsa properly taught me (along with that sometimes the hardest thing to do in cooking is persuade people that it's okay to throw part of your ingredients, e.g. tomato innard, away). Boil a kettle; pour the hot water into a bowl and throw the tomatoes in it. Wait 5 minutes; if you don't do this, the tomato will be as reluctant to shed its covering as a good catholic girl in a casting couch (the other thing I learnt in the past is that patience is a much undervalued but crucial ingredient in cooking). Then make a short line in the skin with a knife and peel it off gently; if it's had enough time, this will be as easy as stripping paint from a damp wall.

And the final verdict? Pepper and pepper and tomato are just such a classic combination; I love burnt peppers anyway, but the tomato has softened (like a good Sunday-morning fry-up) and mixed its taste with the pepper and garlic, and both are offset by the sharpness of the black pepper. The only thing I have a bit of a problem with is the anchovies. I can see that the dish might need something to balance it, but the salt in the anchovies is offputting in this context. Somehow, a softer fish, maybe one of the meatier white fish, would seem a better match for this dish. Maybe I'll try it that way next time.

My weight? Let's just say that a weekend with my mother feeding me up and a week of comfort-eating ('s all brain food honest) has taken its toll. About half a stone of toll. I'll start monitoring it again from tomorrow.

1 recipe: Saffron Soup with Mussels (p180)

I'm busy tomorrow, so I shopped tonight. The Friday plan has firmed up to Chocolate Bavarois, Creme Anglaise and Poached Salmon with Buerre Blanc (possibly in that order); tonight was meant to be Piedmontese Peppers but I forgot the anchovies, so it's just as well that I went a little OTT and sourced the ingredients for Saffron Soup With Mussels too. Which I'm cooking now.

The wine, as always, took longest to find (the gelatine leaves took a while too). I think this is essentially a soup version of Moules Mariniere, so I fancied a good dry German white in it. Sainsburys has the teensiest of German selections. Minute: only a few bottles hidden between the all-conquering spanish and french. Which made the choice difficult: a cheap bottle and risk it, or something more expensive that may be risking it anyways. In the end, I settled for an Ernst Loosen Riesling. And in traditional style, I'm going to cook half and personally evaporate the rest... tasting notes to follow... hmmm... apricots. Well, more like biting the fesh around an apricot pit; like the stuff you paint on to stop nailbiting, slightly bitter but strangely inviting. And sweeter than I expected.

Final straits now... waiting for the potato to soften so I can put in the mussels and declare the soup done. But there doesn't appear to be enough liquid for this to really be called a soup. I'll see what happens, but for now it seems somehow wrong. Tasty, but wrong.

My god it's good. The cream was enough to push it over the liquid edge from stew to soup, and it's no more an extension of Moules Mariniere than Jordan is an extension of Debbie Harry. It's rich, complex, smooth on the taste but plays off the crunch of the potato (I was sure mashing them was best, but no, this works well) against the tang and suck of the mussels. Kids, please try this at home. And invite me round to supper. Please? I only have a giant bowlful left...

ROTW: Mackerel Souffle

One souffle. I think it's my first ever, although I have a niggling memory of attempting one in the crooked house (two feet different in nominally- parallel wall lengths in a single room).

That was... fun. Usually cooking is calming or meditative or sometimes badly stressing, but this one was fun. Probably something to do with all the changes; lots of stirring and whisking and grating going on. Nutmeg especially is a cool thing to grate: you think you've just run it over the grater a couple of times and nothing's happened, and then you lift up said grater and a whole pile of magically- grated nutmeg is just there waiting for you. Some foods are just special like that. Like the eggs: I had a box of Old Cotswold Legbar eggs in the fridge (I have a soft spot for rare breeds, although they're hardly rare now I can buy the eggs in Tescos), and was pleasantly surprised to see that inside those pastel- blue shells are lovely deep orange yolks. The only down was beating the eggwhites. Hwngo showed me that using a stick blended really works on this, so I used mine, and nada. White fluffy mixture, but not a peak in sight. And I couldn't rescue it from there: after 10 minutes of fighting it with a hand whisk, I gave in and made the mixture anyway. Then anxiously watched through the cooker's glass door for half an hour.

I wasn't expecting texture. I've always thought of souffle as a smooth dish, a rolling hill of smooth curves forming a chef's hat shape over the top of the dish. But there it is, in photographic evidence: a textured top (and one that, ta-da, didn't sink when I took it out the oven!). It tastes good too: like the best of soft omelettes collided with a soft cake; worth missing my yoga class for even. The nutmeg and fish balance off each other beautifully, and the only regret I have is that I wasn't a little more adventurous with the pepper; I've been a bit too heavy-handed with it of late (the pestle-and-mortar full of pepper is probably a hint about my culinary proclivities) but I think this dish could take it. Peppered mackeral souffle, anyone?

And I promise when I have both eggs and mackeral in the fridge, the last thing I'll think about cooking is a kedgeree...

Back again

Back again. After a small period of adjustment. Hwsgo is now Hwngo; this may or may not be temporary, but it certainly won't get in the way of cooking and eating together. Last night was dinner out at the tapas bar near Borough Market. Which is itself surprisingly close to London Bridge. I'd mentally pegged it as just past Tower Bridge, so the familiar ironwork was quite unexpected at the end of a spooky-if-it-hadn't-been-well-lit tunnel near the station. But at least I know now that it’s a very short walk to the Artisan de Chocolat misfits stand on a Sunday…

The tapas was good; we’d been spoilt by going to Granada last month, but I don’t often get tapas this good in the UK (there’s a little place in Wales, but it’s a long way to go for a croquette). The ham plate looked enormous but the slices were delicately wafer-thin so we still had room for all the potatoes that Hwngo had ordered (I hadn’t realised he liked potatoes so much. No wonder he’s offered to help me dig the potato beds in the allotment). The hams were good: the chorizo properly spicy, and something that we couldn’t identify was good enough to have us both proffering the last piece to each other (then splitting it :-)). Croquettes were almost-Granada, with surprisingly good fried curly parsley on top. Potatoes aioli: good chips, and distracted Hwngo long enough for me to snaffle almost all the olives from the sardine (big, plump, yummy) plate. I rocked the balance a bit with ham cheeks and white beans; good, but we were full and it didn’t quite match the other plates… meat tasty and tender and reminiscent of the stews my mum made when I was young(er). And we washed it all down with sherry, with another piece of kitchen wisdom from Hwngo: if you don’t like the wine list, drink the sherry. And beer. And whisky. And…

...Enough: I have received my ROTW of the week and intend to assail it. Although being a soufflé, the assault may be in quite the other direction…

Souffle de poisson
100-150g smoked macheral (whatever you have), liquidised smooth in a little lemon juice
bechamel sauce [ white sauce ] made from 50g of butter, 50g of flour, 250ml of milk
salt and pepper
grated nutmeg
4 eggs carefully separated into whites and yolks
Put the fan oven on at 190.
Prepare the bechamel sauce by melting the butter in a pan over a medium heat. Add the flour working it in thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Remove the pan from the heat, add the milk and whisk until smooth. Season well with salt and pepper and grated nutmeg. Return the pan to the heat to cook for about 10 mins stirring frequently. Getting this smooth is key to success.
Remove the pan from the heat, beat in the yolks one at a time. Stir in the mackeral.Beat the egg whites to a stiff peaks. Butter the souffle dish. Put the flavoured bechamel in the souffle dish and fold in a third of the whites using a sharp-edged spoon. Add the rest of the egg whites in the same way: do not stir or beat: a hetrogenous texture is better than losing the air in the eggs. Pour into a butter souffle dish to about three quarters full.Place in the oven immediately and cook for 20 mins then increase the heat to 220 for 10 mins and serve without delay with bitter leaves.

Weight today is unknown, but has held at 166.6 for the last few days. Food intake to come shortly.

Pub, chinese and a decent-sized nightcap

Ah, the mutation into an eating blog continues apace: fridge still full, social life still active... Usual day routine of cereal soup and bag of something horrid but low-cal (quavers this time) yesterday, then out in town with Hwsgo, for a pleasant change. A pint of Spitfire at the seriously difficult to find Cock and Woolpack (pleasant wood-panelled pub with decent beers, down Finch Lane, between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, but the buildings are so tall and close together that you can't see it from Cornhill), then dinner at Imperial City.

The online reviews for Imperial City weren't great, but Hwsgo usually knows what he's doing, and as usual was right about this one. The restaurant is in a basement, and has that lovely Victorian sewer architectural style of arching handmade bricks twinned with discreet good taste, which also pretty well describes the waiters (waitpeople? Has that term made it over the pond yet?). We started with seaweed and eel as suggested by Hwsgo because they go well together. They did: the eel was plump inside with a suitably dry edge to it, and the seaweed was, well, chinese seaweed (i.e. cabbage), done well (i.e. inoffensively). I had crispy duck for main course (goes well with the beer I'd had earlier) and Hwsgo sea bass; both cooked well, and the sea bass plump and fresh. The wine was a little punchy with apricots but calmed down after an eel-based talking-to: all-in-all, an elegant dinner in a place that allowed us the priviledge of relaxed conversation (sometimes a rare commodity in an English restaurant). Then off to the Counting House for some well-deserved whisky and people-watching. Although someone who won't be mentioned (but ratted on my chocolate frenzy earlier in the week) did manage to snaffle some chocolatebars on the way home...

Today I am mostly not hungover (unexpectedly) and 166.4lbs. Tonight I am planning another outing to the gym, this time combined with some plodging up and down the pool. One day I shall be thin...ner...ish... Scrub that plan: some of the livelier types from work dragged me (kicking and screaming honest) off to Ceroc tonight. Lots of fun, but it will take quite some time for me to stop looking like an engineer remembering how to count to four...

Back to normal

Healthy again now (although a canteen egg sandwich may yet see to that); weight 166.8, and fridge full so foodie tasks today are limited to planning and possibly making things with chocolate.

Food intake: 1 bowl specialk + milk, 1 bag baked crisps, 1 canteen egg sandwich, 1 latte, 1 machine coffee, lots water, 1 bag mini cheddars. Exercise: well, I'm thinking about it. I have a plan forming. I feel guilty about eating too much chocolate, and I don't run enough. So: the chocolate/running exchange rate. I've thought about it, and a half-hour run is mentally worth five 1" squares of chocolate. The catch? I have to do the running before I can have the chocolate. Boy am I going to hate myself for this one...

...really didn't want to eat tonight, so I headed off down the gym to see if I could work up an appetite. First bodypump, on the 10kg warmup because I'm a bit wimpy at the moment... still had a complete muscle rebellion 2/3 of the way through, but at least I made it to the end; then Pilates, which was in some ways much more difficult... a bit shocking how bad my core stability is at the moment, but I can work on it and the fat that stopped me bending properly a few months ago has gone now. Still not hungry, but I forced a bowl of chicken and sauce. I'm now eyeing up a square of chocolate and wondering if 1 bodypump will allow me to eat a square inch. I rather think it will.

Not much food today

It's a little embarassing this, but I appear to have picked up a food bug. Not really ideal for someone trying to blog about food. Today's fare will be less ornate than usual: active yoghurt, water and plain rye bread. All day. Simply missing out coffee will be death itself, but it's better than spending any more days waking up unreasonably spaced out and hurting every time I go near sugar (the chocolate last night was a very very bad idea). Although the weight loss is good (169.8lbs yesterday; 166.4lbs today), it's probably very bad for me not to be absorbing any energy from my food.

Enough. This is a food blog, and I have at least one morsel for today. I've found my local Polish food shop (not that that's very difficult anymore); well, Polish-Tamil food shop, but at least now I have a good source of rye bread, pickled fish, hot sausages and unusual ketchups. And German yoghurt: not something I often feel the need for, but I now know where to find it.

Onwards... food purgatory awaits.

Plans for today

Today is a good day to buy and cook a chicken to the next book recipe (poulet poche). And to attempt an rotw (lemon meringue pie) at the same time. And maybe consider buying a straightjacket in advance.

I was so out-of-sorts that Hwsgo cooked the chicken instead and we missed the lemon meringue completely. He was ever so sweet, and re-did Simon's roast chicken recipe for us; we bought a big bird (2.4kg, the smallest they had) at Allen Martin Meats; it was a good bird, but I think a little too large for the recipe; we got good firm flesh, but not quite as infused with lemon and herbs as the earlier one had been. The really really good thing was the banana shallots that Hwsgo packed around the baking tray (with roast potatoes; also good, but not as spectacular); they picked up the butter sauce, and caramelised into melt-in-the-mouth sweetness. We also finally found a use for the comedy turkey baster that's been sat in my kitchen drawer for the past year: it really does work, and it saves an awful lot of fishing around in the baking tray with a spoon.

1 Recipe: Leek Tart (Page 121)

I really really didn't want to cook today. Got out of work late (traffic snarled up again), went and bought the ingredients I needed then wandered aimlessly round Sainsbo's, trying to think of something I desperately needed and had to spend a long time thinking about, then eventually (I now know their entire range of non-food goods, which really isn't something to be proud of) came home. And read the Guardian, did the crossword (nearly), puzzle (absolutely), watched something fascinating about cooking on TV, checked hwsgo's now very-important-blog (vib); in short, anything but come into the kitchen and cook.
But I had to come here eventually (the butter was going soft), and start. So I made the pastry dough (p151) , started chopping the leeks, and suddenly it hit me. I'm in here doing something repetitive, difficult, long-winded (it's going to be well past bedtime when I finish tonight) because it calms me. And it calms me because I start to think. About life (not as bad as Monday), about work (definitely not as bad as Monday), about hwsgo and familes and roles and self and jobs and the limits of banks buying Bayesians because they're trendy but not thinking about what happens next (hopefully not the same as puppies after xmas, but my gut feeling tells me that only some will be allowed to stay in the house).
And then somewhere at the end of this reverie, I realise I have more leeks than I realistically have pan. I mean, I have some big pans, but the leek pile has filled a very large bowl and I'm suddenly wondering if I should revise my idea of 'big' for this quest. I also have my soup kettle, but I'm loathe to burn things on the bottom of it without reason, so I melt the butter and carefully tip all the leek cuttings into the biggest 'normal' pan that I own. Which they completely fill, as in no pan insides showing at all. Now I believe I'm logical, and I have several pieces of evidence that lead me to believe that everything's going to turn out fine. 1) I have enough pastry for an 8" dish, and there's no way that lot is going to fit into anything but an unreasonably tall 8" dish. 2) onions shrink, and leeks are basically onions on an Atkins diet, and 3) it looks a bit like my compost heap. Which is not as bad as it sounds. One of things I love about my compost heap (compost not having been one of them yet) is that it's always full when I fill it up (with leaves, grass, clippings etc), but when I come back to it, there's always a gap in the top waiting to be filled. Now either some kind soul has been digging out my compost for the last few years (and I wouldn't put the neighbourhood squirrels past that), or when you warm up a pile of leaves they shrink. So that's solved nicely then. But there's still the issue of where the butter went. I put leek clippings on it, stirred them and all the butter disappeared. And how are the leeks going to sweat without water? I'm really hoping the stuff about their high water content is true, or it's compost pie for supper tonight...
It's okay; it's half an hour later and all the mysteries (the leek-based ones anyway) have been solved. They do have enough water to sweat; the butter has run out and joined the leek juice too, and I can see half of my pan insides with no leek-shifting cheating. I think I can go and bake the pastry now...
...okay, problem. I don't own a small baking thing. I have 10" ones and huger, but nothing at 8". I must remember to buy at least one of these (all my baking trays are rubber, so another one of those would be good), as well as the large frying pan that I need, and a full-sized Le Creuset pot. All I need now is a town with shops that stock that sort of thing.
Okay folks. I'm supposed to be one of the smarter people in the world (there are also people who think I'm completely stupid, but I guess it's all relative). Let's think what happens when we try to put wobbly pastry into a wobbly rubber baking tin. Oh yes; collapse on a scale not seen since.. well, quite recently if we're talking finance, but. Oh grief. I've just looked at the oven. The sides have fallen into the middle. Using only your skill and ingenuity... I've been and poked it, but the sides are determined to lie down and sunbathe. I poked the leeks too: it does indeed take an hour to sweat them down. I do hope the filling won't turn out to be too runny. Oh, and you prick the bottom of pastry cases with a fork to stop them blowing giant bubbles on their base. Doing it halfway through cooking is definitely not a cool idea (but is fun watching the bubbles go down).
The pastry case is cooked. And shot. It's more of a bent pastry saucer; my first official kitchenblog disaster (takes bow/curtsey). But the leek filling is good. I was tempted to eat the tarragon on its own. I can't remember having ever cooked with tarragon, although I may have grown it sometime (I love just having herbs around to smell in the garden), and it's a much nicer smell and taste than I was expecting. I've put the filling over/around the tart bas(in), and I'll see what happens over the next half hour. Apart from me getting hungrier, of course.
It's done. Smells good but I've left it for a while to cool (there being no pastry edges to keep the filling in). And the verdict is. The tastes work really well together: the tarragon, the leek, the parmesan (I put it in, even though it was optional) is a really good combination. But it's a bit... erm.. squidgy. I suspect I didn't cook it quite long enough (out at 35 mins on a 30-40 min timing because I was worried about overcooking it). I think I like the recipe, but I don't think I've done it justice this time.

Reorientation...

Right! This blog has been far too much about me and not enough about food for a few days. All immediate crises are over, so it's time to get back with the Simons. Hwsgo has suggested Poulet Poche a la creme with crepes parmentier (posh chicken pancakes, p38) for the weekend, and I'm taking The Book to work with me today to choose something for this evening as well.
Back to me for a second... weight yesterday was 171.0; today is 170.4lbs. Food intake today 1 bowl specialK + milk. Yesterday 1 bowl SpecialK+milk, 1 specialK bar, 1 cream-inside biscuit, 1 pack baked crisps, 1 bowl soup + bread + butter, 2 slices bread with butter and smelly cheese, 1" lump of Italian dried sausage, 1 1" square millionare shortbread (thank you IET, you do lovely cakes at your talks), way too much coffee.
Onwards...

Another night on the town...

Ah, yet another non-cooking day caused by my social life... am going out on the town tonight, so dinner will yet again be cooked by someone else. Will try to eat healthily though, to maintain my (probably temporary) weight advantage of 168.8lbs. Today's food: 1 bowl specialK and milk, 1 bag baked crisps, 1 bowl soup with bread+butter, too much beer, Thai fishcakes and Thai red curry (which elicited a quite spectacular food reaction later; maybe additives, maybe just a bit too hot a curry for me).

weight rising

Back from a lovely weekend with the chef and her family. No cooking as such (except bacon etc) but lots of eating. Italian friday night (risotto and lots of wine), moules saturday lunch (great watching the 2-year-old eating them), salmon and salad sat pm, roast beef in the pub on sunday. On the 1st feb, weight was 170.8; now, it's 171.6. I really really need to get some exercise and some rest from eating too much.

This is very odd; same scales, same me, scales not moved at all, but my weight changed during the night... at 3am it was 171.6; at 7am it was 170.0lbs. I really really must have been hot during the night...

Today not a good food day; work exploded badly, and I ended up being sick with shock and unable to eat much. Bad on the stress/ Simon fronts; possibly good on the weight front...