Peach pie

I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I would always have the starter (or another drink) instead of the dessert in a restaurant. I don't get a great paroxysm of pleasure if 'someone' brings me a box of chocolates. I would eat them, you know, out of politeness, but my mind would be on other things. Desserts are also in my experience quite hard to make. And so, with that attitude I am trying a recipe that I am particularly sceptical about.

I believe I made my feelings about William Dufty known in a previous update after I came back from holiday. The title of the book is Sugar Blues, and on the edition I have it is typed in handsome Spencerian cursive just like the Coca Cola logo, how ironic! Ha ha. And the basic message of the book is that sugar is bad, man. Check out the before and after picture, take the sugar out of your diet and you turn into fricking Robert Redford!

This isn't really a cookbook, more like a parsimonious mandate with a few recipes in the back. Imagine a dried up casuist with a Japanese fetish and you might get an idea what I'm talking about, everything tastes better with an umeboshi (salted plum) thrown in. OK? Lock up your sons and daughters! Especially when you hear this :
"I've had some success weaning youngsters off sugared puddings by making a whipped mixture out of stewed dried fruit and tahini"
Well, I didn't have any youngsters lurking around, and as I started making the pie crust I wondered where one would get some...
This 'recipe' was a real mental challenge for a pedant like me, there were pretty much no measurements, which always worries me. As I mix the dough the texture is pretty revolting, the cornmeal is like sand and the whole thing reminds me of the mudpies I used to make when I was five. I also used to eat those pies, so no judgement!
The crust bakes/dries up in the time specified and as he didn't mention greasing the dish I was expecting it to stick to the pie dish (which I borrowed from the boyfriend's mum) which thankfully it didn't.
Luckily for us, we don't live in the 60s so I was able to obtain peach halves in natural grape juice as opposed to syrup, and that was pretty much the only ingredient. Having been dealt a lifelong blow by the 'ginger' chicken, I am pretty paranoid about sourness, but the unspecified amount of lemon peel goes in, along with the raisins.

Result: I am pleasantly surprised. Apart from the snotty texture of the filling I can't fault it. 'Even you have to admit, this is nice' said the boyfriend, what is that supposed to mean?
I would make the pastry crust again, it was crazy easy and tasted like every other pie I've had. Fancy pants claims he never makes pie out of fresh fruit because you're meant to eat it raw, but I would totally put strawberries in the next one.
Good, and it makes it easy to pretend that eating a pie is good for you.

Sarma

In February I went to Bath with some girls, and either because it was frickin' freezing or because I'm thick, the only memory I have is of all of us walking around, stopping every five minutes to pose and take pictures. At one point someone said 'Hey, lets all of us almost flash the camera!' That picture's in Facebook now, and let's just say some of us are almost flashing more than others...

The other thing is this Favorite Romany Recipes booklet by Keziah Cooper I bought in the train station gift shop as soon as we arrived. Yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with Bath. Every recipe has a little story preceeding it, and there's a bunch of ye olde time sepia photographs of caravans and horses and that kind of stuff all over the place. Cute.

I don't have access to a scanner today so I'll have to type out the recipe at the end, and take a photo of the cover, but I have a new phone, so hopefully the food will look as good as it... tastes hahaha

I'm not a big fan of the old 'a good pinch of' this and 'a mixture of' that, especially after I've been stung but playing fast and loose with the ingredient in the previous recipe. And I was about to halve all the ingredients when I thought that I didn't have enough rice, before I realised that 1 pound of cooked rice is made out of half a pound of uncooked rice. Thanks for keeping that to yourself, Keziah Cooper. But clock the cute little tomatoes from the garden :)
I didn't have any bacon, which is optional, but you're not told to put a little salt in the mixture if you don't use any. Is there a danger of this being, dare I say it, bland?
I'm still under the influence of Julia Child, from the weekend, so I'm using butter and not oil to prepare the filling, and it's pretty simple until you start trying to wrap them up in the cabbage leaves. I was really pleased with myself for having one of those gigantic flat cabbages from the Turkish supermarket, easy, right? No. A couple split and only one or two were neatly wrapped and tucked in to the steamer, I had visions of the contents spilling out, trickling through the holes and making a big mess... (Julia Child might tell me to have no fear!)

Result: You are meant to eat this with tomato or mushroom ketchup, Cooper gives the recipes for both, but I didn't have time to make either. That's Heinz in the picture, and I understood the recomendation as soon as I tasted it. The sweet acidity of the ketchup goes really well with the starchiness of the cabbage, without that it was blaaaaaaand. You can just about taste the dill and peppers, but next time I would cook the rice in stock and instead of steaming the parcels might stew them in tomato sauce. Otherwise, this is a dinner to make for yourself when you've been really bad >:( (that's what you get for being such a loser on a Friday night)


Sarma
When I was young we made several trips in May to the great annual Romany pilgrimage at Saintes Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue in Souther France. Apart from the excitement of seeing the Camargue cowboys rounding up the wild horses, there was something magical about witnessing so many different tribes coming together in one place. Our aitchen tan (stopping place) was part of a rich tapestry of different cultures. This recipe was garnered from out neighbours there and is one I always associate with those colourful spice-and-garlic scented visits.

Large cabbage leaves (red or green)
4 shallots or a handful of ramsons (leaves and bulbs), chopped
A little oil or butter
2 well flavoured tomatoes, chopped
A mixture of sweet peppers, de-seeded and chopped
Diced cooked meat or bacon (optional)
1 lb plain boiled rice
A good pinch of fresh chopped herbs (dill, parsley, marjoram)
4 oz smoked or herbed soft cheese
1 large egg, beaten

Saute the shallots or ramsons in the oil or butter until soft, add the tomatoes, peppers and meat (if used) and cook lightly. Remove from the heat and combine the rice, herbs and the cheese into the mixture, including the beaten egg. Fill the cabbage leaves with the mixture and fold them over to make secure parcels. Steam these for twenty minutes and serve with tomato or mushroom ketchup

Update

OK, nothing to do with cooking, but I just came back from watching Julie and Julia. Oooh, when's the DVD coming out!!!
I liked the look of the boned duck pie at the end, but I don't think I really want the book. I'm not ready for it. Plus the boyfriend has kind of put a moratorium on cook book buying until I use all the ones I have now.
Maybe that's because I told him that Stanley Tucci gives me major wide on...

Ginger Chicken

I'm back in business, baby!
Today, that business is using up whatever in the fridge is about to go off which was chicken and steak. I couldn't find any recipes for steak that didn't necessitate a trip to the shops, and doing this blog has made me so perverted that I don't really want to cook anything that doesn't require the use of a recipe. So just like, you know, frying the steaks to make - steak - for dinner was out.

So taking all of that into consideration I decided on the rather simple looking Ginger Chicken from Keith Floyd's book of Great Curries. Great!
As I have written earlier in the Biryani post, I don't really trust Westerners trying it with asian food, but Floyd gets special dispensation because he's so cool! To be honest, alsmost none of the stuff he made on his shows looks that tasty, but I still want to try all of it. As far as I can tell the idea of his programs was to make international food accessible to English people. I remember one bit where he cooked something in France and the woman he gave it to to taste told him, in French, that it was kind of OK, but not that great. I think that's the point, you make it for yourself and everybody else can go jump in a lake!

OK look at the picture and see if you can tell where my downfall is going to come from. The recipe calls for the juice of 2 lemons or 2 limes. I figured that since the citruses we had were soooooooooooo small that I should use both the lemons and limes. Ha.
The method is pretty simple, you fry the chicken, then season it, and then simmer in the liquid. Hey, how is the flavour supposed to get in to the chicken meat? Shut up, that's how.

Perhaps another way in which my misguided self assurance sealed the doom of this dish is that I didn't use the entire bunch of spring onions. Come on, look at the size of that thing! We got it in the Turkish supermarket up the road and it's pretty big, yeah?

I also made Raita, but you don't hear me bragging about it. Check out the recipe below, though, I wouldn't have been able to do without it!

Result: 'Yeah, you can definitely taste the ginger' generously offered my stepmother. Everybody else was a bit more honest about the meal. Ahem.
All you could taste in the sauce was the lemon :( having said that I'm not sure if you would be able to taste anything significant in the absence of the lemon. The raw spring onion was supposed to provide the heat - um, maybe I didn't put enough in, or maybe it just tastes like onion. Or maybe I'm in the Twilight zone, up is down, left is right and this recipe is really authentic and delicious. Lets just say if I fed this to an Indian he would die of shock.
Raita was good.

I kind of have a cold today, so just leave me alone

Update

OK, I haven't done anything for a while (to the consternation of my many fans, I'm sure) because I've totally been in Croatia, serously you guys!

It was amazing, the sky was blue, the water was clear, fishes swam around you fricking legs, German nudists everywhere - good stuff man!

We collected some mussels straight out of the Adriatic, I spent 2 hours cleaning them and they were yummo-pajamo. I had pictures but the stupid boyfriend went swimming in his pants and drowned his camera :(




So three things I'm planning to do now that I'm back on this soggy, sunless isle -

1) I'm really disappointed that there are no Croatian restaurants in London. Their food is indescribable. Not in a creepy orgasmic way, but becasue it's a combination of Slavic, Muslim (from Bosnia) and Meditarranean influences. Lots of fish and lots of veal. I had this pizza one night... dude. Who do those Italians think they're dealing with?
Anyway, so I bought 2 cookbooks to recreate the experience. They're in Croatian but I'm arrogant enough to think I can figure it out.

2) My holiday reading was a lifestyle/diet book from the 60's that I got the boyfriend as a joke gift last x-mas. The premise is that sugar is the Devil's crack rock, every problem you have is because of sugar and other refined food. Headache? Sugar. Cancer? Sugar. Car crash? Sugar (yes really). He gives historical examples and cites scientific studies, so it's pretty convincing stuff and there are recipes in the back for a sugar free life. To be honest, I don't really like the guy's mega superior tone and it sort of scared me as well, but I'm eating a bag of Haribo as I'm typing so the effect isn't lasting.
The punchline is, I'll give it a go.

3)The first piece of news I heard when I got off the plane was that Keith Floyd died. It was really sad. Along with the Two Fat Ladies, his is the only tv cooking show I could stand (Clarissa, that means you're next).
I only have one of his books, and I don't anticipate finding any others in charity shops in the near future. I shan't wax on about how great and innovative the old booze hound was, but I'll give his book a go




OK, finito. The Haribos are kicking in, the sugar musta have given me this headache, better go and drown it with some coffee.

Klops

I'm not sure why I bought this book, I'm about a quarter Jewish but 0% American. I've always been intrigued by Jewish food, it's not specific to a particular country so there are so many regional variations as well as religious restriction - like cooking with one hand behind your back, sort of. And what is more appetising sounding than Klops? If memory serves me right, klop is Russian for bed bug, yummy!
I'm going to make the accompanying beetroot and pasta dishes too, so I might as well tell you that I'm using butter instead of margarine - milchig-schmilchig, and guess how Jewish I am when i reveal that I used pork instead of veal (try finding it in a British supermarket!) and I had to go to three different shops to find caraway, I bet you won't even be able to taste it. Also I still have no parsley, but who cares?
This book is a little wierd, I guess, I'm not sure who the target market is. It reads very upper middle class New York, and I found the tone a little condescending. The top billing goes to a guy called Raymond Sokolov, but the recipes are by Susan R Friedland, so like, huh? She's doing all the cooking and he's just lurking around, yeah? I think this must be a book for people thinking of converting or something, because Jewish people would already know most of the recipes and the rest of the stuff in this book, and I would struggle to buy the idea that a lay person would be attracted to a book that almost sets out to belittle them. Most of the dishes here are in the same calorific, carbohydrate laden vein and the tone is just so fricking superior! But if Sex and the City is to be believed, New York is just teeming with women desperate to convert in order to marry their Jewish boyfriends, and so why not mess with their heads while you're at it.
Setting my insecurities about what the book thinks of me aside, I commence.
I'm pretty excited about making meatloaf, enough to buy a brand new loaf tin! It seems such a staple of American family mealtimes and so easy to assemble. I also think that I've finaly figured out how my oven works, it even has a timer - wow, does your oven have one? Really? And what colour is it?
Well anyway I have plenty of time to settle this while I wait for the klop to bake and the cabbage to drain. By the way, I'm using an ENTIRE head of cabbage and just one of those little bags of pasta in the photograph above, those are the measurements given in the recipe, but I still find that a little unusual. The timings of it are perfect though, I start chopping the cabbage after the loaf is in the oven, wash the dishes while it's draining, the cook the pasta while I fry the cabbage, assemble the pasta dish and quickly fry off the beetroot while it finishes cooking. Et voila!

OK, I'm not accusing anyone of cheating, but I'm a little inclined to think that the image in the book has been doctored somewhat! So ok, I used ground beef instead of ground chuck which is less fatty and less flavoursome, but today was a Bank Holiday, the butcher was closed and I wasn't really in the mood to source expensive and obscure cuts of meat. However, regardless of that, I see no way in which Ray's meatloaf had a delicate pink hue and mine is a solid block of prison shower-room gray. Also, I had meant to take a photo of the product after it came out of the oven and before I sliced it, but it looked just so awful, burnt and unpalatable that I lost my nerve, and will leave that to your imagination.

Result: Despite my uncharitable comments about the appearance of the klop, it tasted really nice and was pretty moist and meaty.Not sure what sensation the egg was supposed to produce, lets just leave that mystery unsolved. The cabbage shrunk down to meet the pasta in quantity, but was still pretty prominent and no, you couldn't taste the caraway!(You could taste the butter though, you greasy pig!) I used pre-cooked beetroot and all I ended up doing to it was bringing out it's sweetness, not sure it needed that, but I guess it was ok. Overall it's quite... ok. It wasn't the brightest idea on my part to make this while we are still enjoying the summer heat, if there is ever an appropriate occasion to klop out, this isn't it. Don't believe the recipe below, this ain't unusual OR delicate.


Update: I'm going to have to change the title of this blog to 'Last time I cooked, I was sooooo sick!' Raymond, I don't know what I ever did to you, but whatever it was, we are even!
I have no idea whaether it's the cabbage producing these unfavourable gastro-intestinal manifestations, or maybe bad things just happen to bad people, but none of the 4 other people I fed this thing to have any symptoms. Whatever the culprit (and this is pretty much the only meal I've had all day, so... 2+2...) I'm inclined to take this as a sign that this book should go back to the charity shop whence it came tout de suite!

Bigne con Crema de Funghi and Coxinhas Encantadas

I'm using The Vegeterranean by husband and wife hoteliers Malu Simoes and Alberto Musacchio. I initaly gave this thing as a Christmas present and it's never been used bacause all the recipes are super fiddly. It's a nice big glossy book with dishes from their restaurant so it's as much about presentation as it is about the food. I've had a couple of comments from the nearest and dearest to the tune of 'all the dishes I've cooked so far are E-Z', so I've decided to try something more challenging and learn some new skills! Go skills!
Also we were having a barbeque this weekend, a total sausagefest, so I wanted to make some elaborate vegetarian side dishes.

So first dish is Bigne con Crema de Funghi, which translates from Italian as Mushroom Eclair (I guess). Here are the substitutions I've had to make for all the fancy ingredients, Manitoba flour became flour, but that's only the beginning! Parsley became basil, and Robiola turned into Keci Peyniri from the Turkish supermarket up the road. I'm sure I'm robbing myself of a unique taste experience, but that's a crime I will have to make my peace with later, right now I have half a kilo of mushrooms to chop up. It looks like a lot, but it boils down to not that much. Mustachioso magnanimously doesn't specify which fancy expensive mushrooms you are meant to forage for and use, so I've bought Flat Caps, Oysters and Shitake. That was obviously the wrong decision because instead of becoming 'golden brown' they've turned into pidgeon poop gray. Look at all that crap, I really couldn't find enough nice bits to fish out for garnish so I put everything in the blender.
The pastry is really easy to make, and I fashion a piping bag out of a food bag just like they showed us on Ready Steady Cook. And behold the inamorata!












They actually look quite revolting side by side :(




Result: Maybe all that was a bit too easy, you know what I mean? Because look how they turned out!
The puffs are a little anaemic looking and the mushroom paste doesn't gain anything cosmetically from being in the blender, but they taste really good. Although the goats cheese and basil were not the prescribed ingredients they taste really good with the mushrooms so I rather think they should have been. I used the exact quantites specified and the overall yield was 18 mis-shapen pastries but I only ended up using about half of the mushroom mix. I would probably make the choux again but most likely fill them with something like choklit!
But really, if I have learned anything it's that I need a proper camera instead of my crappy phone.

My other attempt to class up this hibachi was with Coxinhas Encantadas.These are really impressive looking and are on the cover so let that be the reason! But I think it's supposed to have chicken inside.
I didn't have any thyme but got some rosemary from the garden, I didn't make the Vegetable Stock as required and outlined on page 36, and what is the difference between Parmesan and Pecorino Romano? They taste the same, especially if you're only using 2 tablespoons, wrapping it in mashed potato and chucking it in the fryer.
OK, lets get going. I have never peeled an aubegine before, and what's the difference if you're putting it in the blender afterwards? You can't taste the rosemary anyway...
The dough is quite tasty, it would be a good thing to make out of leftover mash, but you know, with meat on the inside.
I'm a little bit nervous about the deep frying, I always worry that the pan will catch fire, tip over, splash me in the face, and explode.

Result: Well I dodged the deep fat fryer appocalypse bullet once again, but lets put it this way - this would be the most appropriate dish to make for my next S&M sex party because it's both humiliating and painful to do. It's clear now why the Coxinhas are in the shape of teardrops, it's to symbolise the frustration of the person stuck in the kitchen cooking them, it took me almost 5 hours to get 18 of the other ones and 11 of these. They look gorgeous and taste really nice, but why would you bother? I had 4 pans, countless plates and the blender to wash and it totally killed any buzz I got from eventually eating the now cold appetizers. I guess it's because I don't need to try to impress people with my cooking skills, on account of my winning personality! Duh.