Sauerkraut

Now that I have my own (almost) flat, it's time to start turning my kitchen into a science experiment. The boyfriend and I kind of have an unspoken understanding that I won't go into the box room/office and he won't go into the kitchen. I literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about all the smelly projects I'll finally be able to embark upon. So lets start with something easy, sauerkraut. This is my dad's recipe and the results are always amazing. All you do is shred a head of white cabbage and a couple of carrots, and then layer them in a clean jar, sprinkle each layer with a teaspoon of salt and kind of scrunch it down with your knuckles, try and compress it as much as possible. The salt and friction with tear the first layer of skin off of your knuckles, which is very cool if you're going to a party later. People will ask you what happened to your hand, and then you can slam your drink down and scream 'Stay away from my man, bitches!' and everyone will want to be friends with you.
Anyway, after the final layer you cover the top of the jar with an unshredded cabbage leaf and figure out a way to weigh the whole thing down somehow, next time I go to the beach I'll look out for a nice big rock. Now, I've seen recipes for this that require you to top the whole thing with water to make sure all of the cabbage is submerged, this is wrong, and the best way to make sure your sauerkraut rots instead of fermenting. If you've used enough force the cabbage should start reacting with the salt immediately and releasing enough liquid to cover it completely. Should look like this. At which point, try and stir in a big spoon of sugar
Leave it for at least a week on your counter, poke it around a bit every day to make sure a bit of oxygen gets to all the layers, and then eat or store in the fridge (if you have a fridge that's big enough to store a jar in. I currently don't).

Correction!

The friend referenced in this post has demanded credit! (or some horse shit like that) So please enjoy this video of some guy I went to school with (Jack Brotchie), and other beautiful boys, being asked slightly creepy questions by Peter Lorre. Look out for the one with the calm human face.
And after that, watch this totally awesome cooking video! I love you, internet. x

A new place to hang my hat

So here's what happened - for the first week in our flat we had no internet access. The my loaned us his wifi dongle, but for some reason it wouldn't let us into any hot and nasty adult sites, of which blogspot is apparently one. I lost the cable that connects my camera to my laptop in the move. I spilled water on my phone and it stopped taking pictures. I was really really busy at work after my 'holiday', and clearly the universe was conspiring to keep me from posting anything. My car broke down, we ran out of gas, there was an earthquake, a terrible flood, it wasn't my fault!
We got broadband finally today, and I used my stupid chicken brain to discover that I can just take the memory card out of the camera, I don't need a cable to get my pictures. I put my phone in a bag of rice for a couple of days and it dried up and totally works again, I'm pretty much back in business (but nobody reads this blog anyway, so it doesn't matter).
This is my new kitchen, it's actually in the contract that we're not allowed to change the colour of the walls, and check out the baby fridge, yikes!
and this is what I've been furnishing it with
Like a robbed a frickin' little kid's tea party! I'm sure all of this crap won't seem so cute in a couple of months, but this is the deliberate look I'm cultivating. Every time I come home with shopping bags the boyfriend rolls his eyes, moans and says 'Well, what fresh new fuckery is this?' and then I give him a little present
I'm also kind of into demented salt and pepper shakers at the moment. Nobody I know keeps these on their dining room table, they're not very fashionable and it's kind of a chore to fill them. I guess if you're cooking for yourself you'll just add salt and pepper in the kitchen, right? Well yes, that's why I got 4 of them
One's for salt, duh, one's for white pepper, one's for sumac (kind of sweet, lemony and peppery at the same time, I'm addicted to putting it on salads), and the last one for cayenne. I had a little daydream about having like 20 shakers lined up on the table filled with all different kinds of pepper, and I would, of course, always select just the right one for my meal. What a buffoon I'm turning into...

Uha

Well I'm back from Moscow now, and moved into my new flat (!) so I'll try and get all the old stuff out of the way before I regale you with fascinating accounts of eating beans out of a can - that's all I'll be able to afford to do for the next couple of months.
Anyway, Uha is a simple fisherman's broth made with fish heads and anything else you have on hand (or in sink), kind of like a stock really.
I kept the sturgeon's head and tail and boiled it up with an onion and a potato for a couple of hours, if you have a bay leaf throw that in too, if you want to. The result is a thin, cloudy broth, but the taste is rich and very satisfying. The amazing thing about sturgeon is that it has no bones, it's all muscle/flesh and cartilage, no scales and the flavour is earthy, meaty and fresh at the same time. Best fish head to make soup out of, but just look at that photo. I'm going to have a new tag to attach to posts that feature something that looks like something else, if you get my drift. I think I've managed to produce the most unappetising food post in the world today.
By the way, no internet in the new place yet, so now I have an excuse for being so slow.

Moscow: VDNH and sturgeon

Well here I am in Moscow. Dad and I had to come in for a week to do some work and we're staying in his wife's flat in VDNH. That's pronounced ve-de-en-ha, not V.D.N.H, and stands for Exhibition of the Accomplishments of National Agriculture and is basically a gigantic park built in the 40s to showcase mighty Russia's power and glory, with all of the (now former) republics displaying their best in a glorious pavilion each, with about a hundred other pavilions dotted around the entire area - and I can't overestimate how huge this park is, you can walk around for a couple of hours without seeing all of it, You'll get tired by the Film Exhibition Hall, you'll want to turn back by the spaceship commemoration Gagarin's ascent into orbit, but you'll be too tempted by the Exotic Bird House and carry on. Did I mention that all of these are out of use and in a general state of disrepair? Unfortunately with the fall of communism the state stopped supporting the permanent exhibition and as entry had always been free there was simply no point or fiscal possibility of carrying on. But the buildings themselves are amazing, most of the facades still have their original ornamentation, well worth taking a look at. Some have been taken over by shitty clothes shops and general toot stores, and some still have authentic products for sale, like the Armenian Pavilion has a huge selection of cognac. If you're in Moscow, even though this is kind of out of the way, you should plan a visit.
Anyway, there's a really great indoor food market near by with old ladies selling their home made cottage cheese (no jokes, seriously, be nice), a Tajik bakery with every kind of lavash freshly made in a huge clay oven and the most gorgeous samosas (lots of cumin, and so light!), butchers with seemingly every cut of meat you can dream up in your most perverted fantasies (I saw a large pile of lamb balls in the window of one, and a packet of chicken necks), a Korean kimchi stand (there are tons of North Korean immigrants in Russia) selling my two favorite things - shaved preserved carrot with chilli, and something called 'sparja' which is actually pickled yuba and I'm totally making both when I get home. And finally a fish stall. Moscow is landlocked to the point that fresh fish is impossible to obtain, whatever is on the menu in restaurants is alway almost 100% guaranteed to have been frozen, you can sometimes find salmon steaks lying around but the only way to make sure your fish is fresh is to buy it live. The bigger fish counters have tanks of live carp around (packed in like a pile of shit, that's why they always taste so bad), and sometimes pretty big crayfish, but today was a first for me, and I saw a tank full of sturgeon, bloody expensive compared to everything else, but I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity again. The lady behind the counter (fish girl?), deftly fished out the liveliest specimen, threw him on the floor and hit him on the head with a hammer before quickly gutting him. Maybe it's a consequence of feeling nostalgic for my homeland, but I thought this was all very romantic. I paid my money, took the bloody bag and strolled on home.
Incidentally I read a whole series a little while ago on the Japanese fish killing technique Ike Jima, and it pretty much proves that the manner of slaughter affects the taste, but also, interestingly, that fish doesn't always taste best the second it's killed and gains something from 'resting' for a day (much like any other meat, so makes sense.
Obviously I didn't have recourse to any fish anesthesia, but I cut the head and tail off when I got home and bled the fish in ice water for half an hour before putting in the oven. No sharp knives so I didn't even pretend to bother filleting.
Result:
There are many different kinds of sturgeon, from the mighty caviar laden ones up north, to the piddly kind clogging up the waterways. It's a freshwater fish, and a bottom feeder so was expecting the earthy dirty taste, but while this definitely had that it was also sweet and meaty. Very meaty, in fact while I was looking around for a recipe I came across a blog that praised it as a superfish as it's apparently almost impossible to overcook, it's quite fatty so always stays moist. Texturally it was almost like red snapper. Yum!

Taramasalata

I'm so incredibly lucky to live in London. I got really drunk a couple of day ago and apparently kept telling the boyfriend that "all I want is just to have everything I want, whenever I want it, that's all". Drunken tautology aside, in London I can pretty much step out of my front door, wonder around for a bit, and come back with everything I was looking for (*wink wink*). When I was growing up, you know, behind the ole' iron curtain, you got what you were given in a very Oliver-esque way. My first banana when I was about 8 was a really big deal, my brother and I were really into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but had no idea what pizza was, that sort of thing. Until a few years ago I had quite narrow horizons, I didn't really care what went into the food I ate, I was only interested in the taste. On our first date I quite arbitrarily told the boyfriend that I didn't like pork because it was smelly (despite being a proud Spaniard he took it quite well), I had a similarly good reason for disliking all Greek food, it was too herby. I used to delight in telling people that mushrooms were gross because they were really like something that grew on someone's foot. Ginger tasted like soap and black bean sauce was washing up liquid. Mangoes taste like onions. Blah. Now that I eat almost everything I tend to get quite short when someone comes out with a stupid comment like any of those. The boyfriend won't eat freshwater fish because of the earthy, dirty taste - moron.

Anyway, when I saw a pot of smoked roe in the Greek Cypriot supermarket down the road from me I got very excited. I love taramasalata and even finding out that it's made out of fish eggs, raw onion and stale bread doesn't put me off. The recipe is from Vefa's Kitchen but it's pretty simple and also quite flexible - basically you put the ingredients into the blender one by one. Apart from the stuff pictured you can also add almonds into the mix but I didn't have any.
Result:

No, not really, but close. I'm not really sure why it came as a surprise to me that the total yield was going to be a bucket, and the appearance would be 'Primrose Garden' from the Dulux catalog. Mmmmmm
I didn't put enough bread in the mix so this is saltier and sharper than the stuff you would get in the shop, but hey, at least there's a lot of it, right? Apparently there are a two types of roe you can get, the acrid orange stuff I used and a delicate white variety which has a nicer, milder taste. Most people use a mix of both. Fancy bastards, I suppose these are the same people who don't have to pick up their blender mid-blend and give it a shake to speed things along.
Oh, but the good news is that this stuff will last 17 years in your fridge!

Update

Ooops! I missed this blog's one year anniversary by a couple of weeks. The boyfreind and I have been busy looking for a real flat to move in to like a couple of real adults. We found a cool place, but nothing is 100% set so I'm having to type this with my elbows, whilst also crossing my fingers, touching wood, spitting, swearing and not breaking any mirrors (the swearing is optional).
I have a couple of posts I'll publish in the next week or two, but in the mean time, enjoy this thought - what the view from my bedroom will be at the end of September...