Jules Jones

Gacked from lexin 

Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

"I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers (you will have to prise my breadmaker from my cold dead hands), juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese knives, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders (which actually gets used for grinding whole spices, not coffee), milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, and fondue sets languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards."


I'm not counting a few items which were lost or abandoned during inter-continental moves and not replaced. I'd still be using them if I had replaced them, which  is why I didn't  -- I'm at high risk for diabetes and I don't need the temptation offered by a deep fat fryer or a toastie maker.

The juicer and blender came with the heavy duty food processor, which does get used regularly. I wanted them available in case I had another bout of dental woes necessitating a pureed diet, but fortunately so far I haven't needed to use them.

The piping bag -- I haven't used my piping bag in years. That's because I do my once a year cake decorating elsewhere and use someone else's...

On the other hand, I do have a number of foodie kitchen gadgets not mentioned in the above list, many of which have not been seen outside the cupboard since I moved into this house. Some of them are simply too difficult to use with the level of RSI weakness I have these days, others are fairly pointless if you're not feeding several people and thus preparing food in bulk (my mandoline is brilliant if I'm making food for ten, but a waste of time on food for two). I haven't got that many which were bought for faddish purposes and then abandoned, but I do have to admit to a shameful weakness for the Lakeland Plastics catalogue that would have led me astray had I had more money and kitchen space fifteen years ago. :-)

Kalypso_V came round to watch The Wedding of River Song, so I needed to cook something vegetarian (for her) but lowish fibre (for me). I had some pre-pack vegetable stock I needed to use, so risotto seemed a good idea. Alas, the chestnuts are not in season yet, so we went for cashews and pistachios instead. It was a good way of using up some nuts getting towards their Best Before, and the nuts blended well with the mushrooms.

The stock was a mix of a pack of Waitrose vegetable stock (which I wanted to try out), and a pack of organic miso cup-a-soup. The latter is not particularly cheap, but makes an excellent vegetable stock. I thought at first that the resulting stock blend was going to be too strongly flavoured, as it smelt very strong, but in fact it worked very well with the mushrooms and nuts.

Bring four metric cups (one litre) of stock to a gentle simmer in a saucepan. Chop a small onion and fry gently in a large frying pan for a few minutes in butter or oil. For this one I used a blend of butter, olive oil and sesame seed oil. Add 1 1/2 metric cups of white risotto rice (other rices can be used, but a proper risotto rice works best) and stir over a low heat for a couple of minutes. At this point you can add 1/3 cup wine and flash off the alcohol, but I didn't have any wine to hand and couldn't be bothered looking for something appropriate in the spirits cabinet. My normal recipe calls for adding 1/2 to 1 cup of simmering stock at a time to the frying pan and letting it all absorb before adding the next batch, but in this case I was going to steam some of the vegetables over the rice so was keeping it wetter than usual.

Started with 1 cup of stock, then added a punnet of mushrooms which my sous-chef had been quartering in the meantime. Stirred those in and let them heat through, adding more stock as necessary. Then stirred in a handful of cashews and shelled pistachios, and let them heat through. Added the rest of the stock, put some thinly sliced runner beans and carrots on top of the rice, then put the lid on and let the veg steam while the rice absorbed the stock. When the veg were almost done, I added a couple of knobs of butter, put the lid back on and turned off the heat, allowing the risotto to finish cooking and blending on its own heat for about five minutes.

This is fairly low in insoluble fibre as long as you use white rice. If you're cooking for someone with fibre tolerance problems, do not use brown rice. Other obvious potential problem ingredients:

-- the miso soup base is largely soya, which can be an IBS trigger and is an allergen for some people. It also has some brown rice, although not enough that it's likely to be problem just from the fibre point of view.
-- nuts are variable for people on a low fibre diet. Some people can handle them without problems, some can't. And of course some people have nut allergies.
-- butter is fairly low in lactose, but even so it can be a problem for very lactase-sensitive people. And there are people out there with milk solid allergies.
-- don't use flavoured oils such as sesame or walnut without checking for allergies.
-- if the alcohol isn't flashed off it can be an issue for people on medication. (And supertasters will not thank you for ruining the food with the taste of ethanol...)

Note to self: in future, don't. Not unless there is enough stock or gravy to completely cover the meat, and even then microwave it on medium. Should have gone with my first instinct and put it on a covered plate over the steaming veg. Or just left it cold and put it on a hot plate with hot veg.

I thought I'd put enough stock on to keep it moist, but one plate dried out slightly on the top surface, and both plates were tougher than they need have been.

Last week's Sunday roast was a Middle White pork belly roast, slow roasted on a bed of potatoes and carrots, with the skin scored in a diamond pattern to release the fat. It carved into four substantial ribs -- and yes, it needed carving, separating out the ribs by cutting through gristle. The flavour was excellent, but it has to be admitted that the result is remarkably fatty. Not enough to bother me, but any future purchases will be for when Spousal Unit is away on business and I'm eating alone. Makes lovely crackling, though. :-)

Savin Hill were back in the market this week, so I picked up some lamb chump chops for Friday's dinner -- flavour good grilled, but I thought my chop was a bit on the tough side. Probably better to pot roast them in future if I have time to do so. Tonight's roast is a small half shoulder of lamb, and there's a Cumberland sausage for later in the week. They didn't have any of the Cumberland patties this week, alas -- I'd have been happy to buy several packets to stick in the freezer.

We went out for a colleague's birthday at lunchtime, to a pub that specialises in doing old-fashioned food very well and charging $LOTS for it. Which is how I came to have slow-braised pig's trotter for lunch. There was a hefty mark-up over what a pig's trotter costs from the butcher's, but I wasn't the one who had to do the fiddly bit to bone and stuff it and then slow-braise it. I've never had trotters as an actual dish before, mostly because they're not widely available and the recipe I had always seemed a bit fiddly to bother with for one person. I wasn't that enamoured of the seasoning they used in the stuffing, but the gelatinous skin, which is a significant part of the point of the exercise, was to die for.

There was also cake. Lots of cake. So it being only one trotter on a bed of mash with no side vegetables has not left me feeling lacking in food today.

Well, I *think* it was chicken stock I pulled out of the freezer in a bid to clear down some space. It could conceivably have been pork. However, after I threw in a commercial chicken stock cube and some extra water to bulk it up to a litre, it was definitely chicken flavoured...

So, followed my standard recipe for risotto, with one difference -- while the rice and initial cup of boiling stock got to know each other, I grabbed half a dozen fresh chestnuts out of the bag I bought from the barrowman earlier in the week and then completely forgot to do anything with. Pricked them and put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, which was 30s longer than they needed, as they announced by starting to explode. :-/ Cleaned the chestnut flour out of the microwave and tipped that into the frying pan along with the next cup of stock, and halved and peeled the ones that didn't go bang, adding those to the pan once they were clean of inner skin.

And in the other frying pan, butter, sliced mushrooms, and some julienned carrots on top. Lid on to let the veg steam in the mushrooms' own juice for a while. Once they were cooked through, tipped the remaining juices into the rice, and put the lid back on to keep the veg moist. A couple of minutes before the rice was ready, lid off the veg to let the mushrooms fry down a little.

Rice and veg on plate, added some hot garden peas and some cold cubed red Leicester cheese. It worked rather well. Will have to try that again (possibly with vegetable stock if there are vegetarians to be fed).

alg is asking for recipes for white bread, suitable for people who do not have a bread machine. This reminded me that I'd meant to post the recipe for barm brack (which is a spiced tea bread, not a plain white bread), and I don't seem to have done so, or at least have failed to tag it if I did. I'd credit the book I got this from, only I can't remember which one it was -- probably Favourite Irish Recipes or Irish Teatime Recipes from J Salmon.

( Barm brack )

Oh yes, fudge...

In the comments in my post linking to an essay on the crystallisation science of fudge, soshoni posted her recipe, and I promised that I'd post mine. And then got distracted...

So, fudge. This is a very simple recipe, taken from an ancient Women's Institute cookbook. It's also from memory, because I've been making it so many years now that I don't look at the recipe, I just do it, and the recipe book isn't in the same country as me at present. I suspect that there are really, really obvious things I will miss out...

( fudge recipe )

Harvested the first Mamma Mia plum tomato late last week -- 63g, and they are on the small side compared with plum tomatoes I've grown before. But good solid flesh, and a nice flavour both raw and cooked. A couple more are ripening now. I should stake the plant, as it's getting big enough to need it.

The mystery tomato started ripening some fruit over the weekend, and turned out to be something yellowish-orange. Just picked the first one, and it weighs in at 103g. I think it was slightly underripe as it was reluctant to part from the stem even though it's been a fairly solid ripe colour for three days or so. Not much scent. Very meaty when cut open. Raw flavour is fairly mild, definitely tomato but not that strong, and no acid.

Just picked the second fruit on the Patio Dwarf, and several more are ripening. 60g, Light scent but stronger than the mystery tomato, mild tomato flavour with slight acid.

The Siberia started ripening some fruit yesterday, but has a few days to go before I can pick something.

Also had the first two sunflowers start opening bud yesterday. I think the first corn is ready to eat, but there has been marital disharmony on this topic, so they remain on the plant for now.

The two tomatoes picked before dinner became part of dinner. I cut up some applewood smoked streaky bacon, fried it for a few minutes, then added the diced tomatoes and fried them gently for a few more minutes while the pasta was cooking. The mystery tomato held its shape well, but still picked up flavour from the bacon fat. The Patio Dwarf was a little mushier. Both had a good cooked flavour after frying, and held their colour well. I wish I knew what the mystery tomato was, because I'd like to grow it again next year. I think it's probably going to be a good barbecue tomato.

NB: when did rich text become compulsory, and can I turn it off? I do not like it...

Because I am desperately avoiding trying to work on either my own book or a review of someone else's book, behold -- the recipe for the hot cross buns from Easter Sunday:

( Hot cross buns )

I am in exile in a foreign land, and thus I must make up my own mixed spice, for it is not available on the supermarket shelf here. Since I've got to go to the effort of mixing it, I am a purist and try to make it from whole spices as much as possible, although I draw the line at trying to hunt down dried whole ginger and grinding it myself. Once made it keeps well in the freezer.

( mixed spice )