Once more a great big gap appears in the blog with no posts. Regrettably, I've been laid up in bed with the start of a pressure sore. This means that my internet access has been via my daughter's lap-top computer: a machine that I don't think I'll ever get used to!
Needless to say, I've done no cooking, curing or sausage-making, so I've nothing really to write about. However, one thing I am happy to have been able to do, is help one of the old gits sorry... ...the gentlemen revellers at the Elephant and Castle, with his sourdough starter... ... or lack of it. I'll explain, you see Keith (a.k.a. Victor Meldrew) had a sourdough starter which he'd been taking good care of and which he'd used to make his daily bread...
...now Keith is what they call around here "an eligible batchelor" - that is: he's breathing and got four limbs and most of his faculties! As such he's in constant demand with the local ladies, who having worn out a few husbands already, can't be too choosy. That said, he can occasionally be seen 'walking out' with a very nice lady - you know, a proper lady - she's far too good for the likes of 'im! Anyhow, it seems that said lady got to cleaning Keith's kitchen, and assuming that it was "sommat pass'd it's sell-by date", chucks 'is sourdough down the Khasi! Or something similar anyway! Laugh? I nearly bought a round!
Now Keith's not daft - I know, he does a good impression of it, but he's not. No! honest, he's not! So he makes up another starter, feeds it etc and, well to cut a long story short, everyone he makes dies. Now, my sourdough starters usually work OK. They daren't do any other with Mrs Phil on the case! So, kind sould that I am, I made one for Keith. I called mine Selwyn, just because of the alliteration - Selwyn Sourdough - get it? Keith says that sourdoughs given as gifts should be named alphabetically, or is that hurricanes? I forget. Anyway, his is called Brenda. as in Brenda Barm! (pot or cake?)
Blow me, less than a week in and he reckons Brenda's flagging. Super-sleuth Phil to the rescue! It turns out that Keith's tap water stinks of chlorine! No wonder he was having problems. Anyway, Brenda's now drinking bottled water and is up and running on all four cylinders. She's making some great bread as this photo of Keith's shows:
Well, we're into the new year, so that's seen the back of "Another Bloomin' Christmas":
Happy New Year to you all.
Do you know, I actually enjoyed Christmas this year; amazingly that also extends to Christmas lunch, a meal that having cooked I rarely enjoy eating. It's funny, we did but a few things differently, but it seemed to make the preparation so much easier. Yet, the only things we didn't make from scratch were the pork pie, mincemeat, and some of the buffet items. Mum made the cake and pudding, leaving us to do the sausage-rolls, sausage-meat, bacon, ham , mince pies, smoked salmon and cheeses, and a few sundry cheese palmiers that were just to use up the rough puff pastry but proved to be very popular. Oh, we did more than I thought! Perhaps we we just better organised than normal:
I cured Pauline's Ham somewhat differently this time, using a lot less brine cure thereby saving quite a bit of money. I'll write about it in a separate post, but here's it curing:
The turkey was from a local farm and was superb as usual; not only that, but much cheaper than the ones at the supermarkets. The only picture I took of it is in it's bag, oops:
Needless to say, the remains ended up in a Turkey Korma!
I've written before about cold smoking food and there's even a full review of the smoker that I use - it's simplicity itself. However, I realise that there can be a tendency to worry or even panic the first time you smoke something like a salmon. Questions like, should I brine or dry cure it? What brine or cure should I use? What strength should it be? How long should I cure it for? So, here's a breakdown of what I did with the salmon I smoked for Christmas.
I bought a side of salmon, ready filleted, from the local 'trade wholesaler', Makro. It's a 'bog standard' farmed salmon, nothing fancy, most supermarkets have it 'on promotion' around Christmas. If you can only get a whole fish you'll need to fillet it. The filleting-fish.com website has excellent instructions and a video tutorial on how to do this. I will say though, it's a lot easier with a good filleting knife. I use a very good, and very reasonably priced, Victorinox. My salmon fillet weighed 1160gm. I decided to dry cure it rather than put it into brine, it's a lot simpler that way.
I started my salmon by covering a plastic food grade tray with salt, placing the salmon skin side down on top of it, and covering the salmon with 200gm of salt. You can add all sorts of fancy things: sugar, whiskey, beetroot, all sorts of stuff, but I prefer to keep mine simple.
The salt I used was a medium sea salt. 'Ordinary' salt's fine if you can't get anything better, but try to use one without any additives. Anyway, it shouldn't be difficult to get some decent salt. Maldon Sea Salt's fantastic and widely available from most supermarkets.
The salmon was put into the salt for 10 hours. Then I rinsed it and put it to dry on a cake cooling rack in the fridge with a tray below it to catch any drips. It weighed 1080gm at this stage.
I'm back! I'm not dead! I've just had a break from posting for a while. To tell the truth, none of my experimental/test cures have gone right for the last couple of months and my health's not been 100% either.
I've written before about the Garlic Sausage and Cider Ham that went wrong. I made another Cider Ham using an immersion, rather than an injected, cure. Cured and cooked, it looked good; things were going along just fine. However, unbeknownst to me, my daughter had twigged the electricity breaker when making coffee. The breaker had been reset, but my curing fridge hadn't. Doh! This picture of some cooked beef that was also in the fridge at the time, shows the problem:
I also made a modern version of a Victorian spiced beef recipe, said to originate from Melton Mowbray. As you can see from this picture, it wasn't a resounding success (although it tasted great!):
I'll certainly persevere with both the cider ham, and the spiced beef. I'll have another go at both when we've got Christmas out of the way.
Looking back over the six weeks since I last posted, we've done very little by way of cookery. I guess, because we've both had rotten colds, we've stuck to 'comfort foods' and easy meals. Things like:
A cheat's tomato soup, made with passata and tomato juice:
Casseroles:
Veggie soup:
...and good old steak pie:
The only unusual thing I've cooked with is some salsify that Bob grew:
It's a root veg that some say has an asparagus taste. I can't get the asparagus taste, but it's nutty and good enough to serve at the centre of a recipe such as in a salsify salad.
Daughter Hannah's still cake-making. She made this cake along with her partner, Alex, who made the icing granny:
Yesterday, we had a trip to the local wholesalers. We got a good deal on a side of salmon and, against my better judgement, some pork. Neither are local. The salmon couldn't be even if I wanted it to as we're about as far from the sea as you can get in this country! The pork is from the UK and is actually better that it looked when it was in its vacuum packs. However, I still prefer pork from local pigs bought direct from the abattoir. The salmon's salting prior to smoking:
The pork leg's been injected to make Pauline's Ham. I'm trying a way of making it that uses a lot less brine, hopefully it'll work out OK:
I'm also making 4 kilograms of of my favourite Dry Cured bacon. I guess I should have took some photos as I was processing it. How 'real bloggers' manage to do this when they're up to the neck in meat and cure eludes me. It would sure be more interesting to look at than this though:
The BBC Good Food Show Winter is the perfect place to find everything you need for Christmas all under one roof. With 21 years experience of putting together the country’s biggest and best Food event, The Good Food Show offers a great festive day out.
Following on from British Food Fortnight (17 September–2 October), the BBC Good Food Show, 23-27 November, will host the largest display of artisan and British producers in the country. From Aberdeenshire to Cornwall, exhibitors across the UK will display some of the very best food products Britain has to offer. With something for everyone, now is the time to book tickets and support the best of British.
Well that's crept up on me without me noticing! It's Halloween on Monday: that special day when little kids can 'mug' old people with impunity!
At this point, 'proper' bloggers would roll out a recipe for a cake with spiders, slugs, ghouls or goolies (evening vicar!). Well, my kids are grown up and if I want a cake, I'll make a cake, but I can't be fussed with all that nonsense. Perhaps I can pretend that the pear in the pear sponge cake, that Pauline made a couple of days ago, is ectoplasm or some other such nonsense!
Anyway, here's my recipe for ghost's blood, something special for Halloween (or for that matter any other time that Bob has tons of spare tomatoes!).
This is simplicity itself. I half filled a medium sized saucepan saucepan (about 18cm diameter - the middle sized one that comes in a standard set of three) with cherry tomatoes and added a medium sized onion and stick of celery, both chopped up. Cover with water or stock (I used water), season with salt and pepper, and simmer it for about about 20 minutes before liquidising. Sieve the mixture through a fine sieve, taste and adjust seasoning. It may need a little sugar if the tomatoes were a bit acidic, or some tomato puree adding to the mix if they're a bit flavourless (never an issue with Bob's!). I like to add a tablespoon or two of double cream just before serving. (omit the cream for a vegan version)
I would point out that this is the very basic recipe and method: the way to make if time is short. Whilst it's fine, greater effort will give an even better result. A couple of options are roasting the tomatoes or sweating the vegetables until cooked in butter before making the soup. You can add herbs/garlic/spices whilst cooking it or chopped soft herbs such as parsley, chervil or basil, after it has been sieved. The one thing I never add to tomato soup is anything for thickening; I think that you don't get the full flavour of the tomatoes if you do.
...and the pear sponge? Well, Pauline made it following a suggestion of mine. It was great but would have been even better had we used whole pear halves rather than chopping them smaller - my fault, as Pauline had asked me what she should do.
Doh! What possessed me to write about a luncheon meat when I hadn't finalised the recipe! Normally, it takes numerous trials to formulate a recipe; there's so many variables. With a fresh sausage it's not so bad because you can do trials in 100gm batches and try 5 or 6 variations at a time. I've not yet found a fool-proof way of doing a similar thing with luncheon meat which means that I end up with vast quantities of not too good sausage.
This is my second trial of the recipe for Ham and Garlic Luncheon Meat and to be honest it's worse than the first! I can't believe that, when all I had to do was make the paste firmer, I've managed to make it softer! All I can think is that I messed up on the ratio of fat to meat.
Oh well, back to the drawing board. I'm not even going to mention the two meat cures I'm doing at the moment: it'd be tempting fate too much!
It's Not a Sin to Bin! Or, so says the 'signature' of one of my friends on the sausagemaking.org forum. Oh boy! Was that relevant this weekend. Firstly, some ham pieces I was preparing for my 'Ham and Garlic Sausage' went 'off', and now my trial 'Local Cider and Honey Ham' has gone 'down the Swanee'! I made this test ham using the injection method of curing and it's turned out with bigger lines than the local heroin addict! It's a pity because it tasted OK and didn't look too bad:
That is, until I sliced some:
Doh! I'll make another using a full immersion cure. I'd even made some rolls to put it in:
Anyway, to you cheer everyone up, here's three of my favourites from our village's scarecrow competition this weekend:
Congratulations to local Leicestershire cooks, Holly Bell and Rosie Clark, who were both in the finals of food competitions this week.
Holly was the runner-up in the BBC's 'The Great British Bake Off'. Although beaten in the final by Essex grandmother Jo Wheatley, Holly is still a real winner. Just to get to the final is a major achievement, to come runner-up, more so.
Rosie was the winner of the Leicestershire Cook-Off where her offering of three local breads were named as Leicestershire's signature dish(es?). Congratulations Rosie, the breads sound fantastic.
That said, the official website tells us that Sarah Harrison, city centre director and Leicestershire Cook Off judge, said: "Lots of counties have a signature dish. Birmingham has its balti and Lancashire has its hot pot, and now this county has its Leicestershire Loaves! Congratulations to Rosie, her recipe will go down in history as the county’s signature dish...".
The breads are: Leicestershire beer and honey bread, an Eastern rye bread featuring Asian spices and a Leicestershire Stilton cheese, Irish soda bread... ...Leicestershire's signature dish? Mmm, well I suppose that I never thought that we would have a Black-American spiritual as our national rugby anthem!
Seriously though, somebody please tell me that they're having a laugh!
Local Food Heroes is owned and run by Phil Young a resident of Leicestershire in the UK. Here it is that I ‘ramble on’ about my interest in home produced food products with an emphasis on curing and charcuterie.
The BBC Good Food Show Winter is the perfect place to find everything you need for Christmas all under one roof. With 21 years experience of putting together the country’s biggest and best Food event, The Good Food Show offers a great festive day out.
