Cheddar

With Broadway Market being a five minute walk from our house, L and I have buying our week's groceries there for over two years now. As such, we've become friends with a number of the vendors, in particular the staff at Norbiton Cheese, whom we visit nearly religiously.

This week, in addition to the usual delights, Bryan also had these beautiful looking cheddars to which L was immediately drawn based solely on their aesthetics (you don't often see purple cheese and L happens to like purple quite a bit).

On Meat

I'm a flexatarian with four kilos of pig in my fridge. (See the photo of one I prepared earlier - that one was even bigger!)

(As much as I hate cutesy terms and non descriptors I can identify with flexatarian. I'm not a vegetarian. I enjoy meat and I want to continue eating it. I'm not a pescatarian, a term which annoys me. So someone who doesn't eat very much meat and who regularly chooses veggie over meaty- yeah, I can work with that. )

Focus - FOUR kilos of pig. A pig shoulder which is currently nestled in the fridge with a rub (rosemary, fennel, garlic, chili, preserved lemon) waiting for the morning when I will pop it into the oven for six or so hours.

How does a flexitarian justify four kilos of pig? Isn't a flexi just a lazy, or uncommitted, vegetarian? Isn't FOUR kilos rather excessive?

Let me climb on my soap box and tell you want I think about meat...

I like bacon. I think there are few homier meals than a roast chicken. Steak makes me salivate. Food is a celebration and for us Anglo Saxons a big chunk of meat is traditionally the centerpiece. Food equals love. So I can't imagine becoming a full vegetarian and giving up these bits of comfort and love and tradition. But learning about meat, all about it, from health issues to ethical to environmental to consumer issues, makes it very difficult for me to eat it the way I used to and the way I cook and the way I eat has shifted substantially in the last few years.

We eat much less meat than we used to. It features as the centerpiece of our meals maybe once a week and gets used as flavour and side bits two or three (two rashers of bacon in pasta, a sausage in soup). The meat that we do eat comes from either the butcher in Broadway Market or the Ginger Pig and is brought up and butchered in a way that I feel good about. I feel good knowing that the meat that I buy satisfies every tickbox I have against the long list of "Meat is Bad".

I recognise that it is expensive. I recognise that I'm really lucky that I have these options. But it is a choice and a commitment that I am happy to make. (And since this is my blog it is my soap box and I can sing the praises of happy meat to my hearts content.)

As for the FOUR kilos of pig in the fridge. It's a lesser known cut, so less expensive, will be succulent and last us for many many meals- or at least one great meal with friends.

Join me on my soap box next time for "Why the tuna in your sandwich is like eating elephant".

Tartiflette

Is it cold where you are? Are you hungry? Do you have a small mountain of French cheese in your fridge?

You DO!?

Excellent. You should make a tartiflette for dinner then. You should probably eat it with little gerkins and balsamic caramelised onions and a crisp apple cider.

A tartiflette appears to be a dish of fried potatoes, pig bits and Reblochon cheese, but since the cheese choice is apparently the result of a trade union attempting to increase market share I think you can (and I did) use whatever delicious melty type cheese you have available. Except that mozzarella that you use for pizzas. Ew. Please don't put rubber cheese on this. Do that much for me.

Tonight's tartiflette was brought to you by Diana Henry's Roast Fig, Sugar Snow: Food to Warm the Soul. It also provided the recipe for our Christmas Goose (six kilos of bird with a brandied fig, chestnut and cranberry stuffing). It's a cold weather book that ought to be read under a blanket, preferably beside a fire.

This fed two of us with a bit leftover which we will nibble on for lunch...

1lb or baby potatoes, boiled til just tender then cooled and sliced

4oz of smoked bacon, cut in bigger than normal chunks (about four rashers- I know it was four ounces because I weighed it) (nerd)
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
4 sage leaves, roughly torn

2 big dollops of Crème fraiche (you could probably omit this if you live in a sad place without it - or you could make your own!)
Half a camembert (or 4 ounces of melty cheese of your choice)

Turn the oven to about 190.

Fry the sliced potatoes until golden, season, then set aside in an oven proof pan.

In your potato pan melt a dollop of butter and fry your bacon until nicely coloured. Turn down the heat, add your onion and cook til just colouring. Add the garlic and sage and stir for a moment or two. Fold the bacon mixture gently into the golden potatoes.

Dollop the creme fraiche strategically on top, then lovingly place slices of your cheese over the potatoes. Pop in the oven til the cheese is melty and delicious- this may happen quickly so keep an eye on it!

Take it out and eat!

Hiatus

C & I ate Kraft Dinner for dinner last night. No joke. We had two boxes, we made them and then ate them out of bowls while watching Mad Men. It was one of those nights.

But it made me think that C&C hasn't gotten any love lately. It's not that we haven't been cooking. We have. Killer marsala omelettes. Apple dishes galore. Lots. But we haven't been photographing anything and we've been eating everything before we get a chance to type up its story.

What I'm saying is, things have been busy. And will probably continue to be busy for some time. So we'll be back later. In the meantime if you need us, email.

We'll get back to you shortly.

Lemon Zucchini Pizza

I've been making the same pizza dough recipe for eons. When I still lived at my parents I watched Mario Batali on his show Molto Mario and he made pizza dough and I took it to heart, made it, loved it and made it my own.

But I've recently been given Jamie Oliver's Italy and I decided to go crazy and follow Jamie's pizza dough recipe to a T. Except I halved it.

I followed Smitten Kitten's inspiration for the lemon-zucchini topping (adding some roasted garlic to the goats cheese) and voila- lunch!

The new dough was fabulous, crispy edges, nice bite. I love the addition of semolina to the regular white flour. A winner. Jamie's pizza dough FTW!

14 oz. white flour
3/4 cup semolina flour
1/2 tablespoon fine sea salt

Just over a cup of warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 oz yeast

Combine the first three ingredients in your main bowl. Combine the last three ingredients, stir and let sit and watch the magical bubbles of yeast.

Make a well in the center of your flour and add the yeasty water. Start mixing with a fork. When it gets too difficult, get your hands in and mix and pull and knead the dough to a soft spring warm ball of luscious smelly dough. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes, covered on the counter.

Split the dough in two and roll out each pizza. Let sit for another 15 minutes, add your toppings and bake it in a ferociously hot oven on a fancy pizza stone for about ten minutes.

Adam's BBQ

Adam had a BBQ last weekend. I stressed about what to bring. I mean, we don't get to BBQ that often, so it had to be good. But it also had to be eatable with a bunch of strange people in a backyard, so I couldn't exactly go get steaks or do burnt aubergine.

So I made kebabs. Fancy ones. With rosemary sticks from the balcony. I've always wanted to do that. They look fancy and automatically special and the frangrance of the roasted rosemary was gorgeous.

Rump steak cubed and marinated in lemon zest, garlic, sage and olive oil.

Before

Cooking

We ate them in pita bread with salt and pepper chips and beer. A proper BBQ.

Mushrooms on Toast

I'm in love with Skye Gyngell. If I ever meet her I'm sure I'll be flustered and stuttering like a tween at a Twilight movie event when Robert goes through the crowd and like, totally, almost touches my hand. (For the record I thought Twilight was crap.)

Anyways. Focusing. Skye. A Year in my Kitchen. Everything I've made has been beautiful and a perfect seasonal expression of love and the Way Things Ought To Be.

We ate this back in March. Her recipe is called Morels on Toast. Mine is called Mushrooms on Toast, because I didn't get morels. We're in a recession here people!



Mushrooms, crème fraîche, lemon, mustard and parsley on chewy garlic rubbed bread. Delicious.


I love this book. Seriously. Broad beans with mint, ricotta and crisp Parma ham. Crab salad with nam jim. Pan fried salmon with wild garlic (which spawned a short obsession as we ate wild garlic leaves with everything for awhile). Mackerel fillets with roasted tomatoes and horseradish cream (C's new favourite way to eat his favourite fish). Lobster curry with tamarind, roasted coconut, ginger and coriander (made with still expensive monkfish).Baked aubergines with tomatoes, tarragon and crème fraîche. All love.