A couple of faggots for dinner.

I invested a lot of time recently, dreaming up exciting and excruciatingly funny titles for today's blog.  Some I winced at with withering mirth, others I bellowed at with convivial glee.  Actually, in truth, "a couple of faggots for tea" was the best I managed, and for that I am truly sorry.

There is something titterworthy about the word, "faggot".  In America, though, it has a slightly more derogatory connotation.  Having once been a defamatory word for homosexuals, it now seems to have achieved the heady status of generic, mainstream slur. 


Faggots for tea, however is a totally different ball-game.  A faggot is a meatball made of pork and liver (and other cuts of offal dependent on which brand you happen to be eating), mixed with some onion, basic spices and encased in natural membrane.  I made an onion gravy to cook mine in and served them with potato wedges and finely shredded cabbage.

I cannot bring myself to eat liver in its purest form, indeed I have no desire to eat kidneys, heart or tongue.  I can, however, squeeze a faggot in - and I eat them with great gusto (and in this case with a cold glass of Gavi).

Epic Bread Fail.

One of the great things about blogging is you are able to show your "warts and all".  Some of my cooking is rather proficient - I don't mind saying so myself.  Without doubt I have attained a fine understanding of Asian cooking, and I think I'm not bad at European styles too.  One feather, which seems particularly absent from my chefs hat, is baking.  I do seem to be rather rubbish at baking...

Ostensibly, this loaf seemed to be a success.  The crust was, well, crusty!  The base, when tapped, elicited a hollow echo.  It smelled delicious and its appearance was pleasing. 


When I cut through the bread it was still rather doughy, so I returned it, reluctantly to the oven for a further spell inside.  Again, after another 10 minutes, the same result.  A doughy middle.


I do not know what I did wrong, but boy did this piss on my chips.  Whenever I see the tag, "artisan baker" and whenever I gape at the astronomical price for a sourdough loaf I will just cast my mind back to this complete and utter baking failure.  


I think I'll stick to flatbreads!

Pizza to go!

Last night was another night of using up scraps.  We had some bolognese sauce left over from the kids dinner and some salami left over from when my mother and sister visited yesterday.  Couple those ingredients with half a lollo rosso and only one thing sprang to mind - pizza.

The pizza base is still a work in progress item, but I seem to be experimenting with a mix of 30% wholemeal and 70% plain flour.  The recipe for my pizza base can be found http://swlsk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fast-food-pizza-potato-and-pepperoni.html

So, I made two pizza's, one kind of like a "Sloppy Giuseppe" should you be familiar with a certain chain of restaurants, and the other a simple tomato, onion, sweetcorn and salami affair.  Here they are before cooking:

Pizza must accompany something.  I find that, on it's own it can be rather one dimensional.  Even if you serve it with some coleslaw, or perhaps some sauerkraut it really perks the flavours up.  The crunch of the vegetables against the crunch of the crust and yielding toppings is a great melange of texture.


In this instance I used up the rest of my lettuce and carrot.  Freshly grated carrot is fast becoming my favourite salad accessory.  Indeed, a salad of exclusively finely grated carrots is amazing when offset with a punchy dressing - something I learned from my travels in Scandinavia.

I am undecided if I should par-bake the base of the pizza in the oven first then add the toppings.  I find myself watching "Diners, Drive-in's and Dives" on Food Network quite often, and last night one of the establishments did this. I think it is worth experimenting with a small pizza to see if this negates the possibility of soggy middle.


In an effort to prevent the middle from being a little soggy sometimes I overcompensate and end up with slightly frazzled edges.  

They were both tasty, and we have half remaining.  This will be cherished by my 4 year old tonight who reserves a special place in his stomach for such delicacies as pizza, sausages and casserole (not all eaten at the same time, though!).

Surbiton-fried Chicken.

I think I can honestly count on one finger the amount of times I have been to a certain fried-chicken establishment from Kentucky.  I think I can even recall the exact day.  It was after I came back from the US, ironically enough, and was jet lagged and couldn't be bothered to cook.  The bucket of chicken and wobbly fries that we procured obviously did not enthuse us enough to motivate our return within the last 7 years.  If I want a crunchy-coated spiced chicken breast I make it myself.

This particular coating does not draw inspiration from the deep South, rather it is actually more European - though I'm not sure where in Europe! I guess it's closest to a parmigiana - the chicken dish they make in Southern Italy.

Crunchy Surbiton-fried Chicken

•   Make some breadcrumbs.  Panko are great if you have them, but honestly, you can just blitz some old white bread in a blender.  I used the hollowed-out remaining 15cm of a stale baguette.
•   Put the breadcrumbs in a shallow bowl.  Season with salt and lots of black pepper.
•   Finely grate some parmigiano cheese (I had a typical triangle of it and grated about 3cm thickness off).  Add to the breadcrumbs and mix.
•   Add half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Mix.
•   Add a pinch of dried oregano.  Mix.
•   Beat an egg.  Put in a shallow bowl.
•   Take a fistful of flour.  Put in a separate shall bowl.
•   Cut your breast of chicken lengthways through the grain to create two thin escalopes.
•   Dip one into flour, then egg, then the breadcrumbs.  Make sure it's nicely coated.  Repeat for the second breast.
•   Heat some olive oil in a pan.  When it's nice and hot add the breaded escalopes.  Cook for 4 minutes each side.  Don't be tempted to turn, you need a crust to form.
•   It's entirely likely your breasts are cooked through and ready to eat.  Mine was rather thick, though, so I heated an oven to 180C and finished it inside for 10 minutes.
•   Don't overcook! 

I made a simple salad of lollo rosso lettuce, grated carrot, finely sliced raw fennel (bulb not flowering top) and fresh tomatoes.  I made a punchy vinaigrette using English mustard.  This goes really well with the chicken and salad.  

Hog's Pudding

There is one thing that always goes down a treat on our table, whether it be for the kids or for us and that is the mighty sausage.  I have eaten many variants from a plethora of countries, spicy merguez from North Africa, currywurst from Germany and mustamakkara from Finland - I have enjoyed them all.  One thing I have not knowingly tried, though, is an offal sausage.  The thought of eating lungs and heart really arrests my appetite.  

Becca's parents were down at the weekend.  They live in North Devon and from time to time they present us with some attractive little local gastronomic delights.  Often they bring us some local faggots (yes, I know these have offal in them, but I've eaten them as a kid), sometimes they bring up a local cheese, or, as in this case they brought us some Hogs pudding.

Now, I was also struck by the name of this product.  I seriously have never heard of it before.  It turns out to be an offal sausage masquerading as some kind of minced sausage in a clingfilm bag.  It is made with, "Pork, groats, herbs and spices".  Only an ingredients list as vague as this could inspire such fear in a man of limited bravado, like me.  First up, what the hell are groats?  They sound like a complaint one might have if their intestines were swollen.  They turn out to be just milled cereal grains - mercifully.  The pork, it would seem is the hazy term.  Generic to say the least.  I would suggest Hogs pudding contains trotter, tail and tongue by all accounts.

Hog's pudding with baked beans and a fried egg!

Crisp on the outside, mushy on the inside with the consistency of something that might have died within the past month, I ate them with a certain degree of caution.  The cereals pack them out somewhat, to the extent where you are confused as to what you might actually be eating.

Both Becca and I turned to each other and said in unison, "they're OK, but I wouldn't buy them again).  'Nuff said.

Rice n' Beans.

There is something that is both financially and spiritually rewarding from using up leftovers.  The propensity to use what many people would just bin has become somewhat of an obsession.  We smile, smugly in our seats each night as we slurp the remnants of the previous day's ingredients.  

This weekend was spent celebrating the first birthday of our second son, Kasper.  All sorts of relatives came round to coo over our little scion amidst much devouring of food and guzzling of elixirs.  As a result of this little soiree we had around 300-400g of rather tasty roasted beef left over.  We had some, cold in sandwiches with English mustard on Sunday night and this was most flavoursome.  The remaining hunk I decided to finely dice and make a chile con carne out of (the recipe for which you will find on this post)

http://swlsk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/voodo-o-chile-chile-con-carne-alongside.html 

Chile con carne

As previously mentioned, the addition of beans to a chile is deemed incongruous by Mexicans, who seem to be rather exacting as to who this dish should be prepared.  This is a perfect example of a regional dish which over time and much Anglicization has become rather bastardized.  

We most frequently use kidney beans for our chile's in this house (and, I suspect, so do you too, if you make this), however I have become rather open-minded as far as which beans can be utilized.  Last night, for example, I used cannelini beans (which work rather well).  You can even pop a can of baked beans, wash off most of the viscous sauce, and use the remaining haricot beans.

I thought I'd give a quick precis as to how I cook and prepare my basmati rice.  It is very easy to get fluffy, individually-grained rice, cooked to perfection with the minimum of fuss.  Here's how I do it:

Fluffy Basmati Rice

•   Take out however much rice you deem in requirement for your dish.  Put it into a saucepan.
•   Wash the rice, at least once in cold running water.  The goal here is to remove some of the excess starch and rice powder.
•   Fill the saucepan with enough water to cover it by 2cm.
•   Bring to a slow simmer.
•   After about 6 or 7 minutes, test it by eating a few grains.  If it seems "not quite but almost ready" drain it into a sieve.
•   Stick the sieve back over the saucepan and settle a lid over the top.  Allow to steam.
•   When you are ready to serve, fork the rice a little to separate the grains.  Be gentle. 

¡Ay, caramba! Tortilla chips!

Mexican food is, I believe, a poorly understood cuisine here in England.  I am certainly no expert on cooking it, but I do love to wolf it down whenever I get the opportunity to try something that at least strives to be authentic.

Last nights culinary delight was by no means authentic, and probably not very Mexican at all, but I sat there, munching on my tortilla chips, revelling in the mental projection of my poncho, my droopy moustache and my sombrero. 

I am neither a polyglot nor proficient with the Spanish language - those which originate from the Latin base seem to evade my memory.  I do dabble, though, when on holiday and usually end up ordering something I didn't actually want.  Tortilla, as most words in Spanish seem, uses the "illa" part to denote a diminutive.  In this case, Tortilla means "small cake".  

 

The kind of "tortilla chips" we get are actually just corn chips, mass-made in some intensively automated factory in Barrow-in-Furness.  Real tortilla chips are made from corn tortilla's, pressed into discs and then deep fried to make them crispy.  After getting soaked at Selhurst Park yesterday I was in no mood to start experimenting, so I happily cracked open my bag of intensively made, non-authentic corn chips to make the following:

Corn chips with tomato salsa, refried beans and sour cream

This is just a matter of reconstruction (assuming you made the salsa earlier).

http://swlsk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/asparagus-officinalis-end-of-april.html 

The chips are placed onto a plate, spoon some salsa over, some refried beans (I bought mine, you can probably hazard a guess where they are probably made), some finely chopped spring onions, and some some grated cheddar cheese.  Preheat your grill, grill the abomination for 2 minutes, until the cheese has just melted.  Finally, serve it with some ample dollops of soured cream.