them apples

Forerib of beef, roasted with beetroot

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:30:00 +0000

In the middle of the beef crisis in the UK during the nineties, beef joints including the animal's bones were banned. You couldn't buy proper roasting joints anywhere.

All beef was sold off the bone, and that was that.

My dad had other ideas, and wasn't about to be scared off by a minor inconvenience such as CJD.

He knew people, he worked in the trade.

One weekend, for some family get together or other, he came home with an enormous joint, at least six or seven ribs wide, it must have weighed about four kilos, on the bone.

He'd asked the butcher for a joint prepared 'in the traditional way', and no further questions were asked.

It was magnificent, and sat in the middle of the table as we weighed up whether or not to take the risk of eating it. The contraband beef won in the end, and it was the best beef I've ever had.

This Abel & Cole joint wasn't far off, either, and this time we benefited from our dinner being totally legal.

To roast a beef joint properly, you only need four things - a good joint, salt, pepper and an eye on the clock.

The hardest part is choosing the joint.

My cut of choice is the forerib, or rib of beef. It comes from just above the brisket, and normally has three to five ribs left in. The ribs are vital. They give the joint flavour and support, protecting the tenderest of the meat from the fiercest of the heat.

The quality of the beef itself is also vital. If you're going to roast a large joint, it should be a good one, from a cow that's been well looked after and farmed properly.

This joint was farmed in Herefordshire by a 78-year old farmer called David Powell. It's from a Hereford steer, one of an award-winning herd headed by a 22-year old calving cow called Pru. Abel & Cole do go a bit overboard on the provenance of their food, you may have noticed, but it's good to know the little things.

The 1.6kg joint was seasoned liberally and given twenty minutes at 220c and a further forty-five minutes at the more sedate 170c, resting for another twenty minutes afterwards. This left the joint with a rich, pale red colour in the centre, moist and tasty.

The timings are from Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall's unparalleled River Cottage Meat. Hugh spends five pages describing the process of roasting a joint in minute detail. It's a joy to read something written with such knowledge and enthusiasm, but in a nutshell, Hugh's advice is to blast the meat at a high temperature for twenty to thirty minutes, then reduce the heat to a lower setting for a further fifteen minutes per half kilo for a perfect medium roast.

These timings, or anything else in River Cottage Meat for that matter, never fail.

The beef was cooked with beetroot and onions. Beetroot is an excellent partner to beef, especially when roasted itself, with some gutsy herbs and a heavy hand with the seasoning.

Boil four or five beetroot gently in their skins for about forty minutes until just done. Peel and halve them.

Peel and quarter a similar number of small onions, and add them to the beetroot with plenty of salt and pepper and a couple of tablespoons each of thyme and marjoram leaves. Add a big glug of olive oil to coat the vegetables, and tuck them around the beef for the last half an hour or so of cooking, finishing off whilst the beef rests.

Slice the beef into thick slices and serve with the roasted vegetables, and some horseradish sauce or mustard. The beetroot will be warm, tender and sweet, the onions rich and caramalised, the beef rich and pink.

One last thing. If you're going to roast a big joint of meat, make sure it's far too big. You need to have some left over for sandwiches the next day, or even to just slice straight off the bone in the middle of the night.

Thanks to Abel & Cole for sending me this joint - your beef is superb.

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Wikio's October Top Twenty Gastronomy blogs

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:58:00 +0000

I've been given the chance to preview the Wikio Top Twenty UK gastronomy blogs for last month, October.

Here's the list:

1	The Guardian - Word of Mouth (=)
2	Food Stories (=)
3	Eat like a girl (=)
4	Hollow Legs (=)
5	DOS HERMANOS (+1)
6	London Eater (+3)
7	Cheese and Biscuits (-2)
8	World Foodie Guide (+2)
9	Spittoonextra (-2)
10	Tamarind and Thyme (+2)
11	Gastronomy Domine (-3)
12	Thring for Your Supper (-1)
13	Tinned Tomatoes (+3)
14	Dinner Diary (+1)
15	An American in London (+5)
16	Ambrosia and Nectar (-3)
17	The Foodie List (+1)
18	Ice Cream Ireland (-4)
19	Crumbs and Doilies Cupcakes blog (+11)
20	Domestic Goddess in Training (+6)

Ranking by Wikio

These rankings are worked out using some sort of complicated algorithmic voodoo that I'm not going to pretend to understand. Wikio explain it all here.

There are some excellent writers on this list, and I'd say it's fairly representative of the cream of British food blogging. These twenty blogs are pretty much required reading.

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John Torode's Chicken and Other Birds

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Chicken and Other Birds is the latest book from John Torode, the Australian chef behind Smiths of Smithfield and one of the presenters of the BBC's Masterchef.

The purpose of Torode's book is very simple and very clear. He sees chicken as one of the cornerstones of a cook's repertoire.

"If you can roast a chicken, you will survive", as he puts it.

This is a collection of recipes intended to lift this most popular of meats out of the doldrums, to give people the confidence to cook it with flair and passion and, above all else, to get the most out of it.

There are chapters on soups and stocks, with recipes for a simple chicken soup with mazo balls alongside broths tinged with the influence of the Pacific rim. Other chapters focus on salads, curries, roasts, tarts, pies and pastries, and somewhat inevitably for an Aussie chef, barbecuing.

The collection has a healthy south-east Asian edge to it in parts - Asian ingredients are much in evidence in many of the dishes, and used to great effect. A jungle curry of guinea fowl takes a close relative of the chicken and gives it a northern Thai treatment, the flavours bordering on Chinese, hot with yellow curry paste, savoury and sweet notes from fish sauce and Shaoxing wine undercutting the heat , the dish balanced with bok choy and mint.

An inventive but easy dish.

Other examples of thoughtful cooking are everywhere.

A beautiful dish of pot-roasted pigeons with bacon and cabbage contains only a handful of ingredients, put together in a way that leaps off the page as something that's easy to do.

More daunting recipes, such as confit duck, are stripped back and shown to need little more than patience to complete with stunning results. Pairing the newly-made confit with haricot beans, sausage and pancetta is never going to win any awards for innovation, but it's a classic combination, guaranteed to win.

There are other more complicated dishes, recipes to offer a challenge. Turkey pastrami involves brining and smoking in a wok, something that I doubt my smoke alarm would tolerate, but which I know I'm going to try, when everybody else is out.

The classics are all here. Torode tells us how to roast a chicken, gives his take on the chicken sandwich (really, is there a better sandwich?) and runs through a few essential techniques, such as grilling. A quick overview of how to joint a chicken properly is also included, something that I suspect many people don't know how to do properly. If you can joint a chicken, you can use it all, and the inside of the dust jacket has a 'beak to tail' view of what to do with a chicken. The intention is to get the most out of the bird, to use it all.

Chicken and Other Birds is accessible, useful and has some great recipes. It tempts you to look at the humble chicken again and want to do more with it than just roast it.

It's one of those cookbooks that's less of a celebrity chef vanity job and more of a manual, a practical guide to getting the best out of the amateur cook. It's the type of book I want in my kitchen.

I enjoyed Torode's book enormously.

If his aim was to kindle some enthusiasm for chicken, he's succeeded, and done a thorough and thoughtful job of it, too.

Thanks to Quadrille for the review copy.

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Should I take photos in restaurants?

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Is it OK to take photos of food in restaurants?

It's a big issue for food bloggers. I posed the question on Twitter, and got a mixed bag of responses back. Nobody seemed quite sure, and there's certainly no consensus.

@JAD73 said

You've paid for it, it doesn't affect the other diners so unless you start demanding waiters adjust the lighting ok, surely?

@TheAmpleCook echoed this:

I think it depends on the restaurant, the proximity of the next table etc. However, it's your food and you're paying for it.

@CulinaryTravels sat on the fence:

that's a tricky one. partly I feel it is bad etiquette but then I love to read blogs about restaurant reviews with pics too ...

...and seemed to ponder it some more...

... definitely a tricky one.

@daveycraney got straight down to the rules:

photos in resteraunts, flash = bad, no flash/camera phone = good

Something tells me photographing plates of food is a little rude, but I can't really put my finger on why.

Why does it make me feel so uncomfortable? Am I over-reacting, as usual?

The Internet is a visual medium. The photographs that illustrate blog posts are as important, if not more important than the words. Great writing will always, always shine, and I appreciate it enormously, but it's the photography that catches the eye and draws the reader in.

Some of the best blogs, the ones I come back to again and again, the ones whose recipes I actually cook myself, are the ones with amazing photographs on them.

At home, it's possible to cook something, plate it well and take a decent photo with at least some control over and understanding of the lighting. Good results are entirely possible, and I've been lucky enough that the hyper-constructively critical people at Foodgawker and Tastespotting agree with me now and again and publish my work. It just takes a lot of time and work to take a good shot and massage it into a great one.

But in a restaurant? Is it possbile to take a decent photo, and more to the point, should you even try?

Is it just bad manners?

There are a few things that give me reason to pause. I'm never quite sure whether or not photography is acceptable, and I'm nervous about the waiting staff spotting me and - can you imagine the awkwardness for everybody? - asking me to stop.

There are other people in the place, and they've come out to have a good time, spend some time with their family and friends, eat some great food. Perhaps they wouldn't expect to endure some people on the table next to them endlessly snapping photos of their food for some stupid food blog?

I've read discussion threads on the subject, and some of the practices described leave me speechless. Pulling out a huge SLR in a restaurant is perhaps a little indiscrete, setting up a mini tripod on the table even more so. Standing on chairs, re-arranging furniture, adjusting the available lighting, re-setting the table are all things that I'd class as 'generally unacceptable'. Making waiting staff more or stop what they're doing (i.e. their job) whilst a photo is taken must really hack them off.

The other big problem is the technical issues around photography in low-light situations. You're faced with often very low light levels, poor camera equipment (really, who wants to lug an SLR around on an evening out?) and a need for discretion that means that photographs are snatched quickly. Over-riding all of this is the fact that you're likely to have paid a lot of money for the plate of food in front of you - it tastes better if it's still warm.

What of the other side of the coin, though? What's in it for the restaurant?

Food bloggers and restaurants have a fractious relationship at the best of time. We're amateurs. We're not trained writers. We only visit places once or perhaps twice if we're very lucky before writing about them. Our views could have a far-reaching impact when published on a medium that's instantly accessible, searchable, available. We can damage their business with our below-par photography and stumbling, half-baked opinions. Collectively, our voice is more powerful than we realise.

It's no wonder that some restauranters feel a little tetchy at the sight of yet another amateur hack brandishing a camera in their dining room. They must dread another badly written review, another small nail in the coffin.

On the other hand, a good review, alongside some delicious looking photos of incredible food really can't but help a restaurant. It's a real contradiction, and there isn't an easy solution to it. Each restaurant will have a different relationship with and feeling about food bloggers. You just can't tell, and, being British, there's no way I'm going to ask.

So, if you feel you must take photos in restaurants, how do you do it properly, and by 'properly' I really mean 'discreetly and sensitively'. This is my take:

No flash. Never, under any circumstances use flash. It's just plain rude and very intrusive. Think of your fellow diners.
No tripods, however small - a restaurant table is no place for extra camera gear.
Don't stand on the chairs - don't even stand up - get the best shot you can whilst sat down. Surely your mother told you not to stand on the furniture. Her advice still applies today.
Don't take photos of people - neither your fellow diners nor the restaurant staff want to end up plastered all over the Internet. If you want to use somebody's image, you need their permission - not getting it could land you with some attention from the Information Commissioner, and you don't want that.
Be quick, and be discreet - you've got a couple of minutes, maximum. Take whatever photos you can without disturbing anybody at all, then put the camera away and eat your food. That's why you're there.
If in doubt, ask - if the restaurant staff say no, or ask you to stop, respect their wishes, and whatever you do, don't carp about it later on the Internet. It's really not that big a deal.

My method is to use a very small camera, hold it as still as possible with my elbows wedged against the table, my hands cupped around the camera to hide it from view. I take a couple of shots and pray that one of them is good enough, or at least rescuable later. Sometimes I get a good shot, and I'll use it, other times I don't, and I try to think of some other way to illustrate the post. Maybe I'll return in the day and take a nice photo of the restaurant's exterior, or perhaps I'll email later and ask if I can use an image or logo from their website. Sometimes I'll try to search out a relevant stock photo.

I avoid causing any kind of disturbance whatsoever, and if I feel that I shouldn't be shooting, I don't. I hope that nobody even notices what I'm doing.

Nobody has. Yet...

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Lamb breast, stuffed and rolled

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:10:00 +0000

Part of the challenge of cooking is to make something unpromising into something worth eating. There are few cuts of meat that present as little to the cook as a breast of lamb.

Let's be frank here. This is not an appetising cut. It looks fatty, skinny, full of gristle and just plain unappealing. On top of all that, it's a funny shape.

The butcher let out a small gasp when I asked for a lamb breast, before regaining her composure and selling it to me as quickly as she possibly could, in case I changed my mind at the last minute. She charged me £2.50, but I got the impression she'd have taken anything just to get rid of it.

I had a recipe in mind. Nobody buys a breast of lamb just on a whim.

This recipe does two things - it packages the breast up into a neat roasting joint, and it allows the lamb to cook slowly and gently, rendering away all of that fat, basting and protecting the meat. A tough cut is slowly lulled into tenderness.

The results are astounding, and at less than £3 on the table, it's a complete bargain.

The breast is going to be stuffed and rolled, so ask the butcher to remove the rib bones for you. They'll be delighted to do this for you. Anything to get a sale.

At home, mix 75g of fresh breadcrumbs, 75g of chopped dried apricots, half a tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves and the zest of one and a half lemons together in a bowl. Season genorously with salt and pepper and add enough beaten egg to bind the mix together loosely.

Spread the stuffing mix out onto the lamb breast and roll it up tightly, starting from the thin end. Do this slowly, and push the stuffing back into place if it falls out of the sides. Tie the rolled joint up with three or four lengths of string.

My joint-tying skills are very haphazard, as is evident above. If anybody out there knows how to do this sort of thing properly, I'd be very willing to learn. Just do the best you can.

Put the lamb in a roasting tray and cook in a 200c oven for half an hour to get a nice colour on the meat, then turn the temperature down to 150c.

At this point, lift the joint out of the tray and add some root vegetables, potatoes, squash, carrots, celeriac, whatever you have handy, cut into hefty chunks, tossed around in the fat and seasoned. A couple of bay leaves help, if you have them. Place the meat back on top.

Return the tray to the cooler oven and cook for a further hour and a half, basting the meat every now and again.

Let the meat rest for ten minutes before carving into thick discs and serving with the vegetables.

The meat will be tender, balanced by the sweetness of the apricots and the earthiness of the thyme. The vegetables will have soaked up their fair share of the meat juices, soft underneath, crisp on the top. This is a warming, autumnal plate of food.

This recipe is from Hugh Feanley-Whittingstall's new book, River Cottage Everyday. Hugh cooks two breasts, enough for four. All I've done here is roughly halve the ingredients for the stuffing, although it's not an exact science by any means.

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The Old Tramshed, Saltaire

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:16:00 +0000

We'd planned to eat at The Boathouse, a newly renovated pub/restaurant on the river at the bottom of Saltaire village. It's a slick and modern looking place which inexplicably stops serving food at 8pm despite having a large dining room, doesn't run a reservations system and was packed by the time we arrived.

It soon became obvious that Plan A had failed and there wasn't a Plan B, so we wandered up to The Old Tramshed on the roundabout.

When The Old Tramshed opened a few years ago, it caused quite a stir as the first bar/brasserie in the area. It's housed in a converted engine shed fronted with enormous glass windows and a smart restaurant on a mezzanine floor above a bustling bar. The food was aspirational and the building spectacular.

Over the years, the place has changed hands and approach a few times, including a stint hosting variety type live acts which caused the average age of the clientele to rocket upwards at a shocking pace.

It was all a bit rubbish, quite frankly.

There was also a Sunday night singles event, which I don't want to think about too much.

The building is still just as impressive, but the current owners have taken a more relaxed approach. The entertainment side is more, well, entertaining, more acoustic rock and folk than aging variety acts and the restaurant feels less stuffy and formal than it used to.

We sat upstairs on the mezzanine, and ordered something to drink. I asked about beers, and the waitress stumbled through three or four mass produced lagers and a couple of ciders before she mentioned anything remotely resembling a proper beer. I ordered Leeds Brewery's Pale, which later turned out to have been Saltaire Brewery's Pale Ale. It was very good, but slightly mis-sold.

The menu was standard pub fare, a world away from the food that used to be served here. That's not a bad thing - previous menus were over ambitious and sometimes missed the mark completely. Now, there are plenty of simple and unfussy dishes, the sort of things that people actually want to eat rather than the sort of food they think they do. Prices are ridiculously cheap.

Jen's steak was cooked well. She asked for medium, and she got medium, which hardly ever happens. Garlic mushrooms and proper chips on the side, a thick, rich, garlicky sauce to accompany. Not complicated cooking, but done well.

My mixed grill was less successful. There was nothing wrong with it, but it just proved a little too much for me.

A lamb chop was left just pink and perfectly cooked, as was a piece of steak. The chips were excellent, hand-cut, crisp and light - very good chips indeed.

The glorious chips were overshadowed by a huge stack of onion rings that were crisp, but oily, and a couple of sausages, which should have been better quality. Is there any excuse for serving a sub-standard sausage with two excellent butchers within a two minute walk?

The menu also includes a series of tapas-like platters of small dishes of chorizo, chicken wings, and the like. They're very successful.

I'm a little torn by The Old Tramshed. It's a great bar, and they've always had at least a couple of great beers on tap every time I've been, but the food lets it down. It's fine, there's nothing wrong with it as such, and it's certainly good value, but it just isn't memorable or adventurous.

Our meal was accompanied by a selection of some of the most terrible music I've ever heard in public, anywhere. Not one track was recorded later than 1989, and there's really no excuse whatsoever for playing Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters at all, especially when I'm trying to eat.

The Old Tramshed
199 Bingley Rd
Saltaire
BD18 4DH

01274 582 111

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Slow roasted pork belly with fennel and coriander crackling

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:51:00 +0000

A pork belly gives a lot of bang for buck.

It's a cheap cut that benefits from simple, hands-off cooking. A few herbs, some salt and pepper and a few hours in a low oven are all you need.

First, the joint.

A cut from the thick end of the belly weighing between 1 and 1.5kg is best, on the bone, the skin scored with a craft knife. Your butcher should do this for you, and if he doesn't or won't, you need to get a better butcher.

Next, the seasoning.

Grind two teaspoons of fennel seeds and three teaspoons of coriander seeds with a pestle and mortar. The aim is to crack and break the seeds, not to grind them into a powder.

Sprinkle the scored skin of the joint with salt and pepper, and rub about half of the spice mix into the skin, pushing it deep into the score marks.

Place the joint in a roasting tin and pour the rest of the spices into the bottom of the tray, where they'll flavour the fat that renders from the meat.

Start the roast at 220c for thirty minutes. The initial blast of heat sets the crackling and guarantees a crispy finish. Turn the heat down to 180c for another ninety minutes.

You could go lower, to 140 or 150c, and cook for longer, upwards of three hours. No harm will come to the meat.

Let the joint rest for at least twenty minutes before removing the crackling in one piece and snapping into small pieces, and carving the meat into long, succulent strips. The snap of crackling is one of the most satisfying sounds any kitchen can produce.

The bones should be left to cool, then sliced into small spare ribs and gnawed away with a good chutney or relish.

Serve the pork with mashed potato and a green vegetable such as cabbage or broccoli, in a vain attempt to balance the fattiness of the meat.

The vegetables are there only for show. There's no point pretending that this is a healthy dish, so you might as well undo this token nod towards healthy eating by spooning some of the delicious pan juices over the potato.

This method with pork belly comes form Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new book, River Cottage Everyday.

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Fifteen's Hazelnut Torte

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:06:00 +0000

This is a traditional Italian torte, loaded with hazelnuts and poppy seeds, rich with ricotta cheese. It goes well with a cup of good, strong coffee.

First butter and line a 28cm tart or cake tin, one with a removable base, with greaseproof paper.

Toast 125g of hazelnuts in a dry frying pan over a medium flame until they're golden and start to smell, well, nutty. Be careful not to let them burn at all or darken too much. They'll catch in a second if you let them.

Let the nuts cool on a plate for a few minutes, then grind them up in a food processor until you've got a fine powder. Some slightly bigger chunks add texture, so don't be too enthusiastic with the 'On' switch.

Beat 115g of butter that you've hopefully remembered to take out of the fridge an hour or so earlier to soften with 125g of caster sugar until the mixture is pale and light. A food processor will make short work of this, but you can do it by hand.

Add four egg yolks, one at a time, to the butter and sugar and mix them in slowly, along with the finely grated zest of an orange. Save the egg whites.

Sieve 30g of plain flour into the mix, add 125g of ricotta cheese, the ground hazelnuts and two large tablespoons of poppy seeds and gently stir them in.

Whisk the egg whites with the barest pinch of salt until they're very stiff, then fold them into the rest of the mix.

Tip the torte mix into the tin and bake in an oven heated to 190c for 25 to 30 minutes.

Leave the torte to cool in the tin for a while, then take it out and brush the top with a glaze of apricot jam - just heat a couple of tablespoons of jam with a splash of water in a pan and brush over the torte.

To serve, grate some plain chocolate over the torte and cut into thick slices.

This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Kitchen, which accompanied Oliver's TV series charting the setting up of Fifteen and it's associated foundation. The Fifteen Foundation aims to provide a chance for disadvantaged young people to learn to cook and forge a life in food.

Fifteen's mission is to "inspire disadvantaged young people to believe they can create for themselves great careers in the restaurant business" through offering apprenticeships, vocational training and expert support.

At the very core of what Fifteen stands for is "the belief that the best way to learn is to get stuck in and learn by doing".

Fifteen now runs four restaurants, in London, Cornwall, Amsterdam and Melbourne, and turns over £4million a year, contributing £250,000 to the Fifteen Foundation. Their 2007 Social Audit showed that of the fifty-four students who had started the programme, three quarters are still involved in the restaurant business.

Anybody who uses their own success to leverage a chance for others, building that germ of an idea into a repeatable experience, an enterprise that can continue to give the same chance to successive intakes of students deserves all the credit and success they get. Jamie Oliver should be proud of Fifteen's success and what its achieved.

And the torte?

Utterly superb.

Sweet, cut with the faint acidic overtones of orange juice, crunchy from the nuts and poppy seeds, the grated chocolate swinging in at the end with a slightly bittersweet finish.

Knowing where the recipe came from makes it all the better.

NB. thanks to Tastespotting and Foodgawker for publishing my photo.

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North African slow-cooked lamb shanks

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:32:00 +0000

I've had some success in the past with tagines of lamb or mutton, flavoured with the mysterious North African spice blend, ras-el-hanout. The tagine is suited well to this time of year, when long, slow cooking suddenly seems appropriate again.

Ras-el-hanout is the garam masala of the North African and Middle Eastern world, a combination of up to a dozen different spices in quantities and combinations jealously guarded by each producer. It normally includes coriander and cumin, cinnamon, cloves, mace and nutmeg, black pepper and hot, smoked paprika, each spice toasted and ground to a powder. It has a real affinity with lamb and is said to be an aphrodisiac, although I haven't noticed any discernable evidence of this.

This recipe uses lamb shanks, the ultimate cut for a slow cooked lamb dish, their substantial bones flavouring the sauce and keeping the meat moist. It's a simple casserole, quick to prepare and packed with flavour.

Season two chunky lamb shanks with salt and pepper, then dust them with a tablespoon or more of ras-el-hanout, before browning in olive oil in a medium pan, one at a time. The pan should be big enough to fit the two shanks snugly side by side.

Set the browned shanks to one side and add two sliced onions and two finely chopped cloves of garlic to the pan. Let the onions wilt and soften, but don't let them brown.

Scrape the bottom of the pan to lift any residue from the lamb into the onions. This is the heart and soul of the sauce.

When the onions have softened a little, slip the lamb back into the pan and nudge it down into the onions. Add a couple of handfuls of dates, each chopped in half, and top the pan up with water until the lamb is just covered. Add a star anise.

Cover and cook in a slow oven (180c) for at least two hours, topping up with water if it seems a little dry. This would be perfect in a slow cooker, left to bubble away all day.

The dish is aromatic. The lamb will fall easily from the bone, into a sweet sauce, thickened with caramelised, melting onions. It tastes complex, fiery and very autumnal.

This recipe is adapted from Girl Interrupted Eating, a superb blog that's well worth reading and cooking from. Becky's photography, in particular, is excellent.

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Keith Floyd's Beef Bourgignon

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:43:00 +0000

The passing of Keith Floyd earlier this month caused me to dig out one of his old cookbooks, Floyd on France, a cornerstone of the Floyd canon and packed full of traditional French recipes described and executed with typical flair.

Beef Bourgignon, caught my eye. It is, as Floyd puts it 'a splendid stew (that) has been raped and pillaged by pub and wine bar cooks the length and breadth of this fair land of ours - they add peppers and other unmentionable ingredients to what must be a simple, slow-cooked dish with no deviation from this recipe'.

First, open a bottle of very good quality red wine, pour a glass and place it next to the stove. No Keith Floyd recipe should be cooked without a glass of red wine within arms reach. It's just not the done thing.

Cut 1.5kg of well-hung shin beef into chunky dice. The quality of the beef is vital, and I was lucky enough to have some shin from an Aberdeen Angus steer, dark, almost purple meat marbled with fat. The butcher was, quite rightly, proud to have it and made sure I left his shop under no illusion about the quality of my beef.

Place the meat in a large bowl and add five roughly chopped onions, five roughly chopped carrots, five roughly chopped shallots and three cloves of garlic, along with six large sprigs of thyme, two bay leaves and a handlful of chopped parsley. These vegetables are vital to the marinade, giving it body and complexity.

Cover the meat and veg with red wine, a good Burgandy is ideal. Keith stipulates the use of two bottles, but one topped up with a little water was enough. Don't worry, there'll be more booze later.

Allow the meat to marinade in the fridge overnight, the longer the better.

The next day, quickly brown six thick slices of cubed streaky bacon in a large, heavy bottomed pan with little oil and then add the meat, leaving the vegetables to one side and reserving the marinade separately, stirring to brown. This is best done in small batches. Be careful not to burn the bacon.

Sorting the meat from the veg is reasonably laborious, but the veg has done its work in the marinade.

There's still life in the veg yet, and I made a half decent soup out of it, adding some bouillon and simmering for twenty minutes before liquidising. Quite a nice lunch.

Next add a large glass of brandy and flame it, followed by 150ml of Madeira and enough of the marinade to cover.

Bring the stew to a gentle simmer, cover and keep it on a low heat for three hours, until the meat is tender and the sauce thick. Stir it every now and again and top up the marinade if it starts to reduce too much.

When the meat is cooked, fry 250g of chopped mushrooms in some butter and add them to the stew. Fry 200g of small, baby onions until they start to colour and add these as well, simmering gently until the onions are cooked through.

Season with salt and pepper and serve with crusty bread and French beans.

The meat will be tender to the point of falling apart, deeply flavoured with the wine with sweet overtones from the Madeira and brandy. It's extremely good, and tastes of France.

I cooked this meal as part of Back to the Chopping Board and A Slice of Cherry Pie's excellent joint idea to encourage people to cook Keith Floyd's food in his memory.

If Keith Floyd did one thing, he encouraged us all to cook better, and that's a good legacy to leave behind.

As a final touch, I tried to find a video of Floyd cooking this dish, but found this clip instead, where a stern looking French lady tries something he's cooked and then proceeds to viciously critique it with an air of superiority that only a stern looking French lady could manage so effortlessly:

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Copper Dragon Brewery, Skipton

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:20:00 +0000

The Copper Dragon Brewery resurrected the local brewing industry in Skipton in 2002, with the aim of re-establishing the long defunct Skipton Brewery.

Their aim, after much research which basically indicated that the more artisan end of the beer market was being squeezed to near death by the big multinational breweries, was to brew traditional, high quality beer.

They certainly achieve that.

Copper Dragon have five beers in production.

Golden Pippin is a light blonde with a citrus tang and a huge nod to the Continent that I've found goes extremely well with Indian food, whilst right at the other end of the spectrum, Black Gold is a rich, satisfying dark brew, full of body and roasted malts, the recipe rescued from old, long-forgotten brewery records. Both are quite superb.

Best Bitter is apparently brewed to 'satisfy the Northern pallette', which I can confirm it does.

Challenger IPA is a light, well-balanced and full-bodied and Scott's 1816 is a heavyweight, serious bitter. Both are full of hops.

Of the five, my favourites are Golden Pippin and Black Gold.

The brewery have just announced a solid set of financial results, turning over more than £4million from the sale of over 500,000 pints and 25,000 bottles. Actually, 'solid' might be something of an understatement.

More importantly, they've increased their workforce by fifty percent - creating jobs in the middle of a recession is most definitely indicative of a thriving business.

I called in at the Copper Dragon Brewery with the sole aim of picking up some bottles to try, and didn't have a chance to take the brewery tour - that's for another visit - but the new Visitor's Centre looks very smart, complete with a bistro that I'll certainly try soon.

Unsurprisingly, the bistro has all five beers on tap and uses Golden Pippin in the batter for their fish. In a stroke of what I consider to be utter genius, they also serve breakfast.

For closer look at the brewery's astoundingly shiny new plant, have a look at this post and this post from The Good Stuff.

Copper Dragon is a roaring success, and I think this is down to one thing and one thing only - their beer is just excellent. The range is carefully thought out, the beers are crafted with skill and precision, and have a freshness and vigour about them.

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How to make butter at home

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Making butter is simple.

It's really just very agitated cream.

The craft of making butter seems to have been lost. In past centuries, most butter was made by hand using methods similar to this. These are forgotten skills now, so much so that actually doing it yourself by hand and seeing a pat of butter form before your amazed eyes has something magical about it.

All you need are three things:

double cream, about a pint
a large jar with a tight fitting lid
a little salt, to taste

Pour the cream into the jar and fasten the lid.

Shake the jar.

Shake it some more.

And some more.

Keep shaking it for what will seem like an eternity. The cream will thicken and cling to the sides of the jar. Don't worry, just keep shaking.

Eventually, you'll feel a weight slopping around in the jar with a satisfying thud. The cream will have separated into butter and buttermilk.

Drain the contents of the jar through a seive and swill it out with cold water to remove any bits that were left behind. Shape the butter into a block, squeezing out as much liquid as you can, and dry it with a cloth.

You could beat in some salt at this point, or just leave your butter unsalted.

This method is centuries old, and it's difficult to see how a recipe that involves only one ingredient - a carton of double cream - could be attributed to any specific person. Despite this, I got the idea from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's excellent The River Cottage Family Cookbook, a superb book full of simple and easy recipes that are perfect for kids to help out with.

Hugh writes that people sometimes used to make butter by giving their grandma a jar of cream and letting her rock it into butter on her rocking chair. If you have access to a suitably equipped pensioner, by all means strap a couple of Kilner jars to her chair and see what happens.

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Fiery Kolhapuri-style lamb curry

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

A long time ago, a demon called Kolhasur settled in the beautiful and rugged land along the West coast of India, bordering the Indian Ocean. The people suffered terribly at the hands of their demon neighbour.

A goddess, Mahalakshmi, was sent to free them.

Mahalakshmi killed Kolhasur, but in an act of benevolence, granted his dying wish and named the town Kolhapur in his name.

Kolhapur grew prosperous, and became an important town in the Mahratta Empire.

The food of Kolhapur is associated with the Mahratta Empire, whose forces were the finest of India's warriors, routing the Moghals and causing untold mischief for the British.

This curry has a lot of the demon's fierceness and the Mahrattas' bravery. It's a fiery affair, hot, rich and spicy. You could tame it by leaving out some of the chilli, but that just misses the point.

Eat it like a Mahratta instead.

Marinate a kilo of cubed lamb or mutton, preferably on the bone, in four generous tablespoons of yoghurt, two teaspoons of peeled and grated fresh ginger, a teaspoon of crushed garlic and a quarter teaspoon of turmeric. The meat should sit in the fridge overnight if at all possible.

Heat a large pan and add a glug of vegetable oil, two to four dried chillis and a cinnamon stick. Let the chillis colour slightly and then fish them out of the pan and set aside.

Add ten whole cloves, two tablespoons of coriander seeds and ten cardamom pods to the pan and stir and roast them until they darken and start to smell exotic. Move the spices to the plate when they're ready.

Grind all the spices together in a clean coffee grinder until you have a very fine powder. Mix a teaspoon of salt into the spices.

Slice one and a half onions into thin rounds and add them to the pan, frying until golden brown. Finely chop another one and a half onions and add to the pan too, along with two teaspoons of crushed garlic and another teaspoon of grated fresh ginger.

Stir for a minute or two and then add the ground spices and half a cup of water. Stir and cook for a few minutes.

Next, add the meat, marinade and all, stirring well for five minutes before topping up with another half a cup of water. Bring to a gentle simmer and then reduce the heat and cook gently for an hour and a half, until the meat pulls away from the bone easily.

Check the seasoning, adding more salt if necessary, and increase the heat to reduce the sauce if its too loose.

Serve with plain rice and a cold beer.

This recipe is from the unsurpassed Madhur Jaffrey's superb A Taste of India.

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Jamie's Italian, Brighton

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

I love Brighton.

It's vibrant and exciting, but still has some of that shabby seaside charm and a little of the old menace chronicled so expertly by Graham Greene in the brilliant Brighton Rock. As a seaside town, it's hard to beat, and as a place to eat out, even harder.

As an end-of-holiday meal out, we had lunch at the Brighton branch of Jamie Oliver's new Italian chain. It's a friendly and open restaurant, very suited to families. A counter in the middle of the room heaves with Italian hams and salamis, a huge pizza oven radiates in the corner.

The kids were given their menus, hidden inside one of those magical red slide viewers from the Seventies. This captivated the kids immediately and gave us a bit of peace to look at the main menu properly. Very clever indeed, although I did have some trouble retrieving one of the viewers to have a play, sorry, serious look at the children's menu myself.

I ordered a plank of antipasta to start with. The waiter casually placed a couple of cans of tomatoes down on the table. We looked at each other and half thought that we might end up cooking some sort of pasta sauce ourselves. Later, he returned with a long wooden plank of salamis, pickles, mozzarella and pecorino and rested it on top of the cans, up away from the general clutter of plates and cutlery. Mystery solved.

The antipasta was excellent. The hams were just beautiful and the tiny mozzarella balls were by far the best examples I've ever had. Superb, simple and very effective food.

For the main course, I ordered soft shell crabs, deep fried in breadcrumbs with a mayonnaise on the side. I did pause before ordering. Two whole crabs, which parts can't I eat? The sardines look good. Will it be too fiddly? I decided to risk it and be brave.

I'm glad I did.

The crabs were delicious, the soft and tender flesh contrasting perfectly with the crisp breadcrumbs. The meat was rich and tasty, the mayonnaise sharp and cutting. A first class dish.

Jen had a carbonara, thick pasta in a creamy sauce with chunks of salty pancetta. The pasta was cooked perfectly, and made me realise that my interpretation of 'al dente' may have been a few minutes cooking wide of the mark. It was a huge plate of food, too much for a lunch, really, which Jen struggled to finish.

The kids had a pasta dish, spaghetti in a tomato sauce (no green bits, much to Lara's relief), with some excellent parmesan on the top, and a burger, a good sized patty of chargrilled beef in a toasted sesame bun. Each meal was served with a small undressed salad of a few leaves and some grated carrot, beetroot and butternut squash. The extra carrot was that if they tried the salad - just try it, not finish it - they'd get a badge. In our case, some extra encouragement was needed, too, but both salads were indeed sampled.

The children's menu was packed with easy, unfussy dishes. There were three or four meals that we could have happily ordered. Variety on a children's menu is quite rare.

Dessert for me was an affogato, a ball of vanilla ice cream with a double espresso poured straight over it. Stunning Italian simplicity itself, and a powerful combination. The waiter talked me out of ordering another espresso on the side. Jen had a tiramasu, a generous pile of coffee flavoured trifle with mascarpone cheese.

The bill came to about £70, which for a three course lunch for four is great value, although we stuck to soft drinks only.

Service was excellent throughout. Our waiter was friendly and attentive but left us alone to deal with the kids when we needed to. First class service.

Over dessert, Jen mused that the waiting staff all seemed to be very attractive. She wondered if the only qualifications needed were model looks, but the waiters who dealt with us knew exactly what they were doing, handling a busy dining room with ease, so very clearly not.

Jamie Oliver has found a real winning formula here. British Italian restaurants can be a little jaded and familiar, the same dishes cropping up time and time again, some cooked well, others not. The menu at Jamie's Italian has some of the staples, but goes beyond them to includes some more rustic and traditional Italian dishes.

Jamie's Italian is a superb restaurant, great value with an interesting menu of simple, honest, well-cooked Italian dishes.

At the moment, there are five restaurants in the chain, with another couple coming soon.

Jamie, a branch in Leeds would be great, please?

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them apples on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:11:00 +0000

I've finally become terribly modern and set up a page on Facebook, so you can, if you excuse the slightly horrific terminology, become a 'fan'* of them apples by clicking on the link below.

* The whole being a 'fan' thing on Facebook disturbs me greatly. It just seems so narcissistic and self-centred for what's essentially a souped-up RSS feed. However, you have to move with the times, don't you?

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Simon Seeks

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:18:00 +0000

I've been asked to contribute something to a new travel website, simonseeks.com.

I get this kind of request every now and again, and usually it's from yet another portal site wanting permission to essentially rip off my content. They usually receive a polite 'no thanks'.

This one caught my eye, though, and I've been reading it for a couple of days now.

Simon Seeks is a community hub for travel writers - you write about your experiences and the places you've been, the things you've done, the strange food you've eaten, and publish your guide to a growing body of independent travel articles. The quality of the writing and photography is fairly good, and some of the advice and tips are superb.

The real benefit of this kind of approach to travel writing is that it's fresh and uninhibited. Contributors are just normal people. Anything they've done, you can too, so be inspired.

I've done more than my fair share of wandering around the world with a heavy backpack, a battered guidebook and little idea where to go next, and I've picked up plenty of advice on where to go and what to see from other travellers. It's valuable advice because it comes from normal people and it beats the guidebooks every time.

A great read when planning your next adventure.

Update: this post on Simon Seeks is excellent - it's a round-up of some of the weirder and more wonderful places to eat around the world, including restaurants up a New Zealand tree, under the Maldives' sea, dangling from a Belgian crane and completely and utterly in the London dark.

The plates at the featured Thai restaurant have to be seen to be believed.

SimonSeeks.com

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Dealing with gluts - chutney

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

It happens to all courgette growers.

Turn your back for a day or so and the small, delicate fruits transform into gigantic marrows. They take over your plot, they take over your fridge. You kid yourself that courgette soup is nice, then you realise it isn't. You throw them on the compost heap.

Happens every year.

The gardener needs a strategy for dealing with late summer's abundance of produce, and for making use of those courgettes that got away.

This chutney, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's unparalleled recipe, is an excellent way of disposing of at least a kilo each of apples, plums and mutant courgettes. If prepared properly, in sterile conditions, it should last at least a year. If you make it in September, it will have matured nicely in time for that all important Boxing Day turkey sandwich.

Chop a kilo of courgettes into centimetre square chunks, discarding the seeds in the middle. Dice a kilo of cored and peeled apples into similar sized chunks and stone and quarter a kilo of plums, or use a kilo of green tomatoes instead. Place the fruit and veg in a large pan.

Add 500g each of chopped onions and raisins or sultanas to the pan, along with 500g of light brown sugar, a teaspoon of salt and one or two teaspoons of dried chilli flakes.

Pour 750ml of white wine or cider vinegar into the pan, with 250g of water.

Make a spice bag out of a small square of muslin, and add a thumb sized piece of ginger, bashed to bruise it a little, a tablespoon of black peppercorns, a tablespoon of coriander seeds and a few blades of mace.

Push the spice bag down into the middle of the pan and set it on a medium heat, uncovered.

Let the chutney cook gently for at least three hours. It will darken, and thicken very gradually, and will fill your kitchen with a wonderful smell. Keep stirring every now and again to stop the chutney catching on the bottom of the pan. A bit of sticking is inevitable, but if it really catches, just tip the contents into a clean pan and start scrubbing the dirty one. It'll take days to clean.

The chutney is ready when you can draw a wooden spoon through it and leave a wake behind.

When ready, ladle the chutney into sterilised jars and put the lids on tightly. A wide necked funnel will really help.

Chutneys like this are best enjoyed with a piece of cheese, some bread and a thick doorstep sized slice of pork pie, but they can be a useful ingredient in their own right. The general idea behind chutney, and indeed the name, originates from the Indian sub-continent, and many of the spices involved have a distinct Indian tinge to them. A couple of tablespoons can bring some life and body to an impromptu curry.

Well worth having a jar or two tucked away in the cupboard.

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Tarte aux Quetsches, or Plum Tart

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:30:00 +0000

I posted some photos last week from a small café and bookshop in Becherel, France.

It was an amazing place, a bookshop with a café attached as a sideline rather than the other way round. This is the way these things should be.

It was how I imagine my bookshop will look and feel if I ever have the good fortune to run one. Mine will probably have more books in English, though.

As we were leaving, the owner appeared with a freshly baked tart aux quetsches and set it down on a table at the front of the café. The tart was packed full of plums in a crisp pastry base, the plums slightly caramelised on top.

It was magnificent, as you can see here.

I had my camera out, having sneaked a few photos when nobody was looking. I knew I had to get a photo.

The problem with this sort of situation is that I think too much about it, start to panic and end up with a shaky photo. Sometimes I pass shakiness off as 'artistic blur', but that's not always possible.

I stood at the table, looking at the tart, the owner watching me with a quizzical look on her face.

"Why is he going to take a picture of my plum tart?", I could see her thinking. Something about the English being crazy probably also flashed across her mind.

My French is nowhere near good enough to explain about this blog and say that her plum tart, whilst it may be a run-of-the-mill, every day thing in her café was probably the single most impressive thing I've seen emerge from an oven anywhere in the world, ever.

So I took a deep breath and pressed the button.

I just about nailed it. I'm sure the good folks at Tastespotting and Foodgawker will have something to say about sharpness or composition, but the end result was good enough for me.

I might even frame it.

Tarte aux quetsches is a classic example of French pattisserie, and it's a fairly simple dish to bake.

For the base, I used the ever-dependable shortcrust pastry from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro cookbook. This is the same base I used in last month's almond and oloroso tart, and the recipe for it is included in that post.

Take care when baking blind - the pastry will colour very quickly. Eight minutes may very well be long enough.

The rest of the recipe comes from Orangette, but it's really just a simple custard with some stoned plums set into it.

Start with the custard. Whisk two eggs, 60g of caster sugar, 75ml of double cream, 75ml of milk and three tablespoons of plain flour together. Make sure that the sugar is completely dissolved and the flour properly amalgamated.

Arrange about 750g of halved, stoned plums in the cooked and slightly cooled pastry case, cut side down, and pour the custard over the top. Don't over fill the case.

Bake in a 180C oven for about forty-five minutes, until the top of the tart has coloured and the custard has set. Check the tart after thirty-five minutes.

Let the tart cool completely before serving, and refrigerate any leftovers.

The taste of the tart is very much dependent on the sweetness of the plums. If your plums are very sharp, a dusting of icing sugar might be necessary. Mine had hung around on the tree for an extra week or two past their best, and were very sweet indeed, so I skipped this.

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Orangina, France's favourite soft drink

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

What is it?
Orangina is an orange juice based soft drink that's massive in France and other European countries.

It comes in a funny shaped bottle and needs to be shaken up before serving. "Shake the bottle, release the flavour", as the advert goes.

Every day, million of French waiters half-heartedly shake Orangina bottles with a look on their faces that screams "you do know that all this shaking the bottle business is complete bollocks, don't you?"

What does it taste like?

It's quite good, actually - a lightly carbonated orange drink with hints of lemon and grapefruit. Two percent by volume is made up of fruit pulp, so it's easy to kid yourself that it's good for you.

What's the story with the bottles?
Orangina comes in bulbous, pear shaped bottles that have a rough texture that's supposed to be reminiscent of orange peel, although this is perhaps stretching the concept a little. The shape of the bottle is instantly recognisable.

The current French advertising campaign involves anthropomorphic animals (deer, crocodiles, etc) in swimsuits, posing on Orangina bottles. It's all quite strange, sinister even, and I have no idea whatsoever what it's all about.

It's all very French, isn't it?
Absolutely. The French love it, and it's the closest thing they've got to an iconic soft drink, even though it was invented by a Spaniard.

Does it travel well?
No. Orangina is best enjoyed in France, or on the continent, at the very least. It tastes different anywhere else (well, actually, it doesn't, it tastes exactly the same, but the context is all wrong and the mood isn't there, and it's probably raining outside and, well, you get the picture. Some things are cultural as well as gastronomic).

Note: Jenny, pictured above modelling an Orangina bottle, is wearing a top from this season's collection at American Apparel, and has a new plan for managing French border crossing points on the English Channel. She considers French people to be emminently more stylish than their Anglo cousins, and suggests that they need protecting from the worst of the British nation's fashion crimes. Jenny proposes setting up a new check at all ports for basic fashion mistakes made by inbound passengers - sportswear, men's three quarter length cargo shorts, white socks, sandals worn with socks, any kind of electronic device clipped to a belt, etc.

Any transgressors would be returned to the ferry to either a) change or b) return to Britain where they can't hurt anybody.

Taking action, Jenny insists, would be in everybody's best interests.

The scariest part of this plan is that I think she's only half joking.

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Cancale's oysters

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:00:00 +0000

As Jonathan Swift put it in 1738, "he was a bold man that first ate an oyster".

That first brave leap into consumption is easy to imagine when you're holding a freshly shucked oyster in your hand, the slimy flesh swimming in seawater.

There's a lot to put people off about a raw oyster.

The first timer eyes the delicacy with suspicion, will often pause, may even refuse a couple of times, but will eventually knock it back, a horrified expression fleetingly crossing the face.

That first oyster is very often the last, but more often, it's the first of many, and it won't be long before the newly initiated tries a French Atlantic oyster.

Most of northern France's oysters are farmed along the Brittany coast, and the port town of Cancale is the centre of the industry. Twenty-five thousand tonnes of oysters are produced every year in Cancale's waters, close to the sea wall in vast beds, collected at low tide by tractor.

Some oysters find their way into the town's smart restaurants, others have found their way as far as Louis XIV's plate at Versailles, but more are eaten from plastic plates by people sat on the low sea wall. Oysters are greedily slurped down with nothing more than a squeeze of lemon and the shells thrown casually back over the wall. At low tide, the town is filled with the gentle clatter of discarded shells landing on thousands of other shells on the foreshore.

Cancale's oyster stands are very cheap and are the best way to sample a few of the town's finest. A dozen oysters cost between three and four Euros, depending on size, with an extra fifty cents each for shucking and a lemon. Lunch comes in at under five Euros.

The stallholders, wearing a chainmail glove and wielding a stout knife with a practiced ease, know exactly what they're doing, and open a dozen oysters in the time it'd take me to do one.

The oysters are superb, large, with a subtle nutty flavour and a clear, salty brine. Even so, there's a limit to the number one person can eat at a time, and as you can just about see below, I found that limit.

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Librairie Salon de Thé, Bécherel, France

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:08:00 +0000

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Croquetas de bacalao

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:43:00 +0000

These croquetas are from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro Cookbook, a book that's seeing some real service in my kitchen recently. It's a wonderful book, full of practical and delicious recipes.

Croquetas are a standard tapas dish, something you're going to find nearly anywhere in Spain. They're the perfect snack food, and, really, what's not to like about something made out of potato and deep fried?

Croquetas are normally made with ham, but this version uses salt cod.

Salt cod can be challenging to cook. My piece had soaked in the fridge for two days, simmered in milk for nearly fifteen minutes, but still it had the feel of something that's not how it should be.

"That looks like a lot of work," observed Jenny as I battled away, hacking at the fish in a vain attempt to 'flake' it.

I eventually managed to shred the fish into a usable pile, with the aid of two forks, a knife and a pair of scissors. In the end, I think that all the swearing made it just give up.

My execution of this recipe could have been better, but the basic idea is a winner. Just season the mixture more than I did.

Soak 225g of the infernal salt cod in several changes of water for at least twenty four hours, probably longer.

Place the cod in a pan and cover with 600ml of milk. Add a couple of bay leaves and half a peeled onion. Bring the milk up to the boil and then let the fish simmer gently for four minutes.

Now, after four minutes, my fish resembled a brick, so I carried on simmering. And carried on. And carried on. My cod took significantly longer than four minutes to approach anything resembling tender.

When the cod is finally done, lift it out of the milk and replace with 350g of peeled, quartered potatoes.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking, pick over the cod, separating the bones and skin and flaking the flesh. The recipe advises that this is best done whilst the fish is hot, lest the fish become 'stubborn' or 'gluey'. Well, there's a good chance it'll be stubborn whether it's hot or not.

Drain the potatoes, and throw away the onion and bay. Mash them with a potato masher and mix in the flaked cod, a heaped teaspoon of plain flour, a large handful of chopped flat leaved parsley and a dessertspoon of grated onion. Mix thoroughly and season well.

Shape the croquetas with a pair of dessert spoons. Take a spoonful of the mixture and use the other spoon to shape a quenelle shape. There's a definite knack to this, so persevere.

When the croquetas are shaped, fry them in hot oil for about four minutes or until golden. Drain on kitchen paper and serve immediately with wedges of lemon and cold beer.

The croquetas were good, but they weren't great.

"What did you think of those?"

"They were OK", replied Jenny, nudging a half eaten croqueta around her plate, "but they looked like hard work to make, and I expected more."

Exactly.

Next ime, I'll do a traditional bechemel and ham version.

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Tarta de Santiago - Moro's almond, oloroso and membrillo tart

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:08:00 +0000

I'm not a huge fan of spirits, so when a recipe calls for a dash of this or a small glass of that, a trip to the off-licence is often needed.

This Spanish tart from the superb Moro Cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark calls for oloroso sherry, a smooth, dark and nutty wine. I found a bottle in Oddbins, Lustau Solera Reserva, which is just excellent, a rounded drink with depth and character that isn't too sweet. The casks used to age oloroso are often sold on to Scottish distilleries who use them to cask whisky. The distinctive flavour of oloroso is there in the background of many a single malt.

The other unusual ingredient is membrillo, a Spanish style jelly made from quince. I couldn't find membrillo, but Harvey Nicholls had an excellent locally produced quince paste that proved a worthy substitute. They also tried to sell me a £35 bottle of fino too, but that's a different story.

The most challenging part of this, or any tart, is the base. Get the base right and the rest of a tart is easy.

This method worked perfectly. The pastry held it's shape without shrinking, and the base was thin and crisp. This will be my standard recipe from now on. It's the only one that's ever worked perfectly for me. It's miraculous.

Sift 140g of plain flour and 30g of icing sugar into a large bowl and mix in 75g of chilled butter, cut up into small cubes. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. A food processor makes short work of this.

Add a single egg yolk and continue to mix until the pastry starts comes together. Finally press the pastry into a ball with your hands. You may find that you need the tiniest splash of milk, barely a teaspoon, to make the pastry behave properly.

Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and rest it in the fridge for at least an hour before using a coarse grater to grate the rock hard ball of pastry straight into a 24cm loose bottomed tart tin. Press the shredded pastry into the base and up the sides until the pastry shell is formed. Prick the base all over with a fork.

Grating pastry may seem crazy, but believe me, it works.

Rest the pastry shell in the freezer for a good half an hour before baking in a hot oven, 220c, for ten to fifteen minutes. The pastry should be a pale golden brown.

To make the tart's filling, start by melting the membrillo or quince paste in a pan over a low heat with a tablespoon of lemon juice. Stir until the lumps disappear, and then spread it out on the base of the cooled pastry case.

Next, blast 230g of blanched almonds in a food processor until a quarter are quite chunky, the rest medium. The almonds should keep some of their bite.

Mix the almonds with the zest of three quarters of a lemon and orange, 40ml of oloroso sherry and a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and set aside for the sherry and citrus to soak through the nuts.

Beat 115g of softened butter until it's light and pale, then mix in 75g of caster sugar. Next, add two eggs, one at a time, beating all the time. The mixture will look a complete mess, on the verge of splitting. Don't worry. Just tip the almond mixture in and keep mixing.

Spoon the filling into the pastry shell, smooth it down and bake in an oven preheated to 180c for thirty to forty minutes, until the tart is golden brown.

This is a stunning tart, with a crisp, thin base, a sweet layer of quince, crunchy almonds and a sweet background booziness from the oloroso sherry.

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Opposite - real coffee in Leeds

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:24:00 +0000

I wrote last week about the new Starbucks stealth cafés that are springing up in Seattle, and as an afterthought added that Opposite in the Victoria Quarter probably serves the best coffee in Leeds.

This doesn't do Opposite justice.

Opposite's original branch is opposite the Parkinson building at the University of Leeds, tempting academics out of the depths of the glorious Brotherton Library for a quick break from the books since 2005.

The recently opened Victoria Quarter outlet is one of those Tardis-like kiosks in the middle of the arcade, a small place that revolves around an impressive and no doubt very expensive espresso machine. It marks a bold move into the very heart of the city, straight onto it's upmarket high street with some heavyweight competition from Harvey Nichols on one side and Anthony's on the other, both of whom know a thing or two about good food and drink.

The coffee menu has the usuals - latte, cappuccino, espresso - but it's the presence of the little known but very serious ristretto that makes the passing coffee connoisseur pause. A ristretto is an extremely short cup of espresso. Only the first ounce and a half of hot water are drawn through the coffee grinds, creating a powerful and concentrated mouthful of coffee. Nothing more, just a taste, but the taste of a true cup of coffee. It's a magical drink.

Opposite's espresso is made from 80% Columbian and 20% Guatemalan Arabica beans at the moment, but they use four different 'seasonal' blends depending on the quality of beans available and the time of year. All the coffee beans are ground to order, for each cup, which helps to capture the freshness of the bean.

Making a good shot of espresso is not easy, and there's plenty of scope for tiny errors that can destroy the taste of the finished drink.

I watched the barista carefully as he made my shot. He ground the beans and measured the exact amount of coffee into the hopper, wiping the rim and tamping it down in a practised move he'd clearly repeated thousands of times. He loaded the hopper into the machine and sent the steam through.

The coffee started to drip into the warm cup below, then it started to flow more steadily in a thin, dark stream.

The barista didn't take his eye off the stream of coffee once. The espresso was pulled with care and real attention to detail, and this care showed through in the taste.

The espresso is exquisite. Smooth, velvety, bitter and deep with a rich, almost chocolate like flavour. It really is good.

Milk based drinks are poured with the type of flourish and attention you just won't get from a high street chain. The pattern on top of a cappuccino is a work of art.

Opposite deserves to be successful, and it will be.

The quality of their coffee is simply just too good for Opposite to become anything less than a complete triumph.

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Virtual College's online food safety and hygiene course

noreply@blogger.com (them apples) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:42:00 +0000

I've learnt a thing or two about food safety and hygiene this week, courtesy of an online course from Virtual College.

Virtual College are a supplier of e-learning courses to business and industry, and have content covering a huge range of vocational subjects. I completed their Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering course, and I've got the certificate to prove it, having scored a collosal 93% in the final test. Not that I'm bragging, or anything.

The course covers everything the budding food service worker needs to know about storing, preparing, cooking and serving food that won't harm anybody. The tone of the course is excellent, and information is presented in a simple and logical way, with the participant's understanding checked at key points through sample questions and tests.

Online delivery of this type of content is ideal. It means that quality training is accessible to anybody, anytime, which is more flexible for both staff and their employers. The course is modular, and I completed it over several evenings, one or two five or ten minute chunks at a time.

Food safety and hygiene is vital for food businesses - it's the difference between success and failure, prosecution and imprisonment - but there's a lot for the average amateur cook to learn too. I suspect that many domestic kitchens verge on being bacteria laden death traps, and whilst implementing a rigorous inspection routine complete with control checks and charts in a domestic kitchen would probably be overkill, knowing how to wash your hands properly and what core temperature a joint of meat should be cooked to are probably nuggets of information worth having.

Right now, I'm off to clean the fridge out. It's a real mess. The oven can wait until later. I think I might need professional help with that.

Full disclosure: I was given a free logon to this course, for the purposes of this post. Thanks very much, Virtual College.

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