Brimstone & Treacle

Coming Up For Air

2009-10-11T22:12:00.003+01:00

Ok, I've decided I have to post something because I've been bombarded with an email asking if I'm ok - and I am. I wasn't, but I am now.

Illness followed by the exhaustion it brings followed by the arrival of students and the beginning of teaching/Ph.D students/etc/ARGH and getting up at OBSCENE times of the morning because the trains have been a bit screwy...basically I've been too knackered to think about blogging. I've not cooked anything in an age either - I've been on a diet to shift medicine-induced-weight and since then I've been pooped and only had the energy to make ready-meals. Oh the shame!

Normality will resume shortly, I promise!

I'm baaaaaaack!

2009-09-10T23:14:00.003+01:00

I'm back - kind of. I started this post then lost the energy to complete it.

Sorry.

Everything's fine. I'm fine. My health has improved. Work is fine. Life is fine.

There's really not a lot to write about when everything is fine.

tig

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2009-08-18T23:57:00.003+01:00

[Green Day are clearly closet academics]

Well, judging by JaneB and Propter's blogs, we're all pretty much feeling the same at the moment. We all seem to be stricken by an illness that spreads like wildfire in every university at this time of year - Augustitus.

Augustitus is what happens before September Syndrome kicks in. It's the calm before the calm before the storm. We all feel (and look) like hammered shit throughout August, then, in September, we some how re-invent ourselves as semi-human ready to look Smiley and Oh So Very Charming in October-ish time when the sodding undergraduates come back and the new Ph.D students start.

I'm battling a bit with lupus at the moment. I wish life was an episode of House because then it wouldn't be lupus. It would be something else. But it's real life and it is lupus and this time it's playing with my heart. Well, not my heart, it's playing with my pericardium (sack what my heart lives in) and making it inflamed, putting pressure on my heart. Now, to the unacquainted, this sounds terrifying and life-threatening, but I can assure you it's no more than a pain in the chest. It's tiring though as it keeps one awake at night and it's not come alone. Every flare of lupus that I've had seems to come with the same suite of symptoms - a rash all over my body that itches like galloping scabies, sudden hair loss (it's not too extreme, just more of it on the pillow than normal of a morning), sore/stiff joints, sore kidneys, strange-coloured wee-wee and a complete lack of interest in anything relating to cultivating a two-backed beast. Good thing I'm single at the moment, eh? So, yes, I feel like shit BUT I've been to work every day, I've only had 2 days off (as annual leave - I need to use it up or I lose it) in the last month and they were planned ahead. I'm a bit "slow" compared to normal - I'm not thinking at my normal speed and I have to stick to "light duties" (which, in my case, means I can't tax my brain too hard, rather than my body). Lab work is right out at the moment as various things set my skin off and I can't be doing with that. An update on my minions:

Pleb - Working like a bitch and still as enthusiastic and lovely as always. I've got him 50% FTE still at the moment but, alas, I'm likely to be losing him in the next year as he's decided he wants to do a Ph.D. I would LOVE to keep him and have him do his Ph.D with me but I'm not sure I can get the funding in time, though we are going to try.

My GRA - What an absolutely lovely man. Is it part of a GRA's job description that one should give one's PI a shoulder massage without being asked on a Friday afternoon in the middle of the lab? Of course not, but he did it last Friday and his timing was perfect. That's the kind of behaviour that I'm sure makes people talk in the department about my sexuality/attitude to my male staff/colleagues but fuck it. Who cares when one can get ones shoulders rubbed?

Students - All doing swimmingly and DUE TO SUBMIT ON TIME WITHIN THE THREE YEARS A Ph.D S H O U L D TAKE! Note to my department: 3 years is NOT "early submission", it is ON TIME!!!

Newbies - In the next few months I am getting 1.5 Ph.D students - one of my own and half a one with someone at another University. I am also about to advertise for 50% of a PDRA (the PI is someone else, I am Co-I), once HR get their fingers out of their arses...

Right, I must go to bed!

I'm Not Dead

2009-08-16T10:46:00.001+01:00

But I am off work ill. Friggin' lupus. Should be back to "normal" in a week or so, at which point I'll start blogging again!

In which Tig Rants

2009-08-11T00:06:00.002+01:00

Have you SEEN the British news of late? It's all nonsense!!!

"Researchers discover that giving out Tamiflu like sweets might not have been a good idea"

"Organic vegetables have the same nutritional content as non-organic ones"

My response to this (and the othersuchlike in the news of late) is quite simply:

NO SHIT!!!!

Did you REALLY need scientific research to tell you something that's just plain common sense?! What a waste of funding...

Beetroot Velvet Cake

2009-08-01T22:34:00.003+01:00

There's something that really fascinates me with respect to shoving vegetables into cakes. Everyone will have made carrot cake at some stage but courgette cake, marrow cake, turnip cake and, yes, beetroot cake are all delicious.

I have an old friend popping in to visit for an hour or so tomorrow to break up a long drive and, since she'll be wanting a cup of tea, I felt it only fair to be able to offer up something dark and chocolatey.

This isn't a true velvet cake per se (they contain buttermilk, and I've made one previously) but it does resemble one, in as much as it has the red colour similar to that of a red velvet cake.

I have written about beetroot recently, and you can read more about them here.

Beetroot velvet cake

5 small beetroot
180g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1.5 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
250g sugar
3 large eggs
200mL vegetable or corn oil
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
2 × 1" squares 90% cocoa solids chocolate

First of all, cut the leaves from your beetroot (leave about 2cm stem attached to each beetroot) and put them into a pan of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer, covered for 45 minutes to 1 hour, at which point you should be able to easily stab each beetroot with a skewer without too much effort. Drain the pan and put the hot beetroot into a bowl covered in clingfilm and leave them to cool.

Once cool, peel the beetroot and remove the rooty bit and the little bits of stem as they are no longer needed. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease an 8" square tin. You need to make a paste from the beetroots and the easiest way to do this is to put them into a bowl and to pin each one down with a stick-blender, cover the bowl with a tea-towel then turn the blender on for 5 seconds. You should end up with a bowl of pretty magenta gloop. Put this to one side and prepare the dry ingredients.

Sieve all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl and make a well in the middle. Returning to the beetroot paste, give it a good stir and check there are no lumps and add the eggs, vanilla extract and oil and mix it until you get a glossy magenta liquid. Enjoy the colour because it's the last you will see of it. Pour the mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. You should have a reddish-brown cake mix at this point. Take the squares of chocolate and crush them into very small pieces and stir them into the mixture before pouring it into the tin. Put the tin in to the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.

I filled this with a layer of chocolate chantilly and topped it with a cream-cheese frosting, the recipe for which I will give you tomorrow, along with some photos as I've now finally found that bloody cable!!!

Well, Bugger Me Gently

2009-07-31T23:18:00.003+01:00

HOW is it Friday already and more to the point, HOW is it August tomorrow?!?!

ARGH!!!

I've not cooked all week, I don't have any motivation at all. I've had a shite week and now I'm eating takeaway pizza and drinking a bottle of wine. Diet be blowed!!!

Tomato Salad

2009-07-27T19:15:00.002+01:00

Ok, this morning I was trying to decide what to have for dinner and it was a complete no-brainer as soon as I opened up my delivery from Abel & Cole this morning to find two punnets of beautiful heirloom tomatoes - green, purple, yellow, orange, red, orange, round, plum, sausage, plain, stripy, spotty - it was all I could do not to shovel them all into me gob there and then.

I have managed to restrain myself enough to save some for dinner. All I've done is take Mrs Upton's Best Tomato Salad and used spring onions in place of shallots (as I'm fresh out of them) and added half a tub of feta ("foetid cheese" as I like to call it) as it needed using up. I had it with toast in lieu of any decent bread.

I do have photos and I think this is an incentive to find the camera-cable as the colours are just fantastic.

Black Stew

2009-07-25T19:23:00.006+01:00

Photos to be added once I find the cable for my camera!

The two main ingredients of this smoky, spicy, salty stew are cuttlefish and black turtle beans.

Cuttlefish (usually Sepia officinalis L. in Europe) are wonderful creatures. The name "cuttlefish" comes from a very old word meaning "scrotum", referring to their sack-like bodies. They're absolutely fascinating to watch - if you ever have the chance to see them in an aquarium or whatever, make sure you do - but they're also wonderful to eat. They are quite easy to get hold of from a good fishmonger (you might have to ask them to get one in for you) but I procured this little monster from The Fish Society. For this recipe, I used a fish weighing 550g, which was enough to serve one. If you want to serve more people, use a bigger fish and multiply up the ingredients. If you want to, you could serve this with polenta, which will bulk it out very nicely. Something you need to consider with cuttlefish is that you don't get quite as much meat from them as you might think - the cuttlebone (the equivalent of the cuttlefish's shell - it's a big honeycomb-type-thing made of calcium carbonate) takes up a fair bit of space and, once it has been removed, you obviously have a lot less meat than you might have originally anticipated. Having procured a frozen cuttlefish, I defrosted it overnight in the kitchen then transferred it to the fridge until I was ready to cook it later on today. Once removed from the pack, the cuttlefish needs to be prepared, so I have included a section on "How to prepare a cuttlefish" today.

Flavourwise, this stew relies quite heavily upon saffron and paprika. Now, since I've coloured the stew black with cuttlefish ink, you would be forgiven for thinking that the saffron is a bit of an idiotic addition, but you'd be wrong. Whilst saffron (the stamens of Crocus sativus L.) is used as a colourant to give that wonderful deep yellow colour, it also has a very subtle, almost phenolic flavour and aroma. The smell of redbush tea always reminds me of saffron and for good reason - they are both laden with safranal - the compound that gives this dish a subtle edge.

The black colour of the stew is due to the addition of cuttlefish ink (if you are very careful, you can rescue the ink-sack from the cuttlefish and use that, though I added a sachet of commercially prepared ink). The ink consists mainly of the pigment melanin, which is the same pigment found in dark/tanned skins and in brown and black hair.

How To Prepare A Cuttlefish

The first thing that you need to be aware of is that preparing a cuttlefish is messy work! In the accompanying photos, I am wearing nitrile gloves - this is nothing to do with the ink staining skin - it is just because it made it easier to ensure that I didn't get ink on my camera. The ink washes off of things very easily, so don't worry about the mess. A second word of warning is that a previously frozen cuttlefish can be a little bit pungent. As you will all know, good fish should not and does not smell too fishy; however, a cuttlefish is a very soft beast and cells can break open during the freeze-thaw process. Cuttlefish (along with many other fish) use trimethylamine N-oxide inside their cells to help balance against the salty water that they live in (otherwise they would shrivel up much as we do in the bath). When the cells break open, a bit of chemistry can happen that turns trimethylamine N-oxide into trimethylamine which is the stuff that smells fishy. Don't be alarmed by this - it won't do you any harm and once the cuttlefish has been washed, he won't smell. If you're really bothered by it when you're preparing the beast, light a scented candle or daub your face with perfume/aftershave/somesuch. It really isn't anything major but I can see it being a bit too much for some folk.

First of all, extend the tentacles at the front of the beast and lie him down on his front (so that the eyes are on the top). Within his tentacles, you will find two paddles - these are his arms and you need to pull these to their full length - they can be coiled up inside of the cuttlefish. Next, stick your fingers down inside the "neck" of the cuttlefish into the mantle (the body cavity) and grasp your hand around his head and neck. Take his mantle in your other hand and pull your hands in opposite directions, removing his head from his body. In the process of this, the entrails will come out attached to the head. Plonk the head and entrails into a bowl while you finish preparing the mantle.

Turn his mantle so that the side with the cuttlebone in is uppermost and the open end is away from you. Gently run a knife down the skin above the cuttlebone and then use your fingers to get inside and pull the cuttlebone out and discard it. Take his mantle to the sink and give it a good rinse - inside and out - removing any innards that haven't already come away. Cut down one side of his mantle so that you can open it up as a sheet and cut away all of the membranes and the pink skin so that you are left with just a sheet of white meat. Give this a good wash and put it aside whilst you prepare the tentacles.

Take his head and entrails and cut his head off, just behind the eyes. At this point, take a pair of scissors and cut off each of the short tentacles and then the pads from the ends of the arms. Give all of these bits a good rinse and twat with a meat-hammer to soften them up slightly. Discard all of the rest.

Black Stew

1 × ~500g cuttlefish (Prepared as above and with the mantle cut into strips)
2 × handfuls dried black turtle beans (Soaked overnight in cold water and rinsed)
1 medium onion (Chopped)
4 cloves of garlic (Crushed)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp smoked salt
2 potatoes (Cut into chunks)
1 tsp paprika
1 sachet cuttlefish ink
Pinch of saffron strands
750mL fish or vegetable stock
1 tbsp brown sugar

First, in a large saucepan, fry the onion and garlic in the oil until they start to soften. Meanwhile, put the beans into a pan of cold water and bring them to the boil. They need to be boiled for about 5 minutes then strained and rinsed in cold water. Put the saffron into a small bowl and add a few tablespoons of boiling water and set aside.

Add the cuttlefish and potato to the onion and garlic and gently toss for just a few seconds then add the stock and give it a good stir. Bring the stew to a good simmer and add the paprika and the saffron. By this point, the beans should be ready, so add them and the cuttlefish ink and sugar. Bring the stew to a good strong simmer, turn the heat down and gently simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes.

Catching Up

2009-07-26T15:12:00.002+01:00

I'm sure Starbucks have shrunk their muffins. I'm very disadvantaged at the moment in that New House is within walking distance of a Starbucks, which could lead to problems. Yonks ago, when I was living in London and there was a Starbucks every 10 metres, I had a serious addiction. Two venti coffees a day and then some. I've managed two in two days this weekend which is Very Bad. I mean, ignore the price for a second and count the calories! I won't be able to fit through the front door if I keep this up. I went for a walk to clear my head and to buy a new fountain pen. Mission accomplished there with a nice new Waterman though the stationers only stock a very boring range of inks like black, blue and blue-black and I like to write in Noodler's Red-Black which is a swine to find. Thankfully I've found an online retailer and have ordered a case of it so that I don't run out and have to resort to a boring colour. I have two other pens loaded with Noodler's Antietam and Marine Green for marking/editing etc.

I was going to bake a cake today but I seem to have lost motivation/time/energy/etc. I am currently painting upstairs which is a good distraction from the huge amount of work that I need to do. I have also started watching a TV series on DVD - a guaranteed way to waste time until I have finished said series. A couple of years ago, I watched 30-odd hours of Tenko on DVD over a Bank Holiday weekend. That's how addicted I get to crap old camp TV shows. Alas this time, it's not something with only 30-odd episodes. It's something with almost 700 hour long episodes! Only 64 have been released thus far and I have watched 10 of them since Friday night. Have you guessed what it is yet? Yes, it's the Mother of all it's-so-awful-it's-really-good TV shows: Prisoner: Cell Block H. I've watched so much of it this weekend that I'm slightly confused as to why the walls in my house don't wobble every time I close a door...

I should continue painting but bugger that. I think 4 more episodes of PCBH is a much better idea!

15 Things About My Kitchen

2009-07-25T15:31:00.002+01:00

Ok, this is one of them there memes and I hereby tag everyone who reads this! Post a link to your post in the comments. The aim is to write 15 things about your kitchen. It's very simple.

1. My kitchen used to be three rooms but now it is one enormous room. There is a little "utility room" hanging off of the back, though I insist on calling it "the laundry" because "utility room" is a bit too 1980s for my liking. It has a stone floor, which is not very kind on one's tootsies first thing of a morning.

2. I store things like flour, pasta, dried pulses and the like in glass jars on open shelves. I cannot be doing with the annoying bags that always rip and fill your cupboard with self-raising, so I dispense everything into jars and keep them out in the open where I can get at them much more easily. Besides anything else, it also looks very nice.

3. I don't own a spice rack. I have 76 little glass jars of spices lined up along the back of my main work-surface (with sneaky labels hidden on the bottom so that I can tell my fenugreek from my ground ginger but without spoiling the view of the beautiful spices within). I have a big box of the same jars ready and waiting in case of the event of a new procurement.

4. For 99% of my cooking, I use rainbow pepper of the Icelandic variety (i.e. black, white, green peppercorns, rose pepper and allspice) which lives in a large jar next to a pestle and mortar. I can't be doing with having to fill up a peppergrinder and I like grinding things by hand as I think it's therapeutic. I mix the pepper myself, after buying all the individual components in bulk so it is very economical this way. My salt lives just next door - flaked sea-salt for most purposes.

5. My pots and pans are a mix of Le Creuset cast-iron stuff in granite and Ikea stainless steel efforts. My wok is a cheap one from Muji that I've had for years and it's still going strong.

6. I grow basil, mint and chives on the windowsill but intend on planting a big pot of mixed herbs on the patio shortly. I have quite a few plants in my kitchen as it gets a lot of light.

7. My recipe books (of which I own a surprising few - I tend not to follow recipes very often) live on another windowsill.

8. I don't produce a lot of kitchen waste as I recycle cans, glass, paper, cardboard and certain plastics and a vast proportion of my food-waste ends up on the compost heap. I like composting. It makes me happy.

9. All my kitchen appliances are variations-on-a-theme of black/stainless steel.

10. My kitchen cupboards resemble "Sleeping With The Enemy".

11. I will not permit ground nutmeg to enter my house for I think it is evil. I have a nifty little nutmeg-mill as I use enormous amounts of nutmeg in my daily cooking.

12. Even though I own a dishwasher, the sink is invariably full of dishes as I am bone-idle.

13. I am a very messy cook, but I like to keep everything in an orderly fashion so that I can find things quickly.

14. I am a huuuuge fan of Buying In Bulk, so my laundry room is full of giant bags of rice, sugar etc. Hurrah for Costco!

15. I make pastry on a big slab of Pembroke slate using a marble rolling-pin. It takes a lot of the effort out.

Four Seasons Pizza

2009-07-18T20:01:00.003+01:00

Okay, this recipe comes with two caveats and they are:

(1) This is very much an à la mode d'ici recipe (that's French for "this is how I do it and if you don't like the fact that it's about as authentically Italian as a lamb korma, then I don't really care").

(2) I like to mix the toppings up, which is technically pizza capricciosa ("unpredictable pizza") rather than pizza quatro stagioni ("four seasons pizza") but since the latter is more well known, I've listed it as that. If you want to make a four seasons, follow my recipe but separate the toppings into four segments for the seasons. Me, I like to jumble them up a bit, so my photographs (once I find the sodding camera cable thingy!) are not how a four seasons should/could look!

The reason I like this recipe so much is because I get to use my favourite vegetable of all time - the artichoke (Cynara cardunculus L.). Firstly, let's clear up a little bit of taxonomy. The artichoke ("globe artichoke") has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus L.) - the latter is the tuber of a type of sunflower and no one, myself included, seems to know which berk decided to call it an "artichoke", which it clearly isn't. Now, back to C. cardunculus - this beautiful species is basically a fuck-off-massive thistle. If you've ever seen a thistle in seed, you will recognise the white fluff that we call the "choke" that lurks deep inside the artichoke, which is actually the flower bud. If left to go into bloom, the artichoke flower just looks like a giant thistle flower. No surprises there. For this recipe, we will be using the heart of the artichoke, which is really just the base of the flower bud and isn't anything special. You can buy these preserved in oil in a fancy jar or you can buy them preserved in brine, which is what I do as they're much more economical that way.

Four Seasons Pizza

This recipe comes in several sections - the base, the sauce and the topping.

For the base:

250g "00" flour
1 tsp salt
160mL warm water
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3.5g dried fast-acting yeast (i.e. 1/2 a sachet)
1 tsp honey

Firsly, plonk the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and give them a good mix to combine them. Now, combine all the wet ingredients in another bowl and stir until the honey has dissolved then add the yeast and 1 tbsp of the flour/salt mixture and give it a good stir. Leave somewhere warm for 5 minutes then add to the salted flour in the big bowl. Give it a good mix, adding extra water or flour if you need to until the dough comes together into a ball. Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and kneed for 5-10 minutes until it becomes silky. Coat the ball of dough in flour, put it into a bowl and cover with a damp cloth and leave it somewhere warm for about an hour. Meanwhile, make the sauce.

For the sauce:
2 × 400g cans whole plum tomatoes
2-6 cloves of garlic (I used 6 but I'm not planning on snogging anyone tonight, more's the woe)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 leafy sprigs of basil

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and crush the garlic directly into it. As soon as the garlic starts to sizzle, give it a quick stir and add the tomatoes then tear the basil leaves into strips and throw them straight into the pan. Attack the mixture with a potato masher until you have a smooth-ish consistency and then bring it to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes then tip the mixture into a sieve and work it through with a spoon. You should now have a tomato-soup-like sauce with no lumps of tomato flesh, seeds or basil leaves. Return this to the pan and bring back to the boil then simmer for a few minutes until it becomes thick and glossy. Leave to cool whilst the dough continues to rise.

For the topping:

200g vintage Cheddar (I don't like any of the white Italian cheeses so I use this instead, mea culpa. Grate the cheese)
3 artichoke hearts (a can normally contains about 5, as a rule)
3 cherry tomatoes (Halved)
3 pieces of parma ham
4 chestnut mushrooms (Sliced)
1/2 a can of black pitted olives (Because I ate the other half waiting for the oven to heat up)
10 fine green beans

First of all, put the beans into a small saucepan and cover in boiling water. Leave them to sit in the water while you do the rest. Turn the oven up as hot as it will go and put a baking tray in on the top shelf to pre-heat with the oven.

Take the dough and knock it back then kneed for 5 minutes and roll into the shape you want. It needs to be about 0.5cm thick. Cover it with a damp cloth while you wait for the oven to heat up. Meanwhile, get all of the topping ingredients ready. Once the oven is ready, take the baking tray out, oil it and put the dough on it. Cook for 5 minutes on the top shelf of the oven so that the surface goes hard and crusty. Spread with the sauce, then top with the cheese and all of the other toppings. Bake in the oven on the highest setting for 10-20 minutes until it looks cooked, basically. Cool for 5 minutes before you tuck in!

Crab Apple and Lavender Jelly

2009-07-17T16:37:00.003+01:00

Following my recent hijacking of the comments on Liz's pork rillettes recipe to discuss the virtues of lavender, I decided I should post this recipe for crab apple and lavender jelly. Normally, I just call it lavender jelly, but, since it's chock-full of crab apples, I felt that needed to go in the name really. This jelly goes very well with robust cheeses like Stilton or a really good vintage Cheddar, but Liz reliably informs me that one could use it to anoint a leg of lamb. Who knew?!

Lavender (usually Lavandula angustifolia Mill. or a hybrid such as Lavandula x intermedia) is a beautiful plant on many levels. Firstly, you've got the purple flowers - the shade of which is very rare in nature and there's something instantly enchanting about them. Secondly, you've got the smell. The odour profile of lavender is largely comprised of linalyl acetate [found in bergamot (Citrus bergamia risso (Risso) Wright & Arn.)] and R-(-)-linalool [pronounced "lin-a-low-ol" and also found in the sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) and the bay laurel (Laurus nobilis L.)]. I guess it would make sense then that lavender should marry well with meats that go well with bay leaves, basil and bergamot? I've often thought that Earl Grey tea (which is bergamot-laden) would make a good marinade for lamb, so I guess it's all falling into place now.

"Crab apple" is a collective term for "wild" members of the genus Malus Tourn. ex L., of which the domesticated species (M. domestica Borkh.) is referred to as just "apple". In the UK, the crab apple we usually find growing wild is the European wild apple, M. sylvestris (L.) Mill., the name of which translates as "apple of the forest" and yes, you do normally find it growing in the woods. M. sylvestris L. is a little bit like it's distant relative the quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) in that it's virtually inedible when raw but sublime when cooked.

This recipe makes a deep red jelly, but if you want to make it purple so that it seems "more lavendery", you can just add 1 tbsp of blueberries or blackberries or something similar to give it some colour during the initial cooking step.

Crab Apple and Lavender Jelly

1kg crab apples
250g sugar
A small lemon
125mL cider vinegar
Two handfuls of lavender flowers (Yes, I know this isn't precise but that's how much I use!)
Several pretty sprigs of lavender to go in the jars
Knob of butter

Firstly, wash the crab apples very well and chop them into small chunks. Don't core or peel them - just cut them up. Put the apple into a large saucepan and add just enough water to cover. Add the cider vinegar and bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes then add the lavender flowers and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes, at which point the fruit should be soft and squishy. Give the mixture a vicious stir with a wooden spoon and pour into a scalded jelly bag (cf. my pear, geranium and rose jelly recipe for instructions on how to scald a jelly bag) and leave it overnight over a glass bowl. Do not be tempted to squeeze the bag at any point or you'll end up with cloudy slime, not jelly.

The next day, measure your seepage into a jug and, for every 100mL you had, plonk 70g sugar into a Maslin pan then add the liquid. Add the juice, pips and skin from the lemon to the pan and bring the contents to the boil. Keep the mixture on a rolling boil until you reach a set-point (see my other Jams and Curds recipes to find out about this) - this could take up to 40 minutes, so be patient! Stir in the knob of butter and skim off any white scum that isn't destroyed by the butter. This recipe makes about 750mL jelly usually so take an appropriately sized, sterile jar and add the hot jelly to it. Before you seal the lid, plunge a few sprigs of lavender into boiling water for 5 seconds then push them into the hot, liquid jelly then seal the jars. If you try and add the lavender to empty jars then pour the jelly over the top, they will float and look silly, so make sure you add them after the jelly.

Steak and Kidney Pie

2009-07-16T21:49:00.003+01:00

It's been a miserable, rainy old day and I needed something stodgy, comforting and hot for my dinner - what better than steak and kidney pie?

Meatwise, you will need 1kg steak and kidney. I buy the majority of my meat online from Aubrey Allen, who delivery your meat in a very well insulated box with ice packs by an overnight courier. I like to stock up my freezer every few months with a box from them. Yes, I know they're not cheap but the quality of the meat is superb. Right, back to my point - I buy my steak and kidney already mixed from them - it's a mixture of chuck steak and ox kidney - it looks to me to be about 750g chuck steak and 250g kidney, if you prefer to buy them separately.

Pie purists will shoot me for calling this "a pie" because it's really a stew with a lid on it. To my mind, a pie has to have sides and a base really.

Steak and Kidney Pie

1kg steak and kidney (See above)
2 cloves of garlic (Crushed)
15 shallots (Allium oschaninii O. Fedtsch; peeled but left whole)
4 carrots (Cut into rings)
5 chestnut mushrooms (Sliced)
2 clementines (Citrus reticulata Blanco; Zest and juice, thereof)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp plain flour
500mL beef stock
500mL red wine
2 bay leaves (Laurus nobilis L.)
5 allspice berries (Pimenta dioica (L.) Merr.)
1 tbsp cloudberry jam (Rubus chamaemorus L.; if you can't find this (try Ikea!) then you can use redcurrant (Ribes rubrum L.), or blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum L.) jam instead)
Salt and black pepper
Pre-made puff pastry (Because life is too short!)

Firstly, cook the whole shallots with the garlic in the oil for a few minutes in a large cooking pot until they start to soften and brown a little. Remove them from the pan and add the meat. Cook the meat until it browns on the outside and then sprinkle with the flour and stir until the meat is well coated. Cook for 2 minutes with constant stirring and then add the stock and the wine, giving it a good stir. Add the mushrooms, carrots, bay leaves, allspice, salt, pepper and jam and then bring the pot the boil. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes then take off of the heat and leave to cool for a little while. Pre-heat your oven to 200°C.

Using a slotted spoon, add the meat and vegetables from the pot to a large pie-dish and then cover with enough of the sauce so that they aren't swimming. Cover with a layer of the puff pastry and bake for 30 minutes. I had this with boiled potatoes and some peas...oh and a large glass of white wine *hic*.

Venison and Beetroot Casserole

2009-07-20T19:01:00.002+01:00

Venison is one of those meats that doesn't really get much of a look-in these days or is considered "too expensive" but I enjoy it de temps en temps as a special treat. Diced venison is usually pretty reasonable but you could use beef for this recipe just as easily - or any other member of the Cervidae, such as elk or moose. This recipes combines various flavours from both Russia and Finland and, as such, could probably be considered "fusion cooking". As such, if you're feeling really adventurous, you could try a meat that was once very popular in Russia but is now very, very hard to get hold of outside of the USA and Canada - bear. Black bear (Ursus americanus Pallas) meat is relatively easy to get hold of in the USA and Canada but I've never seen it on sale in Europe - if anyone knows where to find it, please let me know!

Beetroot (Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris convar. vulgaris var. vulgaris L.) is a very, very beautiful vegetable that I simply adore. It belongs to the same species as the sugar beet (B. vulgaris ssp. vulgaris. convar. vulgaris var. altissima L.) so it is not surprising to note that the beetroot is absolutely laden with sucrose and gives a beautifully deep, sweet flavour when it has been cooked slowly. The fabulous red colour of the beetroot comes from the compound betanin, which is used as a food additive (E162) to give things a red colour. As anyone who is a fan of beetroot will know, betanin is very easily absorbed into the bloodstream, after which it gets rapidly cleared by the kidneys, resulting in one's urine turning pink/red (depending upon how much one has eaten!). A little tip - if you're about to consume a large quantity of beetroot, pop a note up above the loo to say "You have eaten beetroot, stop worrying, your kidneys have not exploded" because, if you're anything like me, you will invariably forget and then panic for a few seconds.

One of the main flavours in this dish comes from juniper berries (Juniperus communis L.), which are not berries at all - they are actually a very teeny little seed-cone (megastrobilus). Juniper berries are one of my very favourite things ever for they are what is used to flavour gin. The berries contain a variety of lovely volatile flavour compounds, including camphene (also found in ginger and lemongrass), eucalyptol (obviously found in eucalyptus but also in bay leaves, rosemary and sage), pinene (found in rosemary) and myrcene (also found in bay leaves). As such, I use bay leaves here to complement the flavour of the juniper.

Venison and Beetroot Casserole

1kg diced venison (Or beef, elk, moose, wild boar or bear)
4 medium beetroot (Pealed and cut into 0.25cm-thick slices)
12 shallots (Pealed but left whole)
3 carrots (Cut into rings)
5 chestnut mushrooms
1/2 bottle red wine
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp juniper berries (Lightly crushed)
Salt and pepper
500mL vegetable stock
Olive oil

The night before you want to eat this, pop the venison into a large bowl and cover with the wine. Add the juniper berries and bay leaves and season with salt and pepper. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.

Take the venison out of the fridge about 30 minutes before you want to cook it to allow it to warm up a little bit. Pre-heat the oven to 160°C. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large casserole dish and cook the shallots until they start to brown. Pour in the meat along with the marinade, carrots and mushrooms and bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Add the beetroot and the stock, season well and bring back to the boil. Pop a lid on and cook in the oven for 1 1/2 - 2 hours, until the meat is cooked and the beetroot is tender.

I ate this with some of my killer mashed potato. It was sublime.

Eternity

2009-07-15T10:38:00.002+01:00

I've just been thinking about eternity, as one does when one is waiting for something to be delivered. Ikea shop online. Great idea, I thought. I'll get my new wardrobe from them to save having to undergo a Krypton Factor-style procedure to get it into the back of a mate's car. Much easier, so I thought. I got phoned at 9:05am to say they would be here "within the hour". Getting on for 2 hours later, still no sign. They've got till 1pm...wow it worked! As soon as I started to blog about them being late, they turned up! Christ why did I order so much stuff?!?! You see, I didn't stop at a wardrobe. Oh no, no, no and thrice no. I made procurement of various other gubbins, including (but not limited to) a rather complicated-looking glass-sided booze cabinet. Look, when you drink as much gin as I do, it needs a dedicated home!

Right, I have Sainsbury's delivering at 8pm so that gives me a nice long free slot to pop into the city centre and make a few purchases, namely a BluRay player to go with my Massive New Telly (special present to myself because I am allowed). After about 6 months of the last 12 being close to Dire Financial Straits, it is really nice to be solvent once again. I've dipped into my savings and procured myself a few little pressies (ranging from Massive New Telly down to some recipe books I wanted).

Right, I must be getting on. I need to buy net curtain wire. How horrifically domesticated is that?!?!

Broad Bean Salad

2009-07-13T20:45:00.005+01:00

So, the move went absolutely brilliantly. Very fast and only one thing got broken and that was something I don't really like anyway.

Now, part of my deal with myself re: New House is that I have to be A Good Tig from now on and eat proper food every day. Now, as you all know, I love to cook, but, sometimes by the end of a week I just can't be arsed and Emergency Pizza gets used. I also can't be arsed to make a packed lunch normally and I just end up eating crap. So, I've been VIRTUOUS and set up a weekly delivery on a Monday with the lovely people at Abel and Cole for a box of vegetables. I don't really like many fruit so rather than having a box of them, I am just adding one or two items of fruit to my veg box each week. At some point during the moving-in-process, a mysterious box appeared in the hallway brimming with beetroot, sweetcorn, broad beans, magnificantly pungent spring onions, potatoes, carrots and a very handsome onion squash.

Last night, when thoroughly knackered and just wanting to eat takeaway pizza and collapse in a heap, I remembered those humongous broad beans and put the phone down and got my Le Creuset on the hob before you could say "Tig, you angel". I made a very simple salad with broad beans, tomatoes and spring onions and a very limited array of utensils. I cut the tomatoes with a Stanley knife and the onions with scissors! Mea culpa.... My excuse is that I can't unpack the kitchen until the fridge-freezer has been delivered today (it's not so much a fridge-freezer as an American "food centre" - carbon footprint be buggered!) so there.

Broad beans (Vicia faba L.) aka fava beans in the USA are something I admit I rarely eat, but I do enjoy them. I just can't normally be arsed with the hassle of peeling the little swines, so I rarely buy them. They belong to the same genus as the delightfully named bitter vetch (V. ervilia (L.) Willd.) which is something used to feed cattle in hot countries.

Broad Bean Salad

Broad beans (Vicia faba L.)
Spring onions (Allium fistulosum L.)
Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.)
Balsamic vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Liberate the broad beans from their leather-lined-with-ermine housing and throw them into boiling salted water. Bring back to the boil and cook for one minute, then remove them from the pan and plunge them into cold water. Now for the fun part - remove the sweet, soft and beautiful green beans from within the tough, bitter, white husks. When you've done this, but the green beans back into the pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain them and allow them to cool in a covered dish.

Chop the spring onions (remembering to use all of the green bits) and slice the tomatoes and arrange on a plate. Add the broad beans and drizzle with oil and vinegar and season with salt and pepper.

This is best eating sitting on a cold, hard, tiled floor whilst using one's laptop on a cardboard box makeshift desk. Wash it down with a can of warm cider.

Well...that's it then...

2009-07-13T00:47:00.003+01:00

Old home, old home,
Oh dear familiar,
Sweet familiar,
Memories embedded there in every brick and every corner,
Can't believe I'm hearing the last closing of the door upon my home.

(from Old Home by Fascinating Aïda)

I've done it. All packed up. Just my PC to take down in the morning and we're done. I'll probably not be online much this next week but I hope you all have lovely weeks.

Ok, I was slightly sensible...

2009-07-12T12:59:00.006+01:00

...in that I went to bed early and had a lie-in. Now, this might seem like an INSANE thing to do when one has to be ready for the removal men in less than 20 hours, right? Wrong. It will mean that I am able to pull an allnighter if need be. I've done it before, fairly recently and that didn't seem to kill me so I'm sure I can do it again and manage to get the rest of this packing done. I'm going to go and buy some caffeine-laden, sugar-loaded soft drinks in a moment - I might even go hardcore like the young people do and buy some Relentless. I saw them guzzling it around exam time - seems to be Pro-Plus in liquid form. No one takes Pro-Plus these days - we swore by it when I was a student. So yes, Relentless and junk food and probably some more black sacks are on my shopping list. How can one man accumulate so much rubbish?! I mean actual rubbish too - old envelopes from bank statements crammed into drawers! WHY?!?! ARGH!!!

Please post your moving-house-horror-stories to cheer me up!

Updated 15:28
I've finished my desk drawers, hurrah! I've taken the rubbish down, hurrah! I've been singing along to the "Rocky Horror Show" soundtrack, hurrah! I'm going to finish the lounge and office and then stop for lunch, hurrah! Lunch is a Ginster's pasty, hurrah!

Updated 16:20
I think I've finished the lounge and the office! Ok, I've got my PC and a stack of journals to pack and a bookcase to take apart but that won't take long. Stopping for lunch and then back to finishing the lounge, then it's the bathroom, hallway and then bedroom before finally the kitchen - which is gross at the moment.

Updated 00:01
Allnighter won't be required - I'm almost finished!!!

Oh twatflaps!

2009-07-11T23:48:00.002+01:00

You know how I'm really good at procrastinating? Well, I've gone a bit far with it... I had a little nap after Casualty and I'm very behind now. It took FOUR black sacks to clear out my desk drawers!!! Can't you imagine?!?! I still have half a kitchen, half a bedroom, a cupboard, two desk drawers and the bathroom to do by 10am on Monday. Is this possible?! I might run out of boxes before then... EEEK!!!

Moving on up, moving on out

2009-07-11T16:46:00.002+01:00

Right, the time has finally come! I've got removal men coming at 10am (traffic permitting) on Monday but I've still got about 1/3rd of my things to pack it seems. I'm just having 5 minutes with a can of Diet Coke before I take all the rubbish out and start work on the kitchen and bedroom.

Last night, I realised I was running out of boxes, so this morning I decided I needed to go to Wilkinson's and buy some plastic massive crate things. I figured that if I was going out at all, I might as well kill as many birds as possible with one very, very well aimed stone. I've been and procured paint for the bedroom ("intense truffle", get me) and associated gubbins (sugar soap, rollers, dust sheets) and a large amount of weed killer. The previous occupants of New House let the garden run fallow it seems and whilst I could spend a day of my life uprooting Taraxacum officinale L. and beating Cirsium vulgare L. into submission with a spade, raining gallons of glyphosate solution onto them (along with a bit of pelargonic acid for the really brutish Cirsium spp.) is just faster and so much more fun. Hopefully they will be gone in a few weeks. The brand that I procured comes in sachet form - I diluted it to double-strength (I'm a scientist, I'm allowed) for good measure. On Monday I intend to hose down the entire garden to wash any excess into the soil so that the Pseudomonas spp., Arthrobacter spp., Geobacillus spp. and Flavobacterium spp. can get to work on it. Wonderful things, soil Bacteria - they can use a wide range of recalcitrant compounds as carbon sources, which is can handy when one wants to shift a pollutant, for example.

Right, I really should be getting on. Eeeek!!!

Abalone in Jade Sauce

2009-07-10T21:31:00.005+01:00

This is something I made for my tea months ago and completely forgot all about posting it. As I'm currently living on pizza, corn chips and takeaway slurry, I thought it'd be a good chance to post an old recipe, whilst I'm also watching the last episode of Torchwood which is just fantastic and oh-so-dark!!!

Abalone (various members of the genus Haliotis L.) are sea-snails that are considered a delicacy in various parts of the world. If you've not eaten one before, you will have come across them as they have beautiful shells lined with nacre ("mother of pearl") and a lot of nacre jewellery is made from Haliotis spp. shells. In some very high-end Chinese restaurants, you might have seen abalone sold as bào yú and it can be cooked in many styles. If your local fishmonger can't get his/her mitts on abalone, you can buy them online from The Fish Society.

Now, the most important thing to know about abalone is that if you don't cook it properly, it ends up like rubber. You can get round this very easily by firstly soaking it in an alkaline solution and then by cooking it very fast - do not overcook your abalone or you won't enjoy it and then I will be unhappy.

There are quite a few variations on what is called "jade sauce" but they all basically revolve around spinach and various herbs. Jade sauce goes very well with most fish, I think.

Abalone in Jade Sauce

(This recipe makes enough for a very light starter for 4 or can serve 2 as a main course)

200g abalone (the weight includes shells)
100g oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tbsp root ginger (finely chopped)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cornflour
350g spinach leaves
25g butter
1 bunch of chives
5 sprigs of coriander leaves ("cilantro")
5 basil leaves
1 small chilli (finely chopped)
1/4 cup fish stock
3/4 cup crème fraiche

Firstly, take your abalone and run a knife around the edges of them (between the shell and the meat) and pull the meat from the shell. Remove all of the dangley bits but don't trim off the dark bits round the edge. You should now have a nice clean "foot" from each abalone. Cut these into 2cm thick slices.

Next, dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in about 750mL cold water, add the abalone and leave to soak for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the jade sauce. Put the spinach, coriander, basil, chives, stock, chilli, salt, crème fraiche and ginger into a bowl and attack them with a stick-blender until you have a nice smooth green paste. Pour the paste into a small saucepan and heat until it just starts to simmer. Meanwhile, slake the cornflour with about a tablespoonful of water and add this to the simmering sauce. Mix very well and keep the sauce simmering, with constant stirring until it thickens - this normally takes about 3 minutes in my hands. Put the sauce to one side and cover with a cloth so that it stays warm.

Now, drain your abalone slices and pat them dry. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the mushrooms. Fry the mushrooms for just a few minutes until they are nice and tender and then add the abalone slices. Cook for exactly 30 seconds - no more, no less!

To serve, put the abalone and mushroom mixture onto plates and cover with the hot jade sauce.

Síldarsalat

2009-07-09T13:04:00.004+01:00

Continuing my theme of Northern European food that I'm posting a lot of at the moment (I do have many photos to upload after I've moved house and found my camera!), here's a salad from Iceland which is lovely for picnics. If the summer ever comes back, this is also good for BBQs.

Síldar is quite simply herring - usually Clupea harengus L. though C. pallasii L. abounds too. For this recipe, you need to use pickled herring and I don't mean those horrible soggy things you get in jars in Tesco. You need something of much better quality. The Icelandic have their own magical pickling methods, but getting authentic Icelandic pickled herring outside of Iceland can be a bit of a bind, so, I recommend using Dutch pickled herrings - maatjes, which you can buy online here. In the coming months I will try and find an Icelandic pickling recipe and, if I can get it to work, I will post a recipe for pickling your own herrings, as I think that sounds like potentially quite good fun.

You can also use this salad as a sandwich filling - it works very well on dark rye bagels.

Síldarsalat

200g maatjes or other pickled herring fillets
4 pickled baby beetroot
1 sweet eating apple
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup soured cream or crème fraiche

Core the apple (leaving the skin intact) and dice it and the beetroot into small cubes. Take the maatjes and cut them into small thin strips and mix with the apple and beetroot. Add the mayonnaise and soured cream and mix very well until it is a uniform pink colour with no blobs of white mayonnaise/cream showing through.

Steenpudding

2009-07-06T22:14:00.002+01:00

As everyone else seems to be posting picnic-type summer recipes at the moment, I thought I'd contribute one, but also keeping in with my current theme of North European food. This one comes from the Netherlands and I was taught it by a Dutch chap I went out with almost 15 years ago and this is his Mother's recipe. The name Steenpudding translates to "stone pudding" and comes from weighing the pudding down with a large stone. I use tins of beans or a bowl of water, myself.

The spicemix used here is called rommelkruid and I've included a recipe in case you can't get hold of it. It's easy to find in Schiphol airport, of course. The ingredients can be hard to find but various online spice merchants sell them. Ask in the Comments and I will find you a supplier. For UK visitors, try Spice World.

Rommelkruid

1 part liquorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra L.)
1 part powdered cinnamon bark (Cinnamomum verum J.Presl)
1 part whole cloves (Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merrill & Perry)
1 part white peppercorns (Piper nigrum L.)
1 part dark muscovado sugar
1/2 part finely ground mace (Myristica fragrans Gronov.)
1 part ground ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe)
1 part red sandalwood (Note, this is Pterocarpus santalinus L.f. and nothing at all to do with Santalum spp. L.)
1/2 part anise seeds (Pimpinella anisum L.)
1 part paprika (Capsicum spp. L)

Grind the ingredients in your pestle and mortar then store in a tightly sealed jar in a cool, dark place.

Right, back to the steenpudding. You can use either chicken or veal for this - or even a mixture. It's entirely up to you.

Steenpudding

1kg chicken meat or veal
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 onion (diced)
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp rommelkruid (see above)
Salt and pepper

Take about 1/2 of the meat and run it through a mincer. Take the other half and cut it into thin, flat pieces. Put the minced meat into a bowl and then season the rest with salt and pepper. To the bowl of minced meat, add the parsley, breadcrumbs and onion and give it a good mix.

Grease a loaf tin, pudding bowl or Charlotte mould and line the bottom with about 1/4 of the pieces of meat then top with about a third of the minced meat mixture. Sprinkle with about a third of the rommelkruid then repeat the process until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of meat pieces.

Cover the meat with a layer of greaseproof paper that is big enough to tuck under the edges of the meat stack. Tie it closed with string. Press down very hard on the mould then top with a saucer or plate of the right size/shape and put a nice heavy weight on it.

Put the mould into a big pan and add enough water to come about 3/4 of the way up the sides. Pop a lid on and simmer for 3 hours, then, remove from the pan and leave to cool (with the weight on) for 12 hours.

Serve in slices with lemon, gherkins and other pickled goods.

I'm going on a proper date...

2009-07-06T17:51:00.002+01:00

Oh heck - I've completely forgotten what you have to do and I'm all of a tizz even though we've not actually arranged the date for the date yet.

I got asked out yesterday! This does not happen often - generally it is me who does the asking - so, whilst I'm trying to enjoy the moment and bask in his praise, I'm very busy panicking at the same time. Internet dating is clearly the way forward!

Good job I had my hair done at the weekend I guess, as it was looking a right state before. I loathe having my hair done, I really do. Many years of bad haircuts has taught me that you get what you pay for and that going to SwinkySwanky salon and paying upwards of £35 is actually worth it. What I can't be doing with is the attitude of hairdressers. They have far more edge than anyone else I've ever met AND they're no better than they should be! I get very intimidated by them all glammed-up and coiffed and pristine-looking at 9am when I'm dragging myself in off of the street looking like I've just woken up in a skip. I don't like the way they look down their noses at me for dressing like a tramp (I make an effort, but compared to them I look like a tramp) and for not being 21 and skinny as a rake and beautiful. That said, if I were to follow the fashions they seem to be going for, I'd be walking around with my arse hanging out over my jeans (which would have to be absurdly tight) and I would have to have a wide array of bad tattoos and too many piercings.

Right, I need to make sure I haven't packed my favourite shirt(s) in case I need them for this date. I'm moving house at the weekend and I'm nowhere ready!!!