6 posts tagged “food”
I love Food Doctor seeds. Not sure about all the other weird stuff, but the seeds just taste great.
Thumbs up for the new fennel and caraway mix. Makes me want to cook loads of warming caraway dishes this autumn. And it has been too long since braised fennel.
Thumbs down for chili and garlic - the old chili recipe had more kick without inappropriate garlicness.
Dinner today was a joy.
A salad with duck liver, mostly purchased by Lucy and I at the farmer's market. We followed up by Confit du Canard from France and plumbs also from the farmer's market. Etienne and I enjoyed a glass of 16 yr old Bushmills that I bought on a memorable, sunny April day, in the north of Norther Ireland. Then, to top it off, we all had mugs of lime blossom tea. It arrived this afternoon via the Eurostar, direct from Marie's uncle's garden.
Marie has also bought a hansom sauccisson and some tempting cheese. We have whole place in the fridge for tomorrow - recently landed in Essex, and some beautiful fruit and veg. Most interestingly, David has been offered rabbit in near unlimited quantities. I feel a stew coming on.
Finding the food yourself is much more effort, but it tastes and feels immeasurably better than the supermarket.
Bought lunch today, as two weeks ago, at the Edinburgh farmers market. Marissa Mayer spent quite a while telling the U.K. TV industry that Google means them no harm. By the time I escaped most stalls had closed. The hog roast people had loads of tasty crunchy bits of pork left, but refused to serve me. Then one kind woman said she had just enough sausages to make a sandwich.
Tasty herby chipolatas with a beautiful piece of moist ciabatta. It was divine.
Continuing the theme of posting bean-based food thoughts here: My current obsession is kidney bean salads. I've been mixing a tin of beans with various stuff, and serving with fish.
A whole grilled trout worked nicely with beans plus parsley, spring onions, and touch of green chilli.
Seared tuna called for more bite. I added two red chillies to the beans, and offset the heat with a pile of mint leaves, complemented with a touch of strong white onion that we happened to have in the flat.
In both cases I added a little olive oil, some sharp white wine vinegar and pepper. I'm guessing that beans soaked from dry would be better, but that would require foresight, and I've been far too relaxed for that recently.
Despite very little sleep on the 'sleeper' up from London, we somehow found enough energy to visit the Edinburgh farmer's market on Saturday. The market consists mostly of little stalls selling a few select gems, rather than larger stalls with a full range of fruit & veg, bread or meat.
Having accepted that we couldn't get all our groceries there, I went searching for gems. The bounty was good: some great mature cheddar from The Island Cheese Company, a nice loaf of light wholemeal bread, a mild but very tasty chorizo, and beautiful lamb's liver and kidney from Cairns Farm in Kirknewton.
I made a nice coarse pate out of the liver and some rosemary, rejecting the farmer's suggestion to batter and fry them - maybe more traditionally Scottish, but difficult in our rather basic kitchen here, and a lot less healthy.
The kidneys were less obvious. I had thoughts of making a pie, but that would have meant passing up on valuable theatre and comedy time. In the end I simply halved, seasoned and fried them till just a little blood remained in the middle. They tasted really good. But the big chance discovery: they worked very well with the cheese.
Still not sure what to do with the Chorizo. It is a bit too chewy to just slice and serve with salad, not strong enough to add loads of flavour to a dish, but too good to be lost amongst other ingredients.
30 minutes preparing: pop them from their pods. Shell them. Release the beautiful green inner bean. It will take a while. It is worth the wait.
30 seconds cooking: drop them into a shallow pan of boiling water. Drain them, then back to the pan to mix with good olive oil.
Toss with rocket, season, serve, eat, enjoy.
