A September Evening BBQ

Last night's BBQ was wonderful. While I hope I'm rather far off the grave, advancing years make each special event like that all the more pleasurable for me: at the very least my son is likely to fly the coop in three years' time post A-levels. The simple joy of sitting with my wife and son eating well on a warm evening is worth celebrating. Ours being a role reversal household I prepared the food and Ruth cooked it, with Joe's help: sausages, thin steaklets, scallops steamed with garlic in foil, mushrooms on skewers plus rapidly prepared hot veg stew (I overdid the cayenne) and warm guacamole. A half-bott of Beaujolais to wash it all down (that it is half-bottles these days is sadly another sign the first flush of youth is long gone). Hardly a mosquito to bother us and still warm, though pitch dark, when we came inside at about 8pm.

Though our neighbours have equally pleasant gardens - not overlooked, nicely leafy and quiet - nobody else had come up with the same idea. Ours was the lone smoke signal.

Sunshine and the Wonders of Bicarb

We Brits have to take our sunshine when we can - generally in recent years April and September rather than what we laughingly call the summer months, and 2011 has pretty much worked out that way again. So tonight we barbie, doubtless with some strange looks from any neighbours observing the smoke signals. BBQs are always a good excuse here for hotting up the veg as accompaniments, so have some guacamole with extra chili maturing nicely in the fridge and paprika-laden tomato/courgette/onion stew bubbling nicely. I envy my former colleague Mike Riefsnyder in the USA who - living in the Carolinas - reckons to do a cookout (two nations separated by a common language) every Sunday, even at Christmas. It is a man thing, though contrary to the Woman's Hour cliche some of us can do a bit more than burn food over charcoal. Man light fire. Fire good. Meat good.

Needing to clean the BBQ grill I ended up doing the oven - how many brownie points is that? - as well, eschewing Mr Muscle and other overpriced lookalikes for a little pot of bicarb, far more effective and it costs pennies. Somehow I feel better about eating stuff cooked in an oven cleaned with bicarb than with more sophisticated chemical concoctions. Ecological and economic.

Stuff the Apples

The current glut we are enjoying if that's the word is of apples, both cookers and dessert. The new food dryer is helping to cope with the seemingly endless crop, and both wife and son devouring the little rings like sweeties.

A couple of days ago, thinking of how to use up space in a low oven cooking a casserole over two hours and more I improvised a simple pudding: six apples were washed and cored, and the hole stuffed with a mix that was roughly 4 parts fine porridge oats, 3 ground almonds, 2 sesame seeds, 1 sugar, moistened with maple syrup. Halfway through the stuffing looked too dry so more syrup was added, plenty on the skins too, along with several big glugs of rum. Delicious and very simple. They held their shape and had a rummy-toffee apple flavour. It's rewarding to come up with something that simple and that tasty.

Joined-up Eating

Yesterday's evening meal made me think about how proper cooking is not just about individual dishes. We had a mushroom risotto (I can never write or say the word risotto now without thinking of Stephen Fry's deliberately pretentious enunciation of it in a sketch years back - riso.........tto) made with lovely jellied stock from a ham hock cooked on Sunday for eating cold in a light first course on Monday. Joe, my harshest critic, said the risotto was the best thing I'd cooked for weeks. He meant well.





Joined-up also tends to mean economic. The hock was I think £1.69 from Morrison's (best of the big-four supermarkets as regards butcheries, their animals have both extremities and innards, Sainsbury's beasts these days are only made of roasts and chops it appears) and it did that starter, much of my lunch yesterday, and the risotto, plus the last shards were eaten at breakfast today). A chicken does at least three substantial dishes - roast, the remainder in a stir-fry, ragout, curry or similar, and always (or nearly so) broth or if already picked clean stock made from the carcase. By my reckoning the risotto cost about £3.50: £1.50 for mushrooms, say 50p for half a box of risotto rice, and £1 for a lot of parmesan, plus pennies for onion, 'basic' tiny pepper, and garlic.

Barbecue Summers and Dire Winters

It was alarming this morning to hear that several weather forecast companies (now there's a gig - I predict it will rain in Preston next week - that'll be £1000 please) are expecting a very harsh winter. Then I remembered these are probably the same people who assured us a year ago that 2010 would see a barbecue summer.

Strangely I feel rather drawn to the idea of a harsh winter, selfish though that is, as I love the cheerful cosiness of eating in a room with a wood-burner throwing light and heat about the place. We have bought some of our winter log supply, and half of Sunday was spent sawing up two fallen branches from one of the apple trees. Odd how the wood smells of apples, distinctly so. Those logs are now in the greenhouse drying out, there is precious little plant life beyond a big tarragon plant competing for the space.

Economic doom and gloom that sometimes gets to depressive depths, and food inflation running way ahead of the general level, is nudging me to lay in a load of tins and other keepable stuff, may as well invest the money in such stores as see it lose value in the bank. I am reminded of just such a suggestion on the bloody awful Nationwide in the Seventies. And if the world spirals into total economic meltdown we will be able to have tomato ragu and various bean dishes. Add indispensible olive oil to the list then.

The Scent of Coriander and Bay

Using the food dryer toy to preserve some herbs - a good way to get early payback as a little Schwartz bottle of dried sage etc runs well beyond the £1 mark - had the very pleasant by-product of filling the basement with a fabulous scent, as we pretentious wine-writer gits would say the coriander was the top-note, the bay providing a deeper background aroma, and the sage a subtle little touch of the savoury.

That is one of the joys of proper cooking, of real food: filling the house with mouth-watering smells. This morning's breakfast smell only noticed after we had been in the garden for a moment, returning to a comfortable mixture of bacon, coffee, and toast. Had we been using the wood-burner people would have thought we were selling the place.

A New Toy

On Tuesday we had a new toy delivered, a food dryer. There is probably a fancier name for it but it dries food so it's a food dryer for me. As with various other purchases in the same line it will take a long time to get the monetary value (£56 delivered) back in terms of food shopping saved - the apple press a case in point - but it's fun, we get to have a store of free food, and when civilization comes to an end we are the ones looking smug just before the Morlocks come and grab our stuff.

I dried some apple rings yesterday and enough bay leaves from our tree to see us through a winter of casseroles, likewise sage leaves. My wife loves the apple rings in her packed lunch, Joe as a snack including for his upcoming DoE hike - all the goodness only 1/10th the weight.

If any damsons have survived the hurricane-lite a few days back I may try a few of those to see if they work when re-hydrated (in vodka left over from reviews?) as the basis of crumbles or dry in cakes.

The sell-by-date changes currently mooted have brought up the issue of food waste again, an annual figure of 5 million tonnes mentioned for Britain. I doubt this includes the vast quantities of fruit never picked from garden trees and little lost orchards. Maybe the third way politicians keep trying to claim they are following should be not throwing so much away: our personal budgets would benefit, and so too would the world's poor.

Pears like Christmas

We have two pear trees on the allotment, and our friends with the one next door have another with a crop so huge it has broken at least one large branch off already. Pears don't ripen on the tree, and picking them is a matter of judgement, too early as with a recent load and they remain rock hard before collapsing unpleasantly.

So yesterday I tried poaching about six or seven peeled and cut into quarters, core removed. My spirit reviews have left us with overflowing cupboards, so the syrup in which they were poached contained rum and limoncello, lots of sugar, and some cinnamon and nutmeg. It took half and hour on a very low simmer, the pace upped at the end to reduce the liquid, but the result was sublime, a taste of Christmas a whole season too early. They reminded us of some figs we used to buy from a deli in Ramsbottom (laugh now effete southerners, Rammy is a foodie oasis believe it or not). The jar sloshed with spiced syrup, served with cream and a glass of amontillado they were an annual treat until the deli changed hands and they were no longer stocked.

Given the calorific content not a pudding to be eaten daily, but we will have them again soon.

Supermarket Basics

Supermarket Basics takes in several ways of economising, and to my mind of being a bit more eco friendly than otherwise.

We waste obscene amounts of food even before it has the chance to get to the shops, much of it because things fail to match the ridiculous standards set by bureaucrats. Produce destroyed as slightly uneven in shape; or not within the size limits set as norms. Some of the things not deemed perfect within those parameters are sold very cheaply as 'basic' or a similar designation in supermarkets. Buy them! It is not the taste but appearance that differs.

Likewise with cheap tinned tomatoes, basis of so many sauces and stews: their colour varies, or size, or maybe a tiny amount of skin clings to them. Buy them! Currently 35p or so for a tin of basic chopped toms against 50p or more for prettier-labelled 'perfects'. If you could save 30% on all your bills...

A similar line of thought follows with cheeses. I always glance (guiltily in case friends around) at the nearing-sell-by-date shelf for cheeses, and if I see any brie or camembert or good blue will buy them, as they will maybe be ripe and ready to eat. Better for less - new chalky camembert is not worth its place on the cheese-board.

Some fruits are sold cheaply because they too are ripe, or there is over-supply. Buy them! and eat quickly rather than keeping them for weeks then forgetting to check and letting them rot. To paraphrase Byron, Arise ye goths and eat your gluts (though you can feel like you are glutting your ire against EU silliness too if you want).

Good Plain British Cooking

Yesterday on one TV news programme an article 'revealed' that Britain is returning to traditional dishes - cottage pie etc - that had supposedly gone out of fashion. Setting aside fashion in food - vanilla infusion anyone? coffee foam? - this was introduced as being linked to the recession. The suggestion was that until the banks lost everybody's money we had all been dining on caviar, venison and wild sea-bass. Maybe in Kensington.





Actually what has probably happened over the years is that as we advanced economically some of the nastier cheapo filler dishes have been dropped - no recent sightings of gruel - but the good ones retained. And we have added foods and dishes from cuisines from around the world, so Indian and Thai curries, Chinese, Italian and Spanish things appear regularly on the tables of those who actually do cook (and I suppose those who buy ready-meals too).





Last night we had sausages (nice herby ones), mushrooms, mash made 50/50 parsnips (cheap 'basic' bag i.e. not standard EU size - topic for a other post I think) and potatoes (our home-grown), and onion gravy. Cost for lashings for three of us about £4.25. Though I say so myself the gravy was sweet and delicious. There's nothing wrong with good plain British cooking, though there would be if you closed your eyes to other options. Tonight then a chick-pea curry, made with freshly ground spices. Which has become good plain British cooking too.

Damson Ice Cream

There is little of the weekend's cheaty damson ice cream left, for which thank the brilliant recipe of Nigel Slater, simultaneously our most interesting and annoying cookery writer, at least of those to whom I offer house room. I lifted the recipe, if something so simple merits the term, from Tender II. Buy a tub of decent supermarket custard (the cheaty bit), pick twice its weight in damsons, wash them then simmer with sugar to taste for about 10 minutes, leave to cool (eventually in the fridge) then sieve and combine the puree with the custard and whirl it in the ice cream maker. Fantastic colour, sharp fresh taste, lovely.





The annoyance part comes from a) calling too many things favourites and comfort food; b) his often prissy writing style, (reflected in the font used in the book). As a pastiche: Take 500g damsons. Nice ones the size of a sparrow's egg. Their blush as pure as a novice nun's thoughts. And sugar. Introduce the damsons in a pan to a bustling heat.





So I will buy his next book for the excellent ideas. And grit my teeth while reading it. And make more damson ice cream. Lots. Aargh, it's catching.