Shopping and cooking

2007-01-31T20:14:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Leftovers day. A small celeriac: sliced it thinly and fried it in butter and oil. Used too much butter, thinking it would be absorbed, but it wasn't; must try again with less oil. Tasty but not crispy.

Fried four Richard Auler streaky rashers (to produce bacon fat) and seven kiln-smoked dry-cured organic rashers. Delicious. Then heated leftover pesto mash in the bacon fat. Again, ration of fat to goods too high, though it all got absorbed.

2007-01-30T22:20:00.000Z

Tuesday
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Cold roast beef, salad, brown bread. Yum.
Monday
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Something half way between an omelette (six eggs) and scrambled eggs, with fried smoked lardons (so called) and oven-dried tomatoes.

2007-01-28T17:13:00.000Z

Sunday
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"Pork tomorrow", said I, having misread the label.

I'd had a 6lb piece of meat in the freezer, and I took it out on Friday night to unfreeze. The butcher's label said "tender loin", shich I assumed to be pork, but as soon as I unwrapped it it was clear that it was beef. But never mind.

About 40 minutes at 230C, then down to 160C. Meanwhile steamed some peeled potatoes and some parsnips. When the interior of the meat got to about 58C, I removed it from that oven and shoved it into a resting oven at just over 50C. Then, having shaken the potatoes and parsnips, I put them into the bottom of the roasting tray (the beef had been on a rack) with extra dripping.

I put a cauliflower in the steamer. Wife made Bisto gravy for Small Son; I made onion gravy (taking the best part of an hour, but it was delicious) for everyone else: soften a sliced onion in butter, then shake in some flour; let that cook for a bit. Add some sloshes of cooking marsala; stir; leave it for a bit. Add a heaped teaspoon of mustard; leave it for a bit. Add (but by bit) about a quarter of a litre of onion stock (made from a Kallo cube). Near the end, stir in some grated parmesan (an idea I got from a website somewhere). Very good too.

The final veg was radicchio. I had picked up a head at Steve's stall, without really looking at it, thinking it was red cabbage. He pointed out that it was radicchio, and the idea of wilting came to mind. A website suggested marinading it a bit first. So I cut it into quarters, shoved it into lemon juice and some oil and garlic, and let it sit until everything else was almost ready. Then a few minutes over high heat, some time on each of the three sides of each quarter, and there it was, the bitterness gone and the flavour and texture delicious.

Whole dish went well except that the potatoes, though full of flavour, were not crisp.

Managed two glasses of fino before and two of Fleurie with the main course.

Wife had very kindly prepared a pear and raspberry crumble (using some of our garden produce), which was delicious with cream. After we had tidied up, we had some of the whiskey-flavoured coffee I'd been given free at the market (a new stall: they roast coffee and I'd bought some of their other blends).

2007-01-27T21:48:00.000Z

Saturday
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Small SOn being home for the weekend, and with a mate, our meat consumption has shot up: steaks yesterday, lamb today, pork tomorrow.

Today's lamb was a Guard of Honour, and it worked reasonably well. I saw it in the butcher's yesterday: it's two racks of lamb pointing towards each other, the ends of the chop bones trimmed of meat and interlaced, and stuffing in the gap between the racks. Mind you, I think the stuffing may be a bad idea. It's surrounded by bone, which doesn't transmit heat very well; the meat would have to be very well done (which is undesirable) before the stuffing reached the requisite temperature for killing off any nasties. Maybe I'll make my own stuffingless Guards in future ....

Anyway, stuffing apart, I think I got the rack about right: medium on average, a bit on the well side at the ends, a bit short in the middle, thus catering for everybody. That was just over half an hour at 230C and about the same at 160C, followed by about ten minutes' resting in a 50C oven.

With the lamb, I served

- mashed potato (milk and butter) for Small Son

- mashed potato (pesto and single-estate olive oil) for everyone else

- microwaved broccoli for Small Son

- sugar-snap peas, cooked in water and butter: slightly too much butter, I think, but it was OK

- leeks, sliced and sweated in butter

- a sort of Cumberland Sauce made with unmeasured quantities of redcurrant jelly, port and some of the zest of a clementine. Very good it was too.

Whole thing worked well and all components were ready on time, which is always a minor miracle.

2007-01-27T09:53:00.000Z

Friday
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Small Son home. Went to butcher for one large and two small T-bone steaks. Also baked potatoes, microwaved broccoli, mushrooms fried in butter.

2007-01-25T21:28:00.000Z

Thursday
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Soup first: parsnip-and-fennel-and-apple-and-onion.

Then pasta: that stuff that's slightly wider and somewhat flatter than spaghetti. Heston Blumenthal recommends two litres of water for 200g of pasta (which is about right for two people) and TWENTY GRAMS OF SALT. I usually use no salt; I weighed out 20g and looked in horror as this mountain of salt formed. I put in a small amount.

Ragu from freezer, with Parmesan. Quite good.

Spoke to Jack McCarthy butcher today: possibility of venison and other goodies next week.

2007-01-24T20:06:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Not hungry myself, so boiled a potato and heated some shepherd's pie mix for wife.

2007-01-23T22:43:00.000Z

Tuesday
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Intended as a quick meal: parsnip and fennel soup with toasted-cheese-on-toast.

2007-01-22T19:46:00.000Z

Monday
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Had intended to make risotto but, it being cold, and finding bacon, eggs, mushrooms and soda bread to hand, reader, I fried them. Bacon included Richard's streaky and Glasthule butcher's dry cured kiln smoked.

2007-01-21T18:56:00.000Z

Sunday
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For lunch, a little soup to start, the last of the unfrozen leek-and-potato. Roasted the last four or five inches of the Christmas pig. Served with baked potatoes, leeks (melted slowly in the pan with butter) and stuffed mushrooms (stuffing being a couple of spoons of the crumbs I keep in the freezer, the mushroom stalks, a few gratings of cheese, some dried herbs and some melted butter to hold it together). Also wife's apple butter, which has been very useful: still lots left, but a spoonful enlivens many meals.

Vi's rhubarb cake afterwards.

2007-01-20T20:39:00.000Z

Saturday
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Away Thursday and Friday. To market on Saturday: a few veg, some rhubarb cake, carrot cake, a little cheese, some sun-dried tomatoes. Milk from supermarket.

A big salad on Saturday evening: bag of leaves, some watercress (not a success: too wilted), a few chard leaves from last week, six hard-boiled eggs, a few herbed croutons, a tin of anchovies, a few slices of Mizen chorizo, dressing. Delicious.

2007-01-17T19:49:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Soup: some of what made the xmas vichyssoise, but diluted with chicken stock and served warm. Crostini: wife's bread, toasted on the bottom; the top with butter, serano ham, spicy tomato stuff, a little grated cheese. Very good.

2007-01-16T22:13:00.000Z

Monday
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Using up leftovers: baked some potatoes and used oven to cook six Frank sausages and the last of the (home-)baked beans.

Tuesday
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Cooked rice to go with a tub of the daube de boeuf from the freezer. Rather tasteless, with acidic liquid: added chilli sauce to mine to cheer it up. I think that's the last of it, thank goodness.

2007-01-14T22:04:00.000Z

Saturday
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Wife unwell so dashed to supermarket for shopping: chocolate bars, chocolate biscuits, potatoes. milk, steaks, dog food, toilet paper. Heated Irish stew (from freezer) for dinner.

Sunday
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To Killaloe market. Only four traders. Bought chard and celeriac from Jim, twelve large chocolate cookies from one woman (her last remaining stock) and cakes, biscuits, falafels and hummus from the American woman. The other chap was mostly non-food.

Lunch was walnut bread from freezer (defrosted and cut into thin slices) with Cheshire cheese, falafels, hummus and a chilli and basil dip from the Limerick market (Forbidden Foods): very refreshing.

Before dinner, two glasses of rum and lime-juice with ice: very addictive and refreshing. Dinner was a large baked potato each, a large T-bone steak each and a salad of chard and julienned celeriac: very good, but the dressing drowned out the beetrooty taste of the chard. I wanted some oranges in the salad, but didn't have any.

2007-01-12T21:08:00.000Z

Thursday
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I had four potatoes, a chunk of ham (less the thick slice that went into the beans) and a leek.

Boiled and baked the ham. Boiled the spuds (too few for the steamer). Simmered the leek (sliced) in milk, and used some of the milk to mash the spuds. Smeared apple cheese over the ham. Very good.

Friday
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Wife unwell. Sliced the last of the loaf thinly and toasted it. Sliced a chunk of Hederman's smoked wild salmon: new knives made it possible to do this thinly and neatly. Scrambled nine eggs. Ground some black pepper. Bliss. That salmon is really good.

2007-01-10T21:33:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Currently reading Heston Blumenthal's *In Search of Perfection*. I don't imagine I'll ever spend 31 hours (even of elapsed time) cooking a steak, but on the other hand I've been thinking about baked beans.

Method 1: buy tin. Open. Heat contents. Eat.

Method 2: get 500g dried haricot beans. Put them to soak on Saturday. Add more water on Sunday. On Tuesday, bring them to the boil (still in the same water), then simmer them for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile put the oven to 125C or so. Chop some bacon or ham or pork into bite-sized chunks and put it in a casserole. Add the beans and enough water to keep them covered (add more throughout the process). Stir in a couple of spoonfuls of mustard (whole-grain garlic and chilli was to hand) and two thirds of a pot of apple jelly. Leave the beans there for six or seven hours. On Wednesday, reheat in the oven for a couple of hours, stirring in half a bottle of passata or other tomato goo, but leaving the lid off to reduce the moisture. Serve with wife's sourdough bread, which can be dipped in the sauce; them as likes tabasco and suchlike could stir in some drops of that or of a chilli sauce they may happen to have bought at Carrick-on-Suir market. Delicious.

2007-01-09T20:27:00.000Z

Monday
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Made Welsh rarebit to use up stale bread and old cheese (some 18-month-old Dutch stuff and some Cheshire-with-the-mould-cut-out). Threw in two eggs and a jar of Teresa's spicy tomato stuff. Very nice, but I made too much: four slices each, where two each and a salad would have been better. No salad veg, alas.

Tuesday
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Another unsuccessful day. Tried a sort of pilaf. Rice (with onion in it) went OK. The rest was leftovers and store-cupboard stuff: a bulb of fennel, some chicken, a few chopped apricots, some pistachios, the last of the hazelnut butter. It was edible, but not much more: not interesting in any way.

2007-01-07T22:57:00.000Z

Saturday
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Little available in the market, so it was just as well I didn't need much. Didn't feel well myself so, with wife going out to a hooley, I just fried a steak (nicely this time), baked potatoes and microwaved broccoli for Small Son; I didn't eat.

Sunday
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Wife made two loaves today and one yesterday, starting from sourdough. Very good: another step towards self-sufficiency.

Roasted a chicken for lunch. Served it with a gravy of its own juices and butter, potatoes boiled then roasted in olive oil, crispy bacon, microwaved cauliflower, celery simmered and then tossed in hazelnut butter (very good).

2007-01-05T21:10:00.000Z

Friday
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Ate out in local pub.

Thursday
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Steak (fried from near-frozen) with baked potatoes and broccoli for Small Son; reheated lasagne for self and wife.

2007-01-04T10:59:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Drove Small Daughter to ferry in Dublin and had a breakfast roll on the way there and lunch in a pub (for a rest) on the way back, so wasn't hungry. Fed wife and Small Son on baked potatoes, boiled cauliflower and roasted streaky (Richard) and back (Tom & Sharyn) rashers, which they ate in front of the television: clearly standards have fallen.

Ate some Cheshire myself, froze some and gave some mouldy bits to the dogs.

2007-01-02T20:33:00.000Z

Monday
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Fried two pork chops for Small Son, served with some microwaved cauliflower.

Everyone had baked potatoes. Everyone except Small Son had baked pork chops (from Tom and Sharyn's pig), prepared after this fashion.

1. Softened a large sliced onion in oil; shoved it into the bottom of my roasting tin (rack removed).

2. Browned six pork chops in the pan; put them on top of the onion. Made a small amount of gravy with the pan juices, flour and a bottle of cider; added that.

3. Sliced half a pineapple (xmas leftovers), quateredd the slices and arranged them up the sides of the pan.

4. Poured in a bottle of "Governor's sauce", which Teresa had made when something went wrong .... It was a sort of green tomato ketchup, and provided the "sour" element.

5. Put foil over the top and baked it at 190C for 45 minutes, then removed the foil for a final 15 minutes. Checked the sauce at that stage and decided it needed a bit more "sweet" so added some honey.

Worked well.

Tuesday
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Small Daughter's last day, so roasted a 5lb piece of Whelan's rib beef on the bone, and served it with mashed potatoes (plain steamed for Small Son) and the remains of the turnips (broccoli for Small Son).

The beef lost a lot of liquid on defrosting, but it wasn't too dry. I kept it pink inside: half an hour or so at 230C and an hour at 160C.

2006-12-31T23:24:00.000Z

Saturday and Sunday
====================
Didn't cook dinenr on either day!

On Saturday Small Daughter cooked a lasagna. I had defrosted a second tub of ragu for Thursday, but hadn't needed to use it, so I thought we'd have pasta of some sort again on Saturday. Then I remembered that SD had cooked lasagna in Wales, so we bought some and she did the rest. And very delicious it was too. Enough left over for a meal for two later in the week. Drank a bottle of Prosecco with it.

Didn't go to the market (many of my suppliers wouldn't have been there); bought a small amount of food in supermarket, as we have quite a lot in stock still. Plan for the next few weeks is to eat all the older frozen stuff --- and to run down the stocks of alcohol.

On Sunday we had to drive to Dublin for a tea-party, which meant we would be on the road both at lunchtime and at dinnertime. Accordingly, I cooked bacon, sausages and eggs for breakfast. There were Tom & Sharyn Shore's sausages and rashers: did the rashers (and later the eggs) in the big Aga frying-pan and the sausages in the smaller Aga that SD gave me for Xmas. Managed to cook them at a very low heat, giving a nice brown exterior: very good.

On both days I had some Cheshire cheese. What a pleasure it is to slice it horizontally. I ate it on both days with crackers, salted almonds, olives and raw onion --- and beer. Bliss.

2006-12-29T20:42:00.000Z

Friday
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The humble turnip (swede or rutabaga) is often despised, but Gerry Galvin has a very good recipe for it in *Everyday Gourmet*. It's simplicity itself. I adapted his method very slightly to sue up more cream ....

I chopped two cloves of garlic and an onion and put them in a saucepan with half a litre of cream, brought it to boiling point and then left it to infuse. Meanwhile, I took the skin off a turnip with a sharp knife, then quartered it and sliced it thinly. I oiled a heatproof dish and built up layers of the sliced turnip, then poured the cream over the top and shoved it in the oven at 200C for an hour and a half.

After half an hour, I put a tray of washed potatoes to bake in the oven.

I had taken a fillet of ham out of the freezer two days ago. This was one of the local butcher's, so a bit saltier than I like, but not bad. I simmered it in water and unlabelled cider for an hour, then de-fatted it and baked it for half an hour.

Because all of this meant lengthy preparation, I prepared a plate of nibbles: table water biscuits with the last of the foie gras, the last of the venison paté (two more patés still in the fridge), some caviar, thinly sliced cherry tomatoes, a chunk of pineapple and some vegetarian bean paté. That kept people quiet for a while.

Dessert was lemon cake or fruit salad.

Christmas Day was high tide in the amount of food in storage; the level is declining satisfactorily.

2006-12-28T19:41:00.000Z

Thursday
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Lunch: Cheshire cheese.

Dinner: cooked some pasta, and got the texture pretty well right. Provided son with some of Richard Auler's streaky rashers; salty, but dark and delicious, producing much bacon fat. (Later, I mixed the leftover pasta and sauce, with some pork fat from xmas, in the bacon fat: the dogs loved it.)

Some of my very dense ragu, from the freezer, for everyone else: I diluted it with a jar of Bunalun organic tomato puree. Very good.

Opened a bott of claret.

2006-12-28T10:09:00.000Z

Wednesday
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Wife and offspring went to Cork to buy soap and had a meal there, so no need to cook. Foie gras, cold roast pork, hazelnut butter, raw onion, crackers, bread, Cheshire cheese.