And breathe… My nerves have just settled after submitting a meal to Food Urchin‘s Where’s my Pork Chop challenge, now comes the seemingly endless wait to see what the outcome is. Will he like it? Is it too bland? Too spicy?
Happily, whatever the food’s like, it was a real pleasure to meet and chat to FU over a St Peter’s Honey Porter and burger in The Jerusalem Tavern. (more…)
No-place does vegetarian food like the South Asian subcontinent. I’ve had very good vegetarian Italian, Japanese, Thai and for want of a better name, fusion food. But nowhere, and I mean no-where, that I’ve come across takes vegetarian based cooking so seriously and has such a breadth of veggie food. It’s my go-to cuisine when i’m in need of a serious green (or orange, yellow, red etc) flesh-free hit. (more…)
Sometimes you start off with the kernal of an idea that just grows until it’s way beyond your control, taking on a life of it’s own, just like Jack’s magic beans. This started off when I glanced at What’s for Lunch Honey’s Channa Palak recipe a few days ago . I mentally filed it away as something I wanted to try out. That mind running along a South Asian spice track, and then, heading back to the same blog I found a Spicy bream recipe and thought I could adapt that to some wild salmon. I figured the strong almost gamey flavour of the fish would stand up to spices well.
And everything just sprouted uncontrollably from there. I needed rice to go with it, but rather than soothe and mollify, I wanted it to complement and almost compete with the salmon. So I matched the paprika-laced oily fish flavours with sweet and scented saffron and raisins. They made a glorious juxtaposition and both were backed up by the simpler, more rustic chickpea and spinach. (more…)
I have a whole repertoire of dishes that I create pretty much from instinct. Cooking most days means that I have developed a whole lot of simple concoctions that are easily adapted to whatever ingredients I have hanging around. This one’s a favourite. It pretty much looks after itself and is straightforward to throw together and leave to bubble away while I get on with other things. In this case singing along to some sixties soul classics at the top of my formidably tuneless voice. (more…)
In need of lunchtime inspiration I spent a good five minutes mentally cataloguing the contents of the fridge. A rather tired aubergine and red pepper were loitering in the vegetable drawer, a tub of greek yogurt and the remains of a jar of tahini sat in a shelf. Add a bulb of garlic and a couple of lemons from the vegetable bowl that sits atop the fridge, and the ever present pittas in the freezer, and I had the makings of a fairly decent meze lunch. It was either that or something more complex and slow cooked – but I had neither the time nor the inclination to spend too long over the meal. (more…)
