Food and Drink – Page 5

Butter Chicken, from M&S’ Curry Bible

29. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Books, Food and Drink

My wife bought me the Curry Bible for Xmas, from Marks and Spencer – not to be confused with various other similarly named books. It's a great recipe book as it keeps things relatively simple, and contains most of my curry house favourites. It explains things in a decent manner that certainly worked for me, judging by the results!

I made Butter Chicken for my first attempt. This uses tandoori chicken (the nicest single foodstuff in the world) but I wasn't up for doing that entirely from scratch this time around. The supermarket didn't have any tandoori chicken ready to go though, so I bought chicken thighs (free range) and a jar of tandoori paste. Add lemon juice, salt, oil and yoghurt, mix it all up (or get wife to, as in the picture) marinate overnight in the fridge then blast in the oven to get that slightly charred surface. Then I took the chicken off the bone and used it in big chunks in the Butter Chicken recipe. I'll be doing tandoori chicken again, since it was so easy and so delicious even on its own.

I shan't bore you with the details of the recipe (or invite a copyright problem) but it wasn't crazy difficult and the results were to die for. The quality of the chicken in particular really made it stand out from usual curry house fare. I know the final picture of it on the plate just looks like an orange splat, but trust me it was great, and I couldn't be doing with garnishing with nuts and coriander sprigs.

Happy Xmas!

23. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Culture, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Me

Nearly there, and dare I say I've been quite organised about it this year. Let's hope I haven't forgotten anybody.

Walked on the beach at Sandyland near Skegness today. Apart from the wind it was really quiet mild, especially for Xmas Eve Eve.

Here's a quick example of our home baking (a bit rough and ready to look at but the best mince pies I've had this year) and the tree (artificial because it fits our small space much better – real ones tend to be very broad at the base), to make you feel Xmassy.

Omelette Baguette

13. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Food and Drink

When the wife's away and you have to make dinner from the limited remains in the fridge, you end up with the extraordinary feast that is the omelette baguette. Frankly I'm pretty proud of this creation, because it was absolutely delicious and over the top. Elvis would have approved.

I made a straightforward 2 egg omelette in a small non-stick frying pan, then added grated mature cheddar and thin slices of a good dried sausage before folding over and leaving long enough for the cheese to melt and all the egg to just about cook. Incidentally, I always keep a big dried sausage in the fridge as it's perfect for slicing into lots of things: omelettes, pasta, laid on top of grilled fish, pizza or just to scoff as a Dutch style snack.

The baguette was a part-baked one from Waitrose in this case. These are amazing as they have a shelf life of about a month (I don't want to know what they put in them to achieve this – I like to think it's just the airtight sterile packaging) and can be whacked in the oven for 10 minutes for fresh hot bread. Having let it cool a little I sliced it open and put my gooey omelette inside, cut into three pieces so it fit the long, narrow sandwich. I then added slices of tomato and a bit of pepper. Beautiful, but admittedly a bit of a coronary on a plate.

Beer review: Innis & Gunn Blonde

10. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

This is an amazing beer. It tastes like a really flavourful Chardonnay – full of oak and vanilla, with a very buttery finish. Given it's aged in American oak barrels, that's not surprising, but honestly most people would be absolutely gobsmacked when trying this beer, it's just so different to anything they will have tasted before.

It's fairly strong, like most of Innis & Gunn's range, but like all of their range, it's totally to die for. I hail their efforts as the very best beers available from the UK, if not the world!

Beer Review: Wadworth 6X (can)

04. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

For once I strayed away from just slinging a four pack of Greene King IPA cans into the trolley and instead went for something markedly more expensive, in the interests of variety.

At 4.3% this has a midrange punch (but not too much for a weekday evening) and plenty of colour and flavour. It's got quite a malty, fruity flavour, which was almost edging into being over the top for me, for a daily evening beer at any rate. That said, probably better to have one of these than two of something more nondescript, and I'm sure the doctor would agree! Recommended for most purposes, especially as we head into the ever darker and colder months.

Scotch Pancakes / Drop Scones

03. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Food and Drink

Apparently some people call Scotch pancakes drop scones instead. It's a strange world and takes all sorts, or so I'm reliably informed.

That aside, I decided to make some from scratch for breakfast a couple of weeks back, to go with the maple cured bacon and maple syrup we already had. We always used to just buy a packet of Scotch pancakes and stick them in the toaster, but we didn't have any in and that small problem wasn't going to stand in the way of my breakfast.

The recipe's really ludicrously simple, though the wife seems to have hidden the Hugh Fearnley-Doodah book I used at the time. Luckily, I found his recipe online here and I think it's about the same as the one I used from the book. What confuses me though is the one from the book made about 30 scones so I halved the quantities, whereas this online version says it makes 12, but looks like the version that I read before halving, so use your own judgement 🙂 One thing I found is that weighing out really small quantities accurately is quite tricky with analog scales, but it didn't seem to cause a problem.

It's really very quick and easy to make the batter, the critical thing being the liquidity. I must have got it right, because they spread out nicely to just the right thickness on the hot frying pan and looked like the real deal. I found with a non-stick pan they were really trouble free when flipping, not requiring careful extra oiling as Hugh suggested. I was able to do four at a time, and stacked them up when done, but I failed to keep them warm enough whilst then frying the bacon (I wanted to use that same pan) so the butter didn't melt on them as well as I'd have liked. Next time I'll probably keep them under foil and maybe give them a quick zap in the microwave just the steam them up a bit before bringing to the table.

Finally – and frankly this was a touch of genius-like inspiration – I served with lime wedges. The lime juice cuts through the sweet maple syrup to take it to another level of breakfast heaven! Look at that picture and imagine the pancakes buttered and real Canadian maple syrup drizzled all over..

Breakfast: Kellogg’s Start

01. December 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Food and Drink

I was delighted a couple of years back to find that Kellogg's Start had re-emerged onto the supermarket shelves after what seemed like 15 years away. It was my favourite breakfast cereal as a boy and it still is!

Sadly only Sainsburys and Tesco seem to stock it (certainly my local Waitrose doesn't) so we have to make occasional special trips, just to pick up an armful of the stuff. It's been on special offer recently, so that's a bonus 🙂

Why it ever went away is a complete mystery to me.

The Quest for the Perfect Flapjack

29. November 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Food and Drink

I've almost always been disappointed with bought flapjacks, or flapjacks made by other people – because I have a very particular vision in my mind of how the perfect flapjack should be, which is apparently different to everyone else's. To me, perfection is golden, sweet, initially slightly brittle yet yielding to become jaw-achingly chewy. The overriding flavour should be oats and golden syrup. Putting flour in a flapjack is anathema of course – this is a chewy, oaty treat, not a soft cake!

So I set out to create the perfect flapjack by starting with a basic recipe and modifying till I found nirvana in a baking tin. My first effort was just a straightforward attempt to act as a benchmark, using the following straightforward approach, modified from several I found across the internet:

125g Whole rolled jumbo oats
125g Oatmeal (because all whole oats is apparently a bit much)
150g butter
75g Golden syrup (the single most important ingredient – Tate & Lyle of course)
75g caster sugar (I used golden caster sugar)

Melt the butter, syrup and sugar together in a pan, add everything else, stir together than put into a 20*20cm tin lined with baking parchment. Put in oven at 175c for 20mins or so, but if you're oven's anything like mine you really need to keep an eye on it!

Here are the before and after going in the oven shots:

Looked pretty good and tasted OK, with decent chewy texture, but not the flavour I was after – just not enough golden syrupyness coming through.

So I tried again, this time using much more syrup and much less butter (they were a bit greasy first time). I also threw in a handful of sultanas to add moist chewiness and flavour. After only 15 minutes it was 'done' and came out looking like this:

It took some serious effort to cut it into those few pieces, but I gave up after that. Those black blobs are the sultanas, embedded within the concrete that was the 'improved' flapjack. Honestly you could have made houses with this stuff. I think I know what the butter's for now! The experiment will continue…

Beer Review: Budweiser Budvar Dark

20. November 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

No, the other Budweiser! The Czech one that makes good beers!

This dark variant of the much acclaimed Budvar apparently won Best Beer in the World or somesuch at a worldwide competion in 2007. I can just about believe it too, as it's a great example of decent lager, that puts the usual piss-water to shame. It's not even especially strong (sub 5%) but manages to push a great deal of flavour through to you, whilst not overdoing it. I've even seen it served on draught in pubs, often in a fancy heavy tankard. I thoroughly recommend it.

Beer Review: Wychwood Hobgoblin

15. November 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

Now here's a beer and a half! A winter warmer of a brew, with burnt, roast flavours, but not too bitter. Almost like a good toffee as you roll it around your mouth. It's a long time since I'd last had this, and I was pleasantly surprised at how drinkable it is – not too over the top in the strong, dark flavours, but just right for a wet and windy autumn evening. I think I shall have to buy more!

JustTheSam