Return of the Jedi

Ok ok,

I haven't written anything in two weeks - put it down to an intense study load, busy work schedule and to be perfectly honest, a lack of English food. I don't know what sinister forces were casting their spells on me last week, but I crossed into the dark side and like a cursed soul devoid of time and memory made Spaghetti Bolognese for my Sunday dinner. Having supped on this classic dish I can safely say it earns its keep on the list of international comfort dishes, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it in detail - a future blog, perhaps?

For now, let's focus on what went on in my kitchen last night - the Lancashire Hotpot

I could have lied about my cyber absence and said I was waiting for my hotpot to cook BECAUSE THAT'S HOW LONG IT TAKES! Well no, I left mine in the oven for 3 hours, but according to tradition one puts it in at a low temperature prior to stepping out for work - there it will wait happily, stewing away so that dinner is ready to go upon your return from whatever you do to earn a buck. If you're like me and enjoy cramming way to much food into inappropriately small pots, you'll also be greeted with a godawful mess.

There's no definite date for the invention of the Lancashire hotpot, but it made it's reputation as reliable working class fare during the mass industrialisation of 18th century England - female workers trudging out to the cotton mills each morning could bung this thing in the oven and thus work assured that there'd be a hot meal for the family that night.

The ingredients are the working class type that the more astute of you should be familiar with by now - potatoes, carrots, leek, celery, and a cheap cut of meat. In this case I used lamb shoulder chops, rendered indescribably sumptuous after three hours of slow cooking.




Now, I've held forth at length on how wonderfully simple all of these rustic dishes are, but this one might just be too simple for my liking - you literally just brown the chops, then throw everything in a pot with some stock, and whack it in the oven. That's not even a recipe! Cooking two minute noodles is more complicated.

Don't get the wrong end of the stick, the Lancashire hotpot is a treat to smell, taste, and serve to your loved ones - but as my beloved noted last night, it seems an awful lot of these dishes are mere permeation of the stewing technique the Brits "invented". And you know, dear reader, I just grow a bit weary. I'm desirous of something more fanciful, more decadent, something less heritage and more dandy.






Luckily there's occasion for joy, for there is no lack of delightful things to satisfy this craving. Scotch bread. Devonshire tea. Pies and pastries, biscuits and breads - and we haven't even mentioned the world of puddings just waiting to be discovered.

There's also the Victorian era monstrosities to be had at - think offal, haggis, and stargazey pie (google it). And of course, there are still some of the classics yet to be explored - cold pork pies and roasted beef, I'm looking at you!

So take heart, my culinary brothers and sisters, things will only get more difficult, more interesting, and more delicious from here on out. Out of the sodden moors, with its soul warming stews and soups, and into the horror and glamour of the big smoke!

Til next time folks
                              -Jon     

You pastie son of a b****....

Once upon a time, in a mystical land far, far away (well, Cornwall...)

Imagine you're underground. You're mining coal the old fashioned way - pick in hand, banging away at the cold rock wall, choking on coal dust and sweating under your brow, and the only sound louder than the ominous echo of metal on stone is your stomach grumbling.

Finally, your break for lunch - probably after like, 8 hours of hard labour or something - so you sit down on the cavern floor, unwrap your sandwich....only to get dirt and coal dust all over the bloody thing, rendering it inedible. Shit.

Such was the life of early Cornish miners, a vicious cycle of mmm lunchtime and oh bugger it's all dirty. Thus the Cornish pasty was born!

The idea of the somewhat triaangular shape, of course, is to hold it by either end and manch away - when you're done you simple throw the two soiled corners into a dark hole in the ground, where it no doubt becomes sustenance for an earthworm or goblin or something.

I absolutely adore the story behind these things - it's so rugged and working class - and yet I've never made them or even, to memory, eaten them outside the realm of the school canteen, where, I'm ashamed to say, they had the reputation as a poor mans sausage roll.

This is how came I to be apprehensive in the buildup to cooking this evening - I loved the story and yet wasn't actually all that excited about eating them. Before I let you all know how they turned out - because I'm sure the suspense is killing you - I'll address some things that may be bothering the more astute readers.

First of all, I'm not sure that what I made were actually Cornish pasties. I don't mean that in the sense that I nursed a chicken egg only to have a gnarly lizard crawl out of it six months later, I mean the recipe I used was actually for vegetable pasties - and I didn't do any shopping around because this particular recipe was just that rarest of birds - a decent gluten free pastry dish. I myself love a bit of gluten, however the woman of my life gets violently ill when she eats it, and as British cuisine is all about sharing the love, it was gluten free or bust.

Which brings me to the second point, that of my pasties decidedly sickly appearance. First of all, this is what gluten free pastry looks like (sigh), and then to to top it off I don't have a cooking brush, so when it came to basting the half cooked pasties with egg I was somewhat pathetically reduced to smearing it over with my fingers for seconds at a time, quickly retracting my digits lest they become singed. Hence the, shall we say, misshapen pattern of glaze across the tops.

I'm not going to put the cooking method to text here because I followed Jamie Oliver's "Gluten free vegetable pasties" recipe (google it) pretty much to the letter.

Have you had a quick peek at it? Good.

I'll say one thing, xantham gum is THE. SHIT. Seriously, I hate gluten free baking with such an intense passion it's like poison bile that builds in my tubes - you can make a dough which looks workable enough...

...but the instant you try to do anything with it, it crumbles to bits. Xantham gum is the missing glue that gluten usually acts as, and with a mere teaspoon of it today I managed to get through the rolling, folding, and baking without a single hitch. GET IN ON IT. 

The filling of Cornish pasties is one of the best things about them - it's essentially leftovers wrapped in pastry. I had to fake it a bit today by using purpose roasted veggies, but conceivably anything could be made to serve as innards for these things - roast dinners, curries, you name it. I envision that with a bit more practice making the pastry - and it really is simple enough that you could get it happening pretty quickly - it'd be the ultimate lunchbox staple, killing two birds with one stone in a truly heritage way.

So after all that, how did they actually taste? In a word, heug.

It's Cornish for delicious.

Til next Sunday folks

                                  - Jon 

A very happy Easter to you all! I hope that elusive bunny caused everyone to become thoroughly spoilt, and that you ate and drank your fill of good food and wine.

Yes, I'm aware this post is being written on a Monday - time seemed to slip away yesterday and I just didn't get a chance to sit down and commit my Easter dinner to the annals of time.

With that said, behold!

I had initially been toying with the idea of the traditional roast lamb for Easter dinner, but given my somewhat rocky relationship with red meat at the moment  (we're spending time apart, see each other on weekends sometimes), I opted for chicken and white wine casserole instead.

Some of you may call foul at this, and indeed I grappled with the notion as well - stewing meat in wine is after all a very French thing to do, and you can almost imagine those salty old English cooks spinning in their graves at the very thought of me soiling this blog in such a way. However I have in my possession a charming book entitled Dinner at Buckingham Palace - describing in detail the royal families eating habits and preferences - which points out that after the Napoleonic wars a great many out of work chefs from France found themselves in Old Blighty. It was thus that some French cooking practices - stewing in wine, for example - became intertwined with the traditional English love for game, like chicken, pheasant, and grouse.

So vindicated, I excitedly began to dig around for recipes. In the end I selected the simplest example I could find:

- Brown some chicken pieces and remove from pan
- Fry some mushrooms with garlic in the same pan, then throw the chicken back in
- Pour over 600ml of combined white wine and chicken stock, along with a good helping of herbs such that you like
- I also threw in some chopped celery because it was knocking about in my fridge and no better place for it really

- Simmer for an hour and a half or so!

Although English food never needs to justify a simple recipe, I'll point out here that half the reason I chose it was because it involved cutting up my own whole chicken, which was an educational experience using a knife that could barely cut through cheese - however I persevered, hacking through joints and cracking breast bones until I was rewarded with an impressive amount of meat for a mere twelve dollars (another reason I chose to carve my own bird)

You're probably supposed to get rid of the skin and gristle, but throwing caution to the wind I said aloud "jam that!" and just threw it all in the pot - I was paid a rich dividend in the form of skin that just slid off the flesh, soaked as it was in wine, stock, and celery juice. I served it with good old mash and asparagus, those nutritious little green-piss cigars. The best thing of all is that upon placing your desired foods onto a plate you can ladle over all that terrific cooking juice, to your liking.

While it was simmering away and smelling absolutely divine, I reflected that it's the kind of thing my Grandma (Mum's side) would approve of. She and her husband - Papa to me - ran a hotel for some time in England, and she's always had a taste for the finer side of English cooking - her Salmon mousse is notorious for its dynamite level of flavour, while her chocolate version of the same for it's proof.

If I'm smart, I'll organize some time to talk to her about that experience, because she is an amazing woman and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to eating and drinking in the English way - she recently bought by accident several boxes of wine (she thought she was buying just several bottles) and confided to me "Now my only worry is that I'll die before I can drink it all". 

Prior to writing this post I finished off what was left of the casserole for my supper and it struck me that several of the dishes cooked thus far are actually better the day after - the nature of stewing things all together in one pot means that the flavours steep overnight and become one gluttonous mass of gastronomic pleasure.

So that's that - something special for Easter dinner. I was in fact going to casserole a rabbit, something of an Addams family approach to 'seasonally appropriate fare', but then I remembered that I've cooked it before, and that rabbit is really the word for expensive chicken. It tastes the exact same, I'm not joking.

Perhaps, in time, and when I'm getting paid obscene amounts of money to travel the world and chronicle various cuisines in written form....maybe, I will re-visit that admittedly fun white meat. If anyone knows of any jobs going which fit that description, you know where to find me.

Til next Sunday (or Monday)

                                               - Jon