Morning team meeting with breakfast rolls

I had my first "team meeting" this morning on the new job.

Why didn't anyone tell me there'd be bacon butties provided. I'd already paid £1.20 for a bowl of weetabix in the canteen.

Gutted.

Won't make that mistake next week.

My new corporate canteen

Well - the new job has arrived and the consequent reduction in blogging.

I had a very good plate of chinese chicken noodles from the canteen for lunch today. An unexpected benefit of my change of employ appears to be an improvement in the food provided.

It's not the cheapest though - clearly my new employer doesn't deem fit to subsidise the canteen. I'm also not sure about eating in corporate canteens. Not only are they a bit sterile, but they rob you of your only window of opportunity to escape the stuffiness of the office and have a bit of a change of scene.

Still - good option when it's raining!

The Old Hall Inn - Threshfield

http://freespace.virgin.net/gregory.collins/wharfedale/oldhall.html

This is a good place.

The first impressions weren't great.

My dad is a bit of a fussy eater these days. He couldn't find any starter which took his fancy, so he asked the waitress very politely if he could have spinach and ricotta canelloni as a starter, rather than a main course.

"no sorry that's only served as a main course"

You what? What sort of a stupid, backward narrow minded attitude is that? It's like Little Britains "computer says no!" It's Fawlty Towers.

Why can't you serve a main course as a starter - I mean - how difficult is that???

On further interrogation the waitress said this strange restriction was in place because they were already portioned them out. Oh my god! How could you possibly go to all the trouble of reportioning it into a starter. You might actually have to lose out on a bit of spinach ricotta plain flour and eggs and that would really break the bank.

Why can't these places get it? The financial loss of reportioning a main into an hors d'ouevres is minimal - can't be more than a couple of quid of wasted ingredrients. There were six of us and we ran up a bill of £170. The difference between us leaving thinking "what a great place", and "what a bunch of awkward b*stards" is £2.

Fortunately the owner was an enlightened woman. She understood the logic and gave my father the canelloni as a starter - FOR FREE - thus fully rescuing the situation.

It had occurred to me to suggest that dad ordered the whole main course, paid the £12 or whatever it was, and made it back down to £6 (starter price) by taking the difference off the tip, but fortunately it didn't come to that.

What proceeded from that point on was a lovely meal in a really cosy, characterful and well kept Dales pub. So we left thinking "what a great place" and will definitely be back again and recommending it.

I had a nice celery and stilton soup (perfect consistency and balanced flavours), followed by roasted pheasant wrapped in pancetta. It's the first time I've really enjoyed a pheasant. It wasn't at all dry and was served in a deep, full flavoured sweet and fruity sauce and in generous abundance. Being Yorkshire this isn't effete food with subtle flavours in quaint servings, this is good hearty stuff. In fact it was the first time in a while I haven't managed to finish my main course, so there must have been plenty.

Sticky toffee dessert was "restaurant style" (a square slab like a cake, dusted in icing sugar) and served with ice cream. It was pretty nice if slightly on the dry side (must have been left out a bit too long).

Apparently this is a place owned and run by five women and probably adds to the feminist theory that women are inherently more capable than men. Apparently the food here was very poor as it changed hands through a number of (male) owners. Well these "sisters" sure seem to have the place on track and good luck to them.

The Hare and Hounds - Lothersdale

Lousy British pub food is alive and well.

As I rambled round North Yorkshire with my dad on Saturday we decided to stop for a pub lunch in a little place called Lothersdale, near to Earby. I ordered a steak sandwich with chips.

What I got was an old school plasticy white chewy roll, full of very poor quality roasted silverside, and absolutely drenched in nasty tasting bisto gravy. Such was the amount of bisto that the already soggy roll became soggier, and it was impossible to eat the sandwich as a sandwich, lest the gloupy brown goo dripped all over my body.

The chips were frozen oven chips. Although chips are always enjoyable, no matter what variety, this is a bit of a poor show, and a throw back to what I thought was a bygone era of freezer to microwave/grill pub cooking.

Don't get me wrong, this was a very nice pub. It was homely, earthy and friendly and refreshingly unaffected by pretension.

I know what you think - you can't have your cake and eat it. If you want poncy ciabatta's in your pub then don't go to these traditional places. I'd point you towards the New Star Inn at Appletreewick where I had lunch on Friday:

http://freespace.virgin.net/gregory.collins/wharfedale/newinn.html

This is a great place. An old school unpretentious pub with old school unpretentious food. Good home made food, including meat pies, door step sandwiches jacket potatoes, and as many desserts options as main courses, covering about every favourite you could possibly want - treacle sponge, sticky toffee pudding, jam roly poly, banoffee pie. Plus an impressive list of real ales - this is pub nirvana.

Friday night dinner with my in-laws

Friday night dinner was eaten with my in-laws up in Yorkshire. I showed them how to roast a chicken properly and make a good sauce to go with.

The starting point to a good roast chicken, as anyone will tell you, is a good chicken. Seeing as we were cooking a cheap battery farmed variety, we weren't off to a good start. Like a good poker player can play any hand, I feel an accomplished cook can make the best of lesser ingredients, so I set about trying to make this poor creature (who had a miserable life - see http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/vegetarianism/ALL/513/) taste reasonable.

A chicken is a lean creature, and therefore doesn't have enough of its own fat to roast properly in. The best start is to rub in some fat, and while you're at it, a bit of flavour.

I left my father-in-law in charge of this bit. I believe he rubbed in some butter, some vegetable oil and some herbs de provence. A bit of butter and oil is the best bet for fat. For flavour you can use a number of different things. Dijon mustard is quite good, honey if you like it sweet, crushed garlic, tarragon, grated lemon rind. It's intuitive, what goes with chicken? rub it in. You can also shove the same fat and flavour up its "cavity" as well. A few garlic cloves, and a couple of lemon quarter work well.

When you're ready to go get the oven really hot (about 230) and sear it at this temperature for about 15-20 minutes. This sears the chicken, and browns and crisps the skin. My father-in-law left if 35, and it went pretty golden brown, but didn't really seem to have harmed (depends how crunchy you like the skin).

After that take it out and baste it then turn it down to 180 and let it carry on. Basting is the key, the absolute secret to getting a roast chicken right. The basic rule is to baste as often as you remember/can be bothered. At least every 20 minutes, probably no more than every 8 minutes. Forget tin foil, adding water or whatever other funny ideas you have, this is what will stop the bird drying out. I once ate a chicken which hadn't been basted at all, and it was disgustingly dry and wiry. The hostess was distraught and didn't understand what she had done wrong. If you want a good roast chicken baste like an obsessive-compulsive. This probably applies to any meat which doesn't have much of it's own fat/marbling.

Timing is a difficult thing. After a while of doing this you just get the hang of it. You know you are getting good when you can look at a chicken (or joint of meat) and have a pretty good idea how long it needs cooking for - like a good tailor can size you up without a tape. For the inexperienced, the best rule is to do 20 minutes per lb. Then start checking. Some people say you check for doneness by poking and seeing if the juices run clear. This is probably a very good method if you can master it, but I never have. It's pretty hard to tell as the stuff runs down the chicken exactly what shade of pink/clear the juices are. An easier and more reliable method is to gently scratch away the inside of the thigh and literally see if the meat is cooked through. This involves hacking away a bit, which might ruin the final presentation. But if you have good surgical skills you can do this and still leave a very small scar.

The next important bit is resting. The difference between a rested chicken and one straight from the oven is stark. The juices go back into the chicken and it becomes soft and deliciously moist. Pull the chicken out of the pan by sticking a wooden spoon up its "cavity" and letting all the juices run back into the pan. Then drop it onto a large piece of foil (that you prepared earlier) and wrap it up well. Cover it with a tea towel (or two) to keep it warm. Leave it to reast whilst you eat hors d'oeuvre, and by the time you carve it up for main course it will be divine.

I made a great sauce to go with it. This is so easy. First of all tilt the pan and let the fat float to the top. You then spoon off the fat and leave just a small amount of fat and all the chicken juices (the brown stuff underneat the clear fat). Put the roasting tin over the heat and beat in two tablespoons of plain flour until it makes a nice paste (known technically as a "roux"). Then start pouring in fluid - white wine or chicken stock. You could use some reserved water from boiling vegetables -whatever is lying around. Start whisking as you slowly pour in the fluid and you end up with a nice thick sauce. Then just sieve it out into a gravy boat and keep it warm whilst you head to the table for your hors d'oeuvre.

I used synthetic stock from a cube, and jazzed it up with a generous splash of sherry. Another tip is if you make gravy you can keep it warm for longer periods in a thermos flask.

The verdict:

The chicken was very good for a battery. I'm not sure I would have been able to tell the difference in a blind trial, which made me wonder whether organic chickens taste better as they tend to be bought by people who take care over their food, and therefore prepare them more capably. The unbasted dry stringy chicken I had was a battery, but cooked like that would still have been disgusting even if it was the finest bred label rouge organic chicken from Harrods. It's maybe confusing causation and correlation - the writer of Freakonomics could investigate this.

Anyway I'm no way advocating the unsavoury process of battery farming, and I'll continue to use organic chickens on humanitarian grounds - but it's an interesting insight. This one was also bought from a local yorkshire butcher, so maybe is a better than your average Tesco stuff.

New job - less blogging

As I am about to start a new high powered job, I won't be blogging as much any more.

I am going to try to put in a bit of time on a Sunday evening.

Last lunch at Rasa express

I'm moving jobs next week so I decided to pay one last visit to one of my favourite lunch spots near the current office - Rasa Express.

Nowhere divides opinion in the team as much as Rasa. It's the marmite of lunch spots. To some (including myself and my good friend and colleague Patrick) it's the highest expression of a working lunch - fast, hot, healthy, delicious and cheap. To others it's a filthy dive serving cheapo food.

So let me explain why I sit comfortably in the first camp. The concept is a "lunch box". You can have meat or vegetarian, and I always go for the veggie option (OK - I'll admit that I don't quite trust this place with meat - you should always be suspicious of cheap meat).

The veggie box comes it at £2.95 (meat box is £3.50) - that's about the price of a sandwich in your average poncy working lunch. For that you get a box with two curries, rice, chapati, a side dish and a dessert. It's such a good deal you can't believe it - how does the place make any profit?

The box just hits the spot - the right balance of vegetables, proteins, carbs with something sweet to round it off.


The curries are nicely spiced - it's south indian cuisine so not too oily of overly hot - perfect at lunchtime.

As it was my last visit we marked the occasion by ordering a few additional items. We got some fish cutlets and a huge potato dhosa and left feeling satisfyingly stuffed, having spent just over a tenner for the both of us.

I really hope there's a place this good near my new office.

Beef stew

I was in on my own last night and decided to make a big stew. My reasoning was that I am out tonight and I wanted to leave something nice for my pregnant wife, and then on Wednesday we are going to see the new bond movie, and will need a quick dinner.

We also had some left over rooty stuff from Friday night (carrots, potatoes, onions) which I thought I could throw in.

I bought a pack of organic stewing steak from Tesco. There was 650g in the pack and I think it cost just over a fiver. That's the good thing about a stew, you can afford to use organic meat. Whilst I was in Tesco I also had a look at my "stock options" (excuse the poor pun). Tesco do their own Tesco Finest stock in a vacuum pack. This is deceptive - it looks like the real stuff, but a read of the ingredients list shows it's mostly yeast extract and salt - so really it's just a stock cube that they've already made up for you. But what I did happen accross was a similar product by Knorr. This is actually made from chicken bones and vegetables, so seemed promising, and I don't think it was too pricey (about £1 a pack of 450ml).

I'm not an expert on stews, but I am trying to leearn, so to help me along I was vaguely referring to a Rick Stein recipe for "Carbonnade a la boeuf". This is a belgian stew which uses equal parts of stock and beer for the liquid. I didn't have any decent beer so opted to use red wine instead.

The first thing to do was brown the meat. This isn't a task I particularly like. For a start, it needs to be done in batches - and so can take ages. Secondly grease flies all over the place, and evaporates from the pan, so you end up with a kitchen like the inside of a wok pan and a face like a chip shop worker.

There's a few rules to browning which basically dictate the quality of the stew (the rest is just a case of waiting) so this is the point to take care and attention:

Don't crowd the pan! I usually use a big saute pan, but still the pieces of meat are spaced such that I can only really brown six or seven pieces at once.

Get the pan hot hot hot! Think fires of hell and you are probably close. So therefore use a robust oil which won't burn. Groundnut oil is a good option.

Brown each piece on all sides - Tongues are a useful implement for this.

But the main point is brown means brown. You aren't trying to turn the meat from red to pale grey - the stewing process will do that. You are trying to make a nice brown crust to give the stew a real flavour.

Before browning I tossed the meat in plain flour and black pepper (no salt, this dries out the meat). I just put it in a bowl and used my hands (some people put in a freezer bag and shake - whatever works for you, though an unnecessary waste of plastic in my opinion). The flour does two things, it helps make a nice brown crust on the meat, buy more importantly - it thickens the sauce as it cooks.

After I finished browning I let the pan cool off whilst I chopped some onions. I used three medium sized onions (Rick Stein's recipe had even more than that - but then it didn't have much else). Then I gently cooked these in the same pan. This is great as you are essentially frying onions in a mixture of oil and beef dripping. So they go really satisfyingly brown and take up all the flavour from the beef. I cooked them gently for about 10 minutes (Rick said 15 but I didn't feel that was necessary).

After that I chucked in some roughly chopped unpeeled (but washed) carrots and potatoes. You can probably use any root vegetables you want at this point. I like big chunks of carrots in my stews, and by adding potatoes you carb it up and it become a meal in itself (a "one pot wonder").

The I poured over the whole pack of stock (450ml) and about the same amount of red wine until the meat was covered. For flavourings I added just over 1 teaspoon of mustard powder, some worcester sauce (which I've recently discovered is great with any red meat sauce) and a few bay leaves. I didn't add any fresh herbs - I don't think rosemary goes that well with a really punchy dish like this. I wasn't sure about thyme either. I considered adding paprika, but I wasn't really trying to make a goulash, so I left it. I added a bit of pepper, but no salt as the ready made stock had plenty.


After bringing to a simmer I popped it in the oven at 160 and left it a while.

I think I decided to retrieve at about 2 1/2 hours later and by this point it smelled very very good. The whole flat had a wonderful earthy rustic smell. Timing is not crucial, and that's the beauty of a stew. Though as a general rule I wouldn't leave it less than 2 hours, but probably the longer the better. So it's a good one if you have some rellies driving down to eat with you, and you don't know if they're going to get stuck in traffic on the M1.

The final result looked and smelled great - I tasted a bit of the meat just to check. As I was cooking it for the next day I used one of my "flash cooling" tricks. The quicker you cool a dish down, the better it keeps. It also reduces the chance of bacterial contamination (because it doesn't spend a lot of time at cosy temperatures allowing them to breed), which is important when your wife is pregnant. To do this I split it into two metal bowls (smaller portions cool quicker) and left in a bath of ice water in the sink.

It's now in the fridge waiting to be eaten tonight. Another great thing about a stew is that it develops overnight and the flavours meld, so it tastes better a day later. The fat will congeal on the top and can easily be scraped off. Or if you like beef fat just leave it and it will melt back into the dish when you reheat. A few frozen peas can be added when reheating if you want to incorporate some greenery.

The legendary Mrs. Bean

I am breaking the rules of my blog to give you some background. The blog is supposed to chart my notable meals, however I feel compelled to explain to readers about the legendary Mrs. Bean, a continual source of culinary inspiration.

Mrs. Bean is loosely speaking family, being the mother of the husband of my sister. She grew up in Split, in Croatia, during the days (if I am correct) of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I don't know where she learned to cook, but this woman knows her stuff. She is a cook straight from the old school. She does traditional french and italian cooking and she does it with honour.

She's a treasure trove of information on techniques and also is very good at sourcing produce. It's through her that I came upon the cow.

Wedding at Claridges ball room - superb canapes

Went a friends wedding on Saturday night and it was a very nice do. This couple are filthy rich, so it was always going to be an upmarket event.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the dress, the groom, their future - this post will discuss one aspect of the wedding - the food.....

.....which was sublime

It's not often you get top quality tucker at a mass catered event, but if anyone can do, the guys at Claridges can. These guys are serious pros. I'd love to see their kitchen.

Let's start with the canapes, which were probably the highlight. I was determined to try each and every one, but I rationed myself to one of each, and I still must have eaten ten or so canapes, such was the spread on offer.

Let's see what I can remember - scallops wrapped in parma ham, beef sirloin skewers, smoked salmon and caviar cones....

Are you salivating yet? The list continues...

Salmon and cream cheese crackers, mini crackers with pate (possible foie gras, I'm not an expert on this), minced lamb skewers with chili sauce, duck spring rolls.

The one's which sound great were great, and the ones which sound bog standard were also great. I broke my resolution to have one of each, because I just had to have a second scallop (why not, perfect accompaniment to a glass of champagne).

The meal itself was also incredible. For starter there was a rich "tuffled veloute". To you and me that's a very rich soup. It was very creamy, much to the annoyance of the waif like woman sat next to me, who couldn't cope with the calorie hit, but couldn't resist the delicious creation. The most amazing thing about it was that it really did taste of truffles.

I don't think I have ever actually tasted truffles properly before. I have had many a dish which claim to be truffled, but such is the micro quantity normally used that I hadn't really noticed anything and I couldn't work out what all the fuss was about. But this soup tasted different. Finally I can accept that truffles really are as wonderful as everyone claims.

The main course was a rack of lamb, which was pinked to perfection. This is a real credit to the skill of the kitchen manager. Roasting lamb to perfection isn't easy when you are cooking for a few people for Sunday lunch - but to do it for 140 people, serving each table absolutely simulataneously, is nothing short of culinary heroism.

Friends for dinner - Pot Roasted Veal with New Potatoes and Vichy Carrots

We're still eating the cow.

We were trying to tot up how many meals we've eaten from it:

- Veal escalops - 3 weeknight suppers
- Stewing meat - 2 weeknight suppers
- Shoulder - 2 dinners
- Rack - One Sunday lunch

And still we have

- shin (osso bucco)
- Silverside
- Another piece of shoulder
- a few escalops

And still it goes on. I decided to defrost the Silverside for our dinner party on Friday night. 3 guests, cooking for five and the shoulder piece looked a bit too small. Again, another piece I've no experience in cooking, so some research was in order.

All I know about silverside comes from my knowledge of the the calfs older relatives. From what I know about beef silverside, it's not a first class cut for roasting. It's not got enough of it's own fat, and it dries out easily. But it's too good to waste on a stew.

The legendary Ruth Bean (more on her later) the purveyor of my half cow, needed to be consulted. As ever she was full of culinary insight and wisdom.

The answer is a pot roast - a compromise between a stew and a roast. Basically you roast the joint at a low temperature (175 on my fan assisted oven), with a bit of fluid, in a covered pot. This creates a moist atmosphere to cook the meat in and stops it going dry.

Mrs. Bean had some tips and rules for this process. Sear the meat in a pan before you start the roast. Sear it in a bit of oil with a knob of butter - and she stressed the importance of butter, apparently this lifts the dish to another level (her words). And be careful not to burn the oil.

This is much harder than it sounds. In order to get a good browning on meat you need fiery temperatures. But butter and olive oil burn at relatively low temperatures. I did consider using a sturdier oil, like groundnut, but it seemed wrong with what is essentially an italian dish.

So instead I walked the tightrope, keeping a keen eye on the gas (you really couldn't manage this with electric). I seared the meat in two pieces as Delia told me you should never crowd a pan when trying to brown meat (she's right, as ever).

Due to my cautiousness on the heat I didn't manage a really good, brown crunchy crust, but I kinda sorta got there with the browning.

Then out went the additional fat, and time to roast the meat. Mrs. Bean told me some rules on adding the fluid to the pan. Don't add too much, baste regularly.

With this in mind I put in a glass of wine, and about the same amount of chicken stock. I'm still saving my last freezer pack of stock (which is getting a bit tedious now - time to boil another carcass I think), so I had to use something synthetic again. This time I used some concentrated chicken bouillion from Waitrose - which, whilst nowhere near the real stuff - isn't at all a bad option. I might try keeping a few packs of this stuff in the larder. A quick scout of the ingredients reveals that it is actually made from boiled bones (unlike a cube), although they throw a lot of questionable stuff in with it. Glucose came it at a whopping 9%, which means you are chucking a ton of sugar into your dish. And salt of course, so be very careful when seasoning.

Then for a bit of flavour. I opted for my favourite veal accompaniments. Rosemary, garlic, lemon. I chucked into the pond several sprigs of rosemary, three crushed garlic cloves and a quartered lemon.

Into the oven at 175, I basted every 15mins (sticking to the guidance of the legend Mrs. B).

I decided to cook for just under 2 hours. It was a big piece of veal. The advantage of this method of cooking, as opposed to a traditional roast, is that precision timing is not required. The meat, as long as it's regularly basted, won't dry out too easily. So I could cook the meat thoroughly for my pregnant wife.

And this proved particularly fortuitous, since our guests were 30 mins late.

I rested the meat for 20 minutes (wrapped in foil and covered with a tea towel to keep warm) whilst I made the sauce.

Another advantage of pot roasting is the sauce is already half done. I just sieved off what was left in the pan, and reduced it down. I tried arrowroot as a thickener as there was some handy from a recipe my wife was making. Two teaspoons went in, but the effect with negligible (I'll probably stick to cornflour in future). I also added some double cream. It seemed appropriate, and I had a pot open for another recipe.

The meat was an absolute revelation. It was everything meat should be, moist, juicy, tender, flavousome. The sauce I was less happy with. I think I put too much lemon in the pan, which made the sauce very tart and acidic, so I'll tone that down a lot next time. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves though.

David's Deli - my lunch treat when working from home

I find myself working from home today. I therefore have followed my usual "working from home" routine and had lunch from a local place called David's Deli.

When I say local, I mean local in the superlative sense. It's 20 metres from the back of my block of flats. It's almost a community centre for our block - reminds me of the college bar in my university days.

Thanks to the shmooze of the Israeli's who run it, it's also a bit of a housewives favourite.

The over the top meditteranean welcome is just one of its attractions. It also does very nice food. It's all made fresh (daily it appears), then warmed to order in the microwave. As such the service is faster than Richard Hammond on a test track, and therefore appeals to my gluttony. There's very of the little agonising wait between choosing what you would like to eat and actually eating it.

As the name would suggest, it's a kind of deli. Not the kind mind you with salamis hanging from the ceiling and olives sold in overpriced pots. It's really a cafe I suppose. It does a lot of the deli stuff, like humous, taramasalata, bagels, smoked salmon etc.

Today I just got a falafel. £3.50 (less than a meal at pret), whipped up in a flash and served with enthusiasm. I asked them if they had todays paper which I could read whilst I ate, and you knkow what these guys did - they actually sent one of the staff out, who came back from the newsagent with the Times and Telegraph. That's the best service I've seen since we ate at a 3* restaurant in the South of France, and they offered Jill a pashmina to keep warm as she was looking a bit chilly as we ate on the terrace.

I think the up their own @rse posh restaurants in London could learn a thing or two about service from this friendly little place.

Veal shoulder in white wine

I used some of the frozen veal from my freezer last night to make dinner. I thought I'd cook the shoulder and then we could have it for leftovers a night or two.

I have never cooked a veal shoulder before and didn't really know what to do with one. A friend of mine told me about "soffrito" which sounds like an italian technique. This basically involves searing it then steaming it. You sear the outside of the meat in oil then put it in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water, the juice of a lemon and some saffron to flavour it.

Sounds lovely and I will no doubt do that one day. Last night however I wanted to make a bit of a stew, as I had some leftover vegetables from the minestrone the other night, and because I thought it would keep better.

The veal shoulder took over a day to defrost and was absolutely massive. There were a number of top ribs attached to the pack labelled shoulder, and having defrosted them thought I might as well cook them. Besides, the more bones in a stew the better especially veal bones, which give an amazing flavour when they cook.

So I seared all the meat in a nice hot pan with a bit of oil. I had to chop it into three pieces to sear it properly.

I then took the meat out, turned the hear right down and fried two onions and four cloves of garlic. You have to be careful when you do this, because the pan is sometimes so hot from searing that it immediately burns the garlic and onions. I normally take the pan off the heat for a few minutes to let it cool down. If you are being time efficient you can chop your onions at this point.

Now was the time for the liquid. Most veal stew recipes I have seen use red wine (and or stock). I think this is a mistake. Veal is a delicate flavour, not robust like meat or (older) lamb. I thought I'd try white wine instead.

I poured half a bottle of white wine over the meat and popped in some carrots we had leftover (rinsed and chopped large). I also added some sprigs of rosemary and thyme from the balcony. The wine didn't even nearly cover the large piece of meat. I am down to my last freezer pack of veal stock and didn't want to waste it on a weeknight dinner but I needed some more fluid - so I decided to reach for (horror of horrors) the stock cube.

Such is the infrequency with which I use these things that we actually didn't have any which were not passed the use by date. Did you realise these actually could go off?? Maybe one of the chemicals in there oxidises over time or something, but they are so inorganic I can't believe any bacteria could actually colonise a stock cube.

Luckily the wife was on the way out and brought a pack back for me. I read the ingredients. Mostly salt, then a load of chemicals I'd never heard of. No sign of any bones as far as I can tell. Still, probably better than just water I figures.

I poured about 1/2 a litre in. I always mix up the stock to about half the strength of what it says on the packet, because the flavour can be a bit nasty.

I then left the veal for a couple of hours simmering to do its stuff.

At the end there was a lot of fluid left so I tried to thicken it. I took the veal out and wrapped it in tin foil, then covered it with a tea towel and left it to rest. I then had a load of fluid with vegetables which I left simmering without the lid on.

I tried to thicken it with plain flour but made a bit of a mess and ended up with lumps. What you need to do is first mix the flour with butter and then add a bit of the fluid from the pan. Mix it well then really beat it into the sauce. I tried that and I got there in the end.

I am always a bit scared about reducing a sauce which contains powdered stock, ultimately you'll just end up with concentrated salt - perhaps salt crystals if you left it long enough. Which is why I was glad I had made the stock weak. I still want to concentrate down the flavours from the wine, the meat and the vegetables. With hindsight I probably didn't really need the stock cube at all.

I put a few frozen peas into the fluid to give it a bit of greenery and then served up after they had cooked. I also served with some new potatoes I had lying around. Plenty of ground black pepper over the veal and sauce.

The result? Pretty good. The meat was nice and tender. Shoulders are a bit fatty though - maybe I should have made the effort to cut some of this out before cooking. The white wine sauce works perfectly with the veal and I was definitely right about that. Rosemary, thyme and garlic all worked really well. There was a bit of a chicken powder taste to the sauce, but all in all it was pretty good.

There's plenty more to eat tonight and probably even tomorrow so I won't have to cook (or blog) for a day or so.

Sunday lunch - Dovedale House Battersea

For reasons so painfully boring and domestic, we found ourselves in Battersea on Sunday. Not for some Sunday chill out session in a cool bar, but alas tile shopping in a local centre.

We were looking to get a snack for lunch, but happily we ended up walking in the wrong direction, and the only place we found serving lunch at 2.30 was a pub called the Dovedale House.

I'll have to use the term "gastropub" to describe it, as that's essentially what it was. I realise this term, and it's connotations are offensive to some, but personally I am very pro-gastropub. I have no nostalgia for a crappy old pub which serves 1970's food straight from the freezer to the microwave and p*ssy beer, just because it's cheap, old and apparently represents the working class community in some way.

I say let's make all our pubs gastropubs, to the point that we don't need the term anymore and we can just say "pub", because it's a given that any pub will provide something reasonably gastronomic.

I have seen the gastropub thing taken too far. A gatropub should not be pub converted into a restaurant. It should be a pub which serves good pub food, made properly.

I got roast beef with all the trimmings (what else) and it was pretty damn good. The roasties were a bit dry and sorry for themselves, but it in fairness it was 2.45 when we ordered and the place wasn't too busy. You can't expect them to make fresh roast potatoes for the stragglers.

The meat was lovely and the gravy was the real stuff. Perfect consistency, red wine based, infused with rosemary and the juices of the meat.

Yorkshires were also a delight, but the idiots put the horseradish all over the yorshires and even though I scraped it off onto the meat they were still spicier than they should be. But they were fluffy with a crunch outside, just like they should be.

It's such a good sign of the times that you can wonder into a pub on spec and get a very good and very british meal. If they improvement in the general standard of cuisine carries on we will rightly catch up the french soon.

Fish and chips from Nautilus

AAaaahhh fish and chips. The british favourite.

You just can't beat fish and chips for sheer indulgence. It's the ultimate junk food. Fast, fatty and delicious.

You can pretty much deep fry anything and it will taste good, but fleshy, meaty white fishes really are the the best. If salmon is the king of the seas then cod is the king of the deep fat fryer. I know that we shouldn't be eating cod anymore, and I could go on for ages about declining fish stocks, but this is a food blog and not an environmentaly blog.

As it happens I had haddock (for not other reason than it had just come out of the fryer and looked better than the poor wilting cod in the keep warm tray), which is nearly as good and nearly as endangered.

Chip shop chips really take some beating too. Although I've developed a taste for "frites" recently, especially as they are done in Belgium where they crisp them up on a sort of wok after frying. The genius of chips is there simplicity. Let's face it, potatoes and cooking oil (or ideally beef dripping) can combine into a food that can rival most posh stuff. Foie gras is nice, but I reckon I speak for most of the british population when I say I can get as much if not more pleasure from a plate of chips, which only costs £1.

Fish sadly is now becoming a luxury food, thanks to depleting reserves, and my haddock and chips was about £7.

Nautilus is a good place for fish and chips. It's so close to my flat that it's basically smelling distance. It takes strong will at times not to dash in there for a plate of chips.

It is pretty much the sort of greasy chip shop you want to get your fish and chips from. It considers itself slightly upmarket, and the fish is probably fresher than some other places, which is important, but that's about as far as it's pretentions go. To all intents and purposes it's a chippy.

I love it more than is good for me.

Eriki - Finchley Road (near to Swiss Cottage)

Eriki has been open a couple of years now. I have to say, I never had any intention of going there. I pass it regularly on the bus, and the frontage makes it look like your usual naff indian restaurant. Besides which the Finchley road is such a grubby location, you can't imagine it accomodating a decent restaurant. Most of the other restaurants around there are suitably down market.

My prejudices were first challenged by the Michelin Guide, which I received for my birthday. Eriki has two knives and forks. I can't remember exactly what that means or how many knives and forks you can get, but it's a good sign, and the place had a good write up. Then someone in my office had the Time Out eating and drinking guide the other day, so I looked it up. More glowing reviews.

I absolutely love indian food, and this place is a very short bus ride from my flat, so I made the necessary arrangements with some other local curry lovers, and we all headed down there on Friday night.

The place was full, which is always a good sign, and creates a nice atmosphere. It's not a small place either, so there was a fair gathering in there. In fact one of my criticisms is that maybe the place is a little too big. It loses the personal touch a bit. But that's a minor point, the service was on the whole quite good and certainly polite. It makes a nice contrast from you average curry house, usually pretty small, specialising in take away, and only about three full tables at any time.

The decor on the inside is as garish as on the outside. Lot's of deep reds and yellows. Apart from it's sheer boldness it doesn't have a massively sub-continental feel to it. It works though, it makes for a bright atmosphere, which along all the full tables gives the place a real buzz.

We had communal starters between five of us. I can't remember exactly what we ordered. The starters were fairly typical indian fayre. I think we had some bhajis and some lamb sticks and some tandoori chicken. There were also some small pastry type things. It was all very nice but nothing particularly amazing. It ranks above your average oily curry house stuff, but not quite in the indian restaurant big league, in fact not in the premiership (Zaika, Cinamon club etc) or even the championship (Cafe lazeez etc). Probably just one league down, and definitely in the professional leagues. Same could be said of my lamb and spinach main course.

To be fair, it prices itself at that point. Meal for two, two courses, a few beers and soft drinks came to £53 including services. Probably about £17 a head on food. All in all it a pretty good place, but in my mind not quite up to the praise which is heaped upon it. I am sure I will be back again and again, because its easy to get to, know only for us but for lots of people we know in the area. It's in a very convenient location being so close to Finchley Road tube station. It's also the best place I've found to get indian food in my locality.

Work lunch - Pret a manger soup and sandwich

Hats off to Pret a Manger - the best sandwich chain there is.

Their USP is that all sandwiches are made fresh on site throughout the day. I can't think of anyone else who does that - except those mom and pop's places where you have to wait for ages and then explain to someone with a thin grasp of english exactly how you want your sandwich, down to the number of grains of salt. Plus they only seem to have about two fillings that look at all appetising.

Personally I prefer to just grab something off a shelf when I am in a rush.

The rule of Pret is that it takes over £5 to get you full up. So quite an expensive option. I usually opt for a soup and sandwich - especially when it's chilly outside. Soup £2.69, sandwich £1.45 some sort of desert £1.50 - total £5.64.

I had the chicken and leek stew today. Why do they call it a stew when it's blatently a soup? Anyway - it was pretty good, as usual.

Then I got one of those "half" sandwiches. I can never decide which sandwich to get, as there seems to be few options for the "half" and most of them are fatty (chicken avocado/chicken mayo) boring (egg) or both (homous). So I got my usual favourite and the trademark Pret Sandwich - Crayfish and rocket.

I like eating crayfish. It tastes luxurious, like real seafood. Apparently our rivers are teeming with them and they are nuisance because they eat everything else in the river up. They are like an aquatic terminator baddie. So you are doing the world a favour if you eat more of the b*stards. You don't have the guilt associated with most seafood these days - you can feel positively virtuous - like a cannibal eating Osama bin Laden rather than a hapless missionary.

The rocket makes a nice balance. Pret are kind enough to provide the "recipe" for this sandwich on the box - but you don't need to be August Escoffier to work it out. I think there's a bit of something like paprika in there. There's plenty of mayonaise for sure, although there seems to be less these days than there used to be. Which I suppose is good.

Pret supplies the nutritional information for all their sandwiches on their site. Only 185 calories in my crayfish half. Chicken and avocado would have hit me for 230, as would the humous. Actually egg mayo is slightly better at 180. All day breakfast would have been my most sinful option with a wopping 300 calories in a tiny half sandwich.

So there you go, a nice fresh healthy, guilt free sandwich and a warming bowl of soup. Long may Pret last.

Well I am sure it will now it's part of the McDonald's Group!

Home made minestrone out of the freezer - Gourmets like freezers too

Freezers are much maligned. Their bad rep has been established by the convience meal application. A frozen steak and kidney pie from Iceland is never going to be as good as a home made pie with fresh puff pastry - that's a no brainer.

But let's not overlook their sheer utility - to a gourmet they are a godsend. I'll rank their use to a gourmet in order:

1) Frozen stock

This should always be on hand. A man cannot boil a chicken carcass every time he fancies a risotto. And no gourmet worth their (excesive quantities of) salt uses one of those horrid cubes with excessive quantities of salt. If you are a millionaire I suppose you can buy a pot of Joubiere organic stock from Waitrose for your risotto, but to buy enough for a soup you need to need to be in the super rich league, and then you might as well just head out to Gordon Ramsay's for dinner. Besides, home made stock always seems better. And it's fun to make, and it gives you a sense of pride to start from scratch - nothing makes you feel like a cook as much as boiling some old bones.

2) Freezing left overs

This was the genius of last night's meal. A builder was coming over to give us a quote and there was no time to prepare a proper meal. But wait! Didn't I make a massive batch of minestrone the other night which I froze? Plop into a pan and leave to simmer and voila - lovely wholesome dinner.

Does it lose anything for being frozen? Probably. But it's still a damn site better than most meals which are that easy to prepare. If you follow my "freezer rules" (see below), you won't notice much difference.

Being in a couple, this system offers untold advantages. Firstly, most ingredients come in batches too large to use. So instead of making a soup or stew for one or two nights, and binning half a bag of carrots/potatoes etc. just make a big batch and you have an instant economy of scale. There's also the times when the other half is out and you can't be bothered to cook for one. Then there's a treasure trove of stuff waiting for you.

3) Frozen top quality meat

I bought half a veal for £45. That's about 4 Sunday lunches, 4 weeknight dinners (escalops) and 4 litres of veal stock.

Frozen meat isn't really too bad, if you follow the rules below. Granted, it's not as good as fresh. But given me a frozen top quality meat above fresh cheap supermarket crap any day.

4) Ice cream

5) Frozen bits and bobs

Ginger, lemongrass, herbs etc.

Rules of freezing:

1) Don't refreeze anything - this could kill you. You can freeze food which had frozen ingredients, provided they have been cooked thoroughly. So don't worry about freezing a curry which included some frozen peas and frozen stock.

2) Wrap it up airtight - everyone knows this.

3) Freeze as quickly as possible - for scientific reasons I won't go into food is less damaged if it is cooled and frozen as fast as possible. Industrial companies use "blast freeze" techniques which can freeze food instantly. The best advice I can give is cool your left overs by transferring them to a freezer container placed in an ice bath, then locate the "superfreeze" shelf in your freezer and put the food in there.

4) Portion it out before you freeze - obvious really, but you don't want to be hacking around with a block of meat you only need half of.

5) Freeze as fresh as possible for best results - meat which I buy at the farmer's market freezes briliantly. When I spoke to the farmer I buy it from he explained that this is because it has not previously been chilled. Most supermarket meat has been superchilled to about 1 degree for the distribution process, which can take some time. So when you try to refreeze it turns out horrible

6) Freezing ruins texture but not taste - remember this. That's why frozen stock is basically perfect, because essentially it's just frozen water. My advice is freeze stuff in parts. For example I wouldn't put pasta into minestrone before freezing. Why bother, when you can put a bit in after it's come out, and it only takes seconds.

7) Thaw raw meat/fish slowly - just take it out of the freezer and leave. Takes some forward planning but worth it. Don't defrost in the microwave unless you like eating rubber. Stocks can be thawed just by chucking the ice brick into a pan and heating slowly. Be careful though as the ice can scratch your non-stick surfaces.

Happy eating my fellow gastronauts.

3 Nov 2006 Le Saint Paul - a michelin starred lunch

Don't the french just know about food.

It's such a cliche I know, but it never fails to amaze me. On holiday in France with me pregnant wife and thumbing through the Michelin guide for a good place to go.

It seems that the "dejeuner en semaine" is the way to go. Many of the Michelin starred places do a weekday lunch. Not only is this a good deal as a way of filling the tables at quiet times, but as you inevitably drink less (particularly with a pregnant wife, and because you have to drive to get to many of these places) it can work out incredibly reasonable.

Our 3 courses with two glasses of wine (for me) and coffees came in at €126. That's about £80. And seeing as my previous experiences of this kind of food have generally hit me for about £200, I consider this to be very cheap.

Cheap but certainly not nasty. I had expected a second rate effort for the lunch crowd but not so. Our set menu was:

- game terrine with rasperry sauce
- risotto with sea bream
- some sort of amazing chocolate dessert

And of course the obligatory amuse bouche/petit fours which these places lay on.

The amuse bouche comprised a small jar with guacamole, with a prawn on top and then some caviar. Lucky for me the wife can't eat that so I ate them all. Very nice start to the meal, though admittedly not the height of creativity. The guacomole was good but nothing to get excited about.

Then came the terrine. I admit, this isn't the sort of thing I'd normally pick off the menu and I remember why. I'm not mad about game terrine and feel that the fat/taste ratio is too high. Sweet savoury contrast is not always something that appeals either. None the less, with the usual amazing bread to spread the pate over, it was tasty enough - again still not anything to really get excited about.

But then the main course comes, and boy is this exciting. OK - so it's just a risotto - some might say a cheapo, use up your ingredients type of dish, something italian peasants eat. But there's risotto and there's risotto. We don't usually make fish risottos at home, possibly because we normally have risotto as a weeknight supper, and also because fish stock doesn't tend to hang around in our freezer (due to the difficulty obtaining fish heads - in contrast to chicken stock, which is usually on hand). And I know that risotto should be served warm on not hot, but when it's the end of the day at work and you are hungry are you really going to stand around for half an hour breathing in the wonderful aroma and waiting for your risotto to cool to the right temperature. But the perfect risotto is to die for. Obviously cooked in some real fish stock, perfectly al dente without being crunchy and served at exactly the right temperature. Then surround it with a "bisque" reductions (lobster shells also don't tend to be going round in my home kitchen) and then put some top class sea bream fillets on top - heaven. The sea bream must have been grilled - the skins was deliciously crunchy - but had not at all dried out.

Just as my gastric juices are starting to flow, they are sent into overdrive by a dessert which sent me to heaven. Rich chocolate goo, crunchy biscuit base with (get this) creme brulee!!!! inside it, and served with a big blob of lavender ice cream. Bang - food heaven - tastebuds start to dance wow.

Then the coffee and petit fours, and finally - the piece de la resistance - a digestible bill.

Time to find the next dejeuner en-semaine - perhaps La Palme D'or at Cannes next time.

Dim t

8 November 2006

I ate a rather good meal at Dim t in Hampstead. Me and the wife were on our way to the cinema and needed something quick and good. The staff in there were on the ball. They picked up on our body language and brought the food quickly - no messing around - so we got to the film in time for even the trailers.

It's a funny place. I've never been there before though I have passed it many times. It's slightly mroe upmarket than your average noodle bar - as you would expect in Hampstead. The prices reflect that - a bowl of noodles was £7.65. Just a bit more than you would normally pay but not so much more as to feel the pain - clever pricing.

You can "make your own dish". Which means you choose the meat, type of noodles and sauce. I went for a Japanese theme and had chicken with japanese noodles and a teriyaki sauce. It's not going to blow you away, but for a quick and cheap supper it holds its own. And the place had a nice atmosphere. Fun decor and pleasant staff. A little too Hampstead perhaps, all full of yummy mummy's and precocious kids.

Worth a try.