Dangerous Thinking

I’ve been messing about with a honey and mustard salad dressing this evening – sticky fingers, but fun – and I think I have it the way I like it.

I’ll post it here in case you want it. Otherwise, it’ll save me losing the recipe and having to go through the rigmarole again

1 Tbs clear honey
1 tsp (or a little more) smooth mustard (good Dijon)
Juice of one largish lemon (say, 2 Tbs)
4 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (should be stuff with a bit of a kick, or it’ll get lost amongst the other flavours)

It then went with a salad of new potatoes, green beans, chicken breast, pancetta and salad leaves adapted from this month’s Good Food magazine.

Matt:

Euro vote ends GM food ban. The European parliament passes controversial laws that in effect lift a ban on genetically modified foods. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

Oh well. Don’t blame me if you kids develop udders or cloven hooves.

I have difficulty in expressing how strongly I feel about the pollution of Organic foodstuffs by GM. It will happen, and our choice goes straight down the pan.

Matt.Blogs.It

It’s been another balmy day here in Worthing. Time to unpack the shiny new portable barbecue we bought last week and head across the road to the beach to watch the sun go down and the dogs gambolling in the shallows.

Sounds kinda nice, doesn’t it?

With the chilled bottle of Viognier, marinated jerk chicken and herb salad.

Between you and me, it didn’t quite work out like that.

Maybe I’m just out out of practice with charcoal-type BBQs… but we haven’t got the space for the gas model we’ve been using for the past few years. And then the arse fell out of it sitting in my parents’ shed not long ago.

I thought a pack of those impregnated bags of charcoal would make life easier. But no. I lit it easy enough, but there was just too much fuel for anything other than a large family-sized BBQ.

But we were hungry. Slap on the chicken and some sausages as soon as the charcoal is coated in ash.

Mistake. Immediate conversion of surface of food into charcoal. As if we didn’t have enough of the stuff.

And before the middle was properly cooked, we had a whole load more charcoal.

We wanted the fish and chips being consumed by the three women who sat just along from us. But we had the Viognier. And the sunset and dogs were nice.

Maybe we’ll try it again tomorrow. It can’t be that difficult, can it?

Rusty writes about Sourdough from scratch:

kuro5hin.org || Sourdough Success!

This is one of those things I keep coming back to.

Jamie Oliver has his foolproof way in one of his Naked Chef books; Jeffrey Steingarten devotes a whole chapter to it in his great book, The Man Who Ate Everything. And now Rusty.

I’m going to have to carve out some time to capture some Worthing yeast, and try it again. (Previous attempts have been semi-successful, shall we say).

As we do most weeks, Mark Pruul and I met for our Wednesday afternoon board meeting in central London.

There was something even more important on the agenda than the MarkOne Creative Consultants’ brochure copy – we were going for a curry afterwards.

We’d met in the Charing Cross Hotel, and didn’t have a clue where we’d find a decent curry house, until I remembered there were a couple on Bedford Street, running between the Strand and Covent Garden.

Then I saw it – an old favourite, The Strand Tandoori. It must be 12 or 15 years since I’d been in there. And it still had the fish tank in the window.

Eyes clouded with nostalgia, and memories of a chicken dish stuffed with spiced meat coming to the fore, I missed the universal sign of crap food. The man standing in the doorway enticing hungry punters in. 20% off, if you order before 7:30, he said.

We sat down, started a wonderful cooling bottle of Cobra beer each, and nibbled on poppadums, while we ordered our food.

What followed was quite the worst Indian meal I’ve had for many a long year – there was even a definite flavour of Oxo cubes in one of the desperately under-spiced dishes of mediocrity.

To cap it all, I had a couple of visits to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I’ve been feeling nauseous all day. I haven’t caught up with Mark to see if he has the same symptoms, or if I’m suffering from that stomach bug thing that’s going round.

Food poisoning or not, I’m not going back there.

If only I’d applied one of my primary rules of restaurants…

This is turning into my food blog…

I have a general rule that traditional things are best in the kitchen. Good knives, heavy saucepans, and so on. I’m not into gadgets.

So why are bread boards so awful? You know the type. Round and not large enough to accommodate most rectangular – or oval – loaves. But, crucially, they’re higher in the centre than at the edge, so the damned crumbs fall off!

A note to bread board designers – can I have one with a generous trough to collect the crumbs?

End of rant!

This is a bit of a puzzle.

I bought some kaffir limes (the fruit, not the leaves) at the local Chinese grocery recently, and used them last night in a king prawn-based stir fry – kind of Thai, but with a pile of ginger instead of the chillies. My wife isn’t a fan of chillies.

The aroma and flavour were much more like I’ve had in Thai restaurants than I’ve achieved before.

I thought I’d find out some more about the fruit, as I’d never seen them before. Most of the sites talk just about the leaves being used in cooking – just one mentions juice being used in fish dishes.

So why the downplaying of the fruit itself?

I’ll have to ask the shop owner what I should be doing with the limes next time I go round there – and buy some of those tiny Thai eggplants they stock.

It warns me that my pack of King Prawns contains shellfish.

Do they have any that don’t? Maybe I shouldn’t ask!

Doc points out some frightening food!

The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, April 11, 2003

There’s a really good secondhand bookshop not far from here, with shelves of books of this kind of recipe. I was tempted – for a millisecond.

I always wonder what my favourite cookbooks will look like in 30 years’ time.

I had some Yo Sushi sushi from Sainsbury’s for lunch today. It was surprisingly good (as was some from Marks & Spencer the other week).

It’s some time since I made my own (about 10 years, I’d guess). But kuro5hin.org comes to the rescue.

kuro5hin.org || How To Make Sushi

But frozen fish??? I’m going to buy mine just out of the water from the guy on the beach!