food, reviews and of course coffee
Chocolates come and go, many people reading this will remember Texan bars and the like. The Wispa disappeared for a while and then came back.
The Cadbury advert has a product I’ve not seen before, it’s merely a specific chocolate from a box Milk Tray and available in a pack of them that “snap open”.
Whilst getting a quick lunch at the cafe in Sainsbury, what I wanted was off the menu, so needing to make a quick decision I decided to go for a burger.
It came with chips, coleslaw and some salad. The chips were double cooked, which means they were cooked properly, went cold and were cooked again. Places do that because it is quicker and they can get food out faster to the customer. Personally I don’t like it, as the chips can be quite greasy and over cooked.
I did like the fact that they had used real cheese and not the plastic cheese you get on most burgers you can buy from fast food joints. It was quite a nice burger and had a reasonably good flavour. Didn’t think too much of the burger bun though.
Overall it wasn’t that bad, quite nice in fact, however not sure if I would get it again.
There have been various discussions on various websites and radio programmes about the problems of the Chorleywood process that is used to make modern bread. As I am sure most people reading this blog are aware, the Chorleywood process was devised to speed up the bread manufacturing process. There has been recently a fair bit of criticism about bread made in this way, that it has a reduced nutritional content and doesn’t taste as good as bread made in a traditional manner.
I do like traditional or artisan bread, that is bread made in a traditional manner by a traditional baker. My real issue is that I don’t have easy access to such bakers to be able to buy such bread on a weekly basis, let alone daily as I would prefer.
There is something beautiful about a fresh baked loaf, straight from the bakers. Sliced with a spread of butter. If I had a baker close by, I would be tempted to pop down in the morning to get fresh bread for breakfast. I have done this a few times, such as when I was on holiday in Aldeburgh and when I was in France. I even managed to get some decent bread in Bristol when I lived there.
I have considered baking my own bread, not so sure I have the time to undertake this before I go off to work, however I still firmly believe that to bake decent bread you need a decent bread oven. A standard kitchen oven in my mind is okay for a few things, but it’s not a bread oven.
Having said all that and written all this I think I might try and bake some bread at some point in the future. Any advice for me?
When I last wrote about Tea Monkey in Bath I said the next time I visited I would try one of their flowering teas. So when I visited Tea Monkey recently I did go for one of their flowering teas, Dragon 4 Flowers.
Light lavender notes with a floral bouquet giving depth and body to this early season green tea.
It was certainly an interesting experience, a small dried “bud” in a clear teapot which as it brewed opened into a flower.
Certainly a spectacle to watch and the flavour was light and delicate.
When I visit Pizza Hut, I try not to think of it as a place to eat Italian food, much more a place that serves American food. So when I have a pizza there, it’s not trying to be an Italian Pizza, but something that would be more at home over the pond than down in the south of Europe. Once I’ve got my head around that then I can just forget authenticity and think about eating pizza.
Going for the Best Ever Supreme, this was a thin crust pizza that came with chicken, black olives, beef, pepperoni, red onions and mixed peppers, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
I quite enjoyed the pizza, yes the tomato sauce is a little too salty for my tastes, and the black olives were a little too “boring”, but the thin base was good, tasted of bread and was crisp without been too soggy due to the sauce and the toppings. The rest of the toppings were okay and just about right in terms of quantity.
I’ve not done a barbecue for ages, my last proper barbecue went a bit rusty one winter and I never got round to replacing it. I did buy a disposable barbecue at some point, but it was so long ago I couldn’t remember when I bought it. Remembering that I had it, I decided I would cook some barbecued chicken thighs. I wasn’t entirely confident that the disposable barbecue would work and as I was cooking chicken and without any way of adjusting the heat (as the grill was fixed) I thought I would need to try a slightly different cooking method than I had done in previous years.
The first thing I did was poach the thighs in a pan of simmering stock for about 15 minutes, I did to ensure that the chicken was virtually cooked before placing it on the barbecue. It can be very easy over hot charcoal to have the outside of chicken well cooked and the inside raw. Poaching allowed me to ensure that the chicken was cooked, stayed moist, added flavour and importantly when grilled on the barbecue would brown and take on the smoke flavour. You could “bake” the chicken in the oven first, rather than poaching, but this would take longer and if the chicken browned in the over wouldn’t then be on the barbecue long enough to get that really nice barbcue smokey flavour.
After poaching the chicken, I drained it, let it dry and then tossed it in some olive oil. At this stage I could have added some lemon juice (if I had any lemons) and maybe some mixed herbs (if I had something other than just parsley). In the end I went with just olive oil and a bit of black pepper.
Things didn’t go entirely to plan, the instructions said light the touch paper and it would be ready to cook in about 20 minutes. The reality was that it took closer to 35 for half of the coals to turn grey and I was really glad that I had poached the chicken as I don’t think it would have cooked the chicken properly if I had started off with raw. As a result I only had half of the grill to use, but I wasn’t cooking a huge quantity of chicken so it wasn’t too bad. It would have been nice to spread the chicken out to ensure that the smoke added more flavour, but better some then none.
Serving the chicken with a range of salad and some crispy roast potatoes, as I bit into the barbecued chicken, it bought back a range of memories of eating similar food in a range of places and countries.
Time to get a new, proper, barbecue methinks.
There is something about the traditional jam doughnuts, the ones with red jam in the middle and dusted with real granulated sugar. With the increased availability of American style donuts, such as Krispy Kreme, in many different places and quite a fair few pale imitations, it’s nice to know that the traditional jam doughnut is still available. I don’t always want my doughnuts to use icing sugar instead of normal sugar, I don’t always want icing or toppings. That’s not to say donuts (as opposed to doughnuts) have their place, but we shouldn’t forget the delight of the simple jam doughnut. There are also differences between the yeast raised versions, cake versions and batter versions. In my mind I much prefer the doughnuts made with a yeast based dough.
I remember as a young boy being entranced by a bakers shop in town that had windows into the bakery part of the shop, so you could see where and how they made the doughnuts. You could see where the doughnuts were cooked, the trays of sugar where the virgin doughnuts were coated and finally the jam injection contraption that filled them with sweet sugary red jam. They also had other flavours, apricot and blackcurrant, but for me it was always the ones with the red jam. I rarely bought jam doughnuts with my pocket money, but when I could I really enjoyed eating them.
I wonder about that red jam, in theory it should be raspberry jam, but anyone who has read the ingredients list of Jammie Dodgers will realise that mass catering these days seem to use a raspberry flavoured plum jam rather than a real raspberry jam, so hence the red jam moniker.
So are you a secret doughnut eater? Do you prefer the Americanized (sic) donuts? What about varieties from Germany or Holland?
My favourite brand of coffee these days is Percol’s Black & Beyond and I have recently had trouble finding it in my local supermarkets (and in some cases not so local). So as a result I decided to buy a pack of Percol’s Black & Beyond whole bean coffee. I’ve not used beans for a while, so though I do have an electric grinder, my son got out the manual coffee grinder. If you have ever watched Dances with Wolves
I have been making risotto much more often now, as you might expect, the more you cook it, the easier it is and also becomes less daunting. What I like about risotto is how easy it is to add different flavours and make something different each time. The key of course is to use the right kind of rice; I have started to experiment with different kinds of risotto rice. As well as the usual suspect, arborio, I have also been using carnaroli. The end results are very similar, the creamy consistency is what makes a risotto a risotto.
The process I use is as follows.
In a large frying pan, place some olive oil. Then add some finely chopped onion.
Soften the onions.
Bring up the heat.
Add the risotto rice and ensure that the rice is coated in the oil
and mixed in with the onion.
Now add some stock. I either use chicken stock or vegetable stock. If it’s in the fridge I also occassionally use some white wine.
Keep topping up with stock to ensure that the rice doesn’t dry out.
Stir on a regular basis. This will help create a creamy texture.
Once the rice is virtually cooked, add a large handful of grated parmesan and some freshly ground black pepper.
Serve.
For flavours I will either add the ingredients in with the onions, or cook them separately. With some ingredients such as mushrooms I may do both!
I am always a little disappointed with sausages from most places you eat out at (well the cheap and cheerful places). Partly as they use cheap and poor quality sausages, but mainly as they cook them in the deep fat fryer! As a result I rarely eat sausages when eating out, but as one of the little people in the house loves sausages I do often see the type he orders. You experience something similar if you order breakfast at a supermarket cafe.
Grabbing lunch at Sainsburys the other day and the Sausages and Mash was on special, I thought I would save a little money and take a risk. As I was expecting to be disappointed, I was in the end very pleased with the food that I got.
What I was really pleased with was the fact that these were high quality sausages that had been cooked properly. I think they were more likely to have been cooked in the oven rather than grilled.
The mashed potato was nice and wasn’t lumpy or overly creamy. A little too salty for my tastes, but not over salted. The peas were typical peas, so nothing special.
Overall I was really pleased with the meal and for the cold wet day I had it on, it was a really nice dish of comfort food.