Red Jam Doughnuts

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?

Grinding Coffee

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 you will know what it looks like. I’ve never actually used it, and remembering the film, I thought it would take a while to grind the coffee. In the end it was quicker than I thought it was going to be. It didn’t do a fine grind, you wouldn’t want to use it in an espresso machine, but for a cafetiere it was okay. The coffee was really good and as a result I might keep getting beans now and again.

Making Risotto

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!

Sausages and Mash

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.

Burrito and a Beer

Needing a quick dinner and not wanting to spend a fortune and wanting to try somewhere different. I decided that it was time to go to Chiquitos. I have been there before, but that was years ago. Not been recently as generally when I go to where my local one is, I have the children with me and they aren’t fans of mexican food (at the moment), we go to Bella Italia or Frankie and Bennys.

As I was on my own, then I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and see what it was like now.

They had a special offer of a burrito and a beer for just £7.99.

Well lets go with that then. I decided to go with the pulled pork option.

Service was really quick and even though I was having the “special offer” I also got the complementary tortilla chips.

The burrito when it arrived, certainly looked interesting.

I am not sure I would have presented it in that way, I think I might have preferred the sour cream, guacamole and salsa to be served separately.

I think I would have also preferred it to be “freshly made” rather than as I think it was, just heated through. I may be wrong on that.

Overall it was very nice and quite tasty. Spicy but not too spicy.

I will probably go back and try something different another time.

Giardiniera

Of all the pizza places available, the one I go to most has to be Pizza Express. I do enjoy their pizzas and the atmosphere (depending on where and when you go) is nice. I’ve generally had excellent service too, which is always a plus and is one of the reasons I make return visits.

On my latest visit there for lunch… well another reason I quite like Pizza Express is that they do Tesco Clubcard Deals, so I can get a meal for “free”, which means I can justify lunch there now and again. As I was saying, on my latest visit there for lunch I went for their classic Giardiniera pizza. It comes with artichokes, mushrooms, red peppers, santos tomatoes, courgettes, olives, garlic oil, tomato & pesto base.

The pizza base was good, tasted fresh, was crusty on the outside and soft inside. There was a decent amount of toppings without going over the top. There is a (and is it a small) window between not enough toppings on a pizza and too much. The topping shouldn’t overpower the pizza and as a result turn the pizza into a plate for toppings, whereas the actual pizza itself is the important part of eating pizza. The toppings are there to enhance and add a little something to the pizza eating experience, they are not the reason for eating pizza in itself.

Another reason that I like Pizza Express, it still has that Italian feel to the place, you don’t get “stuffed crusts” and all that, you get at other places I could mention.

I suppose my only criticism of the place is that I feel the starters could be better.

Overall I enjoyed my pizza, it was enjoyable and the service was excellent.

Italian Inspired Bistro Box

Italian Bistro BoxA new concept from Sainsburys has been a series of Bistro boxes. The ones I have seen are Italian, Spanish and Greek. I went for the Italian.

It contains a pasta and pesto salad with pine nuts, crunchy focaccia, milano salami, sun dried tomatoes with mozzarella and rocket. You also get a balsamic vinaigrette.

Overall it was really quite nice for lunch, a good combination of textures, flavours and colours. My only real complaint was that it was quite salty, but then Italian food can be quite salty anyhow! What was I expecting?

So was it value for money? Well at £4 I think it was a tad pricey. However even if I bought the items individually, it would probably be about the same price for similar quantities. Interested enough to try out the Greek and Spanish versions.

Liking Mackerel

Mackerel

Decided to cook some mackerel for the first time in years. I’ve not had a huge amount of success cooking mackerel in the past, so have avoided it and gone for other types of fish.

After eating out recently at Café Rouge and having a very nice piece of mackerel there, decided that I would get some myself at some point and cook it.

So having bought some salmon for the rest of the family I also bought a fillet of mackerel.

I prepared the mackerel, though it was almost prepared by the fishmonger, it still had some bones in, so I removed that. The mackerel was then coated in seasoned flour. In my heavy frying pan I heated up a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter. With the butter bubbling I added the floured mackerel fillets. Once they were nearly cooked I added pink peppercorns and chopped parsley. They were stirred through and cooked for another minute.

I placed the mackerel fillets onto a plate and poured the butter, peppercorns and parsley over the them.

They were really nice and I will certainly be cooking mackerel again.

The salmon by the way, I roasted in the oven.

Espresso in the car…

You just know that I want to get one of these…. Perfect for those long journeys, or when queuing for petrol when there’s a tanker strike on, or as happens way too often the M5 grinds to a halt.

Only €149

Yo! Sushi Takeaway

There is a huge difference between the sushi you can buy from the supermarket and the fresh stuff that you can buy at Yo Sushi!

Needing a quick meal I decided to get some Yo! Sushi takeout. I went for a Mixed Box and a Meaty Box.

In the Mixed Box, you get 3 sashimi: salmon, tuna, coriander seared tuna. 3 nigiri: salmon, prawn, tamago. 2 iso: crunchy prawn & avocado, YO! roll. 2 cucumber maki.

What I do like about Yo! Sushi is they use fresh raw fish. I really enjoyed the sashimi, fresh succulent and tasty. I sometimes add the pickled ginger and soy sauce. The nigiri were good, solid sticky rice with tasty toppings. Less confident about the tamago sweet omelette but the salmon was very good. I also quite like the small cucumber maki, when accompanied with the ginger and soy is a very tasty treat. Overall there is a really nice selection in the box and probably about right for one.

However as there were two of us we got two boxes, as well as the mixed box, I also picked up the Meaty Box. In this box, you get 2 crispy duck futomaki. 2 spicy chicken katsu iso. 2 seared beef nigiri. 1 spicy chicken salad.

I don’t usually have meat when I have sushi, favouring the fish, so this was a first for me. I though the seared beef nigiri was interesting, but lacked the depth of flavour I was expecting. Whereas the spicy chicken katsu iso was a wonderful combination of tastes and textures. There was also a lot of flavour in the crispy duck futomaki. Though I enjoyed the spicy chicken salad I do think we needed more of it.

Next time I think I might need to add more bulk, maybe some an extra rice or noodle dish. Possibly more salad too.

Overall, though not too expensive at £14 for two, it’s not the cheapest takeaway you can buy, it was delicious, fresh and tasty.