Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has some great orange recipes.
Oranges, clementines and satsumas really come into their own at this time of year, so it would be foolish not to put them to good use.
Check them out on the Guardian website.
Redbush Tea
I am currently enjoying a cup of Redbush Tea, which isn’t really tea at all.
It is made from a plant only grown near Capetown in South Africa. Redbush tea tastes a little bit like normal tea, but with a slightly earthy, naturally sweeter taste.
I drink it with milk, but you can drink it without.
It’s a refreshing change from normal tea.
Ban on junk food ads introduced
The BBC reports
A ban on adverts for junk food during television programmes aimed at children under 16 has come into force.
Will the ban have any effect?
There will still be the big roadside places with all the colourful signs.
Junk food places will still be the only choice available in many shopping mall food halls.
For me healthy eating starts in the home and that means families working together to change their eating habits.
Bargain
Well I got a bit of a bargain yesterday from the deli counter at Sainsburys.
They had some cooked mini Turkey joints (around 500g) reduced from £9.99 to 99p, a nine pound saving. It wasn’t as though the use by date was yesterday either, bought yesterday on the 29th December, to be used by the 1st January.
It was cheaper than buying a couple of slices of the cooked turkey (which is why I was at the deli counter in the first place).
It wasn’t the best or most tasty turkey, but it works well in sandwiches. Of course we didn’t have turkey at Christmas, so we didn’t have lots left over like those poor people who buy and cook those HUGE turkeys!
Christmas Dinner
The dinner I cooked this Christmas was very nice and went down well.
We had stuffed haunch of venison which was lovely and tender and full of flavour.
Served with potatoes roasted in goose fat, roasted parsnips and sweet potatoes. Along with stuffings, carrots, beans, and other trimmings.
Delicious.
Book Choice – Saturday Kitchen
This week’s book choice is Saturday Kitchen Cookbook
“Saturday Kitchen” is a popular magazine-format show broadcast live on BBC1 for 35 weeks of the year. Combining a regular band of chefs and celebrities, as well as archive material and interactive features, it achieves a perfect balance of lively on-screen atmosphere with practical content. Hosted by James Martin, the programme has a down-to-earth approach with attention to modern food trends that appeals to not-too-serious cooks. The new “Saturday Kitchen Cookbook” will move forward with the successful growth of the brand, providing a fantastic opportunity to tap into a bit of everything. With over 100 inspirational recipes from the show, it will bring together new ideas from some of the nation’s favourite chefs, cutting-edge recipes from fresh talent, a variety of different cuisine from all around the world and a wealth of tips on current food topics.
I do quite enjoy Saturday Kitchen, and some of the recipes from the series are quite good or at least inspiring.
This is a nice book with great recipes and lots of lovely photographs. Buy it from Amazon.
Having a love affair with bacon
Wonderfully amusing article in the Guardian on bringing home the bacon.
With sales of gourmet rashers on the rise, it seems Britons can’t get enough bacon. Tim Hayward is no exception but, tired of shelling out a small fortune on the stuff, he decided to follow in his grandmother’s footsteps and cure his own …
Baked Mushrooms
This is an excellent choice as a vegetarian main course, or as an accompaniment.
Take some portobello mushrooms (these are the big flat ones) remove the stalk. Add some olive oil and butter. Cover the mushrooms with breadcrumbs, fresh herbs and parmesan. You could if you wanted add garlic as well.
Bake in the oven for about twenty minutes until the topping is golden brown.
Serve.
Go on, make me feel even worse…
So there I was saying how much I didn’t enjoy Young’s Scampi when I read on the BBC today about how ludricously Young’s catch their langoustine (scampi) off the shores of Scotland, ship them to Thailand for peeling, ship them to Grimsby for breading before moving them by lorry down to me here in the south-west.
It sounds mad: shipping UK-caught langoustine thousands of miles to be processed, then back again to be turned into breaded scampi and put on sale.
Now I feel even worse…
Don’t visit the supermarket at Christmastime…
Well you walk around the supermarket this Christmas, do not under any circumstances be tempted by the Christmas prepared goodies you see on the shelves. You will find that you are much better off, cooking nice recipes yourself, as often these (so-called) goodies are just full of sugar or have even less of the nice stuff in it then the label or name suggests.
The Guardian sent three foodie experts to test out the goodies from leading supermarkets.
This year, you don’t even need to peel a potato for Christmas dinner. From gourmet seafood starters to exotically stuffed turkeys and hand-decorated cakes, you can buy all your celebration food ready made from the supermarket. But do these time-saving dishes taste any good? Our three expert foodies tested ranges from the five leading chains.
One thing for example, is roast potatoes cooked in duck fat, well you would think that was roast potatoes cooked in duck fat wouldn’t you. Well they aren’t they are roast potatoes cooked with 2% duck fat and a lot of rape seed oil!
Cook your own (organic) potatoes, get some duck or goose fat and use that, don’t buy the prepared veg, cook your own!