Chinatown and Year of the Rooster

Had to get the tube at Leicester Square today, so decided to take a brief detour through Chinatown. Lots of red lanterns everywhere still, very pretty, although the main Chinese New Year celebrations were a couple of days ago, on Sunday, I think.

The pastry shops seem to have lots of cream cakes these days, unusual for Chinatown, and not very different from the cream cakes we see in the Turkish shops. I wonder where this trend comes from. Green tea as a flavoring still seems to be popular though, and the bakeries all had a version of a green tea flavored Swiss roll.

Purple sweet potatoes at See Woo supermarket on Lisle street, rather expensive, though. Lots of seafood, with tanks of live lobsters and crabs, among other things.

Krachai and red Java apples at the shop on Gerrard Street opposite Loon Fung, I can't remember the shop's name at the moment.

Saw packets of dark red granules labelled Dried Red Yeast in Loon Fung and one of the other main supermarkets. Never noticed that before. The only instructions on one of the packets was to rinse with water before using. Is this the wine yeast that's used to make red-fermented bean curd, perhaps?

Bought a packet of licorice-flavored preserved kumquats, because I remember having them, and licorice-flavored preserved plums, when I was first in London many years ago, and one of my in-laws was living in Hong Kong at the time.

Found that my favourite pastry shop, Kowloon, at the end of Gerrard Street, was still going, and bought one of those fried sesame-coated balls of dough with a red bean paste filling, because I hadn't had one in a long while.

Apple Tasitng Notes 2015

 Part 1 - July/August

These are notes from apples acquired early in the season, July/August, so mostly from windfall apples that weren't quite ready yet, apart from the George Cave apples.

George Cave:  Bright red skin.

Lady Henniker:  Very waxy skin.

Maldon Wonder:

Duchess of Oldenburg:  Slightly tart.

Emneth Early:

Pronounced ridges. Waxy skin.  Soft, dense flesh.  Slightly juicy.  Slightly sour, but I think it's supposed to be a cooker. Emneth is in Cambridgeshire.

Part 2 - October

James Grieve:

Bright red and yellow skin, red stripes on yellow background. Skin is quite waxy. Flesh is cream to white with yellow-green veins. Flesh is soft, very juicy, tastes a bit bitter, overall taste is just like apple juice. Perhaps these were riper than ones we've tasted in previous years, I seem to remember them being rather more tart. Skin is thin, a bit chewy. Bought at a farmer's market. These are early apples and so don't keep for very long.


Princess Russet:

Yellow to pinkish-beige colour under the brown russetting. Yellow flesh. Quite sweet.

Crisp, crunchy, dense flesh, not very juicy. Some herbal notes - maybe like fennel - in the rough skin.

Herefordshire Russet:

Skin is yellow-green with a flush of orange under the russetting.  Rough skin, due to the russetting.  Creamy to yellow flesh. Very sweet. Soft, moderately dense flesh,  moderately juicy. Mellow apple juice flavour. Very nice. Really like this one. I am beginning to really appreciate russet apples.

The second one we tasted had some spicy, herbal notes.

Ashmead's Kernel:

Skin is green with pale red flush and red stripes under the russetting. Not quite ripe yet, probably better later in the season. Skin is rougher than Herefordshire Russet, lots of russetting, flesh is white to creamy, and more juicy. A bit sharp, probably because it's not ready yet, but also sweet. When we tasted some properly ripe ones last year, they had a lovely balance of flavours.

Pitmaston Pineapple:

Yellow skin. Skin is a bit rough and chewy. The apples we got this year are very small. Yellow flesh, crisp, coarse textured, quite juicy, mellow flavour with a hint of pineapple.

Part 3 - November

John Standish:

Small apples with bright red skin. Thin skin. White flesh with red veins. The first one we tasted had a rather dry mealy texture. May be past its best. Tastes like it might have a nice balance of flavours though, a little bit sweet, a little bit acid.

Newton Wonder:

Waxy skin. Hard, dense flesh. Moderately juicy. A little bit tart. I think these are supposed to be dual purpose dessert/cookers.

Adam's Pearmain:

Very pronounced pear shape.  Hard, moderately juicy flesh, slightly sweet,  nice flavour.

Our previous tastings led to quite different conclusions. The year before last we tasted them for the first time, perhaps they were past their best, we didn't think much of the flavour, so we thought maybe it was the distinctive shape that made them interesting.

But then the ones we tasted last year, we thought, that's quite a nice apple.

October

It's October, which means it's time for Apple Festivals, and also Chocolate Week.

Chocolate Week is this week in the UK, 12 - 18 October, 2015, and it's not too late to catch The Chocolate Show at Olympia, whch runs from 16 - 18 October, 2015.

Five Recipes from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

I haven't called this post Five Favourite Recipes as I've only recently started cooking from this book, so I've only tried about five recipes so far.

What I loved about the book when I first got it out from the public library was that it uses ingredients which I have bought and stockpiled in my pantry, and then never got around to using because I didn't have that many recipes that used them. Ingredients like dried Iranian limes, freekeh (Egyptian smoked green wheat), soba noodles, large Israeli couscous/Sardinian fregola, and pomegranate molasses.

There are a few recipes using quinoa, an ingredient that hasn't yet made it into my already overstocked pantry, and barley. While I had previously bookmarked a few recipes for barlotto ('risotto' made with barley) from various sources, I have yet to cook any of them.

I also noticed a recipe that uses verjuice, and a bean recipe that uses lovage, a herb that I have been growing in my garden for several years, but have only used the occasional few leaves (the taste is quite strong) for pea and lovage soup, a River Cottage recipe.

Many of the recipes include at least a sprinkling of fresh herbs.

So here are 5 of the recipes I have tried so far.

1. Soba Noodles with Aubergine and Mango.
soba noodles, aubergine, mango, lime, rice vinegar, fresh herbs.

Seems like an unusual combination, but it was really good, the only thing was that it seemed very acid, perhaps next time I would reduce the amount of vinegar.

The price sticker on my packet of soba noodles said 89p, the price when I looked recently in a Korean/Japanese food shop was more like £4.89, an indication of how long the noodles had been in my pantry (and of high inflation - I can't remember when I had bought the noodles, but probably not longer ago than 2010).

2. Itamar's Bulghar Pilaf.
bulgur, onions, red peppers, currants, spices.

Very colorful and tasty, the only problem with this was that the whole coriander seeds were a bit of a nuisance  when trying to eat it, I think next time I will substitute them with ground coriander.

3. Freekeh Pilaf.
 freekeh, onions, stock, spices, fresh herbs, pine nuts, yogurt.

This tasted lovely, similar to a mushroom risotto. The wheat grains had a slightly chewy texture. I made it with some chicken stock that I happened to have in the fridge. This was the first time that I had cooked or eaten  freekeh.

4. Burnt Aubergine with Tahini.
 aubergines, tahini, pomegranate molasses, lemon, garlic, parsley, pomegranate.

I love aubergines, and this will be one more recipe to add to my repertoire of aubergine dips.

I skipped the tomatoes and cucumbers, and didn' t have any pomegranate seeds on hand to scatter over the top as decoration.

In the photo in the book, this dish looks very white, as if it had yogurt on top, as well as the pomegranate seeds, but no yogurt is called for in the recipe. My version turned out looking more dark grey, like mud, but was very delicious nevertheless.

5. Black Pepper Tofu.
tofu, chilies, garlic, black pepper, spring onions, soy sauce.

I had bookmarked a very similar recipe from Spice Trip, by Stevie Parle and Emma Grazette, but for some reason we opted to make the Ottolenghi version. Not sure if we used the full amount of black peppercorns.

Bradwell - The Ultimate Rip-Off

This was never meant to be a political blog, but I just could not believe my ears when I heard the news earlier today.

Not only is China, still a totalitarian country, going to build a nuclear power station at Bradwell, we - through our taxes - are going to guarantee them a huge amount of money to build it, and then guarantee them twice the going rate for any energy they produce, for many years to come.

What kind of Third World country has Britain become that we have to invite a foreign power to be in control of our nuclear energy?

You would never know that Britain was the home of the Industrial Revolution, and that there are still plenty of British universities producing engineering graduates year after year.

Why have we elected a government that is going to sell us down the river like this?

Five Favourite Recipes from Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti

I just heard on BBC Radio 4's Food Programme (Sundays at 12:30 pm, Mondays at 3:30 pm),  that next week's edition, part of the Food Heroes series, will feature Mary Taylor Simeti, so I decided that this should be my next list.

1. Caponata - Sweet and Sour Eggplant.
aubergines/eggplants, celery, green olives, capers, tomato sauce, vinegar, cocoa powder.

I love aubergines, and Mary Taylor Simeti's version includes the optional use of cocoa powder, a baroque touch, which I always add.

Caponata

2. Pesto Trapanese.
garlic, basil, almonds, tomatoes, olive oil.

This Sicilian pesto uses ground almonds instead of Parmesan cheese, and is a hit with me because mature cheeses give me headaches.

3. Pasta Capricciosa - Pasta with Capers and Mint.
tomato sauce, garlic, capers, mint, cream.

4. Fegato ai Sette Cannoli - Sette Cannoli's Liver.
winter squash, garlic, mint, wine vinegar (actually a vegan recipe).

The author explains that Sette Cannoli was a poor neighborhood in Palermo.

5. Cuddureddi - Christmas Cookies.
filled with figs, walnuts, almonds, raisins, citrus peel, chocolate, honey, vino cotto, spices.

D decided that they were not unlike mince pies.

Five Favourite Recipes from An Invitation to Italian Cooking by Antonio Carluccio

My top 5 of the recipes I've tried from An Invitation to Italian Cooking.

1. Pollo al Forno con Patate -  Roast Chicken with Potatoes.
chicken, potatoes, onion, unpeeled garlic cloves,  rosemary.

2. Peperoni Fritti con Aglio, Capperi e Aceto - Fried Peppers with Garlic, Capers and Vinegar.

3. Pasticcio di Polenta - Timbale of Polenta.
polenta, tomato sauce, cheese (fontina, Gorgonzola, Parmesan).

4. Patate Fritte con Aglio e Rosmarino - Fried Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary.
potatoes, olive oil, unpeeled garlic cloves, rosemary.
a fried meatless version of 1.

5. Stewed Quinces.
serve with mascarpone.

I discovered after I'd had it for some time, that my paperback edition of the book is slightly abridged, and this last recipe was one that was missing from it.

Stewed Quinces

Stewed Quinces

Harvest 2015, Peas

Harvested a grand total of 9 peas from 3 pea plants. Peas are green and wrinkled.

I grew a variety of old-fashioned peas called Nec Plus Ultra, in containers. They were supposed to be tall peas, up to 6 ft, and indeed, even in the relatively small containers they got to a good 4-5 ft. They had white flowers, but only set 1 or 2 pods per plant. So I had one plant with a single pod and 3 peas, one plant with 2 small pods each with 1 pea, and the third plant had 2 pods with 2 peas each.

I sowed another 3 plants a while after the first 3, and those did not fare very well. One got munched by something at a very early stage, the second one had the tip munched by something, but survived, only to die off after getting maybe 18 inches high, and the third one seems also about to die off.

Peas, beans and broad beans seem to have been attacked by all colours of aphids - black, green, yellow, this year, and have not done very well.

I grew some black beans, which did not grow more than maybe 4 inches tall,  got attacked by some very small insects at a very early stage, and gradually died off. I had given up on them, when one of the plants produced pale violet flowers, and set one small bean pod which, at a couple of inches long, is quite large compared to the size of the plant.

But our raspberry canes and morello cherry tree have had good crops, so it's not been all bad.

Five Favourite Recipes from The Complete Spanish Cookbook by Jacki Passmore

This is not a vegetarian cookbook, but most of the recipes I have cooked from it involve medleys of Mediterranean vegetables, although if you want to split hairs, courgettes, tomatoes and peppers came originally from the New World.

My top 5 recipes:

1. Samfaina - Catalan Braised Vegetable Sauce.
red peppers, onions, aubergines, zucchini, tomatoes.

Samfaina

2. Tumbret - Mallorca Vegetable Flan.
aubergines, potatoes, green peppers, onion, tomatoes.

3. Pisto Castellano - Braised Peppers and Aubergine.
red peppers, green peppers, aubergines, onion, tomatoes.

4. Pisto de Calabacin - Braised Zucchini.
red peppers, zucchini, onions, tomatoes.

Pisto de Calabacin

5. Pimientos a la Chilindron - Pepper Casserole.
red peppers, onion, tomatoes, bacon or jamon serrano.

Five Favourite Ethnic Cookbooks

Since I'm not managing to post much, I thought I would try to kick-start something by posting lists. And to start things off, a list of favourite cookery books that I have cooked international dishes from.

1. Chinese
Lucille Liang - Chinese Regional Cooking

2. North African
Time-Life Foods of the World - A Quintet of Cuisines

3. Indian
Madhur Jaffrey - Flavours of India

4. Spanish
Jacki Passmore - The Complete Spanish Cookbook

5. Jewish
Claudia Roden -  The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey From Samarkand to New York

I think I'm going to extend the list though, as I soon realised that there were some favorites missing.


6. Sicilian
Mary Taylor Simeti - Sicilian Food

7. Mexican
Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz - The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking

8. Middle Eastern
Arto der Haroutunian - Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East 

9. French
The Roux Brothers - French Country Cooking

10. Indonesian
Sri Owen - The Home Book of Indonesian Cooking

Azzurro!

Blue, blue sky today, without a cloud in sight,
looks like a postcard for somewhere tropical,
except that the green are mainly deciduous broadleaf
trees rather than palm trees. Intending to enjoy
the mini-heat wave while it lasts.

Chocolate Week

This week is chocolate week in the UK, usually I only realise it after it's been and gone. I'm afraid the big Chocolate Show at Olympia is a bit expensive for me, (not sure where I got this idea, I think I must have confused it with some of the other events, because on looking back I found that it was only about 14 pounds or so, so try again next year) but look out for special events and tastings at department store chocolate counters.

I managed to get a taste of some chili chocolate by Melt. The chocolate had chili seeds in it, but I didn't really taste much chili heat, maybe I didn't get any bits of chili in the pieces of chocolate that I tasted. Still, the chocolate was very smooth and creamy, I was really impressed.

I also tasted two very different chocolates from Madagascar, one from Madecasse, which was supposed to have lots of citrusy notes, but I don't think I was able to taste them, and another 70% chocolate made in  Belgium by a chocolatier whose name I can't remember because I had not heard of him before (I think it is Benoit Nihant). The second one I really liked.

Spring Watch 2014 Part 3

Our tulips have finally started to bloom, maybe a couple of days ago. Most years they start to come in just as the daffodils are finishing, but this year they're a bit later, which seems odd because we've had a mild winter. My lilies of the valley seem early, in contrast. Some seem to be well under way, about an inch or more above ground, and with flower stalks forming already. Usually I start to see them coming up around the beginning of April, and by May the first they're in bloom, except last year, they were somewhat later.

What I think is an ornamental crab apple near the local library was in full bloom today - a spectacular dark purplish-red. The pear trees are also in full bloom.

The bees are happy in the back garden at the moment - lots of purple flowers to keep them busy - we have spring-flowering heather, lots of pulmonarias, and the rosemary is still in bloom.  A borage plant that seeded itself in the front garden is also currently in bloom.

Having seen Jamie Oliver, I think, as well as probably James Wong, on TV telling us that various types of flowers are edible, we decided to taste the rosemary flowers, not expecting them to taste of a lot,  but surprisingly they taste very strongly of rosemary!

Spring Watch 2014 Part 2

Went for another walk around the neighborhood to have a look at the spring flowers on the Sunday before last, March 23rd. The pear trees were just about to blossom, just not quite there yet. We saw some of the first tulips, some pale greenish white ones, and some pale greenish cream ones, delicate colours that I really like. I remember when I was first in England, complaining that all the tulips here seemed to be red! We got hailed on briefly two or three times during our walk, only for a few seconds each time, small hail that looked like large salt granules. We saw more camellias and magnolias in bloom, some just starting, some nearly over. The peach trees that D grew from seed  were also in bloom, pretty, largish violet-pink flowers. My white hyacinths had also flowered - they have a lovely but very, very delicate scent.

Seasonal Foods 2014, Part 1

So far this year we have had oranges.

The Seville oranges are usually in the shops in January,

Seville orange

but this year we also found the first blood oranges from Sicily in January, somewhat earlier than usual.

Sicilian blood orange

This year we also discovered something new, green oranges from Jamaica. They were lovely and sweet when you eat them as recommended on this website.

http://www.mysilversands.com/content/oranges.aspx

Jamaican green orange

D made a lovely Seville orange meringue pie, using the recipe from Rachel Allen's Bake.

This is a link to a Mary Berry recipe for Seville Orange Meringue Pie:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sevilleoprangemering_71465

Spring Is Breaking Out All Over

Today was sunny for the most part, but there was a strong breeze at times, and after an unseasonal 19 degrees last Sunday, it felt rather cold.

Back from yet another job interview early in the afternoon, I changed into warmer clothes and decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood and catch up with the advance of spring, afraid that I might have missed the magnolias.

It was a lovely afternoon for a de-stressing walk,  with the sun shining, and lots of spring flowers everywhere, it just lifted your mood.

Our daffodils came out around the 22nd of February, this year, not at all early, in spite of the mild winter, and are just about finished, but there are still plenty in the neighboring gardens. Tulips are not out yet, but there were lots of hellebores in full flower, some snowdrops and primulas,  small purple hyacinths, and lots of bergenias. The forsythias are in full bloom, a glorious splash of yellow. Most camellias are just starting, and I saw two of the ones with bubble-gum pink flowers that I really like. The mimosa tree is in bloom, and so is the deeply coral japonica quince (Japonica glistens like coral, in all of the neighboring gardens,...). One lovely dark pink magnolia was in full bloom. The large one at the top of the road was mostly over, and starting to show leaves, and some of the early flowering cherries are in bloom. A lovely time of year.

Apple Daze

Today is Apple Day in the UK, or at least the anniversary of the first apple day held in 1990, and October is these days the time for Apple Festivals all around the country.

We have been to a few events in the past few weeks, the largest and most impressive, of course, being the Apple Festival at the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale (near Faversham) in Kent.

We have enjoyed ourselves, despite the wet and sometimes cold weather, and have seen lots and lots of different apple varieties, tasted several, and bought a few.

We continue to be astonished by the diversity of sizes, shapes, colors, flavours and textures that apples come in, that we had no idea about until a few years ago.

The photos were taken by D, under challenging conditions. It was raining heavily a lot of the time, and by the end of the last day water had got inside the camera. Fortunately he managed to dry the camera out!

The apples in the photo above are Red Elstar. You can find out more about all the different apple varieties on the National Fruit Collection's website.

Another website that has lots of information about heritage apple varieties is Orange Pippin.

Edward VII

Lord Lambourne

Knobby Russet

Starkrimson

Yellow Belleflower

September Beauty

Gelbe Trierer Weinapfel

Francis

Pumpkin Sweet

Wellspur Delicious

Woolbrook Russet

Below are photos of some of the apples on display indoors at Brogdale. This year's displays were arranged in alphabetical order.

Alastair Cannon White

Antonovka Grammovaya

Kaiser Franz Joseph

More indoor displays from another festival.

Beauty of Hants

Catshead

George Cave

Herring's Pippin

Hoary Morning

Powell's Russet

Red Ellison

Sturmer Pippin

Below are three of the varieties that were for sale at one of the festivals.

Kidd's Orange Red

Ribston Pippin

Catherine

The Brogdale festival included pears as well as apples, so we also got a guided tour of the pear orchard.

Plymouth pears are very tiny pears that you wouldn't want to eat, but they are the ancestors of our modern pears, so they are in the collection as a genetic resource.

Plymouth pear

Black Worcester pear

The Black Worcester pear is a cooking pear,  with an interesting history involving Queen Elizabeth I, and it appears on the Worcester coat of arms. You can read more about it here.

I just realised that I never got around to blogging about our previous visits to apple festivals in 2011 and 2012, so I will try to write up some of those  in a later post.

Also tasting notes to come.

September 2013

September 12th:
The perils of food growing: most of the nearly-ripe tomatoes, plus a couple of the still-green ones, have split because of this week's rain. C'est la vie.

September 11th:
Saw what we think is a hornet in our front garden.  Never seen anything like it before. It's quite large, about as wide as a honeybee and maybe three or more times as long, with a bright yellow end, and a burgundy colored thorax. The first time I saw it, about a week ago, it seemed to keep bumping against one of our rosemary plants, which are not in flower at the moment. Scary.

September 6th:
It seems that traditional French milk producers are just as beleaguered as their English counterparts.
Here is a link to a campaign to save traditional milk production, http://sauvonslelait.fr/ and an appeal set to music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guMYOFphto&feature=youtu.be
which I came across via a link from Clotilde's blog, Chocolate and Zucchini.

September 1st:
At last the tomatoes are starting to go yellow.  They are a yellow variety from the Heritage Seed Library, Scotland Yellow.
Hopefully they will ripen before blight sets in, otherwise I have a recipe for Green Tomato Curry from Floyd's India. Last year's attempts to grow tomatoes were a total disaster.

Found some fresh pistachio nuts in the shops. They have a thin leathery outer skin, pink to black in colour. When you peel that off you get the hard shell that we are used to seeing on pistachios. The texture of the fresh pistachio kernels is similar to that of fresh hazelnuts.

Bought some Turkish-style ice cream, dondurma. Ice cream is made in Linton, Cambridgeshire. Contains salep, and doesn't seem to contain cream, so maybe a low-fat type of ice cream. The color was very white, unusual for cow's milk ice cream, and more like some goat's milk ice cream that we had at a Food Festival in Hyde Park in the early '90's.

August 2013

In the photo:
Greens that I have been growing, with seeds from Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library.
Left to right: top row - Asparagus lettuce (celtuce), lettuce var. Liller, lettuce var. Amish Deer Tongue,
lettuce var. Bath Cos,  bottom row - chrysanthemum greens, turnip var. Nabica (grown for the leaves),
callaloo (amaranth) var. Mrs. McGhie.


August 17th:
Bought some Iranian ice cream in a Turkish food shop. Ice cream is made by the Village Bakery in East Finchley. Decorated with pistachios and flavoured with rose water and salep,
tastes like Turkish delight, unusual and very, very nice.

August 10th:
Bought some green olives to cure. Apparently they come from Cyprus. Surprised to see green olives in August, I thought they were supposed to arrive in October, and was surprised last year when I found some in  the shops in September. Attempting to cure them in 20% brine. Hopefully that will stop them growing moulds.

Went to see a play in St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch. I  think this is the church in the Oranges and Lemons rhyme, as in "When I grow rich say the bells of Shoreditch.''

August 4th:
Tasted white currants possibly for the first time. Taste not as distinctive as that of blackcurrants or redcurrants.

Spring at last

It's been a long hard winter, and it seemed like it was never going to end. The first daffodil in our front garden finally bloomed on March 10th, several weeks later than usual, and it was so cold they kept going until about the 23rd of April, by which time the tulips were nearly ready. The cherry plums that normal bloom in early to mid-February were at least a month later this year.

But over the last 3 weeks or so, the daytime temperatures finally climbed above 10 degrees celsius, and we've also had several sunny days, and nature has fast-forwarded. The lilies of the valley were barely breaking through the ground a few weeks ago, but they've nearly got to full-size, although this year they weren't in bloom on May 1st, the flower buds aren't ready to open yet.

But the red camellia across the street suddenly put on a spectacular display, with all the flowers opening at once. The magnolias flowered, and all of the ornamental cherries. Today I noticed that the cherries with the  large pompon-like pink flowers are in full bloom. Our Morello cherry is also in full bloom.

Our rhubarb, which I usually reckon is big enough to eat around Easter, is nearly there, and I'm planning to cook some of it over the weekend.

And so we have fast-forwarded to the first bank holiday of the summer. It's been obvious that we're marching towards summer since the days are much longer and the sunlight wakes me at 5 am,
but since it's been so cold and gray, and all the spring flowers were behind schedule, it was difficult not to feel that it was still winter.