All Activity

I can get a lot of different fish and seafood sausages here. Cod, cuttlefish, squid spring to mind. They all also contain pork and its fat. Cod Sausages I never buy them. I prefer my fish and seafood never to be sausaged!

@AAQuesada I listened yesterday evening while on stage 32 of Botrytis Cinerea. I'm struck by how 'different' he sounds these days. He's made several appearances in UK media recently discussing his mental health problems, and seems noticably medicated at times. Hopefully he's back on track after some dark times.

Spaghetti with Bean Sauce and Coffee from a recipe in essen & trinken - great recipe which really shows why we like essen & trinken so much. The ingredients might not sound like they would work together but in the end everything flows together - Saltiness from the pancetta, earthy from lima beans, coffee for some bitterness, some spiciness from black pepper, pears for some sweetness and pecorino to bring it all together with its umami. You saute some pancetta, onion, garlic and lima beans, cook it a few minutes with vegetable broth and puree it. In parallel, you caramelized a little bit of sugar, dissolve it in pear juice and cook diced pears and some butter until you can mash it into pear sauce. You grind coffee beans and black pepper corns to a medium grind. Once you have cooked the spaghetti you use some pasta water, pecorino and the coffee-pepper grind to build an emulsion, add the spaghetti, bean puree and some pear sauce. Serve topped with a little bit more pear sauce and additional pecorino

Something very simple for the evening meal tonight: Almond cashew milk sweetened with one plump Medjool date. I don't have a clue about the staining shown in the image. The bottle was perfectly clean before adding the nut milk, and the milk doesn't show any discoloration in the drinking glass, nor does it have an off or odd taste <shrug> This was an experiment as I was running low on almonds and didn't want to open a fresh package. I had an opened bag of cashews left over from a recent chicken tikka masala dish, so I added them to the mix and ended up with a 2/3 - 1/3 mix of almonds and cashews. Soaked those puppies about 10 hours with one complete change of water, threw a quart of 34-degree filtered water into the blender, added that plump date and a three-finger pinch of Diamond Crystal. Whirred it around, filtered it, and crossed my fingers for the best. The result was quite good ... I had no expectations, just a hope that the mixture would work out, and it did. Going forward, considering the price of the almonds and the deal I can get on cashews, I may just make this blend more often. Not long ago, I found a local source for fresh, refrigerated coconut chunks, so almond-coconut milk will go into the rotation along with the more usual straight almond milk.

Speaking of.. This is a really nice food podcast - Go-To Food Podcast -featuring UK Chefs/restauranteurs. Including the latest with HB For anyone interested I'll post the link below

Dried currants are a lie! lol they are just dried 'champagne' grapes (those really small ones). Although I prefer to lie to myself and say they aren't raisins (still grossed out from childhood lol)

I think you need to try it and report back. But imo currants are superior to raisins in butter tarts.

Batch 42: 90g blanched Spanish almonds 90g apricot kernels 350g water 280g sugar 60ml Wray & Nephew Overproof And I got a chance to use my new homogenizer!

Thank you! That sounds fantastic.

Grill eggplant over charcoal: Grilled eggplant salad (yam makreua yao) from Thai Food: Cool and peel eggplant, then mix with mint leaves, sliced shallot, chopped scallion, lime juice, chile powder, and fish sauce. Serve topped with ground dried shrimp and steamed eggs. Temporary bachelor meal because Mrs. C is out of town and does not like the texture of mushy eggplant.

I had a lot of corn to use up, so I blended some of it in a vitamix with salt and pepper and a splash of milk, then strained it. Then I just cooked some sliced shallots in butter until soft, added in the corn liquid until it was warm, then stirred in some corn kernels, a handful of Parmesan and a handful of shredded basil. Season to taste. Pretty simple.

Duh! It gets worse! I'm an idiot. The Chinese for 'fig' is 无花果 (wú huā guǒ) which literally means 'no flower fruit'. Reminder to self: Don't post before your second coffee of the morning.

I'm clearly fig ignorant. The only figs we get here are dried. I've never bought them. They're usually used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

I made something called Molten Brownie Bites in the Takoyaki pan tonight. Pictures show them both cooking and the finished product. These are great little fudgy things. When I put the batter in the pan I I inserted chocolate chips in the middle of each one. Eating them warm, as we are doing, and you get that nice melty centre. I've got some other things I want to do with this pan. Fair warning - octopus balls will not be among them.

Not a huge pasta fan but this one hit hard… carbonara base, sautéed local corn, orange garden tomato seen below, pancetta and some fish pepper.

The "flower" part of figs is internal to the fruit and are pollinated by wasps that burrow into the centre. So bees can't make honey from them. However, fig trees can produce fruit parthenocarpically, without pollination.

Digging around has revealed that there is something called "fig honey", but it isn't honey at all and not made by bees, but people. It's a syrup made from figs. How to Make Fig Honey

I’ve never seen fig honey either. Maybe the figs are sweet enough as is. Or because figs are generally pollinated by wasps so the bees take their business elsewhere.

Lemongrass chicken with home grown lemongrass and chillies. Cucumber salad

Thanks! Nothing like a little pig fat and cream to smooth out the swordfish! I get a weekly fish share from a local community supported fishery group. They’ve started a side business to convert their fish scraps into fertilizer. I’m thinking sausage could be more lucrative 🙃 I’ll see what they think!

Do, the bees harvest the figs for nectar? My friend who recently sent me lychees from the family lychee farm also sends me lychee honey which I like a lot. Never seen fig honey, though.

Not homemade - from Boston, apparently. Mrs. C picked them up at our local seafood market. Edit: I think she was hoping they were like the delicious smoked swordfish we had in Puerto Vallarta, which tasted like pastrami. No ideal why it hasn't caught on globally, I wish we could get something like that locally.

And still is. It was also one of late French mother's short list of favourites to cook and eat. The dish was named in Honour of Napoleon after his victory in the Battle of Marengo, Italy. Rice is certainly eaten (and grown) in France and my mother and grandmother both served it with this dish. Corn is gaining acceptance but still not common.

My kitchen floor is sticky because I spilled lime juice on it.

The local hospital carries those traction socks and hands them out to patients. I think I must have 4 or 6 pairs of them now. I really like them.