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marlena spieler

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Everything posted by marlena spieler

  1. marmite. salt and vinegar. the dill flavour one from cascade is it? garlic and sour cream/spring onion and yogurt i like em very light and crisp, not the heavy handmade kettle chip type. but i do try to avoid them all as they are my downfall. and don't even MENTION the dip.
  2. but before we turn our thoughts to lunch: a little slice of fresh (French, the kind in a log without any crust, the kind that the welsh do really well, too, except that french was what was in my fridge) goats cheese sprinkled with thyme.
  3. When in Greece and Italy friends have teased me (referring to the whole American/British fascination with the mediterranean diet) by describing their "Mediterranean diet breakfast" as : coffee and a fag. so this morning i had the mediterranean breakfast without the cigarette. then ate a big fat banana and the sweetest little satsuma ever. i mean, that banana was so fragrant, so firm yet sweet and yielding. same for the satsuma: when the peel just rolls off the flesh, and its juicy with the right balance of sweet and tart and citrus fragrance......then you think about most supermarket produce: so dull and boring. soba, glad you're enjoying blog. the whole milk in tea thing seems to have taken over tea in britain, not quite sure exactly when though no doubt its there in the miasma of tea literature out there--i'm sure its in one of the many the books on my shelf. not everyone takes milk in their tea though. sometimes people take nothing at all, and even though you hardly see tea with lemon in general, it is there..... you find it in posh or genteel tea rooms or restaurants, served in nice delicate cup and saucer...... not necessarily in the big hefty mugs that much of britain drinks its tea from. and i think: you know, tea with milk is delicious in a mug, tea with lemon is delicious in a cup and saucer.... ...... was awake half the night trying to think of what i was going to serve to you all today........ will report after Lunch!
  4. we don't have a selection of exotic ice creams here, alas, but we do have the excellent hill station ice cream. tonight it practically flung open the freezer door itself and insinuated itself into my bow: an english company owned by two americans who love ice cream. the chocolate is modelled on paris' bertillon, and its good, the coffee ice cream is wonderful too. (i'm not so fond of the coffee spice flavor) and most of the other flavors are spices: cinnamon, ginger, vanilla bean, and there is a coconut rum i think. anyhow: my favourite: cardomom. i've got a bowl of cardomom ice cream in my chubby hands as i tap; cardomom ice cream is so exotically fragrant.........good with poached peaches except we don't have any, this being winter and all..... husband has a bowl of---haagen-dazs, how mainstream can we be? but this is banoffee caramel pie flavour, and he is treating the whole container as if it were an ice cream bar. has he no dignity? he's only small and he's eating the whole bloomin' container! time for a digestif i think.
  5. 20th february 04, evening: a happy fog has settled around prince of wales close tonight (my home) because this is what the inhabitants inside have dined on: hot crumbed goats cheese salad: cheese from poiteau-charentes, mild and milky-tangy, coated with homemade garlic crumbs and broiled until hot and just that wee bit melty; leafy salad part: watercress, butter lettuce, paper thin red onion, beetroot, thinly sliced cucumber, extra virgin and white wine vinegar. pinch of thyme. Potatoes browned in home rendered duck fat, with shallots, garlic, chives, porcini mushrooms and milk which sort of bound it together gratin style. generous grating of nutmeg. we drank a vin de pays from the languedoc, which was wonderful with the earthy mushroom- potatoes, but with the cheese, it went sweet and berry-ish.....only thing for it was to have another bite of potatoes. The cheese was a very very ripe chaource and was flogged at a discount because we seem to be the only people within a 70 mile radius who like ripe cheeses (and to think that 4 miles away, the boats sail to france). anyhow, i think this is the best chaource ever. in fact, i meant to just have a teeny bit but have now gone back for more. and i just know that this will not be the end of it..... dessert is: pears lightly poached with lemongrass with lime........an idea inspired by the ingredients of fridge: pears, lemongrass, limes....... lets have a taste: yummmm. this is like reality tv, reality egullet, its live folks......what will i eat next? what will you eat next? excuse me one second.........[ever so genteel burp]......i do beg your pardon. i'd like to say "see you for breakfast", but there is some ice cream in my freezer. will keep you posted.
  6. It seems as if I've neglected to mention the endless cups of tea we drink. Strong tea, with low fat milk. no sugar for moi. when i lived in america i always made proper tea, in a pot, using loose leaves. when i moved to britain everyone made tea using bags and what happened to my standards! however, if you must use bags, and i think i must, squeeze the teabags well to extract all of the flavourful tea juice. there is, of course, a raging debate as to which is better: tea in the cup and then milk? or milk in the cup and then tea? it actually changes the chemical composition of the brew: has to do with temperature and milk proteins and colloids forming. i'm a milk in second person, and only a little milk at that.
  7. you know, i like a bit of yeast sauce, and cottage cheese, and i'd even go so far as to think that the corned beef powder might be a bit of a treat, and i like to be surprised and shocked gastronomically a bit, but i mean..... pureed spaghetti. marie-rose sauce (ketchup and mayonnaise) baked beans weatabix horlicks (more and more, but those are the only ones i can remember from the menus at the moment) i mean we can see that he's being clever and trying to come up with a home-grown british ingredients dazzling menus, a sort of el brit-bulli...... but there is intellectual stimulation and then there is just plain good or bad food. also, for the prices i too lift an eyebrow at the description: Very carefully cooked (fish)..... and his ignorance about steak and meat is suprising..... i guess he'd better stick with the pureed spaghetti. and i'm not trying to be unkind but i feel a certain cynicism in his food...sorry.....
  8. Thanks, Rhea, now: slave aka husband, has just come back from food shopping for this blog. here is what he got: haggis--he's scots. last week we ate vegetarian haggis which was very good and almost as heavy as the original meaty one rutabaga, some creamy little potatoes, five packages of vacuum packed beetroot (am i going to have to call this the beet-flog?), three logs of fresh perky goats cheese from poiteau-charentes, unsalted butter from a farm in somerset, pecorino, chaorce that has been discounted cause its getting on in age, and......two cucumbers. just ate a pear. possible dinner plans: a little moulded timbale of haggis, and rutabaga, but after last nights meaty dinner and this afternoons spicy bean soup, i'm thinking salad and either a tart of goat cheese and spring onions, or mariolle and pear....or spaghetti with goat cheese and basil. On the other hand the temperature has just dipped and i kind of fancy some potatoes with porcini mushrooms...... will let you know as we grow hungrier this evening, and i head into the kitchen.
  9. uh.....actually my secret dream is to be a stand-up commedian who entertains the troops.......and gives out recipes here and there, maybe even cooks a meal or two..... i sort of live my life like this even though there is no camera on me so far as i can tell.........
  10. Gotta keep my strength up: 1 little satsuma: i love these! so sweet and tangy and perfumed, all wrapped up into one tiny citrus fruit, and hey: hardly any seeds, and so easy to peel! and 1 perfect wrinkly black oily salty chewy gorgeous olive. turkish olive.
  11. hi soba, my husband is a lurker. with a slightly addictive personality, he's been lurking big time. right now however he is harmlessly engaged in wandering the aisles of waitrose in search of whatever he can come home with of interest to egulleteers out there who might be eating along. should be fun to see what we're all eating tonight........
  12. Friday 20th Feb 2004 LUNCHTIME! spring being what it is, today is the wintery sort of spring day. cold. grey. so after the pork blowout i thought: warming spicy soup. started off in the lahlebi direction: i was thinking of a bowl of tender chickpeas in broth with spices etc. that i used to eat in jaffa, israel, but never can quite manage to replicate it........and anyhow, i only had one can of chicpeas (confession: i was using canned chickpeas and anything with chickpeas is really is so much better when cooked from dried). okay, the chickpeas were simmering in water in the saucepan, then i added cooked brown lentils stashed in my freezer, half a can of kidney beans leftover from a salad a few days ago, tomatoes (canned!) and lots of: sliced garlic, chopped celery inc the leaves, chopped onion, ginger, tumeric, cumin, celery seeds, a little smoked pimenton (spanish paprika) and cardomom. lamb stock from freezer. It was a little anemically thin---lots and lots of lamb stock--so i made a paste of chickpea flour and water and stirred it in. not a lot to make it thick, just to hold it all together, just before serving, i stirred into each bowlful: a spoonful of homemade green curry paste that I keep in my freezer: cilantro, green chillies, lemon grass, ginger or was it galangal, i do both depending on whats available...... and a big squirt of lime juice. we're eating our second bowlful now.
  13. melkor: thank you for photos, esp interiors of the bread....i can almost smell them! but please: a sandwich on a croissant!? promise me you won't do this, at least until we can talk this thing through. there are so many good breads to make sandwiches with......don't do this thing on a buttery, tender croissant. and carolyn: good girl! i love it: not afraid to mention nugget in vacaville with the finest bakeries in paris, london, nyc, sf, napa etc. I often go to the nugget in davis for their israeli feta cheese. really excellent!
  14. hallelujah, the red royal mail van with its little yellow crown on the side, her majesty's postal service, a big ER on the side (nothing to do with the television series)........has just pulled up....and we have pounced onto the delivery guy.......his cardboard box is just the right size for the expected bag of coffee....... open it up........we're sniffing right now. the smell of such fresh dark coffee. i'm in a state of sort of happy whining if there is such a thing. i just want to sniff and sniff and sniff.......but i'm going to force myself into action now: grind the beans and brew the coffee. before union roasters i always brought coffee back from peets and one morning, having returned with wonderful "major dick" (my affectionate term for peets finest major dickensens) my coffee grinder gave up the ghost. i was desperate and tried grinding the beans in my mortar and pestle (no one sold electric grinders in my neighbourhood at the time, i didn't have a manual grinder, nor did i have the patience to spend a day going out west to buy a grinder. i needed coffee at that minute). it didn't work and beans were flying all over the kitchen. Then i put the beans in a plastic bag and bashed at it with a hammer but the bag broke. finally i put both the beans and the hammer in a double-layer plastic bag and started smacking the floor (concrete floor, we lived in a warehouse). and that was almost okay. now i always keep two electric grinders in my kitchen at all times, though this past year i've had problems with power outages (nyc and naples, italy). i may need my own generator. 2 cups of dark roast revolution blend with hot steamy milk, coming up.
  15. Marlene: how nice for me too to meet a Marlene! Marlena was the name that stuck itself to me when I lived here and there and places where people pronounce it that way. spieler, by the way, was name of husband number one, and it seemed so apt that i decided to keep it: spieler by name, spieler by nature. its always hard to know EXACTLY where i live as i've been nearly bi-continental for a long long time, depending on where i'm earning my keep. but if the definition of home is where your cat lives, then i live in hampshire, england, about seventy miles south of london. before this i was an east ender warehouse dweller for over a decade. i've written for the chronicle for a zillion years, but it was food features which doesn't have the high profile nor the scope for personality-expression that writing a column does. i came to britain for a year, met husband, got involved in a parallel life, and kept on writing for the chronicle via the wonders of telecommunications: first faxing articles in, then emailing them. michael bauer has always been hugely very and encouraging, and one day when i proposed a column he and the other editors said: lets try it out! Pips on Radio 4 tell me its eleven o'clock. time for elevenses (british)--midmorning snacktime in american. leftover roast pork sounds good. just a sliver.
  16. Good Morning! Drinking my coffee, first cup--lavazza and okay as it is caffeine, but i expect a delivery of some truly excellent coffee to arrive shortly. then it will be coffee number two. coffee number two will be fantastic, because it will be from union roasters, a uk coffee company of two sweet guys who are obsessed with good coffee, trained at peets in berkeley, and are devoted to fair trade. they are sending us coffee from ruanda, from a co-operative of survivors of the genocide. so not only do i feel good drinking the coffee but i feel good ABOUT drinking the coffee. i am now sitting at the window with my binoculars looking out for the delivery van. i love caffeine. at this moment, perhaps i should mention that a study several years ago at one of the universities came up with the fact that coffee drinkers have a lower suicide rate than non caffeine drinkers so it never hurts to be safe rather than sorry. but if the van doesn't arrive soon i might kill myself. however, coffee alone does not a breakfast make. and my breakfasts vary wildly as you'll see throughout the week. today, In preparation for our--marlena, husband, and cat, madeleine-- morning meal, i've despatched husband who shall be acting as my slave this blog-week, to the store for provisions of the jam and preserves type. he came back with: a box of nearly everything bonne maman makes. we have: four types of conserve/preserve, 3 compotes, and one jelly. he also bough two boxes of cookies just because--petits biscuits au noisettes and galettes au beurre. I've now got all of the jams and preserves lined up on my desk. what i want to do is open each and every one up and take a bit from each. but then the rest will languish and eventually rot. we don't eat jams fast enough and i hate to waste. okay, breakfast is taking shape. i've got pain poilane in the freezer (i always do), cream cheese and a few strawberries...... here it is: pain poilane, cream cheese, a thick thick layer of strawberry preserves (the old favourites are the best), and a topping of sliced fresh strawberries. and i'll try not to spill it all on the keyboard.
  17. its 10:45 p.m. (greenwich meantime, i live in the UK) and ordinarily i might be thinking about reading in bed right now..... but i have responsibilities. i realize now that i'm not eating for myself right now, i've got the blog to think about and the 10,000 egulleteers. how can i just have that cup of tea......i'm eating for egullet.com now! maybe i'll have a little rampage through the fridge.......
  18. uh oh. and oy vey. a nice jewish girl like me talking like this about pork? gevalt! don't tell my rabbi, and don't mention the jewish heritage cookbook that i wrote. plate licking, pork, what am i going to confess to next?
  19. Marlena, you should stand tall and proud when you admit you're a plate licker. Those last bits are always the best. Screw good manners. maybe we should start a thread elsewhere of confession time for those quirky little food things we do. OR....... start a club for us PLATE LICKERS. There I've said it again and I'm proud! Thanks for helping set myself free.......I lick plates and I don't care who knows it. The question is: Do you lick yours?
  20. Marlena, you should stand tall and proud when you admit you're a plate licker. Those last bits are always the best. Screw good manners. maybe we should start a thread elsewhere of confession time for those quirky little food things we do. OR....... start a club for us PLATE LICKERS. There I've said it again and I'm proud! Thanks for helping set myself free.......I lick plates and I don't care who knows it. The question is: Do you lick yours?
  21. mmmm mmmmm mmmmmmm, we are now licking our fingers and our plates clean. (confession: we lick our plates clean here in our house, don't tell anyone, and we never do it with guests, but when its just us, we like the way the last bit of sauce tastes when you lick it up from the cold smooth ceramic surface of the plate). thank heaven the web cam is not plugged in yet. also, we are licking our lips at the moment, now that our plates are clean. the pork was good. that pork was so good, so succulent, so moist, you could taste its added wisdom from growing to a more mature age, and its character from being aged on the bone, and its succulence from the extra fat it was allowed to put on to its sturdy body (a bit like me, now flying free from the restraints of the evil diet!). so, here is what i did with my beautiful pig: the roast was a shoulder with crackling, lean but plump. i cut incisions in the bottom and inserted slivers of garlic, then dusted the whole roast with thyme, salt and pepper. put it in a pan and surrounded it with peeled shallots and whole unpeeled garlic cloves. Then i roasted it, fiddling around with the heat up and down until it reached about , oh, say, 135 or so on the meat thermometer which i don't have but aproximated by my emotional feelings. it felt right. halfway through the roasting, i parboiled some sliced parsnips, drained them then tossed them with extra virgin. into the pan they went along with the shallots and garlic and it all roasted together, cozily. when the pork was right--which was when i felt it was--and the vegetables were golden browned in places, i took it all out of the pan and let it rest. then made a pan sauce by deglazing the pan with red wine and chicken stock. until it was rich and dark. and essential. sliced the pork, so juicy it was, have i mentioned this? and just dabbed it a bit with the essence of juices and reduction of wine. by the way, the pork will soon be sold at sainsburys as a follow up to their jamie oliver 21 day extra mature beef. i don't think jamie had anything to do with my pig though. we started the meal with tzadziki: greek yogurt with tons of garlic, coarsely grated cucumber (european, with its skins), fresh dill and mint, and lemon juice. and for dessert: really ripe mango with lime zest and juice. can't wait for breakfast! full report as i eat it......... pleasant dreams y'all!
  22. Hi guys, I guess I'm going to be taking over this food blog but I'm thinking: how on earth can I do justice to this metier without a camera........ also, after our last week's foodblog girl, pim's amazing week of eating, i'm feeling a cross between a slut and a nun, foodwise. first of all, have been dieting and am now miserable with the whole thing, eating weird things like salad salad and also cabbage soup, and wishing instead that it was a thin cake of foie gras and leek encrusted in potatoes, that sort of thing. today for lunch: a tiny piece of pain poilane topped with some st marcellin so ripe i could swoon, warmed slightly with a little truffle oil. i suppose the misery part of this is that it is a very very small portion. lots and lots and lots of salad to go with my meager but magnificent cheese croute. dinner: was sent a piece of beautiful pig and i shall cook it. very beautiful pig: raised in the fresh outdoors of the northern england countryside, from a family that includes both hampshire pig and gloustershire white. its siblings are to be sold at sainsbury's. i ate another member of its family at brian turner's restaurant a few weeks ago and loved it so much that the pig farmer sent this to my home. brian turners pork was very good and i have high hopes, even higher hopes for this one because i'm going to blanket the little roast with garlic and thyme. talk with you all after dinner........
  23. Hi guys, I guess I'm going to be taking over this food blog but I'm thinking: how on earth can I do justice to this metier without a camera, only my little words? also, after pim's amazing week of eating, i'm feeling a cross between a slut and a nun, foodwise. first of all, have been dieting and am now miserable with the whole thing, eating weird things like salad salad and also cabbage soup, and wishing instead that it was a thin cake of foie gras and leek encrusted in potatoes, that sort of thing. today for lunch: a tiny piece of pain poilane topped with some st marcellin so ripe i could swoon, warmed slightly with a little truffle oil. i suppose the misery part of this is that it is a very very small portion. lots and lots and lots of salad to go with my meager but magnificent cheese croute. dinner: was sent a piece of beautiful pig and i shall cook it. very beautiful pig: raised in the fresh outdoors of the northern england countryside, from a family that includes both hampshire pig and gloustershire white. its siblings are to be sold at sainsbury's. i ate another member of its family at brian turner's restaurant a few weeks ago and loved it so much that the pig farmer sent this to my home. brian turners pork was very good and i have high hopes, even higher hopes for this one because i'm going to blanket the little roast with garlic and thyme. talk with you all after dinner........
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