MOVING THIS BLOG!

Dear readers,

When I started this blog in February, I didn’t know how much time or energy I would have to devote to it. That is the reason that I chose to host it here on wordpress.com instead of installing a standalone copy of WordPress and developing my own website around it.

For a while it seems that my doubts were well founded, there was a gap of about 4 months with no blog posts at all, but I hadn’t forgotten about it, I just didn’t have the time to devote to it. In the past month I have made the time to make updates here, and I’m glad that I have, I’m enjoying it.

Since I have made the decision to write more here, and I would like to do a lot of other interesting things with ‘John on Food’, I have decided that the time has come to move it out of wordpress.com and into a custom designed home of it’s own.

For the past week or so, I have been posting everything that I write here also on a standalone WordPress installation, and I have also copied over all of the old posts and comments that I have here. Not just that, but every single post has had some typos removed, some nicer formatting and a picture added.

It’s far from finished (it’s ‘Beta’), but it’s time to move over there, so from today on I will be posting exclusively on the new John on Food.

You can find it at http://www.johnonfood.com

Please update your bookmarks, and also if anyone out there has any links to this blog then I would really appreciate it if you could update those as well.

If anyone has any feedback on the new site, either good or bad (especially things that don’t work), then I’d love to hear it.

Thanks all, see you over there.

John

Food diaries

No, I’m neither turning into Nigel Slater, or writing a review of his book.

This is the first post in what is a bit of a new direction for this site, my very own ‘food diaries’. It’s not set in stone, I’m not going to be here at the end of each evening meticulously cataloging what I have eaten throughout the day. It’s much more loose than that, it’s just my way to inject a bit more of me into this site rather than just offering instructions and recipe ideas.

Without further ado then, let’s get started with…

Saturday 2nd August 2008

One of the more unique things about living in Brighton is ‘Pride’. Not being proud about the city that you live in, but the UK’s biggest gay event. I’m heterosexual, but that doesn’t stop me from going along to see the Pride parade and then heading up to Preston Park for the rest of the event.

From the moment that I woke up on Saturday morning it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be a glorious sunny day for this years event. I had a few things to do in the morning, and so was up and out early, wandering around the city in the cold grey drizzle. After a couple of hours of getting damp and chilly it was time to head back home for breakfast.

The biggest problem with breakfast was always going to be the fact that both the fridge and cupboards were pretty devoid of interesting content. Without going on a big loop out of the way, there wasn’t much chance of passing by any interesting shops, so I settled on popping into whatever local shops I might pass, and hunting down any ingredients that I could find to construct the kind of warming hearty breakfast that you need before you face a long chilly day spent outdoors.

What I actually ended up with was a completely random collection of items, some of which made their way into breakfast and some that didn’t. Those that did came together to form something probably horrifically unhealthy, but tasty and warming and just right before heading back out into the damp air to spend a day being amazed by semi clad people bouncing around a park on spring propelled fawns legs.

It’s painfully simple, toasted muffins filled with bacon, eggs and tomatoes. You will notice that there are no quantities in this recipe, as you just need to put in as much of each item as you like.

Bacon and Egg Muffin

Ingredients

• English muffins
• Lightly salted butter
• Eggs
• Smoked bacon
• Tomatoes

1. Cook the bacon however you prefer to do it, I’d recommend either grilling it or baking it in a hot oven, as frying will leave it a bit greasy and you will end up with a soggy muffin.
2. While the bacon is cooking, slice the tomatoes reasonably thinly, and heat up a little oil in a frying pan to fry the eggs.
3. Split and toast the muffins until they turn golden brown, and spread them with salted butter
4. Fry one egg per muffin, until the white has set well but the yolk is still liquid
5. Remove the bacon from the grill/oven and drain on a piece of kitchen paper
6. Layer the bacon, tomatoes and egg onto the bottom half of each toasted muffin
7. Season with just a touch of sea salt, and some freshly ground black pepper, and pop the top on the muffin

We ate lunch out, in the nearest pub to the park that wasn’t completely swamped and looked like it might be able to deliver some food within any kind of semi-reasonable amount of time. From a pretty traditional pubby menu, I chose a ‘home made’ burger with chunky chips and a mixed leaf salad, and whilst nothing to write home about it, it wasn’t too bad at all.

In an attempt to appear modern and funky, the burger was served in ciabatta rather than just a bun, and the salad was decidedly Mediterranean. The chunky chips were great, the salad was nicely dressed, and the caramelised onion relish and slightly spicy salsa that came above and below the burger were all tasty, I didn’t eat the ciabatta. It’s just a shame that the burger itself didn’t live up to the rest of the plate, not just under seasoned but positively bland, it tasted more of onion than anything else, and still trying to work out why why when I could clearly see that it was made of beef.

We got home in the early evening and I really didn’t feel like a meal of any kind. Instead, I spent most of my evening grazing on bits of cheese, cold meat and pickles, with a bit of crusty bread. Why bother to cook when you have things like brie, stilton, some goats cheese and a nice pickled onion?

Żubrówka

Żubrówka – the first challenge is in pronouncing it.

I’ve consumed quite a bit of Żubrówka, and even gone as far as living in its country of origin and marrying one of the citizens. The result of this is that I know how to pronounce the name of not just this drink, but also a wide range of other Polish vodkas and beers. The problem is that when I pronounce them properly in bars in England the bar staff invariably look at me as if I’ve just landed from Mars, and I have to point to where the bottle is.

I’ve just spent far too long staring at the screen and contemplating how to write the word in English so that you would pronouce it correctly when you read it, but I have to admit defeat, I just can’t do it. For anyone who understands phonetics (I don’t), then it’s like this: ʐub’rufka

Right then, now that is out of the way, what is it?

Żubrówka is a Polish vodka distilled from rye and then mixed with a tincture made of Bison Grass (Hierochloe odorata). The herb gives the vodka a distinctive and unique taste, smell and colour. There is a stalk of this grass in every bottle, but its just a decoration and actually gives nothing at all to the drink.

The taste and smell are both fantastic, the colour slightly less so. The colour however does make it easy to convince naive friends that it’s called Bison Grass Vodka because they only use grass that the Bison have peed on and that this is where the flavour comes from.

As for the taste, well it’s a little bit herbal, a little bit vanillaish, a lot vodka, and something else difficult to define. I strongly suggest that everyone (who doesn’t dislike vodka) goes and tries some though, because it’s great.

Sadly, if you live in the United States then you aren’t going to be getting the real thing though, because the FDA don’t like Coumarin, a chemical compound found in Bison Grass, so the Poles have formulated a special version just for you wher the Coumarin in neutralised and you get artificial colours and flavourings in its place. It might still be great, but I’ve never tried it.

The classic ways to drink it are either neat, or mixed with apple juice.

One pub chain in the UK calls the Żubrówka and apple juice mix a ‘Frisky Bison’. I love the name, but don’t think that their version of the drink is up to much, so here is my own.

1. Make sure that your Żubrówka is COLD. Keep it in your home freezer, the alcohol content is high enough that it won’t freeze.
2. Mix one part Żubrówka with two parts apple juice.
3. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.
4. Add a slice of fresh apple.
5. Garnish with a cinammon stick (optional, but it does make a big difference to the taste, like the celery in a bloody mary).

That’s it, sit back and enjoy, just try not to think about the bison pee.

Carrot juices

Until recently, I’ve always been less than adventurous when it comes to fruit juice. As a child I drank orange juice, as an older child I added apple juice, and for almost 30 years that was about it.

When I moved to Poland, I found that carrot juice was ubiquitous. In the UK, carrot juice was something to be found only in health food shops and at huge expense. In Poland, every supermarket devoted huge amounts of aisle space to it, and seemingly everyone drank it.

Now, I’m still not a fan of just plain old carrot juice, but in Poland there isn’t just plain old carrot juice, you can buy it in combination with just about every other fruit that you can think of. Not only did I start to tolerate it, I began to really like it.

At the moment I am living again in England, and just as it has always been, carrot juice is largely the preserve of health food obsessives (and Polish immigrants), has to be bought in shops that specialise in soya milk and costs a fortune. None of this goes a long way towards satisfying my carrot juice desires, so I have resorted to whipping out the old juicer and making my own.

I love the juicer, not only does it provide me with tasty and healthy drinks, but it also amuses my daughter hugely when she pushes the pushy thingy down and watches juice shoot out the side. It also has downsides, it makes the cat go psycho and it’s a complete nightmare to clean.

Anyway, the trauma of washing up isn’t the point, the point is that I’ve been using it quite a lot recently to make different juices, and most of them contain carrots.

My favourite combination is equal volume of carrot juice and apple juice, with the addition of either a banana, or a handful of strawberries or raspberries. It’s also important to add a good squeeze of lemon juice, you won’t really notice the taste of it and it will stop the apple juice from oxidising and turning the whole thing a muddy brown colour. Oxidisation won’t affect the taste, but it’s nicer if your fresh juice doesn’t look like pond water.

I’ll keep on playing with my carrots and my juicer and add more of my favourite mixes later.

Temperature conversion

Just about every food website in the world, along with the majority of recipe or culinary training books have an oven temperature conversion table.

Well, here is another one. Not just because I so love typing out tables of data, but also because this site(blog) contains a number of recipes and it seems only right to provide all of the info that you need to cook them in the same place.

I’ve added a separate column for fan assisted ovens in °C, the general rule is that you subtract 20°C (about 36°F) when using a fan oven.

	°C	°F
Water freezes	0	32
Water boils	100	212

Oven Temperatures

	°C	°C (fan)	°F	Gas Mark
Very cool	110	90	225	¼
	130	110	250	½
Cool	140	120	275	1
	150	130	300	2
Moderate	170	150	325	3
	180	160	350	4
Moderately hot	190	170	375	5
	200	180	400	6
Hot	220	200	425	7
	230	210	450	8
Very hot	240	220	475	9

For anyone interested the formula for converting between For any temps that aren’t listed here, don’t forget that you can always use Google for just about type of conversion, simply by typing the amount you want to convert and the from and to units into the search bar.

Traditional Custard

Traditional English custard – it might be old fashioned and unhealthy, but it is a seriously sexy substance. It’s like having liquid velvet infused with the exoticism of vanilla sliding down the back of your throat.

I wasn’t sure at first where to put this post. I mean it’s not really a recipe in itself is it, you wouldn’t just sit down and eat a jug or bowl of custard, would you? Then I realised that I probably would actually, so this is where it is.

Custard is as English as cricket or bowler hats or drunk exploits in Ibiza, except for when you serve it over any kind of steamed pudding, when it instantly becomes far more English than any of those other things. Even the French almost acknowledge it as our culinary creation (although Creme Anglaise is slightly different).

Without further ado then, here is the quick and easy way to make real custard. The real bit meaning that it isn’t bright yellow and made from a powder or out of a tin, and that it isn’t low in calories and made from milk or cream substitute. When I was a kid we had Birds custard powder mixed with milk, and at the time I loved it, but when I started cooking I realised that it really is a pretty poor substitute for the real thing.

Ingredients

• 1 Vanilla pod
• 275ml double cream
• 3 Large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon Cornflour
• 25g Caster sugar

Cut down the length of the vanilla pod, and scrape out the seeds, put both the seeds and the pod itself into a small saucepan, and add the cream to it.

If you don’t have a vanilla pod, or do but just don’t want to use something so expensive to make custard, then you can use vanilla extract without too huge a difference to the taste.

Put the pan onto the hob at a low heat and bring it up to just below simmering point.

While the cream is heating up, put the egg yolks and sugar together in a heatproof bowl, and whisk them together.

Take the vanilla pod out of the hot cream, and then slowly pour the cream into the bowl with the eggs and sugar. Keep on whisking it all the time that you are pouring in the cream.

Pour the combined mixture back into the saucepan, and put it back on a gentle heat. Keep whisking it as it heats, and as it reaches simmering point it will start to thicken.

If you overheat the custard then it will split, and start to look grainy. If this happens, don’t panic, just take it off of the heat and keep whisking it until it re-emulsifies.

When it has thickened, either serve it hot as is, or put it into a jug and cover it with clingfilm to serve it cold later. If you don’t cover it then you will find that it develops a skin on the top.

That’s it, serve it with anything, or just eat it with a spoon from a jug!

‘Organic’ & other ambiguous terms

A few days ago we bought some bread. Now there is nothing unusual in that, I love bread, and don’t have the time to bake my own nearly as often as I’d like to, which generally leads to buying some.

What was a bit unusual was the marketing term that was so proudly displayed all over the breads packaging:

‘Artisan Inspired Bread’

It’s one of those utterly bizarre terms that actually means absolutely nothing. Being inspired by an artisan doesn’t mean that you bake like one, any more than being inspired by Miles Davis suddenly makes you musically gifted. ‘Artisan baked bread’ would definitely inspire me more to buy it.

Not that this particular term is any worse than a plethora of others though, the most prolific offender obviously being ‘Organic’, or it’s frequently cropping up cousin ‘Natural’.

Now, I’m not saying that organic food can’t be a good thing for all number of reasons, but it doesn’t have to be. The term ‘Organic’ without any further clarifying information doesn’t actually mean all that much about the quality of the food you are getting.

My wife’s grandmother grows what she thinks of as organic vegetables on her allotment, she is very proud of the fact that she doesn’t use any chemicals fertilisers or pesticides on them, and makes a big point of letting you know about it. She doesn’t mention or even seem to think that it is vaguely important that her allotment is about 500 metres away from one of the biggest chemical factories in Central Europe. They could very accurately be described as being organically grown, but I’d rather not eat them if I have any option!

It’s been pointed out to me that in most of Europe, the USA and Japan, foods that are produced and sold commercially must meet strict conditions in order to label themselves as organic. As far as I’m aware, foods labelled as ‘Natural’ have no such criteria to meet, and this really is a completely nonsense term.

The fact is that I actually buy quite a lot of organic foods, but it is not my only criteria when selecting them. Seasonality, sustainability and local production are just as, or more, important to me. There are a huge number of variables that aren’t covered by organic certification, and it’s quite possible that a good grass fed free range cow will produce a better beef than anything organic in the same butchers shop.

There are fantastic organic foods out there, that are full of taste and nutritionally brilliant, and then there are some that are less great, that are produced without passion or care for the end product, but simply because the producer realises that he can charge a huge premium if he does the things necessary to reach the certification.

Ghee

If you find that normal butter isn’t quite fat enough for you, then you can always go for ghee!

Actually ghee, or any clarified butter, does have a couple of big advantages over normal (unclarified) butter. You can keep it for much longer periods of time without being in the fridge (as long as you have it in an airtight container), and you can heat it up to a much higher temperature before it starts to burn.

Ghee is widely used in Indian cooking where it imparts a deep rich slightly nutty flavour. You could substitute butter in virtually any Indian dish, but you will find that the finished dish really loses a lot of its depth. Although Indian cuisine is the most widely known use of ghee, some other pretty diverse food cultures use it as well, including Egyptian, Ethiopian and Brazilian. If you have ever eaten Moroccan ’smen’ you might be suprised to know that it is actually aged spiced ghee.

It’s not hard to get hold of ghee, you can buy it in most bigger supermarkets and of course any Indian grocer will stock it. If you can’t find it in the shops, or you are just one of those people who likes to do absolutely everything yourself, it’s incredibly simple to make your own.

• Take some unsalted butter (however much you want), and put in a saucepan over a medium heat.
• DO NOT STIR THE BUTTER, let it come to the boil and keep it a gentle simmer.
• As the butter boils it will start to separate, let it continue cooking until the bubbling starts to lessen, the sediment at the bottom starts to brown, and the liquid underneath the froth on top starts to turn an amber colour. At the same time you will notice that your kitchen starts to smell like freshly baked croissants.
• Take the pan of the heat immediately you notice the liquid turning amber, otherwise the ghee will burn. Skim the foam off of the top and leave it to stand and cool for about half an hour.
• Strain the liquid through muslin or cheesecloth into sterilised jars, and throw away the sediment that you are left with.

That’s it, as the ghee cools it will turn hard and a bright yellow in colour. You can keep it in sealed jars for up to a year without it needing to be in the fridge.

It’s worth bearing in mind that your ghee is only going to be as good as your butter was, so if you are going to go through all of the effort of making it, then you may as well start out with a good quality block of butter.

Pickled onions

Now, in my naivety, I thought that pickled onions were a purely English thing, to be eaten with fish and chips, or with a ploughmans lunch. I was wrong though it seems, the Swiss eat them as well served with raclette, in Hong Kong they are served as an appetizer in Cantonese restaurants, and the Americans (allegedly) make horrible soggy ones.

I’m going to skip over all of that for a minute though, and stick to what I know, the traditional English pickled onion.

Pickling is an old way of preserving food, dating from before we had refrigeration, and you had to do something with the crop. In the Western world it’s all but superfluous for practical reasons, but we are still using this antiquated method just because it tastes so good. Simple dishes like crusty bread and cheese get a big wake up kick with the addition of a pickled onion or two.

A good pickled onion should be intense, both in flavour and crunch, if it doesn’t give you some stong resistance to being bitten, followed by a satisfying crunching sound, then you may as well just throw it away as far as I’m concerned.

You can buy special ‘pickling vinegars’ which will give you the generic pickled onion taste, but there is no reason why you can’t use any kind of vinegar that you like. White wine vinegar has been historically used, as has spirit vinegar, but I think that the best and deepest flavour comes from plain old malt vinegar. You can also pickle the onions just on their own, or add spices to the vinegar to give them a bit of a kick.

In theory there is no reason why you can’t use any type of onion that you like, but there are a couple of reasons why every commercial jar of pickled onions that you buy uses small varieties, like Pearl onions or Cipolla. The most obvious reason is that they fit into the jars, and the second reason is that the bigger the onion the longer you have to pickle them for before you can eat them and get that lovely vinegary taste all the way through. My personal favourite is to use shallots, they give a fantastic flavour when pickled, they are just a bit of a pain to peel.

There is no real recipe for pickling onions because really there are no hard and fast rules, some people will give you incredibly complex directions calling for various different types of spicing, or which need you to soak the onions in fresh brine two or three times. I’m not going to argue that none of that is good or that it doesn’t give good results, but here is the simplest basic technique that works well, and you can experiment and modify it as you like.

• First make some brine by dissolving salt in boiling water, you should use about 100g of salt for every litre of water, when you have done this leave the water to cool down, because if you put the onions in when it is still hot they will go soft. You will need enough brine to cover however many onions you are planning to use.
• Peel your onions, and then put them into the brine and leave them for at least 24 hours. You need to make sure that all of the onions are covered, which can be a bit tricky as they like to float up to the top, the easiest answer is to put a plate or saucepan lid with something heavy on top of it, on top of the onions.
• Take the onions out of the brine solution and drain them thoroughly.
• Pack the onions into jars, and cover them with your vinegar of choice. If you are planning to use any spices in the vinegar, then the best thing is to boil them in the vinegar beforehand, but make sure that the vinegar is completely cool again before you pour it over the onions or they will go soft.
• Seal the jars and leave them in a cool place to mature

You can eat the onions after about a week, but obviously the longer you leave them the more the flavour develops. I’d recommend leaving them for at least 6 weeks before using them.

Moist Chicken breasts (poached)

Breasts, nice moist breasts.

When it comes to humans, the moistness of the breast isn’t really a huge factor in deciding its quality, but with chicken it’s all a bit different.

I’ve read a few different articles and blog posts over the past few days about chicken breasts, with people saying how much drier they can be than other bits of the bird.

If you have a problem with dry breasts then there are some excellent creams available, just ask your local pharmacist. With regard to your bits of chicken though, it’s all about the way that you cook it.

Grilling or frying chicken breasts can leave them dry, but here is one cooking method that will leave you with beautiful succulent meat every time. We are going to poach it.

• Start by seasoning your chicken breasts with salt and freshly ground pepper, then wrap each breast tightly in clingfilm – this will ensure that the meat will keep it’s shape while cooking.
• Heat a saucepan of water to a gentle boil, gently put the chicken into the water, and poach it for about 12-15 minutes.
• Remove the chicken from the water but don’t unwrap it, and leave it to rest for 10 minutes.
• Heat some butter in a frying pan, unwrap the chicken and add it to the butter. Cook the chicken slowly in the butter until the skin has a beautiful golden colour.

One of the key things it to always buy chicken breasts with the skin on them. They simply taste better (they are also cheaper)!

Serve it however you like, the meat will be nice and moist so you don’t need to cover it in a creamy sauce.