As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.
Joan Gussow (born 1928) is a professor, author, environmentalist and gardener
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Just a quick post, I haven’t written anything for a few weeks but it’s going to have to be quick cos I am busy putting in a new kitchen. I started on Monday and by Friday I have just about managed after several trips to Ikea and the local bricolage to assemble all the kit that I need. To be fair I have also removed all the tiles that were welded to a stone and concrete wall and arranged for an electrician to rewire the kitchen so tomorrow is J +5 I finally start installing the new kit. Despite all of this we still need to keep body and soul together but perhaps nothing to complicated. A bonne choice is Salade Poulet Grand-Mere or in traduction Grand-Mother’s Chicken Salad a simple, popular workaday dish eaten in France, it’s a sort of turbo-charged chicken salad that is quick, cheap, simple and healthy. The main ingredients are chicken (natch), mixed salad, bacon bits and mushrooms. A quick check of the larder showed that I had everything but the mushrooms. Dam. Oh well Poulet Grand-Mere sans Champignon is still nice. But….. The weather has been bloody terrible here for the last fortnight, cool winds, and lots and lots of rain with few sunny spells typical English April weather and St George’s day was on the 23rd April the conditions are perfect for St Georges mushrooms the subject of one of my earliest posts on this blog which can be found here. A quick hop in the car to my nearest mushroom site and I’m back home 10 minutes later with a scant kilo of mushrooms! Were on! To make Salade Poulet Grand-Mere you need; Ingredients
Method Roast your chicken. While the chicken is roasting make up your mixed salad. Peel, cube then double fry your potatoes, just like homemade chips except you are frying of potato cubes. When the chicken is ready take it out of the oven to rest. Fry of the bacon bits and mushrooms. Place the chicken on to the plated salad When the chicken is cooked, plate up the salad and add the dressing. Place the chicken on the salad and sprinkle over the bacon, mushrooms and potato cubes. The presence of salad means it is automatically healthy It’s quick, simple and easy to do, useful if you only have a remnant of a kitchen! Bon appetite. Julie asked me to make some Chorizo’s the Spanish spiced sausage and as my beloved she must be obeyed. Complying with her request did present some problems. The first problem is learning the correct pronunciation so that I don’t look like a total idiot, apparently the correct pronunciation is (ch The second problem is sourcing a recipe and ingredients; the distinguishing ingredient of Chorizo is Spanish smoked chilli – Pimenton and though available outside of Spain finding a good quality source can still be tricky. The easiest solution is ebay and a quick search produced a tin of ‘El Avion Pimenton Picante Ahumado’ a good quality spicy pimenton. Next is sorting a recipe, it doesn’t take much internet research to realise that there are nearly as many recipes as there are websites. In any event the web would only represent the tip of all the variations in making Chorizo, many recipes would be unique to individual villages or even families. A key decision is whether to us a cure or not. A cure is seen as being safe as it would prevent nasty bacteria such as botulism from forming as well as having some benefits in preserving the colour of the meat. Personally I think that if care is taken with hygiene and the correct ratio of salt is used the dangers of bacterial infection is very small, the importance of using a chemical cure as opposed to a salt cure is something that is given a modern priority and though desirable in some preserving it is not a universal necessity. The rest of the ingredients are fairly straightforward Pork belly, pimento as already discussed, ordinary paprika mostly for colour, chilli powder for colour and heat, some garlic and a herb such as thyme for an aromatic taste. So armed with my insights what to do, well after a little think I decided to get into the spirit of things I decided to go a little free hand. To make my Chorizo you need;
Chill then grind the pork belly using the rough plate on a meat grinder, add all the other ingredients. Mix very well for about 5 minutes, you have to really get your hands in at this point. Prepare your sausage casing as necessary and knot one end. The knotting should be done correctly because the knots have to withstand a fair bit of weight and buffeting under the sausage has dried. The correct method is a doubly tie, first tie one end of the sausage skin about 2 cm from the end with a simple tie, then flick the 2 cm tail over the tie that you have just and tie of this section once more with a reef knot. Do try and get this right or risk your chorizo falling in the wind. Stuff your chorizo with the meat mixture, I just did it by hand because the gape of the sausage skin is so wide. Leave the chorizo to hang indoors for 24 hours to dry slightly then hang out somewhere dry to cure in the wind. My chorizo’s were ready in 2 months and had lost just under 40% of their weight We once you have your perfect and economic Chorizo what to do with it? Well one possibility is a simple Chorizo hash, ideal for a weekend brunch when you fancy a bit of pep. Even better if you have some potato’s from the previous night’s dinner to use up; to make Chorizo hash for two people you will need
Brown the onion in the olive oil, add the potatoes and fry in the hot oil. As the potatoes begin to colour add the chopped chorizo and parsley and continue cooking for 2 or 3 minutes then stir in some chopped parsley. While you are doing this poach the eggs for 3 minutes, I prefer to poach them at 80C for about 3 – 4 minutes as it keeps the egg whites very tender and the egg compact (or fry the eggs in olive oil if you find that poaching eggs is a bit of a faff). Split the potatoes between two plates and pop the eggs on top. Delicious worth making with shop bought Chorizo, even better when you use your Chorizo maison. One of the most useful spices in the kitchen is Vanilla, it adds a fragrant spicy note to sweet and savoury dishes and I use it extensively in my cooking. An early post of this blog gives a recipe for vanilla and honey glazed pork and a scoop of homemade vanilla ice-cream flecked with vanilla’s . . . → Read More: Vanilla is not plain Ambrose Bierce Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. Ambrose Bierce born 1842 – died after December 26, 1913. Americain writer, journalist, humuorist and critic . . . → Read More: Quote of the day 11# O Comercial I know my readers must be waiting with bated breath to learn how our return to O Comercial went, my other motivation for writing this post is that I like the restaurant which has new young team who are trying, and I think are well on the path of succeeding, in offering . . . → Read More: O Yummy O Comercial I’m currently taking a much needed and dare I say deserved break in Porto with my lovely partner Julie, it’s a kind of joint Christmas and Birthday present to us both as Julie turns 27 (again) on Friday. Being me this has to involve a few gastronomic delights. I am not going to give you . . . → Read More: Two Dinners in Porto Jean Gabon the definitive Maigret My Friend Maigret 1949 – George Simenon. Maigret leaves rainy Paris to solve a case in the warm, Spring Midi region on the Mediterranean coast. He takes with him Mr Pyle – a detective from Scotland Yard, London who is studying Maigret’s “method”. After walking around the small, quiet . . . → Read More: Quote of the day 10# sort of! A lovely fat saucisson drying nicely Although I have not posted much for a while I have not been inactive on the cooking front. It’s the season for making Saucisson, something which I blogged about in an earlier post that can be found here. This year I got hold of some beef middle sausage . . . → Read More: Getting fatter I have not posted for a while, a combination of too much work and inertia but sitting by the fire on a bitterly cold winters day (it’s minus 10 C outside) I’ve run out of excuses. I have been planning posts for ages and this post goes back to a culinary sojourn back in the . . . → Read More: Bringing matters to a head |
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