Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was the guest on Desert Island Discs this week. Although I never actually listened to the programme subsequent research showed him to have the reasonable (albeit mainstream) musical tastes of a man of a certain age. The Specials – Gangsters. The Who – Love Reign O’er Me. Beethoven – Symphony No.9 in D Minor, the Choral Symphony. David …
In Praise of… Gwydwr’s Turnips
A lovely lady called Gwydwr came up to the big smoke and gave us some handsome home grown turnips and a pair of socks each. We ate them thinly sliced and raw in a salad. They were peppery and delicious. The turnips weren’t half bad either. Ha.
Review: Abel & Cole Large Organic Chicken (with giblets)
Our Abel & Cole large organic chicken arrived well protected and coddled with ice to keep it fresh, which was a fairly good plan since it was one of the hottest days of the year. It was a good-sized beast, weighing in at 1.8 kg. In the interests of getting a fair evaluation of said beast it was decided that …
Cloudy Lemonade
When God gives you lemons, make lemonade. Two things. Firstly everyone who blogs up a lemonade recipe starts with this proverb and secondly there is no God. There is however a Waitrose, which is where we got our unwaxed fruit. So more accurately, when you go to Waitrose to buy lemons to make lemonade, make lemonade.
L2B 2009
Last weekend Team Yumblog shaved an hour off their personal best and finished the London to Brighton cycle ride in record time. There was to be extensive photographic documentation of this momentous event but the camera battery went flat the night before and the charger was the other side of the river. The packing.
Gooseberry Sorbet
They had gooseberries at the fruit and veg stall on Saturday morning and so I just had to buy some. When I got home and set about working out what I was going to do with them I realised that gooseberries are generally cooked up and mixed with cream, just in various different ways. I didn’t really fancy that so …
Salsa Verde
… or if you prefer green sauce, or maybe sauce verte, possibly Grüne Soße.
In Search of…the Perfect Pasta Sauce No 2
Butter & Rosemary There is a pasta dish called ‘La pasta col tocca d’arrosto’ or literally ‘with a touch of the roast’ which is essentially made with the rich meaty/garlicy/herby juices left over from a Sunday roast. This is a clever approximation of that sauce which takes minutes to make and is very, very tasty.
In Praise of…J-P’s Hand Pressed Olive Oil
How do you take your olive oil? Pure, virgin, extra-virgin, hand-picked, first cold press, single estate, non-filtered, Greek, Tuscan, Andalusian, Carbonell, Bertolli, Filippo Berio, Il Padrone, Masia el Altet, Tesco’s finest? Boof, here at yumblog we have bespoke olive oil! Olive oil personally pressed and kindly donated by a handsomely moustachioed Frenchman who goes by the moniker of J-P. A …
In Search of…the Perfect Pasta Sauce No 1
Butter & Tomato Sauce A recent trip to the magnificent St John led to a visit to their website which in turn resulted in the purchase of a Fergus Henderson-endorsed cookbook called The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. It’s perfect bedtime reading and has an intriguing section on simple tomato-based sauces for pasta – with three ingredients …
Become a TV Star
Michelin Mums Maverick TV, the company that makes ‘How to Look Good Naked’ and ’10 Years Younger’, is looking for friends who are up for a fun cooking challenge. If you would like to take part in some filming for a Channel 4 pilot could one person in your group please email a.walsh@mavericktv.co.uk with a contact name and an evening …
Fresh & Friendly
In the light of ongoing shenanigans at Westminster and with the desire to be always open and transparent with you, dear reader, perhaps this posting should be called an ‘Advertorial’ or possibly a ‘Blogvert’. This is because the mixed organic fruit’n’veg box below was supplied to us completely free of charge; in a complimentary manner; gratis; or if you like, …
Stinking Bishop with Jersey Royals
A couple of weeks ago we had a slap up anniversary feed at St John in Smithfield, and this dish was on the menu. Obviously visiting the home of ‘Nose to Tail eating’ and plumping for the vegetarian option is like… (Note to Blogger-D: Please insert apt and amusing analogy here.) (Note to Blogger-R: Can’t think of one. Don’t worry, …
Savoury Rhubarb Soup
I know what you are thinking. Rhubarb soup? Savoury rhubarb soup? Never heard of that before. Sounds intriguing. Could be tasty. Could be unpleasant. Could be a toxic coupling of sour fruit and salty meaty water. Must get some rhubarb and give it a go. Well that’s what I thought anyway. Besides, the recipe was in Colin Spencer’s ‘Vegetable Book’ …
In Praise of…Proper Eggs
A weekend with a sister who keeps 4 exceedingly pampered chickens (Dolores, Fifi, Jolene and Daphne) afforded us with a dozen beautiful, tasty, fresh very-free-range eggs, some of which are shown below. Special thanks to Daphne who laid the one in the middle. Not bad handwriting for a chicken.
Baked Herbed Ricotta with Roasted Tomatoes
The plan is at some stage to make our own Ricotta from the whey left over from Yumblog Amalgamated Dairy Industries yoghurt-making enterprise. However I suspect the quantities involved will be minute and certainly a lot smaller than our massive combined appetites.
Labne
The obsession with yoghurt continues – this time using it to fashion a traditional Middle Eastern-style cheese called Labne. Once made it is rolled into small balls, coated with fresh herbs, placed in a jar and covered with olive oil. Simple and delicious.
Potato, Carrot & Feta Rosti with Herbed Yoghurt Sauce
I got this recipe from an article called ‘Five ways with potatoes’ in this months OFM. Nigel Slater calls it ‘Potato pancakes with herb and youghurt sauce‘ but I changed the name as for me the feta was the main event and therefore deserved higher billing. I’m also not sure my brain can accommodate yet another variation on the spelling …
We Have a WINNER!
It was a star-studded glitzy night at the first annual yumblog ‘Taste of London‘ ticket giveaway awards, held in the magnificent Princess Diana memorial banqueting suite at yumblog corporate headquarters in the heart of London’s fashionable West End. From the spectacular opening sequence by dance troupe sensation ‘Diversity’ to the closing rendition of ‘Anyone Can Fall in Love’ by curly-haired …
L2B 2009
Once again Team Yumblog will be slipping sexily into lycra cycling breeches and pedalling the 54 miles from the heart of London’s Clapham Common all the way down to Brighton. There is a specially designed team t-shirt available here which anyone is welcome to buy should the urge grab them. A full size version of the graphic can be viewed …
Roasted Vegetable Terrine
This layered jellified curiosity comes from Gregg (Beefy beefy mushrooms) Wallace’s book ‘VEG!!!‘. The exclamation marks are mine of course.
John Hurt’s Salami Face
Is it me, or is that John Hurt’s lovely face in a piece of his own salami? It’s either a minor miracle, a vanity project, or the designer working on the ‘What’s in your basket?’ feature in this Sunday’s ‘Observer Food Monthly’ was a bit bored and decided to counterbalance Dr John Briffa’s usual pessimistic analysis with a little light …
Loss in Translition 2
Fill the raw cannelloni, as they are in the box without boiling them. (The stuffing must be cold). On the bottom of the empty bakepan strew tomato sauce. The cannelloni, as they are settled in the bakepan on one layer, strew above fluid tomato sauce in order to counterbalance the interior expansion with the outer surface, to avoid the crevice …
Cucumber Soup No.2 with Wasabi Pea Relish
As you might have guessed, I got a job lot of cucumbers from the market – three eye-wateringly large shafts of Cucumis Sativus for a credit crunching quid. Unlike the previous version, this soup is entirely prepared in the blender and requires no cooking – just a blender.
Cucumber Soup No.1
Funny how you wake up one morning and decide that the thing you want to do most in the world (ever) is to make cucumber soup. Maybe it’s a form of neurosis that all food bloggers share and perhaps writing these blogs is a therapeutic, legal and relatively harmless outlet for our collective obsession. Who knows. Who cares. Just had …
Natural Hydration Council
An idle few minutes waiting for a tube found us pondering a poster championing the now unfashionable consumption of bottled water and sponsored by a quasi-official sounding organisation going by the name of the ‘Natural Hydration Council’. We are both big fans of the ersatz scientific ‘research’ body such as Laboratoires Garnier or The Institute of Trichologists and so were …
Welsh Rarebit
Spelled rarebit. Pronounced rabbit. Tastes delicious. Incidentally this cheesy delight can also be used in the construction of an Illinois delicacy known as a Horseshoe Sandwich (aka Freedom Sandwich). To make one simply take a thick slice of toasted bread and top with a quantity of cooked meat (hamburger/deep fried pork tenderloin/chicken/etc.). Next cascade with a generous portion of chips/freedom …
Raspberry Vinegar
I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with raspberry vinegar when I started making this, although I’ve since heard tell that among other things it can be mixed with equal parts sugar syrup and diluted to make a refreshing summer drink much enjoyed by Jane Austen and various other Regency types.
Yoghurt – A Work in Progress
The making of yoghurt has been the most exciting discovery in the yumblog kitchen since the finding of a forgotten and unopened Kellogg’s Variety Pack at the back of the cupboard. There are a multitude of techniques for transforming milk into yoghurt, but our objective was always to do it with the least amount of faff, equipment and financial investment. …
Mediterranean Vegetable Pie
There’s that fork again.
Tuna & Red Pepper Empanada
I came across this recipe in last month’s Wa’ro magazine and it looked so tasty I had to give it a try. It also gave me the opportunity to photograph it alongside this stylishly knackered old fork which I bought recently in a charity shop purely for use as a prop. Everybody’s doing it – look at the Observer Food …
Linguini with Prawns and Roasted Almonds
‘I can’t be in love if it’s plastic to live on my own just seems tragic but we’ll raise our swords high when our day comes you thought it was gold but it was bronze so, get here in time when our day comes you thought it was gold but it was bronze’ If this doesn’t make you laugh you …
Griddled Spring Onions with Harissa
Here’s a simple spicy little snack/starter from Gregg ‘beefy beefy mushrooms’ Wallace.
Sweet Pickled Watermelon Rind
Who’d have thought you could pickle and eat watermelon rind?
Salmon Rillettes
This lovely dish is made only from locally sourced fresh ingredients and is very popular at our friendly and unpretentious ‘local bistro’ restaurant ‘Charlie Uniform November Tango’.
Music to cook by
Always on the lookout for the opportunity to appear on the fringes of yesterday’s zeitgeist we cooked up a plan to share with you – our faithful – an album choc full of infitessimally predictable and overexposed tunes that you couldn’t possibly have playlisted yourselves. We call it Cook-In – like the sauce you use when no-one’s looking – and …
Happy Easter to all our readers
Cod with Mixed Peas in Cider
We would like to reassure readers that despite selling 20% of yumblog to Coca-Cola for a cool £30m, we are adamant that our ideals* and pseudo-eco-friendly sentiments will be in no way compromised. Yumblog will still be cynically overpriced, we will continue to put patronising and twee drivel in a ‘handwritten’ font on all our packaging and our 2009 AGM …
Halloumi Wrapped in Red Pepper
In accordance with government guidelines and the criteria laid down by the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) (and because you are all, dear readers, lazy obese mollycoddled porcine cretins incapable of making a decision unless the myriad complexities of an issue are reduced to a simple 3-digit number) yumblog will in future state the calorific value of all published recipes. Olive …
Linguine with Peas & Mint Pesto
Hi Guys, Just wanted you to be the first to know that at 2:46 this morning, Jools gave birth to a beautiful baby girl!! She weighed 6lbs 10 and we have called her ‘Petal Blossom Herbal Essence Bonjela Aviva AmbiPur ScarletDivision Clinique FlavourShaker Twitter Pantene Pro-V Sky+ “Ooooh Danone” Sainsbury’s Tefal Yulumba Rainbow Oliver’. Both Jools and ‘Bonjela’ are doing …