Thus far we have glogged and grogged… time to get nogging.
Egg Nog
Grogg
Despite being grammatically only one letter away from Glogg, this is actually a toddy far removed from its near namesake. The alcoholic element can be supplied by either Rum, Brandy or as in this case Kirsch – we had some left over from our post-modern ironic fondu phase. Less of an infused libation and more of a medicinal compound, this …
Gravalax one way
According to this year’s Yumblog Winterval menu, on Christmas Eve we’ll be sitting down to a meal of ‘Gravalax 3 Ways with Horseradish Cream and Vodka’. Ever wary of eating raw flesh, we thought we’d do a dummy run of this, the most trad of the trio just to make sure it wasn’t too ‘wet and fishy’. It turned out …
Happy Christmas from yumblog
Here’s wishing you, dear reader(s) a very happy Christmas. We have of course sent each and every one of you a beautiful handcrafted card which you should be receiving any day now. If you would like a magical insight into the brilliant young artist behind this challenging work, please watch the video below. Warning – depicts scenes of child labour …
Wintery Pimms
We had some Pimms in the house, we wanted to make a new hot boozy drink, a recipe was found that indicated a potentially minimal expenditure on further ingredients in order to fulfill our warm Pimms dream. After no debate apple juice was bought.
Glogg
The plan is to try out as many festive toddies as we can in the run up to Christmas so that you, dear reader(s), will have a selection of Yuletide tipples to choose from come the big day. With only 12 drinking days to Christmas we realise we have set ourselves a daunting task, but hey, that’s the sort of …
Banana & chocolate bread
At the last count Yumblog Junior had an impressive vocabulary of 38½ distinct words*. These range from the traditional and vital Mummy, Daddy, Dog, Cat through Cheese, Spoon, Cock-a-doodle-doo to more personal choices such as Shoes, Crumpet and Cheers (accompanied by the touching of the parental beer glasses). One of her first and still most frequently used words is B’nana …
Mushy Peas
Restaurants in the Dordogne serve them under the name of ‘Pois Détrempés’; in Italy they are commonly known as ‘Piselli Pastosi’ and are a popular filling for ravioli; the Germans claim ‘Deutsche Matschig Erbsen’ to be their national dish, and of course the Spanish love nothing more than a tapas of ‘Guisantes Fofos’. Here in the UK Gordon Ramsay has …
Tomato, goat’s cheese and basil ‘bread’
The inverted commas are there because this loaf contains no yeast and is actually more of a savoury cake than a bread. This has the added advantage that as well as being pleasantly toothsome, it can also manifest from a wishful inkling to an incontrovertible plateful in just under an hour and a half. That’s quicker than it takes to …
Mushroom soup
Our recent enthusiasm for cooking with mushrooms is appropriate as at the moment we seem to be cultivating several interesting varieties of our own on the increasingly damp internal walls here at Yumblog Cottage. The damp man* who came round to investigate told us we can eradicate 70% of the problem by simply keeping the windows open and the heating …
Fried polenta with mushrooms and Gorgonzola
We like a bargain here at Yumblog Cottage, so when we spied the veg stall at Todmorden Market selling large boxes of portobello mushrooms for the VERY reasonable price of two quid, we couldn’t resist. They proved to be the frugal basis of three meals – this, a tasty cream of mushroom soup (recipe in the queue), and a disappointing …
Smothered cabbage
In some parts of the world it is still illegal to smother a cabbage, but thankfully not in Italy where this recipe originates.
In Search of…the Perfect Pasta Sauce No 6
Porcini Mushroom (with Tomato) Sauce This was less of a search for the perfect pasta sauce, and more because we had an empty fridge and needed to knock up something tasty from what is commonly known as ‘store cupboard standbys’. What do you mean you don’t always have porcini mushrooms in the house? Hand in your John Lewis Store Card …
Foraging (an introduction)
A few Saturdays back one of us (me) joined the Incredible Edible Foraging Walk which took place in and around the IE Market Garden Training Centre just down the road at Walsden. Contrary to naive expectations I didn’t skip home through the woods afterwards with a trug filled with wild garlic and exotic fungi, however I did more importantly get …
A Taste of Yorkshire: Jam Round
The woman at the market who sold us our Jam Round informed us that it is sometimes also referred to as a Brighton Tart. Asking the obvious question as to why this traditional local treat is named after an East Sussex town caused much debate among the staff which, even after one had tweeted her friends, came up blank. Further …
Cream of celery soup
Now I know I don’t need to remind you dear reader, that when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calender in 1582 he decreed that the third Sunday of October would herald the beginning of Soup Season (Source: Wikipedia). Obviously in these most modern of times we are much more relaxed about such things and tend to live and eat …
In praise of … Hedgerow Foods
A few Sundays back (BT*) we travelled out east to Walthamstow where we came upon Belinda and her lovely stall of tasties. Once upon a time Belinda was ‘Gavin’s sister Belinda who’s in a band and is an Arsenal fan’. Now she’s Belinda who makes lovely jams and chutneys and cordial too. Special mention also to her father John who …
Observer Food Monthly Awards 2011
Yumblog has won ‘Best Food Blog‘ for an unprecedented tenth year in a row! (Surely some mistake – Ed) So thank you to the thousands of kind and generous readers who voted for us in this year’s Observer Food Monthly Awards. Thanks also to OFM’s panel of judges who singled us out for our extraordinary talent, enthusiasm and vision … …
A Taste of Yorkshire: (Fatty) Dab
Waiting in the Tudor Chippy for the haddock component of our chippy tea to be cooked, I noticed ‘Dab – 30p’ chalked up on the menu board. Enquiring on your behalf, dear reader, I was told it was a lump of mashed potato deep fried in batter. Before I had time to ask for one to be added to my …
In Search of…the Perfect Pasta Sauce No 5
Aubergine Sauce (with tomato and chilli) Well this is as close to perfection as you are likely to get in this increasingly imperfect world. As with all the other sauces in this occasional series, I turned to the ever reliable Marcella Hazan for inspiration and guidance, and once again she delivered the goods with this simple (slightly faffy) delicious recipe.
Grumbeerekiechle au Chevre Chaud…
…or potato pancakes with toasted goat’s cheese. Or indeed rosti with toasted goat’s cheese. But another Alsatian dish anyway.
A Taste of Yorkshire: Fat Rascal
A Fat Rascal is essentially a flat dry fruit scone/Garibaldi biscuit hybrid which, after a disappointing tasting, was fed to the ducks.
A Taste of Yorkshire: Yorkshire Curd Tart
This is another traditional regional delicacy which ended up being a teatime treat for a appreciative family of local ducks. Unlike us, they didn’t seem to mind it being a dry and heavy approximation of cheesecake.
The Great British Bake Off, Mary Berry and Fake Cream
A belated congratulations to Joanne for deservedly winning the final of this years TGBBO and commiserations to Mary-Anne for being such a gracious loser. We would have been happy if either had won, so long as it wasn’t Yummy Mummy Holly (Ooh look, I seem to have already got a book deal!), with whom we took an instant dislike which, …
Ragout of lentils with smoked haddock and horseradish cream
Our recent move to dwellings considerably larger (and colder and damper) than our old lair at Yumblog Towers has meant our cookbooks can now be displayed in a more prominent position and as a result this long forgotten book on Alsatian cookery … I’ll pause for a moment while you insert your own dog joke.… book on Alsatian cookery was …
A Taste of Yorkshire: Sad Cake
Regular readers may be surprised to hear this but neither of us are trained psychologists and so wouldn’t presume to make a judgement on the mental disposition of this particular baked treat, melancholic or otherwise. However we do feel (humbly) that we are qualified to make an impartial assessment of its overall cakiness and, similar to the Barm Cake below …
A Taste of Yorkshire: Barm Cake
Hello again dear reader and sorry for the brief interruption in transmission but the logistics of relocating the entire Yumblog Corporate Empire Inc. from fashionable East London to its new HQ in the even more fashionable outskirts of Media City, plus the switch over from analogue to digital (can you see the difference in quality?), has meant that only now …
We have moved…
…to West Yorkshire. Yumblog have up sticks, waved goodbye to the chicken box and red spit paved streets of Bethnal Green and headed north to the Incredible Edible blooming market town of Todmorden. Set on the Pennine waterway in the heart of Calderdale, Tod (as we locals call it) has it’s own brewery, cheese maker, community vegetable beds and herb …
Crab tart
Lately crabs have become very much the decapodic crustacean of choice here at Yumblog Towers. This is a preference very much aided by the fish stall at Roman Road Market which sells big brown locally caught (Mile End Road at low tide) specimens for under four (s)quid. Having recently made this magnificently delicious crab tart by Rick Stein, for comparison …
Andalucian gazpacho
Over the years we’ve covered the entire spectrum of gazpachos – from the lush red of the classic tomato, to the cool white of almond and grape via the verdant green of avocado. I suppose we could start searching for other colours, possibly blue, but that would be getting dangerously close to Bridget Jones territory and before you know it …
Rosemary Potato Pizza
Trawling through the dusty archives in the Fanny Craddock Wing of the Great Library here at Yumblog Towers, it seems that in all our years as honoured custodians of this esteemed and venerable blog, we have never written up a recipe for pizza. A possible explanation for this (should your legal department require one) is that maybe in the past …
Roasted elephant garlic
We returned from a weekend visit to Grannie Gwydwr with among other things this saucy and buxom bulb of elephant garlic. …and by way of a diversion from riotous ‘hooded thuggery‘ and the long overdue collapse of capitalism, here are two diverting links: Diverting link #1, diverting link #2
Cherry & apricot crisp
As well as a handsome moustache and a penchant for white trousers, The Frenchman also has a strong liking for desserts. We made him this HF-W dish. He had three helpings.
Crab tart with garlic & tomato
This is a variation on yet another recipe from Rick Stein’s current and excellent Spanish cookbook. Variation because gone is the tarragon (tarragone?) as we didn’t have any growing in the Victorian walled garden here at Yumblog Towers and ditto the carrot*. Plus we decided to construct one big fat tart rather than 12 individual dainties. However despite these omissions, …
Piedmontese peppers
…and talking of Simon Hopkinson, this week’s episode of TGC featured two vegetable dishes which looked so simple and tasty we knew we had to try them out here at Yumblog Towers. The first was this roasted pepper and tomato dish which if you cook nothing else between now and the world’s end (August 2012), cook this. It is astoundingly …
Grilled aubergines with olive oil, garlic, parsley and feta
…and so to the second Simon Hopkinson dish.
Press Release
Yumtech Technology Solutions are proud to announce that since the spectacular success of its trial on Simon Hopkinson’s ‘The Good Cook’, all future Yumblog postings will now feature this convenient ‘Quick Response’ code. Simply touch your QR enabled Android smartphone* to the screen and instantly receive the missing parts of the recipe we couldn’t be bothered to type up, a …
Chilled summer salad soup with prawns
Another visit from the sister and her handsomely mustachioed Frenchman ‘friend’ and another opportunity to push out the culinary boat and prove there are a few people left in this country who still know how to use a knife and fork and don’t think dinner should be deep-fried and served in a bucket. This soup kicked off the four courses …
Mediterranean tuna
It was Saturday so we took our now routine trip across the wasteland to Victoria Park ‘Village’ for provisions. Wallet out. A score in the fishmonger, a Paul McKenna each at the offy and greengrocer, a few sharpeners at an impressive £4.40 a pint… where did that fifty quid go? Well, most of it went on a rather delicioso tapas …
Spanish prawn, potato & pimentón stew
This is essentially a simpler version of the ‘Spicy Seafood Stew‘ which can be found a few posts below, although none the inferior for it. It is based on a recipe from the excellent ‘Rick Stein’s Spain’ which is itself based on a trad Spanish dish called ‘All-i-pebre’. Feel free to continue the process of adaption yourself or alternatively if …