Fuck the Tories
Saint Valentine visited Yumblog Villas on Sunday bearing Philosophy Football gifts, homemade cards and 650g of wet fish. All were welcome and put to good use. If you fancy cooking the delicious looking burger above/below, be forewarned this recipe requires around 3 hours put aside for salting and chilling … that said, it’s not as if you have people to …
And so ends our travels. After the longest journey of this adventure so far we arrive at a snow covered twilit Sweden. As the Disunited Kingdom slowly bleeds out from the self-inflicted wound of Brexit we spend our last night dining beneath the aurora borealis pondering our future and planning possible escape routes from a country that is feeling ever …
What better way to round up a Saturday than to head south west and spend the evening eating in Portugal, specifically the Algarve. We’ll assume that if you have come here in search of Cataplana (the recipe), you won’t be in possession of a Cataplana (a copper lidded pan traditionally used to cook said recipe). Worry not, you can easily …
In contrast to yesterday’s simple snack, today we’re heading to Luxembourg for something a little more refined. Luxembourg, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. As of 2020, Luxembourg citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access …
From Estonia we head north a little bit to Finland, a Nordic country located in Northern Europe. Finland shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, and Norway to the north. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life and human development. In 2015, …
Unfortunately Andrew the Fishmonger was closed today so we were forced to resort to the Sainsbury’s chiller cabinet of vacuum-packed disappointment. As I picked over the hermetically sealed packets of sweaty fillets I couldn’t help but recall the magnificent fresh fish departments of Spanish supermarkets. Anything with a gill, tenticle, sucker or shell that had ever swum, slithered or drifted …
After the stunning and heroic intake of baked goods* on our recent tri-city Teutonic train tour of Düsseldorf, Berlin and Köln, thoughts and waist-lines turned to meals of a lighter, altogether less bready nature. This recipe fulfilled that desire to such a degree we ate it two days on the trot – first as here with prawns, and secondly (as there) …
Another dish with an Asian theme. Appropriate considering the news from the Tory party conference this week is that we’ll all (or at least the low paid lesser orders) soon be ‘working like Chinese‘. Excuse the slip of the tongue, but even amongst such stiff competition, the Right Honourable Member of Parliament for South West Surrey stands out as a …
We have just been blessed, here in Brighton, with a visitation from a bearded prophet from the North (Islington). Known variously as the Anointed One, the Author of Eternal Salvation, the Alpha and Omega, the great I am, or simply … Jeremy H Corbyn. A beacon of light in these dark days, and possibly our only hope to oust the …
Obviously being the unbearable gastro-snobs that we are here at Yumblog Terrace we would never dream of buying a meal from anywhere as common or unrefined as a take away, Chinese or otherwise. So imagine our chagrin when travellers from the Orient told of a rare Eastern delicacy known as a Sesame Prawn Toast which, were we to satiate our …
I know what you’re thinking: “What the Fricking Frack are cod cheeks?” The answer (they’re the meaty jowls of the Gadus Morhua) begs the obvious supplementary question “…and where on earth do you expect me to get hold of those obscure little frackers?” The immediate reply is sorry, not even Waitrose stock them, so unless you can find yourself a …
Bream steamed with celery, ginger & pickled plums
The beauty of this dish is you can do most of the prep work in advance and spend the afternoon in the pub. Not obligatory you understand, but highly recommended.
Summer has eventually arrived in the UK. It has even managed to reluctantly drag itself all the way up to Yorkshire where, tripping over Stoodley Pike and tumbling down the hill it collapsed bloody and exhausted in our very own back yard. In fact one afternoon it was so balmy I was able to pop out down to the One …
I know, I know, you weren’t even aware cuttlefish had balls. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don’t. For all I know they might ride the ocean currents with their magnificent jewels swinging low and proud beneath them. Perhaps the entire aquatic world stares with slack-jawed envy as they swim by with their pendulous plums dragging along the seabed. Like I …
One of the meatier vegetarian dishes you’ll find here on Yumblog.
Smoked salmon scotch (quail) egg You can tell you’re at the Ocado end of the middle-class spectrum when your 2.5 year old asks for smoked salmon and quails eggs for breakfast. Soon she’ll be insisting on Jo Malone bum wipes. Anyway, if you manage to wrestle the ingredients away from your toddler why not make these lush smoked salmon scotch …
Ever wished you could enjoy your Fish Supper in one convenient, portable, pastry-encased handful? Of course you have. Then rejoice for your days of yearning are over as we here at the Laboratoires Yumblog have developed the Cod, Chips & Mushy Peas Pasty. Now you can scoff the nations favourite health food whilst out and about and on the go, …
Pity the green pepper, no wonder it’s a little bitter, here in the UK its sole function is to ‘add a bit of colour’ to that dull and unwanted guest at every barbecue, picnic or family gathering* – the rice and sweetcorn salad. Not so in Spain where the pimiento verde is treated with the respect it deserves and makes …
This is a bit like a kedgeree … but with potatoes instead of rice… and smoked mackerel instead of haddock … and horseradish instead of curry powder… In fact now I think about it, nothing like a kedgeree. In that case, consider this a Salade Niçoise with mackerel replacing the tuna and an absence of olives, green beans and anchovies. …
What’s that? Your house doesn’t smell fishy enough? You like the idea of being greeted by a fishy waft every time you walk in the front door – no matter how much Glade ‘After the Rain’ you have sprayed about? Then why not make your own fish stock? And here’s how …
If any of you dodgy lot were to break into Yumblog Cottage, you would probably notice (apart from how bloody cold it is) that despite several shelf loads of cookbooks, there was virtually nothing ‘written’ by TV chefs. No matter how frantically you rummaged, you’d find no Jamie, Nigella, Gordon, Heston, Sophie, Ainsley, Gino, Levi, Hugh or god forbid Nigel. …
It’s taken a while to write up this, the third of our festive gravali because to be honest I got a little over excited at the fishmonger’s (Paul, Todmorden Market) where I bought the salmon and ended up with 1.5kg of the stuff. Delicious as it was (and this beetroot version was the tastiest of the three) this was a …
Obviously our enjoyment of Christmas was seriously curtailed by the devastating news of Prince Philip’s hospitalisation – thank God the BBC ran half-hourly news bulletins to keep us up to date with every nuance of this never-changing national cataclysm. Here at Yumblog Cottage we tried to keep our subjective peckers up by preparing and scoffing a variety of delicious foodstuffs …
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 …
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 …
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 …
It was Saturday morning and so the evening meal needed to be planned. She wanted something seafoody (but not with mussels). He wanted something spicy (but not Asian). They both wanted something tasty (not the usual slop they serve up). Cook books are leafed and websites consulted (but not food blogs as these are written by amateurs and are invariably …
Are you sitting confitably, then we’ll begin …
Oft of a weekend we don disguises, dodge the border guards, dash across the metaphorical railway tracks and stealthily enter the sanctuary of E9 – aka Victoria Park Village. VPV (as I am sure it is referred to by Foxtons) is a culinary oasis in the otherwise apocalyptic wasteland of Costcutters and sub-KFC-style ‘restaurants’ which like radiation-tolerant cockroaches infest our …
London Cure Smoked Scottish Salmon On a grey and damp Saturday last October all of us here at Yumblog Towers boarded the Globe Town charabanc and trundled eastwards to the annual Forman & Field open day. It transpired to be a great day out with talks and demonstrations from farmers and food producers, a tour of the smokery, and most …
If you take nothing else from this recipe, you will at least leave with an unusual and delicious new way of cooking potatoes. Not bad. Consider it an early Christmas present.
…or Seafood Spaghetti baked in paper parcels. To be honest, this method doesn’t particularly impart any more flavour than if cooked in the more traditional way, however there is something satisfying and vaguely theatrical about peeling open the paper and wafting aside the aromatic steam to reveal a hearty mound of spaghetti and seafood.
I came across the mention of Bottarga relatively recently and was intrigued by both the descriptions of its flavour (along the lines of ‘like nothing you’ve eaten before’ or ‘tastes just like the ocean’) and its impressive price tag (roughly a tenner for 100g). For those of you not in the know, Bottarga is fish roe which has been dried, …
A recent trawling of the recipe archive of the excellent Australian Gourmet Traveller Magazine website, produced among other things, this simple ‘one-pot’ fish dish. Instead of cod we opted to use the (considerably) cheaper and (coincidentally) sustainable whiting and spend the money we saved on an impressive quantity of prawns.
As soon as I saw this recipe with it’s unusual ‘Boil in the Bag’ cooking technique, I knew I had to take it to our experimental kitchen here at Yumblog Towers and see if it was worthy of a place on the menu of our amusingly post-modern and knowingly ironic restaurant ‘The Yummy Duck’.
In theory you could arrive home from work after an exhausting day Ice Road Trucking, and 10 minutes later be sitting at the dining table sipping a chilled white Rioja and tucking into this tasty treat… quicker than it takes to microwave a bowl of Batchelors UnSavoury Rice.
Cornish Yarg is a mild yet flavoursome firm cheese not to be confused with the Cornish ‘Yarp’ – the only word uttered by Michael in ‘Hot Fuzz’.
The recent purchase of a £25 bargain pasta maker* has led to a spate of fresh pasta making here at Yumblog Towers. Whether this enthusiasm lasts or whether this gadget ends up in the back of the cupboard along with the onion goggles, Waring Professional Martini Maker, OXO Good Grips® Strawberry Huller, Cuisinart® Soup Maker, some nonsense called a ‘Stirr’, …
Here’s a great idea – why not get up early on Saturday morning and spend an hour baking for a cat? After all it has to be a rewarding experience, our feline colleagues are renowned for their un-fussy attitude to food and the appreciative way they savour every meal lovingly placed before them. What could go wrong?