This is number seven in our occasional series ‘In search of the perfect pasta sauce’, and once again we have turned to our adopted Italian granny Marcella Hazan for inspiration. Thus far she’s rarely let us down.
Like the yoghurt, this is our second posting for Labneh and also like the yoghurt this uses a simpler Valentine Warner-inspired process.
How about something unusual and tasty which requires the minimum amount of preparation and no cooking? You’d be a fool not to. Another recipe from the infallible Polpo Venetian cookbook.
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 …
Now that interesting looking critter below is called a brik and is essentially an egg dropped into the middle of a sheet of filo which is then wrapped up and shallow fried. It comes accompanied by a spicy chickpea curry and a refreshing cucumber and coriander salad. Service not included. Not only is this a dainty dish to set before …
As a rule I tend to avoid drinks with the suffix pis, but this sounded so intriguing I had to give it a try.
Middle-class dilemma #23: Lovely things beetroot, but what to do with them when they turn up for a fourth time in your Abel & Cole veg box? In the past we have roasted them, pickled them, rosti’d them, risotto‘d them, borsch‘d them, and even brownied them – all delicious in their individual ways you understand, but we here at Yumblog …
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 …
If you’re in the market for something weird yet tasty then give this recipe a go… I guarantee* you’ve never eaten anything like this before. A word of warning though, pearl barley has a bent for clogging up dishwashers so best go manual on this one. * UK and Ireland only. Terms and conditions apply.
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, …
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’.
Mucking about with a Raymond Blanc recipe…I know, the arrogance of it. Generally I would follow Monsieur Blanc’s instructions to the letter, but I had no Angostura Bitters and was not prepared to buy a bottle just for required 2-3 dashes, and I suspected my local CostCutter was unlikely to stock either banana shallots or fresh garlic flowers. The original …
Recently a friend of Yumblog arrived breathless on our doorstep brandishing a bag of chickpea flour and gabbling lavish tales of a crepe-like dish prepared for her by a Frenchman with an impressive moustache. With some reluctance we let her in and once calmed with a Lager & Campari, set about making sense of her crazed wordage. It turned out …
Recently BluSky Innoventions™ the ‘Pseudo-Science, Holistic Wellness, Quantum Synergy & Bio-Weapons Division’ of Yumblog Holdings Plc was given an obscenely large EU grant to investigate whether it is necessary to cook pasta traditionally in a large volume of boiling water, or whether it could be prepared ‘risotto’ style in the merest covering of liquid. Our groundbreaking and highly controversial findings …
I found this Lemony Cheese delight in a back issue of the excellent Donna Hay magazine – the eponymous title from food editor, best-selling cookery writer, and from what I can gather, Queen of Australia.
As with the mackerel, so with the cheese. It was in the same Fearnley-Whittingstall spread* as the potted mackerel and required cheese, butter and a splash of vin rouge or some vine-based glug, thereby having all the markings of a winner about it. The man himself suggested you play with the recipe and use whichever combo of cheeses takes your …
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’ …
Who’d have thought you could pickle and eat watermelon rind? Preparation time: 10-15 minutes plus 6 hours brining, 2 hours marinating and 4 weeks maturing Cooking time: 45 minutes Skill level: easy Ingredients watermelon rind – 900g – roughly 2 small or 1 very large watermelon sea salt – 50g water – 900 ml granulated sugar – 450g white wine …
As the financial markets imploded and governments around the world desperately threw good money after bad, we were at a market in the South of France spending (accidentally) €6.65 on a single mushroom. At the time of writing that’s about a fiver. A fiver for one bleeding mushroom. It had better be good. So how does one prepare the most …
Artist impession of how Pullum Frontoniaum may have possibly definitely looked in the olden Roman times. And so to the cooking of the chicken in the name research for Archaeologist T. That rainy weekend we hastened to Cirencester and having paused briefly at a local butcher selling free range chicken, we hurried on to Waitrose where we knew an organic …
Ok, so we now have our sourdough starter sitting ominously in a jar at the back of the fridge gently seeping brown water. Time to make some bread. For a recipe I turn to the Observer Organic Allotment Blog and follow their elaborate and long-winded instructions to the letter. Preparation time: a wasted 48 hours Cooking time: 40 minutes Skill …
If you believe the hype (well in my narrow Guardian reading world anyway) everyone in credit crunch UK is now an artisan baker spending their precious downtime in the kitchen fashioning crusty bloomers and squeezing out granary torpedoes. Generally (and childishly) if I find myself on a bandwagon I have the irrestable urge to jump off and find a more …
We’ve gone cold soup crazy this month. This particular variety is based on the classic Ajo Blanco but with the cheeky addition of cucumber and watercress. Preparation time: 15 minutes plus a few hours for chilling (the soup) Cooking time: 10 minutes Skill level: Easy Serves: 4 starters, 2 mains Ingredients 2 1/2 cucumbers – cut into 1″ dice – …
I’ve always liked the idea of free food, and cooking a meal with ingredients foraged from nature’s bountiful larder holds a romantic and atavistic appeal. Sadly Bethnal Green doesn’t offer many opportunities for living off the land. You’ll struggle to find a morel growing among the KFC cartons and general crap along the Mile End Road, wild garlic is a …
Poor old salsify. It seems to be either unknown, forgotten or unloved. Virtually unavailable in the shops, not a single search result for it on the usually flawless Waitrose cooking and recipe website, and salsify.com still available and up for grabs. All of which is a shame as it has to be one of the most unusual and tasty members …
There were mixed feelings about this recipe at yumblog cottage. One of us had never had Jerusalem artichokes before and so was keen to give them a try, while the other was force-fed them as a child and is still suffering from flashbacks. However, as with most things in life, novelty won out over experience and this soup was the …
I love these little beasties. Fried and salted and accompanied by a cold tube of Cruzcampo. Tradition and statistics dictate that 29 out of 30 are mild and sweet with the remaining rogue being hot and fiery. I’ve never seen them sold in this country before but have recently discovered them tucked away on a stall in Borough Market.
We found these amongst the impressive array of fancy potatoes at Waitrose. As you can see, the flesh is yellow with a markedly blue vascular ring and as with all unusual vegetables, the packaging describes the flavour as ‘nutty’. We roasted ours in their skins in olive oil and they were very good indeed. Nutty in fact. Well worth a …
This one goes out to VJ ‘Mr Prudence‘ – anarchist, transphormetic blogger, psychic geographer, algorithmic obsessive and occasional ActionScript guru. The other day he confessed he was in possession of a celeriac and asked what he could possibly do with it. I’m afraid my advice was a dismissive “either mash it or chuck it in the bin” A melancholic celeriac …
