Fuck the Tories
Perhaps with the exception of the odd East End boozer and the ready availability of Waitrose, there are not many things to miss about no longer being in that there London. However, living as we do in the heartland of Greggs, we have yet to find any bakers which sell a decent loaf – some have made wild and reckless …
Let’s say you like marmalade but have missed the Seville orange season by a whisker and this was going to be the year when you made marmalade for the first time, darn it. Let’s say that’s what’s happened. Well what if instead of using Seville oranges you go tri-citrus instead? The tartness of a couple of lemons and a grapefruit …
Living as we do at the very epicentre of the rhubarb triangle – the mysterious 30-square-mile area formed between the three cities of Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford famous for early forced rhubarb and the unexplained disappearance of countless ships, planes and whippets – it seems only appropriate that we should make more use of this local delicacy. Coming up soon …
We had a pair of Hebden Twins coming to dinner so obviously we Googled ‘What do twins eat?’ in search of appropriate ways to tickle their sapphic taste buds. The results threw up a biography of Sue Perkins and an incongruous and seemingly random set of images, but very little in the way of practical advice. Undeterred and after consulting …
A while back we bought a bumper pack of frozen sweetcorn for Yumblog Junior hoping this might make a healthy addition to her somewhat restricted and monotonous diet. As is invariably the case she gave our offering a glance of contempt, shook her head and returned to her preferred menu of bananas, Marmite and toothpaste. Parenthood can sometimes be a …
“You know me and my weakness for a juicy pear” – Gregg Wallace, MasterChef, 2012. “I just love the big flavours of Dick” – Gregg Wallace, Celebrity MasterChef, 2010. Looks like Gregg butters his toast on both sides. Our constructed Colcannon soup can be found here.
Well I never, I’ve just discovered our local Morrisons now sells packets of fresh yeast for breadmaking… and at the very reasonable price of 50p for 126g. This was unexpected because a) as far as I know you can’t even get it at Waitrose, and b) Morrisons is very much at the (Sp)Asda end of the supermarket spectrum and tends …
Although the fridge has now all but emptied of Christmas goodies the cheese compartment is still heavy with half-eaten lumps, wheels and wedges of every variety of soft, hard, blue, holey, mature and goat. It has become clear that the occasional lunchtime snack is never going to make much headway into this cheesey surplus and we need to start shifting …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
In some parts of the world it is still illegal to smother a cabbage, but thankfully not in Italy where this recipe originates.
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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
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.
…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 …
…and so to the second Simon Hopkinson dish.
What do you do when you’ve been engauntleted by a friend regarding the potentiality of high quality picnic foodage? Why you go to your most recent recipe font and seek out something large and sublime that will sate the masses. And it has all the food groups too, cream cheese, cream, sugar, eggs.
Again, inverted commas as the viscosity gradient of this dish leans very much more towards the stewy than the soupy. However, let’s not get bogged down with culinary thixotropics, pull up a chair, grab yourself a spoon and tuck in.
For lovers of puds and alliteration this is a tasty toothsome treat…
…a simple refreshing salad.
The beauty of this recipe is you can kid yourself you are eating a healthy authentic Mediterranean potato dish when in fact you are just scoffing fancy chips.
With the weekend Guardian scattered over floor and table, Adam and Joe on 6Music and Yumblog Junior playing happily and noisily within the Tachyon beam containment field, few meals are more eagerly anticipated here at at Yumblog Towers than Saturday brunch… and few dishes have endorsed that anticipation with more spicy gusto than this delicious tomato and cumin ‘soup’. The …
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.
A few weekends back the Yumblog family boarding a cramped Virgin train and sped uncomfortably northwards to West Yorkshire in what could be referred to as Phase Two of their cunning plan for a bright and exciting new future. A few days later they returned to Yumblog Towers refreshed and excited and carrying a modest cache of local beers, hand-crafted …
‘Chase me, girls, for I am full of rhubarb!’
Watching Michel Roux eulogising the virtues of hand-crafted bread on the ‘Great British Food Revival‘ reminded me that shamefully I hadn’t baked a loaf for several weeks. Thus suitably laden with middle-class guilt I put on a pinny, grabbed a jar of Mathos Organic Polygonum Honey (dark, strong and liquorice-ee) and made this simple white loaf. And on the subject …
The starting point of this recipe was a forgotten and up until now unused bargain basement cookbook called something along the lines of ‘A Zillion and One Easy To Make Risottos’. I should have been forewarned, for even after the most cursory of scans it was obvious the editor had struggled to fulfil the ambitious promise of the title and …
Despite heroic efforts on our part, post-Christmas still found us with a substantial wedge of a 3 tonne wheel of Stilton left uneaten. This tart was one of several tasty ways we found to remedy the problem.
… or scrambled eggs with goat’s cheese. If you want a different more goaty way to scramble your eggs, this is the recipe for you.
Fellow bloggers… is it a crime to recycle an old post?
Porcini are very much in vogue here at Yumblog Towers. Along with late Sunday roasts. And baked potatoes with cheese and beans and coleslaw. And spending Saturday morning watching 5Live on the red button. And Sophie the teething giraffe. And Friday night beer and pizza after swimming. Lots of things in fact. But not duck eggs. Or Paul Rankin’s Potato …
It’s ok, put the dogs back in their kennels, tether the steed, the search is over, we’ve found it. The perfect white bread f’toasting is here and even better hardly any kneading is needed. Brilliant.