For the definitive yuletide Gratin Dauphinois recipe to accompany the also-blogged lettuce-wrapped bass we turned to Larousse Gastronomique.
Vegetarian
Pot-au-feu
Traditionally this dish was a way of using cheaper cuts of meat and worthy root vegetables and was kept topped up and bubbling away over an open fire indefinitely. This is a gentrified version using a recipe from the archetypal gentleman himself, Gordon (Cheat ‘n’ two veg) Ramsay.
Milk Loaf
Here we have another superb and satisfyingly time-consuming recipe from Dan Lepard. This one caught my eye because two of the ingredients are cream and golden syrup.
Potato and Oatmeal Soup
What could be more comforting and warming than soup? Porridge perhaps. So why not combine the two and make this silky smooth winter treat. (Remember to take a photograph before you eat all the soup )
Happy Christmas from yumblog
It’s the 1st of December, so officially Christmas starts here. Happy Christmas to all our readers. R&D. xxx
GREGG WALLACE!’s Pumpkin Fondue
It’s a Hallowe’en tradition at Yumblog Cottage to celebrate the 31st October with this pumpkin fondue devised by the mighty GREGG WALLACE! himself. I say tradition, we made it for the first time last year, however, it is so tasty I am sure we’ll tucking into it again in 2009* Phwaaaar!
Yuckblog 6: Basics v Batchelors
A battle between two behemoths here. The ubiquitous high-street-killer Sainsbury’s, and the daddy of dehydrated snack foods, Batchelors – the company which bought us such culinary innovations as Cup-a-Soup and Savoury Rice. So which is the best? Only one way to find out. Food fight. ‘Do not purchase if open or torn‘
Cicatelli with Spinach, Cream & Gorgonzola
The clocks went back this weekend and suddenly it was winter. Time to lay down some much needed winter fat* to sustain us through the long chill months ahead, and what better way then eating refined carbohydrate swimming in cheese and cream.
Cheese Scones
And so it came to pass in dying chill days of October that the idea of soup for lunch started to grow in its appeal and so it was that a pair of Thermos was bought. And then Blogger D did make a rather tasty spinach and rosemary soup. And it had been recommended even on the Waitrose website that …
Delia’s Pickled Beetroot with Shallots
Delia prefers to bake rather than boil her beetroots and then pickle them in red wine vinegar rather than the more usual malt. This, she told me over a Cherry Bakewell, goes to make a milder more beetrooty pickle.
Pickled Onions
You may need some emotional support for this recipe as peeling 2kg of onions can be a long, tedious and tearful process. Not dissimilar to listening to an entire Coldplay album.
A free Christmas card from yumblog
Well freeish. All you have to do is click here to download the pdf, then print, mount on card, trim, fold down the middle and buy a stamp. Get a grown-up to help if necessary and be careful – scissors and scalpels can be sharp and dangerous. Have a safe xmas, R & D. x If you’re making this for …
Yuckblog 5: Splendips Raspberry Cheesecake
Yummy, now for dessert. And what better after a bowl of delicious Asda ‘Good For You!’ Spaghetti in a cheese flavoured sauce with broccoli floret pieces than a raspberry cheesecake? Your dinner guests will be so impressed.
Cep
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.
Yuckblog 1: Mug Shot v Asda Pasta Mealpot
A regular game we play to enliven the joyless visit to a supermarket is to hunt down the most ridiculous, unappetising, over-packaged or ill-conceived snack ‘food’ and snarl Duncan Bannatyne style derision at it. However, as enjoyable as this is, I sometimes feel we are just being middle-class OFM-reading wankers and so perhaps should give these products the benefit of …
Coburg Loaf
Always on the look out for novelty bread flours, I came across a packet of Doves Farm organic Barleycorn in Way’ro. It’s a mixture of wheat and barley flours, malted barley flakes and linseed. Apparently this loaf was one of two things named in honour of Prince Albert.
Chewy Light Rye Bread
I had to give this one a try, if only because it contains treacle, soggy Ryvita and onion. What’s more, it takes a whole weekend to make.
Borsch
A family gathering in Suffolk this weekend meant I was able to plunder my sister’s vegetable patch and return home with a binbags worth of wonderful homegrown produce. Along with a variety of beans, carrots and onions, my swag consisted of several kilos of beetroot as big as your face. The obvious thing to do was to make a bucket …
Minestrone Soup
As 10 CC once said: “Life is a minestrone wrapped up in Parma ham/cheese. Death is an old D’Artagnan, suspenders in deep freeze”. Or something like that. Purple Podded Peas from Gwydwr’s garden
Lager Batons
After the sourdough fiasco I felt the need to purge the memory by baking something successfully. This is a handy recipe as it uses only store cupboard essentials: flour, salt, yeast, honey and lager.
Sourdough Fiasco
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.
Making a Sourdough Starter
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 …
Rosemary Focaccia
On Saturday we went to a rain-drenched Oxford and had lunch at the highly recommended Branca Restaurant. Before tucking into fried calamari with lemon and chilli dressing followed by a big fat skate wing with scallops and mash, I soaked up the house red by nibbling away at some fine rosemary focaccia. So fine in fact, that I had to …
Marrow & Goat’s Cheese Gratin
This weekend’s planned camping trip to Whitstable had to be cancelled because of the shitty and weirdly biblical weather we are having this summer. So I found myself on a Sunday afternoon at the beginning of August wanting nothing more than to curl up on the sofa in a dressing gown and eat comforting wintery food as outside it rained …
Clafoutis
Despite a mouthful of fillings, I don’t really have a sweet tooth and so tend not to delve into the sugary world of desserts, afters and puds. However, we had a friend over for a boozy Sunday lunch and this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall-Clafoutis-Recipe had caught my eye in the Guardian the day before.
Garlic Soup with Harissa
Two days after the end of our holiday, British Airways very generously and efficiently returned our luggage. We celebrated with a bowl of Yotam Ottolenghi garlic soup. Britain’s favourite soup.
Goat’s Cheese & Butternut Squash Falafels
I’m struggling to think of anything interesting to write in this intro, so why not give this falafel based game a play instead. Alternatively, learn DotNetNuke module development from Falalel Software – the experts who brought you ‘some of the best sellers DNN modules worldwide’. They look like a friendly bunch.
Spaghetti with Aubergine, Mozzarella & Basil
I came across this Loyd Grossman recipe whilst driving my decrepit G4 along the Information Super Highway. Obviously Mr Grossman recommends we use one of his jars of special authentic Italian-style tomato pasta sauces, but (equally obviously) if you’re taking the time and trouble to cook a meal from scratch, what’s the point?
Goat’s Cheese Ravioli
Another recipe from the mighty Yotam Ottolenghi. Perfect for an anniversary meal. x
Almond & Grape Gazpacho
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.
Goat’s Cheese, Roasted Pepper & Basil Pasta
This recipe involved the dazzling debut of our latest item of kitchen equipment – a Black Iron Omelette Pan bought for the bargain price of £7.60. It came from Dentons Catering Equipment Ltd – a magnificent shop crammed with professional quality cooking gear and definitely worth a pilgrimage – providing you can tolerate the multitude of cityboy urban tossers infesting …
L2B Energy Bar
There’s nothing finer than getting up at 05:00 on a Sunday morning, amassing on Clapham Common with 27,000 other Lycra-clad humans, and pedalling off on a six-hour ride to Brighton. To help us reach our destination we packed the traditional sausage and Branston sandwiches, a bunch of bananas, 2 gallons of Lucozade and, for the first time this year, these …
Avocado Gazpacho
What could herald the arrival of summer more than a big bowl of cold soup. Wasps perhaps. Or possibly sharing the big bowl of cold soup with a wasp. A wasp in shorts. Anyway, if you’ve bothered to read the posts below, you’ll know I am intimately familiar with the red, tomato-based gazpacho, however, up until now have never tried …
Radish & Apple Salad
The yumblog balcony cottage garden celebrated its first harvest this week – a dozen juicy, crunchy, peppery radishes. There’s a little-known double-barrelled bloke called Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who has a similar, albeit more modest operation to ours, so we thought we’d give him a little free publicity and try out one of his recipes.
Feta & Mint Bread
Regrettably, and I feel unreasonably, Tower Hamlets Council won’t let us keep sheep on the balcony so making our own feta cheese is out of the question. We do however have a healthy and ever-expanding mint plant and so at least were able to locally source half the ingredients in the title.
Gazpacho
Summer reluctantly and briefly visited the UK this weekend, and so as a gesture of thanks to the mighty sun god Ra we held up this delicious offering – the first gazpacho of the cold soup season.
‘Fancy’ Rolls
I knocked up these whimsical little critters one Sunday morning partly because I was in the market for a bread product less brown and worthy than the usual, and partly because it was an effective way of delaying various foreboding DIY chores. Four of the five fancy shapes are illustrated below. The fifth, a curly knot construction, resembled something a …
Thunder & Lightning
This is traditionally a humble peasant dish designed to use up stale bread and lovelorn broken bits of pasta and was ironically published in the current edition of Waitrose Food Magazine. Considering the imminent global economic melt down it is of course prescient as we’ll all be peasants soon … or at least those who have a bit of land …
Stinging Nettle Soup
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 …
Salsify in Garlic Vinaigrette
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 …