Fuck the Tories
There are only 3 shopping days left until Hallowe’en, so why not hot foot it down to your nearest pumpkinorium, grab yourself the largest Cucurbita pepo you can carry and drag it back to the kitchen table, there to prepare it not once, not twice, but thrice-wise as prescribed below – ensouped, seedled and carved.
I’m always reluctant to write up a recipe for soup as it seems far too simple to warrant a post and possibly risks insulting your no doubt exemplary culinary skills dear reader(s). After all, your average soup is usually just a few veg zhuzhed up in olive oil or butter, simmered for 20 mins in stock and liquidised to the …
As much as I love to cook, sometimes it’s a welcome treat to prepare a meal which requires little more effort than a nifty flip of the switch on the Magimix.
… or an Italian version of a baguette. Not to be confused with the French Stick – the English version of the baguette which is 24 inches of pale bendy disappointment and about as authentic as Peckham Spring Water.
A monthly review of this site’s stats shows that in your endless and futile search for all that is novel and inconsequential, on average you lot spend only 11 fleeting and no doubt twitchy seconds reading Yumblog. For fuck’s sake, dear readers, you’re a capricious bunch … sometimes I wonder why we bother. …8, 9, 10, 11, time’s up … …
Obviously when I first eyed a display of Romanesco at the local veg market I mused how the inflorescence had an approximate self-similar character, with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral and how it approximated a natural fractal with each bud composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. (I don’t need to …
Despite your average British tomato being a Dutch grown, prematurely picked, under-ripe, woolly, anaemic, flavourless, blemish-free and over-chilled orb of disappointment, it’s still hard to get a genuine green tomato in this country… unless of course you live in Yorkshire and grow your own, in which case they’ll ALL be green from lack of sunlight. So when I found a …
Don’t roll your eyes, I know what you’re thinking, “Stuffed marrow? When it comes to vegetarian misery, it’s up there with the brown rice and kidney bean salad …or anything involving couscous or a that stalwart of the ‘vegetarian option’, the butternut squash”. Relax, this is like no other marrow you’ve stuffed before, and as well as being very tasty …
Matt the Cat loved this soup (once we’d given her a spoon).
It’s been a while since we’ve borsched a beetroot so when the Hebden Twins paid a brief visit the other morning and dropped off among other home-grown things, these handsome fellows, we knew exactly what to do with them.
The (ish) is there because to be properly Deutsche this should of course contain in some part or many a piggy porcine element, and if our experience of eating out in Berlin is anything to go by, a solitary pineapple chunk. Well you know what potato salad looks like, and it doesn’t photograph pretty, so here is some graffiti from …
The day started with two itinerant cows and ended with a trip back in time to 1978. In between there was a misfuelling which led to three spontaneous guests for dinner. We served them pasta with this simple and deceptively delicious roasted pepper sauce.
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.
…not to be confused with a Vinegaroon which is an ugly and menacing critter you definitely wouldn’t want to share the dinner table with. If you are short of time AND have been lucky enough to get hold of some juicy ripe flavoursome tomatoes (i.e. you live outside the UK) you can skip the whole 1½ – 2 hours slow …
Like the yoghurt, this is our second posting for Labneh and also like the yoghurt this uses a simpler Valentine Warner-inspired process.
It was way back in May 2009 when we first wrote a post on homemade yoghurt – that was 218 miles, 4 houses, 2 floods and one small child ago. I am ashamed to say the whole knit-your-own yoghurt thing was a short lived fad due no doubt to this early technique requiring thermometers, sterilised jars, a Bunsen burner and …
There are as many varieties of flat breads as there are varieties of Heinz products, or indeed bi-pedal humanoid aliens living amongst us – 57*. I can’t vouch for all of them, but this particular variant is tried, tested, easy to make, and very tasty. We laced ours with cumin although you could of course flavour yours with whatever spice …
If you would like to keep a fidgety child amused for an hour AND at the end of it have something tasty to dunk in your tea, this could well be the recipe for you. If you don’t have a child of your own don’t worry, you could always rent one … we hire ours out for £20 an hour …
Such is the fast turnaround of this post I still have a piece of samphire lodged between my teeth and a prawn juice stain on my t-shirt.
Sun turns to grey, grey turns to wet and wet heralds the first flood alert for, ooh days. Time to get nostalgic about those long balmy Yorkshire summer evenings sitting on the white-washed terraza under ancient gnarled trees, their branches heavy with succulent ripe Barm Cakes still warm from the day’s sun. It was on one such evening when we …
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.
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 …
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 …
Waiting for a post from Yumblog is a lot like waiting for a bus. Nothing for six weeks and then two come along at once. There the similarities end, so hop on board and enjoy the ride. What’s that, you don’t have the correct change? Bugger off and walk then.
Apologies (again) for the blogging hiatus. We can offer no excuses other than an extended trip outside the country, a redundancy, a three year old who has gone slightly bonkers and the usual plagues of locusts, frogs and boils. Here by way of compensation is a tasty morsel ideal for an extended al fresco (it rhymes with Tesco) weekend lunch.
We started writing yumblog because (like most food bloggers) we wanted to give you dear reader, the opportunity to press your greasy nose against the window of our perfect world and enviously look in slack-jawed and drooling at our incomprehensibly magnificent lives. Yumblog Cottage is a haven of sunlit space, children’s laughter, crisp white linen, freshly cut flowers, beautiful friends …
One of the meatier vegetarian dishes you’ll find here on Yumblog.
If you were to apply the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test to fruit-based desserts you’d find the Rhubarb fool sits somewhere between the Strawberry Simpleton and the Damson Dunce. Not the brightest confection in the bowl you understand, but possibly one of the tastiest.
Spinach, egg & parmesan pizza is like so yesterday. This is now our Friday evening pizza of choice.
This could possibly be the last comforting soup of the season as summer has finally reached these parts and the Pennines are roasting under 40 degrees of searing Yorkshire sunshine. Evenings are now spent sitting in the dappled shade of Hebden Bridge olive groves, drinking ice-cold Albariño, and listening to the song of the cicadas high up on the parched …
Such is the toothsomeness of this pizza, it has now become a Friday evening regular here at Yumblog Cottage – along with six hasty after-work Stellas and a punch up* with rival food bloggers in the precinct. The recipe comes from the excellent ‘Polpo – A Venetian cookbook (of Sorts)‘ by Russell Norman. If you want a copy you can …
I like Paul Hollywood, I like beer and I like bread…
As the snow fell on Yumblog Cottage thoughts turned to sledging and comfort food.
As a rule I tend to avoid drinks with the suffix pis, but this sounded so intriguing I had to give it a try.
Sometimes I wonder why we bother. We try our best to make this blog an edifying and sophisticated experience, but a glance at our site stats shows that the top three search queries which brought you here today were ‘Soft porn’, ‘Chicken pox’ and ‘Dairylea Lunchables’. You’re a weird and mucky bunch. Incidentally, anyone browsing for the 12th most popular …
This recipe does require the use of a pasta maker so you’ll need to have a rummage around in your cupboard of only-used-once things. There it is next to the Ken Hom wok set … to the left of the Jamie Oliver Flava Shaker … and behind everything you ever bought from the Lakeland catalogue.
Look, everyone I have an iPad Mini. In fact as I write this I’m on the morming commute steaming through the Calder Valley aboard the Northern Rail Executive Express. For those of you not in the know, the Northern Rail Executive Express is a sleek luxuriously upholstered silver bullet from the future which flashes silently and smoothly between Leeds and …
Now sit up straight, hands on desks and pay attention for what I am about to tell you is very important. This rosemary-infused oil is going to feature quite heavily in many up and coming and no doubt mouthwatering posts so it’s imperative you set aside the 10 minutes required to make it. Consider it homework.
Strolling through the orangery here at Yumblog Hall it became clear we were going to have a glut of oranges again this season. A bumper crop no doubt thanks to both the skill of old Mr Fothergill the head gardener, and the relentless sunshine and arid terroir of West Yorkshire. We decided to use some of this surplus to make …