Fuck the Tories
Bags packed, we’re off to Hungary for a bowl of noodled soup. For a relatively small country Hungary has many largest things: largest thermal water cave system and (second) largest thermal lake in the world, not forgetting the largest lake and largest natural grasslands in Europe. Budapest, Hungary
And so to our spiritual home, Germany. A country that seems to get most things right in the same way we don’t anymore. In 2018 on a visit to Berlin we saw Scritti Politti at an event called ‘Goodbye UK – and Thank You for the Music‘, a celebration paying ‘homage to the extraordinary musical creativity that made the United …
What better way to start a new year than a visit to France, specifically the heavily German influenced region of Alsace. Colmar, Alsace, France.
And what better to soak up your Lohikeitto than this robust (and novelty shaped) rye bread. Putkilahti, Finland
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, …
Today we are eating pie in Estonia, a country in Northern Europe which borders the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. Including more than 1,500 islands, its diverse terrain spans rocky beaches, old-growth forest and many lakes. Estonian citizens receive universal health care, free education and the longest paid maternity leave in the OECD. It is one of the world’s …
Denmark is a Scandinavian country comprising the Jutland Peninsula and numerous islands. It’s linked to nearby Sweden via the Öresund bridge. Denmark is considered to be one of the most economically and socially developed countries in the world. The country ranks as having the world’s highest social mobility, a high level of income equality and the lowest perceived level of …
The challenge Yumblog faces as a vegetarian/fish/seafood blog, is that many countries in Project EU lean towards a meat-centric and essentially pig-based diet. Added to this, fish dishes from landlocked countries invariably feature carp – a best-avoided flaccid, grainy creature which tastes of mud and has a texture not dissimilar to tripe. On a 2009 visit to Prague (some photos …
Every December Dresden holds its annual Stollen Festival. It is a celebration of all things Stollen and involves among other things, electing the Dresden Stollen Maiden (Dresdner Stollenmädchen) and baking the world’s largest Stollen in accordance with the standards laid down by the Stollenschutzverband. This is a recipe for a stollen of more modest proportions although you can multiply the …
After the main course, where better to have puds than 1,898 km away on the sun drenched Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Officially called the Republic of Cyprus (this is probably not the best forum for discussion of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus), it is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. On 1 January 2008 …
Our New Year’s Eve dinner found us straddling the 1,898 km between Croatia and Cyprus. Croatia served us the main course of these tasty prawns accompanied by a flat bread called Lepinja, and Cyprus a dessert of light and zesty rice pudding. Croatia is classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy and ranks very high on the Human …
To go with our Škampi na buzaru we made these delicious flatbreads. Unlike many of their ilk, these are baked in the oven rather than cooked on a griddle and the resulting puffs of bread are most pleasing. It’s an easy bread to make, imagine the joy of filling them with lunchtime morsels, ham and slaw, cheese and pickle, houmous, …
On the day Parliament voted through the Brexit deal with little or no scrutiny, shamefully aided by a whipped Labour Party, now is a good time to reflect that were you to have believed the spew of lies wretched up by the Leave campaign, our glorious Kingdom would now be overrun by Bulgarians, and Banitsa, no doubt garnished with chips …
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 …
We thought we’d end the year and start the new with a celebration of the 28 27 members of the European Union. Each day we’ll be serving a meal from a different EU member state, striving for the authentic and traditional and avoiding the cliched – and to make it unnecessarily complicated, doing it in alphabetical order. Today we’ll be …
Along with the pretzel pre-injected with butter, the Laugeneck has been one of the more innovative baked-goods finds from our many visits to the bakeries of Berlin. This triangle of loveliness is essentially a cunning hybrid of croissant and pretzel, taking the chewy butteriness of the former and encasing it in the salty crunch of the latter. Unusually for Yumblog, …
If you are the impulsive sort who starts cooking a dish before fully reading the method, and then 10 minutes before your planned meal time come across the instruction ‘marinade for a fortnight’, then please read the recipe below thoroughly as it contains not only ‘simmer for two hours‘ but also ‘soak overnight‘. That said, forewarned is forearmed, and planning …
As a rule I scroll past any sponsored content appearing in my Facebook timelime (unless of course it’s from Boots in which case I write an angry comment telling them to stop ripping off the NHS and pay their fucking taxes, or Dyson when I inform them Henrys are better, and pay their fucking taxes), however when a Branston* Pickle …
When a succession of veg boxes leaves you with a cumulative glut of lettuces, you come to the realisation that there is only so much you can eat in traditional salad form, and cooking seems to be limited to braised side dishes, either solo or avec pois. But worry not dear reader(s) for there is hope (especially if like me …
We here at Yumblog Villas are always reluctant to post soups (upload, not mail) as they are so simple we fear you might be insulted dear reader(s) and flounce off in one of your famed over-dramatic strops. However, lockdown lends itself to the desire for something comforting and warming and besides we had all the right ingredients in the form …
Readers would be forgiven for assuming a salad favoured by weather worn salty old seadogs would more than likely contain something fishy, seafoody or otherwise scaly/tenticaly/crustacean(y), but they would be wrong … very wrong in fact, as this dish could be enjoyed by even the most devout and fervent hessian-clad vegan. I could go as far as to say this …
The study topic for Yumblog Junior this term is The Great Patriotic War (aka WW2) and one of her assignments was to prepare and cook something authentic circa homefront 1939–1945. Eschewing the Mock Fish Cakes, Potato Floddies and Reconstituted Egg on Toast, she opted for something which, at least at first glance, promised contemporary chocolatey sweetness. As I said before, …
As I had to line up outside the greengrocers in a long socially-spaced covid queue for over twenty minutes to buy, among other things, these three handsome leeks, I thought they should (in true Masterchef style) be made the ‘star of the dish’. This is a modified, and in my ‘umble opinion, much improved Jme Oliver recipe.
Yumblog Junior rarely gets involved in the cooking process, preferring instead to be the slightly ungrateful and generally underwhelmed recipient of a parent-prepared meal. However pandemics, close proximity, home education and a lot of time to kill, means times are a changing and she’ll be sharing her parents’ enthusiasm for the kitchen whether she likes it or not.
This recipe, such as it is, is based on the ingredients listed on the side of a box of Aldi meusli – the no brand, no frills, no nonsense, no dessicated coconut, budget Swiss-style, German engineered breakfast of choice here at Yumblog Villas. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a lefty bubble like the People’s Republic of Brighton (Hello …
Ok, so eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that this isn’t technically food, however, it is a recipe of sorts and uses completely benign and edible ingredients. Besides, once we’ve negotiated our glorious no-deal Brexit and the only food available in the shops is powdered egg and chlorinated luncheon meat, we could easily find ourselves rooting around in the bathroom cabinet …
‘So what precisely is kefir?’ I don’t hear you ask. Well according to the top boffins here at Laboratoires Yumblog, kefir is a scientifically proven magic drink packed full of friendly bacteria so affable they’ll transform your stomach into a fragrant wonderland of probiotic loveliness. ‘Hmm, sounds interesting’ you quizzically reply, ‘but by what devilish witchcraft does one contrive this …
As the result of a Christmas spent in France hosted by, among others, Jean-Pierre the moustachioed turophile, we had pretty much vowed to stay away from cheese for long into the new year. That was until, in an idle moment, we happened across this tempting Potato, Leek and Gruyère tart from the ever reliable and inspirational Gourmet Traveller website. Be …
Here’s wishing a ‘Happy New Year’ to all our lovely readers. In many ways 2017 wasn’t the best, but trust me 2018 is going to be great. The Tories will implode under the sheer weight of their incompetence, corruption and lies, Corbyn will march us joyfully towards a new Socialist dawn, Brexit will be cancelled, Greggs will be nationalised, and …
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) …
Take a shop bought pitta bread and make it lighter, fluffier, yeastier and generally breadier and you should get the general idea.
Thought it would be safer to put ‘falafels’ in inverted commas as the absence of chickpeas and the inclusion of halloumi, would probably leave us open to criticism from ‘The Guild of Master Falafel Makers‘ as well as purists, pedants, trolls, stupid people and no doubt the odd het up vegan. We here at Yumblog don’t want any trouble, especially as …
Following Yumblog Juniors Christmas frenzy there is brief and welcome hiatus before the excitement once again builds in anticipation of the June birthday. An excitement particularly heightened this year as it represented the enormous leap from the risible infancy of six to the long awaited and unimaginable maturity of seven.
The source of this recipe can be found in ‘The Gaza Kitchen‘ by Laila El-Haddad & Maggie Schmitt. This is an impressive collection of Palestinian recipes interspersed with stories of life, struggle and food in the oppressed land of Gaza. We have made a few tiny modifications, tweaked proportions, and converted the measurements from ‘cups’ to the 21st century, but …
Consider the humble chickpea. Nutritious, ubiquitous, tasty, cheap, and as versatile as a 46-piece socket set. It can be stir-fried, casseroled, tagined, enstewed, devilled, saladated, hummouserised, soupified, and in this case, masalaed. If you’re contemplating doing something interesting with a tin of chickpeas this weekend, we here at Yumblog Villas urge you to give this a go.
By far the most prolific and rampant vegetable currently growing in the collective garden here at Yumblog Villas is the courgette. Some have become so pumped up they have started to hang around with the marrows. Two such swaggering beasts constituted the bulk of this refreshing, light yet substantial summer soup. I’ll suggest next year we also grow peas and …
You know humanity is truly approaching the end of days when a flier from McDonnalds drops on the doormat and not only pronounces ‘We deliver, McDelivery has arrived’, but also proudly trumpets that this essential service is bought to you by UberEATS. A partnership forged in the fat-clogged sewers of neoliberal hell. It could only be worse if your Happy …
Blimey, looking at the date of the Fondue below, it would appear we haven’t written a post for a year and a half. I would be inclined to feel guilt were it not for the troubling matter of the past 18 months, during which you dear reader(s) seem to have become crazed and in our absence voted for an ugly …
Traditional Cheese Fondue
