An Onion Experiment

A cold walk by the canal left me desperately wanting a warming filling good old british style lunch, unfortunately my girlfriends cupboard was pretty bare but there were some sausages, and digging around in a bag of what looked like roots revealed that there were in fact potatoes still just about eatable so the decision was made that it would be good old sausage and mash. Wanting however to impress the lady friend with something vaguely special I decided to make something I had till now kept my distance from, onion gravy.

Now it wasn’t that I hated onion gravy you understand, I’d hated it as a child, but most most foods I now adore, mustard, rare meat, fish, I hated as a child, so I paid that no attention. It was just . . . just . . . it was just the idea of it, I mean onion gravy urgh!!! we all know onion isn’t for gravy, I can’t think of anything that would seem less likely to make good gravy (well in fact, I can and its bisto, but moving past my snobbery). But other people rave about it and onions was the only other ingredient I could find, so it was clearly time to give it a go. ten minutes or so on BBC food found about fifty recipes all totally different so I decided I might as well make it up as I went along. Well I love onion gravy, it took a very nice but nonetheless cheap and cheerful lunch and transformed it into something distinctly special, and also earned me enough brownie points with the lady friend for her to volunteer to do all the washing up.

For a classy yet traditional british lunch you will need:

4 Sausages

preferably from the butchers, its really worth it though this time I used, Tesco ‘finest’ don’t get skinless sausages, I know skins are probably made of intestine, but come on, Hannibal Lector ate worse and he was a master chef.

A couple of handfuls of potatoes

now I know if you’re making mash your supposed to used king edwards or other big flowery potatoes but being poor, I use the same potatoes for everything and I honestly don’t notice the difference, today I ended up using new potatoes (I think, they were small)

Three small onions

this would probably be nicer with red onions but white ones will work

Butter

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Red Wine vinegar

Brown sugar

Stock (I used chicken but if you use something else don't let it keep you awake at night crying at what could have been)

Put Sausages in a frying pan on a very low heat and don’t turn them, oh and if you prick them I’l prick you, leave them there while you’re doing the rest. they should take about 40 minutes if everything else is ready but the sausages are a little raw on top then turn them over for the last few minutes. When done they should be slightly burnt and sticky on the bottom and smell amazing.

Melt a knob of butter on a low heat and add the finely chopped onions and two teaspoons of brown sugar then leave them on a low heat for about 45 minutes then add a glug of olive oil, two cloves of crushed garlic and turn the heat up to medium. When the onions are starting to go brown and sticky round the edges as they caramelize add three table spoons of balsamic vinegar stir for a few minutes then add a big glug of red wine vinegar. make up about 500 ml of chicken stock and gradually stir it in then turn the heat up by half.

While the stock is reducing peal and boil the potatoes in salted water, when they’re soft mash them up, make sure you mash them properly or you will get lumpy mash and lumpy mash is worse than conservatism then add to big glugs of milk and season with just a little salt and pepper. serve the mash then top with the sausages then pour the onion gravy generously over the top, enjoy.

Rant and Roast

I'll be using this blog to indulge two of my favorite things, food and ranting. To that end I will not only be talking about food that I love but also contrasting it with peoples behavior around food that really grinds my nerves. the following are my three deadly culinary sins: (and I should probably confess I am or have been guilty of all of them at one point or another)

1. Being overly snobbish and generally tory about food (oh I may also get political from time to time sorry!). This is the one I'm probably guilty of the most since I love describing foods with at least three times as many syllables than would normally be required. Also far to I often just can't resist throwing in extra ingredients that there are no need for and I have no valid reason to assume will enhance the flavor of the dish in any way, usually, balsamic vinegar or cumin seeds or the like. However lets not go nuts here, if you have a poor piece of steak no flamed black peppercorn and cream sauce is going to revive it and if you have a really nice piece then it won't vastly improve it, nature's already made the food remember as a cook you job is just to put in the finishing touches.

2. Refusing to trying new things. I will go on record and state quite willingly that I am the biggest, I believe 'wuss' is the turn of phrase used by the younger generation these days (yo I'm down with da kids). I hide my face in horror movies (even just the 15s), if a wasp enters the room I promptly depart it squealing, and once when I didn't recognize a friend on the street late at night when he offered me his hand into it I placed my wallet before curling up on the floor screaming 'please don't hurt me' (that last part may be somewhat lacking in truth). But I digress, the point being I'm a hardly adventurous, but I can't stand when people seem to have found say a dozen foods and have decided that these are they only foods 'they like'.

What do mean those the only foods you like?! of the literally billions upon billions of combinations of edible substances and ways or preparing you have reduced this vast, nay, INFINITE selection down to a number that can be counted be an infant without removing socks?!!! and how? how have you gone about reaching this unfathomable and mathematically impressive conclusion? have you gone on an exhaustive journey of the worlds cuisines trying every possible food cooked in every possible way before by trial and error you have discovered that the only ones out of all this delicious glory you 'like' are a small solitarily dozen foods (of which, no doubt, at least for have the letters 'Mc' stuck vulgarly at the beginning)

No you haven't you've simply settled on perhaps the first dozen foods your mother gave you after the Nestle formula milk ran out and then deny yourself the whole world of vibrant diverse and wonderful flavors available in the modern world for fear that a couple of them might well be unpleasant in your mouth, cause you to gain weight of suffer the horrific social stigma of having on of you friends say, 'oh my god you don't like that do you?!'

Goodness me what an outburst. I think my rages originates in the fact that when I was a child I used to be like this, as far as I was concerned good food was steak shepard's pie and honey sandwiches and really with those things there really was no need for me to look any further (fortunately I had a mother who is a fantastic cook and told to to stop moaning and what was in front of me) then about two or three years ago I read Nigal Slater's wonderful book Appetite and reading his wonderfully evocative descriptions that made the mouth not so much water as gush like the Niagara Falls, and of things I was sure I hated such as mustard, or fish. So I made a conscious decision to take every opportunity to broaden my culinary horizons and as a result my life is infinitely richer, (a the thought of a world without mustard fills me with dread). I realized how foolish I'd been all this wonderful pleasure I'd denied myself for no real reason at all, and it does tend to rile me up a little when I see others determinedly digging themselves deeper into that same whole I wallowed in for so long.

3. Not being bothered about food. Now I like to think of myself as a good liberal and I know everyone has their own hobbies and enjoyments and cooking and a real passion for food can't be for everyone but . . . well, but no! I totally reject everything I just said! I'm sorry but not being into food makes as much sense to me as saying "yeah I've never really got in to the whole oxygen thing" you NEED food! it keeps you alive! I may like video games and you may like embroidering cats bottoms but both of us need to sit down every day and get some chow, we've just got too, so it can either be an enjoyable experience that you look forward to where you relish the sense of anticipation you get from preparing nice food and the exquisite joy you receive on that first perfect bite, juicy tangy salty rich fiery, savory, smooth crunchy, fresh, sour, dry mellow, or whatever fits your taste, or you can enjoy it as much as your cold dead metal car enjoys being refueled, feel the same tedious monotony of plugging your phone into its charger. So take a few minutes just every now and again read a book on food watch good old Jamie in his latest attempt to save the world, listen to the pearls of wisdom hidden subtly between expletives by Gordon Ramsey, or even just pay attention to what's in your food, particularly if your ever eating out, try a few new things and see which flavors work together for you.

So with these in mind lets move on to talking about some actual food last night I made that great classic roast chicken, its used to be a favorite of mine but because I live with just one other guy, I haven't really had chance to make it for a over a year, a roast is a bit too much food and certainly to much money for to young guys. So imagine if you will, my delight to find myself at my parents house with a sole responsibility for preparing dinner and a fantastic organic 2.2 kg chicken (I think it was kg I really hate measurements they are the enemy of all creative cooking could Van Gogh tell you how many ounces of each colour paint he used to paint the Mona Lisa?! and if he could do you think with that knowledge anybody could ever recreate it?!).

Now before we go any further, roast chicken proves exactly a point I made in complaint number 1 namely its more about the food than what you do with it. So when it comes to choosing a chicken for a roast CHOOSE A HIGH QUALITY FREE RANGE CHICKEN, I know they really can get expensive but simply put there's no point having a roast if you don't and none of all this elaborate (somewhat snobby I'll admit) seasoning will be able to improve the disappointment that a cheap factory made McChicken will bring. I know they can get expensive but I would say if like me roast chicken is a luxury you can only afford say once a month, then don't have it once a month have it once every two months and get a decent chicken better to have one fantastic meal that will proved leftovers and stock for many more than one poor one you wouldn't want to repeat.

So finally on to the chicken.

The other wonderful advantage to cooking at my parents house is my Mum's extensive herb garden, I'm can not say with any degree of certainty how big it is since its bigger than my mental gallery of what different herbs look like when still alive and fresh. This means the herbs I used with the chicken were partially decided by what herbs I could identify with certainty in the garden. I think thats how cooking should be though; every now and then let fate decide what goes in the dish and you might discover some marvelous new combination (tea was supposedly discovered when tea leaves accidentally fell from a tree into a pot of water being boiled).

I ground some cumin and coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar (if you really must have quantities it was about a tsp of cumin and 2 tsp of coriander seeds, but seriously why does how much I use matter? If you really like these flavors increase them if you don't reduce them) then I added some roughly chopped flat leafed parsley and Thyme, and some dried Marjoram, and a good hunk of butter (room temperature so it was soft, say between 100g and 200g). I mashed all this lot together till I had a wonderful smelling buttery paste which I then rubbed all over the skin of the chicken, this is actually quite trick and some bits had quite thick layers whilst others only a small smearing I don't think this really matters within a few minutes of being in the over most of the butter will have melted anyway, so long as there are herbs every where it doesn't matter.

To Stuff the bird I placed a few shoots of rosemary, half a bulb of garlic and half a lemon up its bottom, (I know, I know the cavity isn't really up its bottom) I also put the other half of the garlic bulb cut side down in the baking dish to help flavour the gravy. oh and put some potatoes on to par boil.

I stuck it in the top oven of the aga for about and hour and a twenty minutes. This is what mine looked like when was done.

Next to go with it roast potatoes and butternut squash and some fried courgettes, all delightfully simple.

Quarter the squash down its vertical axis and using a melon baller scrape out a little grove in each piece. Smear a little butter on the inside of each of them just enough to help the spices stick, grind some more cumin and coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar and sprinkle them over the squash. bake on the bottom of the oven until the chicken is done, it seems to be impossible to burn these things so you should have quite a lot of leeway I prefer them well done because then you can easily eat the skin which is my favorite part. Incidentally I'm not sure these spices are the best ones for this so any suggestions are very welcome.

The potatoes should be done about now so put a couple of generous dollops of goose fat (you've probably heard about how goose fat makes great roast potatoes trust me you haven't lived till you've tried them!) on a baking tray and heat of the gas, when its very hot add the potatoes carefully flipping them over so they are covered all over, put them in the oven they should take about as long as the chicken.

When you've only got about ten minutes left for the chicken then fry some (say 4) thickly sliced courgettes in lots of olive oil and when their brownish add the juice of a lemon and a chopped dried chili.

For desert I wanted to keep things very simple so I didn't have to panic about anything burning while eating the main course so I cored three cooking apples and filled the resulting holes with alternate layers of raisins sugar and butter, slice them around their circumference to prevent them exploding. Delicious with cream and almost no effort at all.