Monthly Archives: July 2014

Orzo

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Last summer we had a lunch at Manning’s Emporium as the rain came pouring down. We had a few glasses of dry sherry and plates of meat and cheese. As we left we were given a bag of small pieces of pasta shaped like flat pieces of rice.

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Over the last year I have either come across that bag of pasta when not expecting to see it or remembered it was there and not been able to find it.

For two reasons today I came across the word orzo in relation to food. The first time was in a menu for The Open just down the road from here which someone had brought into work and the second time was on the twittersphere. I needed to know what orzo was so late in the day I put the words into google only to find a picture of something looking very much like the bag of pastaI had been given last year.

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We ate it this evening. The pasta took five minutes to cook. Once it was done I mixed it with cherry tomatoes, garlic and parsley and then ate it with a couple of pork chops cooked on the barbeque.

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Still listening to Dexys. 

Pot Roast

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Yesterday morning leaving the house for work my mind turned to what we might eat that evening and I remembered that a month ago I had overbought at The Farmer’s Market as a result of which there was a small beef pot-roast in the freezer. I took it out to defrost.

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Having got home that evening I heated some olive oil in a heavy pan and as it started to smoke tipped in the beef. It sputtered and spat fat and oil as I turned it to brown. As it did so I added a couple of chopped onions, a chopped rasher of bacon and garlic. As the onions wilted I stirred in two chopped tomatoes and then half a pint of water and a few sprigs of thyme. Once it was simmering the heat was turned down and I moved onto something else.

Really I should have put it in low oven for a few hours but there were kids to feed so I left it to cook on the stove turning back to it every twenty minutes or so to turn over the meat. It was done in an hour.

I took it out of the pan to rest for a while whilst I boiled down the sauce left in the pan. 

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To eat it I sliced the beef on a flat dish and sieved the sauce over it. We ate it with a salad made with pitta and lettuce leaves from the garden.

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Listening to Luscious Jackson.

Courgette flowers again

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Summer must be here as there are courgette flowers to be had from the veg patch.

The courgettes themselves are still a bit small but give them a week or so and they will be taking over and I will be scouring books for new ways to cook them. in the meantime I can munch on the flowers – a special treat at the end of the garden.

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We finished off the roast chicken this evening. It was better cold, the eat pulled from the bones and chopped into bite sized chunks mixed up with the jellied juices from the bottom of the cooking pan. We ate it with salad and tomatoes mixed with toasted pitta bread and a dressing of pomegranate and oil and finished off with a handful of nasturtium flowers and sumac – don’t forget the sumac. The kids avoided the flowers and salad and just ate the toasted pitta.

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Listening to Let It Bleed.

Golden beetroot

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One of the reasons for having a veg patch is being able to grow those things that you cannot get in the shops. I don’t do as much of this as I should do but this year I have grown some golden beetroot.

We had the first of it for lunch today. Each globe was sized halfway between a golf ball and a tennis ball. I picked four of them. 

They were boiled for half an hour or so, allowed to cool, peeled and sliced the thickness of a good pound coin and seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, some feta cheese and dill.

We ate them with a roast chicken stuffed with tarragon and cloves of elephant garlic (both from the garden), a broad bean salad and fried potatoes.

The chicken was good but could have come out of the oven 10 minutes earlier and I should have pushed the tarragon under its skin so that its full flavour could have soaked into the the bird rather than just putting it into its belly. That will be for next month.

In the meantime I have been making up plans for a birthday celebration later this year. These plans have not got much further than working over the logistics of taking a record player to Ahakista in the summer and what records I should take with me. On a good day I reckon I could limit the records to 25 – perhaps enough to fill a small record case.

1. Exile on Main St.

2. Snakes & ladders

3. Gardens where we feel secure

4. Blue Valentine

5. What’s Goin’ On

6. Party time

7. Parallel Lines

8. No. 1 Record & Radio City

9. Reckoning

10. Surprise, surprise, surprise

11. One Nation Under a Groove

12. At Fillmore East

So that’s 13 to go.  

And I am looking forward to cooking the two artichokes that arrived this afternoon!