Surprising a gold-crest

Posted on March 21, 2015 by Ralph Bullivant

I am not sure who was more surprised, me or the gold-crest. It came to on a small branch in the yew tree about 18 inches from the tip of my nose. We looked at each other briefly and then it was off again to another branch higher up in the tree, it was only there for a couple of seconds and then it was gone.

For lunch we had a bowl of tomato soup with goats cheese. The tomatoes came from the green-grocer – a split blue plastic tray of cherry tomatoes all for £3.99.

I sweated a couple of roughly chopped onions on a high heat in olive oil and then stirred in a chopped red pepper and aubergine. I should have added some garlic at that stage but I forgot. For seasoning I threw in some sage leaves and roughly ground coriander seeds. As the onions started to catch I tipped in the tomatoes. I didn’t bother to cut them up knowing they would split soon enough over the heat.

I kept them on a moderate heat until most of the tomatoes had split and the ones that hadn’t were floating in a thick sauce.

That sauce then went through a mouli and then a fine sieve. For serving I place a couple of slices of soft goats cheese in the middle of each plate. We ate it with bread the sun blazing through a blue sky outside.

After lunch I planted eight salad seedlings in the veg plot and took in the smell of the garlic growing there.

How the last lot of homebrew turned out

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Ralph Bullivant

This evening I went down to the basement and eyed up the barrel of beer.

It had sat there for the last two weeks, quiet and unassuming and with unknown mysteries going on under the plastic. The small piece of paper with instructions said leave it two or three weeks; we were on two weeks and a half, time to crack it open.

When I opened the tap it came out with a suitable rush and in the glass it was clear with a slight frothy head. Taste-wise it was better than the last lot – not so sweet and with a touch of the bitter. It still had the tang of homebrew about it but no more so than the odd bottle of beer I have bought from The Farmer’s Market.

So that’s forty pints done and ready for drinking in the space of three weeks or thereabouts. I may start the next lot off this weekend and have a go boiling up some hops to go with it.

Lobster presses

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Ralph Bullivant

Sunday’s Observer Food Monthly gave us a list of 50 Foodie things we should know about this year. I was surprised that the mackerel curry from Jane-tira didn’t make the list. The more time goes on the more I am looking forward to the next time I can pit my taste buds against all of its vicious power.

But tucked away as an aside at No. 38 was reference to a contraption that should be on everyone’s wish-list. The article was on the pressed duck available from Otto’s Restaurant in London.

Pressed duck involves the use of a duck press which was described as the sort of thing that would have had Vlad the Impaler licking its lips and is a silver screw-press into which the carcass of a duck cooked rare is scrunched up so that its bloody juices can poured off and ladled over the breasts which will have just been carved away from the same crushed carcass.

But then mention was made to a similar but more ancient device used for lobster. Go to Otto’s website and he explains that there are only four of these things that were ever made. It was crafted out of silver almost 100 years ago and took over 150 man hours to put together.

It takes the shell and roe of the lobster once they have been cooked and the press is screwed down so as to extract every last residue of flavour from the beast. The juice is then mixed with some good lobster bisque and ladled over the meat. All this costs about £150 for two.

I have been on Amazon and these contraptions are just about available at a knock down price of $1,950.35 but with free shipping thrown in.

As much as a bargain as that sounds I reckon I could knock up something almost as tasty with a couple of Tommy’s lobsters and some heavy pieces of wood for knocking the buggeration out of the shells to extract their flavour.

Purple carrots and dirty carrots

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Ralph Bullivant

Saturday was The Farmer’s Market in New Ferry and Sunday was Mother’s Day so the two came together with me roasting a couple of chickens for a late Sunday lunch that had been picked up at The Farmer’s Market. Along with the chicken I bought a sack of potatoes and a couple of bags of dirty carrots. Why do carrots taste so much better if they have a good covering of black soil still clinging to them.

Before roasting the chicken I made some spiced root vegetable cakes from Persiana. Three potatoes cooked in their skin and allowed to cool grated into a bowl together with a grated beetroot, parsnip and two carrots and then mixed with some chopped spring onions, ground cumin and turmeric and then bound with a couple of eggs and a spoonful of flour.

The chickens were smeared with olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon juice and plenty of salt and pepper and were then thrown into the hot oven for just over an hour. In the meantime potatoes were peeled and boiled, tossed in oil and put in the oven along with the chicken.

Twenty minutes before we were ready to eat the chicken came out of the oven, covered with some foil and left to rest. The oven was then turned up to finish roasting the potatoes and a vast Yorkshire Pudding was made.

The carrots were boiled with honey and cumin and for added excitement I cooked a couple of purple carrots as well.

The root vegetable cakes were fried and eventually we were ready to eat.

The purple carrots were a talking point although the tasted much the same as the orange ones!

I manage to lay the table for 12 forgetting that we were missing one child. A pity. She would have enjoyed the Yorkshire Pudding.