More excuses for opprobrium on the head of Boris Johnson

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Go to the opening page of this blog where I set out a few words about The Sheep’s Head Food Company and you will see that one of the instigators for all that is on here was the vague idea that one day there would be an opportunity to import from West Cork to Birkenhead some of the fine cheeses, sausages, bacon and other good food we have every summer sat up from the beach in Ahakista.

It seems that one more nail has been driven into that particular coffin with the vote last week that we should leave the EU. Yet another good reason to heap all possible opprobrium on the head of Boris Johnson.

It seems as if the answer maybe to spend more time on the Rightmove website looking up suitable properties in Cork to move into.

In the meantime this evening I cooked up a pan of pasta in mushroom sauce for two.

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An onion and some garlic was sweated in oil. As it took on colour chopped mushrooms were heaped in and put on a high heat until they started to wilt. In the meantime I had ground up some porcini mushroom pieces in salt and soaked them in water. They were added to the pan along with some chilli flakes, a couple of sage leaves and some thyme, tomato paste and a pinch of flour. Some more water was added from the pan in which the pasta was cooking until I had a thick sauce. It was then stirred into the drained pasta.

St George’s Hall

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

We found ourselves walking out of Lime Street Station yesterday and then across the road into St George’s Hall. There was an arts & crafts fair going on and so we looked at the arts & crafts but I found myself spending more time looking over the building and its internal splendour.

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And then we walked back outside through the great columns that stand opposite the old station hotel. There were chairs and a table had been set up from where you could buy coffee but I couldn’t help thinking that here was an opportunity lost.

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Afterwards we admired the ginger cat in 69A on Renshaw Street and then went for lunch in Maray. Is it now the best place to eat in Liverpool?

Tortilla

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

I got told off the evening for boiling my potatoes.

The Spanish tortilla had been cooked and was on the side in the kitchen resting for a few minutes before being eaten.

As it sat there it was briefly admired by a friend but I was told that I should not have boiled the potatoes.

She was right of course. If I had been doing it properly I should have cooked the potatoes in hot olive oil before adding the onions and egg. But I was being lazy and truth be told I was more worried about whether the egg would stick to the bottom of the non-non-stick pan.

In the event it seems that the pan has managed to pick up sufficient seasoning over the last couple of years and it is now more or less non-stick and I was able to get the tortilla to slide out without too much mess.

I still cheated by using the grill to cook the top rather than go down the route of tipping it out onto a plate and then tipping it back in upside down.

Rather to my surprise we finished it all.

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Another prawn curry

Posted on June 19, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Six years ago when we went to Australia I came back with a signed copy of David Thompson’s Thai Street Food. I am still not quite sure how I was able to bring it back with me on the plane. It is a monster of a book and weighs a ton and must have taken up most of my luggage allowance all by itself.

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I had it out yesterday as I was looking for another prawn curry to make.

Once assembled it was fairly straightforward. A lot of the recipes in the book involve the making of a paste. This means getting out a heavy pestle and mortar and spending the best part of an hour chopping and pounding.

The spices were done first – a mixture of cumin, coriander and fennel seeds which all had to be roasted and then ground to a powder. They were mixed with some mace and white pepper.

In the meantime some dried red chillies had been soaking. Once soft they were chopped and ground to a paste with some salt, a couple of cloves of garlic were then added to the mix and ground down as well. They were followed by coriander roots, lemon grass, red shallots, galangal and turmeric. I was able to find some fresh turmeric roots in The International Store and they have stained everything a bright yellow. The spice mixture was stirred in.

I was left with a thick brown pungent paste.

This went into a wok to be fried off with some coconut milk. As it started to stick I tipped in the rest of the coconut milk, stirred in some sugar along with an onion that been chopped into chances and a couple of cubed cooked potatoes. As it all started to cook I added the raw prawns and a couple of handfuls of split cherry tomatoes. Once the prawns were pink I seasoned it with fish sauce and chilli powder.