Happy New Year!

The dearth of posts on this blog over the last month or so has partly been down to a dearth of eating out! Christmas has put paid to that for now.
But I have been in the kitchen a lot, cooking my first Christmas Day dinner for one thing (fairly successful, but still not as good as my Mum's!)

I have been getting into soup-making, partly out of thrift and to use up the organic veg bag I receive fortnightly. In the past couple of weeks we've enjoyed

* Roast Parsnip and Cumin
* Carrot and Orange
* Cream of Cauliflower

and today I think it will be cream of mushroom, to use up a bulk bag of cheap mushrooms I bought a couple of days ago for a curry.

I did do some entertaining over the festive period, though, including New Years' dinner with pals. We ate smoked salmon on coarse oatcakes with dill creme fraiche, wasabi crabcakes, courtesy of Nigella Christmas, coq au vin and a huge wedge of Webster Blue Stilton to pick over along with wine and chat.

Here's the crabcake recipe as it appears in Nigella Lawson's book Feast - courtesy of the BBC Food website:

Ingredients
4 spring onions, chopped
1 garlic clove
500g/1lb 2oz white crabmeat
3 tsp Japanese wasabi
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp tamari or Japanese soy sauce
100g/4oz brown rice flour
groundnut or other vegetable oil for frying
limes sliced into segments, to garnish


Method
1. Place the garlic and the spring onions into the bowl of a food processor and blend until they become finely chopped.
2. Add the crabmeat, wasabi, rice vinegar, tamari or soy sauce and the rice flour to the bowl. Blend the mixture again until it has combined to form a rough paste.
3. In a large frying pan, add enough oil to fill the panto a depth of 0.5cm/¼in. Heat the oil until a breadcrumb sizzles and turns golden-brown when added (CAUTION: Hot oil can be dangerous. Do not leave unattended).
4. Roll teaspoonfuls of crab mixture into balls with your hands. Flatten the balls slightly and carefully place them into the hot oil. Fry the crab cakes until they turn golden-brown on both sides and are cooked through (only cook 8-10 crab cakes in the pan at one time so that they can be turned quickly and the oil temperature doesn't drop too much). Drain the crab cakes on kitchen paper.
5. To serve place the crab cakes on a clean plate and place the lime segments around the plate.




I have to confess that I didn't have the vinegar - and in Nigella's Christmas book, the brown rice flour is replaced by breadcrumbs... I also used tinned crabmeat (horror!) but they did taste amazing with a cold lager (or so Mr Gastro told me)!

The coq au vin was my own recipe - and very simple, but with a bit of a cheat in the middle. I usually start making it the day before - frying onions in butter and garlic, I add a carrot, some celery and a couple of splashes of Worcester sauce (or soy if you don't have it) and a litre of chicken stock. I let all of that cook down, strain and then return the stock to the heat. I add a bottle (or near enough) of good red wine. Again I leave this bubbling away on the hob. When it's reduced I let it cool and put it in the fridge, this is a good way of taking the fat out of what is quite an oily mix. In the morning, skim off the excess fat on what looks like a weird gelatine stock. And start again - with butter, onions and garlic - this time I brown chicken pieces before stirring in the dark mixture. I add some boiling water, some seasoning and taste. If it needs more wine, do it.
I add mushrooms in when it's nearly done, to keep the texture - and I served it with maple syrup roasted sweet potatoes (hardly very French, I know, but oddly comforting), and buttered baguette.



I have also been reading food blogs for ideas - my fellow bloggers have certianly come up trumps. I absolutely love reading Niamh Shields' Eat Like A Girl blog. A girl after my own heart! I'd also recommend Just Bento for anyone interested in Japanese cookery...

All the best for 09
GG X

Comfort food

I have a really sore throat today, and I'm finding it hard to swallow. This means only one thing to me - vegetable noodle soup. There's no recipe for this. It's whatever veg you fancy (for me, usually finely chopped mushrooms, and greens) along with a chicken stock, flavoured with soy or miso, and full of lovely noodles, finished off with spring onions. Nigella has a recipe for a similar soup in her How To Eat book, but I think that unless the idea of cooking terrifies you, just go with it - you can return to the pot during the day and make flasks for work, to keep your comfort levels high. 

Picture by emilychang, Flickr

Rain food

It's howling a gale outside, and raining heavily. I have my coq au vin ready for when I get in later, but I'm working late tonight and might need something to tide me over. When the weather's like this, traditional West Coast weather, I want traditional food. Like cock-a-leekie soup, or even Scotch broth. I'm going to be in the West End at lunchtime, and am worried that none of the trendy eateries will sell something so, well, ordinary.

The first place I'm going to try will be Naked Soup, which I used to frequent in its previous premises on Byres Road, and is now happily settled on Kersland Street (at Great Western Road). I can't remember if they do Scottish soups, but the last time I was there, I had a Thai chicken soup which was absolutely wonderful, full of chicken and the smell of lemongrass. It came with an apple, a roll and a drink if memory serves me. My fingers are crossed for the rainy day soups of my childhood.

Photo by Wysz, Flickr.