New Years Booze

My girlfriend discovered this wine in Tesco, it's called Viña Albali Tempranillo and it's pretty good. It's on the website but says it is unavailable, but I bought 6 bottles last night for £2.85 each. Tempranillo is basically a Rioja, which usually consist of 60%+ Tempranillo grape. So if you are feeling the pinch of recession/Christmas and want a budgeted New Year's Eve party, then try this. 

Also at Tesco is a Freixenet Vintage Cava for when the clock strikes 12, at £6 a bottle and this seriously knocks the shit out of any Champagne. Treat your self.

Knife

I've drank a little to much wine this evening which is dangerous when writing anything so I probably shouldn't be doing this. Please excuse the grammar and all that, you get me?

We, as human beings eat every single day and some fatties (my self included), will eat many times a day. Cooking or preparing food is imminent, just like Christmas, if you don't embrace it, you will not enjoy it.

The main tool in the kitchen is the knife, I'm sure it's a man thing, psycologist would probably say it's an extension to the penis, like a guitar or a massive car. Using that analogy, if it fits in your hand and feels good then great, go for it, chop away at your meat!

But there are good knives and shit knives. Global are a classic rip-off knife, they are made of good steel, but so uncomfortable, you never see a chef using one of them. Anyway I have a large collection of knives, different brands, different shapes, different sizes. I recently purchased a new knife on the basis that it's elder brother (pictured below) being so good.

I highly recommend this brand of knife, Alolon, if you are thinking of investing then get this brand, and I really mean the word investing! Using a good knife will save you time, your fingers, make better food and cooking more pleasurable. This type of knife is a Santoku, which is an japanese veg/meat knife and the sheath protects the blade from becoming blunt in the draw or stops you slicing your hands when rummaging around. The handle is a soft rubber, which is ultra comfortable and the blade is made from an excellent high grade German steel, with a fluted blade to stop veg sticking. Unfortunately I think this knife is now discontinued. The next one on my list is this - Tojiro Senkou, which is made from folded steel like a samurai sword and I've heard it's scientifically proven to compensate for a small penis! I probably need about 10 of these.

Turkey is for twats

Ok its time to really upset some people.

I don't know where this ridiculous tradition has come from to have Turkey at Christmas. Not even the Americans traditionally have it on Christmas day, they have it for Thanks Giving. There are lots of things that twats eat at Christmas that they usually wouldn't eat, like fucking mulled wine. Why don't people drink it other times of the year? Because it's horrible and nobody actually likes it.

I'm now rolling up my sleeves and tensing my fist, getting ready to give Turkey a long awaited and well deserved smash in face. It is so rubbish, well alright, turkey breast and mince can be good for people who are on a low fat diet, but ultimately it's a stupid roasting bird for stupid people. The meat is so dry you have to cover the thing with bacon, sausage meat and goose fat to keep it moist. Or some idiots cook it upside-down and cover it in tin foil. But after doing all this the meat is still actually quite bland.

The best bit is people go all out and pay over the odds for an organic, local, free-range bird and because of the Christmas demand, they are even more expensive. Twats. Sorry, they're Fucking Twats.

Buy a Chicken. Very simple solution.

1. It cooks quicker
2. It's cheaper
3. It tastes better
4. You don't have to pre-order it (and if you do it fits in a freezer)
5. You're not following a non-tradition

I could be here all night if I really wanted.


I'm just looking forward to the duck I've ordered from Creedy Carver for about £5 each, but it's only that cheap because I did it through work.


Have a wonderful Christmas everyone and I hope you enjoy your meal, whatever you eat, seriously!

Fruit not Flowers

Being a bloody beer-drinking bloke I require logic for something to make sense. So I don’t really understand flowers, apart from the fact they look pretty, sometimes smell nice and most importantly, bees make honey from the pollen & nectar (this is only with natural wild flowers as fertilised flowers can kill bees and cut flowers do bugger all). Anyway, my point being - as I’ve now become an opinionated prick, which wasn’t my point from the outset of starting this blog -  is that  fruit can serve a better function. Fruit looks nice, smells nice and has helped the little bees when it was just a piece of blossom and putting all that aside you can eat the fruit. And vegetables are even better. There is a very true speech from Wihhnail and I, where uncle Monty describes flowers as being “simply tarts; prostitutes for the bees” and he thinks “the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium”. So when I die, please pile lots of fruit & veg on my grave, and then eat it.

My girlfriend bought this sprout tree for about 70p, far more interesting than a morbid lily, and I got eat it.  There is a certain 'je ne sais quoi' about a firm, young carrot!

Do me a flavor and get rid of the blandness!

On Friday evening I had an amazing meal at Riverford Field Kitchen, probably my favorite restaurant and better than any Michelin Stared place I've had the pleasure of feeling uncomfortable in. The place simply wins due to the incredible food, everything else is average. The food simply wins due to the incredible flavor, everything else is average, meaning presentation etc. 

But this got me thinking about flavor and how you can make weak food taste good. When I'm at work and a soup a bit bland, we add more salt & pepper, if that doesn't work we add some bouillon, if we're still not hitting the flavor zone, we blend in more fresh herbs, raw garlic, extra virgin olive oil, a bit of sugar and lots of lemon juice. And bang, flavor! It never fails. This is a picture of me in the kitchen looking all smug about the great tasting soup.

When cooking at home I love big flavor and I feel there is no excuse for my food to be bland, my Scottish grandmother would detest my food if she was still alive, to give her credit, she gave me a great introduction to whole foods, but she didn't like any sort of richness. I suppose my food could be criticised for it's lack of subtlety, but I'm the most important critic when it comes to tasting, so everyone can go and eat elsewhere if they don't like it.

To bang some balls in your broth you need a good balance!

Saltiness - lots of good sea salt, butter, OXO cubes or real stock, soy, fish sauce, Marigold Swiss Bouillon (although it makes everything taste the same), anchovies, capers, cheese or bacon.

Acidity - lemon or lime (added at the end of cooking), vinegar, wine, tomato.

Sweetness - sugar, honey, sweated onions or other veg like carrots, leeks or celery, cream or coconut milk, butternut squash, sweet potato, peas or any sweet veg.

Heat - pepper, chili (powder or fresh), ginger, wasabi, horse radish, hot smoked paprika or various spice blends

Added flavor - more butter, a small amount of raw garlic (1/2 a clove) made into a paste, olive oil, fresh herbs (coriander, parsley, basil, tender thyme tips nothing too woody).

Experiment and enjoy.

Crumble beats the cold

Winter has arrived so shove some hot crumble in your gob. 

Q. What makes a good crumble? A. The crumble you cock!

And to make a good crumble you need to add cinnamon and oats. I also feel cold ice cream works really well with the hot pudding, I love custard but hot & hot just isn't as good as hot & cold.

I'm going to embrace winter by running full speed into the chilled easterly wind, whist stuffing my face with all things warm & stodgy and wearing a really expensive winter coat. Piss off Jack Frost I love winter.

London

This weekend was a big weekend of partying in London, but I also used my time in the city to soak up some of the amazing food that's going down and coming up and that people are down with and up for.

First thing on Saturday we went for a pretty amazing coffee at a new shop called Allpress (rubbish name) on Redchurch Street. The actual coffee shop feels a little cold in terms of atmosphere and interior design, but as soon as that coffee hits your lips the clinical lines of the furniture disappear, especially because we sat on the bench outside. They roast all the beans in the premises and make the coffee with a La Marzocco espresso machine, so it's hard to make a bad coffee with those winning factors. Although I probably could cock it up if I tried hard enough.

We next headed to Maltby Street in Bermondsey for a breakfast of more coffee at Monmouth HQ, cured meat and beer from the Kernel Brewery, which turned out to be one of the best beers I've ever had. This is a really interesting food market and if you can't stand the crowds of Borough market it's worth a visit, however I feel it won't be too long before those crowds, or shall I say cunts, spread their middle-class labia from London bridge to Tower Bridge. 

Whist on the subject we then encountered another breed of the middle-classes on fixed-gear bikes at Broadway Market, but they're alright really, no they're not. It is actually a pretty good food market, but lacked the Dickensian charm of Borough. I bought a really good Vietnamese sandwich called a Bánh mì, so so good. I'd heard about these on the Food Programme on Radio 4 a few weeks ago. After scoffing some average brownie I was still hungry and decided to get a native Oyster, but suddenly noticed they were selling clams as well, so I went for both and had a mollusc off. Surprisingly the clam was a clear winner, with more flavor, better texture (if you like to chew) and larger in volume. The clam was also less than half the price at only £1.20. To be honest I didn't know that people ate clams raw and there must be plenty more shell fish in the sea, ready to be scoffed in an uncooked form and they're beckoning me with their buttery sweetness.

The rest of the weekend mainly consisted of potato based conversation, but that's another story.