Do you know how sad I feel for having this page? For all those of you who asked and asked for the following, I hope it makes you happy that I have lost all respect and credibility by having a goddamn recipe section on this otherwise fairly decent site. It pains me to do this, it really does. I shall have to improve things by burbling a bit first.
Firstly, in a change from the original text, I am no longer vegetarian. Hoorah! As my spell as a veggie was dictated by the feathered fiends, so is the lifting of the ban on meat. No, I don't know why. I have no idea why I was veggie in the first place. I do like eating meat and have no objections to the consumption of meat, as long as it has been ethically farmed and the land on which it was reared is well cared for. I happen to think that every meat eater should visit a slaughter house once, or kill and clean a food animal once, just so he knows exactly what goes into the plastic wrapped lump of flesh that he gets at the supermarket. Frood and I have often spent a long time perusing the goods at the organic butchers in Oxford's Covered Market. In fact, the Covered Market is ace for seeing dead animals, as some of the butchers in there hang the beasts outside their premises before cleaning and preparing them. Ostriches are quite large. Occasionally there are hares, which must be one of the few animals I couldn't eat, for some peculiar reason. They are too magical, I think. Couldn't eat a crow either. There is a good fishmongers there too - I remember being astonished by this massive monstrous thing that had a placard stuck into it proclaiming "I am a halibut!".
Just this weekend, in fact, we spent a good few hours discussing the amazing difference in shape between slow-grown mature free range chickens and the ones grown and killed young to have large, tender breasts. We prefer our chickens to look like they could have flown a bit before they died. We prefer our chickens to look like birds, not just meat.
I am a bit of an organic food freak, and write letters to supermarkets on that basis. For the environmentally minded, there are growing numbers of box schemes, wherein local organic farms take about a tenner off you and deliver a box of vegetables once a week. There is Chiltern Organics in the Luton area, and apparently there is an organic grocers in Summertown in Oxford that runs a box scheme. Uhuru in Cowley in Oxford (about 100 yards down from The Plain along Cowley Road, near Beeline Bikes) sells all sorts of nice things, including organic soya sauce in both shoyu and tamari styles by Clearspring and vegetarian worcestershire sauce by Lifestyle. Uhuru also gives discounts to members of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and a few other worthy causes (not Sustrans or CTC though), and I'm fairly sure they participate in the local letts scheme.
For those who care, and who know what I'm talking about, Cauldron Foods (who, along with Saanchi, are the only ones to do organic tofu) and Jordan's are currently generally approved brands and I don't have to read the ingredients lists. We are still arguing over lettuce, but the latest thing is tomatoes, and the origins thereof. Organic isn't as good as non-organic local, apparently. Anything refined is generally frowned upon, and artificial additives and hydrogenated vegetable fats are right out. We're currently heading for a high protein, low fat type affair, which will mean Frood's habit of using a whole pack of butter in his mashed tatties will have to be regulated, although it's not particularly strict. No more eggy bread, though, which is a shame, and my scrambled eggs will have to use less than the normal half ounce of butter per egg. At least I'm getting out of my rice cake habit.
Yes, I do know all these brand names off the top of my head, and I am that anal about the ingredients. Bite me.
I would like to make a point about the recent upsurge in the availability of organic produce. I prefer to buy my stuff in the market, because it tends to be local and follows the seasons, and I'm getting back into seasonal variation in my food after years of tomatoes in everything. I do appreciate the support that supermarkets give to organics in general, but I think more highly of the support the local market and local shops give to smaller, local producers. I am pleased to report having seen a sign in Sainsbury's proclaiming that all the eggs are British, which is A Good Thing, and I think all the milk there is too. Of course I'm about to go make a ratatouille in the middle of February, but I never claimed absolute consistency.
There is an absolutely astounding amount of convenience food now available in organic, but I can't help thinking that convenience food, perhaps with the exception of bread, takes some of the spirit of organic food away. I buy organic ketchup and bread (although I have yet to find a decent organic cheese without going to a specialist), but I have generally been disappointed by the pre-prepared pasta sauces and burgers. They are nice, and I prefer them greatly to non-organic versions, but I really prefer to make time to make my own. This does mean that Frood and I frequently eat at getting on for midnight, because he doesn't get in til about 11pm most nights, but there you go. It doesn't take that much effort to soften a couple of onions, chuck in some tomatoes and mushrooms and let it simmer while the pasta cooks. Also, a really nice burger can be made from beans and breadcrumbs, then frozen in square sandwhich bags for frying straight from the freezer. Make up a whole batch and you have convenient and tasty.
Can I also say how much I abhor the drive for consistency in produce? Of course I can. It's my goddamned website. Home-made stuff tastes so much better and is hardly ever consistent. Why should food be consistent? It should taste nice. I don't care if my apples have blemishes and are not perfectly round, and I don't care if my shortcrust pastry doesn't always come out quite the way I expected, and I'm not overly bothered if the texture of my bread varies hugely from loaf to loaf. So there.
I have finally included the chilli recipe, down at the bottom. This can be made with either meat or quorn, it's just a case of adjusting the other ingredients to taste.
All french vinaigrette dressings are made using the following basic rule: 2 parts oil to one part acid. The rest is basically up to you. A standard dressing would be 1 part white wine vinegar to two parts sunflower, olive, grapeseed or even walnut oil, with salt and pepper added to taste. A handy tip is to add the salt and pepper to the vinegar and mix before adding the oil. You will need less salt this way. Salt is only tasted once it gets into solution. If you add the salt after the oil, the salt grains are coated in the oil and it tastes less salty. If you add the salt and mix before adding the oil then it dissolves into the vinegar and can be tasted. I used to use the shake a jam jar technique for mixing my dressings, but got fed up of the other people in the house throwing away my carefully preserved (heh) jam jars. Now I just use a serving spoon to measure the stuff into a jug and mix it with a fork as if I were beating eggs. It works just fine and requires less exertion than a jam jar.
Same ratio of oil and acid, but you can spice things up by adding honey and mustard at the same time as the salt and pepper. Complement the strong taste of a good olive oil by using half balsamic vinegar and half white wine vinegar. Try using Aspall's organic cider vinegar and Meridian organic olive oil for a totally organic dressing. Bart's spices have organic black peppercorns. The Meridian brand also does organic sunflower oil that makes a great light dressing for a fresh green salad using lemon juice as the acid. Add some fresh chopped dill and it is a perfect complement to a fresh tuna salad.
This is the dressing that everyone asked after. All ingredients should be organic where possible. If you can't get organic olive oil, the Phillipe Berio Farmhouse olive oil is very good. In any case, a good olive oil should be extra-virgin and cold-pressed. I am informed that most Greek olive oils are organic even if they are not labelled as such, but I was told that by a Greek person who didn't know you could get whole watermelons in Tesco's despite going shopping there every week.
Add all ingredients bar the oils to a jug or bowl and mix well with a fork or whisk. This could also be done in a blender. Add the oils and mix again until thoroughly combined. This produces a fairly thick dressing that requires a fair amount of tossing in order to coat the salad. It is also fairly strongly flavoured and does well with a really fresh crisp salad with strong flavours like feta, onion and raw sweet pepper. In the above recipe I have used dessert spoons as one part. For a smaller amount, cut down on the teaspooned amounts (well, I don't bother, because I like it like that).
I don't usually give quantities for recipes. I'm a "that looks like enough" kind of cook. Cakes, however, are different, mainly because they involve eggs. I don't always stick to the precise quantities, but I do use them as a guideline. You will need one of those deep victoria sponge sized tins for this (er, what size is that? 10 inch diameter I think, I dunno, it's a cake tin) or else two shallow ones (the deep one works better though). Grease and line it before you start (you can get unbleached greaseproof paper and the new Pure brand of margarine is organic, contains no hydrogenated fats, and tastes more like butter than most of the ones that claim to be buttery. At least it does if your preferred butter is unsalted lurpak), and dust it with flour as well. Preheat the oven to about 175°C (ObNonMetric: Find out for yourself, I just guessed anyway) and do it before you start. Ingredients are given in ounces - one ounce equals approx. 28g if you want to be pedantic. I converted from cups, fer pity's sakes. I'm being nice here.
Again, all ingredients are organic where possible.
Sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl, holding the sieve high to get air in. Beat the eggs and add to the dry ingredients. Fold in. Add the carrot, the seeds or nuts and banana and fold in gently until all is combined, trying not to lose too much air. Pour mixture (it should be a fairly thick gloop that is still readily pourable) into the tin and scrape bowl with one of those rubber spatula things (very useful). Stick into the middle of the oven for about an hour or so.
The cake will go a delicious dark brown on top, and is ready when the middle seems hollow when tapped. To be absolutely sure, you can stick a thin bladed knife or skewer in, and it should come out clean. This is a very moist and quite substantial cake. For some reason the sunflower seeds went bright green when I made this, the same colour as Frood's hair, but it is lovely. You can complement this with cream cheese icing, which I haven't got a recipe for at the moment, as my copy of the Crank's with it in is elsewhere.
This is a list of the things I used for the salad that had that dressing on it. Relative quantities are largely up to you. You can, of course, use cooked dried beans in place of the tinned ones. This salad fed several people for a couple of days. It's large. It also keeps surprisingly well. Use little gem lettuce or butterhead (they keep better) and layer over the top of the salad after tossing the other ingredients in the dressing. This adds a protective layer to the dressed salad and keeps the lettuce from going soggy. Kept covered in the fridge, this will keep for two days at least (Frood has been known to finish one of these off 5 days after it was made, but he isn't really human). All of these ingredients are available in organic.
Add all ingredients bar the lettuce to a large mixing bowl or plastic sealable container, pour over the dressing (the third one above has the correct quantities for this salad) and toss. Arrange the lettuce in a layer over the top and either serve or seal and put into the fridge until required. The flavour actually improves overnight, but all the vitamins are in it immediately.
Frood and I do like our chilli to be boisterous. Other people might even describe it as "hot". I didn't like spicy food when I met Frood. My Mum's curry is an aromatic affair using a couple of teaspoons of paste and a tin of pineapple with plenty of raisins (anyone else seen the film "Better Off Dead"? Mail me if so. I need to know I'm not alone). But Frood started me off with black pepper, and finally I've turned into a chilli queen. I don't go for mouth burning, so hot you can't taste the flavours food, but I am no longer averse to a bit of nose-sniffling and spontaneous sweating. Tip: the chemical that gives chillies their heat, capsaicin, is only soluble in fat and alcohol, so calm down an overly hot mouth with milk, not water. The type of chilli is quite important - the hotter chillis have a distinctly greener, fresher chilli flavour. They contain more chilli essence or spirit than the ordinary chillis, which do remind me in flavour of sweet peppers.
Interestingly, if you leave out the chilli and the chocolate and use a couple of tablespoons or so of paprika instead, as I appeared to do one night, although I don't remember, you turn out a perfectly reasonable goulash. The beans in that instance should really be replaced by mushrooms, but use your imagination.
This recipe feeds....lots. I think everything but the chillis can be had in organic. Oh, possibly the lemon juice, as we use the bottled stuff.
WARNING: Powerful chillis really get into the skin, and no amount of washing will decontaminate the skin. Chilli extract in the eye is not an experience to be repeated. Wear latex gloves, wrap your hands in clingfilm, whatever - just don't touch the damn things. I'm talking from experience here.
Brown the meat. I tend to have to chop mine (and always end up eating some raw) from steaks to chunks - use diced chuck if you like. Make sure you don't overload the pan. Too much meat in the pan will make it steam rather than fry and seal. Fry off a bit at a time, over a very high heat in a pre-heated pan. Get that dark brown on the outside, it has lots of flavour. If using quorn, you can skip this step. Chop the onion as fine as you like. Chop the garlic - smack whole unpeeled cloves by placing the flat of the knife on top and pressing down hard and the skin will fall off - it doesn't have to be fine. Chop and deseed the chillis, noting the above warning. Add a spot of oil to the pot in which the meat was fried and heat, then add the onions, garlic and chilli and sweat over a low-moderate heat until onions fully soft and there is no acrid smell coming off (sweat onions at a lowish temp, fry mushrooms at a high temp. Ghods know where I got that but it works). Stick in a bit of cumin, a bit of coriander (where one bit is about half a tsp), a lot of pepper, stir for a bit then add the meat/quorn and stir to coat. Add the tomatoes, all of them, stir round to mix. Add the beans.
This is where personal judgement comes in. Everything else is based on personal taste. I reckon you will need at least 3 tsps of cocoa powder, 2 of cumin, about a tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tsp coriander, 1tsp tabasco, ½tsp worcestershire sauce, as much black pepper as you can grind and just a pinch of salt. Get the tomato puree right and you won't need sugar. I probably use about 5-6 tsps cocoa, and maybe 4-5 of cumin because I like it earthy, but then I also add paprika sometimes too. Don't add the puree too soon. Let it simmer and reduce for a while - this is best cooked slow. It can be an hour of simmering before we add the puree, then another hour of cooking after that. It doesn't hurt it. Like all chillis, it actually improves overnight as the flavours mature and develop depth.
Serve with baked potatoes, bread, rice, or as a topping for pizza, generously covered in buffalo mozzarella.
To be brutally honest, I don't know if they were fluffy or not, because by the time I got to them they had already been skinned and gutted, leaving only a few pellets behind in the anal area. I imagine that they were pretty fluffy before the butcher obtained them, at least at some point. It's kind of a feature of rabbits.
I have offered this recipe around, but an awful lot of people seem to think that having had a pet rabbit in the past means that it is difficult to eat rabbit now. I can assure you that by the time you get it from the butcher it looks nothing like your little Flopsy or Patch or Daisy or Peter, and tastes damn nice. I had a couple of rabbits myself, as a kid, but it hasn't put me off.
This recipe calls for two rabbits, and was originally intended to feed two people at one meal. It worked out rather more productive than that, and given that bunnies are less than 2 ailing molluscs apiece, even at Oxford prices, they really are very economical. And if you say you will joint them yourself, you get a big cheery grin from the butcher, which is always worthwhile.
If you don't know how to joint small animals, or don't have a hefty, very sharp knife (every pagan should though, I reckon - dammit, everyone should) get the butcher to do it for you or you'll make a mess in your kitchen.
Seal the bunny joints by frying at a high heat in a (big) pan. Do only a few pieces at a time so they fry rather than steam.
Once the bunny has been sealed, set it aside and fry the onion and garlic. Fry the mushrooms. Add the rest of the veg and fry off for a bit. Season, adding some dried herbs if you fancy. Replace the bunny. Pour on the entire bottle of cider and make up with stock to cover the rabbit. Add the lentils and the bouquet garni. Simmer for about an hour, making up with stock if it looks too dry. The rabbits should be kept covered if possible.
Leftovers can have the meat picked off the bones, the bones used to make a stock, and extra veg and lentils added with more cider and the stock to make a soup. Our bunnies lasted almost a whole week that way. And that was with Frood and me eating them, and Andy too, one evening. Not bad for a couple of bunnies.
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