Posts filed under 'Food writing'
Overwhelmed as I am with five comments on one post, I know that what you really wanted to read about was Cremola Foam.
I have a Useful Notebook that gets carried around, partly so I can work out which children’s book to buy for which new arrival and that kind of thing, but it’s useful for ideas about blog posts too. Sometimes it’s as good to think about writing as it is to do it - like food in that respect.
Topping the list of items to write about is Cremola Foam. Going to wikipedia, fount of all immediately accessible information, I discover that I have the name wrong - it is in fact Creamola Foam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creamola_Foam
Growing up as a Mackenzie, a big part of family tradition was going on holiday to the Isle of Jura. It’s a few generations since we had direct relatives living there, but there’s a family cottage, and a lot of shared history. It’s where my dad spent his summer holidays too, and part of those holidays, for both of us, was creamola foam.
Part of the mystique of creamola foam was the buying it en route to Jura. We’d drive up from the north of England or central England, according to where we were living at that point, and stay over with my great aunts in Greenock. (Greenock is indeed the place to live if you are an aunt.) We would then drive to Gourock, just up the coast, and get the ferry to Dunoon, to continue the journey.
And once we arrived in Gourock, anticipating the first ferry of the journey, it was time to buy the small pot of creamola foam to induce the holiday mood. In Dad’s day, it was mostly lemon flavour, in mine, orange. But mainly really it allows you to have an absurdly fizzy drink and a huge amount of happiness (and no doubt sugar), combined.
Creamola foam was also available in the shop on Islay, after the second ferry, and before the third, over to Jura itself. Should you run out on the holiday, there would usually be a day trip to Islay, and an opportunity to stock up again.
One year, I attempted the impossible. I brought a full pot of it home with me. Now I could continue the holiday feeling. But then, it being precious, it was hard to make a move to start it. A month or two down the line, and it was already hardening into a lump. And somehow, it didn’t taste the same at home.
Reading wikipedia, I discover the advertising boast that creamola foam was ‘fully sweetened’. You bet. This is a Scottish foodstuff, after all. Needless to say, they don’t write advertising copy like that these days - or perhaps, they just hide the fact that something is fully sweetened.
Tastes of childhood. Perhaps sometimes it’s best for some things to remain at a distance. Worse, perhaps, to discover now that I didn’t like it - although again, wikipedia indicates that there’s a bit of an attempt going on to bring it back.
With rain on the menu most days at the moment, it’s good to think about summer at times, even distant summers. Next stop, soda streams, I feel.
September 18th, 2008
The wintry onslaught continues across Britain. Alison considers a writing career for the weather section of the Beeb…but wait! There are signs of an alternative weather front looming…
Never mind fog (although many do, of course, particularly those driving). What we want at the weekend is fug.
Fug is one of those words that suggests it’s a bit hot and stuffy, but we like it that way. It’s just what we need indoors when outdoors, we and our possessions are likely to be blown away in all directions.
Now that smoking is banned in public places all across the UK, fug is less of an option for pubs, which used to be a potential locator when there was lots of smoke. You can tell that those who described it as fug in pubs rather liked it after all.
Next option is cafes that fill up when it’s raining. A great example of a cafe that had the right level of fug is one a little below Snowdon. I once attempted to climb Snowdon with someone I knew from my gap year, plus a couple of friends of hers. We didn’t get very far up when really driving rain set in, and by the time we were back down, we were all completely soaked.
Thankfully, the cafe was just the place for having a huge pot of tea and full fry ups all round. No doubt we added to the fug by steaming gently as we dried out. By the time we had drained the tea pot, we were even mostly dry. A very happy outcome - I might even suggest happier than having reached the summit, although I’m sure that’s not really the spirit.
Meanwhile, the home fug is settling in nicely - probably my favourite sort. A little light soup making (though the soup itself will probably be reasonably ribsticking), a batch of sauce, some veg to add to the oven in a sec. In a while, I can add to the fug by bringing out a roast chicken, making gravy, that kind of thing.
You could describe it as steam. Even condensation. But that defeats the point. It’s happy steam. It suggests that the world is, for a little while at least, set at rights.
February 2nd, 2008
Hurrah for a half day on my birthday! I left early today so that I could fulfil a small ambition of mine, and browse the shops on Broughton Street on the way home.
Now Broughton Street may be known for various things, but I’d suggest, increasingly, food. It has the long-established RealFoods at the top, which does health food and much more, but also some brand new places that have opened up in the last few months.
So, started with RealFoods. They are doing all the Gillian McKeith type stuff - lots of alternative grains and so on - but the shop must be a godsend to anyone with food allergies. You name it as an alternative flour, they have it, plus masses of oriental ingredients, along with all the dried fruit, muesli to scoop out of a sack, and so on. I came away with linseeds, and ful medames beans - the latter are very popular in Egypt, so I’ve read, and there’s a recipe I’ve been meaning to try with them.
Broughton Street also has Crombie’s, the high class butcher, well known for its sausages. I decided to play fairly safe, and came away with some very smart beefburgers, which should be good to try.
I missed out the fishmonger at the top of the street, also long established - Something Fishy. I thought it might take too long to finish my shopping and head home, by which point the fish might be complaining a bit. But it is an aim of mine to try proper butchers and fishmongers this year, so I can see what the difference is between supermarket stuff and the specialists.
So, now, to the two new arrivals. Artisanal coffee, chocolate and honey can be had in a fairly new shop that also sells takeaway coffee. Their owner only sells the coffee beans that he likes, but will happily recommend and let you sniff them to see which you like. I made off with some Sumatran coffee which I think is meant to be his favourite. My bag certainly smelt wonderful all the way home.
The other newcomer is a shop selling all the things you might need for cocktails. Again, its owner is chatty, and knowledgeable. He didn’t seem put off by me saying I wasn’t too good with drinking spirits, but told me more about fruit syrups, and so on. He also has glasses and all the other kit for making cocktails. I am hoping he will stock some fruit purees so I can finally try a Bellini (prosecco and white peach pulp).
I didn’t go around explaining it was my birthday - thought that might be a bit obvious - but it was nice to have time to browse, and equally to chat with the shopowners. Certainly RealFoods has so many different lines of stock that you need a good forty minutes just to look round and see what they have.
I should add that it’s been a happily foody morning too - my colleague who does her own bean sprouts, and has been coaching me with my first attempts, gave me some mung beans to try sprouting. My manager found a couple of mini bars of dark chocolate to slip inside my birthday card. And the piece de resistance was battenburg cake, brought in or for another newer colleague who shares the same birthday. (Can’t resist marzipan and cake combined.)
Meanwhile, it’s now about time for a cup of tea. Nice thing about birthdays - the everyday pleasures as well as the special treats.
January 23rd, 2008
Starting preparations for a joint party with a friend. We have birthdays around the same time, and we have seized on the idea of soup and bagels to feed the multitudes. Jesus had loaves and fishes. We will hopefully have some loaves too, although the fishes have regretfully been left out (smells) in favour of large quantities of carrots.
I like a spot of bulk catering, but I’ve not made soup for 25 before. I’m quite looking forward to the challenge, which is really only making double a normal quantity, times three pots of soup. I can make use of my enormous ladle (a wedding present which doesn’t get much use for quantities under 6 people), large cooking pots, etc.
We are probably feeding 30 at the cake stage, but as both of us are making cake, that’s only 15 each. 3 cakes a-piece should do the trick. Mine all seem to be fruit related, but it’s also a case of seeing what I want to use up. Time to defrost the overripe bananas in the freezer which are kept for such purposes (a helpful tip from a former flatmate).
The last time we did one of these joint parties, Dan and I were still living in Inverleith Terrace. A very large sitting room made parties fun. Now we have more, but smaller, rooms, so a bit of ingenuity is required. Hopefully the kids coming will agree to play in one room, and we’ll keep the soup etc in the other. It may be just as well we don’t like our sitting room carpet that much…
In these days of ever more scrutiny of diets, ever more opportunities to point the finger at us as consumers - and over-consumers - bread and soup strikes a fairly quiet note, I feel.
Cake doesn’t really get excused…but then I am a firm believer that cake should be encouraged. Not daily, true, but it is a sure-fire way of filling up lots of people. And I learned that lesson as a student. Should you want to feed the multitudes, trying to feed 3 guys, one of whom was running triathlons at the time, and a girl with a ‘healthy appetite’, is no bad place to start.
I’ll give you the line-up of cakes on another occasion.
January 21st, 2008
When it comes to leftover fests, Christmas is the biggie. I find it very pleasing to have similar meals for days in a row when the leftovers change a little, there is plenty of cheese, and the prospect of finishing up with lots of cups of tea.
In this vein, a few new discoveries for leftovers:
1) The cold roast veg salad. Now I know that roast veg salads have been done for some time. But having a few leftover roast potatoes, assorted roast (or boiled) veg, consider adding mayonnaise and then some cucumber pickles, possibly a little of the pickling liquid too. On both occasions, I attempted to share my stash, but really had most of it myself.
2) Cold chicken, a little avocado, and some cooked beetroot. Dan’s mum has demonstrated that avocado and beetroot go well together in a salad (even better with the addition of watercress or rocket), but this is a nice respectable option for leftover chicken, though probably turkey would do too.
I’m sure there was a third one, but memory escapes me for now.
However, there’s also space for new year’s (food) resolutions. I had asked for spending money for Christmas to get some unusual ingredients - the kind of thing I contemplate, or read up about, but am not sure about buying.
Yesterday saw most of the shops shut in Stockbridge - limiting our usual charity shop trawls, but leaving the way open for deli browsing. Between the twin delights of Peckham’s and Waitrose, I happily parted with most of the cash, and we noted how it was a good idea not to come to Waitrose often. At all. Unless you want to part with all your month’s food shop money all in one go…
Anyway, this morning included looking up recipes to use the following: camargue (red) rice, buckwheat flour, quinoa, rosewater…(There are also more familiar favourites such as maple syrup and hot chocolate, to reassure you that it’s not one big health kick.)
Anyone thinking it’s about time we fed you, let me know which ingredients you are interested in, and we’ll see what we can do.
January 3rd, 2008
It’s confession time. I enjoy having people over, cooking for them…but sometimes I secretly think that the best bit about parties is eating up the leftovers afterwards.
The fact that this comes shortly before going away for Christmas means that there are all sorts of plans for how to use things up in a pleasing manner. It must rank reasonably high in my subconscious, as that was what I woke up thinking about, while trying hard to wake up enough to get up and see if I had remembered the contents of the fridge accurately…
Part of the thing with parties that makes this satisfying is where you have a party with different people bringing different things. Leftovers - with unplanned ingredients! It’s fairly close to Ready Steady Cook, but without the inconvenience of a studio audience.
To be honest, what was also exciting was seeing how well all the different things went together last night. Nibbles, mini things on french bread, a big vat of soup…I mention this as I am reminded of a similar party a few years ago where we decided we would all bring Christmas things from different countries - or at any rate, a dish relating to a particular country.
The only difficulty was that we had all thought about dishes containing potato, or so it seemed by what was produced. For one guest, fairly heavily pregnant at the time, this meant effectively eating a five course meal where every course included potato. Not great if you are working on a smaller stomach, and having difficulty digesting things…
But the second joy of leftovers is the potential to do things you might not normally do, such have coffee and cake for breakfast. (To be honest, cake for breakfast is such an exciting prospect that it’s just as well I don’t do this too often.) You can equally have things that you might normally eat - such as soup at lunchtime - but with someone else’s take on what that should be. (Three cheers for spiced parsnip soup, by the way.)
So hurrah for parties. And leftovers. In this day and age, in the West, we have lost the significance of feasting, because we are unused to the alternative - or unwilling to go there. We have to get our joy of providence through other means. Leftovers might just be it.
December 20th, 2007
Chilly? Just a trifle. Our central heating boiler is playing up. We have a Man coming to fix it (our former landlady had a stream of little Men who came to fix different things…and no, not those kind of little men, and definitely not wearing green either).
I have counted blessings as a way to calm down about it - we have separate gas so we can cook, we still have electricity for other stuff, we still have a shower that runs separately so can ablute, and so on. Feeling rather foolish not to know to do boiler servicing - but there again, the people we bought from didn’t tell us anything about it, parents didn’t mention it, etc. The back of the little on box seems to suggest the boiler was last serviced in November 1999…hmm…
Meanwhile, however, there is always food as a distraction. Today have had a shot at making a different kind of trifle for our small church group meeting on Wednesday. My manager has been on holiday to Switzerland, and came back with Lebkuchen. It was rather sturdy just for eating this afternoon, but with a little liquid soaked in, it should make rather good trifle.
I have started to experiment with different kinds of trifle, mainly relating to variants on the cake part. Today lebkuchen. On one memorable occasion, panettone, with a little rum on top - that one went down VERY well. Occasionally failed chocolate cake, sometimes cheap sponge on offer from the Co-op.
It’s not that I don’t want to spend money feeding guests. But I do like good leftover ideas, and trifle is as much a left-over dish as a create from scratch with wonderful sponge fingers kind of dish. In any case, I think the whole trifle sponge thing is really something you buy - a savoiardi biscuit, or something like that. I suspect macaroons would be good; I think brioche might almost work too.
My other innovation in the trifling department is different ways of soaking the sponge/cake bit - see rum reference above. Sherry - always good option. But was also rather pleased at using the juice from stewed fruit to soak through the sponge - success a few weeks back with brambles as the fruit content, and bramble juice turning the sponge a particularly exciting colour.
You could claim all this is just distraction. You’d be right, certainly tonight. It makes me grateful that we both go out to work, and can rely on someone else paying for heat, somewhere else, during the day. But it’s probably better than too much kicking ourselves, which is always a bit limited after the event. Plus, this way, it entertains people - and perhaps it even entertains you, dear reader, finding out about it, or considering your own cake and fruit creations for the future.
Feeling better? More than a trifle.
December 3rd, 2007
You know the signs. Interest in gardening, cardigans, family history…among the list of signs that you are getting on. (Some of us have liked cardigans for a while, but we won’t dwell on that.)
Perhaps one of mine is an interest in a little more tradition for the weekend, or something to mark the fact that the weekend is a time to slow down. I’ve probably already written about my cooking phases, and the fact that roasting chicken in different ways is the current focus. So here’s my chance to champion the Coop, and their chickens that are organic, reasonably priced, and even better, delicious!
But alongside this, starting to think about ‘oven economy’, and how to get best use out of the oven when it’s on. Last weekend and this, trying to do some baking while the oven’s on. I wouldn’t claim to have this sussed - and in fact, the aim is to get a double oven so I can only have the appropriate bit on when I need it, or cook things together at different temperatures.
I know that in the past, there were different days for different household tasks. Washing day, baking day, etc. I don’t know that I’ll ever get as far as a fixed baking/cooking day (and I certainly don’t want to have a washing day - three cheers for washing machines!). But I certainly agree with Nigella et al that there is something soothing about cooking various things together.
It allows for a different rhythm to part of the week. How much of the rest of the week allows me to do one kind of activity (apart from sleeping, I suppose) for more than an hour or so? Life at work can get very fragmented - certainly felt like this last week, settling back in and going from task to task, or even bits of tasks, before being pulled on to something else.
There is a sense of peace from doing these things that permeates into the start of the week. Knowing that there is more ‘already done’ for the next few days makes it easier to deal with that unhappy bump back into Monday mornings.
Maybe the nicer side of getting older is realising that there are certain patterns to life, and that we can choose which patterns help us, which to take on as our own. Alongside this, our concern about what others will think starts to wane. So hurrah for cardigans, Sunday roasts, and slippers…
November 18th, 2007
Most nights, no problem selecting what to write about. Tonight, I’m feeling weary, and suspecting a cold coming on.
Still, not to worry, as I’ve read enough of these journalist “oh dear, I don’t have anything to write about but I’ll spin some words” pieces.
Actually, if I’d called it “Has anyone seen my Topic?”, as I considered while typing it, that suggests whole new vistas of chocolate snack bar to explore. Not an inconsiderable subject, given that there’s been enough public interest in the UK to bring back Wispa bars.
How do people make the decision that they want to bring back a chocolate bar? I suppose you build a petition online these days, though the option of marching on the Bourneville factory dressed in large crinkly wrappers is another way to make your point.
Perhaps the other question to ask is, at what point does a company decide it’s a good PR point for them to bring something back? I’m aware of other companies which have strong customer loyalty - thinking of Lush, and Lakeland - which also herald when they are reintroducing items at readers’ demand. But to go back into production for a chocolate bar, with all the economies of scale and so on - you must need to be sure that people will buy it.
Fortunately, it’s not difficult to like a Wispa bar. It really is just chocolate. Easy. Except a little bit softer in texture, I suppose we should say. Not difficult to build up a new fan base when you have a product like that.
So, be careful of your water cooler discussions, my friends. You never know what a careless wispa could spark next.
November 14th, 2007
Back to Edinburgh yesterday, after a couple of weeks’ holiday. The crunch of coming back is not so bad, although the quality of greyness this morning made me realise why some people decamp abroad for the entire winter…Admittedly, we’ve been spoiled, with quite a lot of sunshine and heat in the south of France, followed by sunshine and warmth in the north of Italy.
Decided we’d have the weekend at home, so doing a certain amount of pottering. This has even gone to the lengths of clearing out dead spices from the kitchen cupboards. Not so exciting, but it makes me realise my ‘anticipate exciting food by buying herbs and spices’ habit needs to be checked up on every now and then. Thankfully none of it was crawling out of the cupboards by itself, but our bin will smell of a weird combination of flavours for a little while, no doubt.
I guess that when we’ve been away, it’s nice to get to know one’s home again, and pottering about helps in this. Seeing it all with fresh eyes also helps for clearing out stuff that you’ve been putting off doing before going away (if not for months before, I suspect).
One aspect of taking stock is to think about doing something with the garden again, rather than looking out the window at it, feeling tired, and going off to do something else. Having been inspired by our friends’ veg patch, and having rediscovered a few pots for growing things on window sills, perhaps I’ll start small over the winter, and actually get some gardening done in the spring.
One exciting discovery today was what’s on offer for food digesters. Rather than leaving it to me and Dan to digest everything (ha, we’ll give it a try), you can get bin things for the garden which allow you to get rid of food waste, even bones, fish skin, etc, rather than bin it. This immediately suggests an end to our kitchen bin getting smelly, a surge of interest in cooking roast chicken regularly, and provides a further incentive to create a new bit of the garden in front of our shed, where it gets the most sun. I suspect in practice it will involve prevailing on my mum and Dan’s, who actually know what they’re doing in the garden, but it’s another reason to feel positive about the garden.
Talking to Dan’s mum on the phone today, aware that I have less of a sense than usual of what will be waiting for me when I get back to work, now that there are new colleagues to return, potential to give away a further chunk of work when I’ve tied it up, and some new activities in investigating staff learning for the wider team I’m part of. Maybe it will mean I genuinely can have a bit more time at home too, plan for things, rather than work always dictating what’s possible in my home life.
Taking stock. Moving on to making stock tomorrow.
November 10th, 2007
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