Frydmania

Definitely into the post-Christmas food slump. Palate sated. No idea what to eat, as well as no idea what day of the week it is. Perhaps a cup of coffee will help. Much of the time, I feel sure a cup of coffee will help.

At least, I used to. These days, I say that I still like coffee, but it doesn’t like me so much anymore. My way round it is to stick to instant – sorry, purists, but I had too much of the good stuff for too long, and it started to take a toll.

I do remember my first taste of coffee – no doubt Nescafe, certainly instant. We were visiting a friend on the island where we used to holiday – a lady known for her hospitality and her cooking skills. At seven, coffee tends to produce a ‘yuk!’ factor, which is probably just as well at that age.

I’m sure that coffee resurfaced as OK, in the next few years, but my awareness of it took a leap when I was waitressing in a cafe that did serve pretty good coffee. I started on ‘half and half’ – half black filter coffee, half hot milk.

This was before all the espresso-and-friends coffee terms had really hit the UK (or at least, medium sized towns in central England), so half and half was pretty OK. But I started to get a liking for the real thing. By the time my waitressing was up, I had moved on to black coffee – and have stayed there ever since.

Spending some of my gap year in Poland introduced me to various options on coffee. One of the more concerning was the use of filter coffee grounds to make a coffee rather as you would an instant coffee.

Coffee itself was fine, you just needed to remember to stop drinking before the bottom of the cup, or you could find yourself chewing through the grounds. It went by the wonderfully onomatapoeic name of ‘plucha’ – I think this was shorthand for ‘will go straight through you’. It sure did.

I must have learned to like better coffee in Germany at some point. The coffee percolator machines were great for making a decent cup, and I learned to trust particular brands there. If you were having a serious kaffee und kuchen moment, you did want a stronger cup to offset the sugar rush of the cake.

On one occasion in Poland, I did have a filter coffee plus poppy seed cake – and ended up with a severe headache rather too quickly. I love both items, but learned not to mix them – or at least not in quantity.

I also remember the first time coffee started to interfere with sleep. I joined friends for a birthday party at a rather smart Indian restaurant. Offered a coffee at the end of the meal, I agreed. All of a sudden that night, I realised that I was somewhat tenser than usual – and that my body wouldn’t switch off in the normal way.

The real impact came when I worked in an office where there was free tea and coffee – the latter being good quality filtered. Bit by bit, the daily coffee intake went up. It did help with shifting giant amounts of paper from A to B (after data entry), so I kept at it. And at weekends too.

Along the way, we also encountered brilliant coffee in Italy – and discovered what a quality cappuccino could taste like. We worked our way round the arty city of Graz by moving from cafe to cafe, taking in coffee all the while.

Then, one time, I went on a work trip and got ill. Having a second work trip straight after, with a weekend in between to recover, I went cold turkey on the caffeine front – and found it OK. Had I tried to reduce the coffee by other means, I don’t know that I would have escaped the headaches.

Now, I still drink coffee – but I stick to instant. The caffeine dosage on a filter coffee is hefty – I can have a range of hot drinks over the course of a day, or drink one filter coffee. I went with the former.

I still love the aroma of filter coffee. I still love the ritual of setting up an espresso maker on the stove top, or hearing the chug chug of a coffee machine moving into action. I occasionally risk a decaf filter coffee, and live to tell the tale.

Even before the coffee reduction, I have to admit that I saw little point in fancy coffee machines. When all you want is black coffee, and you can get that via an espresso maker or a simple coffee drip machine, all the bells and whistles can seem a bit over the top.

Funnily, despite my overall appreciation of coffee, I’m not huge on coffee flavouring in cakes, and the like. I prefer the real thing. And part of me would still like to in the way I used to. But I know I feel better for it, not doing so.

Here endeth the sermon on too much coffee. For all of where I am now with coffee intake, it still makes the essential list.

For the high note in feasting, I think it’s time to bring in a kingly ingredient. Venison. While this, like duck, is in my ‘order when out but wimp out of cooking at home’ list, that doesn’t stop me appreciating it.

Part of my day job involves some food blogging for restaurants that regularly serve game. A whole range of it, in fact. So I have to get my linguistic thinking cap on to do it all justice.

Game is a wonderful part of autumnal food. It happens to sit well with sweeter tastes, things like fruit, which is great for people like me who rather like mixing sweet and savoury together in main courses.

Game is also good for you. It’s lean, it’s got great flavour, without the heaviness of some other red meats. And, above all, Scotland is a brilliant place for game. You don’t have to be into the glorious twelfth to recognise that it’s accessible here, which makes it easier to enjoy, whether you are cooking your own or dining out.

Having set out my stall, back to venison. I recognise that plenty of people don’t want to eat ‘Bambi’. That’s OK. But I’ve holidayed regularly on an island known for its deer, where culls are part of the balance of animals on the island.

I’ve seen the deer at fairly close quarters – particularly in the spring when they come down behind the cottage to eat the fresher plants. I know they are appreciated (except when they eat too much of the back garden). I know that their end is a respectful one.

So I sit fairly comfortably with eating venison – as does the rest of my family. Find us out for a meal, with venison on the menu, and most if not all of us will be ordering it. This sounds like we are eating it a lot – it probably adds up to once or twice a year, which I think is probably OK.

What to put with venison? Wine. Dark chocolate can be great as part of the sauce, adding some bitterness to the richness of the meat. Some greens, if you can, for a cleaner flavour to balance out the meat. Plenty of mash to mop up the sauce, if you have it.

The meat can sometimes be a little drier, so having a good sauce to a dish helps. I’ve not experimented so much with larger cuts of meat – mostly, I come across venison stew, and accept it gratefully.

On a similar note, venison pie is also good – the pastry as a mash equivalent. Plus it cheers up a pie no end, breaking through the crust and discovering a special treat underneath.

Venison. It’s maybe not the go-to choice for Christmas. I understand. But if you are kicking off twelve days of merry-making, this would be a cracking place to start.

Not so seasonal, I agree. I’m not out to encourage you to buy lots of imported fruit and veg. But I am out to bang a drum for tomatoes, wonder ingredient without which…no tomato soup, no pizza (or not much) and of course no tomato ketchup.

While we are still working our way through the leftovers of that import from the Americas, turkey, spare a thought for tomatoes too. Another of those ingredients we take for granted, tomatoes also made their way over around that time – and Europe certainly took to them with gusto.

If I remember rightly, they were initially considered poisonous. There is a connection with the nightshade family, so fair enough to proceed with caution, but thankfully, people did proceed.

As a child, my parents would grow tomatoes in growbags – preferably on a window seat if they could. I remember the window seat in their bedroom having two if not three growbags on it, making it hard to see out, but offering great conditions for the tomatoes.

They stopped after a while. We always seemed to be on holiday when the crop came on – and so we missed the best of them. But even so, I know what a tomato should smell like. I love the spidery vines they grow on, the feeling of slight resistance as you twist them to separate the tomato off.

One summer, I went to Russia and the Ukraine as part of an organised trip. The tail end of the trip involved a long train ride from pretty much one end of the Ukraine to the other, getting ourselves back to Kiev to fly home. After 18 hours on the train, even the train lovers among us were starting to wish for stable ground – and something decent to eat.

We arrived early in the morning, and went to a community house to breakfast and freshen up, before getting the flight later in the day. Breakfast was simple: bread, fried onions and potatoes, and tomatoes. To those of us who had had little sleep, this was manna. Especially the tomatoes.

Even now, I still wonder if that was the best meal I ever had. The freshness of the ingredients, the heartiness of the other ingredients against the juice, the fragrance and the roundness of flavour of the tomato.

I could spend much longer making my way back around my food memories that include tomatoes. But I’ve been making a batch of red sauce today aka a thick tomato sauce with added red pepper and chicken stock.

This one comes from tinned tomatoes, and is lifted from The New York Cook Book – it’s the Easy On The Diet sauce. It combines so well with many things, particularly sausages and pasta. Just the thing to stock the freezer with.

My final note to end on is that tomatoes have also been known as love apples. I think that sums up all I need to say.

It’s Christmas Eve. Not far off Christmas Day. It must be time to write about cheese – though perhaps I’ll pass up sampling it at this late hour. I may wish for ‘visions of sugar plums‘ in my dreams, but I don’t want nightmares from careless late night cheese eating.

Cheese! The perfect word to smile for the camera. Pretty much the perfect word, if the word is like the substance itself. For I am an unabashed lover of cheese. Maybe not all types. Maybe not to the extent of always ordering cheese at the end of a meal out. But still.

Like so many in the UK, I give thanks for cheddar. Because I know plenty of ex-pats who do just that when able to buy even a tiny slice of it in far flung corners of the globe. It’s tangy, satisfying. And a good sharp cheddar is a treat. Plus it melts well, it makes great sandwiches, and it cosies up to pickles just fine.

It is now time to air that great Yorkshire saying:

‘Apple pie without the cheese
Is like a kiss without a squeeze.’

And indeed, why not? If cheese will work with pickles, it’s only a short step to eating some alongside something like apple pie. I know there are others who alternate mouthfuls of mince pies and cheese.

On that note, cheese and jam? Maybe. I did try it (I try most things, to be honest), but I don’t think I will keep going with it. But Spanish Manchego cheese with membrillo, a sliceable ‘jam’ made from quince, that I can get excited about.

What else? I am probably more in the land of the hard cheese, overall, but hard but crumbly is also good. Cue Cheshire, Wensleydale. There’s more acidity in these, which makes them great to pair with fruit. So, also, wensleydale (or white stilton) with apricot, which I love so much, I limit myself to buying at Christmas. Then it remains an indulgence.

We have developed a little habit of buying a cheese for each of us. Mine is stated above. Dan goes for Applewood smoked cheddar. Brie has been selected by the junior cheese fancier, and generally appreciated (until the point it got a little too ripe, and was passed up to Dan).

On the subject of cheese and fruit, I discovered just how addictive good parmesan and grapes are, when staying with family of our Italian friends, on our first combined trip to Italy. I don’t know if I requested that it was taken away from me in the end, or whether I had to move to another room. The saltiness of parmesan against the honey aroma of grapes: tremendous.

I also have a soft spot for Port Salut, that softer, orange-rinded French cheese. We ate our way through yards of it on a family holiday to France in my teens, when I was not ready for ‘pongier’ cheeses. Still came back with good impressions of French food though.

I had the good fortune to do the washing up at a three star hotel with a great restaurant, back in my teens. I say good fortune, because I was positioned just by the door when the cheese board was wheeled back out of the dining room, at about ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

We would grab some of the freshly made rolls that the kitchen produced, then dive into ‘tidying up’ the cheese board. They served an English cheeseboard way before people were generally putting together artisanal cheese selections.

So I was introduced to Cornish Yarg (the name supposedly being the reversal of Gray), and Hereford Hop, which had toasted hop leaves round the outside. You could cut the hop bit off, but if you ever get to try some, try it with hop first.

You can understand that I am therefore excitable when given the option to eat cheese fondue. Dan hasn’t got there yet, but I have converted him to macaroni cheese, which is a big step in the right direction. He didn’t use to eat lasagna because of the cheese sauce. Luckily he has seen the light on that one.

There is so much more that could be tapped out about cheese, but I’m looking forward to lazy post-Christmas meals, where one after another consists of cheese and crackers. What price Christmas pudding, when there’s a goodly range of cheeses?

Yoghurt. Also known as Oghurt, courtesy of a small friend of ours who has probably forgotten about saying it that way. But we remember. And sometimes request it of each other in a 3 year old boy kind of way. ‘Oghurt!’ Because it needs to be there.

I’m going for broad brush here (though haven’t as yet tried brushing things with yoghurt): I’m including plain yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, yogo-smietanka and probably also sour cream in my rhapsodising. Think creamy and sharp, and you’re in safe hands.

Like most, yoghurt was first encountered in a fruit version. I seem to remember many years of Ski yoghurts. I’m not quite sure why you needed to ski while eating yoghurt – maybe the ad people saw expanse of whiteness, added ski poles, and were done.

I do remember the fruit chunks were quite good. Sometimes you got most of a small strawberry, it seemed.

I was also the child to turn to at school if you couldn’t open your yoghurt at lunch time. (This was also the stage at which you could open a yoghurt towards someone, fast so that it ‘burped’ at the person opposite. A mild act of aggression, really.)

Natural yoghurt was only bought for curries, as made by my dad, and for addition to cucumber to make raita. And it was pretty acidic only, back in the day, so you didn’t really want to sit spooning it in in this form.

Later, it seems like there were many happy years of Coop set yoghurts, in four-packs. They came with a little bit of sweet liquid on top, which you could drink off (if mum wasn’t looking) – long before the days of yoghurts you could drink.

The vanilla one was particularly good. I think they were trying to emulate the French yoghurts you get now in little glass jars. Worked for me. I’m sure there was an indoctrination in better quality European yoghurts when I went to Germany on exchange.

And once in Poland, there were more variants. The aforementioned yogo-smietanka is really a combination of yoghurt and sour cream – quite thick, tangy. Breakfasts in the school boarding house (my first time in Poland) were around the bread plus model favoured across Europe.

The point of yogo-smietanka was to mix it with the Polish equivalent of cottage cheese (more on that in another post, I think), plus jam, and spread it on bread. If you can imagine a kind of chunky fruit yoghurt spread, that was it.

Greek yoghurt came later. A friend who loved feeding people first introduced me to it, serving it with honey, and probably something else fruit based, for pudding. I couldn’t believe how thick it was, how creamy, and indeed why I had gone so long in life without eating it.

So: what of cooking with it? Yoghurt and cucumber: already praised when combined with dill. And accompanying curry: on occasion, I think that really what I love most is the yoghurt and the naan, or perhaps what I eat most of would be more accurate.

I like the thing of yoghurt as a marinade for meat, to tenderise it. I like it, too, as a bit of an all-purpose sauce to go with yummy things like griddled courgettes. A kind of mayo for the east of the Med, perhaps.

A former colleague introduced me to the French concept of cakes made with yoghurt – conveniently, you measure all the ingredients with the pot of the yoghurt, if I remember rightly. They’re good. I should probably have another go at making them, but then I’m probably too busy just eating the yoghurt.

I had quite a long phase of making yoghurt – a 1l machine that sits at the right temperature overnight, and provides you with yoghurt in the morning. Go a step further, and strain the yoghurt, and you get a mix between Greek yoghurt and something almost like an old fashioned ‘set cream’.

This ultra thick yoghurt is particularly wonderful with some berries, and some honey drizzled down the sides. But I had a bit of a phase too of layering yoghurt, whatever fruit I could find, and sprinkling some seeds on the top.

The latter is a Nigella Express one, adapted a bit. Particularly good if the Coop decided to sell off raspberries. I would stash them in little boxes in the freezer, and bring them out bit by bit to go with the yoghurt.

The other key place to use yoghurt is with things like chilli con carne. Dan’s version is to serve it in halves of pitta, adding salad, yoghurt, and a spot of grated cheese. Guacamole would of course be acceptable, but yoghurt is good as a calmer if the chilli is on the hotter side.

Realising that this is another post completed after midnight, I will stop there. But I will say one thing – if you find Onken Rhubarb yoghurt on special, you know what to do.