But ... But ... Butter??

… or "Adventures in going dairy free"

OK, so those of you know me well know something about me.  Something shameful.  Something there should probably be an intervention for … my addiction to butter.  The tale unfolds from here ...

I'm not sure where the addiction came from.  I was certainly brought up eating excellent food (thanks Mum) with a strong French influence, possibly from my mothers love of Keith Floyd.  That love of French cooking has stayed with me and when I started teaching myself to cook it was the French chefs and French inspired chefs that led the way … particularly James Martin.  I liked his straight forward approach to things and he showed me other paths to follow to find out more.  From there it bloomed.  It honestly got to the point where if there were less than three packs of butter in the fridge it was a state of emergency.  Call 999 and ask for the Dairy Service.

This is combined with a love of cheese that borders on the ridiculous.  After a loooong abstinence from the stuff do to being told I was allergic (I am not) I rediscovered it in my late 20s.  My tastes had changed though, no longer mild cheddar, gouda or edam … no, now the bluer, softer, more unusual the better.

So this was me.  French food cooking, butter blooded, cheese freak.  Which I guess has you wondering about the subject of this drivel.  Well this is where my health comes in.

I have something wrong with my breathing, my chest will go very, very tight.  I become unable to breathe properly.  I become extremely tired.  It can vary from annoying to extremely uncomfortable.  (I know, woe is me etc … it's clearly not life threatening but its not great.)  A lot of trips to GPs and hospitals yielded nothing, except thankfully ruling out anything nasty.  Allergy tests threw up nothing, nor echos, x-rays, scans of all shapes and sizes.  This has continued for around 7 years and I've just had to live with it.

I came up with the idea of making my diet as clean as possible, a last gasp as it were attempt to find a solution.  So I went vegan.  Don't worry, I'm not going to preach … I will be caveating this heavily later on.

Not going to lie, it was a hell of a lifestyle change.  I have more or less had to re-teach myself to cook. Coconut oil doesn't behave quite like butter.  Vegan cheese is an abomination.  Mostly, I utterly refuse to eat vegan "meat" products.  I'm giving the stuff up, replacing it with Fakon is not going to keep me on this path.  So no, I went full veg only from the get go.  Luckily a lot of foods I love already embrace this … Indian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish … all these foods have a multitude of things to go for that exclude all meat and dairy.

Did it work?  Yeah, in the main it absolutely did.  The number of attacks I had dropped radically from 3 or 4 a week to maybe 2 in 6 months.  That for me is a big win.  Lately, it has returned a bit more strongly but I am, for now, putting this down to stress.  I'm sticking with it.

Oh yeah, caveats.   Looks, I cannot claim any moral reasoning behind this and accordingly I am not going to preach in your general direction … or any other.  I love going to very nice restaurants and I am not going to limit myself on menu of a restaurant I've gone to specifically to try the specialties of a chef I admire, or skip an interesting taster menu.  I would be a hypocrite to do so.  No, I will continue this regime at home and as often as possible when I'm out with that exemption.

I would say this though, its worth trying a few meat and dairy free dishes now and then.  They are very, very tasty.  And you can get a lot for a very low expenditure.  Buy better meat less often, you'll enjoy it more and maybe be a little healthier for it.

Or don't  … up to you.

I do really miss fish mind you … so this probably isn't going to last much longer :)

Anyway … to finish, here's a pasta recipe I've come to use as a real staple. I love it, its quick and simple and delicious. I would love to credit the source but I have no idea where it came from and my internet history is not helping find it.  If I find out, I will update this at a later date.  Here we go:

Pasta with Raw Tomato Sauce

Serves plenty

5 or 6 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
Handful fresh flat leaf parsley
Handful freah mint
Handful fresh basil
Tbsp drained capers
2 cloves garlic (or to taste)
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
Pinch of sugar
Handful of walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped

Olive oil

Salt and pepper
Pasta of choice … I like linguine

Salt a pan of water, bring to the boil and cook the pasta.
Place everything else except the oil and seasoning into a food processor and pulse until smooth.
On a slow speed run the food processor while drizzling in the oil until you reach a nice sause/loose pesto kind of thing.
Taste, and salt and pepper until happy.
Drain the pasta, stir in the sauce and serve.

Easy eh?  Enjoy!

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P.S.
I know this is the first post in a long time.  It won't be the last this time.  I've made an agreement with a friend of mine that we will post at least once a fortnight on our respective blogs.  This was serves mostly as a catch up.  I will attempt to something more interesting/exciting for the next one.

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P.P.S.
I'm still angry about that Bake Off result.

Three Course Lunacy

Cooking for other people is always a pleasure, especially when it goes well.  You have a whole range of options too, from something simple and tasty right up to the full blown dinner party.  This weeks decision was sort of a combination of the two.  Since I was cooking for a friend who a) knew I liked to try things out and b) was a big foodie I decided to do something ... interesting.  How did it turn out?  Read on, dear friend, read on.

So, the menu had to be decided upon first and foremost.  And somewhere in there needed to be the comfort zone so I knew at least one course would work ... just ... in ... case.  Also, as we all know, the more you can prepare in advance the better.  So, where to go?  For inspiration I turned to three of my favourite sources, Heston Blumenthal, Michel Roux Jnr and Raymond Blanc.  Incidently my ideal dinner party guests, as long as it's them cooking!  As such the menu ended up looking like this:

Red Cabbage Gazpacho, Mustard Ice Cream
Magret de Cannard Bordelaise
Mango Ravioli, Coconut Jus

It doesn't really matter how good a recipe is, I'm unlikely to follow it to the letter.  Partly because I always adjust things slightly to my tastes, but mainly because I always forgot to shop until really late in the day and then some of the required ingredients are going to be glaringly absent!  However, prep began and seemingly well.

The desert takes a few days, purely due to the need to freeze things, allowing them to be rock solid before moving on to the next stage.  So it was that Sunday saw the making of the coconut milk panacotta that is the bedrock of the dish. I've made this a few times before, it's always tricky but I felt fairly confident in it's execution and, save a slight shortage on gelatine sheets, all went to plan.  The hope was that I would simply have a slightly softer pannacotta ... the hope was.  Things would not be fully revealed until about an hour before serving.  No pressure!  At least at this point I could relax.
Monday evening was step two of the whole process, it would also be the day to make the mustard ice cream.  This ice cream was the source of many odd looks when I was talking to people ... although when it comes to food this isn't an unusual situation.  I'll admit that out of context this may be an odd thing to make but I wasn't about to put it in a cone!  This would sit in the centre of the soup and add a creamyness to the whole affair.  It was a fairly straight forward recipe as it goes and the final product was really quite delicious.  Once fully churned it was potted up and placed into the freezer, another job done.

The next stage of the ravioli was the "filling", another simple part of the dish.  In my version (due to that late shopping), it was just diced mango and some passion fruit mixed with chopped mint leaves.  This was loaded into the silicon moulds and topped with discs of the, now frozen, pannacotta and returned to the freezer over night.

Tuesday, time to jelly the ravioli.  This always the bit that makes me nervous.  If you don't get them covered they leak, everywhere, once defrosted.  Turns out this was to be the least of my worries.  Somehow the filling and the pannacotta had parted company over night, I clearly assembled badly ... but I'd been so careful!  This was never going to work, there were huge gaps ... I couldn't coat this.  A rescue mission was on the cards.  I carefully seperated the two componants and set about shaving a flat surface on each, once happy that the join looked OK I painted mango juice onto both pieces, pushed together and returned to the freezer.  This had to work, had to.  If it didn't I would be without desert and that wouldn't exactly be the ideal ending.  It's a very odd feeling being nervous about a dessert.  That only normally happens when there are two you can't choose between, in the gap between ordering and arrival, have I made the right choice?

Wednesday and it was time to check if my emergency repair had worked.  It seemed it had.  To say I was relieved would be an understatement.  The woods was not fully escaped from yet however as the jelly coating still needed to be applied.  I've learnt the hard way that it's very easy to end up with a fridge full of fruit juice if your coverage is off.  I prepared the jelly, let it cool to and then dipped the ravioli.  Looked OK so back to the freezer and cross fingers.  This is where they would live until around 1 on Thursday when they would be moved to the fridge to defrost.
Thursday night, very shortly it will be go time.  First though, the soup!  This is a pretty simple affair which is a relief after the stress of dessert.  A process of juicing and making a mayonaise to thicken.
All done, I can do no more now until it's time to serve.

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Serving time and the starter was just a case of blending in some fresh red wine mayo and adding the ice-cream.  It was completely delicious, refreshing and interesting.  The ice cream melting in and making the soup creamy, the cucumber was crunchy and added another burst of freshness.

The main course, finally back on more familiar ground with some classic french cooking.  Beautiful, soft duck breast with a red wine sauce and wild mushrooms.  I served up with a pomme puree (well, mash ... let's be honest) as I wanted to  keep things a little simplier after all the previous days of prep.  In hindsight I wish I'd made the potato cakes as suggested in Michel Roux's book as there would have been some extra texture.  It is a classic for a reason though and I heartily recommened trying it out.

Dessert ... here we go ...

It worked!! If nothing else this proved I need to work on my presentation, I am well aware of how this looks!  It was tasty though.  It wasn't as liquid as hoped, but it was at least tasty.  What I'm saying is I'm taking this as a win ... maybe not a win, maybe bronze ... but definitely not last place.

All in all, a pretty successful outcome. I will be trying all these dishes again, trying to hone the finish and presentation.

But not for a while ... I couldn't handle the stress again yet ...

Thanks to John for the photos.

Sources:

Heston Blumenthal at Home - Heston Blumenthal (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal-at-Home/dp/1408804409/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424340565&sr=8-1&keywords=heston+at+home)

The French Kitchen - Michel Roux Jr (http://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Kitchen-Recipes-Master-Cooking/dp/0297867237/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1424340657&sr=8-3&keywords=michel+roux)

Kitchen Secrets - Raymond Blanc (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Secrets-Raymond-Feb-21-2011-Hardback/dp/B00BOL9BLI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1424340691&sr=8-2&keywords=kitchen+secrets)

Juniper ... tasting, tasting, one, two, three

Restaurant : Juniper
Location : Cotham Road South, Bristol

The tasting menu, small portions of several dishes as a single meal.  Generally these are designed as a way of showcasing both local produce, seasonality and the skills of the chefs.  Some restaurants and chefs specialise in these types of menus, most famously perhaps The Fat Duck in Bray under the wing of the incredible Heston Blumenthal.  Traditionally these menus will provide something of a challenge to perceptions of food and ingredients and delight you with surprises and delicious combinations.

Juniper clearly does not specialise in the taster menu.  Although, to their credit the menu was certainly "challenging" although possibly not in the way intended.  Allow me, dear friends, to guide you through the importunate demands of this gastronomic minefield ...

Course #1

Fresh Crab bonbons, smokey red pepper relish, crushed fennel & peas, dill emulsion

 

This looks OK, doesn't it?  And it sort of was ... with some provisos.  Two little soft balls of white crab meat, over fried to a blackended crisp and frigteningly under seasoned.  If you look VERY closely you might just see the smokey red pepper relish.  It wasn't smokey, or very reminiscent of peppers ... just a sweet red goo used to hold the balls in place whilst in transit from the kitchen.  The fennel and peas were very nice but were completely destroyed by an emulsion that was far too strong for anything else on the plate.  That was literally all you could taste if you put everything in your mouth at once Greg Wallace style.   5/10 : all too bland except those rank dill drops, but edible if you avoided those.

Course #2

Beetroot & Ricotta Tortelloni, pesto cream, beetroot pickle

I had high hopes for this, we both did, we love beetroot.  Love it's earthy sweetness and richness.  Add that with some good pasta and a reasonably restrained pesto and this was going to be an absolute winner.

Well, they got the "sweet" part in there but managed to remove and awful lot of the "beetroot" and every last drop of "earthy" and "rich".  Quite simply a sweet purple paste in over thick, cold pasta; over powered by a pesto which was below the quality of any basic jar you could pick up from the supermarket.  They tried to lift the pesto with a little cream but this just added to the sickliness of the whole affair.  The beetroot pickle was, in fairness, quite reasonable but the little tomato on top actually made me laugh.  Look at it, go on ... that my friends is what D&Ls cafe in Yate calls garnish, not what you'd expect fro somewhere "posh".  5/10 nice try, edible but utterly forgettable, far too sweet and too strong with the pesto.

Course #3

Chilled potato & goats cheese soup, truffle oil, croutons

No photo here, sorry, but you can picture white soup in a white cup I'm sure.

Immediately we noticed a problem here.  See that last word in the description, "croutons"?  Well, drop the S, one sad little bready square, heavily garlic sat in the middle of an anemic looking soup drizzled with oil quite lacking the truffle flavour.

I will stop being mean about this course now though, it was clearly the standout dish.  Simple but beautifully made, thick and well textured, strong with a very good goats cheese.  Ignore the garnish and it was lovelly. 8/10 delicious but let down but the finishing touches.

Course #4

Confit of English lamb, spice aubergine, mint jelly, tomato fondant

Let me start by say that lamb and aubergine are two of my favourite, if not my favourite two, ingredients available.  If I was on Saturday Kitchen they'd be in the heaven category.  How can this possibly go wrong?  How? ... let's have a look at the delights awaiting us ...

Excuse me waiter!  Someone appears to have **** on my plate!

For the love of Christmas, some one please have a word with the chef.  This is where it all started to go wrong.  The first three courses were pretty average on a whole but edible.  This was the point where that stopped.  The lamb was horrific.  Stringy, pungent in the wrong way.  And yet, miraculously, it was actually over powered by the even worse, sickly sweet, truely foul mint jelly.  Maybe the aubergine can save us!  You can't go wrong with aubergine!  Unless that is you serve it cold, under cooked, spiced like you dropped the spice rack on it and made do and then mashed into quenelle in order to make it look like you knew what you were doing.

I honestly thought at this point Karolina was going to be sick in public. 1/10 utterly horrific in every way.

Course #5

Champagne sorbet

Frozen sugar with Tesco Value Prosecco poured over it.  Vile. 2/10.  Next ...

Course #6

Fillet of Salmon, sticky coconut rice, black bean & sweet soy

Some asian treats for this course.  Another of my absolute favourite cuisines, light and flavoursome with the perfect balance of sweet and sour, salt and spice.  Well, that's what it should be.  Yet again Juniper found "sweet" but very little else.  The sauce itself was quite nice, if over sweet, and on something more robust then it may have worked well; unfortunately the salmon was cooked until it was completely bereft of flavour and had the texture of stacked cardboard.  Everything I hate about badly cooked salmon exemplified here in a masterclass of poor fish cookery.  3/10 Only the sauce tasted of anything.

Course #7

Free range chicken, jersey royal potatoes, creamed mushrooms, jus

No picture again I'm afraid but if you imagine a tiny sunday roast you'll be close.   I don't know what it is with Juniper but they like to cook all the moisture from their meat.  The only saving grace of the lamb was that, being confit, some had remained in sheer defiance of clearly a most determined chef.  The "jus" was clearly attempting to be a refined chicken stock reduction but it was like licking the burnt remnants from a three day old pan.  Jersey royals should be a delight in the potato world but these were so salted as to taste of nothing else, and frankly the lest said about the mushrooms the better.  This course nearly DID cause me to regurgetate all previous courses as well as lunch and breakfast right there into the, now empty thanks to salt overload, water jug.  1/10 I've had better in Nandos.

Course #8

Pineapple pudding, hot rum butterscotch, pineapple & coconut relish.

This is exactly what it looks like.  A dry sponge (see previous comments about the chef's disliking of moisture ... I wonder if (s)he has rabies ...) with a sugared drizzle of loose bottom water.  The "relish" seemed to consist of frozen pineapple mixed with dried coconut leaving an odd taste and a weird sensation of all moisture being drawn from your mouth while sucking an ice cube.  2/10 just dire.

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I don't really know what to say about Juniper.  This was booked by Karolina as my birthday treat as our Casamia booking was pushed back, and back ... so we were really looking forward to it, quite excited by the idea of a selection of interesting and tasty morsels.  We'd heard good things about the place and so hopes were high.  It was a most depressing state of affairs, then, when course after course of terrible food was delivered following long, long waits between courses and luke warm white wine.

Chef clearly thinks he's a creative genius but, in reality, (s)he just likes quenelles.  If you're reading this QUENELLES DO NOT MAKE FINE DINING!  I know presentation is important but taste has to come first and I honestly thing nothing here was tasted.  Everything was as sweet as a dessert.  Ironically, the exception to that was the dessert.

I think it's safe to say we won't be visiting again.  Hopefully our next dining experience will be better and I will doubtless ramble about it here again.  Apologies for the length of the post today ... but some traumas need to be shared.

Bon Appetit ... 

The Parrot Fish Incident

Saturday was upon us and, as we occasionally do we ventured across the bridge to Cardiff.  We have family and friends there, the Waitrose is better than any in Bristol and there's Ashtons Fish Market in Cardiff Market.  We like fish, those of you who know us might consider this a massive bleedin' understatement, but we do ... so there.  This weekend was especially nice, we were greeted with something looking like this:

Seriously now, look at the size of that bloody Monkfish!  And those Plaice looked awesome.

Here we have the pile of Turbot, massive John Dory, huge Red Snapper and nestled at the back the intriguing Parrot Fish.  It looked rather like this:

... only much more dead.   Anyway, I seem to remember trying this in the dim and distanct past but couldn't for the life of me remember when so, as usual before buying fish I don't know, I phoned my mum :)

"It's delicious" she said, "we had it on holiday just baked.  Really nice"

That'll do thought I, so we bought it.  Two and a half kilos of the bugger, leaving this glorious filleted sight:

So, we had enough for three meals once portioned up, so what to do with it tonight.  A quick google found that it's popular in Spain so I made something up along those lines. 

Pan Roasted Parrot Fish with Chorizo and Butterbean Stew.

Here's how we made it.

Chorizo and Butterbean stew

2 tbspn Olive oil

2 Shallots – finely chopped

3 cloves garlic – finely chopped

60g Chorizo

1 squirt of tomato puree

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tin butter beans

Big pinch of chilli flakes.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Sweat off shallots and garlic in the oil

Add chorizo and fry until the oil changes colour in that very cool way that it does.

Add the tomato puree and cook out for 2 or 3 minutes. 

Add the tin of tomatoes, the butter beans and chilli flakes and season.

Reduce heat and simmer away for 20 minutes or so.

Recheck seasoning and serve.

For the potatoes

New potatoes, halved

Smoked paprika

Pre heat over to 180 C, leave baking tray in to warm up with some olive oil in it

Par boil the potatoes

Drain the potatoes and tip into the hot, oily baking tray and sprinkle with the paprika.

Place back in the over for 15 – 20 minutes until done.

For the fish

Parrot Fish

Salt and Pepper

Season the fish and fry skin side down in a pan for 2 or 3 minutes.

Cover with foil and transfer to the oven for 15 – 20 minutes until done.

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"So?  What was it like?"  I hear you ask ... bloody lovely as it goes.  The fish itself was reminicent of Hake in flavour but flaked more like an extremly meaty cod.   The stew worked along well with the fish, just enough heat and sweetness to contrast ... and you have to love spuds covered in paprika and then roasted, no?

We'll definitely be on the Parrot Fish chomp again soon, and it was a bit of a bargain too.

We didn't have any suitable white in to go with the fish, so we washed it down with a bottle of Rioja afterwards.  Hey, it's Spanish .. what do you want from me :)

NOTE : Parrot fish skin is grim :)  It turns to glue.  You've been warned, OK? :)

Welcome to our adventures in overly ambitious dinners

Welcome, welcome to Dinner Unknown.  We are the sort of people who occasionally get very, very carried away by something unusual that we've not seen before.  An ingredient will catch our eye, a recipe with spark an "Ooooo", James Martin will instill an obsession with scones one Saturday morning and our lives will not be complete until we've had a good half dozen each and are left lying on the sofa fat, sick and bloody pleased with ourselves.

This is our blog, this is where we will share these adventures be they unsual fish, hot jelly, baking disasters and general oddities that grab our attention.

Or maybe we'll go somewhere for dinner one evening as is our wont, maybe it'll be stunning ... maybe it will be like old chip grease poured over a steaming pile ... either way it will probably find it's way on to here and I'll be sued to within and inch of my life.

If you like food like we do then I hope something that goes on here will amuse you, inspire you, confound you or simply make you go "that dude's a dick".  Whatever, if it kills five minutes I'm a happy chap.

See you down the road for the upcoming adventures.

Cheers, Prost, Salut, Gom bui, Na zdrowie, etc :)