March 10th, 2010
I tried out a new cheese bought on the Cambridge market. It is Deepdale, a non-cow’s milk cheese that does not come from sheep or goat’s milk. It is made from the milk of water buffalo at Deepdale, near Skipton. It is quite near Clitheroe, where Paul used to live, but is just over the boundary into North Yorkshire. It is a hard cheese, but one of the softer ‘hard’ ones, being quite moist. It comes with a wax coating to retain its moisture. It is a full-flavoured cheese, somewhat on the sweet side, but not in the sweet way you get with cow’s milk. It has quite a subtle taste which lingers afterwards. I found it went very well with oat biscuits and sweetmeal cookies. The other cheese in the top photo is manchego, a hard sheep’s milk cheese made in the La Mancha region of Spain and aged from 3 to 6 months. I found the two quite a good contrast.
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March 10th, 2010
I have a Finnish lab mate, and she’s well aware of my carnivorous diet. On her latest trip home she a brought a present for me: mustamakkara, the Finnish equivalent of black pudding, and its traditional accompaniment of lingonberry jam.
I sliced off a chunk of the sausage and heated it through in a frying pan, placing it on a plate with a good dollop of jam. It was good – more-or-less identical to black pudding, although perhaps a little softer. That said, the texture varies from sausage to sausage so perhaps best not to read too much into the texture. The jam is fruity, a little tart, and goes surprisingly well alongside the meaty taste of the sausage.
I can’t quite see how to fit the jam into a breakfast scenario, but the mustamakkara definitely would work. Perhaps though, as a light lunch in the future, I’ll go the ultra-traditional route: mustamakkara, lingonberry jam, and a glass of cold milk.
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March 9th, 2010
I bought a hock of pork in Waitrose. Fearnley-Whittingstall doesn’t rate it as worthwhile in his Meat book. I think he’s thinking of a different cut to the Waitrose hock, as mine hadn’t plenty of meat and looked great.
I opted to cook it like a lamb shank – so, I browned it off and threw it in a casserole dish with onions, carrots, bayleaves, and water to cover. Then in went some apple juice for good measure. It cooked for several hours before coming out, whereupon I skinned it and poured the gravy into a pan to thicken with a little flour. I put the skin back in to the oven to make crackling!
It was good – the meat flavoursome and moist, the crackling crisp, and the appley sweetness of the gravy fantastic. With the usual roast vegetables, January King cabbage, and apple sauce alongside, it was a great meal. There was enough leftover to give me delicious hunks of pork in my lunch the next few days…
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March 9th, 2010
CUCA always holds a Chairman’s Dinner during that Chairman’s term. This one was held for the chap in the title, and began with a Champagne reception in the Old Kitchens of Queens’ College, after which, we popped across to the Ancient Dining Hall (as I like to call it, as they have a new one, too, and the decoration in there is truly ancient).
After finding our places, we began with a charcuterie platter of smoked and cured meats, accompanied by a Tuscan-style pazanella salad, unless you’re one of those vegetarian wimps, of course, in which case you got endive salad.
The main course soon followed, and was magnificent (as you can see from the photograph above). It was grilled breast of barbary duck, and alongside came fondant potatoes and wilted greens, all covered with a delicious port wine sauce. For those that prefer boring food (no names mentioned, such as Victor Vavatch or Veronica Victoria), there was sweet potato and butternut squash crumble with what was described as ‘tarragon brioche gruyere’ (make of that what you will) and walnut crust.
Dessert, as you can see, was sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream, largely drunk with the college port. Throughout the rest of the meal, we were served La Gioiosa Pinot Grigio from 2007 and Plan de Dieu Promenade du Papes from 2006, the latter of which was highly enjoyable and the former of which was less so.
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March 8th, 2010
I picked up a guineafowl at Waitrose – it was reaching the use-by date and, hence, reduced somewhat in price. I opted to roast it – giving it 40 minutes on 200C. I opted for a breast and a little of the leg meet and alongside I served the usual accompaniments to a roast meal – roast potatoes and parsnips and a mix of steamed green vegetables.
I like guineafowl – it has a delightful lightly gamey taste, with a texture of chicken. Breast of guineafowl is a standby at most Cambridge Colleges when they want to do something a little out of the ordinary.
Plenty for leftovers, too – another breast portion and enough bits for risotto, too! I didn’t make stock this time, but froze the bones – there’s a pheasant in the freezer, and each alone wouldn’t be enough for stock.
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March 7th, 2010
Whole chicken breast stuffed with raw chorizo (jabugo – acorn-fed black iberic pig), butter (except it was ‘pure’ because I dont eat dairy) and cherry tomatoes, wrapped in bacon and seared in a hot pan.
I then prepared a potato salad and opened a bottle of Perrie-Jouet champagne whilst I popped the chicken in the oven to cook for 45mins.
The champagne was delicious but a bottle is only a bottle and as we ate the chicken we drank an Australian Shiraz. The well known McGuigan Estate.
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March 7th, 2010
There is the right way to eat grapefruit and there is my way. My way is better albeit wrong.
The right way involves bisecting the fruit and slicing each segment free to be eaten via spoon.
My way involves alot of preperation and effort but makes for the most delicious eating. I peel it a l’orange and remove all the membrane/skin/pith leaving the fruit segments as pictured.
This way makes for the best eating and the least mess (once preperation is over).
The right way is quicker to prepare but results in more effort during the eating. My way plays the long game. Gets all the work out of the way and leaves all the joy for the eating.
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March 7th, 2010
1985 was a fantastic year.
At least two grand events took place.
Firstly, this port was produced. It is delicious and perfectly balaced, coating the inside of the mouth completely with a velvety warm sensation.
Prune and raisin flavours. Powerful yet inobtrusive. Elegant yet unpretentious. Pleasing in every way. Yaddda yadda yadda. Delicious.
Secondly, an even more sophisticated if slightly imbalanced creature was produced that year; me.
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March 7th, 2010
I was invited to join a dozen members of Cambridge University Spaceflight (rocket boys and girls) at formal dinner in Christ’s College. Once again I put on my grey suit, bow tie and black gown and went into the panelled dining hall. It was a rather unusual meal in several respects. Firstly, there were more on the high table than in the body of the hall. They even sang “happy birthday” to one of their number, which is most unusual. And the food was untypical, too.
The first course was smoked mackerel, difficult to get wrong unless it is too dry, which this was not. Then came halal lamb Balti, lamb curry cooked in a Balti, or flat-bottomed wok. It came on a bed of savoury rice, and side dishes included vegetable samosas, vegetable pakoras, mango chutney and poppodums. This was an interesting and quite pleasant dish, and a change from more traditional college food.
Finally there was peach melba. Unusually I ate it all and found it very pleasant. With the food I drank a red Spanish tempranillo, a grape named after the Spanish word ‘temprano’ meaning ‘early,’ and so-called because it ripens early. It was surprisingly smooth, and 13 percent in strength.
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March 6th, 2010
A friend is a by-Fellow at Churchill College and invited us to dine with her. For reasons of politik, whilst we were to enjoy the High Table food, we were to ‘dine below’ – in otherwords, on the undergraduate tables. As part of this, we had to abide by undergrad rules – one bottle of wine between two. But, as it happened, the six bottles – one white, one rosé, and four red – were plenty enough for us.
The starter was fish – smoked salmon and prawns with Marie Rose sauce – with fresh bread rolls. As luck would have it, even though we’d not seen a menu beforehand, the Chilean Pinot Gris went rather well with it. The main was steak, with roast potatoes and vegetables. It wasn’t the ’still mooing’ steak I’d opt for out of preference, but it was remarkably tender. Both the Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages and the ‘Big Ass Zin’ (a Sonoma Valley Zinfandel from Adler Fels) I sampled suited it nicely. Dessert was widely recognised afterwards as the best part of an otherwise-standard menu: a delicously light and moist lemon tart.
The coffee, unfortunately, was Fairtrade and so, in what is fast-becoming the signature move of anotherfoodblog, I refused. We repaired afterwards to the Senior Combination Room and sat in comfortable leather sofas with a glass of something. I enjoyed a little dessert wine, but there was whisky, port, madeira, gin, beer, and red and white wine available too! Some opted to stay in the bar afterwards – and I hear the talking went on till nearly 2am – but I headed home. It was a school night, after all…
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