Another Food Blog

Balzano’s in Cambridge is an authentic Italian deli established well over 30 years ago now and still  serving the well-settled local Italian community and everyone else….It has a fantastic bakery where bread is still baked each day and supplied to a host of restaurants and food outlets.

I love it as it has a fantastic range of dried pasta that no Superstore can compete with either on price or choice. The main brand of dried pasta is called La Molisana.

Calvados is an apple brandy from the French region of Lower Normandy. It is made from cider apples, double distilled and often aged in oak casks for a period of time. It is rumoured to have come into being around the time of Charlemagne, the great leader often cited as being the ‘father of Europe’ who united most of this region under his influence, the first to do so since the Romans.

I discovered it years ago while living in London, while looking for a present for my father in law. In our home it is drunk at the end of a evening after a good meal – or when friends come round after a night out.

Cavolo Nero, originally from Italy, has a distinctive colour and depth of flavour. Once cooked and combined with roasted red pepper and lemon juice and a little olive oil, it takes on a ’surreal-sublime’ taste, which will stand its ground as a excellent accompaniment alongside any dish of the day, be it a roast dinner or a fillet of Brill. In the winter months we normally eat it twice a week and always serve it to our friends who umm! and aah! with delight.

A trivet, also known as a ‘hot plate,’ is an object placed between a serving dish or bowl and a dining table, usually to protect the table from heat damage. In cooking a trivet serves the purpose of cooking a joint of meat with the same care of protecting it from the direct heat of the roasting dish.

This simple method of using vegetables can certainly enhance a dish, and can be varied using a whole array of different types of root vegetables depending on what is being cooked.

Our dinner this evening is a simple rack of British Pork from East Anglia. These pigs can always be seen scattered across the countryside when one makes car journeys along the traitorous  A14 en route to Ipswich or further afield to a seaside town of Southwold where our family spends a good few weeks every year.

A while ago now I made a promise not to buy another cookery book – as one tends to just buy them and not actually cook from them. Only last week I bought this online and thus broke my promise that I had made a few months ago. This new book is called ‘British Seasonal Food’ written by Mark Hix.

So never make promises you cannot keep – enjoy cooking, its a fantastic book with great little gems in its pages.

Suffolk red poles feature among the cattle grazed on local meadows in and around Cambridge.

Having collected the rib of beef late last week, I decided to delay cooking it until Sunday – it’s weight was a mere 4kg, and it had 2 bones on it, cut short. When my wife saw it she commented on how it looked quite unlike any beef meat she had ever seen in a Superstore,

On the morning I took it out of the fridge to come to room temperature before roasting it for 2 hours, and letting it stand for another half an hour.

We enjoyed this beef, cooked fairly rare with a simple bottle of  Spanish Tinto ‘Pesquera’ 2004.

Overall it was fantastic in taste, texture, flavour and smell, and well worth the effort of cooking it with care.

On Sunday we had a simple roast chicken, brought from Waitrose, a local superstore. I did my usual warm fennel salad with garlic, plus roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings & gravy. The great thing about doing a large roast is that one can always come back later that evening for a lighter supper.

On Monday we enjoyed some slow cooked pork belly (6 hours at 100 degrees Celsius, the last half-hour being at 200 degrees). Very tasty served with baby new potatoes and a salad of tomato and baby spinach.

Tuesday – tonight’s dinner will be a simple herb risotto with a warm salad of roasted celeriac, steamed Savoy cabbage & the cold chicken from Sunday’s roast.

Wednesday’s dinner has to be simple as we play tennis in the afternoon. We usually have a meat ragu with Fettuccia  Riccia pasta & Parmesan cheese – a take on ’spag Bol.’ I have a note in my diary to collect a rib of beef that I ordered weeks ago now – the beef being that of the Suffolk Red Poles that have been reared on Midsummer Common in Cambridge. I am quite excited to taste this beef, having heard so much about them of late, so if time allows on Thursday, I will try and cook this rib for some friends to finish off another busy week.

We usually eat out in restaurants either on a Monday evening or on Fridays at some point.

A couple of years ago now, one of my best friends, Marco, in Basel, Switzerland introduced me to this little drink.  I liked it so much that I keep a stock in our fridge at home, bought from my local deli. Crodino is one of Italy’s famous drinks, a non-alcoholic Italian aperitif made with aromatic herbs.

Aperitifs are appetite-stimulating beverages usually enjoyed before a meal. In Italy they are normally served with peanuts, Crodino is also a delicious refreshing drink on its own, usually served with a slice of lemon and a couple cubes of ice, each bottle or serving being 100ml.
Crodino takes its name from Crodo, the area in northern Piedmont.

British Regional Food by Mark Hix was the last cookery book I  bought, early this year – after making a promise not to buy another cookery book.

It’s fantastic in many ways – unpretentious, simple and has the wow factor in local produce, food, and some classical local recipes. The author runs a good restaurant called ‘The Hix Oyster & Chop House,’ situated in its own little street near Smithfield Market, London.

Best known as the Chef Director of Caprice Holdings, Hix was the man in charge of what the customers ate at The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and, latterly, Scott’s.

Known as one of the best executive chefs in the business, Hix can be credited with redefining a kind of contemporary, template seasonal menu that has since been much copied elsewhere. Earlier this year he decided to leave the corporate world and branch out on his own.

This is his first stand-alone restaurant, where he has utilized many of the antique and junk shop finds he has collected over the years to add a personal touch to the table settings. The pewter finger bowls, whisky water jugs, cook book collection and copper pans on the walls all belong to him. Always keen on using the best of local  British food, he has a diviner’s touch when it comes to sourcing quality produce. If it’s on a Hix menu, it is going to be good and if it features on a Hix wine list, someone will have thought carefully about its inclusion.

Lastly this book pictured in the photograph above by Mark Hix, has a short piece about the Suffolk Red Poles, a rare breed of  ginger cattle that can be seen grazing on Cambridge’s Midsummer Common. One can buy this fantastic meat on our Sunday market or through a web site called camcattle.co.uk

Sunday – a bright crisp morning – not a cloud in the sky! Wonderful for picking quinces!

In Cambridge, quince tress abound in unusual locations … on forgotten allotments & doctors’ surgeries and in local gardens.

I had been invited to pick some ripe quinces – so I called my best friend, Steve, who was at work in his own garden, to come away for ten minutes to pick some of these special fruit. Our first attempt to shake this old tree was unsuccessful. I scaled its inner depths only to discover fantastic lichen growing on the branches. I was able to pick and pluck at different fruit and throw them down into secure waiting hands. This week I will make some great quince jelly to accompany the Irish cheeses I bought on Friday afternoon last week.

Personally, I had never been one for ‘Food for Free’ until I tasted stinging nettles, collected  from Grantchester, a village near Cambridge. Blanched in boiling water, refreshed in ice cold water, and gently reheated & served with Parmesan cheese…