Another beer from Hall and Woodhouse: Golden Glory.
The label talks of a peach and melon aroma, which is very much the first smell to arise from the beer. It’s neither too bitter or two sweet in taste and is – perhaps unsurprisingly – a crisp and golden colour.
A good beer, that I found went as well with food as it did on its own.
I used my metal flan dish with the detachable base. I made my usual short-crust pastry with 4 oz flour, a spoon of bran, and goose fat and sunflower margarine as shortening. I scattered chopped onions on it, then added mussels, squid and king prawns. I put Italian herbs, salt and pepper on top, then added an egg whisked up with about a third of a pint of milk.
I baked it for 40 minutes on a 180 oven, them took it out to rest for a few minutes while I prepared the vegetables. It came out beautifully succulent.
I chopped up carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, string beans and mushroom, and sautéed them lightly in olive oil in a sealed pan. It was very good indeed, full of fresh seafood flavour. To follow it I baked apples, cored and stuffed with raisins, with rum poured into them, and wrapped in foil. Goat’s milk yoghurt on top. Yummy…
I took a salmon fillet and placed into a pre-heated oven (190C) on foil on a baking tray. It had about 15 minutes-or-so. On the hob, I dry-fried red onions, garlic, and mushrooms until soft and beginning to brown. Into this went half a vegetable stock cube and cous cous. When I’d stirred everything to an even mix, I added a splash of cold water. As soon as it came to the boil, the pan came off the heat and the lid went on.
A few minutes later, I broke the couscous up with a fork and put in onto a warm plate, sliding the salmon on top. Alongside, some steamed mange tout, brocolli, and savoy cabbage. Delicious, with the salmon slightly crisp on the outside and pink inside. The cous cous was flavoursome and moist, and the vegetables crisp and green. Afterwards, I enjoyed a plum and pear crumble with vanilla yoghurt. I’d made the crumble with a mix of wholemeal flour and oats, and only a little sugar – for a dessert, pretty healthy.
Having learned that the extra effort is not justified by any difference in results, I bought prepared pizza bases to put my own toppings on. First was the tomato paste. I didn’t have any intended for the task, but I did have a jar of ragu, so I spread that over the bases instead. Next I used Italian pepperoni. It came in large slices, but I halved them and laid them in an elegant circular pattern. Then I halved black olives and put them in the gaps between the pepperoni. Then green olives treated similarly. Next I chopped French string beans into about half-inch pieces and scattered them on top. Then came chopped purple onions and half a rough-cut field mushroom. I had mozzarella left, so I added that, and finally came grated manchego sheep’s cheese to cover everything.
It had just over ten minutes on my pizza pan, the one with the holes in that I’d pre-heated first. While my guests were eating the first one, I cooked a second, identical one, so we had two of them between three of us. They were beautifully done, and much better than restaurant pizzas, largely because the bases were crisper and crunchier. I gave my visitors miso-vegetable soup while they waited for the first pizza to cook, and afterwards I served fresh blueberries on a bed of Muller light blueberry yoghurt. It was a good combination, and the blueberries were very juicy.
I have recently become quite a fan of blueberry juice. It’s very refreshing served fridge-cold and full of the right stuff – vitamins galore! It strangely isn’t blue, but rather more red than you’d expect. I should imagine it goes well with a varied fruit salad, but I drank it with my breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. It is, unfortunately, rather expensive, but various of the supermarkets do a similar version where the juice is diluted with a few other things to make it cheaper whilst retaining the flavour. I’ve been told in the past that blueberries are good for preventing various types of cancer, which only adds to the reasons you should have this on your shopping list!
It was at B-Bar and called a ploughman’s slate because it came on a slate. The term “ploughman’s lunch” was first mentioned in 1837 in John Lockhart’s “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott,” but its modern use derives from the English Country Cheese Council’s marketing started in 1960. It is basically bread, cheese and pickles, though many extras can be added.
Two of us had the slate between us. There was Shropshire blue, smoked cheddar and Somerset brie. With it were olives, pickles, piccalilli, tomato, chutney, balsamic and oil dip and two big chunks of bread. (Piccalilli is a pickle containing cauliflower and marrow, and coloured bright yellow by turmeric). Ploughmen never had it this good.
I was at a private party at Cotto in East Road, Cambridge. The food was stunning, and the wines excellent. There was a Michelin star chef behind this, and I will report back when I’ve been there for dinner. Meanwhile, what excellent food for a party…
By the way, the cheese board was brilliant…
Not quite, though it was quite a good starter course. I served the smoked salmon on finger-sized pieces of wholemeal toast, and with lemon juice and black pepper. The caviar was Onuga, the best non-sturgeon one I’ve found, and basically made out of smoked herring. It was served on half-blinis (those big ones) with crème fraiche. And the champagne wasn’t. It was vintage Cava, and a pretty nice one, too. It put my guests in a good mood while they waited for the main course.
I bought some Manchego to have in ploughman’s lunches. It’s a sheep’s milk cheese which has to be from La Mancha in Spain. It’s quite a firm cheese aged for a minimum of 2 months (fresco), 3-6 months (curado), and up to a full year (Viejo). It has the sharpness of ewe’s milk cheeses (which I really like), but a creamy texture. The distinctive patterns on the rind are from the press it is made in, replicating the marks of the woven esparto grass it used to be wrapped in. It’s a lovely cheese to eat by itself, or with chunks of wholemeal bread, butter, Branston pickle and an apple.
I bought some of Sainsbury’s Strong Dry Cider, which clocks in at 5.3%, quite reasonable for the price. It comes in a three litre bottle, which is quite inconvenient for most fridges, it being quite wide. However, given that I haven’t a freezer and therefore didn’t have any ice to pour this over, I chilled it outside on the windowsill instead anyway. The night was cold, so it came it at just the right temperature, and was surprisingly refreshing. Next time, I’ll try one of the vintage versions.
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