Friday food links – 3 July 2015

Jul3

It has been a hot and sunny week in London, a heatwave in English-weather-speak. A taste of living in a different climate, and a chance to try out those holiday eating rhythms at home, or to pretend we live in the Hamptons, or Santa Monica, or Italy. Lots of tomatoes and cucumber. Watermelon. Avocado. Ice cream or lollies for desserts. Some grilled meat, but nothing needing the oven. For once, it’s a relief to relax into the wather, knowing that it’s not going away tomorrow, and to feel that the ice-cream stash in the freezer is justified (for once).

Recipes:

Salmon fishcakes (baby friendly) from Nigella’s How to Eat
Swirled berry yoghurt popsicles from Smitten Kitchen (little and large versions)
Green pancakes with cheese (for baby) from Butcher Baker Baby
Courgettes with mint and basil from Food52 (adapted from a Deborah Madison recipe)
Lamb kebabs, loosely a lebanese kefte recipe in Anisa Helou’s Mediterranean Street Food

Without a recipe:

Chopped cucumber and tomato salad
Tacos with black beans, leftover pulled pork and avocado
Meatballs (from the freezer) with tomato sauce over pasta
A big Cobb salad, or something approximating it (see photo above)

Reading:

Bon Appetit magazine has become a bit too hipster for its own good, but now and then it still has good articles, and this month has a nice example of multimedia journalism. A magazine piece on ‘the best pizza in America’ also has a video of the pizza being made, and a podcast interview with the maker of this amazing pizza, Chris Beddia.
After the raspberry yoghurt lollies, I think watermelon popsicles are next up (via Orangette)
This slightly scathing article on ‘Wellness gurus’ from the peerless Hadley Freeman is well overdue
If you haven’t already discovered it, American food magazine Lucky Peach has some of the best long-form food writing at the moment. Here’s a great example: America, your food is so gay

Friday food links – 12 June 2015

Jun12

Recipes

Mushroom bolognese from Homemade with Love, by the peerless Jennifer Perillo. I added some soaked, dried porcini as well. So good – even E approved.
Butter chicken – from Slow Cooked. My odyssey through this book continues.
Ricotta fritters from My Lovely Little Lunchbox – ostensibly for E, but I ate most of them

Without a recipe:

Vegetable stir-fry with peanuts, pak choi
Mushroom and bacon pasta
Tacos with leftover white chili, avocado, cheese, and spring onions

Reading:

Lots of reading for work about food, and not time for much else

A really enjoyed this piece about the idea of a meal in a pill, and where it came from
Our strawberries are in full flood now, so I really need to start cooking with them. A strawberry conserve from the Canal House column in Bon Appetit caught my eye, as did these uses for strawberries and grappa in the Guardian (which I found via the excellent Supplemental round-up of the food pieces in the weekend papers)
It sounds like madness, but I’m curious enough that I might actually try out this black bean mocha mousse cake from Green Kitchen Stories
And speaking of Green Kitchen, they will be at the Food Blogger Connect 2015 weekend in September, along with Claudia Roden and others. I’ll be attending on the Saturday only, but say hi if you’re coming.

Friday food links – 29 May 2015

May29

The week started with our inaugural scheduled Sunday lunch. We have nominated one Sunday each month as Sunday lunch for guests, and invited friends to join us. We were 8 adults, 4 kids and 2 babies for lunch last Sunday, and just barely squeezed around our (new, larger) kitchen table. There was a huge lasagne, made with a beef shin ragu, and another huge dish of aubergine parmigiana for the veggies; asparagus, fennel salad and broad beans with peas. For dessert, hazelnut shortbread, strawberries and cream and dulce de leche brownies. The sun came out for long enough for the kids to play with sand outside, and we had a great time.

The strawberries weren’t from our garden, but it won’t be long now until they are here. The one above is the very first one to ripen. I’m sure that when I planted strawberries, years ago, they were all Cambridge Favourite, but this is definitely a different variety to most of them. It is a very deep, glossy red, with rich colour all the way through the berry, and a strong strawberry fragrance. A strawberry warmed by the sun is a very different proposition to one from a plastic tub in the fridge. For years I couldn’t stand strawberries – the texture, plus the slightly sour flavour of most shop-bought strawberries was a combination I couldn’t bear. But properly ripe strawberries from the garden converted me. Now all I have to do is try and protect the crop from being savaged by the pigeons.

Recipes:

Aubergine parmigiana – approximately from a Cranks recipe for Tian d’aubergine
Hazelnut shortbread – from James Morton’s ‘How Baking Works’
Family meal fish tacos – NY Times
Chili with chocolate – Slow cooked

Without a recipe:

Lasagne
Beef stir fry with rice
Fish and oven chips, peas and asparagus

Reading:

Nigel Slater writes an ode to the British embrace of immigrant cuisines
Those hyperbolic diet headlines (“Slim with chocolate!”) are almost all based on junk science. Here’s how that works – and how a science journalist faked that chocolate study.
In preparing a blog post for work on food innovation, I came across this lovely piece from Bee Wilson about Eliza Acton.

Friday food links – 16 Jan 2014

Jan16

A bit of a bleak week – rain battering on the skylights at night, cold winds whistling around the pushchair in the day. Highlights included a first run with my proving baskets from Bakery Bits (above), and some nice veg-centred cooking, including soup, roast vegetable salad, and tacos.

Recipes:

Pain de Campagne from Brilliant Bread by James Morton
A version of squash, black bean and feta tacos from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Braised chicken with pears and rosemary from All About Braising by Molly Stevens – truly delicious, that one.
Carrot, sweet potato and ginger soup, in the Thermomix, a Riverford recipe

This week’s reading:

A lovely, sane, contrast to the usual ‘2015 food trends’ pieces, Diana Henry runs down what she thinks we will see more of this year. Wise words.
An old LA Times piece, carefully researched, on why there’s no need to soak your beans before cooking them. Of course, as Catherine Phipps (author of The Pressure Cooker Cookbook) pointed out on twitter, this is something pressure cooker cooks have known for years.
I can’t remember where I first learned that you should peel and cook broccoli stems, not throw them away. This NY Times recipe for sliced and fried broccoli stems sounds delicious.
One I have just caught up with – Bee Wilson reviews Anna Jones’ book ‘A Modern Way to Eat‘, and describes her approach to vegetarian eating as an eight-step process. Something that’s useful to bear in mind when you’re used to composing meat-and-two-veg meals.

Using Mainly Spoons

Reading between the lines of recipes

Tag Archives: tacos

Friday food links – 3 July 2015

Friday food links – 12 June 2015

Friday food links – 29 May 2015

Friday food links – 16 Jan 2014

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