Jul/092
Asian Supermarket Food Box
Some of my favourite food comes from South East Asia, especially in the summer. It could be because the time I mispent in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and India was always very hot, so when it's hot in Europe I suddenly feel like eating noodles, chillies and stir fried green vegetables.
There's only one place in within a hundred km from where I live where you can buy the right ingredients. That would be the Angkor Store in Bonneville. It caters mostly to the region's few and far between Asian restaurants.
I loved the way the packing was done. Such a sustainable method. I'd bought a box o' stuff, and the lovely lady (whose mum and dad run the shop) packed it up so expertly. As she was running my jars through the till she asked me if I knew what my jar of Pickled Gouramy Fish was for. It was obviously the most disgusting thing in the world to her, but her dad explained to me that it's OK with vegetables, but I'd probably hate it. In fact he didn't even want me to buy it. But I bought it anyway. Along with all this other great stuff. And all this for EUR 40!
Asian Supermarket Box from Listingslab Productions on Vimeo.
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Jan/090
Preserving Chicken
One of the trains of thought my recent obsession with River Cottage etc has set me on is the massive influence that humankind's ability to preserve and store food has had on the development of society. The ability to store enough food to last the tribe through lean times must have been a vital stage in allowing human populations to grow.
I've been experimenting with an ancient method of preserving meat called confit. It's a french word which means to conserve - think of the word confiture. My plan was was to cook and conserve a big batch of 12 chicken legs so that we could eat them throughout the winter but without using a fridge or freezer.
Here's how it works. First the meat is cured for a few days by rubbing it with a mixture of salt and some aromatics like thyme & bay leaves. Then it's browned in a frying pan and transferred to a big cooking pot (I happened to inherit an enormous fish kettle from Germany this summer - perfect for the job). The chicken is then slowly cooked for a few hours totally submerged in.... well... lard. After a few hours, you simply turn the heat off and let the whole thing cool down.
The meat is completely covered in the solid fat and is therefore not exposed to the air which would otherwise make it rot. The meat can happily sit for several months in a room temperature larder. When you want to eat it, you just dig out a leg, scrape off most of the fat and bung it in the oven for a bit to melt off the rest of the fat and crisp it up a bit. I know that probably sounds like a heart attack on a plate, but I reckon it's still got less fat than a big mac or a tikka masala take away curry.
I made my confit a few weeks ago and the fish kettle has been out on the porch ever since. I decided to give it a try today. Served alongside some spicy noodles and salad for lunch, it was surprisingly delicious. Intensely salty and savory, I reckon the trick is not to eat too much at once.
Next time I dig some of my confit out I'm going to strip the meat off the bone after it's been in the oven and then make those little rolled pancake things you get in Chinese food with hoi-sin sauce & a bit of shredded cucumber & spring onion.
Dec/080
Chris cooks Christmas
Inspired by the boy Hugh F-W, I'm cooking Christmas for 6-8 of my friends this year. An epic shopping trip to Carrefour in Sallanches on one of the busiest days of the year wasn't the most fun, but later in the day I picked up the goose from the artisan butcher in Chamonix. Analltogether more civilised experience. Sitting on my kitchen table, the goose looks like a big bastard and to be honest it scares me a little. It doesn't scare the cat, though. She got so excited I had to lock her in the bedroom while to calm down while I dealt with the goose.
The first job was to take off it's legs and cure them for 24 hours or so in a mixture of salt & pepper, garlic, bay and thyme. Later the legs will be slowly cooked in goose fat to make a traditional French confit.
The crown of the goose is going to be filled with a chestnut stuffing and roasted on Christmas day, along with the potatoes done with goose fat, the usual veg and a proper goose-stock based gravy.
The first course is a soup. Cream of Jerusalem Artichoke with a parsley and chestnut pesto dabbed through it (thanks Hugh). I was a bit worried about finding the Artichoke things here in France. Mostly because I had no idea what I was looking for, never having heard of them before. Turns out it's quite a popular vegetable here in France. They call it topinambour. Who knew?
And for desert it's a poached pear tart with vanilla ice-cream. Washed down with what will probably be a good chunk of the 24 bottles of wine I got from my mate the other day (he runs a chalet and has a nose for putting delicious wine on his punter's table at very little cost to himself), I'm hoping Christmas dinner is going to go down well.
It's certainly the most adventurous meal I've ever attempted. Starting preparing a meal several days before serving feels a little strange, but hopefully everything will come together without stress on Christmas evening and I'll be able to enjoy eating it as much as I'll enjoy making it.
Dec/082
River Cottage HQ
My short trip to River Cottage HQ in Dorset was well worth the effort. Even if the flights and hundreds of miles of driving on either end made my carbon footprint more of a carbon Jackboot over the last 48 hours.
The event was called Hugh Cooks Christmas and was essentially a 2 hour cooking demonstration by Hugh of some of the River Cottage Christmas dishes, followed by a 5 course dinner comprising all the food that had been demoed. Delicious it was too. The demonstration was as fun and instructive as any cooking demonstration I can imagine. But then again, I've never seen a cooking demonstration before.
I met some great people over the course of the evening. A very eclectic bunch of young & old, foodies & gourmets. I was sitting next to pro cricketer Geraint Jones at dinner. Top geezer he is. He keeps pigs & filled me in with a load more detail about the whole process of raising, butchering and making sausages etc.
And the highlight of the whole evening was getting to meet Hugh himself. He's a genuine hero of mine. He and Stephen Fry are right at the top of the list (although for different reasons). I like Hugh's style, his way with his audience and most of all his ethics and the direction that I've seen the River Cottage brand and TV programme develop over the years I've been watching.
So what did I say when I met him face to face? I said....
"Dude. You're totally my hero, man."
It made him chuckle at least & I suppose that was my intention.
Dec/084
Meeting a hero
I'm a bit over excited this morning. I'm on my way to Devon to meet a hero of mine, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall. I'm going to River Cottage HQ for dinner & a demo of Hugh cooking christmas (a brilliant christmas present from my girlfriend).
Tapping this post into my iphone at Geneva airport isn't ideal so I'm going to leave it here & think about what I'm going to say to the geezer this evening.