More Food

So this was tonight's tea: beetroot & goat's cheese salad with pesto dressing, followed by mackerel with cauliflower puree, puy lentils and rhubarb sauce. Both of these dishes are actually really cheap and very healthy; I tend to make stuff like this on a Tuesday because my other half plays badminton and can't eat heavy stuff beforehand. If anyone wants the recipes, you only have to ask...pictures below are of the actual "plates of food" I served - you can tell I'm no food photographer!

Duck a l'Orange

My Version...recipe below picture, but no quantities listed, as they should be common sense to any decent cook, and if they're not then don't try this at home..

non-meat-eaters might like to try to find an alternative to the duck - and let me know what works ! I've always wondered whether a meaty fish, like monkfish or swordfish might go...? though I expect you'd have to replace the orange with lemon and the sherry with madeira or some such...

For the duck: score skin of breast, rub with salt and leave for a few hours so the salt draws the liquid out of the skin. Pat skin dry with kitchen roll. Roast in oven at 190C for approx 25 mins depending on size of duck breast. If you are lucky enough to have a posh oven, put it on  the "oven plus grill" setting so the skin goes crispy...alternatively pan-fry the duck, skin side down, basting every few seconds for about 10-12 mins or until done to your liking. Rest for at least 5 mins before serving.

Bean puree: use cooked (or tinned) white beans eg Cannelloni beans (or lingots - a large French variation of the haricot - if you can get them). Finely chop or crush a couple of cloves of garlic. Sweat in some butter. Add beans and a little cream, heat until beans are hot, then season, and blitz in a food processor (add more butter or cream if not pureed properly). Keep warm. Keep a few whole hot beans for garnish.

Orange Supremes: Use a sharp knife to remove the top and bottom of an orange, then using the knife, peel away the skin and pith leaving a whole orange without skin. Carefully cut V shapes between the skin of the segments, to remove whole segments of pure orange flesh without skin. Mix some sweet sherry (Oloroso works best for me) and sugar with some spices (I use cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms), and heat until sugar is dissolved. Gently coat orange supremes in the liquid and leave to cool.

Orange sauce: make you favourite duck a l'orange sauce. Mine is the juice of about 6 oranges (use slightly bitter ones if you can, not tangerines or clementines), a little sugar, a glass of red wine, a glass of Oloroso sherry and  some duck stock (or the juices from roasting the duck). Reduce until it "coats the back of a spoon". No thickening agents necessary (though not forbidden either!)

Jellies - 1) port jelly - heavily reduced port or red wine, add gelatine and set.  2) fennel jelly - make fennel "juice" by boiling then simmering fennel seeds, fennel stalks, spare leaves, a bit of tarragon; (and maybe a bit more white wine or sherry if this isn't already alcoholic enough), blitz in a food processor then sieve to get a nice  green fennelly juice. Add gelatine and set as normal.

Side dishes: braised fennel: use fennel root, remove leaves and stalks (and use for jelly as above), remove hardest part of base but leave base intact so fennel stays in chunks. Slice into chunks, season and braise in the oven in a mix of light chicken stock with a little sherry or white wine, turning once halfway through cooking, for about 40 mins or until softened to taste.
Mashed potatoes: make your favourite mash (mine involves King Edwards boiled in salted water, drained & returned to pan to dry, then mushed through a ricer with lots of double cream and butter. Make sure the mash is quite heavily seasoned with salt and white pepper as under-seasoned mash is always a disappointment.

To serve: A couple of quenelles of bean puree on the plate. Slice duck breasts into 3 and layer duck-orange-duck-orange. Place jellies, spare orange, whole beans around, and a small amount of sauce. (see picture). Top with a little spare fennel frond. I also added pea shoots to the one in the picture but thought they were a step too far and would have been better under one of the duck slices. Serve the braised fennel and pommes puree separately, and any spare orange sauce in a gravy boat.

Enjoy.

f2

Chips, dips, chains and whips

So the government has decided that to stop people being attacked by dangerous dogs they're thinking of  introducing compulsory microchipping of dogs, and compulsory public liability insurance for dog owners.

I have the following comments:

1) Stop thinking about it. Do something. I am sick of being tarred with the brush of the evil minority.

2) Compulsory chipping is a good idea. The woman who bred our dog wouldn't let any puppy out of her sight until it had been chipped. It's a good idea for the safety of the dog in any case.

3) Compulsory chipping of owners who let their dogs attack someone is a better idea.

4) Compulsory chipping of all pet mammals, reptiles and other larger pets is a better idea again. That way when I kill the cat that keeps leaving its toxoplasmosis-laden shit all over my front lawn (thus saving my kids from all sorts of medical seriousness) I'll know which house to post the body through for disposal.

5) Better still, let's try smart-water marking. That way I can prove exactly which animal it is that's shitting on my lawn. And why stop at that? I think dog owners should be liable to be sued if they allow their dogs to bark for more than 30 seconds before 7am. That way I can make a fortune from the people who own those two rats (jack russells - yuk!) a couple of doors away.

6) Anyone who is going to keep any pet should have to prove they have the wherewithal to pay for its medical upkeep, food, and indeed any damage or distress the poor creature may cause to others. Just like owning a car.

7) That brings me on to the fact that in the past I've been hit by a pushbike and ended up in hospital. I couldn't claim for anything - you don't have to have insurance for a pushbike despite the fact you can easily kill someone. On a lesser note I've had a pushbike squash past me (on the inside) in London, leaving a big scratch along my car - again I couldn't claim against the perpetrator yet they were allowed on the roads alongside road-tax and insurance-paying people. This is wrong. More wrong and much more frequent than dog owners needing public liability insurance.

8) Now I think about it, we should re-introduce license for pets - not just dogs - but all pets. And people should have to take exams to prove they know how to look after the animal, how to behave in public etc.
Those who can't pass the exam themselves (I'm not saying someone with mental health problems shouldn't be allowed access to a pet) should need to find someone to take legal responsibility on their behalf (a bit like having a ward of court, or getting your parents to act as guarantors to your first mortgage).

Anyhow I hope you've aken the tongue-in-cheek point. Animals are not the problem, Their owners are. But I would hope that all pet owners would recognise the benefits of chipping and insurance.

This is love calling Earth...

Someone tried to chat to me via the website today at 3:17pm GMT; unfortunately although my computer was online it failed to respond on my behalf and I was actually elsewhere in my little den, so when I got there the person had left.

Whoever you are, I apologise for not responding. Please send me a message letting me know who you are and what ou wanted to talk about (I hate mysteries and it might be the death of me to not know who you are as to be honest I get very few people live-chatting despite the apparent couple of hundred regular site viewers); or at least try again until you get to me.

Thanks, and to quote someone who has been very lucky indeed in life, and who has a more famous website than mine, "peace and love, peace and love".

f2

Haiti hasn't gone away

Regular readers will know that my adopted home is Grand Cayman in the western Caribbean. It's a very nice and quite affluent place; even though crime (especially robbery and petty theft) is on the up, mostly thanks to illegal immigrants from Jamaica, this is something we can address. Sitting on Seven Mile Beach looking west into tonight's sunset (try this for a view), I'm sure it's very easy to forget that only a few hundred kilometres due east is the island on which you will find the nation of Haiti.

There have been a few earthquakes on and near Grand Cayman in the last few weeks; some caused minor damage but nothing at all compared to Haiti. These weren't even reported much other than in the local press. But even local paper the Caymanian Compass seems to be printing less about the ongoing situation across the water.

I know it's no longer fashionable to talk about this disaster, but so many people still need help just to survive. I saw the UK's attempt at raising money through charity - that awful version of Everybody Hurts. I have a suggestion -  so-called-stars: why not just give those in need some of your money instead of inflicting this on people? Why should the ordinary people donate their hard-earned cash while all you do is turn up for a few minutes' piss-poor warble at a studio? Mr Cowell, you and your colleagues have millions upon millions of pounds, you could possibly give as much as your single raises just from your personal wealth and still be very rich indeed. Why not at least match what others donate pound-for-pound? Then I might believe you really care, rather than my current view that you may just be using others' suffering to further your crusade of self-promotion.

However I also saw that music for relief , an organisation set up by the members of Linkin Park some years ago, which has already raised over 3 million dollars for this and other earlier natural disaters, has released an album. Highlights include a new original song by Linkin Park themselves (written about the disaster), which is clearly hastily-written and unfinished compared to their usual production masterpieces; but they clearly felt moved enough to do something meaningful and original (as real musicians and artists should - Simon Cowell and friends take note). The difference is that LP created this organisation as an ongoing charitable outfit and regularly raise money for such events whilst playing down their own involvement. Finding a video to go with this song took some doing, but there is one for die-hard searchers below.

The video of the LP song tries very hard to drive the message home without being overly sycophantic, you can see it here. Whether you watch it or not, please download and donate. Thanks.

And don't say you can't afford to. You could sell your sofa and sit on the floor for a bit. It's still a much more comfortable existence than most Haitians have at the moment. In fact I am tempted to start a campaign to out all those who don't sell their sofa and donate the money to Haiti.

A series of questions

Q1: In this day and age, do we really still have to be represented by a minority bunch of braying idiots like many of our politicians? Can't we just put everything to a referendum via the web? And if not, why not?

Q2: Why do we need charities for such things as victims of the Haitian earthquake? Shouldn't it be obvious to governments that this is where we want our taxes spent, rather than weapons? And shouldn't we have the immediate and inalienable right to remove any government who doesn't act appropriately on such fundamental matters?

Q3: Why do other countries (e.g. Greece) always look to the UK as a "rich nation" to give them money to pull them out of the crap? The UK has one of the highest working hours and lowest resulting standards of living in Europe. The Poles are all going back home because their own economy is so much better than the UK's now. Even Africa can't call the UK rich - the UK now owes more than the whole continent of Africa added together.

Somebody

valentine's day put me in the mood for doing this . i'm calling it the "found somebody" remix.