Gammon in Coke

Last week, while talking about delivered meat boxes, a friend asked if I had any idea what to do with a gammon joint.  They had received one in their last meat box and didn't have a clue where to start with it.  I jokingly suggested that they should acquire a bread-fruit and cook Oil Down.  Another, more sensible person suggested cooking the gammon in coke.  I had heard of cooking ham this way before, but it was something that I put down as a weird idea.  The conversation moved on and I forgot all about gammon, after all I didn't have any.

On Friday, while discussing my plans for the weekend, I was offered the gammon joint that had starred in the previous conversation.  It turns out that neither Elizabeth nor Rachel are actually that keen on cured pork.  My mum is exactly the same.  She loves pork chops, roasts a mean pork shoulder but can't stand bacon.  A little bit of bartering later*, I was the proud owner of a modest but perfect gammon joint.

There was only one thing I could do with it really and that was to cook it in coke.  A bit of judicious internet surfing lead me to Nigella Lawson's Ham in Coca Cola recipe.  I'm all in favour of odd cookery but submerging a joint of meat in coke did feel strange.  I cooked the joint as per Nigella's instructions before going out for the afternoon.

The final part of the recipe was the glaze.  I'm sure that you could have quite happily eaten the gammon without glazing it but I felt like going the whole hog.  In any case the meat needed reheating so not glazing it would have been a wasted opportunity.  While the gammon was getting its final cook, under a coating of treacle, brown sugar and English mustard, we roasted a sweet potato and boiled some new potatoes to make a two potato mash.  The final sweet accompaniment was some corn on the cob to round off the sweet savoury theme of the meal.

It wasn't the handsomest plate of food I have ever photographed, but what it lacked in looks it certainly made up for in flavour.  Yes I was sceptical about the whole cooking meat in fizzy pop thing but I shouldn't have been.  The coke didn't just add sweetness to the meat but also added an extra meatiness to the joint.  I'm much more likely to have a joint of gammon in the house in future than a bottle of coke but if the two turn up at the same time, I have a feeling that I'll be cooking this again.

*I owe you some lamb!

Sage and Thrift - Cook Book Swap

It turns out that I was wrong.  When I first joined Twitter I was very dismissive of it as a waste of time.  My first tweet was "I'll give this two weeks" and in under a week I had stopped tweeting.  This was a long time ago, so long ago in fact that one Mr Stephen Fry follows me.  I can't remember what lured me back to twitter but whatever it was I owe it, or them, a debt of gratitude.

For me twitter is a melting pot of wonderful ideas and like minded individuals.  It's a place where ideas turn into reality, it's a hive mind of information, it's all so quite fun when you're drunk*.  A good example of the possibilities of twitter is Sage and Thrift's Cook Book Swap.  The idea of people coming together to swap their precious cookery books was born after Jo gently teased Liz about her cook book habit.

I'm sure Liz isn't the only one of us out there who just can't resist the urge of buying more and more cook books.  Images of egg yolk running down a perfectly poached egg or cream oozing down the side of an apple pie are almost pornographic to foodies.  The better written ones are good enough to lose yourself in for hours.  I don't really use cookery books for their recipes, but for inspiration and that's enough to make me want all of them.

The problem is, as with most things, books cost money.  They also take up a lot of space in the kitchen**, so they are a costly and bulky addiction.  Liz and Jo's solution was to organize the Cook Book Swap so that we could all share our love of cook books without breaking the bank, or our book cases.

The first Cook Book Swap was held back in April.  I ummed and ahhed about what book to take along with me.  Luckily Z came along too so we could take a couple of books.  We handed over our tomes and started browsing through the other contributions.  Z chose Organic by Sophie Grigson and I picked the cookery book from the Thai Orchid Cookery School in Chiang Mai.

Over the last couple of months we have feasted on; Chicken with Cashew Nuts, Savory Scones with Beetroot Jam, Polenta Crusted Mackerel, Gnocchi with Mushroom Ragu, Hot and Sour Prawn Soup, and Pad Thai.  I'm sure you can guess which dishes are from which books.

The next Sage and Thrift Cook book swap is on Sunday 23rd June at Brewbar Espresso, under Leeds City Library, from 2pm until 4pm.  I'm still in two minds about whether to swap my two books or take in two fresh ones from my personal collection.  Either way I know I'll have another couple of months worth of new recipes and inspiration after Sunday and I'll have Liz, Jo and Twitter to thank for it!

*Drink responsibly kids
**or wherever you keep them.

Warm Pigeon and Beetroot Salad

Regular visitors here and to my other blog, Everything but the Oink, will know that I have an ongoing relationship with Swillington Farm.  I have been a purchaser of their organic meat and vegetables for some time and I recently sponsored one of their pigs.   We have been visiting the farm every couple of weeks to visit Breakfast*, to check on his progress and pick up some treats from the farm shop.  We recently got our first ever double yolker from one of their hens which had us both giddy with excitement!

We last visited Swillington on 9th June for Open Farm Sunday.  As well as seeing how Breakfast was getting on, we could tour the whole farm, visiting the bees, sheep and cattle.  We also wandered through the woods past Cockpit Round** and found the old Ice House.  As well as the animals there was one thing that stood out on our tour of the farm. 

Everywhere you looked there were signs reminding you that Swillington Farm, the walled garden, the fishing ponds, Ice House Woods, Cockpit Round, Breakfast's pen, are all scheduled for destruction. The High Speed 2 rail link to London will run right through the heart of Swillington destroying everything that Jo and her family have worked hard to create.  I'm all in favour of building to boost the economy but I am yet to see a business case or argument that has convinced me that HS2 is a good idea.  The fact that Swillington is affected just makes it worse.

That said, the signs of things that are not yet certain to come didn't stop us having a great day.  I'm told that this was the best Open Farm Sunday that Swillington have hosted, with more visitors than ever finding out where their food comes from and how it is raised/grown.  We couldn't leave the farm without visiting the shop on our way out and, for a change, we bought a pack of pigeon breasts rather than pork, beef or lamb.

We've had a whole pigeon in one of the meat boxes that we had delivered from Swillington in the past.  It's one of my favourite game birds, but one pigeon does not really feed two people***.  The packet of four pigeon breasts for £3.00 was a much better find for us.  A simple warm salad of fried pigeon, sautéed beetroot and the first of the salad leaves from the back garden, was a perfect summer's evening meal.  It was also a great way to round off a glorious weekend. 

*Yes I have named my pig Breakfast, you can read all about him at Everything but the Oink.
**so named because cock fighting to place there after it was made illegal in 1863.
***not when they are as hungry as we are.

Primo's Gourmet Hot Dogs

It's just typical, isn't it?  After 300 posts on Tonight's Menu there was only one restaurant review.  Then suddenly two come along at once.  Whereas the last one was all bought and paid for, this review is courtesy of a freebie from Primo's Gourmet Hot Dogs.

For a long time now Primo's has been my go-to fast food restaurant.  Since finding out about Primo's, I've almost eaten every hot dog on their menu, but they keep introducing one off specials.  Every time I pop down to cross off another one of their standard dogs I'm faced with glories like Slum Dog, a hot dog with an Indian twist, or a raft of South American inspired hot dogs, the best of which was Argentinian and smothered in chimichurri sauce.

Creating all of these specials have given the staff at Primo's a taste for the extraordinary.  It was only logical that themed evenings would follow so that they could flex their imaginative culinary muscles.  It also made sense that the first of the Primo's Vs. events would take place during Leeds Loves Food!  I couldn't attend the initial night, Vs. New York but I was more than happy to get a table at the second event, Vs. Australia.

On arrival we were ushered to our table and asked if we were ready for our starters.  It was odd having table service in such a familiar fast-food setting, but I soon got used to it.  The starter of Coogie Bay crab and crayfish cakes with a mango salsa soon arrived, along with a bottle of Carlton Draught.  The fish cakes were superb, not as strong a crab flavour as I had expected.  The star was the salsa. The sweetness of the fruit worked brilliantly with the fresh herbs and the slightly salty fish cakes. If I'm honest, I could have eaten a bowl of it on it's own and I'm not a mad mango fan.

Next up, the main event.  No Australian theme night could be complete without Kangaroo on the menu and this was no different.  Of course Primo's being a Hot dog joint the Roo was in dog form.  I was really looking forward to this as I'd never had kangaroo before but, if I'm honest, the dog was lost under the flavour of the caramelised onion and mustard topping.  The Roo was served with Sweet Potato Chips, Coleslaw and a bottle of Victoria Bitter.  The two sides were great.  I have tried and failed to cook decent sweet potato chips a couple of times.  Whatever I'm getting wrong Primo's got spot on.

The third course was a home baked Lamington served with cream and a hot rum and banana cocktail.  Lamingtons are an almond sponge cake, covered in chocolate icing and topped with coconut.  I don't have a sweet tooth and was starting to feel full after the previous two courses but somehow I managed to delete the lamington and its mountainous Bundaberg cream accomplice.  I'm told that there was not as much alcohol in the rum punch as it felt.  As with mulled wine the heat added to the strength of the punch.  It went brilliantly with the sponge and was a good way to round off the meal.

The Primo's Vs. events are running every month until December and at £17.95 for a three course meal, including drinks, they are a steal.  I know fingers crossed I'll be able to go along to a few more of them, if not I'll still be heading down to The Corn Exchange for a hit of my favourite, The Classic Chicago.  The next Vs. event is "Dixie" on 4th July, Independance Day, if you are interested bookings, with a £5 deposit pp are being taken now in Primo's shop.

Kendell's Bistro

I don't do restaurant reviews* very often.  There are probably a number of reasons for this, which I'm not going to bore you with right now.  However, I think the main reason that I don't do many restaurant reviews, other than the fact that nobody asks me to, is that we rarely get the chance to eat in the kind of restaurants that I would like to review.  Most of our meals out take the form of Saturday lunch while shopping.  We frequent some good family friendly pubs and restaurants in Leeds but we're never there long enough to really get stuck into the menus.

Last month we had that rarest of things, a babysitter.  Z's Mum was visiting for the weekend and kindly offered to look after R so that we could have some "us time".  Not going out often left us with a dilemma, where to eat.  Leeds is awash with restaurants that we haven't eaten in.  A lot of them have had glowing reviews.  Some of them have so much hype that I feel like I have eaten there already.  Others have opened their doors and gone about the business of serving good food, without all of the bells and whistles that grand openings insist upon.  In the end we chose to go back to an old favourite, a place where we would spend more time if we had the time to spend, Kendell's.

Kendell's Bistro, on St Peter's Square, opened in 2007 and has been selling excellent French bistro food ever since.  I wouldn't say that we had been regular visitors since then.  In fact, it was a couple of years after they opened that we first found out that Kendell's even existed.  However, we fell in love with the restaurant on our first visit, which is why we have kept going back.

As always we faced the perennial problem of what to choose.  When faced with the kind of menu that Kendell's provide, that decision is doubly hard.  In all honesty I could happily have eaten everything that was on offer.  I passed on the binoculars as I had a great view of the floor to ceiling blackboard that acts as the only menu in the restaurant and started to deliberate.

By the time our pre dinner drinks arrived we had made our choices.  To start I chose Escargot (snails) and Z went for Coque St. Jacque (scallops).  I'd only had snails once before in France and to be honest I hadn't been impressed.  My overriding memory of that occasion was eating overly garlicked rubber balls.  I know a lot of people who would have never chosen snails again but I had a feeling that Kendell's wouldn't have anything on their menu that wasn't worth eating.

I was right.  Although served in the same ubiquitous white porcelain snail dish with plenty of garlic butter, that was where the similarity ended.  This dish of snails was topped with a pastry lid so the snails steamed in the garlic butter and avoided a bouncy send off.  Z's scallops were just as perfectly cooked but served in a less traditional manner.  Rather than being served in the shell, topped with mashed potato and cheese these were served shell-less with micro-greens and shards of crisp bacon which were a perfect foil to the soft sweetness of the seafood.

Unlike the starters, Z was not so keen to try my main course.  I had picked Rognon de Veau (calves liver).  Z has a very strong childhood memory of ordering rognon de veau by mistake on a family holiday in France.  So disturbed was she by the whole liver that was served to her, that she ended up swapping it for her friend's mother's dinner and hiding behind a propped up menu during the meal.

I didn't get a whole liver but slices of seared liver with a rich onion gravy and buttery mashed potatoes.  This was a real treat as we don't eat half as much offal at home as I would like.  To have it cooked so expertly was an added bonus.  Not to be out done, Z's Canard de Cassis (duck in black current sauce) was everything that she hoped for.  You could almost get drunk from the cassis in the sauce and yet it didn't over power the duck.

After all of that I was stuffed, but Z soldiered on to a third course.  More out of duty** than hunger, she chose Iles Flottantes (floating islands).  A light, fluffy meringue, bobbing in a sea of custard, is not something I'd ever encountered.  I dutifully tried some but it was too sweet for me.  That said I don't have much of a sweet tooth at the best of times.

As we were finishing off our wine I realised that the woman sat at the table behind us had ordered the exact same meal as me.  I thought I had been adventurous and a little off-piste with my choices, but perhaps there are more cavalier diners out there than I give credit for.

For the record, this was no freebie.  We chose to dine in Kendell's.  We weren't invited and I certainly wasn't asked to write a review.  I genuinely love the food, the wine, the not too attentive staff and the atmosphere.  I don't know when we'll next get the chance to go to Kendell's Bistro but I know that I'm already looking forward to it.

*Some would contest that I don't really have a food blog at all due to the lack of reviews and recipes.
**her mother's favourite dessert

People of UK - A week in food

For the past week I have had the honour of being Person of the UK.  No, this is not some lofty office with privileges handed to me by Whitehall*.  People of UK is a rotation curation account on Twitter.  Every week a different person from England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland takes control of the account and shows their followers a unique snapshot of living, working and playing in the UK.

As part of my week, I have been asking the thousands of followers of the People of UK account what they have been having for their evening meals.  The response has been staggering and varied.  There is a clear and unsurprising people's favourite and a few things that I really want to make**.  Below is a full list of my meals and those of the people of the United Kingdom for the week ending 26th May 2013.  Thanks to everybody who got involved.

Artichoke Omelette, Bangers and Mash, Bath Chaps, Bavette Steak with Jersey Royals and English Asparagus, Carbonara, Cheese, Chicken Korma with Coriander Rice, Chicken Mint and Orzo Soup,  Cod in Thai Green Sauce, Fish Fingers, Ginger Chicken Udon, Glamorgan Sausages and Mash, Goan Green Chicken Curry, Goat Cheese Salad, Huevos Rancheros, King Prawn Chowder, Kedgeree, Lemon Chicken, Linguine with Crab and Wild Garlic Pesto, Mackerel on Toast, Merguez Sausages, Onion Bhaji and Lamb Madras, Pasta Bolognase x3, Pea Fritters, Pepperoni Pizza, Pork Belly, Pork Fillet and Veg, Quesadillas, Reheated Takeaway Pizza, Rump Steak, Spaghetti with Leek-Peas Cheesy Cream Sauce, Smoked Salmon Blinis, Tacos, Thai Turkey Burgers, Tin of Salmon mixed with a Tin of Beans, Toad in the Hole, Vague Curry, Veal Escalope with Sauté Potato and Green Salad, and Wiener Schnitzel.

*I did visit Eton this week but it turns out that that just isn't enough these days!
**and some things that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

Chilli Jam: Kebabs & Cake

A couple of weeks a go I was offered a FREE jar of jam made by The Chilli Jam Man.  All I had to do to receive the jam was to promise to eat it and write about the experience.  The first part of the deal was a cinch.  I went to Millies, who had made the offer of the jam, and picked up a jar.  I chose a jar of Ginger Chilli Jam and made sure that it was included in our meal plans for the week.  The second part of the deal was equally successful with the jam featuring only a couple of days after I had picked it up.  However, I found myself at a loss for words when it came to putting together this blog post.

The quality of the product wasn't the problem, neither was my cooking.  Yet for some reason I just couldn't get the words out.  I had decided to use the jam as a marinade of pork kebabs.  I found a couple of loin chops in the freezer, roughly chopped them and coated them in half of the jar for a few hours.  I threaded the meat, along with onions and peppers, on to bamboo skewers and grilled them.  Served with wild rice they made a great midweek meal.

The kebabs were really nice.  The ginger really shone through the sweetness of the jam.  I would have preferred a more fiery kick but Z thought it was spot on.  I then sat down to write about them but I got stuck in a loop.  I found myself writing the kind of gushing blog post that I don't like, so I parked the blog and moved on.

What I needed to do was to use the jam again.  We had mused about other uses while we were tucking into the kebabs and the idea that had stuck in my mind was to use it in a sweet dish instead of a savoury one, it is jam after all.  Chocolate and chilli are such a good combination I decided to break with tradition for Tonight's Menu and bake a cake.

Z is the baker in our house*.  Other than a massive batch of cupcakes a couple of years ago for charity I am a cake novice.  I have seen Great British Bake Off on the telly and I know that baking is more of a science than my usual cooking style so I needed a fool proof recipe.  I was about to trawl the internet but the first chocolate cake recipe that popped up was one of Mary Berry's.  As Mary is the queen of cake, I assumed that nothing could go wrong.  I followed the recipe to the letter, I even managed to find two matching cake tins which were the specified size.  However, it's fair to say my cakes' uneven rise and almost burnt sides lead me to believe that I wouldn't be master baker of the week.

That said, this cake was baked for flavour and not looks.  By the time I had sandwiched the two cakes together, using the rest of the chilli jam as the filling, we had a glorious chocolate cake.  This time around the heat levels were perfect against the sweet richness of the cake.  I was going to take the cake into work to share with my colleagues as I don't have a sweet tooth, but I couldn't part with it. 

The Chilli Jam Man does make a cracking range of versatile jams and chutneys and great pickled onions.  Most of his range can be bought in Millies, who also stock a load of other interesting chilli products including this great looking gift hamper.  Thanks to Millies for the free jam, I'm off to eat some more cake.

*other than bread