World Cup Food Challenge: Honduras - Carne Asada

The Republic of Honduras, formerly Spanish Honduras to differentiate itself from British Honduras (now Belize), is situated on the umbilical cord of the Americas, between Guatamala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Like many other Central American countries, Football is the national sport of Honduras.  This doesn't mean however, that they're very good.  In the hundred years that they have had a national football association they have only qualified for the World Cup Finals twice.

With a French recipe in the bag as soon as the draw for the World Cup Food Challenge took place, I started to look around for culinary inspiration for the other countries in group E.  On two separate Honduran food sites I found reference to Carne Asada.  It literally means Grilled Meat but its origins have been lost in the mist of time.  Some say that it has Mexican roots but given the amount of Spanish influence in the region it isn't a surprise that there are cultural overlaps.  In the end I chose the version of the Honduran favourite from This is Honduras.

This is Honduras points out "Hondurans look for any excuse to get the barbaque going and make carne asada - it is a favourite for birthdays, family days out, picnics, etc."  Well, today is Father's Day.  That sounds like a decent excuse for a barbecue to me, so carne asada it is.

Z had managed to get beef skirt from B & J Callard's on Kirkgate market during the week and I set about marinating it first thing this morning, having reread the recipe to discover that you should marinate the meat overnight.  The strips of skirt were placed in a bowl with the juice of two oranges, a tablespoon of cumin, four crushed garlic cloves, salt and half a tablespoon of Worcester Sauce.  The final ingredient struck me as a little odd but who am I to argue?

Z made a batch of home made corn tortillas and some guacamole while I made some Chimol to accompany the beef.  I had planned to make a batch of Encurtido*, but I missed the bit of that recipe that says "Refrigerate for at least 3 days to allow for the flavour to develop".

The beef was great.  In fact, I can't envisage a barbecue in the future that wont have carne asada as part of the meat fest.  The simple onion, tomato, pepper, corriander, and lime juice chimol, was a good sharp foil against the sweet meat, so we might be seeing that on the menu again too.  I'm not sure if Honduras will get out of Group E, if they do I promise to get my act together and make a batch of Encurtido.  You never know, I might just make some anyway.

*think piccalilli and you're almost there.

World Cup Food Challenge: France - Confit de Canard

I have been planning to make my own Confit de Canard for a long time.  It's one of those dishes that makes me feel happy just thinking about them.  The problem is, duck isn't cheap, duck fat isn't cheap, and, in all honestly, the need to confit duck to preserve it for long term storage is kind of superfluous these days, what with the dawn of in-house refrigeration units. Freezers I think they are called.

Then, the draw for the world cup took place.  I had already organised the World Cup Food Challenge and knew that I would end up cooking dishes from the countries of Group E and France was first out of the bag.  I knew instantly that the first* dish I would cook to represent France would be Confit Duck.

I flicked through various cook books and trawled the internet before finding three recipes that I liked the look of, each with subtle variations that I wanted to incorporate into my duck.  Anthony Bordain, Nigel Slater and Valentine Warner were chosen as my inspiration and my guides for the week long duck-athon.

The first step was to salt the duck.  I added rosemary, lemon thyme, black peppercorns and juniper berries at this stage, rubbed the duck legs thoroughly with the salt and aromatics and put it in the fridge for 24 hours.  The following day I rubbed the excess salt off the duck, nestled it in the bottom of a pan, added some of the herbs that had also been in the salt, and smothered the lot in duck fat.  The fat, by the way, cost more money than the duck did!

The chefs all had differing opinions as to how to cook the duck at this stage. High temp in the oven for an hour, low simmer on the hob, or two and a half hours at a low temp in the oven.  At two to one the oven method had it.  Could I decide which temperature to set the oven at though? No I couldn't.  In the end I went for a middle ground of 180˚c, mainly because that is the maximum temperature that my pans can withstand.

After an hour I had a cheeky peek and decided that the oven was too high so I droped the temperature and let it cook for another hour.  And there it was, perfectly cooked confit duck, but now came the hard part.  It was Tuesday and I wasn't eating it until Thursday.  I left the duck in the pan of fat to cool overnight and popped it in the fridge in the morning.

Having gone to all the effort to make confit duck I then turned my attention to what I was going to serve it with.  There was a sizeable bit of my brain that wanted chips.  Another part of me wanted to go the whole hog and make cassoulet from scratch, but frankly I couldn't be bothered.  In the end I made boulangere potatoes, partly because I needed the oven on to finish the duck and partly because I love boulangere potatoes.  Think of them as a low fat version of gratin dauphinois and you're there.  A cheeky glass of wine and I could have been in France.

I very much doubt that I'll make my own confit duck again.  Don't get me wrong, it was magnificent.  The crispy salty skin, the soft melting meat, none of the thick smoke that hangs around the house for weeks after roasting a duck or frying a duck breast.  It just costs too much. 

*I'm assuming that I'll need to cook more French dishes when they get out of the group as group winners.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I know, I know. You hang around for ages waiting for a blog post and two come along at once.  Well I'm sorry for the delay, I really am, but circumstances at work and at home have changed so I haven't really had the head space or time to write.  On the odd occasion that I have had a window of opportunity to write I haven't been doing the cooking, and writing about food that you haven't cooked yourself isn't as easy as it seems.

I have tried to write, I really have. I have draft posts for Indian inspired Fish and Chips, Green Cauliflour Cheese, Chocolate Turkey Fajitas, Seafood Pancakes, and Rabbit Stew and Dumplings.  There are also a couple of posts relating to our experience of giving up Supermarkets for Lent.  But these things will remain in draft until such time as we cook the dishes again*.

On top of work I have also been training for my first half marathon.  Getting home from work and going out for anything between a 6k and a 10k run before even contemplating food, really reduces the amount of free time in the evenings, before going to bed and starting the whole thing again in the morning.  But with the half marathon behind me** we're settling into a new routine, which should see me at the stove more often.

Apart from anything else, I have instigated yet another food challenge.  You may have noticed that there's the small matter of the World Cup looming on the horizon.  Whether England win the tournament, make it out of their group, or capitulate and lose all of their opening matches is neither here nor there.  A group of us will be eating dishes representing all 32 of countries taking part in Brazil.  You can follow our progress here.

In the mean time, we have tried to be very organised on the food front.  Our weekly meal planning has gone from strength to strength.  We either plan after a veg box delivery from Market Delivered, or before we do our big shop for the week.  This is the only way we have found of making sure we always use the food we have and limit food waste.

Tonight we had planned to have spaghetti with a beef ragu using some braising steak that was lurking in the freezer, however, in the interests of a happy house, we have allowed a change of plan to suit the mood of our youngest and fussiest family member.  Rather than defrosting the steak we acquiesced and took some pork mince out of the freezer to make meatballs.  It really wasn't such a big change as the sauce for both dishes contain the same ingredients.

Fried onions and fennel seeds were added to the mince before it was rolled into ping-pong ball sized spheres.  These were then poached in the tomato and vegetable sauce before being piled onto the pasta and served with garlic bread.  Everybody was happy and cleared their plates so it was a worthwhile change of plan.  I don't have Italy in my group for the World Cup Food Challenge so I'll not need to cook any pasta dishes during the tournament.  What to cook for Ecuador is another matter all together.

*Hopefully won't be too long as they were all very good.
**I'm still running, just not as far.

Cabbage Bake

There is very little that is inspiring in a blog post entitled "Cabbage Bake".  In fact I had considered calling this post something else just to get your attention, but if you have made it this far, please stick with me, I hope you won't be disappointed.  The fact is, during my blogging hiatus* we've cooked this dish on more than one occasion, so it feels only right that it gets a look in. 

Now, I'm not the kind of person that will revisit a dish unless it's worth eating, so that should tell you something.  I can't remember the exact details on the night we first cooked it, but tonight we had good reason to look up the recipe again in Russian, German & Polish Food and Cooking by Lesley Chamberlain.  That reason was being in possession of a whole savoy cabbage that we needed to eat before another one turned up a couple of days later.

But why bother buying another cabbage if you already have one?  Well, since giving up Supermarkets for Lent we have been using the excellent Market Delivered service to get fresh fruit and vegetables from Kirkgate Market on an almost weekly basis.  We have found that the secret to veg boxes is to wait until the order has turned up and then meal plan.  As we're still not clear of the "hungry gap" in the growing season, cabbages are turning up in most boxes, so using them is always on our minds.

We often steam cabbage, to have as a side veg, or add it to stir fries and curries, but this week we had managed to neglect our cabbage altogether.  Our need to get it eaten was therefore high, before it became that most horrible of things, wasted food.  We needed a recipe that would use it all not just a few leaves and that is where the cabbage bake comes in.

The shredded cabbage is cooked in a little stock until just soft, drained, seasoned and spread into an oven proof dish.  The cabbage is topped with a layer of sliced tomatoes and then baked for 30 to 40 minutes.  Nothing could be simpler.  We happened to have a pack of kielbasa sausages that I'd picked up from our local Lithuanian store, so we chopped them up and added them to the cabbage before adding the tomato lid.  I know that makes calling this a vegetarian dish a flight of fancy, but trust me, it works just as well without the meat.

*it's been over seventy days since my last post.

Big Shop - Week 2: Hyper Local

After last Saturday's enjoyable trip to Leeds Kirkgate Market for our big shop we could easily have decided to shop nowhere else for the duration of Lent.  What items we couldn't find on the market I know are available at other independents in the City Centre.  But shopping in town isn't an easy or accessible option for everybody.  We are lucky that Z works just outside of the centre, on Leeds' "South Bank"*, and we are even luckier that her place of employment has a car park that staff can access during the weekend.

That said, we don't drive into town that often.  We live half an hours walk away and our bus route is one of the better, more frequent ones that Leeds has to offer.  In the past when shopping on the market we have walked in and caught the bus home with our bags of groceries.  I realise that this too is a stretch for some, Beeston Road is steep and the bus prices have been going up.  But if you can't get into town and transport is an issue, where do you shop?

For most Beestonites the first option for something resembling a "big shop" is the Co-op.  It's local, it's convenient, its range of food, drink and cleaning products is large enough.  But it is a Supermarket**, so for us it is out of bounds even for a few bits.  Further along Old Lane is a small ASDA.  Small or not this is right out of the question, you don't get more supermarkety than one of the big four, even in "Express" format.

Yet in amongst the dense Victorian houses of LS11 there are still some small, local, independant food shops.  The cornershops of the Open All Hours variety do still exist, there are butchers, bakers and greengrocers.  So with these shops in mind we set off with our trusty list to see how we would get on.

The first stop was McDonnell's Butchers on Beeston Road.  The only meat on the shopping list was sausages for Toad in the Hole on Sunday but I also picked up some pork pies for our lunch.  We then miandered through Beeston heading towards Dewsbury Road, where we hoped we would be able to get the bulk of our purchases.

The first shop we got to was Kasa's, a local chain of convenience stores**.  Here we managed to get a few bits and bobs; pop, squash, milk, but nothing to write home about.  The next stop was much more successful.  J & D Marsay on Dewsbury road is a blast from the past.  A greengrocer and florist in a world where people struggle to eat their five-a-day and only buy flowers from petrol stations.  I'd been to Marsay's before, but Z didn't even know it was there and we have lived here since 1999.

The bulk of our weekly shop is fresh fruit and vegetables so we filled our boots and had a chat.  Turns out there used to be three members of staff that worked on Saturdays but the shop hasn't been busy enough to justify that for years.  The blame, without any prompting from me, was laid at the doors of the supermarkets.  That, coupled with the fact that most of their old regular customers are, well, old, means they aren't getting the footfall that they used to.

With R's buggy starting to tip backwards under the weight of the carrier bags*** we ploughed on.  A new Polish supermarket** next door to Marsey's provided olive oil, ham and orange juice.  The promise of fresh bread was dashed as the bakery we went to has closed down, as has the Dewsbury Road branch of Gregg's!

Our final stop was at Barkat Continental Foods on Roland Road.  Barkat is our go to for herbs and spices as I can get there easily in my lunch break, but this time we bought toothpaste and shampoo along with a shopping basket full of chilled and dry goods.

Two hours later we were foot tired and very hungry so we yomped back up Beeston Hill to survey our wares and see what was still missing from our list.  Once we'd unpacked, the missing items were obvious.  We were so busy chatting in the greengrocers that we didn't get enough fruit for the week, so a top up shop is in order.  The other item missing was toilet roll.  We did have opportunities to buy some but we aren't desperate enough to use non-recycled loo roll just yet.  I guess our ethics are still working even if our local shops aren't quite living up to them.

*I am not a fan of the current trend for calling anything and everything south of the river Aire the "South Bank".
**What is a supermarket?
***all our own.

Big Shop - Week 1: Leeds Market

I don't know about you, but our house is ruled by lists.  There is the Birthday list, the Christmas card list, the list of what is in the overflow freezer and the wine list.  There is also a list of DIY jobs that still need finishing*.  But the two most important lists are the weekly meal planning list and the shopping list.

The Meal Planner dictates what goes on the Shopping List on a weekly basis, but we try to add things to the shopping list the moment we run out of them, just in case we forget.  There are always some items that never actually make the shopping list, like milk and orange juice.  We use so much of both that it's just taken as read that we need them whenever we're shopping.

This list mentality has done us proud for years.  We seldom buy things that we don't need, we keep well stocked cupboards and we very rarely waste food.  This weekend though has been a challenge, would we be able to get everything on our shopping list even though we were not using supermarkets?

To make life as easy as possible, we tried to keep the shopping list and meal planner as fluid as possible.  A good example of this is the meal we planned as 'fish'.  I have learned to keep fish in the hands of the fishmongers of Leeds Kirkgate Market; if you plan to eat cod there wont be any cod, best to go with what's best on the day and today we got Sea Bass.

We didn't pull any punches with our shopping list though.  We included laundry liquid, maple syrup and mayonnaise.  These are all things that I assumed that we would struggle to find whilst shopping locally, but I needn't have worried.  The first shop we went to** not only provided the laundry liquid that our middle class lifestyle is accustomed to, but also gave us a cracking loaf of wholegrain bread.  Then we hit the market.

I love Kirkgate market.  There I've said it.  I love the buildings that it is set in, I love the mix of stalls, I love the calls from the stall holders hawking their wares, but I was worried that we would return home with items still not crossed off our list.  I shouldn't have worried.  An enjoyable*** hour or so later we returned home with fifty pounds worth of fruit, vegetables, fish, bread and sausages for the first barbecue of the year.

I have a feeling that giving up supermarkets for Lent will not only be possible, but I'm starting to think that we won't have to change our habits either.  There are still some question marks over where we can source our preferred brands of soap, beans and toilet roll, but Leeds is a big city and we have only just begun to scratch the surface of the local shops on offer.

*we've been living in our house for 13 years but some things just never get done.
** Out of this World, 20 New Market St, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS1 6DG
***when was the last time you enjoyed a trip to the supermarket? It doesn't happen. Markets are great and you should use them.

Give it up for Lent!

Lent, Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday.  Christians around the world will be fasting or giving up a luxury item for forty days as a form of penance leading up to Easter and the marking of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Many non Christians also join in and give up food stuffs from crisps and chocolate to meat and alcohol.  I gave up booze for lent a few years ago and this is not something I will be doing again in a hurry.  Trying to explain to my Scottish relatives that I didn't want a beer while visiting them on holiday was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

This year we have decided not to deprive ourselves of food and drink but limit ourselves to where we can buy it from.  For lent we are giving up supermarkets.

I have a love hate relationship with supermarkets.  I love the range of food available.  I love the convenience of being able to buy all of my groceries under one roof.  I love the copious free car parking.  I'm quite fond of free morsels of food on cocktail sticks on the deli counters.  On the other hand, I hate BOGOFs on £5 chickens.  I hate individually wrapped apples.  I hate buying fresh food that is out of season and has been shipped around the globe.  More importantly I hate the damage, perceived or otherwise, that supermarkets do to the High Street and independent traders.

We have made a slight tactical error however.  We missed the opportunity to stock up on the larger items that we rely on the supermarkets for.  Top of this list is nappies, but as this is a food blog I'll try to focus on the food.

So until Good Friday* we're saying goodbye to Asda, Morrison's, Sainsbury's and Tesco's.  There will be no cheeky visits to Aldi, Co-op, Lidl, M&S or Waitrose.  We will be shopping in the corner shops, the greengrocers, and the butchers that we all too often avoid because they aren't located next to each other.  We'll also be spending more time shopping on Leeds Market which, to be honest, is something I'm really looking forward to.  Bring on the shopping.

*and possibly beyond depending on how we get on.