Food Is Beautiful

People eat with more than just their mouth, and to fill more than just their stomach.

'Still Life' by Adriaen van Utrecht, 1644

Or, if they do not, I would ask myself why do they not, for it is for a reason that the words “to feast one’s eyes” are a common idiom even today.

There is a reason why opulent cooking shows are far more popular today than can be accounted for by the popularity of cooking – they have become a spectator sport.  There is a reason why we (yes, oh yes, count me in!) love cookbooks with glossy photos of finished dish (or stages of preparation) and are far more inspired by those than any number of pages with dry instructions.

Eyes are the windows of the soul, and the soul wants to eat (unless it is fooling itself, but even then the body still does).  And so to me – and many more people out there, except the unlucky ones caught in the food-is-evil-and-I-hate-it cycle, food is a lovely sight and is wonderful to behold.

I enjoy visiting the supermarkets.  Well, ok, not when I need to haul home large bags of produce while ill and/or tired, though those prosaic trips also happen due to inevitable necessity of eating, but I do love going to those emporiums of edible gorgeousness and figuring out whether there is anything in there that I want, need to eat NOW, and what to feed Tobias and I in the next few days, and the guests coming on some approaching date.  I feel no guilt about wanting to acquire, prepare or eat food – or feed the people I care for, for that matter.  I do not believe there should be any.

It is no wonder that the Dutch masters‘ paintings of abundance of field and sea are museum pieces and were admired so – they, too, are a celebration and commemoration of food, in a time when its abundance was treated with joy rather than the creeping guilt or shame of obesity and overeating – associated with seeing rich food in quantity these days.  Indeed, the above painting (one of my personal favorites) celebrates food as beauty – accented not just by the arrangement and careful composition of the still life itself, but by the inclusion of sheet music and instruments, to bring in hints of celebration which is more than that of just eating itself, to show food as equal to art, akin to music and to be enjoyed alongside it.

But I digress.  And yes, I do admit that I find the still life paintings of food far more fascinating than posed portraits of random stern-and-self-important looking men in severe black clothes in the museums, for more reasons than just drooling (but who in their right mind wouldn’t, when they look at them?).  To me, these paintings are a window into the relationship of the people and the food in those bygone days – both, the relative dearth of it (compared to aforementioned supermarket with shelves looming at any time of year), and the admiration and celebration of it, which is scarce and hard to come by in the generally antiseptic atmosphere of todays’ health spas and weight-loss centres.  Leaving aside the sanitation and availability, the people who commissioned such paintings were not people who would, had those been available, choose to drink with pride the utterly useless and over-hyped snake oil remedies wheatgrass shots or (insert me shuddering in disgust!) over-processed ‘soy milk’.  And, had you suggested something of the sort to them as food, leaving snake oil aside, they would have probably thought you insane.

So, what changed then?  Where did we go wrong?

I imagine that there are many things to blame – but chief among them would be the cheapening of food by the junk-food industry, and the fact that there is no such thing as free lunch.  And the people who happily fall upon the ‘cheap and tasty’, the over-processed and/or -sugared that passes for food these days alongside with actual food pay the ultimate price – that of their health and life expectancy.  And the resulting backlash against fat-and-ugly (not to mention unhealthy) people whips up the frenzy of self-flagellation eating (see the oh-so-’virtuous’ wheatgrass above: benefit-, calorie-, taste- AND guilt-free in one go!), demonizing food as the culprit and driving people into guilt over wanting a steak or a slice of dried ham with a good strip of fat on it like in the painting, and not a cucumber-and-soy smoothie to eat.  Since when should food be divided into the ‘sinful’ and ‘virtuous’?  Perhaps since we created the over-processed, food color-, flavor- and chemical-laden abominations and called them that.

Entrecote roast, fresh button mushrooms, dried porcini and chanterelles.

I have actually seen grown up adult people cut off and discard the wonderfully tender, delicious strip of cured fat off the prosciutto or speck before eating the meat – not because they did not like or want it, but because to them, that tiny strip of fat was a threat, one which needed to be feared, and removed lest it make its way into their plate by some unholy design.  No, I will not go into a discussion of the recent prevalence of eating disorders – let me just say that it simply saddens me to see such amount of self-loathing in normal, healthy and not at all obese people.

I refuse to bow down to this trend.  It is neither good science, nor is it good taste (in the most literal sense) to treat the thing which sustains us (also very literally) with such disdain.  If it is a fashion, it is a bad one –  and besides, I’ve long believed that fashion is what those who have no taste (metaphorically as well as literally here), attempt to substitute for it (with downright depressing results more often than not).

And so it was in the spirit of thinking that food – and the fact that we can afford and have it every day – should be adored, loved and celebrated properly, that I took the above photo.  It was not actually for a specific recipe, but a combination of what I had on the counter while cooking two separate courses for our guests for that night – the entrecote was resting on its way to the searing-and-oven, and the onions, button and dried mushrooms and smoked salt were about to be respectively fried or steeped and prepared as ingredients and garnish to a beef marrow bone soup which was slated to go before the roast.  But, as it was all laying on the oiled wood of my kitchen, I looked on it, and thought it beautiful, and reminiscent (as a very tiny incarnation) of those feasts laid out in the studios of Dutch masters, to be commemorated in oils on canvas, and so to feed the soul with their beauty when the harsher seasons come.

Perhaps it is because the supermarket shelves never grow empty that we seem to forget it, though even our grandparents probably understood it better than we, as a generation, do now.  I am unsure of all the why-s.  What I am sure of, is that to me, food is, and will remain beauty and art, and a celebration, one I want to share with friends, with relatives, and with anyone who cares to read this.

It is not about gluttony, nor is it a call to excess and waste – or if you do want to cook a huge feast, just invite enough people to eat and that solves that problem – but about sharing in the spiritual admiration of something wonderful about this world and being alive and a part of it:  to acquire, to prepare, to scent, to see and to eat.  The gifts of the Divine are not to be thrown aside or squandered.

Dry-Cured Ham And Cantaloupe Salad

I haven’t yet met anyone who didn’t like dried ham.

- for dinner, or lunch, or whenever you feel like it!

In its many permutations – Prosciutto di Parma, Jamón Serrano and Jamón ibérico, or any variety of Speck – dried ham is probably the most favoured cured pork product around.  And if I am wrong, then feel free to correct me, but it certainly is one of my and my friends’ favorites (a good pancetta does come close as well), which is what matters here.

Dried ham in all of its permutations is generally reputed to be delicious, and is frequently expensive, but the sad misconception (courtesy fat-is-bad brigade, grrr!) about it is that it is ruinous to one’s health, and should be avoided by anyone eating healthy.

This, frankly speaking, is bull.  Unless you are on a no-salt diet for kidney failure or similar reasons, or are sensitive to nitrates and nitrites (curing salts), or pork itself, dried ham is a fantastic addition to your food repertoire.  Yes, it is not light in either calories or fat, but if you feel you want to concern yourself with those, consider the fact that it has a lot of flavor packed into paper-thin slices, and that despite it being calorific and salty per 100g, the amount of culinary bliss per those 100g is above and beyond most other meat-based foods in such a small quantity.  And (unless you are like me and don’t concern yourself with fat or calories, watching sugar instead) you don’t actually need to pile a huge amount of said ham on – one or two slices brighten up a salad like literally nothing else.  Though, as you can see in above photo, I myself am very dried ham-happy and just pile it on.  But the point is that such amount of it is not necessary to use if you want it as an accent and flavor.

No one who likes their food (and doesn’t eschew pork on religious grounds) would stick their nose up at this salad – and the  best part is that the hardest bit of preparation is pulling the ham out of its package and chopping the melon.  And considering the speed and ease of preparation, this essentially amounts to fast food.  Compare it to most typical junk people eat in a hurry, and you’ll see the light.  Or the ham.  Same thing, really!

Ingredients (for 2 large plates):

• Several large handfuls of arugula (rocket, rucola, etc.), watercress or other strong-flavored baby greens
• 10 – 15cm of cucumber, washed and sliced
• 1/2 of a cantaloupe melon, cored, taken off peel and chopped – I like mine ripe enough to be aromatic and sweet but still crisp rather than mushy, but any stage of ripeness would do if you prefer it otherwise
• 6 – 8 slices of dried ham of your choice (the one in the salad in the picture was some sort of generic Spanish variety which was found lurking in the back of the fridge during a routine sensor sweep – have I mentioned that, unopened, dried ham keeps in the fridge for ages?)
• Pinch chili flakes and dried oregano each – or if you have fresh herbs, feel free to substitute 2 teaspoons of fresh chopped oregano or thyme for the dried
• Flaked sea salt
• Good quality extra virgin olive oil to drizzle

How to:

• Place your greens onto plates and fluff them up
• Spread cucumber slices on top
• Pull apart the ham and drape it over the cucumber
• Pile cantaloupe pieces on top of the ham in the centre of the plate
• Sprinkle with chili flakes and oregano (dried or fresh or thyme if using.)
• Drizzle with olive oil
• Sprinkle with sea salt flakes – and it is ready to eat, though it certainly won’t hurt it to stand for about 5 minutes to let the melon drip juice all over the ham.

Lovely, healthy and oh-so-drool-inducingly gorgeous!

All Measures Are Approximate (All Butter Is Real)

Butter. With a side of red-hot chili flakes

If you are reading this blog in a tense diet-rules-ridden worry about healthy eating and weight loss (I am all for the former for all – and for the latter, for the people who need it only), I have one word for you: relax.  There is nothing more likely to cause you stomach ulcers than stress – and getting those stressing over food issues is just sad – not to mention totally unnecessary.

To borrow a derogatory term from one of the cookbooks from my collection, I can’t stand diet dictocrats.  Not only have they done little other than help plunge the Western civilization into the depths of an obesity and diabetes II epidemic (do the words “metabolic syndrome” mean anything to  you?), but to add insult to (the very real) injury, they have systematically tried (and in the cases of too many people, managed) to take away the joy and love of good – and healthy! – food.

Regrettably, I do not exaggerate – neither the size of the problem (individually or population-statistic wise), nor the amount of food-related neuroses I have encountered.  Oh the sad people at the supermarket, staring wistfully at the butter display and then picking up a tub of light margarine, if you only knew how much better for you that coveted block of butter is than the over-processed box of “healthy” junk you hold in your hand!

So, in the spirit of revolution against the above (and because it fits with what I like, know and believe), the recipes in this blog are written with as relaxed and anti-dictocratic and politically incorrect attitude as possible.  After all, who am I to tell you how much parsley you want in your pasta (or how much pasta you want in your fresh-ground black pepper for that matter), and in what proportion you like your bacon to your beef.  It would be both rude and presumptuous for me to try to tell you how you should like your food and what constitutes the perfect this, that or the other – and I do not hold cookbooks or cooking shows by celebrity chefs that exhort you to do things “just so, else it is a waste of whatever and time” in any sort of good regard.

Therefore, from the very start – and until further notice (nor foreseen anytime at all) – all measures in recipes are given approximately.  They are a guideline and a suggestion of good consistency and usually above-average (for a Northern European taste) amount of seasoning (the way I like it), but when following any recipe, I would strongly urge you to modify it to your own taste and preference – since it is far more likely that you will be the one eating it, or maybe your friends, rather than I.  Food, like sex, is neither a competitive, nor a spectator sport.  Or, I don’t think it should be.

In line with my education in food and biochemistry, and my hate towards political correctness – especially in food and other items of personal preference – I refuse to use butter-, milk- and meat-substitutes, regardless of whatever “ethical” and health claims (both usually unfounded beyond superficial advertisement hype) they make.  Quite aside from the fact that they all taste like… well, not like what they claim, but rather much like shit – thus violating not just the “good for you” but also the “good to eat” rules of my food philosophy.  I like my food unfucked-with and natural, and thus tasting of actual food, thank you very much.  And while on the subject of ethics, I would rather finance small dairy farmers than large vegetable-oil processing plants with my butter habit.  Loved-and-cared-for Daisy the cow tends to give far better butter than vegetable oil-and-water-plus-emulsifiers goo that comes out the pipe at said industrial facility.  I won’t even speak of meat and milk substitutes in any detail to avoid ruining your appetite for a week.

And thus the butter is real, and usually (for cooking with) unsalted.  I will use good quality gourmet salted butters for eating, especially when prepared with sea salt and the like.  Likewise, meat is preferably fresh, bloody, non-Kosher, and whenever possible, free-range and bought from someone who raises it and sells to small butcheries.  Or at least from a good butcher shop or counter – easier in Sweden than most places, with its good livestock welfare standards.

I refuse to feel guilty about eating things which were produced without inflicting undue cruelty on animals, and I refuse to make quality compromises regarding what I eat – we are what we eat (and look like it).  So please do read, try, change, cook, eat and most importantly, relax and enjoy it.  Else what’s the point, really?

An Ode To Bacon

Oh bacon, thee maketh my heart gladder.
Thee maketh my stews heartier and my soups flavourful,
and you impart thy divine fragrance to the chicken or the beef
– or the greens of the field among which I place thee.
Truly, for all the savoury dishes, thy glory shall be great!

So yes.  I love bacon.  In fact, I don’t think I know anyone (save some vegans and perhaps vegetarians – don’t know many of either kind closely for the obvious reason of them not liking me much) who does not like bacon.  And when pressed, I suspect that even those die-hard ethical eaters love the flavour of bacon, if perhaps not the idea.

Actually, where it comes to my favourite animal-based things to eat and use in savoury food to improve its flavour as an ingredient (other than meat, obviously, which is in its own category), I suspect bacon has only cheese to compete with – and in many cases it wins.  (But honestly, when it comes to cheese and bacon, why pick just one?!)

The photo above is from a few days ago, when I have discovered that apparently, happy, well-fed chickens raised to Swedish farm standards, grow into (utterly delicious) humongous monsters.  For reference, that’s a large restaurant-sized plate.  And that’s a cooked chicken breast on it.  And yes, they were 250g each raw (without water added).  So once I brought them home, I was left face-to-chicken-breast with them and the contemplation of what to do.  Mind you, that was before my luggage (and the spices therein) had arrived in Sweden, and so all I had at my disposal were fresh veggies, garlic, salt, oil and a bit of black pepper.  But – eureka! – I also had bacon and cheese.

The salad alongside them was planned in advance (and a separate recipe), but for the bacon-wrapped cheese-stuffed chicken, you really do not need that much:

• 2 chicken breasts (to serve 2, obviously)
• 1 large garlic clove (or 2 smaller ones – can’t skimp on the garlic!)
• 1-2 tablespoons butter (I use lightly salted butter here and do not salt the inside of the chicken pocket)
• 2 slices of cheese (I used a good cheddar in this instance, but any you like will do)
• 5 bacon slices (streaky, with a bit of stretch to it – make sure it’s defrosted completely if using after freezing)
• salt and black pepper to taste (I like lots of the latter, and again this is up to you.  Can also use chili flakes.)
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil (optional)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 220°C
• Pat dry the chicken breasts and lay on cutting board.  Cut a pocket into the thicker side of each one, carefully
• Slice garlic clove(s) thinly and insert half the slices into each chicken breast
• Place half the butter into each pocket over the garlic
• Place a slice of cheese into each pocket as well
• Season the outside of the chicken breasts with salt and pepper
• You can secure the edges of the pocket with a toothpick, or -
• -  in lieu of one, you can tie them with bacon:

• Lightly oil the baking dish you plan to use with the vegetable oil (optional – only to make clean up easier)
• Lay 2 strips of bacon in an X shape on a cutting board, and position breast top side down on them
• Pull the edges together and tie them in a knot on the underside of the chicken breast – one after another
• Place breasts into the baking dish knot-side down.  You can cover the dish with aluminium foil for the first half of the cooking time, removing it after 30 minutes
• Cut the last bacon strip into 2 and lay the halves over the chicken breasts
• Place dish in oven and turn oven down to 180°C
• Cook for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes.  You can switch the grill element (broiler) on for a little while at the end to brown the bacon if necessary.
• Take out and allow to rest for 5 minutes.
• Cheese may leak out of the chicken some – I just spoon it and some of the butter over the chicken when it’s plated.

Serve with your side or salad of choice and rejoyce, for the Holy Bacon is great and wonderful and bringeth much joy to the chicken, and makes it juicy and flavourful and not at all dried out or stringy!

Amen.

Oh Salmon, How I Worship Thee

It’s great to be back in Sweden!

The snow is deep (and white and cold!), the daylight is not yet 7 hours a day this time of year (here in Stockholm, not up North where they don’t have any), and the supermarkets are still a culinary nirvana.  Even the tiny ones.  Why?  I don’t know, really, but my educated guess is because Swedes like to eat (duh!) and don’t compromise on food quality, spoiled Scandinavians that they are.

There are many such examples, of which I will probably orate at length later, but salmon is one of them.  Yes, simple raw salmon, sold here in huge slabs of filleted sides of fish, large and small, with all the fantastic fat and the beautiful silver-black scaly skin still on (I can’t stand it, nor understand, why people want to buy their salmon with the skin cut off, but maybe that is just me).  I suppose the reason it is so readily available is both, that it is farmed not too far from here, as well as the demand for a lot of it (Swedes eat it in quantity), but whatever the cause, I enjoy the result immensely.  And because it is very fresh, it can literally be eaten at any stage of (un)cookedness, which makes it one of my favourite things to eat – in any such form, from sashimi and carpaccio and gravad lax, to having it grilled or in a soup.

I could go on for a long time about how healthy salmon is and how good for you it is, but really, it’s been said many times by many people and while it’s great that it is healthy and I can eat it very guiltlessly and happily in that knowledge, it is delicious enough in all of its incarnations that I’d probably eat it even if it has much fewer health benefits (or indeed, none, like cake or sweets, for example).  Because while how healthy the food is, is an important consideration in my kitchen, how well said food tastes, is one that outweighs it enough to call veto on something which is very healthy if it tastes awful, or just not good enough to want to eat.

In the case of our dinner a few days ago, when Tobias showed up at home hauling a piece of a salmon that might have, in its fishy life, been as long as Tobias himself is tall, it was fusion-Oriental seasoned carpaccio.

Carpaccio, in modern use, is more or less any food (in my view, of animal origin) which is sliced thin and served raw in a dressing/marinade of oil, seasoning or herbs, and some sort of mild acid.  To make this particular one, I have sliced the salmon (rather haphazardly I would say, as I was hungry and salivating over aforementioned huge slab of raw fish) across the grain and laid it across two platters, adding some greens to shovel into toasted bread later on.  The dressing is the only thing here which can be construed as a recipe beyond assembly instructions.

Ingredients:  (depending on the amount of food you serve and how much dressing you want for mopping up with your bread)

• A few tablespoons of good all-purpose soy sauce (Kikkoman is the right consistency for me)
• Juice of 1 lime, with some bits scraped in.
• 1 tablespoon good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 finger of ginger (about 5-7cm), peeled, grated and squeeeeezed out into the sauce.  You can put some bits in too if you like.

Mix, taste, adjust seasoning to taste.  For more salt, add soy sauce, for more acid – a few drops of vinegar (if your one lime is exhausted).  Other things I like are mixing a pinch of chili flakes and/or half a teaspoon of brown sugar/honey into the sauce, or chopping some fresh chilies and/or coriander and scattering them over the salmon before drizzling the dressing over it generously (pouring out the remains to desired depth for salmon to swim in).

I tend to let salmon marinate up to 5 minutes, but I imagine up to 10 minutes won’t make that much of a difference.  I just like mine asap.  Especially when hungry.

Mediterranean Salad (Not Exactly Greek)

… but no worse for it, certainly!

The idea for the salad originated when, in search of a bag of lentils at the local supermarket, I wandered facefirst into a refrigerated display of Greek cheeses, a veritable cornucopia of several kinds of feta and halloumi.  My mouth watered instantly and there I was, holding a packet of each, good feta and halloumi, and staring around in a suddenly hungrily-urgent need of other various salad ingredients.

The thing with feta is, it is very hard to mess up a salad which involves it.  I suppose the imaginative could do so, on purpose, but the crumbly and fresh tangy-saltiness of it really does go with many things, and I attribute the popularity of the traditional Greek salad to feta (mostly).  One mustn’t forget Kalamata olives – which I managed to forget while frantically picking up red onions and other things necessary for a weekend’s worth of food with possible guests.  It is the lack of those, and a lemon, that makes this a generic Med salad rather than a proper Greek one.  Thankfully, Tobias’ fridge held a jar of green olives and a jar of nonpareil capers, all of which got gleefully used, mixed and eaten.

Salad Ingredients (to serve two hungry people a large lunch):

• Two (large and greedy) handfuls of fresh arugula
• Two rather fat vine-ripened tomatoes
• A chunk off a cucumber
• Half a red onion
• Pack of said feta cheese
• A few forkfuls of capers packed in brine or vinegar
• As many green olives as I had patience to fish out of the tall and narrow (!) jar with a fork in my starved-after-walk-in-the-snow state
• Salt and olive oil in quantity to taste (or in other words, enough extra-virgin olive oil to light up Solomon’s temple)

(I actually also had a pot of thyme that I had planned to clip some off and add to said salad, but in our feeding frenzy, I have forgotten.  Some fresh thyme would not go amiss here, and neither would some flat-leaf parsley.)

Instruction:

• Chop all choppables.
• Dump all ingredients into bowl.
• Salt and pour oil over.  Mix.
• Eat (that’s the important bit!).

Tobias toasted some Swedish wheat flatbread to go with this, in lieu of pittas, which worked fantastically well as a side.  Om nom nom!

Snow

I have arrived in Stockholm two days ago to be greeted by metres-high snow piles on street corners, a blanket of sparkling white everywhere, and twinkling snowflakes falling slowly onto my hat (and nose) through the dark air.

Somehow, while in England the snow felt like a disaster and bad weather, here it feels different – appropriate and right: this is what winter looks like.  The temperature is not at all arctic at the moment – it hangs a bit below to a bit above zero, but not enough for the snow to melt, and the cloud cover has just shifted, letting sunlight in.

Yesterday’s blizzard has persuaded us to stay indoors and write and read to candlelight, curled up around a succession of pots of tea – from Tie Guan Yin to black rose-petal flavoured Persian.  We ended up eating whatever we managed to drag in on Wednesday after our flight (whole-wheat spaghetti with bacon, fresh arugula, sliced and seared garlic, and a hard Swedish cheese as it happened).  But, now that the sun is making the world almost painfully white, I think it is time to pull my ankle-length coat with its huge fur collar out of the closet and remind it that real winter does come sometimes (at least to these shores!).

We are on our way out to find some small (and large) edibles.  The hitherto empty pantry must be stocked!

Grilled Duck Breast with Oriental Chili Sauce

Duck Breast With Oriental Chili Sauce

My cooking style, when presented with options in terms of time and selection of raw materials, tends to run, almost regardless of season, to fusion-food styles, which are inspired by a variety of cuisines, ranging from rustic French and Italian to Southeast Asian, with anything and everything (provided it tastes good and can be combined well) in-between.

Since the friend who visited the weekend before last is Norwegian, she was not very used to the English abundance and inexpensive availability of duck, and so after having had it at the Yee Rah and liked it, we have decided to have the quacky bird for dinner the next day as well, provided the supermarket supply gods were merciful. Which, as it happens, they were.

We had gone for a walk around Liverpool One again, with the objective of shopping (Bravissimo featuring on my list as always), and then dropped by the new Tesco across from the BBC Radio building. The fresh food department downstairs yielded the following:

• A fresh duck crown of about 1.2kg in weight
• A large bunch of coriander
• A bag of washed rocket (aka arugula or rucola for non-British)
• A few red chilies
• Two chilled flatbreads with spices and red onion
• A box of rather happy-looking chestnut mushrooms

… all of which was gleefully purchased, and dragged home along with the requisite box of cream and fresh berries for dessert.

The pantry (storecupboard for the British) at home contributed:

• Blue Dragon Sweet Chili Sauce (hot variant)
• M&S Thai Fish Sauce (Nam Pla)
• Kikkoman Soy Sauce
• Tesco Toasted Sesame Oil
• Sea salt and black pepper (in grinders)

The following recipe is heavily Southeast Asian-inspired, but I by no means claim any authenticity to a specific style, nor care to.  The only assurance of success I ever go by, is my own, and my guests’ happy smiles while eating, and by that measure, this is well worth the (relatively minimal) efforts.

Overall, the preparation for this is very simple, but it does require a very sharp knife, and a good (in my view, best if it is cast iron) grill pan, or at least a heavy flat griddle, though the latter would be fiddlier to deal with, considering the fat layer on the duck.  (If your grill pan has a non-oven-safe handle, you will also need a baking dish to finish the duck in the oven.  Mine’s fully cast iron so I simply move the entire thing in once done searing.)

Unpack and rinse and pat dry the duck.  If using a crown or whole carcass rather than prepped breasts, lay it securely on a cutting board, and using a very sharp knfie, carefully slice the breasts off, starting with a lenghtwise cut alongside the breastbone and continuing downwards to the wing joint.  Separate the breasts and trim the fat edges (fat will overhang the meat on any well-fattened duck).  Put carcass/half carcass (from crown) aside in a plastic bag – refrigerate or freeze for later use in soup (recipe to follow another day).

Turn the breasts fat-side up and pat dry, then cross-hatch the fat with diagonal cuts through skin, without cutting into the meat at all/not too much.  I usually aim for 1x1cm diamond cross-hatching, or smaller – but if it is uneven or a bit larger, it is no matter.  Salt and pepper the duck on both sides and place on a plate or board to rest.  About an hour should be enough, one and a half is better to allow the meat to come to room temperature.  In meantime, make the sauce:

Mix 1/3 of a cup of sweet chili sauce (I use the hot kind) with about a teaspoon or three (to taste, so taste after small-portion additions) of soy and fish sauces.  Blend well with a fork, add some sliced red chilies and top with sesame oil.  Allow to stand.

Clean the mushrooms, preheat oven to about 180°C, and the grill pan on high heat on stovetop.  Arrange rocket and some of the chopped coriander on plates.  In meantime, start grilling mushrooms on the pan.  When those are done, remove to the plates and place duck breasts fat-side down onto the very hot grill pan.  (You should have the exhaust on and a window open at this point, as the duck fat will smoke.)

Grill time will depend on how well-done you like the duck, and the heat of your stove/quality of grill pan.  Best advice I can give you is to watch it – and turn it over once the fat is crispy and golden and possibly a touch charred in places.  Cook the duck meat-side down until it is seared and crispy, and the sides are still showing red/pink rawness, then turn the stove off and place the grill pan directly into the hot oven for about 5-6 minutes (or place into baking dish and put that in the oven if the grill pan is not oven safe).  This will result in a pink-medium-rare duck.  You may keep it in the oven for longer if desired.

Take the duck out of the oven, remove to a board and cover with a tent of foil for 3-6 minutes, then remove tent and slice crosswise, arranging the slices on the bed of greens.  Sprinkle with a bit more coriander and sliced chili, and drizzle the sauce over.

We ate this with sparkling water and green tea, and a side of heated up spiced flatbread, but you could steam some rice or boil some noodles if that’s your poiso… starch of choice.

Other than being spectacularly delicious (at least to my taste, and that is obviously the main consideration), the dish is also rather healthy (provided you do not overload it with the sweet sauce as that contains sugar), and can (omitting the flatbread) be good for those on reasonably low-carbohydrate diets, diabetic or coeliac sufferers (make sure that your sauces you use are, of course, safe for your level of sensitivity).

Good luck, have fun cooking, and above all - do enjoy, both that and the subsequent eating!

Own Label vs Brand – A Different Perspective

Store brand, own label, private label, generic - historically, the concepts have not carried a positive connotation among the consumer base compared to brand names, with the possible exceptions of luxury supermarket brand ranges, which are effectivel a brand name in their own right.  Up until the current recession, own label products have not accounted for a very large percentage of sales, and were regarded as the lesser (and therefore cheaper) choice.

The difficult economic times have changed the sales figures – tightening purse strings tends to cause the public to compromise, and so the cheaper products have begun to find their way into the shopping baskets.

But, aside from being less expensive to the consumer, and perhaps having a slightly different formulation (to avoid intellectual property lawsuits) from brand names, what is it that makes up an own label product for a multiple retailer?  Why is it cheaper?  Is the quality compromised?  And, aside from price and packaging colours, is there any real difference?

I by no means have the answers to the economic varieties of questions regarding this.  I know little of how the contract structure is set up, and what negotiations take place in the baroque behind-the-scenes arena of price negotiations.  What I do know, is a very interesting, and rather important datum regarding the technical regulations guarding brand and own label products, and the differences between those.

The major difference is this – while brand names have their brand loyalty to build on, and must deliver on the brand standard, brand-name manufacturers are often large international conglomerates, and are governed only by the overhead applicable law of the land (EU food laws, in the case of Europe, or the FDA regulations in the case of the States, for example).  On the other hand, own label products can’t, by default, be marketed with a brand name (since the only brand they carry is that of the retailer itself), so they must build customer loyalty by offering something better – and since better standards of quality and cleaner labels have become the consumer favourites lately, they have also become a necessity in the cut-throat competitive world of multiple retailers.

Therefore, in addition to the law of the land, the retailers institute their own codes of practice for their brands: quality standards which they then can and do advertise to the consumer.  For example: in 2007, ASDA’s no-nasties guarantee has scored it press coverage and heightened consumer respect for the retailer, it being the first to tighten its codes of practice and make it public.  Since then all the major multiples have followed suit by instituting lists of banned additives, narrowing the list of what could be used in own-label products significantly from the EU legally permitted additive list.

Furthermore, as suppliers to the multiple retailers are dependent on every contract for their livelihood, and wish to remain so (compared to large brand names that the retailers wish to list due to consumer preference), they (own label suppliers) tend to allow audits of their sites and rigorous inspections of quality of production of items to be supplied under the retailer own label brand, which is not necessarily as easy in terms of the larger brand-name conglomerates.

I do not say that, being less legally bound and less given to inspections, all brand name products are therefore necessarily produced to a worse standard than own label.  That is not nearly the case.  The question regarding what is in every particular product is still answered on the back of pack panel, and those who care about such things, should make their decisions on the basis of that.  What I am trying to say, is that store own label products are not normally inferior (and quite often are superior, especially in case of top ranges) to the brand name ones, and are, in fact, governed by an extra set of external codes of practice and control over production which the brand name products are not.

So next time, before you automatically reach for the branded product, assuming the higher price tag and flashier packaging imply a better quality guarantee, do turn it over and compare the back to the own label item sitting next to it on the shelf.  Clear your head of advertisement bull-manure, remind yourself that the pretty packaging is likely to end up in the garbage anyhow, take note of what is (and is not) on the list of ingredients of both of those boxes – and then make up your own mind – it’s what your head is there for.

Infused Alcohol – For Whatever You Celebrate

It is early autumn, the days are getting ever so slightly chillier, and the light tends to fall a little aslant. I can feel the change of season in the air, and to me in terms of my kitchen, it means two things: I want to bake (an urge that I tend to resist except when have guests), and I know it is time to make infused alcohol if it should be ready by midwinter, whatever your flavour of celebration may be that season.

My relationship with alcohol can best be described as a loving long-distance relationship of sorts.  I love it, love drinking the really good stuff, and I also get intoxicated from the tiniest amounts, so I drink it rarely and in small quantities.  In the words of my friends, I am the most lightweight drinker any of them have ever met.  On the up side, that also means I am sober within an hour or two of drinking, so (if it is an occasion on which I would actually drink at all), I can get tipsy again and again repeatedly.

I think alcohol is a good thing in the quantity I consume it, but in a very non-hypocritical way, I can also honestly say I drink about half a bottle of wine and a couple of shots of hard liquor (typically brandy in my coffee) per month.  I imagine people can be just fine drinking more than I (and also stay on their feet better than I’d manage), but I am not here to lecture anyone on how much they should drink.  If you are drinking too much, you probably know it anyway, and I strongly believe in the fact that the only person whom you can change in this life, is your very own self.

But, I digress, as I was going to talk about infusion, and not about sobriety (or lack thereof).  So, it is usually for the winter festivities, that I prepare a variety of those (to be drunk chilled, or used in sweet-making and desserts, or whichever way you like it).

Infusing alcohol is easy.  What you need is:

• A glass preserving jar, 1-1.5L in volume, one of those with a metal lever lock and food-grade rubber seal.
• A 750ml bottle of alcohol you wish to infuse (plain vodka, gin, and white rum are the typical favourites).
• Whatever you plan to infuse the alcohol with (fruit, herbs, whole spices, etc.)
• Sugar (if using, not all recipes call for it)
• Boiling water on two separate occasions (to sterilize the jar and muslin)
• Muslin cloth and a funnel.
• A friend you can trust.
• Refrigerator, and a whole lot of patience

The basic instruction is:

1. Wash and dry your fruit (if using to infuse).  If you plan to use it later and freeze it in advance, wash and dry it before freezing.
2. Free up a spot in the corner of your fridge that you can easily reach on a daily basis that the jar would fit into.
3. Wash the jar and rinse thoroughly (this is primarily for you strange British people who don’t rinse the washing up liquid off your clean dishes… RINSE IT OFF, else the result will taste of soap!).
4. Sterilize the jar by pouring a bit of boiling water in it (use a dish towel to hold it), and swirling it about, then pouring out.
5. Place infusion materials into jar as per recipe (berries, fruit, spices and sugar).
6. Pour the entire bottle of alcohol on top.  Reclose the empty bottle, do not wash it, and keep it for later refilling.
7. Seal jar.
8. Swirl gently and place into the prepared spot in fridge.

Now, here is where the patience becomes imperative.  The use of the refrigerator is twofold:  One, it keeps the alcohol cold, which means it is less likely to evaporate.  Two, if you are like most people, you open your fridge at least once a day.  What you must do for the next 2-3 months, is take the jar out once a day, admire it, pet it, swirl it a bit gently, admire some more, DO NOT OPEN IT, and place it back in the fridge.  Not opening is important to both, prevent contamination of alcohol with water condensation on inside of cold jar, and to resist temptation to stick fingers in and try it.  It won’t be ready for at least 8 weeks.

Once 2-3 months have passed, or when you just can’t wait any longer (but you must remember that if you open too soon, it won’t be as nice!), take out your trusted friend, muslin cloth, funnel, empty bottle, and the much-anticipated jar.

1. Drape the muslin cloth over the funnel (letting it drop into it obviously), and pour some boiling water over it over the sink.
2. Open the empty bottle and place the funnel into it.  It will cool quickly, and we also want that.
3. Let the trusted friend hold the funnel and bottle so that it does not tip over and ruin all that hard work.
4. Carefully filter the alcohol through the funnel back into its waiting bottle, and close.
5. The fruit in the funnel (depending on which ones you’ve used) can make fantastic boozy cake topping (if they were strawberries or elderberries or blueberries for example!), or tossed out.  Or, if they are spices, they can be wrapped in said muslin and hung up as air freshner (like a pomander without an orange) for a while.

I tend to keep the resulting infusion in the fridge, but I think it can quite easily be stored outside of it once filtered.  Not that it is very likely to survive long enough for storage to become too much of a problem, anyway… :)

A couple of my favourite ideas for infusion materials (but feel free to come up with your own, experimenting is fun, and you know what you like better than anyone else does):

• Quince Rum:  white rum, 1 large quince fruit (sliced), 2-4 whole cloves, 2 tablespoons demerara cane sugar.
• Yule Vodka:  plain vodka (I like Absolut, but that’s my I-love-Sweden habit speaking, and any decent vodka will do), 1 cup blueberries (you want the true wild ones, aka bilberries), fresh or frozen, 1 stick cinnamon (for the love of little green apples and the booze you are making, make sure it’s real Ceylon cinnamon!), 2-4 whole cloves, 1-2 allspice grains, 1-2 tablespoons of white sugar.
• Elderberry vodka:  plain vodka as per above, 1-2 cups of ripe elderberries (de-stemmed), 2 heaping tablespoons white sugar, 1 curl of lemon or orange peel (make sure to wash the citrus with soap and water to remove shellac resin which is used to spray citrus, unless you manage to buy unwaxed citrus).

Enjoy!