I have started a new blog, which is really a sub-blog of this one. I wanted to have a somewhere where I could keep all my recipes together, so I decided to set up another blog, imaginatively titled My Recipes. All the recipes on there at the moment have already featured on the main blog.
If you click on the My Recipes tab at the top of the page it will take you to the blog as will clicking on My Recipes in the blogroll. It was mainly done for my convenience, but everyone is welcome to use it.
After 180 years of brewing and selling beer Young’s now have no connection with brewing and have become exclusively a pub owning company. They have sold the 40% stake that they had in Wells & Young’s Brewing Company to their partner the Bedford based Charles Wells.
There’s more
Because last week and Friday in particular were quite hard, I couldn’t be bothered to go shopping on Friday evening. Mrs johnm55 suggested that we go out early on Saturday morning and have breakfast in the café at Tesco before we did the shopping. One of the great things about a traditional British breakfast is that it is almost impossible, even for Tesco, to mess it up. So before shopping I had a full, heart-attack threatening, plate of bacon, fried egg, sausages, black pudding, hash browns, and to add a bit of healthy eating, some baked beans. The breakfast was fine, and set me up for the grocery shopping, but beyond that was nothing memorable. However it started a train of thought, because a lot of the meals that I truly remember have been breakfasts.
Breakfast below the fold
I found this recipe by Angela Hartnett in last weeks Guardian. She has been publishing a series of quick and easy dishes that are described as Angela Hartnett’s midweek suppers. This is the first one I have tried, not so much because I didn’t like the look of the others, it is just that this was the first vegetarian dish in the series. I decided to make it for lunch today. My Veggie Wife thoroughly approves of it and so do I. It is dead simple to make. All the ingredients should be available at your local supermarket, if you don’t already have them in your cupboard.
I served it with naan bread (bought from Tesco’s) and a slightly chilled Hook Norton Bitter
I’ve included the ingredients and the method below.
Ingredients
(Serves four to six)
1 whole cauliflower
3 medium onions
4 cloves of garlic
½ tsp chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp ground coriander
2 star aniseed
½ tsp ground chilli
4 curry leaves
2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of chickpeas*, drained
2 tbsp of chopped fresh corianderMethod
Remove the stalks from the cauliflower and cut into large florets. In a pan of boiling water, add the cauliflower and cook for five minutes. When ready, drain from the water and place back in the pan. Cover so it stays warm.While the cauliflower is cooking, cut the onions into small pieces. Squash the garlic with the back of a knife to make it easier to peel. Chop until nice and fine.
In a pan, add a touch of butter, plus the onion, garlic and ginger, and sauté until golden brown.
In the same pan, add the dried spices and cook for a further five minutes.
Add the tin of tomatoes and chickpeas and stir well. Then add the cooked cauliflower. Top up with 100ml of cold water and bring to a simmer for five to 10 minutes until the cauliflower is cooked.
Finish by adding the chopped coriander. Serve on a warm plate.
*garbanzo beans if you are American.
As London grinds to a halt under the effects of a major 10cm snowfall, thoughts turn to the fact that corn flakes are not quite what is required for breakfast. I should add that I appreciate that other parts of the UK may have had considerably more snow than we have had in London, but what you don’t appreciate is the fact that if it hasn’t happened in London then it hasn’t really happened.
This is the season for porridge for breakfast. Besides all the well touted benefits of eating porridge for breakfast there is something satisfying about making and eating a bowl of porridge for breakfast. It does take slightly longer that pouring out a bowl of Rice Krispies, but believe me you will be a better person, or at least feel like one, for making the effort.
The first piece of advice I will give you is do not make your porridge in the microwave.
Shortly after I was diagnosed as diabetic I had a session with a dietician, during the discussion about what were good food choices from the point of blood glucose control, she mentioned that porridge was probably one of the best things I could eat for breakfast. She also mentioned that it could be made in the microwave, but forgot to tell me the most important thing about making porridge in a microwave. My immediate thought was ‘that will save a bit of washing up’. The next morning I proceeded to make my porridge in the microwave.
I measured out my usual recipe,
For 1
put it all into my porridge bowl, stuck it into the microwave, pushed start and went back to drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. About five minutes later the microwave went ping and I wandered across the kitchen to retrieve my no effort, no washing up porridge, to discover that the bowl was empty and the microwave was generously coated with porridge. I also discovered that it is much harder to remove porridge from the walls of a microwave than it is to remove it from a pan.
What my dietician forgot to mention is that porridge made in a microwave foams up and boils over. So unless you use a bowl that is at least five times the volume of the liquid to allow for this fact, do not make your porridge in the microwave.
I now always make mine in a saucepan. It is just as quick and I think tastes better. So using the recipe above put all the ingredients into a pan bring to the boil, then turn it down to a low heat and allow it to ‘plop’ away happily for about five minutes. Give it a stir now and then. Traditionally you should use a tapered stick, usually with a thistle as a handle, because that is the way we made them in woodwork class when I was at school, called a spurtle and stir it clockwise. I find that stirring it with a wooden spoon anti-clockwise also works. I tend to put the salt in at the start, but some people like to cook the porridge the add salt to taste, all I will say is do not neglect the salt, it doesn’t need much but porridge does need some salt.
For Saturday mornings, or if you are a traditionalist, porridge made with oatmeal does have a certain quality that porridge made with rolled oats does not quite possess.
The recipe is fairly similar but here are a couple of variations.
For 2
Bring the water to the boil, add the oatmeal slowly, stirring all the time. Reduce the heat and allow to cook slowly, just giving the occasional ‘plop’, for up to 30 minutes, depending on how solid you like you porridge. Give it a stir every now and again, add salt to taste and serve.
Again traditionally, you should eat your porridge by dipping a spoon of hot porridge into a bowl of cold milk. This is to keep your porridge hot, as adding cold milk to the bowl of porridge will cool it down. Nice though that is I think there are more interesting things to add to porridge.
Here are some of my favourites.
Or of course any combination of them.
Should you make too much porridge, let it go cold and set solid. It is absolutely delicious sliced, fried in a little butter and served with runny honey.
As for washing up the pan, don’t, fill it with cold water and let it soak for a few hours. The porridge sticking to the pan will have come off as a sort of skin which can be scooped up and discarded, leaving a clean and shiny pan behind.
I’ve been eating fairly regularly at the Jaffna House in Tooting since being introduced to it by Mrs Johnm55′s Sri Lankan friend. We have just had lunch there (with the aforementioned Sri Lankan friend) an I feel that it is time to announce what a fine and wallet friendly place it is.
I am talking about the café / takeaway part on Tooting High Street rather than the licensed restaurant, the entrance to which is round the corner on Coverton Road. The restaurant I am sure also serves excellent food and will also be very good value for money, but I have never eaten in it so I can’t comment. The café however is in my opinion brilliant.
My starter was quite simple, just two Masala Vadai, served with red and green coconut chutneys, they were nicely crisp on the outside, but the spiced potato filling was moist and soft. The chutneys had, for me, just the right amount of chilli kick, the red being a bit more fiery than the green. I pinched a bit of Mrs johnm55′s Chana Chundal (chick peas) and they were excellent as well. The SL friend originally wasn’t going to have a starter, but changed her mind and came back with a couple of what looked like miniature deep-fried Cornish Pasties, she did say what they were, but as you get older the short-term memory goes a bit.
My main was Oothappam which is probably best described as a thick pancake with peppers, tomatoes, chillies and other veggies mixed into the batter and served with a vegetable curry and a coconut sambar. The softness, almost but not quite stodginess of the pancake batter was sharpened by the heat of the chillies. The vegetable curry added more flavour and lubrication (after I had picked out the okra – I don’t like the texture) and the sambar gave a bit more heat, if needed. I was just what was needed on a grey rainy November day.
Mrs johnm55 had a Masala Dosai as she normally does, and pronounced it as being up to the normal standard. The SL friend had three Idaly. I’m not quite sure what they are, but as she often orders them, I’ll take it on trust that they are good. I might even try them the next time I eat there. The fourth member of the party, a Canadian, had the Sunday special, Jaffna House Special Noodles, which are noodles with mixed veg, mutton, egg and prawns, which she said were rather good, just don’t turn up on Tuesday expecting them to be on the menu
If you decide to eat there remember it is a café, Sometimes all the plates do not arrive at the same time, but they do arrive within a few minutes of each other. The café is also unlicensed so no Cobra.
There were four of us, we each had starters, main courses and (soft) drinks. We all enjoyed our meal.The total bill was just under £16.00. I consider that pretty good value for money.
