What is a foodie? Slow cooked Portobello mushrooms.

West or northwest 4 or 5, becoming variable, mainly southwest 3 or 4.

Slight.

Occasional rain.

Good, occasionally moderate.

Yesterday I was on the bus for one hour. One of my fellow passengers clearly had more than one drink and somehow he was angered by “foodies” (might have something to do with the fact that from tomorrow on we have a local food festival so I might not cook a lot)

He was in full flow. I lost count how many times he mentioned f***** hipsters and wan****s and sneered at foodies. But he also insisted that “foodies” eat every day like kings. And this left me puzzled.

The truth is I am a foodie but I am not what you think a foodie is. Maybe no foodie is what you think they should be. Maybe I am not really a foodie.

I get up in the morning, stumble into the shower and my whole connection to food is “coffee”. Buckets of it. I stumble into the kitchen and get my fix. Then I remember food. Some days I get a bowl of oats and fruits and sit down at a table, on other days I munch on something while standing up and looking out of the window. And wonder what I am doing there. There are also days when I open the fridge, look at some slightly curling slices of cheese, close the fridge and think: "I am not eating that shit" and after an hour on the tube/bus gobble down an even worse shit in the shape of a Mars bar. However, if I happen to wake up at 5am I just might want to experiment with a perfect omelette. What else can you do at this time of the day?

And the same pattern follows throughout the day. But one thing is for sure: No day passes when I don’t want to cook something for myself. Cooking, not eating, is for me an exercise in love. Love for the people I care about and of course love for myself. You come home after a day of work and find peace while watching the telly, doing gardening, connecting with friends on facebook, play with your children, run a few miles, paint your nails.....it is ultimately what makes you keep your sanity. My sanity is cooking. It is not about food!

I had a few years ago a holidays of dreams. My husband was working very hard, was barely there during the year and decided to treat his family a holiday with every luxury you can dream off. We spend three weeks in France, going from Michelin star hotel to another. There was not one minute which was not cared for if we wished to have it. After 3 days I hated it. I did not want to have the best food 24/7 delivered to me, I wanted to prepare a cheese sandwich for the people I loved. Even if it was not great. I am not blaming him. He wanted to give me time out. Time to relax. But I missed the cooking bit.

I eat health-ish, sometimes not so. I don’t buy ready made meals. And sometimes I don’t need to feed myself. But I would still cook. Even if it is something for the next day. And it doesn’t have to be time consuming. Could be just a home made mayonnaise, top up my salted lemons, prepare the starter for tomorrows bread, or cook slowly mushrooms for a Portobello mushroom burger.

A well done Portobello mushroom burger is so excellent that I would swap it in 99% of cases for a beef burger. I actually get a bit obsessed by it and make my own bap (see here) and made in the past with great success my own “Kraft style cheese” (maybe I share that recipe in the future). And it is of course perfect for the BBQ season; just bring your own”burger”. However just popping the raw mushroom on the grill is no good. In order to get most out of it you need to slow cook it before. In fact, you ought to slow cook many mushrooms. They keep in the fridge for a few days and you have always a quick ingredient, either for pasta or in an omelette, topped with a poached egg or goats cheese, baked in a pastry or just on bread. You can even use it as a pizza “base” by filling it with tomato sauce and mozzarella. It is initially not a cheap dish, since you probably spend one bottle of olive oil. But first of all you can decant the oil (when it is cold) back into the bottle and continue to use it for many more mushrooms; and second it makes a tasty oil for all kind of BBQ marinades. Just keep it in the fridge to prolong its life.

Slow cooked Portobello mushrooms

1 Portobello mushroom, but while you are at it, why not make more? Ideally you take as many as fit in your oven proof dish, so they sit snug and tight but in one layer.

1 bottle of olive oil

Some rock salt

Garlic if you want

Thyme if you have

1 or two dried porcini mushrooms if you want to gild the lily

Preheat the oven to 80C-100C

Lay the mushrooms stem side up in one layer into your oven proof dish. Tuck all the other ingredients next to it (no need to soak the dried mushrooms if you use them); and pour the olive oil over it, so they are ideally at least 90% submerged. Make sure you fill the gills as well. Put into oven and cook for 2 hours so all the water has been driven out of them. Turn after 1 hour if they are not fully submerged. If they turn too brown after one hour, reduce the temperature.

Lift them out with a slotted spoon, drain over a bowl and catch the oil. Pour the oil back to the other oil.

If you already know what you want to do with then, e.g. take to a BBQ or make a burger out of them, just add your favourite BBQ spices or at least pepper and salt. Put in the fridge where they will sit happily for a few days.

When you are ready to use them, just put them in a hot pan without oil (either sliced or whole for a burger or onto the grill) and heat through and char slightly.

Pour the cold oil back into the bottle and keep in the fridge for your next batch.

Of course you can experiment with the poaching ingredients. Or add a few drops of “liquid amino”  or a few drops of truffle oil (macaroni cheese with truffled Portobello mushrooms? Sounds like something I might try if the weather gets colder).

Go one, love yourself. Do a bit of light cooking.

Oh, and by the way: Never ever tell a foodie that you feel afraid to invite him for dinner because his standards are so high and he is a much better cook. It saddens him tremendously (well, it did sadden me when I heard it far too many times. Yes, I know, it was supposed to be a compliment but I felt “punished”). If he wants perfect food he goes into an excellent restaurant. Dont deprive him of your love you show through cooking.

Update. A personal joke. My answer to your vid, K.

Substantial salad. Lunchbox. Fattoush.

Southwest veering northwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6, becoming variable 4 later.

Slight or moderate.

Rain at first.

Good, occasionally poor at first.

My salad days, when I was green in judgment: cold in blood...,

I am pretty sure that Cleopatra was not referring to the English summers when she remarked on her cold blood, however it gets never really hot here. Even when the sun is shining. And, as I noticed, when you live at the Atlantic. While I officially live at the “English Channel”, this refers just to the stretch which links the North Sea with the Celtic Sea, the Atlantic Ocean. Wind can get pretty rough here and even in June it is more “make sure you have a jumper with you” than “walk in your beach dress on the promenade”. So, while it looks like summer and you want something light, a salad alone is still somehow unsatisfying. Unless you mix it with bulk, preferable warm. 

Enter Fattoush, a brilliant salad which can be even taken to the office, providing you have a toaster there. You can even make it all at home, but you will then miss out the added satisfaction of the warm bread. It is based on the same idea as the Italian “Panzanella”, a thrifty dish to make use of leftover or stale bread. A salad is a great way to give stale breads a second life: Breads lend crunch and texture, soak up juices and dressings, and add flavour, too. And it bulks salads up, so if you are short of the vegetable ingredients, you can still get a pretty filling light meal. The only drawback of a Fattoush is that chopped parsley tends to linger between your teeth; so do yourself a favour and just swill your mouth with water if you see clients later.

Fattoush

Dressing:
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice, fresh-squeezed

1 tsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 garlic cloves, minced

zest of half a lemon

1 tsp dried oregano, crushed between fingertips

coarse salt and fresh black pepper, to taste

Salad:

1 large tomatoes, chopped into very small chunks

¼ cucumber, deseeded and sliced

1/4 red onion, sliced

a few mint leaves, roughly chopped

fistful flat parsley leaves, roughly chopped

1 pitta bread

1 tsp sumac (optional)

In a food processor pulse the oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard and garlic together until creamy. Mix in the lemon zest, oregano and season with salt and pepper to taste. Toss together all the salad ingredients except for the pitta bread and sumac. Add the dressing and season to taste.  Let it sit for several hours, you can even make it the evening before. Once you are ready to eat, cut the pitta in half, toast it and tear it into small pieces. Add to the salad, let sit for a minute, sprinkle the sumac over it and enjoy.

Of course you can add 2 pittas, or if you want to stretch it over two days, add the drained and rinsed content of a tin of chickpeas. You just need a bit more dressing then. If you don’t have a toaster in the office, toast the bread at home, wrap in foil and tear it apart in the office before you eat.

The problem with food blogging. Ukrainian flatbread with Sorrel and Dill.

Variable, becoming west, 3 or 4, then backing southwest 5 or 6 later.

Smooth or slight.

Fair.

Good, occasionally moderate.

The problem with recipes is that any confident cook doesn’t follow them. The problem with food blogging is that you cant remember what you have changed. Since I blog, I use a scale. I never used a scale before (for cooking; for baking it was different). But even if you did weigh the ingredients when you started: much flour did you really use? If you make a dough and knead by hand, and sprinkle your hands or the surface with flour, can you really tell a cooking novice how much flour was incorporated? How would he know when a dough is right? Only if you made plenty of  dough, you know how a non-sticking-yet-smooth dough feels beneath your hands.
And there is another problem.  I might sound like a very old person who mutters: When I was young things were better, but I do believe this is true in regards to recipes. You had cookbooks and before they were published, the recipes were tried and tested. I know that because a friend of mine was an editor for cookbooks and a very confident cook, so she was in charge of the testing ”brigade”. On at least two occasions she asked me to test some recipes because she ran out of time. It was not about if I liked it or not, it was if the measurements are right and provide from the written words alone a guidance for a person who is not familiar with that dish. This does not seem to exist anymore. Add to that sloppy editing in newspapers and printing mistakes and 2gr of salt become 20gr. Even the 2gr might be too much because no one tested the original recipe.

I made a dough today. I cant really tell you how much flour I used, I reckon it`s about 93.6gr (only kidding). But then I am not alone. Today`s recipe is an adaptation of Olushka Hercules` wonderful book “Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine & beyond”

She promoted her book the first time last year in the Guardian with a recipe of “pampushki and green borsht”

I liked the idea and set out to make it. Halfway through I thought: And where is the oil? No oil. And then I read through the comments and saw that someone asked her why there is no oil and she said that she was so stressed making the video that she forgot about it. Fortunately there are very few mistakes in her book. Not more than in any other cookery books. Dont get me wrong, it is a wonderful book and will broaden your mind and introduce you to new exciting flavours. It will challenge your idea that the “Eastern Block” had no food beyond Soviet food allocations and that Eastern European food is stodgy. She writes beautifully and you can feel the love of cooking and the desire to evoke forgotten recipes of her ancestors. And if you know how to cook you wont weigh things like salt or sugar anyway. You taste. But sometimes I wish there would be still old fashioned editors who try out the recipes as they are about to be printed. And no, it is not the recipe which was featured recently in the Guardian and where she forgot again (or the editor) to mention the oil.  Its from her book, from a recipe which works. If it would not work, I would drown my sorrow on wine and keep quite tonight.

Ukrainian bread with sorrel, dill and cheese

Preheat oven to 200C.

Kefir dough:

60ml kefir or buttermilk

1 dash (a dash is less than a glug, kind of 3 to 4 drops) of distilled vinegar

1 dash of oil

1 pinch of sugar

1 pinch of salt

80g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 pinch of bicarbonate of soda

Add the kefir, oil, vinegar, sugar and salt to a large bowl and mix well with a fork. Sift the flour with the soda into the kefir mixture and mix to obtain a soft and quite wet dough. Heavily flour your work surface, tip out the dough and start kneading, incorporating more flour as needed. The dough should stop sticking to your hands, but it should also remain soft.

Flour the surface again really well. Roll out the dough into a 20cm disc. Let it rest while you deal with the filling.

For the filling

1 handful of fresh sorrel, finely chopped, or one teaspoon of tinned sorrel, which can be bought in Polish food shops under the name of Szczaw

1 spring onions, finely chopped

3 sprigs of dill, chopped (stalks and all)

80gr of crumbled feta or labneh

1 teaspoon of sunflower oil, plus 100ml for frying

moisten the surface of the pastry with about 1 tsp sunflower oil (come on, use your hands and don’t bother with a brush!) and then add the sorrel, dill, onion and feta on top (it is easier if you mix these ingredients before and crumble the feta or whisk the Labneh.)

Fold opposite sides of the pastry to make a parcel. Left, right, top, bottom. Make sure all of the edges are firmly pinched inside, flour the top lightly and gently flatten the parcel with your rolling pin or with your hand. Flip over, so the side with the most dough is at the bottom. Heat the remaining 100ml of sunflower oil in a pan until hot and gently lower in the flatbread, with the bottom side down. Cook for 2 minutes, and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. After about 5 minutes brush the top with the oil from the bottom. Dont worry if the filling is bursting out. If after 10 minutes it doesn’t look right, give it some more minutes . We are talking bread here, not a pancake. So if it doesn’t look like bread or smells like bread, it is not done. Serve with a tomato salad.

Additional info:

Sorrel is hardly available to buy but you can easily forage it. Just go for a walk and look out for a plant which looks like in the picture above. Hey, I did not even alter it in order to make sure you know what you are looking for. Try a leaf, if it tastes sour it is the right plant. If you are not convinced don’t worry. There is a similar looking plant with boring tasting leaves but it is not toxic. Just try. You will be surprised how many sorrel plants actually grow in your neighbourhood.

Going bananas. Indian Banana and Paneer Kofte

Northeast 5 or 6, decreasing 4 later.

Slight or moderate.

Occasional drizzle at first.

Good, occasionally poor at first.

"I'm Chiquita banana and I've come to say - Bananas have to ripen in a certain way - When they are fleck'd with brown and have a golden hue - Bananas taste the best and are best for you - You can put them in a salad - You can put them in a pie-aye - Any way you want to eat them - It's impossible to beat them - But, bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator - So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator."

Song by Patti Clayton 1944, the first Chiquita jingle, which you can listen to here.

But I always liked the German take of the song: “Yes! We Have No Bananas” from the hilarious movie Billy Wilder movie “One, two three” (if you don’t know it, watch it, it is full of political references and really funny)

We don’t tend to eat green bananas within a savoury dish in this country; but it is actually quite popular in many cultures. And I don’t mean plantains, I am talking about your humble unripe banana. The following dish can be adjusted to taste: make it quite mild and you can sneak bananas into your child, make it really spicy to go with beer, put it into your favourite curry sauce (I only made them today because I found a pouch of the Holy Cow Delhi Tikka Masala Sauce in my fridge which was 3 weeks past its sell-by-date and I wanted to use it up), or, and this is particular useful for picnics, just eat them as they are with maybe a Raita or Chutney dip.

The original recipe is from the wonderful Sailu, a “must book-mark” blog if you love Indian food.  She makes it pretty spicy (which I did not want today) and used Amchur which I did not have. But in order to introduce a bit of the complex sour note, I boiled one dried Iranian lime in the water. I personally don’t think that tamarind alone would work (if you have neither Amchur nor a dried lime), so maybe use lemon zest. Of course you can substitute the other spices too.

Green Bananas and Paneer kofte

2 green bananas

1 tsp turmeric powder

1 dried Iranian lime (optional)

80gr Paneer

2 spring onions

1tbsp chickpea flour (Besan or Gram)

½ tsp (each) of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and dried fenugreek leaves (Methi)

1 tbsp fresh Coriander leaves (optional)

Salt to taste

Oil - for deep frying koftas

Do not peel the skin of the bananas. Cut the ends off and cut each banana into two pieces. Boil them in ½ litre of water along with the turmeric and the dried lime for about 20 minutes on low to medium flame.  Remove from water and put onto a kitchen paper.  Once they are cool, skin them and grate them on your finest grater.

In the meantime heat the spices (no oil) in a pan until fragrant. Remove from heat and pound them in a pestle and mortar to fine powder.

Grate Paneer and the spring onions (white part only) on the same grater as the bananas, mix into bananas. Add spices, salt, finely chopped coriander leaves and gram flour.

Roll the mixture into small balls (about 8), use a bit more gram flour if necessary, but the above should be fine for medium sized bananas.

Heat oil in a pan and fry the koftas on a low temperature until nice and golden.

If you want to serve them with a sauce, make or reheat any Indian style sauce, and add the koftas for 5 minutes. Serve with rice.

Or just snack on them with some chutney; however you might want to put them for another 10 minutes in a preheated oven since they wont be cooked through yet. Not that it really matters since the bananas have already cooked, but depending on the amount of gram used, you might get a bit of a raw floury taste.

Oh, and if you happen to have an overripe banana, just pop it as it is in the freezer and come back in a few days for a lovely chocolate banana dessert recipe.

Verdict:

I must say that I am not a fan of ready- made sauces and purchased this only because it was on “flash sale”. But holy cow, that Holy Cow brand is good! If I would still eat chicken that would be my favourite ready- in- 12- minutes dish. Just fry some chicken breast and pour sauce over it and let cook for 10 minutes.

But it does not serve 2-3. It serves one single greedy gourmet.

And the koftas work like a dream with it! Maybe next time I add some cashews for a bit of “bite”