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Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Carol Service Tipples: Spiced Cranapple

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 14 December, 2009| 6 Comments »

This Thursday evening we are hosting the staff and governors of our church school here at the Vicarage for ‘mulled wine and mince pies’. That’s what our invite said, anyway. But as many of the staff have to drive home, we will also be serving a wonderful non-alcoholic alternative, given to me by another Vicar’s-wife-in-training, when the Vicar was at theological college. Her original name for it was spiced cider, but that is not very helpful, as it really is non-alcoholic, so I’ve renamed it Spiced Cranapple. It is mulled winey in flavour and not too sweet, as some non-alcoholic punches can be. Serve it at your carol service or at the Vicarage and enjoy!

Enjoy the warmth

Ingredients
1l cranberry juice
1l apple juice
250ml (1 cup) orange juice
5 cloves
3-4 cinnamon sticks
2 tbspns sugar
1 orange, halved and sliced into rounds

Combine all the ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes to allow spices to infuse. Can also bring to boil and transfer straight to thermos pots and leave to infuse that way for church events (and keep leftovers warm for Vicarage use the rest of the week…mmmmm).

Anyway. Best get on with the pastry now. Not sure how many mince pies I’ll need for Thursday but I definitely need to start making them today.

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Shallow pros and cons of the inner city

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , on 25 November, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I love food. You may not have noticed, but cooking is one of my passions. We have a friend who says that everyone should have a hobby that they could practice wherever they lived and whatever their age. His is fishing. The Vicar’s is photography (and golf I guess) and mine is completely definitely and utterly cooking (and eating).

Anyway, living in our multicultural neighbourhood has pros and cons for the practise of my hobby. The many positives include:

  • A vast selection of spices available in bulk at the local corner shop
  • A fab butcher (for chicken, lamb, mutton and fish only) who will chop my meat as I want it for no extra cost
  • Cheap cheap cheap onions (in 10kg bags), garlic, fresh ginger and coriander. And milk.
  • Exotic fruit and veg available too (big boxes of mangos are a fave)
  • Cookery advice from local friends of all cultures

Mine didn't look as fancy as this

On the minus side, yesterday I was in search of couscous. I’d bought my ‘chopped for curry’ chicken on the bone and was looking forward to cooking a Moroccan tagine. But not enough couscous was available in the Vicarage pantry and I didn’t want to trek into town. It’s not like couscous is a matter of life or death or anything. It’s just right with tagine.

So I tried our local Indian supermarket. Because it’s a multicultural area I sort of expect all sorts of interesting foodstuffs to be available easily. But there was no couscous. Not much call for it in our neck of the woods. We have Punjabis, Pakistanis, Kenyans, Jamaicans, Somalis and Polish folk plus many others. But not enough North Africans for the right selection at the shops yet. And they don’t stock parsley either, so if I’m making tabouleh or kedgeree I have to think ahead a bit. Oh the trials.

Maybe it’s not multicultural enough here.

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Sunday Lunch – Menu considerations

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , on 16 November, 2009| 4 Comments »

After the guest list, next up for consideration for the Vicarage Sunday lunch is the menu. Our Sunday lunches have a few criteria to meet:

  • Cheap, otherwise the Vicar’s stipend would be sorely stretched. This means fancy organic meat and any red meat not on special offer is usually off the menu.
  • Acceptable for consumption by all the guests. This is why I tend to stick to pretty traditional roasts. We don’t live in an area where we can cook our beef raw or serve the lamb with a fancy salsa verde. And since I cooked roast pork for some dear friends in our last parish and only discovered on serving that one of them couldn’t abide it, I ALWAYS check whether there is anything that people won’t consume. I’ve been surprised by people’s dietary restrictions.
  • Possible to cook on the oven timer, or otherwise be worked around our absence at church between about 10.00am and 12.30pm. And we want to eat by 2.30pm at the latest, otherwise the Vicar has indigestion at the Evening Service and the children have consumed so many snacks that they don’t eat the lovely meal I’ve just slaved over.
  • I like if possible to make desserts the day before, or have a dessert that’s really speedy to make on a Sunday. There’s enough stress in the Vicarage on a Sunday morning without having to whip cream.
  • A few good leftovers always makes a good meal perfect.

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Vicar’s wife in frugal cooking shock

Posted in Food, Snacks, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 4 November, 2009| 6 Comments »

Or not. A shock that is. I was busy peeling potatoes for the church lunch club yesterday. As well as the keen band of ladies who run the club, the Vicar’s Apprentice Happy was also wielding a peeler.

Once we’d finished peeling the 12kg or so of spuds, I offered to take the peelings home to put on the compost heap. And I was recalling the cook in Nanny McPhee (a favourite movie in the Vicarage – I can’t think why) who rustles up a gruel that includes various vegetable peelings. ‘Maybe I should be making Vicarage gruel’ I pondered.

Then Happy (who has a background in the hospitality industry) mentioned that he’d made parsnip crisps from parsnip peelings whilst working in a posh hotel once. ‘Why not try potato peeling crisps?’ was the suggestion.

So home we went with our bagful of peelings. I pulled out the longer and thinner ones and popped them on a baking sheet (actually four baking sheets), drizzled them with some olive oil, heated my fan oven to 200C and popped them in on a five minute timer.

That wasn’t long enough, but after about fifteen minutes they came out great. Some of them were still a little uncrispy and I switched the oven off and left them in to dry out.

Once out, I sprinkled on a little fancy French sea salt and the Vicar, Happy, Polly and I demolished them extremely quickly. Next time I’m trying this technique with parsnip and carrot peelings too. And I might use an olive oil sprayer to make sure the oil is rather better distributed.

Happy’s Peeling Chips
Long veggie peelings (potato/parsnip/beetroot/carrot)
Olive oil
Sea salt

Preheat oven to 200-220C (Gas 6). Lay peelings in single layer on non-stick baking sheet. Drizzle or spray with olive oil. Cook for 10-20mins until brown and crispy. If any peelings are still a little uncooked at the end, switch the oven off and leave to dry out. Remove to bowl and sprinkle with sea salt to taste.

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Vicar’s wife job description – Part 7 – Busy Evenings

Posted in Church, Food, vicar, Vicar's wife job description, tagged , , , , , , on 21 May, 2009| 5 Comments »

One evening this week things got a bit crazier than usual in our house. All was calm at tea time and our next few hours ahead looked like being fairly gentle. I had to take the Queen to her swimming lesson, and the Vicar had offered to help a homeless youngster move into some new accommodation, which was going to take him about an hour. Polly’s baby was beginning to get into a sleeping routine.

When I came back from swimming things were looking more frantic. Polly greeted me on the doorstep rolling her eyes. ‘Just ask the Vicar’ she said.

Keep a stash handy for callers in need

The Vicar now has a stash like this in his study (minus the radishes)

Whilst the homeless teenager was waiting downstairs, the Vicar had been putting the boys to bed. And then another visitor had appeared, asking for money for food. We don’t give money, but we are happy to provide food. The Vicar’s head was spinning so rather than grabbing a few bits from the cupboard, he agreed to take our newest visitor to Sainsbury’s after his homeless teenager rehousing run.

He didn’t get back till after 10pm. But he’d stocked up with supplies to keep in a box in his study. Which came in handy the following evening when SainsburyRunMan returned with another friend in need.

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to half term next week.

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Anniversary lunch recipe

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , on 30 April, 2009| 2 Comments »

Yesterday the Vicar and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

I’ve got a bit hopeless at anniversaries these days, but spotted some English asparagus going cheap at Sainsbury’s that morning. So I cooked two big bundles of it. We added shaved parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, drizzles of lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil and some Sainsbury’s Basics salami, which is very thinly sliced.

It was delicious, and at a perfect temperature after the Vicar took it into the living room first to get better light for his photograph. We ate it with bread on the side to mop up the oil and lemon.

Impressive, eh?

Looks professional, eh?

PS The Joker was messing around with this post before I put it up and tried to re-type the title. He called it “Annaversy lunch”. Ahhh.

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The hazards of masala chai

Posted in Abroad, Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 14 February, 2009| 2 Comments »

I love the strong, sweet and spiced Indian drink known as masala chai – spiced tea. Usually I go round to my friend Starstudent’s. She makes great masala chai. I normally visit her and have two mugfuls of the delicious drink. I always visit in the morning.

Delicious but not for insomniacs

Delicious but not for insomniacs

You make masala chai by boiling your water in a pan with the teabags and some spices – cardamom, cinnamon and others according to your family tradition eg fennel, ginger, cloves. You boil it for a good while and then add a good helping of milk, sugar to taste and boil for a little longer. Then you strain and serve.

When we visited our friends the Kanns last night I drank two mugfuls, just as usual. Very tasty. But also very high in caffeine (because the teabags are so well boiled I guess).

So I was watching the ceiling at 2.30am. Grrr.

What was really annoying was that I’d done this before. When we lived in Singapore, the church we attended was a Tamil congregation and they served masala chai after the evening service. I had to limit myself to a single cup and couldn’t drink the coffee at all, or I couldn’t sleep. Wish I’d remembered that before I tanked myself up on the caffeine last night.

I wonder how it tastes made with de-caff teabags?

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Cakes and Culture

Posted in Food, Ghana, tagged , , , , , on 4 February, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Our newish ministry trainee, Gentle, had a friend from his home country of Ghana to stay over Christmas. Gentle and his friend very kindly babysat for the Curate and I whilst we went out to see the Queen performing in Snow White (she was dancing, no speaking part this year as she’s only a lowly Year 3).

I had made a cake that day and said that Gentle and his friend should help themselves and provided them with cake, plates and a knife. It was a double layer chocolate Victoria sponge with butter icing sandwich filling and topping. Yummy.

When we returned I realised that this must be a new type of cake for them. This is how they left it:

The Victoria sandwich - an unfamiliar foodstuff

The Victoria sandwich - an unfamiliar foodstuff

Cultural differences can be surprising.

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A Strange Thing

Posted in Family, Food, Kids, tagged , , , , , on 27 January, 2009| 2 Comments »

The Joker started crying at tea tonight because I gave some of his extra broccoli to his brother.

Some yummy broccoli

My children are unusual (the Curate says I can’t call them ‘strange’).

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How to cope with a looming kitchen inspection

Posted in Food, Fun, State, tagged , , on 25 September, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Mrs Discoman sent me this Youtube clip, which made me smile this morning. It also lessened the stress caused by the prospect of having my kitchen checked out by someone who knows about catering and hygiene.

I particularly liked the line “He loves me when I waste my time by writing silly songs”. But sadly no line with “He loves me when my kitchen is filthy”.

PS The kitchen inspection is not another nanny state extension announced in Gordon Brown’s Labour conference speech along with nursery places for two year olds. It’s because I’ve just started baking for a cafe and they need to check that I won’t poison the public.

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