A Remedy Rather Than A Recipe!

We've started Christmas early in our house (doesn't everyone these days) because we will be setting off to Spain on the 27th for a couple of tranquil weeks.

As much as I love the lead up to Christmas, I can't wait to spend time in our little village of Jacarilla. In rural villages most Spaniards start their Christmas by attending Midnight Mass 'La Misa Del Gallo' (The Mass of the rooster) so called because a rooster is supposed to have crowed the night that Jesus was born.

Before Mass families will gather for a traditional dinner which is normally a lavish and joyful affair where the sumptuous meal and the high spirits carry on until Midnight when the ringing of Church bells call the families to Mass.

 After Mass they will walk through the village streets, carrying torches, playing guitars and beating tambourines and drums whilst singing carols and hymns.

                                                  Some of the villagers in Jacarilla

Families will stop at the village bars and cafés for a drink and there is a saying: 'Esta noche es noche-buena, y no es noche de dormir' which means 'Tonight is the good night and it is not meant for sleeping.'

There is a distinct lack of commercialism as Spaniards are more oriented towards joy and celebration with family and friends - a welcome change from the daily grind. This holiday is rather a calm celebration which includes walks, socialising, dropping into bars and generally relaxing and enjoying life.

On Christmas day families gather in the local park or plaza where the children play with their toys from Papa Noel and adults share a drink or two before eating another large family meal during the afternoon.

Although we won't be there for Christmas itself we will be able to enjoy new year and Epiphany which is celebrated on 6th January. Dia de los Reyes Magos is the most important day for children as they wake to find the Three Kings have left gifts for them (Santa will have only left a small gift on December 24th.) On the eve of Epiphany, children place their shoes, filled with straw, on the doorstep, and in the secret of the night, the Three Wise Men pass leaving gifts.

Epiphany is heralded by another social gathering in the village which includes parades where sweets and cakes are distributed to the children by adults dressed as the Kings.

Far from the mayhem of Christmas in the UK which sees us shopping late into Christmas eve and back in the shops on Boxing day fighting over TV sets, Christmas in rural Spain still has a religious connotation and has a magical feel.

Now, back to Christmas here, I've already accumulated a pile of Christmas recipe booklets from various newspaper supplements telling me how to cook the juiciest turkey etc etc...... so I shan't be bombarding you with the same old same old as I'm sure Nigella, The Hairy Bikers et al have given you enough recipes and tips already! Today I'm literally sharing a tip which has nothing to do with Christmas fayre but I feel is certainly worth mentioning. As you know, I have a fear of watery sauces, I hate sloppy, slushy bolognese or chilli con carne (I was recently subjected to a bowl of grey, watery gruel masquerading as chilli at a friends house.) By simply adding a handful of lentils you can transform any watery sauce into something thick and unctuous.

                               Always rinse lentils thoroughly under cold running water

                                                  Add to chosen sauce 20 minutes before serving

                                                                   A nice sticky sauce!

                                                                Oh I do hope so!

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx

It's Beginning To Look Alot Like Christmas (Excess)

Christmas, more than ever, has become an unholy celebration of consumption and greed. In the lead up to Christmas (which starts earlier and earlier each year) we buy too much food, of which we waste a significant amount (averagely 50 million bin bags of unwanted Christmas food reaches landfills.)

We don't spare a thought for the poorly paid workers who toil away making stuff we don't need but must have, or face the lamentable truth, as we engorge ourselves with turkey and mince pies, that all around the world,  every 5 seconds a child living in poverty dies.

Apparently, 13 million Britons can't make ends meet, yet by mid December all trace of birds stuffed with birds, ready-made stuffing and bread sauce, luxury mince pies and Christmas puddings, prepared sprouts, red cabbage, pigs in blankets etc, are gone from the shelves. This is modern Christmas and it comes ready-made!

The rituals of making bread sauce (for example) from stale bread to bulk out a Christmas dinner, as many poorer classes did, are long gone, as has making pastry for a few mince pies or homemade sausage rolls. These days, mum's gone to Iceland where foodstuffs are cheap and plentiful and by consequence, disposable.

An elderly friend of mine told me that she recently asked in her local supermarket where she could find suet? She was met with a blank stare. The manager was summoned and said to my friend he didn't know what suet was, my friend explained she wanted to make dumplings to which he replied: 'What are dumplings?'

Foodstuffs like dumplings were staples in working class households a couple of generations ago when people really couldn't 'make ends meet.' As a child I remember my mother making stews with cheap cuts of meat, neck of lamb or ox tail and bulking it out with vegetables and dumplings.

Even on 'professional' Masterchef the chefs are failing simple skills tests such as making a basic pancake, it seems they're only capable of dealing with exotic and expensive ingredients.

So, after our modern Christmas of overindulgence, rather than consigning your leftover turkey or ham to the bin, why not make a tasty stew and top it with delicious dumplings.

Dumplings

Recipe
125g self raising flour
60g suet

Sift the flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl
Add the suet and enough water to form a thick dough
With floured hands, roll spoonfuls of the dough into small balls
Add to your stew and cook for 20 minutes or until dumplings have swollen and are tender

'Everything in excess is opposed to nature.'
- Hippocrates.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

#wastenotwantnot

                                                   In an Italian restaurant making pizzas

When the first episode of Hugh's War On Waste was shown on TV #wastenotwantnot was trending in the UK within the first half hour. Such was the outrage of the British public regarding the unfair practices by supermarkets towards their growers and suppliers and the shocking waste perpetrated by their cosmetic standards that it caused a social media storm.

Needless to say, I was overjoyed by the reaction, however, I had to ask myself, were people so completely unaware of the situation? Given that we have become so accustomed to over supply and overindulgence, will our outrage be a storm in a teacup?

        Just one small section of a single supermarket of which the UK has thousands

Globally we waste enough food each year to build a mountain 2 miles across and 8,000 feet high, how can we justify this when there are still so many suffering from food poverty and starvation?

Unfortunately, as I don't have a dog (let alone chickens or pigs) the combobulation of leftovers and scraps found each week in my fridge are fed to my family. Last week I had accumulated some odds and ends, garlic and anchovy paste, some cheese sauce, a bit of leftover chicken stir fry, homemade tomato sauce, leftover tuna and half a mozzarella ball. They all desperately needed using up but I couldn't think of a way to combine them into one 'delicious' meal. Then the penny dropped! Pizza started off as a means for Italian housewives to use up leftovers such as bread dough, tomatoes, cheese and whatever else they had in their cupboard and my leftovers lent themselves very well to pizza (ok, maybe not the chicken stir fry, but it went on anyway!)

Hotch potch pizza

Recipe
For the dough
500g strong plain flour
2 teaspoons salt
10g yeast
325ml lukewarm water


Put the flour and salt in a large bowl
Dissolve yeast in warm water and gradually add to the flour, mixing well until you obtain a dough

Shape into a ball and cover with a cloth, rest for 5 minutes
Knead the dough for 10 minutes (very therapeutic) until smooth and elastic
Split dough in half and Shape each into a ball, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for 30 minutes
Sprinkle some flour onto a clean surface and carefully spread your dough with your fingers, or roll with a rolling pin into a circle about 35-40 cm in diameter, making the border slightly thicker

Preheat the oven to 250c/gas mark 10
Put your pizza bases on flat baking trays and now you can top them as you please, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle cheese (good way of using up older pieces of cheese) and chopped tomatoes on top, tuna and sweetcorn, leftover ham or chicken pieces......
Place in the hot oven for 7-10 minutes depending how crisp you like your pizza

Remove from the oven, drizzle with olive oil, season and eat immediately

There's really nothing easier than knocking up a bit of pizza dough, and topping the pizzas is also great fun if you've got children, and if you're using up leftovers it makes for a wonderfully economical meal!

'The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.'
- Calvin Trillin.

I'm pretty sure that'll be the epitaph on my tombstone!

Love Donna xxxxxxxxx

Don't Knock It Till You've Tried It!

Food focused television is a growing phenomenon with celebrity chefs becoming some of our most recognised superstars, we watch them on TV (we're fed roughly 500 hours of TV cookery a week) delivering mouth-watering dishes and think about how we can recreate them.

But how many of us actually do? I particularly love Nigella (have you noticed in the new series, simply Nigella, that she has a pink kitchen!) Nigella's backdrop is always fairy lit and alluring, her cookery style is very seductive and on face value her recipes seem achievable. For many of us, though, visual consumption has replaced actual cooking, I often buy recipe books that accompany TV shows such as Nigella's, however, in the cold light of day the recipes suddenly become less enticing.

Masterchef The Professionals is also currently on TV and interestingly many of the 'professional' chefs fail the first and most basic skills test. This week saw chefs failing to execute a buck rarebit (a glorified cheese on toast) which to be honest even I can do, but it does beg the question, if professional chefs are struggling, what hope have we got?

So, rather than waiting for Nigella's new book, I jotted this next recipe down as I watched her prepare it and literally struck while the iron was hot. Unfortunately, Nigella has yet again been lambasted on Twitter regarding this recipe, however, I thought it was quite ingenious and both I and Glenn thoroughly enjoyed it, as the saying goes: 'Don't knock it till you've tried it!'

Nigella's Caesar salad

Recipe
1 Romaine lettuce, cut diagonally
2-3 anchovy fillets
1 clove garlic
Half a lemon
Parmesan cheese
1 free range egg

Place lettuce in a baking tray

Cook anchovies in a small pan for a couple of minutes until slightly caramelised

Remove from heat and grate in the clove of garlic
Drizzle over lettuce

Place under a medium grill for 4-5 minutes until slightly charred
Remove and squeeze lemon over the lettuce, pop back under the grill for 2 minutes
Meanwhile, fry the egg
Place lettuce on a plate, sprinkle with grated Parmesan to taste and finish with the fried egg

What I can tell you about this dish is that the fishiness evaporates into a delicious salty hit whenever you caramelise anchovies (I use them in all sorts of recipes.) The saltiness of the anchovies and Parmesan compliments the sweetness of the cooked lettuce, and the soft oozy egg becomes a silky sauce, all delicious mopped up with crunchy toasted bread. As a light lunch or supper this is also an incredibly economical dish!

'Anyone who's a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: is it good?  Does it give pleasure.'
- Anthony Bourdain.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Use Your Loaf

A selection of greatly reduced food which I bought at my local Co-Op saving myself around £40.

I applaud Hugh's War On Waste (chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's campaign) and am avidly following his Facebook page. There are some great contributions, with people posting recipes which hi light how best to use up leftovers, something my readers will know, is very close to my heart.

After banging on this past couple of years about food waste, it's encouraging to see people embracing Hugh's campaign, and I think people are really starting to employ common sense and ethics.

Hugh has written a very clever hypothesis which asks us to imagine: you're leaving the supermarket after a weekly shop, trolley piled high with delicious food. Now picture yourself stopping by the stores wheelie bins, pulling out a few potatoes, a bag of salad, a couple of eggs, half a loaf of bread, a couple of bananas and half a packet of biscuits and throwing them straight into the bin. Sounds crazy, but essentially this is what we're doing with our food.

Of course, we don't bin it as soon as we've bought it, however, regardless of whether it still looks and smells good enough to eat - if its tipped over its use by date - we chuck it in the bin.

UK families are throwing away £700 of perfectly edible food every year with bread, potatoes, bagged salad, fresh fruit and milk being the most wasted items. Sadly people aren't utilising their freezers, bread freezes extremely well as does fish and meat (including bacon and ham) also butter, prepared vegetables, cheese and various fruits. With a bit of imagination we can begin to curb our lavish wasteful ways.

                       I store potatoes in paper bags in my garage where they keep very well

I rarely buy bagged salad, however, I often end up with tired odds and ends in my salad compartment and vegetable box. I recently had a delicious salad in Spain which I tried to replicate with some of my 'seen better days' ingredients and it worked incredibly well.

Walnut and cheese salad

Recipe
2 carrots
1 onion
1 lettuce
A bunch of spring onions
A large handful of sultanas
Blue cheese
Balsamic vinegar (I used vincotto, balsamic flavoured with velvety fig)
Honey
Chopped walnuts

Grate carrots, cabbage and onion into a bowl

Add chopped spring onions and lettuce leaves

Add some crumbled blue cheese

In a separate bowl combine balsamic vinegar and honey to taste

Add sultanas to salad

Combine all the ingredients and drizzle with dressing
Scatter walnuts on top and serve

This salad is a delicious combination of sweet and salty with mouthwatering textures, delicious served with crusty bread.

'Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.'
- Criss Jami

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Let's All Go Shoplifting At The Supermarkets!

                                 A photo taken in January at my local Waitrose supermarket

Back in November of last year I wrote a post: 'The great supermarket scandal.' I had taken issue with my local Waitrose, who didn't have a reduced section in their store and furthermore, weren't reducing items of food that had reached their sell-by date until very late in the day. Consequently, heaps of edible food was ending up in their bins on a daily basis. After my little chat, miraculously, a few weeks later a reduced section appeared and credit where it's due, I wrote a post: 'Food is not trash, it's life' where I praised Waitrose for embracing my concerns.

Alas, as suddenly as the reduced section appeared, it vanished, with nobody being able to give me an explanation as to why?

I have often felt that I am fighting like a one man army against the food corporations who have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply. However, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has decided to tackle these corporations and has declared a war on waste!

Having watched the second episode of Hugh's War On Waste, I am incandescent with rage! Morrison's had driven a family of farmers to breaking point in their demand for exacting cosmetic standards and participated in a pathetic little trial where they put some substandard squashy vegetables next to some gleaming perfect ones at the SAME PRICE. Surprise surprise, customers opted for the firmer vegetables, a Morrison's spokesman then patronisingly told Hugh that customers had 'voted with their feet.' Unfortunately, customers hadn't been told the story about Morrison's rejecting, for example, Tattersett's Farms parsnips to the tune of 20 tonnes for not meeting their cosmetic standards, nor the fact that this was standard practice which is crippling farmers across the UK.

During this televised interview, two of Morrison's bigwigs, you know the type, the ones in smart suits with smarmy smiles, the ones who destroy peoples livelihoods between sips of Perrier water from high in their ivory towers, the fat cats who never get their hands dirty but receive outrageous incomes and perks, well, two of them shamelessly made no apologies regarding their contribution to colossal food waste or the destruction of farmers livelihoods and made it very clear they look only to maximise their own and their shareholders wealth!

                        Shamefully all supermarkets are culpable regarding colossal food waste

Given that supermarkets can quite happily throw away tonnes of perfectly edible food on a daily basis and refuse to be accountable, I've come up with a game plan. Why don't we all start shoplifting rather than shopping? If the supermarkets can afford to lose so much of its produce without feeling the pinch, why not help ourselves? Better we feed ourselves with all this over supply of food than see it happlessly going to waste. I wonder what the men in suits would do if we the public started an en mass shoplifting revolution where we went in our droves and helped ourselves to food across the UK?

Hugh's war on waste is one we very desperately need to win, by whatever means necessary as far as I am concerned. We have to take responsibility as consumers to change the retailers behaviour towards both their suppliers and the contents of their rubbish bins!

'I find it very sad that by the time corporate science realises the value of nature, that it may be too late.'
- Steven Magee

'Mercilessness is not a bad trait to have in the corporate universe.'
- Soroosh Shahrivar

Love Donna xxxxxxx

Lime Wood Hotel.

                 The ravishing hotel Lime Wood, just east of Lyndhurst in the new forest

There's a running joke between Glenn and I which involves yawning and raised eyebrows on his behalf whenever I start to tell my anecdotal stories about my time at Fortnum and Mason. Admittedly, I'm rather like uncle Albert from Only Fools And Horses, who was famed for telling stories that began with the words 'During the war....,' which annoyed Del and Rodney.

When I started working at Fortnum and Mason I was a young girl earning very little money, however, that didn't stop me assuming the lifestyle. I spent nearly a months wages on a pure silk shirt from the ladies department and shortly after saved up for a Gucci handbag and a bottle of Jean Desprez Bal A Versailles parfum. A colleague and I would go to the Cavendish Hotel for vodkas and orange and canapés, I would puff my way through a packet of St Moritz menthol cigarettes, feeling very grown up and ladylike.

I suppose because I was pretty and young, I had my fair share of wealthy suitors, thus my social life was a whirlwind of dining at Claridge's and The Ivy and reveling to my hearts content at Tramp. I acquired a taste for champagne and escargot, the more garlic the better and was never phased by all the wealth and glamour, I took to it like a duck to water.

You may wonder why I'm reminiscing about those long gone days, well, I happened to spend an afternoon at the opulent Lime Wood Hotel here in Hampshire just a few days ago and I felt I had been transported back to my youth.

Lime Wood is set in 145 square miles of ancient heath and woodland where ponies, donkeys, pigs and deer roam freely. The building is a stately home that has been transformed into a stunning 5 star hotel, crossing the ground between old and new notably well. The staff, (like myself in my Fortnum days,) whilst young, are part of the fabric, well-mannered, well-spoken and totally at ease with their surroundings.

We were shown to the centre courtyard and sat amongst other customers who exuded wealth and class.

           The courtyard boasts a retractable roof which is opened up during the summer

Not since I left London have I found anywhere that compares with the luxury or glamour of its restaurants and hotels. As a restaurant reviewer, I have spent time in some wonderful eateries, but, at the risk of sounding like a snob, I am not ashamed to admit that rubbing shoulders with the extremely wealthy has a completely different feel. Nowadays, eating out is not uncommon, but enter even some of the most expensive restaurants and you will see bad etiquette, mess on the tables and floors, scruffily dressed people glued to their mobile phones, children running amok, rudeness to waiting staff.......

Lime Wood thankfully doesn't attract that sort of clientele and I can't tell you how relaxing and civilised it felt to be sat in its wonderful environment. We enjoyed a delectable afternoon tea, served by the most accommodating staff.

                                                My friend Gill waiting patiently to tuck in!

Regular readers will know of my love for Angela Hartnett (her family hail from Bardi as do mine,) well, Lime Wood is Angela's home away from London where she works alongside chef Luke Holder. Something of Angela's personality is stamped on to Lime Wood, the staff (whilst I have said are well-mannered and well-spoken) aren't stiff and starchy, in fact they all happily gathered for a group photograph and I sensed the camaraderie and fun amongst them which has to be attributed to their bosses.

                                              A perfect example of Angela's sense of fun

It's no small wonder that celebrities frequent Lime Wood, and given they could probably have picked anywhere in the world, Jamie Cullum and Sophie Dahl chose to tie the knot at Lime Wood in 2010.

The only drawback to the day was having to leave. I could have happily stayed in one of the hotels beautiful rooms and dined on one of Angela's Italian influenced forest dinners. Let's hope that when Glenn reads this post he'll know what to treat me to for Christmas!

'Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.'
- Coco Chanel

Love Donna xxxxxxxx