Tag: food

  • Lemon Salt

    Lemon Salt

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    Last one for today, I think.

    180ml jar.

    Maldon sea salt – enough to almost fill jar.

    Zest of two lemons. Peeled with a zester. Or grated, I guess.

    Put salt and lemon zest onto tray lined with greaseproof paper.

    Rub the zest into the salt with your fingertips, lightly. Just enough to release the oils and mix well.

    Put into oven at about 75 degrees C.

    Check after 15 minutes to see if the zest has dehydrated. Mine took about 30 minutes.

    Rub through salt and zest with your fingers to break up any lumps. Try to keep the flakes of salt reasonably intact.

    Pour into sterilised jar.

    Use on grilled vegetables.

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  • Salt Preserved Lemons

    Salt Preserved Lemons

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    So, lemons were on offer at Tesco.

    This is a large 1L jar.

    I stuck two tablespoons of salt in the bottom of the jar.

    Then I cut up a load of lemons into quarters – take the little nasty end bits off where they were connected to the tree.

    Toss them in salt.

    Stick them into the jar. Add more salt between each layer.

    Press them down. Add more lemons and salt.

    Add some peppercorns. Usually I add a bay leaf too, but I didn’t have any.

    Top up to the height of the lemons with lemon juice from a bottle or other lemons.

    Put somewhere cool. Turn over a couple of times every few days to make sure the salt and juice makes its way around all the lemon bits.

    In a month, there will be preserved lemons.

    You use them by cutting away the flesh and then rinsing under cold water.

    Omnomnomnomnom.

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  • Mint Syrup & Tea

    To me, having a vegetable garden and eating fresh produce is only part of the equation. The real joy comes in the winter when you can head down to the cellar, pick up a bottle or jar, and then cook something wonderful that tastes fresh – as if you picked it that day.

    I love preserving as much as I love growing things, so it’s only natural that two weeks ago I bulk ordered a load of jars and bottles so that I can save a good portion of the harvest for the winter. I’ve got plans for herb syrups, herb teas, herb alcohols, tomato pasta sauce, herb jellies, gherkins and all manner of frozen vegetables and herbs.

    A few weeks ago I started by cutting back the mint plant and hanging it up to dry. It was an experiment really – was it better to freeze mint or dry it for tea? When I freeze herbs I stick them in an ice cube tray and then I can just pop one into the filter of my tea pot and pour hot water over it. These dried herbs I did by hanging them upside down in mesh bags in our exercise room upstairs.

    It worked! The mint is beautiful – and you can keep the leaves as whole as possible. Not like those horrid tea bags (even the expensive ones) that just have dusty old bits of mint plant that have probably been in storage for a few years.

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    CM-150531-6828webAnd then yesterday I noticed that the mint plant had started to get a bit enthusiastic again, so it cut it all down and made the Mint Syrup from Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No.2.

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    For future reference I’m leaving these pictures here. This is the mint plant before and after I’d harvested just about enough to make one 500ml bottle of syrup:

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  • New York: Day 1 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    New York: Day 1 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Painted in Waterlogue

    Today was Day 1 in New York. Well, actually yesterday was technically Day 1, but that mostly involved flying from Heathrow to Brussles to New York. It was all relatively uneventful – except for the ridiculous high winds that caused rather a lot of turbulence for well over 50% of the flight. And the slippy landing at Brussles on an unprepared landing strip. And waiting over an hour for the car plane wash to remove the snow from the long-haul plane. And the almost 90 minute wait in customs in New York (so long, in fact, that our luggage was removed from the belt and dumped unceremoniously into the middle of the floor). And the subway line that wasn’t running on the weekends – which they didn’t tell you when you got the airport transfer train out to that particular subway – meaning we had to take a replacement shuttle bus at breakneck through Queens which was quite frankly terrifying.

    However the hotel was an oasis of calm. The room is small. Tiny in fact. But we have the most wonderful rainforest shower and the bed is seriously comfortable. There’s a burger joint downstairs which appeared to do incredible vegetarian burgers, so Adam went downstairs to do the hunter-gatherer thing. Except it was closed for refurbishment so he headed down to the next block where he found a pizza place.

    Holy Fuck. I’m telling you, Abitino’s Pizza is amazing. It tasted of everything New York should taste like as far as I’m concerned. We had thick Italian-American style pizza dough encasing various combinations of ricotta, mozzarella, aubergine and spinach. And the tomato sauce! The tomato sauce was amazing. I’m going to have to start experimenting with making my own tomato sauce this summer – better plant some tomatoes in the garden.

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    And then we pretty much just went to sleep because we were completely carbed out and we’d been up for about 24 hours or so. Living the high life, etc.


    Midnight local time… woke up. Went back to sleep.

    4am local time… woke up. Ate remaining pizza. Went back to sleep.

    Got up… 6am.

    Decided to go to the Met.

    We walked 14km in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Yes, you read that right. 14km INSIDE the Met (and 6km there and back to the hotel).

    We saw:
    The American Wing
    Arms and Armour
    Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas
    Modern and Contemporary Art
    Medieval Art
    Ancient Near Eastern Art
    Art of the Arab Lands
    Greek and Roman Art
    Asian Art
    19th and Early 20th Century European Art
    Photographs
    Musical Instruments.
    Some Special Exhibitions

    We might have seen about half of the place… back again later in the week. Check out the map here, with marks on to show you the bits that we managed to see.

    More thoughts on the Met later.

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    Then we came back to the hotel. And died. And managed to eat some chips and dips before wandering to the local grocery store, drinking tea and watching trash TV. It’s a TV show where they bid on abandoned storage units and then sell the stuff they get. It’s very odd. But really rather good.

    Over and out.

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