Early Modern Notes

What I’ve been reading online lately…

Charles Tilly, May 20, 1929 – April 29, 2008
  personal memories of Charles Tilly

Old Bailey opens its unseen files
  nice feature on the project in The Observer

Observer Food Monthly April 2008
  a special anniversary edtion: loadsa Nigel Slater recipes

the moment cat lost…
  uh-oh

Hitler diaries scandal: ‘We’d printed the scoop of the century, then it turned to dust’
  on the 25th anniversary of the Hitler Diaries, the inside story

The Pirate Problem
  dan cohen on historians' reactions to digital history

After snow last weekend and pissing rain yesterday, today is a glorious spring day, perfect for a trip to the farmers’ market. Where they have the best purple sprouting broccoli I’ve seen this year. I love this stuff; it’s far, far superior to the more common green version.

Recipe ideas:

P.S.B. with rice noodles
Ideas for tender spring veg
Linguine with p.s.b., sesame and chilli

Mind you, some of these recipes tell you to cook it in boiling water. I think that’s nonsense. Steaming or stir-frying is all it needs.

Thanks to Tony, I now know that 2008 is the International Year of the Potato.

How splendid.

(PS: Happy New Year, everyone!)

Is cooked food dangerous?

Edited to note: so, these yummy baked sweet potato wedges with their oh so crunchily charred edges are going to kill me, then. Damn. *eats another one*

Well, a week or two ago I said I was thinking about baking my own bread. And look!!

No idea what it tastes like yet (I’m worried I should have given it another five minutes in the oven), but it smells lurrvely. I’ll update tomorrow when I do the ceremonial cutting.

Update: It was good. Yay!

So I shall be doing it again. Maybe today, even, as I could do with some nice bread rolls for packed lunches… (I like the look of this potato and olive oil flatbread too.) This could get addictive.

Serendipitously, the Graun ran a baking special this weekend, which was very helpful.

(The advice it didn’t include: Before your dough gets kinda to the point of no return (on a Sunday evening…), check that your oven lighter still has some fuel. I knew it was running on fumes, but had I bothered to do anything about it?)

The perfect lamb and lentil stew for Sunday dinner in winter.

1. About midday*: get out of bed. Yes, I know it’s cosy in there. It will be worth it.

2. Take your stewing lamb and chop into rough cubes if it hasn’t been done already. Heat oil in pan. Brown the lamb, turn down slightly and add sliced onion. Add spices to suit tastes: coriander, cumin, cinnamon, paprika and chilli/cayenne does it for me. Stir so the meat gets coated and the spices nicely toasted. Transfer them to the waiting slow cooker pot (don’t forget to turn the thing on). Now deglaze the pan with red wine/water and add that to the pot as well, so you don’t lose any of the flavours. Then top up the pot with some tinned tomato juice (or passata) and stock. Optional extra: some chopped dried apricots. Adds some extra fruitiness. Put the lid on the cooker and leave it. (You may wish to put the cooker on high for the first half hour or so to get it started, but after that it should be on low.)

Now you have about five hours to kill: you may choose to go back to bed, get some work done, go out for a walk, etc.

3. So, when you come back to it, add some handfuls of lentils. At this point you can also add some chunkily chopped carrots or other root vegetables that you fancy. Leave for at least another three hours. Serve with your favoured form of starchy accompaniment (with these flavours I prefer rice or cous cous, with some bread if needed for mopping up). You should be able to eat it with a spoon, pretty much.

An alternative would be beans rather than, or as well as, lentils.

This seems to me a remarkably simple route to pleasure. There’s about 20 minutes of activity, and the rest of the time is just letting it get on with it. No elaborate measuring, and none of the timings are critical. It doesn’t even make much of a dent on your wallet; slow cooking and cheap cuts of meat go hand in hand.

—

* or about 8 to 9 hours before you plan to eat.

Yuk. It’s cold and horrid and dark. Time to start gathering up some of those recipes I turn to during the winter to cheer me up.

Roast pumpkin soup. (Next time though, I think I might add some tomato puree or extra tomatoes.) Also, I now know what to do with the cleaned-up pumpkin seeds: toast for ten minutes or so in a frying pan with oil, add a mix of spices (chilli powder/cumin/paprika) for a few more minutes and then add some fresh-squeezed lime juice, let all the liquid evaporate off, sprinkle a bit of salt, and serve up as a side dish to nibble happily.

Tuna and fennel spaghetti. The toasted breadcrumbs are essential, although the capers and fresh herbs aren’t. Leftovers also make a nice packed lunch the next day (especially if you have access to a microwave at work).

Haloumi and sweet potato casserole. Which works pretty well even if you don’t have sweet potatoes around. Ditto on the packed lunch leftovers, if you have the self-control to have any leftovers. Baked sweet potato is also simple, utterly delectable, and makes a nice change from the usual version.

Sweet potato risotto. This was my absolute favourite form of risotto last winter. (I don’t usually oven-roast it, mind you, as I have an aversion to turning on the oven to cook just one thing - I parboil/steam in microwave and then finish off in a frying pan for some crispy edges before adding to the risotto.) Risotto of any variety is yet another thing that’s worth making extra for lunch the following day.

Lamb and lentil stew. Tomorrow I’ll be doing something with similar flavourings, but in the slow cooker. I love having the house slowly filling with cooking food aromas for several hours. My mouth is expectantly watering already.

Then there are the things that are essential but don’t need recipes, like mashed potato (in all its varieties: with parsnip; cheese; mustard; bubble and squeak…). And sausages. Sausages. Sausages. Mmmmm. Sausages…

I am contemplating making my own bread this winter (I’m fed up with the available local choices - I found a really good bakery, but they went bust). I know how to do it, thanks to good friends who had the patience to teach me the business of dough-making, and were prepared to gamble on the results being edible (now that’s real friendship). The big question is, can I be arsed?

Do you have any special favourites for seeing off the winter blues?

Bunnies = Delicious Dinner, says Hugh. Indeed.

I, on the other hand, will be having Bambi stew for dinner tonight.

I like cookery books. A lot. Remember these (from 2004)?

The collection continues to grow. My favourite this year (it was a Christmas present) is Elizabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cookery. I’ve just ordered 1080 Recipes (mmm, Spanish food).

But for the habitually disorganised, faced with a random assortment of potential ingredients and limited time to make something tasty, the internet takes some beating. I tend not to use particular recipe databases anymore: I simply google “recipe [list more or less plausible ingredients]” and let it do its serendipitous thing a few times until something I fancy turns up. It works remarkably well, much of the time.

Now, if only Google could do the washing up as well…

Yesterday I went along to Sheffield Farmers’ Market, which seemed surprisingly small considering that it’s August Bank Holiday weekend and the weather was lovely. A little disappointing.

It wasn’t just the size. I don’t know whether this is just Sheffield or whether there’s a more general trend in farmers’ markets, away from being places packed with lots of great quality and relatively cheap raw ingredients to cook for yourself.

There were plenty of stalls selling pies and pasties, tubs of interesting ready-cooked dishes, cakes (some very good cakes!), bread, preserves and sauces. But fresh fruit and veg, meat, cheeses, what I’d think of as the essential ingredients of a farmers’ market - these all seemed a bit thin on the ground. I’m not saying the former type of stall shouldn’t be there - it was all good, interesting, local produce (and I’m looking forward to trying out my tub of curry goat) - but the balance between the two types of stall seemed different from what I’ve been used to in the past.

Are farmers’ markets starting to turn into high-class fast-food markets?

Remember these babies?

Some of my fondest memories of my summer research trip to Kew three years ago revolve around the fresh fruit ‘n’ veg stall at Richmond Farmers’ Market, which was run by this barmy and slightly despotic European chap (never did work out where from. I’m useless at accents).

Also barmy and possibly despotic, but in the nicest possible minor-public-school English-treasure way, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall just evoked all sorts of memories of that summer and its fruits with this column devoted to tomatoes.

Mmmmmmm….

* This is a damn fine way to cook spare ribs. You can of course substitute your own sweet/sour barbecue style sauce.

* I’ve been addicted to this Rwandan coffee for some time (possibly since it first arrived in the UK in 2003).

* Fave stroppy birds in bands of the moment: The Gossip and The Long Blondes. From Arkansas to Sheffield without a break: iTunes playlists rock.

* It’s spelt schadenfreude, folks. Hee hee hee.

One of my favourite blogs for the last few months has been separated by a common language. I don’t know what it is about mutual incomprehension between Yank and Brit, but it generates infinite amusement (on this side of the Atlantic, at least). So I was, as you can imagine, much entertained to discover the surprisingly prolific UK/US Translations thread in the Dr Who Forums at the rather lovely, though very American, Television Without Pity.

[I want to point out that a) baked beans on toast are yummy and b) Marmite is DISGUSTING. (You can get Marmite-flavoured baked beans. I think this is some sort of sacrilege. When the revolution comes…)]

Tonight I grilled some haloumi and it started to melt.

This is not supposed to happen. I am puzzled.

(I scraped it off the grill pan and ate it anyway. It still tasted good, even if it wasn’t quite what I intended. Salty, mmm…)

This is a really spaced out M&S Easter bunny.

Aargh! The eyes are following me around the room! Who wants to eat something that looks like it just spent the entire weekend on speed?!

(But if you really want one, you’ll find him in your nearest M&S Food Hall for just £4.99. His name’s Max. Give him a good home, he obviously needs one.)

So today in the foodie shop I convinced myself that I’d finished up my last jar of anchovy fillets in olive oil and I needed to buy some more.

This was partially true. I did finish up a jar a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I forgot the episode inbetween then and now where I already bought a replacement jar.

Good job they’ll keep. But still, if anyone has any favourite recipes for the little buggers…

I stumbled upon Binnur’s Turkish Cookbook earlier today (I was looking for a red cabbage salad recipe). There are good things here.

I am doing leek, parsnip and potato soup of some kind tonight. Anyone got any favourite flavour combinations for that? (I mean, I’m kinda spoilt for choice here: lemon, ginger, apple, curried…)

News of the 1743 recipe book of Mary Swanwick, currently in Derbyshire County Record Office. They have plans to publish it next year.

There are reasons why I love living in Aberystwyth and others hate it. Take the Starbucks store locator (hat-tip: The Daily Grind), for example.

According to this, not only are there no Starbucks within 5 miles of Aber, there aren’t any within 50 miles either. We do not compute in the Starbucks universe.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t find a good coffee in town, by the way. Far from it.

[No, not more on the difference between American and British eating habits.]

Pop culture reference: every year, they’ve run those ads for the disgusting-ness that is the Cadbury’s Creme Egg, on that theme that people eat theirs in different ways (eg, bite off the top and suck out the middle, or whatever). Ugh.

But anyway, I have had a particular eating pattern for as long as I can remember: wherever I might start, I have to make sure that the very last mouthful from the plate is a Best Bit (eg, sausage rather than carrots). Which can be Very Hard if there are too many kinds of Best Bit to fit on a fork together.

And so, I’ve realised, the same pattern applies with my Bloglines feeds. You can tell my current favourite blogs because they’re the ones I have to make sure I finish up with. And this can be Very Hard if there are several current favourites all with recent updates.

So, is this normal behaviour or am I (again) slightly weird? How do you consume your RSS feeds? Faves first, last, middle?