Things ain't cooking in my kitchen
This evening (or, rather last night as you read this, because I wrote it yesterday. At least, I'm writing it today, but won't post it til tomorrow, because the interweb in our house is busted) I had braised red cabbage for tea. With others things, of course (mashed potato and gammon, if you're interested). Braised red cabbage is so great that I don't understand why people don't eat it all the time.
I've never actually cooked it before and had very little idea how to go about it. I'd had a vague look online from work, but written nothing down so when I reached home I was thrown back on our shelf of recipe books (see interweb, busted). My first choice for sensible advice is always my trust 1960s Marguerite Patten cookery guide. Although Marguerite Patten's advice was very ahead of its time (in her post-war books she went round suggesting that people boiled their vegetables for a very short time or even ate them raw, for heaven's sake), parts of the book do show their datedness. Everywhere there is the unwritten assumption that you (the wife) are reading this book in order to cook an evening meal for your husband. "Of course", say the instructions for shepherd's pie, "you can pipe the potato if you wish". And you, Mrs Patten, can sod right off.
However, it does contain the sort of basic instructions that are missing from the trendy, glossy books of the day. Looking for guidance on butter icing a while ago, I found not only the butter/sugar proportions but a small chart of how much butter to use to fill, ice, etc cakes of various dimensions. Braised red cabbage sounded right up Mrs Patten's alley, but she failed me. There was a scary reference to braising vegetables "in a brown sauce" but I gave that a wide berth.
I started the trawl along the shelf; Delia and Jamie both let me down. The answer was eventually located in a very 70s-looking Gary Rhodes Around Britain (which was actually published in 1994. I have insufficient grasp of typography to explain why I thought it looked so 70s. It just did.)
All the recipes I'd found online earlier had included apples. Apples ? I said. Red cabbage does not contain apples in my world. However, Mr Rhodes was quite insistent. He wanted two apples for half a red cabbage, and I put only one in - not out of some veiled sense of sedition, but actually because I misread the instructions. Not wanting to steal all my housemate's onions, I only put one of them in, too. And we didn't have any red wine vinegar, so it had to be cider vinegar. So when I say I followed the recipe... well, y'know. It gave me a starting point.
Our house now smells as if someone's had a mad pickling fest, and the chopping board has gone a funny colour. Incidentally, the people who were as distressed as I was earlier in the week to hear that steaming red cabbage makes the water go blue will be as delighted as I was that the braising process does make everything go a crowd-pleasing dark red.
The result, however, was fantastic. I ate my cabbage, mash and gammon in the kitchen, drank some of the red wine which hadn't gone in the cabbage, and read PG Wodehouse. And all was well with the world. Everyone should dash out and buy a red cabbage while they're in season.
Actually, all wasn't quite well with the world. Having had no time to go to the butcher's, I bought my gammon from Tesco. I actually wanted a bacon joint, of the type I grew up calling "a boily bacon"; Tesco, however, seemed to have stopped selling anything so low-class. Along with bacon chops, the bastards. I figured I'd settle for an unsmoked gammon joint - I didn't look at the price as I picked it up; they're usually around four or five quid.
My shopping, at the checkout, was surprisingly pricey. Checking the receipt, I found my gammon had been £11.99. I queried it and was told "that's what it comes up as". Because I am a cynic and do not trust the computer, I went back to the shelf to look at the unit price... and lo and behold, it was correct.
Without realising there was a choice, I'd picked up an organic joint. Inorganic gammon: £5.35 a kilo. The organic kind: £15.99 a kilo. Youch. I'm not used to organic meat being three times the price. I buy meat very rarely in the supermarket (preferring butchers and farmers' markets), so am not familiar with the price differences. Is this normal ?
I've never actually cooked it before and had very little idea how to go about it. I'd had a vague look online from work, but written nothing down so when I reached home I was thrown back on our shelf of recipe books (see interweb, busted). My first choice for sensible advice is always my trust 1960s Marguerite Patten cookery guide. Although Marguerite Patten's advice was very ahead of its time (in her post-war books she went round suggesting that people boiled their vegetables for a very short time or even ate them raw, for heaven's sake), parts of the book do show their datedness. Everywhere there is the unwritten assumption that you (the wife) are reading this book in order to cook an evening meal for your husband. "Of course", say the instructions for shepherd's pie, "you can pipe the potato if you wish". And you, Mrs Patten, can sod right off.
However, it does contain the sort of basic instructions that are missing from the trendy, glossy books of the day. Looking for guidance on butter icing a while ago, I found not only the butter/sugar proportions but a small chart of how much butter to use to fill, ice, etc cakes of various dimensions. Braised red cabbage sounded right up Mrs Patten's alley, but she failed me. There was a scary reference to braising vegetables "in a brown sauce" but I gave that a wide berth.
I started the trawl along the shelf; Delia and Jamie both let me down. The answer was eventually located in a very 70s-looking Gary Rhodes Around Britain (which was actually published in 1994. I have insufficient grasp of typography to explain why I thought it looked so 70s. It just did.)
All the recipes I'd found online earlier had included apples. Apples ? I said. Red cabbage does not contain apples in my world. However, Mr Rhodes was quite insistent. He wanted two apples for half a red cabbage, and I put only one in - not out of some veiled sense of sedition, but actually because I misread the instructions. Not wanting to steal all my housemate's onions, I only put one of them in, too. And we didn't have any red wine vinegar, so it had to be cider vinegar. So when I say I followed the recipe... well, y'know. It gave me a starting point.
Our house now smells as if someone's had a mad pickling fest, and the chopping board has gone a funny colour. Incidentally, the people who were as distressed as I was earlier in the week to hear that steaming red cabbage makes the water go blue will be as delighted as I was that the braising process does make everything go a crowd-pleasing dark red.
The result, however, was fantastic. I ate my cabbage, mash and gammon in the kitchen, drank some of the red wine which hadn't gone in the cabbage, and read PG Wodehouse. And all was well with the world. Everyone should dash out and buy a red cabbage while they're in season.
Actually, all wasn't quite well with the world. Having had no time to go to the butcher's, I bought my gammon from Tesco. I actually wanted a bacon joint, of the type I grew up calling "a boily bacon"; Tesco, however, seemed to have stopped selling anything so low-class. Along with bacon chops, the bastards. I figured I'd settle for an unsmoked gammon joint - I didn't look at the price as I picked it up; they're usually around four or five quid.
My shopping, at the checkout, was surprisingly pricey. Checking the receipt, I found my gammon had been £11.99. I queried it and was told "that's what it comes up as". Because I am a cynic and do not trust the computer, I went back to the shelf to look at the unit price... and lo and behold, it was correct.
Without realising there was a choice, I'd picked up an organic joint. Inorganic gammon: £5.35 a kilo. The organic kind: £15.99 a kilo. Youch. I'm not used to organic meat being three times the price. I buy meat very rarely in the supermarket (preferring butchers and farmers' markets), so am not familiar with the price differences. Is this normal ?