Yearly Archives: 2010

Titchwell, North Norfolk

I do like to be beside the seaside

I do like to be beside the sea!

I do like to stroll along the prom, prom, prom,
Where the brassbands play
Tiddley-om-pom-pom!

So just let me be beside the seaside,
I’ll be beside myself with glee;

And there’s lots of birds beside,
I should like to be beside,
Beside the seaside, beside the sea.

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And I realise belatedly I should add this YouTube video (thankyou, thankyou YouTube!) of Basil Rathbone performing “I do like to be beside the seaside’, for anyone unfamiliar with the song. And then there’s Cary Grant, if you want more…. nip over to YouTube

Chicken Soup the way my Grandma didn’t make it

I wish I took better food photos because this soup represents a huge ‘Aha!’ moment for me. Celia posted the recipe for this soup a little while ago on her blog. I have to confess I was sceptical, part of me knew it was wrong to be sceptical as it clearly worked but… even so…

Put a whole chicken (I used a 1.6 kilo bird) in a stock pot, cover it completely with cold water, throw in some slices of ginger and spring onion, a tablespoon of salt. Bring it to the boil, this takes about ten minutes. Let it simmer for five minutes, throw your pinny on – it’s a splashy bit coming up next – turn the chicken over, let it simmer another five minutes, then put the lid on the pot and TURN IT OFF. That’s it for cooking the chicken. ? Yes, I thought so too. But it works. Leave it for forty minutes and come back to it after a quick glass of sherry, test for doneness by poking a sharp object into its thickest part, usually the thigh and if there is no sign of pink juice running out then remove the chicken from the stock to a plate.

Strain the bits and bobs out of the stock. Slice some onions, I used a white onion and some spring onions and some of those dinky little Chantenay carrots that look like they belong on a carrot cake made out of icing. Take the icky skin off the chicken and dismember the bird, then slice or shred the chicken into the size pieces you want for your soup. We used about a third of a chicken for two of us last night and that was more than enough.

Pop the chopped vegetables back into the stock, bring to the boil, add a sheet of egg noodles per person to the stock once it has boiled and some of the shredded chicken, simmer until the noodles are cooked. Chop some coriander or parsley with gay abandon and ladle into a big bowl and slurp away.

Anyway it is absolutely delicious. Oh so delicious. I think I might have to make it every week now. This soup is my new best friend. At the risk of being completely disloyal, I used to dread my Grandma’s chicken soup with its matzo balls and half inch of golden chicken fat on the top.

It isn’t particularly quick, (apart from the assembly part) and the bit where you do battle with the hot chicken removing the skin and the layer of surface fat isn’t the easiest, but I defy any cold or flu germs to get through the aromatic pleasures of a huge bowl of this translucent broth steaming away on your supper table.

There’s a bowl of clear quivering set stock sitting in the fridge right now. I think we’ll have it again tonight.

For the definitive version of this recipe please visit Celia’s blog. She’s made a lovely .pdf file for it too. I’ve got another wonderful soup recipe to try from Heidi : Fennel and Celeriac with toasted almonds… I’m going to make that one next. I learn so much from my blogging friends. Thank you all!

PS. There is no spot the ball in this little post, but I suspect quite a few foodie clichés so along with the bad photos I apologise for the ‘quivering stock’ as well.

Carrots and two sorts of onions in stock coming to the boil before the noodles and chicken meat are added

I just had a thought, having had my second meal from this, this time with some finely sliced chestnut mushrooms added and a little fresh lemon grass. Would cooking your chicken this way count towards reducing your carbon footprint? It must use considerably less energy than having the electric oven on for an hour or more. Maybe I should call this post 10:10 chicken?

Westphalian Pumpernickel by Post

Bread all over the place

Here is the current crop of breads at home spread out in the watery November sunshine between showers of rain.

From back to front:

Dan Lepard’s delicate milk loaf, good for toast, holding poached eggs and Brian’s favourite white bread.

A 7 seeded bread from Marks Bread in Bedminster. I’m working my way through his breads to see what they are all like. This is one is a nice, nutty seedy bread.

My Horst Bandel rye bread – you’ve met before!

Westphalian Pumpernickel kindly sent to me by Ulrike who is a Mellow Baking friend for me to compare with the Horst Bandel rye bread.

I eat them all but Brian will only eat the first two and he is not too sure about the seeds, though he will eat rye bread if it has caraway in. So I couldn’t ask anyone else’s opinion here. I am not particularly good at describing tastes but I will give it a shot…

Taste test

What's in the Westphalian Pumpernickel?

Pumpernickel to a German bread eater means exactly this bread, dark and sweet, soft and dense, made only of very coarse ground rye (meal or Schrot), molasses, malted rye,* water, salt and yeast and baked for a very long time indeed. Looking at this bread it is quite distinctive and it has a unique texture and taste.

At a guess it doesn’t include whole grains soaked and boiled like the Jeffrey Hamelman bread.

Pumpernickel close up

Taste wise I am biased towards my own breads. I think that’s because I am used to them. My version of the Jeffrey Hamelman recipe is more chewy and grainy and it has a sourer taste too, which might be down to the long second prove it had this time round. It is not as sweet as the traditional pumpernickel, but then it only baked for about 5 hours as opposed to 20! My bread reminds me of the Danish and German Vollkorn breads more with its paler colour and chunkier texture.

What’s really interesting is I just Googled to see what was available here and look here is an export Pumpernickel from the same German company with an English label which is slightly different. It doesn’t mention molasses and has slightly less rye content. Do you think it has been ‘tweaked’ for the English market? I know all manner of products are changed slightly to make them more acceptable when they travel abroad, it looks as if pumpernickel does that too.

I have a similar reaction to Ulrike’s when I come across bright orange plastic cheese called Cheddar in, say, a Canadian supermarket. But apparently my Cheddar is only one sort of Cheddar, my sort has a special title ‘West Country Farmhouse Cheddar’ . OK, I didn’t know that, thanks Wiki! I suspect that not many people outside the food production world know that certain names are protected or have to be phrased in a particular way. Cheddar is just another word for a medium hard cheese to most people.(My favourite Cheddar ever by the way is made by Keens with unpasteurized milk.)

A little Keens Cheddar on Beer Bread

Only cheese produced and sourced in the English counties of Somerset, Devon, Dorset, and Cornwall may be given the Protected Designation of Origin name “West Country Farmhouse Cheddar”.^[3]

Maybe they should do the same for Westphalian Pumpernickel? I am sure it would count as a TSG if not a PGS. You can find out more about this complex area of protected names here on Wikipedia. I looked up Pumpernickel on the DOOR database but I couldn’t find it, though I did find Nurnberger Lebkuchen !

Do you have a treasured foodstuff that has been changed completely in its travels across the world?