The Gannets love this soup. There is something utterly comforting about the creamy whiteness of it, and it’s perfect for this time of year. So easy to make and so impressive to serve. If you are serving this as a starter for guests it’s easy to make the day before and refrigerates well for at least 2 days. Simply reheat and prepare fresh garnish. A bowl served with some fresh crusty bread and butter makes a wonderful lunch.
Recipe after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
A recent trip to Wales took us by Trealy Farm.
Correction: A recent trip to Wales took us within 25 miles of Trealy Farm, so we took a big detour from Monmouth out past Usk to visit and pick up some of their delicious charcuterie. James, the co-owner, was very gracious and managed to gather the vast quantities of our Gannet-style order, which was then augmented to heroic proportions through the addition of our travelling companion’s selections.
After a full day’s rest, I felt up to cooking something and this morning’s order was bacon butties, a bacon sandwich usually made with big slices of bread, dollops of ketchup and a “fair amount” of bacon. They are very popular in the UK and go by many names.
The Trealy Farm “Monmouthshire cure” bacon has a good amount of fat on it, which is where all the flavour is. I fried the bacon in its own fat over a medium/medium high flame to get the fat to crisp up properly. Fat renders fat, so I once enough had rendered, I took each piece of bacon, tilted the cast-iron skillet and held each rind underneath the fat until the rind was well-cooked. After I sliced the fresh French loaf from our bread machine and laid out the bacon, I removed the excess bacon fat from the pan, turned off the heat and deglazed the pan with ketchup, mixing and reducing the bacon-y ketchup mixture until it became a thick paste. A dollop of that went on each piece of bread, and laid out four pieces of the thick bacon on one half, topping it with the second slice.
I have been on a quest to find meals which take 30 minutes or less to prepare. Again – the heat of the British “Summer” and the fact that I’ve been working lots of hours lately just mean I don’t want to be in the kitchen much. This meal is again inspired by Olive magazine (who seem to have come up trumps this month. I don’t rate my presentation much, much the flavour was fantastic.
Ingredients
Method
We have been having Summer in London this past week (well, apart from the day where it pelted down). For those of you outside the UK, that means the temperature has climbed all the way up into the 80′s and London has slowed down. It’s not so much that the 80′s is so hot (sorry that’s about 30 Celsius for those of you who have converted to the New Math) but that (a) we’re in the city, and (b) the city has no air conditioning. I think Harrod’s might have air conditioning, but you have to ride on the tube where the temperature is just a few degrees above Hell to get there, so most of us don’t bother.
Warm days of course mean wanting to spend less time in the kitchen, but as we’re cutting down on our takeaways in this house, and we still want to eat, we have to do something. This salad, though it does involve a bit of time near some hot pans, is pretty quick and painless and it was a big hit with Him Indoors, who said “that’s my kind of salad, baby”. Meaning of course that the ratio of green stuff to bacon was acceptable for him. It’s inspired by a recipe from Olive magazine, though I took sufficient liberties so as to feel it’s my intellectual property.
Ingredients (Serves two gannets generously)
Enjoy.
This weekend is Superbowl Weekend in the States, when most citizens (regardless of their interest in football) will gather around the television to (a) watch the Pittsburgh Steelers battle it out with the Arizona Cardinals, and (b) gorge themselves on beer, chicken wings, beer, burgers, beer, hot dogs, pizza, beer, nachos and more beer. Typical Superbowl fare is high in fat, low in subtlety, and can be devoured using one hand (the other is reserved at all times for… yes, beer). Wired magazine's Wired Science editors asked America's leading molecular gastronomists (British: Heston Blumenthal) to come up with their own take on Superbowl fare. The resulting recipes including Pizza Pebbles, Puffed Sauerkraut, and Beer Ice Cream With Pretzel Crust, and read more like chemistry lessons than a cookery lesson, but the ingenuity and the accompanying photographs – are much admired by The Gannet.
I have been frustrated recently in my efforts to find the perfect
cook's software to run on Mac OS X. My criteria isn't that demanding
(so I thought). I have been looking for a programme that:
There seems to be maybe a dozen recipe and menu packages for Mac out
there. A few of them do all three of the above. But what I found was
there are very few that do it well. This is when I should start to
admit that my criteria is, actually, a bit more demanding than I
thought. As I've spent so much bloody time trying to find the perfect
package, I thought I'd share my research here. Maybe one of you knows
of a programme that I haven't found yet. Or maybe this will save you
some time and money. I've listed each programme and a list of criteria
(demanding – me?) that I used to evaluate them. I actually made a
spreadsheet and compared the features and cost of them all. I am my
father's daughter, after all!
Mac Gourmet (version 2.1.4)
