Of herbs and stewed fenek

I am proud to announce that I have tripled my Maltese vocabulary. I now know three words of Malti: "Kappillan," "Bonju," and "fenek". Which, really, is pretty much all a good Catholic needs. Maybe I should learn to say, "What time are confessions at this parish?"

Fenek is the Maltese national dish.

Take:

1/2 fenek, cut up into pieces
3 bay leaves,
handful of chopped sage
1/2 a lemon
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 sticks celery chopped
2-3 cups white wine
tablespoon or so of honey
dash of Lea n' Perrin's
little whole mushrooms
olive oil

Peel, chop and place in the bottom of your cast iron-enamel Dutch oven all the veg, including the garlic. On top, place the pieces of fenek. Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle the sage over top, with a dash of salt n' pep. In a coffee cup, mix the white wine, lea-Perrins, juice of half the lemon and the honey. Mix vigorously, then pour over the fenek.

Pop the lid on and put in a medium oven for a long time. An hour at least.

Eat.

So good! So so soooo good!



~

Aubergine egg sandwiches

In my endless search for a viable replacement for the English Fry-up, I have been experimenting with ingredients readily available in Italian supermarkets. Today we have a winner!

It's like a little fried mushroom, bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, only with slices of aubergine instead of bread.

Stay with me, it's teh. awesome! (Fully tested in the Orwell's Picnic test kitchens.)

Take:

about 1 oz of bacon chopped into small bits (sold in Ita. as "pancetta affumicato")
about 5 sliced mushrooms
four slices of prepared aubergine (you can buy them already sliced, pressed and grilled in bags in the freezer section)
25g butter
2 eggs
1 oz grated cheese (Leerdamer is very popular here)

You will need a skillet with a tightly fitting lid.

Cook the mushrooms and bacon together in a pan over a medium heat until the mushrooms are nicely cooked in the bacon fat. Remove and set aside. Lower the heat and scrape the pan carefully and add the butter. Lay in two large slices of aubergine.

Then ever so carefully, pile on the mushrooms and bacon bits in a heap on each one, then make a little well in the middle so there's a little bacon/mushroom fortress surrounding a little space. Crack the eggs into the well. (Don't worry if the egg white oozes out a little.) Lay on top the other two slices of eggplant to form a lid. Top with the grated leerdamer. Add about 2 tbsps of water to the pan, and clap on the tight-fitting lid. Allow it all to cook, keeping the heat down, for about 10 minutes or until all the cheese is melted and the egg is cooked inside.

Dress on the side with a tablespoon or so of Mexican salsa and another of sour cream (Very difficult to find, but shows up occasionally, other wise plain Greek yogurt makes a good s. cream substitute.)

Eat.

You won't be sorry.



~

Awesome 350 calorie lunch for your low cal Friday:

A friend has recommended this 5-2 thing. I think the hopes of me actually getting thinner are extremely... errr, thin. Most of the process of weight loss/gain has to do with hormones, and after All That, and particularly (h-word) my endocrine system is completely buggered up, even with the HRT drugs. But even without thinking about weight-loss, lowering caloric intake is a good idea, or so all the latest research shows.

Even if we're not eating badly, even if we're buying fresh from Whole Foods or the local farmers, eating too much is still pretty bad for us. That and sitting around. (My sedentary habits are really making me worry.) The idea that everyone needs 2000 cal/day is outdated, and is even possibly dangerous.

So, lately when I'm at home, I'm more or less just eating fish, poultry, fresh fruit and veg, nuts, cheese and yogurt, with lots of tea. Mostly one main meal a day and a little grazing for the rest. On Wed's and Fri's I drop down a bunch of calories. Doesn't seem to be hurting at all...

Prep time about 20 mins:

1 swordfish steak
1 cup oyster mushrooms
1 clove garlic
20g butter
pinch of salt

1 cup broccoletti, chopped
tsp chicken stock powder

Wash the broccoletti, pull off any yucky bits, chop off the tough ends of the stems, then chop into little bits, about an inch long. Into the pan with a cup or so water, tsp chicken stock powder. Cover with a tight fitting lid and let it simmer/steam over a lowish heat. (I did this the other day, but failed to wash the greens first, and got lovely crunchy grit in my teeth. So do the washing.)

Melt the butter in another pan and break up the mushrooms into bite size bits, toss on the warm butter and saute with the minced garlic over a low heat. When the mushrooms are starting to release their juice, throw in the fish, sprinkle with a wee bit of salt and cover the pan. Let it all cook for 10 mins.

Remove the mushrooms from the pan (don't over cook) and flip the fish and let it brown a bit for a minute or two. When the fish is done, take some of the chicken/broccoletti stock from the other pan and deglaze the fish and mushroom stuff.

Load it all onto a plate.

Eat.

~

People from the developed world really just eat too damn much food and sit too much and judging from the ever-increasing girth of most of the people you see around you, the 2000/day notion really does seem overly simplistic. Each person is different. With my buggered up system, even with the HRT, I've been getting along just dandy on about 1500/day, and I haven't lost any weight at all.

And I never buy bread or pasta or anything with sugar in it. I eat a little bread about once a week when I join the gang for our post-Mass lunch in the City, but that's only because the waiter brings it to you without you asking.

Having been largely off sugar for a few years now, I think we have seen that sensitivity rises. Judging from the awful reaction I had this week, I can't imagine what the heck was going on with me before I gave it up entirely. I cringe now to think how much sugar I consumed!

"But I get so hungry!" Cut out the carbs. The feeling of hunger is not your stomach being empty or your body craving nutrition. It's a hormonal signal your organs produce based on other hormonal signals. If you're eating too many complex carbs or sugar, it's getting turned into glucose in your blood and your liver and pancreas are working too hard and getting overloaded. Your body produces the "You're hungry!" signal in response to chemical changes in your bloodstream. If you eat too much of the stuff that triggers the system, you're going to get the signal when your body doesn't need food for fuel. So you're eating sugar or carbs that get turned rapidly into glucose, which triggers the hungry-hormone, which makes you eat more, and what you're probably eating more of is the same carbs and sugar stuff that started it, ad infinitum... oh wait, no. Ad obesitum, and diabetes, heart disease and cancer (yes, cancer).

All of which is the nutshell version of why the 1st worlders are fat. We eat nothing but processed food, all of which has sugar added. All. Sugar = hormone imbalance = obesity. And I'll say it again: there's sugar in damn near every single thing we eat that's processed or packaged. That means everything except for fresh food. Don't. Eat. Sugar.

And watch out for boredom eating. This is a big one for me. I work on the computer, so sitting and looking at the screen for long hours prompts me to want to stand up and walk around pretty often to clear my brain. Where do my feet have to go in the flat? Usually to the kitchen. I eat to take my mind off work and my eyes off the screen.

Working on it. Those nice nuns gave me a copy of the Farnborough Monastic Diurnal, so I'm thinking maybe I have somewhere else for my brain to go when it can't stand the screen any more. We'll see how it goes.



~

The Lowly Sprout

OK, Muricans, let's deal with your fear of Brussels sprouts.

Personally, I've never understood the problem. I've always loved sprouts. But for some reason, they've got a bad rep. Well, here's a way of doing them that will make everyone ask for more.

1lb sprouts, cut in half
1 carrot, diced
1 medium slice of bacon
1/2 and onion, a couple of shallots or a leek, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
handful raisins
handful pine nuts or walnuts

On a low heat, cook the bacon and onion together in a skillet until the onion is transparent. Throw in the sprouts and carrots and continue to saute until the sprouts turn a bright green. Pour in the stock and raisins and cook until the veg is tender. Toss in a handful of nuts at the end when the raisins have plumped up and the sprouts are nice and eat-able.

Mmm... baby!



And now, here's some Shatner.

Happy Turkey Day all youse down there below the 49th...



~

Of herbs and stewed rabbit

My freezer chest needs defrosting. When I moved into this apartment, it had something I'd never seen before: a fridge with no freezer compartment on top. I told them that this was one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen in a kitchen and insisted that the place had to have a proper fridge. I was, of course, roundly ignored. Nonetheless, the agency lady, who seemed to take rather a shine to me, called me a few weeks after I moved in offering to give me one she had in her garage. Arranged a man with a van to come over and deliver it even. And it's huge. If any of our local friends need a place to hide the body, give me a ring.

But it's also old, and though it certainly freezes things, it also manufactures an indoor wintery wonderland. The ice shelf is now so huge I'm thinking of calling it "Ross" and offering guided expeditions across it. So I've decided to start the project of eating up everything in there that needs to remain frozen so I can unplug it and spend a day mopping.

One of the things in there, right down near the bottom, is a package of skinned rabbit I bought on a whim a few months ago. I started looking up recipes online, having only had one rather unsuccessful experience with rabbit in the past. (I discovered that while it really does more or less taste like chicken, and you do similar things to it, it takes a LOT longer to cook.)

But then I realised, wait, what am I thinking? I know how to stew meat.

Take:

1 rabbit, cut into big pieces (actually, it was half a rabbit, including the head! gross!)
3 or 4 carrots, chopped into big bits
two leeks, also chopped into big bits
a few cloves of garlic, also as above, chopped into...
1 apple, not peeled, sliced into thin wedges

a few handfuls of dried shitaake mushrooms
two cups of water
two tablespoons chicken stock powder
splash of red wine
dash of Lea and Perrin's

Sprigs of fresh thyme, marjoram and sage from the balcony pots, all chopped up fine together.

Put all the chopped veg and the apple into the nice cast iron dutch oven you bought in Cheshire at the 50p shop. Cut up the little bits of meat on the head (including the tongue! gross!) and give it to the cat. Sprinkle the herbs on top of the veg.

Bring the water, chicken stock wine and wooster to a simmer. Break the mushrooms while still dried into big pieces and put them in the juice to simmer, covered for ten minutes or until they're nice and squishy. Pour the whole business, stock, mushrooms and all, into the dutch oven. Place the rest of the pieces of coniglio on top. Cover and put in a hot oven for 45 minutes to an hour. About half way, turn the pieces over and squish them down into the broth.

I went with very mild, herby sort of flavours, ones that might be found on the road by travellers, say. And that reflect an autumnal mood. But it would do just as well as a wine-tomato sort of thing too, and would lend itself pretty well to stronger, spicier stock.

I added the apples, in case you're wondering, to add a little natural sugar to offset the saltyness of the chicken stock, and as we all know, meat is great with fruity stuff. Don't peel the apples because they tend to disintegrate in stews, so if you want to keep them as nice apply blobs, you need the peel to hold them together.

You won't believe how wonderful...



~

Red Thai Chicken Curry... Hilary version

Finally got the knack of doing my own Thai curry. I bought a bunch of coriander and cumin seeds from the Bangladeshis at the Esquiline market the other day, and have been putting them in nearly everything but my tea.

In a dry fry pan, toast a handful each of coriander and cumin and sesame seeds, until the sesame seeds start to turn golden and the coriander starts to pop and crackle. Set them aside in a dish to cool then store them in an airtight container.

Take:

half an onion, chopped
two minced cloves garlic
slice some mushrooms
slice into thin spears some Romanesco Broccoli
slice some carrots into thin ovals
a large fresh plum, sliced thin
knuckle of fresh ginger, grated

(other nice things are yellow and red sweet peppers, Thai aubergines, Japanese sweet potatoes, parsnips, lotus root, or really any fairly hard sweet vegetable. All orange veg is good.)

Cut up one full breast of chicken (this recipe would also be good with gamberoni or other seafood if you're not into meat)

2 tbsp olive oil

250 ml coconut milk
teaspoon Thai green curry paste (watch out, hot! omit if you're not into spicy stuff)

1-2 tbsp Thai anchovy sauce (the Romans called it liquamen and put it in everything so this is not just a Thai recipe, but could easily be a Roman one)

a blob of tomato paste
a squeeze or two of ketchup

Saute in the olive oil the chicken and all the veg and fruit in a large skillet, until the chicken is cooked and the veg starts to soften. Meanwhile grind up in a mortar and pestle a couple of generous handfuls of the coriander/cumin/sesame seeds.

Once the meat and veg has cooked a bit, throw in the ground spices and toss so it' evenly coated. Allow a few more minutes on the heat.

Once it's becoming fragrant, dump in your coconut milk and reduce the heat to very low. Season with the liquamen, tomato paste, ketchup, curry paste, stirring gently. Once you've got it tasting the way you like it (all amounts above are approximate), stick the lid on, turn the heat down as low as you can, and go away and leave it alone for at least 20 minutes.

Eat with rice, or just by itself if you're paleo.


The secret to making Thai food taste that heavenly way that Thai food does, is the fish sauce. I was skeptical about this until I started trying to recreate Thai curry at home, but no matter what I did, it never did come out the way it was in restaurants. I did the curry paste, the coconut milk, the spices, everything, but it just lacked that special something.

Turns out it was fermented anchovies.

And that, as Robert Frost said, has made all the difference.



~

Laganum

OK, I have tried the Roman flatbread recipe and modified it into something AWEsome. It's a little more complicated than my usual throw-it-all-in-a-pot sort of recipes, and requires some attention, so no going off to watch Big Bang Theory while it's cooking...

In a bowl, mix equal parts

spelt flour, about three heaping tablespoons
coconut meal
almond meal
hazelnut meal
and a little bit of rice flour
about 2 tsps salt

In a hot dry fry pan, toast
coriander seeds
cumin seeds
sesame seeds

Swirl it around regularly and don't keep the heat up too high or they will burn. Toast until the sesame seeds are starting to brown and the coriander is starting to pop. Take the mixture off the heat and place in a dish to cool (I used a soup plate). Pour a handful into a mortar and grind.

Mix the spices into the dry ingredients.

Pour in enough water to make a dough, mixing thoroughly with a fork.

Ball up into about 50g lumps.

Dust the board with spelt or rice flour, and work the dough ball until it's nice and dense and not too sticky. Roll out very thin. Thinner than you think it needs to be, since the heat in the pan will make it shrink and thicken.

In the hot fry pan, add about 2 tbs olive oil and swirl it around until it runs freely. Keep the heat under the pan quite low. If you see the oil start smoking, you will have to pour it off, clean the pan with a paper towel and start again. Burnt olive oil is quite unhealthy.

When the oil is nice and swirly, very gently lay your flatbread sheet into the pan so it lies flat on the bottom. Don't fuss with it. In fact, just wander off somewhere for a few minutes. You want to leave it long enough that it starts forming the little brown toasty spots. Flip it once and allow it to toast on the other side.

When it's nice and toasty and crisp, break into big pieces. Perfect with lentils or mashed Mexican beans or anything like that for a good Lent or Friday meal. Or just eat them plain like chips. Best when really hot.

I know I'm supposed to be off grains, but there really isn't much in this recipe, and the spelt keeps the gluten content down to a minimum. It's pretty carby, but as a once-in-a-while treat it can't be beat.



~

I'm hungry

Looks good, huh? It's lentil and root veg mash, that the Romans called ... um, lentil and rootvegmash.

In Rome there are still a few old fashioned (really old fashioned), usually family-owned restaurants that do traditional Roman style cooking. (One of the best ones is v. close to the Campo di Fiori, called Trattoria Der Pallaro, where there is no menu that you choose from, and the sign outside says "You will eat what we want to feed you".) The real Roman menu always has lentils, and they usually just bring it to you in a big bowl, cooked in olive oil, possibly chicken or meat broth and spices and sometimes onions. Often you can get this thing, lentils and salsiccia, which is sausages cooked with lentils.

I've got almost no food in the house. I'm trying this new thing of just buying food in little bits and eating only exactly what I buy, when I buy it. It's working out cheaper and I do a lot less grazing. But it does mean a lot of little trips to the shops. V. old fashioned. Italy still has a housewife-oriented domestic culture, and you are expected to shop early in the morning (ugh!) and often. Traditionally, Roman housewives shopped only for the day, and the idea of keeping food around was, until very recently, considered a sign of bad housekeeping skills. Laziness. Which, I suppose, is simply accurate.

Anyway, there is a cool 'blog out there, Pass the Garum, which I've been looking at for a while, that recreates ancient Roman recipes, mostly from Apicius. And today have decided to try one of their recipes. Lentil and root veg mash.

Apart from all the things we would consider normal in kitchenware, fry pans, soup and stew pots, Dutch ovens, etc, the Romans used one item in the kitchen probably more than any other: a mortar and pestle. You see them in the museums a lot. They used a lot of pastes, ground-together veg and herbs to make sauces. I've got a little brass one that I use just for quick crushing of peppercorns and nutmeg and things, but is too small to use for making sauces, or making my own curry past (which I've always wanted to try). I found a beautiful one at an antique stall in S. Mar during the beach season this year, but the guy wanted 50 Euros. It was bronze, which I admit, was fairly cool. But still! fifty smackers! I'll keep my eyes open.

The other thing you really need to reproduce Roman cooking is Garum and liquamen. The first is a condiment, Roman ketchup, that is added to the food later by the diner. It was very expensive in Roman times, (though the price varied with the quality) and would be considered pretty gross by today's standards. It was made by fermenting fish blood and guts. You can get a modern equivalent of Garum in Italy, but it's hard to find, and pricey.

Liquamen is another kind of fish sauce that is much easier to get, and is more or less exactly the same as Thai fish sauce that you can buy in a lot of supermarkets, and is even available here if you know where the Chinese supermarkets are in Rome (near Termini train station).

Anyway, it's 3:30 and I've done exactly nowt with myself today, so I'm going out to the only shop open in S. Mar on Sundays, the Elite supermarket near the marina, and I'm gonna get me the stuff to make some Roman food. We'll see what kind of root veg they've got in and buy a big bag o' lentils.

I might even try making the spelt-based Lagana, a Roman flatbread that has no gluten, if I can find the spelt flour.



~

Don't drink Coke

Go to your cupboard or fridge. Take out any thing in a tin or bottle that isn't water. Look at the ingredients list. Very nearly everything will have high fructose corn syrup or glucose syrup as one of the first things on the list.

Stop consuming processed foods.

And yes, stop drinking Coke.





~

Hilary's Italian kitchen... or something like that

So, doing my imaginary cooking show today, narrating lunch to the invisible camera with lots of fun kitchen tips, it was my favourite English fry-up replacement:

take
two large slices of melanzane/aubergine/eggplant
two tomatoes (the lovely little Italian kind shaped like teardrops that are in the shops right now, and sooo sweet!)
buncha mushrooms
six slices of bacon or a packet of pancetta affumicato
two eggs
1 oz. butter

Chop the bacon into bits and cut the mushrooms into big thick pieces and the tomatoes in half lengthwise, saute the lot together over a medium heat in just a little of the butter for five minutes and push to the edge of the pan. Turn the flame down, and melt the rest of the butter, and lay down the two nice thick slices of melanzane (remember, butter burns at quite a low temperature, so keep the heat down).

Turn the m. after a few minutes and pile the mushrooms and bacon on top of the m. and make a little well in the middle. Crack an egg each into the well, so the yolk stays on top and the lovely eggy stuff oozes all through the bacon and onto the pan. Drop a few teaspoons of water into the pan and pop the lid on quickly. This will steam cook the egg very quickly. A teeny bit of balsamic vinegar in the steam water will add interest to the flavour.

Now your tomatoes should be nice and cooked but not squishy and you just ladle the whole thing onto a plate and eat. Nomma nomma!

I've been watching a lot of Jamie Oliver's cooking shows on Youtube lately and have fallen back into the habit of narrating all my cooking as though I'm doing my own YouTube cooking show. I grew up watching Graham Kerr and doing my own imaginary cooking show at home. My mum would often oblige by holding the imaginary camera and being the studio audience all at once. It was so much fun. And she always sat down and tried all my stuff. I suppose it was just a way of supervising me in the kitchen, but it always felt very supportive. Grandma also taught me cooking but she thought making an imaginary cooking show was silly (though she was also a Graham Kerr fan... who wasn't?).

I keep thinking that now with Youtube and cheap-o digital video cameras and whatnot, I could actually make this little dream hobby come true. Wouldn't it be fun to actually get together for (virtual) tea and triangle sandwiches? I'd have to do more housework, I guess. But maybe the camera wouldn't pick up much of the dust.

And we could take little trips together to the weekly farmer's market on Thursdays. I could show y'all around Santa Marinella, and maybe we could take little trips to the big daily market in Civitavecchia once in a while and y'all could meet the nice fishmonger and the garden centre lady.

We would need to come up with a good name for it. I'm really a terrible name-thinker-upper, so suggestions?



~

Peach panna cotta a la Inghilterra

In my endless search for the perfect combination of fresh fruit and cream, I've invented a new dessert. Peach panna cotta a la Inghilterra. Kind of a combination of Creme Anglais and classic Italian panna cotta. With fruit.

250 mls of whole milk
250 mls of panna
2 peaches, peeled
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 bustine stevia (about 3 tsps natural sugar substitute)
two egg yolks
1/4 tsp sale
4 leaves gelatine

Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water to soften. Heat milk and cream together over a low heat. Puree the peaches, stevia, salt and vanilla and a little of the milk in a blender on high for two minutes. Whisk together the peach puree with the milk and cream. When the mixture is close to the scalding temperature, quickly whisk in the egg yolks. Remove from heat and add the softened gelatine and whisk until it's dissolved (will be almost instantly).

Pour the mixture into bowls and allow to cool to room temp, then into the fridge for about 3 hours or over night.

Serve with a puree of fruit or just by itself.

Awesome.

Orange Soup

A long time ago, I invented something I called Orange Soup, and it was a pretty big hit with friends. It had all orange food I could think of: sweet potatoes, carrots, red lentils and the grated rind and juice of one orange. Plus curry powder. It was hot and good for you and everyone loved it.

Unfortunately, I can't remember how to make it and I never wrote it down.

But tonight, I tried a simplified version that turned out pretty well: Cream of Carrot and Orange soup.

Take:

an onion, chopped
two cloves of garlic, minced
about five or six small to medium carrots
a few sticks of celery
an ounce of butter

tablespoon or so of chestnut flour

2 cups chicken stock
half an orange
tablespoon of curry powder
250 ml heavy cream

Saute all the veg in a heavy bottomed pot in the butter until the onions are soft. Turn the heat down. Sprinkle the chestnut flour (sweet and very flavourful, but probably expensive outside Italy, you can substitute wheat flour... if you don't care about your health) over the veg, mixing it all around until the flour has absorbed all the remaining butter.

Pour in the chicken stock, adding curry powder to taste (I get mine at the Bangladeshi's at the big Esquiline Market near Termini train station, but it's pretty hot stuff, so careful,) the juice of the 1/2 orange, and allow to simmer until the carrots are soft. (An easy method of juicing an orange is to use the round end of a wooden spoon. Don't buy one of those stupid juicer things. They're a waste because they never get all the juice and you end up throwing away most of the pulp.) If you want a more orangey tasting soup, grate in a little of the rind while the veg is sauteing.

When the carrots are very soft, pour about half into a blender and add half the cream. Blend on high for a minute or so. Pour it back into the pot and bring up to heat.

Eat with a little apple and ricotta salad.



~

Creamy apples

On my constant search for a replacement for the English Fry-up, I've discovered multiple ways to combine fruit and cream. Lately, in the depths of "winter," one of my favourites has been Creamy Apples. Even in Italy, the fruit choices start getting a little monotonous at this time of year. Must try to make the best of what we've got, hey?

Creamy apples: simplest thing in the world, and OH baby! so nice!

Take:

1 large or two medium apples,
250 ml whipping cream
teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup water

Peel, core and chop the apples into spoon-size pieces and stew them in a bit of water, (just to cover the pieces) on a low heat in a heavy-bottom pot (my favourite is my enameled cast-iron saucepan I got from the 50p shop in Cheshire). Cook the apples until they are soft but not mushy. Add about 1/2 the cream and continue simmering, stirring constantly, until the cream starts thickening. Add the cinnamon. When it looks all nice and cooked, add a little more cream. Pour into a bowl and eat. Great with tea in the morning.



~

Broccoli

The other day I was overjoyed to see that the wonderful Fibonacci broccoli is back in the shops.

Italy's food production is determinedly cyclical. In the wrong season, you cannot, for love or money, get anything that isn't coming out of the ground or off the tree right now. It makes grocery shopping a little more fun. You have to learn what things are available when and what things to look forward to, and when to stop buying something because, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Italians are usually right. Food that is getting to the end of its season is really not as nice. And every time you get used to something (I've been eating the huge yellow peaches at a rate of about a pound a day) you have to learn to let it go when it's at its end. But it's OK, because it just means that the next nice thing is coming along.

The Fibonacci broccoli, properly called Romanesco, is much, much nicer than the "regular" kind we're used to in Britain and N. America. Apart from its delightful shape, and interesting mathematical/cosmological implications, it's taste is much milder and somewhat sweeter. It comes in heads like a cauliflower, only smaller, and you can cook and eat every bit, stems and leaves too, which are also very good. I usually steam it lightly, drizzle in a little olive oil or fresh butter and grate some peccorino over it.

But when I was very small, I was not such a broccoli enthusiast.

I don't know whether this memory is one of those real ones, or one of the kind your brain makes up later and convinces you is real, but one way or another I do remember it.

My dad used to take me for weekends when I was small, and on one of these occasions, I recall that we were to have dinner at his house and then go to the park to play on the slides and swings, at that time, my all-time favourite thing to do.

I asked him what was for dinner and he said, something, something... "and broccoli".

I said that I didn't like broccoli.

My father, being a guy and therefore having a rather more practical turn of mind than a woman would have, promptly responded, "OK, will you eat it if I give you five dollars?"

I agreed to this sensible transaction, believing that I was definitely coming out the winner. ("Five bucks!! Woot!"... I'm five, remember).

Well, it turned out that broccoli was actually wonderful, and I've had a lifelong love of the stuff ever since. But Fibonacci broccoli is an entirely different matter, a stage of evolution better. If you see it in some N. American yuppie specialty food store, get some immediately. You won't be sorry.



~

The secret's in the deglazing

Made Fegato alla Veneziana for lunch today. I've been ordering it in Roman restaurants lately and it's wonderful, and often the cheapest and most digestible thing on the menu.

Today, faced with a pound of beef liver, I was fed up with my unsuccessful attempts to do it the way my mother did it; floured in a pan with butter. It always seemed to turn out burnt on one side and the flouring stuck to the pan.

The Italian way is soooo good!

Take:

1 pound of beef or calves liver, very thinly sliced and cut into strips
1 large onion, sliced into strips
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 and apple, cored, peeled and sliced thin
about 2 tbs olive oil
1 cup or so of red or white wine
dash of aceto balsamico
1/2 tsp rice flour (optional)
knob of butter


Saute the onions, garlic and apple in a pan with olive oil until soft and fragrant. Pile onto a plate, cover and set aside. Add a little more olive oil to the pan and add the liver but don't cook it too hot. Sprinkle with balsamico, but not too much. Keep the temp low. The liver will release quite a bit of meat juice, let it cook in that at a low heat until it is tender and still slightly pink. Remove the liver while keeping the juices in the pan. Turn the heat up and get the pan and the juice very hot, then add the wine and deglaze the pan with the back of a fork (no teflon in my kitchen!). When the wine has reduced a bit, add the butter. If you want, you can sprinkle the sauce very gently and sparsely with rice flour to thicken. Stir fast. You won't need more than a 1/2 a teaspoon, if that. When the sauce is ready, pour the liver and onion mixture back into the pan, stirring it all round in the sauce until everything is nice and coated and hot.

Eat.

You'll be amazed at how good it is. It will put a completely new idea about liver into your head.



~

Bakies

I have invented a new Primal snack food to have with your tea. I call it "Bakies". It's kind of a combination cookie and cake, and you bake it, so...you know... that's the name.

You make it with ground coconut, ground hazelnuts, about a tablespoon of rice flour, butter, honey, baking powder, a little cream of tartar.

I don't really have any measurements to give you. Just take a few tablespoons of each thing, gish it all together in a bowl (I use one of those big coffee bowls) lob it into a cake tin and into the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes. It's amazingly like cake/cookies, without being bad for you. Nothing but no-gluten, no-wheat, low-carb, high-proteiny goodness.

OK, I'll do a little guesstimating with the amounts. Preheat the oven to about 180C (350F)
2 oz ground coconut
2 oz ground hazelnuts
1 or 2 tablespoons rice flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp (or so) baking powder
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
- maybe some ground nutmeg and cinnamon or even a 1/4 tsp of chai spice if you've got it lying about

Mix all the dry ingredients in a small bowl.

add
1 oz soft butter (if it's hard, just cut it up into little chunks and give it extra mixing with a fork)
1 tbs honey
1 egg
a cap-ful of ARTIFICIAL VANILLA

Nearly all these ingredients can be adjusted to taste. I just sort of threw it all together the first time. I've just done enough cakes over the years that I know what a batter is supposed to taste like and can recognise by taste when I've not got enough of something. It's just practice. Keep trying it and remember that half the fun is having it turn out slightly different every time.

Gish it all around very thoroughly until the mixture is more or less even.
Once you've got it the way you like it, put a sheet of greaseproof paper in the cake tin and slosh the dough/batter onto it, and smooth it about into a round patty like a big cookie.

The dough/batter shouldn't be so liquid it runs, and shouldn't be so doughy that you could knead it.

Oh I don't know, kind of like muffin batter I guess. Just figure it out. If it's too runny, throw in a little more coconut to absorb the liquid, but don't use the ground hazelnut which can make the Bakie slightly bitter.

Shove it into the oven for 20 minutes or so, or until it goes crispy around the edges.

Eat hot with tea. Makes a nice breakfast with a side of no-sugar fruit preserves.

Another variation which is really nice is to cut up some soft fruit like a plum (skin on) and mix it into the dough. When it bakes, the fruit is just softened and the tartness of the plum really heightens the nuttiness without adding any sugar.



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Want one more?

Another reason not to eat sugar and to drop the carb intake:

Turns out Alzheimer's is a form of diabetes.

Researchers are calling it Type 3 Diabetes.



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Everything you think about nutrition is wrong

Sorry.


Here it all is with helpful graphics. (Just ignore the advert part.)



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Convenient death

Modernity never ceases to amaze me in its incredible thoroughness. There just doesn't seem to be any tiny corner of human life that it hasn't managed to poison.


And I think it is clear that what Modernity has done to food, "poison" can be taken literally.

I think it's very significant that the woman talks (in possibly the most annoying, nasal American accent I've ever heard) about the traditional methods of food preservation. Now, ask yourself how this was possible. Who was doing the food preparation and preservation, and how did they learn these skills? Women today do not know how to cook even with the inferior processed foods available to them. Their domestic skills are limited to ironing their suit blouses before work.

It is clear that the degeneration of food-related domestic skills, and therefore the good health of children, men and future generations, is yet another victim of the feminist revolution. No one is feeding the family, and the "obesity crisis" is the result.

And the word, "convenience" is starting to become my most-hated word in the English language. I remember once talking to a young man I knew who was complaining about the expense of running his car. He also complained that he was gaining weight because he wasn't getting enough exercise. I observed that in the eleven years I had lived in Vancouver, the city had become almost uninhabitable, hellish, because of the increase of the number of cars, private vehicles, on the roads. I think the government issued a notice that the number had increased about 65% in the first five of those years. I suggested that since he didn't have steady employment, and since he lived in a city with an excellent and cheap public transit system, that he get rid of his car.

He said, "Well, it's convenient." And I think he meant that to be such a sound argument that no further disagreement was possible. And in a way he was right. He had made it clear that nothing, not money, nor his interest (which was real) in the environmental damage cars are doing in cities nor even his health, nor any other thing topped "convenience" on his list of priorities.

We are addicted to it, but it is convenience that is, literally, killing us.



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It's not just for normal people

...even the slightly creepy and weird should be healthy too.

I apologise for boring you all with this health kick. I seem to be turning into one of those annoying proselytising health nuts. I'm sure I'll get back to normal eventually.

In the mean time, while I have no idea who this Jorge Cruise guy is or why he has such a rage about processed foods, or health in general, or why he seems slightly creepy and weird, or why the people he interviews often seem slightly creepy and weird, but there's some useful information about the badness of sugar here.



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