Pick and choose…

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Are you a fussy eater? That was the question on everyone’s lips over the Guardian Word of Mouth blog recently as they discussed people’s foibles and finickiness.

I was amazed by how many people both outed themselves as fussy eaters and seemed quite proud of that fact. I consider myself a fairly fussy eater and am quite embarassed by it since I’m a grown woman and the rest of my family are fairly unflappable when it comes to food. I hoped that some of Mister North’s sangfroid would rub off on me when we started this blog…

And I think it might be working. In the past few months, I have tried quite a few things I would usually have skipped in favour of something less challenging to me. Bad childhood experiences with liver have left me wary of offal for years, but I have eaten liver and hearts recently and enjoyed both of them greatly. I have long been suspicious of broad beans as drab little bitter things after eating frozen ones as a side dish in the 80s, but have been converted to their charms when served peeled and fresh.

I also ventured out for an Indian meal recently with Mister North, setting aside my lifelong distaste for garam masala, curry powder and tumeric to at least try something different. I also didn’t baulk when my dining companions ordered cumin chilli chicken at Chilli Cool despite a deep loathing of this retch-inducing spice. I actually quite enjoyed the dish when I tried it, but that was probably because I couldn’t taste the cumin…

However my new found bravery (and fear of looking like the fussy one when eating out) will not get me over my previously mentioned loathing of bell peppers. Unlike my childhood dislike of mushrooms which has more or less faded to an indifference now, my hatred of peppers is for life. That’s a carefully nutured abomination, cultivated over years of sitting at the dinner table until finished as a child, vegetarians dishes that didn’t mention them yet are chockful of them and a late 80s belief that stuffed peppers were the height of swank at the dinner table. It’s a dislike that has come to define me and I’m not letting it go.

While I fully admit to being (rather) judgemental of really fussy eaters who as adults can only force down chicken nuggets, potato shapes and boatloads of ketchup, I think it’s perfectly normal to have at least one thing you really dislike whether that be because of taste or texture. I would also never judge if someone is forced into fussy eating by food intolerances, allergies or illness, but I admit to a few qualms about people who refuse to at least try new things.

I shall be continuing to try something new as often as possible, even attempting to challenge my dislike of fruit in savoury dishes with the very generous gift from loyal blog reader Margo-a-go-go of the beautiful The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit which seeks to encourage the creative cook to try new and unexpected flavour combos. I’m particularly keen to see if I can overcome my antipathy to oranges…

So what say you? What’s your dealbreaker? Or what are you secretly yearning to try despite the fear that it make you spit food into your table napkin?

How does your garden grow?

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The long cold winter seems like just a memory here in London (apologies to our  less lucky Northern readers!) and my little garden has been responding well to the fabulous warm sunny weather we been having since late June with things starting to crop abundantly… Read more

Kraft Mac n’Cheese

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I have long been a bit of an Americanophile with a particular penchant for American literature. Part of that fascination is to do with the descriptions of seemingly exotic sounding foods in these novels. To someone growing up in Ireland, corn dogs and crawdaddies held an almost magical fascination. So imagine my childlike glee when I espied a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in Brixton Market last weekend! I could finally try that most archetypal of American meals without the need for transatlantic travel…

Kraft Mac n’ Cheese or Kraft Dinner as it is also referred to, seems to be the thing that most of my American ex-pat friends crave the most outside the USA. They beg returning travellers to slip those familiar blue boxes in their luggage or pay ridiculous prices for it in Selfridges food hall. Their eyes glaze over with wistfulness when they mention it. How could I resist trying something so iconic?

So on a grey rainy Sunday evening, after a few cocktails the previous night, I decided it was time to try the ultimate comfort food and open that box of Kraft Dinner in time for Come Dine With Me. Firstly, I was alarmed to see that since the macaroni and cheese sauce are separately packed, you have to make the entire 3 serving box in its entirety. Even as a great lover of macaroni cheese that seemed excessive.

Secondly, the macaroni seemed to stick together the instant I added it to the boiling water and no amount of stirring seemed to help. Thirdly, while my pasta lump was cooking, I was horrified to see that the serving instruction was to use 4 tablespoons of margarine to make the cheese sauce. For a real butter lover those instructions felt like sacrilege. I was slightly relieved to see that the ‘Light Prep’ involved 2 teaspoons of butter and the same amount of fat free milk. Pondering why anyone would willingly add that much margarine to anything, I drained the macaroni.

Thanks to having to stir it to try and break up the unappealing lump it had formed, I haven’t seen macaroni this gluey since I last made art in kindergarten class. Obeying the express instruction not to rinse it took every ounce of my willpower. Instead it lay draining in the colander looking wan and quivering like a recently unearthed brain. I hoped the cheese sauce would salvage it…

I added a 1/4 cup of semi skimmed milk to the pan along with a lump of salted butter and opened the foil sachet of cheese sauce powder. Believe me when I say the last time I saw anything that unnaturally lurid in colour, it was being worn by a eager young thing en route to a Nu Rave night. Luckily stirring it into the milk and butter rendered it normal enough coloured to consider eating and it looked almost palatable by the time the macaroni was stirred in.

I was too shocked to take a good photo…

I put the whole mountain of mac n’ cheese in a bowl and added some black pepper for extra favour. I was slightly concerned to see that by the time I had sat down to eat, it had begun to congeal slightly in the bowl, adding an extra dimension of unappealingness to it all.

Undaunted, I dug into the dish, only to discover it looks better than it tastes. I’d say it tasted like sick, but at least sick has a definable flavour. This was offensive in its sheer blandness. It didn’t even taste of salt, let alone cheese. The macaroni was limp and wet with absolutely no texture or bite while the sauce was just tasteless with a unpleasant hint of oiliness. The whole thing was simply like milky semi digested pap. By the time the good folk of Come Dine With Me had reached their first starter, I had had enough.

Having tasted this dreck, I cannot imagine how miserable you must be feeling for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to classify as comfort food. Everything about it is an insult to the real thing. Any craving for processed cheese I had after reading this paean to it has been obliterated. After this crushing disappointment I doubt I will ever risk trying an egg cream or a funnel cake in the future. I’m not sure I could take the shattering of another childhood dream after this debacle!

Feeling Hungary

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Mister North’s recent trip to Hungary made me very very envious as a weekend of beer, pork and paprika is definitely something I would revel in. I decided to create a little Magyar magic at home and make goulash with the lovely looking tube of gulyáskrém he brought me…

Paprika in a tube...

Strangely I loathe, despise and abhor peppers, yet I adore paprika. Something about the drying and grinding of peppers to obtain this rich intricate spice seems to remove the taste of a regular bell pepper that I hate so much. I’m not quite sure how that works, but I’m very glad it does, since avoiding the unexpected addition of peppers is the bane of my life when eating away from home. Such is my hatred of these vile fruits that I try to avoid walking past them in shops in case I get a whiff of them. At risk of sounding like the princess and the pepper, I can even tell if you used the same knife for peppers and and didn’t wash it before moving on to something else. It is impossible to cut peppers up small enough that I won’t notice them in a dish…

Yet I add paprika to everything I possibly can. Along with anchovy sauce, black pepper and Maldon salt, it is my essential can’t live without it food flavouring. I tend to fill up the famous La Chinata tins with cheaper tastier paprika bought from my local Portuguese deli and I like to keep all types in the spice cupboard, but favour the sweet paprika most generally.

Keen to try the new spicy paprika cream Mister North had provided, I set about finding an authentic sounding goulash recipe that didn’t involve adding in strips of bell pepper. This was quite difficult to find as many of those that omitted peppers relied on other ingredients like dried ceps to make life more awkward and expensive. I eventually found what I was looking for thanks to the lovely Liz at Gastronomy Domine and set about making a paprika infused, pepper free stew to tantalise the taste buds!

The recipe is very easy to follow. I used goose fat to brown the meat since the Hungarians are the most goose obsessed nation on earth. Everything was easy to come by and apart from an exploding tube of tomato puree, everything was straightfoward. I was making the goulash for about 3-4 people, but used the same amounts of paprika as Liz suggested anyway. I also deglazed the pan with some red wine as that was all I had to hand. This rich heavily scented stew was ready for the oven about 15 minutes after starting. I popped it in for 2 hours and settled down with a glass of red wine as delicious aromas filled the house.

Ready for the oven...

A few hours later, I pulled this stew out of the oven and realised I had turned the oven up too high and carbonised this round the edges! Luckily the meat and sauce were fairly easy to salvage and once I’d added some lemon juice, it all looked deliciously thick and tasty. Rather than make the nokedli mentioned in the recipe, I served this slightly singed stew with some plain pasta.

Ready to eat!

And it was delicious! Rich, deep paprika-y flavours with just the right amount of tang from the tomato puree and the lemon juice and a slight warmth from the gulyáskrém. Surprisingly it was quite light to eat on a warm night despite its reputation for being a heavy dish. The meat was a bit tough from my mistake with the temperature, but tasty enough to do justice to the sauce. I will definitely be making this lovely paprika spiked stew once more…I’ll just double check the heat of the oven first!

Marmalade Cake

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I haven’t thought much about marmalade for years, despite a fondness for Paddington himself, but I was given some for Christmas last year and have been pondering what to do with it since I don’t like oranges. Inspired by Oliver Thring’s recent piece on this traditional preserve in The Guardian I decided to try baking with it in place of using lemon.

A marmalade loving little bird told me that Nigel Slater had the ultimate recipe for marmalade cake and thanks to the power of online archives, I soon had my little hands on it. It had a simple list of ingredients and was part of an article about easy straightforward baking. What could go wrong? Read more