We decided this year to go for a Christmas Day buffet rather than to try to do one main menu. With 13 people in the house and even my family divided on what they would enjoy it seemed the best compromise.

After a fairly late breakfast we decided to do two rounds of buffet - one early afternoon and the other early evening - with a Dutch "Sinter Klaas" celebration in between (basically a sort of secret Santa accompanied with rhymes about the persons receiving the gifts). We had planned what we would do with the buffet a few weeks back, but the split between the two rounds was decided on the day.

Buffet Round 1

With everybody fairly full after a large breakfast we decided to keep this fairly light. The menu was (from left to right)

Grilled pitta bread with garlic and herb butter (front)
Nürnberger Bratwürste with sweet mustard (back)
Chilli rice crackers
Roast carrot and yogurt dip
Crackers with Canadian sockeye salmon
Fennel salad
Sparkling wine, wine or beer

The next round was heavier. We decided to cook some fish and bake camembert cheese. A few years ago we had monkfish wrapped in bacon at a restaurant and loved it. We have done the same at home but usually used black forest ham rather than bacon; however that has had a divided response. Mrs Oregano and I like the thinness of the black forest ham and the smokey taste. Others, however, do not like the smokey taste and prefer unsmoked bacon.
In the end we compromised and did two monkfish tails one with black forest ham and the other with unsmoked bacon.

A handy tip with monkfish (saw it in a book by Jamie Oliver) is to salt the monkfish for an hour before grilling, then wash off the salt and dry the fish. This avoids the grilling releasing a milky liquid from the fish.

Another easy thing we did was baked camembert (right in the photo). Just cut to top 2 mm of the camembert and place thyme or rosemary on top. Bake in the oven  at about 180 degress until the cheese bubbles up.

So the Christmas buffet round 2 was a bit more substantial. Going left to right it was

Crackers
Roast Scottish smoked salmon
Orkney pickled herring (back)
Deep fried filo prawns (front)
Prawns in cream sauce
Cheese platter with 8 different Dutch and English cheeses, grapes and quince cheese (back)
Grilled monkfish wrapped with black forest ham or bacon
Dip sauce for vegetables
Raw vegetable selection (carrot, cauliflower, red pepper and cucumber)
Bread (back)
Baked camembert (front)
Cold (boiled) quince (back)
Courgette pakora with dip sauce

The food seemed to be enjoyed by everybody and little remained by the end of the evening. However probably doing a turkey and trimmings would have involved less work in the kitchen. There was lots of chopping to be done plus deep fat frying and baking. Nevertheless we felt happy with the end result judging by satisfied guests. I was particularly pleased that the Dutch visitors liked the quince cheese with strong flavoured cheese such as their mature goat cheese.

Now we are looking forward to a relaxing few days...guests have just left.

Having been brought up to roast dinners at home, for many years I thought that the principal use of the oven was for roasting large joints of meat or for baking bread or cakes. I am more and more convinced that the oven can simplify some meals and help deal with a crowd - with 13 people in the house over Christmas that is my focus at present.

In October when I was trawling around for ways of cooking quince, I wandered into Waitrose and picked up a recipe card for pork, pear and parsnips done in the oven with maple syrup. It required the use of hard British pears which were in then season and sort of in line with my thinking on quinces. My wife tried it and it went reasonably well apart from the maple syrup burning on the roast pan. What really appealed to me was the fact that everything was chucked into a single roast pan meaning that once the roast pan was prepared there was little to worry about for 45 minutes. This seemed like less work than fussing over pots and pans on the hob.

We have worked on refining the recipe and the pan shown here is a recent variant that included sweet potatoes. However I am convinced that the basic idea of the single tray roast meal is very sound.

A few years ago with our kids showing little enthusiasm for roast turkey we tried roasting salmon for Christmas. Our motive was that we all liked salmon (though admittedly to varying degrees) but that it roasted in less than an hour. The roast potatoes were the limiting factor. I liked something I read which suggested resting the salmon on slices of onion (rather than leaving it directly in contact with the roast pan) and stuffing the fish with lemon and rosemary. I had gathered that the onions were not intended to be eaten but I like the way they absorbed some juices from the fish.

I have read of oily fish being roasted with vegetables such as celery, fennel and carrot so have tried that a few times. If the roast takes about half an hour one problem with the fennel is that it loses its aniseed taste and seems indistinguishable from onion. On Saturday we roasted 6 trouts (3 to a tray) on a bed of onion, carrot, lemon and celery. All the vegetables were sliced thinly (about 2 mm). Half way throught the roast I added some thinly sliced fennel and chorizo; this ensured that the fennel taste was not lost and that the thin chorizo slices did not burn. We served everything with rice and (since our guests are big potato eaters and the oven was hot anyway) roast potatoes as an alternative. I was pleased that we cooked for 12 at that meal (one side of roast trout each) with one oven and a rice cooker. Of course it could be said that the 'traditional Christmas turkey' is almost completely done in the oven too but our meal certainly took a lot less time to cook. The main work was chopping the vegetables thinly.

About a month ago Mrs Oregano saw Nigella Lawson prepare her 'lamb, olive and caramelised onion tagine'. This basically involved chucking diced lamb, olives, capers and caremelised onions in a tagine or pot, emptying a bottle of red wine on the lot and putting the pot in the oven for 2 hours. Mrs Oregano tried this and we had mixed feelings about the results. We were not so convinced of how well the olives and capers went with the lamb - our taste I suppose - but thought that the lamb was very tender. However we did find this a very straightforward way to cook. A key advantage was that we left the pots alone and did not have to worry about whether the stews were burning on the bottoms of the pots; no fussy stirring.

This was put to good use in the last days. On Friday evening Mrs Oregano and I prepared four dishes. Mrs Oregano did a carrot and corriander soup, then a chicken soup. I did a venison stew and a spicy lamb stew. In both cases we put the stew ingredients in large steel pots and put them in the oven at a low heat for 3 hours. Our two largest pots just fitted into our oven! With our fridges full we were thankful that the weather was below 5 degrees C and so could safely put the pots on a table outside our kitchen door as a natural fridge.

Yesterday we served the soups in maincourse size portions with ciabbata; just needed to heat them up on the hob.

Today we served the stews with couscous and as an alternative roast sweet potato and parsnips. We offered Dornfelder red wine with the stews; Dornfelder is a wine I first tried in a restaurant near Heidelberg and somehow it goes very well with venison - it is unfortunately hard to find in the UK - it is one of the few German red wines. Thankfully it all seemed to go well and almost everything got gobbled up.

We are not roasting any birds tomorrow but plan a staged buffet with both hot and cold things.

...Meantime Happy Christmas all!

O.

In early November when some BCUK friends were exchanging views on how to eat inexpensively, my thoughts returned back to my student days and my first attempts at cooking. These were by definition on a low budget and thankfully junk food was less well established then. One thing my mother told me how to make was a simple meatloaf. At that time I used beef mince, however when I did my little price survey at the local supermarket I was reminded that lean pork mince is good value for money. This is what I have done more recently

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

500 g pork mince (a good pork sausage meat would work too)
1 egg
1 medium onion
2 slices of old brown bread
1 tsp soya (or a pinch of salt)
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp chilli (more if you like it hot)
2 tbsp tomato ketchup

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to about 180 Celsius
2. Grate the bread into breadcrumbs
3. Either put all ingredients in a food processor and blend for a short period or mix all the ingredients thoroughly in a mixing bowl
4. Put the mixture into a non-stick loaf tin (approx 20 cm x 10 cm)
5. Bake in oven for 50-60 minutes
6. Serve in slices

Accompanying staples and vegetables

Since the oven is on anyway we have often roasted potatoes at the same time; the roasting time is the same. On other occasions we have served the loaf with boiled rice.

The oven can also be used to roast vegetables. In summer we roughly chop aubergine, courgette, pepper and onion, mix with salt pepper and olive oil and roast for 30 minutes. In winter we have tried roasting roughly chopped carrots or leeks (sticks about 5 cm long) and roughly chopped onions.

Economics including potatoes and veg

Let's compare with the proverbial supermarket pizza of £4.00 for 4 people.

Based on recent pricing 
500 g lean pork mince £2.14
1 egg   22p
300 g onion (for loaf and roast veg)  27 p
400 g carrot   25 p

So compared with £4.00 of pizza there is still £1.12 left to spend on herbs, spices and dollops of sauces used.

Back in October I made a posting on another blog about a report on obesity; I got far more comments than usual. One comment from Ranfuchs was though-provoking for me as I think it accurately reflects how some people approach food buying. I want to challenge this view even if the resulting posting is somewhat pedantic.

For instance, at Tesco, for instance, you buy 2 pizzas for 4.00 This would normally be enough for at least 4 people. That is 50p per person. Pies are about the same. The worst grade fresh tomato, for instance, at the same shop is 64p each.

So what would a typical mother, who does not have much money to spend, and even less free time to prepare food would choose for her kids?

The way to obesity, is her easiest choice.

I do not think the arithmetic is quite right (sharing 2 pizzas for a family of 4 is £1.00 each) but certainly the pizza option sounds cheap. My boys are big enough that they would certainly demand one pizza each (so nearer £2.00/head). A £2.00 pizza might vary from about 230-430 grams so in the price bracket there is a fair variation in size.

A month ago I did a quick survey of prices in my local supermarkets (may not be the best value for money nor the best quality). With almost 4 weeks on the road I never got round to writing the post. For reasons of space I quote the Sainsbury prices which are neither the most expensive nor the cheapest.

Staples:
Couscous 69p/500g
Long grained rice 46p/kg
White potato 37p/kg (this is admitedly much cheaper than some named varieties)
Fusili 51p/500g

Fresh vegetables:
Tomato £1.29/kg
Carrot 62p/kg
White cabbage 79p/kg
Onion 89p/kg
Iceberg lettuce 85p/ea

Meat:
Lean pork mince £4.28/kg
Pork loin steaks £6.40/kg
Stewing steak (beef) £4.10/kg
Beef steak mince £4.38/kg
Lamb mince £4.30/kg
Lamb chops £7.98/kg

A main meal from fresh ingredients might simplistically consist of meat, a staple and vegetables.

For staples, I would use the following rules of thumb for budgeting:

70 g/person for couscous (39 p for four people)
100 g/person for rice (18 p for four people)
100 g/person for pasta (41 p for four people)
200 g/person for potatoes (7 p for four people)

For vegetables I would assume 200 g per person (in practice that might be more than one vegetable). Taking a few examples that gives 26 p per person (£1.04 for four) with tomatoes, 72 p with onions, 50 p with carrots etc.

For meat I would assume 100-125 g per person. For four people (with 125 g) that gives

Lean pork mince £2.14
Pork loin steaks £3.20
Stewing steak (beef) £2.05
Beef steak mince £2.17
Lamb mince £2.15
Lamb chops £3.99

Thus with a budget of £4.00 providing a cheaper meat (mince or a stewing cut) is used it should be possible to combine most vegetables and staples and still have some money over for herbs, spices, oil, etc.

The pizza (junk food) is of course cheaper if you compare with lamb or pork chops or a prime cut of meat. However that is probably not a reasonable comparison given the tiny amount of meat or vegetable that there is on a pizza.

Of course, my general assumptions reflect conventional British cooking and are not necessarily the best route to low cost, fresh cooking. As a student I noted how, despite my limited budget, students from Asia certainly cooked for less than me. They generally used fresh vegetables and meat but there were some tricks to reduce the spend.

Indian students made good use of pulses. Sainsbury lentils are priced at £1.38/kg so a good deal less than meat. A dhal will cost less than half the price of a meat curry. I noticed how Chinese and Indian colleagues used a lot less meat; for example using a single pork chop for 4-5 people but by fine chopping ensuring that the taste was there.

Returning to the original comment there is of course the question of time. The time required to prepare may differ considerably from the time required to cook. However, planning should get around this obstacle. For example if I make a pork meat loaf (definitely cheaper than the pizza) the preparation time is max 10 minutes before one hour in the oven. My wife's stewing steak takes 5 minutes to prepare but then requires a long braising time.

Summing up, convenience of some junk food may make the path to obesity an easy one. However, it should be possible to cook with fresh ingredients a tasty meal for no more than it costs to prepare junk food.

Well, I'm on my third week of jet lag with Vancouver 2 weeks ago, Munich last week and now across the Atlantic to Austin, Texas. I won't bore with details of my meetings but my boss took us out to a pretty decent joint last night.

Congress is the main street in downtown Austin stretchin from the Capitol to the famous "bat bridge" where the street becomes "South Congress". A few years ago we went about 2 km south of the bat bridge to a great Italian restaurant in what looked like a pretty dodgy neighbourhood. Apparently the whole area has been improved and has now a number of new restaurants. South Congress Café is one of them.

The restaurant has a modern and fairly light appearance. Interestingly you cannot book tables but can put your name on a "wait list" for a certain time. We turned up and waited in the bar about a quarter of an hour. There was a choice of about 8 draught beers - good ones.

We were in due course shown to our tables where a "trainee waiter" was serving us. In the UK service has traditionally been poor in restaurants while in the US it is considered essential to serve well even at the risk of being smarmy. One cannot fault US restaurants for investing in training their staff though I imagine it must be pretty embarassing for the trainees. In case you have not been to the US let me explain the method. The trainee waiter (or waitress) is shadowed the entire time by a more senior colleague who is there to prompt the trainee or to do a "diving catch" if something goes wrong. Yesterday, the trainee managed to knock over my beer when taking my order; the senior waitress who was training him dived across the table to try to catch the glass but missed...OK, the firthe second bit is a lie! The training method is probably effective but to an outsider it always looks comic.

OK, back to the interesting stuff....food. The menu had some interesting starters but I succumbed to the 'spicy' fried calamari; this was a bit of a boring choice but tasted very good. I would not have described the squid as spicy but the squid was well fried being crisp on the crust and tender inside.

I chose the 'five spice crusted pork tenderloin' which was served with potato enchiladas and a piece of sweet potato. 

(OK, I left my camera behind but this picture from the website looks just like what I ate).

The grilled tenderloin was very good...well spiced and grilled with the right balence of browned on the outside and tender inside. The menu describes the sauce as 'very spicy ranchero burgundy' and it is accurate. My boss who ordered the same dish broke out into a sweat. For me it meant that I stayed with pale ale rather than switching to red wine. The enchiladas seemed to be a tortilla stuffed with potato and some other spice stuff. At $16 it seemed good value in US terms - and an absolute bargain with the US dollar worth less than 50p!

I could not manage a dessert. However my colleagues who ordered other dishes seemed equally pleased at both the taste and prices.

It was a good place to eat out both in terms of food, price and ambience.

Just before leaving for Vancouver airport, I did a walk of a few blocks to see if there was anything worth buying for the family. It was snowing fairly hard but the temperature was above freezing and the huge snowflakes were melting as soon as they hit you. Getting rather sodden and having not found anything of interest I headed back by a slightly different route.

In Thurlow Street I saw a shop called Salmon Village so I thought that looked promising and went in.

This had extensive stocks of sockeye smoked salmon which they claimed had no additives other than salt and brown sugar. They also had a service for packing for air travel. (Pictures are not that great as I did not have a camera with me so resorted to my phone!)

I settled on half a side of smoked salmon. The packaging was very effective. I have seen mail order companies here use small icepacks for keeping fish fresh but for the fee of one dollar each I got two very substantial ones. Having just unpacked I was surprised that they were still almost completely frozen.

I think that it must be sockeye salmon that you sometimes see in the UK labelled as "Alaska salmon". However in case any readers have never seen it the photo below contrasts the deep colour of the sockeye with the paler European salmon. My Finnish colleagues found it very hard to believe that the sockeye colour was natural and initially thought it was food colouring.

I assume that the Scottish salmon shown here is farmed. Wild Atlantic salmon looks much paler still.

Well this is not a thorough analysis of the dining scene as you would expect in a newspaper review. I found a hotspot at Vancouver airport at the end of a 5 day stay for our company sales conference. Since for the conference days our company planned the time from 08:00-22:00 every day I have sadly seen little of the city.

After landing on Tuesday I managed to walk a few blocks away from my hotel. I found a sushi bar on Robson Street (Tsunami Sushi) and gave it a try. After a day or airline food it was a good change. Tsunami Sushi was one of these places with a bar with a chain of boats taking different dishes under your nose (well not literally!). I tried some of my usual favourites such as spicy tuna roll or mackerel. One fish I did not recognise with its dark orange colour and very lean flesh. I asked and it turned out to be sockeye salmon. It has a much stronger colour than our Atlantic salmon.

With 1,500 people at our conference the logistics for serving lunches and dinners were quite amazing. However the hotel caterers seemed to take it in their stride with reasonably tasty and varied buffets.

One evening we split into ten smaller groups and went to a variety of restaurants. Our group went to Bridges which is in South Vancouver with a spectacular view across the creek to Downtown. The food was good and the main course was seared sockeye salmon with goats cheese potato cake.

We had an awards dinner at the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel. This was very good indeed for a "standard" menu for masses of people. There was a goats cheese salad, followed by a gin and tonic sorbet (much better than I thought it would be) followed by a steak. I never managed dessert.

Today I spent a while wandering around a few blocks from my hotel. I was aware that quite a lot of people had emigrated from Hong Kong to Vancouver but in the streets where I walked it seemed that there were loads of Japanese restaurants. However with a heavy shower of wet snow I did not wander very far so my impression may not be representative.

Now for another Air Canada economy meal in a few hours...

In the UK it has often been reported that most of us eat too few vegetables. This is particularly true of those children who are brought up on junk food, with lots of sugar, salt and fat. Yet I have also often read that parents who want to give their kids fresh food struggle too. I have seen a few different strategies for tackling this. For example some friends of ours have a boy who is notorious for leaving his vegetables, yet if his Mum or Dad make a vegetable soup with everything blended he enjoys from the soupbowl those very vegetables he rejects on a normal plate.

Thinking of my own childhood, I recall being a fussy eater as a kid. We did not have fast food in those days other than the local 'chippy' - my parents only took us to a chippy when we were on holidays. I recall enjoying my Mum's roast beef, sausages, pork meatballs and fish - all proteins. I recall enjoying potatoes - we did not have pasta or rice in my family then. But vegetables were a different matter...and a bit of a struggle. I remember enjoying fresh or frozen peas, green beans and carrots. However, I recall not enjoying brussels sprouts, green cabbage and cauliflower. In the 1960s we were not given a choice about eating what was set in front of us and had to eat up what was on our plates; parents then were more willing to sit out such situations with their kids than in my generation. In those days I think that one problem was that some people - especially the elderly - cooked vegetables for far too long. The green cabbage would have a dark green hue, the cauliflower would be tinged with grey. I think that another factor is that children have a more sensitive sense of taste and texture and what tastes good for adults may taste too strong for children. However, I also remember the time my Mum introduced white cabbage to our roast dinners. Instead of the usual flacid, strong-tasting, green leaves we had crisper and milder white strips. I actually looked forward to eating the white cabbage as an integral part of the roast dinner instead of being something 'I had to eat'.

I am now in mid Atlantic on my way to Canada. My writing was interrupted by the mid Atlantic Air Canada economy class lunch which reminded me of another thing from my childhood - salads. My meal today came with a salad having a variety of green and red leaves and accompanied by a bottle of vinaigrette. There was something wrong with the bottle lid and it could not be opened. I complained to the stewardess but after a 10 minute wait I tried the dry leaves - yuck! Almost immediately I was supplied with a new bottle and the salad tasted fine. So back to my childhood, then nobody used dressings although the salads were well-washed (in my Mum's case in salt water) to avoid insects, but were not appetising. On our first holiday abroad (to German-speaking cantons of Switzerland) I found that I enjoyed the leaves much more with a simple oil and vinegar dressing. It is amazing what just 10 ml of dressing can do to some leaves!

Going to University in Glasgow was a step forward in developing my taste. Specifically I was exposed to a much bigger variety of things. The institutional food at my Hall of Residence was the 'worst of British' but we were right next to one of the main South Asian areas with restaurants that were just affordable for students. Then in 1976 we had a potato shortage. So many British families who had previously only used potatoes as a staple were forced into alternatives like rice and pasta; my parents included.

Another element was my fellow students from South East Asia - mainly Chinese - from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. From Chinese friends I realised that you did not have to boil vegetables to death - though to be fair my mother did not do that either - but that cooking could be very light indeed. A revelation for me was to observe how they prepared cauliflower: firstly quickly fry florets in a little oil then pour on boiling water from the kettle and simmer a few minutes. The result was mild and crip as opposed to the soft but pungent taste in food from elderly relatives. I also realised that I actually liked the mild crispness of raw cauliflower. In a different direction the Indian way of cooking vegetables made me realise that there were so many ways to prepare common vegetables and that it was worth adding herbs and spices.

I also realised that (back in the 1970s) the perception of white Britons of what constituted "healthy food" was based on the nutritional content but with little thought of what it tasted like. People were expected to eat disgusting food that passed for 'healthy' because of a few ticks in the nutritional checklist. I recall being served disgusting soup in my Hall of Residence with the server saying "it's good for you son" as if that compensated for the taste! If food tastes bad people will inevitably make poor choices and go for the unhealthy but tasty alternative.

So (after a long diversion...you can probably tell the flight is boring!) back to kids...we have wanted our children to eat healthy things and to enjoy their food. This involved developing their tastes. A surprising success, when our boys were under five, was raw vegetables. At weekends we wanted to unwind and some Saturdays or Sundays had a snack meal rather than a proper cooked mone. If we did that we did not just resort to crisps, nuts and fizzy drinks but offered quite a bit of raw vegetables. We usually did some combination of carrot sticks, cucumber slices, pepper slices and cauliflower florets. However to make it appetising we always did one or two dip sauces. We also felt it was unwise to be fanatical, e.g. to ban crisps, as we knew that our kids would eat them somewhere else if they were not getting them at home. However offering lots of raw veg also meant that they needed to eat the vegetables to avoid hunger. We found that the raw vegetables were always consumed with as much gusto as the crisps. Importantly, as teenagers now, they have not lost their taste for raw veg.

I think that the presentation of vegetables is not unimportant. I recall that when my grandmother served finely sliced carrots with butter and herbs it was more appetising than those from other relatives who plonked medium-sized whole carrots on the plate. The latter always seemed intimidating.

In our case a simple dip sauce probably helped to make the vegetables more interesting. We never measured but we would do roughly:

150 ml natural yogurt (ideally Greek)
50-70 ml mayonnaise

then something like either

a) a crushed clove of garlic, salt and pepper or
b) a dash of soya sauce and tsp paprika or
c) a teaspoon of curry powder or garam masala and a pinch of salt.

It's probably just our taste but we always were light on mayonnaise with our dips. Salad bars I have seen in the UK - along with many supermarket coleslaws - are very heavy in mayonnaise. For me it is adding needless calories and makes salads needlessly heavy-tasting.

So to sum up, it is well-worth trying to get kids to try fresh raw vegetables. Think though about presentation and how they can be appetising to a small guy's pallette.

In this country we tend to think of radishes as small red vegetables. In German there are two words for radish - Rettich and Radieschen - the former is a large white root and the latter is the small red radish. I have not seen them for sale here until yesterday when I saw them at Lidl.

On an earlier posting about parsnips, I concluded that Princess Fiona and I were talking at cross-purposes. I think that her mooli is a radish rather than a parsnip. The photo above shows the two side by side. Above is the German radish which is white with a smooth skin and weighs about 500 g while the parsnip below weighs about 300 g. The German radish looks rather like mooli sold at Tesco. I have never seen daikon for sale but assume it is similar too.

When I think of German radish I think of having lunch in a Bavarian beer garden. The white radish is used a lot in salads and served with cold cuts and beer. It is normally sliced very thinly and left with salt for up to half an hour to tenderise it. It can be cooked but is normally eaten raw in salads. Like cucumber it has a very cool taste so is more suited to the heat of summer than the greyness of November.

After a full morning and midday working in the garden we had a simple but tasty lunch. I had bought just over 300 g of sprats for 90 p yesterday evening and we grilled them.

In the UK, I have always thought you should clean fish unless they are tiny like whitebait. However I was surprised this summer in Portugal to see that sardines, squid and smaller fish were grilled uncleaned. When we had sardines that way the flesh seemed to separate from the inedible parts quite well.

However, we decided to be conservative. Cleaning sprats is easy with scissors. Just cut through most of the fish from the top behind the gills, almost all the way through. A little tug will also bring most of the innards with it too. To be sure do a second snip along the belly to the anus and remove any remaining guts. Cleaning is not onerous for 300 grams (3 people) but if you were doing this for 10 people it would be a bit of a drag.

Season with salt, pepper and a little oil. Grill for 5 minutes (3 minutes for the first side, 2 minutes for the second) and serve with lemon.

I have bemoaned the lack of a fishmonger in our town. Our only fish counters are Tesco and Waitrose. The former has some reasonable offers but it seems to be based on whatever the delivery lorry is offloading and you cannot order things. Waitrose is a bit more customer friendly in the fish department.

Most people in this country focus on cod, haddock or salmon all of which have some problems of supply. You also end up paying £7-13.00/kg or even more. So in a similar price category to prime cuts of beef.

Some fish are under-appreciated and are more economic. I have always thought mackerel was under-rated though my Dad refuses to eat it as a "scavenger fish". However mackerel is reasonably priced.

A month ago in the Netherlands I really enjoyed the smoked sprats I was offered. Sprats are a smaller cousing of the herring. They are in season now and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Tesco fish counter sold them at just £2.89/kg. We will have a cost-effective lunch tomorrow.

A number of Christmases ago we decided to roast salmon for our main dinner. My family has never been much enthused by the idea of a "traditional" Christmas turkey; not that turkey is really traditional! Roasting salmon was a much quicker and simpler affair and went well - well, apart from the fact that my youngest son always complains about eating fish. We have tried variations on this - mainly successful. However, a delicious-looking idea for honey roast salmon once went awry when the honey trickled away to burn onto the pan!

My Dutch wife used to be very sceptical about the British roasting habits. She was probably put off by the Sunday lunch palava of my parents and some other people. However, I am convinced that roasting can be a way of simplifying cooking.

For much of my life my only experience of roast vegetables was roast potatoes or parsnip to go with roast meat. However there are plenty of other root or other vegetables that taste good roasted. Carrots roasted for half an hour acquire a sweet taste. Many begin to caramelise.

In the last few months I have been increasingly combining roast vegetables with roast fish. Tonight we decided that we needed to use up some of the stuff in our freezer. We had a few salmon steaks - what was left of a side of salmon we bought months ago. There was also a somewhat tired fennel,  a carrot and a leek in the fridge. It is a while since I cooked with ginger and the occasion seemed opportune to use it too.

We sliced the fennel, a knob of ginger and carrot about 1 mm thick using a mandolin. The leek would not slice well on the mandolin so we sliced by hand into about 2 mm thick slices. We tossed the vegetables with a little salt and vegetable oil and laid them in a roasting pan. We then seasoned the salmon steaks and laid them on the bed of vegetables and roasted at about 180 C.

Roasting times for salmon depend on the thickness of the fish. The only rule of thumb I have seen published  is 5 minutes/cm thickness plus 10-15 min standing time. Our steaks were about 3 cm thick and we had them in the oven for 20+ minutes. Five minutes before the end I squirted a little liquid honey on the salmon. The fennel and leeks caramelised slightly and with 20 minutes in the oven the fennel loses the strong aniseed flavour it has when raw.

We served the salmon and veg with couscous, but with hindsight it would have been perfectly fine just on the bed of vegetables.

For most of my life I have focused my cooking energies on doing (in my view) tasty, reasonably healthy main courses or starters without burning a hole in my pocket. I have limited dessert experience and next to no cake baking experience. Jams, jellies and pickles are also a hole in my experience. So making Membrillo from quince has been a challenge for me...and if you are experienced in making jams or jellys forgive my inexperience!

Well, Hugh's 'quince cheese' recipe spoke of bringing the dissolved sugar to the boil for 5 minutes then simmering the quinces for an hour after that. I did that last night. Since it was already late, I then poured the quince paste into a roasting tray and tried to set it in the oven at 50 Celsius. At 01:30 on Saturday I realised I had fallen asleep and that the quince paste was still in the oven - the good news was that it was not burnt, the bad news was that it had not set. I duly went to bed. To be honest the less than set mixture would have made a great sidedish to meat and vegetables: I had something in that direction a year ago near Grenoble.

After most of today spent on taking my youngest boy to his gymnastics competition, I took a look at the original recipe this afternoon. Despite the claim that boiling the quince for about an hour would be sufficient it was also clear that they said that there should be a thick paste in the pot. That was not really the case last night despite the hour cooking...

So today I returned the membrillo to the cast iron pot and let it simmer for a further hour. BTW, when food writes talk of 'simmering' is it the same? I simmered last night with the quince mix barely bubbling. Maybe Hugh had a more vigorous simmer than me!

After an hour the mix was a much deeper red. I put it into a tray in the oven for a further hour at 50 Celsius and it truly set.

I have tried it out with cheese and indeed it goes well. Particularly with the more salty ones. While the membrillo has set I am not sure I can talk of slicing it; it did not set that much. However I can put it into jars for Chirstmas.

The first taste test with cheese and wine went well. The sweetness of the quince complemented the saltiness of some cheeses.

Maybe this whole exercise was not a thundering success but at least disaster was averted!

The last few weeks have been crazy at work. I have been spending the last few days going through massive spreasheets where if I get my analysis wrong there could be some dire consequences. So I have not got round to using the quinces I bought in the Netherlands.

I have found plenty of recipes on the internet and had excellent advice from copdam and technomist on this blog. However, I decided to focus on a recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Year. The reason was it seemed to be a means of coming up with quince cheese or membrillo which could be highly useful when we get a large number of guests for Christmas from the Netherlands. It also seemed simpler than some of the other recipes.

It starts with 1 kg sugar - well that's easy as it's a single bag! 0.75 litre of water and a kilogram of quinces. It is not clear whether this is before or after peeling so I took the former; my quinces weighed exactly 995g on my scales.

So I peeled and cored the quinces to reveal their white flesh. Then grated them in my food processor and added them to the syrup.

As expected they look white in the first five minutes, but gradually take on a redder hue with cooking.

After an hour they are having a pinky-orangey hue. The recipe said that by now there should be a grainy paste, but obviously I was some way away from that. I succumbed to the mechanical help of my hand mixer.

By now we were at the deeper colour I remember from when my mother-in-law stewed quinces for meat dishes. By this time you are probably wondering why my camera tripod has been gathering dust in the attic too.... 

When I started to let the mix cool I thought it had a fighting chance of setting before putting it into the oven. However, since I want to avoid failure I have taken technomist's advice on using lemon juice and used juice of half a lemon.

In a few hours I will know whether this will set or be another of Oregano's doomed experiments!

I have made my rants on various moderated internet sites, written to newspapers, etc but not with an astonishing amount of success. I was surprised and pleased that the Love Food Hate Waste people quoted me.

I just wish I had identified myself as "Oregano, food blogger". Sorry to let down blogland!

Today my middle son turned 18 and he wanted some Japanese food. I made some maki tuna rolls (conventional and inside out) followed by some tempura vegetables and prawns. I do not often make sushi rice so have always relied on the instructions on the Takara sushi rice packs I used to buy at Waitrose.

Unfortunately Waitrose has changed supplier. The British firm that is supplying the rice offers a 500 g pack (like Takara) but offers instructions in cups. Odd isn't it when cupmeasures have not been used in the UK either in metric or imperial. How many grams of rice in a cup. Thankfully I had the Takara rice instructions written down longhand on a sheet of paper. I will document them here for safe keeping!

250 g rice
boil the rice then when still warm add
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp mirin
2 tsp caster sugar
(1 tsp salt)
mix the dressing and gradually fold into the rice.

The salt I leave out as it seems excessive (recommended daily amount for one person) and with sushi being dipped in soya and wasabi there is enough salt around anyway! ...I also have hypertension so need to be sparing with salty anyway.

Today WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme) launched an intiative called Love Food Hate Waste. I was initially shocked to read their claim that one third of food in this country gets thrown away. However on reflection, that is probably realistic. I have often heard colleagues or friends lament what they throw away. Also what used to be called "good housekeeping" involved avoiding throwing away excess food and using it in innovative ways.

Looking back my grandparents wasted very little. The cooked in a seasonal way, they would cook a roast once and use it to produce a hot meal on Sunday then a cold meal on Monday. At that time ways of dealing with leftovers like "bubble and squeak" or "stovies" were just part of normal cooking. Such skills are largely forgotten in my generation and the next one. Similarly a lot of people throw out tired vegetables when they might be used creatively. For example the Balkan ajvar side dish can be made with aubergines or red peppers that are 'tired' and taste almost as good as made with fresh ones.

The LFHW website focuses on some sensible things. They draw attention to the financial and environmental consequences of food waste as well as offering practical advice. The scale of the issue is staggering

6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year,  or, to put it another way, around a third of all the food we buy end up being thrown away, and most of it could have been eaten.

 
In our household where we usually fall down is in fruit and vegetables. We plan our purchases of meat and fish more carefully but tend to "stock up" on fresh fruit and vegetables with less planning. We are apparently not alone.

Current research suggests that about 40% (by weight) of the food thrown away that could have been eaten is fresh fruit & vegetables (which includes potatoes). 

 

They explain what food labels e.g. 'best by' and 'use by' really mean. They provide practical suggestions around planning, using leftovers and some recipes themed as 'cook once, use twice', 'time saver' or 'rescue recipe'.

At first sight this is a very welcome initiative. While as a family we do not like to waste, I have noticed that we do much better when we have guests and come up with say a 4-day menu plan than when we plan meals spontaneously.