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...