So a weekend drive down to the Samye Ling Buddhist centre in the Scottish Wasteland Borders to meet up with Kurt and Karen and scatter our Mum.
We know it's what she would have wanted because she told us. She even told us exactly where - it's known as the Naga House - where the water spirits live, at the confluence of the river Esk and Moodlaw Burn. It's pretty there.

Mum really loved Samye Ling, visiting often - I've not quite worked out if she took the opportunity to visit me on her trips there or visa versa. But then, she used to visit me before she ever discovered Samye Ling - so I win!
It's a slightly unnerving place, incredibly peaceful, but just a little smug. Opulent, but at the same time tawdry. Beautiful but meretricious. It does deliver an overwhelming sense of peace though, carried on the astonishingly rich birdsong, the fluttering of prayer flags and the mellow ringing of wind chimes. I can see why Mum loved it so much - just her kind of thing.

My route there is through some of the best countryside that the Borders has to offer, not that I got to see much on the way there - according to Google Maps I needed to make up half an hour on their estimated time of arrival to get there on time, so I had to drive like a complete bastard. I needn't have bothered as it turns out; Kurt and Karen were an hour late - more than long enough for my front wheels to cool down sufficiently to touch.
Luckily the Tibetan Tea Room does an acceptable latté to sip on as I waited for them to randomly show up since there's absolutely zero phone signal anywhere nearby.

I wonder if it's a Buddhist plot?

Spherified sauerkraut - ever heard of it?
Well neither have I, but apparently Martin Wishart has. So:

• Step one: Make sauerkraut.
• Step two: Spherify it.

Leaving Step two aside for the moment watch this space... making sauerkraut is the easiest thing in the world, apart from the waiting, and once it's ready you can make yourself a sauerkraut salad with it. How good is that?

But about that milky beef.
Ah milk - streams of pearly goodness massaged from the teats of complicit ruminants. And what more appropriate liquor for boiling up their flesh than their own lactate?
Actually I was attempting to make saffron potatoes, and I wondered if gently poaching spuds in saffron-flavoured milk (with a dose of salt for flavour and sodium bicarbonate to retard curdling) would work.

Conveniently enough I've recently acquired a small crockpot from the back of Mum's cupboards and brought it back home with me after she died (silver linings eh?). I've got a slow cooker already, but this one is much smaller and despite being pretty old, looked to be in good shape and I thought it might work more effectively for smaller amounts. So I filled it up and set it off...

Turns out the recipe's a bust - the potatoes stubbornly resist flavouring (or softening) and the saffron adopts a rather harsh tannic taste from long simmering rather than the delicate aromaticism is that a word? I was hoping for.
Not only that, but it seems that small crockpots from the seventies aren't the models of efficiency you might have hoped - were they giving electrickery away free in those days? Unlike modern cookers which make at least some concessions to insulation, the entire aluminium casing of this Rima electric cooker heats up, which means that its main effect is to warm the kitchen (indeed - I could feel the crockpot as soon as I stepped foot into the room), and warming the ceramic liner occurs as something of a side effect. Making it the most inefficient slow cooker on earth I should imagine, unless the intention was always to use it as a space heater too?

Anyway, back to the cooker's disappointing contents;
Rather than waste the lot, and remembering something from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about milk-braised pork, I just threw in a small silverside beef joint (cut up) and some vegetables and left it to get on with it.
It tasted reasonably foul after 12 hours, but a day later was actually quite palatable!
It seemed to go especially well with fruity flavours (I had some sun-dried tomato couscous in the cupboard to eat it with) so it might help to throw in some dried apricots or prunes.
Unfortunately due to the milk curdling (the onions will do that - if nothing else) it looks like a bowl of sick.
So I'm not sure I'll be making it again to find out.

The duck's not really fishy of course Wait a minute - is that an idea? Fishy duck? No. No, it really isn't. Of course not. As you were... it's just the first course that's fishy.
But the duck is coffee-ey and chocolate-ey.

There were quite a few inspirations for this meal - it's been such a long time since I did any cooking what with running up and down to visit poor old Mum in the hospice (Moominmamma - as my good friend Becky called her), that I suppose I've had a lot of these ideas rattling around in my head.
The fish course comes straight from The Star Inn (a handy watering hole on my trips South) where I had soused mackerel packed in a little jam jar with a beetroot relish.
Delicious.
It wasn't until I made the version below that I realised theirs was more like a raw pickling method than this cooked one, but mine was nice enough for all that.

My friend Doctor Jenny once rhapsodised about their braised radishes when she went to visit the venerable Peat Inn and I fancied having a go at them.
I also remember someone else banging on about baking salt-crusted vegetables - apparently it's all the rage on one of those ghastly cooking competition TV shows - Britain's Got Chefs or whatever, so I thought I'd have a go at those too.
But then that set me thinking about what else you might bake crusted in salt (chicken works apparently?), and then naturally onto what else you might use to pack around yer baking goods.

Now it just so happens that I've had a sack of coffee beans rolling around in the bottom of the freezer I've been trying to empty forever now (so I can get a new one), and needed something to do with them other than making coffee.
I'd thought of baking or steaming fish with them, and had more-or-less dismissed the idea of using duck or chicken, especially breasts, because of the problem of them drying out during the roasting.
I mean - who just roasts duck breasts? No one that's who. Well, until now.

The idea of using the coffee beans from frozen to stop the duck drying out seemed like a stroke of genius. Or madness.
Either way I grabbed onto the idea with both hands et voilà: coffee roasted duck breasts are born.

Garlic scapes are those eccentrically curly flowering stalks that grow out of garlic bulbs in the springtime - amusingly described as looking like a cross between a plant and an octopus.
If you're lucky you might come across bunches of them in a farmers' market. On the other hand, if you happen to have shuffled your Mum off to a respite hospice you might find them growing in one of their sheltered and well-tended gardens from where you can pluck a handful unobserved.

You can serve them up quickly cooked on their own as a side dish or starter, use them in pesto, soup, add them to a stir-fry, serve them with pasta or chop them into salads. They taste a little harsh raw, but the flavour mellows surprisingly when cooked.

When not stealing garlic scapes from Marie Curie, I've been popping into The Star Inn on my way to and from visiting Mum (though it turns out that Harome is not that close to the A1 and includes some pretty crappy roads).
I got to try their famous Black Pudding and Foie Gras combo and after complimenting him on the surprising crispness to his fried foie gras, that nice Mr Andrew Pern gave me a few pointers for getting my weeping, saggy livery pillows to turn out something more like his:

• it's essential you begin with slices of fresh, high quality foie gras
• get your pan blistering hot to seal the liver
• let the slices gently cook through to completion at a lower temperature

Exactly how he both scorches the outside, but then continues to cook his foie gras slabs at a lower temperature I'm not sure - I wonder if he just slaps the liver into the pan, flips it, then leaves it to cook through off the heat? Most of the advice I've seen involves searing the liver in a smoking hot pan for only 30 seconds on each side then rest for 1 minute on paper towels before serving.
You might consider scoring the first side to cook too, or even dusting with flour to generate that extra crustiness.

Not only was his foie gras exquisite, but his accompanying reduced apple chutney was thinner, but crunchier than mine, suggesting that I'd reduced mine a little too hard. I wondered too if he might have added a second round of cubed apples after reducing, to maintain a level of fresh crispness whilst still managing to generate such plentiful rich jam?
To top everything off, Andrew's decorative apple slice was beautifully caramelised using a blowtorch too - rather than pan-frying as I had. I think that gives a better-looking result.

Anyhoo, I also had a fantastic Tournedos Rossini there for dinner, served with their own paté de foie gras, which inspired me to make up some of my own. With mixed results.
I'm going to have to do a lot better than this if I want to serve my own Rossini!

Sophie is sixteen - only two years away from being an adult!
In celebration she asked me to organise a sushi (and tempura) evening for her and 9, no 6, no 5 teeny friends. So I mostly did an extended re-run of the last sushi meal the Eldorado girlies helped to organise - except without Larry The (sadly eaten) Lobster.

Faced with the perpetual problem of what to cook for a mid-week dinner?
Just do what I did - crack open that jar of foie gras you brought back from your last French skiing holiday, stuff a couple of duck breasts and voilà - a quick meal for three. Assuming you already have a starter, some braised red cabbage, mango sorbet and creamy diplomats on hand.

This week I will be mostly eating stuff from the back of the fridge.

...Where I found some Halloumi lurking. It had been lurking for quite a while (it's not my favourite cheese) so I invented an aubergine dish to use it up. It was so good I'd consider buying more Halloumi just to make it again!

Next to the Halloumi was the remains of a jar of home-made pesto that I'd once used to coat a slab of salmon so I decided to work on another taste sensation that I've got a hard-on for: peanuts and pesto. Having once been surprised at how well crushed peanuts worked on a salad dressed with pesto, I've been searching for other ways to combine the two. I had a go at grinding peanuts into that pesto crusted salmon nope!, then I thought I might just try pasta with peanuts and pesto.
I figured the nuts would need to be considerably less crunchy if they were going to be at all palatable on linguine, so I boiled up a small bag of roasted salted peanuts in stock (well, water with a spoonful of Marmite in it) for half an hour or so to soften them, then threw them on top of the pesto pasta. I chucked the leftover softened peanuts into my Imam Kustu, so all was not wasted.

Meanwhile my temporary flatmate Doctor Jenny has been on holiday from her Edinburgh holiday, but returned briefly to collect her washing.
So I deep-fried the fatted calf for her dinner.

Well, of course, we didn't really have a fatted calf - my freezer isn't big enough for one, so we had deep-fried buffalo wings with ranch dressing instead and I baked some of the leftover barbecued spare ribs (sadly pre-barbecued and pre-packaged from Costco) that have been hogging space in the freezer since my Birthday Barbecue. Maybe I'll be able to get a calf into the new freezer, when I've finally emptied and replaced the one I've got?
As a break from all that fat, I bought a pack of four organic beetroots and mixed up a wasabi-flavoured version of Joyce's beetroot and horseradish salad which also went very nicely with the Imam Kustu as it happens.
To cook the beetroots I boiled them unpeeled in diluted white wine vinegar with some caraway seeds, rosemary and dill - since that's what I had lying around.
What beetroot I didn't use in Joyce's salad I grated over bowls of mixed salad greens dressed with a vinaigrette flavoured with bruised caraway seeds for a nice and simple salad that was also pretty tasty.

As if Doctor Jenny hadn't been pampered enough already, I also treated her to some experimental mashed potatoes with whisky-poached prawns which were enthusiastically received. Maybe that's what she's looking so excited about?

Later my ex-partner Rachel announced a short-notice visit by our mutual friend Mary Poweroff, or at least it was short-notice for me - I'm sure Rachel knew all about it in plenty of time. Anyway, it gave me the perfect excuse to use up the other Reblochon cheese I brought back from my recent French skiing trip. This time I decided to make a smoked salmon Tartiflette replacing the original bacon (though without the frying). I added a few tablespoons of sour cream which you could also serve as a topping - I think most of the extra liquidity actually comes from the fish rather than the cream (and some chopped dill) too - so it was a bit sloppier than the bacon version, but still delicious.
Rich, but delicious.
To go with I made Elizabeth David's courgette and tomato bake; there's a meatless theme here - can you tell? Rachel's eldest Sophie ate (and ate and ate) with us, and she's now joined the legions of the vegetarian - the horror! Between the four of us there wasn't a spot left either, so I must have done something right :)

Speaking of creeping vegetarianism; what with the astonishing indoctrination of the younger generation by today's militant and unashamedly political teaching profession, it's really only a question of time until meat is banned. You already see the steady terrorising of meat as horror stories about the dangers of bacon, sausages or cow flatulence persistently infiltrate our news media.

So, my question is: What will the world look like when the skills and abilities and (*shudder*) opinions of these brainwashed youngsters are valued above those of their elders?
Don't think that's gonna happen? Don't think that's already happening?
Ask yourself what capitalism most desires:

• A gullible, undiscerning, painfully fashion-conscious consumer, vulnerable to advertising and peer-pressure.
  Read children.
  
• Products which change rapidly, are highly obsolescent, and are indispensable to a certain lifestyle or peer group
• Methods of production which are facile to implement, require little training, education or scholarship

then look around you.
All that's thwarting this consumerist nirvana is youth's lack of disposable income. And that's where you old geezers come in (apologies to any 'yoof' reading). Too set in your ways to continuously re-organise your lives around the latest fads, too reluctant to endlessly shell out for products that last no longer than the time it takes to unwrap them, you need to be divested of your assets so they can be redistributed to the young.
Expect a two-pronged attack:

• Promotion of the young:
  • foster the view of children as small adults
  • develop resistance to the idea of disciplining or controlling children and invent syndromes that require recalcitrant children to be appeased not opposed
  • praise the maturity of 'modern' children and encourage their independence:
  • promote the idea that children require ever earlier sexual education sex sells really well
  • press for a reduction of the voting age and promote the political engagement of ever younger children
• Demonising of the old
  • scaremonger an 'ageing population'
  • present the elderly as expensive and unproductive - an increasing drain on precious resources
  • represent the retaining of homes with unused rooms by the elderly as a form of squatting - and accuse them of preventing hard-working families from affording suitable houses.
  • introduce mechanisms by which the elderly can be forced to liquidate their assets to pay for their subsistence or their health-care.

So Sophie - in answer to your question do I think that the voting age should be reduced to 16?: Fuck You!

Fortunately, despite consumerism's best efforts to render obsolete any need for knowledge or experience, I know that ain't happening with cooking anytime soon (young Masterchefs of the year not withstanding) so my continuing utility is sinecured.
But the rest of you better watch out - you have been warned!

I'm not a racist but...

I was catching up on my Question Time viewing and enjoying watching the pompous bigotry of Peter Hitchens do battle with the mountainous hypocrisy of Diane Abbot when some idiot in the audience demanded that Hitchens define what it means to be British.
Apparently he's written an entire book on the subject, which he was keen to advertise, but I can answer the question for him in a single sentence:
To be British is to hate foreigners more than you hate other Britons.
To hate Americans, Muslims, Belgians or the Jews more than you hate the Irish, the police, Pippa Middleton or southerners.
And the reason why multiculturalism is so damaging to British society is that it breeds communities who have more affinity for foreigners than they do for their neighbours.

So the other night, in the interests of promoting cultural integration I went along to join the McTSingh Roadtrip and chow down on that most British of foods: curries.
It's not a meal - it's a political statement!

Since the unfortunate closure of Tony Singh's excellent restaurant Oloroso I've been looking for a chance to interrogate him about my failure to reproduce his delicious Bhangra Burgers, so I booked onto his latest venture - a popup restaurant that he calls his roadtrip. Although to date it only seems to have travelled as far as Freeman's Cafe in Marchmont.
We arrived there to find him busily setting up his barbecue outside, from which all manner of tasty goodness issued over the course of the banquet (menu below). The service was very smartly organised with a lot more waiters than plates - ingeniously we were required to keep the same plates for all the savoury dishes just having them periodically cleaned off.
My favourite dish was the spicy, soupy, sambal. The most entertaining definitely the curried salmon bones(!). The least interesting was the vermicelli dessert. Fortunately I'm not big on desserts, but I do like a good kulfi. Which we didn't get.
It was pretty easy to buttonhole the man himself in the intimacy of such a small café-venue, and I got some good burger pointers as to what I was doing wrong that I look forward to putting into practice. One day. Plus we had a very nice dinner in a fun atmosphere with a bunch of like-minded people that made for a really pleasant evening. I'd have a popup dinner again - providing I had a popup appetite.

For bonus points - we made off with some of the table's farty salt - sorry about that Tony!
Top Tip: Girls - don't smuggle farty salt in your handbag: it makes them smell funny.

I'm back from a veeeeery long ski holiday in the French Alps (Les Carroz don'cha know) with a group of instructors from the Firbush outdoor centre.
Naturally they're all quite experienced skiers, which made the eight full days on the slopes quite hard work for someone who hasn't skied for about 5 years, and who wasn't all that great to start with.
Despite winning the medal for the fallingest skier, I survived the trip even if it did take over a week for my legs to recover.
Possibly from that wipeout when my kneecap did its best to pop itself off my leg.

We took a self-catering apartment - so naturally we ate well, taking turns to cook dinner for everyone. I turned out a depressingly unauthentic moussaka-lika (honestly, the pun is better than the dish), but a very tasty and well-received pan-fried chicken breasts wrapped in bacon (as opposed to that other kind fried on a dustbin lid), glazed carrots with orange and honey, served with boiled potatoes.

We allowed our budget one night out on the town and I sampled the local speciality Tartiflette for dinner at a very homely restaurant Le Neve in the village square.
I also enjoyed their version of Crème Brûlée, which they flamed off at the table with a shot of the local wormwood-based hooch génépi (vaguely related to Chartreuse).

On the return flight I filled out my baggage allowance with local meat and cheeses including, naturally, a couple of Reblochons so I could have a go at my own tartiflette.
I have to say it was every bit as good as theirs.