Fancy a squeeze? Leaf it out, will ya?

It's the time of year when grocers where I live start selling citrus fruit with leaves on. Odd

Normally, the tangerines, clementine, orange and lemon ranks are just piled as they are.  Perfectly acceptable in appearance, but just as they are.  But I've noticed more of this creeping in here.  Outbreaks of leaf action in the Christmas run up.  I'm sure that's quite commonplace in uber trendy urban areas where people buy sausages wrapped in brown paper,  and say things like 'Ya it's all very villagey here, don't  you think...?' but not here it isn't.   And another thing.  They're sold in boxes.  Those shallow, flimsy, wooden boxes with printed adverts that I suppose name the grower or distributor or whatever, I can't say I've stopped to read one.  But they do, I confess, look really nice and you always want to use them for something else later, put them in the shed and end up using said box to light the barbecue with seven months later.

So what's this all about?  Why must my clementine or lemon have leaves now and not all year?  I can't pluck up the courage to ask one of the grocers in town, I mean it wouldn't be right, I can just imagine the look on his face.

'Eh?'
'Leaves on lemons.  Why now?
'Not with you mate...'
'Why do you sell lemons with leaves on now and not in June..?'
'Can't say I ever thought about it...'
'It's just that it makes no sense, so I wa.....'
'Neither do you mate.'

And off he goes to rearrange his roast chestnut display, which you also only get right now, before alerting the authorities about some bloke who clearly needs professional support and is there any specific help available for lemon obsessives.

Waxed, unwaxed?  Don't ask me I've no idea.

Market forces

It's infiltrated the three-times-a-week market in town too.  They've caught on.  I had a quick look today.

'Yer Granny Smiths a paarrnd.   Yer tomarrtas a paarrrnd.  Yer mushrooms a paarrnd.  Yer lemons and clemetines with leaves on a paaarnd a paarrnd....'

Or whatever.  Last year I fell for it and bought a box.  More clementines than I knew what to do with.

They 're probably sold like that in certain supermarkets too, just not the ones I go to.  There is a particular brand of supermarket that's 25 miles away from here, that doesn't normally cater for my sort.  I needed polenta a few months back in its grain form and could only buy blocks here.  As I happened to be (sort  of) passing that supermarket at the time, I popped in because it was inevitable it would be sold there.  Can't remember when I felt less comfortable.  The mummies in there all had sunglasses perched on top of their heads and had children called Magnolia, Apple White or something, and there was certain sort of more mature lady who bypassed metal shopping trolleys and held firmly to her wicker basket.

Takes no prisoners.  The PChef citrus press.
Juice to the max.

The staff looked sideways at me and seriously considered whether I ought to have a DNA swab to see if I was a suitable customer.  As it happens I found the polenta by the hand knitted pasta and left before there was an incident.

Maximum squeeze from a citrus press

Anyway, the sort-of point to all this is that I seem to get through an awful lot of lemons, for one reason or another, so I suppose that's why I notice these foliage situations.

I won't drone on about zesting anymore.  Done that, been there.  But I've a new friend in town.  The citrus press.  You see, after watching endless TV food programmes, I'm used to the idea of squeezing a lemon with one hand into the other, catching the pips.  We have got a plastic roundish, spiky thing that sits over a container which you twist your lemon into.  Useless.

But I've just taken delivery of a PChef citrus press as in the pic above.  Basically a half lemon shaped
cup, as you can see, in metal. Good Lord.  This boy takes no prisoners.  This is the Marines of citrus presses, the undercover Seals Unit.  Punch its solar plexus and you'd be the one with a sore fist.

Half fruits are turned inside out before your eyes.  Inside out.  The end result rind, skin, whatever, is drier than a wash at full spin.  There's nothing left. I've never seen such viscous juicing in a domestic setting.

I have a cooking show booked in December with a host who is also into her lemons.  She squeezes and turns the fruit - get this - inside out with her thumbs.  Now that's serious.  A woman with thumbs that can inflict that sort of injury isn't to be trifled with. I'll have to behave myself.

All lemon-ed up. Ciao for now

So now I'm fully equipped with my ever-present zester that never leaves my side and my Jackie Chan of a juicer, I'm urged to move into the big league of home-made mincemeat and - wait for this, a bright idea from my wife last night - home-made lemoncello.

'Let's get some vodka at the weekend....it's dead easy, apparently...'  Says she with enough home-made sloe gin and sloe vodka fermenting for Christmas to kill several armies.

Lemoncello.  Really?  Me?  Mind you, if word got out that I was into that kind of thing, maybe I could go to whatever supermarket I chose.  Even pop into a cafe there, if they have such things, I have no idea, and buy a skinny something or other and bird seed drizzle muffin.

Ciao bella.  Oh Dear.

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As always, feel free to leave a comment, join the page or have general chat up at mikegetscooking@gmail.com or find mikegetscooking on the Twitter malarkey and Her Majesty's Facebook.  I thank you.

Feta Zesting. Looking for a pizza the action

Feta Zesting.  Try to say that quickly. Go on. Give it a go...  

Zeta Festing...?  What's that? I know...me being a silly again.
Oh Dear....where does the time go...?  Lapsed on the blogging front of late and my excuse is 'time issues'. Hmmm. Anyway...

I haven't stopped working, cooking and trying out new ways to get the best from the kit around me.  If I'm going to invest in high-quality kitchenware, then it had better damn well work for a living and be prepared to get out of it's comfort zone.

Low fat, not as much cheese as usual pizza action

The multiplane zester.  It's job description is: 

Sharp stainless blades quickly grate foods. Easy-grip handles adjust to easel and extended positions. Non-slip feet keep them steady. Includes storage covers. Makes quick work of zesting fresh citrus fruits — one swipe removes the zest and leaves behind the bitter pith.

Well, frankly, I'm more than happy with it's citrus action, which is well documented on here, but I expect more commitment.  Watch the short vid I made and you'll see and hear what I mean....

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By the way....just thought I'd say, remember to make a comment if it takes your fancy and join the page.  Follow mikegetscooking on Facebook and twitter, yes OK, I'll shut up now. 

Brownies, cookies and a whole lot of whisking going on.

Brownies and whipped cream given a good pampering, thanks to 

Pampered Chef.  Ridiculously easy.

Recording a Brownie blog.

Cookie on the medium round stone that's clearly seen some action.

Brownies and cookies.  And so easy, thanks to Pampered Chef

Whipped cream with the Double Balloon whisk, faster than you can say, '...so shall we whisk some cream then with the Pampered Chef Double Balloon Whisk, thingy?'

And below, have a listen to what happened...

Whisking cream? I'd better tell the window cleaner.

CRZC49JZJWW8

The smell of whipped cream

You always know when cream is being whisked to a frenzy in my house.  You can smell it.

This perhaps only confirms to you that I have finally lost whatever plot I related to, because as most of us will be aware, whipped cream smells of not a great deal.  Even at a cream to nose distance it's not noted for any discernible perfume or aroma. No.  I don't mean I can smell the cream, whipped or otherwise, what I can smell is the electric whisk thing with its viscous spinning blades.

It must be years old, this electric hand-held thing and frankly I reckon it's past its best. It's certainly been instrumental in the creation of dozens - maybe hundreds - of pavlovas as a whole battery of eggs has been converted into wispy meringue things.

Anyway, what you could smell in my house is the electric whisk's motor.  This thing is at full whack, the blades lashing through egg whites or cream at full pelt, spinning and spinning and the clapped out motor is getting hotter and hotter and so is my wife as she wrestles with ageing  kitchen appliances.  I don't do pavlovas or any other meringue jobs as a rule.

Now before I go any further, let me say right now that I have a solution to all this. A whisk that does not require mains electricity and is ridiculously fast at its whisking ability.  Off the scale, in fact. More later.

Electric Light work. No, not really.

But for now, back to this electric thing and the smoke alarms are now wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to pounce at any time.  They've just bleeped once to make sure they haven't forgotten what to do in such circumstances, are braced and ready for a damn good bleeping. The kitchen now smells like a mechanics workshop.  You couldn't do this randomly without warning key services such as window cleaners, for example, because the vibration through the glass would constitute a health and safety violation and more than likely action through the civil court as the hapless window operative plummets to the ground.  

Not a laughing matter.  Wobbling and equally ageing double glazing has now taken on all the qualities of those badly designed suspension bridges years ago that turned into huge skipping ropes when the wind topped a gusty 5mph and turned Ford Anglias and Hillman Imps into equally poorly-designed Frisbees.


Any window cleaner that happened to call unannounced as a few egg whites were given a seeing-to could expect to move down his ladder quicker than expected in a froth of suds, buckets and taking a slap from a selection of flapping chamois leathers on the way down to the back garden.  

We wouldn't hear his screams obviously because Ken Bruce is shouting his head off on Radio 2 trying to make himself heard over the phenomenal noise from those damned rotating whisk blades.  The egg whites or cream for that matter after three or four minutes of this onslaught is still a flowing stream of liquidy stuff, refusing point blank to stiffen on command and certainly not while that flipping Adele is wailing from Ken's CD player.  The smoke alarms are beside themselves and on the edge of their seats, willing this to go really badly wrong as they sense what could be smoke coming out of the back of the hand-held mixer.

And still my wife is valiantly holding on to the mixer which has now gathered momentum and spinning around the bowl all by itself, squinting through the noise and now acrid stench coming from the glowing motor. The window cleaner, flat out on the patio, would by now  have now stopped his fruitless attempts at rescue by banging on the patio doors and instead be dragging what's let of him towards the road in front, shedding scraps of chamois leather on the way, in the hope of attracting passing paramedics.

And then, a breakthrough.  Just as the loosened kitchen light fittings were about to abandon the ceiling, the egg whites/cream give up the fight and stiffen to acceptable levels after 20 minutes or so of kitchen carnage. 

All quiet after a cream whisking

Then it's...nothing.  That eerie stillness in the air that I can only imagine is the consequence of a hurricane that's passed by.  All except the radio, of course which is still at 10 on the volume knob blasting out an old Moody Blues standard.

'...Nights in White Satin....'

The ancient electric hand-held whisk is slumped on the kitchen bench, throbbing.

'....Never reaching the end...'

Although the motor stinks to high heaven, no actual smoke appeared from it and so the smoke alarms have retreated sulkily back to their comatose state, bleeping just the once more as if to make a point.

'.....Letters I've written...'

The windows and everything else for that matter, finally calms to a rest.

'....Never meaning to send.'

And yet all this is preventable.  There really is no need  for this level of misery just to create an acceptable pudding/ desert whichever you prefer to call it.  

Pampered Chef Double Balloon Whisk to the rescue

There is a readily available device, as I hinted earlier, that can solve this misery with one flick of its wire frame.  The Double Balloon Whisk. For under fifteen pounds you can help save yourself and others from the ordeal as described.  Now, I'd been told this device by other PCheffers, was a winner and would turn double cream into whipped cream in 10 seconds or less.  Which obviously is ridiculous.  And then I saw a video recorded - I guess - on a phone by Sally, a PCheffer and uploaded to the Facebook thing.  It took seconds.  So I bought the double balloon whisk and a pot of double cream. (Heavy cream, I guess it's called in parts other than the UK).

It's a strange looking thing with the sort of face only a mummy whisk could love.  Apparently although it looks like it might, in truth, be a small mobile phone mast, in fact its thin wires and strange shape is to '...maximise aeration for more whipped cream in less time...'

I whisked away full of enthusiasm and guess what?  It didn't work.  Well it did, that's not true, but it took about a minute or more and I was expecting miracles.  I could simply omit this stuff but I try to be an honest chap - that's what happened.

CRZC49JZJWW8

All in the wrist action when it comes to whipping cream 

I bought another pot and changed my technique.  With the cream out of the fridge for a little over an hour and poured into a bowl out of the cupboard, I stirred rapidly instead of the up an into the cream whisk action I'd tried before.  Everything about stirring like a spoon seemed wrong.  And for a glimmer the cream was stubbornly liquid.  And then after about 10, maybe fifteen seconds, the clouds parted, the sun shone and the cream thickened visibly.  Transfixed by what I was seeing, I went to around 20 seconds and ended up with a mousse-like cream.

Bizarre.  I shall now try with egg whites to see if the same happens. And more cream to see if it was a fluke. But I see no reason why it would be.  It's just a different technique to the one I'm used to.

Try it my friends.  Embrace the weird wires and get yourself fully aerated and whipped accordingly.

I can think of a few window cleaners that would be very happy if you did.

CRZC49JZJWW8

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P.S  You can always join me in the wonderful world of interactive social media thing, stuff by following me on facebook and twitter: both are mikegetscooking, or even YouTube for goodness sake.  In fact I'd be very pleased if you did and then you'd maybe comment a tad here and there.  Ta ta for now.  

Warning: May contain information

There's nothing funny about food allergies.  Of course they can have dire consequences for those affected.

I'm just guessing now that it's the reason we see so many warnings on packets and boxes of foods these days.  You need to know if nuts are anywhere in vision if you have an allergy to the things.  That's somewhat obvious.  Around 1% of  Britons and North Americans are allergic to peanuts and other nuts.

But it does mean that some of the wording on boxes, bags and whatever do seem to have  gone off on one of late.  I mentioned on these pages a while back about a box of lamb grills that was heading for a BBQ of ours that had the instructions, 'do not grill'.  Odd when you consider that grill featured heavily in the job description of that particular product.

Now maybe that's more to do with just daft language.  The rest, I'm thinking, is more to do with a spin off of the warnings train of thought or arguably a rather literal interpretation of ingredients. The above picture is a classic of it's type, spotted by my son.  A bag of fish fillets.  The ingredients lists fish.  Not such a surprise, in fact I would go as far as to say we would feel pretty cheated to open a bag of fish fillets only to find that fish was not the dominant component part.  You can't really have a bag of fish that's fishless.  

But closer inspection shows that that the allergy advice of a bag of fish fillets is a stark warning (exclamation mark) that the bag may contain fish.  Just thinking this through, I know,  but if I was allergic to the previously mentioned fish, what the hell I am doing with a bag of fish in my hand? 

If you had  the nut allergy pointed out earlier, you wouldn't select a bar of fruit and nut chocolate and say, 'Oh for goodness sake, they've only gone and put nuts in a bar of fruit and nut, haven't they?  I mean how stupid, how dense do they have to be?  Lucky I spotted that one in time...'

I've got a bag of salt in the cupboard that 'contains salt.'  I don't know what to say really except... good.  Thanks for clearing that one up.

There are plenty of other bizarre twists of language out there when it comes to the obvious.  And it's not just the food industry.

For example:  On a box that contained hair curling tongs.  For external use only.  I think you'd need to be fairly up to speed on advanced torture techniques or have unusual tastes in the bedroom to consider that electric heated hair tongs had any internal applications available.  Hairdryer:  do  not use in the shower.  I wish, I really wish I was making these up but sadly I'm not that clever.  A bottle of dog shampoo: Caution, the contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish.

So the warning is clear and obvious, next time the Labrador is a tad dank and in need of a spruce up, don't get confused with Tiddles the Goldfish doing several laps of his bowl with his tongue hanging out.  Trust me: dog shampoo and fish food are significantly different.

My eyes have been itching of late and I know it's because I have to be careful what I slap on my delicate little face.  It took a few years of frog-like facial expressions in a range of Mediterranean destinations to work out that I'm allergic to suntan lotions dripping into my eyes when mixed with a sweaty brow.  I now use a suntan lotion for babies less than a day old and it seems to work.  The rest of me is bathed in factor whatever, just not from the neck up.

The fact that my eyes have been itching recently means that I'm going to stop now and head for the shower to check on something.  Like most women, my wife's shampoo contains ground pearls, gold leaf, the extract from leaves only found in one acre of Brazilian jungles and so on.  I strongly suspect she's got me something from the value range at Pets R Us again.

Something fishy's going on.  

Ketchup? Make mine brown any day.

No, seriously, I can't be doing with tomato sauce, ketchup, whatever you'd like to call that weirdly red thing.

But you're not really supposed to say that out loud.  I get some very funny looks from those that are clearly major fans of the red stuff.  I'm not sure what the look is; it's not pity, it's more bordering on loathing, like you've admitted you have a fondness for Dallas or doing something unusual in the bedroom with bananas.  They just don't get it, they can't understand what your problem is.

I only mention this because I heard, fleetingly on a newspaper review on the tele, that we're not buying bottled sauces like we used to.  Can't tell you which paper it was in because I only caught a sentence or two.  But what I did hear surprised me somewhat.

We certainly haven't cut down or fallen out of love with bottled sauces.  I'm a brown sauce kind of bloke.  Now, I suspect no-one outside the UK will have a clue what I mean by brown sauce and it's a bit difficult to explain.  I'll try in a minute.

A quick peek in my cupboard and there's Worcestershire sauce, soy, brown, the hideous ketchup and various  remnants of various hot sauces.  In the fridge a fish sauce, and I think that's it. No, hang on, salad cream and mayo, if you count them as sort of sauces.

Hot sauce can be deadly

I like reasonably hot food, as in spicy.  A chilli has to be a lip-smacker for me or it's just mince. I have been known to blob a dab of hot sauce on a range of stuff that's on my plate much to the disagreement of my wife who sees it all as...well, I'm sure what she sees it as, but it's certainly worth an audible 'tsk!'  So stocking filler Christmas presents or a present from someone you get a bit of something for, for me will usually include at least one bottle of hot sauce.  And naturally they've got welcoming labels such as ' Death Sauce' or 'Eternal Damnation Sauce' or Burn your Trousers if you Spill This Sauce.'

I've still got a bottle of unopened hot sauce I was given last year in the cupboard.  Which reminds me, I'd better check the sell-by date.  I've not bothered yet probably because I remember the other bottle that came in the set.  It was allegedly a reasonably hot marinade in a bottle.  So I got meat - can't remember what now - and did as per instructed then cooked said meat.


I think my wife gagged on the first mouthful from memory and I have no recollection of what happened to my face for a few hours.  Good Lord, it was hot. The sort that makes you go from dry to moist to wet through in under a minute. Hells Bells.  It may well be the ideal cure for athletes foot, except that most of the good skin would probably go too after a smear.

So I couldn't bring myself to even look the other bottle in the eye and there it's sat next to a box of sea salt and it's infinitely milder cousin the Tabasco for almost a year.

HP sauce on everything

Anyway: Brown sauce. Any readers from outside the UK may be confused at this point so...how do I start.  I guess the best known variety is HP Sauce.   The original was invented in Nottingham and registered by Frederick Gibson Garton.  That was 1895.  The HP bit is a reference to the Houses of Parliament but the exact connection is a little muddled.   For what ever reason, Fred made a bit of a hash of it, didn't get it to market by all accounts and sold his sauce invention to clear debts for £150 to Edwin Moore. Moore owned a vinegar company and launched HP Sauce in 1905.  

Basically it's a vinegar base with dates, tomato, tamarind extract, sweetener and untold spices. And I put it on too many foods to be honest.  I suppose I prefer it over ketchup because of that spice element rather than the sweet taste of the tomato.  But then, I don't like sweet and savoury together. Whoever first thought of putting pineapple on pizzas needs a damned good telling off. Or their ear flicked, or something. A Chinese burn.

Quite why bottled sauces are dropping in popularity with younger eaters wasn't made clear.  Odd considering they must have the taste for tomato based sauces anyway as so many consume their body weight in fast food burger rubbish.

One one my offspring accused me recently of putting fish sauce in a chilli I was cooking, which is slightly bonkers and not something that would have occurred to me.  Which makes me think.  Maybe there are just too many sauces now.  When I was a kid there were three TV stations to choose from.  It was either Blue Peter, Magpie or nothing because BBC2 didn't start until early evening.  Now with my Freeview Box (I can't be arsed with Sky) I can choose any number of 1980s repeats or gaze in a glazed state as a man spends an hour on the edge of his seat with excitement as he sells me some XXXXL fleeces in battleship grey or olive green on a shopping channel.

A saucy sandwich over the sink

There was tomato sauce, brown sauce and Heinz Salad Cream.  Oh, and Lea and Perrins aka Worcestershire Sauce.  That's it.  We had yet to hear of soy sauce, fish sauce, salad dressings, etc and so on, and olive oil was sold in tiny bottles at the chemists which you dropped in your ear to loosen ear wax.  If you were seen putting it on your salad then, you would probably have been bundled into a secret institution at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

So maybe we've found the answer.  Too much choice.  Choice can be good but it can chip away at what we had and cherished.  Which doesn't mean we should stop and never move on.  We're programmed now, I suspect for the new thing and long may that continue because so much of what has made our lives more tolerable or pleasurable or even just interesting  is the result of that curiosity.

The girlfriend of one of my sons eats ketchup sandwiches.  In fact she favours sandwiches that, quote ' you have to eat over a sink.'

If that's not a good reason for not buying bloody ketchup I don't know what is, frankly.

Zesting cheese and walnut whips. It's all getting out of hand.

Nothing's safe at the moment, from the zester

I've got a terrible addiction.  Actually that's not true. I've got several, but there we are.

Some I've already confessed to elsewhere on these pages.  Chocolate for example.  I'm a big girl when it comes to chocolate.  I could eat the stuff everyday (but don't) - on a biscuit, wrapped around a chocolate bar filling or just a solid bar of it.  Don't care.  I worked with someone years ago who did clearly have an addiction to chocolate. She was eating it by the sack and had become a real issue for her, so whilst for me it's just a slobbering desire, we shouldn't forget that for some people, these things take over lives in a most unpleasant way. Eating a whole pack of Penguin biscuits plus a multi pack of Mars Bars nightly is at best, unusual I would have thought.

I was prompted because on the tele last night I saw a piece about a young woman who shifted, I think, because I was only half watching, six litres of cola a day.  She rarely ate anything but said nothing quenched her thirst properly other than cola.  There was some extraordinary statistics in there; eating the weight of a four year old child in sugar over a year or something bizarre. I wish I'd paid more attention. A team of doctors got her off the stuff in the end but she was biting the walls on the way there as she came off it. She now eats three meals a day and - as they say - has a balanced diet. I'm full of admiration for people that manage successfully that kind of struggle.

Sweet childhood memories

So this puts into perspective somewhat my 'desires' rather than addictions. I drink too much tea and coffee, but have never smoked, so in my head (incorrectly) one cancels out the other. Back to chocolate for a minute, I've rediscovered Crunchies; that honeycomb in a choccy coat is just fab.  Well, it is at the moment.  I've had fads.  I favoured Mars Bars but haven't eaten one now for years. Snickers, or Marathons or whatever they're called this week have lost the appeal.  And I do occasionally hanker after my youth.  Whatever happened to Spangles?  Not choc, I know, I'm just meandering. Aztec Bars.  Sherbet Fountains.  They were a yellow paper tube full of the kind of sherbet that once in your mouth turned your lips inside out and made your eyeballs lurch violently backwards inside their sockets.  Inside the tube and hanging out of the top was a stick of fairly acrid black liquorice.  Magnificent, they were. Can't remember the last time I saw one.

My memories are
whipped into shape

For years I questioned the absence of a half walnut in the bottom of a coffee walnut whip.  As a kid I hated the damned walnuts for being too bitter.  Now of course with a shift of palate, I like them. Anyway. I was convinced a semi walnut resided there at the very bottom of the Whip. Chomping one a few years back the Whip was sans walnut. Disappeared.  So anyway the conversation about the 'thin end of the cost-cutting wedge', 'how dare they abandon my childhood with such a dismissive attitude towards nuts', 'no respect for tradition, culture and heritage' rumbled on for months with me going increasingly round the bend.

All for half a damned walnut, I know.  I'd lost it.  The big questions of life were passing me by. Bear in mind this happened years ago, I'm since recovered, but as I said, the big issues of the day such as why was Robson and Jerome in the Top 40 and which vindictive halfwits were responsible for buying the damned records, were not reaching my radar.  It reached such a peak, I had to contact Nestle's/Rowntrees (I think) and demanded an explanation for their damned cheek.  Around a million walnuts are used by the company every week on Walnut Whips and they've been a crucial ingredient since 1910.  So in my eyes a walnut whip without a walnut is falling well short of expectations and fundamentally alters the description. In that scenario it's just a Whip. End of. Unsatisfactory.

Whipped into shape

'What the hell are you playing at woman...!'  I bellowed down the phone to some hapless and admirably polite PR lady on the other end.  You can see I was at the end of my tether, and I'm not proud, let me make that clear.

Turns out there was never a half walnut on the bottom of a coffee walnut whip.  It seems the original vanilla whip did enjoy a half nut on the chocolate base, inside the mallow, and not on the top. As a marketing ploy, a walnut was later added to the top and the nut inside was removed not long after.

My childhood memory had let me down badly and I retreated, embarrassed to lick my wounds and hang my head.

Anyway.  Back to addictions.  Or as I say,'desires' because I suspect the word addiction is a bit strong. I can't stop zesting.  I'm zesting everything.  I've mentioned this before and I thought it was a phase but clearly not.  It's sitting there smirking at me on page 17 of the new Pampered Chef catalogue.  The Microplane Zester.  Quote: one swipe removes the zest and leaves behind the bitter pith. I'll say it does.  No citrus fruit is safe in my house, or nearby supermarket for that matter.  It safely gathers all the fragrant zest effortlessly which just sits, patiently, at the top of the zester, waiting for instructions.  Try as you may, the revolting white pith is nowhere.

The medium round stone

Pampered Chef microplane zester multitasks

I've become adventurous.  Not content with fruits I've moved onto cheese - feta in particular.  At a recent cooking show, I was making a pizza on the round flat stone (medium round flat stone with handles to give its proper name) and I grated or zested some feta cheese on top.  The point being I hardly used any cheese - so healthier - and my little zesting friend was more than able to cope with a cheese as incredibly soft and crumbly as feta.  Small wisps of feta floated down like dessicated coconut.  It was a win.
The snag is of course it's done nothing to ease my appetite for seeing what else I can zest that was never intended for such treatment. And before you even suggest the heels of your feet, you can think again.

Now I've caught a whiff of childhood, I'm off to see if I can buy a pack of Munchies. Or Treets.  I don't hold out much hope though.

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Remember you can also find me on facebook and twitter at mikegetscooking, drop a comment and or join this page. I thank you and have a nice day, won't you.

You did what? Put mashed potato - in cakes?

'For mash get - cakes and tarts and stuff...'

Is it just me or is instant mash suddenly cool again?  Or at least OK?

I vividly remember eating it as a kid.  My mum was a keen advocate of new-fad labour-saving cunning-plans culinary-wise. We had both the instant mash dust and the granulated versions.  Facinating to watch the dust transform into a potato tribute act.  And with a blob of butter added as it gathered pace it was perfectly fine to eat, I seem to recall.  Not sure if I'd say the same now because I haven't eaten it for years.

Look, I've got a craving now.  It's always the same.  When I write about stuff like this, I want a slab/portion/slice/blob of right now.

Vesta instant meals: 'exotic chinese curry in minutes'. Fab. I'll have you know it was the height of sophistication. Seriously. This was in the days when a glass of fresh orange was a starter on a restaurant menu, when Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins where banging on about Cinzano on TV ads and the lady still loved Milk Tray. Convenience foods were sexy and this was long before the fleet of takeaways we have now down our high streets.

Why chop onions and carrots when you could boil a kettle and watch the veg reappear before your very eyes? Something in the back of my mind is telling me that the noodles in a Vesta Chow Mein had to be fried to crisp up?  Apparently, you can still get the meals. Anyway...I digress.

Angel Delight.  I could murder a bowl of that now, washed down with a lime pop from the Soda Stream.  Now look what you've made me do.  I'll be wanting a Babycham next. Or a Dubonnet. (Too young..?  Ok.  It was a sweet wine-based thing, ridiculously popular in the 60s and 70s among the smart set; bitter because it had a good dose of quinine in it.  It was first sold in 1846 and the story goes the French Foreign Legion were encouraged to give it a good swallow because of the quinine and its protective qualities against malaria)

Instant mash 

 

I was watching the Food Network the other day, which I do when no-one else is around because they're fed up with me watching all the food tele shows. Some bloke in the States was making restaurant quantities of a meatloaf, burger kind of concoction - I wasn't paying much attention.  But I did when I heard him say 'instant potato' which he chucked into the vast metal bowl as a binding agent.

I have a feeling there will be several people now shouting, 'yeah...and...?'  but it honestly hadn't occurred to me.  Breadcrumbs, yes, egg, yes.  But not instant spuds.  Maybe because instant potato - in fact instant food in general - has such a poor reputation in some quarters of my generation.

Gluten free lemon drizzle - with spuds.

But it is two thirds starch by dry weight, it would thicken and grab hold of what's around it so it does sort of make sense, I suppose.

Slice of gluten free lemon and potato cake? 

 

I think I'm suddenly aware of potatoes taking on a more unusual role because my wife cooked a lemon drizzle cake this week, made with potato. Carrot cake, we're used to.  I quite like it.  But potato?

You see, my brother and sister in law paid a visit and she has to steer well away from gluten.  Basically, 250g of cold mash takes the place of the flour and do you know what?  You'd never know. It was fantastic. I had more than one slice which is the norm.  We've never had to search for this kind of thing because this is a recent diagnosis  and again, I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't all really obvious to those who have battled through lists of ingredients before.  It must be exhausting to keep needing to check and check again.  The rest of us have no idea how lucky we are.

Instant mash in a Pampered Chef style

 

Deluxe min muffin pan

Now this is coincidence, honestly, but I picked up an old copy of the Pampered Chef recipe book, Season's Best, and there, on page 8, a recipe for potato bites.  Instant mash mixed with cheese butter and egg becomes a golden brown case in the deluxe mini muffin pan as would pastry.  I've never tried that and now I want to.  Whether that's the power of TV, recipe books, a yearning for nostalgia or just my curiosity taking over, I don't know. There is a continued recipe for the case filling but really, I guess that could be just about anything you fancy, chopped up small enough.  

I suppose the yearning to go shopping will take over now.  I'll probably have to wear dark glasses if I pick up some instant mash until I've come to terms with my silly behaviour, I don't want the neighbours waving net curtains, but I also want to see if there's any Fray Bentos pies handy.  Or Angel Delight. Gravy Browning. Bottle of  Emva Cream or Stones Ginger Wine..

I could certainly do something to a Pop Tart right now. And no I don't mean Cheryl Cole, I meant one of those things you put in a toaster, thank you. Really. Pffft.

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By the way...please feel free to comment, in fact I'd like it if you did, about the bloggy stuff in general or this bit, whatever takes your fancy.  I'd quite like to know where I am with your train of thought and if you've got suggetions. then get it off your chest. Your ideas are just as valid as mine. And why not join the page on the right hand side. That would be nice and appreciated at this end.  But if you'd prefer to keep it quiet then contact me at mikegetscooking@gmail.com, also that mikegetscooking thing on facebook and twitter.  You have a nice day now.

 

KEEP CALM. It's only a school holiday.

Easier said than done. Keep Calm, it's only a school holiday, who's he think he's kidding..?

 

Drawing to a close; the dying embers. Now, my offspring sprung from school some time ago so it's not an issue for me.  But it most certainly has been with the three of them.

We tried to go to the seaside a fair bit as we live not far from the east coast.  Each boy was equipped with exactly the same swimming trunks in the brightest colour we could find, pretty much in keeping with the mikegetscooking philosophy - electric lime greens, vivid bright orange and so on.  It made it much easier to keep track of them just in case one small boy decided to leg it down the beach just as my back was turned as I tried to explain to another why a recently caught crab the size of a 50pence piece with two remaining legs, now in a bucket, was almost certainly dead and unlikely to take part in any beach races. And that particularly stiff star fish that they hid in the car last time stunk to high heaven after a couple of weeks.  And no, I didn't appreciate your mother blaming me for the smell with unfounded accusations of wanton farting, so I really would prefer it if this new exceedingly dead star fish was laid to rest where you found it.

The car for weeks was almost a permanent, mobile sandpit. No matter how much vigorous shaking of shoes, clothes and boys we did, sand dunes would slowly appear in the boot.  But the boys were more than happy to spend hour after hour, digging a hole and filling it in again.  Then digging another one. Repeat until time to go home, with a small break for a sand sandwich and a melted ice cream and the periodic argument at the application of sun creams.

"Dad can't do it, he's useless...you got sunburn last time because he missed a bit. Or most of you.  He doesn't rub it in..."

Have a brew and Keep Calm...it's nearly over.

So mid afternoon it was down to the icecream booth when their mother would tell them they could have anything from the bottom lines on the ice lolly posters - mini milks etc, not the Soleros.  They still talk about that now, particularly as it was a policy enthusiastically taken up and supported by all the other mummies in the 'group'.

We did, every now and again, go to a very well known holiday resort not far away and swim in the pool there and use the rest of the facilities.  I don't want to sound ungrateful hence my reluctance to say out loud which park it was, but the pool changing rooms were always something of an experiment in whether it was possible to leave without catching something that would probably make you itch for a while. The floors of said facilities bore an uncanny resemblance to those glass plate jobs you see under microscopes. Always a potentially awkward GP-type chat.

"And where did you take the children again, you did what with them..?"

Again, the (not-so now) boys recount that when the subject is raised.

Anyway...to cooking matters.  I saw on the Facebook malarkey only recently that a mum/PChef chum was organising a Pampered Chef cooking show with her offspring.  I'm liking this.  Cook with the children, demonstrate some of the kit and how easy it is to use (childsplay etc...).

One lump, or two..?

I was never a cook by any stretch but I started venturing into the kitchen because I wanted my boys to see me cooking.  I didn't want them growing up believing cooking was exclusively 'womans work.'  We bought them a toy kitchen, I remember, and a tea set. Now not all our friends got the idea.  In fact I remember one dad being majorly dead against the concept.  But the outcome is all three do indeed now cook for themselves to varying degrees and the eldest  is probably a damn sight better than me.

Anyway I was half watching the Food Network on the tele today with Guy Fieri, and his five year old son wandered onto the set.  Accidental or a production decision, it didn't make much difference.  It gave Guy the chance to point out the importance of kids connecting with food, enjoying helping to cook and taking - as he put it - ownership of not just the food but the experience.  I'm all for that. Well...as you've heard me say on an audio post elsewhere on here, regardless of previous prejudice, the boys are coming forward in droves for food technology classes; it's the girls that are now lagging behind.

Anyway.  My aim is still to get more men involved in opportunities such as Pampered Chef.  It's ludicrous that more men are cooking than ever before and still we have yet to engage this market. I'm working on it behind the scenes with others and hopefully tangible progress will be seen soon. 

These are seriously suggested as girls school shoes on a website

That's quite enough of that for now. The point is, the school hols are almost over, a new start and the chance to keep calm and carry on with a few of the things we did with the kids over these past weeks - including cooking.

Still to finish - the collosal rows over school shoes...

'God mum, they're like well lame, you're embarrassing. I can't wear them, like a freak, I want them' cos they're dench...'

(Don't ask me, I'm just writing it down, but I suspect it's striking a chord here and there.)

That hideous experience, plus the rows over uniform is long gone for me.  Time passes. I could no longer get away with Mini Milks with my lot but at least, on the bright side, I no longer have to buy my twenty-somethings lime green swimming trunks. Or bury flippin' starfish.

BOOOOMMMM!!!! That'll be a raspberry pip and a decorator bottle, then.

 Time for the pips

 

You just can't take raspberry pips for granted.  In the wrong hands they can cause devastation.

At the very least they can kick-start a need to redecorate.  This is a cautionary tale involving the Pampered Chef  Decorator Bottle Set and a pip.  Rubus idaeus, is the red fruit we are familar with here in the UK and much of Europe.  It's the native species of Rubus to Europe and northern Asia. I didn't realise until recently that black raspberries are grown in parts of America.  Now whether this is all getting confused with what we know as blackberries, I don't know and I'll leave that bit to those that do.

I'm not a fan, to be honest.  In fact, I've never been a fan of raspberries.  Don't know why really, just don't like the taste.  I've already mentioned before that meringue is a mystery to me so raspberry pavlova is about as far off my taste-bud radar as is possible. Perhaps because the perfume taste of the raspberry is a bit lame for me.  I like munching raw gooseberries that are so tart you can actually feel your face turning inside out; the sort that push your lips back inside you mouth towards your tonsils as your eyeballs balance yet wobble on the outer edge of the sockets.  Hardcore sour. I like that.

Anyway, back to pips.  They can wedge in dental lapses and provide an unwelcome crunchy thing.  Not the exact same example, but on holiday abroad recently I was reminded how used to seedless everything we have become.  I was offered some uber-plump raisins to graze on, and duly did.  Now, I got the shock of my life when the plump fruit went crunch in my mouth.  I have to say I panicked slightly as I pondered the effects of eating a loose filling only to be relieved when I realised it was a seed.  A raisin with a seed. Well...yeah...why not?  It's just that we have become used to seedless stuff.

So maybe our concentration in these matters is not what it should be.  We've blanked pips from our memory.  We take no account of what havoc a single pip can unleash.

Will Torrent

Put this to one side for a moment as we focus on decorator bottles.  Now, I haven't got any of these and suppose it's because I generally don't decorate my food.  I might blob something or other here and there but all that fancy waving a sauce around isn't my gig.  Again, as with meringues, I've jabbered on here about jus and other sideshows.  Gravy I get and adore, but a teaspoon of blobby on my plate hardly seems worth the effort.

To get me into all this, I should perhaps give these bottles a go.  There's certainly no faffing about with bags and random nozzels.

Quote: 'Three easy-squeeze bottles and writing, basket weave and rosette tips let you decorate with different designs and colours at one time. Perfect for icing, whipped cream and soft cheese...' 

Sounds painless. Now at this time of year the PCheffers all get to hear about the new products for this season and in parallel there have been demos on how to create no-bake tarts by PChef's new guest chef, Will Torrent, using the new tart tins, decorated with the bottles.

So there's been a flurry of activity of late demonstrating how easy it is to do all this.  My chum Carolyn told me about one such cooking show.  Tart made, there was some raspberry sauce action to get sorted. So, in the bottle goes the sauce, the onlookers looking on, suitably enraptured. Squeeze. Nothing much happens, certainly not the carefully formed red trickle and at this point, of course, the penny drops.  The pip. A damned pip. The bottle has fallen foul to the stroppy pip blocking the only available exit.

Now, I've had a kidney stone.  In fact I enjoyed the mind-altering pain so much I've decided to have another.  It's been sat there for a long time now.  You don't know you've got one until it gets bored and decides to stretch its legs. When it does and you have to pass a stone larger than the exit facility, something has to give.  Likewise the damn pip. 

Someone suggested having a cheeky squeeze over a bowl to free the intrusion. Mistake. Seriously.  As I said, something has to give...

Fruit Casualty

BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!

The whole lot exploded.  It must have looked like a scene from 'Casualty'.  Screams, hysterical activity. Red splatters everywhere.  One team member was caked in it, the wallpaper splattered, all the products on the table dripping - only the ceiling escaped the explosion of seasonal fruits.

Naturally those out of the blast zone roared with laughter, but we could all do with learning from this tale.  We've become careless, lazy even.  As long as I keep myself reasonably hydrated me and the kidney stone can call a truce.  But if I let my guard down it will  head south. The thought has just made me shudder as I recall a Boxing Day never to be forgotton as the last stone blinked in the daylight.

Watch your pips, gang.   The little buggers have a mean streak when they fancy it.  

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By the way...please feel free to comment, in fact I'd like it if you did, about the bloggy stuff in general or this bit, whatever takes your fancy.  I'd quite like to know where I am with your train of thought and if you've got suggetions. then get it off your chest. Your ideas are just as valid as mine. And why not join the page on the right hand side. That would be nice and appreciated at this end.  But if you'd prefer to keep it quiet then contact me at mikegetscooking@gmail.com, also that mikegetscooking thing on facebook and twitter.  You have a nice day now.

Sweaty? I'm throwing in the towel, Juan.

 

‘I’m sweating like a fat lass in a club…’

Now, I’m not sure where I heard that, I think it might be a Peter Kay line, but I’ll stand corrected. We do like to make jokes to cover up emissions of a personal nature be they from armpits or twixt buttocks.  It’s the former that is taxing me at the moment.

 I’ve been quiet on here for a while mainly because I’m several thousand miles away in Northern Cyprus – the Turkish side.  I also had to miss the PChef annual conference which happens every year in Birmingham for various reasons, so I have no insider gossip on that front to reveal.

This isn’t to say that I am in a non PChef zone right now, because I’m not, as I shall jabber about in a minute.

The temperature here bounces around 40 degrees, give or take. We are staying at a friend’s house equipped with all the usuals – fridge, freezer, blah etc. And this is kit that really has to put its back into it to keep anything from rotting within hours of purchase.  And you want to buy.  As with some many other countries the markets are amazing.  I’ve shifted more fruit and veg in the last few days than within six months at home – water melons the size of unfurnished flats; and water, gallons of the stuff.  But we’ve been coming here for a few years now so we knew – or at least I knew – that bodily functions would be put to the test.

I’ve been cooking. Apparently that’s my job on holiday.  In 40 degree heat.  So here’s one example.  I’m (loosely) cooking a PChef recipe of chicken, chick peas, chorizo (Turkish sausage) pepper, chicken stock , tomatoes etc, all bunged into one pot and served with rice.

Dear Lord.  There are cooler blast furnaces.  The sweat after five mins or so of chopping reached crisis levels and I’d not cooked a damn thing yet. That snake-hipped lad and his kitchen towels – Juan Sheet – or whatever he’s called would  need a pack of rolls never mind one flaming sheet.  In fact I wish he’d been here because I wouldn’t mind slapping his smug little face.  Anyone who can wear trousers like that needs to be treated with caution. As the pathetic kitchen towels available to me dissolved on impact with my forehead I had to engage some serious support.

With the start of cooking in progress, fighting for oxygen and with a T shirt that now looked as though it had been taken out before a fast spin, I went to the bathroom and got a hand towel which I plonked on my head and wrapped around me ala Lawrence of Arabia. To cut a long story short, I managed the meal but needed two such towels to cope with the onslaught of moisty bits. 

Pampered Chef note:  I have been using a selection of knives, pink and green versions, stoneware etc all resident in the island.

‘A bit hot…?’ says my wife after a gruelling shower plus sit down for half an hour with a white wine and soda, as her meal is presented.

I think I mentioned something about never feeling dry at any stage and knowing now what a slug feels like.

‘You need to wipe your face,’ said wife or friend Bridget, I can’t remember, I was hallucinating I think; I’d got locked in the Lawrence zone by this stage  and I think I saw camels in the garden. Either way I plonked down in a chair looking I’d just finished the 100 meters backstroke.

‘I have been wiping my face…I’ve been using the hand towels…done it before’

‘You did WHAT!’

‘I used the hand towels to…’

‘I’VE BEEN DRYING MY HAIR ON THOSE..!’

I won’t go on, you can guess the rest.

Tensions were a little raised before because we’d not long finished a chat on Skype via this very laptop with the middle son who was about to head off to Italy for a couple of days of work.

My wife is very big on sun.  Loves the stuff.  A tan – whilst not an obsession - is a summer must-have in her book.

‘Do I look brown then Tom…?’ she asked eager for confirmation.

‘Yeah, you look like Lennox Lewis’

Now, whether it was son suggesting that his mother closely resembled a boxer or my comment about Fatima Whitbread, or my snort of laughter, I don’t know, but it set a tone for the evening that climaxed in the towel incident.

There are other tales to tell from here, but while I’m on this theme, we went to a market which sold just about anything you’d like from clothes and accessories to dodgy rip-offs.  Tucked away was a small booth-come stall that housed two young girls plus an older woman who was turning out what at first glance appeared to be pancakes or crepes – except they can’t have been. That’s because I watched the older lady roll out a ball of - I have no idea what – with what looked like an inch thick piece of dowel rod.  These now ‘pancake’ sized discs were lightly filled with potato or cheese or meat or aubergine or any combo.  They were folded and lightly rolled again with the filling inside, placed on a hot plate which the girls cooked.  Naturally these, whatever they were, were blisteringly hot and tasted fantastic.

However…on the board behind the girls, written in white chalk, that listed the options of meat, cheese etc., there was a ‘Sweat’ version.  Even in this heat it didn’t take much working out that the poor girls meant ‘Sweet’ and not the more unconventional ‘Sweat’.  Look, I’ll try most things – I like faggots and gravy and I’ve eaten snails, but sweat flavoured ‘pancakes’ are a whole new departure for me and not one I’m keen to explore.

Bridget pointed this out and had to visually explain the error by pointing at her armpits.  An urgent search for chalk and the ‘A’ became’ an ’E’.

Anyway…must dash, more later.  There are some towels to wash, apparently.  Some people are so picky.