Temporary milk solutions for cups of tea?

I have a question for those of you who are experts in hot drinks. I haven't had caffeine for maybe 13 years and so while I can go through the ritual of making cups of tea for someone else, they aren't the greatest cups of tea. I am a human version of a Nutrimatics Drinks Dispenser from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

So. in our household where MB is a big tea drinker (something to do with coming from Yorkshire) but neither of us are regular consumers of milk, he is frequently presented with the following choice. Cup of tea with either:
-no milk
-something that used to be milk but is now closer to cheese
-strawberry yoghurt, which was made from milk originally

I recently proposed that a sensible option could be to make some ice cubes from milk, and upon making the tea, drop in a frozen milk cube. Et voila, perfectly fresh milk every time and also a cup of tea at just the right temperature for drinking, rather than burning the tongue. The response: expression on face as if I had suggested going to work in a cardboard dress; words out of mouth 'don't be ridiculous'.

My question is, has anyone tried this? can anyone suggest an alternative that is not UHT? Thank you, from an ignorant non drinker of hot drinks.

My favourite salad. Pretty as a picture.

Notice to those from the North American region: courgette = zucchini.

Firstly you need access to some good courgettes.

Good courgettes:
Can actually be attributed to some kind of growing environment like your friend's garden or an overpriced organic shop.

Bad courgettes:
Presented in more than two of packaging from a large supermarket. Gives you the sinister feeling they have been drilled out of acrylic in an industrial prototyping machine.

To make the salad:
Ideally, gather some yellow and green courgettes. Young ones so that the central bit with the seeds is firm. Simply top and tail the courgettes, retrieve your favourite potato peeler and peel strips off each courgette. You should be prepared for the double delight of an incredibly satisfying sensation as the peeler zips through the vegetable, and the surprisingly attractive result, which I might call a perfect little parallel line of nature's pigment if I was being pretentious. Talking of which did you know that the M25 was build on a bed of shredded Mills & Boon Books. Sandy Toksvig said so on the radio so it must be true.

Anyway. If you aren't eating the salad immediately then you could store the strips in cold water in the fridge. Don't dress the salad till it is on the table, in front of hungry people. When ready, mix a dressing from:
-1 lemon, juiced
-1 teaspoon sugar
-olive oil
-shredded fresh mint
-salt, pepper
teaspoon Dijon mustard

Enjoy!

Huxley's Spanakopita

This recipe was not invented by any of the Huxley family. However it was eaten last night against the background of a debate about which Huxley had done what. So, in case you had forgotten, some of the most well known Huxleys are::

• The anatomist/biologist/medic Thomas Henry Huxley, who lived through the mid 1800s, is referred to as 'Darwin's Bulldog' because he was a key supporter of his theory of evolution. Having been exposed through junior medical apprenticeships to poverty in East London, he then studied medicine, anatomy and physiology. A role in the Navy allowed him to study invertebrate biology and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society at the ridiculous age of 25. Not only a great scientist but also a great influencer of education and the humanities. Lots of info at the wikipedia site (yes I know, wikipedia is not the most intellectually rigorous way to gather information but it's a very useful summary)
  
• His grandson Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World (which I am ashamed to say I thought I had read, but haven't, it was 1984). The origins of 'is-ness' is Aldous Huxley's mescaline-fuelled Doors of Perception. I cannot possibly embarrass myself by writing another word about Aldous Huxley when my mate Jake has done his PhD on the guy.
• Important if you are into neurophysiology or biophysics: Andrew Huxley, also a grandson of TH and I think brother of Aldous, who with Alan Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for describing the action potential - the miracle of electrophysiology that means you can both read and comprehend this blog, and click away from the page because it is becoming too geeky.

Anyway this Spanakopita is also named after Huxley because it is a minor evolution from the traditional kind, adding courgette into the centre and including an additional layer of olive paste/tapenade. Some traditional versions don't have cheese at all.

Ingredients (serves 4/5/6 as a main course or lots at a party in bite size pieces)
500g - 750g spinach according to taste (in this photo I used 500g). You can buy good frozen spinach, if so then defrost and squeeze as much water out as you can. If fresh then wash it, wilt it (microwaves were made for this) and again squeeze it as much as you can.
3 small courgettes, diced
2 onions
2 slabs of good feta
dill or oregano
filo pastry (you could make your own but really the shop bought stuff is so good you would clearly be mad to do so)
butter/olive oil
olive paste/tapenade

to make it:
1. chop the onions into fine slices and sweat them down in a pan with a little butter and olive oil until they are cooked through. I recently had a revelation on this - putting the lid on the pan and turning down the heat actually works better than a high heat uncovered.
2. add the courgette and cook for a minute, add the spinach, herb and chopped up feta. stir till well blended, season and set aside to cool down a bit.
3. get your baking dish. I used a silicon square one, which was useful at the extraction-from-baking-pan stage which I usually balls up. brush with butter/olive oil and build up about 4 layers of pastry, bushing each one. Then spread a layer of olive paste/tapenade and build up another 4 layers. Then, add your spinach mixture and top with the same layer formation
4. cook in a non-fan oven for about 30-40 minutes until it looks cooked. It's good cold, too.

Scotch Egg for the cricket

My lovely friends Will and Milla have an annual cricket match in September. It's the perfect balance between competitive play and crap people being allowed to have a go too. Naturally I am only using the C word with reference to myself, everyone else is county-class. My partner and I's 12 runs were offset by -15 points with three of our balls being caught. And that was despite the kind butterfingers of our field. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun.

At this annual picnic, everyone brings their own lunch and I thought I might experiment with some cold meats. Firstly I had the opportunity to use my friend Charlie's home made CK sauce. It turns out that if you coat chipolatas with this spicy and apple sauce and cook them so that you get a sticky crispy coating, the result is unfortunately too delicious to actually make it to the cricket match the next day. Be warned.

Next, the Scotch Egg. Having debated with Charlie (of CK sauce fame) and his girlfriend Jess whether sausagemeat or minced pork is the better medium for scotch eggs, I can confirm that sausagemeat is excellent but must be handled correctly. You could could make your scotch eggs like this (or..if you try minced pork please let me know how it goes?)

1. boil some eggs so that they are soft boiled. Plunge immediately into cold water and peel. If you leave them to cool not only will they overcook but you might get that weird blue line around the yolk
2. get some good butchers sausages and extract the meat from the casing. I mixed extra sage into mine, you could mix any herbs in or even other ingredients like apple, parmesan cheese, whatever takes your fancy.
3. wash your hands and leave them wet. Form in your left hand a thin slab of sausagemeat, gently drop the egg onto this slab and start making another slab to go over the remaining part of the egg. I found that the loosely-packed sausagemeat worked well after the cooking - the one that I packed more tightly ended up looking like this:
4. As you can see I got all poncy and rolled my good egg in some pine nuts. I know they are a bit 1990s, food style-wise but that doesn't stop them from being delicious.
5. bake at 180-200 for about 20-25 minutes

i heart old kitchen scales

Part of the recent Cullen experience was going back to a simpler kitchen. Going cold turkey on my cookbook-and-kitchen-gadget addiction turned out to be fun. As well as finding out that fan-free ovens are in many ways better than fan ones, I got to play with a traditional set of kitchen scales. If you are doing the same, don't forget to perform an initial balance. To do an accurate baseline balance, you will need 5 tablets of swiss souvenir Tourist Schokolade and half a cherry tomato.

Rhubarb Souffle: aesthetic #fail

Before and After

It was a lovely idea. I had some rhubarb and I had a halibut dish to follow and thought 'hmmmm a rhubarb fool is a bit of a cliche, and I have some eggs to use up. I wonder how the fibrous rhubarb would cope with the texture of a souffle?' One google stop later and I found that Gordon Ramsay had a recipe from the F word that I could try. Looked like a piece of cake.

So the basic idea with a souffle, in my limited experience is:

1. make flavoursome sauce, based on a basic roux sauce (savoury) or custard (sweet)

2. mix this with whisked egg whites

3. DON"T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR WHILE IT"S STILL COOKING. I REPEAT, KEEP THE OVEN DOOR CLOSED.

Clearly, number 3 was the equivalent of placing the proverbial big red button in front of me. The one that said 'don't press me'. I had scaled up from the 15 minutes in Gordon's recipe to 23 minutes for a twice-the size one, when I took a quick peek and immediately shut the door. The thing about electric, fanless ovens, is that while they don't misbehave on some items (cakes, bread), they are not so forgiving for impatient idiots who refuse to obey the basic instruction for cooking a souffle, that the temperature must be consistent throughout the cooking process.

Anyway if you (joyfully) have an oven door that you can see through, do try this because it tastes really good, but make sure you cook it for someone with a good sense of humour as it could look like this, not like the infuriatingly perfect version that Gordon R's food stylist created.

here is my quick recipe, for full detailed instructions, and indeed the actual quantities, I refer you to Monsieur Le Ramsay.

1. make rhubarb sauce. Rhubarb is one of a small number of food items that have specifically evolved the quality of being perfect for microwave cookery (the other main one being spinach, oh the washing up saved as it wilts in the plastic packet). Chop up your rhubarb into small pieces, pour over some lemon juice and sugar and nuke until it collapses, stirring every 30 seconds or so. This won't take long, 2-3 minutes probably. make too much and save the rest in your freezer. Anyway, put the rhubarb sauce in the fridge while you make the custard.

2. Make custard. Whisk together 2 egg yolks, a teaspoon of cornflour and some sugar. Separately, heat in a pan the milk/cream combo. When it is scalded, i.e. when it is just about to boil (watch carefully. This is generally about the same time period as a pear being ripe, ie 0.22 seconds), pour this slowly onto the egg yolk mixture, whisking rapidly.

Return to the heat and heat-and-whisk over a very low heat until it thickens. For a thicker custard, add more cornflour.

3. Mix the custard and rhubarb to make one rhubarby custard.

4. Whisk the egg whites. Strangely, older egg whites work better so its a good way to use them up. When they are stiff enough (can you create a cool mountain of foam and it stays?), fold in the rhubarby custard.

5. put in a suitable container, grease the inside with butter and ground almonds or sugar if you like - it will make life easier when the washing up comes.

6. pour in the egg mixture

7. STEP AWAY FROM THE OVEN DOOR! mine needed 30 minutes at least - a 3 person size.

Please share your success secrets if you can do this better - thanks! Z

cullen scallops with grapefruit and radish

Aha, I hear you think, she must mean Cullen Skink? Well yes, I am indeed at the end of my holiday in Cullen, Aberdeenshire, home of the famous creamy smoked Haddock Broth.This week, the town has an identity crisis. Cullen thinks it is the Caribbean, with one additional layer of clothing, and Speyside Malt instead of Rum cocktails. The golf course has two holes that involve teeing off either up a cliff or down a cliff. We even had dolphins. Scotophiles, please add Cullen to your list of beautiful places.

One of the many joys of this seaside town is the fresh-off-the-boat and brilliantly priced fish and seafood. Shopping trips to Eat Mair Fish in Buckie had me rack up a bill of £12 for eight fresh juicy scallops, a haddock, and two whopping fresh dover sole (soles? Grammar check needed) and separately half a halibut for £8.



Still engrossed in my copy of The Flavour Thesaurus (which I am sad to say came on holiday with me), I discovered that grapefruit and seafood are apparently dream pairing and put together this dish which adds purple radishes. Might I say that this is one of the best trios since sage, pumpkin and pasta, the three little piggies or Bananarama.

Ingredients
Scallops. Super fresh ones please. I allowed 4 per person. As a starter. Ooooh the gluttony.
Pink Grapefruit
Radishes, ideally purple ones
Half an egg yolk per 2 people
Butter and olive oil (a generous splodge)

To make it:
Firstly, operate on your grapefruit so that you have skinless segments. I allowed quarter of a grapefruit per person.
Secondly, slice your radishes really really thinly. Say about 4 radishes per person. Plop in the same bowl as your grapefruit.

In a pan, heat your butter and olive oil together until foaming. Add the scallops and cook at as high a heat that your butter will allow without burning. After a few minutes pour off the oil/butter into a separate container and carry on cooking the scallops with less fat so that they will crisp on the edges. Don’t overcook! Allow 4-5 minutes on each side maximum but less if you can cope with semi-sashimi texture.

Put the scallops to one side to rest. Pour the grapefruit juice from the container of wedges into the butter/olive oil mix, which should now hopefully be quite cool. Mix with a fork so the mixture really is cool. Then, beat in half the egg yolk. Pour this mixture into the warm pan and cook, beating well, for a couple of minutes until it becomes thick and glossy. Serve with the scallops and grapefruit/radish salad. Preferably, in a setting like this: