Sunday 26/6/2005
Back to noshblog site (click here)
Diary and Notes
As it's beans week you might have thought I was going to go on and on about my 'movements' and whether it was having any strange effects on my digestive tract, but I shall make this prmoise: Unless something really unusual happens (like I do a Paula Radcliffe or similar) I wont mention my bowels/tracts/tubes etc again - all week.
So, that's out of the way and you can all relax.
I am going to return to one of my favourite culinary topics of debate: the humble black pudding.
For those who are new to this column, I am quite a fan of the black pudding and will sing its praises whenever I get the chance or whenever I have some for dinner. I love the stuff. I love all black puddings; the little Bury ones (which I used today) the big Bolton ones, the French boudin, the Swedish blodpudding, the barley filled Irish ones, the Spanish morcilla, I love them all. I am becoming a bit of an afficianado of this most underrated of culinary pleasures and think everybody should go out and have some black pudding today, I did and it was srcumdiddlyumptiousness on a sugar coated stick.
One other thing before I sign off: Now that the English are officially useless at tennis and the Scots are the only British hope
for the next 20 years will all the middle class housewives in Buckinghamshire be pretending to be Scots from now on? If this happens
and they all start saying things like "Oh my great grandfather was Scottish, so I'm practically one too" and this starts to
annoy you as it will me, I suggest the following as a test of true Scottishness: Beef Lorne. (There's a picture of some on a breakfast plate if you click here Mackenzies Guest house)
Anyone who eats beef lorne is a true Scotsman and anyone who doesn't isn't. Lorne is not well known outside Scotland and there's a good reason for that. If anyone you know is pretending to be Scottish when they were really born in London for instance (ie Rod Stewart) let me know and I'll order some beef lorne for them online and post it as a present. Then you'll know. It's a more sure test than looking under a sporran to see if it's meat and two veg or M&S whites. Excellent dinner today, no lorne but just enough black pudding to keep me happy.
This isn't a real fabada. A real fabada would have a pork knuckle cooked with the beans and dried beans instead of canned would always be used. I didn't have a pork knuckle nor the time to be soaking and boiling beans. Also I should have used Spanish morcilla not black pudding from Bury,but it's almost exactly the same, so who's to complain. It was a damn tasty dish even without these additional touches. The really important thing for the flavour was the smoked hot Spanish paprika. It's not really hot like chilli but is really well flavoured. Well worth the £1.75 I paid for a tub.
Cake Blog
Chocolate chunky crispy cake: 35p from Sainsbury's
Menu
Ingredients*
| Fabada 3 Thick Pork Belly Slices 2 Cans Canelleni Beans 2 Tbsp Olive Oil 2 tsp Smoked Paprika Few Strands Saffron 500ml Chicken Stock 1 Clove Garlic 2 Bay Leaves 100g Chorizo 1 Small Black Pudding 1 Green Pepper Black Pepper |
Watercress Salad 2 Handfulls Watercress 2 Tomatoes 2 Tbsp Pickled Capers 20 Black Pitted Olives 3 Spring Onions 1 Tbsp Vinegar from the Capers 1 Tbsp Olive Oil |
Preparation
*All quantities are very approximate and for three people
Jon.Borresen@GMail.com