Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:10 pm  

you may be interested to look through this site, it is all about fat. I can certainly recommend the lardo. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-lardo-real-thing.html

you may be interested to look through this site, it is all about fat. I can certainly recommend the lardo. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-lardo-real-thing.html

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:14 pm  

peggy wrote: you may be interested to look through this site, it is all about fat. I can certainly recommend the lardo. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-lardo-real-thing.html Nice one – thank you. To all – have you seen Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan? She's a chef – but she also goes into some history, some chemistry and some biology. Even setting aside some very nice recipes (salted butter caramel tart, anyone?) it's a very strong argument and, I think, a quite important book.

peggy wrote: you may be interested to look through this site, it is all about fat. I can certainly recommend the lardo. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-lardo-real-thing.html Nice one – thank you. To all – have you seen Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan? She's a chef – but she also goes into some history, some chemistry and some biology. Even setting aside some very nice recipes (salted butter caramel tart, anyone?) it's a very strong argument and, I think, a quite important book.

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:42 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

... As for topside of beef, I'd probably choose to brine it and cook salt-beef

The most expensive sandwich I ever ate was a salt-beef sandwich at Selfridges' Oxford Street branch, in the 1990's.
Very expensive but by 'eck it were tasty.

Still in London but going back even further, to the early 1970's, around what is now called Fitzrovia, especially along Goodge Street, you could get decent salt-beef on what seemed like every street corner and even up to the mid-90's you could still call at Bloom's on Whitechapel High Street and get a lavverly salt-beef sandwich, even though Brick Lane had already become BanglaTown ... as I recall from my days as an East End boy.
Blooms still exists, but in Golders Green (what a cliche !), in fact I think they had that shop before they shut down the Whitechapel shop.


But you don't see salt-beef much now, a real shame because it's delicious.

EDIT - Just remembered, you can get a very nice salt-beef bagel at the Brick lane Bagel Shop, or at least you could when last I was in the area, and it's open all night too ... or at least (usual disclaimer etc) ..

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:45 pm  

Oh god - don't get me started on Blooms! What an experience - and ta was well before my foodie days!

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:02 pm  

It's all flooding back now "a la recherche de temps perdu" and all that.
For madeleine, read salt-beef.

Walking along Goodge St, away from Tottenham Court Rd (on the corner of which was a Golden Egg cafe, remember them?), about four shops further along on the opposite side was a sandwich shop where I bought my first ever kebab in my first ever pitta.
They called it a "kebab sandwich" which, of course, it was.
I thought it was amazing you could get something so exotic for 30p.

They sold salt-beef as well.

1971 that was.
Blimey.

McF should be able to tell us whether you can still get salt-beef in Moortown, Leeds?
You could when I lived in Roundhay in the mid-70's.

OK, apologies ...nostalgia trip now ends.

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:10 pm  

Did anyone else watch A Question of Taste on BBC2 last night? I quite enjoyed it as a 30 minute quiz show format, they even had bone-marrow scoops just for Minty

Did anyone else watch A Question of Taste on BBC2 last night? I quite enjoyed it as a 30 minute quiz show format, they even had bone-marrow scoops just for Minty

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:47 pm  

yes I saw the programme and thought the same when I saw the scoop.

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:01 pm  

cod'ead wrote: Did anyone else watch A Question of Taste on BBC2 last night? I quite enjoyed it as a 30 minute quiz show format, they even had bone-marrow scoops just for Minty Damn. Missed that. Will look it up on iPlayer. But back to Blooms: I remember being taken, with two other 'young people' (we were in our mid-twenties) to the Blooms in the East End by a Jewish friend. He was much older – we were all gentiles. This was well, well before my foodie days, so the food is not what I really remember – although I and one of the other youngsters did order salt beef, were overwhelmed with the amounts, could only eat a small amount and were then given vast doggie bags. But I remember the waiters with clarity. They knew our Jewish friend – and boy, did they give him stick throughout (or should that be 'schtick'?). It was close to outrageously rude. But he was happy – delighting in being know, I suspect. We didn't know where to put ourselves, frankly. I remember being fascinated but shocked but delighted all at the same time. The memory stuck – it always makes me think of the waiters in Hello Dolly. Oh. And my doggy bag included a badge for Blooms too. Amazing experience.

cod'ead wrote: Did anyone else watch A Question of Taste on BBC2 last night? I quite enjoyed it as a 30 minute quiz show format, they even had bone-marrow scoops just for Minty Damn. Missed that. Will look it up on iPlayer. But back to Blooms: I remember being taken, with two other 'young people' (we were in our mid-twenties) to the Blooms in the East End by a Jewish friend. He was much older – we were all gentiles. This was well, well before my foodie days, so the food is not what I really remember – although I and one of the other youngsters did order salt beef, were overwhelmed with the amounts, could only eat a small amount and were then given vast doggie bags. But I remember the waiters with clarity. They knew our Jewish friend – and boy, did they give him stick throughout (or should that be 'schtick'?). It was close to outrageously rude. But he was happy – delighting in being know, I suspect. We didn't know where to put ourselves, frankly. I remember being fascinated but shocked but delighted all at the same time. The memory stuck – it always makes me think of the waiters in Hello Dolly. Oh. And my doggy bag included a badge for Blooms too. Amazing experience.

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:39 pm  

I got a 750g boneless turkey breast the other day.I simply cut it into 1" cubes and oven cooked it for a couple of hours with 1pt of chicken stock (1pt water and 3 oxo cubes) about 1/2 pint of good red wine ,button mushrooms and a chopped onion.I've just eaten the last of it with mash and curly kale ,it was delicious .

Re: Food thread ... another serving ... : Tue Jan 03, 2012 9:11 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

McF should be able to tell us whether you can still get salt-beef in Moortown, Leeds?
You could when I lived in Roundhay in the mid-70's.

I don't know, I suspect that you can, there are just a few isolated pockets of ethnic specialist food purveyors around these days and Moortown corner is one of them.

I have eaten salt beef though, and pastrami on rye - both from the excellent (but now sadly demised) Kendall Moore deli in Headingley ('twixt 3 Shoes and New Inn), a most excellent double fronted shop unit that sold the most exotic foodstuffs, our office used to be around the corner and lunchtime was always an adventure - it was there that I first tasted, and hated, proper pickled rollmop herring, uuurgh!