I must have eaten quite a large number of figs over the years, although I've certainly not tried to keep count. However, it's only very recently that I've discovered the joy of fresh figs.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the taste and texture of fresh figs is very different from that of dried ones (in the same way that, for example, raisins are very different from fresh grapes). The first ones I had were not quite properly ripe, but even so were quite nice. Properly ripe ones are wonderfully succulent and juicy.
Fresh figs are also quite interesting things to look at. Here's a
photo I took of one this afternoon:
If I remember before I eat it, I'll take a photo of what the inside looks like, as that's pretty interesting too.
Recently, I was reading about pasta and related things on Wikipedia. I discovered that while spaghetti bolognese (affectionately known as "spag bol") is one of the classic Italian dishes in the British imagination, the Bolognese sauce (or ragù alla bolognese to use its Italian name) is rarely, if ever, actually served with spaghetti in its native Bologna. Instead, tagliatelle or lasagne verdi are generally used.
Armed with that newly-discovered knowledge, I resolved to try for a more authentic Italian meal by trying a Bolognese with tagliatelle (I suppose you could call it a "tag bol"). That's what I enjoyed for dinner tonight.
To celebrate the fact that I was using a more authentic pasta, I decided to go for a slightly more sophisticated version of the sauce than I usually make up. My basic recipe consists of an onion, minced beef, carrots, tomatoes, seasoning (generally black pepper, basil and a bay leaf, if I remember correctly) and water, perhaps with the addition of a few other vegetables if I have any to use up. On this occasion, I added some bacon chunks, tomato puree, oregano, fresh thyme, Worcester sauce, red wine and beef stock (from Oxo cubes). I also washed out the remains of a jar of pesto rosso into the mix. In addition to the slightly expanded ingredients list, I let it simmer for at least two hours instead of the usual hour. The result was a beautifully rich, flavoursome sauce that was a delight to look upon and even better to eat.
It worked really well with the tagliatelle too.
I was recently given a large box of apples, mostly for the purpose of making cider but with the plan to use a few of them for various other culinary purposes. The person who gave me the apples also suggested a simple recipe for making "baked" apples in a microwave, which I have subsequently tried and found to be excellent. I've never tried actually baking apples in an oven, but I imagine it would give similar results and take significantly longer.
The only ingredients required are a medium to large apple, a few raisins and some sugar (or honey). Sufficient equipment is a microwave oven, a (microwave-safe) plate and a sharp knife or apple-corer, although a teaspoon is also handy, and I find a fork to be the best implement for eating the finished product.
After washing and drying your apple, remove the core and stick it on the compost heap. Plonk the apple on the plate, fill the cavity with raisins and a teaspoonful of sugar, then shove it in the microwave on half-power for about 5 minutes (YMMV). Leave to stand for a little while, then remove from the microwave, eat and enjoy.
The first couple of times I tried this I used white sugar. I've since tried it with honey instead, which is perhaps even nicer. I suspect it would work well with brown sugar too, but when I went to try that I discovered I was out of brown sugar and haven't yet got round to getting any more.
Autumn is upon us again, which means that I'm starting to get back into my winter cooking mode. As I mentioned last season, that means lots of stuff like soups and stews which I find particularly fun to cook (and eat) but which don't often seem appropriate summer fare.
Yesterday I managed to pick up a pack of bacon scraps on special offer at the supermarket, so I made myself a bacon stew. As usual these days, I cooked it in the slow cooker after starting things off on the hob. In addition to the bacon, the bulk ingredients were onions, potatoes, swede, carrot and... a lemon!
I wasn't too sure about the idea of including a lemon in the stew, which occurred to me randomly while I was preparing the other ingredients. I had a couple of lemons left over from an earlier purchase that needed using up, and I thought that a bit of lemon might go nicely in the stew and possibly help to counteract any greasiness in the meat (since I was too lazy to trim off all the fat). After washing the lemon, I cut it in half then quartered each half and lobbed all the bits, rind and all, into the pot.
Since the lemon was serving dual purpose as a bulk ingredient and a seasoning, I'll take a moment to describe the other seasonings used. I decided not to add any extra salt as the bacon was already fairly salty. Using one of my favourite stew cooking tricks, I washed out the remains of a jar of marmalade into it - the orange providing a nice complement to the lemon and the sweetness helping to mitigate its sourness. Apart from that, I used a fairly generous amount of freshly ground black pepper, a large pinch of dried sage, a couple of bay leaves, a few dashes of red wine vinegar and some paprika (which I sprinkled over the bacon while frying it prior to adding it to the pot).
When it came to eat the stew about 7 hours later, I found that the taste combination worked quite well. The lemon provided a nice undertone to it, without being overpowering. After such a long time simmering, the chunks of lemon were very soft and tasty.
I don't think I'll start using lemons every time I cook a stew but I've now established that it's an idea that can work very well, so I'm sure I'll make use of it again before too long.
On my first visit to Hungary I was only driving through en route to Romania and I didn't get a chance to try out any of the local cuisine. Earlier this month I spent just over a week in the country and was able to sample some traditional Hungarian food.
Pastries and cakes seem to be very popular in Hungary. I had a couple of particularly nice pastries involving poppy seeds. One was a sour cherry and poppy seed strudel (meggyes makos rétes - sour cherries being another popular Hungarian delicacy). The other was a kind of sweet roll filled with a poppy seed mush that tasted like it also contained honey. Poppy seeds and honey also featured in one of the nicest ice creams I've ever eaten, which came from an ice cream parlour in Szeged called A Cappella.
Soups are a big part of Hungarian cuisine too. One type of soup that is popular there is a cold fruit soup, which is often served as a starter. I had a citrus one (lemon and lime) on a day trip to Budapest, which was immensely refreshing and very creamy. Another popular one is fish soup, of which there is a particular regional variety in Szeged, called szegedi halászle (literally, Szeged-style fish juice). I had a bowl of that as a starter for a meal in Szeged one evening and it was a bright red liquid (presumably due to the paprika, which is a very popular spice in Hungary, and possibly also tomato) with chunks of random fish and a delightfully peppery and not-too-overpoweringly fishy taste. It was served with a mountain of bread.
The Hungarian way of serving coffee seems to be small amounts but very strong. I think it's quite common there to drink it black, which is just the way I like it. I now have a working theory as to why Hungary has produced so many fine mathematicians.
Most of the local beer seems to be lager style. That is not
usually my beer of choice but the ones I had in Hungary were all very
tasty and extremely refreshing in the hot weather. One warm evening I
had a litre of Dreher, which looked something like this:
I believe that Dreher
is a Hungarian brand, although it is named after a Viennese brewer
called Anton
Dreher, supposedly the father of modern lager. The Dreher brewery
also produces another, fairly similar, lager called Arany
Ászok which was the main type of beer I had throughout the
week.
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