Vegetarian food

• Friday, 20 June 2008

  • Lunch poem

    Bagel, bagel, how I love thee:
    Toroidal and so seedy;
    I want to eat your topology.
    Posted by Matthew at 12:42:42 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Friday, 23 May 2008

  • Queer times pudding

    I listened to the delightful Ramona Koval on The Book Show reading from Mrs Beeton and declaring to her colleague, "Here's one for you: queer times pudding!"

    What could be more a propos? I've found a Beeton website, but alas it's not there.

    Anybody? Anybody?

    Posted by Matthew at 9:10:14 AM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Wednesday, 12 September 2007

  • Mojito

    I've just been learning to make this cocktail. It's pretty good and tastes like summer.

    Place 4 mint leaves in a tall glass. Add 30mL lime juice and 1 tsp icing sugar. Muddle with a muddler, or improvise. Add crushed ice then 30mL white rum. Stir. Fill with soda water.

    Posted by Matthew at 7:59:16 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Thursday, 31 May 2007

  • Cheese carving 2

    

    Taken Thursday, 31 May 2007

    
    
    No no apparently there was no alpaca hiding in this mozzarella, just this mutant with a too short neck. Oh well, so much for that gift idea. I see pizza.
    Posted by Matthew at 11:58:45 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

  • Cheese carving 1

    

    Taken Thursday, 31 May 2007

    
    
    There's an alpaca in here somewhere...cheese is hard to work with as it develops cracks.
    Posted by Matthew at 11:55:06 PM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Monday, 28 May 2007

  • Feta, strawberry, melon salad

    I took this kickass salad along to a singing course at the weekend and it met with universal acclaim. It's by Judith Sutton, and was printed in The Press.  

    Keep the three parts (salad greens, fruit, feta and dressing) separate until serving.

    In a jar, combine 6 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsbp balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp cider vinegar, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp honey, salt, pepper, and a handful of chopped mint. Add a cubed block of feta and marinate.

    Combine 1 cup diced watermelon, 1 punnet halved strawberries, 1 cup sliced telegraph cucumber.

    Line a bowl with salad greens. Add feta, then add the fruit. Toss lightly.

    Posted by Matthew at 9:47:41 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Tuesday, 8 August 2006

  • Syrup and synesthesia

    A month or so ago I found pomegranate syrup in my favourite shop. It is thick and brown and comes from Lebanon — you know: the country Israel just invaded -- and it tastes like a neutron star made out of fruit, like super-strength grenadine. If you eat it off a spoon, it is like there's a conquistadore rampaging on your tongue, but in a good way. I know, you think I'm waxing superlative. But when you try it, you'll think again.

    Sometimes people remind me of food. One person I have met recently reminds me of pomegranate syrup. Strongly flavoured, unpredictable, distinctive, pointy. I wonder what it is when people remind you of groceries.

    Synesthesia is the conflation of two different sensory experiences. Some people see different letters as having colours: "'One day,' I said to my father, 'I realized that to make an 'R' all I had to do was first write a 'P' and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line.'" [link] But we all do it when we refer to sharp cheese or cool jazz. I wonder where art would be with out it. Here — you can test yourself.

    Posted by Matthew at 12:20:40 AM | Permanent link | Comments (2) | Email Matthew | The mind | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Sunday, 30 July 2006

  • Today's experiments

    Last weekend I stayed out until early hours of the morning, then went skiing on 3 hours sleep, then went out again.

    Then I got bronchitis and spent most of the week feeling pretty bad.

    This weekend has been quieter. Today, I cooked risotto and bread and butter pudding with my mother; I went hunting for Monarch butterflies; I heard talk of Eric Carle, the collagist and natural historian of the preschool crowd; and I experimented with soy egg creams.

    Just now I watched Abre Los Ojos, which was remade as Vanilla Sky by taking the Spanish out, putting Tom Cruise in, and leaving Penelope Cruz exactly where she was.

    The results are as follows:

    1. This bread and butter pudding recipe is very fine indeed.
    2. One tree in Woodham Park is festooned with a few hundred butterflies. I found nothing at Risingholme, Abberley Park, or the Ruru Lawn Cemetery.
    3. Egg creams are the quintessential New York soft drink and involve neither egg nor cream — just soda water, milk and chocolate syrup. Perhaps they only work in New York. I have yet to master this drink, soy or otherwise.
    4. Abre Los Ojos is better if only because it's the original. What a shame to go to all the trouble of remaking a movie and barely change anything.
    Posted by Matthew at 12:29:01 AM | Permanent link | Comments (4) | Email Matthew | Movies | Nature | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Thursday, 27 July 2006

  • Indulge

    That's definitely my loathed word of the day. I hate the way it is so popular in advertising as if appreciating decent food is giving into some kind of weakness or being sinful and — ooh aren't we being naughty! It's so damn juvenile. I feel like it is a word used by people who are not particularly discerning about food and don't realise that eating well is not overeating.

    Stop the press — I forgot about "eatery." Oh I hate that horrible vulgar word. It's so cheap and cavemany — apparently "restaurant" is too confusing as it doesn't actually include the verb in there anywhere. This word makes me not want to eat. Ever. Where did it come from? Is it American?

    I wonder why I'm so cranky today. Perhaps food websites are annoying me as I've mostly only had orange juice since Sunday. 

    Posted by Matthew at 10:31:35 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Books / writing | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Wednesday, 17 May 2006

  • Not a post about muffins

    This evening while making frozen mixed smoothie berry muffins (because the supermarket was out of blueberries) I was watching Bruce Springsteen playing Pete Seeger songs and talking about music. He differentiated folk and pop music, saying that folk retains a roughness and richness that is polished off in pop. It has to be or it wouldn't be popular. It's just another example of how observation (or in this case listening) changes what is there.

    Diversity is freedom.

    Posted by Matthew at 8:34:33 PM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Music | Vegetarian food | Back to top

• Sunday, 22 January 2006

  • Italiano

    At the Lyttelton market Saturday morning I picked up some cavolo nero, which is not the prettiest thing: it's a bit like a dark and brooding spinach. I didn't know at the time but apparently it's an Italian braising green. I shall braise some tonight. Later I went searching for the Mediterranean Food Company, which is basically a supermarket. I had an idea about where it was and simply drove up and down streets until my mouth started watering, whereupon I slammed on the brakes. So you don't have to do this, I shall clue you in: it's on Tuam Street, and it looks like a brick mockery of an amphitheatre. Inside it's like a wonderland. I bought white truffle oil, pear-flavoured balsamic vinegar, gnocchi, beans, and all sorts of pasta I never heard of: mezzani (long tubes), millerighi (squat tubes), conchiglioni rigati (huge shells), and bombardoni (massive penne). I was also tempted by the beautiful bottles of fruit syrups and grappa, and by the siena cakes. But I had enough to be going on with. I was not at all tempted by the black pasta died with squid ink.
    Posted by Matthew at 12:14:30 AM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Vegetarian food | Back to top