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"Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body, using outside sources of energy. Also, since cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture."

Michael Pollan

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Entries in cumin (12)

Saturday
Oct232010

Stephanie Alexander's Moroccan-inspired chicken

DateSaturday, October 23, 2010 at 2:48PM

About halfway through making this dish I thought I might have another Dalmatian disaster on my hands. Part of me was thinking what a waste of good ingredients, while the other half of me was eagerly imagining the comic potential of another culinary catastrophe. In the end I was left disappointed on both fronts; I was able to save the dish from disaster but not from the dull and the ordinary, the result being that I still felt I had squandered good ingredients on a dish that turned out to be perfectly pleasant, but rather plain and where is the comic value in that?

So why, you may ask, am I sharing it with you? Faith. And a lack of it. 

Faith: This is the first time I have ever been disappointed with a recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. It seems so unlikely that a recipe with so many sumptuous spices could fall flat. Caroline Dewe of the Mostly Undaunted Cook certainly rates it (“Love this dish”) calling her post ‘Thank you Stephanie: Morrocan inspired chicken’.

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AuthorVix | Comment4 Comments |
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Sunday
Aug082010

Ray's meatballs, inspired by Jamie Oliver

DateSunday, August 8, 2010 at 2:45PM


 

Let's get a few things straight before I start this recipe.

I am in the camp of people who find Jamie Oliver a rather annoying personality (the pseudo-geezer thing), but who appreciate what he has done for food in Britain (example). I like his early books (I only got as far as the first two), but I sit firmly with the Italians when it comes to 'Jamie's Italy'. Basically, if Italy is, as he says, his biggest inspiration ("I should have been Italian"), then why can’t he respect the time-honoured recipes developed over generations instead of coming in and throwing all manner of herbs and spices into dishes that traditionally would have been made up of a few ingredients, cooked simply and allowed to shine. In the words of Angela Hartnett,

Nonna taught me to understand what great Italian cooking is all about: start with the very best raw ingredients and do very little to them; just let them speak for themselves, and make the best of their natural flavours and textures.

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AuthorVix | Comment5 Comments |
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