I was very excited to find these unusual vegetables on sale when we were in Vancouver in May. I first discovered Fiddleheads when I lived in Montreal. They are a traditional dish in Quebec and the Martimes, as well New England in the States.
Fiddlehead ferns are the unfurled fronds of ferns, but you can’t just pick any old fern, like these freshly furled ones we saw on our hike up High Creek Falls. I’m guessing we don’t have the right type of fern growing in the UK to harvest Fiddleheads since we don’t get them there (though we have plenty of bracken). Or could it be simply that no one knows which or when to harvest them?
Fiddleheads aren’t cultivated here so you only get them in season and they aren’t cheap, but they are well worth spending money on. Their taste is somewhere between asparagus and artichokes, and like those, they are delicious served with lemon and butter.
To prepare, brush off any loose brown leaves and give them a good wash. Then trim the woody or brown ends off the stalks. To cook them I would recommend steaming them until tender. Then serve tossed with a dob of butter, a good squeeze of lemon juice and seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper.
We flew into Chicago on Tuesday evening, after catching a midday flight from Seattle (where we’d spent a few days visiting our friend Ted).
I got a window seat which was very cool. I love aerial views. I’m always trying to remember what I learned in geography, like oxbow lakes (formed when a meandering river takes a shortcut).
I also got a good sense of how Chicago is laid out from above.
Lots of trees.
Couple super tall buildings. You can just see the top of the Hancock building, the black blob peeping out above a white building on the left, and the Sears’ Tower, the big black blob on the right. We’re looking towards the east in this photo.
Once we had taxied over the train and car highway (very bizarre) we were quickly off the plane and greeting Duncan by the baggage collection. Then we went to get on the “L“, (equivalent to the Underground), which mostly goes overground or above ground here – L standing for elevated.
The line which runs out to O’Hare airport runs up the centre of a 4 lane highway. It is a bit full-on standing in the middle all that.
And here is a detail of Duncan’s goofy wave in that last photo.
It is hot here in Chicago. Actually a bit hotter than usual for May, though June through August is always hot and humid. It’s been around 27 degrees celsius the last few days, reaching a staggering 30 this afternoon. Thankfully, our hosts, D&J, have air conditioning throughout their house. It’s like magic!
Here’s their house.
They just bought a new rocking bench for the porch there, which is lovely to sit in and watch the street or read a book. They live in the Albany Park neighbourhood. It is in the north of the City of Chicago, and is “one of the most ethnically diverse in the United States”.
Appropriately then, we went out to a Columbian place for dinner when we arrived, just round the corner from D&J’s house.
This was the grilled steak and chicken dish (meant for one? we shared between 2!), which was deeeelicious. That’s a yummy empanada (top left) which we had as a starter, next to the green garlicy sauce, cilantro [fresh coriander will be known thus, while I am here ok!] and/or parsley, we weren’t sure. There’s a fried plantain on the plate too.
The next couple days we all had work to do, so we got on with that. This is me working in the dining room which has a mirror at the end, reflecting the lounge and its windows which look out onto the street.
We did explore the local neighbourhood, taking a walk, checking out the local shops. I also went to the lovely Bloom Yoga studio in Rockwell for a class one evening. On the way home I made a little video of the “L” level crossing.
I was intending to take a photo of the station but my phone camera was on video so I got video instead. Out here the tracks run along street level or a bit higher, so there are lots of level crossings. I was in the middle trying to take my photo, when the bell started ringing, and I didn’t fancy being in the middle of the tracks when it went by. So the video starts with me dashing to a safe position behind the barrier! Hang on in there for the bit with the train rushing past.
There was more excitement to be had on my way home, as I saw a couple rabbits hopping around the wide grassy area between the pavement and the road. Chicago turns out to be ‘green’ down on the ground and not just from the air, which makes wandering about this neighbourhood very pleasant.
Okay I’ve run out of time – the new (gas) BBQ which North assembled in the garden today needs some food putting on it now. So I will have to save my impressions of downtown, which I explored yesterday, for next time. I’ll leave you with a little taster though – the view of downtown Chicago from Millenium Park.
I love brussel sprouts but when they’re not being served with a turkey (i.e. when they’re being served in my house, as I leave the turkey cooking to the experts) and I’ve already sautéd them up with chestnuts and bacon a few times, I’m looking for something else to do with them. Enter (yet another) Yotam Ottolenghi recipe.
This recipe demonstrates why Ottolenghi is such a king of Fusion cuisine. A spicy chinese stir-fry with brussel sprouts. And it has maple syrup in it too. Brilliant. The tofu is marianted in the maple syrup along with chilli sauce (I used chilli bean sauce as that’s all I had, seemed to do the trick), soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar. If you can get the firm tofu from a chinese supermarket which comes in water (like I did), you need to drain and press this first so that it will suck up the marinade.
I even treated myself to including the fresh shitake’s as suggested in the recipe. A treat because I had to go to Fresh and Wild Wholefoods to find them (and so it goes without saying: paid silly money for them). I think you can find them in Sainsbury’s sometimes but that was not an option for me this time.
I used little over half the amount of brussel sprouts recommended as that was all I got in my veg bag (once I’d peeled off the outside leaves which were looking a little worse for wear after waiting a week to be eaten!). I think these proportions were just fine.
Looks alright doesn’t it? Tasted absolutely fabulous. We had it with plain white rice.
I spent a week camping in the woods as part of a course in survival skills recently, which found me crawling through the forest, blindfolded, at night. Along the way I lost my glasses.
Yup that’s right. That woody, twiggy, leafy woods swallowed my spectacles whole. We were doing an exercise in which we were to find our way back to the campfire at night navigating by the sound of a drum. I took my glasses off in order to tie my blindfold tighter round my head. It was only when I got back to the fire and that I realised my glasses were no longer in my pocket.
The next day a bunch of us returned to our starting spot and rewalked the route, scanning the ground for my glasses. (Thankfully I had some contact lenses with me which I wore instead). It was difficult to know where to look, because I didn’t know which way I had walked/crawled when I was blindfolded and disoriented. The one potential clue to location was that I was probably doubled over at the time, since if I’d been standing up straight they couldn’t have fallen out of my deep pockets. So we looked around areas where there were low level branches and twigs. That didn’t narrow it down much.
It also didn’t help that my glasses are brown and blue and silver. Kind of like the colour of the birch tree twigs littering the woodland floor. After a couple of unsuccessful day time searches, Dan – also a glasses wearer, who made it his mission to help me find mine – joined me on a night time search.
We hoped that perhaps I could manage to retrace the path I took by recreating the disorientation I felt at the time and that the torch light might reflect off the glass/metal parts. As Dan paced behind me shining the torch about, I stumbled, half crawling, through the woods. And look what we found.
They were a couple feet away from a spot we had stood in earlier in the day, where Dan had noticed a small branch that was broken in 2 places – indicating that this path had been trodden more than once. Luckily, no one trod on my glasses.
(Thanks Dan – I couldn’t have done it without you!)
Here is my favourite Sichuan dish posted now in response to a call from the London food blogger, Helen Graves, of the Food Stories blog. Helen has just started on a Sichuan food kick and recently shared her first adventures in Sichuan cooking in which she tried out the brilliantly titled “Pock marked woman” Bean-curd dish (I’ve made a variation of this which I wrote about here) and a rather enticing sounding Rabbit in peanuts with hot bean sauce which I must try.
I’m afraid this blog post isn’t strictly a food pictorial like this one (the inspiration for which I explain here), because I didn’t document every single step. I only decided to make the dish at the last minute, I didn’t have all the ingredients, and I was hungry! But since Helen has asked for other things to try, and I need to respond to this while she still has the wok on the hob, this will just have to suffice!
This recipe is from my Chinese Regional Cooking book by Deh-Ta Hsiung which I talked about more here. This dish actually comes from the Hunan province which borders Sichuan to the south-east, but their cuisine is closely affiliated, since they share a passion for hot chilli. The photo above is of the illustration for the recipe from Deh-Ta’s book.
You can see right away, it is one of those seventies cookbooks. Sexy food photography had not yet been born. But it is also one of those recipes that doesn’t match the illustration. Green pepper isn’t mentioned in the recipe (though I’m pretty sure it’s in that photo unless he had access to mega sized chillis!) but I think it looks better like that and tastes right too. In fact it is usually having got a green pepper-or a leek-in my veg bag that inspires me to make this recipe.
Ingredients
300g pork fillet (you don’t really get pork labelled ‘fillet’ in the shops here so I tend to use pork chops)
3-4 chinese dried mushrooms, soaked
1 tbsp chinese pickled cabbage (look for a little packet, may be labelled ‘preserved vegetables’)
2 tbsp bamboo shoots (you can freeze the rest of the tin for next time)
50g hot green chillis (no idea how many that is, I use 2 long thin green ones which-coupled with the HOT chilli paste-seems enough heat for us)
1 leek
1 green pepper (this wasn’t in the recipe, but is in the photo, and I think goes very nicely!)
For the pork coating:
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp salt
1 egg
For the sauce:
2 tbsp chilli paste (see notes, below)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seed oil
One detail of this recipe I haven’t quite got yet – though it doesn’t seem to hurt, is that Deh-Ta says you should “cut the pork into thick slices [and] score the surface with a criss-cross pattern” before cutting it into small squares and marinating in salt, egg and cornflour. The idea here being, that when you deep fry the pork “each piece opens up like a flower”. This never happens for me. However, I still score the meat each time like a good student. I guess I feel that at least it gives more surface for the egg to cling onto, and more places for the sauce to get a grip. I suppose I should try not doing this one time to see what the difference is. (I’ll add the results to the comments if/when I do this!)
The other tricky thing here I suppose is the chilli paste. You may find it difficult to locate. I was lucky the first time and found this squat little jar in my local Chinese supermarket that seemed perfect. Then they stopped selling that and the next best thing I’ve found is a much taller jar, whose English language label is titled with “Black beans” but the first ingredient is actually chilli (then soybeans). This stuff I find I need to chop or grind by hand (it appears to be predominantly black beans) to make it into a paste – the other jar was more a paste to start with. See how you do, and good luck!
Oh one more thing: can I just emphasize that the leek and preserved vegetables are crucial. Okay, so you can probably get away with out the latter-incase you struggle to find them too-but I just tried this with onion instead of leek and it was definitely missing something. So please use leek if you can.
Pork in egg with cornflour and salt
Grinding up chilli paste
Chopped vegetables
Deep frying the pork
Removing the deep fried pork
Stir-frying the vegetables
Adding pork and chilli paste
The final moments
Ready to eat
Method
You know what to do with the pork already (as decribed above: score/chop – add to egg, salt and cornflour). The vegetables: chop them all up finely; I find the green pepper should be roughly 1.5cm cubed, same with leek; the other can be chopped smaller, in proportion to their size. Grind the chilli paste if what you’ve found isn’t much of a paste. Get a colander/plate-with-paper-towels on it ready. Put some rice on.
Then heat a couple inches of oil up in your wok (a wooden skewer or chopstick left in the oil will indicate the appropriate temperature when it starts to fizz) and drop the pork cubes in, possibly in 2 batches so you don’t overcrowd it or cool down the oil too much. You’ll need to give it all a good poke to stop it sticking together. I have an enormous holey spoon that helps with both this task and the fishing out of the pieces later. It doesn’t take long. If the pork pieces open up like flowers please tell me how you did it. If not just take them out before they start to brown. Drain them in a colander and/or on some paper towel. Tip the oil into a saucepan to cool (I then put in a jar for reuse another time).
Add 1-2 tbsp of the aforementioned oil to stir fry the vegetables. They only need a few minutes on a hot heat, stirring ALL THE TIME. Then add the chilli paste and pork, stir well. Then add the soy. Take off the heat, stir in the sesame oil, and serve with rice.
Enjoy.
P.S. Deh-Ta’s recipe suggests you add some cornflour slurry at the end to ‘thicken the sauce’. I don’t find I have much of a sauce when I make this dish – just all the flavours which are clinging to the ingredients. There is no liquid left in the pan for the cornflour to thicken. However, if you would like to try making this more saucy, I guess you want to add more water (or maybe chicken stock) and then the cornflour slurry (cornflour/cornstarch mixed with equal parts water) will have something to thicken and you will have a wet sauce. But I am pretty convinced you don’t need this.
This video is brilliant to watch because of the journey that you get to see a glimpse of as the background to this guy’s walk across China. But the reason I like this video so much -given that the self portrait timelapse video has been done many times before, the best one by Noah which was even parodied on The Simpsons- is that it uses video and not camera, and so each shot that makes up the timelapse has a little movement in it. Not always, but occasionally. From just a blink of the eye, through hair blowing in the gail force winds, to a brother or lover dancing around in the background. It gives the whole concept a new texture which I haven’t seen before, and I love it.
For 2 nights each summer, most of its local population descends on Plymouth’s waterfront, the Hoe, and (by boat to) Plymouth Sound to watch 2 nights of the National Fireworks Competition. This year I got to experience this delight for the first time.
I took the week off to it spend with my friend who lives in Plymouth, and also to celebrate my birthday which happens to coincide with this spectacular event (as well as the annual Perseids meteor shower, which unfortunately we were prevented from enjoying due to cloud cover).
Plymouth is a great location for the fireworks competition because the waterfront of Plymouth is large, meandering and on many levels which means there is no jostling for positions and you don’t have to worry about being stood behind the tallest-person-in-the-world. Having said that, there are definitely some prime spots for watching the fireworks display. The grassy embankment of the Royal Citadel is a prime spot.
In fact on the second day I was walking on the Hoe at about 4pm and I saw people taking up their positions at the top of this embankment already, 5 1/2 hours before the fireworks display begins! Not surprising then, that they were kitted out with deck chairs, tents, tripods and cool boxes.
I’m imagining that the person who made the following video was probably one of those getting into position early. This video is a recording of the winning display which was by a company called Phoenix Fireworks from Sevenoaks. Apparently members of the public could vote online, though we didn’t. If you have the broadband speed, I recommend you watch this full screen and in HD – it’s pretty impressive. Oh and listen to the background commentary too, its quite amusing.
In this photo of one of the lower levels of the Hoe I explored earlier in the day, you can see the jetty from which the fireworks are set off. All the water surrounding the jetty is full of boats during the displays, though overnight mooring isn’t allowed so they all go shooting off to their marinas as soon as the last firework has exploded.
Here you can see the little fishing spot where we sat on the 2nd night, with our feet dangling off the edge as we enjoyed our front row seat of the fireworks displays.
I know I said you don’t have to worry about people getting in the way of your view, but I took this next photo while I was still getting into position. I rather like the way the person’s head has a halo of firework though, don’t you? The big firework above reminds me of photos of jellyfish underwater.
You can see all my photos in this slideshow below. They’re a bit blurry but they do capture the scale and calibre of the displays. Check out the reflection of the light in the water. That was really fab.
I’ve been practicing yoga for 5 years now, starting seriously with a couple years of regular Bikram practice, then switching to do a meddley of ashtanga and Iyengar and Hatha yoga. Then I discovered AcroYoga.
London AcroYogis doing a demo at The Yoga Show in 2008
Though I practice yoga regularly I’ve never really been part of the community, so it was actually through work that I ended up going the The Yoga Show last year (thanks to Paul of Yogamatters for the ticket!). There I saw a demo by the London AcroYoga team and I walked away thinking “I am going to try that!”.
A little later than than I’d have hoped, due to a strained tendon and some time away, I attended my first AcroYoga workshop (every 3rd Sunday of the month at Globe House near London Bridge). There has been no looking back.
AcroYoga is a combination of acrobatics, yoga and Thai massage. You don’t really need experience in any of the above, but it will help. It shouldn’t replace your yoga practice (I still practice ashtanga/hatha at home) but it compliments it nicely. AcroYoga is different to yoga because you work in pairs or in larger groups, so it is requires you to put your trust and confidence in – and have fun working with – others.
What has really amazed me is how much you can achieve, even when you are new to the game. The teachers are constantly demonstrating a formation which I look at and think “yeah, right!” and 10mins later, with the careful and attentive assistance of a spotter, I’m in the middle of basing or flying it. For that reason it is incredibly rewarding and very addictive! Doing AcroYoga regularly will build up your core body strength, as well as strengthening your arms and legs. I come away from the classes feeling exhilarated.
I urge you to try it.
The video below is a beautiful demonstration of AcroYoga and one which proves that it doesn’t matter how big or small you are – you only need to build up the strength and confidence to be able play.
I saw this brilliant artwork by Daniel Arsham on the fabulously inspirational Swiss Miss blog.
If you are familiar with my sculpture making past you’ll instantly know why this caught my attention, but if not, this piece will give you an idea.
I’m not saying my work matches the level that Daniel Arsham is working on – I am comparing my student work – but I do feel it kind of demonstrates the direction I might have taken my sculpture had I pursued it further. Having given up making art, I do rather love it when I see work like this that makes me think “There. I didn’t need to carry on cos someone else is doing it for me. Good!”
There is little bit of magic in the moment when you see a photo of your corner shop or local dry cleaners’ published on the web. No, really! I suppose in a small way it is like those rare times when you see your local neighbourhood in the background of a mainstream movie. At least it is rare if you live in Hackney – I’m sure those living in Notting Hill are used to their streets being used as a film set. I can pretty much guarantee* the streets documented in www.londonshopfronts.com haven’t been used as mainstream film sets, but they are no less fascinating for it.
