Serial Cooking – Cinty’s French Fish Pie
This fish pie is another Lindsey Bareham recipe, that is an ideal two portion dish.
It is easy to do and I suspect that the completed dish could be prepared earlier and left in the fridge for most of the day.
The one here, gives me two portions for two suppers or a meal with a friend.
A friend of mine does this recipe a lot. She says it is easy to modify for however many are turning up for supper. She also says she doesn’t get complaints.
Serial Cooking – Ham And Leek Gratin With Emmental Mash
Ham And Leek Gratin With Emmental Mash is another of Lindsey Bareham’s recipes from The Times
Again I chose it becauses there could be a break before putting it in the oven. I also made a half quantity for myself. Lindsey’s sizes were double mine for three.
I had one portion cold and it was delicious.
Serial Cooking – A Good Cauliflower Cheese
This is another Lindsey Bareham recipe, that I cooked serially like the Sausage and Bean Casserole a few days ago.
It is easy to do and I suspect that the completed dish could be prepared earlier and left in the fridge for most of the day.
An Experiment In Serial Cooking
According to many people I’ve met, including my secretary, Jane, men are not good at multi-tasking. She put it down to the caves, where the man had to be single-minded enough to go off and kill that buffalo, so they didn’t all starve. The woman meanwhile was left at home with all the problems, like the kids, collecting firewood, nuts and berries, and perhaps trying to grow some crops.
I am not the best multi-tasker, although with tasks I used to do in the past, like software bug-fixing, I would do them in related groups.
One of the problems in this house, is the small, but extremely-badly designed kitchen. I deliberately have a smaller two-oven Zanussi cooker, but the kitchen has only one sink with a low tap, cupboards you need a torch to get things out of and no freezer.
So often if I cook something, I get piles of washing up everywhere and have nowhere to put anything.
Some recipes I use, like Cinty’s French Fish Pie are what I could call serial cooking, in that they are a series of tasks. That recipe also has the advantage that you can make it in the morning, leave it in the fridge all day and cook it in the evening. I usually, make two, when I’m cooking for myself and leave one for the supper after next.
So as an experiment, I decided to see if one of my favourite meals, Lindsey Bareham’s sausage and bean casserole could be cooked as a series of tasks. Normally, it needs a casserole and a frying pan to cook the sausages, so instead of that, I cooked the sausages first in the casserole and then started the meal in earnest.
I was also able to leave the casserole on top of the cooker all day, before I cooked it in the evening.
My First Shop-Bought Fishcakes In A Dozen Years
I was in Marks and Spencer at Eastfield and looking for a piece of fish for my supper, when I saw some gluten-free fishcakes.
I probably haven’t had any since Waitrose in Newmarket stopped selling their locally-sourced ones in about 2000.
But I do like fishcakes and except for the odd meal in an expensive restaurant, I’ve hardly ever eaten any in the intervening years.
I actually bought one packet of the salmon and one of the cod, so tonight, I ate one of each and put the others in a sealing container for perhaps Sunday.
They didn’t disappoint, after I cooked them in the oven at 220°C for 16-18 minutes.
I think it’s true to say that these and other products in Marks and Spencer’s Made Without Wheat range, taste so good, that even the most fussy of eaters couldn’t tell the difference between these and the standard products.
The only problem with their gluten-free products is finding the new ones in the store.
I found these excellent fishcakes totally by accident.
The Best Meal I’ve Ever Had On A Scheduled Train
I’ve eaten on many trains and used to regularly enjoy breakfast on Ipswich to London in the past, when they had a dining car. In some ways the most memorable was a return from Teeside to London behind a Class 55, where the driver showed what a Deltic could do.
I’ve also travelled with C on the Eastern and Oriental Express.
But no meal on a train could compare with the one I ate going from Paddington to St. Ives in one of First Great Western’s InterCity 125s. They call it Pullman Fine Dining.
I had found out that they were serving lunch on the 11:30 from Paddington, so I booked myself on that train. There was a bit of a mix-up between the train times and the web site, but as you can see, I got my high-class lunch.
As a coeliac, what really impressed me was the professional way they dealt with allergies. In fact, if anybody wants to open a restaurant, they could do no better than copy the openness.
The two courses I ate were excellent, as was the service.
I do hope that this form of catering leads to similar offerings on other lines.
There was only two things wrong with the meal.
I had to eat it by myself and it would have been so much better with a travelling companion.
The other was that First Great Western don’t have a card, which says when this service is offered. I’m off to Cardiff on Tuesday, so could I get lunch on the way down?
Is This The Ideal Bread For A Lone Coeliac?
Yesterday, in Marks and Spencer, they had sold out of my usual bread, so I bought a pack of Brown Bloomer Slices.
There are six or so slices in the pack, which costs £3.15, and it is pretty good either fresh or as toast, as the pictures show.
I hope you don’t get the impression that I live on toast and jam, but I am partial to a cup of tea and toast in the afternoon, if I’m at home.
These slices are ideal for me, as they are good untoasted and cut in half they fit my toaster. The toast isn’t bad either!
This loaf would be good, if you’re having a coeliac friend staying for a couple of nights or just coming round for a meal, as the way it’s packed it will keep for a day or two.
But for my purposes of a coeliac living alone, it does everything I need and as a loaf seems to last about three days, that means it probably costs me around a pound a day or fifty pence a slice. As my daily State Pension is around twenty pounds a day, I think I can afford it.
One problem is that as the bread has no crusts, which might cause friction in some families.
I wonder how many cafes and restaurants will start using this bread, as it seems to be in most Marks and Spencer’s stores, except possibly those in stations. The pack size would satisfy a couple of patrons on perhaps two days.
Marks and Spencer have either designed the product and pack size very carefully or they’ve just struck lucky.
I don’t care as the product is excellent.
Food Tasting At Leon
C always used to say about me, that I couldn’t handle bones. Whereas a good part of the population like to eat spare ribs, I tried them just once and haven’t tasted them in perhaps thirty years. If we had chops for supper, she would always take mine after I’d finished , and then strip any spare meat. In fact, when I have chops now, I always buy them without the bone. I also am one of the few men, who can’t carve.
It’s not a phobia or anything like that, it’s probably down to a problem with my hand and arm.
It’s also not just meat, but I really can’t fillet fish on my plate. Although, I’m getting better at that, if someone presents me with a plaice or sole on the bone. I’ve also got form about getting bones stuck in my throat, as this post shows.
I had been asked to taste a new gluten-free chicken by Leon, so I went with a friend to their restaurant in Spitalfields.
Gluten Free Chicken At Leon
The chicken unfortunately was on the bone. It is cooked in a herb crust and is served with a dip of choice.
Despite the bones, I quite liked it, although of the dips I tried, some of them were more to my taste than others.
I might try one again, but now I know it has bones, I would probably stick to one of their bunless burgers.
I’ve asked my companion for an opinion and I’ll post it when I get it.
But you have to admire Leon for being upfront with calling a product Gluten Free Chicken. How long before this initiative is copied?
And how long before we get Gluten Free Lamb etc.?
Ten years ago, coeliacs like me had a problem finding good food in a restaurant. Now in the average town or city centre, this choice has got a lot easier in the UK. But like the Tap on the Line, there are still restaurants trying to do good food, who don’t have a clue!
Recently Carluccio’s have changed their bread from an excellent brown one, to something best described as a crap white.
Restaurants that don’t cater for coeliacs and the gluten free, now have a problem, in that there are now several restaurant chains, who take gluten free meals seriously!
I once asked Gordon Ramsey about his attitude to those who asked for gluten-free food in his restaurants. He said that if when you book, you say you’re gluten-free and they say they can’t handle it, then the establishment is not a good restaurant.
I would take this further. And restaurant that thinks it’s at the top of its class, that doesn’t say what dishes are gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, vegetarian or vegan etc., is definitely not at the top.
London’s Garden Station
With the English love of gardening, you’d think that there would be lots of railway and Underground stations in the capital, which celebrate gardens.
But there are only three; Covent Garden, Kew Gardens and Ruislip Gardens.
The first is not really a garden now and who has heard of the last, but everybody has heard of the second.
So as I had heard the station had a pub on the platform, I went to take a look.
I just had a glass of real cider, but unfortunately the pub called the Tap On The Line had one of the most coeliac-unfriendly menus I’ve found in a long time.
The piece de resistance, was that the chips were oven chips, which as any coeliac knows are enhanced with wheat, so are not gluten-free. Even McDonalds manage to make their fries gluten-free!
You would be better off bringing a picnic to eat in Kew Gardens, which is four hundred metres away.
Are These The Perfect Gluten-Free Dunking Biscuit?
Marks and Spencer have recently launched some gluten-free ginger snaps.
I don’t think I’ve found a better dunking biscuit.
I wonder if they’d pass C’s test of breaking them into pieces on her left elbow, with her right hand?
On the other hand, she wouldn’t approve of the picture on the right!
The Anonymous Widower 