Mangoes? You can't be serious?

The Pampered Chef Mango Wedge.  Great when you can get mangos.

Mangos. Seen one recently?

 

Do you know what, I couldn't buy a mango last week.

I had change in my pocket earmarked for a couple of them.  But there wasn't one single mango in my town to buy. Not one. Well, actually that's not quite true.  There was one, in a traditional grocers, but it had clearly been a mango for quite a long time and had long since dispensed with the need for keeping up appearances.  It had let itself go rather.  Even the lady in the shop didn't bother to hide her dismay; she didn't even really try to sell it to me.


'Yes...it's a bit past it, isn't..?' she said in a faltering voice.  But she still put it back on the rack, mind you.

Now I appreciate for many reading this, the situation sounds highly unlikely.  You've already gone back and re-read the first bit.

'Did he say there were none - in his town..!?' 

Well, yes I did.  I checked the supermarkets and the two available grocers.  You see, I live in a small, rural market town.  Even a few miles down the road the mango choice would no doubt have been extensive.  I could have browsed on at a leisurely pace through a selection, tweaking as I went to check for flabby bits or round firm buttock-y type portions.


And this search was first thing, about 8am to avoid any rush on exotic items.  But it was interesting to note the reaction of those I asked.  I had to ask in the shops - something we don't normally do these days - because time was of the essence and I needed to get to the point.

Having received a few startled jumps from the early supermarket gang, unsettled by demands for information on the whereabouts of fruits native to the Indian subcontinet, I dashed instead to the grocers.  The first encounter is detailed above and the second and final was even more brief.  I didn't even really make it through the doors properly. A quick dash passed the Jersey Royals and a chap, still putting out the morning displays, came up to me with armfuls of strawberry punnets.

'Morning!'  Cheery so far, in a grocer kind of way. 'Looking for anything in particular Sir..?'
'Well...mangoes actually, I don't suppose you..?

He shot me a glance that hovered between disbelief and outrage.

Strawberry punnets

'Mangoes?! No, definitely not!' Then, short pause...'Sorry about that' after he'd regained his composure. The look on his face suggested he was far too busy with a potential early strawberry rush to spend time on whimsical requests, I was clearly getting ideas above my station and should really downsize my ambitions. Or maybe he knew that mango peel and sap contain urushiol, the chemical  in poison ivy and I was obviously planning some kind of civil disobedience.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a small community, I'm not an urban creature. But there are times when it would be great to be somewhere where you could buy more than one sort of rice.  And don't get me started on  polenta.  That can never be an impulse buy, involving a 50 mile round trip; no I'm not joking.

So mango and chilli salsa is on hold until I venture onwards.  I would like to sample the PChef Mango Wedger with its dishwasher safe ergonomic handles and protective storage cover, but...geography will clearly play its part.

There are 35,000,000 tonnes grown worldwide, and the only mango I could get couldn't manage The Last Waltz, never mind a Salsa.
 

• If you like what you read, why not join the page - you can do that on the right hand side, or repost on facebook or twitter or join me on facebook  or email mikegetscooking@gmail.com.

Why have boys taken command of the kitchen?

TV is awash with blokes cooking.  We know that. 

It's possible to watch a man cooking most nights on terrestrial TV and certainly every night on satellite.  And it's likely that the outcome is the huge increase in the numbers of boys cooking at school and choosing food technology, over others, in options.

Equally is that also the reason why so many girls actively don't choose food technology now?  Or is there a more subtle answer to all this?   I've been speaking to food technology teacher, Anne Gamble...

(Press the orange arrow to hear the audio...)

.

• If anything occurs to you or you have a point to make, please make a comment about what you've just heard. It's your page too.  Also please join the page - you can do that down the right hand side, or like my facebook page at mikegetscooking  (a work in progress).

Pampered Chef salads could be good for your ears.

Pampered Chef Mix Measure and Pour, on salads, obviously

Whatever happened to lettuce?

When I was a kid it was just lettuce. Just lettuce. That's what it was called.  And with the lettuce went cucumber, half a tomato or two and half a boiled egg.  When visitors came around the egg might be sliced. On top of that for me went a significant amount of Heinz Salad Cream.  I don't ever remember being a fan of salad, but I was - and still am - a fan of salad cream.  Unfortunately as I keep finding, there's a time and a place to admit to these things, if you read my bit about fish and brown sauce.

Not that I turn up my nose at more adventurous dressings these days.  There's a great piece of Pampered Chef kit that I suspect is somewhat overlooked.  It's a salad dressing mixer that looks like an individual caffettiera.  It goes by the name of  Measure Mix and Pour which pretty much covers what it does and what you do, for that matter.

Around the sides of the cylinder are recipes for  a range of different dressings.  We've tried a couple at home and they're very good.  So, you put in fresh ginger, top up to that line with rice vinegar, add garlic then this amount to this line of olive oil and so on. When you've added everything, up and down goes the plunger with a bout of vigorous plunging, pour it out onto your salad, in the fridge goes the remainder.  I like it because I don't have to faff about looking for a recipe, it's a one-stop shop.

Olive oil, ideal for ears

Olive Oil for Pampered Cheffers

It's a strange one isn't it, olive oil?  Again, when I was a kid, olive oil was in the medicine cabinet and used to loosen your ear wax. One of those Sunday night rituals. Bath, Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the tele, and ears brimming with salad dressing. Odd.

Speaking of the tele, I see there's a new impetus in the salad dressing ads, new ranges of tarted up sauces.  One leading brand of mayonnaise now has a hint of caramelised onion, a 'twist' of pepper, a 'spark' of chilli, a 'hint' of wasabi.  Wasabi?  Now maybe that's quite clever, that could be a winner with a particular set.

'Salad cream?  Eeeeeaaawwooooo!  Mayo with wasabi you say? Oh yar, def. Squirt away, darling'


It's a bit like a few years back when 'hint of a tint...' was suddenly huge in DIY paint situations.

'Love the magnolia walls, so retro...'
'Errr, I think you'll find that's hint of a peach, thank you (sniff)'


But then everything has to be tweaked this days  to be what it isn't and never was.  My bathroom has to smell like an alpine forest or the Chelsea Flower Show, or else.

Lettuce leaves, a fashion statement

My lettuce must comprise of a baby leaf or two. No seems to complain that such leaves have been ripped from the hearts of their loving mother lettuce.  No, they're sweet and tender, so that's OK. It's now romaine, butter lettuce, endive, lambs, escarole, rocket, so on and so forth.  There's even beetroot leaves and sliced red cabbage in there. The thought of my mum putting cabbage in a salad beggers imagination.  Cabbage in our house was only consumed when it was given a damned good boiling and taught a lesson.  Then it was boiled some more until all the green colour had come out and was down the sink where it belonged. See-through cabbage was never a favourite of mine.

Salad eating weather

Lettuce, as in lettuce, is now the unloved Cinderella.  And to be fair, I've had to put some desperately limp lettuce out of its misery today and into the kitchen bin.  I didn't like doing it, I hate throwing any food away.  But it really was at death's door, mainly because - and this won't surprise you - it's been raining of late and is right now as I type.  Again. Not salad eating weather.  I'm sure what salad eating weather is but I just don't think it's now.

So I'm going to have to keep my Measure Mix and Pour in the cupboard a while longer. If you have any dressings left over, just waiting for the sun to shine, you could always put a drop or two in your ears to see if it shifts anything stubborn.

Probably best leave it until you need to liven up a leaf.

• PS, If you'd like one of those excellant dressing mixers, just leave a comment or send me an email.  Also remember, please repost or facebook or twitter this blog and please join the site on the right hand side.  You can also find me at mikegetscooking on facebook.

Sheeps bits, samosas and a helicopter

 

 

Haggis samosas?  Haggis?

 

I think I'd be happy to try that.  Just been watching the excellant Hairy Bikers and a Mum Knows Best repeat. I like haggis and I like samosas so it's a done deal. Not that I've enjoyed haggis for a while.  When one of my sons was into rugby, the club organised an annual fundraiser Burns Night.  Very few on our table actually enjoyed the haggis or the tot of whisky to pour onto it.  And yet they went year after year. Meanwhile as a significant fan of both those items, I would leave the Ball roughly the same shape/dimensions of a haggis, wobbling due to  having consumed vast amounts of sheeps bits and whisky.  Whether it was the alarming shift in my centre of gravity due to bloated stomach or the alcohol, I can't be certain.

Thinking back to why so many of my fellow diners shunned the menu, I suppose there's a clue in the ingredients: sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs to you and me) with more mainstream onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, all plopped into a sheeps stomach and boiled until it's given up the fight.  It's widely believed that it's of Scottish origin but there are records of a dish answering to a vague description in Lancashire in 1430. Let's not get involved, there's heritage at  stake here.

Pigs trotters with a hoof

 

As a kid,  I waded through more than my fair share of pigs trotters and tripe.  I couldn't tell you the last time I saw either to buy. Butchers where I live opt for safe cuts they know will sell to what appears to be a squeamish market that's lost contact with food and where it comes from.  And who can blame them?  They have to make a living selling what will sell.  It's our fault, not theirs.

So imagine my surprise when I visited Birmingham some months back at the vast array of meaty bits in the covered market.  It was hard to keep my jaw from dropping.  The star of the show for me was the stall selling piles of hooves. I'm going to presume from a cow.  This is way off my radar.  I have no idea how to cook or what you do with a hoof.  Now Birmingham is about as multicultural as you could find in the UK and that would account for my ignorance, I suspect, living as I do in a small rural market town. I mean, they were sold by a butcher so eating must be the end result...yes?

Apart from eating the unusual (well, unusual by today's standards) there is also the question of eating in unusual places.

Roast dinner followed by a roast dinner 

 

I have eaten on a gas rig in the North Sea.  That was quite some experience.  You have to get there by helicopter obviously which marks it down as unusual before you do anything else.  Inside the canteen, ignoring the fact that you are miles from anywhere and lashed by waves the size of houses, the sheer scale of the eating was legendary.  It may have changed in the years since, but it was roast followed by a roast, with roast to follow.  Seriously, vast helpings and damned tasty.

I also ate a somewhat nervy lunch with members of our armed forces in Northern Ireland during one of my previous careers. You don't forget grabbing what you can with a bunch of  anxious young men in a hurry.

But as I write this, something unusual has happened.  I look up from my laptop through the window and I see the dwindling remnants of sunshine.  We've not had much of that.  And that reminds me...

Some years ago I ran a short live radio project with a couple of colleagues and a shed load of 11 to 18s.  It was hot all week. Really hot. We had an idea.  Can you really fry an egg on a path?  Or a car bonnet? It would make a great feature.

The car thing fell on deaf ears.  The usual kind of response was; "Are you havin' a laugh?  I've just had the damned thing Turtle waxed and you want to practice your Full English?  Jog on Monkey Boy."

So we tried the path. Let me tell you, eggs don't fry on hot paths. They sort of set. Ish. And they take some scraping off later.  I guess they might somewhere, majorly hot, but not our kind of hot. Shell-shocked, I was.  Eggsactly. Oh dear.

• If you like this nonsense, please pass it on, facebook, twitter, join the page if you like (right hand side) make a comment, whatever takes your fancy - I thank you :)

Horns, flags and in the pink. Just another Pampered Chef 'Conference.' See you there..?

Feather boa time 

 

I wonder how I'd look with a pink feather boa?
Interesting thought. I can say right here, right now that not one single feather of any colour or dimension resides in my wardrobe.  That's just in case you were wondering.

Now, I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this is a random train of thought.  You know, what's suddenly make him think of feathery adornments?

Conference. It's not even called 'The' Conference.  Just Conference.  The Pampered Cheffers know all about this and there's a certain tang, a certain zip in the PChef Facebook Action at the moment because they're getting their loins girded in readiness.  I'd like to give more details and a cheeky insight into what happens at an event so eargerly anticipated.  It must be a pretty confident gig if it can ditch the 'The' willy nilly. But I can't because I've never been there. I've heard tales, obviously, but I have no first hand knowledge.

I've seen the pics from previous years and grass skirts seemed to feature heavily. I can sense you're getting a bit lost here, so I'll go back a bit.  Pampered Chef is a direct selling company - one of the most successful in fact; long established in the US, not so long here in the UK where I sit. And in common with such organisations, the selling part is essentially done by those that sign up across the country.  The vast majority are part time and fit it around existing lives, some are occasional, some are full time. And again in common with industry practice there are incentives - a fair steady stream of free products to those that sell - independent consultants - just for selling.


On top of that there are holidays and so on.  The gang are not long back from a few days in Dubai and rather good it was too, I'm told.  The next biggie is a cruise, free to those that sell enough, and that will be a a significant amount of people, let me tell you.  Tempting to think the free stuff tumbles to a select few: not so.

Anyway, now we're getting to the point, although I've something else to tell you about the Dubai trip in a bit. Very saucy. Again in line with everyone else there are conferences where the company plus consultants of various levels all get together, in this case Birmingham. It's in July. There are meetings, workshops on a range of activities including, this time social media, and so on.  Naturally, there's a knees up or two. The pics from last years knees-up suggests it was a Hawiian-inspired event that looked like one of those Elvis films from the 60s.

Getting in a Flapper

 

The main theme this year, if I remember right, is Flappers or Gangsters.  I don't know, however, if this is compulsory garb.  I do know that PChef HQ asked those attending Conference to wear something pink.  This is all in line with with Cancer charity work that PChef does which raises thousands every year.  And all credit to those involved. Next Sunday I will be there supporting my wife and her friends taking part in Run for Life which they have done for several years. We should never lose sight of how important such combined efforts are.

I can do pink. I own a few pink shirts so that's not a problem. My wife has bought me pink shirts previously. Pink is good.

However, I've already been offered (through snorts and chuckles by PC ladies) the loan of a grass skirts, coconut shells etc etc. as they recall previous years.  I've yet to be offered Flapper attire but feather boas have been mentioned. Now, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but...

Hundreds of women, the core of such direct selling, will descend on Birmingham from across Britain. Plus a few blokes. A few blokes. Is the thought of a boa, constricting the number of chaps coming forward, I wonder, not just to conference but the whole picture? I've been thinking of that of late.

Anyway. Will I be there? Don't know. I have several names on my dance card apparently, so that can't be bad.  It will be energising and just damned good fun for those there. As one PCheffer put it to me, 'I went with a hobby and came back with a business.'  And let's not lose sight of how significant that is in such times of reduced incomes.  The chance to add to, supplement, change to a more fulfilling role can't be ignored.

It's just that I'm not sure if  I'm Flapper material. Now, apart from pink, the PCheffers have also been asked to take flags to wave in an Olympics kind of groove and blast one of those vuvuzelas horn jobs that irratate the hell out of football organising committees.  It was car horns last year, apparently.  I've perked up now.  I wish I'd gone last year. A rare excuse to nip to the local scrapyard and rip the horn from an old Sierra. One of my sons has a colossal Cuban flag on his bedroom wall, but I'm guessing that wouldn't hit the right tone.

Oh yes. Before I forget. About the Dubai trip. Well...predominately women again.  And (can't reveal sources, I wasn't there, remember) but, on the plane, by the pool, shopping, one of the main topics of conversation, if not the main topic was...well it involved...how can I put it...ermm..I had no idea women talked about that stuff.

I'll stop now. I'm getting in a flap.

• Please leave a comment, offer your opinion and if you like this or anything else on here, please re-post, link to facebook, whatever takes your fancy.  I'd be very grateful.  Thanks.

Silly menus and Family Bathrooms

Pan fried Pampered style.

Pan fried. 

Pan fried?  What else should I use apart from a pan?  I could try the kettle but it wouldn't go down well with my wife, would be my best guess.

Sloshing a pint or so of vegetable oil in there to heat up and fry a few nuggets wouldn't be a preferred plan.

I've been a little quiet on here of late - real life taking over for a while plus I've been away.  Catching up on various things, I've read numerous postings, emails etc.  I've been reading about overblown menu writing and the way it's all put down these days.  Once upon a time, not too long ago, it was all French if the restaurant thought it was important enough.  Few could understand a damned thing, but at least it sounded important. Even hairdressers my mum went to when I was a kid were 'Salon of Madame Jean' or something or other.

Frankly, it's not much better now, and it's in English of a sort.

There was ( I say was, it's no longer there) a restaurant not far from where I live that boasted: hand battered haddock, nestling on a bed of crushed peas served with hand cut chips. (Small mist of semi rage appearing).  That'll be fish, chips and mushy peas then? Crushed is OK, mushy is not.  It's just a word.  Why is one cool and the other chavvy?  And you just know all the half dozen same size chips will be stacked like a game of Jenga.  Not for me, thanks. I'll go to the chippy.  I get a free fork there too. And scraps.

Jus versus gravy

How did I manage to get through the early years of my life without a jus?  Half a teaspoon of brightly coloured cack in a cresent blur on my plate. No damned use at all.  Or a veloute, that's a good one.  I like gravy myself, but apparently I shouldn't say that out loud.  I was staying in a hotel in Wales last week and ate mind-boggling good lamb.  It arrived doing the backstroke in a meaty gravy to die for and came with an additional gravy boat. Yum.  If I had a straw I would have supped the lot. Here's a couple of real ones: 'gateau of grilled vegetables' and a 'bouillabaisse of sardines'.  Good grief. 'A carpaccio of courgette'.  I'm not making this stuff up.
I ordered one of these hand battered haddock malarkeys at a restaurant in Wales last week.  When it arrived, the waitress - as they do - asked if I needed anything else.  I asked for brown sauce.  I don't like ketchup, I like brown sauce.  She blanched.  The blood drained from her face. The request took time to process.

'Sorry, I got confused for a second....you said brown sauce?  With hand battered fish?  It's just that you've already got our homemade sauce of tartar as it is '

'Brown sauce would be great, yes please'

'Right...well. I'll just err...'  And off she went, clearly to tell the head chef to alert the authorities. I had little intention of using the hand-carved lemon wedge either.

Baked beans and brown sauce, please

To get back to our friend the veloute for a second, it's a long established sauce. Nothing new; it was one of the five "mother sauces" designated by Auguste Escoffier in the 19th century. It's just that for some reason we've picked up these words and trot them out to make a perfectly sensible dish sound flash. What on earth for? I'm getting grumpy now.

Pot au feu d'agneau aux pommes de terre et aux oignons I think you'll find is Lancashire hotpot. Boule aux épices et aux fruits secs would be Spotted Dick.  As I said, I've spent a while away in Wales  and I loved the fact that the shop and road signs made no sense whatsover.  Well, they would if I was Welsh. 

I'll have to take it that 'Mae hyn yn ffordd i ganol y dref' means 'This way to the town centre'.  It could say 'All your camels have warts'  I have no idea.  But like I say, it makes me happy that even in this small island in which I live we can celebrate our national heritage of words and language. That bit, I love, I'm just  not comfortable when we mess about with words for no real reason.


But it's not just foodies that revel in this tangle of consonants.  I quite like watching property programmes when I just want to relax. Phil and Kirsty and Jasmine with the A Place In The Relocation, Location, Home or Away or whatever it's called. But.

'And up the stairs you can see the Family Bathroom.'  A what? The Family Bathroom!  Is there another sort?

'Can I use your loo..?'

'No...please don't go in there, you are a friend, you must be upgraded to...The  Family Bathroom.  We only use this one for Non-EU Residents, total strangers or the dog if no-one else needs it'.

Yes, I know I'm getting sarky, but I mean, really...

A pack of Birds Eye Lamb Grills destined for a BBQ at our house years ago came with the instructions 'Do not grill.'  And again just last week while away, we walked past a childrens play area.  The sign was vast.

'Large childrens play area.  Families welcome'  Really..? Not just for orphans then?

Tonight I shall feast on a root vegetable confection of chopped beef encased in a hand rolled all-butter crimped shell served with a thickened tomato-infused bean broth and pomme puree and a molasses-based drizzle.

Or, pasty, baked beans and mash with, you guessed it,  brown sauce on the side. (Small burp.)

• Please leave a comment, offer your opinion and if you like this or anything else on here, please re-post, link to facebook, whatever takes your fancy.  I'd be very grateful.  Thanks.

Joust a minute, the gazebo's all wrong.

 

I'm in a foul mood.  No really, you've picked a bad time.  I've just had to put up the damned gazebo.

In a previous scribble on here, I pointed out how men tend not to follow instructions - or recipes. And yes, that includes me.  So I did the proper thing, I sourced the gazebo instruction putting-up sheets. It's because a few chums are decending tomorrow for a BBQ.  A peek at the weather forecast suggests we might miss the rain by about a quarter of an inch on the tele map.  But we are taking no chances, I was told.  So a spot of shelter is required in case of a short, sharp burst.

Now, we have two of these gazebo things; smallish and absolutely huge.  The huge one was bought prior to a larger family gathering one August; the cost of hiring one for a day was eye-wateringly staggering and buying one the same size in a B&Q sale to keep for ever and ever was cheaper.  I'd use it more but it's the size of Belgium and needs a minimum of six people to put it up. So out came the small one today and I proudly waved the instructions in a 'This'll be up in a jiffy, don't you worry' kind of way to my wife, wrestling with bunting.

Before I go any further, how did we get into this gazebo thing?  I mean when did gazebos become essential items? When the tent morph into the gazebo?  It's just a roof.  Well the one in our garden at the moment is. When did I sit in the garden and think to myself, 'This whole sitting out here experience would be dramatically improved if only I had a fabric roof over part of the garden.  Get a tent out darling and bring the scissors, while you're at it.'

I don't remember that.

Anyway I got all the bits out of the box, fabric, poles and a bag of plastic feet, pegs and joining bits.
I laid out all the poles, grouped as per size and with the makings of a smile on my face, turned to page one.  So I need eight of pole E, two of pole C,  six of A, so on and so forth.  A quick check of  the poles confirmed they had identifying stickers on them.  Some had the nueber 3, some 5 others 6. Eh?

Check instructions.  I need eight of pole E, two of pole C,  six of...but the poles have got 3, 5, 6...

We'll move on...this went on for well over 20 minutes, I went back and forth to the garage to double check I'd got the right gazebo poles amongst the significant quantity of poles at my disposal.

Then the feared moment arrived.  Bunting in place, my wife distracted by my increasingly choice language grabs the instructions. She had in cracked in under 15 seconds.

'Well if you'd turned the page, you'd know.  Look!  You need eight of pole E which is 2, two of pole C which is 3, six of A which is 6.  It's obvious.'

'What..?'

'Look! Here!  The drawing...the letters are actually numbers...!'

If you're confused reading this then you have just a tiny indication of how I was feeling at the time - and yet it made perfect sense to my wife. Venus and Mars?

So anyway, we got the thing put up mid garden, only for her to decide that it really should be right in front of the patio doors.  So we crab-like walked this ridiculously flimsy, wobbly metal frame to the doors and secured it via the ropes into the garden.  It stood there, stripey and flouncy looking like a sad offcut from a jousting tournament. I double checked the instructions, so determined was I to get something positive out the farce of the one time I tried to do it properly.  My eye was drawn to the final words.

'Should not be used as a permanent dwelling.' Dear Lord, it's a tent with a mohawk. And they seriously chastise me for thnking of moving in.  I give up.  Still, at least the damn things finished.

'I'll put the kettle on, ' she said.

We both looked at the gazebo.  Pause...still looking.

'I can't get in. The gazebo roof is lower than the doors.  They won't open...perhaps we should move it back to.....'

I've had better Saturdays to be fair.

PS  Sunday June 3.  The weather map on the tele was wrong. It rained. We didn't get to use the gazebo.