Tummyrumble

St Agur and ginger bread cookies

High traction ginger bread snap cookies, for those really icy days
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Baked ginger bread snap cookies using mom's recipe tonight. While the dough at first seemed more like DOA, we managed to save it.

Don't know if it was too much butter, or too much flour (hey, I don't bake a lot) but first the dough was way too crumbly and then when flattened out it stuck to everything.

Wishing it would just make up its mind already we resorted to rolling small dough balls with our hands and then flattening them with a fork straight on to the baking tray.

Five minutes of baking and five minutes of cooling later, best ginger bread snap cookies ever! They may look like something TfL could use on bus tyres during icy road conditions, but they came out even tastier and more crunchy than the Swedish brand we bought at Scandinavian Kitchen to compare our efforts to! Success.

Best way to eat Swedish ginger bread cookies is with a generous dollop of St Agur blue cheese.

Perfect mix of textures and flavours.

Ultimate Bacon Sarnie, Proof of God

Perfect sarnie: bacon (with rind), fried egg, caramelised onion, pork & leek sausage, dab o' ketchup!
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Made myself and Wendy wicked bacon sarnies this morning.

Bacon (green back from Muscat Butchers, our local butcher in Peckham), fried egg, caramelised onion, sliced pork and leek sausage and then a few dollops of ketchup. On white bread of course, lightly toasted.

This sarnie will wipe away any worries, restore your vigor, cure any hangover no matter how severe.

I thought this was the ultimate bacon sarnie, until Jen a few hours later showed me how it is really done. Adding a bottom layer of hash browns (carbtastic!) and of course a slice of cheddar cheese... She is the real pro!

A sandwich like that can't leave anyone untouched.

There's just something so fantastic about bacon and carbs. In fact, some would go so far as to say that bacon is conclusive proof of the existence of God:

(Thanks Daf for that awesome video clip!)

Holy Cheese Batman, the Brits really have nailed it!

Happy to read that UK cheese is booming, with exports to Germany risen by £66m since last year.

Daily Telegraph has the story: Germany goes mad for British cheese.

Before I moved to London my view of UK cheese was not very favourable. When my friends over here told me I needed to change my views I sneered. Surely the Brits would never be able to reach the cheesy heights of Sweden or France? Pah.

Having now lived here for a few years, exploring Borough Market, becoming a huge fan of Neal's Yard Dairy and the simple beauty of Red Leicester (an instant favourite of mine) my views have definitely changed.

Most organized cheese board ever, regions on one side of flag and name of cheese on the other
Originally uploaded by Manne.

And no wonder, with excellent cheeses like these on offer: Milleens (Irish, but still), Colston Bassett Stilton, Golden Cross, Innes Log... Check out my post from this years Burn's Supper for some tasting notes (scroll down to the end, past the embarrassing video evidence of me saying the toast to womenfolk).

Lessons learned: never form an opinion about anything without researching and experiencing it first hand, and especially not on a representation of a country in a foreign supermarket...

Roasted chicken with chorizo on a bed of root vegetables and cabbage

Waitrose saved our Sunday dinner (again)
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Building from a Waitrose recipe, we made this for Sunday dinner. While their recipe was basically just the chicken on cabbage and chorizo, served with potato mash, we decided to whack a load of various veggies in there and let it all roast together in the same pan. 

Lazy buggers, we are.

Simple as day, and in Waitrose's own words "quick to prepare, lovely mix of flavours".

While I am at it I'd like to recommend these sausages from Unearthed that we found through the Waitrose recipe. The little kabanos snacking sausages are brilliant on a plate with some Comté cheese...

Mini sausages from Unearthed, delish
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Ingredients (serves 2 hungry piggies)

2 carrots
1 parsnip
1 swede, diced
1 leek, sliced
1 pointed spring cabbage, shredded
1 onion, cut in clefts
1 pack cooking chorizo (250 gr)
4 chicken legs
2 tbsp sherry
rosemary, 4 fresh sprigs
garlic, 4-6 whole peeled cloves
olive oil
salt
black pepper

Method

Heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Start with cutting the root vegetables and onion in rough pieces, chop up the chorizo, peel the garlic cloves, place it all in a roasting tray. Drizzle with some olive oil, splash in the sherry.

Add the chicken legs to the tray and rub it all around, getting some of the oil and sherry on the chicken. Then place the legs skin side up and season with salt and pepper.

Roast for 20 minutes.

Remove tray from oven and lift chicken out on to a plate. Mix the cabbage and leek into the vegetables and chorizo, give it all a good stir. See how the chorizo has released its juices, all that lovely bronze colour? You want some of that to rub off on the cabbage and leek.

Put the chicken back on top, return tray to oven and roast for another 35 minutes.

Chicken should be golden in colour, and when cooked through no pink meat should be seen near the bone in the thickest part.

Place a few good spoonfuls of vegetable mix on a plate, rest a leg (or two...) on top and drizzle with the juices from the pan.

Serve with a rich red wine that survives the spiciness from the chorizo. Waitrose recommends Vina Fuerte Old Vine Garnacha, Catalyud, Spain.

Why not, I say.

Who needs Lemsip when you can drink toddy?

Hot toddy with ginger and lemon to fight the cold
Originally uploaded by Manne.

In this weather knowing the recipe of a good hot toddy is worth gold.

If you do a quick search online you will find a lot of recipes for hot toddy, clearly the inventiveness in this area is immense! 

While I do not know where the claims to cure colds come from, the word toddy is said to be derived from the Hindu word "tari" which is a sweet alcoholic drink.

Somehow that word made its way to Scotland, was lovingly distorted to "toddy" and made immortal by Robert Burns using it in the poem "The Holy Fair" as long ago as 1785... In the poem it means an alcoholic drink, plain and simple, but today I think most people would associate it with something warm and spicy.

My own favourite originates from Ireland and was handed down to me from a colleague well versed in the arts of toddy making. His advice was to drink a really nice and piping hot toddy if:

• you have a cold, 
• have a friend who has a cold,
• think you might be coming down with a cold, or
• you feel a need to practice the recipe for when the cold comes aknockin'.

Dead simple. Pour two (hard working man's) fingers of Irish whiskey in a highball glass. I prefer something simple and smooth like Tullamore Dew or Black Bush. Take a lemon and cut a big slice from the middle. Stuff it with cloves. Push it into the glass, wedging it good half way down. Add two teaspoons of (brown) sugar or honey and then fill up with boiling water. Use a long spoon to stir around the lemon until the sugar is dissolved.

Drink and feel the cold cower, faced with the force of the almighty toddy!

Another excellent hot toddy recipe was supplied by @garlicconfit yesterday as I was moaning about my man flu on Twitter. His favoured version uses brandy and ginger that first is boiled with the water to make the toddy really pack a punch! Try it out, it helped me.

If you want to cut out the alcohol, but still enjoy a quick and simple yet strong toddy, the ginger is really the way to go:

Chop up a thumb's worth of fresh ginger in pepper corn sized bits. Put them in a cup with a dollop of honey. Squeeze the juice of one lemon on top (I like to also scoop out some of the lemon flesh and add to the potion), and fill up with boiling water. Leave to infuse for a few minutes and then enjoy.

There you go. Three really nice toddies to chase the cold away. Who needs Lemsip, when there are lemons and ginger in the world?

Do you have a favourite toddy recipe? Please share it in the comments, so I have a few varieties to try should my battle against the cold require reinforcements!