One Man’s Attempt To Snack Like A Princess

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“Life,” the writer Shirley Conran once famously noted, “is too short to stuff a mushroom.”

Now however much I may disagree with her about stuffing mushrooms (gorgeous little button mushrooms stuffed with a brandied chicken liver mousse! meaty portabello mushrooms stuffed with brie and garlic and walnuts!), I must concede that Ms Conran was not on some anti-fungal crusade. She was, instead, making a much larger point about the uselessness of engaging in needlessly fiddly and time-consuming activities simply to prove their status or- even worse- their worth. Boiled down, if you think that presenting the world with a stuffed mushroom is what will finally show them all that you have it all and can do it all, you’ve probably got a very skewed idea of what having it all and doing it all actually means.

This thought, amongst a colorful array of others, occurred to me the other day when I faced up to the realities of a challenge I had set myself: making homemade potato chips. Continue reading “One Man’s Attempt To Snack Like A Princess” →

What American Food Means To Me

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Earlier today, on the eve of that Birthday of the United States of America, the 4th of July, Deborah posed a real, well, poser of a question:   “What is American food?”

On the surface, this was a very easy question to answer. “Hamburgers!” “Hot dogs!” “Apple pie!” “Chop suey!” “Barbeque!” “Pizza!” were amongst the most vociferously voiced suggestions. And despite the fact that each of those originated in another continent (if not country), I completely agree.

But as an amateur food historian, I could counter those with “Popcorn!””Peanut butter!” “Turkey!” “Cranberries!” as each of those foods are actually native to the USA. Well, … Okay, so peanuts are actually native to South America, and the peanut butter we eat today was possibly loosely based on a Cuban culinary practice-but it became peanut butter in the USA. And no, it was not invented by George Washington Carver, but I’ve covered that story here.)

And anyway, I started to think about the question in a different, more personal, way. Continue reading “What American Food Means To Me” →

The Foodie Link Between Banbury and the Bard?

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Banbury is, as you may know, forever entwined with Banbury cakes – flat-ish oval pastry filled with spiced currants. They’re not unlike Eccles cakes and they’re still available in Banbury though not in the two shops most associated with them in days or yore. I present to you – the days of yore.

E. W. Brown’s Original Cake Shop, 12 Parsons street.

There was some dreadful idea being tossed around about turning that A. Betts High Street space (very much present and in use lately as a pop-up shop) into an arcade.

Betts’s Cake Shop on Banbury High Street in 1878

Yes, a gaming arcade. I am very much hoping the request for the change of use required will be denied. But never mind that now. I will complain about that elsewhere.

Banbury has another eponymous foodstuff lurking in its past and today seems a good time to mention it. Why today? Because today is April 23rd — anniversary of both Shakespeare’s birth and his death.

Banbury Cheese!

“Banbury cheeses, for which the town was noted until the 18th century, were first mentioned in 1430” (*). It was a cow’s milk cheese, yellow in colour and quite strongly flavoured, made in thin (about 1 inch) rounds.

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “What does this have to do with Shakespeare?”

In “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Bardolf addresses Slender as “You Banbury Cheese!” – and this would have been commonly understood by the playgoers as an insult implying there wasn’t much to him (Banbury cheese being only about an inch thick.) That’s not to say Banbury cheese wasn’t popular – it was; in fact, it was better known than Banbury cakes at the time. It was just  … well, thin.

It was made in various places around the area but mostly in Grimsbury and Nethercote – what was then the Northamptonshire end of things (**)

And that’s not the only bardish thing about Banbury. No, there was a Shakespeare Inn on Parsons’ Street and we can still see the bust (sitting over the door at 46 Parsons St) that used to greet visitors to the Shakespeare Inn (1871-1891, I believe). *waves* Hi, Will!

And that is my culinary history trivia for the day. Happy birthday, Will.
_______________

* A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 10, Banbury Hundred

** Boundaries tended to move around a lot and originally Banbury straddled two counties.

Pickled And Baked – No, Not Like That!

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It’s not what you think.

I’m not wallowing in wine or whacked out on weed. (At least not right now.) I do, however, have homemade bread baking in the oven, and I’ve just put up a bunch of pickles.

Again, it’s not what you may think. I haven’t joined a commune in Vermont, delved too far into the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, or taken up extreme right-wing ideologies and moved into a nuclear bunker in Tennessee. I’m just trying to stay hip. And for once, I’ve found I haven’t already aged out of the latest trends.

Both baking and pickling are tres chic here in the UK. That runaway smash tv show The Great British Bakeoff has taken the nation by storm over the last few years.

What was once the province of the WI has now become a national craze. Artisan bakeries are opening across the land, companies are holding their own employee cake contests, and near strangers are getting friendly jabbering about their Genoese sponges.

In the restaurant and television cookery worlds, pickling is equally de rigeur. TV shows like Masterchef: The Professionals are giving us weekly bites of the latest fine dining trends, and along with pistachios, apricots, cauliflower and cured mackerel, pickled vegetables adorn pretty much every plate. In fact, sometimes they’re all on the same plate, which strikes me as a digestive challenge.

Now I don’t, as it happens, have much of a sweet tooth. I’m not a big fan of cakes or pastries. And I’ve never before felt a particular need to knead. Nor do I, living on the third floor of an apartment block as I do, own acres of farmland replete with legumes that need preserving before they rot.

But still, a boy can get to feeling left out. Continue reading “Pickled And Baked – No, Not Like That!” →

Shakespearean Noshes, A Literary Nibble

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It is April 23 – National Cherry Cheesecake Day. Do we really need to expound on the glories of cheesecake? Don’t we all know it already. Instead, let us turn our culinary attention to Shakespeare. Yes, you heard me right. Shakespeare.

Today is the day of Shakespeare birth in 1564 (at best estimate) and his death in 1616. And on both those occasions, I bet food was prepared, served, eaten and shared. But which foods? Continue reading “Shakespearean Noshes, A Literary Nibble” →