Crustless quiche

Banishing the pastry monster
Failure, success and timing by the glass

I have a friend and if you think that's strange, the fact that she is a sensible eater will probably blow your mind. My sensible eating friend has been singing the praises of crustless quiche all summer.

Bruce Feirstein declared in his book 'Real Men Don't Eat Quiche', that, real men don't eat quiche. The source of all known knowledge, and some unknown, Wikipedia, informs us that this 'is a bestselling tongue-in-cheek book satirising stereotypes of masculinity'. Thank goodness for that! I love quiche and although I have no issue with being outed as a quiche-eater I do have an  issue with one element of the original version and it's cousins flan and tart - the pastry.

My pastry making could best be described as 'tense'. Even shop bought pastry can grip me with horrors, so much so that I have a rule not to imbibe even a single glass of wine until I've mixed, rolled, lined and if necessary blind baked the demon dough (not very Floyd, sorry Keith). Once cooked, cooled and devoured my pastry nemesis strikes again, sending me off to scrabble in the medicine cabinet for my old friend Gaviscon.

Given my obvious incompatibility with pastry could crustless quiche be the way forward? Not being one to shirk my responsibilities to gastronomic research, and being a bit short of the sugar and gluten free, strawberry flavoured tablets of sodium and calcium I decided to investigate the pastry free world of the crustless quiche.

A goto dish

Pork chops, tomatoes and pasta
Burkinis, green flared hipsters and Iberian ancestry

I've looked back on my World Cup posts, yes I do read my own posts, unfortunately much like text messages it's usually after I've pressed the send button. Reading those posts it strikes me that I have a handful of goto dishes, dishes who's origin are lost in time but are easy, tasty and, well, goto. I'm waiting for one such dish to cook as I write.

It is quite by chance that I rediscovered the draft of an unpublished blog I had been working on over a year ago. The blog was based around a conversation over a sandwich lunch with a couple of old work colleagues. The focus of the conversation was supposed to be Nigella's then, latest offering, Nigellissima. Unfortunately being of the female variety my colleagues seemed more inclined to discuss her burkini. Not having a clue what this was all about I decided to concentrate on my sandwich and give it a Google when I got home (the burkini that is, not my sandwich).

Despite once being the proud owner of green flared hipsters and a purple Ben Sherman shirt with collars long enough to protect my nipples, I cannot by any stretch of the imagination be classed as a 'dedicated follower of fashion'. I do though like to think of myself as pretty broad minded, even so I'm not broad minded enough to find the pictures of Nigella in her burkini acceptable. To be honest I found them quite disturbing and having re-googled I still do!

Before we get too engrossed in Nigella's fashion faux pas or for that matter mine, what about Nigellissima. My friends and I, in common with more knowledgable commentators are of the opinion that not only was the burkini a step too far, but so was Nigellissima. Stop teeth sucking, I'm normally a great fan of the curvy goddess, after all, having studied every episode of every previous series, I've come to the conclusion that she knows I'm watching and can't resist flirting with me. Unfortunately flirting is not enough to mitigate her latest offering in which a lot of the dishes seem to have come completely off the rails.

It was part way through episode 5 that I finally had enough. Risottata!

World Cup I

First half - Group stage
Eating the football, hope, disappointment and a bite

Let me just say from the start or should I say kickoff I'm not a football fanatic. I do not have a team to which I owe allegiance or even one that I can muster anything more than passing interest. The local team, the team of my current town of residence is Preston North End Football Club so called presumably because it is a football club with their ground at the north end of a town called Preston. PNE, as it is known, was a founding member of the Football League and in the inaugural season were unbeaten and thus become the first league champions. In the same season they won the FA Cup without conceding a goal and became the first club to achieve the English football "Double". An auspicious start, unfortunately with the exception of a few positive blips (if you can have positive blips), one of which was their 1938 FA Cup victory over Huddersfield Town, it has been somewhat down hill for the club since then.

The team of my youth was Barnsley F.C., a team struggling in the lower half of the then 4th Division. There were division one teams within striking distance, the two Sheffield teams and the then mighty Leeds United to name just three, but the truth was, they were out of my league financially. This didn't stop me penning LUFC on my school satchel and books in that funny thick sausage writing so loved by modern day graffiti artists. LUFC supporters were hard, Barnsley supporters less so.

Given my limited financial situation, and the fact that my mum wouldn't let me shave my head and wear Doc Marten's, Barnsley was the team that I went to watch the most. Every other Saturday afternoon in the season me and my mate 'Rolo' would wait on the main road, opposite the Bulls Head for the supporters bus. A coach supplied by Borrow's Buses of Wombwell and organised by an old guy who to misquote Brian Hanrahan's dispatch from the Falklands 'counted us (young'ens) off the bus and counted us back on again'. For half a crown, 2/6 in old money or 12½p in modern era coinage we could get the coach to Oakwell, get admission to the ground, buy a Bovril at halftime, get the coach back, then call into the village chippy for six pennyworth of chips and some free fish 'bits'.

Those chips were the best in the world...

World Cup II

Second half - Knockout stage
Eating more football, a failed prediction and OCD

Half the teams have gone home, including some of the big names in European football, Spain, Portugal, Italy and of course England (well perhaps not that big a name at the moment). Germany, Holland and France are still in there along with a few big name South American teams.

Who will raise the FIFA World Cup...

Mulligatawny soup

Ornate pubs and listed toilets
Top hats, bustles and pepper water


Over the last two bank holiday weekends I succumbed to temptation and joined a like minded group of friends on the Liverpool pub run. To call it a pub crawl would do it an injustice. We are far more discerning than that. Being of a more senior demographic we are looking for traditional pubs, dark wood paneling, big solid bars, brass fittings, wood or stone floors (preferably slopping), cask beer, real ale and in my case a great selection of whiskies. It is hard to fault a pub that has it's whisky listed in a menu folder!

Of all the fantastic pubs we visited, thanks to Ken our guide and guru of all things Liverpudlian, the standout drinking establishment must be 'The Phil' or to give it it's full title The Philharmonic Dining Rooms.

Opposite the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (hence the name) and commissioned towards the end of the last century, well actually the century before last now. Although we are already ten and a bit years into this one I've not quite got my head around it yet. Indeed I'm still having millennium bug flashbacks. Built in the style of Gentleman's club the Phil lays claim to be the most ornate pub in Briton. It is certainly magnificent and even though I try not to endorse or give recommendations this pub is a must be visit if you find yourself in Liverpool's fair city. Have a look at the photographs on CAMRA's historic pubs website and don't forget to have a peek in the Gents, it's listed!

Standing at the bar in the spectacular 'drinking lobby' I couldn't help thinking of frock coats and top hats, bustles and Suffragettes, Empire and mulligatawny soup. Why mulligatawny, I've no idea. Up to that time I'd only every had mulligatawny from a tin!

That was then but this is now...

Double Comfort

A pie for all seasons
Fishy in a dishy, prawn béchamel and mash topping


I feel I've been a little less than positive of late but the days are now longer than the nights, the clocks are set to British Summer Time, the flowers in the park are blooming and I've even had a few trips out in the old jalopy with the roof down. So let's shake off the SAD and adopt the glad.

The only problem is the changing seasons also marks a change of page on the menu planner. The comfort food staples of stews, braises, suet pastry topped pies, steamed puddings and hearty soups with big chunks of crusty bread have served their purpose over the darker, chillier months and now have to take a back seat. In come the lighter meals, grills, pan fries, wok tosses, poaches and even the occasional green salad!

There is however a comfort food that is comfortable whatever the season and this particular comfort food, for me, delivers  double comfort. The first comfort is the making and baking the second of course is the eating. We are talking good old fashioned, Fish Pie!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin...

Two Fat Ladies

Clarissa Dickson Wright & Jennifer Paterson
Two large characters and a beautiful motorbike

On the day I posted my last blog the death of Clarissa Dickson Wright was announced. She died aged 66 on the 15th March in Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary. A former barrister (the youngest person to be called to the bar at the time), a business women, a cook-housekeeper, a writer, an accredited cricket umpire and not least a larger than life television celebrity. She is probably best remembered as the less zany of the Two Fat Ladies.

Around 1994 a British television producer by the name of Patricia Llewellyn brought together Clarissa Dickson Wright and, arguably, the even more eccentric Jennifer Paterson to make a pilot programme. The pilot resulted in the BBC commissioning the first of three series of Two Fat Ladies. Sadly Jennifer Paterson died on the 10th August 1999, halfway through the filming of a fourth series.

Two Fat Ladies was, and still is, compulsive viewing but it shouldn't be...

Trippa alla Romana

A load of tripe in tomato sauce
Honourable's, music teachers and cow-pats

Thinking back, a lot of episodes in my life have involved cows. When I say cows I refer without exception to the female version of the bovine animal and defiantly not, quote 'an unpleasant or disliked woman' unquote. I am, after all, far too much of a gentleman to tell of episodes of that kind.

Despite, unusually, having two goes at the eleven plus I failed to follow in my sisters footsteps to the local grammar school. This, an embarrassment compounded ten or so years later when a young political wannabe did just that. I console myself with the belief that had I been adorned with the middle name of Jefferson and, maybe another try or two at that troublesome exam, I now could be the Foreign Secretary. A job with a fair bit of travel and a very agreeable expenses regime.

I could even be 'The Right Honourable BrianR'...

The Red Menace

Whistle-blowing

Strange fruit and a sprinkling of abbreviations

I am the product of the cold war. I was conceived, born, brought up and, questionably, grew up during that forty plus years of confrontation. This was a time when the West faced up to the East and the East faced up to the West. It was a time of suspicion, propaganda and espionage, a time for Smiley's People - One recent rainy Sunday afternoon (and way into the evening) I re-watched all seven hours of that 1980's classic TV mini-series based on the le Carré novel of the same name, breaking only to pop more popping corn and refill my glass, but I digress.

During the 50's, 60's,70's and to some extent the 80's we in the west were constantly warned of the threat from the communist east, particularly the military, and subversive threat emanating from the then USSR. This was generally referred to as the 'Red Menace'. This term may or may not have come from a 1949 anti-communist and anti-Soviet film titled (you guessed it) The Red Menace.

Last Christmas, in one of my more contemplative moments it came to me that twenty or more years on from the breakup of the USSR the source of the red menace has flipped hemispheres and now comes from the one remaining super power!

I refer dear reader to the USA, yes that's right, the United States of America...

The Return

Cephalopods and me

Edward Lear, Owls, Pussy-Cats and other nonsense

A new year, a new look and a new post. Now, the chronoligists amongst you may have noticed it is a year and a day since I last 'blogged'. Although I can hear you making instant comparisons to Edward Lear's owl and pussy-cat sailing away for a year and a day I have, regrettably, to tell you I have not been whisked away on a cruise, a ferry journey or even a hour on the local boating lake. No such luck, I can't even claim to have partaken in the wrinkly equivalent to that strange student phenomenon, the 'gap year'.

The truth of the matter is I've simply had a years gap!

Much as the thought of sailing away for a year and a day on a beautiful pea green boat has a certain amount of appeal, playing gooseberry while Owl strums his guitar and serenades his feline shipmate with the lines “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are” does not!

But enough of this nonsense, lets talk cephalopods...