Posts filed under 'Gipsy Hill'
The Spice of my life
How was your Easter, then? Spent it with family and friends cooking up tasty dishes and watching family blockbusters from yesteryear on the TV? Well I spent three solid days cleaning, packing and sorting for my move, and, God, it was dull. Now as some of you may know I’ve ‘bet the farm’ on Eating Albion/Channel 4’s Big Food Adventure, and so this weekend I moved out. I never knew I had so much stuff. Eight bags of rubbish, six bags of recycling, and I took so much stuff to the charity shop over the weekend - Cancer Research in Crystal Palace - that the shop began to resemble my house.
Anyway, all that isn’t really about food. What is about food is the the muck-out of the cupboards I found myself doing on Saturday night. Blimey, I never thought it was possible to pack so much stuff into such a small space: vinegars, pickles, sauces, spices, ketchups, herbs. Most of the jars at the back had best-before dates of late 2007. Now, everyone knows that spices are best ground fresh or used as quickly as possible, but unless you eat a lot of curries and such it’s very hard to get through an entire packet of coriander seeds.
Other highlights included an unopened bag of paprika bought exactly two years ago in Budapest, and never used, and a tin of treacle I once bought planning on making some parkin, though I didn’t. On the tin it said discard after expiry, so I did along with all the other stuff. For one moment I contemplated doing a culinary equivalent of George’s Marvellous Medicine and pour, tip and shake everything into a massive bowl to make a ‘MEGA MARINADE’ but it probably would have tasted rank. So it all went down the sink or in the bin and the jars and tubs into the recycling.
I also cleared out the fridge and defrosted the freezer, where I found half a organic chicken I’d forgotten I put in there a few months ago along with the obligatory handful of peas. The peas went in the bin, but the chicken went on to glory as Saturday’s tea in what I’ve just christened…
‘Gipsy Hill Spicy Leftover Moving Soup’
1/2 a free-range organic chicken
1 sweet potato
1 onion
1 carrot
1 parsnip
hand full of chilli flakes and one fresh green chilli
half a star anise
clove or two of garlic
knob of ginger
handful of dried curry and or lime leaves
Method: Break down chicken into leg, breast, and wing, so that it fits in a casserole and cover in boiling water from the kettle - about a pint. Add all the other ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes. Lift out the chicken and set aside to cool. Lift out and discard lime leaves and ginger.
Shred the chicken when it’s cool enough, then blitz the remaining liquid down to a smooth soup with a hand-held blender, adding the chicken after the first couple of pulses. I like to have a smooth spicy base with tiny chunks of chicken in, but you could chop it by hand if you like bigger bits.
I found a packet of instant noodles and thought about adding that, but for me these work best in clear soups rather than opaque smooth ones like this. I was planning to dunk in the last of the sesame seed loaf I’d bought, but on closer inspection it seemed to be ‘on the turn’, so I just had two bowls of the soup instead and threw the bread out. Given that the weather was so poor this weekend, almost winterly in fact, this soup hit the spot with filling root veg and some chilli warmth.
1 comment 24 March, 2008
There are food stories everywhere…
… even at 11:30pm on Gipsy Hill.
Last Thursday, after beers and tequilas with Sarah, I found HMS me moored on the tall quay-like counter of the Express Fast Food fish and chip shop on Gipsy Hill. Being after 11, there were slim (and not very appealing) pickings on offer - see below - but the guy behind the counter kindly offered to cook me a piece of haddock fresh from scratch. It was going to be 5-6 minutes, so I waited.
This used to be a regular (and a bit shabby) chippy run by an old guy and his wife, but after something like 30 years, they sold up and some enterprising young Turkish guys took over. They added chicken and kebabs to the menu for the yoot, and spruced the place up a bit. While it’s never going to make the shortlist for the UK’s best chip shop, it’s not too bad when you’re a bit drunk and hungry. It’s like a million other chip shops and kebab shops throughout the land.
Waiting for my haddock, I took the time to read the old framed poster that hangs on the wall - the sciencey sort the newspapers all had a small arms race about last year - depicting different species of edible sea fish. You only see a handful of these in any shops nowadays. Chip shops mainly deal in the traditional species of fish that make up British fish and chips: cod, haddock, and occasionally rock salmon and skate. The Sea Cow in Dulwich have tried to update the fish and chip formula in a gastro-Dulwich way, but the reviews seem to be getting unkinder.
Anyway, what I found interesting about the poster is that each species had its Latin name, and then its name in a variety of European languages (well, languages from countries with a fishing fleet, anyway). At the top of the poster was Zeus Faber, which is called John Dory in English-speaking countries, but St Peter or St Peter’s fish everywhere else (apart from in France, where they also call it the chicken of the sea, bizarrely). I then tried to explain to the Turkish guy behind the counter about the whole ‘St Peter picking it out of the water‘ thing, which totally confused him.
Me: ‘… so some people think it’s called John Dory here because it’s a corruption of the French jaune and d’or - yellow and gold - but it’s called St Peter everywhere else.’
Him (bemused): ‘So what is called in Turkish?’
Me: ‘Er, it doesn’t say.’
He probably just wanted to close up and go home, not talk about the nomenclature of edible deep-sea fish. A guy wearing tracksuit bottoms, two earrings and a baseball cap came in with his girlfriend and ordered chips in pitta for her and saveloy and chips for him. Have a look at them saveloys, man! I’ve never liked saveloys - I had one once in the mid-90s when Blur released Park Life and everyone went through that weird southern-mockney phase, but I only did it to blend in. Never again… corned beef in a condom, deep-fried. Urgh. Mind you, I’ve had many a battered jumbo in my youth.
After Mr & Mrs Saveloy left, the guy behind the counter starts talking to me about other types of Turkish fish, and how when he was back home he’d often go fishing for skate. He does the ‘it was this big’ hand gesture thing, which I’m glad to see is universal. When I asked him how he eats it, he said pan-fried with a little oil, served with some vegetables. I told him about caper sauce and a bit of butter, which is a traditional way of serving it here.
By then my haddock was ready, and we both snapped back to the here-and-now of a late-night chippy in South London in January. I paid up and set off home.
Incidentally, according the the very good Chow.com, it’s called dülger baligi in Turkish.
2 comments 20 January, 2008
