This and That

Please don’t think I’ve not been busy in the kitchen! I have, I promise, but the offal has been a bit of a slow burner lately. Health issues and a natural inclination to scale the offal feasting back, mean that mostly we’ve been eating a lot of vegetarian food. Yeah! If you know me personally, you could see that as a Bad Thing – mostly because of my epic curried parsnip in white sauce episode. Kind of gross.

Yet, lately I’ve not managed to curdle white sauce with a parsnip. I did make some AMAZING parsnip burgers:

That’s parsnip and fenugreek burger, on a layer of red pepper and walnut pesto what I did make too!

I’ve also learnt how to keep my kale perky:

That’s right – kept in a pint glass of water in the door of the fridge, it keeps for BARE TIME. You also get new tiny baby kales growing in the middle and they are just so cute. So cute.

And that Waitrose labels the fish that is sustainable that it sells! I felt same eating these fishcakes.

I would like all fishes to have this label. BUT it is confusing because I saw some cod with that label (aparently it was a very specific cod catching area and method) AND cod is meant to be almost an endangered species. I still won’t eat cod. I don’t think you should eat any endangered species, even if the bit of it you’re eating isn’t. That’s why I don’t like to eat tuna nowadays. Some tunas are worse off than pandas.

I also thought people might be interested in my CURRENT BEST INGREDIENTS. Only capitals will do. I have phases in my cooking. The blood phase. The lovage phase. The aromatherapy oils in cooking phase. Some of these are with me long time – neroli in the Christmas cakes as we speak. Others – like lovage – are waiting for Spring. The blood phase, well, I will make black pudding and I will make it soon. The point is these are my current favourite things and if you have the (mis)fortune to dine chez moi, these things will probably be in the dishes. Maybe all together, maybe separately, who knows? I’ll keep you guessing.

So there’s Herby Salt from Dilston Physic Garden, Fenugreek seeds which are apparently a cholesterol buster and Nomu dukkah which I got in FPP parcel. I know there’s a lot of talk about how salt isn’t healthy and YOU’RE RIGHT, but we do need salt for our bodies to work and I reckon having a bit of lovely delicious salt used in either the cooking or the condimenting bit, you’ll be OK. Don’t eat it by the spoon though. Personally I find it quite strange ‘using salt’ because I grew up cooking without it (aged grandparents) and it wasn’t until recently that I began. Now I’ve flavoured some of my own salts: lovage salt, juniper and orange salt, rosemary and lavender salt. All are good. I’m working on an ‘Asian’ salt currently! Fenugreek has a lovely gentle curry flavour. I also love how knobbly the seeds are, like potatoes for Borrowers. The dukkah is basically ground up nuts and spices and I can’t wait to start making my own when this is used up. You sprinkle it on whatever you want – soup, stew, vegetables, burgers, all the things. A word of warning though: if you put it on everything, all the time, don’t be surprised that everything tastes the same. It is pretty powerful stuff!

If you’re missing me talking about fresh and juicy offal. Don’t worry, the offal is rising and I’m defrosting an ear as we speak!

Foodie Penpals the Eighth

People should blates know the FoodiePenpals drill now. If you don’t, or have been on Mars, then you sign up to send a treaty package to one plumptious personage, whilst receiving your own from another gorgeous giver.
Lovely! I sent mine to Juls of the blog GoodGobble – so if you want to know what I sent, have a look over there.

My parcel came from Ali, who doesn’t have a blog (I think), but she does Tweet @alimaley and sent a great parcel! What was inside?

And under the stuffing …

Loads of things. I had a STUFFED BOX. Obvs quantity isn’t everything, but it is nice to have lots of things sometimes. I live in the twenty-first century, therefore I consume!

So there was a lovely letter, explaining about all the things and why they were there. Clockwise from the top we have:

Pink Himalayan salt, Manuka honey, Voodoo raw chocolate, Heinz tomato soup, sun-dried tomato bruschetta, Guinness Nuts, Asian soup mix with seaweed, Pomegranate tea, a Shrewsbury, Harissa paste, cheddar oatcakes

I immediately had some pomegranate tea and a raw chocolate!

All the things were things I’d looked at, or already used, which was lovely. The pink sea salt I in fact sent tomy very first foodiepenpal. The other really exciting thing was the raw chocolate. I’m very interesting in trying to be healthy and embracing different ways of eating and raw principles are really interesting. Ali gave me lots of great advice about raw networks in Leeds too. Anyway, raw food isn’t heated above 38 degrees, so amazing things are done with dried fruit and unprocessed ingredients. Raw chocolate does have a different texture to Dairy Milk, but I think its delicious. At work we’re discussing making a raw Christmas cake for us to all share as all of us eats differently.

Thank you for a great parcel Ali, I’ve been enjoying it all month! You’re a raw chocolate genius!

Foodie Penpals the Seventh

Woah there. Seven months of Foodie Penpals … Wahooza! Seven months of getting ace parcels of deliciousness to my door? Wahoooooooooooooooo.
This month I was paired with two Sarahs. Sarah who I sent my parcel to runs a blog about lots of things, but one of the most important aspects is her candid discussion of mental health. You can read about how she found the package at her blog ‘Make-up and Mirtazapine’.

My parcel came from another Sarah, who has her own writing blog here. And once more, what a lovely parcel I got!

I did my usual ritual of saving it and then settling down with a cuppa and some cake, for the unpacking!

What would be inside my box of wonder?

All the amazing things! Sarah had clearly read through other posts and worked out what things I’m interested in and what sort of things I like. She set out by saying that she tried to theme it around Rosemary and sent some from her garden. Then there was some chilli vinegar, some parmesan biscuits, some chilli chocolate, a liquorice bar, some apple and elderflower tea, some rosemary cake and a pot of dukkah, which is a spice blend that you can add to everything! There was also some interesting infomation about rosemary and how it pairs really well with dark chocolate.

A great box of lovely new things to try and lovely homemade things to sample.

The dukkah was pretty exciting – I put it on top of some soup I made this week, which made it super tasty! The soup was a lentil, home-cured pancetta, chard and cavolonero soup. Or a veg box special in a less-pretentious tone.

The powder on top is the dukkah, which is a blend of sesame, almonds, hazelnuts, cumin, coriander, sugar and salt. I really like it. Other suggestions are to dip freshly baked bread into it and to sprinkle it over salads and cous cous. Another flavour of dukkah that the company does is pistachio and sumac, which I might try to re-create at home!

I’m sure I’m going to create some more delicious things from this great box of tricks too!

Thanks again for another lovely foodie penpal month, if you’re inclined to join in, please go over to the lovely RockSalt’s page and sign up.

 

Moroccan Stuffed Spleen

Have you ever eaten spleen? I hadn’t until my recent visit to John Penny where I got given a fresh beef spleen to cook with. Prior research from the Offal Club’s page suggested from their experience that spleen was gross. Anissa Helou has a few recipes in The Fifth Quarter for it, which all sound very amazing, so I was excited again. Then I read in Jennifer McLagan’s Odd Bits that she expected that “if you like liver you’ll probably like spleen”. Damned by faint praise indeed. Never one to be deterred I got my spleen out and looked at it. The spleen looked back.

More disturbingly – how filthy was my cooker that day? What a slut! And look how long a spleen is. Long. So what does a spleen do? I always find that thinking about how the organ works can help you get to know how it might be nicely cooked. A spleen:

“… is an organ found virtually all vertebrate mammals. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, the spleen acts primarily as a blood filter. It is a non-vital organ, with a healthy life possible after removal (splenectomy). The spleen plays important roles in regard to red blood cells and the immune system. It also acts as a store of blood in case large amounts are lost. The word comes from the Greek ‘splen’ which is the rough equivalnet of heart – so to be good-spleened in Greek means to be good-hearted. In French, ‘splenetique’ refers to a state of pensive sadness or melancholy.”

Of course that infomation is from wikipedia. Importantly it tells us two things: the first is that as a filter, the texture will be spongy; secondly that if you eat it Greece you’ll be happy, while if you eat it in France you’ll be sad.

Taking the Mediterranean as a theme I used Anissa Helou’s recipe for Moroccan Stuffed Spleen as a guideline to work from, but incorporated EXTRA OFFAL into the recipe. That’s right. Offal stuffed with other offal. Just like a cheap sausage. Or not.

Beef spleens are huge, so I only used half of this one. Due to the nature of stuffing as a premise, I chose to use the fat end. So if you’re cooking along with this, cut your spleen in half, freeze the thin end and then we’ll peel the membrane off the fat end.

Removing membrane from spleen is not very easy. In fact, it’s quite hard for a novice like me to do. There was some fruity language and I cut my fingers a few times. There is an outer one and an inner one (or so it seemed to me). The outer one peels away using your fingers OK.

I tried a few different ways of getting rid of the inner membrane, but the one that worked best for me, was to pinch a bit of it up and to use a knife between the membrane and the flesh to almost chip away at it in small, frequent movements. (There was meant to be a video, but I deleted the wrong file from my phone, so you actually have five second shot of the inner spleen and it’s stupid clinging membrane.)

Once you’ve removed it – or if you’re clever – ask your butcher to do it for you (if you have one), but once it is removed you make a horizontal cut most of the way through (but not the whole way) parallel to the top and bottom of it. Your stuffing will go in this pouch.

Yup, TRIPLE OFFAL STUFFING WITH PORCINI. You can of course see some chopped lamb heart, some chopped lamb sweetbreads and some rehydrated chopped porcini. The porcini had arrived that very day in my foodie penpals package. I mixed these all together with 5 crushed garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon ground cumin and 2 teaspoons of paprika. Then I shoved it in the spleen pocket, rubbed the pocket with oil and baked it in the oven at gas mark 4 for 40 minutes.

This is pre-cooking – looks pretty nice doesn’t it?

Well, by this point, after all this effort, I was very hungry indeed. And how was the spleen. To me, inedible. That was the saddest part, despite loving liver I just couldn’t cope with the texture of the spleen – think liver but with lots of fibres running the wrong way through it. I couldn’t eat mine – I was clearly in France. Daz said it was OK – so he’s in Switzerland (is that half way between France and Greece? I’m thinking diagonally). The stuffing was amazeballs though. If you take one things away from this – heart, thyroid and porcini is a GRRRRRRRRREAT combination.

If I’d got the spleen from a butcher I might have thought that it had been hanging around a while. But since I SAW THE SPLEEN COME OUT THE BEAST THAT MORNING, it can’t be that. I’m plumping for spleen being better slow cooked (so the fibres can melt down some) – I’m thinking maybe some spleen and kidney pudding? Would that be nice? Spleen, kidney and porcini pudding? I have a feeling a slow-cooked spleen has fabulous gravy potential.

But despite the loveoly ingredients, I had to perform a splenectomy on my meal (LOLZ). Have you cooked spleen? I’ll have a little poll of the suet pudding …

And I promise to attempt to cook what you decide!

Foodie Penpals the Sixth

Woah, six months on foodie-penpalling – surely this can’t be true? Well it is. I might even collect all my posts in one place now … how do you like them apples? If it’s the sort of apple you’d like a bite from check out RockSalt for the rules!

This month my package came from Helen who has the Patient Gardener Blog. This is a lovely blog and Helen’s relationship with her garden (with other sides to her many interests too). I am a struggling, starting-up grower-of-things-that-don’t-immediately-die. Potatoes are my only continuing success … I think that’s my Lincolnshire blood seeping out. Helen’s blog is nice for me to read because she tries to appeal to people (like me) who are trying to have a go. She is also a SeedyPenpal.
So, what did I get? Well …

Yup, that’s some anticipation for you. When I open my parcels, I do try to make an event of it, so I’d brewed some tea and sat down with some chocolate.

Of course, I used my favourite Smoky Tea from Lahloo, my favourite Emma Bridgewater mug and some Rococo chocolate (that I found when I moved house – lavender flavour). Then I realised that I had probably morphed into being a bit of a poncy twat … and if I had read what I’ve just written I would be shaking my head in despair. But nice things are nice and I find it hard to write about savouring nice things without sounding like a tool.

Nevertheless, Helen sent me a lovely parcel full of great things:

I know, it’s amazing! A living sage plant, home-grown shallots, porcini mushrooms, homemade Cornish fairings (plus recipe), goji berry and seed mix, sesame snaps and two packets of tyrells crisps. Lovely!

Helen sent the sage because she felt it went well with meat – which is does of course – pork and sage is a classic, as is liver and sage! It was prescient (what a great word @carllegge) because my sage was/is dieing. Shallots are great – I usually use onions, so was pleased to have a new, fresh flavour to use. I love vegetable crisps and sesame snaps so two great ticks there. The porcini have already been used in my stuffed spleen (more of that another day). I’m toying with the idea of making my own granola because A) the only one I love is Mornflake apple and it seems to have disappeared from the shelves of Leeds and B) I can be proper fussy (as above), so I am sure the goji mix will get in there. Best of all were the Cornish Fairings which are a gingery, chewy biscuit. Super tasty!

I used some of the shallots up in a chilli-kale combo: put some oil in a pan, then add three peeled and quartered shallots and cook for five minutes, add enough kale for two people and one teaspoon chilli flakes and about a quarter of a pint of stock, stir and cook til kale is done. Yum. The shallots were well nice cooked with the chilli and stock – next time I’m going to just cook them on their own so they are a total star.

I have even managed to keep the sage alive for over two weeks!

It even stayed alive while I went on holiday. So Sandra the Sage I hope will live a long and happy life! What a nice forever present.

My parcel went to Switzerland this month – to Ratri who writes another lovely blog about food and her travels called NomadicFeastKitchen. Carol Anne and I recently had a twitter exchange about the worry that what you’ve sent in your eyes is quirky and thoughtful, can come across as weird and emptying out the cupboards-y. On that note, go see what Ratri made of my parcel …

And of course, you should totally join in here.

Foodie Penpals the Fifth

My lovely initial penpal had to excuse herself from this month’s participation, so the lovely Lisa stepped in at the last minute and passed the package on that she’d already prepared. Phew! I didn’t want Lisa to have to make a new one for me, so I received the ‘Learn to Bake’ parcel that she’d already put together with a note explaining why things were there, because they meant something to our penpal partner. I found it really interesting (because I’m nosy) receiving what was designed for another person. And it was a lovely package.

So, there are cake decorations, white chocolate, edible glitter, fancy cases, exotic fruit and a book on baking. Also (possibly a nod to the carnivory, was some tikka rub) which I put to good use making a very simple lamb neck tikka:

There’s the lamb neck and some mushrooms all tikka-ing away in the slow cooker (6 hours=curry-tastic). I literally just added the spice, some coconut cream and some water. YUM! And simple.

My package went to Fay, and you can read about how she found it on her blog here. I sent a real mix of things, but for my next one I really want to put a theme together as I’ve now had a couple of lovely Themed ones. Look out, next Foodie Penpal! Look out!

Foodie Penpals the Fourth!

Can you adamandeve it? I’m not sure I can. If you’re not on the foodie penpal bandwagon, you need to sign up for Rocksalt’s scheme here. This month I sent a package to Dan, is a non-blogging food person from Sheffield. My parcel came from Lisa at Sweet2Eat baking.  Lisa is very good at baking. Lisa is very good at icing. Lisa is very good at enthusing about the food-blogging community. Do go and have a look at her recipes – I’m am totally lusting over the coriander, ginger and mango cheesecake. And the Jubilee biscuits.

This is the package Lisa sent me:

What the devil did I get? Well obviously a recipe – this was for creamy bacon pasta, so I’ll need to make a bacon substitute (maybe that’s where the pig’s ears can come in?) and a lovely card …

I got some Rooibos tea (I’ll share that at work), some granola bars, some cherry biscuits, some dried cherries, and best of all two homemade things. One is Lisa’s patented hot chocolate mix. The other was two lovely sultana scones.

Lisa had wanted to put a Great British theme behind this (HER FIRST) month’s foodie penpal box. What could be more great and British than tea and scones in the garden? I just need to herbaceous borders to match now … It was especially nice to get tea and cake in a box as moment with my lovely partner have been rare this month and sitting with him in the garden was right good.

This June was too busy for me (moving house, working away a lot, sick family) so I didn’t have a chance to experiment with the recipe Lisa sent. I WILL though. I WILL.

Thank you very much, Lisa. It was a lovely thoughtful box and I hope you enjoyed your first one too!

Happy Foodiepenpalling everyone! And thank you Carol Anne for fixing us all up like a wee canny Cilla Black. Yup. Compliments are what you get here!

Foodie Penpals the Third

So this was my third month of being a Foodie Penpal. I send a box. I receive a box. Said box is full of delicious things. Everyone is a winner. If you want to win like that too, then go and have a shufty at RockSalt’s Sign Up Page.

This month I was paired with Jess to send to and Rhian to receive from. You will be able to read all about what I sent Jess here. (I won’t give any secrets away, oh no!)

Rhian sent me a fantastic package that was pretty generous. So spoiled am I! Her internet presences can be found here, but really you should follow her twitter @rhiandaniel – there’s a lot of good goings-on there.

So Ta-DA:

Here you can see my lovely card with macaroons on at the top left, then clockwise: a packet of Zoo pasta (actually amazing – I can’t wait to eat through the jungle), some handmade cinnamon and coconut macaroons (more later), TWO BARS OF WELSH CHOCOLATE (one dark, one caramel), a recipe book all about iced things (more later toooooo) and finally a packet of Rooibos tea (just because I’d said I like the loose leaf stuff, fancy pants that I am). What a haul. I can’t think of a better advert for foodie penpals than this.

The pasta, I’m waiting to eat because I really want to share it with my partner’s 6 year old son – we’ll going to make a well amazing cheesey sauce to go with it. Lions love cheese. Just like Shaggy loves haslet.

The chocoalte was very delicious. I took the caramel one away with me to my course at Dilston Physic Garden and nommed it to keep my brain cells going on a massively busy couple of days. The dark is delicious, but I’m saving it to make some delicious something with – maybe dark chocolate fudge? Really nice chocolate deserves to be shown off.

The Rooibos tea, I will confess, had my heart fall a bit. Not because it wasn’t a really thoughtful and kind thing to send, but because I forgot to say I don’t really like the stuff on the times I’ve tried it. However, I’m not going to let my pre-conceptions rule my life like that. In fact this rooibos is pretty nice and has very little of that metallic aftertaste I associate with the tea. I think it’ll make a really nice iced tea (maybe the weather will hold enough for a nice jubilee/commonwealth iced tea).

The macaroons turned out to have several lives in them. A flagrant rebel, I put the tea and the macaroons in separate houses (consolidating at the moment) so couldn’t follow Rhian’s suggestion of having them together. Instead I put the macaroons in my handbag *intending* to eat them very soon. By the time they swam to the top of my handbag again, I thought “uh oh I am an ungrateful selfishperson”. Yet, the miracle of Rhian’s baking meant they were still pretty moist and flavorsome. So I apologise, but also thank you Rhian. I’ve enjoyed them in some different ways. One was to crunch one up and add it to my post-netball smoothie:I also crumbled another one on the top of my fudge flavoured ice-cream. Cinnamon and coconut both go well with fudge and ice-cream, so a macaroon of both was bound to be awesome. It was. I felt a bit of a culinary genius. You don’t need to be Nigella and make hot chocolate sauce on a whim. Just crumble a biscuit. (Though these macaroons were a lot more than biscuits.)

Then to the recipe book. I love books. I really love recipe books*. I really love cold things. I under-use my ice-cream maker. What a perfect choice. I’d said to Rhian that I’d enjoyed getting a recipe in my previous packages, so would like one if it was possible from her. A book full of them is indeed inspirational. Lots of ideas for fruity lollies, sorbets, granitas and a host of other iced things. The recipe that caught my eye the most was ‘Watermelon Granita’. It caught my eye because I’d just bought a watermelon from the market and when I got it home and cut it open, well, it had lost it’s bite, but wasn’t manky. Spongy watermelon isn’t what you want.

So I took inspiration from the recipe (I say that because I’ve left the recipe book at my other house and can’t remember it all).

What I did was use my juicer to juice the flesh of the watermelon. If you’re familiar with juicers, you have a pulp compartment and the jug comes out a spout into a jug. After the juicing of my medium sized watermelon, I noticed that the pulp part clearly had a lot of juice in it too. I scooped the pulp into the middle of a clean tea towel and squeezed the rest of the juice out. I think I probably had close to 2 pints of juice.

Then I heated 200ml of water with 150g caster sugar until the sugar was all dissolved. I let this cool down while I grated the zest of a lime to the watermelon and then added the juice of that same lime. The sugar syrup was cool by now, so I swished it in with my watermelon/lime juice. Then I plugged my ice cream maker in and churned it til it was like a slushy that you get at the cinema.

Here my watermelon syrup is churning silkily. I am aware that it sounds like I have all of the kitchen kit. To be fair I do. If you don’t, you can I am sure get the same result by mashing the watermelon and squeezing it all through a tea-towel. The to freeze, put it in a tupperware and keep taking it out and stirring it with a fork. Granita is I think meant to be a bit chunky, a bit crystalline.

I had to try some and it was GOOD. Much more limey than I had anticipated. I don’t think I need to buy a brightly coloured Slush Puppy again. I even caught the last of the sun in the garden. And inspiration struck once more:

I hope growing watermelon seeds inside a watermelon isn’t some sort of fruitarian cannibalism. I do think its a natural plant pot. Maybe even looks a bit stylish? Eat your heart out Chelsea, Beeston is where the cutting-edge gardening is happening. Just you wait til you see my entirely imagainary rockery.

With my muses flowing, I began to make another iced thing. This time a ‘Chilli and Lime Sorbet’, but I had to go to work, so the syrup is growing some muscles in our fridge to be churned tomorrow:

That is some sugar, some lime, some chilli and some honey, waiting to be churned with more lime juice. Tingly tastebud ahoy!

To close, thank you very much for my package Rhian. Little did I know when I opened it that I would be led to ruminations over cannibal watermelons. I did know (pretty much as soon as I saw Rhian’s name on the list) that she’d send a lovely thoughtful parcel, and she totally came up trumps.

Thanks Rhian, Thanks RockSalt.

Keep offalling!

*If you’d like to participate in a cookbook swap – go to SoupTuesday!

Rendering your own lard (and my Lardy Oatcakes)

Really this should have been part of all my nosetotailings, but for reasons of space and time, I didn’t manage to use the lard until it was over. Yes, the suspense is lifted, I did manage to render some of my own lard. Nigella, eat your pancreas out!

The principle behind rendering your own animal fat into usuable storable fat is quite simply. The thing that makes natural fat go off is the cell tissue and membranes, if you melt it enough the fat will spearate from them and you can size them away. However it is a slow process, and I would do a couple of things differently. Also I’m not sure I’d have done it if I hadn’t had a slow cooker. (You must be converted to my slow cooker by now.)

There are two types of rendering of lard: wet and dry. Dry rendering you very gently over a long time heat the fat on its own until the cells and tissue break down which then forms a crusty surface. Wet rendering you again heat it long and slow, but with the addition of water, which stops the fat from burning. As we all know, fat and water don’t mix so well, so you can just pour the water off.

WARNING. I have no idea about weights and measurements as I used the fat I got off the head of Arthur after we’d feasted on him. There will be a lot of ‘some’s. If you google ‘Rendering your own lard’ there are a lot more precise recipes than mine (for example here and here).

So basically:

1. Chop you fat very small.
2. Add it to a slow cooker.
3. Cover this with water (fat floats, make sure it’s all floating).
4. Put the lid on.
5. Switch the low and cook for 4 days. (I forgot to tell my boyfriend to turn it off whilst I was away for a night.) Keep it topped up with water.

When you top it up with water, it will bubble in an alarming fashion. Watch this if you don’t believe me:

When you think it’s melted enough, strain it all through a tea towel (or muslin) into a bowl. Let it cool, then tip the water that will have gathered underneath away. You will now have some lard in a bowl. It’s that simple.

What would I do differently next time? Two things. First I would freeze the fat and then use a grater to make the pieces really small, thus cutting the rendering time. Second, I’m not sure I needed to heat it for 4 days. I think that was excessive, so I would monitor that more carefully next time.

So what do you do with the lard that you have rendered? Well, there’s lots of things – you can use instead of butter or oil in anything. It’s meant to make amazing pastry. It’s a mono-saturated fat, apparently, which is the same as avocado oil, so it’s healthier than the term LARD now suggests. As you may have guessed, what I did do was make my own oatcakes with it. One, I bloody love oatcakes. Two, I thought they’d be a good vehicle for ‘tasting the lard’. (I was also quite proud and wanted the send my foodie penpal something lardy, but wasn’t sure if a jar of lard would be a welcome gift in the post.)

So. Lucy’s Oatcakes. Oatcakes a la Lucy. Das Lutzykuchen!

You need:

150ml water, 8oz medium oatmeal, quarter tsp baking powder, quarter tsp salt, 1 generous tbsp of lard (or butter, or oil), 1 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp chilli flakes, 1 tsp black mustard seeds.

What you do:

Put the water in a small pan and add the lard to it, heat until lard is melted.

Put the oatmeal and seasonings in a bowl, mix them together.

Add the water/lard mixture and mix it all up til you have a firm ball.

Roll this out with a rolling pin on a floured surface, then cut it into bits, or for little mouth-sized morsels, use a cookie cutter.

Put on a greased baking sheet and bake at Gas Mark 4 for twenty minutes, turning them over half way through.

Cool and feast yourself on the Lutzykuchen!

Magen Sie Lutzykuchen? Moechten Sie Lutzykuchen essen? Lutzykuchen schmecht mir gut!*

This introduces something *almost* not offal to the blog – is that a good idea?

(I lost the photos I took, so stole this one off my lovely foodie penpal. It is much better than any I could have taken.)

*I apologise to anyone German, sincerely. Mein Deutsch ist gefahrlich!

Foodie Penpals the Second!

Foodie Penpals is a great project run by Rocksalt where you get paired with two different people – one of those sends you a box and you send your box to the other one. This is the second month’s results. If you fancy getting involved then drop Carol Anne an email.

The lucky recipient of mine was Monique at What I am Up to! Monique lives in Germany, so full in the knowledge that the postage would probably cost me some, I did cheat a little and raided my own cupboard for some of her prizes. I hope they were enjoyed! If you are wondering what I sent, do check over to her blog.

My partner was Hannah. I think I’m right in saying much of her food action happens upon the Twitter, so give her a follow @hansyquirk. I am very lucky foodiepenpaller as for the second month running I got an amazing package! But first, my reveal:

Ah, so dramatic! To be honest, I was pretty excited. I’d already had a good feel of the envelope and really couldn’t feel what was in there. So carefully I extracted my goodies and read my card and recipe!

Here’s what this lucky blogger was sent:

And what do we have here? Most excitingly there was a Morcilla which is a type of Spanish black pudding that also has rice in it. Meat in the post! Most excellent! I’d mentioned that I was quite into loose leaf tea so Hannah sent me some cherry flavoured green tea. They come in those teapig shaped teabags! Posh green tea. It was also nice as this time two years ago I was in Japan enjoying all the cherry blossom –  Hannah must be a mind-reader. Further to that assertion, I also got sent some rose and violet dark chocolate. Flower chocolates are my absolute favourite thing, so I was a bit ‘Golly, how did she know?’ My last treats were two packets of Green Pea Garlic Snacks. They are well delicious. I am also rubbish at going to the Chinese supermarket so I would have never got these for myself and they are well tasty. Look out for them.

The following day me and Dogsnooks Daz had the morcilla fried with some of his friends eggs for breakfast:

You can see the grains of coooked rice quite clearly. From the Leeds City Centre Farmers Market a couple of months ago I got some Spanish black pudding (made here) and that was fiery, so I was expecting the same. Instead it’s almost a sweet blood pudding, packed full of flavour. When I eventually make my own blac pudding I’m going to try and channel some of this verve into it.

Perhaps the best thing that I got was a recipe. A very pertinent recipe. A very offally recipe. TRIPE!

Or Trippa alla Romana, as it actually says on the recipe I was very kindly sent.

I’d been meaning to put my toes into the world of tripe for quite a long time. I’ve only knowlingly had it once, on a hotdate at a Chinese restaurant where my date was trying to Jackass me by ordering tripe and expecting me to go EW! Good job it was a first date, as I soon put him right. As I ate all the tripe. Stealing from his chopstick. Surprised that One fizzled out? No, me neither, put on the path to this One, who really is the One!

Since I started offalling, I began to feel the burden of the tripe quite a lot. I want to eat it. I like it. But where to start? Do I begin traditionally with tripe and onions? Do I return to the oriental? Well Hannah’s recipe came to the rescue. An Italian tripe recipe. Italian food is practially English food anyway, and by force of going to the shop, but not actually buying all the ingredients on the recipe, it got made a little Blightier. (Btw, I do NOT read the Daily Mail; I DO own a pair of leggings covered in Union Jacks – make of that what you will.)

I understand that in some places tripe is quite hard to come by. In Leeds we’re very lucky to have one of the last dedicated Tripe Shops open in the market. *whispers subliminally* “don’t muck up the market, Leeds Council”. Naturally I went there for my lovely tripe! Look out for a saucy dietary tip-off from their web-page!

That is the tripe shop counter. I also discovered they sell pig windpipes (you have them with salt and vinegar) and pig stomachs (you have them with salt and vinegar). There is also dripping, white pudding, black pudding and some other things … sounds like my kind of place! Lunch anyone?

I’m sure Hannah can give you her original recipe, but here is my interpretation!

I needed 400g of pre-cooked tripe. Luckily the Tripe Shop only sells cooked and bleached tripe. YOU DON’T WANT GREEN TRIPE. That’s uncleaned tripe. So it’s still covered in half-digested grass.

Here’s my nice big piece of tripe. Tripe-alicious! To the bottom-left corner you can see the THICK SEAM. I was asked the question of whether I like it? I didn’t know, so I was given a little bit. I also got a bit of honeycomb (that’s on the right in the middle). Different tripes, for differents stripes?

440g cooked tripe cut into strips, 2 sticks finely chopped celery, 2 medium carrots diced, 2 cloves smoked garlic crushed, 3 juniper berries, 200ml stock, 1 can chopped tomatoes, 2 tsp tomato puree, several dashes of Maggi seasoning, parmesan

Heat some oil in a pan, add the garlic, celery and carrots until they soften down a little. Add the juniper berries and cook for fifteen minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and the puree.

Stir in the tripe, the stock and the Maggi.

Season. Simmer it all together for 45 minutes. The sauce will thicken. When cooked down, grate parmesan on top and serve!

And there you go! It was very tasty and delicious. Tripe is more a texture than a taste we decided. Bearing that in mind I’d quite like to run with that and make some Japanese style tripe. I think tripe tacos would also be good. I’m pretty converted to the tripe. So thank you Hannah, for giving me a push towards to the tripe!

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