Category: Food & Drink

Catching Up

Food & Drink, Good Stuff

Stop the presses!  Here’s the latest kitchen fad:

Serious home cooks looking to create a restaurant-style kitchen in their own homes are lusting after yet another piece of culinary kit.

Surfaces may already be groaning under the weight of appliances such as air fryers, espresso machines and top-of-the-range mixers – and let’s not forget the pizza oven in the shed, but middle-class foodies are now adding deli-style meat slicers to their polished countertops.

The ‘industry’ style equipment, which ranges in price from around £50 for a budget version on Amazon to the early thousands for an all-singing, all-dancing one, can precision slice through everything from smoked salmon to hams and cheeses – and even sourdough – with ease.

And while they may seem like an indulgent addition to an everyday kitchen, top chefs say they’re worth the investment – because not only will your charcuterie taste superior, but you can also buy it in bulk, which almost always saves money.

There’s less waste too, because you slice what you need, ensuring wafer-thin sheets of Parma ham don’t go unloved in the fridge.

The slicers – both hand-operated and electric – work by cutting food to uniform sheets, as thick or as thin as you’d like, which can affect flavors significantly, say those in the know.

Well, yes.  The above article appeared in the Daily Mail  yesterday (February 12, 2026).

Then there’s this:

…which appeared in this post, dated Nov 25, 2023.

Good grief;  for once, I’m actually ahead of a trend.

No need to thank me;  it’s all part of the service.  (Oh, and don’t let the product description fool you.  I used the above machine to slice meats like salami, ham and beef for years.)

Under-Achieving

Food & Drink, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Reader Mike L. sends me this astounding list of booze consumption:

Wait… we Texans spent more on booze per capita than Floriduh?  Musht be shome mishtake.

Anyway, I can see why the states at the top are where they are, viz. a) it’s fucking cold there, and b) there’s not much else to do when the snow is fourteen feet deep, and you can only have sex so many times a day until your cousin starts complaining.  Then again…

Roasted Taties

Food & Drink

I know, I know:  “A recipe?  On this website?  Kim, WTF?”

Bear with me.

As always, this year I’m hosting our family Boxing Day dinner, only this time without New Wife to help with the cooking.

This would not be a problem, because I know how to make the meal of roast beef:

However, the one thing I’ve never been able to master is the quintessential companion to rozzbiff:  roast potatoes.

And without New Wife — did I already mention that she’s gone AWOL to some family reunion thing in Cape Town? — I was going to be in trouble because I won’t say my kids are traditionalists, but any substitution of other potato formats (mash etc.) would likely cause taunting, ugly facial expressions and perhaps even a hanging.

So these past few days I’ve been experimenting, bigly, trying out various suggestions and different methodologies until finally, I figured it out.  Here, then, is Uncle Kim’s Roast Potato Recipe:

Use Yukon Gold potatoes only;  just note that large ones will require longer cooking time — I prefer to use the baby ones, myself.

Skin the things, and parboil them for about 15 minutes.  I’ve found that it works better if you drop them in cold water and bring to boil rather than dropping them into already-boiling water.

Now, about that water:  drop a half- to full teaspoon of baking soda into the water first and stir until the stuff has completely mixed in (beware clumps), and then add a teaspoonful of iodized salt.  (There’s a whole thing about alkali water being better for the potatoes to cook in than acidic water, but I don’t want to bore you to tears with the chemistry explanation.)

Remove the potatoes from the boiling water, and allow to cool for just a bit.  Pat dry with a paper towel — this is important, because they need to be completely dry at this point —  then use a fork to lightly scrape the outsides.

Spray the potatoes with some avocado oil, and sprinkle with just a little coarse kosher salt.  Stick the whole lot in a baggie and shake gently.  The salt “roughs up” the surface of the potatoes, which will make them crispy on the outside when cooked.

To cook:  Set the air fryer to 400, or pre-heat the oven to 450.  Cook for no less than 15 minutes — longer if you’re using the large potatoes or doing a large batch of the small ones.

Do not let the potatoes touch each other in the oven:  keep them separated.

Take out of the oven, and allow to sit for a just a few minutes.  Cut them lengthways in half — if for any reason they’re still undercooked in the middle, just pop them back in the oven for a few minutes more. Then serve.

Do not be surprised if these roast potatoes take the place of French fries in your future meals.  You have been warned.

It’s Not Hyperbole

Food & Drink, Marketing / Advertising, Patriotism, Trades

When I first referred to Jeremy Clarkson as “The Greatest Living Englishman”, it started off as a nod to his unflinching honesty when it came to everything he looked at, such as his (non-)review of some Vauxhall car model back in the 1990s:  “If they’re not going to bother to make an interesting car, I’m not going to bother to review it.”

That caused Big Business (in this case, Vauxhall’s then-parent company General Motors) to go apeshit, because that’s not the way car reviewers are supposed to behave.

It’s that same unflinching honesty that he displayed in his first bumbling efforts at farming which turned his Clarkson’s Farm TV show into a runaway smash hit, and along the way almost single-handedly changed the way the British regard both food and the farmers who produce it.

So when he turned that same agricultural ignorance towards brewing beer — simply because he had a barn full of unsold barley which he needed to sell — one might think that it was just another celebrity using their name to sell a product.

In this case, one would be not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.  And if you want to see a case study in marketing that, in hindsight, never had a chance of failing, then I implore you to watch this video.

Time and time again, “the experts” believed that Clarkson was making a mistake, and every single time he proved them not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

He turned a few thousand pounds’ worth of unsold barley into a £75 million company, and in the process, changed the way British people think about farming, about beer and about the people who farm and the people who brew beer.

And he did it all with his usual unflinching honesty and openness, which gave the lie to the usual corporate veneer of respectability and care for both their employees and their customers.

Which is why he truly is the Greatest Living Englishman.

I can’t wait to try it the next time I go over to Britishland.

Culinary Discovery

Food & Drink

The Englishman sent me this merry little picture:

Of course, I had no idea what he meant (quite a common feature in our conversations, btw), so when I sought clarification (“WTF are you talking about?”), I got this:

Badger hams, I think they were a regular on the sideboard at Tuckers Grave. Badger are at their best from October to November, being fat and succulent by then.

The flesh can be treated as young pig meat in every respect, it being just as rich and having the flavor of a young pig. It can be cured by salting, the hams being exceptionally good fare. Badger pies are even better than pork pies, hot or cold.

Badger Ham, To Bake
A badger ham will weigh 7 to 8 pounds and needs cooking very carefully. Soak the ham for at least 6 hours in cold water. Wash it after soaking in lukewarm water. Cover it with a rough paste made with 3 pounds of flour and 3 pounds of water; make sure to wrap it well. Bake in a moderate oven, pre-heat to 350 F for 2½ to 3 hours.

Remove the paste and cover with bread raspings whilst still hot, if to be served cold. If to be served hot, serve with broad beans and fresh parsley sauce or cider sauce.

I had no idea that badgers were edible.

Also, I have no idea what he means by “Tuckers Grave” or “bread raspings”.

Two nations divided by a common language, we are.

Okay:  Tucker’s Grave Inn is a pub just outside Bath:

Of course, The Englishman assumes that I would be familiar with all the pubs around his farm — admittedly, not an altogether incorrect assumption — but in fact, I take it as a shortcoming of his hospitality that he’s never taken me there. [making note]

Bread raspings are the equivalent of panko crumbs.