Roast Rib of Beef, Nottingham Food and Drink Festival and a bad haircut

The weather  yesterday was pretty darn hot here so, just to make the temperature even hotter, I put my oven on for three hours and roasted a large piece of rib of beef purchased from a new  butcher in the village. I probably could have got a piece from work but I couldn’t be bothered going in on my day off and spending nearly two hours commuting on hot buses there and back. Besides, I fancied having a few cool lager beers in my back garden and airing my lily white legs in the sun. The green dustbin has now been removed (the council  no longer collect them) so I can now visually enjoy a full view of my little cottage garden and lavender bush unimpeded by a  gigantic plastic waste bin.

Next door’s cats helped me with the cooking (by looking at me adoringly) and enjoyed a few slithers of raw beef for their efforts. My neighbour, Jo, dropped by while I was watching Paul, the movie, with some fresh salad leaves and some tomatoes from her allotment. I shall enjoy those today in a beef salad sandwich or two.

I took the bone out of the joint and trimmed some of the slightly blackened bits of beef around the bone. The darker meat smelt slightly off was just a bit off colour and the whole joint cost £15 so I wasn't going to throw it all away. The butcher told me that the meat came form cows near Netherfield, a place north of Nottingham. I like to buy local when I can.

I added some whole spices, cloves, cinnamon bark and star anise to the cooking process and cooked in the oven for three hours on a medium heat. I ate it later with new potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots and leeks and a generous amount of horseradish sauce. It was yummy but the house, even with the back door open, was baking hot.

rib of beef with spices

By the way, I gave myself a haircut the other day and rather messed it up. I use an electric trimmer to save money on paying a barber or hairdresser and I got inspired to trim away after a few beers and left my head looking a little varied in the length department and I broke the trimmer into the bargain. My new one cost me thirteen pounds! Ouch! At least I look OK now. What do you think folks? Beard trimmed, bushy eyebrows trimmed and a smooth baldy head.

hairy and not so hairy

I have been busy recently at work and have been working lots of overtime as well as mentoring the new young man on the meat counter and working on my NVQ level two Meat and Fish Counters. The staff on the counters thought that I’d turned spy the other day as I documented (photos) some of the meat products we sell as part of my NVQ. It was a case of cut it up, display nicely, take a photo. All good fun.

I got sent a press release a while ago about the Nottingham Food and Drink Festival. I have edited it for brevity and content and added the events I would like to attend. The previous two events have been great and this one looks equally so this year.

NOTTINGHAM FOOD AND DRINK FESTIVAL RETURNS FOR THIRD YEAR RUNNING.

The Nottingham Food and Drink Festival is back for 2011, with organiser ‘We Are Nottingham’ announcing an exciting new format for this year’s event.

Extended from four days to twelve, the Festival runs from Wednesday 29 June until Sunday 10 July. Venues across the city will be showcasing the best that Nottingham has to offer with a series of seasonal and speciality Festival menus under four price categories: under £10, £11-£15, £16-£25 and over £25.

Visitors are being offered unique food and drink experiences at bars and restaurants.  There are over 120 special events in bars, cafes and restaurants.

In addition, fans of local produce will be able to indulge themselves at a special Food and Drink Festival market, taking place in Old Market Square from Thursday 30 June to Sunday 3 July. With in excess of 70 stalls, and including a demonstration area, Festival organisers are promising the largest food and drink market that Nottingham city centre has ever seen.

Nottingham has a fantastic selection of big name and independent venues and one of the broadest ranges of cuisines on offer outside of London. It therefore makes complete sense to make the venues the true stars for 2011.

For more information on this year’s Nottingham Food and Drink Festival, visit www.wearenottingham.co.uk/foodanddrink , follow @nottsfoodfest on Twitter or go to the dedicated Facebook page www.facebook.com/nottsfoodfest

Looking at the packed programme I would love to try my hand at sushi making at Chino Latino, focaccia making at Carluccio’s, the tea tasting at Lee Rosy’s Tea , Tapas Tuesday at The Golden Fleece and Beer and Food matching at The Kean’s Head. I might pass on the belly dancing at Eviva Taverna, although I do have a good sized belly these days. Incidentally, the spellchecker didn't like the word Focaccia and suggested alternatives: fogyish, dogcatcher, quackish, freakish and cowcatcher!!

I shall certainly be heading to the Market Square for the Food and Drink Festival Market to check out the olives, The Cheese Shop, offerings by Memsaab, Mrs King’s Pies, Yoyo Noodle and The Wellbeck Farm Shop. A lot of the time the events are on I am actually working so whatever time I get to browse and participate will be limited but no doubt enjoyable.

Finally, I want to catch Nottingham's sausage king, Johnny Putztai doing his sausage making demonstration and talk about different ways of using sausages in cookery.

A challenge for my brain weighing approx 1,350 grammes.

I'm about to start my training for my new job on 11th October and it dawned on me that it may well be useful for me to gen up on the metric system. I believe that the metric system came into place in the change challenged British Isles in the mid 1970s. In fact it must have appeared the day after I left school (joke).

Since then I have existed in the comfortable world of pounds and ounces, feet and inches, yards and miles, pints and half pints. Like a lot of people  I don't recall ever needing to actually ask for a kilogramme of spuds, a litre of milk or a half kilo of sausages. The weights side of things metric will be the most needed in my work so I've searched the internet for a table of imperial and metric comparisons. Oh my goodness and quelle horreur! We seem to be dealing with decimal point blah de blah type figures. Examples: a pound = 0.4536kg and a gram = 0.035 oz.

note rather helpful imperial and metric boxes

500 grammes isn't that big.

 

Two pork chops are about £3 and weigh under half a kilo.

I have decided that the best way to learn is to haunt a few supermarkets and actually SEE what these weights equate to and learn that way and become used to thinking in metric. As you can see from the pictures above I've even taken to photographing the labels on food to educate myself. At home that is, not in the shops. Another little challenge for the brain of Phil.

Healthier and wealthier

Times are a bit skintsville in Phil-land at the moment so I am watching the pennies even more and have decided to spend wisely and eat more healthy food. Inspired by Rick Stein and his Far Eastern Odyssey dvd I thought I'd give stir frys a go and so I trotted off to the Victoria Centre market in Nottingham and bought some king prawns and stir fry veg. I originally wanted crevettes but the fishmonger said he hadn't got any as they were too expensive. I was a bit shocked therefore to 'shell out' nearly a fiver (£5) for six of the little buggers. Would you believe that on the other fishmonger's stall they had the ellusive crevettes on display. I looked into their little black eyes and thought for a moment about returning to the original stall to get my money back but chickened out, or is that 'shellfished out'?

The veg market is next door to the fishmongers and butchers and I had in mind buying some bean sprouts and green beans. The bean sprouts were 48p so I got those, but turned down a paltry bag of mouldy looking french beans at 98p. I was sure I could get twice as many and fresher looking at my village grocer. I did however get tempted by some young asparagus shoots although the absorbed vendor was more interested in what was going on on his mobile phone than serving me.

Moving on, I went across town to Han's Chinese Supermarket in Hockley and got myself some fish sauce and pak choi leaves. Once back in my village I availed myself of a few cold beers to 'help' with the cooking and upon going into the local greengrocers on High Street for mushrooms I discovered all the veg I'd bought showing at two thirds the price!!!

The king prawns took about ten minutes to peel and covered my fingers in orangey gunk. There was almost more bits to discard than there were bits to eat. Next door's cat was watching me from the windowsill outside and was head butting the windowframe in a desperate attempt to eat the raw prawns. Her nose was pressed hard onto the glass and her eyes were as big as a plate.

I made the stir fry with chopped ginger and garlic and a de-seeded and finely chopped pepper as well as the bean sprouts, asparagus, button mushrooms and prawns. It took about half an hour to prepare and the cold beers certainly did help.

The following day I made another stir fry with egg riced rice and shared it with my neighbour. There are still cat nose prints on my window.

Playing with your food. Good or bad thing?

When I was a child and teenager living with my parents and subject to strict table manners, myself and my other siblings were often told off for 'playing' with our food.

This was often 'pea sharks swimming through the sea of gravy in the Yorkshire puddings' or making house shapes out of mashed potato and emulating Desperate Dan cow pies as we stuck the sausages into the mashed spuds. I'm sure that we did lots of similar things too and would love to hear of your own experiences and do you still play with your food before you eat it?

Me? Of course I don't play with food anymore... well, not often. Tee hee.

Die!!! Die!!! Gingerbread man!!!