RecipeMuncher

I’m a big fan of muffins. A good blueberry muffin, slightly warm, with a spoonful of vanilla yoghurt is a real treat, especially when the fruit is fresh and the berries burst in your mouth with a little explosion of juice and flavour. I’ve also been a long time fan of Prêt a Manger’s breakfast muffins that were, until not that long ago, amusingly named Morning Glory Muffins, and I’ve been meaning to attempt to replicate them for a while now.

They are chock full of nuts, seeds and dried fruit and have helped me get through many a morning hangover whilst still feeling healthy and without having to resort to a full fried breakfast. They also go really well with coffee and with a Bank Holiday weekend ahead of us I thought I would try to make a batch of these muffins as a weekend treat.

The first step was to try and find a basic recipe for a muffin. One that wasn’t too sweet, too greasy or too complicated. A recipe that was versatile enough to add items to a…

With the weather taking a swift and decisive turn for the Autumnal, the appeal of salad and other such meals diminishes rapidly to be replaced by a desire for soups and other heartier fayre.

I know it is only August and that theoretically we have another couple of weeks before the short sleeves are replaced with jumpers and the barbecue is packed away for another year but the last few days have seen winds whipping through the branches and a significant dip in the temperature. Blackberries, perhaps the most evocative of Autumn fruits, have started to ripen to a vivid purple and the apple trees in the overgrown orchard next door are beginning to bear fruit, albeit a touch on the sour side – not that it will prevent us from making a batch of cider.

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I lay the blame squarely at the door of Anthony Bourdain. If it had not been for this man I could be a normal, fully functioning member of society by now, complete with a regular job and a steady income. Instead I am a food obsessed jobbing writer desperate to eat my way around the world, indulge in endless gastronomic experiences, try anything and everything and hunt for the perfect meal. And then write it all down, naturally.

On second thoughts, maybe blame is the wrong word. I think, perhaps, that what I mean is that I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. If it had not been for this man I might have a regular job and a steady income. I could be a jobbing account manager by now (whatever that means). Instead I am a food-obsessed writer carefully eating my way around the world and cataloguing the growing collection of gastronomic experiences I am revelling in. My boundaries are limitless, my palate adventurous. …

In keeping with my anthropological approach to eating whenever I am away I eschewed the regular looking breakfast items and went straight for the steaming bowl of what looked like wallpaper paste.

Eggs and bacon are all well and good but whenever I eat anything like that for breakfast I feel so sluggish and tired, like I want to head straight back to bed, rest a hand on my belly and watch some inane television. This was most definitely not what I wanted to be doing during my holiday. I wanted to be suppressing boundless energy and racing from temple to temple and market to market. Not snoozing in front of Mythbusters in an air-conditioned hotel room.

So steaming wallpaper paste it was. If this was full of enough goodness to keep generations of Asian farmers fed then I was sure it could keep me sated for the next few hours, no matter how many over-zealous tuk-tuk drivers I had to fend off.

I assumed that this rather unappetising looking gloop was cong…

There is little danger of being unable to get your ‘five-a-day’ in Thailand. Indeed, the ubiquitous street vendors sell so many varieties of fruit it is hard to stop yourself from going beyond the magic number. Pineapples cut into intricate corkscrews, slithers of green mangoes, chilled wedges of watermelon, bags of sweet jackfruit, tangerines with an unfamiliar green skin, deep purple mangosteens, alien-like spiky lychees, freshly cut coconuts with luridly coloured straws peeping from the top and bunches of longan berries, which look disturbingly like potatoes, are all available in huge quantities for no more than a few baht.
Chief among these exotic fruits, though, is the infamous durian, one of South East Asia’s most well known delicacies and something any bold food adventurer simply has to try. Durian look like the pre-historic eggs of an animal dreamed up by HG Wells but it is the smell that makes this particular fruit so notorious.

Put in the simplest language possible,…

Despite the best efforts of Starbucks et al who seem to be invading Bangkok with a ruthless efficiency, the best coffee in Thailand, like pretty much everything else, comes from solo entrepreneurs with little more than a roadside cart and a gas burner. Those who wish to indulge their caffeine habit with a skinny-decaf-frappa-latte-mochaccino may still do so but they are missing out on one of the city’s real treats.

The Thais love to nap. Second only to eating, dozing seems to be a national past-time. If a tuk-tuk driver isn’t racing through traffic he is likely to be parked under the shade of a tree, head back and eyes shut – a look of serene calm on his face. I suppose this explains the 24-hour nature of life in this city: catch some Zs in the day, keep going all night. It also explains the popularity of stimulant-laced drinks such as M-150 and Red Bull, a drink we are also familiar with, albeit in a slightly diluted and carbonated form. These frighteningly sweet, almost medi…

The wonders of the East are beckoning, softly calling in hushed and gentle tones. In a few short hours I will be stepping out of the cool capsule of an aircraft and into the oppressive humidity of Bangkok. And I cannot wait.

Consequently, this is likely to be my last post for a while. I may try to jot down a couple of lines whilst I am there but I shall not be making any promises.

I should also mention a very worthy blogging event going on here, at A Merrier World. I will be writing a last minute entry as soon as I am once again ensconced in the warm bosom of home, two long weeks from now.

In order to keep this little entry vaguely food related, we had some really good mackerel not long ago. It was bought only hours old in sight of the ocean that had a short time ago been the fishes’ home. It was cooked in the simplest fashion possible over the barbecue and adorned wi…

While I haven’t really been counting, I knew I was fast approaching a glorious century of posts – 100 food related musings. And, I suppose, I’d been thinking about how best to celebrate this achievement. Should I follow conformity and bake a cake? Perhaps a perfectly cooked steak frites with a béarnaise sauce would be more appropriate? Or maybe just a little mention, like above?

Ultimately it proved to be a moot point because according to my records, the last post I made was, in fact, my hundredth. I managed to forget my own blogging birthday. But in hindsight maybe it is better that way. There was no fanfare, no bunting and no over the top glorification. Just a simple pasta dish eaten in the sunshine, which is perhaps more in keeping with my general philosophy.

However, I’m not willing to let this milestone go completely unmarked so it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this, the 101st Just Cook It culinary tale. And how did I celebrate this epic f…

Lunch always used to be a hurried affair. Most days I would wander out of the office and head down to the butcher or fishmonger (unless it was a Monday when both were closed) and see what looked tempting but I would never be more than ten minutes out of the office before I was once again sat in my swivel chair. And I don’t think this is unusual in any way. I know of no-one who takes a full hour, or even half an hour unless they have an ‘excuse’, like having a tooth extraction or undergoing hip replacement surgery. In the UK, at least, the lunch break is something of a misnomer.

Pity the poor French who still have the sacred lunch hour entrenched into their statute books. I expect it is hewn into solid rock, or at least written in indelible ink alongside the one that ensures a thirty-five hour week and instant capitulation in the event of invasion.

Those in Mediterranean Europe don’t fare much worse. Granted, it is rather hot during the midday hours, but …

I’ve never been able to work up much enthusiasm for salad. While the concept may be great, the execution is often painfully poor. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been utterly disappointed by the quality of a salad in a restaurant.

Italian eateries are often the worst offenders. A sad bowl full of limp lettuce and a few token slices of tomato dressed in poor quality oil and cheap balsamic vinegar is not a salad. Nor is a handful of withered rocket with a few dry shavings of Parmesan cheese hastily thrown over the top.

A generic ‘salad’ is too small to be sustaining in any way on its own and too devoid of character to be an accompaniment. A salad that looks pretty is often even more disappointing because it teases you into thinking that it is going to taste good whereas, in fact, it offers no more than a few pieces of what may as well be crunchy water.

I have a friend who maintains that the most dangerous item in any kebab shop is…

I am new to this gardening lark so the progress of the veggie patch has rendered me awestruck over the past few weeks. The tiny seeds that we planted back in April seemed to take forever to become seedlings and force their way through the earth. I checked them three or four times a day hoping to see a mini shoot parting the softly compacted compost filling the little trays in which we had planted everything. I’ve never been particularly patient so this whole ‘slow-lane’ life was something I would have to get used to, and quickly. If that makes any sense.

Eventually, they began to peep through, each little green shoot seemingly identical – only a series of hastily written labels informing us what was what. By the time they were ready to be planted into the ground, the soil had been warmed by the early May sun and a healthy amount of compost dug into the beds. They suddenly looked small and vulnerable, like they were toddlers about to have their first day at playschoo…

South of Gamla Stan, across one of the city’s many bridges, lies Stockholm’s vibrant beating heart. Södermalm is achingly, effortlessly and unselfconsciously cool in the way only certain places can be. This is the city’s Soho where artists, musicians and writers pack into small and over-priced flats to compose their masterpieces. The shops are independent and boutique. The restaurants are ethnic and exotic. Cafés line the streets and music pours from open doorways – deep bass lines melding together and converging into a heavy morass that soundtracks your journey.

There is no pretence. There is no agenda. ‘Live and let live’ appears to be the philosophy that exudes from every corner. Closed doors tantalise with their potential secrets – you get the impression that the best nights are to be had in basements that do not advertise their wares. This is the sort of place where you have to be resident to truly appreciate it and we were merely visitors. And hungry ones at th…