N88TFL

That's the number plate of the Two Fat Ladies motorcycle and sidecar, on which they drove all over the UK and to other countries, in the course of their cooking/tourist TV show.

They got the plate because Two Fat Ladies  is  bingo slang for number 88! And  TFL are the initials of their show. Never missed a chance at a joke. They've long been gathered to their ancestors but we can still see their four seasons on YouTube.

They're worth revisiting for the comedy alone, and  their reminiscences of their wildly colorful and well connected lives, into which cooking appeared quite late. And nsfw humor which got past the  censors, and goes over a lot of heads, judging from the YouTube puzzled comments.

Their food is rich, expensive and uses only the best. They leap in a fishing boat to get their fresh catch, pick mussels from rocks, go game shooting, ew, and cook for a wide range of diners, unlimited budget.

Pony clubs, the Cambridge rowing eight, the clergy of Westminster cathedral, a boy scout camp, a Welsh male voice choir, there's no end to the locations. And the views on their way there, make you want to go there.

I watch them, scions of the one percent, the way Mary watches a TV series about California real estate glamor types. Another world, fun to see, but really anthropology. There's interesting cooking, though, because they really are professional experts.

Just watched them cooking for barristers at Lincoln's inn, Rumpole's stamping ground in fiction, Clarissa's in real life. She was a celebrated and very young barrister, various things happened and she became a private chef.

Just seemed a good sequel to watching Rumpole. 

For the barristers, they make among other things, beef Wellington (named for the NZ city) or beef en croute, or what they say, beef in pastry!

Loads of fun. I note their vegetable and fruit cooking mainly,  their fish being different varieties from what's available to me. They also grandly refer you to your butcher to discuss cuts of meat. I don't think that's in my world. Nor references to titled neighbors -- on the next estate!

I get some great ideas to adapt, though and pick up tips and reminders. Also they're funny, worth the price of admission.

So that's keeping up my scattered spirits, what with the upcoming surgery, next week, a new plumbing issue which is more complex than I thought and may mean an expensive replacement, and continuing issues with the newly installed light. 

These too shall pass. It's the meantime that's the bother, as always.

Roast vegetables and Two Fat Ladies

Revisiting roast vegetables today, with sweet potatoes, Granny Smith apple rings, hot Italian sausage, tofu, onions and various spices.  The onions were just halved then unfurled, not chopped, and the only precooked item is the sweet potato, nuked for about 15 minutes, they were big.  Otherwise it won't cook enough in the time you need for the other items.  410F oven, half an hour with a tinfoil hat on, as you see here, waiting, then half an hour sans hat.

This easily makes six meals for me, and freezes up a treat in single serving portions.

Other meals are all about farm produce, great tomatoes, fruit, herbs from my yard, all very virtuous.

I've been revisiting Two Fat Ladies, too, and if you haven't seen them,  all the episodes are on YouTube nowadays, easy to find.  Each episode is a combo of great cooking, very knowledgeable sidenotes by Clarissa, who is a brain of the first water, youngest barrister in England in her day, and spontaneous songs and other such things from Jennifer, while they're busy in the kitchen.  

They visit various touristy type places, so there's scenery, and there's the nice sense of being behind the scenes, in a convent, and in Lincoln's Inn, and cricket clubs, Aldershot military camp, and so on.  Veddy English, and very comic, most of it intentional.  And Clarissa says auregAHno for oregano, too cool.  They both come from great wealth and colorful families with all sorts of posh estates and things and they spare us the rawer facts about them (!) and the feuds. But they do give us all sorts of wild stories which definitely have the ring of truth.

They got through four seasons before Jennifer got ill and died, sadly.  Then Clarissa did seasons of other stuff, like visiting country areas for country pursuits, and I couldn't bear to watch the joy she took in hunting and killing animals and birds, and the total disdain and outright rudeness she reserved for anyone not in her elevated social circle.  So the cooking evidently brought out the best in her, stick with that if you want to watch her. 

Here and there they do something I fancy, like Tomato Tartlets which are a kind of salade nicoise (insert your own cedilla there) in pastry shells, and a pastry made from ground almonds and other things rather than flour, interesting.  Some great baking, too. They are actually very versatile, and in real life did some high end catering for all sorts of events and people.  Jennifer is always the one to point out how a recipe can be adapted for cocktail party use, she being a great fan.

Mostly they slosh incredible amounts of cream and butter about (you should see Clarissa buttering a slice of bread, cor, a week's ration there) and large amounts of alcohol.  For culinary purposes, of course.  And slabs of meat.  So a lot of it is viewing not emulating for me anyway, except that they always get the best ingredients, freshest, etc, good to copy. But great fun, and I recommend them.

Yorkshire Gingerbread and an impossible dream

Yesterday, amid the blogista meeting and other events of the day, and the sheepnip excitement at home -- second installment of this took place when Duncan showed up and found the toy, and went ravening all over the furniture and floors in catnip joy --I also baked a Yorkshire Gingerbread from the Two Fat Ladies cookbook.

Tremendous fuss and bother, I think I might go back to my much simpler and perfectly nice recipe from my Simple Sort of Cookbook, but anyway, I tried it.  And after the time elapsed for an early look at it, found it looked sad in the middle, so I left it for a few more minutes, figuring it would rise like my regular recipe.  Which didn't happen, and though it tastes fine, it's not exactly handsome.

Which reminds me of how poetic the language is.  Sad in baking means heavy, sunken in the middle, usually not quite cooked.  Heavy as in sadiron, those massive solid iron irons you used to heat on the fire before attempting to iron with them.  But our use of sad meaning the emotion, is a wonderful metaphor though we hardly ever think of it that way.  And we talk of the opposite, light as opposed to heavy, when we think of joy, as in Duncan and the catnip toy.

Just a digression for a trot about on one of my hobbyhorses, Etymology, his name is. He's back in the paddock now. Anyway, I gave the gingerbread a bit longer, and it was still sad, but now it was a bit dry, dangit.  Should have taken it out, sad and all, earlier.

And then the Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa to be exact, instruct the cook to leave the gbread in an airtight "tin" for a couple of days before sampling.  What? lovely smelling from the oven, and you put it away for two days before you even find out if you like it? on what planet are they cooking? well, they're no longer on our planet, but she was at the time of writing the cookbook.

                          See, full disclosure, sad in the middle



So this cook took a hearty slice, to test with afternoon Vietnamese, that is not a typo for Viennese, coffee, and very nice it was.  Spicy, not too sweet. But not sure it's worth all the bother they go to.  And I'm puzzled about the sadness, since I followed their lead meticulously, right flour, right butter, right sugar, all that. All the stages of beating and mixing and folding, all that.  I even had the ingredients at room temperature for once, having set them all out before I went on my expedition. I mean, I went over and above, and it shoulda worked better.

However, in the course of this perusing of their cookbook, I finally found a way to use up that shredded cucumber in the freezer, from the surfeit of cucumbers last summer.  As in "the king died of a surfeit", Annie, how I miss you, you'd have got that reference in a flash.  Sellars and Yeatman, anyway, in case you're not Annie.

What I was saying before I interrupted myself, was that I am going to make a nice cucumber sauce with sour cream and mayo, lemon juice, and fresh chives, which I have growing away on the patio, to go with some of the corn, crab and cilantro croquettes currently in the freezer, for lunch today.  Watch this space for updates on that.

Twp Fat Ladies and this rather small one work together

Two Fat Ladies, that comic turn, combined with music hall act, and serious food historians  in the television food world, both sadly now gathered to the great Aga in the Sky, are out on DVD, and I've been watching them with great amusement.  

I borrowed their cookbook, too, though very little of what they cook would actually make an appearance in this kitchen.  It's a lot about meat and lard and butter and other such stuff. But now and then there's an item that's worth pursuing.

Before I do that, though I wonder if you noticed the 88 on Jennifer's motorbike registration number?  did you know, I didn't until just now, that in Bingo 88 is called Two Fat Ladies! just a little footnote to the panoply of Western history here.

Anyway, I decided to make a brave attempt at using up even more of the corn in the freezer before the new farmshare year starts, and made their Corn, Crab and Cilantro Fritters.  

 Left Clarissa, right Jennifer the owner of the motorbike and sidecar in which they tootled all over the UK cooking and having adventures.

Great fun to make, and not sure they were quite worth it.  Next time I might go easier on the cilantro and jolt the crab a bit with Old Bay Seasoning, if there's a next time. Canned crab, nothing else available.  

Anyway, I now have several meals' worth of them in the freezer as well as the lunch I had today. They don't look as pretty as in the magazines, because my food stylist once again failed to show up, but they are definitely very edible.