Archive for the ‘food’ Tag
[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 26th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Eleven miles into the Saturday morning run I suddenly came over a bit peckish but was blessedly near Sammy’s Kebab on Cricklade Road.
The meat was almost crisp at the edges and while a bit salty it was also definitely a lamb based product and very flavourful. The veg was better than my photo near the vandalised phone booth would have you believe, and the chilli sauce was thick and spicy and divine. Only a 50 meter stumble from the Moonrakers and worth the effort (although I had to finish the trail and get home).
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“Do you know how to cook these?” asked Anna whilst ringing up my purchases. I had not been to the Italian grocers for months and grabbed the bag of lupini as an impulse buy because they looked like yellowy broad beans.
“Erm, boil them, I reckon?”
Franco butted in: “you must soak them then cook them an hour; after that you store them in cold water for five days.” Now I was intrigued and had to have them. ”They get sweeter as the time goes on. Don’t get in a hurry, though.” His admonishments were confirmed on several cooking sites with many suggesting two weeks storage. Here is the chronicle of our efforts to prep lupini in time for the 2nd May Bank Holiday this year (although they weren’t ready until the following weekend for the birthday debauch).
Whilst prepping another meal, I boiled half a bag of the thumbnail sized seeds and they began to plump up after 20 minutes. I left them to simmer another 2 hours whilst throwing in bits of vegetables and the fat from some sausage, then drained them, packed them in a Kilner jar (Mason jar, Yanks), covered them with cold water and stuck them in the fridge.
As a reference point, I tasted one of the freshly packed beans. It was the most bitter thing I have EVER tried to eat and for two hours it ruined the flavours of everything else I tried to eat or drink…cookies, iced tea, aged provolone, gin and tonic: they all suffered.
“All we’ve eaten mate for the last four bleeding weeks is lupin soup, roast lupin, steamed lupin, braised lupin in lupin sauce, lupin in the basket with sautéed lupins, lupin meringue pie, lupin. sorbet… we sit on lupins, we sleep in lupins, we feed the cat on lupins, we burn lupins, we even wear the bloody things!”
The beans are the seeds of the yellow lupin and are reputed to have the highest protein content of any beans except soy; that’s as may be, but you have to wonder who first decided to try them and then who came up with this convoluted method of preparation. Most of the Italians in town are Calabrian and most sites I have scouted place lupini in Calabria and Puglia so I am guessing this is sort of Italian soul food, but the question is still begged: from whence does it hail?
At work at the CCRC in the mid Oughties, I developed methods for immobilising lectins on silica gel to make a separation material for specific complex carbohydrates largely because so many of these are extremely toxic to humans and other mammals. The lectins in lupini are likewise specific to particular carb-chains and are also allergens to broad swathes of the population and carry warning markers (such as the persistent bitterness I experienced) for the rest of us.
Some, but not all, of the bitter flavour comes from the skins of the shells. Many of these peel off easily after the first couple days of soaking, but I only tasted the intact beans and the bitterness subsided somewhat even in these after just ten days so this might be overkill. For now, we’ll just take the easily removable husks and leave the rest for the taste test.
They were finally okay to eat on the 1st of June, three weeks after we started them. I minced a clove of garlic and covered it with a splash of olive oil then added a sprig of oregano and some cayenne pepper; this would be tossed with the beans to make the long-awaited snack. The beans didn’t have to be heated but I thought this might be nice.
The verdict? In the deep south, you get boiled peanuts served up, hot and wet, in a brown paper bag that taste as good as these do. The boiled peanuts take an hour or two from start to finish and there is never a chance of lectin or alkaloid poisoning if you aren’t already sensitized to peanuts. I’m wondering if the seeds will sprout, though; lupins are lovely plants.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 23rd entry for the 2013 Challenge]
So insidiously salty that my jaws started to lock a half hour after ingestion, this structure-free meat-esque abomination was covered with delicious tomatoes but lettuce that was soggy and had all the flavour of Easter basket hay. Yuk.
Perhaps Sammy’s Kebab shop’s name was as misleading as that of the neighbouring store which sells decorating shite but which I imagined to be a head shop. I’d have to be REALLY stoned to get another dish from Sammy’s.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 22nd entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Consistently good, Yummy’s was my go-to kebab when I lived nearby. The sauce is awesome and the veg is always a treat. A bit out-of-the-way for me now, I crossed paths with it on my way back from a run to and from Purton and couldn’t resist. Yummy, indeed.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 21st entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Starving on the way home last week, I hopped off in Faringdon when I realised the BF2K was open. I have been here before but never sober or rested. The chilli sauce and chips were the best things, again, but I was pleasantly surprised, in my clear-headed state, that the döner tasted more like meat than fat and salt and had a texture that indicated less gristle or connective tissue than typical. Well done.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 19th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Floating with a couple of beers and on a tight schedule for the bus, I dashed from the Golden Farm back to the Best Kebab, which was near the Bee’s Knees from whence this journey commenced. I’m not sure if it really is the best in Cirencester although it may be the only kebab place here.
The sizes were small, medium, and large so I got the small which would have fed two hungry adults or served as a snack to six. My ears still ring with parental admonitions to eat every bite before me though so guilt gluttony kicked in and I shovelled it all down. Not that this was a chore as it was quite tasty, too; I would easily have finished a medium and probably would have picked at the remains of a large if not hospitalised with a distended stomach from the effort. The lettuce and cabbage were crispy and crunchy, and the tomatoes burst forth with flavour despite the spicy and heavily garlicked chilli sauce. Addictive.
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We named a visitor ”Gentleman’s Relish” at Mr. Happy’s Hash in Tucson after he used the term in a fantastic story from his early days with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The definition I know is here, so you can imagine how surprising it was to find it tinned on the shelf at Sainsbury’s. Yuck.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 17th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
If you are trying to do a statistical analysis based on this year’s kebab challenge, you should note that last week’s assertion that the best kebab places are near a good music shop and across from a porn place (see above) is not necessarily the case. Then again, maybe just noticing these things improves the perceived quality of the meal.
I first went to the Bodrum Fish Bar a year or so ago and was soundly disappointed, but this was pretty tasty despite initial appearances. The elephant leg was a leftover and only about 6 inches in diameter; as the first customer of the day I saw it before the space heater that cooks it was turned on and was impressed and disturbed by the large, white globules of congealed fat. The heat melted these well and the meat, which was less like minced meat than expected and in fact appeared to retain a bit of the original muscular structure, wasn’t salty or fatty once the mass was assembled.
Overall, the chilli sauce was awesome and the tomatoes fantastic and generously apportioned (I got four on the small kebab) but the lettuce was browning (crisp, but old) . Not a kebab for the beginner, I would definitely stop here again following a Cowley Road drinking session.
There are two Bodrum’s on this block, but Bodrum is the most common kebab shop name in this country and I have had some very good and very bad kebabs at Bodrum’s past. {Bodrum is a Turkish resort city known as Halicarnassas in ancient times, and renowned for its cuisine, ironically.}
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 14th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
It was pissing down rain when I returned from Hungerford, starving due to my choice of last minute snack out there. The #6 was waiting at the station when my bus pulled in so I transferred and hopped off on Cricklade Road in front of the Gorsehill Grill.
This was a good call. The chips were crisp and fluffy inside and hot enough to keep the kebab warm for my damp walk back to Old Town. The chilli sauce was better than you normally get (not sweet but still thick and spicy), the meat tasted like it was from an animal source or sources, and the veg was fresh and properly apportioned. Well done.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 13th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
The staff at King’s Best Barbeque (the oldest kebab place in Swindon) take a lot of pride in the kitchen and will let you tour the place. A while back (before the whole horse meat scandal) they volunteered to have samples of their wares sent off for DNA testing; the döner came back >95% lamb which is especially impressive as most döner won’t come back as 95% ANY animal or mixture thereof. And, it is good: not at all salty, the pickled cabbage alone is worth the price, the other veg is grand, and the meat is worthy of their pride. And, the chilli sauce is fresh, homemade, and hot enough to make them warn you about it (but not hot enough that someone with American ideas of spicy food need worry about it). Awesome.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 11th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Not my first trip to the Calne Charcoal Grill and likely not my last. The meat is meaty and not filled with salt or filler, the chilli sauce and salad are spectacular, the pita tastes fresh enough to be homemade (albeit doubtful). Quite pleased I decided to do the run through Compton Basset and into Calne, today. I believe those were my last two pubs in the area, though, so I may be awhile getting back for another of these tasty treats.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 9th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
A seemingly endless quest for lamb döner today finally ended at the Old Town Kebabs. The meat had the taste and texture of more feedlot than livestock and the chilli sauce was a bit on the sweet side but so far none of it seems overly salty and the chips and salad were spectacular.
The proprietor was, I think, Turkish or Cypriot (a very Zorba-esque fellow but I won’t presuppose Greek as he might be touchy). He was having a fantastically heated exchange with some vendor that kept ringing him back with something he didn’t want and I only wish I had the presence of mind to have recorded it. He was definitely the best thing about this stop (apart from the lovely stroll through the park).
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 8th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
I left the Pack Horse hungry and lucked onto Keskins Takeaway. I didn’t say GOOD lucked into it, but the veg was good and the chilli sauce passable…and the chips not too soggy. The döner was, on the other hand, as palpably pulpy as reconstituted corrugated board (they can’t all be good, I guess).
Walking toward the Waitrose to do a bit of a grocery shop before heading home, I was accosted by a chugger (for you Americans, this is Britspeak for charity muggers, those clipboard wielding parasites ubiquitous on the market walks of this country). ”Hello sir, would you like to help Guide Dogs today?”
Swallowing a big lump of my treat I gestured at the pile with my plastic fork; “I’m probably not the right person for that…I think I’m eating one of them, now.”
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 7th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Marmaris is just around the corner from my new house and after the mini-pub crawl today I needed some nourishment before putting up the new shower stall so kebab it was to be. The flavour was good but as the evening wore on I realised it was loaded with salt. The veg was vibrant but the photo doesn’t do it justice (weird flourescent fixtures in the dining area). There are several other kebaberies in the neighbourhood, though, so I’m not stuck for choice (Marmaris is here, if you are interested).
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 6th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Döner meat and chips doesn’t get any better than this, or if it does then the proprietors have probably missed the point. I have had this treat so often that on approaching Branos I have to wave off the staff in the event I want something different. The chilli sauce is thick, garlic rich, and perfect. The salad, when you get it, is always a meal on its own (the pickled cabbage an especially good treat). Right next door to the Falafel House, I am impressed that they maintain peace and harmony but they each have their own specialities.
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A brief meet-up at the Bell in Faringdon turned out to be not-brief-enough as I saw my bus pull away without me. Hungry, I headed for a kebab but the only place open didn’t have lamb döner…just chicken. This was very disappointing, at first.
The fellows in the One Minute Food House (I’m not sure if Minute has temporal or spatial connotations) were awfully nice Turkish dudes watching a Turkish news channel on satellite tv, so I decided to eat there. The salad looked fresh for this time of year but not nearly as pretty as in most kebab places (and yet it sang with flavour). The chicken was very good and much lighter than lamb usually is and the chilli sauce was a thick orgasm of garlic, paprika, and fairly hot chillies. The only down sides were the pita (a bit chewy) and the size (first truly small kebab, döner or shawarma I have ever seen).
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 5th entry for the 2013 Challenge]
They were rude and stingy with the toppings but at least they overcharged me and provided an unpalatable meal, too. Consistency is the key in this business. ”Whoa, I’d like some salt and vinegar on those chips, please.” “Sorry, I’ve already put the meat on ‘em. Do you want some sauce?”
She squirted some overly sweet sauce–more ketchup than chilli–over the meat that she, mercifully reheated on the skillet after scooping it out of the steam tray. This usually is a good thing since it helps boil away excess fat it has been sitting in but sometimes, like this time, it is the only ingredient with any flavour at all and, additionally, its absence yielded a brownish grey remainder more similar in texture to a blackboard eraser than any form of flesh. Yuck.
The absence of salad on top isn’t because the greens and tomatoes looked dodgy (although they did) but due to the fact that I wasn’t offered any. ”Four pounds fifty.” I dug around my pocket to find another pound to add to the £3.50 I had out, adding “you should change the menu to reflect the new price…you charged me £4.50 last year, as well and the price on the wall hasn’t been updated, yet.”
She replied, incredulously, “the cheek.” Indeed. Perhaps they make most of their money off the shady characters hanging out around the front of the store; they are selling something for 35 pounds, but I already had my poison.
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I still plan to do the weekly kebab for the 2013 Challenge, but I was famished on my way home (last meal was a bowl of cereal at 4:30 in the morning) and stopped by the Falafel House and, having never tried their kebabs before (the place next door is my favourite in Oxford) decided to give it a go.
While hot, the meat stayed tender and moist and the chilli sauce was rich with coriander leaf and was almost a hot salsa. The vinegar on the chips was especially sharp and tangy, and the onions, cabbage, lettuce, and tomatoes had flecks of coriander in it as well.
The temperature out has been hovering just below freezing and the meat soon cooled, but here was another nice surprise: instead of fat congealing on the döner, it just went sort of dry and chewy like some wonderfully spiced and still fairly tender jerky. Falafel House is now on my shortlist of Best Kebabs in Oxford.
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post and the 3rd entry for the 2013 Challenge]
Maybe it was just the cold (running through melting snow and continuing rain), but the Westway Chippy was quite a welcome stop. Then, it turned out to have absolutely sublime döner kebabs, chilli sauce that is not only (or, in Britain I should say, “at least”) hot but rich in flavours, and fantastic veg all for £3.80. Lovely.
Located here:
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[*kpw = kebab per week for 2013, as noted in an earlier post]
I can’t say I’m surprised at the vigour with which my American compatriots are attacking this year’s Challenge but I’m saddened and disappointed that so few took the drinking challenge, last year as seriously (I thought my people were all fat drunks but it turns out they are just fat). It should be noted that the crowd is showing some delectable burger porn over there, regardless of the misplaced priorities.
My addition for this week (I need 50 on the year) came from the Kebab Kid on Cowley Road, Oxford at the mid point of a run (well, after a pint of Doom Bar at the Cowley Retreat (pub #1067). The place came highly recommended which should have raised my suspicions…the chilli sauce was cloyingly sweet but the rest of the experience lived up to the word-of-mouth with decent flavour in the fairly dry meat (at least it wasn’t greasy) and marvelous chips and veg (cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes and chillies). I wouldn’t go out of my way but it is a decent lunch and not to heavy to manage a run back to work (and to dump off an unwanted shirt).
Took this over by the Christmas Tree dumping ground at nearby South Park and made a pig of meself
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