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This splendid ciabatta, made with golden durum wheat, comes with a recipe on the label. More of a serving suggestion than a recipe — very simple, and very familiar. Indeed, an old favourite. But I hadn't had it for a while, so it was with my mouth watering that I warmed the bread for 10 minutes in a hot oven, then sliced it in half down the middle and spilt one half lengthwise.
I then layered the cut quarter loaf with sliced tomatoes (using the other quarter loaf as a surface for slicing the tomatoes, to catch the juice) and slices of mozzarella and ground some black pepper over it. Then I added torn basil leaves and repeated the whole process until the quarter loaf was stacked high.
Then I poured olive oil on it ('drizzle' is the official word, but this was a generous drizzle) and stuck the other quarter loaf back on top to make a big fat sandwich. Then I devoured it.
It was outstandingly delicious. The olive oil I used was a top Spanish number called Picualia Aove 1. It's a classy oil and one of my favourites. There is a hint of agreeable, aromatic rankness to it which at first suggested fresh garlic to me. But it's more accurately compared (as it is in the company's literature) to truffles.
This oil has a strong character of its own and next time I might try a blander, simpler oil which instead of asserting itself merely brings out the flavour of the other ingredients.I can hardly wait to attempt this experiment (I still have half the loaf, remember?). And I can only begin to imagine what it would be like with real buffalo mozzarella instead of the cheap stuff I used...
But in the meantime, this is the meal of the week.
(PS: Tried the blander oil but Picualia made for a noticeably superior sandwich.)
(PPS: Bought another loaf and tried it with buffalo mozzarella — Laverstoke Farms Buffalo Mozzarella — and it was superb. Which it should be, considering it cost three times as much as my usual mozzarella; but only because it was on special. Normally it's five times as much.)
(Image credit: the pack shot of the bread is from Waitrose, which is indeed where I bought it. The Picualia olive oil bottle is from the Evoo Gourmet website.)
I'm always keenly interested in olive oil, so when I had a chance to try a posh-looking specimen of a Chilean extra virgin oil from Tesco, I was keen. Aura Limited Edition (I'm a sucker for that) Estate Bottled (ditto) is a blend of Arbosana and Picual olives. It was also on special, about a third off its full price at Tesco's (as I write this it's still on discount there for a couple of days), so that was the clincher.
Disappointing to report, then, that at a Supper Club blind tasting of extra virgin olive oils (dipped with pieces of bread) the Aura didn't stand out. I decided not to buy it again. In fact, I decided to get rid of the rest of it in cooking. So I used it in the legendary Jim Harrison Pizza Sauce.
But the results were so fabulous that I actually went out and bought another bottle. There was something about the synergy of the oil with this recipe which was devastatingly delicious. Well worth a try.
(Image credit: The bottle shot is taken from Aura's own rather groovy FaceBook page.)
As Part 2 of my great Christmas Heston Experiment I sampled his Mini Ham Hock and Piccallili Terrine Slices.
(Ham hocks were until recently a cheap and unfashionable cut of meat. Suddenly they're trendy.) And these Mini Slices were very nice. As much as I enjoy his more spicy and exotic creations, I do prefer Heston to be straightforward.
These slices don't require any cooking or other preparation — I immediately and decisively disregarded the suggestion to serve them with piccallili mayonnaise and micro herbs, whatever the hell those are — and simply dished them up on pieces of decent quality bread with some salading, maybe a sliced tomato and either ordinary Hellmann's mayo or a drizzle of olive oil. Tasty, wholesome and simple.
This confirms my impressions in an earlier post. Heston is at his best when providing simple food from straightforward ingredients of high quality.
I still feel sorry for the pigs, though.
(Image credit: The picture is from Ocado, Waitrose's online sales site.)
I'm rather fond of Heston Blumenthal, the Nutty Professor of modern British cuisine and I'm delighted that the good folks at Waitrose are collaborating with him to bring some of his madcap creations within reach of ordinary mortals like you and I. (They still ain't cheap, but keep your eyes peeled for those special offers, folks.)
This Christmas I had the pleasure of sampling four of Heston's Waitrose seasonal specials, designed for Yuletide parties and dinners, two savoury and two sweet: the mini chicken, leek and ham hock pies (I love the fact that it's the hock), the equally-mini chilli con carne muffins, the chocolate caramel and ginger swirl (that reminds me, I'm going to have a slice of this for breakfast. Yum) and the spiced shortcrust minced pies.
They were all good, and particularly tasty if you went to the trouble of following the serving suggestions — adding wholegrain mustard and mayonnaise to the pies and tarting up the muffins with grated lime zest, chopped coriander and sour cream (or "soured" cream as it's called in Britain, the element of intentionality being intended to reassure people there's nothing wrong with the stuff).
But three out of four of these dishes were over-spiced for my taste. In particular, the ginger in the chocolate caramel etc swirl is so intense that it dances on the edge of rankness. I love spicy food, but it seems to me that these three were all over done. So much so that I actually wondered if Heston is secretly a chain smoker. That would account for the heavy handedness of the flavourings.
I hasten to add that the desserts are not overly sweet, a much graver culinary sin and one I would find much more off-putting.
And the chicken, leek and ham hick pies were terrific, with a wholesome home-made taste.
Have you ever been impatient to eat a banana and selected a fruit that you knew wasn't quite ripe yet? And then, when you peel it and bite into it, you discover what you knew would happen all along: the flavour lacks sweetness and is chalky and disappointing.
Well, there was a time when that would not have happened. Up until the mid 20th Century the variety of banana consumed all over the world was called Gros Michel, and these little rascals were as delicious when eaten green as they were ripe.
Unfortunately Gros Michel (which I'll loosely translate as Fat Michael or Big Mike) was wiped out, completely in commercial terms, by a plague of fungus (Fusarium oxysporum commonly known as Panama disease — a relative of Dutch Elm disease).
So the second best variety stepped up and came into commercial use. This is called the AAA Cavendish and it is the variety that you (and I) are eating today,
The "AAA" isn't a designation of quality. Rather it refers to the fact that the Cavendish is a hybrid with three sets of chromosomes (instead of the usual two). It is called a triploid. The A stands for "acuminata" because all three of the Cavendish's ancestors come from the Musa acuminata subspecies.
The other subspecies of the banana family is Musa balbisiana and cross pollination with M. acuminata has led to the AAB triploids which represent the Pacific plantains.
Enough science. Now for the dramatic bit.
Just as Gros Michel was wiped out by a fungus, Cavendish is now under threat, by a villain called black Sigatoka. (If ever there was a villainous name, that's one.)
Experiments are under way to make Cavendish resistant to the fungus, either by genetic engineering or through breeding in resistance by recreating it from its wild ancestors.
Neither line of research is showing much success.
So keep your fingers crossed, or we may not have any bananas, even inferior Cavendish bananas to eat, green or ripe.
However it's worth noting that the superior tasting Gros Michel variety still exists. It's a rarity, but it's out there...
Maybe it's time for Big Mike to make a comeback.
(Most of the information for this post derives from an excellent article in the 20 April 2013 New Scientist 'Go Bananas' by Bob Holmes.)
(Image credits: the green and yellow bananas are from Boing Boing. The heaped bananas are from Wikipedia. The stages of ripening bananas 1-7 are from Carla Golden Wellness. The close up of a pile of bananas is from Scientific American. All these sites provide some interesting reading on the subject. The Velvet Underground cover is from Trending Trademarks, which has some interesting reading on a copyright dispute between the Velvets and the Warhol estate.)
