Random food notes

[mtbc]

Tonight I sampled some Shropshire Blue; it was agreeable enough. I appreciate the variety. I have already mentioned enjoying cheese and I still feel that some element of flavor must be key.

On the topic of appealing flavors, I have been having suspicions about sage. I am rather partial to sage and onion stuffing. Individually, onion and soft breadcrumbs are hardly special, so I am entertaining the hypothesis that I am partial specifically to the sage, that the onion and the bread are somewhat incidental. I thus plan to try making some generously saged chicken or somesuch to determine how tasty I find it.

Having mentioned Jonathan Meades in my previous entry, I probably ought to add that he has authored a cookbook that is written in his typical confident, direct manner: The Plagiarist in the Kitchen, so named because he is firmly of the opinion that good recipes are far more likely to arise from tweaking others' known-good ones than by de novo invention. Again, I suspect him of being mostly correct.

Comments

[aldabra]

We had a sage fondue recipe that was a keeper (but K won't eat fondue so I haven't had it in years). Alas my cookbooks are still in boxes somewhere, but the gist was cheddar and cider-or-wine-or-ale and cornflour and shredded fresh sage. Serve with cubed bread. (Possibly the original gist was Swiss cheese rather than cheddar, but among my optimisations is fondue that works first time...)

Oh, another cheese-and-sage recommendation: sage derby and apple tart, which is basically slices of sage derby and apple on pastry. K won't eat this one because a) melted cheese and b) fruit in a savoury dish.

[mtbc]

Sage derby turns out to be astonishingly absent from the stores. I may have to go to some fancy place to find any!