Food glorious food

We eat mainly Dominican food but every so often but I go through a phase when I can’t stand the sight of yet another plantain, or any more rice and beans and I become determined to cook something I really fancy. I can never tell what will come into my head and dominate every waking moment until I manage to cook it, and it doesn't help that I love watching cooking programmes on the television which is pure torture as I just can’t buy most of the ingredients here.

Last week I couldn't stop thinking about Beef Bourguignon. Every waking hour it was all I could think of with delicious creamy Dauphinois Potatoes and broccoli. I searched the web and came across Jamie Oliver’s recipe here. Easy. I went through all of the ingredients and I had most but no bacon. The nearest place to buy bacon here is two hours away. I had a look to see if I could make bacon but it seems like a very long process and you need stuff to cure the pork which I don’t have and it has to hang in the garden shed for two weeks. Apart from the fact I don’t have a shed – just a hen house – there was no way I was going to wait two weeks. Instead I used a smoked pork chop which you can buy here easily and cut it into slivers. It sort of looked like bacon. For the potatoes you need cream and I had no cream and again you can’t buy it nearby. I looked at “How to make cream” recipes which again looked difficult so I changed the potato recipe and did boulangere potatoes instead which have vegetable stock instead of cream – I had to make the vegetable stock from scratch mind.

Anyway it was delicious and well worth it.

It did not satisfy my craving for different food though so a couple of days later I made a quiche. That was easy enough as well and I used Delia Smith’s recipe here. I had to do a fair bit of substitution as no lard, no bacon, no double cream and she said you need to use one of those spring form tins which you can open at the side to get the quiche out. I don’t have one so I used my good old Dominican Pyrex pie dish.
Guess what – my Dominican pie dish transformed itself brilliantly into Delia’s spring form dish by splitting in half in the oven just as the quiche was cooked – all I had to do was scoop the quiche onto a plate. Dominican Pyrex always shatters sooner or later – you can never tell when it will happen though.

I was now on a roll to keep on cooking food I had been craving.
So I went shopping a few days ago and look what I found.

I have been longing for Blackberry and Apple Crumble and cream for years and years. Again no cream, but I bought ice cream instead. It was absolutely lovely and even the Dominicans liked it.

Certainly a change from chicken foot soup!