That old chestnut

While the chestnut hot cross buns I made at Easter had been an excellent opportunity to open the tin of chestnut puree I'd had lurking in my cupboard for a while, the recipe had unfortunately only required the use of about half of it. I kept coming across the Tupperware pot containing the rest of the stuff in my fridge, generally looking at the greyish brown mass and wondering what on earth it was, before remembering and telling myself that I really must think of a way of using it before it started to go off...and then forgetting about it all over again.

Thankfully, I did remember to find some ideas for it, ahead of the mould starting to grow. The Merchant Gourmet website, where I had found the bun recipe, had a wealth of other excellent chestnutty suggestions; I was quite drawn to the "No Meat Meatballs" - partly for the name, and partly as it called for green lentils in the recipe. Merchant Gourmet were suggesting a pouch of their own lentils, but it just so happened that I had a tin of organic green bijoux lentils in my stash, crying out to be used (which for once didn't mean rapidly approaching or past their best before date).

Only a few days before my recipe search, the world had received the very sad news of the far-too-early passing of the great Victoria Wood, whose sketches, stand-up and sitcoms I have loved since about the age of 10. One of my favourites, and hence one I'd had on my mind at the time, was the brilliant "Brontëburgers" monologue, in which she played a tour guide at the Brontë family parsonage in Howarth despite having never read any of the books ("I'm more of a Dick Francis nut"), ending with the classic lines "Snacks and light refreshments are available in the Heathcliff Nosher Bar, so do feel free to sample our popular Brontëburgers. Or for the fibre-conscious, our Branwell Brontëburgers".

For Willy, England and Saint George!

While the very subject matter of this blog means that my posts pay little attention to when food is in season, I do nonetheless quite like to link what I cook and write about to the time of year, and specific calendar events. So I have sampled tins to try out recipes for Christmas and Easter, hearty Scottish fare for Burns Night, and Welsh and Irish dishes for St David's and St. Patrick's Days. So, two weeks ago, I felt it was high time that merrie olde England had a look-in too, with some tins to celebrate St George's Day on 23rd April. Which it just so happened was also the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, hence the title of this post.

One possibility being offered by a bar in Stoke Newington was this "Full English" cocktail - a somewhat dubious-sounding spin on a bloody mary, with HP sauce, Marmite, bacon, toast and a quail's egg adding to the traditional vodka, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce, all served in a baked bean tin. Alas, it was only available for a very limited time around the 23rd April, so I didn't get the chance to experience it for myself. Perhaps for the best - while this creation might be a low-sugar option compared to some cocktails, I think this benefit is probably cancelled out by the addition of salt, fat and cholesterol in the added elements.

The chicken tikka masala has reportedly been topping the polls of England's favourite favourite foods for over a decade now, but I felt something a little more traditional would be more appropriate. Few things could fit the bill more than a good old roast dinner, with roast beef feeling the most suitable - the French don't refer to the English as rosbifs for nothing, after all. I had just the tin for it too, with these Beef Slices in Gravy.

Deeply fascinatin'

Those of you with an interest in science and the natural world will have been enthralled this week by the footage beamed live from the bottom of the Mariana trench, which at 11km beneath the surface of the Pacific is the deepest point on Earth. That's nearly 3 times the average depth of the ocean, over 10 times deeper than sunlight can reach, and further below sea level than the summit of Mount Everest is above it. It's so hard to get to that very little is known about the region, so the images of the flora and fauna that somehow survive down there, including species never seen before, have stunned scientists just as much as the public, as their commentary on the footage reveals.

They also found this:

 

Proof, if ever it was needed, that whatever lengths, or depths, you go to, you can never completely get rid of SPAM these days.

The force is strong here...

...the maths, less so.

May the sauce be with you.

Chestnuts: not just for Christmas

Say the word "chestnuts" and, for many people, "roasting on an open fire" is probably the first thought that will come into their heads, evoking thoughts of winter nights, paper bags of the hot nuts bought from street vendors, and of course the traditional Christmas dinner, with chestnuts either in stuffings or tucked alongside the sprouts with crisp shards of bacon.

But why should we limit them just to the food of the festive season? While it's true that the nuts do come into season as the weather starts to get colder, surely there is a place for them on our tables at other times of year? It's easy enough to preserve them, after all, whether steeping them in sugar syrup to be consumed as the tooth-rottingly delicious treat that is marrons glacés, or simply pureeing them up and stucking them in a tin, as the gourmet merchants at Merchant Gourmet do.

You may recall that I tried their chestnut puree as part of my tin-based Christmas dinner in 2014, putting a layer of it in my turkey wellington, and mixing a dollop in with the tinned sprouts in an attempt to make them more palatable (it didn't). Apparently the company have now stopped selling it in tins, sadly switching to plastic pouches instead, which may be why, some time later, I came across a tin in the reduced section, even though it was still well in date. Having bought it but not got round to opening it at the end of last year, I started to look around for some less Christmassy uses for chestnuts. And lo and behold, if Merchant Gourmet's website didn't provide precisely that, with a recipe suitable for Easter - the world's second favourite Christian festival - Dulce de Leche and Chestnut Puree Hot Cross Buns.

Baxters Broth Brothers

Recovering recently from a bout of illness picked up on a trip to Cuba (I won't go into too much detail, but it was the Cuban equivalent of Delhi Belly, or as I dubbed it, 'Castroenteritis' ), I felt the need for some good hearty soups to restore me back to health. Of course something homemade will always be your best bet here, seemingly infusing the broth with additional healing properties, but when you're feeling a little under the weather, you don't always feel up to all that chopping of onions and veg, followed by a lengthy simmering, and then the blending - or if you do, you suddenly find that by the time you've finished, you're not that hungry after all.

So naturally I decided I would turn to the tins for comfort and sustenance, with Baxters seeming to me the next best thing to homemade, given that their messages from Audrey Baxter on the labels almost give the impression that they have been made by a real person. I happened to have two different tins in my stash - Highlanders Broth, and Scotch Broth - but which to go for? Which did I feel would do me the most good?

Shakespeare Tin Love

Occasionally in my blogposts I have moved away, briefly, from just sampling tinned foods and attempting to write vaguely amusing things about them, to tell you about some artist or other who has either used or been inspired by such items in their work, or even television programmes that happen to feature canned goods. Not quite sure why I do it, but it makes a change, at least.

I have yet to have reason though to write about anything concerning tinned food and the theatre, one of my other great passions. Until now, that is.

Recently I discovered that the Sheffield-based theatre company Forced Entertainment would, over the course of a week, be putting on their own take on the complete works of William Shakespeare at the Barbican Theatre, under the title Table Top Shakespeare. In essence it is a staging of the thirty-six plays from the First Folio (no Henry VIII or The Two Noble Kinsmen, which is a shame as otherwise I could have called this blogpost 'The Tuna-ble Tinsmen and other stories'), abridged to just an hour each, and presented without scenery, costumes, or huge casts, but instead on a table top, with one actor telling the story using a range of everyday household items as the characters.

The Barbican website describes it thus: "a salt and pepper pot for the king and queen. A spoon stands in for a servant and a candle for the Friar. Macbeth becomes a cheese grater, Pericles a light bulb and Hamlet’s now a bottle of ink."

© Hugo Glendinning