Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 January 2006 11:06:04
I'm going to start sounding like a food pseud here but blame Nigel Slater. Or The Spouse™, if you wish. Or Clare, who bought the kippers.
At New Year we had some kippers. From Seahouses, which is supposed to have excellent fish (Though apparently Craster, just down the Northumbrian coast, is better). We didn't get to touch them being made, though, which was a disappointment, as it's advertised on one of the tourist places that you can. Swizz.
There were lots left over, and my new (Christmas present from The Spouse™) book, The Kitchen Diaries, suggests kipper fish cakes. I've never made fish cakes before, but they looked easy, and were. And they were supposed to have dill in them - I wasn't sure if what I picked up in the greengrocer's was dill or fennel - it looked like fennel tops but I suppose I don't really know anything, do I, as the woman at the till said it was dill.
So now I feel like a very seasonally-appropriate foody type... local (well, bought locally 150 miles away!) fish, cooked in season...
We've also almost finished the Christmas cake, and I had the last of the rum balls last night. This is a recipe of my mum's which she's mde for many Christmasses and which I thought I'd try as part of Sweetshop of Katie, a present-creation enterprise this year. They were pronounced delicious by the New Year houseparty gathering. However, they were also pronounced incorrectly by the same, I felt. We have always pronounced the phrase "Rum Balls", two separate words, equal emphasis. The collected party could not make up its mind whether to pronounce them "Rumbles" or "Rum BALLS" with far too much emphasis on the second word. Odd how you can say something for years and not realise there's any other way to pronounce it.