Someone's in the Kitchen

Today I am going to tell you a little about cooking in England, it has been a huge challenge for me to catch my stride in shopping and getting around the kitchen here so there is a lot to tell. First, let me direct you to the left column, you will see a link for "Anglotopia> Dispatches from the North". This is a new column I am writing for a website called Anglotopia which is a site dedicated to British culture. I am really excited for the opportunity to write for Anglotopia. If you check out the site you will notice that as expected there is a lot to do with London on the site, so I am really excited to offer a Northern perspective. Maybe the North East Tourism Board will thank me for relaying the message to Anglophiles that the North is definitely worth a visit! I will be updating my column on Anglotopia on Wednesdays, and my posts will show up at the left so if you would like you can feel free to check it out. I won't be writing about all the same things since it is a different audience so it shouldn't be too monotonous if you want to read both.

Now, back to the subject of this blog! Those of you who know me well know that I love cooking. I was so excited when I moved here and realized I would have my own kitchen, not a kitchen I shared with two vegetarian roommates, a kitchen that I could work in every day at my leisure. In my first couple months I wrote a lot about my frustrations navigating the UK supermarkets. Now that I have sorted my courgettes from my aubergines and have figured out that ham is bacon and bacon is ham, I am left with another dilemma altogether. 

For Christmas Jason bought me Jamie Oliver's new cookbook "Jamie's Ministry of Food" which I believe is only available in the UK, so sadly you can't go out and buy it because its a fantastic cookbook. Jamie Oliver was one of my favorite chefs to watch on the Food Network and I love his rustic no-fuss style of cooking so I love this cookbook. Up until I received this cookbook, I had been working from American recipes. The big difference is that in the UK recipes are composed of weight instead of volume. For example, instead of a recipe calling for 2 cups of flour it might call for 500 grams of flour, and I just pulled those numbers out of my head and don't have a clue if those two are anywhere near equal. 

That is my problem, I can eyeball a cup but I have no idea what 500 grams looks like. I think it will be difficult for me to learn to judge amounts the way I do with American style cooking, because a cup of sugar and a cup of nuts are going to appear exactly the same but 500 grams of sugar and 500 grams of nuts will probably appear completely different. I purchased a digital scale to aid in measuring my ingredients but often when I am in the kitchen I like to substitute ingredients or add a half cup more of something if I really like it, so making recipes my own is a bit of challenge with metric cooking. 

The other sad thing about this is that it makes it difficult for me to share my favorite recipes with my American friends. I suppose I could go to the trouble of measuring out ingredients and transferring them to a measuring cup to convert it for my friends it is just an awful lot of trouble to go through and too many added steps when I am trying to prepare dinner.

Another inconvenience is that the kitchen equipment itself is much different. The ovens here are roughly half the size of ovens in the US, which is really disappointing for me when I am used to a nice cavernous oven. Below is a photo of a typical English cooker (yes, they call it a cooker here).

At the very top is what is called a grill here, it is really more like a broiler, the flame comes down from above and the food you want to "grill" (or if you are American, broil) is placed on the tray below that slides out. The stovetop is called the "hob" and is pretty much the same as an American stovetop with 4 burners but it just goes by a different name. Finally at the bottom is the tiny oven. 

Just in case you are wondering, what we would consider a grill is only called a barbecue. You don't say you are grilling out, you would say you are barbecuing even if there is no barbecue sauce involved. This has been the most challenging for me because when I think of a grill I think of a grate that is heated from underneath and here it is basically the exact opposite. Also, although toasters are available, most people make toast in their grills. It turns out that although I am a fantastic cook the one thing I can't ever seem to get right is toast. I almost always get distracted and leave one side in for just a little too long and it doesn't take more than a few seconds to go from perfectly browned to charred and black. The grill's heat source is an open gas flame, so I supposed it is kind of like trying to make toast with a giant blow torch and I can't get the hang of it.

Finally, while I am on the subject of kitchens, I know in my Thanksgiving post I briefly mentioned what a typical Sunday dinner is here. Although it might be common in America for families to sit down to a family meal, as with most things here the definition of "Sunday dinner" is much more finite. Ever Sunday, British mothers cook a roast of some kind, usually beef, pork, chicken or lamb and this is served with roasted vegetables like carrots and parsnips, sometimes Brussels sprouts and stuffing balls (which are exactly what they sound like, its like a meatball but made with stuffing), and always brown gravy and Yorkshire puddings. The meal is usually served in the mid-afternoon between 2 and 4 o'clock. 

There is never any change to this formula, and like clockwork every Sunday every house in the UK smells like roasting meat and veggies. There is an option for those who can't cook or those who are hungover from Saturday night. Most restaurants and hotels have a carvery ever Sunday. It is a buffet style dinner with a carving station at the front with beef, pork, chicken and lamb and then all of the other Sunday dinner staples. It is a common topic of conversation here to discuss which place has the best Sunday carvery. 

I have recently started adhering to this custom and the past two weeks I have made a proper Sunday dinner before Jason has to drive back to Scotland for work. Last week I made a roast leg of lamb and yesterday I made a roast pork loin. I of course still add my own flavor to it by seasoning my roasts with lots of herbs and garlic, but I think I will soon become an expert at preparing roasts.

I hope you enjoyed my post this week, thanks for reading!