So, the headline above might be slightly hyperbolic, but the sentiment I’m trying to convey is very real and serious. Last night, UK TV cooking legend, Delia Smith’s new show Delia premiered on BBC2 and instead of garnering the rave reviews virtually every one of her previous series have, this one has been roundly panned, and foodies across the UK are outraged at what they see as Delia’s complete volte face.

You see, for years Delia has been at the forefront of those encouraging us to return to fresh, seasonally-available foods, locally-grown in traditional ways and prepared using time-honored British techniques and recipes – something many of us started to believe, and a mantra that johnny-cum-latelys like serial-lisper Jamie Oliver have made a career out of parroting. But, in her new show, it seems that she is advocating the use of ready-prepared, dried or frozen ingredients to make dishes that are barely cooked, take no time to make and, frankly, sound horrendous. After having built her career by encouraging, nay teaching, a nation to cook properly and traditionally with real ingredients, she’s throwing all that away and encouraging us to cook as little as possible and make meals from foods full of preservatives, artificial colorings and flavorings. Delia had always said that the actual cooking could be as pleasurable as the eating, but now she’s saying it’s just a waste of time. Why, Delia? Why?

The equivalent, for US readers, would be if Julia Child had suddenly decided to advocate making frozen dinners or meals out of a can. Regular readers will know that we’re typically very disparaging about TV cooks who encourage us to cook in this way – Rachel Ray and Sandra Lee, in particular – and in this instance we’re going to have to agree (without having seen the show, admittedly) that (assuming the reports are true) Delia has made a serious mis-step here. Let’s hope that the cooking-haters out there (e.g. the Rachel Ray/Sandra Lee lovers) don’t win on UK TV as they have on the Food Network.

It’s a philosophical issue: either you look at food as fuel, and therefore eating and cooking as necessary evils to be completed as quickly as possible and with the minimum of effort, or you look at food as an opportunity to make a necessity enjoyable and relaxing, and therefore eating and cooking as a “way of bringing pleasure to everyday life,” to quote Delia. Surely those who are on TV trying to get people excited about food should be in the latter camp, rather than encouraging us to rush through to the end of the meal so we can get on with our busy lives? What do you think?

• TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE WITH MUSHY PEA

For example, in the past several years, we’ve had Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the recent remake with Johnny Depp), Chocolat, No Reservations, Super Size Me, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and Fast Food Nation. Prior to that were such movies as Fried Green Tomatoes, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original version with Gene Wilder and his weird sweep-over), Mystic Pizza, and Jamon, Jamon.

Okay, so I hate to be film-snob, but really. Apart from that fact that only one of these movies is really about enjoying food (Chocolat), and many of them are about what’s wrong in the world of food today (SuperSize Me and Fast Food Nation) there really aren’t many good food movies out there. I should say that I didn’t see No Reservations, but that’s because it looked gash on the trailer, and that during a brief web search I found that someone else had had written about this same thing (Brownie Points Blog) from where I cribbed some of the titles above, but when you visit that site, you’ll realize (if you recognize all the films – I had only heard of half of them) that most of them aren’t really about food. They are stories that revolve somehow around food (Jamon, Jamon) – love stories mostly (must be the sensual thing, I guess) in which food is a metaphor, but, sadly, food just as food is hardly ever the central thing. Why is this? And, why do you so rarely see people eat in movies?

I mean, how often to you encounter movie scenes in which tables are laden with food, but nobody’s eating it? A lot, that’s how often. That’s why, apart from it being an excellent, thought-provoking movie, I really enjoy the scenes in Munich when the Israeli kill-squad are sitting around a table laden with brisket, vegetables and wine bottles, tucking in to a delicious meal. And, the other scene in the movie when Eric Bana’s character “Avner” is blindfolded and taken to lunch with Michael Lonsdale’s “Papa” and they all sit down and eat at a table for about thirty outside under a trellis — it’s a beautiful scene. To me, these scenes clearly show that even men focused on killing other men must eat, and when they do, it can be an enjoyable and life-affirming experience. So it depresses me that there are so many movies in which the cast are sitting at a table piled with delicious victuals and then, suddenly, it all goes west — someone gets shot or a fight starts or the dreaded monster arrives with the appetizers and the cast becomes it’s dinner and miss out on their own. Why is this?

Perhaps a focus on food is missing because watching other people eat makes you feel queasy? But then, people very readily watch gory, slasher movies while wolfing down popcorn, soda, ice-cream, hot dogs, nachos and mike & ikes every weekend. And, why do you take your girlfriend/wife out for dinner if not to sit opposite them while they eat? No, it can’t be that. Is Hollywood trying to tell us something about the family dinner, or food in general?

I’m remembering lots of occasions now when meal times get messed up in movies. For instance, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer hold up a diner in Pulp Fiction spoiling the John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s breakfasts, Kate Capshaw screams and passes out during dinner in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (due to the chilled monkey brains, I think) which must have disturbed the other guests, and, the glutton in Se7en is tied to a chair and made to eat plate after plate of spaghetti before he finally carks it. Even worse, perhaps, Marlon Brando has a heart attack among the tomato canes in The Godfather. Is Hollywood attacking gardening — the source of food — too?! I think I’ve identified something sinister here that needs exploring, and in the spirit of figuring this conspiracy out, I’m planning to sign-up to NetFlicks and begin my lengthy research into why Hollywood hates food.

Until this research is complete, please tell us what your favorite food film or food-focused movie scene is. It could be from a TV show too, if you’d prefer, but that’s almost another post in itself. I mean, the cafe in (long-running and absolutely dreadful English soap opera) Eastenders always struck me as unnecessarily grim — ugly people swilling weak tea and sullenly pushing down plates of fried eggs, sausage and fried tomato to the sounds of some crappy 80s music on a crackly radio somewhere – the whole thing just looked insanitary. Then again, the entire show is depressing and ridden with ugly people, so why should the food by any different?

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY:

• SAUSAGE AND PEPPER SANDWICHES
• TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE (Sausages Nested in Batter)
• PROVENCAL RABBIT WITH OLIVES AND CAPERS
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)
• Bon Appetit Magazine’s ‘Makeover’- Love It or Leave It?
• European Union to Stop Junk Food Ads – Why Not America?
• European Roast…? (Why Coffee Taste Better There)
• Rachel Ray – Maybe Hate is a Strong Word?

Now, of course, it’s not true. The British do not, as far as I know, eat toads, though, if frogs are edible, and taste a bit like chicken, then I might be prepared to try toads, if sauteed with a little garlic and parsley. However, the British do eat toad in the hole – a delicious, simple and filling dish that is one of my father’s perennial favorites. I, like my father, love this dish too and had been threatening to make it for my wife for months until recently, when the weather got cold enough to warrant a meal with sausages, eggs, flour, milk and gravy, I finally got around to it.

It went down very well, I’m glad to report, and it’s an easy, inexpensive and relatively quick meal to make on a weekday night. You should try it whether you like amphibians or not.

Toad in the Hole with Fresh Mushy Peas (serves 4)

For the batter:

• 1 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk

Crack eggs and whisk yolks and whites together. Add to flour and mix into a paste before adding milk and whisking until smooth. Set aside, or refrigerate, until ready to use.

For the “Toad”:

• 8 sausage links (about 1 1/2 – 2 lbs), separated
• 1 onion, sliced thinly
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 1 pint hot water
• 2 tbsp Bisto (or use some beef stock and thicken w/ cornstarch)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper

Recipe for main dish:

Preheat oven to 425F. Heat skillet to medium-high and add oil. Brown sausages on all sides, then remove them. Lower heat to medium and add onions. Saute them until soft. Add garlic and pinch of salt. Combine water and bisto powder. Continue to saute for four or five mins, until onions are becoming translucent, before adding gravy mixture. Reduce heat to low and allow liquid to reduce by about a third.

Grease a 12inch baking dish with oil and place sausages in it. Pour the batter mixture around the sausages and slap it all in the oven for about 20 minutes or until batter is risen and golden-brown. Serve in portions of two sausages and pour onion gravy on top. Goes great with the peas but sauteed cabbage, collard greens, kale or broccoli rabe are also good accompaniments. Enjoy!

For the peas:

• 1 lb frozen peas
• 1/4 stick unsalted butter
• A dash of light or heavy cream (about 1-2 tablespoons)
• 1/2 cup water

Simmer the peas in the water for about 12 minutes until soft. Add the butter, cream, salt and pepper and then smash the peas, but make sure to leave them with plenty of texture. Serve on the side of the toad-in-the-hole.

CHECK OUT SOME OF THESE OTHER POSTS:

• HUNGARIAN GOULASH
• LEMONGRASS BEEF SHORTRIBS
• Pulling Pints: Not Small Beer
• A Bloody Delicious Time in England – A Recap
• JAMAICAN JERK CHICKEN
• PERFECT BROCCOLI DI RAPE WITH SWEET SAUSAGE

Many, many moons ago, I published my recipe for pernil, the delicious Puerto Rican roasted pork butt/shoulder. Recently, I had a whole Saturday afternoon to try a longer and slower cooking method for my bone-in pork butt. I have to tell you, if you have the time I would advise cooking it this way as you will have meat absolutely dripping moist and falling off the bone. The quicker method in my earlier recipe is a very good way of cooking the pork if you don’t have 8-9 hours to kill waiting to tear into the pernil. But, if you do remember to put your pork in by 11AM, you will not be disappointed by the results of low and slow cooking.

I am cutting and pasting the old pernil recipe here and adding my alternative “Low and Slow” cooking time. I hope you’ll give it a shot – and let me know what you think! Remember to allow your pernil to marinate overnight for the best results!!

Vermut, or sweet vermouth (the red stuff made by Martini, amongst others), is a sweetish, but slightly bitter, dark red/maroon colored fortified wine that is very popular in Madrid, with several tascas (tapas bars) we visited having it on tap as they did beer. It is served in a tumbler or a hi-balls glass with a couple of cubes of ice and a slice of lemon. Vermouth is fashioned out of wine grapes (but only the very sugary ones) and various herbs which combine to give the drink a sweetness with a nice herbal astringency that means it’s not too cloying on the palate.

Neither of us had ever drunk neat sweet vermouth before last week, indeed, we’d never even thought of it as an option. I remember discussing with my wife, years ago, that in the UK it’s not uncommon for people to have a glass of dry vermouth either neat over ice or with a splash of soda water or sparkling lemonade (SevenUp etc.), and that in continental Europe if you order a martini, you’ll get a glass of dry vermouth and not a vodka or gin martini cocktail. She was surprised to learn this, but reasoned that it might just be a cultural thing – after all, the Martini cocktail often contains very little, if any, Martini products, so Americans have their own little peculiarities too. And so, with this in mind, we decided it would be rude, nay foolish, if we didn’t take advantage of this opportunity for a new kind of refreshment.

Several successive evenings of tapas led us to the conclusion that vermut, at the very least, should be afforded a place in the noble pantheon of our favored aperitivos, and we learned that approximately three glasses was the optimal number during an evening of roving between various Madrid tascas. Three being enough time to fully appreciate the drink’s complexity and ability to meld its flavors with a variety of tapas dishes, and for the alcohol to build to an appreciable level in our veins.

So, I say to you that you should consider purchasing a bottle of sweet vermouth for purposes other than combining it with whiskey in a “Manhattan” and try it neat alongside a selection of your favorite tapas (recipes for which you should keep an eye out for here at weareneverfull.com in the very near future.)

• • The REAL Cocido of Spain
  • Jamon, Jamon
  • Pictures of Madrid
  • Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
  • Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
  • Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
  • CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP

Check out our other posts on Spain:

I bring this subject up, not to highlight again that we had badly upset stomachs during our trip to England, as my wife discussed this at extensive length below, but rather as a roundabout kind of way of introducing an anecdote, which in turn introduces a recipe. You see, at my office we are made/encouraged to bring food to our Christmas party (why this is the case is quite another story altogether), and last year I brought along a black bean dip. This bean dip was a great success with even the president of the company telling me how good he thought it was. Among the other admirers was my boss at the time, who I had never seen eye to eye with. (Subsequently, he has left the company but I should say that it had nothing to do with my bean dip.) But, in telling me how much he liked it (about the only thing I’d done until that point that he had liked) he asked me whether it contained any meat as he was a strict vegetarian and couldn’t stand to eat any flesh. Smiling, I reassured him that it contained no meat or meat products of any kind and that he should go ahead and eat all he could. I took great joy in the, admittedly very petty, trick I had played on him as he tucked in and scraped the bowl clean.

My bean dip, of course, contains chorizo and ham or chicken stock, and half of the joy of watching my boss eat the dip was the seeing him wolf down small cubes of chorizo without so much as a pause to think about why a bean dip should contain something reddish-brown, chewy, smoky and most definitely porky in taste. The advantage of having chorizo in the beans though, is that it provides the porky flavor that gives the often plain tasting bean something to shout about.

So, if you like porky, cumin flavored black beans (and this recipe works just as well for pinto and red beans providing you give them a quick mash at the end) hot or cold, as a side dish or a dip, then check out the recipe below. It goes especially well with the pork chops with lime and olives, but only really if you substitute the yucca for rice, otherwise it can get a bit thick on your palate.  Otherwise, this side dish is great with other Latino-inspired dishes.  We use it often as a side to soft tacos, burritos and shredded chicken sopes.  Get creative.

Black, Red or Pinto Beans with Chorizo and Cumin

Ingredients:

• 1/2 onion, diced roughly
• 3-5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1/2 long hot chili pepper (or other hot pepper), chopped finely (optional)
• 2 medium chorizo links (spanish-style, not mexican), diced small
• 1 can black beans (or pinto or red beans), drained
• 1 pint ham or chicken stock
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tbsp chopped cilantro
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Recipe:

• Saute onions until softened. Add chorizo and allow to release its delicious orange fat.
• Add garlic and hot pepper and allow to saute.
• Throw in beans and allow flavors to mix before adding in dry spices. Stir.
• Add roughly half the stock and turn heat to medium. Simmer beans for about 20-25 mins and adding more stock whenever you can see the beans.
• At about the twenty minute mark, taste beans and if soft, you’re ready. If still a bit chewy, cook until soft.
• Add chopped cilantro and lime juice.
• Mash beans a bit if red or pinto, but not if black.
• Correct seasoning and serve.

1. Rachel Ray Hot (wha-wha-WHAT!!?!?!??!)
2. Rachel Ray Photo (ewww, why? Just turn on TFN, I bet she’s on RIGHT NOW)
3. Rachel Ray Apron (does she ever wear one over that lovely too-tight, tucked-in mom-jean look? Why would she want to cover that up!?)
4. Rachel Ray Large (?????)
5. Rachel Ray Hairstyle (maybe they are meaning to look up “The Rachel” from the 90′s?)
6. Rachel Ray Butt Pics (ummmmm….)
7. Rachel Ray A$$ (uhhhhhhh….)
8. Rachel Ray Fu%king (no joke… someone out in cyber-land was actually hoping to find something with this one – me, I just threw up a little in my mouth)
9. I want to fu%k Rachel Ray (must be the same guy who came up with nothing after searching for #8)
10. Rachel Ray + hate (must be a friend of ours)

And my FAVORITE “We Are Never Full” Rachel Ray Search Engine term is (drumroll, please):

10. Rachel Ray Bong (I could not even tell you how those three words would get anyone to our blog!)

I hope I have not offended anyone, especially if you are one of the ‘special’ people who have discovered “We Are Never Full” by typing in one of the above terms. Regardless of how you arrived, thank you for stopping by!

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY:

• NOOOOO! Could it Be? (Mario Gets Fired?)
• Rachel Ray – Maybe Hate is a Strong Word?
• Diversity Finally Comes to The Food Network
• Bon Appetit Magazine’s ‘Makeover’- Love It or Leave It?
• Sara Moulton Leaving Food Network for PBS