Another traditional (for me) pastime at the Strawberry Fair is the end of festival Chai tea. I fancied a cup just now and found this collection of recipes and other Chai information.

Was watching "What are we like" last night (talk about telly on the cheap - watched it and rather enjoyed it anyway, though). They had a story about how tea was the new coffee and featured a couple of London tea houses. I thought that Chai Bizarre in particular looked very cool and decided to look it up - the interwebnet's a wonderful thing. I loved the interior with the morrocan poufs for seating. That actually might have been a different tea place, but fascinating and exotic all the same.

Apparently, there's also a restaurant called Chor Bizarre which is a sister to Chor Bizarre in New Delhi. I'm not normally keen on curry, but this place says the food is not the Anglicised Indian food you normally get. They also serve Kashmiri food, which sounds pretty interesting. Gonna have to try these next time I'm in the city...

Jes like my old gran used to make. She was from Knoxville, Tennessee and while some of her cooking was atrocious (stewed tomatoes? eew), some of it was fantastic. I've never found a good recipe for the Hot Milk Cake she used to make, but this collard greens recipe looks about right. I'll use spring greens instead and believe it or not, ham hocks are quite easy to find at the local Tesco. Same with yams and sweet potatoes for some reason. How exotic.

...but as long as we're on the subject of food, these are excellent cookie cooking tips. It even answers the question, "what makes some cookies crispy while others are soft and chewy?"

Obviously substitute Fair Trade chocolate for the naughty multi-national's brand.

I've been craving chorizo and eggs recently - real Mexican chorizo with fried potatoes and tortillas. Mexican chorizo is quite different from the Spanish chorizo you get around here. The latter is a dried cured sausage, while the former is more like spicy fresh sausage meat. The best chorizo forms pools of bright red oil on the plate - clearly not healthy, but essential.

I found what looks to be a good chorizo recipe. I did half a batch using lard instead of the pork fat and crushed about five chili de arbol with 4 cloves of garlic and rock salt. Even though I wore surgical gloves (yes, I have jar of them - and?), my mouth is already burning. I may regret this...

Oh, happy day. Martin at the Sun Pig has pointed me towards the Rosslyn Deli in London that offers foods from the US.

I wouldn't go so far as to put any of the fantastic American food products in the "very best of American cuisine" category, but a sometimes source of my favourite comfort (read "crap") foods like Cap'n Crunch, Masa Harina, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and sweet pickles is absolutely what I need right now.

Another chapter in my eternal search for the perfect Buffalo Chicken Wing recipe. This time I kept it quite simple, but did end up making my own ranch-style dressing as our corner shop didn't carry anything even close. It came out well, if a tad too garlicky. I even made buttermilk if you can imagine. The recipes are below in more.

And now for something completely different:

The 11 am Puzzle, in honour of Diamond Geezer's Birthday
I made a load of chicken wings last night, but there was also a ton of bread, so not all of them were eaten. If everyone save the one vegetarian guest ate 9 pieces of chicken and the cat managed to steal one piece for herself, how many chicken wings were left over this morning?

Buffalo Chicken Wings II
This recipe is for loads of people. A big pack of 14 wings will feed two if that's all you're having. I made enough for six...

Joint the wings, discard the tips and place the pieces in a single layer in a baking dish. Pour on a little oil to keep them from sticking and bake in a hot oven for about an hour, turning every so often. If you have lots, rotate the dishes as well so they cook evenly. When they're getting brown pour off the excess oil and drain the wings on kitchen towel (paper towels) briefly.

Put them back in the dish, coat with the sauce below and bake for another 10 to 20 minutes. Serve with ranch dressing for dipping, thick crusty bread and maybe some raw veg for the odd veggie...

Hot sauce

melt together in a saucepan:
250g butter
4 (or more) Tablespoons (60 ml) Dante's Hot Sauce
4 Tablespoons (60 ml) ketchup

Ranch Dressing

Traditional Ranch calls for buttermilk - something that's pretty impossible to get in the UK (at least no one I know has ever heard of it). I made buttermilk by mixing 1/2 cup (150ml) of evaporated milk with 1/2 cup (150ml) of water and a tablespoon of lemon juice and then let it stand for 5 minutes.

1/2 cup "buttermilk"
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonaisse
a teaspoon or two of powdered garlic
a handful of dill

You could also add some or all of the following: chopped or dried parsley, celery salt or chopped celery leaves, onion powder, dried thyme leaves or chopped cucumber. I didn't because I didn't have any of that stuff.

When I was living in Long Beach, I had two staple meals: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (of which I could eat an entire box in one sitting) and Buffalo Chicken Wings. Then I used to use an asparagus cooker as a deep fat fryer and made the sauce just with tabasco and butter. They were quite nice, but never as good as Legends during happy hour. On a trip from California to Boston, I ate at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, supposedly the inventors of the Buffalo Wing, 'though I can't say they were the best.

The last time I made them they were really good, but I can't remember what I did, so I figured the weblog was as good a place as any to write down the recipe for tonight's version - not as good, but not bad at all. Coulda been crispier...

Cut up about 12 to 18 chicken wings and place in a oven dish in a single layer. Add a bit of olive oil to keep them from sticking. Bake in a 180C oven for about half an hour, turning frequently. When they start to get crispy, mix up the sauce. Drain off the extra fat from the wings and coat them in the sauce. Bake for another 10 or 15 minutes. Serve with Ranch Dressing.

Sauce (all quantities are very approximate):

About a third of a pack of butter
Tablespoon chili paste
Tablespoon of sun-dried tomato paste
Couple tablespoons ketchup (it needed a bit of sweetness)
Teaspoon guntar chili powder
10 - 15 drops tabasco

Since today's Friday Five is about food, I'm gonna do one. (See "more")

1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not?
I never eat breakfast and haven't done since I left the states. When I lived there, I ate a huge breakfast of porkchops, eggs and potatoes nearly every day, but breakfast in restaurants was unknown in Italy and uncommon here in the UK (beside being fairly revolting as well) so I got out of the habit. I can't manage cooking for myself that early.

I do often have elevenses, however.

2. What's your favorite cereal?
Cap'n Crunch definitely. I always bring back a couple of boxes when I visit the states.

3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change?
Almost never at the moment. I think I've sort of had my fill of restaurants, to be honest. When I lived in Boston, we ate out at least 3 days a week and in Italy almost every night (how could we not!). When we bought this house, my first job was to completely rip out the kitchen and it stayed that way for 6 months. So, we kept the local restaurants in business for a while.

4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that?
I'm really not in the mood to cook, so I'm going to make angel hair pasta with fresh tomato - very easy - just chopped tomatoes, salt, pepper, chopped fresh basil and some olive oil tossed with the hot pasta. It's perfect for the summer, but dead easy anytime.

5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why?
Now that's difficult. I've been to rather a few very fab restaurants around the world, but my all-time favourite was Sake on Route One north of Boston. We went there so often the owner really got to know us and would send his wife to babysit my daughter while he made the most amazing sashimi creations.

I also loved Egg Heaven in Long Beach - that's where I had those huge pork chop and egg breakfasts.

Now, of course, I'm in England and there are, sadly, few restaurants to really rave about but my favourite has got to be the Wrestlers, which is actually a pub, but they serve the most amazing Thai food...

Ever since I noticed that organically-grown salmon was not the bright garish red that non-organic salmon is I wondered what it was that they were feeding to those fish to make the colour so bright. Now I find that the EU has limited the use of canthaxanthin which is added to feed to make salmon appear more reddish, and chicken skin and egg yolks appear more yellow.

Thankfully, I only buy organic salmon and eggs, so the news that high levels of this chemical can damage the retina doesn't worry me much.

It might worry you, however, as the new regulation will cut levels of this purely cosmetic food additive by over two thirds.

As I mentioned previously, my social life is nothing like master Pepys' and in contrast to his day 343 years ago, mine was positively immobile.

I was intrigued, however, by his reference to his supper of sliced brawn. Having never heard of this dish, I looked it up and found that, not surprisingly, brawn was originally the term for any muscle or meat and then tended mostly to refer to the meat of boar. By the mid 18th century, brawn generally refered to pork that was "collared" or tied up like a ham and eventually came to mean a pickled, pressed and sliced pork (mostly the head) set in jelly.

I don't know which of these Pepys refers to in his diary, but one other tidbit is interesting. Apparently, one element of a brawn meal is consistent to this day and that's the custom of serving it with mustard. Later recipes included mustard, sugar and vinegar. Brawn Sauce anyone?

(These interesting meat product facts found here)

Maybe not new, but new to me, and good for a project I'm working on, a cool website with a simple overview of how food works.

A Reuters article about the environmental costs of organic food coincides with a BBC report that organic production in the UK has doubled, with nearly 80% of households buying some organic produce (although 70% is purchased by only 8% of UK households).

I'm a keen supporter of organically grown produce, but I'm a bigger supporter of locally-grown produce. Buying apples from New Zealand defeats any real benefits that organically-grown produce might provide - at least as far as environmental impact is concerned.

I have a little in-built checklist when I shop. Produce must first be local. I will consider produce from European Union countries, but will not buy South African, Isreali, American or anti-podian produce - those countries are simply too far away. At that point, I'll take organically-grown products any day... but only then. Meat, fish and poultry should always be free-range, local and organic when possible (and in that order). I won't buy North Atlantic cod or non-organic salmon. The benefits are that I am more likely to enjoy food in season and my cooking tends to be more seasonal as well.

My grocery shopping takes rather a while, though...

As we finally begin to understand the interconnectedness of life, the universe and everything, we are also learning that we can not sustain humanity if we continue to rape and pillage the earth at such an alarming rate. Nature's web focus on food brings together a selection of recently published material that illustrates how important food is to every part of human existence.

Fruit and vegetable pesticide 'risk'

Their quotes. There has always been a risk - both individual and global - from pesticides and there will continue to be one as long as they are used. According to the article, Ian Brown, chairman of the government's pesticides committee, said he would back pesticide free foods "if the same quality and price levels could be maintained for consumers".

That's a brilliant get-out clause for him, but I think a change in consumer attitude is needed instead. Consumers need to stop being so demanding. There's nothing wrong with a few spots on an apple, a less than perfectly red tomato or vegetables that aren't precisely the same size. British consumers also need to get back to buying produce in season and not insist on apples shipped from New Zealand or grapefruits from Israel. The odd exotic fruit is fine, trading with European countries is great, but when most of the fresh food in our stores is grown tens of thousands of miles away, I think there's something seriously wrong. If we can change our attitude towards food in this way, we might even be able to cut down on the outrageous amount that goes to waste every day.

[Update: The BBC has changed the headline to "Pesticide levels 'falling'". Which is slightly bizarre]

It was my dad that was Mexican so I didn't have a nice mamacita to teach me to slap tortillas or make rellenos. I can't stand the stuff in the jars and there are about as many different recipes for enchilada sauce as there are, um, recipes for enchilada sauce. This one, however, is fantastic. I can safely say I've never had better. It's much, much better on the second day, so you can take a wild guess what I'm planning on cooking for dinner tomorrow.

Now, does anyone want to volunteer to send me some decent masa harina (and lend me their gran to show me how to make tortillas)?

*Spanish lessons are probably also in order

Sometimes I think fate moved me here to be some sort of British-American ambassador (or anti-ambassador, maybe). I was down at Sainsbury's shopping for dinner and overheard an American women saying to the shop assistant, "I can't believe an English store doesn't have any plain brown sauce!" to which the bemused assistant pointing to the HP Sauce simply shrugged her shoulders.

"HP is brown sauce" I offered helpfully (because as an American I have no qualms about butting into conversations - helpfully, obviously).

"HP is the same as brown sauce?" the women said incredulously, but since it came from me, I guess that was the confirmation she needed and she went away with a bottle. I wonder where the confusion came from? Is there a bottle in the English food section of American supermarkets called Olde Englysh Playne Browne Sauce?

Anyway, the shop girl thanked me afterwards, observing that Americans are often complaining about the lack of variety in the supermarket (before putting her hand over her mouth as she realised my dodgy accent wasn't Irish, but American). I explained that the brands were completely different and the choice was, indeed, massive. I can't remember what I thought first time here, though I expect I was prepared after 2 years of shopping in the Italian ipermercado where you were more likely to find furniture than much in the way of groceries*.

*I'm taking the piss really. There are groceries. And tyres (tires). And toys, bikes, frames, photo albums, clothing, electrical goods, appliances and virtually anything you can imagine.

Cozzy, bare feet, Etta James, a big, fat, icy coke and a deck chair. wow, I feel so much better. I even have a tan line (of a sort).

A full stomach is a new Sunday tradition and like every Sunday, this one started with roast dinner at the County Arms. It's so good, there's never any point in making your own, but serendipitously (really!), I ran across a Roast Dinner HOWTO. Excellent plan, but he left off the yorkies. I rather like Aunt Bessie's, but apparently they're easy to make from scratch. Luckily, Rogi has a recipe...