Category Archives: food

Here’s my impressive haul from my epic local food shopping expedition today.  Looks lovely doesn’t it?

It all came about as my main course tonight, Ottolenghi’s Braised Lamb with Maftoul and Chickpeas required me to search out a single new ingredient.  When you’ve cooked as many of Yotam Ottolenghi’s delicious recipes as I have, you will find yourself with a very well stocked and exotic larder but I was lacking the main grain ingredient for tonight’s feast – Maftoul.  I have eaten it before and liked it very much but hadn’t considered cooking it myself and had never come across it   so I set out to find it.  My first stop for this Palestinian grain (not dissimilar to couscous, but with larger and rounder grains) was one of my favourite Manchester supermarkets – Venus, which specialises in Turkish and Middle Eastern goodies and I was sure I’d get it there, and the lamb chops too (I’ve bought excellent shoulder of lamb there previously).  Much to my amazement they didn’t have any, or any of the other similar grains – morgrabiah or fregola (from Sardinia), but there was masses of couscous of various sizes, I even asked for help, but the very friendly lady had no idea what I was talking about.  I didn’t leave empty handed though, I bought a lovely log of feta (Danish, not Greek), some fabulous green olives, beautiful big bunches of parsley and mint, vine tomatoes, small cucumbers which all fit into tonight’s meal.  Manchester is almost unbelievably well supplied with interesting food shops, but there’s a lack of purely Middle Eastern ones with the bulk being Indian often with a great range of goods including (surprisingly) excellent baklava in many cases but the two I visited in Rusholme didn’t have what I was looking for.  At this point it would have been so easy to pop to the big Sainsbury’s in Salford to get everything else I needed, but I thought that I would try a new food shop I remembered seeing in Chorlton called Persepolis which is a promising name, and then had the bright idea that I would be able to get everything else I wanted in the same area.  So I headed south to Chorlton.  Persepolis didn’t have what I wanted, the chap there had no idea what I was talking about, but there were some delicious looking pastries for future reference!  Then onto the fabulous Unicorn Grocery which is one of my much loved regular shops to replace some spices, and to treat myself to some bread from their Friday delivery and some salad things and I was hopeful that they might have asparagus.  Moderate success – lovely little gems, radishes, wild rocket, carrots, onions, pistachios and the spices I needed (allspice for tonight, black peppercorns, ground cinnamon and cumin) but no bread.  From Unicorn, it was a short hop over the road to that other Chorlton foodie institution, the Barbakan Deli which is a seriously dangerous place to go if hungry, feeling poor or dieting, I was all three by this point and was thrilled to find my elusive grain, despite it not having an enticingly exotic name (pearl couscous), I recognised it as what I had been searching for.  While I was there, I couldn’t resist a large loaf of their delicious Chorlton sourdough and a taste of a strong aged Lancashire cheese with an amusingly rude name (Bob’s Knob) which was very fine indeed and I’ll most definitely get some next time I’m doing a cheese board.

Happily holding onto my maftoul-like grain.

Next – lamb chops, asparagus, strawberries, Greek yoghurt, ice cream and wine.  Not far from Barbikan is much lauded butchers, WH Frost which I am ashamed to say I had never patronised before today.  It’s in an unprepossessing 70s style concrete shopping precinct, a big double fronted shop packed full of meaty delights both raw and cooked and I came away with six very fine looking lamb cutlets for £14 and some lamb and mint sausages, not for tonight, but because I find lamb sausages very hard to resist!  I was very excited to see that they also had mutton chops which looked very nice indeed and I shall try those soon having never cooked mutton and failing to find any when it has crossed my mind to do so.  Then to the greengrocers next door for two bunches of asparagus for my starter and some strawbs for pud (not English though).  Just Greek yoghurt, ice cream and wine left and with two heavy bags and a sore back I copped out really and went to Co-op for the ice cream, they didn’t have Total yoghurt, nor did my other regular Asian grocers so I’m afraid it was Tesco Metro at the petrol station for the yoghurt which wasn’t even Total, but their own label, but I was knackered by then and had melting dairy produce to get into the freezer.  I couldn’t be bothered to get the wine so will pop to Reserve Wines on Burton Road later – a brilliant wine shop to have a couple of minutes from home, it’s jam packed full of unusual and tempting tipples and with seriously friendly and helpful staff to make every visit a pleasure.

So I was done, I had all I need for supper tonight – Char-grilled lettuce and asparagus with goat’s cheese with sourdough toast, Braised Lamb with Maftoul and Chickpeas with rocket salad followed by strawberries, toasted pistachios, balsamic vinegar and vanilla ice-cream.  It took me from about 10.40 to just before 1.00 and I visited ten shops and purchased in seven of them.  Not exactly a time efficient experience considering I didn’t really buy any ‘normal’ food for the weekend apart from tomatoes, cucumbers and sausages so I still have a regular style shop to do but I had fun and it was very nice to remember and revisit some good quality small shops and to talk to people and have a walk and only to buy what I actually needed.

I’d better start cooking soon, the lamb chops will take a couple of hours!