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Corned Beef Hash Revisited, or Why does this key not work?

A can opener or a cannot opener?

The first can of corned beef I have bought for many years!

This is a short piece about my new book ‘Two’s Company – Simple: Fast and Fresh Recipes for Couples, Friends & Roommates, by Orlando Murrin. I am focussing on one of the first recipes I tried in the book because the corned beef brought back memories. First of all, just to explain that Orlando is a chef ‘friend’ of mine. I have never met him, but he is a member of my Facebook group, Archers Chit-Chat, and is a great source of advice and inspiration. It is because of Orlando that I now buy mixed sized free-range eggs, rather than the large ones. These are much kinder to the hens, who suffer from being pressurised into laying large eggs. This advice is endorsed by the British Hen Welfare Trust. Orlando knows that I do not take his other well-known piece of advice in the kitchen, which is to not bother to heat up your oven. Well, sadly my oven is not very advanced, despite probably being only about 5 years old, and it really does make a difference to my meals if I pre-heat the oven, especially for bread, pizza, cakes, scones and so on. I don’t do this to extremes though and find 10 minutes will generally suffice.

We as Chit-Chat were even mentioned in one of Orlando’s articles for the Waitrose news weekly paper. There are lots of keen cooks amongst us and the discussions can get quite heated (even if the ovens are not pre-heated!)

It is always great to have a new cookery book. Indeed as a keen amateur cook and a school librarian, I live by the mantras ‘You cannot have too many books’ as well as ‘You certainly cannot have too many cookery books.’

Today I decided to make the Corned Beef Hash Revisited from Orlando’s new book. You can see the results in the picture:

This was the kind of dish which I think would be great for breakfast or brunch, although Orlando suggests it for supper with some home-made baked beans. I decided to make it for lunch. We don’t eat that much meat and so when we do I quite like something more exciting than corned beef! But lunch seemed the right occasion for this dish. I served it with some sliced mushrooms, as there were some lurking in the fridge which really needed using up.

So what is the significance of the sub-title of this article? Well I was quite surprised to find that the can of corned beef was meant to be opened with a key! I had not seen one of those for years and it seemed so nostalgic. However, after having a go, the key snapped off and I had to resort to the can opener. Even though the can was rectangular with rounded corners, it was a relief that I did manage to open it. It got me thinking about cans of food and how we open them. The immediate literary reference which comes to mind is the can of pineapple in ‘Three Men in a boat’ which is one of those classic comedy scenes.

Here are some interesting facts about cans and can openers:

  • Canned food was invented or came into being in 1810
  • The can opener was invented in 1858
  • In 1866 J. Osterhoudt patented the tin can with a key opener
  • The modern can opener, with the wheel device, was invented in 1870, but it was tricky to use
  • An improved version of the can opener, with a second, serrated wheel, was invented in 1925

We have had family holidays in self-catering accommodation and not been provided with a can opener. I have to say that we have fared better than George, Harris and Jerome in managing to get to the contents of our can. My daughter Jessica did very well with a knife on holiday in Sardinia. We had asked our host for some extra equipment in the kitchen, but failed to notice the absence of the can opener. Not that we eat much canned food, but canned tomatoes and chick peas are part of our staple diet! Strangely we also could not find a can opener in our apartment in Florida, so I made do with the end of a bottle opener. You will see my efforts from the picture, but of course this method would not have worked for the corned beef!

The trouble with this method of opening a can is that the whole structure gradually caves in the more holes that you make.

I have completely digressed from the main theme of this article which is the corned beef hash recipe in Orlando Murrin’s new book. He uses some lovely flavours in his recipe. Chilli, garlic and tabasco feature as well as worcestershire sauce, the latter of which I think is probably traditional. He also suggests flipping the hash over in sections to make it easier to manage.

We really enjoyed the hash, but I had one problem with it, which might be just me. I found it very hard to cook the eggs in the middle of the hash without burning the hash slightly. I did put the lid on my saute pan, but it is still much more tricky to cook eggs in this way than poaching them or frying them in the pan on their own. This is no criticism of Orlando’s recipe, but my own incompetence. Next time I think I shall just fry the eggs on their own and put them on top of the hash at the end. I do think that the home-made baked beans would have made it lovely and moist too, so I’ll do those next time.

I love to support independent bookshops, so here is a link to some of my favourite cookery books available: the-jolly-jaunts-of-sarah-kooky-cook Bookshop UK

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Food in Norway – should I divide by 10 or 12?

https://uk.bookshop.org/a/8665/9781788794671

Prawn Starter – about 2 pints in a bucket

We recently went on a week’s holiday to Norway. It all started when Paul had the opportunity to attend a really useful business conference in Drammen, near Oslo. He suggested that I may as well go with him, as it was in the middle of the school holidays; it also seemed more sensible to extend our stay, given that the conference was only for 2 days.

We went away with the full knowledge that this is an expensive country in terms of accommodation and eating out. Even if we had not known beforehand, it is generally the first point of interest that people will tell you about as soon as you say you are paying a trip to Norway! We watch quite a few Scandi dramas and enjoy the scenery as well as the tense drama; hopefully we would not come across any dead bodies, as murder is clearly as prolific in Norway as it is in Midsomer and Shetland.

Paul planned a whistle stop driving tour for after his conference, taking in some of the most significant cities with views of the fjords and mountains. Thus self-catering was not an option, as we typically had a day of driving and an over-night stop in a different location every evening. The idea is that we return for a longer holiday in the future with more self-catering possible. Our apartments were all of a really high standard and I was quite disappointed not to have the time to shop and cook. We just managed to make a couple of breakfasts, and one simple picnic lunch. I’ll describe the apartments in more detail in the next blog article, just telling you about the food we ate in this piece.

Mussels at a harbour-side restaurant in Oslo

This was a lunch I ate on my own, whilst Paul was busy at the conference in the Drammen hotel. I just adore mussels and usually find they are beautifully cooked in the average restaurant. I like to spend the time eating them slowly, using one mussel shell as my ‘fork’ for extracting the meat from the shells. It is also a treat to have them with chips; I sometimes splash out and do this at home, but chips deep fried are one treat which it is good to let restaurant staff do for you. You get the bonus at the end of a lovely bowl of fishy sauce or soup.

Chips on display with the mussels

I do like to have some idea of how much we are spending on a meal, even if we have accepted that this is going to be an expensive holiday. The average main course in Norway could set you back between 200 and 400 Kroner. You roughly divide by 12, not 10 as Paul first advised me. As we are talking about mid-range restaurants here, not really high class, that is much more than in the UK and all mounts up. Happily, all of the food was really good and not once did we feel that we had eaten a really disappointing meal.

I shall now show you a few more photos of the meals that we had, with brief descriptions. Just to add that I loved the style of the food, with a good choice of fish, meat and vegetable dishes. One feature which really impressed me was the integration of vegetables into your main course, rather than being half-hearted side dishes. In addition, the presentation was superb and very professional, as you should be able to see from the photos. If you think of the artistic presentation of the old style ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’ and just increase the size of the portion, that will give you a good idea of a typical Norwegian meal.

Our one frustration was the continuing and increasing tendency to put copious amounts of raw onion into salads. This happens everywhere, not just Norway. I have written a whole blog piece about it! We both dislike it intensely and have found that many people agree with us that it is unpleasant and unnecessary. We started to request food without raw onion; why did I never think of this before? Neither of us has allergies, so it is not being too fussy I think.

Parma Ham and Mozarella Salad with cheesy garlic bread -sadly the salad had too much raw onion in! My lunch in Drammen
Chicken and Mushroom Pasta in Notodden – excellent but some raw onion crept in despite our requesting for it to be left out!
Pizza with mozarella and rocket in Bergen
Breakfast in Stavanger – I was feeling a need for fruit and it was quicker to do our own breakfast
Raw onion extracted from a salad on our way to Stavenger
Fish soup in Stavenger – this was superb and we both had the same dishes in this restaurant
White fish (possibly cod) with gnocchi, peas and asparagus in a creamy sauce – just superb!

We also spoke to our waiter in this restaurant, who was so friendly, and from Maida Vale! I just had to tell him that this was my mother’s place of birth. The restaurant was truly international, with conversations taking place in English despite the diners not being from the UK.

A fairly standard pizza in Hemsedal, a ski resort. There really was not much open out of season, but it was a fun place to stay; we were in a typical ski chalet
Typical Norwegian Restaurant in Tjuvholmen, Oslo; the food we ate in this restaurant is in the pictures below
Prawn shells left after I had devoured the prawns in the first photograph. There really were about 2 pints of them, but surprisingly I still had room for my main course afterwards
Paul’s Reindeer first course

Game Casserole with mash and jam similar to the type served with Swedish meatballs

Of course it goes without saying that we also drank quite a lot; wine for me and non alcoholic beer for Paul. Again the prices were much higher, at about 150 kroner for an average glass of wine. I show you below the menu for our last night dinner in Oslo, not including the drinks menu, but it gives you a little flavour of a typical restaurant in Oslo.