Christmas pudding ice cream

Rich enough to kill, but perhaps it's only once a year......although this can work with a rich moist fruit cake, too...

We are having this for pudding on New year's Eve, where I am hoping it will do for six adults. To a two litre tub of some slightly softened good vanilla ice cream (although I happen to know this works with the very worst sort, too), add, say --and yes, I did use my hands here-- three or four handfuls of Christmas pudding. I've never weighed it; you'll just have to take my word for it. Mix it in well, add a couple of pinches of nutmeg and, perhaps, a tablespoon (or even two) of brandy. Mix well. I suppose you could mix it in with a spoon, but I confess that I knead it in with my hands, as though I were making bread. Just do it a few times, though. You want it well mixed, but you do not want the pudding to turn into a paste. You could add some slivered almonds and, if you like, some candied peel. Freeze overnight and, for gaudiness, just before you serve it, top with some more candied peel, some almonds in gold leaf if you dare -- and a sparkler! A Happy New Year!

photo courtesy of Elsie esq at flickr. Many thanks. x

A chicken roast dinner of sorts

Now, I had a large free range chicken and I here is what I did: this ensures wonderful succulent meat.

Roast chicken with a hot stuffing.

Take the chicken out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature while the oven heats up to about 230c. While this is happening, take about six slices of bread -- I happened to have half a wholemeal loaf and a slightly elderly white baguette. I dried this in the oven for five minutes and then broke it up in a bowl. Then, I added two chopped red apples, four peeled and chopped cloves of garlic, two chopped satsumas, a very large pinch of nutmeg (or grate it fresh) and a little salt and freshly ground black pepper..

Now, put your chicken into the oven (in a dish, obviously), breast down. This procedure keeps it moist. If you've been following my writing for a while, you will surely know that I harp on about this and also, I suppose, about chicken. Cook the chicken for around 45 minutes. Around this time, put some water on to boil in the kettle, pour it into the stuffing to bind it only when the water has boiled, take the chicken out, turn it right side up asnd stuff the cavity. Now put the chicken back into the oven for about another hour --depending on the size of the bird. So, two points: the chicken cooks upside down first to allow the juices to percolate through the breast, which is the dryest part. Then, the stuffing goes in hot, which serves to moisten the meat further and also makes it easier to predict when the bird is done. You will probably have leftover stuffing: just cook it separately: it will take only about 20 minutes top cook and crisp.

Roast potatoes, broccoli, bread sauce, not gravy today..

What to serve with this? I roasted some potatoes, which I had par-boiled and roughened up. First of all, they were roasted in hot oil and then lubricated further with some of the fine roasting juices from the chicken. I made a little bread sauce. This was made from half a white baguette, plenty of salt and pepper, a generous pinch of nutmeg, a small onion which I had studded with a few cloves (just like my mother might have done) and around 3/4 of a pint of milk. You may well need to add more milk as you go. Heat the mixture up very slowly, until it barely shudders, otherwise it will stick. Cook for ten minutes, keeping a close eye on it.

Elsewhere on the table, some broccoli and a few whole steamed carrots. I made no gravy, but we just poured over the juices from the roasting dish. Cranberry sauce to one side. Some sprouts with chestnuts would have been good instead of the broccoli, perhaps. You know, when your chicken is well cooked, you won't need to drench it with gravy. Nigel Slater has been telling us this for many a moon. And another thought: this was a cheerful and festive meal. It was the nutmeg, orange and apple that did it. We ate at the table with our boys and we ate in candelight, which is to say at a table lit by tea lights in tin cans through which they had punched lots of little holes. I hope they'll remember this stuff when they are grown, just as I do. Even if they are kicking each other under the table at the time.

Chicken photo courtesy of Annie Mole at www.flickr.com Thank you

Some things not forgotten.

For a fine family.


In some ways, I am very easily pleased. When it comes to presents, I don't do perfume or bling: I like a nice trowel or a pot of honey. Or some rose-sented bubble bath. Maybe a pot of honey with a particularly cheerful--looking bee on the label.Yes, I'm bookish, but I gereally fare better when I acquire books myself. How about you? Historically, some of my favourite Christmas presents have been food ones -- things that people made or chose, knowing I would beam at them. This year, I was given particularly fine home-made pickle, which had been packed into fat little jars and with paper covers showing the lovely, quirky old house where they had been made. They had been wrapped in gold paper and decorated with a miniature bead Chritsmas wreath by a 10 year old boy. He placed them on a table and waited until they caught my eye. So you see why they pleased me especially. Because he took the time. But I am in danger of tipping too far into sentimentality here, so let me give you a brief account of foods given as presents -- just seared in the memory from infancy onwards.

The satsuma. Eaten in the night, the fruit felt very cold. It came from the toe of my Christmas stocking.

My first box of sugared almonds. The smooth texture, the pale colours -- like the most beautiful pebbles. I remember sucking on these, having extracted them from the gold box in my Christmas stocking.

Marzipan. However it comes. Love it, but don't have it any other time of year somehow. I'll say the memory of three beautiful little marzipan fruits brought up to our Paris hotel room just before Christmas by my husband. One year old baby on the floor at my side, sucking on a mango stone.

A jar of preserved stem ginger. An odd gift, you might think, from an aunt to a child. But I loved the look, smell, feel and taste of it. I recall that it glowed in its syrup and I made it last a long time.

That's all. Any more and you know I'll cry.

Christmas dinner

Gentle snow (still) and ice on the ground, I got snow-bound (well, ice-bound) in Wales, there is a merry fire in the grate and the boys do not want the day to end. Here, with a Merry Christmas to you, is what I made for dinner. Just a small affair this year, to please two grown ups and two young children. As we had had turkey for Thanksgiving, this year I allowed it to be ousted by a a dinner of a slightly different kind -- but festive withal. Also practical, as you will see from the leftovers.

Above is Virginia, last Christmas. That's what I call ice. Below that would be the comedy mouse snowman, to cheer you up if you are apprehensive about the new year.

A brace of pheasants, stuffed with pork sausagemeat, garlic and apples, with roasted apples to one side and wrapped all in back bacon. Just find some local pheasants if you can and get someone else to prepare them if you are squeamish. I'm not, but it should be fairly easy for you to find ready-prepared pheasant. £6.95 for a brace. Not bad.Take the pheasants out of the fridge a good half an hour before you start to prepare them for the oven: you want them to be at room temperature befeore they go in. Now, stuff them with some decent sausagemeat (or undress some decent sausages), fill the cavity with this plus some large chunks of apple and four or five unpeeled garlic cloves. Wrap the birds well in good back bacon. Cook until the breast is burnished and --really this is the only kind of occasion where I use a meat thermometer-- the sausagemeat is done. I'd allow two hours at 200c, remembering to baste frequently and your pheasant shoulld not be dry. Well, it  will be dry -er than some other birds.

Lots of chicken drumsticks, wrapped in bacon and cosied in with lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. Just as it sounds. I had got my hands on a large consignment of Halal chicken (no, nothing dodgy: this was, rather marvellously, in Asda in Hicksville Wiltshire). Halal meat has, appropriately I thought, a slightly gamier flavour which seemed apposite here. Just make sure the chicken is at room temp, as with the pheasant, before it goe to the oven and wrap it --not Halal: please note!-- with some well-flavoured back bacon ajnd sprinkle lots of unpeeled garlic cloves all around. Takes about an hour at 2oo.

Why the two? Because, this time of year, pheasant is reasonably priced (I am speaking of £6.95 for two, locally shot pheasants) and I was not sure how well the children would take this game, so cooked an alternative. They ate both and scraped at the dishes afterwards.

Sage and onion stuffing with apple, cooked to one side. Dressing, then, as they would say in Georgia. Just grate, finley chop or process --I'm not giving specifics here-- plenty of brown and white breadcrumbs, add sea salt, lots of freshly-ground black pepper, three fresh sage leaves, finely minced and some chopped red apple. Experiment until you have the mixture you like. Moisten it with water, a little olive oil and a generous dot of butter and bake for about half an hour.I cook it all of a piece in a tin, but you could form it into little stuffing balls, I suppose. If you want, a few chopped dried apricots are good here. A good grating of nutmeg would also work. And a note on sage: I don't use dried because there is always plenty of fresh in the garden. I find that dried commercially available sage seems to acquire a rather overpowering musty smell and taste. If you wanted, you could substitute rosemary for the sage.

Roast parsnips and this year, in another departure, I cooked whole carrots in with the parsnips. Just a little sunflower oil and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Peel the carrots, top and tail. Done. Same for the parsnips and then cut them in half lengthways. Cook them in blisteringly hot oil for about 45 minutes, by which time they will be sweet and irresistible and have caught the heat in places so that you get little stucky burnished bits.

Sprouts. I love them; always have.I like them quite well done here.

Roast potatoes. This year, I parboiled the potatoes --make sure you choose good floury ones-- the night before and roughened them up well against the side of the pan and then chucked them into hot sunflower oil. Goose fat, as you may well know, gives them a sublime flavour, but I'll be writing more about roast potatoes in a separate entry. Stay tuned. Cook them until they are crisp and then blitz them under a higher heat when the meat is out of the oven. Should take 45 minutes to an hour. I also added a couple of tablespoons of the sublime juices from the pheasant as they were about half way through cooking.


Mashed swede, with lots of butter and black pepper. Cook it well, in large chunks. And stunt ye not on the butter and black pepper. Salt to taste. Bashed neeps. For Kathleen from Dumfries, if she is readiing this. Also great with Haggis on Burns' Night!

Gravy. I had a little vegetable stock to one side. I had made this with half an onion, some sticks of celery and about a third if a red pepper plus four or five whole peppercorns. For additional liquid I used the water from cooking the swede and the whole thing was started off with a roux made from the juices and a little of the fat from the pheasant roasting dish. That wasn't hard, was it?

AND -- now this is peculiar-- I made unseasonal Yorkshire pudding because that had been requested by the children.

Pudding: didn't have it, really, Just the odd Clementine, hazlenuts and pistachios a little later.And then, obviously, we picked at hazlenuts, walnuts, cashews, mince pies and the Christmas cake made by an excellent aunt. This year we had no Christmas pudding, because no-one likes it apart from me. I'm not entirely happy with this state of play.

And what of dinner? I mean Christmas tea or supper. Still, confusion reigns in our Anglo-Cymric-American household.

A bubble of squeak of sorts. So, all the leftover vegetables --plenty of potatoes and sprouts-- mashed just roughly and then fried until they developed a rich, crisp crust. We had these with two pickles made in the first place by an inspirational neighbour --pumpkin chutney-- and in the second place by an inspirational parent of a child I teach: this was a tart apple and blackberry chutney. Both were received with uncommon joy and both were made from home-grown produce. We also had a piece of Somerset Brie and a slice of Dolcellate with this. A telly-side supper, while I grieved the soon not-to-be- regenerated Doctor Who. Oooh! David Tennant. There's something about his shift from tragic to comic on the turn of a dime.... Oh and we had the leftover pheasants and chicken in sandwiches with mango chutney the next day.

Susie's "mulled wine and a mince pie"

Are you familiar with that bit in The Wind in the Willows when Rat itemises the lovely range of food he has in his picnic basket -- in response to Mole's innocent enquiry as to what was in it? Rat's description is told all in one sentence. I was reminded of this when I popped round, on Sunday, to the house of the Susie. "I'm not doing much", she'd said, or something like that. BUT here, in addition to a treasure hunt for children and a chocolate Santa on the way out, was a table of plenty. Here is what was on it:

mulledwinemincepieswelshcakes...no, I cannot keep this up as I'll alienate my readers. So, dates, stuffed with marzipan and studded with silver balls in a row (lovely, this one), crackers, bread, pork liver pate, a good hot tomato salsa, tortilla chips, twiglets, little sausage rolls, hummus, cheese straws (the nice twisty ones), celery, carrots and cucumber, baguettes a plenty plus Cheddar, Brie, smoked Applewood, and Stilton. Olives - plain and also stufed with feta and herbs. Also, I noticed, a big dish of little stick glazed sausages. To one side, hefty mugs of all kinds of tea for those not mulling.

Just a mince pie, then. Christmas has begun.

Thanks to Adactio at Flickr for the mince pie. Above, this is the snow of earlier this year. Note hat, American readers. x

The peanut

Ah the peanut, groundnut, what you will. I've long been devoted to this little nut, having happy memories of boiled peanuts in Georgia -- I imagine Damon Lee Folwer is right: you'll either dislike boiled peanuts or you won't be able to stop eating them: I'm in the latter camp-- toasted peanuts at the ball game, big bag of salted and a coke in the footwell of the car on what seemed like eternal journeys to South Wales as a kid. Yes: I did say footwell. This was earlier in the 20th-century, you know.

But, of course, I digress: here is a simple snack for when your blood sugar hits an all time low or you feel a bit weepy. And, as with the boiled peanuts, you'll either like this or you won't. This is the sort of snack which resuscitates, as I can testify.

Take a slice or two of some satisfying bread. I happened to choose a crusty white loaf, which I then toasted until it was crisp and the edges just a little charred here and there. Now spread the toast with peanut butter --crunchy, I'd say-- and top this with some thin slices of cheddar, whichever sort you like. That's it. Not exactly a recipe, this -- more an observation: try it when in need.

Solo bonne femme

Here is my dinner tonight. I mean, just for me -- hence the title. I have never tired of eating alone, whether by choice or necessity.

Now, I expect this particular dinner  would be frowned up by a nutritionist. Take a good apple -- you know: an old fashioned single varietal, if you can. Then take a big piece of Parmesan, which you have bought in a good big block. Cut generous slices from the parmesan, cut your apple (or two) into fat slices and either serve the Parmesan on each piece, or take a bite of the apple, then a bite of the cheese. That's it. Also works with a pear. But it has to be a comely sort of pear.

Photo of lots of Parmesan cheese by Ashlakr at Flickr. Make sure you've got a proper cheese!

A speedy supper: chicken curry in a hurry.

Hmmm..It's not that it cooks quickly; more that you'll have it prepared in five minutes and it can then sit happily on the hob for forty minutes or so. That tends to be how I define a quick dinner -- at least sometimes. So...

Tonight, I have taken 8 chicken thighs. I had Halal meat and the meat came already skinned. Now, just slice a big onion into rings and then slice the rings in two. Sweat them in a film of hot oil in a big pan. Then, add a tablespoon of ground cumin, a fat pinch of red chilli flakes, a dessertspoon of ground turmeric, a tablespoon of ground coriander and a large pinch of asafoetida. I guess you are less likely to have this, so you could miss it out, but it does add a deep savoury note to what you are cooking.

Right, continue to sweat the onion with the spices and then add the chicken to the pan. Stir it around well -- the vital thing being that you keep the heat quite low, as spices can turn bitter if they catch. Now add four potatoes, peeled (or not, if you're really lazy) and chopped into pieces (imagine a medium-sized potato cut into four) and --this is one of my most useful store cupboard ingredients-- 8 chunks of frozen spinach, either leaf or chopped. Tonight I used frozen chopped spinach and must say that it melded well with the sauce.

Stir the lot around for a minute, add a cup of water and bring it all to a high heat. Now stir again and simmer very gently for forty minutes or so. You will most likely have to add more water during this time. Check for seasoning and serve with basmati rice.

A Top Tip

Now, I am devoted to Patak's pickles, particularly their hot mango one. Just sometimes, I like to add a good tablespoon of it to a dish -- such as a meat biryani. It worked well with this chicken dish, too, adding an appealing piquancy. You could give it a go, but move slowly as you don't want to overpower the flavours already in the dish. Add it towards the end of cooking and the mango pieces in the pickle will retain a bit of  bite. This is not, by the way, one of the syrupy things it is supposed we like. It is a proper substantial pickle, with discrete chunks that will also do you proud in a cheese sandwich. Or, in fact, under the cheese on cheese or toast. I hope Meena Patak is reading this, actually......

Now put your feet up! See opposite! The picture on the right is courtesy of Subhodev at Flickr. It's part of a series he has on old Calcutta (oops Kolkata) and I adore these pictures. The picture before that is of some whole spices from my cupboard: pretty aren't they?

Tinned sardines: ooh a little storecupboard miracle

Right: I want you to try this. It is what we had for tea last night and I cooked it because I needed to be convinced that it would work. I got the idea from Vicky Bhojal's very jolly book Cooking with Mummyji, where she has a recipe for pan fried (tinned) sardines. Now, I had eaten sardines with spices before, but they had been fresh fish, not the little guys from a tin. So try this and see if you like it. I think it's great and it is also incredibly easy -- hardly even cooking.

Spiced sardines, done in the oven. For Susie Freeman. tell me if you think it works!

For two, take 2 tins of sardines in oil. Drain off most of the oil. Now, put the sardines in a baking dish in a hot oven, having sprinkled over big fat pinches of ground cumin, coriander, freshly ground black pepper, just a few flakes of sea salt, a cautious pinch of red chilli flakes (or not, if you are me) and, I think, a pinch of asofoetida if you have it. Into the oven they go and, while you wait for them to cook and crisp, you have time to cook a pan of basmati rice. When the sardines smell fabulous and look crisp and glowing, take them out, serve them on your rice and scatter them with fresh coriander and a dollop or fresh yoghurt. That's it.

Well, actually, that could be it but because I am the sort of person who has to use up every last leftover bit of potato or spoonful of peas, I should say that I actually cooked these on top of a few leftover roast potatoes and, err, peas. I chopped the potatoes into tiny chunks and spiced the somewhat meagre helping of vegetables with the same mixture I put on the sardines. It does strike me, though, that this sardine dish would do very well cooked on a base of spiced and crisp (and already cooked) potato. Try it some time.

Thanks to Tim Parkinson at www.flickr.com for the tins!

In praise of the Quince.

At this time of year, you still have time to keep your eyes peeled for all the quinces discarded by footpaths and around people's front doors. I find that people plant these shrubs, but then never use the fruit, I suppose not knowing what to do with it. I've shown you a quince or two here -- and before you familiarise yourself with it, remember not to trespass into people's gardens. You don't want to get a reputation as a quince rustler (this sounds rude, I know.) I can tell you, though, that on walking two small ons to school this morning down a residential lane, I scored ten fruits that were just sitting quietly on the edge of the pavement. Just waiting to be claimed.

So, you have found, grown or been handed some quinces. Even if they look a bit battered, do not despair, because they are tough fellows and their fruit may be just fine underneath the peel. You are looking for perky yellow specimens, though.

First, smell them, though. You are inhaling --along with new sandalwood, sweet peas, old fashioned roses, autumn mornings and the tops of my babies' heads-- one of the most exquisite scents on earth, It is fresh, but as old as the hills; of the Orient, but yet so English. To me, this is, above all, the lingering smell of childhood. That's because my mother had a large and flourishing shrub under the windows of our sunny sitting room and the smell would waft in and  gently greet you. There's nothing else like it. If you have surplus quinces or decide that you will not eat them, then do as I have done in our sitting room. It's a picture in there today -- with the rather early Christmas tree that I could not resist and the quinces giving out their musky scent from the radiator and around the edges of the fireplace,. If gentle warmth touches them, they will perfume your house.

Here is a a simple thing to do with quinces. Somethng that also seems to me both autumnal and festive. My mother used to make quince jelly and it had a beautiful amber colour. Here is what I prefer to make.

SPICED QUINCES

Take about 20 quinces, wash and peel them carefully, then cut them in half, into 4 and then into 8. Remove any pith or pip. Now put them in a saucepan and cover them with fresh cold water. Add a big fat pinch of Maldon sea salt, bring them to the boil and then simmer gently for about 15 minutes to soften them. Now remove the pan from the heat, pour the water through a sieve and pop it back into the same pan or a different one if that's easier.Add 450ml of white wine vinegar,300g of caster sugar, 4 cloves, two small cinnamon quills or pieces of cassia bark and a couple of teaspoons of coriander seed. Bring this all to the boil, then add your quinces and then simmer very gently until the fruit is nicely tender but not pulpy.

Some recipes for a similar confection tell you to boil the juices up again the next day, but I just pack the lot into sterilised jars and that's that. The quinces are wonderful with cold meat or cheese and, if I were you, I'd have them with my Boxing Day leftovers.

Thank you to Dave F and Lepiaf Geo for the photos. www.flickr.com

Thanksgiving dinner 2009

This year, in  A slight Departure from the Norm, I have not bought a whole turkey but have managed to secure a heist of turkey legs and some breast meat to be served alongside. This is because I find that we get (well, I get, really) bored more quickly with endless turkey meals than I do with chicken. So, as we're only four to dinner this year, I'm playing to my strengths.



We will be having

Roast turkey drumstucks with whole garlic cloves in their skins
Roast potatoes
Sage and onion stuffing, which to a Southerner would be dressing. And, as I am not serving it inside a bird this year, it will be cooked to one side anyway.
Carrots
Collards (actually, savoy cabbage -- and it will be well cooked with a little bacon in there)
Turkey gravy
Cornbread

NO PUMPKIN PIE.  I know, I know. But this year, just some good vanilla ice cream with, for those who want it, baked apples to one side.I will have cooked them with sugar and spice, and a sparkler and possibly a small flag will be stuck in the top somewhere.

No presents. Just family, sad and happy stuff, this being real life, lots of food, a fire, a walk, board games, a film on telly. Everyone off work and school..Calls to and from America and God Bless It.

RECIPES TOMORROW!

Further pre Thanksgiving Thoughts: mulled wine

This year, in a splendid diversion from the norm, I am starting a pre Thanksgiving tradition. This means that, while we will be creating a square of Georgia in Wiltshire on the day itself (Thanksgiving, by the way, is always the fourth Thursday in November), the night before, folks get to come over and have some untraditional mulled wine. Which will be made thusly:

For each bottle of red wine (you can go cheap here, although I rather have the diktats of Elizabeth Davuid and Keith Floyd in mind here: do not cook with wine that is not goo enough to drink.....), I add about two heaped tablespoons of demerera sugar (you could try soft brown sugar, which gives the wine a bit of a toffee note, I suppose), a sliced orange (scrub it first: oranges are very promiscuous, you know), a small handful of whole cloves, a  shake or two of dried nutmeg (or about four goes against the side of a grater with a whole nutmeg) and three cinnamon quills, or the same of cassia bark. Bring the wine very gently to a high heat and then simmer it gently for a couple of minutes. You must not boil it. Taste and taste again and serve.

As you can see, I like to make a mulled wine which is richly aromatic, but I wouldn't kick you out of bed (see: I'm giddy with Thanksgiving excitement!) if you made it just with a hit of nutmeg and sugar.

CODA

And here I am going all home-made on you to say that, while on Thanksgiving itself we get the US flag and that of Georgia out, my husband says that, this year, I will be allowed to fashion one of his flags into a dress as long as I do no sewing. This will be interesting. Also, that I'll take great pride in festooning the house with candles and tea lights, lighting the fires in two of the fireplaces and putting great jugs of autumn foliage everywhere. Because, you know, I may have a job (or two, really) to do and a family to shout at, but home is where it's at. That's the zeitgeist in the recession, apparently. NO! It's always like that. Derr.!

A nearly thanksgiving thought.

Now, I don't mean this to be a rant, but I am married to an American and, as such, have become more sensitised to the rude comments that folks seem to make about America and Americans. Well, I shall not bore you with details*, but I will say that AMERICA IS A HUGE PLACE AND IT IS FULL OF CONTRASTS. The thing is, though, this is food writing, so I'll also say that, while the US is still in thrall to big national producers -- it is hard, for example, to get really good cheese --  the situation is not the same everywhere. There are changes and there are AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN artisinal producers in the U.S. When the next book comes off the shelf, I'll be showing you all about that.

For now, I'll just quote verbatim what my fine and resourceful mother in law (Mrs Claudia Ballard Ellis -- born in Virginia, raised in South Carolina, married in Georgia, married a more appropriate man and eventually moved back to Virginia!) had for a  dinner with friends and tell you what else just happened in her little corner of Virginia. And we DON'T SASS MOMMA!

"Tonight, we just had rutabagas, just pulled from a friend's garden. We cooked the greens with ham and served them with hot (as in spicy) vinegar, with cornbread to one side. Very Southern and economical."

Rutabaga is a swede to a Britisher, although I have also heard people refer to them as yellow turnips! Note that the greens refers to the swede tops. If they are long cooked, they are soft and delicious. Try it some time, or do the same with turnip greens.

I also quote:

"Lots of interesting things are happening with local food around here: butchers' shops, fresh seafood brought in from our coast, several new farmers' markets. Not much is going to waste."

The mom is happy about that. And if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. (Although note point 3, below.)

*Oh hell: I cannot resist offering some corrections to Britishers out there.
1. Not everyone in the South is a bible basher, but, yes, proportionately, a lot more folks in the US go to church than in the UK. Over to you for discussion of whether going to church is a bad thing. Me, I'm Cof E.

2. Not all Southerners sound like Dubya. There is quite a difference between the voice of someone from Georgia and, say, someone from East Tennessee.
3. It is rude to do impressions of Americans in front of them.
4. There ARE farmers markets in America
5. You can get excellent food made by small producers
6. Proper Southern food is some of the best I have eaten
7. It is not wrong to think that your country is the most glorious in the world. This does not make you a xenophobe or a Christian fundamentalist. It might just mean you are a patriot and since when did it become wrong to be proud of your country?
 8. I've not even got started here, but I  promise I won't go on about it again even so. I also roundly agree that Dick Cheney is, clearly, a nutter. xxx

Pancakes for yours truly.

Now, I had decided to do the full works for Sunday dinner tomorrow and knew I would have to prep ahead, so I made a vat of Yorkshire pudding batter and then, between chores, sat in the kitchen and cooked some pancakes from  a few spoons of the batter all for myself. The house was at peace and the light had dimmed; there was wild weather outside. One child was at a football match (Bath City won -- and in gale force conditions, I might add) and another was happily exhausted but calm and still damp from dog walking in said gale and getting blown over in the field. So, if you are ever wet, cold, a bit over-extended, trying to get ahead and then find, unexepectedly, a few silent minutes to yourself, you could do worse then make yourself a few pancakes. get them just right and then sit at the table and eat them or, hell, swallow them like a Boa Constrictor standing up at the stove. Not that boa constructors ever stand up or cook. But..you see my point.

Take two free range eggs
1 pint of milk
8 rounded tablespoons of plain flour

Then I mix them for a good three minutes in the blender, push the sides down with a spatula, blend again and, if it's for Yorkshire pudding, just leave the batter for a while. Or even overnight. For your Yorkshires, the key points, I think, are that the batter has time to settle and that the fat into which you put them must be blisteringly hot. I bake the pudding in either individual helpings in a muffin tin or in one vast dish and I don't mind if they sre soft or crisp. Same goes for Toad in the hole.

But the pancakes for now....just for me, I cooked two in a pan, keeping them very thin so that they were just a little crisp and lacy at the edges and then I ate them like a woman possessed, with copious lemon juice and soft brown sugar. And it wasn't even Shrove Tuesday.

Thank you to fionaandneil at flickr for tjhe picture. 

Why you should get yourself some thali dishes (part one)

Oooh: look at these. This is a stainless steel shop in Chennai (Madras) and, I must tell you, I have a splendid collection of stainless steel dishes, plates and tumblers. Favourite of all, though, would be my thali dishes.

Thali are large silver platters which are either flat -- for you to place little matching silver pots full of different dishes on the platters-- or the thali dishes have different sections into which you put your food. It is the latter I favour and, reader, I use them day in and day out and not just for curries.(Although you can see a selection of curries and fresh pickles in my last entry -- a regular dinner in our Anglo-American household, curiously enough...)

So here's an idea: why don't you pop over to Spices of India at http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk and find yourself some dishes like these; you'll find them listed as dinner plates and then use them for all sorts of things? For example, dinner last night for assorted under 8s. A thali dish into which went little handfuls of crisps, carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, peanut butter sandwiches cut into stars, cubes of cheese, some chipolatas and a big mango hedgehog. The mango hedgehog is, as you might know if you've been reading this for a while or have read my book, simply a fat slice of mango, skin still attached, scored and bent back on itself. Looks like a hedgehog, see? Well, sort of. My point is, the dish looks novel and hugely cheerful, like party food every day, but is practical and a good way to eke out odds and sods and make them look special. Ker-ching!

And for our dinner tonight, the thalis will be used by Mr Nedved and me and they will be heaped with a prawn curry (curry leaves, cumin seeds, fresh coriander, chopped red chilli, garlic), in the central section will be a mound of basmati rice, in another, some Greek yoghurt, just slightly flavoured with some 'chaat' powder and in another section, a little fresh pickle of finely chopped cucumber with sea salt, black pepper and fennel seed. Fire lit (have you looked outside? My five year old got blown over in a field just now while we were dog walking); dinner on lap. Try it. We might be watching --against Mr Nedved's will, the X factor: awful but I cannot seem to look away. I digress. The thali dish, by the way, tends to be native to Southern India (see the beautiful thali of Southern Indian vegetarian food above), but you do see it elsewhere. And I've given you (to left) another stainless steel picture (how I love these shops) and one of my own thalis. In the dish below, you can see a nan (or naan) bread, which is speckled with kalonji -- the spice you might know as onion seed or nigella; there is a rather thick massor (red lentil) dhal with curry leaves, some aloo paalak (potato and spinach curry), a hot lime pickle, some cucumber batons which I had barely sprinkled with anardhana (pomegranate powder), some fresh lime slices, a hot lime pickle and a little fresh pickle (or you might call it a salad) or tomato, green mango, onion, saunf (fennel seed), fresh mint and dred chilli. These are North Indian foods.Get cooking. x

Many thanks to McKaysavage and LadyJake at Flickr for, respectively, the stainless steel shots and that of the South Indian thali, about which I will tell you in a more scholarly future chapter.

A little Indian food demonstration.

Now, should you find yourselves in Wiltshire on November the 5th and not at a firework display, here is something for you. My alter ego, Calcutta Scarlet (which is the name of my catering company) is giving an Indian food demonstration as part of an evening in aid of the Hope Foundation, an organisation which works with vulnerable children in Kolkata, India. Come one, come all. Here's a link to their site...http://www.thehopefoundation.org.uk/

And here are some pictures of my very own Indian food, largely North Indian dishes, these. There's masoor dal ( a red lentil curry), aloo paalak (potato and spinach curry), a perky little salad of onion. red chilli, lime juice, roasted cumin (jheera) seeds and nigella seeds (kalonji), a naan bread, a few strips of cucmber and a hot mixed vegetable achaar -- a preserved pickle. Off camera, I had a raita, which is a cooling relish or dip of yoghurt with a little cucumber plus some fresh mint on this particular day. You like?
कामे एंड एअत विथ में सम टाइम सून?

Just a little thought

Hello there.

First of all, here is a site which I recommend to you. http://www.localfoodadvisor.com
This site has enthusiastic contributors, strong ethics and I bet you can guess what it is about. Have a look!

Second, I am delighted to see that this blog has a strong panel of readers across the US, the UK and Europe more widely. I've also got readers in Lebanon and Argentina, which pleases me. If you really enjoy this blog, do write to me as I would enjoy adding any food suggestions you have. Or hit the follow button!

BUT you'll be needing something to eat, so I'll just tell you what to do for a simple cooked breakfast for one, two or twelve. This is what we had today.

Just.....select as many sausages as you think you would like to eat. Get them from a local producer, if you can, and the type of sausages you are after would be meaty and not those with fussy ingredients. So, pork sausages with plenty of  fat to meat and only a little seasoning. Now, split each sausage down the middle, give it a thin spread of Coleman's English mustard, and grill. Do NOT prick those sausages. When your sausages are done, just put each sausage in a soft white bap and eat with a big mug of tea and maybe some orange juice if you have children about (yes: go easy on the mustard with them, although I must say that my boys tend to lap up anything with a mustard tingle or a chilli heat: they've got me as a mother, after all).

The beauty of this --quirky as it is is-- is that it reminds me of the Sunday morning breakfasts of my childhood, it's soothing in the weekday rush, you can leave the sausages under the grill --not too hot, now-- while you go and make yourself beautiful and yell at the children to remember to put BOTH socks on and also this breakfast feels like a treat. I also find the warmth of the mustard gives me a little stimulation at breakfast. Go on: try it.

And while I am at it, if you would like some wonderful Chorizo, look here.  http://www.thebathpig.com/index.php/home

mcuun934 at www.flickr.com Thank you!  I loved this photo because the photographer in question has made their own sausages!

Sorrel Soup.

Now here's a wonderful vegetable that you don't often see in markets or ever (do correct me) in a supermarket, yet it's easy to grow and practically indesctructible. My plant is twelve years old now and seems to think it's a shrub. If it bolts --which it invariably does-- just pull of the bolted bits and you're still in business. If you've never grown any sorrel, set some seeds next Spring. Use some of the smallest leaves raw in a salad and the bigger leaves in cooked dishes: it's like spinach with an addictive lemon bite to it.

This time of year, there are plenty of big leaves left on my sorrel plant. I will be making soup tonight. Beg, borrow or steal some or, if you do see a last crop, snap it up. Sorrel makes a lovely filling for an omelette, an excellent sauce for fish and a delicate soup. Proceed as follows.

Sweat about 40 g of washed and shredded sorrel and three finely chopped cloves of garlic in a large pan in some butter. Stir carefully and constantly until you have a soft green puree. Now add four finely chopped peeled potatoes, mix them into the mixture and add 1 litre of chicken stock. Alternatively, you could make this soup with plain water or milk. If you are using milk, be careful that it does  ot curdle with the sharpness of the sorrel. Raise the heat and then simmer carefully for about fifteen minutes. At this point, add about 100 ml of double cream. Stir carefully, check the seasoning -- you will need to salt fairly generously -- and serve with some croutons or just good bread and butter. The soup with be creamy with a satsisfying smack of acidity.

Photo from ndrwfgg at flickr: thank you!

Heaven from pennies. Roast an onion or two,

Ah, the humble onion. Do remember to look at it as a vegetable in its own right, rather than just as a base ingredient or aromatic.  Here is an idea for a simple meal that will show you what I mean. I prefer white onions --or whatever variety-- for this recipe. I would eat this alone or if company is here.

Just take one fat onion person, peel it and top and tail it and put it into an oven dish. Then, sprinkle it with a little oil (olive oil, sunflower, whatever you like), sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and put it into a medium hot oven for about an hour. You need the onion to be cooked so that it is whole and not collapsed. It should be soft and the edges will have caramelised and crisped up here and there. It will smell wonderful. Actually, even if I were only feeding one or two, I would fill my oven dish with these onions, all snuggled in together, because any leftovers are great in sandwiches or chopped up, with a little ground cumin and some chilli flakes added, and turned into an impromptu pickle.

Back to your dinner tonight. With your magnificent roast onion, serve some crusty bread, possibly a simple green salad and some cheese. Maybe a hunk of some local cheese of your choice? This is the sort of meal that sounds plain, perhaps a little empty, but is deeply savoury and very satisfying. Try it. 
Photo by Mer de Glace at Flickr : thank you!

The happiness associated with roast vegetables

Now, we had the full roast chicken dinner tonight, but I won't bore you with the chicken part of this because, I realise, I'm forever giving you recipes for roast chicken. So...I'll focus on the roast potatoes and parsnips and say that I'd be happy to have them all on their own, or with all kinds of other dishes. I'm speaking of potatoes roasted with whole garlic cloves and parsnips --roasted in a separate dish.

You could serve your parsnips and potatoes with a simple omelette, or with a pie of some sort --cold or hot - to cheer up some cold meat or to eat with some cheese. Sometime, I'll even cook a big dish of roast potatoes to have with salad and cheese. I favour them with Wensleydale or Cheshire cheese, perhaps.

Anyway, to make excellent roast potatoes, you should really peel and parboil. Take them to the point when their edges are roughened up, but their centre is still firm, then drain and give them a good shake. Then into hot fat and cook in a hot oven for forty to forty five minutes, perhaps shaking them once. Your fat of choice might be sunflower oil or another bland oil or perhaps some dripping if you have roasted a joint. Or, best of all, goose fat. Tonight --as with the parsnips that follow-- I cooked them in the fat and juices from the chicken when it was about three quarters cooked.

You could be really lazy about it and just give the spuds a good clean, don't bother to peel and then do the same. They would still be delicious but not, I think, ever quite so sublime. When I add garlic, it may be peeled but more often than not I just throw in whole unpeeled cloves. You can squeeze out that golden paste when all is done or just pick them up and eat them, skin and all. They will be sticky and sweet.

Now those parsnips. Here, you cannot get away without peeling. Another thing is that you need to try and avoid the really huge ones because they may be inclined to get a bit woody. Some people core them; I never bother, unless they are really ancient and I have forgotten about them. So, top and tail, cut them in half and just slide them straight into hot fat. Some recipes add honey. I feel that parsnips are so naturally sweet (there was a reason why they were substituted for bananas in recipes of wartime Britain and its subseqent period of austerity), that any sweetening is guilding the lily.

So, cook the parsnips, turning once, for about half an hour and then out they come. They will be burnished and quite sticky and caramelised at the edges and I will always eat one before the dish gets to the table!

By the way, for the best evocation of the joys of the roast potato, you might want to look at Nigel Slater's writing. I also just read his description in Easy Living Magazine of happiness being that last roast potato. I concur.

http://www.nigelslater.com/home.asp 

http://www.easylivingmagazine.com/

The rest of our dinner happened to be a roast chicken, which tonight I had stuffed with a sage and onion stuffing, carrots, broccoli and no gravy. We just poured the remainder of the chicken's juices over our potatoes. As I've said before, if you roast your chicken properly --I always say breast down for at least the first half hour-- you don't need anything to moisten it.

BUT I would have been happy with the potatoes and their friendly cloves of garlic plus the parsnips, salt and pepper and a little English mustard.

Thanks to Alexbrn over at Flickr for the photo. Wish I had time to photograph everything I cooked!

It's the small things that count

O.K. It's a tough day today so far. You know, slept badly, worried about one of the children, fretting about my capacity as a mother. Hell, that's just the start. But what am I doing? There isn't enough worry to go round. Everyone has tough times so here are a few ideas for some small but significant details when you need a little comfort.

1. Coffee. At my right side, there is a melamine mug. I've picked it, tatty as it is, because it reminds me of camping trips in Wales and hikes up mountains. In it, some good coffee, a spoon and --this is the special bit-- a chunk of honeycomb, which was a well judged birthday present from a friend.
2. On your own, sit at the table with a plate you like and, if possible, something you don't usually get the opportunity to cook for yourself. This works well if you are alone at home, but, in my experience, also translates into a packed lunch if you put something a bit decadent in there. What that is will be up to you. I am going to do this at lunch today. What am I having? Follow the recipe later in this post: pasta with a lot of strong flavour.
3. Hot milk at bedtime. Slug of brandy or whisky, honey, grating of nutmeg or, if you have it, a sprinkle of cinnamon -- maybe even a cinnamon quill to stir your milk with. This is my plan for tonight.
4. If you have a suggestion for food to cheer and comfort,  then let me have it as a comment! But here are some classic cheer up foods in my house: I'll include just savoury foods for now, as my tooth is always more salt than savoury. And I mention below only what I'd knock up for myself in straitened times.

*A jacket potato with butter and cheese.Make sure you massage the potato with sea salt first, though. Then you'll get a wonderfully crisp jacket. You can always shake off the extra salt.

*A big bowl of pasta -- but it has to be spaghetti or linguine. I don't know why, but the other shapes do not seem to work in the same way for me. And it has to be a gutsy sauce. Even a cold sauce -- or just cold ingredients added (this doesn't sound too good: see below!).

*A bowl of prawns, hot with garlic and chilli. No cutlery. Ideally, they will have their shell on, so just suck away at them. Ain't no-one else to see you get in a mess. Bread after for starch?

*Couscous, cooked with a little Marigold Bouillon. I'd then just add a little extra virgin olive oil and drizzle on some Encona chilli sauce.

*A shepherd's pie. If I am making one for the family, I have been known to make a little one just for me and stash it to one side. I'll give you a recipe for this in a later post. It's not decadent, it's taking care of yourself (which I regularly fail to do, by the way -- lest you actually thought I was a high-achieving Domestic Goddess).

*Tomatoes or mushrooms on toast. Roast the tomatoes in the oven in olive oil and pile them on to toast. Fry mushrooms gently in butter and do the same. Sardines?  Make sure they are well peppered and that your toast is crisp under them. Maybe slightly charred at the edges?

Now, back to the big dish of spaghetti I promised. Just get as much spaghetti or linguine as you think you will eat. Put it on to cook in masses of boiling water. Now, finely chop several cherry tomatoes or just the last of the English tomatoes you have (I'm using the last few my children grew), half a red chilli and  three cloves of garlic. Put them in a bowl and add to them a dessertspoon of rinsed capers and the same of olives --whichever sort you fancy. When your pasta is cooked, drain it and reserve just a tiny amount of the cooking water in the pan. Now add lots of extra virgin olive oil, freshly-ground black pepper and the mixture in the bowl: it's cold on hot. Check for salt and shovel down the lot. I don't mind if you are watching Murder She Wrote and that you're in bed while so doing. But today, I shall be at table, with Radio 4 on and a book to one side. Today that book happens to be .....haven't decided yet. 

This works for me. Don't baulk at the raw garlic. It's health giving, don't you know.

Photo from pingu1963. www.flickr.com Thank you! 

A lentil soup for a blustery day.

I have just made  a vat of this soup: it's just lentils, water, carrots, potatoes, a bay leaf or two, a sprinkling of chilli, if you like, and some spinach. It is also substantial, cheap and, well, mealy in a way I appreciate. Serve with bread and cheese --this is my very own bread bin on the right: I would feel that things were insecure if that bin were empty--or, maybe, keep it in mind to have round your fire and sparklers on bonfire night -- in which case, the chilli is not an option, it's obligatory.

Take 500g of red lentils, rinse them and pick them over and then put them in a big deep pan. Cover them with water: you will need twice as much water as lentils. Is that precise enough for you? Now add six roughly chopped carrots. As you may know if you're been reading me for a while, I always buy organic carrots and generally I do not bother to peel them, just do a quick top and tail and a little wash or scrub.

Now, to the pan add six medium potatoes, cut into large chunks, peeled or not (for this, though, peeled is probably going to be better), two bay leaves and then a big handful of spinach, roughly chopped -- or use frozen chopped leaf spinach: a great product for soups and curries, I find. Throw in about a heaped teaspoon of red chilli flakes or a whole chopped fresh red chilli and bring the lot to the boil. When it boils, skim off the froth and then simmer for about half an hour, after whch time you can season your soup with salt and pepper to taste. If you like, you can blend the soup; I prefer it as is or just mashed down gently with a fork so that it has plenty of texture still. Oh -- the soup works well with some home-made chicken stock if you have some knocking around. My freezer currently has vats of it and I've also started freezing chicken carcasses in order to make into a huge vat of stock at a later date if I just don't have time there and then. I got the idea for this from India Kinight's book, Thrift.-- a joyful book I would recommend because it made me laugh out loud. As did The Shops. Here they are
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrift-Book-Live-Well-Spend/dp/1905490372
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shops-India-Knight/dp/0141011483
And finally
http://twitter.com/indiaKnight

I have, since childhood, enjoyed a soup like this with big chunks of cheddar cheese dropped into it, going molten as you eat from a bowl or slurp your soup from a cup. But you couild grate it. Try a mature cheddar. Parmesan is good, too.

Here, by the way is a shot of part of my kitchen. It's not wildly conventional, is it?

We are down South: biscuits, sausages and red eye gravy.

That'll be the Southern U.S. My husband is from Georgia and needs to be kept ticking along with soul food like cornbread and, for this dinner anyway, biscuits. I've been enoying the tour of Atlanta, Georgia over at Flickr. Here we have something dear to the heart of this household: cornbread (note the butter!) and a big glass of iced tea. Thank you to Jasonlai: I've been enjoying your pictures.

But back to the biscuits, sausages and red eye gravy.

Now, biscuits: not cookies, but something more like a scone, served with savoury food as an indispensible starch. If you care to go back through the blog, you'll find a biscuits recipe (courtesy of the Virginian mother in law -- although I've decided that you'll need a little more milk than is stipulated in this recipe). Just find the July the 4th section and you're away.

So, make your biscuits and, while the dough waits for a little while to one side, begin to cook your sausages. Really, I'd stipulate patty or bulk sausage, which is to say sausage meat shaped into a fat rissole. It's worth undressing some good sausages for this, if you cannot find decent sausagemeat. On this occasion, though, I used some sausages (as in links) from some proper outdoor piggies and they were just dandy.

Right: put your sausages on to cook. On the hob is best, but because I'm zealous about econonomy right now, I did them in the oven because it was going to be on for the biscuits. Cook your sausages for about twenty five minutes in a hot oven and then put the biscuits in the oven. (The biscuits will take ten to fifteen minutes.) When both are done, keep the biscuits warm under a tea towel and then drain off about half of the fat from the sausages and scrape at any tasty-looking residue left in the pan. If you cooked them in the sort of pan which can also go on the hob, great; if not, transfer this fat and all the juices to a small saucepan and then add a roux made from a tablespoon or two of the juices and a heaped tablespoon of plain flour. Heat it gently and then add --HERE COMES YOUR RED EYE GRAVY---- 120ml of water and 120ml of coffee. By coffee, I mean 120ml of water with about a teaspoon of instant coffee granules added to it (or the same volume of filter coffee). You can also use tea, made with a teaspoon of tea (strained) or one tea bag. So, stir well, bring the lot to the boil and check for seasoning. Then serve with your sausages, the biscuits and, if I were you, some well-cooked greens. We had spinach. I suspect the husband would  have preferred collard greens that I'd cooked with a ham hock for about three hours -- just like his granddaddy.

And the boy was happy. Have you met my husband, by the way? Bath City fan extroadinaire: you can find him at.
http://nedvedsnotes.blogspot.com/

FURTHER NOTES:

*Oh and the sauasges: never prick a sausage of note; just lay it down to lie in a dish or frying pan and cook it for longer than you would think. That's how you get a sausage with a perfectly sticky skin. I've said it before, I know: small but significant detail.

*Red eye gravy is also made with country ham, for which I refer you to Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking.  (Crown, New York, 1995.) Many more to enjoy from him, though. http://www.facebook.com/people/Damon-Lee-Fowler/729229387

And just one more: when the Georgian husband and I are in Atlanta, here is somewhere I always want to go: the Varsity. Elvis ate there once, you know. It's huge. I love it. http://www.thevarsity.com/

A red hot chicken and tomato soup

I do love chillies...

इ दो लव चिल्लिएस: थिस इस फॉर यू अंकल xxxx
And while we're on the subject of chillies, here's a reminder that an excellent supplier can provide you with all the dried spices and herbs you could want for food with a kick. Check out Spices of India: I have used them many times.
http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk/

If you read yesterday's post, you would have seen yet another roast chicken being served up. That chicken went on to do tea for hungry under 8s and now a rather hot soup for tonight, for which proceed as follows. This serves two.  It makes me feel contented to have a pan of soup simmering away on the hob. The estimable and recently late Keith Floyd wrote in Floyd on France about how the soft scent of soup --with its aromas of lentils and ham bones-- filled your heart and later your tummy with joy. That the smell of soup meant home. How right he was. That'll be my hob above, by the way. Ignition on!

Take up your chicken carcass, which may have a lot of meat on it or, in our case, just (apparently) a few scraps. Put it in a big deep pan and cover it with water. Add four cloves of garlic, finely chopped, a dessertspoon of red chilli flakes (or a whole fresh chilli, finely chopped), a small handful of salt (well, say, two teaspoons, but I just put my hand in the big sea salt jar and chuck it in the pan), four medium potatoes cut into small chunks, peeled or not, a good handful of fresh or frozen spinach, chopped,and one can of peeled plum tomatoes which you have roughly chopped in the can. Then add about six tablespoons of red lentils, which have been picked over and rinsed...and bring the lot to the boil.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: why didn't she make chicken stock first and then peel away any meat? Well, this is just the lazy way for Sunday night and it works, all in. So, bring the soup to the boil and then simmer gently for half an hour, after which time, extract the chicken carefully and make sure you remove all bones from the soup. Take off any meat remaining on the carcass and put the meat into the soup. I also had a little rice, left over from lunch, so I added that.

Check for seasoning and serve piping hot with bread. A little feta cheese is a nice addition, too. As is a big swirl of some really good olive oil.

An Autumn Roast

Now, following on from yesterday's vegetables, here's another idea: this was lunch for four today.

You need a good, big oven dish...
Picture of roast chicken by Elijah, aged 7. That's my boy.


Take a large free range chicken and roast it on its back for about half an hour in a hot oven. You do this --I go on about this all the time, as you may have noticed f you've reading the rest of the blog!-- to allow the fat from underneath the chicken to percolate down through the breast, assuring succulent meat. After the half an  hour,  turn the chicken right side up and surround it with some roughly-chopped potatoes, peeled or not, chunks of onion or whole shallots and lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. If you like, add some fat chunks of carrot, too. So you see why I specify a substantial sort of dish. Now, put the lot back into the oven and roast until the chicken is done. The vegetables, by this time, will be sticky and unctuous. Quantities? I didn't count, but I'd say about 8 potatoes, two large onions and twelve cloves of garlic plus three large carrots.

How do you know if the chicken is done? You allow about twenty minutes for every 500g of chicken plus an extra twenty minutes. It's done when the skin is burnished, it all smells wonderful and the juices run clear when you pierce the chicken at its thickest point -- where the thigh meets the body. Use a a meat thermometer if you need to get your confidence up?

I served my chicken carved into thick slices (with my young boys eating the legs and wings), accompanied by the vegetables to one side. In lieu of the gravy you might be missing, I just poured over the juices from the roasting dish. We had spinach, too. And we picked up the garlic and chewed it or squished out its beautiful golden paste with the back of our forks. The picture above was taken by one of my young boys: I'd already scooped out the veg by this point. Look at the colour of the chicken: that's what I mean by burnished.

This is the kind of lunch or dinner that happens a lot in our house. Experiment with the vegetables, using squash or pumpkin, beetroot in large chunks -- even whole fresh red chillis.Either way, this makes me feel like the good Earth mother, even if my children do have a propensity to eat with their hands as if ferral.

A colourful Autumn supper

This made me happy just to look at it.

Potatoes, whole cloves of unpeeled garlic, shallots, sweetheart squash and tomatoes roasted in the oven.

You just cut up your potatoes into sizeable chunks: I didn't even bother to peel mine. Peel your little heart-shaped squash --these sweetheart ones as so pretty, but use any type of squash or the first pumpkins as they arrive-- and chop it into chunks. Leave the garlic in whole cloves, but you need not peel it. Peel the shallots, but leave them whole and chuck in the tomatoes whole. I used some cherry tomatoes I had in the garden.

Now, mix everything up in a big rustic dish or hey -- in a chipped pyrex dish, like the one I had to hand. Add a little sea salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper and a big slosh of olive oil, or sunflower oil. Put this into a hot oven and roast for about forty minutes, turning once.

This is real mood food: lots of consoling starch and you get the cream of the potatoes, the orange of the squash and of the tomatoes (or the reds, if you like) plus purple hues from the garlic cloves and outside edges of the shallots. As cheerful as a real fire.

You could serve this as is. It's good with some chilli sauce drizzled onto it. I favour --and have, since my Trinidadian college room mate put me onto it-- Encona chiili sauce. However, we are also having a simple preparation of eggs in the oven. Just beat four eggs with a cup of milk and some salt and pepper and add some gratings of parmesan. Or whatever cheese you happen to have -- even if it's only a dog end of cheddar that fell down behind the mik.. To this I like to add some finely chopped onion which I have softened in a little oil. You could do all this in the oven while the vegetables are cooking.  Mix your egg preparation together, add some chopped chives, too, if you have them and then bake it for twenty minutes. I do so in a lightly oiled flan dish.

That's all. It's a a really satisfying, robust and el cheapo supper. What do you think?

The picture is good, isn't it? It's from Andyrob at www.flickr.com

A fishfinger sandwich for a late breakfast.

Nope: not for the kids. I'm still feeling peaky and couldn't face breakfast, but this was just the ticket at 10 a.m.. You just...

Get some decent bread. I'd like a good granary or wholemeal loaf. And, for one, I'd recommend a minimum of two fish fingers per slice of toast. You'll see why in a moment.

Now, the photo on the right is from a photographer at  www.flickr.com called Adactio. Have a look: I've been enjoying these photos for a while. This is a somewhat upmarket version of what I suggest below. But look at that fine toast  and you'll see where I'm at, too!

Put your fish fingers under the grill. And the fish fingers of choice are not cod, but something made from 'white fish'. You know we shouldn't be eating cod. Just check out the range: I'd point you in the direction of Birds' Eye, though. Although, during my recent fishfinger research campaign, I did discover some good specimens in Lidl that were made from Alaskan Pollock. But grill, do not fry. They should be properly crisp on the outside.

Having toasted your bread, you butter it liberally (or not) and then put the fishfingers on the bread, breaking them up a bit and serving them with lashings of tomato ketchup. I like these open faced, actually. So you need plenty of fishfingers or it looks a bt mean and thats's no good at all for your morale. And I am bound to say that the fishfinger sandwich concept does not work unless you have a big mug of builder's tea to one side. See: it's the little details that make me happy. How about you?

Sweetcorn: a feast.

I've had some lovely sweetcorn from an organic box. Riverford: to be recommended -- and they kindly gave me lots of vegetables as they left our food festival here in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. Thank you. Here's a link -- they didn't ask me to do this, I should say! I'm just a customer. www.riverfordorganicveg.co.uk

Right: Here is what I did with my haul of corn -- plus another idea or two. By the way, the picture you see --it's elsewhere on the blog, too-- is of my favourite tin. This is for cooking the Southern cornbread to keep the Georgian husband in fine fettle and under the thumb. Ooops: I said that aloud, didn't I? This tin makes beautiful ears of cornbread. Courtesy of  Mom, latterly of Georgia, lately of Virginia.

Just cooked in water..

1. Choose plump ears in their rustling little jackets. Just undress them, bring them to the boil and then cook gently until toothsome -- which would be about fifteen minutes. All you need is butter. Some like to add salt and maybe even a little vinegar, but I just like them with the butter dripping down my chin. We do have some sweet little sweetcorn-shaped prongs to hold them, but usually, I just take a couple of napkins or bear the heat. They are a feast.

In the oven...

2. Corn roasted in the oven. Take as many ears of corn as you would like to eat. Now here is what I have seen in the Southern Unites States. Let the corn soak --in its jackets-- in cold water for ten minutes or so, then peel back the jacket without removing it. Pull out all those little wispy bits --those are the silks-- and put the jackets back. Then, twist the jacket at the top to seal in the corn. Nice touch, huh? Now roast the corn in a hot oven for about twenty minutes. Then just hand them over with a dish of decent butter.

On the barbeque or...

3. An autumn barbeque. Now, I have eaten roasted (some mght call it griddled) corn in a few parts of the world. Here is something I happen to love.

Undress the corn and then soak it for ten minutes or so. Dry it carefully. Now, take it up in your hands and massage it with a mixture of oil and butter (or just oil), salt, pepper, red chilli flakes and lime juice, whack it on a hot barbeque, under a hot grill or onto one of those heavy gridle pans. Allow it to sizzle away, making sure that it does not burn. This process will take about ten minutes. Keep turning. You may find that you have a few slightly charred bits and that some of the corn niblets are a little chewy -- but this is not corn as you may have had it before! Serve it with another helping of lime, salt, chilli and pepper. You will want to lick your fingers and, I would imagine, everyone else's too.And a top domestc tip for you is to serve this for your loved one when you have been squabbling -- you know, over the low-level domestic drudge stuff that must be dealt with.That kind of energy sapping thing. It will cheer you up, surprise you, it's messy and then you can do that thing with the fingers that I was just talking about.x