July the 4th continued: cornbread.

Cornbread in a special tin.

I have, in my ramshackle spice and tin cupboard, a beautiful and very heavy cast iron cornbread tin. Its wells are shaped like ears of corn. And if you get the bread just right and oil or butter the moulds enough, the breads come out easily and looking like miniature corns on the cob. All burnished and ridged. I love it. On with the recipe. You can also cook it in a tin or in muffin tins.

This makes about 14. I'm aiming for leftovers -- for which you'll need to read the July the 4th epitaph.

480g cornmeal. If you have problems getting this where you are, buy Italian polenta.
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of caster sugar
2 large free range eggs
2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
240g of yoghurt -- a good thick one. Not low fat. try Greek yoghurt -- although you can always add a little milk to loosen it, if need be. You can also replace it with buttermilk.
4-5 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter.

You need a very hot oven and it's best to preheat the pans you're using -- you'll see why in a moment.

Now, this isn't absolutely the proper way to do in some eyes, I'm sure, but I just mix the dry together and then add the wet. Remember to beat the eggs well first, though. And to use half of the melted butter, because you're going to use the rest to oil the pan with. Also, cornmeal does tend to lump, so check they you've beaten any lumps out of the mixture. And that these babies do tend to stick --especially if you're using the cast iron mould-- so you might need to melt a little more butter.

Now, take your pre-heated pan out of that hot oven, put in the butter, let it sizzle and then pour in the corn bread batter. If it refuses to budge from the mixing bowl, let it down with a little more milk. If you've made the cornbread all in one piece, allow about 30-35 minutes; probably ten minutes less if you've made cornsticks or used individual muffin moulds. This bread should be golden brown and with a crisp crust -- and should be served piping hot. With more butter. Don't panic: it's not every day, is it? Although I must say that my husband's maternal grandfather did have cornbread and green beans on the table at every meal. And I don't mean, lightly steamed green beans: I'm talking, long cooked with a ham hock.

Happy 4th of July. Read on for leftovers.

July the 4th continued: biscuits.

Aah. Biscuits. Just the thing to make the man from Georgia go all misty eyed. Obviously more so if, like the fifties housewife of my fantasy (I'm not so sure if I should be admitting to this), I am wearing his grandmother's apron. Ric-rac and all. The somewhat alluring picture above is by Foodistablog at www.flick'r.com Thank you!

To a Britisher, the closest thing to a biscuit is a scone. There's a slight kick of acidity with biscuits, though. The quarrel between the raising agents you use and the buttermilk, milk or yoghurt of the mixture. In the South, they would always be served hot and with butter. You could split them and serve them with a little bit of the July the 4th ham I've described for you. In the South, it would be 'country ham' -- for which I refer you to Damon Lee Fowler again: Classical Southern Cooking.

I have here the recipe of my mother in law, Mrs Claudia Ballard Mead Ellis. She is a proud Virginian. I've changed her recipe only in that I've altered the eminently sensible American cup measurement (which is 8 oz or 240 g, in case you were wondering.

To make 12 to 16 biscuits,
take 480 g self raising flour (Claudia uses what is known in America as all purpose)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
60 g of unsalted butter (or you could use vegetable shortening, as she does)
150 ml milk

Alternatively, add a quarter teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the dry ingredients (in addition to the baking powder) and substitute buttermilk for the milk. She suggests adding another 20 grammes of shortening or butter if you wish to make these buttermilk biscuits instead. I like the texture also if I add half and half yoghurt (full fat) and milk instead of plain milk.

So, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and then rub in the fat until it ressembles coarse crumbs. Then just make a hollow and stir in enouigh milk to make a soft dough. Add the milk a little at a time: you may need more or less. The mixture should leave the sides of the bowl and stick to your mixing utensil. Now, turn the dough onto a floured board and knead with the heel of your hand 15 times. Roll thee dough out to about 2 centimetres in thickness and cut out with a straight or serated 2 inch cutter. Put them on a greased baking sheet in a very hot oven and bake until risen and golden brown.

I like Claudia's instruction that you should place them close together for soft sides and 1 inch apart for crusty sides.

And do serve at once. They will re-heat, but do not seem as special. And do you know what my husband's last meal would be? Biscuits and red-eye gravy. If you want to know more about this, you'll have to come round -- although not, obviously, if it really is his last meal.

July the 4th continues: tomatoes on the table.

With your bean salad, coleslaw and ham (don't panic: I've not forgotten the breads), serve some tomatoes. They need to be plain and unadorned. It makes me happy to see something which is-- no garnishes; no fuss.

Take the best tomatoes you can find. Summer tomatoes, but large ones, not little cherry ones. They might be lumpy and ungainly-looking and they might smell like old copper coins and grass after the rain. At least, to me, that is what tomatoes smell like.

Just cut the tomatoes into thick slices just before you want to eat and put them on a plate, overlapping. Don't dress them-- although you could put a little jug of dressing on the table to have to hand. I'd like them with nothing on them at all --salt and pepper at most, but put on by those eating them, on their own plates. Lovely. And I've had it drummed into me that you never keep tomatoes in the fidge because it ruins their delicate texture. But somewhere cool, if you can.

July the 4th continues -- a Green bean salad.

So, you've made iced tea and it's chilling, you have an idea of how to do the ham and there's already a coleslaw recipe for you to read. Next up: a simple and refreshing green bean salad. The picture is by Annie Mole at www. flick'r com. Thank you.

You could use French beans or runner beans, the important thing being that they are firm and fresh and would snap if you bent them, not make an arc.

For French beans, just top and tail; for runner beans, take the stalks off and cut them into thin pieces --although, if they are from your garden, they will still be thin enough at this point in the year for you not to have to bother. Allow a good handful of beans for each person.

Cook the beans until al dente, refresh them under cold running water and drain carefully. Then add a very finely sliced white onion. You can then dress them with a simple dressing of three parts sunflower or groundnut oil to one part white wine vinegar or lemon juice. I think they are fine to steep in their dressing for an hour or so. Check for seasoning. But they need nothing else.

A baked spiced ham

This looks festive and like a proper feast when you put it on the table.

But first, I'll try to clear up any confusion over ham, gammon and bacon. Even then, I read different things.

Really, it is possible to cure any part of the pig -- so that it would all end up as either bacon or ham. If it isn't cured, it isn't ham or bacon, it's another cut of pork. Technically, though, only the back leg is really a ham and two back legs could provide you with four hams.

Bacon can be made from pretty much any part of the pig, with, in my opinion, the best coming from the belly to give you streaky bacon. Mrs Beeton describes as bacon the whole side of pork from which head (for brawn) and feet (for trotters) have been removed. My family refers to boiled cured pork as bacon -- hence the title of this!

So what's gammon? Looking at some contemporary cookery writers, I see they describe the meat as gammon before boiling and ham when it's cooked. Mrs Beeton tells us that gammon is boiled for ham. My understanding, though, is that a gammon is the largest piece of meat from the lower part of the leg. That's a traditional gammon. The other bits would be the slipper gammon and the corner gammon. Ask your butcher because you can get some bargains here.

You need about a 2 kg of gammon. If you think it will be very salty, either leave it to soak for an hour in two in cold water or bring it to the boil, throw out the water and bring it ot the boil again in fresh water. The meat will probably be cooked in about two hours.

Out it comes, ket it cool slightly and then take off the outer layer of fat from the meat. Now, take a sharp knife and make criss cross patterns across the remaining skin. Now massage in two tablespoons of blackstrap molasses or black treacle and the same of wholegrain mustard.

Mix the two together and rub well into the meat. All over it. Now, into each square left by your careful criss-crossing, press a clove. Into a medium hot oven it goes until this sugary, salty glaze beings to shimmer and crackle. It will smell like Christmas in July. It should take only about fifteen minutes to bake.

You can either serve this hot or cold. For July the 4th, I always have it cold.

Now, this is not authentically Southern. I've just evolved a way we like it in our house. You could, for example, cook the gammon in cocoa cola, which gives it a taste redolent of a proper Southern pulled pork barbeque, with its vinegar based sauce (there is another, which is tomato based, by the way). My gammon (or ham, I could say) is actually closer to the baked spiced meats of merrie England. If you want to know more about Spiced beef, Barbados ham or Leicestershire or Lincolnshire spiced or herbed bacon or gammon, may I refer you to Elizabeth David's Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen?

Our annual; July the 4th dinner

Independence Day.
(Above: Isaac aged four with his favourite watermelon.)

This became quickly obligatory when Dixieland came to Wiltshire because you can take the boy out of Georgia, but you can't take Georgia out of the boy. Here's what I cook --it's not necessarily a traditional July the 4th lunch or dinner, but these are dishes that make him feel at home. (Twice).

Iced tea
coleslaw
baked spiced ham
green bean salad
biscuits
cornbread
plain summer tomatoes

The coleslaw recipe you are looking for is earlier in my blog. In addition, try this: Southern recipes with a few tweaks from me.

First of all, make sun tea for your iced tea. Rather than brew the tea with hot water, try making your tea with cold water --as much as you'll need for your guests in the proportion you like (roughly, one tea bag to a person?). I make this in big jugs and I would try to use Orange Pekoe tea, which is the one my mother in law recommends. I have had success brewing with Yorkshire tea, though. But it doesn't have that slightly floral note that I like.

So, on goes the cold water to the tea. In a big jug. Then into the sun it goes to brew for an hour or even two. Then, tea bags out and into the fridge it goes. It needs to be properly cold. Then you serve it sweet, or not, with a little lemon -- and I also like some big sprigs of mint, although we're heading for Morocco not Macon here. Best to add lots of ice, too.

I did have all the rest of the recipes here for you but my broadband failed and my work was not autosaved. So beware: keep pressing Save Now! Write more this evening.

Foods that changed my life

Mackerel.
Caught in Little Haven Pembrokeshire, at the harbour right by the house where my grandmother was born. Bought off the boat, taken back to the tent (actually, looking back, why did we stay in a tent when we had hordes of relatives we could have stayed with...?). Cooked on a camping stove -- fried in a tatty old blackened frying pan that went with us in camping kit. Bread and butter. Fish tasting of the sea. Ditto a pile of sprats once. A crispy skin and lots of rich flavour.

Actually, I bought some sprats when I was in Tesco buying pencil cases (as you do) the other day. The fishmonger clearly thought I was a bit odd because the amount I wanted was twice what he thought we’d need for two PLUS he said he could never eat the whole of a fish like that. Yuk! How could you? I don’t know why exactly, but I really felt like crying. But I cooked the sprats when I got home, in a seasoned flour and served with brown bread and butter. FAB.

The picture of mackerel above is by me'nthedogs at www.flick'r.com Thank you!

Pheasants

A friend had shot them (my grandpa used to poach them around the Mendip hills-- very Danny the Champion of the World, don’t you think? As a child, I thought this was fantastic: I digress) and Ned and I plucked them into a bin bag while watching telly. Then I gutted them. Well larded with bacon and cooked quite quickly in a hot oven. And really not so dry. Spat out the shot. Some of my friends think I’m weird, but I cannot understand why.

Aloo

That is, a potato in Hindi -- and many other Indian languages. Lovely big floury potatoes, cooked in a tomatoey curry sauce by my auntie Joan at the various London houses of my childhood. Copied by my mum. I still crave this now and it’s what I cooked the day of my mum’s funeral, just for myself. And contrary to popular belief, heartbreak and grief sometimes stimulate a mighty big appetite.

The Pie and the pottage

Whenever I get down to the Brecon Beacons and my extra special auntie, you can smell the pie or the potage as you end the descent down the track to the house. Steak and kidney pie, or potato, cheese and onion pie, a soup made with split peas and ham stock (pease potage, really) or cawl (that’s welsh for soup) with lamb, carrot, potato and swede or turnip. I like to add pearl barley to mine. It’s comfort for me; it’s home. I’ve had some years of vegetarianism and some as a pescatarian. But I think it’s home and hearth that bring me back to dishes with meat in them.

Crabs

As a child, brought along by my cousin Michael (this time, it’s St David’s Pembrokeshire), boiled and torn limb from limb, with the help of hammer and various items from my uncle John’s toolkit. Clearly I was a bit of a savage as a child. We’ve had great whole crab in more recent times at the Royal Standard, which is right on the beach at Lyme Regis. Top tip! How can people leave the brown meat? My boys displayed the crab shells by the house and have taken them in to show and tell. Hmmm.

Winkles

In a paper cone, accompanied by a cork stuck with pins to,well, winkle them out. Eaten in Ireland and Ramsgate and never forgotten. Ditto, litle pots of prawns from the boats in Ceredigion, hoping we’ll see the dolphins jump in Cardigan bay.

Street food

I was helping an eight year old child with homework the other day and counted up the number of countries I’d visited. It was 29. I am intensely grateful. We talked about food. What sticks out? Cos I like those spicy things you make for me. Vietnamese spring rolls, with little cellophane wrappers and big fat handfuls of coriander and mint. Pho, aromatic Vietnamese broth, with the wonderful aniseed smell I love so much...hmmm...chicken kebabs and noodles with freshly ground peanuts over the top in the backstreets of Calcutta. Things cooked in front of me, essentially. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not the street food you have to worry about if you’re fretting about amoebic dysentery. High turnover; cooked quickly. That’s my theory and I stick to it.

My mother’s roast chicken Sunday lunch

Say no more. And I’m afraid that, for nostalgia’s sake and because I’m not a food snob, I do love a bit of paxo stuffing. But the chicken has got to be a free ranger. Also, a chicken sandwich for tea, butter dripping down your arm as you eat because in it there might also be some fried leftover Sunday veg.

Mushrooms

Now, most of the time, I don’t really think about them. But something etched im memory is the camping thing again. Mushrooms gathered early morning, mist on ground, mid Wales (Cymru: God’s country, you know). The blackened frying pan again. Big field mushrooms, fried in butter, toast. Swoon.

Oooh this is shameful but Ambrosia rice pudding straight out of the tin?

Now, when I’ve been broken hearted, I’ve actually eaten this (not with my hands -- there being such things as limits, of course) in a dark kitchen in front of an open fridge (for the light: it’s companiable, you know). And I don’t want to put you off, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever made a rice pudding I’ve loved as much. Same goes for Heinz tomato soup, which must be eaten scaldingly hot and taken from a mug.

Cheese. Eggs.

A proper boiled egg and soldiers; a camembert, really ripe. Actually, lots of cheeses -- but I like strong flavours, so I’ll write more on them later. Hmm...not a great omelette fan but a really good poached egg? I’d be yours, of course. You know what? It’s lunchtime. I think I WILL have a boiled egg.

Oranges and others straight from the tree...

Now, I am so much more a fan of vegetable than fruit. But I will say this: fruit straight from the tree. In the case of the orange, from the garden groves of a family in the Jhelum valley area of Kashmir (Pakistani Kashmir, that is.) Rhapsodically sweet. A revelation. Also, my foraging as a child could come in here, too. When sent to pick peas, I would always take a plastic tumbler and eat --well, almost drink-- tumblerfuls of these sweet peas, straight off my father’s lines. Victoria plums from the tree in my grandfather’s orchard, damsons and the little waxy apples that my father grew, their trees all surrounded by unruly grass in which sprouted tribes of early purple orchids. Happy days. I’m getting all Marcel Boulestin on childhood food and gardens. Don’t know who he is yet? You’ll have to read my book!

Mangoes and barfi

Now, when I want a mango, I really want one. And not any old mango, but a Dussheri, a Sindhri mango or an Alphonse. I’ve got my Bengali uncle to thank for this one. And I’ll refer you to the older woman’s crumpet, actor and natural food Terence Stamp (no no: he was my mother’s fantasy man): the only place to eat a mango is in the bath. Obviously not with your clothes on. And if it’s a feeble kind of mango, the point of this will probably elude, anyway.

As a child, I think it was partly the little shiny bit of tinsel at either side of the mango that appealed. I still adore this. Same with the boxes of barfi --that’s a South Asian fudge-- that uncle bought for me and which I have always bought when in the right county or at a sweetmart here. It’s the grainy texture: sweet and milky -- like nothing else you’ve ever eaten, perhaps. It’s the coconut one for me, probably. And ideally, they’ve got to come in a box with some snazyy illustrations, possibly featuring the odd Bollywood scene.

My earliest comfort food. I always come home to potatoes.

Potato like momma used to make.

Now, I've heard of people who like to eat a bowl of bread and milk with some sugar on it --I suppose this is not dissimilar. Try it sometime. I'm eating this tonight: world, go your own way.

For one, take some floury potatoes --maybe two largeish ones? Peel them and cut them into large chunks. Here, texture is everything: it won't work with waxy potatoes. Bring the potatoes to the boil in not too much water and simmer until they are done. Perhaps allow them to be a little softer than usual. When you have drained them, give them a good shaking against the side of the pan. Like you might give if you were roughening up their surface for roast potatoes.

Now, into a bowl go the potatoes, add some milk, salt and pepper and a knob of butter. Eat in your dressing gown. And here it doesn't matter if the pyjamas you are wearing are unbecoming.
What do the potatoes care?

I know: we're not a million miles away from mashed potato here, are we? But it's something about the chunkiness of the potato and the sweet taste of the milk that appeals to me. And that, just as it is, it originally emanated from my mother's kitchen and was something she used to eat, growing up.

And another potato-related anecdote. One of the best I ever ate was at a steam fair in Carmarthenshire. Don't tell me I'm hick. It was a jacket potato, with a fine crispy skin, from an unprepossessing fast food van called (I had to go because of the name) 'Potato Paradise.' It was heaving with a dollop of decent butter (the potato, not the van) and home-made chilli -- heavy on the beans -- plus a spoonful of sour cream. It spoke of generosity, I thought. Just the thing to eat while perusing the chainsaw and then the antique lawnmower display. In the rain.

Runners beans all by themselves

Runner beans, the way I like them.

Let me introduce you to my favourite dish in the whole world. I've noticed that a preference for this is markedly strong across my family, too. So here's to them.

When the runner beans are in season -- not long now, as I write-- take great handfuls of them, if you can. They shouldn't flop in your hand but look, well, alert. Wash and cut the very ends off -- or just the stalk, chop them into generous slices (which I do across the diagonal), cook them until they are tender but not soft and serve. With nothing -- but just a little butter, at most.

Sometimes, I like to serve a lovely vegetable all by itself as a course of a bigger meal. But these would be good with a roast Sunday dinner, too. Growing up, my mother tended to serve these beans with a shepherd's pie. But when we took the first beans from the row or the teepee in the garden, we had them all on their own.

Beetroots.

What to do with beetroot?

 Lots of people seem to hate them. You don't need to eat them with vinegar. You could just shred or grate them and have them --raw, that is-- in a nice astringent salad with good yoghurt, salt and pepper. Maybe a little caraway seed.

Or mix them with grated fresh horseradish to make one version of the Jewish speciality --this I love --called chrain. It's a powerfully-flavoured accompaniment that goes well with fish or meat. I also like it on a jacket potato. I leaned about this from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food, which I urge you to read. If you can buy horseradish, great -- but it's not hard to find it growing by the wayside. Check out a good reference text and follow its lead. Oh - the picture above is by Indigo Goat at www.flick'r com Thank you!

You just grate chunk of peeled horseradish and add gradually add sugar, sea salt and lemon juice (you could use vinegar instead) until it tasted good to you. Opinions vary on the proportion of beetroot to horseradish, but I'd use about twice as much beetroot as horseradish. Peel it, grate it and add it. Check for seasoning. That's all. You might want to warn anyone you're feeding about the potency of horseradish as it hits the back of your throat.

Thing is, though, when I hanker after beetroot --and I do, although in my household I am alone in this-- none of this is what I'm after. Here's what does it for me: it's my dream solo tea or midnight feast. Which you may think is weird.

Boil as many beetroots as you think you can consume at any one time or over a few days. I tend to boil them in their skins and then carefully peel them when they are yield well to the point of a knife in their heart (blimey --I'm the Sweeney Todd of beetroot) and have been left to cool down a little. Then, I slice them, sprinkle them with just a little salt and put them in a sandwich with fresh white bread --for some reason it needs to be white.I don't think this works with the plastic stuff, though: it has to be something substantial and with a proper crust. Butter. Possibly a mug of tea. Really, this is winter in front of the fire -- but I had a beetroot sandwich the other day. I'd also be happy with just slices of beetroot on a plate with just a little salt. Possibly I was unusual as a child in liking this scary, garnet vegetable. But then, I've always loved sprouts -- even the ones that got put on in November for Christmas dinner. But sprouts will appear in another chapter!

Radishes to bring you joy.

In praise of the radish.



My earliest memory of radishes is of those I used to pull out of my father's garden. I would pull the leaves off --these days, I don't: they're good raw or cooked-- wipe them on my leg and eat. I still do that if I've grown them at home. But try this. It's something described by the great Elizabeth David in French Provincial Cooking and, I notice, is listed as one of Nigel Slater's marriages made in heaven in another book I love, his Appetite. It's radishes, just stripped of their greens, washed carefully and then served with cold butter.

The picture above --and man: that's a lot of radishes-- is by Adactio at www.flick'r.com Thank you!

So get the best butter you can-- unsalted. Then try this: a little morsel of butter and a bite from a whole radish. Or a dab of butter across the radish. I suppose you could add a few crystals of some good sea salt --such as the Maldon salt that I use-- but that's it. And you don't slice them or prink them: you keep them whole and admire their beautiful colour -- like you're noticing it for the first time. We'll be having them later this week.

Fairy cakes for strapping lads.

Fairy cakes for strapping lads.

Now, why would you need such a recipe? Because it's a prompt to action and the pleasures of simple baking. This is a regular in our house with my young boys -- and, of course, everyone likes the licking best. Although I am supposed to be telling you that we shouldn't be imbibing raw eggs, by and large.

I use large muffin cases for these -- because the little cakes look more voluptuous in them. I just cooked two hundred of them for Mothering Sunday service at a local church. All golden and slightly cripsy around the frill of the case and topped with pastel-coloured icing and sweeties they looked, I might, say a picture.

To make 12-14.

Cream 250 grams of unsalted butter with 200 of caster sugar.
Add 250 of self raising flour, mix well, then add four free range medium eggs and a half teaspoon of natural vanilla essence. I use my trusty electric hand-held beater to work this in for a couple of minutes. This recipe makes a nice rich mixture and the cakes are buttery tasting.

Cook for about ten minutes in a medium hot oven. If you're not sure of yourself, remove on and poke a knife in. It should come out clean.When they are cool, just sieve a little icing sugar over them.

BUT I'm not after restraint here....so...

For the toppings, just put a teacup of icing sugar in a bowl and, very slowly, add water to make a paste. You don't want it to be too thin Add a little colour to taste -- I like the combination of very pale yellow, pink and green. Not all in one bolw: make a separate mix for each colour! Now, you can get 'natural' colours, but I cannot promise.

Before the icing dries, add little smarties or jelly tots. If you were to make a huge tableful of these, in their pastel-hued prettiness, it would make a great treat for a group of people, I think. Or even, if you just put one lovely cake --get some crystallised violets if you want to bring tears to my eyes-- into a small box and trim it up a bit, you're providing a fine treat for someone. It's along the lines of one of my favourite presents ever one Christmas: a large clear glass bauble on gold thread, packed in white tissue paper in a little gold box. But I would also have liked the cake.

A lentil soup for every day.

Mary Monica Lentil soup.

She was my mother (of the title) and her cooking rocked.

This was, along with the cawl (Welsh soup) I've written about elsewhere and leek and potato soup, the soup my mother most often cooked. And I tend not to deviate from the original recipe so...

1 large onion, chopped - not too finely
six rashers of bacon -- however it comes, but not smoked: chopped into small pieces (use some sharp scissors -- that's how she taught me to snip bacon into pieces)
six fat carrots, peeled (I don't bother if they are organic) cut into generous chunks
six medium potatoes, peeled and cubed -- not too finely, now.
400 grams of red lentils.

You just fry off the bacon, add the onion, then everything else -adding a little sunflower oil if you need to (good bacon shouldn't give out water!). Use a good deep pan. Then just cover the mixture with water and add as much water in volume again. Bring to the boil, skim the froth that rises, turn it right down to simmer slowly and cover the pan lightly with a lid. Stir every now and then. Cook for about half an hour. The vegetables will soft, the onion virtually dissolved into the soup and will be creamy and wonderful. Check for salt and pepper. If you're vegetarian, just miss out the bacon. Sometimes, for an extra boost of flavour, I turn to my trusty Marigold bouillon powder. Go easy and add to taste. Sometimes, my mother added a little ground cumin to the soup and sometimes a dash of a curry powder blend: if you want to try, may I suggest Bolst's or Rajah?

Leek and potato soup.

Leek and potato soup. To cheer you up and comfort you.


Here is another favourite down our way. It's hardly seasonal --reader, I write in late June-- but I felt I needed to cook it because I was feeling sad. This was for two -- so scale up, accordingly. So simple as to be embarrassing.

The photo above is by Adactio at www.flick'r.com Thank you!

Four big fat leeks -- trimmed, but don't waste the dark green bits. Slice and clean carefully under cold water. That thar mud is persistent.

Eight medium floury potatoes -- so King Edwards, Maris Piper -- or even those just sold as 'white potatoes'. Peel and quarter them.

These two vegetables just go into a big deep pot, cover with water and then a few centimetres more, bring to the boil, add salt and a little freshly ground pepper, simmer for twenty minutes, crush everything down a little with a fork - I don't want to liquidise this-- and check for seasoning. We would eat this with bread and butter and, latterly, a hunk of decent mature cheddar. Which you can drop into the soup to scoop up in strings. Does it for me. It does have to be piping hot to do the trick.

Some simple breakfasts from heaven

Some prompts to a fine toast breakfast: just for today, don't rush?

I'm sure you don't really need me to tell you the recipes for these things -- so consider them prompts to action?

French toast -- the eggy bread of my childhood. I remember eating this on summer mornings in the tent my dad put up every school summer holiday --despite what he knew it would do to the lawn. I still have tremendous waves of nostalgia at the smell of damp tent....

You just dunk your finely sliced bread in beaten egg and then it goes into the frying pan in which you have warmed some unsalted butter. Cook it gently so that it's crisp and golden on both sides. To serve, add a sprinkling of cinnamon, a grating or shake of nutmeg and some demerara sugar. OR, best of all, a good glug of maple syrup: the best you can afford, all malty and fragrant. This was also my pre-Brownie tea as a child - until I was removed from Brownies for naughtiness: reader, on the catering badge, I put a flapjack in brown Owl's tea and a squirt of washing up liquid. She was very grumpy. But it was wrong of me.

Sardines on toast. We're supposed to be eating more oily fish, so here goes. I think you need some good, hefty bread. Brown, wholemeal or a proper white with a crackling crust. Or rye bread. I toast my bread very lightly first, then I just drain off some of the oil --sardines in sunflower oil are my choice-- and put the sardines, gently squished, onto the toast. Salt and pepper. Good hot grill. Cook them, watching carefully, until they are sizzling and the skin even beginning to blacken --just a little, mind-- in places. Eat them immediately. I'd like this any time of day.

Tomatoes on toast. Supermamma I'm not (as my children both went to school today with toothpaste besmeared faces, I think), but I did manage a cooked breakfast for everyone today. Into a hot oven go as many cherry tomatoes as you think you will eat, with a big sprig of rosemary, some olive oil and salt and pepper. Cook for twenty minutes and then pile onto hot crispy toast. There may or not also have been coco pops on the table.

And some other tips:

Make a smoothie with raspberries, banana and milk plus a good scoop of Greek yoghurt.

Have a luxury bowl of porridge by dolloping condensed milk or shaking soft brown sugar on the top.

Fry leftover potatoes with a little turmeric, cumin and a little chili: check for seasoning and serve with a poached or fried egg.

Make a BAT: get some good bacon, grill or fry it and then stuff it in the bread of your choice with slices of avocado and tomato.

Boiled egg and soldiers in an eggcup that you like. This works for me. We have, as our mugs, a large and hideous collection of novelty eggcups. For me, though, it's the modest but jaunty, speckled blue eggcup that makes me smile. Proper butter on the bread?

A simple, fresh mango pickle and more!

A simple mango pickle -- or achaar.

Now: pickle, chutney....relish...: what's the difference? The terms seem to me to be used interchangeably, but pickle tends to connote something cooked --or at least fermented or steeped (as in the case of the wonderful Korean kimchee). I suppose chutney does too. The word chutney (originally chutnee) is, like bungalow or pyjamas (I could go on), an Anglo Indian word. I could talk until I bored you on the wonderful range of Indian chutneys, so varied from state to state, town to town, family to family. Achaar means any one of a range of cooked or raw (fresh) pickles -- and it's fresh ones I describe for you below. These are family recipes -- not standardised ones!

Back to the mangoes...

This is a fresh relish -- not so far removed from a finely chopped salad- that's lovely with Indian food, but also great on top of a jacket potato or in sandwiches. Or even by itself!

You just take....

Two fat mangoes. Nice ripe ones. You cube them. Top tip: first turn them into mango hedgehogs (beloved of my young boys) by cutting thick strips away from the fruit, peel and all. Score each strip in a criss cross pattern, bend it back and just slice off the cubes. Then butcher up the rest of the mango, leaving the stone to chew on later. Or give it to a fractious child to suck on. Works in our house.

Put your mango cubes in a bow, add a good pinch of sea salt, a large handful of coriander and half to one whole green chilli (or red), deseeded if you're not so tolerant of heat. That's all.

Now, here's another -- but man, it's hot. This is one my uncle Jamall makes.

Coconut chutney

You take the flesh of a coconut (drink the milk: some say it's a little probiotic, but I just like it). Chop it as finely as you can.
Add a very finely chopped green chilli and a large handful of fresh coriander, also finely chopped.
You could put the whole lot in a blender or food processor, using the 'pulse' mode and scraping the pickle down the sides as you go.
Hot, creamy, a little different and very aromatic. You could also add some mint. See what you like best.

And one more: Tomato and cucumber relish.

You just take two handfuls of cherry tomatoes or sweet tomatoes, chop them finely and add a medium cucumber, also finely chopped. The juice of a lemon or lime and a flat teaspoon of a 'chaat' powder. Those wonderful aromatic spice blends that are used to complement both sweet and savoury snack foods. Mix well. Done. I tend to serve this with a variety of Indian dishes .

A baked apple, bursting at the seams

A lovely baked apple.

Now, this is sweetly nostalgic for me. Really, it's the autumn Sunday lunch pudding of my childhood -- and I expect I would have been sent to pick the apples. So..

Allow one large cooking apple each. Wash, but don't peel -- unless the apples are pretty elderly and past their first bloom: it'll still be nice, but not what I intended. Using a corer, take out the core, scraping out any seeds that get missed in the process. Now, put your apples on a baking dish with just a little water in the bottom. Fill the core of each apple with sultanas or raisins, a good pinch of soft brown sugar and the same of nutmeg. Another fat pinch of sugar all round. Now, into a medium hot oven they go and then cook away for around an hour. You'll know they are done because the skins will be starting to split and a lovely apple snow will be visible within. The important thing is not to cook them too fast, otherwise they won't be tender to the core. You can top up the water level if your pan burns dry and you'll find that there's a lovely, sticky apple syrup underneath each fruit. A toffee apple taste, just gently spiced.

Serve these with more brown sugar, as liked, plus cream or custard -- or just as is. And these also make a good breakfast in bed for your loved one. I mean, a lingering kind of breakfast.

In autumn, may I suggest you add blackberries to the hole in the apple? Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. My favourite.

The smell of your baking apple as it cooks has much to recommend it, too. Makes me want to reach for slippers just thinking about it--you know; carpet slippers, very down at heel, like Badger's in The Wind in the Willows. It just smells, well, cosy. And however twee that sounds, cosy's what I want.

Before bed for a spot of comfort.

Hot milk for yours truly.

Take soft bedsocks, a water bottle --yes: it can be a bit crisp in Blighty even in June-- and the following to bed....

Warm some milk, add a teaspoon of honey, a little pinch of nutmeg and the tiniest grating of chocolate - cheap or posh. Now stir it all together with a big fat cinnamon quill and retire. This works especially well if you are reading something soothing. My plan tonight: Miss Read or possibly, from the children's shelf, my old copy of The Wind in the Willows. For extra appeal, you can start at the Wild Wood chapter and, if you're not asleep by the end, you can enjoy the descriptions of the plates that winked suggestively on the dresser, the famished animals soon to be replete and the clean, lavender-scented sheets in Mr Badger's house -- all when Rat and Mole finally get out of the snow.
Dulce Domum.
Night Night.

P.S: I won't tell anyone if you suck noisily on the cinnamon quill or if you add whisky to your posset.

Cawl: this is what you want, boy.

Cawl -- it's just Welsh for soup.*

I have long been sustained on this by the Welsh mother and aunties. It's a wonderful soup of lamb and vegetables. I saw in Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, that it was traditional to eat the broth first and then the vegetables. Rather like the French pot au feu, I suppose. I have grown up with just big bowlfuls of this, broth, meat and vegetables all in. And often, I like to add pearl barley, too. There isn't any prescriptive recipe.

So, if you had about 750 g scrag end of lamb, you'd be fine for the usual 4-6. You could also use lamb chops --such as best end of neck chops. A butcher could advise you (she says optimistically: hope you have one)
4-5 large potatoes, peeled and chunked (big chunks, though)
1 large onion, sliced (actually, I don't always add the onion, because you've got leeks, too)
1 medium swede, chunked. OR you could use turnips, say three ot four little ones?
4 large carrots, in fat chunks.
3 leeks, chopped into generous logs -- dark green bits, too.
Two handfuls of pearl barley.
Salt and pepper to hand and some fresh parsley

You just put the lamb in a jolly big pan, cover it with water and then you've got two options.
1. If you want to cook the lamb ahead (for about an hour and a half) you can, then skim, cool and take off the fat. The next day or maybe the day after that, add all the other ingredients, bring back to the boil and simmer until all is tender. Check for seasoning, sprinkle with parsley and serve with lots of bread and butter.
2. Put the whole lot in together, bring to the boil and cook carefully for about an hour and a half, all in. If you do this, though, your vegetables will be very well cooked, but still delicious. Keep the vegetables in large chunks, though. Because I'm lazy, this is what I tend to do. Lots of bread again.

This cawl smells wonderful. Although it seems like a winter dish, I admit to cooking it year round -- especially when the household is in need of some succour. When in time of trauma once and entirely at sea, I was taken off to a pub by a Welsh auntie and administered to with cawl, bread and a cup of tea. Carmarthenshire special, it was. Yes: it did help.

*or stew or, according to my Collins Welsh dictionary, "broth, soup; hotchpotch".

A simple storecupboard chicken supper

A simple chicken dinner.

Simplicity itself. Just put this in the oven to cook away, good natured dish that it is.
If you have a rustic-looking earthenware dish, it will be even more comforting.

For four, or greedier souls, take eight chicken thighs, bone in. Probably skinned because, when you're not roasting, the skin of the chicken is not so delectable.

Take your chicken thighs and pour oven them a tin of decent quality plum tomatoes, which you have chopped in the tin. Add a good slurp of olive oil, a few chilli flakes, a handful of rinsed capers and some finely chopped garlic. Agitate this gently around the chicken (or mix the lot in a bowl first and then pour over). I might also add some small shiny wrinkled little black olives and, on top, I might put a couple of rosemary branches from the garden. If you need some iron, you could also -- and this is an ingredient I swear by-- have the chicken nestling on five or six pellets (I realise this sounds agricultural) of chopped, frozen spinach. Right: salt and pepper and into the oven you go. Cook for about an hour in a medium hot oven. Make sure you don't reduce the rosemary to cinders!

A nod to the Mediterranean, I think. You could take your dinner off in a different direction with the addition of ground cumin and a pinch of ground cinnamon. Either way, it's good with plain rice or perhaps some couscous.

A simple dinner for the tired and overworked. If you are both these things and also Welsh or of Welsh extraction, you'll have to read the next article!

Some nice little Indian onion fritter -- piaz pakore.

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

To make very nice pakore you've also got to be prepared to eat straight from the pan!

Pakore are fritters made with a batter of chick pea flour, which is dense, slighty sweet and nutty. You can make them with any number of vegetables -- in Bengal, if you're lucky, you might find one made with potato skins: fantastic. Here is the recipe for onion fritters that I like to follow at home. And the picture above? If you go to www.flick'r com you will find pictures of old Calcutta like this one from Subodhev. This is a snack seller and his wares, I can vouch, will be excellent. Here are some more evocative pictures from this photographer, while I'm at it. Calcutta (oops: Kolkata). I love it.

There's some leeway for ingredients here. Have confidence. Yoghurt is not always added; you could just make a simple batter with sunflower or rapeseed oil and the gram flour.

1 big pot of plain yoghurt. I like to use thick Greek yoghurt. It won't be so good with low fat.
Gram flour. That's chick pea flour, which may also be labelled 'besan'. You can get this easily in Asian markets but also in health food stores. Probably about three cups.
2 chopped medium onions
1 tablespoon each of turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin and a chopped red or green chilli. Salt and pepper to grind over at the end.

Into a bowl go the yoghurt and the spices, mix and then --you'll see I've not specified an exact amount above-- add the gram flour, little by little, until you have a thick paste. That is, something your mixing spoon can stand up in, but not something which is unworkable. Add a little milk to loosen, if necessary. Now, mix in the chopped onion and check that all is properly amalgamated.

Now, have a shallow frying pan ready with a nice film of sunflower in it. Get it really hot (not smoking!) and fry tablespoons of the mixture until golden. You could also, if you prefer, deep fry the pakore or even oven bake them. When they are done, put to one side on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt and pepper when you transfer them to a plate.

You may have seen these in a ball shape or called onion bhajis. I prefer them like this -- as crisp, flat little morsels. The trick is not to put in too much to fry at any one time because they will be just too dense. Keep them small. Oh -- and they do not need to be neat. Part of the appeal is the little bits of caramelised onion that protrude from the batter which encases them. You can serve them with a dip. Read on...

Fill a small bowl with Greek yoghurt, plus salt and pepper and a tablespoon of drained, prepared tamarind. Or easier still, but the ready-prepared tamarind paste. I like to add a few good sprinklings of 'chaat' powder to this, too. There are several wonderful kinds of this about: it's a tart, hot and deeply savoury powder that you spinkle on both sweet and savoury snack foods. My favourite is the one made for 'bhelpuri', which is a great snack food that, one day, you will eat on the beach of Mumbai at twilight. It's addictive.

These fritters are also nice with plain old tomato kitchen, a salsa and, I might add, cold beer. But eat quickly because they begin to lose their crispness pretty fast if you don't get going quickly. Maybe make them in batches, eating them crisp and hot from the stove?

Another's slob's sandwich

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Prawntastic sandwich.

Here is what I made for lunch today. The kick of chilli will revive you if you're flagging in the middle of the day.

You take a large white pitta bread. Stick it in the toaster and meanwhile.....take as many prawns as you think you could eat. I mean little prawns -- so called 'cocktail prawns'. Put them in a bowl and mix in freshly ground black pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, a teaspoon of red chilli flakes and about a dessertspoon of mayonnaise. Of a decent sort. Mix it all in and, if you have them, adda few finely chopped fresh mint leaves -- or maybe a handful of lettuce (I hate icebergs though). I dispensed with the lettuce at the last minute to make way for more prawns. Mix everything gently and pile into the hot pitta bread, which you have halved and opened up gently to make pockets. Quick, simple and pretty satisfying I reckon. Voila!

Actually, it's not really a slob's sandwich, is it? That would be the salt and vinegar crisp and cheese sandwich I ate at a picnic the other day. Oooh: food of shame.

Kheer (khir): an Indian rice pudding

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

An aromatic rice pudding from heaven.

The picture to the side is by Sara Materni at www.flickr.com Thank you. Note that you can make a rice pudding look exquisite with the addition of almonds and, as we have here, some rose buds.


I do love rice pudding. Actually, if I'd found out my husband was cheating on me with a pole dancer, I would choose a tin of Ambrosia rice pudding, eaten cold and straight out of the tin. To be eaten alone, as comfort food. But I digress. As far as I am aware, he isn't, so let's make this instead.

You need 65 grams of pudding rice (this could just work with other kinds of rice, but it seems counter-intuitive so I shan't bother with this today)
1 pint (oh -- 600 ml!!) of milk. Oh come on: full fat is only 3.8% fat.
Approximately 1 tablespoon of soft brown sugar
3 tablespoons of rosewater.

Put the first ingredients in a big pan, stir gently and then add two cinnamon quills (as in 'whole' cinnamon) or two of cassia, a small handful of green cardamons and the same of cloves. Now, my mum would have added sultanas and possibly pistachios, too. I'm not convinced.
Bring this all to the boil, as gently as possible, stirring all the while. Then turn it right down -- it's prone to stick-- and cook, stirring regularly for about an hour. Alternatively, you could put it in a low oven and leave it to cook for about two and a half hours. You will still need to stir it now and then.

You can serve this with clotted or double cream. I also like it with a drizzle (yeuch! I can't believe I said that) of melted chocolate. Make it look extra pretty and more celebratory with some orange and lemon zest. And do tell people that there are whole spices in there. Especially if you're feeding children.

As an alternative, try replacing the milk half with coconut milk -- but not 'lite.'

Now here's an image I enjoyed. Found at www.flick'r.com (thank you Madpai!), this is a paat -- a traditional wooden seat. Tied onto it, as you see, is a bunch of fresh rice. I will let the photographer explain, though: he says:

"The paat is a traditional wooden set. Traditionally people sat on the paat instead of the floow. This paat came to our family as a wedding gift from my grandfather's family. The style of the art is very typical of my father'sbirth village (Cuncolim in Goa). The paat in the picture is close to 70 years old. Navem on the paat is the new harvest for the year and is used to make payas (or rice pudding) on the day after Ganesh chaturi."

Masoor dhal -- a red lentil curry.

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Simple and fine spiced red lentils --masoor dhal.


Now, thanks to the Indian influence on the family, I was eating this from an early stage. It's simple, good for you and deeply satisfying. And did I say cheap and open to rather a lot of variation, too? In the picture above, you can see how I made a rather thick dhal. It seemed required for that particular day. Usually, though, I prefer it more as a soup -- my favourite being one soured with tamarind and with the addition of tomato. Now we're heading for South India -- detail on which you'll have to wait for!

I digress...

Here is how I made the dhal -- the word refers to legumes-- the other night. This is really North Indian stylie. It is traditional to cook the lentils with only turmeric and salt and then to finish them off by popping spices in hot oil and then adding them to the finished dhal. But here is another way of doing it which is, inauthentically, how we have done it my family.

Get 1 kg of red lentils, rinse and pick them over. The day you don't bother is the day you crack someone's tooth with a small stone. Leave to drain. Meanwhile, fry off, in hot oil or ghee (clarified butter), 1 dessertspoon of yellow mustard seeds (or you could use brown) and then 2 tablespoons each of ground cumin, coriander and then one chopped red chilli. I would also add a dessertspoon of turmeric. You could also add very finely chopped garlic and ginger to taste -- say two cloves and then a thumbnail-sized piece of ginger?

So, fry the spices gently until they smell roasted and delicious. Oh -- if you're using garlic and ginger, cook these to soften for a couple of minutes before you add the spices. Be very careful when you are frying the spices: once they are even just a little burnt, they will be bitter. Then add the lentils, stir to coat and then cover with cold water plus twice as much water again. You may need to add more later. Bring to the boil, skim off the froth that rises, simmer very gently for half an hour. Stir occasionally and add more water if need be. Then add salt and pepper to taste and a great big handful of chopped coriander leaf. Fresh mint can also be refreshing here. Experiment -- but don't introduce too many flavours?

Serve with rice and pickle or just as is with any kind of Indian bread -- or even pitta bread. It'll be spicy and creamy at the same time. And this will, in my house, do a couple of dinners and probably packed lunch for the grown ups. Kerching!

Finally, as this is your dinner, you could vary the spices and see what you like best. I am generous in the amounts I use because I like strong flavours; you might want something a little gentler (although the whole is mollified by the creamy nature of the cooked dhal, I reckon). Also, a dessertspoon of garam masala is nice stirred in at the end.

What to eat for a broken heart -- POTATO!

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

For Sophie. If jacket potatoes could hug, they would.

An extra blog. Not because I actually have a broken heart right now, but because I was looking in my little books of scribbles and started thinking about it. I'm thinking boiled egg and soldiers or jacket potato. I'll go for the latter. It worked for me.

To make a sublime jacket potato (a baked potato, I mean: hello Georgia and Virgina! Mom: are you reading?), you need a big floury potato. Rinse it, dry it, but leave it a little damp. Here's the thing: you massage it liberally with Maldon sea salt and put in into a hot oven until you can see that it is verily about to burst and that the skin is crackling. By which stage, your house will smell wonderful and, if you do have a broken heart or your day is just plain grey, then I promise you you will feel better.
Now: here's a trick I learned from Nigel Slater's writing: rather than cutting into your potato, smash it with one, neatly applied karate chop. Give it a go: it does seems to make the inside go all fluffy. Butter and cheese as you please. But you must eat all the skin which, because you took the care to massage your lovely potato with sea salt crystals, will be crisp and divine.

Don't you feel better? Eat all alone. You were too good for him, anyway.
x

A flurry of kitchen activity

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.
 
Above: the tools of my trade: rustic, non?

Late afternoon today saw a flurry of activity in the kitchen.
First, I'll just tell you how we got to this point.
1. Roasted a chicken on Friday night -- a big fat free ranger. I always roast them breast down for the first half an hour: never again will you have a dry chicken if you do this. Served with bread sauce --as I mentioned in the last blog-- which I'd seasoned, as my mother before me, with both garlic and cloves, the latter of which were stuck into half an onion. New potatoes with mint from the garden, steamed carrots and, rather than gravy, just the juices from the chicken poured over. And petits pois -- frozen because, unless I'm growing them myself, there never seems much point....
2. That chicken then did us for Saturday night dinner in bed (see last blog).
3. Captain chicken is still going, because for breakfast this morning, Sunday, I had a sandwich which consisted of the leftover chicken and potato curry. It was slathered in hot lime pickle and I had a mug of hefty tea (as, in proper brewed, like). I was hiding from the children while I was snaffling this. And reading Madhur Jaffrey's The Curry Bible as I hid.
4. Tea tonight for two: found just a few more bits on the chicken and then mixed them up with crushed garlic and ginger, a tablespoon of Teryaki Sauce (I had run out of Kikoman soy sauce, so was improvising), chopped spring onions, a chopped red chilli, seeds and all and half a green pepper, chopped. Quickly cooked up a handful of green beans and some peas and, at the same time, enough basmati rice for two. Fried the vegetables and chicken in sunflower oil for a few minutes until sizzling, added the rice and a handful of mint. Stir fried the lot for a couple of minutes and all was done.
5. The chicken is now spent, so I'm making stock as I write. I've covered the carcass with cold water, added a few peppercorns and a bay leaf. Sometimes, I add half an onion, peel and all, for both colour and depth, but it depends on what you'll use then stock for later. bring to the boil and then simmer for an hour or so. Freezes beautifully.
6. Oh and the boys (7 and 5) and I made pulled toffee, which is as insane as it sounds and had me barking instructions at them all the time. We cook a lot, but the boiling sugar thing is a bit mad. Anyway, they went crazy over syrup on spoons and learning to identify soft ball and hard crack stages! Water everywhere from their test areas! The toffee is delicious -- except it's not toffee, more a sort of crunchy butterscotch. If you make toffee and it goes wrong, here's a tip: stick it in the freezer and you have something you can bash into bits and sprinkle on ice cream. And we made fairy cakes, which are garishly decorated and just gorgeous. Dripping, lopsided and gorgeous.

Inauthentically fabulous chicken and potato curry

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught. And, to tempt you, the pictures are of different curries I've been cooking. You can book me, you know.


Hello again.
Now, I can do you a super duper authentic (insofar as such a thing exists) chicken curry -- and likewise something with potatoes....but say you have a chicken carcass with some meat still to be eaten, a bowl of cold, cooked potatoes --because you over-catered on last night's roast chicken dinner for poor hayfever-stricken husband (with bread sauce --I don't care if some food writers think it's naff: it makes me feel like I'm home)... Well, here is what I did.

Inauthentically fabulous chicken curry for Saturday night in front of the telly. This served two.

You have your bowl of cold cooked pots. Taken them out of the fridge (there were about ten new potatoes in there). Now, in a wok or large frying pan, fry half a large onion until it is sweet and golden. Ghee or sunflower oil for your frying medium? I added two chopped cloves of garlic and a thumbnail sized piece of root ginger, finely chopped. When all was soft and sweet, I added a dessertspoon of cumin seeds, one of ground coriander, a teaspoon of turmeric and a big fat pinch of asafoetida. Also a teaspoon of red chilli flakes Then, to make this 'tarka' base, I cooked all these ingredients gently, before adding about a tablespoon of tomato puree and a tin of plum tomatoes. I had chopped these in the tin. Heat gently until it all thickens; if you don't, it won't work its magic and the toms will taste metallic. Salt and pepper to taste after, say, fifteen to twenty minutes and then in go two handfuls of frozen petit pois (or hell: just pois), the potatoes and as much chicken as you can strip. Mix well, bring to a high heat to reduce the sauce a little and then cook through for five to ten minutes -- enough to ensure that all is piping hot, but also depending on how well cooked your potatoes were to begin with. If they disintegrate a little, it's not the end of the world, though.
In the last five minutes I added a handful of coriander (cilantro) and the same of fresh mint --chopped. Check for seasoning again. You might want just a little sourness, in which case, add some lemon juice to taste or a couple of teaspoons of either amchoor (green mango powder) or anardhana (pomegranate powder - wonderfully aromatic). Mix well.

We had this --oh how slutty-- while watching a film in bed. And I served it with a simple raita which, in an unorthodox manner, I made from whizzing fresh mint (big bunch) in the blender with a pot of cottage cheese (had no yoghurt), a clove of garlic and a little milk. It was really good. You could also add finely chunked cucumber. The reason I didn't --big confession here-- is that I knew it would be a bit watery by the time I had the leftovers for a little midnight snack later. On toast!

And if you chucked out that chicken carcass, you're banned from my blog! No-- just joking: I'll write later on this subject.

Slob's sandwich

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Hello. I'll call this the slob's sandwich. But man: it was good. Don't tell anyone. I had to do a lot of hard thinking this morning and then write a letter to the Bishop (did I say I had a lot of balls in the air and was mildly eccentric?) so starch was the aim of the game.

Slob's sandwich. For those under stress. (I may also refer you to Elvis Presley for the fried peanut buttter and banana sandwich one of these days...)

You need some good brown bread, which you could butter or not. Today, I didn't. Then, into a bowl goes a tin of tuna. I like it in oil because, to be honest, the calorie-saving-tune-in-brine varieties look like something I feed to our cats. So, the tuna. Drain it well (actually, if you have cats, they'd love this oil), mix in lots of chopped spring onions, green and white parts, some mayonnaise and some black pepper. Also, a good pinch of flaked red chilli. Now, to this -- this is the slob part-- I added a good handful of oven chips, which I had crisped up under the grill. Spoon the filling generously onto the bread and top with the chips. Eat with an appropriate degree of inelegance. I mean, I can give you cordon bleu -- but that's not always what you want, is it?

Chicken kebabs for a houseful

All recipes Copyright Anna Vaught.

Chicken drumstick kebabs for a household.

Fiddle with the spices below: you may like more or less chilli.

If you'd like to view last night's tea with its recipe, then take a look at "keema mattar", which is on the menus section of www.calcuttascarlet.com This is a simple minced lamb curry with peas and mint. You could add a little salad to it, of just finely chopped cucumber and carrot, dressed with some hot sunflower oil in which you have popped (in a frying pan) a dessertspoonful of brown mustard seeds.

For tea tonight -- for a household (by which I mean four children and two adults), we're having Tangri kabab -- a kind of chicken kebab. I'll probably have chopped up carrots and cucumber on the table, some hot lime or mango pickle, some lemons to squeeze over and maybe some pitta breads because I don't have any chapati or roti in the house and may be too lazy to make them today. I do think you want a bit of starch on the table, though. If you look at my www.calcuttascarlet.com site and go to the menu section, you'll see my simple naan bread recipe to follow. And it's a lazy lazy recipe, for which I apologise.

You can allow, say, three drumsticks per person. I say three, but my seven year old ate five in one go last week. In India, these would be skinned. Up to you. Right: you make slashes in the sides of the drumsticks with a sharp wieldy knife. The cuts you make should go deep, right down to the bone so that when these drumsticks are marinating, the flavours permeate properly.

In a big bowl combine about six tablespoons of natural yoghurt (not the low fat kind, ideally!), three cloves of crushed garlic, a finely chopped nut of fresh ginger, a dessertspoon of ground cumin, maybe a teaspoon of cayenne pepper or the same (I'd like more!) of flaked red chilli, a dessertspoon of ground coriander, a good pinch of sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and, if you want a little more colour, perhaps a teaspoon of turmeric. You could also add a about a tablespoon of lemon or lime juice. I experimented once with orange juice: you can always try.
Now, mix this lot well and then put the chicken in. I'd mix it and massage it in with my hands. I'm assuming that if you're happy to chew on a drumstick, you're not squeamish about this task. When the mixture is well rubbed into the meat, leave in the fridge --please: health and safety tells you that you gotta wash and dry your hands before you touch the fridge door!!!!-- for 12 hours or so or even up to 24 (see: you can do this in advance).

Later, put the chicken into a pre-heated hot oven, having sprinkled it with sunflower or groundnut oil first. Bake for about 25 minutes, turning half way through. And if you have any leftover juices and oil in the pan, leave them in the pan (removing any burnt bits) and then, next day, roast some little cubes of potato in them. These will be deeply savoury. Actually, now I come to think about this, I have recently converted the afore-mentioned potatoes into a salad, through adding handfuls of mint and torn-up greens from the garden. Get all the greenery ready first and then toss in the sizzling potatoes with maybe a bit more sea salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Spritz with lemon or lime juice, too.

You could make these kebab part of a larger Indian banquet for summer.

A simple salmon tea and maybe a mackerel...

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Here's what we had for tea last night: I mention it only because it's a super quick supper. My auntie J would refer to this as salmon "devilled up", I think. So I'll call it

Bedevilled salmon with rice.

Right: allow one salmon steak per person (and frankly, use the cheapest cuts of raggedy salmon you can find). Into an oven dish the salmon goes (medium hot oven) and you sprinkle over olive oil, crystals of sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, lots of unpeeled smallish garlic cloves, a handful of capers (you can soak them, as I do, in a mixture of milk and water to debrine them a little) and, say, ten cherry tomatoes. I like chilli -- so I would also add a whole dried red chilli, torn into shreds. Yes -- you could use a fresh one, but you get a lovely smoky hit if you make it dried for this recipe. Into the oven and bake for about twenty minutes -- but flake a tiny bit off before then to try because you want the fish to be succuclent and not dry.

In the meantime, cook as much rice as you think you will eat each, cover it with as much water in volume again (long grain rice or basmati -- I'm assuming white, though), bring it to the boil, stir, salt, lid on tightly and then bring the heat down to the lowest possible setting. Will be done in 12-15. Actually, if you've kept the heat in, you could turn the heat off altogether. When it's cooked, fork it up. You could add some torn-up spinach leaves to the rice as you put it in the pan, too.

Mound of rice on each plate, salmon steak on top and don't miss the juices in the pan. That was easy, wasn't it? Spritz of lemon juice is good. And the garlic? Well, I love roasted garlic, so I tend to munch it skin and all. But you could squeeze the rich garlic paste out and put it on your salmon.

An another favourite tea down our way? One mackerel each, head on, tail on if you please, but gutted. I just rinse, pat dry and then roll in a light dusting of seasoned flour, sprinkling a little on the inside of the fish. I might make a kind of stuffing with chopped tomato, spring onions, a little olive oil and couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs per fish. They go into a hot oven, turned once and should be done in about 30 minutes. We devour these inelegantly with bread and butter. Great for camping, too. Accompaniments of any other sort seem wrong. If you want a salad, have it first or afterwards. You need to make sure these fish crisp up -- and I hope you don't think we're a bit savage if I say that we munch the tails, too.

Life is not too short to stuff an egg.

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught

You know that high tea I was telling you about? The waves of nostalgia? Actually, I'm not sure I ever ate stuffed eggs as a child, although I surely peeled a lot of hard boiled eggs. Something funny happened there. On with the show. Here is what to do.

Boil some good free range eggs for around three minutes. Rinse them under the cold tap and then tap them gently, pulling away all the shell. One of my earliest kitchen memories is of doing this with my mum. She liked to add halved, hard boiled eggs to summer salads. As do I. Now slice them in two and scoop out the yolk, mix it with a little mayonnaise (you could any leftover from that recipe I gave you the other day or from a jar of Hellman's), ground pepper (maybe white), a pinch of dried mustard powder and, if you like, some chopped chives. Put it all back in. Done. Note: if the yolks are too hard, then the filling won't quite work. It has to be unctuous.

Serve this with some ham sandwiches made with proper chunky brown bread. Clearly I am deeply predictable because when my Mr goes out to get bread for me he asks "the one with the open texture and the shiny crust?" I'm really specific about this. Can't stand floppy bread. Butter (marg if you must), good ham and maybe a little ground pepper. Not doorstops, but not too dainty either.

A cucumber salad. I forgot this before. Just slices of cucumber, marinated in vinegar (I actually like cheap old malt vinegar here), salt and pepper. Or do as the Georgian husband does: big bowl on a hot day: lots of sliced cucumber, left to steep for a hour or two with a sprinkle of salt and just a little water. Gotta be cold. If, like a fifities housewife, I were to have this for him on his hot and sweaty return from work, his eyes would go all misty.

A green salad? A proper floppy lettuce -- a butterhead, perhaps a cos lettuce? Come near me with a lollo rosso and you're banned. Ditto iceberg (although the other day.....). Just pull it apart, rinse it, dry it carefully and dress it (two parts oil to one part vinegar) at the last minute. Season to taste. Big slices of tomato on the table. Season yourself. Undressed. The tomato, not you: this is a kind of high tea, after all.

Big pot of tea. There you go.

Coleslaw like they make it down south.

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Now, simple can be best. It can be sublime. It can be (I quote Elizabeth David, here) "the test of a good establishment". I hope I've learned that one properly. Here is a simple simple recipe for coleslaw.

I'm a bit of a devotee of Southern (as in Southern United States) food. You'll see me writing about it a lot here. I'm married to a man from Georgia (possibly you wondered what was connoted by 'Scarlet'?) and you know who is also from Georgia? Why, Damon Lee Fowler: he's my favourite American food writer and I urge you to get your hands on Classical Southern Cooking, in particular. Simple, sensible and wonderful food. And he's really funny. This coleslaw is dedicated to him -- with a little English (Welsh?) twist.

Right: the catch is, you have to make your own mayonnaise. It's not hard but, once you've done it, it's worth it! Then all you need is sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and a smallish cabbage. Experiment with green or white. I like green. And you need a wieldy and very sharp knife. Wot? Nothing else? Nope.

First of all, discard any tattered outer leaves and then slice the cabbage very finely. Damon Lee Fowler, when he writes about coleslaw, says there is no machine which gets the chips fine enough. In my experience in the kitchen. this is borne out. He tells you to sit down! If you want measurements, then think the length of a matchstick and just a little bit wider. So you cut your cabbage into quarters, say, and then get chipping. All you do then, is add your mayonnaise and season to taste. The twist I like, which is not authentically, Southern, is to do what my old daddy would have done, and add a couple of teaspoons of caraway seeds. But no onions or carrots, see?

For the mayonnaise: two egg yolks (large, I reckon): free range.
Oil: here you have a choice, partly dictated by economy. Either, 200 ml of extra virgin olive oil and 100 ml groundnut (you could also use sunflower) or go the whole hog and just use the olive. My mum always did. You could get by without using extra virgin, too, but in a dish with this few ingredients, it's the star.
Nice also to add the juice of one lemon -- but experiment. I've read that Old Southern recipes might add ground cayenne (to taste) and possibly some dried mustard powder -- in which case miss out the carraway 'twist'!
It is best, if you can bear it, to make the mayonnaise by hand, but in practice, here is what I do.
Put the eggs and the salt and pepper (plus the lemon if you are using it) into the blender/processor, then mix for about a minute. Now --keep the machine on-- add the oil in a gentle stream. Slowly. Take your time. Gradually, you'll see it thicken. Test for seasoning. Alchemy! If you have any left over, dip chips (I mean French Fries) into it, possibly having crushed some garlic cloves in there, too. Or hey: why not make double, get everyone else to out, put the garlic mayonnaise in a bowl, make some fries (oven chips are good enough) and then have it all on your lap in front of the telly? With some nice cold beer, maybe? If you think this is a bit slutty, watch something cultural.

To make a complete meal, how about some grilled chicken or salmon? If you are veggie, then it's also good with a bean salad.

A potato salad?

As a side note, my mother made fresh mayonnaise for every potato salad we had at home. It's really best with waxy little potatoes -- new ones. Just scrubbed, boiled, chopped as necessary, annointed with the mayonnaise (use your hands: no need to be coy), seasoned and then you add a handful of chopped chives. If you want to stuff an egg with a bit more of this mayonnaise, you'll have to read tomorrow. Because I just went to what was supposedly a high tea for my young children with my friend and former teacher, Nest. And we had stuffed eggs, proper ham sandwiches, big slices of tomato, a green salad and a pot of tea. And I ate like I had never seen food before. (The boys ate the sandwiches, wrinkled their noses at the eggs and then ate all the cakes in a frenzy. But the Jedis are young and they are foolish.)