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