My mother's kitchen,my father's garden

An approximation of Southern barbecue

2011-11-07T03:20:00.000-08:00

I know it's hardly barbecue season (I'd say barbeque but we're down South right now), but I think my beloved looks a little forlorn so I'm doing an approximation of a Southern (as in Southern United States as in Georgia, in his case) barbecue.You know: to cheer him up?

To a Southerner, barbecue is not what we Britishers know it as. Proper Southern barbecue usually refers to pulled pork - perhaps a shoulder basted with a vinegar or tomato-based sauce and cooked long and slowly. Traditionally, it would have been cooked overnight, under the watchful eye of the pit masters. For a description of such things, may I refer you to my (still) favourite book on Southern food, Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking (New York, 1995)?

So, you cook your meat of choice and you pull it, which is to say that you tear it into shreds with two forks and then serve it in or with bread and whatever else you like. In my case, a request was made for coleslaw - more on which in a minute.

BUT WAIT! What good is this to you? Do you remember my rattling on about slow cookers? Well here's what I put in to cook at 9 am. NB: I have a large slow cooker, but this recipe could also be done in a low oven, maybe even overnight. I find my slow cooker does quite well as a pit!

Take a pork shoulder of around one and half ks.(Yes I know that's a lot, but I'm after copious leftovers) and put it in your slow cooker. Then, in a bowl, mix together six tablespoons of cider vinegar, six of tomato ketchup (full fat!), five of soft brown sugar, a palmful of seal salt, five chopped garlic gloves, a couple of teaspoons of paprika, either ordinary or smoked and a couple of sage leaves, finely chopped. Now add lots of ground black pepper. Mix well and add a cupful of water and then rub the lot into the meat. Stick on the lid and, on medium, cook for around six hours. You just take it out (it's a large piece of meat so use a meat thermometer or check the inside of the meat carefully - but I'm confident that all will be well) and it should be so tender that you can pull it apart with forks. You could also have cooked this on slow for about four hours or high for around eight. It may need more time and won't come to any harm if, anyway, you do need to leave it for more. All should have worked pretty well, but I do miss the dense smoky taste of proper barbecue.....

Incidentally, most Southern cooks would, I think, have trimmed the pork well, taking the fat and skin from the top. I don't: I leave it on, making sure it's well scored first and then, when I'm pulling the meat, I first cut off the top layer and blitz it in a hot oven or under a grill so that there is crackling for those who want. Eyebrows were raised when this practice was suggested to a good lady of Virginia, but I'm standing by it.

Serve the barbecue hot, stuffed into bread rolls of your choice if I were you, but it's also pretty darn good cold. Oh: a final thought: if you are going to be cooking it in a traditional oven, I'd advise adding the tomato ketchup later as otherwise it might burn and taste acrid.

And the coleslaw? All you want is finely sliced cabbage of your choice - as much as you think you'll eat - and finely sliced onion. Today, I just don't have time to whip up the mayonnaise, so I'm cheating with some Helman's, plus a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. I think that's how coleslaw should be: no carrots and not sweetened.

Slow cookers continued i'faith

2011-10-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Here's another from the slow cooker just for you. Remember that my slow cooker is a large one and I'm generally cooking for five or so.

If you have a ham hock or a large piece of gammon, try this...

First of all, you might want to soak the meat for a few hours if you think it will be salty and then just put it in the slow cooker together with four chopped carrots, four chopped medium potatoes (I'd say to be really lazy, don't peel, but really, they're better peeled), a small handful of whole black peppercorns, one onion cut into rings and those into half again and then a green of your choice - ideally a big bold brassica: you can use something tougher here because it will stand up to the slow cooker. I'd say two generous handfuls of it - shall I say collards or spring greens?- roughly shredded. Then dice (not too small) a smallish swede or half a large one, add 250g red lentils (rinsed and picked over for stones) and cover with water, stirring carefully. Depending on the saltiness of the meat, it might be best not to add salt but to do it later. Cook overnight on low in my case: I put this lot in not ten minutes ago.

The next day or later that day (I'm allowing around nine hours here), check seasoning and carve the meat. You could serve the soup first and then slices of meat with the vegetables (which will have all but disintegrated) as a second course, or just hack bits off the meat, stirring them back into the soup and serve as is with some bread with a good cracking crust and, if I were you, some pieces of mature cheddar sunk into it. Which is what I did as a child and have done ever since. And with cheese that my dad used to get from the Mendip Dairy on the way to see my grandad in Burrington Combe in the Somerset of my childhood..

Slow cookers

2011-10-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

Well now, the old black dog has come to visit for a while, but he was accompanied by the timely arrival of an enormous slow cooker. So here's a thought: if you are stuck in the doldrums (for to be becalmed sounds lovely but it actually means that temporarily you cannot go further: I digress), invest in a slow cooker. A great big one. And try these. All serve six with leftovers.All these are based on the simple principle of setting the cooker to low and leaving it on overnight.

For a simple pasta sauce, a good couple of tablespoons of decent olive oil, two cans of plum tomatoes, which you crush in your hands as you go. Then add a tin of anchovies, soaked a little perhaps, two handfuls of pitted green olives, lots of freshly ground black pepper, a tablespoon of capers, a heaped tablespoon of tomato puree, three finely minced garlic cloves, half a fresh red chilli, finely sliced (I don't decide because I am tough like that). Into that go three handfuls of frozen mixed peppers - an excellent product which you should have in your freezer - and about 500g minced beef, preferably organic. Stir and that's it. I just stand there chucking it in because that seems to befit this style of cooking. Your pasta sauce will be ready by morning - or just leave it cooking all day. Serve with a pasta of your sauce, but if it were me (which it was), that would be spaghetti or linguine.

So, if you are grumpy, frumpy, resentful about cooking for your fussy and unappreciative family -I'm not saying this is me, but I am saying that cooking meals day in day out can sure make you feel like this - make your house smell happy and comforting with the addition of this piece of kit. You know you want to. Plus, if it floats your boat, you'll feel like an earth mother (or should I say bountiful provider of either gender), when you're sharing out vast platefuls of your slowly, happily-cooked food. Boo to the old black dog, toox

A simple lunch for one

2011-01-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

An avocado salad. With balls.

Current pregnancy cravings are for anything sour and salty (this tends to be active most of the time, now I come to think of it) and I have a bit of an avocado fetish but....this will do you at any time, as long as you are not squeamish about anchovies!

Take a tin of anchovies, drain off the oil and then leave them for a few minutes to de-salt, either in water, milk or a mixture of two. While you... take a ripe avocado and hack it into pieces - I leave the size to your own aesthetics. Put them on a plate. This will be the plate you eat off; you can make it all look prettier later on. Now, add a heaped tablespoon of any olives you like and a couple of tablespoons of some good quality plain cottage cheese. Remove the anchovies from their liquor, rinse them gently and gently tap the water off them and then roughly chop. Put them on the plate with the rest of the ingredients. Now, quickly whip up a scant tablespoon of dressing with a smidgeon of extra virgin oil (remember the avocado is quite oleaginous, so maybe you don't need so much) and a good few squeezes of lemon juice, to which you then add a few drops (taste for preference) of chilli sauce: Encona brand is always the one for me. Tip this over the salad and then mix the salad right there on your plate, forking it over gently. That's it. If you had some decent tomatoes knocking about, you could also add them, diced roughly.

Well, that was my lunch today: try it?

(photo joel washing at flickr - thank you)

Best ever cheese on toast

2010-12-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

Hmm. Potatoes; cheese; cups of tea; lighting fire. OOOH. There is proper snow outside, but I am fading a little so for an emergency tea, something in bed alone or when just ravenous...

Get some good crusty brown bread. Don't make it too thick or too thin. I like to toast it very lightly first. Now layer thick slabs of mature cheddar over it and grill until bubbling - possibly with the edges just a little charred. Transfer to a plate - preferably a warm one - and then douse it quickly with Worcestershire ( Worcester!) sauce. Not drown, mind. Eat quickly, probably with drops of the sauce running down into your lap. This is excellent with some thick slices of unsmoked back bacon to one side, too.

That's it.

The cup of tea

2010-11-23T03:23:00.000-08:00

THIS BLOG IS BACK. I TOOK A LITTLE BREAK BECAUSE OF OTHER COMMITMENTS. BUT SPREAD THE WORD AND PUT THE KETTLE ON

BECAUSE

I have been disturbed, in recent months, by the fact that I have gone off cups of tea. This has been due to morning sickness (number three on the way) BUT HOORAH! While green pesto -or in fact the smell of basil in any setting- and -horrors- chicken are out for the time being, the tea is back. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Like Dr Johnson, you see, I prescribe cups of tea for refreshment, solace and general good cheer. My mother was big on sherry for this, but obviously that's out right now and one cannot be imbibing sherry through the day. So here is my prescription for you. OH: I fear I am so very British.

Put on kettle and, simultaneously, radio 4. Go to cupboard and select a mug. Again THIS IS IMPORTANT. I am instantly depressed by the thought of a cup of tea in a thin mug. You know; one that looks a bit delicate, with a spindly handle. Technically, it might be from your 'best mugs' collection, should you have such a thing, but right now it doesn't cut it. I apologise for the slight vulgarity of the simile, but my mother once said (this must have gone in deep) that thin lips suggested meanness. You know; like a limp handshake (unless you were actually dying)? So, drinking tea from a thin little mug, however pretty, would be, for me, like kissing a man with thin lips. It would not suggest abundance and generosity. I prefer a solid little willow pattern cup and saucer or a chunky-looking mug with a good thick rim. My two favourites of recent years have been the gloriously tacky 'Georgia Peach' mug with the revolving peach on the handle and, also from the Southern U.S., a thick pink mug sold by an old fashioned family restaurant and diner at Fancy Hill, just outside Lexington in Virginia. There's a picture of a cadillac on it because it hails from 'The (pink) Cadillac Cafe'. It has no handle because, well, this ain't no couture mug and it wasn't stuck on properly. But I don't care: I love it and it speaks to me.

Now, I wouldn't complain if you made me tea with a teabag just in that thar mug, but best of all, is for you to use either loose or tea bag in my blue teapot - which you have warmed - and that you then leave it to brew properly. For here are some more depressing things done by friends and family of mine. A certain friend: one tea bag between two and then just a quick dip in the water. NOOOO! A certain person to whom I might be related by marriage: similar concept, but the tea bag is also left on the side of the sink (albeit on a sweet little saucer) ALL DAY. I think that tea bag just does one person apiece. But even so. NOOOO!

Leave that tea to brew and let it be known that, in our area of deep lime and its attendant hard water, I favour the brand called Yorkshire Tea for hard water areas. I could go on about all sorts of teas but right here, I won't. Good and strong and a little bit malty. Pour the tea into the mug first then add the milk. But leave room in the cup or mug for plenty of milk. Strangely enough, I favour quite full-bodied tea, but I like plenty of milk. I have been told this is a bit common.

Sit in a soft chair and continue listening to radio 4, ignoring all chores and outside interference.

I am suppposed to say, I think, that if you are up the duff (sic: pregnant), you should keep your caffeine intake low. But, also, babies like you to be happy. So have a biscuit or some sort of slab of fruit cake it with it.

Watermelon

2010-07-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

The watermelon. Just how beautiful is it? Happy July the 4th yesterday, by the way. "Oh say can you see" some very cool things to do with your watermelon?

1. As is. Just cut it into what, in our house, is known as a watermelon smile. A big slice. Dig in.

2. As before, but cut around the rind, score and then cut perfect little chunks. Serve them in a bowl with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds (even more beautiful this) or a sprinkle of dried ginger and maybe just a few shavings of lemon peel.

3. Keeping the chunks, as before, stash them in in the freezer and have them ready, like lovely pink ice cubes, to slosh into a vodka and tonic or a martini. Experiment and see what you like. You could whizz them in the blender, of course.

4. Make a fine smoothie with watermelon chunks and an orange.

5. Refer to earlier in this blog for a fine watermelon pickle.You use only the rind for this one.

6. Whizz up the chunks with some lemonade and lime zest for a non alcoholic party drink or, sod that, just for you.

7. Try a few cubes of watermelon with some a little finely ground sea salt and a few grindings of black pepper. You'll either love this, or you won't. Also excellent for dysentery - when you're over the worst!

Thanks to Stephen Depolo at flickr for his watermelon photos!

Headline: jacket potato gives hug on difficult day

2010-06-07T10:36:00.000-07:00

To left: don't roasting things cheer you along? In the picture: large chunks of squash being roasted with a splash of olive oil and some black pepper at the house of Mrs Pat Jones: aka one of my marvellous aunts who cooks and totally ROCKS. Having no mother in my adulthood, these girls are very important. As is their cooking. But I digress, because I'm blathering and you might want to know what to do for your tea.

Right: take as many jacket potatoes as you think you can eat, rinse them, pat dry carefully and then massage them with sea salt. Put them into a hot oven and cook for about 30 minutes, possible more. The sea salt should have crisped up the skin and, inside, the potato will be soft and fluffy. Now, after about twenty minutes of potato cooking time, put into the oven (in a baking dish) a big handful of cherry tomatoes, a whole fresh green chilli, chopped as you might like, it plus a sliced medium onion. Make sure you have put a good tablespoon of olive oil in with the vegetables.

So, take out the potatoes when they are done, cut into them, add a dab of butter if you like and then pile the tomatoes, onions and chilli on top.

That's it. Simple but manages to be quite luxurious and a sort of hands off sort of dinner. In fact, what I just cooked for myself just now while answering reproachful-sounding '"ring me" messages and attending to children .

Chick peas (garbanzo, gram, etc...): get a bag for your cupboard

2010-06-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

This is a big rustic salad which I made a few minutes ago. It's very good for this time of year and the flavour packs a hefty punch.

Take a bag of chick peas - about 500g. Soak them for three or four hours, bring to the boil then simmer until they are still firm, but not hard. That is, without a hard centre but still with plenty of bite. If you cook your own you'll have something with plenty of texture. I could be wrong, but I've never found tinned chick peas any good and they tend to be overcooked. So, after you bring them to the boil - and presuming you have soaked them, they should be done in about twenty five minutes or so.

Drain the chick peas when they are done, rinse them under cold water and drain carefully. Now stick them in a big bowl with three chopped spring onions, half a chopped cucumber, one finely chopped green chilli, a couple of teaspoons of drained and rinsed capers, a good squeeze of lemon juice, a small piece of grated fresh ginger, six chopped cherry tomatoes and lots of freshly ground pepper. Taste for salt. If you want to, add to the salad's instant dressing with some sunflower oil?

Serve straight away if you've used tomatoes and cucumber; if you didn't, then the salad can sit for a few days.

I'd serve this as is, but it would be good with grilled fish or chicken. Maybe from the barbecue? Also, if I had not added the ginger, I might like the salad with some grilled halloumi cheese OR I might add crumbled feta cheese to the salad. Cut everything really finely, add a pinch of green mango powder, a couple of teaspoons of cumin seed, leave out the capers, add a couple of cloves of finely chopped garlic and then some roasted black urad dhal and you would have a very fine South Indian salad. Check out the selection of dhals (or dals) at www.spicesofindia.com

Watermelon rinds?

2010-06-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well now, what have we here?

In my view, the watermelon is one of the most beautiful fruits. We have just carved one into huge slices and so we have some rinds left over. Now, in the Southern United States, these rinds might be used to make a pickle. You may well see the same in India. Here is what I just did although, let it be said, it does not make a terribly long lasting pickle.

You have eaten your watermelon. If you didn't wash the rinds, do it now. Cut them into strips and then into little squares. Put them in a big bowl. Take a big green fresh chilli (the contrast -not too much contrast, though.-is very pretty). Cut the chilli, seeds and all. into fine pieces, add it to the rinds with a big pinch of sea salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper and, say, a hazlenut-sized piece of ginger root which you have grated finely. Mix it all up with your hands, then add the juice of a lemon, its finely grated peel and two teaspoons -but taste and taste again to see if you'd like to add more -- of chaat (or chat) powder, one specifically marketed for fruit chaat which, like anything else with chat/chaat in its name, is a snack food. Chat is usually spiced with aromatic flavourings, such as black cumin and pomegranate and green mango powder. Might be a fresh peach salad (which you need tio eat straight away because it wilts fast!)or perhaps a potato salad. More on which soon. You can find chat powder easily enough in Asian supermarkets and shops; I tend to get mine here www.spicesofindia.com I like the 'shaan' brand best!

Mix everything in with your hand and pile into jars. The pickle is ready to eat after two days but will keep for a week. To make it longer lasting you'd need more preserving liquid, but that's jot quite what I'm after here. Keep it in the fridge. I will be serving this pickle with lots of South Indian snacks next weekend.

The photos you see are all mine: of the pickle itself, but also a few images from my kitchen showing some balti dishes hanging up, the plate of chilli and ginger which is invariably sitting on top of my big salt jar, plus one of my piles of thali dishes. I like the colours of my watermelon pickle against the vintage 'Ball' preserving jars. I collect these and you can still get them for just a few dollars at flea markets in the U.S. I've bought mine in Virginia and Georgia. Ball is still is business, the jars are still great but not, alas, in the same lovely colour.Clear these days.

New Book will be out at the end of August

2010-06-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. Been a bit busy with, among other, things, my fund raising writeathon athttp://www.rainbowoverbengal.blogspot.com/ but just a message to say that..

1. An ever so slightly different version of My Mother's Kitchen, my Father's Garden Volume One (that's Spring and Summer) will be out in August. Priced at £6.50

AND

2. Volume two of this text (Autumn and Winter) will be available at the same time. There will be two different versions of the text. One, a black and white text copy at £6.50; the other is a full colour text with some lovely photographs, the price of which I will let you know soon. Texts are available from me and from local independent booksellers in England and Wales -- plus a range of shops, at www. blurb.com - and I am waiting to hear from Amazon and other online sellers. Will advise of ISBNs and stockists in more detail when I get a moment. xx

Re new media section

2010-04-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

An update

If you want to see a sample of my freelance journalism pieces, plus the odd piece on me, I've put a selection in the new media section of this blog. Also, book number one is being edited for re-release at the moment and I have just finished book number two. Volumes one (Spring and Summer) and two (Autumn and Winter), then, of My Mother's Kitchen, my Father's Garden, based on this blog with additional text. Perhaps a publisher would like to take on one or both -- in two volumes or one big fat one? The first book sold well with just yours truly as its publisher and promoter! Don't forget, if you are a business and reading this, that I also handle press releases and publicity!

Photo by Giles Turnbull of jugs on my kitchen window ledge: most of them from skips. Treasure.

Gleanings: a chapter from A handful of Broken Biscuits

2010-04-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

Again, this is a chapter from my late father's book, which I have latterly been editing. If you buy my next book (out at the beginning of May -- I will pass on info about stockists for this and my previous book, which is curently being reprinted, nearer the time), you will find this extract where it should be -- with Autumn! But enjoy it here, now.

The sections of the book which intercut my writing are all about the getting, giving and making of food -- memories of a childhood in the 1930s, which my father felt abrupted by the beginning of war. The text is set in and around Burrington Combe and Langford, in Somerset on the edge of the Mendips. My father is characterised as 'John'; my grandmother as Beth and grandfather as Ed. Here we have walnuts, blackberries, hazelnuts and mushrooms.

There was always someone ready to collect whatever bounty the countryside offered and there were particular places where each windfall fell thickest. In early September walnuts bounced and split open under the big tree on Havyatt Green or the one leaning across the hedge that bounded Hillier's orchard. Since the throwing of sticks was vital in bringing down a shower of the finer, more elusive nuts, the boys of the village were always happy to be of help.

Blackberries ripened in every hedgerow, on waste ground or around the ponds, but they grew in greatest profusion in the wild, tangled triangle of open scrubland immediately below Mendip Lodge and alongside the old driveway. The bushes rambled freely, and the big, glistening, darkening fruit gave off a sweet, distinctive perfume after the smell of late summer. The gleaners, wearing their oldest clothes, moved methodically from patch to patch, rolling the sweet luscious fruit into their baskets, fingers staining ever-deeper-red-purple as they picked. They reached with crooked stick, drawing the furthermost branches to them: picking or rejecting with smooth, deft and unhurried movements. An afternoon's basket of six or eight pounds would provide pies and blackberry and apple jam in plenty.

As the Autumn days became misty and the leaves began to change colour, the long tall hazel hedges in the deep lane at Bourne clustered thickly with nuts. It was essential for the timing to be right. Go a few days too early and the nuts were not ripe enough; shaking or whacking the bushes with sticks would not bring many down. Go a few days too late and many would have fallen into the undergrowth to be nibbled or gobbled by mice and squirrels. But arrive on those few crucial days and the nuts came down like hail -- a harvest that meant a hoard of nuts to be put aside for Christmas.

Pearly-necklaces, low-slung cobwebs, a thin mist on the field, and a warm humid morning were the sings that mushroom picking time had arrived: the feel of the air was just right. Up with the first light of dawn, on with the wellingtons, a two pound basket on the arm. Then a steady, methodical travrsing of the field, moving the sheep along as you went. Folding sheep on the land encouraged the growth and spread of mushrooms, it was said, but John didn't know the truth or otherwise of that lore. yet he was prepared to believe it as he walked in a line gfive yards parallel to his father. The darker grass circles and crescents were the give-away signs of mushroom presence and suddenly he would find a patch of three or four, of fresh grey-white with a scattering of small buttons.

Each time he found and picked he was conscious of the beauty of the early morning. There was a hush, a newly-washed innocence all around. The wild creatures that crawled, scampered or flew were up and doing, but doing it quietly. They wanted time and the world to themselves and had no wish to rouse the lie-abeds. John smelt the pleasant, faint fungoid smell and touched the beautiful pink-brown suffusion of the newly opening gills. It required an effort of will to be up so early to join Ed in these forays, but it was worth the quiet, calm sensuous pleasure he enjoyed. By half past seven Ed and John were back in the house and soon the delicious smells of frying mushrooms and streaky bacon signified a satisfying early morning journey.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits

2010-04-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

Intercutting the prose of my last book are excerpts from the book my father wrote when he was dying. My mother helped with the editing; his devoted former school secretary typed up the entire text. I am continuing with this work now and hope to have it published by the autumn of this year, with beautiful woodcut illustrations by a local artist. Watch this space.

Now, the title of the book refers to early memories of my father, growing up first in Burrington Combe and then in Langford in Somerset, on the edge og the Mendip hills. His mother, so careful about housekeeping, would always order broken biscuits from the grocer. My father felt it was a way of life that was vanishing in this place. Of course, those excerpts I included in my own text were about food memories: they play an important part in the book, whether it be a description of a sweet shop, my paternal grandmother's exemplary food stores, or, as here, Christmas and the whortleberry harvest. Read on over the next few posts for these extracts. Should you read my next book, you will find that Christmas and harvest are, seasonably, in the right months of the text!

A Handful of Broken Biscuits

Chapter 13: Christmases gone.

The smell of hot cloth and spice,a seven year old face i, or a few well-sung bars of any of those old traditional carols have a strange and moving power. Again, Beth is boiling her cloth-capped basins of pudding in the scullery copper. Again, Ed is plucking the big savage , spurred cockerel that will be Christmas dinner. Again, Miss Constance, Elsie and Sally are standing by the tree, lapped in the lemon glow of the fairy lights. Back come visions of the once a year exotica, the dates and the coconut ice, the Brazil nuts and the figs, and for the adults the bottle of sherry which will last from Christmas to Christmas.

For Chris the butcher: steak and kidney pie.

2010-04-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

Chris is a local butcher -- one of very few. So here is a recipe made with things I have just bought from him, with his recommended amounts -- judged by eye, you understand. I bought stewing steak and -- the proper stuff, as he says-- ox kidney for this. I may sound as though I eat a lot meat. I probably eat red meat at most once a week and usually chicken once or twice a week. When I do eat red meat, it needs to pack a punch. This pie does because it's solid and speaks of home and, when it's in the oven, the house smells wonderful. I must confess that my young children were not overly keen on the ox kidney, but did justice to the rest of the pie. And here it is, still warm.

A note of pastry. I think the stuff you can buy ready made is pretty good, but what I generally do is buy puff and filo pastry and make everything else.

Steak and kidney pie. Four 4 with possibly a few seconds. To serve with potatoes -- which could be new ones, now-- and some greens. This time of year, make it a British brassica.

500 g puff pastry, defrosted if frozen and rolled out to about 1cm thickness
1 egg for glazing the pie before it goes in the oven
3 large carrots, roughly chopped. Not traditional, but I like them
1 large onion, chopped into rings
1 wineglass of red wine. I happened to have some recently opened Cabernet Sauvignon
1 bay leaf, if you like
plain flour to hand
500g stewing steak
250g ox kidney, sliced or cut into cubes: generous ones; not dolly mixture size

First sweat the onion in a little sunflower oil in a large pan until the onion is golden. Take it out and put it to one side. Now, brown all the meat. You may want to do this in a couple of batches, because you want it to seal and brown, not steam. Just brown it and let it catch here and there. Then add the onion to the pan, mixing well, plus the carrots cut into smallish chunks. Sprinkle on a tablespoon of plain flour and mix well. Then, pour on the wine plus enough water --or beef stock or vegetable stock if you have it-- and raise the heat until the liquid thickens. Cook gently for five minutes, then into your dish it goes. The choice of dish is up to you, of course. Today, I cooked this in a oven dish 15cm by 30cm. It might look jollier in a big round dish, perhaps?

Put your pastry on the top, allowing for shrinkage, so draping it over the edge and crimping it firmly against the dish. Neatness is not the name of the game here. I think it should look quite roughly done. Now, if you wanted, you could raise the centre with a little pie funnel or maybe an egg cup, but I don't mind if it sinks a bit, so I didn't bother, just cut a couple of slits in the middle of the pie, as was my mother's wont, and brushed it with beaten egg. Cook it it a hot oven --at 200, then, for 40-45 minutes, by which time, the meat should be tender and the pastry golden. If you want your stewing steak so soft that you could cut it with a spoon, cook it for longer before it goes into the pie dish, but add the kidneys just for the last few minutes because you don't want to overdo them.

And here are some tins I mentioned in some of my much earlier blog posts and in my book. These are tins from my paternal grandmother's kitchen. She might have added the contents of either to the gravy for such a pie. Later, they came to house shoe tacks and small nails. Now, they sit -- still full of shoe tacks: in his spare time, my grandfather used to mend people's shoes in his Mendip village-- in an alcove on our stairs.

As a postscript: I should say that my grandmother would have baulked at the use of puff pastry and not suet and as for the wine. Well...

Chicken for Kate.

2010-04-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

K. is a little unsure about cooking chicken, so here is what I am going to show her in a little workshop a deux that her husband Giles has organised for her.

The ingredients that I have asked Kate to have ready:

1 large free range chicken

2 packs of chicken thighs, bone in -- assuming six in a pack.

The Roast chicken

There is plenty about this in my writing already, isn't there? Some further tips.

1. Make it a big free range chicken, organic if you choose but you'll have to pay the price. Note that freedom food isn't quite the same, so I urge you to do a little reaserch on labels and what these things actually mean. Your only guarantee, really, is that it explicitly says free range on the label. Or, of course, if you saw the chicken. Now, I know I said big free range, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a fat one: a little scrawny chap may be very tasty and with plenty of flavour. Chickens may have slightly different builds or appetites, after all!

To begin cooking, bring the chicken to room temperature first and then cook it in a hot oven -- that's 200-- allowing 20 minutes for every 500g and then about 20 minutes more. In practice, you will probably cook most chicken for 1 and half hours. Your chicken is done when the juices run clear: test by inserting a skewer or sharp knife where the thickest part is -- where the side of the leg meets the breast. If you are in doubt, just use a meat thermometer and stick it in here and there -- including this thickest part.

It isn't essential, I suppose, but I cook my chickens upside down first. Which is to say, breast down. Turn it over after about 40 minutes. This is simply to allow the fat deposits, which are most plentiful in the back, to percolate down through the drier breast. So no stringy meat for you. Having said that, I don't mind a chicken I can get my teeth into. Never got the hots for capon for this reason. Don't get very excited about eating young lamb: rather chew on a hogget.

One last point. When the chicken comes out of the oven let it rest for ten minutes or so before carving it. That's to allow the meat to settle. If you go to straight away, lots of precious juices will escape: those would otherwise have been reabsorbed by the meat.

Variations:

1. For extra succour, put lots of garlic cloves, peeled or unpeeled, inside the cavity. Shove lots in the tin, too. I just pick them and eat them whole, skin and all. But you could squish that beautiful caramel-coloured garlic puree ont to your plate as you eat. You could also put half a lemon up the bottom of the chicken.

2.It can be nice to rub the chicken all over, inside and out, with olive oil (or a bland flavourless oil), sea salt and black pepper.

3. You might like to try making a spice paste and rubbing it into the chicken. Go Middle Eastern by trying this with sumac powder, salt and pepper; go Indian by doing the same with a mixture of cumin, coriander and, if yoiu like it, fennel. All of these ground or as powder. Or what about a mix of chilli flakes and Chinese five spice powder? Skin the chicken or not, as you please.

The chicken thighs: two suggestions.

1. Just chuck them in a roasting dish with thumbnail-sized pieces of peeled ginger root and lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. Add a few glugs of Kikoman soy sauce and a big fat pinch of red chilli flakes. Toss this around and put it in a hot oven for about 45 minutes.

2. Do the same, but do not add the soy sauce, adding instead tablespoons of cumin and coriander powder, a fat pinch of asafoetida and a tablespon of nigella (otherwise known as kalonji and sometimes onion seed: both this and the asafoetida are easy to get in Asian markets or try the online supplier www.spicesofindia.com

3. Finally, using more South East Asian spices, keep the garlic and the ginger but tuck in four or five lime leaves, a bashed and chopped up stalk of lemon grass, the juice of half a lemon and a good couple of glugs of Thai fish sauce. A teaspoon of sugar would be good to balance that addictive Thai mixture of sweet, sour, hot and salty.

The leftovers

1. That roast chicken would do a roast chicken dinner --all the trimmings or just roast potatoes and the juices! keep using the meat for a couple of days in a pilaf, a salad, soup, sandwiches.....Then make a rich stock by covering the carcass with water, add a few peppercorns, a stick of celery and a little onion, bring to the boil ann the simmer for slowly for about 1and a half hours. Season, strain and eat as a lovely broth with some tiny pasta, or freeze it and use in umpteen recipes or for soup.

2. Any leftover chicken thighs would make superlative sandwiches, if you pull the meat from the bones.

And for all these recipes, keep the juices and fat and use to roast some potatoes or winter root vegetables later in the week.

Feeling mnore confident?

xxx

Easter Lunch

2010-03-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

For Ned

"Rise Heart"

(George Herbert)

If you read my book, you may remember a somewhat weepy memory of Easter lunch under the willow tree as a child. Well, here I go again, only with less weeping. I picked this card because it reminded me of those my maternal grandmother used to send to me as a child.

Easter lunch for me and the boys and maybe you too.

I like to cook lamb at Easter, so here's an easy way to do it. This is what we will have for Easter Sunday lunch.

Roast lamb with accompaniments and a cheerful rhubarb pudding.

For 4, I have allowed a 2 kg leg of lamb, which will give you plenty plus leftovers. I like cold roast lamb in sandwiches with mint jelly.

Rub your leg of lamb all over with a little salt and pepper and olive oil and then make about 10 little slits in it. Into these slits pop a sprig of rosemary and a fat sliver of garlic, peeled or unpeeled. Then -did I say "bring the meat to room temperature first"? -- put it into a medium hot oven to roast. Meanwhile, try this.

A dish of roast vegetables.

Peel an assortment of seasonal root vegetables to include potatoes, carrots, parsnips and swede. Stick them in a large dish and chuck in some olive oil, sea salt and lots of black pepper. Mix well with your hands. Put to one side.

Some greens.

This time of year, just go exploring and find a nice dark cabbage. I'd probably use a savoy cabbage here. Pull off any dodgy-looking leaves and then shred it finely. Put it in a deep pan and barely cover with water. Add a little salt just before you cook.

Poached rhubarb

Right, while the lamb is cooking, prep your pudding. At this time of year, you may well be able to get lovely forced rhubarb, all pale pink and pretty. I would get about 1 kg, chop into pieces of several cm each with around 3 tbs of caster sugar. If you have bought the full blown rhubarb, you will need more so taste, taste, taste. Poach the rhubarb with the sugar, just covered with water.When it is soft, add a good punch of ground nutmeg and check again for sweetness.

When the lamb has had about 40 minutes, put the vegetables into the oven. The lamb will take another hour, by which time the vegetables with be soft and caramelising at the edges. A couple of times, take some of the juices from around the lamb and put them on the vegetables, tossing in a careless kind of way. 25 minutes later, cook the cabbage.

To serve, let the lamb sit for ten minutes, then hack it into generous pieces and serve with lots of vegetables and the cabbage. You'll see I haven't made gravy. That's because there will be plenty of succulence from the lamb and because you will have soft vegetables, seasoned with some of the fat and juices from the lamb.

Oh, while you are eating, keep the rhubarb warm in the turned off oven and, for pudding, serve it with lots of Greek yoghurt or, if you like, custard. Followed by an Easter egg hunt.

HAPPY EASTER!

Image courtesy of seaside rose at www.flickr.com Thank you.

Hot cross buns. Reclaim the bun!

2010-03-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

Within the past week, I have had conversations in street and bus with older folk about how they object to the ubiquity of hot cross buns. Once, they appeared at Easter or you made them. You did not get them all year round and, though memory may not ratify here, apparently they did not used to be so doughy and squashy. I talked to an eighty year old chap about this on the bus last Thursday. He was on his way to hospital, his wife had died recently and he had just recovered from pneumonia. He was on his way to hospital because of the aneurism, though. They thought he was better now, but he was going for a follow up. "One of these days I won't come home", he said.."I don't get out much either. Although I did go to Asda to get some hot cross buns and, well, I was so disappointed by how doughy and soft they were, not like....".

So here, and I hope you are home and feeling a little more cheerful, is a hot cross bun recipe, just as my mother kept it. They are soft. but substantial and you can also get the top crisp. They have plenty of spice. Give them to all and sundry with a cup of tea. And have two for you.

For 14 hot cross buns

25g dried easy blend yeast
300ml warmed milk
1 teaspoon of caster sugar

Then
400 g plain flour, sieved, with 25g of unsalted butter rubbed in (although I reckon my mother used lard)
pinch of salt
50g caster sugar
1 or 2 teaspoons of mixed spice
50 g sultanas
To make the glaze and get the cross on top, keep to one side 2 tbs of water and 2 tbs of caster sugar

You just add the yeast to the warmed --not hot--milk and then mix in the flour followed by everything else. Leave this to rise in a warm place for about t 20 minutes, add a little more milk if it seems too floury and knead it just a little. Make the dough into 14 balls and put them on to prepared (i.e. greased) trays. Cut a cross in the top of each one with a very sharp small knife, leave for another twenty minutes (they will grow!) and then cook in a hot oven until they are golden. About twenty five minutes, during which time you make a simple syrup for the glaze by dissolving the sugar in the water. While your buns are still hot, you apply the glaze to the cross. Eat while they are still hot or toast later. A triumph! Not the mass produced supermaket squishy bun! Hoorah! Oh: if you want some extra spice, dust them lightly with cinnamom or nutmeg before you serve and maybe even sprinkle with golden caster sugar. But just a little.Best served with butter in the middle, too.

An aside: foods which I do not like. (There are few.)

2010-03-31T03:46:00.000-07:00

I will eat anything that is put in front of me. However, there are three examples that make me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I mean, I have plenty of friends who won't eat meat unless it contains no skin or bone, those who will not eat fish because of the texture or any seafood because it just looks, well, too creaturely, I suppose. Then there are those who won't touch food they think will be (chilli) hot, who dislike leaf coriander with a passion, offal haters and those who reject cumin, tumeric in curries, Thai or South East Asian food because of the hit of fish sauce (which I love). Folks have all sorts of predilections. My husband will not be persuaded to eat beetroot in any form or peppers, unless ravenous. So back to me.
1. Heart. I am an offal fancier, but just cannot eat this. My mother would serve it up about once a month throughout my childhood. To me, it has a rich, slightly sweet, metallic and somehow bloody smell that repels.
Do you have any suggestions? The best way I ever found was to stuff it with herby breadcrumbs, but even then...
2. Lychees. My family is well aware that I regard these as the fruit of the devil. I dislike the texture, the cloying smell and the slight squeak they make. I don't even like the name of the thing, stopping, as it does, somewhere between lice and leeches. They have been served up time and time agai in fruit salads to me, particularly because of the South Asian influence on my family, where I have been served them as a fruit salad after a range of curry dishes. But, well, yuk. They look like congealed vitreous humour in syrup.
3. Tripe. O.k. Big sheets of it. Billowing around in white sauce with onions and served with boiled potatoes. It was a favourite of my father and was cooked at home because it was a dish which his mother, Beth, regularly cooked for him. So, again, this probably appeared at least once a month when I was growing up. I would eat the onions in the white sauce and lots of boiled potatoes and then attempt to eradicate at least some of the tripeyness (this is an invented adjective, of course) by the application of malt vinegar and lots of pepper. Which went some way to improve things. The texture. Well, I don't mind excercising my jaws. Neither am I remotely squeamish about the fact that it is the lining of a stomach. And yet, it does look as if you'd unrolled a wad of bubble wrap and pressed it down and then boiled it and I profundly dislike the way it manages to smell a little like a damp sock when cooking. A smell which pervades each room of the house.

BUT there is a caveat to this one. It came the first summer I discovered Elizabeth David's books and thus, when I went to France, tried to eat some of the things she so beautifully described in French Provincial Cooking. May I tell you about the dish called Tableau au Pompier -- or fireman's apron? You take a piece of cooked tripe about the size of your hand (you would have poached this in a little seasoned water) then you cover it with melted butter, roll it in seasoned breadcrumbs and put it under a very hot grill, turning once, so that the outside is very crisp and blisteringly hot. Eat immediately. If I had to, this is, I think, the way to go. For me, this little curiosity makes the best of a crisp exterior and the soft chewy texture of the tripe within.

OOOH: I think there may be hope here. Since thinking about this little article, I have been looking, in particular, at the use of thinly shredded tripe in the wonderfully aromatic Vietnamese soup, Pho. Now there's one to sample. I'm wondering whether, for me, the meat will lend itself so much more to Chinese and South East Asian food. Will experiment.

The picture above is by James Cridland and shows a shop in Smithfield market: note the Tripe Dressers in the title. www.flickr.com Thank you James.

In honour of a new cooker

2010-03-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

Well now: when you buy a new cooker -- here it is, except mine's cream coloured-- I suggest you have a cook in. What would I do? Try this.

1. A roast chicken. I know, I know. I am forever roasting chickens.

2. Some roast spiced potatoes. I'll call them masala potatoes.

3. Some proper cakes. Or one substantial number. With a bit of spice for the time of year.

4. A casserole or two.

Are you terribly impressed? I did a cookathon in between teaching lessons at home, making a 'Medieval Day' costume for a five year old (tip: pillow case, red and gold paint; giant sequins and curtain tieback...) and writing an article and it felt like a triumph. I am not, may I say, competitive mummy, but I do like to feel I am at home. Less of the blather and back to the recipes.

1. The chicken. Free ranger; roast upside down for the first 40 minutes or so and allow about 20 minutes for each 500g and then another 20-30 minutes But do I ever time thus? No I don't. Give yourself time and you'll just know when it's done. It's instinct. The juices should run clear where the thigh meets the breast.

Variations thereon: try smearing the breast with buter between skin and chicken, rubbing it all over with a mix of best unsalted butter and good green pesro or rubbbing in a mixture of butter, ground cumin and coriander, salt and pepper. You could stuff the cavity with a stack of unpeeled garlic cloves and add sprigs of robust herbs such as rosemary branches plus a little sage. Tarragon is great with chicken: stuff the cavity with it, or strew it over the bird twenty minutes or so before coing time is up. Ditto thymes of all sorts. Great hot with the usual suspects, warm or cold. Remember to give yourself first dibbs at prising away the little stucky bits that have stuck to the roasting tin.

2. The masala potatoes. I've prepped these (just to the coating in spice stage) but will cook them later. Just peel or not, as you can be bothered, and then cut in half. Floury potatoes are what you want, not waxy ones. So, get a dish with a thin layer of sunflower oil piping hot and shimmering in the oven. Meanwhile, coat your potatoes in black pepper, flakes of sea salt, red chilli flakes and a heaped tablespoon or a garam masala mix. I like the Rajah or Bolst brands. Now, chuck the lot in the hot oil and roast until they are soft on the inside and crisp on the outside and sticking to the dish here and there. Cook them in a hot oven and possibly turn up the heat later to blitz them so they get really crisp. You will know your oven best.

3. The cake. I got all nostalgic here. So here, in honour of my late mum, is something she would have liked. It's based on one from a book she used: Been Nilson's The Penguin Cookery Book. It is an almond fruit cake. To me, anything with almond in it feels like a celebration. You need a moderate oven and an 8'' tin then...

MAKE A SPICED ALMOND AND FRUIT CAKE

Cream 200gm of unsalted butter with the same volume of caster sugar. Then add 4 large eggs, 200g of ground almonds and 100g of plain flour. Mix all in well as you go. To this you add 150g of sultanas and the same of raisins and then 75g of mixed peel. Again, mix it in well. Now you have a choice: either 25 of preserved ginger or a tablespoon of ground ginger and then, finally, the grated rind of half an orange and the grated rind of half a lemon. Stick the lot into a tin which you have lined with greaseproof paper and cook for about 3 hours. At this point, if you put a skewer into the centre of the cake, it should come out clean. Turn it out of the tin when it's cool.

4. Right: a chicken casserole. Would you be horrified to know that, a while ago, I had in front of me almost 6 kg of skinned chicken drumsticks? That's the cooking ahead thing; if I don't do it, it'll be tits up round here by Wednesday. But say you had 3 kg, which would be more than enough for 4. Try this

First, brown your chicken pieces in a large pan. You may need to do this in batches. Or, hey: just skip this stage altogether. Put to one side. In the same pan, add a little sunflower oil and then add 2 finely chopped celery sticks or hearts, 3 chopped carrots, four finely chopped garlic cloves and a finely chopped onion, much in the manner of an Italian soffrito. Cook gently until all are softened. Now, add the chicken and toss it all about. At this point --because we are going for an all in one so that all you have to do is dole everything out at the table (or wherever) with no extra fuss-- add five peeled and roughly chopped potatoes. You want these to be in substantial pieces so that they do not disentegrate into the casserole, though. So maybe better in half or whole if they are small. Stir carefully, add a big fat pinch of sea salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper, a couple of bay leaves and then cover the mixture either with a decent white wine or half and half water and white wine. Something dry, I think. Alternatively, cover with water, but add a couple of teaspoons of Marigold bouillion powder and stir carefully. Bring the pan to a high heat and then either turn it right down, simmering for an hour on the hob or a little more if you transfer it to a casserole dish, as I would, for the oven. Making it a proper casserole, then. Because it's the acts of baking and roasting that make me feel better, most of all.

Green shoots

2010-03-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

This time of year, I am foraging in our garden. Here is what I have found and eaten today.

To Libby, with all my lovex

My chives are about four cm high, so I snip a few off. I add to them the wild onions --look for the little green shoots growing everywhere!-- that seem to grow so abundantly in this part of the world. Then I add to these some tiny dandelion leaves and some of the new sorrel leaves that are coming on strong already. I add this to a big bowl either of cold cooked chick peas and salty feta cheese, with a little olive oil, sea salt and black pepper, or do the same with some other white bean which I have soaked and cooked. You might try cannellini beans or haricots. That is it and it will give your system a fresh charge, I reckon, because raw food does you good. Hell, I sound like an eat yourself healthy cookbook.

The beans will be creamy and nutty and contrast with the lemony acidic twang of that sorrel and the little bite of the dandelion. The onions make it more savoury, I think.

Tea on a proper cold night

2010-03-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm not one to whoop about spring coming and everything being all right now that soon we won't be cold, as I love winter in Britain and always have -- much as I relish warmth on my back, butterflies on buddleia and and bees on thyme bushes when we have the balm of those first warm days. But I like cold, frost and winter mornings and fires in the evenings. And I love winter food. Try this followed by this.

SAUSAGES ALL IN -- IN THE OVEN

Buy as many sausages as you think you will eat, which is to say allow two per person and then probably another one each. For two, that is what I did. Get the best sausages you can find. Pork ones from happy piggies. Then stick them in a big roasting tin WITHOUT having pricked them. No no no. Never do this with a sausage, otherwise they won't get properly sticky. Add to the pan some diced unpeeled potatoes, some peeled chunks of swede, ditto of celeriac, some chunks of carrot, a couple of good pinches of red chilli flakes, ten cloves of unpeeled garlic, a teaspoon or so of cumin seeds and a glug of sunflower oil or a mild olive oil. This goes into a medium hot oven and, about an hour later, emerges to warm you through to your toes. It needs, though, to be well cooked and hopefully the vegetables should have caught a little here and there. Serve it with some green vegetables. I'd favour some wedges of a dark green brassica. How about some savoy cabbage?

Pudding. I hope this does not offend. I see that it is a little unsophisticated. Offer up a bowl each of some good thick Greek yoghurt --low fat Greek yoghurt can be pretty good-- with a dollop of the best strawberry jam you can find in it. But get this wrong and it'll be way too close to your primary school dinner. So good ingredients. You could add some lemon zest and some grated ginger or nutmeg, if you like.

I was very happy with this.

OOOH, SPEAKING OF OVENS...I have just purchased a new one after one false start and some unexpected plumbing issues. I became sadly, sadly obsessed over the choosing of said appliance because, this time, I was going just a little upmarket and trying to buy something that was, in fact, rather beautiful. This is not something British cookers do well. And cheapo ovens? Caveat emptor. But this one. Well, I am sure I am boring you, but I went not for the biggish range of my dreams, but for the smallish, compact champagne coloured baby range and....I will be stroking it when I am alone. It is a Stoves mini range dual fuel in, well, champagne. With big knobs.

Pulling mussels from the shell

2010-03-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Pembrokeshire. This is a view from Stackpole Quay, a short walk away from Barafundle Bay, which reminds me...we are speaking of the sea and the wonderful things it produces --some of which you would find might in fine fettle right now.

Mussels are a good buy in March. Actually, March is a good month for British seafood generally. February, too. My rule of thumb here: NOTHING surpasses a little butter, possibly some lemon juice and perhaps some garlic with such riches. However, I may tinker a but -- as follows. Hmm, Mussels. Could be a last meal. No, wait: that would be a whole crab, with a little melted butter to one side, to tear, limb from limb. Back to the mussels.

Have a big pan ready. A big wet pan. Having rinsed your mussels --I am assuming they are in the shell-- and given them a quick scrub if you deem it necessary, just chuck them in said pan. Put a lid or plate over the top. Over a moderate heat, they will steam and their shells should open up. Just a couple of minutes. If you have one which does not, it is already rather dead and needs to go in the bin. Then, add a fat slice of unsalted butter and two cloves of finely chopped butter, toss these around and cook for another couple of minutes. They are done and will be divine.
Do the same two minute steam and then pull half a shell from the mussels, put a little butter and garlic on mussel in its remaining half shell and grill for a minute or two. You could also add some fine white breadcrumbs. I once ate these with a fine grating of paremsan, too.
Moules Mariniere. Well, I just chuck the cleaned mussels in a deep pan, add a little butter over the heat and a couple of cloves of finely chopped garlic. Toss a couple of times and then add a decent dry white wine to cover. One that you like and would drink! Bring to a moderate heat and cook for three minutes or so, and you are done. Again, remember to discard any mussels that do not open.
Mackerel. Good stuff this time of year in Blighty. I do not believe in fussing about with mackerel. Just get it gutted and cleaned, head on or off as you wish (on, in my case), sprinkle it with salt and pepper, roll it in seasoned flour and then fry it gently in a pan in a little sunflower oil or roast it a high heat. Eat with bread and butter and no fannying about with accompaniments. Now, I do quite like to use Indian spices with mackerel (top tip: if you are going to Goa, check it out -- but posssibly not at a traveller's haunt where they sell banana pancakes, if you get my point. You'll need to forage or go inland. Maybe to Paniji, the state capital?). I'd suggest rubbing the mackerel with sea salt and pepper, a little cumin powder and some turmeric, plus plenty of red chilli. It can take it. Rub it in inside and out and then roast in a little sunflower oil. The idea with fried or roasted mackerel is, importantly, to make sure the inside is succulent but that you get crisp skin. I have never in my life cooked a mackerel fillet.
Oh, oysters. There's something else to explore this month. Natives, I mean. The rudest kind of shellfish, somehow: need I elaborate? Remember, that it's terribly silly to swallow them straight down when raw. You need to acquire the skill of shucking without injuring yourself (an oven glove is my top tip: I'm sorry, I'm giggling now) or get a fishmonger to do it for you. Then just pull each one from the shell, chew and taste the sea. Ideally, you'd have a glass of champagne to ne side. But man, if ANYONE ever put this on for me, I'd keel over in delight. Divine. Where was I? You could add a little lime or lemon juice maybe a hunt of the original Tabasco sauce. But that's it. If you did want to cook them, they remove from the shell and give them just a couple of seconds in a hot pan so that the edges curl, perhaps trying a little of the Tabasco sauce with them. But just the tiniest little drop, mind. I don't ever want to turn them into soup or fritters. Tomorrow: more piscine adventures.

A frittata

2010-03-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

Well, there appears to be little food in the house. But wait: what's this? I have found the following items:

Did you get the boiled egg and soldiers thing? Always have some eggs on hand for cheerful pictures and culinary emergencies, I say. Picture by Giles Turnbull.

six spring onions

three small cold jacket potatoes (that sounds kind of tragic, doesn't it? A bit like Mrs Beeton breaking the heart of a young lettuce)

a handful of cherry tomatoes

we have plentiful garlic and whole red chillies. If I have no other food, I always seem to have these -- plus my cupboard full of spices

half a yellow pepper

six eggs

two sticks of celery

Right: I have it.

Chop up everything into small pieces, mince four cloves of garlic and, say, half a red chilli. Fry them off gently in a little olive oil in a large frying or saute pan. Meanwhile beat the eggs well with a little sea salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Then having made sure that your vegetables are fairly well distributed across the pan, pour on the eggs and raise the heat. Allow all to set and then either turn your substantial-variation-on-a substantial-Spanish-omelette with finesse and elan, or finish it off under a hot grill..

Harumph! It is done and, I reckon, it is pretty good fare. I would want plenty of chilli in my omelette and I might also like a little cheese in there somewhere. Perhaps three tablespoons of a sharp cheddar? Pitted olives would, be good, too. Serve with crusty bread or not if, like me, you are not entirely up to speed with the domestics this week.

ALE AND PORTER and then some.

2010-02-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for anything about the lovely new Ale and Porter --cafe, patisserie and traiteur, no less, check yesterday's post for text and related recipe! Here, above is Sebastien Rouxel, the chef. Plus for an extra treat, how wonderful is Giles Turnbull's picture of Gary Say, Head Chef at Fat Fowl, below? You can see Gary loves what he does, I think. Check out home made bread and note sprigs of herbs.

Now we are eight.

2010-02-27T10:57:00.001-08:00

Isn't this the sweetest thing. Well bittersweet, because today I am the grumpy, shouty mother who, well, should not. Back to the sweetest thing. My eight year old cannot hold a pencil 'properly' for toffee; I've been told more than a few times that he underachieves in school. But you know what? I respect opnions and all, but that child is highly emotionally literate. My goodness, how highly that counts. And he knows about food. Today, to give his mother a boost, here is what he did. Foods chosen because he thought they were "cosy." Ah: you're wondering about the provenance of the eggs? Spirit of the same. Photo by Giles Turnbull.

1. Plump up cushions in squashy chair; tell mother to put up feet and wait for lunch. Did I want a romantic DVD or a murder book? (Funny, how young boys see their mothers.)

2. Arrive with a menu and a large reserved sign saying "Mrs V. Table three reserved" Table three is the squashy chair. Mrs V is me. He had also written (sic) "You rok!!!" on the bottom of the reserved sign.

3. Sounds of scrabbling and stumbling on stairs up to room. A tray, with a big basin of rice crispies, lots of cold milk and, well, extra milk in the tray -- for which he had brought an extra spoon.

4. A little later, I was given a cheese sandwich and a satsuma for pudding. Today, I let them eat their meals backwards, so that was why I had a cheese sandwich for dessert.

5. Sounds of running. The boy has prepared a flagon of blackcurrant squash. He is now wearing an apron, the previous lack of which he now apologises for. And he brings me a napkin and a raspberry chewy vitamin tablet.

Further details: all white bowl and plate, blue and white napkin. His choice.

The chips below: another comforting sort of food picture. Again by Giles: they are my oven chips and I particularly favour this old enamel cooking tin for their preparation. It's all in the blue rim and the pale yellow interior.

A lovely new venture to taste: traiteur, cafe, patisserie

2010-02-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

In our home town of Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, there is a new little place for you to visit. It belongs to Sebastien and Shanaz Rouxel and it's called Ale and Porter --taking its name after the building in which they are housed. It's writ large on the front! It's a patisserie, cafe and traiteur. Which means that, while you get coffee and a cake, as in any other cafe, or take a little lunch, you can also get food to take away. Here they are: photo by Giles Turnbull, who, let it be known, is what is called A JOLLY GOOD THING. (Neat photos, too.)

There's a wonderfully evocative description of a traiteur's shop in Provence in the writing of the late Keith Floyd. In winter, he saw that it was filled with game and its shelves were stacked with trufflles and pates, with signs in the window offering food to take away. Cooked on the premises were jugged hare, a venison stew and crayfish armoricaine (the name coming --probably-- from the old name for Brittany, not America. Probably.)

So, in France, the traiteur's shop is where you would get --amongst other things-- a selection of foods to enjoy for your lunch or dinner. These would include something substantial so, for example, you might have a wonderful portion of cassoulet to have when friends come round.. In Ale and Porter, you do the same. As I write, you could be eating a beef daube -- a long simmered beed stew, or a kind of risotto made with pearl barley. Very good for you, you know. While Sebastien is French by birth, the food from this particular traiteur will be more roundly European -- just to give you a taste of more than one country. Not that France isn't a place of genius, you understand. Speaking of which, here is a recipe. It's just a daube, a la moi, but mostly Provencal in nature, I would think. It exploits the French genius for long and patient simmering. Sort of alchemy, then. You could do it two stages, thusly.

Daube. A beef stew (daubes are not only beef!)

Put this meat into a marinade overnight. I'd use 2kg of stewing beef. Decent quality.

The marinade might be:
About 2 glasses of decent red wine
1 medium (say, thumb length?) piece of rosemary on the stem
1 sprig of thyme --maybe even lemon thyme?
1 bayleaf
five cloves of finely chopped garlic
A fat pinch of Maldon sea salt and some freshly ground black pepper
You could add a chopped onion too, because, later it will add aromatic base notes. And I LOVE onions
Take 2kg stewing beef. Decent quality. Cut it into pieces.

Right, the following day, do this.
Get About 250g streaky bacon, cut into little dice. Smoked, ideally. Fry it off gently with a little olive oil. Then drain the meat, putting the marinade to one side. Brown it gently in the pan with the bacon. Oh -- you need a large pan, because you want to brown and seal the meat, not steam it! Take a couple of heaped tablespoons of flour and sprinkle these on, keeping a watchful eye on the heat so that the flour dosen't catch. You do want, though, to cook it out properly. Just a minute or so will do. Stir carefully and then pour in the marinade and 4 glasses of red wine.All you do then is bring to a high heat and simmer for around three hours or you could, at this point, decant it to a moderate oven and let it bubble away. You could also add a couple of pieces of (scrubbed) orange peel. You may find you need to add a little water, but a daube should be thick -- so have confidence. remember to check and correct the seasoning.

When all is done, the meat will be exceptionally tender. Elizabeth David once had tears in her eyes when presented, weary and long travelled, with a daube -- seeing the little branches of thyme and smelling the rich and homely scent as the lid of the daubiere was lifted. I know what she meant.

I would enjoy serving this with plain boiled potatoes and -- because I will never be French and will always inhabit a place sometimes in England and sometimes in Wales-- with a big heap of boiled and roughly chopped cabbage. It might be the done thing, down South, to serve with noodles and a little cheese,

Chicken soup for the soul. For Susan.

2010-02-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes: we've all heard this one But chicken soup really does seem to work if you have a cold or flu and, reader, I am feeling dreadful. However, someone came to my door late this afternoon, having removed the children from my care, swung them around the house so as to wear them out for me and then prepared some soup. I will ask her what she put in it at some point, but let me just say that the right food offered by the kind (a good splash of Southern may I say?) soul made me feel very happy.

And man: that soup was better than mine. It contained good rich chicken stock, chopped chicken --both the brown and white-- and, I noticed, it was cut into neat pieces (unlike mine) which was particularly soothing in the circumstances. Just a nod to what I'll call nursery food. There were peas, neatly cut carrots, just a little celery and linguine which had been snapped into pieces. Well seasoned. Just right. More to the point, she had made enough for two good helpings with seconds so that Nedved (that'll be the husband, if you're not a regular reader) could share it.

As My auntie Bettie in Pembrokeshire says: "I notices things."

Feet up by the fire, dear.

And an update to favourite meals, chicken soup and a tuna tortilla!

2010-02-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

Following on from my last post on favourite meals....

My eldest son, Elijah, just 8, says that it would either be a home-made pizza (with a big crusty base, a tomato sauce, some chilli flakes, some spicy sausage, red or green peppers and light on the cheese) or a big bowl of his mother's home-made chicken soup (warms the heart, this). Made thusly.

Elijah's chicken soup. Son, momma loves you.

You have the remains of a roast chicken. Perhaps you have some chicken stock, too. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. Right, strip the carcass with your fingers, missing nothing. Then put the chicken into a deep pan. Cover with cold water and then twice as much water again. Add a finely chopped onion, five roughly chopped carrots, a head of broccoli, torn into pieces, five potatoes, chopped (whether you peel or not is up to you, but I would -- unless they were newies), two chopped parsnips and, perhaps, half a large swede, chunked. Bring this lot to the boil and then add about a tablespoon of marigold bouillion powder for depth and savour. Just simmer slowly for about forty minutes and it is ready. Check and correct the seasoning. Elijah likes this with a big hunk of bread for dipping, but sometimes not.

Two points: the only way that this soup will be superlative is if you use a free range chicken. So much more flavour for your money and we like chickens. I don't need to go on about the alternative right here in a recipe. Just check out --amongst others-- Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall on the subject. Secondly, don't waste the remaining bones. make them into a stock for the next soup by simmer them long and gently with a few peppercorns, a piece of onion and perhaps a little celery. Or nothing at all. Or make the stock first, having stripped away the meat, and use it as a bases for this soup. It's just that I had a vat of it which I wanted to use up. Oh and finally, do keep some of the Marigold stock powder in your cupboard. It's available in low salt and organic varieties and provides a flavoursome stock. Although I wouldn't use it for every soup I make.

Tuna in a tortilla a la Ned. (You rock)

And a thought from Elijah's father. This is, perhaps, an odd sort of thing to have as a favourite, but it makes him happy, so that's dandy. I like it, too. Just take some tuna in spring water (if you can get it. I say sunflower oil, but we allow him his preferences), drain it and then add it to a frying pan on a moderate heat. Your aim is to cook the tuna until you have dried it slightly and given it a little bit of crisp here and there. Then, add plenty of hot sauce. May we recommend another favourite ingredient in our household? Encona Hot Chilli sauce. It's the best. Just mix in as much as you dare -- it's hot and piquant-- and then toss your tuna into a warmed tortilla. That's it! I might like to add a dollop of Greek yoghurt or some mayonnaise and, maybe, some chopped coriander? Possibly some spring onion, too. But I see that this may be taking away from the somewhat basic but very satisfying original (I mean the sandwich, not the husband).

Isaac's (he is 5) favourite ingredients are: tomato ketchup, rice, sausages, mangoes, kiwi fruit and lollipops! Oh -- and watermelon. His father's son. More on this later!

A favourite meal? A fantasy meal? A last meal? A meal to savour all alone?

2010-02-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

By this I mean, if you and only you had to choose. If you thought no-one was there to disapprove -- which just might, I think, mitigate some folks' choices. And don't think it has to be posh. It might be Nutella on toast, for all I care. I am just curious -- plus I want to put this into my next book. Anonymously, if you choose. You don't need to think in terms of courses and, if you can write lustily about it, so much the better.

These are my favourites. At the moment, I mean. And amongst all my other favourites. All of a jumble and in no particular order.

An obscenely ripe wodge of Brie. Or Camenbert.

Porridge. Big bowl. With golden syrup or --get this-- condensed milk.

A Masala Dosa with a coconut chutney.

A really good floury boiled potato. Must be the peasant in me. Or a roast potato. The one that got stuck to the tin and seemed to have collapsed. That was always the one I pinched on Sunday. My eight year old does it now.This makes me feel warm and fuzzy around the edges. Do you know what I mean?

A giant bowl of pasta. It should be spaghetti or linguine and the sauce needs, probably, to be Arrabiata or Puttanesca.

A lobster. A crab. A cone of winkles. A pot of prawns. Pulling mussels from the shell. Skate wings. Oysters. I'd be positively ferral. And I don't want the oysters cooked. Neither do I swallow them whole.

My mother's Sunday roast. Beef, with billowing Yorkshire pudding, Roast parsnips. God rest her soul.

Roast pork. Good crackling. Apple Sauce.Good rest her soul again.

My mother's steak and kidney pudding. With carrots to one side. And a pile of cabbage. Blimey, I really am from Britian, aren't?

A poached egg or two on thick white toast. Or possibly a boiled egg with the same. And a jaunty egg cup.

A bacon sandwich. Nothing else. And with the bread a bit doorstoppy.

Cawl. That's Welsh for soup, that it. With big hinks of cheddar cheese melting in it.

A giant pizza with a crisp crust. And it has to have anchovies on it.

A really hot Thai soup. With prawns. Or a really good Japanese Tempura. Or a proper Goulash or ...I don't know. Cannot decide. But I'll tell you that I love chillies.And I went wild over a cactus salad not long ago....

Just a few that came to mind. Oh --sweet stuff.

Bread and butter pudding, with the edges caught here and there.A proper trifle. Lemon meringue pie. Home made ice cream -- maybe with blackberries in it? Or gooseberry or rhubarb fool? Or apple or rhubarb crumble?

But what would you say?

An almost instant but cheerful tea for a household.

2010-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

Light the fire. It's a bit damp outside today. I have a houseful. Children and adults; two thieving cats. Try this. It's a sort of fail-safe but fake pizza where you use lots of bagels. No: I'm being too modest. It's inspired! And I've been doing this for years, so I was pleased to see that Nigella Lawson does something similar for herself and her children with shop-bought naan bread in Nigella Express. Not that pizza bases are hard to make. Ready-made ones are though, as she rightly says, invariably horrid. Anyway, I bet I thought of it first.

So... Allow two plain bagels per adult then. The squirrel you see above, courtesy of Jesse Millan's photo 'Morning Bagel' at Flickr.com, is showing that you should allow one plain bagel per squirrel. (Unless you are from Georgia, in which case, eat the squirrel. Put it IN the bagel. Actually, I am not entirely joking about this. In the U.K., read your Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall for how to procure and eat a --grey-- squirrel. Plus, my husband is from Georgia, which is sort of how I got away with the initial part of that comment.)

Slice each one (bagel, not squirrel) in two width-wise and spread each one liberally with red pesto. Try to get a good quality one. You could use red pepper pesto or sun dried tomato pesto. Then, have to hand the following:

Capers in brine which you have rinsed to de salt them a little

Pitted green or black olives

Slivers of fresh garlic

Good quality tinned tuna fish (line caught!)

Olive oil. Extra virgin to drizzle on afterwards, or a milder oil to add before these go into the oven

Red pepper, cut into little pieces

Ditto cherry tomatoes

Red chilli flakes

You could have to hand some cured meats, or ham, but today we are happy with the tuna fish (if you go for the former, I wouldn't entertain the anchovies, below)

Anchovies, whether those preserved in oil or salt. Extract from the tin and rinse gently.

Cheese. Mozarella to do it properly (not that bagels are remotely authentic, you understand), but I actually like a hearty mature cheddar on a pizza. Hopefully not too sacreligious to your ear? If it's the former, slice it into little rounds; if the latter, grate it coarsely

So, just add all the toppings prettily to your pretend pizzas and finish up with the cheese, a drizzle of olive oil and plenty of freshly ground black pepper and, if you like, a pinch of the dried red chilli flakes. Put these babies into a hot oven and bake for about fifteen minutes and then call in the troops. I served this tea with a salad made from ribbons of carrot --do these with the potato peeler-- and some finely shredded spinach, seasoned with a lemon juice and extra virgin dressing. Correct its seasoning with the sea salt and black pepper. Actually, some raisins could work here, too.

Look: everyone in your house is happy. Give them a pancake for pudding, as it's timely. The recipe you need is earlier in my writing: pancakes for yours truly.

You are famished and need something sustaining.

2010-02-15T03:30:00.000-08:00

First of all, put on some woolly socks. Then, put some Basmati rice on to cook. White for choice.Oh: you're wondering about the socks, aren't you? Those were to make you feel sort of at home and cosy. Works for me. With a big bowl of hot rice.

This dinner is just for one!

Now, you can take this in one of two ways.

Going Indian

गोइंग इंडियन

(That's my open bag of turmeric --haldi-- above.)

So, The rice is cooking. Remember not to boil the life out of it, but bring it to the boil and then down to the most gentle simmer you can imagine for about 12 minutes with no fiddling. After which time, you fork it up gently -- not attacking stirring with a spoon! While your rice is cooking, take a wok or a decent-sized frying pan and fry off two finely chopped cloves of garlic, a little piece of grated fresh ginger and half a chopped fresh red chilli. You just need a little film of sunflower oil in the pan for this. Swoosh the ingredients about until they smell nutty and roasted and then add a couple of teaspoons of cumin seeds, about a teaspoon of well crushed coriander seeds and a teaspoon of lightly crushed fennel seeds. Cook these off gently and then add about a teaspoon of turmeric. Cook carefully so as not to burn the turmeric.

Now, when the rice is done, drain it carefully, add it to the spices in the pan, turn the heat up high, having added another little dose of sunflower oil, and twist and turn it until the rice is well coated. Then, all you do is add a couple of teaspoons of garam masala, check for salt and pepper and top your rice with a generous blob of Greek yoghurt. You could, if you want extra piquancy, add a teaspoon of a chaat mix powder to the yoghurt. Chaat, if you have not been following me before, is a South Asian snack food, which might be savoury --such as a mixture of cubes of potato, onion and puffed rice-- or might be sweet -- such as a little fruit salad. The spice mixtures themselves are deeply savoury and my favourites will contain anardhana (green pomegranate powder) and/or amchoor (green mango powder). They are addictive. Try them. If you cannot get them locally, go here: www.spicesofindia.com

So there you have it. A straightforward and meatless supper. Enough to bolster you quickly. Are you still wearing your woolly socks? A kind of pilaf, I suppose, by the way.

Or how about this?

Going Chinese

While that same rice is cooking (and Basmati is not, of course, authentic, so you could use another - such as Jasmine rice or something else you like), fry in just a little sunflower oil a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, a little grated nut of fresh ginger and a good pinch of dried red chilli flakes. Then, add three chopped spring onions to the spices in your wok or frying pan and a handful of green peas, which I'll admit I just lob in from the freezer. Cook quickly and then add a couple of teaspoons of Chinese five spice powder and, for effect, perhaps a few star anise. So pretty.

When the rice is cooked, add it to the mixture in the pan, bring it to a high heat and then add a beaten egg to the mixture. Cook carefully, passionately and quickly (these three are not mutually exclusive) and, finally, add a sloosh or two of Kikoman soy sauce. I like this particular sauce because it's naturally brewed. And behold: it also turns out to be a Delia "CHEAT!" ingredient and, I notice, has been labelled as such in my local supermarket.

And there you are.

That wasn't hard was it?

Let me talk you through a couple of days of food ---feasting and observations.

2010-02-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Now Thursday was my birthday. I am not telling you how old I was, save to say that I have more energy now --and of a sustained and, well, productive sort than I did when I was eighteen. Read on. Lunch was a superlative jacket potato -- as follows. I cooked this just for me because, while I had been wined and dined ant breakfast and elevenses (well, hot chocolated), I wanted time alone. I know not everyone wants this, but, for me, it's nice to dine alone.

Right the potato served one, everything else two BUT with copious leftovers because, as you'll see, I cooked double. Give it a try?

First: your best jacket potato.

Take a good sized jacket potato. A proper floury job. Having pre-heated your oven to 200, rinse the potato gently and then pat it dry. Now, massage it liberally with some Maldon sea salt and stick it in the oven. That's the secret to the best jacket potato you will ever have eaten. When it's done, you will find that the skin is delectably crisp and the inside fluffy.

I've told you before of the habit in my household, copied some years ago from Nigel Slater, of attacking the potato with a neat karate chop. Try it. Some people --my husband now included-- do say that it ensures am appealing and not too neat potato. Anyway, now put in a little butter and some grated mature cheddar and then -- keep your eyes peeled this time of year-- any ittle green shoots you may find in your garden or someone else's. Or round and about, but know what and where you are picking. In my case, this consisted of some tiny sorrel leaves just pushing up, some little mint leaves (ditto) and some wild onions. You will see them here, there and everywhere. They look like chives and grow in abundance, I notice, in my nearest churchyard. But no foraging there. All the green shoots were finely chopped and added to the cheese.

See how simple this is and how it will make you happy?

Now, birthday dinner postponed until next week (suhsi -- I'm afraid I go into a sort of feeding frenzy and end up with teetering plates), here is what we had instead.

Superlative chicken and spinach curry in the oven. All you do is this.

Take as many free range chicken thighs (boned or not: mine are invariably on the bone) as you and a beloved might eat and put them into a nice big oven dish, having pre-heated the oven to around 200. Now, add a tablespoon of ground coriander, two of ground cumin, half a tablespoon of turmeric, five or six unpeeled cloves of garlic, a slosh of sunflower oil if the chicken is skinned (mine happened to be, that day), ten cherry tomatoes, a teaspoon or two of red chilli flakes, a fat pinch of asafoetida (which isn't essential, but it does give this a sort of musky, savoury depth) and five or six pieces of chopped, frozen spinach. Mix this all up well, add a little salt and pepper and just shove it in the oven. You will need to watch it closely to begin with, stirring it carefully as the spinach melts into the spices. Then you can leave it to do its thing for a good forty five minutes. At this point, it's done and you will have sweetly spiced chicken and you can squeeze out the lovely golden paste from the whole garlic cloves into your dinner. We had this with...

A straightforward Masoor (red lentil) dhal.

I took --let's say-- four tea cups of red lentils and added a couple of teaspoons of turmeric to them. Then, I covered them with water, plus almost as much water in volume again and brought them to the boil. Simmer very gently for about thirty minutes --really, you should skim off any froth that accumulates on the surface-- and then it should be done. I know it's traditional to simmer for a bit more, but for me, this is about right.

Now, you want to do what in South Indian cooking would be the tempering. In a frying pan, heat up some sunflower oil. Just a shallow film. To this, add a dessertspoon of brown mustard seeds. Hear them pop, and then add the same of whole cumin seeds and --because I fancied it-- onion seed (that is, Nigella seed or kalonji). Fry these off gently and just add them to the dhal with the oil. Mix in gently, check for salt --which I always add at the end-- and serve with the chicken.

Also...spiced roast potatoes in the oven (can you improve on my word order here?)

Take, say, six medium potatoes, scrub but don't bother to peel. Make sure they are dry, though. Just put them into hot oil and sprinkle in teaspoons of dried red chilli flakes and cumin seeds and, if you like, a little turmeric. Sea salt, too. Cook them at about 200 for about 40 minutes. If you like, mix them with fresh coriander leaf, finely chopped, at the end. I also added some whole cloves of garlic, unpeeled, which I tend to munch whole.

Now, that chicken....did I mention that I cooked enough for two days? I often cook for an anticipated predicament the following day. This time, I was prescient -- and this thankful for the chicken. Here is what I did.

Chicken curry even better the next day, isn't it? (For Uncle Jamall xx)

So, you gently re-heat the chicken with some extra spinach in the oven and make sure you have added plenty of freshly-ground black pepper. While you are doing this, you can make a wonderful potato salad with Indian spices. In Northern India you might have this as aloo achaar -- a tart potato salad served as snack food. Splendid. So, boil four large potatoes with a dessertspoon of turmeric (and water, obviously) and, when done, slip off their peel and cut them into little cubes. Cool (you can make this a little ahead) or rinse gently under cold water and allow to dry. Now, snip five or so spring onions into little pieces and cut up a handful of cherry tomaties and a fat chunk of cucumber into tiny bits, too. Or, well, little pieces, because fiddly chopping might put you off when you just cannot be bothered at dinner time. Mix this in with the potato along with a teaspoon of cumin seeds, sea salt and pepper to taste and a couple of pinches of 'chaat' powder. Other possibilities, as you may well not have this addictive seasoning for snack foods knocking about the house: lemon juice, a little vinegar, green mango powder (amchoor --easier to get than you think) or anardhana --pomegranate powder. Tart and fragrant.

So, you serve the chicken with this cold and spicy salad and that's that.

But I'm not done yet. Oh no. Aha! I also made double of the potato salad. The cucmber and tomato could, I thought, just about handle it. And it did this. How clever of it.

Breakfast for a king (or Mehta, or Maharajah, or our Uncle Mansoor in Karachi....)

Take a chapati or a pitta bread and warm it through. Stuff each bread you have with grated cheese and some of this superlative potato mixture. Really, you should have brought the salad to room temperature, I think. Dollop of decent pickle. I mean, a fragrant and slightly oliagenous mango or lime pickle, not a syrupy number.

And then for lunch or dinner...OH LOOK! I'm roasting another chicken! When it's cooked, tear up the breast meat and serve it as a salad with the rest of the potato salad, a little Greek yoghurt and some finely minced carrots. Here, a little Indian pickle added to the Greek yoghurt adds piquancy.

Fudco: tends to be my spice company of choice. Here we have turmeric in a nice big bag.

To Heinz: tinned tomato soup and baked beans

2010-01-26T04:21:00.000-08:00

Two products of which I am inordinately fond.

The soup

I have never -- should I be telling you this?-- made or eaten a tomato soup which I liked as much as Heinz Cream of Tomato soup.This from someone who dislikes tinned and packet soup; I find it always seems to taste the same and it has a sort of acrid sweetness which disagrees with me. Except for this one. Here, then, is the way to go. It's actually quite luxurious.

Bring your soup to a high heat but do not boil; gently scrape the sides of the saucepan as you cook, stir well and then pour into a mug which, for you, spells contentment. Get a teaspoon ready and, lastly, put a generous dollop of unsalted butter on top of the soup. That's it. You slurp from the mug and use the teaspoon to eke out the last bits from the side of the mug.

The beans.

I have made surveys of supermarket beans and I am here to tell you that Heinz beans (or should that be Beanz? Yeuch: I'm a "zzzz" snob) are the best, to my mind. You could dabble in the reduced sugar and salt variety, I suppose, but I'm not going there. Lunch today, at a bit of a trot, went like this.

Two hefty slices of wholemeal toast, a bit singed at the edge. A light touch of butter and then a little grated cheese. A mature cheddar with plenty of bite. Just pile the beans, piping hot, on top and -- this is not a suggestion; I regard this as a compulsory part of the dish-- serve with a mug of builder's tea.

Photo courtesy of Smantz Sputner at Flickr

Curry: an idignant response and some other informative points

2010-01-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Indignant? Why so. Not for the first time, I see a leading British supermarket insidiously suggesting that curry is fat laden and not to be eaten in its normal state by those who care about the size of their thighs. Hmmmm. "Who would have thought it was possible to eat curry on a healthy diet?" This also inadvertently insults rather a lot of people worldwide. At least one billion people in India for example.

So I am here to set the record straight and give you some things to cook that will not make your bottom --to quote a phrase I particularly like-- "as big as Dallas." Hell: you can even eat them every day! And also, don't get fat phobic. I have reliable statistics which inform us that, if you chop wood rather than sticking on the central heating, do your own DIY, walk everywhere, break into a run now and then, have sex, say, a couple of times a week (if my mother in law reads this, I have in fact just died of embarrassment) and get into being, rather generally, as manual as your forefathers, you can eat a bit more fat. I speak, clearly, of developed countries here. Being fey about fat --when you are healthy, I mean-- may sometimes be an interest of he who has plenty of leisure. And I just turned into my mother with that little lecture! ON WITH THE DISHES.

Right, curry may be derived from the Tamil word for sauce -- kari. Madhur Jaffrey, in The Curry Bible (go get it: it's all you need) defines it, moreorless, as a dish with a sauce and boy is it different the world over. But we'll leave all scholarly discussion for another day and make a simple MASOOR DHAL. This is a red lentil curry; dhal (dhal being the legume and masoor being the type). I refer to split red lentils. Cheap, nutritious and ubiquitous.

Take1 kg of red lentils and pick them over carefull, having rinsed them in a colander. Leave to drain. Meanwhile, fry off (I used sunflower oil) 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic, half a finely chopped red chilli and a little nut of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped. Now add 1 flat dessertspoon of brown mustard seeds, letting them pop first, a tablespoon of ground cumin, one or coriander (lets's use ground again) and a dessertspoon of turmeric. Make sure you do not let these burn, as they will turn bitter. So keep the heat down low. Stir for a minute or so and then add the lentils, stirring carefully to coat with the spice mixture. Now, cover the lost with water plus about half as much water again, bring to the boil, skim off the froth and then simmer for about forty minutes. You could then add a tablespoon of garam masala for extra piquancy and, at this point, salt to taste. I would also add a large handful of chopped fresh coriander.

There are endless variations on this, of course. You might want to add some chopped tomato about half-way through cooking or, perhaps, some fresh or frozen spinach. I like to make my dhal a little tart with the addition of tamarind paste or amchoor -- green mango powder, both of which I would probably add about half way through. Or -- and this is really more authentic, just cook the dhal with salt and some turmeric and then, when it's nearly done, finish it off by adding the spices which you popped into hot oil and cooked off. Just swirl them in. You could just use the brown mustard seeds -- or try yellow mustard seeds-- and a fat bunch of coriander.

Whichever way you cook this dhal --and you may want it thicker or thinner than the recipe I have given you-- you will find it spicy, satisfying and creamy to boot. It's low in fat, full of fibre and B vitamins, it's cheap and filling and it re-heats well. Also, one could argue for the digestive properties of the spices --cumin for anti flatulence and turmeric as a digestive, general tonic and antiseptic. Garlic --well, you know all about that-- and the chilli is high in vitamin C. Add more than half a fresh one -- I would-- and watch your endorphin levels rise. Capascin (that's the active ingredient) is also an expectorant, which is good if you are suffering from winter snuffles and, because of those endorphon-inducing qualities, it'll give your mood a boost. Actually, if I have a cold or even when I am feeling jaded (and reader, I am a melancholy type), I swear by the effects of chillis -- of all sorts.

So stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, cheeky conglomerates! I have eaten dhal like this pretty much every week of my life since I was knee high to a grasshopper, by the way.

Do you want more healthy, err, curry?

A simple, lovely and quite unexpected carrot (gajar) curry

O.K. Take a bunch of carrots. (Well, about ten) Peel them and cut them into batons along the whole length of the carrot. Put them to one side. In a big saute pan or a wok, get a film of oil really hot and then add three chopped cloves of garlic and three or four chopped spring onions. Sweat them until you get that lovely roasted smell. Add some red chilli flakes, a teaspoon or so of turmeric and a dessertpoon of caraway seeds. Maybe you didn't know that they were sometimes used in food like this? Swirl the lot around, add the carrots and toss well. Add a cup of water, raise the heat, then turn it down until the carrots are only just tender. Salt and pepper to taste. But I suppose I ought to say "keep the salt levels down"? Now, this is really easy and it's very good for you.

How about a roast spiced whole chicken? I suppose there are folks out there who must think this is an unhealthy thing? Well, I love the skin of a roast chicken, but if I'm going to go the whole murgh (sorry: that was a rubbish joke. Hindi for chicken), I'll have to skin the chicken. You can do this yourself or ask the butcher to do it. Actually, you'll be lucky if you go to most supermarkets. So, just make a slit along the backbone of the chicken and pull, easing the skin away and using the knife to get between skin and flesh as you go. Use a small paring knife rather than a carving knife here. Otherwise you might have a nasty accident. This, by the way, is just one way of skinning. Find your own way and don't worry if it's ramshackle. I wouldn't fuss over a little skin left on the wingtips, either. If you're squeamish, I'll come over and do it for you.

Right, rinse the chicken and pat it dry (no --not with the hand towel!) and then, having preheated the oven to about 200, rub this into your chicken. Oh -- mix the dry spices with a little oil first.

1 tablespoon of powdered cumin and half of coriander
1 teaspoon of sea salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper
Rub it in well, both inside and outside the chicken. Now, put several garlic cloves inside the chicken and then, on its outside, press in some cloves at regular intervals. Put on a few star anise and lay some cinnamon or cassia quills on top.

Put it into the oven. Upside down for the first half an hour at least. That's to allow the fat to trickle down from the base --especially important when the meat is skinned. And, when you turn the chicken right side up, you may want to replace the star anise and cinnamon on this side. Allow about 20 minutes for every 500 g plus 20 minutes to half an hour extra. But then, I never even think about this. Practise often and your instrinct will tell you soon enough. If you relax. For the last twenty minutes or so, turn the oven up to 230. And do bear in mind that I have cooked the chicken at a slightly lower heat than I would ordinarily because we don't want the spices to burn. While the chicken is cooking, don't forget to baste it. When it's done, let it rest for a food few minutes before you carve it and when you do so, make those generous slices of breast. The leftover chocken plus the carcass will make a wonderful soup with a few tomatoes, finely chopped spinach and diced potato.Water to cover, bring to the boil, simmer for an hour and then remove the bones! Season to taste.

And PLEASE buy a free range chicken, regarding an label which does not explicitly state free range with care. Freedom food, or freedom food endorsed or welfare checked or....you get my drift here. It isn't quite the same, but a quick survey of my immediate neighbourhood (well, my husband --who is generally otherwise well informed) suggests that folks may not know that.

O.K. So, if you wanted to present all this together, you'd have a succulent, spiced roast chicken, a mild and creamy dhal, a crunchy hot and spicy carrot dish. All very healthy and very easy to do, Why not make some accompaniments, too?
1. Stir a little garam masala or some chaat powder (google it, baby -- I'm addicted: not to Google, to Chaat powder) into some Greek yoghurt (reduced fat, if you must). Done.
2. Chop some cherry tomatoes finely and add some diced spring onion and perhaps a large chunk of cucumber, finely chopped. Add a teaspoon of amchoor (green mango powder) or anardhana (pomegranate powder) plus salt to taste. A little lightly roasted cumin seed (just dry fry it in a frying pan for a few seconds) would be good, too.

A banquet. Whoever would have thought you could eat curry on a healthy diet? Nope: they don't know if it's New York or New Year. But we do, don't we?

Oh, in another dhal I cooked --here it is below -- I was after a thich and hearty concoction, so I added less water and kept a close eye on it so that it did not stick. The little black seeds you see in the lentils are kalonji -- onion seed or nigella; the fresh relish (achaar) on top is made from chopped onion, fresh mint and both red and green tomato. The predominant flavouring is the aniseed hit of fennel seed (saunf).

And the other photo of spices from my cupboard is by Giles Turnbull! Thank you.x

Food and funny poets: a thinly disguised piece of advertising for....me.

2010-01-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

Oh -- I could tell you some things about poets and food, you know. Did you know that Byron liked to mash up potatoes with pepper and vinegar*; that he would either gorge himself silly or try to be an aescetic? Or --and I speak here of a novelist, I know-- have you ever read the most erotic scene in the whole of literature? It begins "afterwards." Madame Bovary regarding a bowl of lemons and putting her lover's pipe into her mouth. But I am actually here to tell you that I'm running a whole extra set of poetry classes -- an Introduction to British Poetry-- starting on Tuesday the 2nd of February and running for nine weeks on alternate Tuesdays. These will be at 10 and run until about 11.30. This is to catch those who were too late for the evening classes. Roaring fire as appropriate, home-made cake and I'm sure I will mention food because it is an important part of our cultural context.

You can book here. Food writing is only part of what I do.

www.annavaughttuition.com

*Strange, then, that you sometimes see "potatoes Lord Byron" -- a rich confection of potato and cream-- on menus. Do they know what he actually did with his potatoes? We know from contemporary sources that, on occasion, he disgusted his guests.

Aloo gobi -- which is to say, a speedy potato and cauliflower curry

2010-01-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

Just right for this cold weather and you could serve this on its own or, perhaps, with another curry that you like. Trawl through the blog. There's a lot to choose from. I might serve this with rice --it's simmering away while I type; I might also serve it as is, with just a dollop of yoghurt on top. Other possibilities? It could jazz up some cold meat left from the Sunday roast, should you have had one; it would be nice with some lamb chops, which you have grilled or roasted with some garlic cloves and, perhaps, a little cinnamon to accentuate the natural sweetness of the meat; you could eat it to start the week with a fried egg and a mug of tea if you're up early enough to get yourself in gear; stuff it into a paratha or pitta; roll it in a dosa, chapati or flatbread? The favourite Monday night dinner of my childhood, by the way, was a similar curry served with the cold leftover meat from Sunday lunch. My mother favoured a hot potato curry with leftover roast beef. Be careful, though, to revere dietary laws here!

So, first of all, make the 'tarka' base, which is the slow and carefully cooked preparation of the base flavours. In this case, add two finely sliced onions to some sunflower oil in a big wide pan. Cook them slowly until they are soft but not caramelised. Then, add half a fresh red chilli, finely chopped, a tablespoon of ground cumin, one of ground coriander, a good fat pinch of asafoetida if you have it and a dessertspoon of turmeric. Stir carefully and do not let it all burn. Now, to the onions in the pan, add two tins of plum tomatoes which you have chopped in the tin. Bring this to the boil, add a flat teaspoon of sea salt and then simmer for ten minutes or so, stirring now and again. Then, add to the tomato mixture a whole medium cauliflower, which you have pulled apart and chopped into florets (or even half florets) and five medium potatoes, cut into small pieces. Best to peel them. Add also a good couple of handfuls of fresh spinach, roughly chopped or, in my case, six little pellets of frozen leaf or chopped spinach. Bring the lot to a high heat and simmer for forty minutes or so, tasting for flavour at the end and making sure that the vegetables are soft. I actually like them beginning to fall apart in this dish.

You might like to stir in some garam masala at the end; I would usually add a fistful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped. But that's it. Tonight, I'm keeping the spicing very simple. Eat in big bowls and warm your toes if you've been sledging today. Oh -- the spices in the picture above, from left to right: cinnamon quills, cloves, turmeric and black peppercorns. Aren't they beautiful? A picture from Giles Turnbull of the supplies from my cupboard.

होप यू लिखे आईटी. क्ष

Oooh: food of shame.

2010-01-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Own up: what's yours? We could start a discussion. I'll be anonymous and off we go.

1. Nutella chocolate spread. Straight out of the jar on finger and --this is the bad bit-- thumb. Sometimes, I have been known to dip a finger in the syrup, too. But only finger, as I do have limits.

2. That kind of toxic dust in the bottom of the tortilla chip bag or --even worse-- the bag of Doritos.

3. The parmesan rind. If I've had parmesan on the go, I keep the rind to add savour to soups. I then take the rind, gloriously chewy once it has been simmering along, and wolf it. This could be done in a dark kitchen.

4. I don't think this is really anything to be ashamed of, but other people have been shocked by my habit of chiselling off all the stuck on bits from, say, the roast potato dish. My brother in law said this made me look ferral. I do the same thing with a shepherd's pie or cauliflower cheese dish, chipping away with spoon and fingers.

5. An Iceland exploration. There's some fantastic stuff in them thar freezers. Cripsy pancakes!

6. A whole big bag of liquorice comfits scarfed down in the car. Or that rather expensive all natural Australian liquorice marketed as low fat, but calorifically ruinous.

7. Crackling. Cold and preferably around midnight, when slightly pissed.

8. Making fairy cakes for the children and leaving rather a lot in the bowl for licking out. By me, not them.

How about you?

A store cupboard soup for a cold day

2010-01-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

Proper snow on the ground. I love it. Cold toes, though. And it's an ice rink out there, so here is a soup that you might be able to assemble from squirrel store ingredients, just as I did just now. Yesterday, I had boiled a ham hock, which we had eaten with --get this-- fried eggs and chips. I had been meaning to serve it up with butter beans, cabbage and carrots, but the ham, egg and chip thing got in the way. So I have, by way of leftovers, a few bits and pieces of ham and a pan of ham stock, which would make a fine split pea soup. However, try this....

Lentil and tomato soup with ham (or gammon), spinach and potatoes.

In a deep pan, fry an onion together with a little pieces hacked off the ham. You don't want precision here. Add a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves and a chopped red chilli. Sweat these together for a while. Now add five or six handfuls of red lentils, remembering to rinse them and pick them over first. Toss the mixture together for a minute, then add three medium potatoes which you have sliced into fat coins. Cannot say I had bothered to peel them. Finally, add, from the freezer, eight pellets (appetising word I know) of frozen chopped or leaf spinach. Stir this well, add the ham stock to cover --plus twice as much in volume again-- and a tin of plum tomatoes which you have roughly chopped in the tin. Bring to the boil and then simmer well for about 40 minutes. You may need to add more water, but I doubt you will need salt. Serve just as it is, perhaps mashing it down a little in the pan to make it especially comforting to eat from big deep bowls.

As an alternative -- and I do admit that tinned tomatoes do tend, usually, to taste of, well, tinned tomatoes-- you could miss out the tomatoes and add a few finely diced carrots for colour with the red chilli. You can make this a meatless soup without the ham or ham stock, in which case you could use some powdered Marigold vegetable bouillion to taste for the stock. The point of this soup, though, is that it is plentiful, spicy and earthy -- that's the lentils for you. Incidentally, you could also use brown --whole lentils here. They need to be cooked until they are very soft and juicy. Lentils and ham have a natural affinity.

Cheap and cheerful lentil and tomato soup.

While I remember: even if you just have a bag of lentils and some tinned tomatoes in the cupboard, you'll be o.k. I'm assuming you do have just a couple of other things, though. So, sweat half a medium onion in some sunflower oil with, say, three chopped cloves of garlic, then add a tablespoon of dried cumin, stirring briefly to cook off, then add the roughly chopped tin of tomatoes and about four handfuls of red lentils plus a couple of cups of water. You're on your way to soup survival. Bring the mixture to the boil, stir well and scatter in a fat pinch of dried red chilli and then simmer for 40 minutes. You might need to add more water. You can serve this as is, or puree it. It's nice with a little cream stirred in at the end and, maybe a scattering of toasted sesame seeds. Cheap food, with plenty of chilli to revive you, I think.

Noodle soup

Even simpler in conception is this. Good for the tired, cold and hungry or for those with a hangover. I do tend to have Marigold Bouillion powder to hand. I don't want to use it for all soups because I don't want them to taste samey, but this product is a Godsend for soups and stocks nonetheless. You can also, I have discovered, use it sparingly as a seasoning --say adding just a little to the mayonnaise for a coleslaw or just a pinch to a salad dressing. Suck it and see?

So, for the noodle soup, just bring a bowl's worth of water to the boil, chuck in a dessertspoon of the stock powder and taste to see if it has flavour enough for you. Put to one side. In a separate pan, cook some noodles --whichever sort you like-- until done and drain. Now, in a little pan of some sort, wilt a few spinach leaves or whichever greens you have in a just a drop of oil, plus, perhaps a chopped spring onion. Now, bring the stock back up to the boil and put in the noodles and the greens. Check for flavour and then add, to taste, a little soy sauce or Thai fish sauce and some chilli sauce and a squeeze of lemon or lime if you have it. You need to proceed with caution as the stock may already be salt (though you can get a low salt version).

That's it. Apart from my saying that if you're feeling like a tub of lard after Christmas, I suppose that this is the sort of low fat thing to get you back into your hot pants.

lentils courtesy of macro 3 and rob old at flickr. Thank you.

The sprout. There's more to it than you realised.

2010-01-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

People can be very rude about sprouts, but I love them and, with a bit of frost on them, they'll taste even better. I like them with just a little bite in the centre, but this is not a vegetable that, when cooked whole, takes well to undercooking. I actually like sprouts when they have been almost boiled to death -- you know, like in a hospital canteen. I can vouch for the hospital canteen because I ate in one not very long ago and the sprouts were, indeed, done to death and possibly over-salted. But I liked them. I realise I will not be selling this to may people. so I'll move on.

The secret, if there is one, is that you are best advised to cook your sprouts in the minimum water possible, but keep an eye on them. I also abide by this rule if I am cooking cabbage (although, as with the hospital canteen sprouts, so with the cabbage: one of the joys of my confinement after a labour that appeared to take about three days was the appearance of a Sunday lunch with the overcooked cabbage). Serve your sprouts with a celebration meal of a roast chicken, bread sauce, roast potatoes, mashed swede and proper gravy. That's my choice for the last day of Christmas --the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January. Oh yes: my tree is still up. Just pull any withered leaves off the sprouts, having avoided the purchase of any sad and yellowing specimens, cut the toughest end from the stalk of the sprouts and put them in a modicum of lightly salted water. Bring to the boil and simmer until tender. My mother always made little crosses in the bottom of a sprout, but I can see no rhyme or reason to this. However, if tradition dictates....

That's the roast dinner route. Now try this. BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.

If you have been clever enough to make extra potatoes and sprouts a part of your dinner, you have a feast in store for tea that day or a meal the next day. This works with either boiled or roast potatoes. Just mash your leftover potatoes and sprouts with a fork, amalgamating them as you do so.Keep them roughly mashed though: you are not after a puree here. Now cook the lot in a well oiled frying pan until your mixture, well, bubbles and squeaks. Try to let it brown in places. Serve this with a fried egg and a big mug of tea. Builder's tea, that is. Good Sunday breakfast, this. Or a Boxing Day tea. I'd even cook the potatoes and sprouts especially for it.

AND FOR A CHANGE...

A rapid supper for me goes as follows. Spiced, quick-fried sprouts

Just prepare the sprouts as before and then slash them into strips -- however they come. Get a wok (or a pan you can get really hot and move about easily) ready with a light film of sunflower oil into which you will put two finely chopped cloves of garlic and perhaps a finely chopped small nut of ginger root. Toss these in the oil until they begin to soften and brown and then add the sprouts. Stir them around with as much of a flourish as you dare; when you see them just beginning to soften, add some substantial splashes of Kikoman sauce. This is the only brand I use, the important thing being that it has some depth of flavour and it is naturally brewed. Toss the lot around for a couple of minutes and then add a couple of pinches of Chinese five spice powder and, perhaps, a pinch of dried red chilli flakes. It's done. You could serve this with rice, noodles or as part of a Chinese meal. If you want to make it more substantial, may I suggest that you start off with thin strips of chicken or pork and then add the sprouts as the meat begins to brown? I promise you this much maligned vegetable will taste sweet and nutty but with just a hint of brassica bite to tell you that it won't take being disparaged lying down. Ha!

srqpix and celesteh at flickr for the sprouts: thank you.

Christmas pudding ice cream

2009-12-30T11:52:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

A chicken roast dinner of sorts

2009-12-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

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

Roast chicken with a hot stuffing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some things not forgotten.

2009-12-28T11:27:00.000-08:00

For a fine family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas dinner

2009-12-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susie's "mulled wine and a mince pie"

2009-12-15T04:32:00.000-08:00

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

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

Just a mince pie, then. Christmas has begun.

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

The peanut

2009-12-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

Solo bonne femme

2009-12-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

A speedy supper: chicken curry in a hurry.

2009-12-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

A Top Tip

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

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

Tinned sardines: ooh a little storecupboard miracle

2009-12-07T05:25:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

In praise of the Quince.

2009-12-07T05:02:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

SPICED QUINCES

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

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

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

Thanksgiving dinner 2009

2009-11-24T04:33:00.000-08:00

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

We will be having

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

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

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

RECIPES TOMORROW!

Further pre Thanksgiving Thoughts: mulled wine

2009-11-24T04:17:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

CODA

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

A nearly thanksgiving thought.

2009-11-24T03:53:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

I also quote:

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

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

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

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

Pancakes for yours truly.

2009-11-14T10:34:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Thank you to fionaandneil at flickr for tjhe picture.

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

2009-11-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

A little Indian food demonstration.

2009-10-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-14T01:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-10-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-07T04:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-06T04:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-01T03:51:00.000-07:00

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

A simple pasta supper

2009-09-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

Here is something that you start cooking and then leave for a bit while you get on with other far more interesting things. It's the sort of dinner that you could present in generous bowlfuls to a household, but it offers succour to a famished singelton, too.

It's just pasta and roasted peppers. Make that spaghetti or linguine, actually. If I tell you what I had on my own last night, just scale up accordingly.

Heat your oven to 200 or so and, while it's coming to temperature, get three big fat peppers -- yellow, red and green. I used half of each one, deseeded and cut into large chunks. They went into a wide oven dish with six cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped, and two medium onions, again cut into good-sized chunks. Add a sprinkle of chilli flakes --or a whole red or green chilli, chopped; deseeded if you must. Now chuck in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, add some sea salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper, mix it around well and put this in the oven to roast. It should take about half an hour, with perhaps just one toss from you -- but this isn't essential. The point is that the vegetables are to be sweet and caramelising at the edges. You may want to give them a little more time in the oven.

Now, allow time for some spaghetti to cook in lots of salted water. You know how much spaghetti (or linguine) you'll want to eat. I gather that, per person, it's supposed to be a bunch of strands enough to fill the 'o' made by your forefinger and thumb. BUT I tend to expand on that a bit!

Hopefully, you'll have timed it so that your roasted vegetables are perfection just as your spaghetti is, but you CAN always put the vegetables to one side and let them re-heat a little later by giving them a good toss with the piping hot spaghetti. Then here's what you do: just drain your spaghetti and then add the vegetables, plus any juices from the roasting dish and don't forget to scrape in any crutsy little pieces from the dish, too. Mix it up well, taste for seasoning, add some roughly-chopped fresh parsley if you like and plus a generous grating of fresh parmesan. Or shavings of the same: use a mandoline.

That's it. Serve with a good glass of wine. I had some Merlot and it was, all in, a pretty satisfying supper. And, do you know, I ate this in my sitting room with the door open in the early evening with the cool autumn air coming in. Here's my sitting room, a little dark. No hall? No: it's a cottage and you learn to set upon muddy feet with eagle eyes.

An unsuccessful attempt to introduce a new ingredient: Karela.

2009-09-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Right: I love bitter foods. Love them all. Since I first had karela, the knobbled bitter gourd, in Sindh Province, Pakistan, eleven years ago, I have been hooked.It's a funny-looking thing, the karela. The size of a medium courgette, it is dark green and with a lot of warts! And man, it IS bitter. But, in hot countries, this bitterness, with heat and salt, is comforting and cooling and I like it in damp Blighty, too.

Oh, while I'm at it, here's a link to my catering company. It does Indian food. This is really my hobby, you know www.calcuttascarlet.com

You can get Karela fresh (well, ish) in Asian markets, in cans (though I'm not keen) and, I have discovered,in the frozen foods section in Tesco. (Whence I buy fozen okra and fenugreek greens, by the way.) So try what follows. I've said it was unsuccessful in that I have always failed to get the Georgian husband to eat it. But hey, what do you expect from a man raised on grits. (No -- don't get cross: I love grits, too.)

To make an exceptional lamb keema with karela, try this.

Take about 450g minced lamb.
Also, two small onions. Now do this: chop the onions finely and sweat them in oil unitl they are golden brown. Then add a tablespoon of ground coriander and the same of ground cumin, a teaspoon of red chilli flakes and, perhaps. a dessertspoon of turmeric. Mix carefully and fry together for a couple of minutes. Now, add the lamb, turning it around carefully in the spices. You could also fry off the lamb in a separate pan to make sure it is properly browned. I would then add two large handfuls of karela, add a little water, some salt and pepper and bring to a high heat, then down to a simmer for twenty minutes before adding a good handful of fresh, chopped coriander.Check for seasoning and serve with rice. You may want to add a much more complex list of spices and flavourings: say, three cloves of chopped garlic in with the onion; a large piece of finely-chopped ginger; a dessertspoon of brown mustard seeds; a tablespoon of garam masala in at the end....Experiment, but do not overdo. एक्सपेरिमेंट बुत दो नोट ओवर दो!

Now, look at this lovely thali dish of mine, below. Here we have, from top left, clockwise:
ginger root
green cardamom
dried curry leaves
fennel seeds
masoor dal (red lentils)
black peppercorns
turmeric
kalonji (aka onion seed, or nigella)
whole cloves
cinnamon quills
red chillies
fenugreek seeds
cumin seeds

If you want to get yourself some stainless steel dishes like these --with or without the katori, the little dishes that can sit in your thali, if you like, nip ovet to this site, of which I have long been a great fan: www.spicesofindia.com

Really, this curry, above, is a variation on keema mattar (minced meat with peas). I adore the hit of the bitter gourd with the savoury lamb mince. I might also like to increase the amount of chilli I use. I do sometimes stuff karela, too, but as what I write here is often the shape of family meals down our way, it tends not to be often. I noticed that the Georgian husband had removed the slices of karela from his keema. Does he not know it's supposed to be a tonic and good for thinning your blood?

Tonight Lucullus is dining with Lucullus...

2009-09-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

I am coming down with flu! Hoorah! One big glass of Merlot and here is a little dinner for any poorly folk out there. Actually, this makes frequent appearances at various meals for me.

SARDINES ON TOAST

Now, I have recently stockpiled on sardines. They were 35p a can (in sunflower oil) in Lidl*. When I am unwell, when things feel a little out of control or when I am heavily pregnant, I tend to do a bit of stockpiling. You know: tinned tomatoes and the like. But these sardines, I must say, are excellent and here is what I did with them.

Take some sturdy bread -- white or brown, as you like. This will also, I have found, work quite well with white pitta bread. Get your grill good and hot and then toast your bread under it, briefly, on both sides. Now, take it out and pile on the sardines. I don't usually even bother to remove the oil because I like it to drip luxuriantly from the toast a little later on. Spread the sardines out evenly across the toast, pressing them down a little and add LOTS of freshly ground black pepper and, if you like, just a little sea salt. Now, blitz your sardines on toast under a hot grill until the edges of your toast have just started to char. Eat straight away, possibly with a tea towel to hand and definitely alone if this is a new relationship. Actually, I tend to eat this alone and I've been married for about 300 years. I tend to eat it like a cormorant devouring the best fish he's ever seen. And by the way: you toast the bread lightly first so that's it's a bit more robust for the topping and won't collapse as you eat it. With your hands.

Ooh, the joys of Lidl. I am particulary fond of the "wellness" range (e,g, the breakfast wellness flakes) and the "recycling toilet paper." I realise that this makes me sound as if I am making fun of Europeans just because I am not one and they speak a bit funny.**

**I'm joking.

A speedy dinner with a nip in the air.

2009-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

By late summer, I am always glad for the cold breath of air in the morning followed by a warm day. Autumn food is some of my favourite and I love the smell in the air at this time of year. I get excited about this season in a way I just don't about summer. But enough: I expect you are hungry, so here is what we had for dinner last night.

EGG AND CHIPS TO THE POWER OF TEN

First, take some potatoes -- however they come. Don't bother to peel them, but cut them into fork-sized chunks. Put them into an oven dish with plenty of cloves of unpeeled garlic, a teaspoon or so of crushed red chilli flakes, some freshly ground black pepper and a good pinch of sea salt. Add a splash of sunflower oil and put them into a hot oven to cook until they are crisp and possibly even stuck to the dish. You could, I suppose, give them a good shake after about twenty five minutes.

Now, when you your potatoes are done, just fry as many eggs as you think you will eat. Try not to break the yolk. Now, eat your hot, crisp potatoes with the fried eggs, the yolk running through the crisp bits, the floury exploded bits and the little crunchy pieces of chilli mixed together with the salt and pepper. Squeeze out the cloves of garlic as you go -- or just much them whole, as I do.

Really, it's almost egg and chips. Well, egg and chips to the power of ten. I think you'll like it.

Feeling tired: a day of two breakfasts plus a banana.

2009-09-22T04:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, your recipes start in earnest, but for today, here's a tale of two breakfasts.

When I am exhausted, these things happen.

Breakfast one: 8 a.m. two slices of wholemeal toast, liberally buttered and with the insides of two large soft boiled free range eggs piled onto them. Salt and pepper. Banana on the school run. I have never ever been in love with bananas but -- I kid you not-- I swear they keep me calm.

Breakfast two at a local eating establishment, bought as treat by particularly wonderful girl, 9. 10 a.m. Four slices of granary bread, butter and a pot of marmalade plus an Americano. Lots of discussion: what to do about men, too many commitments.

And another banana, because I am doing a food talk tonight, I have dark circles under my eyes and I am a bit nervous.

x

Up and coming: autumn and winter!

2009-09-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot of new writing will find its way to you this autumn and winter. And if you bought a copy of my book at Bradfood this weekend, thank you!
So, coming up:

Venison

Pheasants

Our Thanksgiving dinner

Apple dumplings

Blackberries

Halloween shenanigans

Pumpkins

What to eat on your own...

Bolstering food for cold weather

Think you don't like cabbage? Think again!

Advent, Christmas and maybe even an Epiphany feast.....

I love autumn.

Anna xxx
p.s. do you like our jack lanterns?

2009-08-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

A summer's day, Sunday lunchtime. We are in the garden.

A big bowl of tortilla chips, cherry tomatoes, small and prickly cucumbers which the children grew. There is a plate of ham, a simple salad made from red kidney beans and chopped spring onions with sea salt, black pepper and some olive oil (I have run out of vinegar and lemon juice). There are some small baguettes, strawberries, some quartered oranges and some damsons and plums from scrumping around the neighbourhood. And the children have made a hideous, wonderful teetering chocolate cake, covered in blue icing and hundreds and thousands.

AND YET

That is a pretty picture. Actually, my forehead hurts from the anxiety induced by my constantly warring children, I am tired and I have a million things to do. And, most of all, one of the people I love most in the world has had a severe stroke and, in one day, the life of my family has changed. Just like that. But here's the thing: continue to put food on the table, lay it with mismatched plates and a pot of flowers. Or sit, if you can, amongst the bees and the flowers. Not to stretch yourself when you are already stretched, but to make something solid on which to fall back: a home; a table; good food.

Because, to quote W.H. Auden,

"Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."

2009-08-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

Hello all.

My book, which is based on the content of this blog, is now available to buy. From Blurb is best if you are not in the UK. Just go to www.blurb.com and look at newly published books. You will get a preview of the first 15 pages and see what I am up to! Otherwise, you can order it from me if you are in the UK or from smaller independent shops in Wiltshire. I am starting small, deliberately and happily. And the picture above? It's part of the book's cover, a painting of mine, in oils, which celebrates, quite simply, the kitchen table.

I have a second volume coming out in the spring, plus A Handful Of broken Biscuits, which is my late Father's book - with my additional text.

I'll tell you more about it all later!

Anna.

2009-08-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

Le Camping. Just a few somewhat random thoughts.And above: my boys at Newgale Beach, Pembrokeshire. And Pembrokeshire rocks.

Every year, we take a decent tent and put it through its paces on a wild headland somewhere. This summer, extra ropes and, at one point, tying part of the tent to the car were called for. But enough: we are hardy and here are some camping ideas.

When I was a child, we had a fire at the campsite; these days, it seems that only the posher campsites have fire pits. So I will make the assumption that you are in possession of a small camping stove.

1. Have really excellent picnics. Don't make sandwiches for lunches, but take the wherewithal for everyone to do self assembly in situ. For me, this means hunks of cucumber, tortilla wraps, cherry tomatoes and some decent corned beef. Have plenty of pickle to hand, which for us means Branstons and a hot Indian pickle such as mango. There needs to be some kind of cake, I think. As we are usually on the wild and marvellous coast of Pembrokeshire, near my wild and marvellous family, this will mean Welsh Cakes or Bara Brith -- a tea bread. I actually favour this picnic for breakfast, too. In general, make a very large fruit cake before you go and hack into it as you go. A robust fruit cake is good with a piece of apple and cheese, for example.
2. For breakfast, spread a tortilla with peanut buter and grate in some cheddar cheese or some sliced banana. Doesn't sound promising, but I urge you to try it.
3. Dhal. You would think that making a lentil curry for tea would not be possible, but really, if you take a bag of red lentils and follow the masoor dhal (red lentil curry) recipe earlier in this text, then you're away. Simplify it by using a good ready-made curry powder -- such as Bolst's or Rajah.
4. This year, I did my usual tea establishment test. There was a clear winner, which served loose Assam tea in a big speckled teapot with local milk. And good thick mugs. We had also ordered cawl (soup) because, of course, it was raining. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, we had also wandered into a scene of domestic discontent. Excellent tea, but a door slammed, out went the owner, his wife stomped upstairs after their morose teenage son and there we were. Muffled crying from upstairs. Money left on table and we repaired to a different establishment for dressed crab -- which consisted of nothing more than the meat from the main body of the crab piled back into the shell with a squeeze of lemon. There were Pembrokeshire potatoes to one side, butter and a salad which contained no iceberg. Hurrah! Actually, I would have been happy with just the crab.
5. Make mulled wine. Sounds nuts but, especially if it's cold, you'll be pleased. For four, just heat up a bottle of some half decent red wine, add a tablespoon of brown sugar, a handful of cloves and some cinnamon quills. This may sound hopelessly decadent, but these whole spices are full of flavour and very cheering. Plus whole spices are far less likely to moulder than the dried ones. Or just add a couple of teaspoons of allspice powder.
6. Super noodles. Just cook egg noodles according to appetite. Put them to one side. Chop up a red chilli -- which I would be doing with the scissors on my Swiss Army knife. Fry it in a little oil (or just sweat it in a little water if you haven't brought oil: if you're in a tent at a festival, bet you haven't!), add the noodles and then add some generous glugs of Kikoman soy sauce. Done. If you are near the sea, you could add a handful of local prawns, bought or caught. AND if you know what you're looking for, a handful of snipped up wild green onions (they look like chives) would be good. Hedgerow food is always rewarding.
7. And if you are cooking with a fire, then get going with silver foil and some local whole fish, baked bananas, potatoes cooked in the ashes or a silver turtle -- the camp fire staple of my husband's Georgia Scout troop. You just take a good weighty hamburger (or mould your own gently from minced beef), then put each burger in silver foil with some thickly-sliced onion and cook until done. Serve in a bun with relish or mustard -- preferably not French's (sorry, U.S.) but Coleman's English.

Break the heart of a young lettuce, stuff the belly of a young marrow.

2009-07-22T03:44:00.000-07:00

Apologies to Mrs Beeton (see below).

In Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking, there is a recipe for stuffed acorn squash. It's just simply a squash hollowed out and filled with sausage meat. Baked in the oven, it is cheap, delicious, very basic and yet it seems festive. The recipe put me in mind of a summer staple of my childhood. I hadn't thought about it in years.

Oh -- and the fine photo above is by Indigo Goat at www.flick'r.com. I'd guess this is someone who just loves their allotment.

When the first marrows were available, I would be sent to crop them and then cook this dish. My measurements for this recipe remain a little vague because much depends on the size of your marrow. (Girls: ain't that true?) It also works with courgettes, by the way -- but the latter doesn't, for me, hit the spot. I think the vegetable has to be larger and more robust for this to seem rustic and satisfying enough. I am aware this paragraph is managing to sound smutty.

Take your marrow --I suppose it would be one about 15cm in diameter: so hot foot it out the vegetable patch with your tape measure-- peel it with knife or peeler. This is very satisfying: do it in long thin stripes. One by one. Force yourself to think of nothing else. I digress: cooking keeps me sane. Now cut the marrow in half length ways and, with a dessertspoon, remove all pith and seeds, scraping the final threads out carefully.

For the filling, you can do simply fill it with sausage meat and a good grind of black pepper --that's it-- or do what I do, which is as follows. Oh --if you do want to use sausage meat, remember that you can always undress some decent sausages: there are easier to procure, I find, than decent sausage meat.

Quickly saute a chopped medium onion in a little oil then add about 480g of minced lamb (you could also use beef). Cook until browned and then add two medium tomatoes, finely chopped and a big handful of fresh thyme or marjoram which you have chopped finely. Cook for a couple of minutes and then check for seasoning. Pile it into the halves of the marrow and either bake each piece separately, covered in foil (take it off for the last ten minutes to brown) or put the whole vegetable back together, wrap it tightly in foil and then cook. It should take about forty five minutes if you have cooked it in two halves; about one and quarter hours if it is all of a piece.
Pierce it through the foil and, if it gives but there is just a touch of resistance, then that's your time to take it out and brown it. Or you could just skip the browning stage altogether. Either way, it won't be at all dr. It will be savoury and cheerful and you will wonder why you never did it before (as I wondered why I had forgotten).

If you want to make a vegetarian version, a marrow is nice filled with a mixture of cooked red, green or brown lentils, mixed with a little sauteed onion, some cheddar cheese (or feta-- but go easy) and the same herbs as before. I do want, though, to keep the number of ingredients down for this dish. Ideally, there would be just two!

And the bit about the lettuce in the title? That's just one of my favourite recipe opening lines. I shan't be dealing with lettuce now. But if you hang on for my winter edition, I will tell you how to make chou farci -- stuffed cabbage. Three ways! This does involve cutting out the heart of a (grown up) cabbage.

A Tale of Three Tins

2009-07-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

1. Oxo. 1930s.

This tin of my grandfather's once contained six cubes. It was retrieved from his tool store. where it held thumb tacks. The Oxo cubes were a standby of my grandmother's who sprinkled them into gravy -- and sometimes into hot milk for her five children. I quote from the tin.

Children love OXO or OXO with milk and thrive on it.
OXO provides delicious soups and gravies in a few minutes and enriches all meat dishes.
OXO -- The Cook's best friend.
And my favourite tip on the back: An OXO cube crumbled into a glass of hot milk renders the milk more assimilable.

2. Burdall's Gravy Salt. 1930s.
ADDING FLAVOUR to the Joint
PIQUANCY to the Gravy
ZEST to the Meal.
Insist on having BURDALL'S GRAVY SALT, which is one of the purest and most useful foods ever invented by man.
The tin contains shoe tacks of a centimetre long. When grandfather was not shooting rabbits (no questions asked), managing estate gardens or his own, he made and mended shoes and boots.

3. A Large Biscuit tin of my great grandmother. Circa 1920. For the provenance of which we must look to A Handful of Broken Biscuits one last time. The tin is marked D Bassett of Portland Street, Sheffield and here is why this rusty, ruby red tin --and its former contents-- are so significant.

Eating biscuits: such a simple thing to remember, but John would never forget his grandma or that quiet shadowed room. The pictures of his soldier uncles on the mantelpiece, the dark green velvety cloth that covered the table, and the two of them sitting there eating cream wafers. The biscuit tin, red and gold, intrigued him. Spin wheels beneath three small windows in the lid showed the months of the year and the date in the month and, bit by bit, on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's knee, John learned the calendar. There, in that sanctuary, he learned it. Grandma left the tin to John when she died and if memory dimmed with the passing of twenty, thirty, forty years, he had but to take the tin in his hand and the flood gates would open, and those Sunday afternoons would be with him again.

So it isn't just the food, it's the receptacle, too. That's why the big red calendar biscuit tin --permanently left on July the 31st, my wedding day-- is on the shelf, kept company by its two smaller neighbours. And doesn't the description above put you in mind of a certain madeleine?

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: what Beth cooked and what she stored away.

2009-07-22T02:01:00.000-07:00

The food described here, such as that in the cool pantry where Elizabeth (Beth) kept her preserves and pickled onions and eggs, is straight from my father's childhood; it is also a page out of mine. And a hint of the conservative eater that was my father.

Beth was a good cook and, though her family cramped her style with their conservative tastes, she persevered with the occasional new recipe she had seen in 'Woman's World'. Sometime, the experiment was not well received and would not be repeated after a few well chosen remarks about working fingers to the bone, people who didn't deserve good things for dinner and those who, if they thought they could do better, were welcome to try.

John often thought of his mother's rabbit pies: crisp light brown pastry crimped all round the side of the dish and with an upturned cup underneath to hold up the pastry in the centre. Two or three knife stabs were always made in the pastry covering to let the steam come wisping through. It made one feel hungry even at the bottom of the garden.

The other dish that particularly lingered in the mind was apple dumplings. Beth always used Bramleys -- always big apples. She cored and stuffed them with currants and covered them with a generous casing of suet pastry. Into the oven they went and when they came out half as big as footballs she would put them in individual dishes, douse them with a hefty sprinkling of sugar and perhaps the top of the milk. Ed could demolish a whole one at a sitting, but the children could manage only part each.

Besides all her jam and chutney making, Beth filled and sealed big one gallon jars of pickled onions, pickled red cabbage and pickled eggs, when the time was right. There was usually enough to last all year. She was proud of her store. The big jars lined the floor under the bottom shelf in her small larder and with home-made jam filling the top shelf she had enough food on hand to withstand a siege.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: tea table.

2009-07-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

This is a depiction of my grandmother's tea table in the 1930 in rural Somerset. While Auntie Polly sat alongside, smoking, coughing and being frowned at, the table was set.

A big noisy family tea would follow. Good, plain simple fare. Enough. Beth usually had a fruit cake, or part of one, from her last baking. She scorned 'bought cake' and never allowed it in the house. Bought cake was for shiftless housewives with no pride. There was plenty of bread and butter and cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. She made copious amounts of jam in season and there was always a choice of two at any time -- blackberry and apple, rhubarb and ginger, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, blackcurrant, wortleberry, damson and plum.

A tablecloth and cups of tea were set for the grown-ups at table and there was just room to squeeze in Eric, the eldest and Laura, the youngest. The other children all had a plate on their knees, sitting on stools, the wide window ledge or the wood box by the range. They had Tizer or home-made lemonade to drink. All the while, the grown-ups' conversation ran like a river over their heads, half understood if understood at all. A warm, companionable time.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: in the garden.

2009-07-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

This chapter of my father's book begins with a reflection on life in 1930s Britain. Again, he remembers the foods of this time -- of blackberrying, of scrambling along the hills and along the lake to find whortleberries, of the 'fire toast' which his father made upon a home-wrought toasting fork if he was having a bonfire. And there is this. Writing this in the summer of 2009, settling in for a long recession perhaps, we ought to take stock. Although this is about the growing of food for necessity, it is also about how, for a country man like my father or grandfather, it was consolation. So you see why the 'Father's garden' part of my overall title is so significant for me.

The years of depression lay hard on the land. The big cities rumbled with the discontent and the sadness of the legions of the unemployed. And a king to be came, saw and said "something must be done."

With a lesser severity, the hand of harsh necessity ruled, too, in the valleys ans fields of the West Country. Thirty five shillings was a common enough wage, and so the cottage garden had an all important part to play in family economy. It was not simply a charming adjunct to the home --though it was that too-- but a place to grow food for the table. Space had to be provided for a washing line, for a baby's pram in good weather, for a bonfire area to clear burn the rubbish and for a compost and manure heap. But pre-eminent was the growing. Potatoes, white, pink flecked or dull yellow to lift with a fork and pull from under a haulm. Savoy cabbage were tight leaved balls of crinkly dark green, that could stand fresh and firm against the hardest weather. Parsnips that were never touched till a hard frost had sweetened them. And carrots, received as an orange delight when new, were but a commonplace vegetable when old. Broad bean pods clustered and burgeoned in the late Spring and the peas were always a favourite with tomtits and jays: they would strip a row in a couple of days if not prevented.

A strong streak of puritanism was always present. It was somehow immoral to buy, if you had space to grow your own. Extravagance in any form was frowned on for working people, but paradoxically it was admired in the gentry.

Outside now in the warm early evenings of May, before bedtime, John stood on the newly turned ground, with soil crumbs in his socks and the scent of fresh moist earth and the new grass in his nostrils.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits: the sweet shop.

2009-07-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is the title of the book my father wrote when he understood that he was terminally ill. "I am past my sell-by date", he told me. "Better finish that book, then." Reading this now --he wrote it for posterity, comfort, family and friends-- it is as if he is extending a cordial handshake across the years to me.

The book is about his childhood, growing up on the edge of Burrington Combe and Langford in Somerset, in the Mendip Hills. The broken biscuits of the title are those that my grandmother, Elizabeth (Beth in the book) would order from the grocer every week and which my father, if he was lucky, would also be able to buy at the village shop. Often, the generous shop keeper would slip him an extra toffee and, if the ice cream churn was nearly empty, give him a spoon and pretend not to notice. I noticed, when I read this book again, how much he remembered of the food of his childhood and, of course, of the garden from which much of it had come. Some extracts.

This first is about having a penny in hand and going into the sweet shop. This was in about 1930 (I was a late-flowering chrysanthemum). The humbugs I include in the picture above could induce a sort of sweetie shop frenzy in me, still. They must, of course, come in a rustling little white paper bag.

Into the shop they went and the door bell tinged behind them. They could see straight through to the post office counter where Mrs Thomson was serving the next customer with penny stamps and his pension. It was slow moving, slow speaking, easy going Miss Buxton who came forward to serve them. They could take their time with her as they weighed the merits of humbugs against licorice allsorts, or Nutalls mintoes against dolly mixtures. These shelves, with thirty six big glass bottles to inspect and choose from. The bottles winked cheerfully at them in the soft, mellow afternoon sunlight, seeming to say "Choose me. Choose me." Aniseed balls, with a sweet, powdery bloom on them, were in one jar; the pink pastel colours of fruit drops were in the next. The rich brown sheen of Sharpes' Bluebird toffee pieces were next to the brown and white whirls of Maynards' delights.

Lovely they were, but they gave you toothache if they took out one of your fillings. All you would get then was iodine treatment to see you through to the next visit of the school dentist, months away. So no: better not. Small black roll chunks of licorice gleamed dully; sherbet lemons spoke of high summer and Fox's Glacier mints of the North Pole, looking to him like bits chipped from an ice flow.

And for me? Mint Shrimps, licorice comfits, rhubard and custard, fruit pastilles, the aniseedy ones in the Licorice allsort box, mint imperials and sherbet lemons. And I'll never forget the box of sugared almonds that Father Christmas delivered and I sampled in a dark still house. I think it was the smoothness, the smell and the thinness of the sugar shell of that crisp nut. And the allure of the pretty pastel sweet -- to a girl mainly interested in mud and not at all sweet and pink things. And they were so cold. From the Pole, I imagine.

2009-07-19T10:55:00.001-07:00

Trifle

This, along with summer pudding and bread and butter pudding (don't worry: these will follow), is my favourite pudding.

First, I cannot be fussed with exotic variations of trifle so here is what invariably happens in our family. It's big, bold, there should be a lot of it. I do like to make my own custard, but I'd bury my face in something made with Birds' custard powder, too.

6 or 7 sponge fingers --or alternatively, break up a sponge cake so that it sits in a generous mound in the bottom of a glass bowl about 1.5 litres in capacity.
400g raspberries
About three tbsps sherry
Raspberry jam
30g flaked almonds
150ml double cream for whipping
300ml custard. If you want to make your own, follow the recipe below. It's not hard and will, I promise, make you happy. The custard should be cold when you use it.

Right, take the sponge cakes, sponge fingers or whatever you are using and spread them with a little jam. I tend to split them in two and make a kind of jam sandwich out of each, replacing the other half when I'm done with the jam. Now, put them in a pretty bowl and drizzle the sherry over them. Leave them to soak. You could also add some finely grated lemon rind, if you like -- but I rarely bother with this touch. Now cover the sponges with the fruit, cover the fruit with the custard, smooth its top down gently and add the cream, which you will have whipped until it sits in soft peaks. Scatter over the almonds and it's ready, after a little chill in the fridge.

You will notice that there is no jelly in this custard. I prefer it not to be there. To make your own custard, here's what you do (in the amount needed for this recipe plus a bit of spoon licking).

Take 300ml milk. Full fat is best here. If you are that worried, why are you making trifle?
30g caster sugar
The yolks of three large eggs

The key word here is gently. Warm up the milk and then mix the eggs and sugar together then add this mixture to the milk. You should continue to warm it, stirring constantly. That way, the custard will be smooth. Use a wooden spoon and make sure that your custard does not boil. It should begin to thicken and look sleek and creamy and coat your wooden spoon: then, it's done. Leave it to cool and stir it regularly to avoid it forming a skin. You can make the custard richer by adding a tablespoon or two of cream. Either way, this recipe should make quite a thick custard, just right for your trifle.

We had this trifle, with eight of my family at table, as the pudding for a dinner of a beef casserole and boiled potatoes. A bit of a winter dinner, but with summer raspberries. Perfect.

Summer pudding. To me, summer pudding was a way to use up the heavy fruit crop of my father's garden. Invariably, we used blackcurrants and raspberries. If there were redcurrants, then in they went, too. Some people use sponge cake for this; I always use white bread, a day or two old. Let's assume we are using raspberries and blackcurrants. The colour is beautiful.

Take 480g raspberries and 120g blackcurrants. You need to stew these gently for five minutes or so with about 120 g caster sugar, but taste and taste again. The amount of sugar you need, obviously, depends on how sweet your tooth is and which fruit you are using. You do not need to add water. Stir gently. Then put the fruit to one side to cool.

Into a round deep dish or good sized basin, goes the bread. For old time's sake, I use an ancient white china basin, used since childhood and, amazingly, never broken-- despite my cack-handed tendencies in the kitchen.

The bread you use needs to be white, sliced, about a day old and have had its crusts removed. Make sure it is not too thin, otherwise your pudding will collapse. You need to make sure that the dish is well lined, sides and bottom, with the bread pressed in gently, with overlapping edges. Then, just pour in the fruit --if it there is a great deal of juice, reserve some-- and cover it with another slice or two of the bread. Put a plate on top of your pudding. It should be small enough to fit snugly inside the dish. Place a weight on top, for which I would probably use a couple of tins of baked beans. Leave your pudding overnight in a the fridge and then turn it out gently the next day. Serve with cream and, if you like, any reserved juices from yesterday. Summer pudding is, I think, rather ruined if it is not served very cold -- which is why I would never put custard with it. Some good vanilla ice cream might be nice, though.

Top tip: make sure that the plate onto which you turn your pudding is big enough to leave a large rim beyond the edge of the pudding --preferably one with an edge which slopes up. That way the juice will not end up on the floor. And if it does collapse, trim it up with some double cream and none-one may notice.

Bread and Butter pudding. Sweetly nostalgic for me. I did recently have seconds of a chocolate version -- but on with the original. It is very straightforward to make.

Take 6 thinnish slices of white bread -- I leave the crusts on because they will catch in the heat of the oven giving you crisp edges against the doughy and soothing quality of the rest. My mother always buttered them, therefore so do I. Just a thin spread of butter, though. Cut each piece into two triangles. If you want it to be a bit daintier make that four.

You need about 90g currants. You could also use sultanas or raisins or a mixture of any of these.
Have to hand
3 large free range eggs
30g demerara sugar
About 750ml milk (I use semi skimmed)

Into a large oven dish -- I usually make this is an oblong earthenware oven dish which is, I think, 1.2 litres in capacity-- goes the bread, triangles overlapping. Sprinkle over the dried fruit. Then beat the eggs just a little with the milk and the sugar and pour this evenly over the bread. My mother would have left this to settle for twenty minutes, so that the milk saturates the bread. Then she would put it in a medium oven (4/180) for approximately 45 minutes. By this time, you should have a set custard and some little crisp peaks pf bread rising above it. You can encourage this further by sprinkling the pudding with just a little more sugar after about 30 minutes. You may find that you need to give this recipe an hour.

I don't think you need anything with this. A sprinkle of cinnamon or some grated nutmeg would be good, though. And, as with the potato earlier (see 'What to eat for a broken heart'), this is consoling when all is not well.

Breakfast and lunch from a seven year old

2009-07-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Today my eldest son served me breakfast and lunch for a surprise. He said he felt bad that I had had one child sick off school and then the other. I had probably been foul tempered as I tried to work at home with the boys periodically at my elbow. Back to the breakfast. (Above are my boys, by the way.)

Muesli, in a basin, with at least half a pint of milk plus a glass of milk and a glass of 'Katy' cider..

Lunch was a boiled egg in his favourite eggcup (he now eats boiled eggs because I draw faces on the eggs) plus a salad. The boiled egg had, as far I could understand, been flashed briefly under the grill (not a particularly watchful mother at that moment) and the salad was a whole unwashed carrot, a spring onion and a leaf from a cos lettuce. This was served with a mug of chardonnay.

Reader, it was perfection.

Lemon fridge cake

2009-07-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

For Nest Davies and Jackie Rice

This was a regular whenever my parents went out, I remember. It's fresh tasting and a little bit tangy. I always helped with this one. It's not really in the repertoire of my kitchen these days, but I have a feeling that, pretty soon, I'll teach my boys to make it so they can impress, as Isaac aged five likes to say, "the laydeez."

Crush 300g digestive biscuits with a rolling pin. Best to put them in a bag first!
You also need150 g unsalted butter
3 level tbs cornflour
150ml water
The grated rind plus the juice of two lemons
120g caster sugar
2 egg yolks (from medium eggs)

So, melt the butter and add it to the crumbs. Now press this mixture into the base and sides of a 22cm flan dish. Actually, I find that, although I work in metric, I think, like my family, in inches for cake tins and cooking dishes. So, could I say 9 inch? Put this in the fridge to chill.

Blend the water and the cornflour together, then add the lemon rind and the juice. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly and then simmer the mixture for 1 minute. Now remove it from the heat and add the caster sugar. Allow it to cool slightly --say for five minutes-- and then beat in the egg yolks. Cool for another five minutes and then pour into the crumb-lined dish. Chill this in the fridge for 5-6 hours. I remember that my mother used to decorate the top with a few little parings of lemon rind and also that she put the fridge cake in the freezer for the last hour before serving.

Marshmallow sludge (try it)

2009-07-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

Something which I should not like, but do

This is something my aunts have tended to whip up over the years. You know, for what is known as informal family dining. In my family, this means that everyone comes quickly to the table and loads up. And then goes back to hoover up some more. This is the sort of pudding that might be on the table after cold meat and lots of salad if family are visiting each other. It's fabulously un-chic and, really, what my grandmother might have called common. And the thing is, I don't really like marsmallows, I dislike the texture of crushed pineapple and I wouldn't mind if I never ate a tinned mandarin orange ever again. By rights, this recipe should not work for me. Looking at the ingredient list, you might conclude it's not for you either. But you'd be wrong. I would bury my face in this. I don't make it for myself, though: I wait for one of the good aunts to dole it out.

I have this recipe, from an aunt, on a piece of paper which has been xeroxed. So it's getting on a bit. Word for word it says:

CONTENTS
Large packet of marshmallows
1 large tin of crushed pineapple
1 tin of mandarins
2 cartons of cour cream
packet of shredded coconut

METHOD
Cut marshmallows in 4, using a wet knife
Place in dish
Drain juice from fruit tins and place fruit in dish
Add sour cream and coconut
Place in fridge for two to three hours.

And then -- and this bit makes me laugh because it's an inappropriate nod to sophistication-- "serve in chilled glasses". Also, it forgets to tell you that you should mix everything together gently. The recipe is really not far away from the American 'Heavenly Delight', if you'd care to look. Clearly, this sounds better than 'marshmallow sludge.'