It's the small things that count

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A simple pasta supper

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.