Last time I cooked, almost nobody got sick!

Paella Rice with Red Mullet and Roasted Pumpkin

2012-02-09T21:36:00.006Z

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been working on a new project. It' early days, so I'll see how it goes over the next couple of months, in the mean time I will do my best to keep this blog - my pet poodle - going. I've honestly missed the stream of consciousness confessional nature of writing here, never again!
Paella, by Alberto Herraiz is one of the books I got for Christmas, I saw a review for it here and put it on my wishlist on a whim, it's that kind of impulsive behavior that makes so charming you see.
My bf (who is also my bff) is half Spanish and I invited his mother over to borrow her paella dish and to get her hyper critical view on the validity of any of the recipes in this book. It's a very interesting selection, there are multiple recipes for stocks and sauces, a section of paellas made on the stove and in the oven, some to be made on a grill outdoors and even some sweet options. Some are very very traditional, some are quite... experimental. I chose red mullet because it's seasonal and there aren't any hard to find ingredients (did you know that Morrisons sells own brand paella rice now? Like ain't nothing but a thing!). You are meant to buy your mullets uncleaned and use the livers as a base for the rice. I got mine from Jonathan Norris's stall which is two minutes walk from my office. The first time I walked past him I thought he looked familiar, and then I realized that he's the guy from season 3 of Come Dine With Me!!!! So amazeballs, is it cool that I'm excited about that? Anyway, he was happy that I didn't want my fish cleaned and I feel like we really bonded.
Buying the fish was the best part of making this recipe, it will kill you. Here are some status pictures my stepmother took.
The result is beautiful and perfectly tasty, but a little too sweet from the pumpkin for me. It was also nothing like any paella Maria Isabel has ever heard of, but that's kind of the point of a paella, its a receptacle for any old junk you have lying around. And actually an insane amount of work. Why would you clean and fillet six red mullets, make a extraordinarily delicious stock, cut up pumpkin into two different sizes of cube, blanch, roast and puree half and assemble your 4 hour paella when you could just go down the road to your favorite Spanish restaurant and get something just as delicious for a lot less money. There are a lot of skills to master, and if that's your bag, this book is perfect.

Anyway, here's another thing I'm doing, it's a charming thing for charming people to do. Pick up the book closest to you, turn to page 45, the first sentence describes your sex life. This is a great game to play with cookbooks. Here's the result from Paella "There are differences of opinion when it comes to black rice", which describes my sex life exactly.

Parmentier

2012-01-19T10:51:00.003Z

This is the last soup for a while because after this I completely fell off the wagon.
Basically it's one half of some kind of a double ying yang soup from this book,
and it's meant to look like this.
I only made the leek part, so mine was never going to look anything like this. It tastes ok. Really, only ok.
When I went to hear Ms. Marmitelover do a little talk for her book last year, one of the things she said is that she doesn't trust the likes of Nigella for providing recipes because as a columnist and cook book author only she has never had to prove herself by catering on a large scale so the likelihood of her dishes failing is higher. Obviously she was speaking about this in context to her own home restaurant enterprise, but still, I cannot disagree more. Restaurants that produce cookbooks have to adapt the recipes to the home cook to allow for available equipment, ingredients, which alters the result. Which is why restaurant cookbooks are always difficult to cook from. It's a showcase designed to entice you to visit the place, so what do they care if it takes you 2 hours at home to make the soup, you should have booked a table instead! Meh

Cream of Broccoli Soup

2012-01-13T09:37:00.013Z

Today's recipe is inspired by having to sit next to a junked out homeless girl on the tube today. Most people's experiences of the homeless are very negative, like being stuck in a confined space next to someone who hasn't washed and keeps twitching and threatening to throw up on you. Gross, but there are charities out there to help people like this by raising awareness and providing a safe supporting environment. This book is called More Than A Meal because homeless people need more than a good meal, ~~they need a bath too~~ they also need compassion and understanding. Admittedly the book is a little dated, we have Hockney's 'Fish', Tony Blair, Des Lynam and and Jane Asher staring morosely at you from the cover. Does that make you hungry?
The very first recipe in the book is Jimmy Carter's (yes the president!)Cream of Broccoli soup. How wonderful and random is that? I had to Google him to see if he's still alive, he is, but he's already made his funeral plans!
Anyway, the soup is pretty straighforward and basic, however I still managed to forget to put the potato in. Just before serving you mix in the lemon juice and add in a little creme fraiche.
Choice of bowl here is entirely coincidental! Overall it's really boring, but innoffensive. I may have preferred it without the lemon, but I don't really care that much.

Turkish Lentil Soup

2012-01-13T09:37:00.009Z

I bought this little spiral bound book in SCP of all places. My old office was on the same street as the Old Street branch and sometimes at lunchtime I would go in there to browse the prices home wares and occasionally make a small purchase, usually gifts for other people (when my goddaugher was born I very briefly flirted with the idea of getting her a 'designer' baby' rattle - no wonder I can only afford to eat soup for dinner now). Anyway, this book was produced by a Primary school in the area, and a few of the shops near by were selling them. I'm not sure exactly what they were raising money for, but they got a lot of support from local restaurants and a couple of celebrities too. The recipe I'm using is by a parent of one of the kids though.
The recipe is painfully scant on the directions, instead of measurements everything is doled out in 'big spoons', and stock is 'meat water'. I'm using some of my precious veal meat water (smuggled from France but I'm sure can find it on the internet). There are no cooking times and no pictures, but what you do is make a roux and fry with onions until everything is a little brown and crispy, mix in the stock and cooked lentils and thicken with milk and egg yolk.
I was really apprehensive about tasting this, hot egg sauces creep me out a little bit and the colour is distinctly 'mental institution beige'. But the taste is amazing. Rich and meaty, sweet from the onions and earthy from the lentils, I would have loved to add a bay leaf though.

Soupe a la Menthe Fraiche

2012-01-10T21:24:00.006Z

Day 5 of the soup diet.
I'm beginning to feel a lot better about sacrificing my evening meal to mostly vegetarian broths (maybe if that was entirely true I wouldn't refer to it as sacrifice?). When I was younger we used to have soups a lot, we didn't have that much money and my mother certainly struggled to give us anything at all sometimes. When we moved to London and food was everywhere I vowed never to eat soup again, pathetic peasant food that it was, I'd really moved up in the world. Now that I have more perspective I feel extremely guilty for being such a brat, if there is any justice in the world my children will probably do this to me.
I feel like I have to meet the Aline Benayoun more than half way in seriously calling this 'Mint Soup'. It's more of a vegetable stew, with mint. But let me tell you, after a bowl of turnip water this was some kind of a feast. Benayoun could have called this a mint souffle and I would still be happy. This is hearty, and very carb rich, but the lemon and herbs manage to lift any heaviness and make the soup taste fresh and light. The flavours are wonderful; rich, Mediterranean but with a herby African twist.

Cream of Turnip Soup

2012-01-09T21:36:00.007Z

I'm getting quite a collection of artist inspired cookery books (this is the Holy Grail that I am seriously saving up for), some make the tenuous links between a painting and a dish, some are charity compilations of recipes with the off one by a painter, and a very few are recipes of dishes they actually ate.
Monet's Cookery Notebooks was complied using Monet's own diary notes recipes, somewhat of a contrast to the starving artist cliche. The first half of the book is an account of his life in the French countryside with photos of his house (if you want to see pictures of the kitchen they can be found on Ms Marmitelover's blog), and the second half contains the recipes.
Look at this assembly of ingredients. The most vital component, the water, is not pictured. A more appropriate title for this dish might be Hot Turnip Water, that's how thin the ultimate soup is. I deliberately, somewhat unfairly, took an unflattering photo of my bowl because I was so angry at having only this for dinner.
You boil the turnips in a lot of water with some butter and blend. Add salt and pepper, more butter, or cream which I didn't have, and presumably enjoy. 'Evening meals at Monet's house always started with a soup' the book tells us, and as a first course this would be lovely. Look at this, I'm not even going to pretend with some clever styling trick that this is anything but a bland soup. As it is, there is too much butter in this for me to seriously consider it a diet food, but not enough flavour for it to be in any degree indulgent. Turnips are actually a guilty pleasure of mine, part of the cabbage family they have that nice tangy crispness, but once cooked their muddy flavour comes through which is why it's a risk to put them at the forefront of a dish like this. It's not bad, but I probably wouldn't make it again.

Pumpkin Soup with Spicy Seeds

2012-01-07T17:55:00.015Z

I'm on the fence about non native authors of books of recipes of foreign foods. On one hand I appreciate that they edit their material with the best intentions to provide me with something that is going to suit my palate and be possible to make up with the available ingredients. On the other hand I want authenticity. However, I'm realistic enough to accept that the flavour of food you've eaten on holiday is affected by the the sun, the sea breeze, the personality of the seasoned old man in the kitchen, and a million other things. It's impossible to recreate.

David Leite is a second generation Portuguese immigrant from America who spent a few months travelling across the old country collecting the recipes for this book. It's mainly restaurant dishes, which may somewhat justify the myriad of processes required to produce a simple pumpkin soup. Don't do what I did and try to make this for dinner after work, it takes about 2 hours from start to finish.

You put the pumpkin, sage and onion in the oven and while they roast you make the spicy seeds to garnish the end product. I didn't have the energy to mess about with the seeds from the actual squash I was using so used sunflower seeds for this step. When the vegetables are cooked you combine with the stock and blend. Deadbeat me would start eating at this point, but the recipe insists that you absolutely must put the mixture through a fine sieve so I felt compelled to. The whole 20 minutes that this took I was thinking that this is something I would do for a baby, grownups with proper teeth shouldn't have their food pureed to this extent. And don't even get me started on how much washing up this generates.

You return the soup to the pan, dilute a little with water and serve. By this point you will be so hungry that you might not want to take the time to savour the delicate interplay of flavours, but take my word for it, this is a very good soup. It's velvety and tastes creamy despite having no dairy. There is a slight hint of sage, the nicest use of that herb I've experienced in the last month, no dusty, heavy Christmassy overkill here. And the cayenne heavy seeds are amazeballs.

Spinach Noodle Soup

2012-01-07T17:55:00.011Z

Harumi Kuriahara is a superstar in Japan, similar to Delia Smith here. Like Delia, her recipes are not very complicated and surprisingly mostly made up of ingredients it would be easy to find anywhere (but I am in London).
I've wanted this book for a while and when I saw it in Oxfam at the quarter of the price I finally got to bring it home. This is how I get most of my books, just go to a charity shop in a fancy neighbourhood and you'll get all the good recipe books by famous chefs.
Day two of the soup diet:
It's actually fairly difficult to find nice, seasonal, vegetarian soup recipes in books because most authors want to do something different and delicious to distinguish their recipe and that usually means the addition of chicken or bacon. But Harumi has one, so here we go (chicken stock can be substituted for veg, obviously)
Unlike a Western method for making soup all of the components are cooked separately and then combined in the stock at the last minute. I would never usually do this, firstly because it's a pain to blanch, drain and rinse things separately and also because I would have assumed that cooking things together would enrich the flavour. But this actually makes a lot of sense, the noodles don't make the soup murky with their starch and the spinach doesn't make broth green. What you get is a relatively clear soup with pretty circles of sesame oil on the surface, the taste is very clean and fresh. Its also worth getting a dining room chair to stand on to get the white pepper off the high shelf instead of using every day black, you can taste the difference.

Gingerbread House

2012-01-05T00:44:00.004Z

Gale force winds accross the UK are causing devastation accross communities.

Sopa de Aguacate - Avocado Soup

2012-01-05T00:08:00.013Z

So this is my diet, mine and the boyfriend's diet - every day I go to work, fend for myself for breakfast and lunch, the boyfriend studies at home, does whatever mystery things that men do when they're on their own (PS3? I know it's PS3), and then in the evening we come together and have soup for dinner. Austerity soup.
Day one:
The first one is probably the simplest 'recipe' I've ever seen. These are the ingredients.
Before I get any haters hating, I fully agree that stock cubes are inferior to stock, I don't care. I came home at 22:00 today, and at 22:05 this soup was ready. I'm not exaggerating, and I don't want to 'give the secret away' or anything but all you do is blend the avocadoes with stock and heat.
I'm servicng these with some home made tortilla chips (deep fry cut up tortilla wraps). This soup is very virtuous but rich at the same time. The avocado is creamy and fresh and the soup is surprisingly filling and much better than the sum of it's parts (obviously it tastes like whatever your stock tastes like, I'm going to try a few different powdered ones to find the most pleasant). Hot avocado is a new one on me though.

Bigoli All'Anatra

2012-01-02T20:47:00.015Z

This book was another gift. I swear I must be the easiest person to buy for, I'd make the perfect wife for some curmudgeonly old misogynist. My dad once gave my mum a cheese grater for Christmas, where are all the real men?
Anyway, The Geometry of Pasta appeals to me as a cook and as a comic book fan. The graphic cross sections of pasta shapes are beautiful and fascinating, pasta is such a ubiquitous food that it's easy to overlook it's functionality. Incidentally, another recent pasta book, Pasta by Design reduces pasta to three basic origins of shape, cylinder, sphere and ribbon, each one is intended for a different kind of sauce. It's written by an architect and he maps the shapes using imaging software to produce the equation for the form, there is an interview with he author in New Scientist which can be read here, or I should say must be read, and then do this quiz!!!! (the maths nerd is the painfully unbearable subset of loser foodie nerd, I can't even...).
Anyway, the author is a big pasta fan and says he would like to see a book that deals with the seasoning as rigorously as he deals with shape, The Geometry of Pasta might be it.
I have a big crush on this book, Jacob Kenedy's tone is so warm and welcoming that I would probably read it for fun, he goes beyond the recipe and history and you can tell he loves his subject.
The recipe gives instructions for extruding the bigoli using a meat grinder, I loved that idea and just had to try it. I used sifted wholemeal flour for the dough - the grainy rough texture is meant to be especially good for picking up the rich duck sauce we're making.
For the sauce you boil an entire duck (I used 4 legs instead), skim the resultant stock, use the fat to cook off the vegetables for the sauce, shred the meat, use half of the stock in the sauce and the other half to cook the pasta in (you're also supposed to add the liver, heart and kidneys to the sauce but I didn't have them). I love the economy and self sufficiency of that, don't you?
Well all that self sufficiency results in the richest meal I've had in a while. Even in the depths of winter this seems like a bit too much. Kenedy makes a point of mentioning that this is a rough peasant meal. It's absolutely delicious, and after a long day in the fields it would be amazing, but I don't think I would ever be able to justify this again. Save me, diet!
If you love pasta but don't love the calories, put it near your face instead of in your face.

Elopitta - Olive Bread

2012-01-02T20:47:00.013Z

This is another bit of my Christmas haul. A lot of vegetarian books have come out lately, and I'd really like to expand my repertoire. I know that you don't make friends with salad, but I don't need any more friends, I have the perfect amount.
Another thing I got for Christmas is a Panasonic bread maker. I've made a couple of successful loaves in the past but making bread is a really stressful experience for me. Working out how dry yeast works is like some kind of voodoo magic trick. The smartest thing for me to do might be to embrace technology.
You mix up the dough, let it rise, mix in the olives and herbs, rise again, shape, rise one more time and bake.
The result is an absolutely amazing, chewy, soft bread.
I was really down in the dumps after my Nordic Bakery semi failures, so this really cheered me up. Yes, bread makes me feel good now apparently, no wonder I need to go on a diet.

Parsnip and Sesame Flatbreads and Classic Cinnamon Buns

2012-01-02T20:46:00.006Z

I'm going on a totally-serious-this-time-not-even-allowed-to-have-gin diet this year, as in, the most boring New Year's resolution ever. So really want to get some of the more delicious looking projects out of the way.
One of the books I got for Christmas was The Nordic Bakery. I don't remember why I put this on my Amazon wishlist, I actually went to this place once, but all we had was coffee. I was shopping with a girl from work and she wasn't hungry so I didn't try any of the cakes. Here's a study that proves that what a woman eats is influenced by what other women around her are eating (men don't have as much impact). I always wanted to come back but I forgot what street it was on.
Anyway, we had some parsnips left over from Christmas so I made parsnip and sesame flatbreads. Not the most indulgent thing, but we had all the ingredients. You grate and boil the parsnip, mix into a dough and bake.
I baked these for about 20 minutes longer than the book said but the still had a raw taste and texture. The moisture in the parsnip makes them cook slowly and the final product is just not my thing. Parsnip and sesame is actually a nice combination, but I wouldn't make these again.
The next day I tried the classic cinnamon bins from the cover. The image is actually a little deceptive, it's so beautifully layered that I initially assumed this was like a puff pastry Danish kind of thing, but it's more like a bread roll with some veins of sugar cinnamon. I was a little underwhelmed, but I think these are best the next day, slices in half, toasted, with a little brie. The most interesting thing about these is the cardamon mixed into the dough, but overall I'm not sure they're worth the calories.

Christmas 2011

2012-01-02T14:03:00.013Z

Happy New Year!
Christmas was stressful this year. In the last week before the break I got some kind of super flu so on the morning of the 25th I woke up with a fever and hallucinated my way through 8 hours of cooking. This (I assume everyone knows Bidstrup)
The run up to the big day almost killed me, going to work, running around buying presents and getting up at 5am to go to Billingsgate Fish Market was tough, but I don't have kids or any real responsibilities so this was all self inflicted.
Since we had to have seafood because of my family's dietary restrictions, I chose lobsters. It was kind of big deal as it's the boyfriend's and mine first year in our new house and it all of our immediate family would be joining us, so what's fancier than that? I got up early like a good girl on Christmas Eve and made the grueling journey to Canary Wharf to pick up 4, which were are very economical £10 each and ended up feeding all 7 of us.
I'd never actually had lobster before, let alone killed one! Far from the docile, obliging creatures I assumed them to be they were actually pretty feisty. I thought the fish guy would have a box or something for me to transport them in, but instead he put all four in a single plastic bag and told me they would be fine. It was a bit too much fun for me at 7am to return home on the tube with a smelly, writhing bag in my hands, but more on that later.
Because I hate myself (or because everyone else had to fast before going to church on Christmas morning), I decided to make some canapes for people to munch on while I made dinner.
Left to right these are:
-Octopus on butter bean puree, the recipe was from the Marie Claire Food and Drink book, easily my favorite party book
-Salmon roe on Borodinky bread, this is a very Russian thing. The recipe for the bread is here, I can't stop making it, I'll write it up in the next few weeks
-Smoked eel on this wholemeal sourdough, with some horseradish my dad made
-Little choux buns with prawns (Marie Claire)
-Artichoke pate (Marie Claire again)

It's a little difficult to recall exactly what was going though my mind when it was time to dispatch the lobsters but here is my version of events.
I used a recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking for steaming the lobsters, she suggests slicing them open before cooking as humane, or alternatively freezing for an hour. I did neither and opted to just put them in the pots as quickly as possible, close the lid and ask God for forgiveness. This was predictably disastrous. Instead of gamely tucking in his legs and making an effort to fit into the simmering liquid the first one I picked up actually struggled for his life. I was holding him with one hand and the heavy iron lid with the other, the battle was not evenly matched. 'SKREEEEEE!!!!' went the lobster as I finally managed to stuff him into his watery grave and collapsed on the floor. My brother had to do the other 3. Next year, Tofurky. That's a joke, it's difficult to argue with how delicious they were.
I also made Brussels Sprout with Chesnuts (a Nigella recipe, way too sweet), sauerkraut, carrot salad and road potatoes (Jamie Oliver's method, very good). An lots of mulled wine. Did you know that the alcohol in mulled wine doesn't burn off? I sure as shit didn't!
Oh and we had pudding, the boyfriend's mum photographed.

Christmas Sandwiches - Sainsbury's

2011-12-16T19:23:00.006Z

Sainsbury's is the cheapest Christmas sandwich I encountered so far, and also they provide just a turkey and stuffing option - but I don't think I'm up to trying all the variants. Here's what it tastes like:

-Instead of a layer of mayo and slices of stuffing the two are mashed into some kind of herby special sauce
-The turkey slices are generous, tasty and not dry, but with the tell tale moist round edge of a shaped turkey loaf
-Token green is lettuce - unlike all the other contenders which have some kind fancy leaf- wilty, redundant
-Don't like the combo of the sweet cranberry and herby special sauce. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it leaves an unpleasant bitter chemical taste at the back of my tongue
-There's bacon, a nice amount

Overall it's not horribly awful, I think I prefer it to Cafe Nero, but I wouldn't have it again

5/10

Christmas sandwiches - Pret a Manger

2011-12-15T10:10:00.003Z

This is the series where I try all the bg chains' Christmas sandwiches and decide which one is best (this year). Some of the places have more than one festive offering, but I'm only trying the turkey with all the trimmings, to give enveryone a fair chance. In the inteserst of full disclosure, I like Pret a lot. Before our office move half way across London there was a Pret next door and sometimes I would go in there two or three times a day. But now that this is no longer the case, the spell has been broken and I'm on the prowl for coffee once again.
Anyway, here's the breakdon of the Pret A Manger Christmas Sandwich:
-Every sandwich sold ensures a 25p donation to a homeless charity which is a very nice deed, you could also buy one of the sadwiches and give it to a homeless person, then they would have the sandwich and the money
-There is a lot of cranberry in this sandwich, it's very sweet
-There are thick generous slices of stuffing, which taste dusty because of the dried herbs
-A lot of mayo, which together with the cranberry obliterate the turkey (not a bad thing). Mayo is the best thing about a leftovers sandwiches anyway.
-Nice soft granary bread
-There was unexpected crunchiness right in the middle, I dug around to find little shards of fried onion which was a pleasant surprise.
-Masses of spinach, it's green and fresh, but flavourless

Overall 7/10

Spicy Fried Cauliflower and Mackerel Balls

2011-12-13T11:46:00.006Z

For the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about what to serve for Christmas. I have absolutely no minimalistic tendencies and will feel like a failure if the table isnt groaning and my family isnt crying at the end of the day.
I'm thinking about little side dishes to have on the side of whatever beast I decide on this year. Obviously I'm going to have potatoes and sprouts, probably carrots and I'm making some sauerkraut, but I'm sure there's something a bit more interesting that will become my holiday classic, out there. Now is the time to have these crazy experiments. By the time you have a family you should really have your crazy traditions down. It's a shame I don't have a crazy aunt that makes spam stuffing or something.
I'm using Moro East for the cauliflower recipe (which can also be found here) and Home Cooking the Flavel Way for the balls (they were supposed to be sardine balls, but all I had was mackerel in tomato sauce).
Flavels was a maker of gas stoves and produced this cookbook for hosewives in the 50s. It's exactly as old fashioned as you would expect, I bought it in a charity shop and it's quite charming. You can always find these slightly naff old book in second hand shops, and I can't resist. It's like a time capsule, here's an interview with a chef who collects old cookbooks. His motivation is to learn and he has a problem with the fact that modern cookbooks give excrutiatingly elaborate instructions for every process, which inhibits learning. Older book don't even tell you the temperatre that the oven is supposed to be, you're meant to use your intuition and the inevitable trial and error forces you to learn to be a better cook. The problem is that nobody is going to want to waste ingredients on something that might fail, but the implication that you can just wing it does appeal to the ego.
And look at it! There is a recipe for tinned sardines next to one for lobster, like you know, whatever, have one or the other for dinner tonight. A modern cookbook would have a two paragraph apology for the extravagance of one and the paucity of the other printed alongside.
For this you're meant to just combine all of the ingredients, roll in breadcrumbs and bake in the oven. I'm using mackerel instead of sardines, fish sauce instead of anchovy essence and panko instead of brown breadcrumbs. They look almost like truffles when the come out of the oven, and taste pretty nice too.
The cauliflower is eaven easier, just fry in olive oil, sprinkle with the ground spices and lemon and serve. It's lovely, and makes your house smell aniseedy and warm. V. good and a great way to make your cauliflower phobic boyfriend eat almost an entire head of it.

Hungry curry

2011-11-25T22:19:00.003Z

What's it called when someone had a name that describes exactly what they do? It's on the tip of my tongue, urgh so frustrating!
Anyway, this curry mix I found in a random Asian shop is the Ussain Bolt of food - in perfect Engrish!
So delicious.

Christmas sandwiches - Starbucks

2011-11-21T13:55:00.003Z

Going to Starbucks for food is like asking your boyfriend to give you a haircut. Yes, it will be a hair cut in the most literal sense of the term, but at the same time quite a lot removed from what you had in mind, and not very nice.
I used to love Starbucks Frappuccinos, I remember I was about 13 or 14 and my friend took me and we shared one as an extravagant treat. But as you get older your palate changes and you don't want all your food and drinks to be Willy Wonka level sweet. It's very sweet, and heavy (they do finally sell salads, or Bistro Boxes, but haven't tried one yet).
The only indication that these sandwiches are the Christmas selection is the word Feast in the title, I got two because I was extra hungry today and because they seem to have the exact same ingredients. Also, I got both of these toasted, so the packaging was removed and the photos make it look like I fished them out of a bin.
Turkey Feast Panini
-The overwhelming sensation here is not a flavor but a texture, mushy. Dry heating it makes the filling steam the bread from the inside and since the slice of turkey included is so flavorless there isn't much to experience.
-There's bacon in it, but I can't taste it.
-After a few chews the slight scent of sage from the slice of stuffing begins to come through. There is also mayonnaise, some kind of green leaf and a little bit of cranberry sauce, the combination of which must have made the sandwich so wet, but not much flavor therein.
-The distribution of ingredients is not very good, but since they don't taste of anything that's not a bad thing.

Turkey Feast Sandwich
-OK, this is interesting, the sandwich has exactly the same filling as the panini but the combination is a lot more successful. Maybe it's the victory of the granary bread over the white panini bun. The mushiness of the inside of this sandwich is actually quite pleasant
-The strongest flavor in this sandwich is the cranberry, it's not too sweet and quite tart.
-The spinach is wilty and not nice, a little bitter and stringy
-There is a lot of bacon in this sandwich, but I couldn't taste any of it. I found this so intriguing that I lifted out a piece to try on it's own, and it was tasteless. Normally bacon is plesant, crisp and salty, this was pale, soft and had no discernible salt on it, so wierd.

Overall, 5/10. The only reason it wasn't lower is because you have the option to toast or not to toast

Christmas Pudding

2011-11-21T13:46:00.008Z

It was Stir Up Sunday a week ago, the day when it's traditional to make your Christmas pudding and cake. I've enjoyed doing this for a couple of years now, but don't really have a definite recipe. It's usually full of whatever I have on hand - I think the year before last I spent some kind of crazy amount of money on single use ingredients and then had random dried up fruit hanging around my cupboards until I could justify throwing them away (in the move). Last year I made my own candied peel. This year I dried some grapes from out grapevine into raisins and soaked them in vodka for two weeks.
I'm sure it will end up being fine, really, don't trust cookbooks when they tell you that you absolutely must put 4 teaspoons of barley water in your pudding or else! After eating (and drinking) the biggest meal of the year, nobody will be able to tell what's in the sliver of brown stuff they force down, Mr Creosote style, before they fall into a coma. Ratios work much better. Here's what I did.
1 part flour
1 part nuts, chopped (hazlenuts and pecans for me)
1 part egg (weigh the egg and use your best judgement)
2 parts suet
2 parts breadcrumbs (all I had was Panko)
2 parts dried or dehydrated fruit (figs!!)
2 parts brown sugar
4 parts raisins/currants/sultanas soaked in
4 parts alcohol for 2 weeks (I used sherry and um... vodka)
And now for every 100g of flour you used put in one of each of these:
Small grated apple
Zest of an orange
Shot of booze
Teaspoon each of your favorite Christmas spices grated (nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, ginger and cardamom)
If the mixture is too solid add more booze, if the mix is too liquid add a couple of spoons of flour.
Mix it all up in a big bucket, pour into a pudding dish, cover with a layer each of greaseproof paer and foil (or a pudding cloth, obv), and then steam.
Delia Smith recommends steaming a 1-2 pint pudding for 8 hours (I usually do it for 6).

Who do I think I am with my laissez faire attitude to recipes? Lets face reality, this is something that cooks for hours and then ferments for at least a month, if you put nice things in, it will taste alright. You only eat it once a year, you won't remember what it tastes like by January (but it will taste good)
Oh, and I would really appreciate it if you would meet me half way with the following photo.

Buckwheat

2011-11-20T14:46:00.003Z

Buckwheat is a trigger food for me. If I was born in a James Bond film that would be my trigger to KILL! But I was born in Moscow and so it reminds me of granny, my childhood and all that good stuff. Buckwheat is very rich in iron and zinc, so if you don't have a lot of money, or are a vegetarian, it's a good energy food to balance out your diet. And it tastes really good, nutty but not too strong.
The kind I buy is from Eastern European shops and the grains are a darkish brown, but you can also get it from healthfood shops and some supermarkets - I saw a bag in Waitrose a few weeks ago, and it was greenish, almost untoasted. This is probably better for you, but I grew up on the shelf stable stuff, so that's what we're going to cook.
The method is very similar to cooking rice - for every cup of buckwheat you need two cups of water. You must wash it to stop it from turning mushy, but instead of putting it in a colander and running water through it, just pour it in a bowl and swirl it around with your hand, then drain. Bring to the boil and turn the heat down so it cooks very gently. I always use a pan with a glass lid for it so that I can spy on what's happening without opening the pan up and letting all the steam out. When there is no more liquid left on the surface, switch the heat off - it needs to steam to completion. What I do at this point is sprinkle it with salt and put about two tablespoons of butter in to slowly melt and trickle in, this flavours the buckwheat and gives a light fluffy texture.
Oh and I take back what I said about foraging a couple of weeks ago.
Serve with a giant creamed Bolete your dad found in the forest. Yum yum

Christmas sandwiches - Cafe Nero

2011-11-14T16:23:00.002Z

Another reminder, in case anyone has forgotten, I love Christmas. Not so much the Jesus part of it, but the chintzy kitsch is right up my street.
Here's a thing I've been doing for a few years now, and now that I'm taking this blog further away from cooking from cookbooks and more towards random things that pop in my head, I think it's appropriate to write about it. I go and get Christmas sandwiches from all the different sandwich places and rate them. Rate them in my head, there's no point to this, it's stupid.
My favorite all time seasonal sandwich would have to be Eat's venison baguette, but I haven't seen it for a few years, last year's winner was M&S for some reason that I now don't remember. But today I'm starting with Cafe Nero.
I'm not a big fan of food at Cafe Nero, maybe my opinion is coloured by a fierce loyalty to Pret a Manger, or maybe it's because I've never had a local branch, but our new office is very close to one so it's the first thing on my map.

Cafe Nero Turkey, Cranberry and Stuffing (horrible photo, I had already started to eat it before I took it)
-It's very dry, there doesn't seem to be a good ratio of meat to sauce.
-The stuffing is in little cubes as opposed to slices, not a bad thing, but a little curious
-There is a very small amount of cranberry sauce, not nearly enough, especially since the sauce is plesantly tart and not too sweet, with whole cranberries in it
-There is a nice piece of radiccio in the sandwich, much better than the ubiquitous handful of rocket.
-The bread seems to be from some kind of seeded loaf, which I like.

Final score: 6/10 It would be a good sandwich if it wasn't so overwhelmingly dry

Best drinking game ever!

2011-11-14T11:30:00.004Z

I thought I was a real pro at drinking games, I had me the Deborah Meaden (watch Dragon's Den, take a drink every time Deborah says 'I just don't understand it'), the Nigel Slater (watch any one of his shows, take a drink every time it sounds like he's talking about sex. This one will put you in a coma, it's chronic, this is him talking about rhubarb "It comes easily if you pull it"), the electronic scale (pour a drink and put it on the scale, you and a partner have to take exactly 10ml sips until the drink is gone, whoever comes closest wins another drink); but this is the best, I'm so excited I can barely keep my pants on (do you drink with your pants on? la-di-dah, look at Mr Fancy), you type in what you're listening to and this site tells you what to drink! I tried with with some really obscure bands and it's pretty knowledgeable. Truly a game changer in the world of drinking.

Which food magazine has the best Christmas issue 2011

2011-11-12T16:55:00.004Z

I have an absolute Christmas fetish. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with it (in Russia New Year is the big meal holiday), I can have an 'ideal' set up in my mind that is purely practical and visual rather than emotional. Instead of some traditional great great granny's Spam stuffing I can focus on food that is, at least to me, the epitome of this Christmas I've heard so much about. Basically I want the Hollywood version of the holiday, and this year I'm doing as much research as I can. So, which food magazine has the best December issue this year?
Here is the round up, I bought every big magazine so you don't have to. I know a lot of people have a favorite mag they get every month (full disclosure, I like Delicious), and won't buy another publication ever, so for all you loyalists and undecideds, here is my guide to this years offerings.

Delicious Magazine - £3.60
+ 'Free Guide to Relaxed Entertaining'
178 pages of which 56 are adverts
Back page - there is a 4 page Tesco spread at the back, but the real back page has an interview with Angela Hartnett.
Famous chefs featured - Antonio Carluccio, Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal

Recipe breakdown (not including the insert)
Meat - 25
Fish - 6
Vegetarian - 18
Vegan - 5
Dessert - 15
Vegan Dessert - 6

Things I liked:
-Delicious Magazine has a page towards the back of tips on how to use up leftover ingredients that they've urged you to buy, like a tin of wasabi powder or a bunch of marzipan.

Things I didn't like:
-One of the questions Angela Hartnett was asked was how she feels about getting older, this kind of got my back up because I doubt they would have asked a male chef about his age, and who cares anyway, this is a food magazine!
-The insert is a bit feeble, there are a couple of recipes and some stuff about cheese, all of which would have been included in the main magazine.

Cook Vegetarian - £3.50
+'Easy Veggie Christmas, 25 recipes'
106 pages, 30 of which are adverts
Back page - Showstopper risotto pie
Famous chefs featured - Heston Blumenthal, Gino D'Acampo, Jean Christophe Novelli, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Simon Rimmer.

Recipe breakdown (not including the insert)
Vegetarian - 23
Vegan - 29
Dessert - 9
Vegan Dessert - 0

Things I liked:
-Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's recipe for a dessert pie made with chard
-Gino D'Acampo's recipe for pannatone, I've never seen a pannattone recipe anywhere before and always assumed it was meant to be beyond the skills of a home cook
-History of the nut loaf

Things I didn't like:
-Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's beetroot tart tartin, probably because I watched the episode of his current veg show where his assistant comes up with the recipe.
-There are no vegan desserts, I found this so wierd, every single other magazine had at least a couple of options. I know that most recipes can be adapted, but why do vegans have to do that themselves?
-The insert had some traditional Christmas recipes, but again I didn't see why these could not have been absorbed into the magazine itself. I'm sure there was a a good reason, but in my cynical mind it's either printing budgets or an attempt to make it look like you're getting a special free gift

Sainsbury's Magazine - £1.60
+ 35g Lindt 70% Chocolate
274 pages, of which 20.5 are adverts
Back page - Win a mini break to Cornwall
Famous chefs featured - Raymond Blanc, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Yotam Ottolenghi, Rachel Allen

Recipe breakdown
Meat - 19
Fish - 13
Vegetarian - 14
Vegan - 8
Dessert - 24
Vegan Dessert - 2

Things I like:
-This is the cheapest of all the magazines and there are a lot of coupons in it, which makes it a complete bargain.
-There is an article about different kinds of gin. Love gin
-The food ideas and photography are very modern

Things I don't like:
-This is not just a food magazine, it's also a lifestyle magazine so it has some human interest stories and stuff like that - fair enough. What I don't need is a set of the most bizarre social tips I've ever heard. Like a tip on how to show empathy, and another about how to redirect a conversation that is boring you - if someone starts talking about how sad they are that their car was stolen take their mind off it by telling them how much you enjoy going for a drive! What?!?
-The front cover looks almost exactly like the Lakeland Christmas advert which is a bit odd, the advert features inside (as well as in most of the other mags) so they really should have been able to spot that.

Vegetarian Living - £3.50
+ 9 Bar. Dairy, Gluten, Wheat free carob coated nut bar (this was delicious)
98 pages of which 17 are adverts
Back page - an article about quinces, I think, and a cookie recipe.
Famous chefs featured - Gordon Ramsay

Recipe Breakdown
Vegetarian - 21
Vegan - 5
Dessert - 17
Vegan - 5

Things I liked:
-This is clearly the most vegan friendly Christmas magazine, I was beginning to wonder what vegans did for Christmas. Almost all of the vegetarian recipes have a note on the bottom about how to convert it to a vegan recipe.
-Some appraiser recipes look amazing (lentil balls)

Things I didn't like:
-Gordon Ramsay's recipes are labeled on the cover as 'posh', that is recipes for things like mince pies! I found this to be be quite off in a vegetarian publication. There seems to be almost an apologetic tone to this, almost as if it's saying 'sorry you have to have vegetarian food to eat, but look, even you're allowed to have a treat'.
-There's something very humorless about this magazine. I know animal cruelty is a big important issue but for a food magazine to be peppered with ads for pet adoption and against animal testing is a bit too blunt.

Great British Food - £3.99
+ 'Festive Feasts'
130 pages of which 26 are adverts
Back page - Interview with Rachel Allen (questions about food, not her age!)
Famous chefs featured - Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal

Recipe Breakdown
Meat - 15
Fish - 8
Vegetarian - 3
Vegan - 3
Dessert - 9
Vegan Dessert - 1

What I liked:
-Interview with Clarissa Dickson Wright, she's such a crank and an abrassive character but I think that's why I like her. She talks about how much she hates Heston Blumental and a few pages later there is a spread of his recipes, it's pretty brave for a magazine to feature both.
-There is also a article about Bompas and Parr, they're so wacky that I can't believe that a magazine would dare to feature someone with so little mass appeal in their most important issue of the year. Quite exciting.
-I love that they give a British alternative to the ubiquitous chorizo in their recipes.

What I didn't like:
-This is the most expensive magazine in my selection and has fewer pages that all but one of the others. Again, the insert just features recipes that could have been included in the body of the magazine, but the paper they use is so heavy and expensive feeling that I wouldn't be surprised if that was out of budget.
-The font of the articles is very thin and tiny (like a mix between Arial Narrow and Agency FB). I'm a young woman with good eyesight but I found it a bit hard to read.

Good Food - £3.60
+ 2012 calendar sponsored by Dr. Oetker and a cheesecake recipe card
210 pages of which 86.5 are adverts
Back page - 4 pages of Tesco adverts and Hairy Bikers Dundee cake recipe
Famous Chefs featured: Paul Hollywood, John Torrode, Rick Stein, James Martin, Bill Granger, Hairy Bikers, Lorraine Pascal, Raymond Blanc, Michel Roux Jr, Nigella Lawson.

Recipe Breakdown
Meat - 39
Fish - 21
Vegetarian - 32
Vegan - 10
Dessert - 30
Vegan Dessert - 3

Things I liked:
-Recipe for Hanukkah biscuits, the only acknowledgement in this whole marathon of magazines that there might be something other than Christmas happening this time of year.
-A lot of reader special offers, like 40% discounts on utensils, stuff like that.
-A lot of recipes of what to do with leftovers, way more than other magazines. One or two of the magazines I looked at had planned their next issue around what to do with leftovers, Good Food is a bit more generous.

Things I don't like:
-This magazine was available with two different covers, one with a picture of a turkey and one with a picture of a pudding. I really don't like this because it makes me feel like I'm missing out on something by not getting both. And what is the point? It's not like doing different Beatles covers, sheesh.
-Next to each recipe, instead of a symbol indicating whether it vegetarian or not, there's a symbol indicating whether it's freezable or not. So you have to read the whole recipe to see if bacon or goose fat is in your apparently vegetarian side dish.
-This is entirely my opinion, but I think the picture of Gregg Wallace and his wife is creepy and unnecessary. I have almost a repulsion for Gregg Wallace, I have to steady myself with a stiff drink before I can watch him shoveling in the food on Masterchef, and I found the extensive coverage of his courtship and marriage gratuitous, so don't really want to be reminded of it.
-The last point, I'm not sure if I like or dislike this, but there seems to be a great deal of emphasis on whether the food on offer is freezable or not. I have a tiny freezer so I don't really care about this, but I suppose others might want to make things weeks in advance and store them for the big day.

Olive - £3.60
+ 2012 Diary
170 pages of which 58 are adverts (including 4 pages of Tesco adverts)
Back page - Food quiz
Famous chefs featured - John Torrode

Recipe Breakdown
Meat - 24
Fish - 11
Vegetarian - 15
Vegan - 17
Dessert - 18
Vegan Dessert - 2

Things I liked:
-Quiz! Answers are going to be in the January edition.
-Vegetarian Mains were inspired by restaurant dishes which I think gives them a bit more credibility.
-I think this is probably the best all rounder. It tries to be everything to everybody there are Christmas, healthy, one-pot, seasonal, 30 minute, party, budget and show off recipes.

Things I didn't like:
-Again, no markers next to the recipes to indicate if they're vegetarian or not.
-It's very innocuous, there is nothing outstanding or offensive about it. I was going to compare it to an ice cream flavor, but that's boring, so lets say if this magazine was a skirt it would be knee length A line.
-The diary is a bit feeble

Good Housekeeping - £3.80
+ 89 Easy Christmas Recipes
This is not strictly a food magazine so I'm not going to do a page count. But just like the other magazines I've looked at I'm not going to include the insert in the recipe count.
Famous chefs featured: Gino D'Acampo, Angela Hartnett

Recipe Breakdown (not including the insert)
Meat - 10
Fish - 4
Vegetarian - 18
Vegan - 5
Dessert - 11
Vegan Dessert - 1

Things I like:
-All in one potatoes and Brussels sprouts recipe, this is roasted so that the sprouts don't become mushy and overcooked.
-Cranberry souffle, looks beautiful and I might try it this year.
-Overall the recipes are quite classic, we're not trying to set the world on fire here

Things I don't like:
-There are a few wildly unseasonal recipes like pea and spinach salad
-There is a calorie count next to every recipe, I don't like this but I see how others might see this as a necessity.
-There is a very odd emphasis on cheating. Good Housekeeping is a magazine for older ladies (I'm an old bag at heart so I actually quite like to have a read of it when I'm at the boyfriend's mum's), these are family women with busy lives so I see how shortcuts might be appealing, but I find it a bit sad, as if it's meant for women who hate cooking but are pressured into doing it at Christmas.

And that's that. I think if you have exactly the same personality as me you will find this guide useful. Let me know if I missed anything. Kisses!

Clam pizza

2011-11-07T21:50:00.003Z

Well well, how low can we go?
Horrible, plastic supermarket pizza. Don't judge!
Add some clams, king prawns, mascarpone, tomatoes, garlic and basil from the window sill. And suddenly something happens, you close your eyes and you're transported... almost to Pizza Express!!!
I kid! It's delicious.

How to motivate yourself

2011-11-06T11:56:00.006Z

Running a blog is really hard when you're quite a lazy person. You want to be lazy and sit in your living room watching Valentine Warner, and every time someone asks you what you're doing you can say it's 'research' and that almost makes you look non-lazy and you can pretend you've fooled everyone.
The trick is to surround yourself with people who have get-up-and-go, my brother came by last night, he was on his way home from jiu jitsu and told me he had an hour before he had to go and watch some Guy Fawkes Night firewors in the park. This is the kind of schedule productive members of society have. I made him a sandwich and started moaning about the redesign of my blog which I was kind of thinking about doing in the next couple of weeks or so, 'No, lets do it right now', he said.
What a cool guy.

Eating at your desk at work

2011-11-03T11:53:00.006Z

Apart from the ubiquitous 'desk lunch', I also tend to have the 'desk breakfast', 'desk snack' and once, the dreaded 'desk dinner'.
Our company moved into a new building a few months ago and I was furnished with my own office and a brand new wood desk. Wood desk that is unvarnished because only losers apparently seal the deal. Yes, there are people out there who worry about meeting deadlines, keeping clients or getting that end of year bonus, but for me the biggest stress at work is how to keep food from staining my desk. It's obviously my own fault for choosing to sit and read blogs while I eat - observe:
I'm going to stick it out until the stains become very very obvious and then flip the table top over. When the other side gets dirty I should probably start looking for another job.

Compost cookie

2011-10-29T08:59:00.004+01:00

The Momofuku chain in New York is one of those hip sexy places where it's hard to get a table and the food is almost secondary. A friend of mine actually went there once and found the ramen to be sub par, but don't underestimate the power of hyperbole. One of their branches is called the Milk Bar and has created a cookie with a mild cult following - the Compost Cookie.
That doesn't sound very appetising, but when you learn what actually goes in, you'll be like, 'yum yum, just not all together'.
I got the basic recipe and method from this site, and beyond the basic mix there is a great deal of flexibility on the ingredients.
First make some coffee (don't look at how filthy my stove is, I have a full time job!).
Pull out all of your favorite snacks and mix them all together indiscriminately, I also added in two tablespoons of used coffee grounds.
Compose the dough, roll it up in cling film and put in the freezer.
Chop into litte disks and put in the oven. These cookies make your house smell amazing, but don't bask in the aroma too long because they start to burn almost as soon as they're ready.
Perfect cookie, sweet and a little savoury.
The Marmite cashews are really good in this, and I don't even like Marmite. Salt and vinegar Kettle chips are awesome, not convinced the pretzels had to be there and Toblerone isn't my favorite. But the coffee grounds are insanely good, long after you're finished eating the cookie you find a ground or two stuck in your teeth, which doesn't seem as though it would be a selling point, but for an addict like me it's a good idea. Probably how I would smuggle coffee into prison.

Mushrooms, I guess

2011-10-18T13:45:00.002+01:00

Do not get excited about foraging. There is nothing romantic about living off the land, getting in touch with nature or driving for two hours to get to your nearest forest.
Maybe it's because I'm suffering from a particular brand of ennui, or maybe it's because I didn't actually pick these mushrooms myself but at the moment sifting through this mystery bag isn't getting my heart to beat any faster.
My dad, who has been picking mushrooms all his life, loves this time of year. When it gets a little too cold for the weekenders to keep populating his patch with their dogs, kids and bikes and he can grab the last of the season's 'bounty'.
Almost two weeks ago he trampled mud through my living room to proudly present me with a bag bulging with mushrooms, I guess. I looked at him darkly, packed the bag into the fridge and ordered a pizza.
We ended up doing something with the mushrooms last night, but I don't remember what it is.
Bof.

Celebrity corner

2011-10-06T11:24:00.006+01:00

I went to a book signing of Supper Club at the Big Green Bookshop near my house last night and finally got to meet one of the people who inspired me to start this blog.
Ms. Marmite Lover talked about her background, family and motivations and I totally felt like a creepy stalker because I'd already read about most of the stuff on one of her blogs. I asked her the very bloggy question about what kind of camera she uses and she doesn't have a fancy one, just some cheap Canon! Take a look at the pictures on her site and tell me what you think.
The book is very luxurious, chintzy and dotted with pretty little drawings, I like that more than a third of it is tips, autobiography and research - ultimately I could probably find all of the recipes on the internet for free if I wanted to, but this extra effort is really worth the price. It's so personal and juicy! And obviously I'm planning to cook from it.
I should probably have asked politely if I could take a picture, focused and framed it properly, but then I remembered that I'm really shy, pulled out out my Blackberry and then ran away. Loser!

Grapevine

2011-10-04T22:35:00.009+01:00

What do you do when you walk into the garden for the first time in months, to do the autumn pruning, and realize that the grapevine you've been saying bad things about all summer is heaving with bounty? You thought it was shriveling but it just won't die.
I ended up picking two huge bowls of grapes, more than everyone in my family could eat before they went off.
I used about half of it to make syrup for the trifle for the Aviation dinner. You put the grapes, vines and all, in a large pot and cover with cover with water, heat very gently for a couple of hours (if it's boiled it will taste vegetably), leave to cool overnight and then pass through a fine sieve. Yummy. If you reduce the juice for a few hours you get a rich almost syrup, no sugar needed, which makes a nice jelly (cold food tastes less flavorful so you have to make sure it's a little sweeter than you would usually have).
Grapes are nice too frozen, as a snack.
I also made some raisins.
Grapes go in,
Raisins come out
There are a lot of options of how to make raisins on the internet, good old sunshine is the best but not practical for me, I don't have a dehydrator (yet), so ended up using the oven. A nice, cozy 7 hours on 95C fan assisted.
'But Sasha' you say 'I can't run my oven for 7 hours, what do you think I am, a millionaire?'
Well it doesn't actually cost that much, maybe a pound, srsly. But if you're really worried use the oven to cook other things at the same time. Meringues need slow, low cooking for example. Or you could slow roast some of the last summer tomatoes for a sauce.
'But Sasha! I don't want my raisins to taste like vegetables!!'
Dude, use a roasting bag, they're awesome.

As a bonus I finally decided to give myself some time to try and make dolmades from scratch. I vaguely followed the instructions in Vefa's Kitchen for the most basic simple vegan version.
What you do is blanch the fresh leaves in water for a few minutes, then fill with a rice, herb and oil mixture, roll up and cook gently in stock for an hour. The leftover blanched leaves can be stored in the freezer.
Wah-lah!

Aviation dinner

2011-09-27T21:52:00.010+01:00

Pan Am is a new show coming out in the States, and while I don't have a particular 60s obsession I don have a Christina Ricci obsession.
I loved Addams Family so much when I was younger, my mum had to have a serious conversation with me about not drinking poison and electrocuting myself. I've watched everything Christina Ricci was in and totally wanted to be her until she lost a ton of weight and got a spot on Ally McBeal. Anyway, I can't wait until it comes out over here and I can start comparing it to Mad Men.
A few months ago, when I was in the throes of Aviation admiration I decided that airline food is actually a glamorous, sophisticated institution and decided to recreated it on solid land. Less life imitation art and more Plato's Theory of Forms, whereby you cannot really know what is real because all you have known up until now could have been a shadow of reality. Who is to say airline food is an inferior kind of food, it might not even be food at all, it's like comparing a chair to a painting of a chair - two totally different things.

Researching airline meals is actually a very fun thing to do, especially if you only have very limited personal experience. The first stop should definitely be Airline Meals, which catalogs reader submitted photos of airline meals (believe it or not). You can spend hours trying to decide what the brown stuff is or how sticky the tray looks, but ultimately it's way too much information.
When I went to University one of the 'rules' we had for writing essays was to quote at least three sources to back up our ideas (yeah, it wasn't a very good university), so I didn't feel comfortable making a decision without some more input. I asked around, and nobody could tell me the last thing they had to eat on a plane. Most airlines don't publish their menus online, but if you're willing to wait for it someone will eventually put a vintage one up for sale on Ebay. I hit the jackpot and got 10 identical PanAm menus from the 60s.
These feel really special, the menu inside is exactly the same but each cover depicts a different destination, exotics such a Yugoslavia, Japan and Portugal etc. The meal on offer, in French and English, is Leek Soup, Veal Duroc with Buttered Noodles, Salad and Dessert. This is a very interesting article about the cost of airline meals then and now and the reason meals are even being offered on planes, count yourself lucky, buddy boy. And let's just say I ended up spending more than £2.50 per head.
Leek soup
It's actually very very difficult to find a recipe for leek soup, almost everything I found had been fleshed out with potatoes which I suspect are there mainly for texture and dilute the flavour of the leek. Here is the recipe of the leek soup I made (but didn't photograph). The taste is creamy, slightly oniony with a great balance of sweetness with the sour notes. Once blended the colour is jade. Simple and cheap (and popular)
Bit of butter
4 leeks, chopped (green parts too)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 glass of white wine
grind of pepper
1.5 pins of chicken stock

Fry the leeks in butter until soft, add in garlic and wine and cook for 5 minutes. Put in the pepper and stock and cook, covered for 45 minutes. Blend, adjust seasoning.

Veal Duroc
Good luck Googling this one. As well as being a forgotten French sauce named after one of Napoleon's generals, Duroc is also a breed of pork, so recipes will be for roasting pork, chops, sausages. Type in 'Veau Duroc' and you'll get one or two recipes in French, formatted in the most mind boggling way. Below is the recipe I used, it calls for things difficult to find in the supermarket,which I suppose is a good antidote to the austerity soup above. I got the veal in Selfridges (but I'm sure there are more cost effective sources), grew the chervil on the window sill and bought obscene amounts of powdered veal stock in France. The stock was the hardest part, the least cost effective option it to make it yourself, you just aren't ever going to have veal bones just lying around. I made the mistake of buying some liquid veal stock from Fortnum and Masons to use on a dry run and the resulting sauce was bitter and rancid tasting. By chance I saw chubby Knorr tubs of the powdered stock on a supermarket shelf in Chamonix and feverishly swept the whole shelf into my basket (you can buy this on the internet btw), the resultant sauce was sweet and savoury, herby and very very good. What's the big deal, why not just use beef? Because in comparison to veal stock, beef stock tastes like fat boy's farts. Trust me.
10ml oil
100g butter
8 veal medallions
40g flour
250g mushrooms
40g shallots
40ml cognac
1 glass white wine
500ml veal stock
1tbsp tarragon
1tbsp chervil

Heat oil and butter and fry off floured medallions, 7 mins each side. Set aside and fry chopped mushrooms and shallots in the same pan, flambe with brandy and delgaze with wine. Pour in stock and reduce until thick. Pour over medallions and sprinkle with chopped herbs.

Salad
Vertical Pear Salad. I love.

Dessert
This ended up being a little disappointing. Initially I wanted to use this recipe by David Lebovitz, which was supposed the be very similar to the pudding he developed for Virgin Atlantic. But I just didn't like it. It had the taste and texture of Angel Delight, which is a bit meh.
I briefly toyed with the idea of serving the dessert they had on the Hindenburg - that is to say, nothing, but didn't have the balls to be quite so conceptual. I ended up making trifles with grape jelly, and my fondest hope is that everyone was too drunk to pay attention to it.
We hope you enjoyed your flight.

Chamonix

2011-09-27T21:38:00.003+01:00

I ended up going on another holiday, I had to. It's very depressing to sit at home and feel deprived, just go.
This is what a tomato looks like in France. All the food tastes good, the wine is cheap and delicious, and the mountain air does something to your body so that even if you have cheese with every meal you will still lose weight.

Chervil

2011-09-09T13:02:00.005+01:00

I'm adding a new tag just for this post because this is something I hope to write more about. The house the boyfriend and I have has a crazy overgrown garden that i'm hoping to make manageable by next spring so the I can start growing stuff for us to eat, learn to photograph is properly and obviously rub it in everyone's face.
Stuff grows there already, things my parents planted, but I haven't been disciplined enough to cultivate it so a lot, a lot of it is going to waste or being neglected. We have a very enthusiastic apple tree which produces sweet delicious eating apples, but the most advantage we were able to take of it was a few jars of jam the boyfriend's mum made and this vegan apple cake (very good).
There is a cherry tree which my dad pillaged, mutant bay bush, grapes that won't ripen because of the cold and a lawn of mint that I unsuccessfully tried to make into ice cream. Better luck next year, loser.
Anyway, this is obviously everyone else's fault, and I'm starting from scratch.
The herb I most want to cultivate is chervil. You never really see chervil for sale anywhere so if you want to use it the only option you have is to grow if yourself. Thankfully it's quite easy to do, and grows almost like a weed. It's a very savoury, almost bitter taste. I think it's grown up, the boyfriend thinks it tastes like grass
The reason I want chervil is to make the almost forgotter Duroc sauce for a dinner party, but there is also a Raymond Blanc recipe for vegetable and cheril soup in the Salute to Cooking charity cookbook I was using last week. And if you're really desperate for some chervil I have bought it in Selfidges Food Hall for the extraordinary price of £2.50 a bag in the past.

Vertical Pear Salad

2011-09-08T11:59:00.001+01:00

From this site. Very easy, absolutely beautiful, but really difficult to eat.

Congolese Chilli Peanut Chicken

2011-09-05T20:53:00.003+01:00

Oh dear, moving house, settling in at work, couple of holidays, all that stuff.
I'm back in the saddle though, for the last couple of months I've been reading a lot of exciting recipes and definitely realised how calming and enjoyable cooking is for me. Yes, it looks like I'm stressed out when I'm chasing the boyfriend out of the kitchen with a knife, or setting my hand on fire, but no, it's very calming.

The area around my new office is very picturesque, posho yummy mummy territory and has an insane concentration of charity shops. Last week I had some kind of crisis and ended up buying six cookbook for about £20, a very good deal I think, all almost new and one with an RRP of £45. More about that later, the one I'm really excited about is this
About a year ago I got into some kind of a charity cookbook frenzy and decided that I really wanted this title. Lets face reality, nobody is going to learn how to cook by reading cookbooks. You probably Google a recipe or your mum teaches you how or you force yourself to learn by trial and error somehow. Cookbooks are fun with pretty pictures, and in the case of charity cookbooks you get 'celebrities' throwing their pearls of wisdom before us swine. I'm planning on making a couple of things from this book, but lets start with something easy.

When I was younger I used to watch a lot of Changing Rooms, it was so retarded but I didn't know any better. Basically a pair of neighbours or friends or whatever would pick a room in their house and allow a 'designer' to redecorate it overnight. The priority was always on doing some kind of weird paint effect on the walls and ruining the room as irreversibly as possible. The homeowners would be asked if there as one feature they would like to keep in the original room, and that was always the first thing that was ripped out or painted.
Anyway, one of the designers was Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
I thought for sure he was gay, the Little Lord Fountleroy outfits were only the first clue. I'm not prejudiced, this was just something so absolutely apparent from his appearance and mannerisms that it never even occured to me that there was a possibility he wasn't.
And then I saw his wife on TV, a chubby, sexy blond. I'm telling you, this rocked my world. I had a very sheltered childhood.
And this is her recipe, based on the food that she used to have when she lived in Congo as a child. It's very simple, onions, chillies, chicken, tomatoes and peanut butter. The peanut butter, of which there are two jars, is not in the ingredients list. A simple mistake to make, but very annoying. And two jars? I used one jar only and this is the result
A pot of bubbling molten lava, with a thick sheen of melted peanut oil on top. The taste is ok, but not amazeballs, and I can think of a better way of getting 1200 calories into my system.

Aviation

2011-07-10T11:44:00.004+01:00

Well here I am in the old familial home. The boyfriend and I have decided to solidify our relationship by buying my dad's old house and my office also had a move accross London, which I definitely recommend to anyone who wants to learn a bunch of new swear words, find out how to function on 4 hours of sleep and substitute meals with caffeine and alcohol.
I now leave for work in the morning, and come back a cozy 14 hours later. If I'm lucky the boyfriends will have done a bit of unpacking while I'm away. If I'm very lucky he'll greet me with one of these as I walk through the door
Is this love? I call it love.
The Aviation was created at the beginning of the century in New York and calls for gin, Maraschino liquer, Creme de Violette and lemon juice and tastes like a bunch of flowers in your mouth. It's strong, I like it.
The first sip fills your mouth with gin, the second sip reveals the delicate cherry-nutty flavour of the maraschino and the very slight flowery, fiery violet notes.
It you read any bartender blogs (this one's very good) you'll know that vodka is looked down on in the industry, it's an alcohol that's praised for it's lack of smell and taste, it's only function is to add strength to the drink. Being Russian I of course have my own views and loyalties, but gin is gorgeous. The point of a cocktail is not to get drunk, it's a grown up drink for grown up people to wind down, chillax to the max, and sit in their new house. Cheers.

Update

2011-06-13T21:31:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, this is no good. Well anyway, I've been very busy lately, moving office and moving house again. Definitely better to do those two things at the same time, I think I read somewhere that stress is good for you and swearing and pulling your hair out makes you more ladylike.

I have a couple of things I'm dying to do as soon as I'm settled, and I bought a Blackberry which I'm very pleased about.

Oh, I've been checking my stats and traffic has actually picked up over the last few months, so really, not posting is probably the best thing for the blog at the moment. Rats.

Update

2011-04-25T14:37:00.002+01:00

I'm kind of over this blog at the moment. Meh.
Went to the monastery for Easter, God bless you. The nun in residence made a batch of apple vinegar from some of last year's fruit from their orchard, and gave me a little bottle. Amazingly delicious stuff, perfect for this April salad weather.
Oh and I fried myself an egg this morning and this is what came out when I broke the shell.
Two yolks. Which I think definitely means I'm pregnant. Jokes!

Update

2011-04-16T16:26:00.002+01:00

Yeah I haven't been doing anything, and I haven't been writing about it because my laptop is broken. It literally broke in two. If I want to surf porn on the internet I now have to borrow the boyfriend's laptop, which I hate doing because he makes me ask for permission and say things like 'please' and 'thank you'. What a freaking nightmare, it's true that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and you don't really find out somebody's character until you're in dire straights.

It's really a generational thing, for Gen Y, like me, speed is a priority. For Gen X, like the boyfriend, everything has to be a bloody procedure. Ooof.

Fakhida bil forn

2011-04-03T23:17:00.012+01:00

Maybe its all of the Masterchef I've been watching, but I kind of lost my cooking mojo. The last couple of weeks have been a greasy blur of takeaways and microwaves. Bad girl.

Anyway, here I am, so get over it. It is what it is.

Maria Kahlife's book on Middle Eastern food, is pretty much my favorite source. My employer is Iranian and I've had the most amazing food at her house, I suppose part of the appeal is the fact that unlike good old Spain or Mexico you can't just jump of a plane and pootle off to get the real stuff, I can't imagine traveling there for a holiday. The situation in the region is uneasier than ever, and it almost seems trite to mention that the political and social unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Libya and inevitably others, will hopefully improve the way of life and how the West perceives the Middle East. Lets hope so. Nobody likes change, but as the anarchist Bakunin put it, the urge to destroy is a creative urge.

Fakhida bil forn is pretty much a Lebanese meat and two veg. You marinade a leg of lamb in garlic, oil, lemon juice, cinnamon and allspice, then roast for a hour before throwing a few shallots and carrots into the pan. I's sliced and served on a bed of rice, which is made with more cinnamon and allspice, as well as lamb mince, onions and nuts. It's all very fragrant, spicy, a little greasy, and very satisfying.

I served it with Foul Medammas, a delicious Egyptian broad bean dish, and Naaz Khaatoon, a very herby Iranian aubergine dip.

Oh, and here is an amazing blog I've been reading, written by an American student in Egypt - he travels through the region making it seem so accessible, and above all, relevant.

http://foodjihad.com/

Vegan cake and a drink

2011-03-15T23:02:00.004Z

I had some of my stepmother's relatives over for dinner, they're very religious and observe the Lent... religiously, which means totally vegan and alcohol free for the next couple of months.
I got in some falafels and houmous (which it was totally tempting to pretend to have made), olives and artichokes, and made guacamole, cucumber dipping sauce, steamed broccoli, fennel salad and lemon risotto. All of which I forgot to photograph of course.
I made this incredible vegan, flourless orange cake which went down LIKE A FREAKING HOUSE ON FIRE!!! Natasha asked for the recipe, it made me so happy, basically you boil a couple of oranges then blend with tofu, olive oil and ground almonds. Very very grown up, tart and delicious. See? Last little piece left.
But the thing I'm most pleased with (apart from almost reducing the boyfriend to tears when I made him hoover and wash all the floors twice before the guests arrived) is my incredible alcohol free cocktail. You just crush together some raspberries and ice and pour over equal measures of apple juice and tonic. I swear to God it tastes like there's booze in there, that's why I've dubbed it Miley Cyrus. Best served out of vintage girly goblets.
Oh, and everything went smoothly despite it being the freaking Ides of March, and almost nobody got stabbed...

Pork Tenderloin with Celeriac Creme and Puy Lentils

2011-03-15T22:27:00.005Z

Bonjour! I've been fancying it up lately - in my own mind, anyway - and decided that what's missing in my relationship is extra un-necessary work. I've decided to try and do a Sunday lunch for the boyfriend and me at least a couple times a month.
I'm using the back section of I Know How To Cook by Ginette Mathiot (one of the giant Phaidon volumes), the bit where famous professional chefs give meal ideas.
I quite hate celeriac, and it features in this dish quite prominently, but actually boiled in cream and mixed with lentils, the flavour is very subtle. We both agreed, and so much so that I was prompted, for the first time, to defile a cookbook and leave a note for my grandchildren.
The recipe was to serve 4, but somehow there didn't seem to be any leftovers, don't know wht happened there...

Shrove Tuesday - Spinach Pancakes

2011-03-10T20:35:00.003Z

What do you do after an entire weekend of overindulgence?
Eat these amazing spinach pancakes. They are the absolute epitome of my least favorite Americanese adjective - 'healthful'!
I don't think I'm selling them properly when I say that these toxic waste green babies are very easy to eat. There isn't much of a savory taste, so these can be munched equally well with maple syrup as they can with say... sour cream and caviar?

Part four - Ube ice cream, urmasice and umeshu

2011-03-02T21:52:00.006Z

Dessert was a simple affair of aforementioned ube ice cream, umeshu and urmasice. Umeshu is a Japanese dessert wine made from the Ume fruit, like a plum or peach or something
This is what my 'drinks cabinet' really looks like all of the time.
Urmasice is a Bosinan cake which I made three or four times, trying to get it right and failed miserably every time. Basically you're meant to bake buttery little dumplings and then soak them in lemon syrup overnight. They never held their shape in the oven, someone suggested freezing them before baking, but I didn't have any room in my freezer because of all the freaking ice cream in there! The taste was nice though, sweet buttery and lemony.
Dig the cute espresso cups?
Ciao!

Part three - Uzska

2011-03-02T21:49:00.005Z

Uzska are the traditional Polish dumplings served either bobbing along in borscht or on their own. I bought this fantabulous gyoza press from the Japan Centre when I was(seriously, I pretty much cleaned that place out)
which makes the process a lot simpler. Just make a dough, kind of like a pasta dough but with sour cream mixed in, roll out - you don't need a pasta machine for this - cut little circles out, place the circles in the press (with a teaspoon of the filling) and squash together. Perfect every time. The filling is meant to be either mushroom or beef - I used both and served them with a beetroot and green apple salad and a scoop of horseradish cream, sprinkled with yuzu ponzu.
This was the most successful dish of the night, most people had seconds (maybe I was just super stingy with the portions?)
And of course, the most important lesson learned was that all food tastes better when eaten off of Royal wedding commemorative plates
It should have been me!

Part two - Urchin Croquettes

2011-03-02T21:40:00.009Z

I woke up at 5 am on the Thursday before the party, sprung out of bed as energetically as is possible under the circumstances, had a cup of coffee whist brushing my hair and ran out the door. You have to picture what it's like to run on pure adrenalin, for the last two weeks I had been frantically making to-do lists for every day counting up to the big finale, and now as I stood on the (packed for some reason) train to Poplar station I could triumphantly check off 'wake up early to go to Billingsgate Market before work'.
This is the view I took in when I got off the DLR.
The dawn light filtered thorough the Millennium Dome's support towers and bouncing off the Bank of America building. If it wasn't for the smell of fish you could almost ignore the single story structure of the market, which looks and feels out of place in suit land.
I made my way down the motorway, along a tall metal fence surrounding the market. 'How do I get in?' I wondered, then I saw this
Sheesh, take it easy man, didn't realise it was such a big secret!
The selection was interesting, lots of razor clams, plenty of whole salmons for a tenner, some fish I couldn't identify. The tuna loins were already vacuum packed and priced at around £13 per kilo (half of what you would pay at a supermarket!) but obviously they're not going to rip open a package and cut you a little slice so I had to buy the smallest piece I could find - 4kg (I did get a nice-face discount, and some relationship advise from the trader, so I feel as though I came out on top in the end).
Here it is
I couldn't stop photographing it, it was so beautiful, a deep dark meaty colour. I couldn't help sneaking slivers as I was portioning it up and the taste was just incredible. I cut a big piece for my dad and another one for the boyfriend's mum, and set about grinding the rest up to make the body of the croquettes.
The recipe is fairly simple, you grind together fresh tuna, onions, and a loaf of white bread soaked in milk, season to taste and form into little balls, fry to seal and then finish off in the oven. I mixed in a little chopped urchin into each croquette - I was desperate, ok?
This proved to be the most difficult course, I mean look at it, what a bloody mess!
It's meant to be some kind of half assed charcuterie plate. I pickled some cauliflower in sugar and cider vinegar, and almost killed myself looking for the cheese. Urbriaco is an Italian cheese soaked in wine. I thought I'd found a trader in Borough Market, and dutifully wrote 'Saturday - wake up early and go buy the cheese' to do on the morning of the party, and get this - dude never showed up! I went home seething that he decided to sleep himself out of a 100g sale that morning, and stopped in at Waitrose to get some unpasturised hard cheese (Un-pasturised, get it?), a poor second choice. Luckily I found out thorough this blog that Selfridges Food Hall also carries Ubriaco and dispatched the boyfriend to go and fetch me some. Phew, crisis averted. This is why you should always read blogs, children.

The un-erotic story of U: Part one - Ugro Soup

2011-03-01T22:55:00.019Z

All I can say is that I got very very drunk, and I don't even want to tell you what happened to my camera. Urgh, I really actually need to erase that mental image...

Anyway, here we go.
Our magical story starts a few weeks ago and involves a lot of Google-fu, trips to random food shops and stress, stress, stress.
I've hit every single charity shop near my house and office looking for nice random crockery, but still ended up purchasing most of the extra soup bowls or whatever from Zara Home. I found a revolting rotten chair in the street, and me and my brother spent an entire Saturday sanding and re-upholstering it
Well anyway, this isn't a DIY show. Had to borrow 3 chairs too. These are the menus -
Good old Uccello and Uglow and Utrillo too, I went to three different galleries to pick up the postcards - had to cancel date night because Friday is when the National and Tate Modern are open late - the ol' bf wasn't very happy about that. Someone might have called someone obsessive and someone else might have called them a big stupid dumb ugly gorilla back. I don't know who these people are, I just went to the check out and paid for my postcards! YouknowwhatImsayin'?
Also, clock the totally awesome 'umbrella' table cloth. Maybe I am a little obsessive.
The first thing on my list was Ugro, a Tajik lamb soup made with noodles and meatballs. Long story short, I didn't take a picture, but my version was basically 'minimalist' if that's what you want to call it? It had no noodles or peas or potatoes, just meatballs and cubes of carrot. I bought a shoulder of lamb, cut the meat off of it (got a picture of that)
boiled it up with onions, garlic, bayleaf and sumac to a thick broth, ground the meat and made that into meatballs.
Honestly, trust me when I say this, there is no way to have a letter 'U' themed evening unless you have a meat grinder.
End of part one.

Ume, Ube and Uni

2011-02-22T11:39:00.007Z

I don't have a good answer when people ask me why I chose the letter U as a theme for my next dinner party. I think I was really drunk a couple of months ago and kept saying 'I love you, I love you, I love you' to "someone" and I thought this was really funny. Really funny and a great idea.

Believe it or not, there aren't a lot of foods that start with the letter U. I toyed with the idea of pig uterus as a starter (found in a Chinese supermarket, they look like little curly shoelaces) but the mere mention of this prompted revulsion in even my most adventurous friends. Pretty much the only other raw ingredient I can think of is urchin (that's sea urchin, not homeless children, David) so I started with that. I remembered this article from The Guardian from a few years ago, dude was working his way through the alphabet, cooking an exotic meat for each letter and settled on urchin, he had to do a lot of leg work around London to find the stuff and ultimately nabbed some in Selfridges. Well this was years ago, I followed in his footsteps only to be told that they no longer sell them, I ended up finding some in the Japan Centre. Maths fans (that's all of you, right?) work this out - this guy was offered 3 kilos for £72, which he declined in favour of 25 grams for £6.50, terrible deal, but I suppose not every one wants a ton of this stuff in their freezer. I got mine at 100 grams for £18, 300 grams in total. The sum makes me cry a little but it's still better than the price he paid.
Uni/ urchin is an acquired taste, it's buttery, a little salty, a little sweet and I think quite bitter. Served as sushi, the sweetness of the rice and savouriness of the nori mask the bitterness a little but it's still not something I would describe as a delicacy. The other obstacle was how to make this expensive, complicated ingredient stretch to feeding 10 people. The Guardian recipe struck me as a little uninspired, but most of the other recipes I found online suggested making it up into a pasta sauce as well, which just did not suit my show off sensibilities. But timing is everything, urchin is in season during the winter, and one of my favourite blogs devoted a few posts to it, one of which included a recipe that mixed the roe into the pasta mixture. I love it when the planets align like that.
Their recipe requires something called yuzu kosho, which I found both in wet and powdered form in the Japan Centre. The yuzu is a citrus, the exotic love child of a lemon and a grapefruit - taste wise, common in Japan and cultivated somewhat in the US as well, but virtually unheard of here. And yuzu kosho is a blend of the zest and green or red chilli (here's a recipe if you want to make your own, another amazing, inspiring blog). My special Japanese source at work tells me that yuzu kosho is typically used as a soup base, and you can tell, it's a very strong concentrate - not something to just spread over your toast in the morning.
The pasta rolled out in a beautiful leathery sheet, very fragrant, and flecked with specks of this and that. But when cooked I found it lost any delicacy and became a big bowl of starch, barely suggesting any flavour other than chilli unfortunately. I don't think that this is a problem with the recipe, I only used half of the urchin quantity specified, it's an image problem. I don't really want to serve people a pile of pasta, it's a bit yawn-tastic, and doesn't showcase the ingredient as much as I'd like. Next
Ube is a kind of sweet potato, popular in the Philippines, so much so that ube ice cream is a totally normal thing available in the shops. So wierd, I wonder if it will ever catch on here.
Old David L is my go to guy when it comes to ice creams. Maybe I should buy another ice cream book at some point, for contrast, but I don't see the point at the moment - as soon as I bought the machine I realised that don't actually like ice cream all that much. It's too creamy, and sweet :( (this is the bit where the boyfriend looks over my shoulder and calls me some kind of precious princess)
Anyway, in the book that I do have he mentions an ube ice cream he had in San Francisco a couple of times and gives a recipe for a sweet potato version. I found this jar of overly sweet spread in Chinatown and literally went to town on it!
The taste is nice, sweet in an indiscriminate way, it'll do. Oh and blah blah blah, something about ume.

100!

2011-02-21T21:52:00.003Z

Well this is my 100th post, woo woo, it took me a year and a half to get here, which is a bit dismal really. I always mean to write more often, and I cook a lot more now than I did a year and a half ago, but I suppose I'm just a layzeeass. The other factor is that I only really want to write about interesting stuff, topics that I would be interested in reading more about, not just random look-at-this-pasta-that-I-had-for-dinner-last-night.
I've also been working on a pet project, another ridiculous dinner party - based on the letter U. I sent all my friends an email with 'I love U' in the subject line, which I'm sure went straight into their spam folders.

Self Flagellation through cooking: Valentines Day Weekend

2011-02-15T12:41:00.005Z

I went back to the Diocese of Sourozh this Saturday to help out with the meal after their Patronal Feast. I wrote about actual place a few months ago, if you go on the website in the link you'll see exactly one photo of me, sitting glumly in the background on the day after the night before. But this time it was different.
I arrived at 10 am on Saturday morning, was asked if I wanted breakfast, replied in the negative and was given a bowl of soup instead. Thank God, because it was the last food I saw for the rest of the day. Well, that's not quite correct, I saw plenty of food, for the next 12 hours I peeled and hand grated so many vegetables I thought my arm was going to fall off. By 9 pm I broke through the wall and got a second wind, and eventually went to bed after midnight when I could feel my legs anymore.
Sarcasm aside, it was a really amazing experience. For two days I was surrounded by the most inspiring women who in one way or another choose to give their lives to God. There was Maryanna (who I kept calling Annalisa for some reason) who's about my age and is a nun in training, she's living at the monastery and made the most incredible lentil carrot and potato soup.
There was Maria who brought along a few jars of her amazing pickles and gave us all the recipe (a lot of vinegar and a lot of sugar), more amazing though was her ability to stand around in the kitchen all day in high heels with no complaints. She came to Orthodoxy late in life, only about 6 years ago, I talked to her about the animosity I felt for the church after my mother died, and she had the same experience when her best friend died unexpectedly - but she got past it.
Katya, our fearless leader, gave me the recipe for the best fish croquettes I have ever had and some advise about going to Billingsgate market for the tuna - my idea of showing up at 4am armed with a cosh and the Haggler's Handbook is all wrong, you can come later in the morning (as late as 7am) and still get a great deal and no one will murder you in Canary Wharf.
Any here's the only photo I had time to snap
This is the kitchen I was working in, and the girl in the corner is Tatyana, total veg head. Maria and I had six or seven different jars of gherkins, some commercial and some home made, to test to select which were going to go in the salad. We would open a jar, taste a little slice of gherkin each, decide if they were too salty or sour or spoiled, the slide the jar over to Tatyana and ask if we should throw them away, she would eat the whole thing and say there was nothing wrong with them. Great system.

I came back to London on Sunday night, super exhausted. For Valentines day, the boyfriend, who had spent the last 5 years convincing me that it's a made up holiday and he doesn't believe in it, blindsided me with a blender. All my friend cringe when I tell them stuff like this, like when he got me a frying pan for my birthday, but I think it's romantic! It also meant that I felt compelled to make him a cake. This heart cake. It turned out so terrible I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it. But never mind, he still loves me.
Kisses xx

Bacon-Rap'd Scallops and Simon Says Salmon

2011-02-06T04:12:00.006Z

I've been a bit of a layzeeass recently, and have been putting off writing up the last two of Coolio's recipes that I've tried but until I do it I can't move on to other things so hey ho, lets go.
Bacon Rap'd Scallops is one of the first dishes in the book, the legend goes that when Coolio started his catering company a client requested bacon wrapped scallops, Coolio doesn't eat pork so he improvised with 'beef bacon' which I used my incredible Google-fu skills to discover is an approximation of bresaola.
The other recipe is for baked salmon, and is meant to be made with your kids. Cute. Here's some photos.
Result:
The scallops are very good. Salty and sweet and garlicky and expensive to make.
Salmon is super plain, even though it looks kind of gross in this picture, the garlic and onion sprinkled on top are almost uncooked but the whole flavour is subtle and nice. For someone who damn near drinks chilli sauce from the bottle, it's a nice change of pace.
Coolio is cool, the book is pretty good. Next.

Cooking with Coolio: Finger-lickin', Rib-stickin',Fall-off-the-bone-and-into-your-mouth Chicken

2011-01-19T20:52:00.005Z

Yes, this is my new book and I don't feel the need to explain my decision.
But I will say this - you know when you get really drunk and wake up the next day covered in bruises, or next to some random dude, or to find that your facebook status says something like KJJJ/R#'23-8923JM9HSDJK. Well I bought this cook book, so lets just get past it.
At the risk of sounding redundant, Coolio is so cool. I had no idea that he had his own catering company or book until I saw him on Market Kitchen a few weeks ago, the book is uber-rad - when Coolio is not referring to himself in the third person he's cooking dishes that makes women's underwear disappear and tastes better than your mother's nipples (I swear to God you guys, srsly!!!).
Now, tell me, what common dish these random ingredients all feature in?
I couldn't find any chicken wings in the supermarket so had to get thighs instead, chopped up a couple of peppers, garlic and an onion, and started weighing out the wet ingredients. I've never bought cream of chicken soup before and in the can it looked like this
-like fricking custard! And you know what? IT TASTED LIKE CUSTARD TOO!!!!
Anyway, you mix all that stuff up and shove it in the oven for a while.
Result: The sauce was way too water, it didn't thicken up at all, if anything it got more and more diluted which I think happened because thighs have more fat than wings would have done. Oh, and it makes your whole house reek of vinegar.
The taste is very nice, but more so the next day when you can smear a piece of toast with the jellyfied sauce and make yourself a chicken sandwich.
Just in case you were wondering, I checked, and my panties did not dissolve from eating this. I asked the boyfriend if it tasted better than nipples and he said no. So there you go, as comprehensive as you can get. Here's Coolio cooking the dish and messing about with some fat kid.

Salt and Pepper Tofu and Crab with Lemon, Parsley and Chilli

2011-01-17T21:28:00.004Z

My final two dishes from the Marie Claire book are both semi deep-fried and semi really quite fresh. I hate hate hate deep frying crap - it's almost like daring yourself to have an accident, a deadly serious accident.
Anyway, I started by marinading the tofu in ginger, garlic and lemon the night before, then you roll it around in Szechwan pepper, cornflour and salt, deep fry and serve with a cool, sweet, spicy cucumber sauce.
I accidentally made these too salty (that's a serious accident in my book), but they were still pretty nice and I might make them again just to munch on while I'm watching 'my stories'... on a Saturday night.
The second other thing I made was these little fried toasts covered with a mix of crab, lemon and parsley. I use tinned crab and it was meh. It was also one of the few recipes in the book that didn't end with the ominous 'serve immediately'.
There are a few heartier and less fussy things in the book like muffins and salad, there are also drink recipes - classic cocktails and lighter things like punch which looked interesting, but I'm just over it and I want to move on.

TV

2011-01-13T21:12:00.003Z

OK, I'm watching Hugh Fearnley Knowitall's Fish Fight thing, and god how dreary is he? The first half of the show is all about farmed salmon - how dare those bastards in the fish farms and the supermarkets make salmon cheaply available to all, when there's all these sardines we could be eating!!! In principle I agree with him, but maybe I would be able to take him a little bit more seriously if he wasn't on the verge of tears pretty much constantly.
Oh noes! Sad face is sad :(
I was cracking up when I saw this piece of 'equipment' LOLZ

More Marie Claire

2011-01-11T19:14:00.007Z

As the old adage goes, if you want something done - ask a busy person. After the relative relaxation of being sick and in bed all over Christmas I'm back in the saddle and going at it at an alarming pace. There are simply not enough hours in the day to get everything done, I mean, I only managed to find time to throw away our long dead Christmas tree yesterday. Stress, but it means that if anyone asks me to do anything I sigh, add it to my list and stay up until 1am to finish it. Still I prefer this to lounging around on the sofa all day, exasperated because it'll be an hour before Cake Boss comes on. Between running around for work, family and housework I've still had to fin time to eat and this is what I've been having from the Marie Claire Food and Drink book.

Squid stuffed with risotto.
You start off by making the most delicious risotto I've ever had - simply fry onions with garlic and thyme, add the rice and some lemon zest, dribble n the stock and finish with fresh parsley and the juice of the zested lemon. It's really perfect, without the cheese you avoid the slightly cloying aftertaste some risottos have and the caramelised onions have it out with the tangy lemon juice for some sort of sweet and sour battle in your mouth - absolutely delicious, I would have been happy with a big plate of this for dinner. But of course risotto isn't really a party food any more than stew, or leftover soup is, no no no, you must be crazy. What you're actually meant to do is stuff the still warm rice into squid bodies and roast for half an hour. I cannot emphasize how difficult this is, my top tips are to buy really big squid so that you won't have to insert the rice into their openings GRAIN BY GRAIN! And inject your hands with botox before you begin so that you won't feel it when your skin burns off as you plunge your fingers into the molten risotto. This is almost impossible to do with a teaspoon and when I tried to employ a piping bag IT FRICKING MELTED which I had no idea silicone did - that's how hot it was.
Here are the pretty little squid out of the oven
And here they are even prettier cut up into circles ready to serve to all your fancy pants friends.
I will definitely make the risotto again, but will probably not go through the S&M of stuffing it into squid. This really tasted better freshly made, not after half an hour steaming in the oven. Oh and here's a little secret, if somebody serves this to you at a party there is a 100% guarantee that their hands were all up in your risotto up to the elbow.

Roasted pepper tortillas
I had to read the recipe all the way thorugh twice to realize you are meant to hide little bits of tuna in these tortillas. Annoying, but apart from that, this was really simple. You shove a couple of peppers in the oven, and while they roast mix up some sour cream dough sprinkled with cumin. Pinch off little balls and roll out (using a wine bottle still instead of a rolling pin, sigh). Fry in a dry pan for 15 secons on each side, sear the tuna in the same pan and wah lah!
Not nice. The mix or roasted peppers, balsamic vinegar and basil was wierd and a little synthetic, tuna was tasteless compared to it and tortillas were ok but a bit austere. All rolled up together it was strangely bitter.

Pickled salmon
You buy a little tub of sushi ginger, spoon off some of the pickling vinegar and chop a spoon of ginger, add this to freshly grated ginger, lime juice, chilli I think and mint of all things! Then pour over slivers of raw salmon and leave to marinade for 10 minutes. The salmon turns a little opalescent like ceviche and then goes to stuff some chicory leaves.
Quite nice, but tasted a little soapy because of all the ginger. I mean pickled AND fresh? Come on, there are other ingredients you know.

Spiced biscotti
Finally, I rounded off with some little biscotti biscuits. It's the boyfriend's mum's birthday today and since she always insists on no gifts and there is really only so much chocolate you can give someone I decide to make these from the recipe in the book - which turned out o be very very straightforward and hassle free. The spice comes from cinnamon and cardamon, as well as dried figs and apricots and mandatory sprinkling of almonds.
Apart from the ridiculous non-biscotti shape these are pretty good, I munched on a couple as I was carrying them to her house (and am eating another one now), she liked them and I'll make them again (maybe add a little almond extract next time).
Ok that's it, I recon Marie Claire has enough juice in it for another week and then I'll lose interest and move on.

Duck and Marmalade Turnovers and Ginger Hearts

2011-01-03T15:39:00.006Z

Today is the first day of the rest of the week and I am beginning my new little game of cooking from one cookbook exclusively for a couple of weeks. The first book I've selected is my most recent purchase, the Marie Claire Food + Drink written in 2001 by the Australian food editor for the magazine, it's a fluffy collection of cocktails and canapes. What better way to live my fabulous life than to feed myself finger food for dinner for the next fortnight? Lets go!
The boyfriend and I have been pretty sick during the holidays so missed out on all the crazayzee partying people our age should have been indulging in, so I roasted a duck for us a couple of days ago to cheer us up, and the leftovers are going into cute duck and marmalade turnovers.
It's really simple, you fry up some onions and bacon, add the red wine, duck, marmalade and voila!
Quite a revolting shade of purple, this is the point you will get quite depressed. If you were really preparing this as a party snack for your wonderful friends, at this point you would start crying and drink the rest of the bottle of wine. But actually tastes quite nice. Then you cut out circles of ready made puff pastry (rolled out with the empty wine bottle because you still don't have a rolling pin, deadbeat), tuck the filling prettily in, and bake.
Result:
Very, very nice. Rich and tangy, these are very addictive. I was worried that they might be too sweet, but the marmalade we had is so bitter and disgusting that it actually works very well.
While I was waiting for these to bake I made a batch of Ginger Hearts from the book. I've never made gingerbread before, but compared to shop bought stuff, this is light and fluffy and almost not sweet enough. The ginger doesn't hit you until you've almost swallowed it,subtle is the word you'd use. Quite nice. Also, I didn't have any heart shaped cookie cutters, so these are more like ginger blobs. Oh, and I learned how to make gifs.

New Year's resolution

2011-01-01T15:55:00.003Z

Well the blog has been going for over a year now and it's become a really big deal for me. I'm a total layzeeass but I try to cook something interesting at least once a week. If fact, whenever I make something that isn't from a book, i feel a bit guilty (sometimes I buy a book because I know it has a specific recipe in it, even if I know how to make it already). So my New Year's resolution is to channel this annoying, impractical focus in a deliberate direction, instead of just hopping from book to book like some slap-happy rabbit. I am going to select one book and use it exclusively for a week or so, this will hopefully force me to be a bit more organized, maybe chuck a few rubbish books away, plan, budget, learn, grow goddamnit!

Christmas!

2010-12-28T13:53:00.003Z

I feel like I've been running around like a lunatic for the last couple of weeks, Christmas this year has been a real pain to try and organize. As usual we went to the boyfriend's mum's for Christmas Eve and had an amazing dinner I didn't help prepare at all. Capon and roast vegetables, lots of cheese and a load of booze. I've never seen a capon before, and assumed it was just a big chicken, but it's actually a castrated rooster, and is apparently illegal to breed them (well you wouldn't be able to anyway, would you, wink wink) in the UK, but it is legal to sell them, so most capons come here from France, where they're a big deal for Christmas. Delicious, tastes just like chicken.
We finished the meal with the pudding I made a month ago. The boyfriend is really funny about his pudding, he threw some kind of a diva strop when he found out that I hadn't put any currants in it - he's the only person I know who actually looks forward to the pudding at Christmas. I was in the kitchen with his mum and she quietly suggested that maybe here was too much food already and we could save the pudding for New Year's, well, anyway, somehow he heard her from the other room and put a stop to that little plan. It was worth it, I'm really being sold on the pudding agenda, it was delicious.
The next night, on actual Xmas, I went to my parents house, and we had a ton of smoked salmon each, and then ate the other pudding in the living room, whilst watching this film.
Perfect xxx

Christmas pudding, candied peel, tangerine chocolate sorbet

2010-12-15T22:14:00.005Z

I'm a bit of a deadbeat at the moment, the boyfriend and I have been eating a lot of sandwiches and leftovers instead of cooking something lovely. It's the first Christmas in the new place and rather pathetically I haven't really made much of an effort since we're spending the bulk of the holidays at our parents' and hey, read the side bar, I'm not a fricking millionaire! I just about dragged home a loser Christmas tree home this weekend but then realised that I don't have a big ole box of decorations anymore so ended up draping a bunch of my cheap tacky jewelery over it. Some of it glows in the dark. Here's my favorite little area
Also got a Hello Kitty advent calendar, which I've since abandoned because there were no pictures in the windows and the chocolate was horrible - that alone pretty much almost ruined my whole Christmas right there!
Anyway, I'm trying to get into it, watching a lot of cooking shows etc. and made Christmas puddings again. Last year I didn't know what the heck I was doing and consulted three different books, this year it was even worse. I missed stir up Sunday by about two weeks, it's fairly redundant to say that I was hungover, and for some reason I'd decided to rescue a few tangerines on the turn and make my own candied peel.
Candied peel is pretty straight forward to do, just boil up citrus peels in a sugar syrup, but of course I messed this up because I balked at the amount of sugar you're meant to use and as a result my little shreds of peel didn't crystallize - rats!
Anyway, I made the puddings, soaking the dried fruits (cherries, cranberries, dates and mango - shut up, yes, mango. I didn't have any currants) in whiskey for a week because I didn't have any Madeira. Also I didn't have any nutmeg or cloves so I dumped a load of orange blossom water in there. I'm not happy about any of this by the way, I know I didn't prepare properly and the results are bound to be questionable, there are no excuses. Only one word to describe it - deadbeat.
I'll conclude this account of a day in the life of a lazy loser with a simple sorbet form David Lebovitz. It's just sugar syrup, tangerine juice and chocolate. I had the wonderfully tangy, zesty leftover syrup from the candied peels, and leftover over ripe tangerines - perfectly economical.
Result: Believe it or not, the sorbet was too cold to eat in the winter. I let my portion melt and dipped biscuits in it. The taste is really great, like grown up chocolate orange, but not sure if I will go to the effort of making it again

Guacamole

2010-12-14T21:54:00.004Z

I bought this book ages ago because I heard that there was an interesting recipe for vinegar in it, including how to make and cultivate a 'mother', which I wanted to try. But unfortunately there are 500 other pages of recipes in this book as well, each one using a bazillion different ingredients which are not native to this country and impossible to find. Well, we'll see about that when my general masochism reaches the next level, but for now lets make do with a nice simple guacamole.
There was some kind of buzz over the summer about some supermarket guacs having no avocado in them whatsoever, which is in equal measure pretty disgusting and quite incredible. How, I wondered, did they manage to compile a collection of chemicals to taste so authentic? The answer is that I apparently had no idea what guacamole is made out of. I mean I'm telling you, it's not just avocado and salt!
The lovely piggy molcajete is the traditional tool for making and serving the guac and I can see why, while it grinds the base ingredients very efficiently, they're not quite rendered into complete mush.
Result:
Lovely! At the risk of sounding redundant, mmmmm it's really fresh. Spicy but mild and cooling at the same time.

Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie

2010-12-03T11:28:00.010Z

Moron, what's wrong with you, don't you know that lemon meringue pie is made almost exclusively out of eggs? How are you going to make that vegan, you must be some kind of a dumbass.
Well anyway, it's my dad's birthday and because the Orthodox season of fasting is upon us he's going vegan/pescetarian for the month of December. Fun! (I'm so glad I don't live there anymore).
So cast yer eye on this sorry collection of objects. What possible cohesive dish could be conjured up from the bunch or nonsense?
I'm using the austere pie crust recipe from Sugar Blues (with a few modifications), a war time lemon curd recipe with marrow substituted for eggs, and a really bizzare sounding mix of what I would call chemicals (but really aren't) for the meringue top.
The crust is easy and boring and goes in the oven for blind baking.
Then, as illustrated in this delightful cartoon from Marguerite Patten's 'We'll eat again' you take your marrow, skin and gut it (or 'peel and seed' if there are any children reading this), weigh the pieces and then casually weigh out the same amount of sugar! Um, no. Normally I would follow a recipe even if seemed wrong to me, just out of curiosity, but I am not the sugar baron and haven't got piles of it lying around in my yard. My marrow ended up being 500g and I measured out a scant 150g of sugar and that's your lot. I suppose if you were canning it to keep for the winter, you'd want more sugar to help preserve it. But I'm planning on eating mine.
You mash the steamed marrow add in the lemon and sugar, and cook for half an hour. If you close your eyes and hold your nose it's just like lemon curd. If you open your eyes, it looks like this and smells like cabbage soup. But nobody's really interested in the curd! It's the egg-free meringue that you really want to see.
I had to go to Planet Organic for the xanthan powder, which is a thickener, 8 times more potent than cornflour, and made from sugar.
And I had to drag my ass to Holland and Barrett for the soy protein isolate which is made into a drink for body builders and vegetarians to get more protein, I think. This is my favorite summation of it's many uses, gleaned from Wikipedia
"Soy protein is used for emulsification and texturizing. Specific applications include adhesives, asphalts, resins, cleaning materials, cosmetics, inks, pleather, paints, paper coatings, pesticides/ fungicides, plastics, polyesters and textile fibres."
Yum yum, I'm ready, lets go!
The recipe I used is from this blog, but if you're too lazy to click I'll write out the whole thing at the bottom of this post.
At first it really thew me that the measurements for the topping are in teaspoons, really, good luck trying to whisk two teaspoons of anything together. It's wierd and annoying. But then you gradually add in more and more ingredients end it thickens up and starts to approximate whipped eggs, it's pretty amazing (and also, your arm falls off from whisking for a solid 20 minutes - use an electric whisk)
Result:
Here's two things I learned whilst making this thing, the blow torch your friends gave you for your birthday won't work unless you fill it with lighter fluid first, and if you leave a pie under the grill for too long it will burst into flames and you'll have to start again from scratch.
Anyway, the second pie was pretty amazing. I swear to God, you can't tell the difference between this and the real thing. Visually, the topping is flatter and less solid than a meringue usually is but the taste and chewiness is identical. The curd has a slight whiff of the vegetable before you cover it up with with meringue and isn't quite as thick and glossy, but I would imagine, much better for you. Try it, really it doesn't take any longer than a real lemon meringue pie would.

Recipe for Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie

Pie crust (makes enough for two small sandwich tins)
2 tbsp semolina/ cornmeal
1 cup plain flour
1 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp sunflower/ rapeseed oil
water
Combine the dry ingredients and mix in the oil until well blended. Slowly add water until the mix forms into a firm dough. Set in the fridge for 30 minutes, then knead, roll out, line your pie dish and blind bake on a high heat for 20-30 mins. (until cooked)

Lemon curd (makes a lot, half a litre)
1 marrow, peeled, seeded and steamed. Around 500g
1 lemon, juiced and zested
150g caster sugar
1 tbsp vegan margarine
Mash the marrow and gently simmer for 30 minutes with sugar, lemon juice and zest, and margarine. If the mixture isn't thickening up as much as you want, add a little cornflour mixed with cold water. Taste and add more sugar, lemon juice if you'd like to.

Meringue topping (makes just enough for topping one pie)
Sugar mixture - 6 tbsp caster sugar, 1 tsp soy protein isolate powder, 1/2 tsp xanthan powder

4 tsp soy protein isolate powder
5 tbsp water
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix up the sugar mixture and set aside. In a large bowl whisk together the soy protein powder and water until thick and well blended. Add the vinegar and vanilla and whisk until it begins to thicken. Gradually whisk in the sugar mixture, one tablespoon at a time, until it thickens ups and becomes white.

Sardine and Tomato Risotto

2010-11-12T22:57:00.008Z

We haven't had any fish for a while, and I was trying to prove some point to the boyfriend (honestly, we have so may fights every day I can't keep really keep track of everything) so I made Nigella's poached salmon again a few days ago. Last time I made it I had to throw the poaching liquid away because it was so oniony, but this time I used quite mild white onions - the fish didn't suffer and I recovered just over a pint of tasty tasty stock.
After all the bad things I said about Sophie Grigson I still find myself crawling back to this fish book, all the recipes I've tried so far work. Another thing I like is the very practical step of providing substitutes for different kinds of fish. Fish, after all, is a seasonal thing and so much depends on where you live or what DEFRA's got to say about it. So for example, this recipe is listed in the book as anchovy and tomato risotto, but anchovies are now on the endangered species list (according to the Marine Conservation Society) so even though I love them I'm trying not to eat them. The alternative listed in the book is sardines, and the other substitutions I'm making are tinned tomatoes for fresh, parsley parsley parsley for all the herbs listed in the recipe and fish stock for chicken stock (why chicken stock with sardines in the first place?).
Oh and clock the fancy vialone nano rice, at £5 a kilo it's the most expensive ingredient I'm using (and that's including the wine, ahem) and I'm lucky I saw some today in a deli near work otherwise I'd probably be using basmati rice... or alphabetti spaghetti or something!
Anyway, you just mill around the kitchen for half an hour or so, stirring and adding liquid. The sardines melt into the sauce and you add the tomatoes just before the end. Ta-da!
Result:
This is plate-lickingly good. There's no cheese in it, so you don't get that sightly rancid melted grease aftertaste. It's mildly salty, very savoury and the best bit is that there's lots of it!

Seasoning a molcajete

2010-11-12T22:56:00.004Z

A friend of mine got a Kitchenaid mixer for her birthday or whatever a while ago and I got very jelly. It was so big and beautiful and all the TV chefs use one, and it does so much! I've seen attachments you can get for it, to turn it into a meat grinder, a juicer or even a pasta extruder! A fucking ice cream maker!!!! So cool, I couldn't sleep for a week. Anyway, I finally brought myself round to the fact that I can't afford one, and even if I got one I would never use it often enough to stop feeling guilty about the price. So the low tech options for me age going to be the whisk, the mouli, and some kind of grinder.
I've never been able to use a proper mortar and pestle, there's no grip and everything flies out of the bowl and rolls around on the floor like an asshole. I saw some buzz around Thai granite mortar and pestles which has a slightly rougher texture than say, marble, and is meant to be a little easier to use (interesting thing about it here). But for the longest time I've had my eve on a Mexican molcajete. It's a wide shallow bowl on little legs made out of volcanic rock and is essential for making guacamole and salsas. You have to have real volcanic rock, apparently some cheap ones are made with a mix of cement which chips off and gets in to your food (here is a shop that sells the good stuff in London). And really the lava rock chips and gets in your food as well, which is why you have to prepare, or season it before using.
Step 1 is to soak it overnight, this gets rid of the surface grit
Step 2 is to get a handful of rice and grind it into a fine powder. It will start off looking like this, and four fricking hours and bright red and throbbing hand later it will look like this.
Gray powder that's a mix of rice and ground stone. This step will have smoothed the surface down a little and will have ground away the looser particles.
Step 3 is to grind some aromatics - I'm doing peppercorns, garlic cloves, cumin seeds and olive oil, and then you leave the mixture to sit for a few hours or overnight. The point is for the oil to penetrate into the remaining pores and seal them to create a smooth surface but with a coarse texture - does that make sense?
These babies last forever and get passed long from mother to daughter and the flavours of everything you grind in it are imparted into the stone so each successive salsa will be tastier than the last - but it pretty much obligates you to only grind similar things. We'll see when I finally decide to make a pile load of guacamole.

Bitch ripped me off!

2010-11-05T23:15:00.007Z

No, not really. Even I am not that vain and deluded. But dig this clip from a recent episode if Nigella Lawson's new show where she mentions the black supper scene from A Rebours and then makes a squid ink risotto!

Poulet aux olives

2010-11-04T23:25:00.009Z

So I got way too much food for the my birthday party (oh and booze too, by the way. But I'm not complaining about that, don't change the subject), so now I have a big ass bowl of leftover olives. My first obvious thought was eeew gross, how many people have had their ratty mits in that bowl? But I found a recipe that suggests blanching the olives to get rid of some of the salt, but will also take care of all the toxoplasma and plague or whatever.
You see, now that I have to spend all my money on stupid things like rent and the electric bill I really can't brig myself to throw food away. Maybe that's how I picked up last week's stomach bug...
Anyway, I picked up this book a couple of years ago, it's kind of a collection of family recipes from Casablanca, North Africa was colonized by France so this is fusion cuisine here. The book is replete with romantic tales of going to the market to buy a live chicken, I mean seriously, believe it or not, they didn't have supermarkets! OK here we go.
You brown the chicken pieces, then stew for an hour or something like that with most of the other ingredients and then shove in the blanched olives 20 minutes before the end and wah-lah!
Result: Aline Benayoun writes that this is the chicken dish she always loved best growing up, and that's exactly what it tastes like - a stew that someone's mother used to make for them when they were little, and they really liked it, and the memory was formed. This is quite an inelegant pan full of random ingredients, every mouthful should have a bite of meaty chicken, a still salty olive and a bland potato to help everything blend in your mouth. It's nice. Smoky from the paprika, savory and sweet, but could do with some lemon. Also, two potatoes is just not enough. Meh.

Birthday loot

2010-11-04T22:42:00.009Z

So I had a little party a couple of weekends ago, and it's taken me this long to recover - factor in a nasty stomach bug, decorators and the boyfriend's mum moving in for a week. Or maybe I'm making that up.
My friends have all been so generous, and of course they all know me so well that I got a buttload of kitchen stuff. Check it out
A couple of mugs (Mr Happy to counteract Mr Grumpy hahahahahahahahaha)
A really interesting cookbook full of quotes from Zola - more on that later
A set of cute mini quiche tins and a fricking blowtorch! I've wanted one for a while but never had a good enough excuse to get it for myself, but I now see a lot of individual lemon meringue pies in my future.
Funny ceramic pie bird - good excuse to get a nice deep pie dish
A cast iron tortilla pan and a molcajete, both of which need to be seasoned.
Also, a cookbook I borrowed from a girl at work so many times it wasn't even subtle that I wanted it. Bad.
A pretty wooden bowl. When we first moved in to the place and I was looking for nice salad bowl, I saw lots of nice wood ones I wanted and I couldn't afford any of them. This is very welcome (but apparently not welcome enough to photograph)
And a mouli grinder from the boyfriend's brother and his girl. They can't have known that we don't have a blender yet, but I really wanted one of these instead and I don't know if you noticed, but I always seem to get what I want.
And lets not forget the normal human sized fridge that my dad got to replace the tiny loser student one we had.
Thank you so much!
All in all, great birthday xoxo

Kartoshka Cake Pops

2010-10-24T21:45:00.010+01:00

Yay! It's my birthday in a few days - this is definitely the year that I get that pony...
The boyfriend and I are having a little party and wanted to get a big ass cake to feed the mob we invited. There is a bakery near by our new flat so we casually sauntered in, all cool, like we knew what we were doing, and I told them what I wanted

Make custom Glitter Graphics

They told me that it was going to be both impossible and out of our price range - amateurs!
So I suppose I'll have to figure something else out.
Cupcakes are kind of old hat, and my new oven is too tiny to make them in significant amounts so I'm totally joining the newest new band wagon and going the cake pops route. A cake pop is a piece of cake, mushed together with icing, shaped into a ball and served on a lollypop stick. If that sound retarded that's because it is, but I'm going to use a Russian recipe for the best cake in the world, so should be fine.
I remember these little dumplings from when I was little, they're called Kartoshka, which means 'potato' because presumably calling a cake 'little shit' wasn't a very Communist thing to do. You basically bake a sponge cake, break it up into crumbs, mix in some condensed milk and cognac, form into 'potato' shapes (feel free to draw on 'sprouts' with whipped cream if you feel like it) and serve to little kids. If memory serves, three or four of these are meant to make you very drunk. I got the recipe from this book, good luck with that
I didn't take a picture of the cake because as soon as it came out of the oven and I put it on a wire rack to cool, the boyfriend came along and started cutting himself a slice in a very matter of fact way. Obviously I hit him over the head with the rock I always carry around, and then had to drag his lifeless body out of the door, down the stairs, across the road, and dump it in the canal behind the house. That took like 40 minutes, so by the time I came back and wiped all the blood off the floor, the cake was cool. I don't have a food processor yet so I used a cheese grater to crumble it. Here are the ingredients by the way
At this point you're meant to mix in some sweetened condensed milk, one cake should take about 3/4 of a tin. Or if you're feeling fancy you can cook it down into a dulce de leche, always very nice, or if you're in a really good mood you an use this amazing goat's milk dulce de leche. There are no words in the English language to describe how delicious this stuff is. It's sweet but also a little tangy from the goat's milk, and there is white wine in the ingredients list which adds a bit of sourness, this is probably the nicest thing I've ever put into my mouth. They boyfriend got it for me in a Mexican grocery store in Bethnal Green. I miss him so much...
You might also notice a bottle of genuine Armenian 5 star cognac in the background, trust me, that's the shit, those Frenchies don't really know what they're doing when it comes to alcohol. I ended up pouring in about a cup, trust me (again) that's the correct amount, if that seems like too much to you then get back to me when you grow a pair (I might also be interested in hearing from you when you grow a pear).
Form the mix into little balls and leave to firm up in the fridge overnight. This gives you enough time to call the police and confess, assure them that if he makes it he won't be pressing charges, visit him in the hospital and tell him that you hope he learned his lesson.
Result:
Here's the mugshot, OMG yummo. For the party I will dip them in melted chocolate and coat in sprinkles, but for now I'll enjoy them in the manner they were meant to be consumed - for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Sweet and Sour Pork

2010-10-18T22:11:00.007+01:00

The boyfriend went to Spain for a long weekend to visit his mum - what a selfish bastard!
When you're living in a flat you can barely afford you kind of stop going out, and when your other half goes away for four days all your sources of entertainment vanish - you can't play drinking games on your own, I've tried, it doesn't work. I don't know how single people do it.
But the one good thing about being on my own is getting to indulge the cheesy, awful cravings that no one must ever know about. My local charity shop is always a good source of food porn.
I love Chinese food, it's my go to takeaway, and there's one thing that I always want and can't persuade anyone else to split with me. The sweet and sour, gross yuk yuk yuk, but I just can't resist that toxic looking sauce. I always thought there was a mystery to Chinese cooking, but look, come on this is just ketchup and vinegar! According to the book, this is an authentic dish - ahem, excuse me while I don't believe you, but whatever, check out these ingredients.
Pork, yeah ok. Pepper and onion, makes sense. Egg and cornflour for deep frying (which I hate doing, it's just so dangerous! And the fire blanket in my new kitchen is hung just out of reach near the ceiling, very exciting). Ketchup, is a totally bullshit ingredient, the boyfriend usually doesn't let me keep this stuff in the house (watch this, all about how mayonnaise is better than ketch on your chips). Rice wine vinegar, an entire fricking bag of sugar (!) and two jars of mystery vegetables - the recipe called for Chinese pickles, nice and vague.
Result: Yeah, my pancreas has been getting pretty snooty lately, what with all the insulin production, and trying to digest all my food like he runs the place. You gotta show em who's boss, so I like to threaten him with a bit of diabetes whenever I get the chance. He can take it, this didn't really have a whole bag of sugar, only 170g. And really that's only a teacup full, but you're not meant to eat the whole serving yourself, this is meant for 2 people, so it's more like 85g of sugar each. The recommended daily allowance is 90g so we're free and clear! (ketchup contains sugar... but... um.. shut up).
So, little jokes aside this was really way too sweet. It tasted just how you would expect, which was great, but I never want any ever again. I'm not a snob, and I don't really care about what goes in my food, as long as that food is totally delicious and not something that people would have to dare you to eat (this is what a boyfriend is for, people). This was nice, but I would probably not make it again. And I just can't get this reference out of my head

Pirojki

2010-10-11T20:47:00.007+01:00

Yeah I got a place where I get this stuff. I shouldn't really talk about it, it's just something to take the edge off, you know?
Nah mate, that's not Charlie, just a bit of yeast.
Live yeast is pretty amazing stuff, I got this in a Russian shop within Wood Green shopping center and really it's the only place in London I've seen it for sale, out in the open at least. I'm sure you can probably stroll into a bakery and ask for some but that doesn't really guarantee anything. Most people who bake use dry yeast, which doesn't like me very much and almost always refuses to work.
Anyway, yes, I'm baking.
I finally decided to see if the oven at the new place works properly, and of course I had to do it in the most stressful way possible. I invited a couple of girls from work for dinner and planned to serve them a big bunch of Russian stuff, which pretty much meant I was shopping, cooking and cleaning all day on Saturday and Sunday - you know, woman's work. I switched on the oven to preheat it for a cake, and got a noseful of the most revolting burnt bleach smell, the landlady hadn't cleaned it properly, so gross. It took the boyfriend all afternoon to scrape it clean, and I ditched the cake idea and went out for a little stroll instead.
These are the ingredients for dough for little hand pies, pirojki in Russian. Usually when I make these I'll buy a pack of shortcrust pastry from the supermarket and a pack of puff pastry and squish them together, but now that I'm almost a real adult I guess it's time to learn how to make it from scratch. The packet on the right is of kefir, a cultured milk drink that's totally good for hangovers. The way to make it is of course pretty nasty, you have to get a special kind of mushroom and dump it in a pint of milk and the next day you get a slightly thick, tangy load of kefir. You fish out the mushroom, give it a rinse and pollute another pint of milk with it, the kefir is your to drink. I actually have a friend who has one and she keeps threatening to give me the offshoot, once you get it you're pretty much obligated to keep it alive with a fresh supply of milk every day. I'm thinking about it.
Anyway, the dough, I got this recipe from a blog and the woman who posts it recommends putting the bowl with the dough in a basn on warm water to rise - such a good idea. After two hours it goes from this
to this
You then roll it out into little circles, if like me you left your mother's beautiful marble rolling pin behind when you flew the family nest, then use an empty wine bottle (or a full one, if such a thing is to be found in your house) and fill them up. I made half with cabbage and half with beef and egg. Bake them in the oven for a bit, serve, and get a wrist fetishist to take the photo (yeah, that's a thing)
Result:
Well I tasted the dough before it was baked and it was pretty delicious, tangy almost meaty with a warm yeasty flavour. So I was a little disappointed that once baked it turned super dry, but stayed soft. I think I need to try again...

Coca Cola Jelly

2010-10-04T22:34:00.003+01:00

Well I had a bottle of wine for dinner last night, and decided to make a jelly with my boyfriend's name on it for dinner tonight. Anybody got a problem with that?
But looks a bit butch, lets bedazzle it a bit, bitches love that shit.
Yeah girls!

Recipe here

Sauerkraut

2010-10-03T10:05:00.003+01:00

Now that I have my own (almost) flat, it's time to start turning my kitchen into a science experiment. The boyfriend and I kind of have an unspoken understanding that I won't go into the box room/office and he won't go into the kitchen. I literally couldn't sleep last night thinking about all the smelly projects I'll finally be able to embark upon. So lets start with something easy, sauerkraut. This is my dad's recipe and the results are always amazing. All you do is shred a head of white cabbage and a couple of carrots, and then layer them in a clean jar, sprinkle each layer with a teaspoon of salt and kind of scrunch it down with your knuckles, try and compress it as much as possible. The salt and friction with tear the first layer of skin off of your knuckles, which is very cool if you're going to a party later. People will ask you what happened to your hand, and then you can slam your drink down and scream 'Stay away from my man, bitches!' and everyone will want to be friends with you.
Anyway, after the final layer you cover the top of the jar with an unshredded cabbage leaf and figure out a way to weigh the whole thing down somehow, next time I go to the beach I'll look out for a nice big rock. Now, I've seen recipes for this that require you to top the whole thing with water to make sure all of the cabbage is submerged, this is wrong, and the best way to make sure your sauerkraut rots instead of fermenting. If you've used enough force the cabbage should start reacting with the salt immediately and releasing enough liquid to cover it completely. Should look like this. At which point, try and stir in a big spoon of sugar
Leave it for at least a week on your counter, poke it around a bit every day to make sure a bit of oxygen gets to all the layers, and then eat or store in the fridge (if you have a fridge that's big enough to store a jar in. I currently don't).

Correction!

2010-10-02T20:56:00.003+01:00

The friend referenced in this post has demanded credit! (or some horse shit like that) So please enjoy this video of some guy I went to school with (Jack Brotchie), and other beautiful boys, being asked slightly creepy questions by Peter Lorre. Look out for the one with the calm human face.
And after that, watch this totally awesome cooking video! I love you, internet. x

A new place to hang my hat

2010-10-02T19:35:00.005+01:00

So here's what happened - for the first week in our flat we had no internet access. The my loaned us his wifi dongle, but for some reason it wouldn't let us into any hot and nasty adult sites, of which blogspot is apparently one. I lost the cable that connects my camera to my laptop in the move. I spilled water on my phone and it stopped taking pictures. I was really really busy at work after my 'holiday', and clearly the universe was conspiring to keep me from posting anything. My car broke down, we ran out of gas, there was an earthquake, a terrible flood, it wasn't my fault!
We got broadband finally today, and I used my stupid chicken brain to discover that I can just take the memory card out of the camera, I don't need a cable to get my pictures. I put my phone in a bag of rice for a couple of days and it dried up and totally works again, I'm pretty much back in business (but nobody reads this blog anyway, so it doesn't matter).
This is my new kitchen, it's actually in the contract that we're not allowed to change the colour of the walls, and check out the baby fridge, yikes!
and this is what I've been furnishing it with
Like a robbed a frickin' little kid's tea party! I'm sure all of this crap won't seem so cute in a couple of months, but this is the deliberate look I'm cultivating. Every time I come home with shopping bags the boyfriend rolls his eyes, moans and says 'Well, what fresh new fuckery is this?' and then I give him a little present
I'm also kind of into demented salt and pepper shakers at the moment. Nobody I know keeps these on their dining room table, they're not very fashionable and it's kind of a chore to fill them. I guess if you're cooking for yourself you'll just add salt and pepper in the kitchen, right? Well yes, that's why I got 4 of them
One's for salt, duh, one's for white pepper, one's for sumac (kind of sweet, lemony and peppery at the same time, I'm addicted to putting it on salads), and the last one for cayenne. I had a little daydream about having like 20 shakers lined up on the table filled with all different kinds of pepper, and I would, of course, always select just the right one for my meal. What a buffoon I'm turning into...

Uha

2010-09-21T09:13:00.005+01:00

Well I'm back from Moscow now, and moved into my new flat (!) so I'll try and get all the old stuff out of the way before I regale you with fascinating accounts of eating beans out of a can - that's all I'll be able to afford to do for the next couple of months.
Anyway, Uha is a simple fisherman's broth made with fish heads and anything else you have on hand (or in sink), kind of like a stock really.
I kept the sturgeon's head and tail and boiled it up with an onion and a potato for a couple of hours, if you have a bay leaf throw that in too, if you want to. The result is a thin, cloudy broth, but the taste is rich and very satisfying. The amazing thing about sturgeon is that it has no bones, it's all muscle/flesh and cartilage, no scales and the flavour is earthy, meaty and fresh at the same time. Best fish head to make soup out of, but just look at that photo. I'm going to have a new tag to attach to posts that feature something that looks like something else, if you get my drift. I think I've managed to produce the most unappetising food post in the world today.
By the way, no internet in the new place yet, so now I have an excuse for being so slow.

Moscow: VDNH and sturgeon

2010-09-08T18:48:00.009+01:00

Well here I am in Moscow. Dad and I had to come in for a week to do some work and we're staying in his wife's flat in VDNH. That's pronounced ve-de-en-ha, not V.D.N.H, and stands for Exhibition of the Accomplishments of National Agriculture and is basically a gigantic park built in the 40s to showcase mighty Russia's power and glory, with all of the (now former) republics displaying their best in a glorious pavilion each, with about a hundred other pavilions dotted around the entire area - and I can't overestimate how huge this park is, you can walk around for a couple of hours without seeing all of it, You'll get tired by the Film Exhibition Hall, you'll want to turn back by the spaceship commemoration Gagarin's ascent into orbit, but you'll be too tempted by the Exotic Bird House and carry on. Did I mention that all of these are out of use and in a general state of disrepair? Unfortunately with the fall of communism the state stopped supporting the permanent exhibition and as entry had always been free there was simply no point or fiscal possibility of carrying on. But the buildings themselves are amazing, most of the facades still have their original ornamentation, well worth taking a look at. Some have been taken over by shitty clothes shops and general toot stores, and some still have authentic products for sale, like the Armenian Pavilion has a huge selection of cognac. If you're in Moscow, even though this is kind of out of the way, you should plan a visit.
Anyway, there's a really great indoor food market near by with old ladies selling their home made cottage cheese (no jokes, seriously, be nice), a Tajik bakery with every kind of lavash freshly made in a huge clay oven and the most gorgeous samosas (lots of cumin, and so light!), butchers with seemingly every cut of meat you can dream up in your most perverted fantasies (I saw a large pile of lamb balls in the window of one, and a packet of chicken necks), a Korean kimchi stand (there are tons of North Korean immigrants in Russia) selling my two favorite things - shaved preserved carrot with chilli, and something called 'sparja' which is actually pickled yuba and I'm totally making both when I get home. And finally a fish stall. Moscow is landlocked to the point that fresh fish is impossible to obtain, whatever is on the menu in restaurants is alway almost 100% guaranteed to have been frozen, you can sometimes find salmon steaks lying around but the only way to make sure your fish is fresh is to buy it live. The bigger fish counters have tanks of live carp around (packed in like a pile of shit, that's why they always taste so bad), and sometimes pretty big crayfish, but today was a first for me, and I saw a tank full of sturgeon, bloody expensive compared to everything else, but I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity again. The lady behind the counter (fish girl?), deftly fished out the liveliest specimen, threw him on the floor and hit him on the head with a hammer before quickly gutting him. Maybe it's a consequence of feeling nostalgic for my homeland, but I thought this was all very romantic. I paid my money, took the bloody bag and strolled on home.
Incidentally I read a whole series a little while ago on the Japanese fish killing technique Ike Jima, and it pretty much proves that the manner of slaughter affects the taste, but also, interestingly, that fish doesn't always taste best the second it's killed and gains something from 'resting' for a day (much like any other meat, so makes sense.
Obviously I didn't have recourse to any fish anesthesia, but I cut the head and tail off when I got home and bled the fish in ice water for half an hour before putting in the oven. No sharp knives so I didn't even pretend to bother filleting.
Result:
There are many different kinds of sturgeon, from the mighty caviar laden ones up north, to the piddly kind clogging up the waterways. It's a freshwater fish, and a bottom feeder so was expecting the earthy dirty taste, but while this definitely had that it was also sweet and meaty. Very meaty, in fact while I was looking around for a recipe I came across a blog that praised it as a superfish as it's apparently almost impossible to overcook, it's quite fatty so always stays moist. Texturally it was almost like red snapper. Yum!

Taramasalata

2010-09-01T22:20:00.009+01:00

I'm so incredibly lucky to live in London. I got really drunk a couple of day ago and apparently kept telling the boyfriend that "all I want is just to have everything I want, whenever I want it, that's all". Drunken tautology aside, in London I can pretty much step out of my front door, wonder around for a bit, and come back with everything I was looking for (*wink wink*). When I was growing up, you know, behind the ole' iron curtain, you got what you were given in a very Oliver-esque way. My first banana when I was about 8 was a really big deal, my brother and I were really into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but had no idea what pizza was, that sort of thing. Until a few years ago I had quite narrow horizons, I didn't really care what went into the food I ate, I was only interested in the taste. On our first date I quite arbitrarily told the boyfriend that I didn't like pork because it was smelly (despite being a proud Spaniard he took it quite well), I had a similarly good reason for disliking all Greek food, it was too herby. I used to delight in telling people that mushrooms were gross because they were really like something that grew on someone's foot. Ginger tasted like soap and black bean sauce was washing up liquid. Mangoes taste like onions. Blah. Now that I eat almost everything I tend to get quite short when someone comes out with a stupid comment like any of those. The boyfriend won't eat freshwater fish because of the earthy, dirty taste - moron.

Anyway, when I saw a pot of smoked roe in the Greek Cypriot supermarket down the road from me I got very excited. I love taramasalata and even finding out that it's made out of fish eggs, raw onion and stale bread doesn't put me off. The recipe is from Vefa's Kitchen but it's pretty simple and also quite flexible - basically you put the ingredients into the blender one by one. Apart from the stuff pictured you can also add almonds into the mix but I didn't have any.
Result:

No, not really, but close. I'm not really sure why it came as a surprise to me that the total yield was going to be a bucket, and the appearance would be 'Primrose Garden' from the Dulux catalog. Mmmmmm
I didn't put enough bread in the mix so this is saltier and sharper than the stuff you would get in the shop, but hey, at least there's a lot of it, right? Apparently there are a two types of roe you can get, the acrid orange stuff I used and a delicate white variety which has a nicer, milder taste. Most people use a mix of both. Fancy bastards, I suppose these are the same people who don't have to pick up their blender mid-blend and give it a shake to speed things along.
Oh, but the good news is that this stuff will last 17 years in your fridge!

Update

2010-08-29T15:13:00.003+01:00

Ooops! I missed this blog's one year anniversary by a couple of weeks. The boyfreind and I have been busy looking for a real flat to move in to like a couple of real adults. We found a cool place, but nothing is 100% set so I'm having to type this with my elbows, whilst also crossing my fingers, touching wood, spitting, swearing and not breaking any mirrors (the swearing is optional).
I have a couple of posts I'll publish in the next week or two, but in the mean time, enjoy this thought - what the view from my bedroom will be at the end of September...

Pizza, Jump-in-the-mouth

2010-07-23T10:40:00.010+01:00

Veal!

But pizza first. I love pizza, but it's hard to get the exact taste and texture combination that everyone enjoys. Whenever I'm trying to order a pizza in some place there are always at least two or three that I want to try, so I have to persuade the boyfriend to order a different one than me so that I can have both. Every restaurant has a different crust too, from the Pizza Hut balls to the wall ten inch thick, to this place which makes them so thin that I think it barely constitutes as a pizza at all (but is bloody delicious). I've always been tempted by the moist looking crusts that I've seen on New York pizzas in films (the bit in Saturday Night Fever when John Travolta gets two slices of pizza for breakfast and eats them squashed together... mmmm), but haven't encountered anything similar here. Most pizzerias tend to make crusty crusts. So what's the problem? Make your own.
I'm trying to steer clear of recipes that involve yeast, because I'm a dirty stinking coward, and there are two that I've earmarked to attempt. First is the Perfect Pizza from Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Total Perfection, but I'm still waiting for the whip, chains and ball gag that are mandatory for attempting any of his recipes, to be delivered. And second is from Not Only Spaghetti! which is just so simple, it's almost ridiculous. I didn't really like to do this but I've copied out the 'recipe' if anyone wants to try.

Take about a pound, 1oz. baking powder, and water (or milk in some recipes), salt. In some cases sieved mashed potatoes may be added. Make a dough and leave it to rest for 3 hours, then knead it again and divide in sections which are then rolled out into rounds about 6 inches in diameter and about a quarter of an inch thick. Put these on a greased pan and cover with any combination of the following; peeled tomatoes, anchovies, sliced onions, mozzarella or gryuere cheese, chopped mushrooms, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, black olives (stoned). The pan may be greased with lard. Cook in a very hot oven and serve immediately.

Doesn't get any more straightforward than that! One of the very first recipes I made for this blog are from this book, and at the time I lamented that proper measurements or temperatures weren't given. Now I'm like, whatevs, ain't nothing but a thang.
Here are the usual suspects
I made the dough, put it in a bowl to do whatever it was planning to do for 3 hours and started in on the appetizer - Jump In The Mouth.
When I told the boyfriend what I was making he lol'd and said he couldn't believe that the author or editor of the book would translate Saltimbocca so literally. Apparently it's a very popular dish in Italy and Spain of strips of veal wrapped in ham and fried with sage. So delicious that all you have do do i open your mouth and in they jump!
But first a word about veal. Veal is a by product of the milk industry therefore if you drink milk, eat cheese, and slather yourself in whipped cream, you have an obligation to eat veal. I really don't see the logic in consuming lamb instead of mutton (courgettes instead of marrows?) but not their bovine equivalent. Veal isn't cruel, not in Britain these days. Foie gras is cruel, oyogu hone is cruel, monkey brains is cruel! Plus veal tastes really good.
Off my soap box, I bought this piece of veal in Sainsbury's, it wasn't cheap, but the butcher behind the counter gave me a coupon for a £2 discount which made me really happy. Ever since I stumbled on this guy in America basically using coupons to get free food from his local supermarkets I've been fascinated with coupons. Supermarkets use so many incentives to attract your custom that if they're willing to just give things away, and you'll shop there anyway, you might as well take advantage of it.
Results:
Eeesh what a bloody mess this jump-in-the-mouth looks like. More like i-jumped-from-a-five-story-building-kids-don't-do-drugs. But it's absolutely delicious. The only changes I would make are obviously the presentation, and the overpowering scent of sage. It's a very medicinal flavour and next time I might just use a few sprigs to season the cooking butter, instead of attaching a leaf to each piece.
The pizza is a beaut. I didn't roll the dough out as thin as ought to have done but it was still cooked through yet chewy, not brittle like I had expected. I might play around with the toppings in the future but this is a good place to start.
Heston, I'll be with you in a few minutes, please assume the position.

Divine Liturgy

2010-07-19T15:39:00.005+01:00

This is Hastings.
Magical, isn't it? By the time I made it to the beach I was so exhausted I could barely move, let alone look for something interesting to take a photo of. I didn't know what to expect from the weekend, but nothing prepared me for what happened...

We arrived late on Friday night, rushing home after work to pack a few things and then piling into the car for the 2 hour drive. I'd been there before for Easter, but since then they have built a new kitchen plus an open sided extension with another oven in it, I was show around and then slumped back to the B+B for a few hours sleep. We came back at 8 am on Saturday (I made loads of jokes about how I didn't realize that there was an 8 o'clock in the mornings as well hahaha) and after a little breakfast I was whisked away and put to work. For the next 13 hours I washed mountains of dishes - the hard core way, no gloves, no washing up liquid (an organic mix of mustard powder and baking soda, works quite well), I peeled and chopped 10 kilos of onions for the onion and barley soup we were to have for dinner that night. And then another 10kg for tomorrow night's soup, along with carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, celery and one of those giant bags of lentils. The knives weren't very sharp and I got a blister on my hand from all the force I had to use (very Anthony Bourdain on his first night as a chef). I got things stick under my nails, minor burns, cuts and scrapes. I lost all feeling in my feet, and I still can't get the smell of onions off my hands. But the feeling was incredible, I felt so useful, a vital part in a functioning machine. I took along my fancy camera to take pictures of everything I was doing, but of course there wasn't time. This is the only paparazziing I was able to do.
I finally sat down to have a bowl of soup for lunch at 4pm. The composition is horrendous. This is Katya, the incredible organiser, coming to ask if I wouldn't mind peeling a million tons of potatoes. Just behind her you can see the giant 30 liter vat for the soup, even empty I could barely lift it.
A word on Katya, I've never met anybody who compares to her, when I grow up I want to be just like her. She seemed to survive on no sleep and no food, and still had limitless energy. She lives in the diocese part time and also has a flat in London and works in the city. She's in charge of all the administrative duties and making sure the practical aspects of the property run smoothly. She had to answer to the nun who lives there full time and ministers to the spiritual mandates. At every minute of the day, somebody would come up to Katya and ask a stupid question, this is the scourge of modern religion - the church volunteer. Mostly older devout ladies, these people had very original interpretations of the concept of being useful, if I was in the same positions, I would be very tempted to lose my temper, empty my entire vocabulary of sarcasm on their heads and storm off. Katya obviously did none of these things and exhibited the most inhuman amount of patience I've ever seen. What is a stupid question? May I please have 11 olives to garnish the salad?
Yes garnishes aren't dead! Jump back!
Apart from the soups I also helped make some traditional Russian salads which are wheeled out for every special occasion and which everyone from the old country loves loves loves.

There's Olivie - often served in Spanish restaurants as Russian salad - a delicious amalgam of cooked, cubed potato, carrot, and egg, along with peas, gherkins, sometimes apple, and either ham or prawns, held together with lashings and lashing of mayonnaise.

Seledka Pod Shuboi - Salted herring layered with cooked potato, carrot and beetroot (held together with lashings of mayonnaise) which in my house arrives at the table as a glorious purple orb, but here was a canvas for an amateur Kandinsky to decorate with wild combinations of swirls, rectangles and circles, rendered lovingly in peas, strips of carrot and dill.

Korean carrot - the most delicious application for carrot in the world. Pickled lightly in cider vinegar with onions and cayenne. Not a native dish, but some kind of bastardization of kimchi, gleaned from all the North Korean immigrants in Russia. When I was making the lentil soup I put a few chillies in it and was immediately reprimanded by some old lady who told me that devout Orthodox Christians like plain food. If I had to, observing lent for 6 months of the year, eat vegetarian food and not be allowed to spice it up, I would kill myself. But then I'm not very devout.

One thing that really struck me over the weekend was the way members of the religious community talk to their underlings. As a very very occasional volunteer I was spared from most of this, but witnessed an incredible amount of criticism for the smallest infractions. For example, at one point there was no more counter space and Katya put a heavy cooking put on the floor instead. The nun walked in, had some kind of a fit, and basically tore her a new one. This was completely bizzare to me, but my stepmother eventually explained. She said that when she first started volunteering in her local church choir 20 years ago she had the same romantic view of the church, you know, all smiles and warm hand shakes, brandy with the vicar and teary eyed gratitude. Instead she was pretty much told that she wasn't really welcome, and who the hell did she think she was, anyway? After a few days of thinly veiled hostility she decided that this wasn't for her and was all but ready to quit when during a chat with the priest (something about Jesus) she realized that this was all a test. The Orthodox Church wasn't there to bow and scrape in front of her for a bit of singing here and there. A lot of people think these days that organised religion is on the ropes and will be glad of anything they can get, so subsequently whoever shows up often has an attitude and tends to think that they are 'it'. And the point of the mindless criticism and hostility is to force people into humility, and to try and improve themselves. If you walk around thinking that you're so great, there's no room or motivation to try and better yourself, and at the same time you have to realise that there are things and situations that are bigger than you and that you can't control. I love this, the approach really tickles my masochistic, servile streak, and I know I would be responsive to it. But it's not for everyone, I explained it to the boyfriend and he said it sounds like a brainwashing cult (is there any other kind?) which is pretty preposterous considering he's a Catholic!

Anyway, after an exhausting day I crawled back to the B+B, had a shower and passed out until 7am the next day.
Sunday was even more hard core. Gone was the gentle pace of chopping veggies and deflecting stereotypical female cattiness (yes, I know you have a family recipe for this, it's famous and you're amazing, but back off!!), the wasn't time to dawdle as everything had to be plated up whilst the Divine Liturgy service was going on, punctuated by mad dashes out of the kitchen to confess and receive sacrament. I stood by the giant pot of bubbling soup filling terrines with a giant ladle until I though my arm was going to fall off. Then rushed around the cramped dinning room collecting up the empty plates and depositing dishes of salad. What I wouldn't give for Nigella's asbestos hands!
Finally by around 2pm it was all over. I sat on some garden steps with a plate of potatoes, wild eyed and hungry for my first meal of the day, washed down with a glass of kvas. I never knew how tiring just standing up is.
I have no idea what my brother, dad and his wife were doing all of this time apart from choir practice. They could have been shoveling cement or catching butterflies, I'll never know and I don't want to know. We drove to the beach and I lay there reading Charlotte Roche's Wetlands as an antidote to all the spiritual work I'd done over the weekend. Everything was good. Amen.

Special Soup Weekend

2010-07-16T11:07:00.007+01:00

Back in March I spent a weekend helping out at the Diocese of Sourozh with their Easter shenanigans (so disrespectful and inappropriate to refer to it as shenanigans, but go with me here). I'm not particularly religious, but when we were younger my brother and I were summarily dispatched to the summer camp run by the Orthodox Church in London to meet up with other Russian kids and get out of our parents' hair, so yeah, it's all connected.
So back in March I was invited to return in July to help out with their celebrations of the Divine Liturgy, I totally said yes, came home and immediately forgot about it. Imagine my puzzlement when contrary to all the social norms I live by they decided to remember my promise and hold me to to it! And on the weekend that I've been invited to a really cool fancy dress party too! (no, that's not an oxymoron, shut up, you guys)
Bof, who cares. Needs must, and to Hastings I must go. I picked up this little number a couple of days ago, and since one of the things I'll be doing on Saturday is making soup for 80 people, I thought I might as well leaf through it to clue up on cooking, spirituality, and an old man's take on modern life.
Bad! Wrong decision!
There isn't really anything wrong with the book, but going through it I got the same feeling I had when I read Diana Athill's 'Somewhere Towards The End' which was that I'm intruding on somebody's stream of consciousness. Maybe as a twenty year old I just can't grasp an 80 year old's frame of reference. Or maybe when you go off on a tangent in the middle of a narrative it's just jarring.
Here's a couple of other gems:
On women doing the cooking - The emancipation of women is a thing of great good, as long as it does not divorce the priestess from her altar. That is the way divorces start.
Odd mash-up of Eastern and Western religious ideologies - The penitent thief was promised Nirvana because he recognised the Buddha nature in Jesus.

I'm going to stop bitching, there's nothing wrong with the book it just isn't my style, but there are a few recipes in here for seafood, soups and curries. Just make sure you're not a vegetarian because every recipe has pork or mutton in it. And try if you possibly can to live in the countryside instead of being 'imprisoned' in an apartment, that way you'll be able to cook over a wood fire and forage for herbs in the surrounding woods. Just like you're supposed to.
Helpful to me in no way.

'Smoked' Trout, Caballa a la Plancha

2010-06-27T21:05:00.012+01:00

Man is it hot today! Which really I think is terrible BBQ weather, I mean, you're hot, getting sunburned out in your garden, and you've got to mess about with a load of fire as well. I've been known to barbecue in October under an umbrella, or at Christmas time, wearing a big thick jumper. That's the time to go for it with some white hot coals. Not when it's so hot that you feel yourself melting and you absolutely don't want to eat a thing.
Anyway, the new next door neighbours have put up a pretty high fence between our gardens which means no more borrowing a cup of sugar, and also not too much sun in our back yard. This recipe is from a book I bought in a charity shop near my office, entitled optimistically 'Creme de Colorado' hahahahahaha, right? Apparently no, despite having a rather odd premise, and being published in the 80s, this book has a bizzare cult following on Amazon, it is 'never fail' and 'sure to impress'.
So here we go, this marinade is for smoked trout, but I suppose that it would work just as well on the old barbie.
I don't really know that much about Colorado, other than what I saw in Cannibal! The Musical, but for a state populated entirely by cannibals, this book is surprisingly fish heavy... You know, when somebody makes a joke, you're supposed to laugh. Anyway, here we go.
There's a lot of garlic and parsley in this recipe, you basically brine the fish for a few hours and then it's ready for the smoker/ whatever.
I'm also making mackerel today, a very simple recipe from this Tapas book I've used before, just rub it with some garlic, oil, and paprika and leave for a few hours.
OK, party time!

We poured some of the brine over the coals to produce a bit of smoke, but they only needed a few minutes on each side.
Result: The trout tastes trouty. The Boyfriend used to have a thing against fresh water fish, it tends to taste kind of muddy, and earthy. I personally can't stand carp, it's big in Eastern Europe but the taste is just too strong for me. I've never had that kind of problem with trout, until now. These were pretty big, or maybe the brine accentuated the flavour. But maybe I'm just nitpicking because the mackerel was so much better by comparison! (might brine overnight the next time)
Mackerel can be a little bitter sometimes, but this was amazingly sweet and juicy. I was hoping to take some to work the next day but there was nothing left!
Boo to burgers and save the steak for Santa, BBQ fish is where it's at.

Mock Apricot Flan with Oatmeal Pastry

2010-06-27T21:04:00.010+01:00

I often get home from work and want to cook something, but having not planned it in advance I find that I haven't got the right ingredients and that's totally a good reason to lose it, throw a tantrum, go to bed early and cry myself to sleep. (the very opposite of keeping calm and carrying on, get it?)
This recipe is from a nostalgia cookbook compiled by Marguerite Patten, who worked for the Ministry of Food during World War II and came up with clever ideas for using up what little food there was. I'm very into this idea, and even more into the idea of giving people something to eat and then shouting 'Surprise! That's not what you think it is! Man, I can't believe you guys fell for it'
In the true spirit of the war, I'm making do with what I have, so instead of apricot jam I'm using my dad's quince jelly, vanilla instead of almond essence, and I'm throwing a few apples and cherries in there with the carrots for the filling.
Result: Well it ain't gonna win no beauty parade, that's for sure, but amazingly it really does taste like apricots! The 'crust' is not the best, it's pretty dry and flaky, but if it was on top, instead of the bottom, it would be a pretty nice fruit crumble.
But, to be honest, vegetables disguised as fruit is nothing new. There's another recipe in here of how to make lemon curd out of marrow (the worst vegetable in the world) instead of eggs. What I really want to learn is how to make roast beef out of a plum.

Japan #2

2010-06-27T21:03:00.005+01:00

I don't want to dwell on this for too long because it wasn't the success I really wanted it to be. I'm still totally obsessed with Yakitate Japan! It hasn't bee updated for a while, I'm stuck on chapter 235 and I'm desperate to find out if Azuma defeats the bread monster Maou (if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about have a look here )
This is a Manga series about making bread, Azuma is some kind of bakery savant and everything he makes looks absolutely delicious. There area couple of recipes in the series that are, presumably, intended for Manga nerds who can't cook. So really this should be simple and straight forward. Well, lets have a look. I don't really need to explain anything. Here are the ingredients, I wanted to use up the wholemeal flour I had, but nothing prepared me for what happened next.
Result #1:
It's like a brick! 6 hours of preparation for a slightly burned on the outside, undercooked on the inside brick. Remember swimming lessons when the instructor would trow a rubber brick into the deep end of the pool and you had to dive in and get it? That is the weight and texture of this 'product'. I'm sad :(
Result #2:
Since this is Japan Bread #2 I felt compelled to try again. I put it in the warmest place I could think of, covered with pillows and towels to give it the best possible chance to rise. I kneaded it carefully, and gently placed it in the rice maker to steam-bake. Slightly better, more airy, but still undercooked in the middle. I think the culprit is either the fact that our rice maker is a lot bigger than the recommended size, or that you should not take cooking tips from nerdy geeks!

Beef and Coconut Macaroni

2010-06-23T22:20:00.008+01:00

As far as I can tell, his is how Karma works - nice things always end up happening to me. And when people say 'Karma's a bitch' that means that they're super jealous of me and how my boy karma always sorts me out and not them. Right? Well no, but it's a nice, unusually optimistic sentiment for me, so lets pretend that's the case for the next 5 minutes.

About a month ago, I got rid of that awful Jay Rayner book by leaving it in a bar, and last week I found a much better food book, in a better bar, and I got more drunk that day too.

The Settler's Cookbook is the story of one family's journey from India into Uganda and onwards to Britain, from the beginning of the century up to now. And while the author, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, seems a little self satisfied at times it is in a way that is a polar opposite of Rayner's tone of bland superiority. Bah, I'm still angry at him.

Anyway, history buffs, I had no idea that there was an enormous community of Asians in Uganda. Almost a quote from Big Lebowski, they were the guys who built the rail roads there. It's an incredible story, very engaging, and I love the idea of combining a family history with recipes. Everywhere she goes and everything she does is defined by a dish or meal, and so it should be, when I first moved to London I missed my grandmother - and the breakfasts she used to make me, the loaves of bread she used to bring in after work, and the pies she used to bake. However, my family history is not interspersed with graphic scenes of violence under Idi Amin. One minute she's giving a recipe for carrot pickle and on the next page there's a description of her university dorm mates being gang raped, tortured and murdered. Read the whole book if you have a strong stomach, just skim through the recipes if you don't.

Alibhai Brown's special source of annoyance is people who, like herself, have no real origin, rejecting their Indian roots. This recipe is from the last chapter of the book, served to her in the home of some ex-pats, proud of of their new found taste for macaroni.

You fry up some onions then throw in the beef and cover in water (plain water again, I already don't like where this is going) and chuck in the oven. Then parboil the macaroni, add to the beef, cover with coconut milk and mashed mango and bake for a few more minutes.

Result: I really wish I had picked one of the family recipes at the beginning of the book, a rich biriyani, or elaborate dhal, not this wierd fusion dish.

No matter how briefly I precooked the macaroni, it still ended up being overcooked, and the beef was tough. Despite the tempting smells emanating from the oven, the promised taste never materialised - never cooking anything in plain water again. Overall, not horrible, but not that great. A medium pasta bake. But I've got my eye on almost every other recipe in the book, so we'll see. If I'm taking away any lasting message is that the human spirit can overcome and adversity and there's always something to look forward to.

Garlic soup from Salamanca

2010-06-14T21:38:00.004+01:00

I hate soup, I always get depressed when I have to eat it. Well that's not true, but soup is just so utilitarian, and always fills you up in the most practical way that I don't find any joy in eating it (stupid girl, this is why you're fat, food isn't supposed to bring you joy! Go out and get some friends) That's evidence of my depression manifesting into some kind of fully blown mental disorder - an alternate soup personality narrative (oh shut up).
Anyway, I picked this cute 70's book up in Oxfam (sorry about the tiny picture), I had a massive clear out a few days ago and cleared out about two shelves of books, so what better than to fill them straight up again! Never mind that after a spree I usually don't have any money left over to buy ingredients to make any meals, Theodora Fitzgibbon shows you how to make the most of it! Most of the recipes in this book call for only a few simple ingredients to make a variety of tasty quick nutritious meals for the whole family. Most recipes include a tip of what to do with leftovers, and there is even a chapter in the back about foraging for free stuff - very popular these days.
From what I understand Theodora (bitchin' name, by the way) travelled quite a bit, and has certainly written a buttload of different cookbooks, so there are a lot of Eastern European, Asian and Mediterranean recipes in the book, as well as traditional English, Scottish and Irish stuff.
I settled on this garlic soup because it looked incredibly easy, and I'm crazy about garlic (it's supposed to be a great mood elevator, I hear).
Basically, you fry up some whole cloves of garlic, then fry a little white bread in the garlic oil, and pour in some water, shove the pulverized garlic back in with some parsley and chorizo and then serve in a bowl over a poached egg. It takes about 10 minutes.
Result: I was actually too hungry to bother taking a photograph before I inhaled this, but I did take a picture of the ingredient that gave this soup most of it's flavour

Yes that's a garlic and parsley stock cube that the boyfriend's mum bought in a Portugese deli, and it was delicious!
About a minute before I turned the heat off and got ready to serve I gave it a little taste, and would you believe it, 6 cloves of garlic dissolved in 3 pints of water doesn't really yield a very strong taste! Reader, I was as shocked as you are, but apparently the equivalent of a teaspoon of garlic and a litre and a half of plain water don't magic into a substantial broth, incredible. The boyfriend decided that this was a typical example of the dumbing down of authentic cuisine for plebeian local tastes, but I'm going to be more generous and assume that '6 cloves of garlic' was meant to read '6 bulbs of garlic'.
Now the look, I always intended this blog to be very visual, so since I forgot to take a picture I'll try and describe the appearance as best I can. Imagine a thick slick of red oil entirely covering the creamy gray liquid beneath (Google 'BP disaster' if you're having trouble visualizing it). Artfully suspended in the almost entirely flavourless oil are shards of parsley, and just below, you can see sinister globs of gluten from the not quite dissolved hunks of bread. That's what you get for not cooking off the chorizo before adding it to the soup, and not chopping the slices of bread into tiny croutons.
APART FROM THAT IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!

The thin line between convalescence and being a layzeeass

2010-06-03T13:01:00.005+01:00

Yes dear friends, I tread that line every day. No no, let me finish, I'm just like you, I wake up and put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody. But unlike everybody after I do that I'm just as likely to go back to bed and start reading a book.
But my finger is all better now so normal activities will resume soon.

In the mean time, here is what I've been reading for the last three weeks:
This copy of In Search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal (or Hector Blabber-ball, you can tell, we're such good friends) was less than half price at the local discount bookshop otherwise I never would have bought it. To be honest I find his TV shows uniquely annoying, him smug; his guests are always drunk, his sous chefs are snobs, and his reliance on truffles, foie gras, and Japanese ingredients is boring.
However, in print his enthusiasm for food is very engaging, and whilst I don't envision his recipe for roast chicken (two days of work, boys and girls!) ever having an outing in my kitchen, I love the research, passion and intelligence he writes it with.

Hector's diametrical companion is Jay Rayner. I thought I liked him and appreciated his writing in The Guardian, but discovered that taken out of the weekly restaurant reviews, his aggressive, condescending rhetoric is pretty nauseating. In the book he travels the world ostensibly looking for the best meal, but in reality deliberately going to places he can mock for their opulence and pretension. He makes a big deal out of wrestling with the ethics of accepting free meals, hotels and flights (which he finds deplorable) but accepts nonetheless - charming. I didn't actually finish the book, I left it under my chair in a cheesy wine bar to hopefully find a more appreciative owner. The final straw for me was his description of Moscow. He is offered an all expenses paid trip in return for a favourable review of a dubious restaurant in London, he 'grudgingly' accepts and spends his time ensconced in 5 star bullet proof luxury, complaining about the price of the only meal he had to pay for, the sub-par food he has to eat, and the possibility of being shot at any moment (what?). In contrast I am now reading More Caviar by Art Buchwald who drives to Moscow from Paris in an absolutely free Chrysler Imperial, complete with driver, makes fun of place names and customs and still manages to come across sympathetic and personable. The difference is in the attitude.

OK, enough vitriol, the last book I read is totally wholesome Nella Last's War is a collection of exerts from a diary of a British housewife during the Second World War. She writes about how she comes into her own for the first time in her life, and how all the work she does around the house and in the community is finally being recognised and appreciated. She writes a lot about their meals and rationing and their lives actually seem not to be affected by the shortages of food because of her clever management. It's very inspiring. She recounts a moment from when she first got married and asked her husband whether he liked a particular meal she'd prepared and he replies 'Why should I tell you if I like it? I'll tell you if anything is wrong, though', and his attitude changes when he sees all the other men getting terrible meals because their wives can't cook. There's another bit in the book when the doctor comes to see her for a cold, notices that she's made some bread and mentions that they haven't had bread in a while because there isn't any in the shops and his wife doesn't know how to make it from scratch. I'd imagine even less people know how to make their own bread now, I'd really like to learn.

I think deep down my fantasy has always been to be a housewife and run a home properly. I know, what a loser, right? I'd probable spend my entire day reading blogs and cool stuff online like this totally appropriate Manga my brother turned me on to!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan
It's the story of a young boy in Japan who tries to make the ultimate Japanese bread. Bread isn't really a staple over there and the comic tries to promote the slow food movement and craftsmanship in a modern way. Seriously, all they do, all the time is enter bread making competitions. The author does a crazy amount of research and explains the history of each bread they make, as well as the chemical processes that are at work in each ingredient combination. It sounds nerdy but it isn't, and it's totally addictive, you can read it online for free here
http://www.onemanga.com/Yakitate_Japan/1/01/
(btw, the guy with the afro is my dream man)
The author also includes a few recipes of easy to make at home breads. Here's is a virtually no knead version that I might try.

Update

2010-05-16T22:55:00.002+01:00

Don't know how much cooking I'll be doing in the next few weeks, because as the picture suggests, I've decided to go out and fracture one of my fingers.
That's not actually my x-ray, and to be 100% honest I didn't really do it on purpose. But it's only the little finger, not one of the important ones, and I'll just have to do my best and live without pinky-swears for a couple of months. But it will be hard...

Pain Au Vin

2010-05-11T22:15:00.010+01:00

A girl at work lent me this cookbook which is something I totally hate because I always end up wanting to keep it and then end up buying myself a copy. I seriously need to go on one of those TV shows all about curbing the ol' impulse purchasing and saving up for retirement. I kept this book for waaaay too long because there was a particularly tempting recipe at the back for Pain Au Vin which requires you to produce your own sourdough 'starter' and that takes around a week. I used this method, http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm
which suggest that you grow this stinky bacteria as a kind of pet in your fridge! (join me in saying eeeeeew to that metaphor)
You basically mix together a cup of flour and one of water in a clean jar, add a little of the mixture to it every day to 'feed it' until it grows into a beautiful, bubbling blob of fungus. Yum.
The book is written by a blogger, and like Lebovitz, she's continued with the blog and is dating some guy who won a James Beard Award a couple of days ago... so yeah, food.
She suggests using a blend of flours so I've got Strong White Bread Flour, Wholemeal Flour and some Buckwheat Flour I bought on a gluten free kick.
This recipe is really easy, just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and leave covered for 12 hours, it will be really runny but you're meant to scoop it out, fold it somehow on a floured board and leave for another two hours under a tea towel to rise some more. Looks like this. I saw this photo and immediately thought of blob fish, mmmm blob fish...

You finally bake the dough in a hot, covered pan, in a very hot oven for almost an hour. I don't have any very good bread experiences, it's always too tough and brittle, burnt and tasteless - so imagine my surprise when I saw this.
Result: It rose quite well, but I was a little put off by the slightly hard, dark crust. And then I cut in to it and took a bite. It's amazing! So light and fluffy, with a good chewy crust. As soon as I tasted it I wanted it make more, and the next one was even better! I couldn't really taste the wine in the first loaf, so used water for the second one, and added more buckwheat which gave a a wholesome nutty taste.
I'm not much of a bread eater, but this was gone in one day, it's that good. And easy, basically 410g of mixed flour, 250ml liquid, 250g starter, a tablespoon of honey and a pinch of salt. Leave to rise for 12 hours, fold, cover, rise for another 2 and bake in a 220c pre-heated oven, covered for the first half an hour and uncovered for the next last 10 minutes. Do it now.