Frolicking Foodie

This blog has moved!

2011-01-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

Please find me at www.frolickingfoodie.com

In the Festive Spirit

2010-12-24T03:49:00.000-08:00

I do love Christmas, and this year is the first year we've tried to choose some lovely wines to go with our food. After our 'Choosing Wine With Confidence' course, we felt it was only right! So what have we plumped for? Left to right...

Domaine Bernard Fleuriet Sancerre Rouge (Pinot Noir) 2007, France

This was a bin end and bought on a bit of a whim. It will be a totally new one for us, which we will be having with our Christmas ham tonight. A little investigation says it should go well with pork or charcuterie, so here's hoping it'll be a lovely match for Christmas ham.

*Went very well with Christmas ham (and dare I say it... prawn cocktail!)*

Fratelli Bortolin (Prosecco) NV, Italy

Again, a bit of a whimsical choice. We bought some white peach juice from the local Italian deli so we could make Bellinis on Christmas morning so we thought something 'extra dry' would mean the cocktail wouldn't be overly sweet.

*Peach juice was quickly discarded so we could drink this alone. Lovely sparkles, very bubbly without being co-codamol fizzy.*

River Farm, Ben Morven (Sauvignon Blanc) 2009, New Zealand

This was one of our absolute favourites from the wine tasting course, so we thought we'd get some for Christmas day. I'm not sure it'd be a stellar match for turkey (probably better with fish) but we're having chicken and usually end up drinking wine before and after the meal (and water during) so, why not go for something we like?

Heartland, Langhorne Creek (Dolcetto and Lagrein) 2008, Australia

This was another wine we had on the wine course which was the only wine that everyone agreed was wonderful. It's by winemaker Ben Glaetzer and is made from two lesser Italian grape varieties - apparently this Glaetzer is a bit experimental, but it certainly pays off. No idea what we'll be drinking this with, probably on its own on Boxing Day!

Elysium (Black Muscat) 2008, California

We spent ages trying to find our very favourite sweet wine (Campbells Rutherglen Muscat) without success. It would have been perfect to go with Christmas pudding... However, we'd been eyeing up this little bottle for a while so we're looking forward to giving it a whirl.

*OH. MY. GOODNESS. Raspberry and blackcurranty, and it went amazingly well with Christmas cake. Would definitely buy this again to serve with a very fruity/berry fruit dessert.*

Autumnal Lamb and Pumpkin Stew

2010-10-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

I love the colours of autumn, and being able to have thick stews and warming robust meals with a glass of gutsy red wine. This lamb and pumpkin stew is one of my absolute favourite dinners for this time of year, it takes time to cook but it's really really easy. Serve with some roasted vegetables, cous cous and finely chopped salad (with leaves, cucumber, red onion, parsley). I also took on board Fiona Beckett's suggestion in her Guardian column of the Argentine Fairtrade Malbec Reserva 2009 wine from the Co-op and it went very well with this dinner (and I'm still enjoying it as I type this blog post...)

Ingredients (serves 4)

flesh of one butternut squash, weighing approx 900g before preparation
6 cloves garlic
1 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tbsp powdered ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp dried chillis
450g diced lamb
300 ml stock

How to make it

To start, cut the butternut squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Put three cloves of garlic, in their skins, into the hollowed out sections and roast for 30 minutes. I also roast my carrots and parsnips at the same time to make use of the oven heat and give them a head start. Leave to cool before scooping out the flesh and squeezing the cloves out of their jackets. I do this in the same pan (see first photo) and then add all the spices, tahini and honey together.

In a separate pan, brown the lamb in batches. Once this is done, simply pour in the pumpkin/squash mixture, add the stock and turn down the heat and leave to simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. I simmer it on the hob for the delicious smell and the extra warmth it gives to the house.

When the lamb is tender, serve the stew with some roasted vegetables (peppers and courgettes work just as well as carrots and parsnips), finely chopped salad and cous cous.

Filleting a Salmon - Kitchen Technology

2010-10-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

What's your favourite piece of kitchen technology? A blender? A KitchenAid? I'm beginning to think mine is my iPhone perched on a book chair.

Having spent time on an island in the South Pacific, I have gutted, descaled, beheaded and lopped fish like barracuda, tuna, red snapper and all manner of unidentifiable reef fish into pieces. And while I have plenty of experience of getting a fish ready to eat, I can certainly tell you that I have no skill in filleting whatsoever. I should probably have seized the opportunity to experiment more when fish was so abundant and cheap, but filleting wasn't really the done thing.

But with the world at my fingertips (well, not when covered in fish) and a whole salmon in the reduced section of the supermarket, I was ready for my first filleting challenge.

First was off with its head and tail. Then I took a blunt knife in hand and flecked myself with scales (how do you stop them pinging everywhere?!). Fish prepared, I armed with my book chair (essential piece of kit for watching iPhone programmes in the bath etc) and my iPhone, I followed a video step by step. And I didn't waste too much!

Scruffy and a bit ragged, yes, but I still managed to cut 14 fillets, and make a saucepan full of ends that I boiled up for stock. After it was slowly simmered, I managed to pick off enough good flesh to make 4 salmon fishcakes, and a whole enormous bowl of skin and fat and discarded bits suitable for cat consumption.

Hmmmm... it'll do

So what's your kitchen kit of choice?

Choosing Wine With Confidence - Week 1

2010-10-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

One polystyrene cup of red wine or two?

For most of my drinking life, wine has been consumed either through drinking games or the boat has been pushed out on sugary pink fizz. There were few criteria to get through: is it white, is it under £3, is it over 11%, does it have an animal on the bottle (extra points if it was a koala)? Once I graduated I became a bit more discerning, but still totally bemused.

TLM and I mostly choose wine by standing baffled in the supermarket (or Majestic Wine if we're feeling adventurous) and generally plumping for something on offer. We decided it was about time to sign ourselves up for a wine appreciation course and 'Choosing Wine With Confidence' sounded just the ticket. The course is 8 weeks long and aims to reduce the number of "I don't know, you pick" public arguments. Or thereabouts.

So after a 45 minute stride out to the venue (driving would obviously be a bad idea) we arrived for our first session. We had no idea what to expect or what everyone else in the group would be like. There were just 10 or so of us and it was a bit awkward to begin with (we were by far the youngest people in the room), not helped by the fact there were no icebreakers or even going round to state your name!

It was straight down to business, with the first session focussing on how to taste and describe wine, with lots of reassurance that we could like or dislike whatever we chose.

We were greeted with our first wine, a sparkling. Now, at this point we'd not been shown how to drink it and I wasn't even sure if we were supposed to. The lights went down and power point commenced, and without my contact lenses on I couldn't see if anyone else was sipping theirs or not... so I went ahead as we were taught about the different components of wine and how they affect taste: acids, sugars, alcohol, tannins, flavours and aromas.

I sipped on my first wine:

Green Point (Chardonnay & Pinot) from Australia, NV.

I learnt that this wine is made from Chardonnay and Pinor Noir grapes, two of the three grape varieties used in Champagne and is made in the same way (though because they can't say this, they state 'Method Traditionelle' to let us know...) and as I took a sip scribbled some notes like 'acidic', 'crisp', 'butterscotchy' and 'floral' on my sheet. It was tasty, but did not surpass my beloved Lindauer as my favourite sparkly tipple.

As the lecture about taste components of wine came to a close, we learnt how to sniff and 'chew' our wine to appreciate the flavours best. I'd polished mine off by this point which, apparently noone else had done (pff, theirs would be warm). So I just listened as the technique was explained while other people tried it themselves. Thankfully, no silly snorting or air puffing was endorsed and the spittoons were shunned by everyone.

After the first hour of lecture follows an hour or so of further wine tasting. The course leader lets you know what to look out for (e.g. oak fermented) but does not tell you how it will taste or whether you should like it (yay). It's also so helpful that if you don't like something, he gives some reasons why maybe you don't (e.g. too tannic) so you start to build up an idea of what tastes suit you and which don't.

Moschofilero Boutari (Moschofilero) from Greece, 2009.

This was a really rather tasteless white wine, very little aroma. It was thin and didn't really do anything for me. Not one I'd be rushing out to buy any time soon. Apparently Greece has a long history of wine production, but maybe we know more about Ouzo for a reason!

Chamonix, Reserve Chardonnay (Chardonnay) from South Africa, 2008.

After the first wine, I could definitely see a difference between that and this white. It was full-bodied (meaning it looked syrupy rather than watery) and it had a strong oak aroma, which made sense as it was aged in oak barrels for 14 months. I can safely say that I went into the course thinking I didn't like Chardonnay and this confirmed it for me, though that may have been on account of the oak rather than anything else. I vigorously scribbled out the wine on my notes (scathing).

Balnaves, Cabernet Sauvignon (Cabernet Sauvignon) from Australia, 2007.

This was the sort of red wine I'm very used to tasting - extremely fruit-driven, with a bit of a smokey flavour too. I found it very drying to my mouth and bitter (these are the tannins at play, it seems). It was OK.

Grand Listrac (Cabernet-based) from Bordeaux, 2000.

This was a great one to compare to the previous wine - aged as it is for 10 years and a traditional Claret (apparently that's the British term for wines from the Bordeaux region). This was rather lovely and so much smoother than the previous red wine. It wasn't smokey and had no overpowering fruit taste, though I thought I could taste some cherry flavours in the background.

Le Dauphin de Guiraud, Sauternes (Sauvignon Blanc & Semillon) from Bordeaux, 2002.

Finally, we tried a white dessert wine. This one is made from botrytised grapes, which is a fungus [called noble rot] that affects grapes - deliberately! They pick the most withered and wizened old grapes and go round day after day getting the ones just about to turn rotten. This makes for a very sweet (but not fortified) wine with a distinctive flavour. Apparently it was a good example of botrytised grapes and I can certainly summon the flavour right now! I liked it actually, it was very sweet and spicy tasting. Apparently this would be great with blue cheese, but wine and food matching is not due until the last session...

So overall, I didn't find any wines I was itching to get out and buy but I really enjoyed the first session and appreciated being able to have wines that contrasted so I could understand what to difference between watery and full-bodied, smooth and tannic was in practice.

Bring on the rest!

Choccywoccydoodah, Brighton

2010-10-16T06:04:00.000-07:00

We went to visit friends in Brighton and they first whetted our appetite for Choccywoccydoodah, an arty chocolatier, by taking us in to their shop. It was all decked out for Halloween and was quite simply incredible - it was also utterly packed which is why we didn't take a picture [edit: I've just found their Halloween Album on Facebook]. There were towering cakes, sculpted with all sorts of adornments (apparently a tall wedding cake with all the fancy theming would set you back around £2000) and it just smelt divine.

We were then taken to the café (or the 'Bar du Chocolat' as they call it). The inside was so kitch, and again absolutely packed (though it emptied momentarily for us to take a quick snap). Much to our surprise, none of the cakes on offer took our fancy so we had to 'settle' for a chocolate sundae.

You remember the diner scene from Pulp Fiction? And the $5 shake? Well this is what a £5 sundae looks like:

And by golly, it was good. From top to bottom: raspberry and strawberry coulis (with whole chunks of fruit, a vanilla-y custardy cream with banana slices, thick melted belgian chocolate with chunks of chocolate, more melted chocolate with chunks of biscuit and some chunks of tiffin, topped by chocolate ice cream, covered in cream and drizzled in chocolate sauce.

It was so rich and so stuffing that we had to retreat to the beach (luckily it's just a stone's throw - ho ho!) and lie with our bellies up for some time.

Once we'd recovered, it was time for fun and frolics on the pier, and a good time was had by all!

Back with a big splash... maybe?

2010-09-26T02:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last blogged and I wasn't sure how to approach it. Julia at A Slice of Cherry Pie told me to jump straight back in with two feet and a big splash. So here I am.

Since I last posted, we've moved house (again) and TLM and I have both started new jobs and it feels like 2010 might be settling down at last.

So far this year we've had:

1 car accident
2 house moves (neither by choice!)
1 cancer diagnosis
8 months of cancer all clears (woo!)
1 MA
3 weddings
1 honeymoon (in spite of the ash cloud...)
3 Michelin-starred restaurants
2 new jobs
2 new kittens
2 25th birthdays
and a variety of undocumented food-related adventures

My enthusiasm for food may have waned a little, and I didn't feel I had the time to do anything worthwhile. Now things are settling, will I be back to blogging? I hope so.

p.s. in the picture: the fruit basket was one sent to us by some very kind people after TLM's orchidectomy - hilariously, it had just one plum in it.

BBQ adventure

2010-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

I am happiest when the sun is out and the grass is underfoot. Throw in some good company and good food and it's heaven, right?

My parents came to visit today, and we cooked a barbecue - and the slightly offbeat menu really worked wonderfully together!

Foc-quiche-a (the recipe has been perfected... watch this space tomorrow!)

Walnut and beetroot Hugh-mous (it's a Hugh F-W recipe and I can't stop playing with food names now)

Pittas

Salad

Minty yoghurt

Lamb burgers

I would definitely recommend this as a barbecue menu, it was so filling and everything went together - the earthy, cuminy beetroot and walnut houmous was gorgeous slopped on top of the lamb. Mouthfuls of fennel and cumin spiked burger, dolloped with minty yoghurt, alternating with leeky and rosemary scented focaccia were simply divine!

With four sets of eyes available to watch for mischief, we thought it would be the perfect moment to allow adventurers into our little walled garden.

i can has cheezburger?

For pudding we had Eton mess. And boy, did it live up to its name! I cooked some rhubarb down with a little bit of orange juice and strawberry jam and left it to cool. I then folded it in with cream, broken meringue and fresh strawberries. The rhubarb cut through the sweetness perfectly, delicious.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend too, it's cider time now!

A right old knees-up

2010-06-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

TLM and I are no longer the newlyweds on the block, and last weekend we had the first opportunity to go all misty-eyed as old marrieds. Not only our first wedding as guests, but our first wedding in London town. And what a magnificent wedding it was!

We went up with some friends (who are also getting married this year!), and before the ceremony we found a little pub (The Old Red Cow in Smithfield) where we played Jenga and had a quick pint or two. When we arrived at the church, my bride-to-be friend and I could barely keep our jaws off the floor when we saw the amazing flowers. I'm sure you'll agree they're something special?!

The ceremony was absolutely beautiful - choir, incense, the whole shebang. The bride looked like something out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting: all flowing hair, cascading flowers and floaty dress. The vows had me choked. Afterwards, we were taken to the reception venue in old Routemaster buses. I'm ashamed to say, it's the first time I'd been on a double-decker bus in London! We got top at the front (yesssss).

The reception venue was incredible: Wilton's Music Hall a peeling, stately old pile.

The food was delicious, a ska band played and the bride and groom had their first dance to Lou Reed's 'I Love You'. And instead of a wedding cake, the finest jellymongers - Bompas and Parr - had created a stack of wondrous, wibbling delight. They then brought round individual jellies (I had absinthe, and TLM had summer fruits in white wine).

We had SO MUCH fun, and thoroughly enjoyed every moment. I officially LOVE weddings.

All change again...

2010-06-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

Been here 4 months and have just had 2 months' notice. I'm so fed up with renting.

Weekend focaccia experiments

2010-06-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

A long, lonesome weekend often leads me to culinary experimentation and this weekend I was particularly bold. Seeing as I'd never cooked focaccio before, I don't know what led me to try out focaccia with toppings. The first was chick peas, tomato and rosemary - as inspired by this photograph by Parla Food.

The second was inspired by a bread-based flamiche I tried at The Bertinet Kitchen (a cookery school in Bath that has a bakery open on Saturday mornings).

Now, the chickpea looks good but didn't taste very special. Could have done with a lot more garlic and, I suspect, an obscene amount of oil. I'll leave that one. The leeky, cheesy focaccia on the other hand was DELICIOUS. I hereby dub it 'foc-quiche-a'. More space for toppings would improve it immensely. I will definitely be trying this again, very soon, and aim to give a proper recipe!

I've written this on my lunch break, having just polished off a couple of slices of the cheese and leek foc-quiche-a with tomatoes and cucumber. I think it would be utterly lovely for a picnic!

Mojo reclaimed

2010-06-13T03:29:00.001-07:00

It's fair to say that this blog has been neglected over the past six months. My energies were spent in various other directions, but now the sun is out again and I'm ready to go!

We've had a few big changes recently, and a few new acquisitions:

They're looking for the mouse, of course.

I start a new job next month, and TLM will be starting his in August. We'll both be within 5 minutes' walk of our work places and hopefully seeing a lot more of each other than we have over the past year.

In other news, on Saturday it will be 6 months to the day that TLM was diagnosed with testicular cancer. We'll be hearing back this week from the most recent bloods, and we're hoping all continues to be well.

As for the computer. Guess who had a major say in how we spent our wedding money? I'm still getting used to using it, but early indications are that it is pretty awesome! I mean, with my workstation now looking like this, how can I not be inspired to write?

So watch this space. Or kitty will track you down.

You give a little love...

2010-05-26T11:55:00.001-07:00

... and it all comes back to you!

We got married on 24^th April 2010, five years to the day that we first met each other. I didn’t realise quite what an affirmation of love and our relationship our wedding day would be. While I spent so much time planning the details, I could never have planned for the support and love and – above all – the joy that everyone shared on the wedding day.

The day before was extremely stressful. Well actually, the lead up to the wedding was more than a bit stressful. As some of you know my (then!) fiancé was diagnosed with testicular cancer in January, which was an enormous shock. Thankfully it was caught very early, and though it was the most rapid growing type of cancer its removal appeared (and appears) to have been curative. However, a strict programme of monthly surveillance was put in place, and an appointment happened to fall the day before the wedding. Inevitably the appointments ran late and they sprung a load of forms on us – some about what ought to be done in the event of my fiancé’s death. Emotions were running high after the appointment and I found it hard to deal with the few things that were left to do. We muddled through, though I dropped my dress in the road, couldn’t take my father-in-law’s teasing and flapped about people being late for the rehearsal. Me and the troops (my parents, the groom, best man, chief bridesmaid, toastmistress) got access to the venue to decorate it after 9:30pm. We strung up the bunting, rolled out the tables and set out the chairs. My toastmistress used to supervise in a restaurant, and she saved our skin with her efficiency – we did the job in under an hour! I was emotionally and physically exhausted by 11pm and I collapsed in bed. I could hear my friends laughing and singing in the next room, but I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. I slept wonderfully and awoke...

... on my wedding day! I stretched out in the big, strange bed. A very good friend was hosting me, my chief bridesmaid, toastmistress and male-friend-who-wanted-to stay-with-the-girls (my own version of the bridal party). She heard me waking up at 6:30 am and brought me a cup of tea and told me that it was a beautiful, sunny day outside. All the stress of the day before melted away. We chatted away (she is getting married in July) and then she nipped out to get newspapers and pastries. I bounded into the next room and jumped up and down shouting “it’s my wedding day, it’s my wedding day!” like a small child at Christmas. My wonderful hostess friend continued to excel herself by keeping us all topped up with coffee (and champagne!) and not letting us lift a finger.

Prior to the wedding, everyone had mocked me for my lists and timetables: I even made copies and distributed them at the rehearsal. But it was thanks to this that my morning was so calm – unlike the day before! Everything went to time, and having so many people popping in and out didn’t feel stressful because they all knew when to arrive, what they needed to do and when they should eventually make their way to the church.

The first thing to arrive was the flowers, and I was blown away because they were exactly what I wanted. Zoe Jenkins, of Jonquil in Bath, did an amazing job of interpreting my country-fayre brief and made a beautiful bouquet that included bupleurum, tanacetum, delphinium, lisianthus, avalanche roses, gentian and ruscus. The flowers were so much prettier than I could have imagined and I started to have faith that all the detailed planning would actually come together on the day.

Next to arrive was my mum and my hairdresser (who is also a family friend). Chantell started my hair at 10am and it must have been at least 11:15am before it was finished. Again, it was so much better than I had thought and much better than the trial! The photographer arrived at this point to take some photos of the preparation.

My dad arrived with my nieces, who were flowergirls at about 11am. They absolutely loved the whole girly atmosphere, getting their hair done and finally being allowed to put on the dresses that my mum had handmade for them.

The morning continued to whizz by and before I knew it, it was 12:30pm and according to the schedule time for me to put my dress on. Up until this point I was quite unfazed, it had felt like an out-of-body experience, like I was watching another bride getting ready. But as soon as the dress went on my head started to spin and my tummy felt peculiar - and not just because my mum laced me in so sotight! Once the dress was on, it all became apparent that this was my wedding day.

It all became even more real as people began to depart for the church. The next thing I knew, it was time for my mum and the flowergirls to walk to the church. So it was just me, my chief bridesmaid and my dad for half an hour. We talked and laughed and walked around. My chief bridesmaid and I practiced going to the loo (!) many times. With quarter of an hour till 2pm, we decided to get in the car. It was barely a 2-minutes drive to the church but we needed to stop pacing! We piled me into the back of her decorated Fiat 500 and sang Take That’s ‘Never Forget’ at the top of our voices (dad not included!). And then it was time. We arrived at the church with a few minutes to go. Take That was turned off and in their place the air was filled with church bells. I think I lost the use of my knees at that point – they were ringing for me!

Our vicar met us at the church and said some touching words about the special relationship of a father and daughter. And again, before I knew it, the music started playing. ‘Colorblind’ by Counting Crows was our chosen processional song. I gave the flowergirls the signal, then my chief bridesmaid. Then it was just me and dad.

With all eyes on me, I didn’t see anyone except my husband-to-be waiting for me at the end of the aisle. I thought I would remember the music, or walking in on my dad’s arm, but all I remember is looking at my soon-to-be husband and him looking back at me. When I reached him, he leaned to me and whispered that I looked beautiful. I told him I liked his shoes.

I was almost oblivious to anyone else there. When the vicar asked if the congregation would support and uphold our marriage, it was the loud “we will” that reminded me that there were other people in the church. The service seemed really intimate, and the vows were extremely powerful and emotional. When it got to ‘in sickness and in health’ it was all I could do to try and hold myself together.

The service made a point of being grateful for love and life. A reading we had chosen way before January was Ben Okri’s ‘To an English Friend in Africa’ which opens with the line “Live while you are alive”. I think the vicar and my brother thought we might change the reading, but we felt more than ever that this was an important message and my brother read the lines we selected with passion and conviction. We then went to sign the register and the song ‘Just Say Yes’ by Snow Patrol played. It was really uplifting, and I will never forget peeping out and seeing old married couples smiling at each other, seeing friends soon-to-be married kissing, seeing my brother and his children hugging.

I can’t even remember when we had our first kiss or were pronounced husband and wife, the service is a bit of a blur. But what I take from it is the support, the happiness and the joy that I felt. When we walked out the church – to the ‘You and Me Song’ by the Wannadies – I was so proud to be able have my husband by my side.

The sun shone on us and the confetti that I’d painstakingly put into teeny boxes went to good use. Note the groom’s shoes!

After group photographs at the church, the guests made their way down to the church hall for the drinks reception with champagne and cream teas. We had other plans. We took a bit of a gamble and drove to the Royal Crescent in Bath, parked up on a residents only patch and went off for some photographs. It was such a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon that the green was packed. We couldn’t take any photos there, but the ones on the crescent itself more than made up for it!

All eyes were on us, and so many people were shouting congratulations. I felt really special and really relished the attention (ashamed as I am to admit it!)

When our photographer arrived in the morning, his registration plate was AJ59 XTC. AJ were my initials (when I was using my maiden name) and XTC – well, ecstasy! He said it was a sign. Well, as we were returning to the car we saw a traffic warden ticketing the car behind us. Thankfully, the traffic warden was feeling generous and let us drive off before he ‘noticed’ we didn’t have the right permit. What a star!

I had been anxious that the church hall didn’t have much outdoor space, but when we arrived at the reception everyone was lolling in a grassy courtyard I had completely forgotten about. I was so pleased! We arrived to the beautiful sound of Bean Downes playing the Hang. (Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wiRNZnMOoA for anyone who wants to listen). We first heard Bean when she was busking in town, asked her if she would play out our wedding and she agreed. Though we didn’t hear much of her on the day itself, everyone had wonderful things to say about her and her unique instrument was a great talking point and icebreaker at the drinks reception. My brother also arranged a sweepstake for the length of the speeches which really brought everyone together. I recommend asking someone to do this!

The venue was an absolute gem. I’d always said that the venue was our compromise. We had a lot of live music and a free bar all day and all night as our priority, and plumped for a cheaper venue to make up the difference. However, the church hall was clean and bright and the outdoor space was just right. The effort we made the night before paid off (including the special DIY ‘Just Married’ and ‘Congratulations’ bunting), but I can’t emphasise enough how amazed I was at the impact the linen, place settings and flowers had. Strawberry Field Catering did a great job for us and their front of house staff made everything go smoothly – and to my trusty timetable!

The meal went down a treat, and the Yorkshire puddings pleased even met the exacting standards of my husband’s northern family! We’d made changes to the table plan up until the day before and it was absolutely worth the bother of changing them at the last minute. It was great to sit back and look from table to table and see everyone enjoying themselves. I’ve had so many people since say that they loved their table.

What can I say about the speeches? Well, my friend Gemma who always wins at poker won the sweepstake. They lasted 37 minutes and 51 seconds. But seriously, what can you say about speeches that are only really of interest to yourselves? They were funny and emotional in turn. My dad’s was wonderful and he was the perfectly composed father-of-the-bride. I was so proud. The best man’s was unexpectedly hilarious (I had my doubts). I gave a speech in which I sang happy birthday to my brother (because it was his birthday, I wouldn’t go that far for a laugh!) and tried to express how much I love my husband. TLM’s speech made everyone cry, and me so proud. He’d also arranged for a very dear friend (who lives in Brazil and couldn’t make it) to write a short letter that the toastmistress read out. That girl knows how to write and I was in tears (again!) at the wonderful things she had to say about our relationship.

The cake was an unexpected bonus. After our run of horrific luck (car accident, unexpected house move, TLM’s cancer) we won our wedding cake in a competition run by Maisie Fantaisie who, I’m sure you’ll agree, make stunning cakes. It tasted brilliant too!

After the cake cutting, it was time to let our hair down properly. We had a ceilidh, and Jiggerty played. They were absolutely fantastic, especially in the face of some very left-footed and champagne sodden guests! The ceilidh got everyone to dance and the atmosphere was just fantastic. I had a brilliant time, danced the night away with my new husband and friends and family and revelled in the festivities.

Don’t think that our day went completely flawlessly. At one point the fire alarm went off and at the end of the evening the caretakers didn’t turn up. But I don’t even remember that because my abiding memory is that of sheer happiness and pride to have married my own hero and star.

We walked up to our wedding night hotel, The Bath Priory. They'd done a full romance job on the room and it was just wonderful. We then had our honeymoon in Scotland and proved everyone wrong who mocked our decision by having fantastic weather for 13 out of the 14 days!

We did it!

2010-04-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

You do a good line in perking-up!

2010-04-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Thank you for giving me some perspective! You are RIGHT. It's time to get excited - and so on that note, here's a picture that our photographer took when he came down to visit. I can't wait to marry that man! (TLM, not the photographer) ;-)

Helter-skelter hectic little life continues

2010-04-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

So, a week to go until the wedding and life is still not letting up! The wedding itself is under control - but of course it come bubbling to a head and everyone wants a piece of me.

I have a website that is supposedly launching the day before I finish work (Thursday next week). And that is so so stressful. I've hardly got any time at all, I'm breaking out in spots and my wisdom teeth are making a new appearance.

I've been running around trying to track down what we're supposed to do to get our vote because we leave for honeymoon before the ballot papers are sent out and return after the election is over. It has been so complicated that I seriously considered just not voting - but those suffragettes just wouldn't let my conscience rest.

TLM is working nights and he left last Sunday and I won't see him now till Tuesday. I miss him and that is making me ratty and making it hard to cope with everything. Next week TLM has three more oncology/reproductive reviews, and my stomach is churning about those. Today someone at work announced they are pregnant, and all I could think about was the tests next week that will give some indication of what is going on with us.

Also, remember that time when TLM had his orchidectomy and had a job interview not two days later? Because the NHS are so caring and recognise that you are a person and not a machine [heavy dose of sarcasm there]. Well, now TLM is having a telephone interview for another job IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR HONEYMOON. I'm so upset, and really quite angry. After all we've put up with this year, we were so looking forward to an utterly relaxing and indulgent honeymoon. Now, we have half the honeymoon preparing and anticipating the interview, the interview, and then waiting for the outcome.

I'm so fed up. I'm sorry to whinge and whine again, but I suppose I'm using this blog almost solely for that purpose at the moment.

A (justified?) whinge

2010-03-04T03:43:00.000-08:00

It's funny what finally gets you. The last straw was having to pay BT £125 to come and put a new telephone line in at the new flat. They did it, then it stopped working. I was on my own, exhausted and overwraught. I phoned them to get it sorted and, poor customer service assistant, I wailed about how everything was going wrong. And because they're trained not to hang up on you, I just went on and on and on. So whoever you were out there - thank you for listening.

I hate moving. I hate the new kitchen. I hate the stupid electric oven. The new flat is tiny and I don't like it. It was left filthy, disgusting and we had to clean it all. I had to chip at the toilet with a screwdriver (at 6am, I hasten to add, a joyful task before going to work for the day). It certainly did NOT look like that when we viewed it. We also had several notes left by various bailiffs for the previous tenants. What have we got ourselves into?!

We're in the midst of moving and it's hideous. Every one of our weekends is gobbled up with other things, so we're having to hoik and heave things from one flat to another in between everything else (like, working, washing ourselves and eating). TLM is working long days (strictly speaking 8am-8:30pm) and with the commute added in he's waking up at 5am, leaving at 6am and not coming home till way gone 10 pm. That's a long, long day and that will be going on until next Friday. Last night we just laid in bed crying because everything is so overwhelming and over-tiring. When there's two of you, it's usually one who is knocked and the other can support. But we're both just wiped out and the strain is showing. Physically, we're exhausted and our muscles ache and being tired just amplifies every miserable thought you have. I've also caught a cold and have an ear ache brewing - I really don't want to pass it on to TLM.

I think we're both also apprehensive about the next oncology follow-up appointment, which is tomorrow. I know I haven't been worrying out loud about it, but I think it's simmering in the background and the anxiety has been gnawing at me. At least he will be going though, because at first TLM's work denied him time off to go to his oncology follow-up appointment (these will be happening every month for the next year). Cue having to trawl the disability discrimination act to support our uproar about this. It's the NHS, surely they should know these things?

Wedding stuff is ramping up, and we just have no free weekends in the forseeable future. Not until the honeymoon - which I can't wait for! There's so much to organise now and with all my papers and special books in various boxes it gets a bit difficult. The church has also apparently lost my electoral roll application, as I had a panicky email from the administator saying we couldn't get married if I wasn't on the roll. This was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Day after day is just slog of getting up early, moving things, sorting things, writing lists, working hard, moving more things, dealing with new problems, writing more lists, sorting more things and still not getting anywhere. It feels like there is no end in sight.Usually when things are too much, you're able to put a time limit on it. But we won't be past this crappy little spot for another couple of weeks, when we will finally be able to STOP. To try and enjoy the poky new flat. To get excited about the wedding and honeymoon. We're being useless at helping ourselves through this, I really wish someone could just wave a magic wand and sort everything out for us.

If you've managed to read this, well done to you, and whoever you are - thank you for listening.

Having my (wedding) cake and eating it

2010-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

In January, bad news was tripping over itself to get to us. February is here and I really hope we've turned a corner. TLM's oncology appointment was again the best news we could have hoped for - the tumour was apparently contained and his tumour markers were coming down steadily. The course of action is now surveillance (such a relief to hear chemo is not needed, though always with the proviso of at the moment) and TLM will be having monthly check ups for the next two years. There's a 10-15% chance of it recurring within 12-18 months (which would have been taken down to 2% with chemo), though if it returns the chemotherapy has a 98-99% success rate. With such strict surveillance, we feel a sort of relief but it will still be hanging over us both. We both feel very subject to outside forces at the moment and are just trying to grab happiness where is presents itself and enjoy ourselves here and now.

With everything happening, we'd totally overlooked Valentine's day. This morning I could hear TLM singing away in the shower and I cried because in that moment I realised just how lucky I am to have him and how much I love him. He is a wonderful person: fun, devoted, hardworking, generous, kind-hearted, understanding, comforting. Our lives have changed forever and I will appreciate him in a way I couldn't have before, because I can never forget the terror I felt when confronted with the possibility of losing my perfect man. *breathe*

So after my moment of soppiness, I decided to check my emails to see if the vicar had emailed us our wedding service (we've been doing marriage preparation all weekend). Not yet, but there was another email. I opened it and saw ....

Congratulations, you are the LUCKY WINNERS!!!!

What, eh? A con probably. Then I realised that this Maisie Fantaisie had used both mine and TLM's full names. And it clicked - this was the win-a-wedding-cake competition I had entered! I absolutely squealed with delight. TLM, probably thinking I was being murdered, stumbled out of the shower without his glasses on and I had to quickly explain about how I'd entered this competition to win a bespoke wedding cake. And, evidently, had won! We phoned up May Clee-Cadman, gleefully accepted our prize and she explained about us coming to London for a design consultation and tasting session. So, yes, it seems I won't be making our wedding cake and will have to make do (;-)) with one of the exquisite creations that you can see here.

We just couldn't stop beaming and impulsively decided to go into town. The usually overflowing Pump Rooms had no queue so in we went and had a delicious champagne high tea.

Maybe I could come round to believing that everything happens for a reason. If it keeps going my way, that is.

Surgery update

2010-01-22T09:13:00.000-08:00

The surgery is done and TLM is woozy and happy on morphine in the hospital. The consultant said that the testicle appeared to be nothing but cancer any more - but who cares, it's gone now. We have also had the radiologist's report from his CT scan yesterday and it is clear throughout. While we aren't breathing a big sigh of relief just yet, at least we are not holding our breath any more. A biopsy of the tumour and further blood tests to look for/compare markers will dictate now what treatment is needed from here - if anything more than strict observation.

I've returned home to a fridge bursting with fruit and vegetables (I put out an SOS yesterday and left our key under the doormat!) and will be going back to collect TLM in a few hours when he has been debriefed by the surgeon and discharged.

Seriously, have I been living my life over the past three days? It doesn't feel like it.

The relationship between love and food

2010-01-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

One day, a few weeks ago, as I munched my lunch at my desk my colleague said, "Alice, seriously, you are so noisy when you eat." The following day, I was eating dinner with TLM and he sighed and said, "I love the way you eat, you always go 'a-nom-nom-nom' and you can tell you really enjoy it". And that, my friends, is why I love TLM. Because he loves the things that other people find annoying.

I am greedy and the reason I cook is because I love to eat. I am mildly addicted to fat and carbs (pastry, mashed potato, cheese) and have a tendency to comfort eat, but in a more balanced state I relish delicious fresh food with brilliant flavours. I have never, to my knowledge, lost my appetite.

But at the moment there is nothing I want to do less than eat, and I don't particularly want to cook and, more to the point, things have been so frantic that we don't even have milk or bread in the house. There is nothing to eat even if we really wanted it. Besides, tomorrow TLM is going in for his orchidectomy and is now fasting in preparation for tomorrow.

I'm guilty of showing my love through cooking, so I'm in a very odd state at the moment where it's not possible to do so ... and I'm feeling lost.

Sorry this post has been so "me, me, me". I don't expect anyone to enlighten me, but if you have any musings to add then please do!

Things can only get ... worse?

2010-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

I think blogging could be a cathartic exercise. I'll let TLM do the talking.

Can we reboot 2010, please?

2010-01-11T03:22:00.000-08:00

--------------------------
It's well known that getting married, moving house and having to find a job are some of the most stressful life events going.

So with three months until our wedding and starting to feel like we've got everything sorted, we've been given two months' notice to leave our home (as the landlords want to move back in) and I have been given two months' notice that my project may be winding up.

TLM has been working in a hospital some 40 miles away (and living in a cupboard there most of the time due to unsociable hours in A&E) and we have endured being mostly separated for the past six months so I could carry on with my career. He was just gearing up to start commuting now that he has a reasonable timetable.

So we are now left - to put it mildly - in a bit of a pickle. What should we do? Look to find a new home where we live now (as job prospects will be better for me)? Or move to the out-in-the-sticks hospital where there will be fewer opportunities? Will my project miraculously continue? If not, how likely is it that someone will want to employ me with the prospect of me having to take holiday for the honeymoon? How likely is is that there are jobs anyway? With regards to choosing our location, there is the small matter that I need to be attending the church where we currently live, and that we need to have banns read in TLM's parish (and we won't know where that will be until the very nick of time), in order to get married.

In the longer term, TLM has finished applying for jobs starting in August, but where that will take us we have no idea. I know full well that his career will entail us having restricted choices, and that I will have to trail along. But I'm still adverse to unpredictability.

Last year was somewhat rocky and uncertain and I couldn't wait to see the back of it. Looks like 2010 has more surprises in store than we imagined.

--------------------------

Well, I wrote this last night with a view to posting this today. And what happens this morning? I get a call at 6:15 am to say TLM has been in a car accident. Much fretting and an hour or so later, he calls to say that he is OK. On the way to work he narrowly avoided a head-on collision down a country road. A car was overtaking on a blind corner, and TLM was forced to crash (into a bollard no less) in order to avoid colliding with the lunatic driver on the wrong side of the road. The overtaker, obviously, drove off. More surprisingly, the people being overtaken also carried on without stopping, TLM's car wrapped round a bollard in their rear view mirror and no idea if he was OK or not. The police say there is next to no chance of catching the dangerous driver, and with no evidence of the other person's culpability, or even identity, we're left to foot the excess and take the hit on the no claims.

Oh, and we have to pay for the rebuilding of the bollard.

So, pretty please, could we wipe the slate clean and start this decade afresh?

Christmas stuffing - chestnut, shallot, apple & quince, sage

2009-12-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

My dad makes a christmas stuffing that I always thought unsurpassable, but of course us young upstarts will try and usurp our parents won't we? I took HEAVY inspiration from his recipe, but made it less like a meat loaf and more like a stuffing.

When I tasted the tester ball I was actually astounded that I had managed to make something so delicious. It was light, flavoursome, soft and yielding. Since I put the uncooked balls in to store for Christmas, every time I open the freezer I wonder what the delicious smell is, and remember it's the stuffing! This recipe is definitely for keeps.

I improvised the weights and measures from what looked right, so I had to go back and weigh the leftovers to get the recipe. To make 10-12 balls of stuffing.

Ingredients

1/2 large cooking apple, diced
8 - 10 shallots, diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbspn quince
2 tsps mixed herbs
1 handful of fresh sage, chopped finely
1/2 fresh nutmeg, grated
salt & white pepper to taste
500 g sausagemeat (I squeezed it out of my favourite leek sausages)
4 slices' worth of breadcrumbs (I always forget to leave it out, so I do it in the oven at 200 C for about 10 mins. I think this actually helps as the bread is crisp but not totally dried out) crumbled up.
250 g chestnuts (un prepared weight) which should be cooked - look up online if puzzled, I did - and then crumbled up.

How to make it

Fry the apple, shallots, garlic and a pinch of salt until soft. Add the quince, mixed herbs, nutmeg and fresh sage and cook for a further minute or two to combine. Add salt (probably not much at all) and white pepper to taste. Leave to cool.

Put the sausagemeat, bread crumbs and chestnuts into a bowl. Add the cooked mixture once it has cooled. Combine with your hands until everything is evenly spread out.

Take handfuls and roll into balls about the size of a lime. Cook at 200 C for around 20-30 minutes.

I ate the tester ball with cauliflower cheese (naughty, yummy) and it was delicious. Can't wait to have the rest on Christmas day! I have told dad about this stuffing and have set aside a taster for him to try at the weekend. I wonder what he'll think?

They aren't the prettiest of beasts, especially photographed on a winter night- but I hope the picture helps show the consistency.

Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer

2009-12-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo from summer days (they seem a long time ago now don't they?) of a bottle of Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer. I stumbled upon it in a pub in the middle of a long walk in Devon and thought it was just the ticket. It proved refreshing and soporific and was surprisingly spicy. I thought it might be a muted flavour, either because of the alcohol or what I perceived as the 'market', but it was really quite delicious. I've not found it since, but judging by the fact I've just spied it as sponsoring the British Comedy Awards, I don't think it'll be long before I see it again.

If I see it soon, it might be just right mulled. If I don't see it till next year, I look forward to another sunny country day and a long, cold drink!

Christmas Cheer

2009-12-12T03:36:00.001-08:00

I cycled into town really early to get my favourite bike stand and to get to the markets before they were swamped. The cycle in by the canal was wonderful. There was not a single other soul on the tow path, so I cycled and sang carols and admired the crisp bright weather.

Got some lovely chestnuts, sausage meat & Gloucester Old Spot bacon to make an experimental stuffing today. Also got an enormous cauliflower to make cauliflower cheese and stash some away in the freezer for Christmas day.

I managed to pick up a couple of Christmas presents and got my cake boards so I can decorate my Christmas cakes later on. I was feeling full of the festive spirit and ready to head back home.

Then, in front of me, a mother asked her child in a sing-song voice, " Are you sulking?". At first I chuckled to myself because it can be quite easy to get grumpy and sticky and frustrated in the crowds, so I sympathised. The child emphatically shook her head, then the mother crouched closer and hissed in her ear, "Good, because if you are I'll f***ing strangle you." I couldn't quite contain my shock, but managed to stifle my intake of breath. What can you do when you hear something like that? Cycling home I thought about all the people who aren't going to be having such a happy Christmas.

Naan Bread - Grilled

2009-11-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

This is my brand-spanking new naan recipe, that has blown my old baked naan bread recipe out of the water. With this recipe, you first dry fry on the hottest hob and then finish off under the blazing grill. It is a very sticky dough, only really suitable to make with the help of a mixer, and you ideally need a gas oven to get the heat needed to cook it. However, it has a brilliant texture, with crispy risen bubbles and thick spongy edges. Perfect to go with a curry.

This recipe makes 4 large naans (that perfectly fit a 23 cm frying pan).

Ingredients

1 sachet (7 g) yeast
125 ml lukewarm water
125 ml natural yoghurt
30 g melted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Nigella / black onion / kalonji seeds (these are all the same thing, but known to different people by different names)
150 g strong white bread flour
150 g plain white flour

How to make it

First, combine all the ingredients (except the flour) in a small jug. Now, if you have a mixer then you simply put the flour into the mixing bowl, add the jug of wet ingredients and leave it to knead for about 5-10 minutes until the dough becomes silky. If mixing the dough by hand, then put all the flour onto a surface and create a well in the middle, big enough to accommodate all the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the well you've made. Then drag the flour to the centre and combine it quickly, before it starts to run down the surfaces and into your shoes. You will have to knead for a good 10 minutes, so the dough goes from just mixed (it'll look sort of messy and shaggy) to combined, and then as you knead more it'll start to relax and get silky and spongy.

When your dough is kneaded, lightly coat it in oil and place in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag and leave the bowl in a warm place until it doubles in size. I leave mine on a windowsill and it takes about an hour and a half. When it has doubled, punch it down and leave it to rise again. If you can do this three or four times it helps improve the dough but it's not strictly necessary.

When you're ready to go, get a work surface floured and get your dough and cut it into four pieces. Roll each into a ball and roll out until it's half a centimetre thick. Once you have your dough ready, place it on a baking tray and cover in plastic and leave in a warm place for 20 minutes. The naan will rise a little. This is a very important stage and should always be done, no matter how many times you punched down the dough.

Preheat your frying pan and your grill. Place one of your naans into the frying pan and let to cook over the highest heat possible for about 5-7 minutes until the bottom becomes quite charred. At this stage, the bubbles should have started to form on the surface of the bread.

Finish the bread off under a hot grill and watch as the naan rises even further. It should take less than 5 minutes to cook through under the grill.

To serve, paint it with a little melted butter. Yum.

Naan Bread - Baked

2009-11-22T10:39:00.001-08:00

It took a lot of experimentation to get this baked naan bread recipe right. I also have a recipe for grilled naan bread. The pros of baked naan bread are that it's easier to make without a mixer (the dough isn't as wet) and you can cook more than one at a time. They're also good to freeze after being cooked. The down side is that you don't get the large air bubbles & associated crispiness that happens with grilled naan. So the texture isn't quite as good. But, it's still a fair bread to go with curry.

This recipe makes 4 large naans.

Ingredients

1 sachet (7 g) yeast
100 ml lukewarm water
100 ml natural yoghurt
30 g melted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Nigella / black onion / kalonji seeds (these are all the same thing, but known to different people by different names)
300 g strong white bread flour

How to make it

First, combine all the ingredients (except the flour) in a small jug. Now, if you have a mixer then you simply put the flour into the mixing bowl, add the jug of wet ingredients and leave it to knead for about 5-10 minutes until the dough becomes silky. If mixing the dough by hand, then put all the flour onto a surface and create a well in the middle, big enough to accommodate all the wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the well you've made. Then drag the flour to the centre and combine it quickly, before it starts to run down the surfaces and into your shoes. You will have to knead for a good 10 minutes, so the dough goes from just mixed (it'll look sort of messy and shaggy) to combined, and then as you knead more it'll start to relax and get silky and spongy.

When your dough is kneaded, lightly coat it in oil and place in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag and leave the bowl in a warm place until it doubles in size. I leave mine on a windowsill and it takes about an hour and a half. When it has doubled, punch it down and leave it to rise again. If you can do this three or four times it helps improve the dough but it's not strictly necessary.

Preheat your oven to 200 Celsius

When you're ready to go, get a work surface floured and get your dough and cut it into four pieces. Roll each into a ball and roll out until it's half a centimetre thick. Pull at one end of the dough as you roll it if you want the classic teardrop shape. Once you have your dough ready, place it on a baking tray and cover in plastic and leave in a warm place for 20 minutes. I find that on top of the oven is quite a good idea as it's warm from the preheating. The naan will rise a little. This is a very important stage and should always be done, no matter how many times you punched down the dough. If you want to add garlic (as shown in the picture), then do so at this stage.

Bake your naan bread in the middle of the oven for around 15-20 minutes or until golden and risen (I like mine very golden as you can see!)

To finish off, paint it with a little melted butter. Yum.

The Naan Bread Saga

2009-11-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

I have had many many problems with naan bread (not least because I have to sing the first verse of 'Here Comes the Hotstepper' every time I make it). For over a year now I've been trying all sorts of naan recipe and they've had varying degrees of success. Mainly clustered around the 'unsuccessful' end of the spectrum. Whether thin and hard or flabby and doughy they were all disappointing and I began to wonder, "just how do you make naan bread?".

Through much tinkering and many failures I have come up with two versions that seem to work in my oven - the baked naan isn't quite as spectacular as the grilled naan but it is a bit easier to make.
First is a baked naan recipe, which you cook in a moderate oven.
PROS: dough is easy to make without a mixer; you can cook more than one at a time; good to freeze.
CONS: don't get the large air bubbles & associated crispiness.

Second is a grilled naan recipe, which you first dry fry on the hottest hob and then finish off under the blazing grill.
PROS: brilliant texture, with crispy risen bubbles and thick spongy edges
CONS: can only cook one at a time; sticky dough which is difficult to make without a mixer; need a very hot stove & grill (so preferably gas).

Cottage Hotpot

2009-11-11T11:56:00.000-08:00

You've probably heard of Frankenstein foods in relation to GM. This is my own Frankenstein's monster - a hybrid of cottage pie (beef mince with mash on top, as I know it) and Lancashire hotpot (lamb chunks with carrot and a crispy potato topping). This proved to be the silkiest, richest, most flavoursome hotpot I've ever made and a total triumph for ekeing out leftovers.

When I made my pumpkin dish for Halloween I used a leg of lamb and was left with the bone and some meat I couldn't quite [be bothered to] get off. Inspiration struck and I simmered the bone with a sprig of rosemary and thyme and made a stock for an hour. I skimmed the fat off the top and reduced the stock by about half. I then carved and pulled off the remaining meat and cut into small pieces.

I fried a VERY large onion with about 150g of beef mince, then added my lamby chunks and shreds, some salt, a little brown sugar and the remaining stock. This was all simmered down again for half an hour or so. After this, I tipped some cubed carrot in and put the lot into a dish, topped the with ultra-thin sliced potatoes and baked in a hot oven for an hour.

Now, this was just delicious. I'm beginning to think I might have to take up the method when I want to make this as a special meal as it was just so darned scrummy. True, it took a lot of cooking (but I did leave the oven door open with the washing stood in front of it to use the residual heat) but it was just SO worth it.

Must experiment more ...

Paint it Black - the fiddly Halloween

2009-11-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Thanks to those of you who answered the cry for help in the previous post - particularly the post pointing out that filo pastry has no dairy! Brilliant!

What a face! I was trying to look all coy and 60s...

Well, cooking for the assembled vegetarians, omnivores and lactose-intolerants proved to be less of a hassle in practice than it was in theory. Once I had my menu and recipes sorted, it was all fairly plain sailing. I do love to prepare thoroughly and would much rather over-cater than under, so I made quite an array of dishes. Thankfully, all of these could be cooked in advance so I was able to enjoy the full murder mystery party. Everyone got completely into character and I'm so glad I didn't miss any of it by being stuck in the kitchen. There was one moment when I nipped to the kitchen to grab the starter and, with my hostess radar kicking in, totally disheartened to hear a complete silence from the 11 people in the other room. It turned out that they were all thoroughly engrossed reading their character low-downs! I recommend a murder mystery game if you ever have the chance to find one (I picked mine up at a car boot sale).

The menu was:

Lemon & cumin houmous (dairy-free)
Coriander pesto (vegetarian)
Flatbreads (used sheep milk yoghurt, so no cow dairy)

~~

Potato and spinach bureks (dairy-free)
Fattoush (dairy-free) [I call it this, because it's what I had in a restaurant once and I've recreated the recipe to taste like it did there - loads of lemon, mint, parsley, cucumber, romaine lettuce and tomatoes]
Roasted garlic and pumpkin mash (dairy-free)
Lamb, pumpkin and apricot 'tagine' (dairy-free, plenty of meat!)
Roasted veg (red peppers, courgettes, red onion, whole garlic cloves)

~~

Fig, apple and walnut crumble (dairy-free)
Cinnamon and Courvoisier cream (dairy-packed!)

And it was very tasty, even if I'm immodest and say so myself! At one point I mentioned that there was no need to be polite and that there was plenty for seconds - I was promptly trampled. Considering the amount I generally over-cater, there were very few leftovers. On Saturday I turned a portion of the leftover lamb tagine into a curry by cooking up some red peppers and onion, adding the lamb tagine and adding some extra cumin, garam masala and chilli. I had that with some home made naan (a recipe I've promised to some friends so that will be appearing soon, no doubt), and a heap of the fattoush. I've had roasted veg and houmous wraps for lunch, and am finally using up the last of the roasted onions and garlic in a tomato soup tonight.

The highlight of my evening was when one of my friends told me she was having a lovely time and that it was such a change for her to be able to eat nearly everything on offer. Making your friends feel at home and cared about is what it's all about, eh? *warm glow*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. Regarding the first picture of this post - well I truly have a new appreciation for the old black and white photos of my mum in the 1960s. My beehive was puny and still my scalp hurt all of the next day!

p.p.s. The second photo is of the body of Lord Michael Jagged I made out of polystyrene and TLM's clothes. I put this out some time before the party, and forgot to warn TLM. Cue being woken up at 3am by TLM shouting - having come in from a shift and found a strange man in our flat. Whoops.

Dairy Free + Vegetarian = Vegan Halloween Feast?! HELP!

2009-10-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

So TLM and I have somehow managed to co-ordinate 12 timetables to fit for a Halloween party. We got carried away with the theming/decorating/music of the event (Swinging, Halloween Murder Party - oh yeah!) and have forgotten all about the feeding people part. Unfortunately, the 12 various dietary requirements lead to a vegan conclusion - or at least mainly vegetarian with dairy and meat dishes on the side. Add this to the fact that restricted table space means this will be a lap-affair and I'm lead to thinking finger food starter, buffet-esque main and every-bowl-pushed-into-service-pudding.

So far I've come up with flatbreads, houmous and rough pesto for dippy starters. A crowd pleaser. Pudding will be a vegan brandified fig, apple and walnut crumble (with cinnamon cream for those lactose-tolerant).

The middle is lacking. I thought about cous cous of some variety, fattoush/tabbouleh, roasted veg, pumpkin & lamb tagine for the carnivores. But suggestions are needed! PLEASE HELP!

Still Jammin'

2009-09-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hello, thought I'd just check in. TLM has been working for what seems like forever, and we've got next week off together, hooray. Fingers crossed for clear bright days to continue!

The blackberry jam has gone down very well (not that I'm a fan of jam myself) and a fiery plum and apple chutney (adaptation of a Nigella recipe) was also met with approval. Got my hands on some cheap strawberries, so made 5 jars of strawberry jam. I'll get my official taster (TLM) to try it and if it's up to scratch I'll get the recipe up.

Hopefully I'll get my act together and post a bit more, but a serious of semi-calamitous events recently have left me with bigger fish to fry.

Wedding 'Photo Booth'

2009-09-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

#Well ever since I saw this on another wedding blog, I thought it was simply one of the best wedding ideas I've ever seen. A perfect way to keep guests busy, and a good project to include TLM in (while he likes the ribbons and stationery, it's just not the same as chopping up wood).

We went to the car boot sale at the weekend and picked up this assortment of frames. The large one (£2 - bargain) will be blank for faces, as will the medium-sized frame at the top right (30p - even better bargain). I've been collecting old family wedding photos for the others. I've been scanning them in, addding dates and captions so people will know where they've come from and when, and soon I can get some printed to the right size frame! Still might be seeking a diddy frame or two...

I added a little plaque to the big frame which has our names, the date and the faux title "Symphony of silly forms, No 297". As you can see, it's had its first poser already!

I have some snazzy green wallpaper lurking at my parents' house, so a bit close to the date we'll start construction.

I love it when a plan comes together! Pondering whether to have a small bin of props/accessories (tiaras, glasses, hats) to snazz it up? We've lovefancy dress, and have quite a stock, so it would seem to fit. What do you think?

Car Birthday Cake

2009-08-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

When you will go and make an outlandish, rainbow-coloured UN-birthday cake for your own party, it seems only polite to oblige when your beloved asks for something equally as ridiculous and time consuming for their birthday.

My brief was simple: a red car cake. With jam.

I scoured the internet for car cake tins (thought I could cut a corner - ho ho - here) but was thoroughly unimpressed at the 20-odd-quid price tag. They would also mean no jam, unless I were to start slicing it up which would sort of defeat the point of buying a cake mould. With a bit of inventiveness surely I could do it with what I had in already?

Using a remote-controlled car as a template and two slightly differently sized loaf tins I set to work. I used the same recipe as the UN-birthday cake, but only used 1/2 the sponge batter and 3/4 of the icing.

I poured 2/3 of the sponge batter into the larger loaf tin, and 1/3 into the smaller one. (Pictured below is the 'squodging' stage where I pressed the larger cake down when it was nearly cooked so it would be flatter to work with).

While I waited for my sponge to cool, I assembled my icing accessories (lights, number plates, wheels, wing mirrors, car badge), cake board with finishing line, chequered flags (made from cocktail sticks), trophy and candles (for the exhaust pipe).

I sandwiched the sponges with jam (only the top sponge needed a little cutting with a very sharp knife).

Then smothered the whole thing in a LOT of red icing, and started to add the pre-coloured roll-out icing accessories.

And TLM had three slices of it for birthday breakfast.

Get blackberry-jammin'

2009-08-26T10:03:00.001-07:00

"big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes"

Seamus Heaney, a poet I hugely admire and have been lucky enough to see read in person, is who I hand over to to describe this time of year in England, where blackberries and greed abound:

Blackberry-picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

by Seamus Heaney

So don't squander your blackberries (I'm hoping there will be a final flush soon, if the sun comes out again)

by doing this:

to make this:

It is REALLY REALLY EASY. TLM has had the first jar, and apparently tastes good, is the right consistency and (honour of honours) tastes "just like normal jam ... "!

Ingredients - make 7 jars (which should be sterilized beforehand - by a thorough wash with soapy water, then leave them to dry in a medium-hot oven and make sure the hot jam goes into hot jars before screwing the lid on tight tight tight!)

1700 g blackberries (this is about an hour's worth of picking for one person, and the most a single person can take before being prickled beyond tolerance)
juice of 1 lemon
150 ml water
2 sachets of pectin (8g sachets)
1500 g sugar

How to make it

Put two or three saucers in the fridge. Wash the blackberries, dislodging any bugs (I try not to drown them, after all they were only being greedy too). Add the blackberries, lemon juice and water to a large pan and boil gently for 30 minutes. After this stage, add the sugar and pectin and boil rigorously for 5-8 minutes. Mine took about 8 minutes until it reached 'setting point'. This is where the cold saucers come in handy... to know when your jam is the right consistency (and not just a mushy syrup), you spoon a little jam onto the cold plate, let it cool slightly, and then draw your finger gently across the top. If the jam puckers - just a little - then you have reached setting point! You don't want full on wrinkles, just a little resistance rather than liquidity. Be warned that this is probably runnier than you think it should be for jam. Don't worry if you think it's far too runny as you spoon it into the jar, as the jam will thicken when it cools. For me, runny jam is better than jam you have to chop up with your spoon.

Try it!

It really hit home that this is a way of preserving, and so when I was using up the last of my apples in the garden and needed a bit more fruit, I bunged in some of this blackberry jam (removing some of the sugar from the crumble recipe to make up!) and it was scrummy.

The Fruit Preservation Society

2009-08-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

Membership: 1

I'm sure I've already told you that our garden here is a veritable Garden of Eden, and now we've lived here for a year we've had the full cycle of apples, plums, strawberries, raspberries, hazelnuts and (a few rather sad) passionfruit. This time last year we were just moving in and the plums and apples had mainly fallen. This year, I was well and truly ready. I plucked the plums regularly so that if any fell, I knew that had only fallen that day and, subject to strict quality controls ;-), were good to go. As there are four plum trees, I have had hundreds of Victoria (?) plums. It took me two hours to halve and stone these that remained after giving bag after bag away to friends, family and anyone who paused long enough for me to hook a carrier bag on.

and it left my hands brown and revolting. They're still stained despite bleach, nailbrush and a Lady Macbeth-esque frenzy.

This year's apple crop wasn't as good at last year's (pictured below). They were on the whole smaller and there were a lot less of them. It could be because of the weather, but I think the apple tree may be dying. It's not too happy-looking.

As we also live a short hop from the river (as in, a 20-second walk!) I've discovered that nearly on our doorstep we have mega loads of blackberry bushes! Knowing I wanted to make blackberry jam today I was up at 8 am to harvest about 2 kg of blackberries before everyone else decided that it would be a good way to spend Saturday afternoon ... mwah ha ha ha.

So for the past few weeks we've been having (and I've been inviting people round for) lots of fruit with icecream and cream, a lot of apple and blackberry crumble, apple and plum crumble, plum pie and various other combinations. However, I've decided it's time to STOP eating the glut of fruit and start to preserve it.

So today I went to town, got a whole load of jars (will need some more...) and various ingredients and set about making blackberry jam, apple and plum chutney, plum and ginger chutney, plum jam and Chinese plum sauce - alongside stewing plums and apples to freeze in portions.

Having never made jam before, I think the blackberry jam looks promising. It seems to thicken nicely as it cools. I was worried I'd stopped cooking it too soon while it was runny as I was scared of ruining my lovely stockpot.

I've run out of jars, I'm knackered and scalded, and the house smells of sugar and vinegar. Further reports will follow.

Let's start at the very beginning ...

2009-08-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

... a very good place to start!

There's been a lot of change recently, not least with TLM moving some distance away, living in a cupboard in the hospital and working in A&E (which means I'm seeing him infrequently - so far about 1 in 10 days). This leaves me with quite a bit of time on my hands, and with my cooking becoming a bit hit-and-miss, creating big batches to freeze and then picking at food in-between times. Cooking for one, it turns out, is much less fun. It seems my creative outlet is fast becoming planning and making things for the wedding.

It keeps me entertained, makes me think of TLM in a lovely way (rather than a 'my-world-is-falling-apart-I-miss-you' way) and is proving to be quite the money-saver.

If you're not interested in weddings, then turn away now. If you do, then I'm tagging all wedding-related posts as such and have a link on the left hand side of the blog.

---

So to kick things off, here's the wedding colour scheme I've settled on:
It is rather all-encompassing, but I've discovered that if things don't have to be too matchy-matchy there's a lot more scope for bargain-hunting. My 'theme' is Wessex as we're marrying here in the Westcountry in a little church on a hill and having the reception in the church's hall.

Keep posted if you're interested, though I expect it will only be my mother who is tuning in (hi mum!).

Lickin' Banksy

2009-07-10T12:01:00.001-07:00

TLM and I were up bright and early to visit the Banksy Exhibition at Bristol Museum and after a (relatively) short queue we shuffled into the main entrance, past a 'topical' image of Michael Jackson sat on the doorstep of a gingerbread house offering a candy cane to two small children. Once we were ushered into the museum we were able to roam free and as part of the first batch into the museum it was still relatively quiet as we looked first at the specially set-aside exhibition and then made our way round the museum, spotting substituted paintings, hash pipes in the 'boring old plates' room and muzzled lambs and beavers with trophies in the taxidermy section.

One of my favourites, the 'Flight from Egypt - budget version' was one of the substitutions in the main painting rooms.
The 'ANGEL OF THE NORTH' had me laughing my socks off (particularly as I'm going up to Manchester tomorrow for a girly night out). Fag, can, heels in hand and kebab wrappers on the floor.

The animatronic bunny sat filing her nails endlessly. I don't know why, but I was captivated. Maybe because she was ignoring me?

The exhibition continued: hilarious, thought-provoking, submersive etc etc. As we were coming to the end, hoardes of people were rammed in to the museum and a whole load of teenagers flocked from piece to piece, indiscriminately taking camera phone pictures of everything - quite befitting.

Afterwards, we wandered up the road and stopped in a little patisserie... (note the grubby finger marks)

and I ate the whole of this little delight, which was like a treacle tart but with added pecans. Hum-a-nah.

Passionfruit, Mango and Raspberry Mess

2009-07-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

As much as I love Eton mess, there comes a time in summer when it's just a bit too sickly. Strawberries? Again?

With the recent boiling hot weather, I decided a tropical twist on the English classic was the way forward. There is nothing more to this 'recipe' than great ingredients and very gentle folding (blitzed meringue just makes for a load of sweet cream rather than chewy texture variation). I used raspberries, shop-bought meringue (shhh), lovely Westcountry double cream and some of this lovely-jubbly passionfruit and mango coulis that I got at the Cheltenham food festival. (I tried the damson, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry...) I spoke to the chap, Nick, who own the company and apparently they regularly win taste awards. I'm not surprised, it is delicious. If only I can wangle some free bottles...

I whipped the cream, crumbled the meringue in large pieces in with it, added a touch of coulis and folded it over twice with a large spoon. Scooped out, daub of cream and a drizzle of coulis on top, raspberries sprinkled on top. Yum. Yum yum yum.

Back to the gym...

Megrim with Tarragon

2009-06-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have learnt from experience that it is better to wait until after you have eaten a fish to google what it looks like (monkfish was the point in case). So when I found out that the alternative name for a megrim was a 'whiff' and that it was specifically a left-eyed flat fish (a relative of turbot), I was surprised that it was actually quite a cute little critter. What's more, it made pretty nice eating pan-fried quickly and then lidded and cooked for 10 minutes with butter, fresh tarragon and lots of lemon juice.

It was a moist, meaty white-fleshed fish, which came off the bones easily and tasted just delicious. It was the first time I have put tarragon with fish and it gave a fennel-y zing to the proceedings.

I'd only gone for the megrim as they were reduced in the supermarket to £2.49 per fish - and I naturally chose the biggest one there was (which was probably twice the size of some of the others). Served with some bread and some lovely fresh peas and broad beans it was certainly stuffing.

It took longer to pod the peas and beans than it did to cook the fish! I love summer eating, where you can laze in the garden doing the prep before a quick flash in the pan.

Green Garlic Sausages in Quince and Grape Sauce

2009-06-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

Without doubt, the most swamped stand at the Cheltenham Food Festival was the Ragley Estate Meats stand as they were serving up tasters of their pies and sausages. People kept going back for more of their sausages, and when I tasted I could understand why! They were so deliciously moist. I snapped up two packets: one of their 'award winning' standard pork sausages, and one of their green garlic variety (which I was led to believe were very garlicky indeed).

One of the most exuberant stalls at the festival was a man selling a plethora of quince products. Never having tasted quince, I duly tried some and thought it was lovely, bought a jar and was given a handy sheet of recipes. I'll come back to that sheet, but I immediately thought of my bangers when I got the quince (I usually put apples in with my sausages).

Today a friend at work, who has been swamped by broad beans, brought a huge bagful of them for us all to dip in to. I took my handful and thought merrily about dinner.

Maybe it was because the broad beans are small and green, or maybe the quince man mentioned grapes, but I decided to include grapes too (I thought the garlicky sausages could hold their own against the sweet sauce). So I set to dinner, making the mash as usual and podding the broad beans.

My usual method with sausages is to give them a bit of a grilling (lets at least some of the fat out) and then put them in a pan with some caramelised onions and finish them off bubbling away under a lid. To make the sauce today, I cooked an onion for a long slow time, adding water at intervals to stop it burning on the pan. I added a tablespoon of quince jelly, a slosh of double cream and a handful of grapes. I then put the sausages in and let it cook for 4-5 minutes to combine.

The garlicky sausages were as good as I'd tasted them at the festival and their robust flavour worked very well with the quince and grape sauce. The broad beans added an interesting texture, but were perhaps overwhelmed (spinach next time instead?) - I did notice however that they tasted LOVELY and didn't have a yukky fibrous skin like school broad beans. In all, I think it almost worked. I'd cut the grapes in half next time and probably have spinach or broccoli or savoy cabbage instead of the broad beans.

Cheltenham Food Festival

2009-06-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the Cheltenham Food Festival and have returned with a bag of produce and a head full with ideas. I'm sure they will feature on here before too long! I'm currently rather whacked, so here are a few highlights:

1. Seeing last year's Masterchef winner, Mat Folas, demonstrate his cooking. The best bit was when he told everyone to come and have a look (rather than remain hermetically sealed to the plastic chairs). The organisers were scurrying around, visibly stressed, while everyone tried the food and asked probing questions about basil, how to smoke things and what exactly was going on with Raymond Blanc.

There followed an incredibly teeny plate of food (his winning meal, I believe, of rabbit three ways - kidneys, loin and rack).

2. Being mesmerised by people with skills I can only hope to master. I watched while he filleted two fish.

3. Enjoying a 'wine talk' (I took notes) where the six wines sampled were given in rather generous portions. Because TLM was driving home I also availed myself of his after he niffed and sipped the wine.

It was a great day, sunny but not too hot, and has left me with lots of inspiration for both food and drink. Brilliant!

Elderflower and mint cordial

2009-06-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

This was a bit of an experiment as I wanted to use some of the mint which is growing copiously in the garden. I knew it would either make a deliciously refreshing cordial or something that tasted like toothpaste. Thankfully it turned out to be just right.

Ingredients (makes enough to fill 2 x 75 cl bottles)

15 large elderflower heads
1.5 litres water
350 g caster sugar
100 g brown sugar
25 g citric acid (finally found it in a chemist's, read the saga of the citric acid here)
5 full stems of mint
1 orange
1 lemon

How to make it

Boil the water (should be about one very full kettle's worth) and pour it over the sugar and leave to cool. Once it's cool, stir in the citric acid.

Lightly rinse the elderflower heads to remove any dirt or little insects (but don't plunge them in water). Peel the orange and lemon with a vegetable peeler and throw the peel in with the elderflower heads. Slice the fruit and add. Pick five tall, young stems of mint and add to the fruity and fragrant mix. Pour the now cool water, sugar and citric acid mixture over the fruity concoction. Cover with cling film and leave to infuse for a day.

Strain the fruit, through muslin or cheesecloth ideally to make it as clear as possible. The cordial should be put into sterilised bottles (I pour boiling water into the bottles, right to the top, pour the water out and leave them to dry in a hot oven for about 20 minutes) and the lids tightly added.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this cordial as it was heady and fragrant, but had a zingy and completely refreshing edge. It was the perfect antidote to a full morning's gardening:

During which I found these growing merrily! I'm going to eat them before anyone, or anything, else does!

Croissants, by the light of the silvery moon

2009-06-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

TLM has been working some extremely unsociable hours recently (two months down, two to go) and we often pass like ships in the night. We live in a perpetual time-delay, asking how the 'day' of work went some 18 hours after it happened. He arrives home after I've left for work and I wake him at 6pm as I return. We make the bed for each other, leaving the corner turned down and PJs for the other person folded up neatly (and, of course, Dr Cuddles who takes the place of the 'spoonee'). It's only right when the bed is in near 24-hour use.

When he's not working nights, he's working all weekend as long days (7am-10pm) and so I am left to my own devices. For a while I spent some fantastically self-indulgent days sitting in the park, cycling, getting my hair cut, shopping, wedding-scheming... and then I decided to try new, labour-intensive recipes that are not possible when you have to think about other people.

So I made croissants, using the recipe from the new River Cottage Bread Book. Lordy. They were everything they promised to be (waiting for dough in large bin liners, pounding butter between cling film, endless rolling, precise isosceles-triangle cutting) and more. They tasted fantastic, and I was overwhelmed with pride that they actually looked like croissants. They were soft, moist, crackly and endlessly giving. One was filling enough (TLM usually eats three, and a few pain au chocolat to boot). They really rewarded the effort that went into them.

Will I be bothered to do them again? Probably not. I just don't see how so much attention can be lavished on any meal, let alone a breakfast pastry. Also, I'm clearly terrible at cutting them as I had about 200g of wasted pastry (this I cannot tolerate) and so it's probably more economical to buy them. But to have a croissant with substance was a pleasing change. And they did work lovely as a 7pm dinner/breakfast for me/him.

Halcyon days, and a mission that would make Guy Ritchie proud

2009-06-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

There's no place like home and, for me, that means there's no place like the Westcountry on a summer day. Having spent recent summers tied to a desk at a university library, or cooped up in a sticky city, or semi-stranded on a tropic isle where the sun sets at 6pm every evening, I've been longing to get back home. Home to hot air balloons, cricket, ducklings on canals, fayres, cider festivals, bandstands, open fields and ekeing out hazy evenings with a blanket on knees.

One of the most evocative tastes of a British summer, aside from strawberries and new veg smothered in butter, is the elderflower. Near where we live all the elderflower were plucked from the riverbanks some time ago, so when I spotted a bush still bearing white flowers, I had to take my chance and merrily denuded everything within reach. I collected over 60 heads (perhaps a little over-ambitious) and made home with my haul.

now follows... the citric acid saga
in which many frustrations befall the frolicking foodie

SATURDAY:

3pm: with a veritable heap of flora, the ingredients to make cordial must be sourced - sugar, water, lemons, oranges... fine. Citric acid? Well that must be with the bicarbonate of soda.

4pm, a well-known supermarket: OK, so it's not in home-baking. Or specialist foods. Or the medicines aisle. Or the cleaning fluids. Or the alcohol. I'll ask this helpful chap. OK, looking it up on the store's system. None. Bugger. Looking it up on the Sainsbury's mainframe. 'no populated content for this search'. That means that there is none, in any Sainbury's supermarket, anywhere. Onwards.

4:30pm, a well-known chemist: So people cut their drugs with it and you can no longer sell it? I could try and independent pharmacist? OK...

4:35pm [by this point, running Anika Rice-stylee down the high street]: You do sell it! YESSS! Oh... you can't get it for love nor money? Elderflower cordial season y'say. Funny, that.

4:40pm, an independent kitchen shop: Oh you'd love to help me, m'lover, but everyone's been asking for it! You'ves no idea what's got into every man and his wife!

4:50pm, a health food shop: Well, I'm at least the tenth person to ask today for this citric acid stuff. Not quite sure what it's for, but tell you what if you like, there's the man that owns the little chemist on the end of the bridge, good Lordy, can't even remember the name of him. Could be Gerald, or maybe Germone? Definitely began with a G of some sort, and, well, he's pretty good with stocking stuff, he is. What's it for anyway?

4:55pm, Gerry's pharmacy (no clearer idea what his name really is): Why haven't I tried the home brew shop? WHY haven't I tried the home brew shop!!

4:59pm, outside the home brew shop (which is next to a small church with a bell tower), the clock striking out 5pm as I turn the corner to face the front door. CLOSED. I raise my fists to the sky, shake them helplessly at the air and let our a prolonged 'Nooooooooo'. I resist falling to my knees and sobbing into them. Just.

5:00pm, car: slight mini-tantrum thrown.

6:00pm, kitchen: elderflowers reluctantly placed in a shallow bowl of water and covered with cling film. Cordial scuppered.

MONDAY:

Home brew shop closed till Wednesday. Phoned every independent pharmacy in town. None, anywhere. There's been a run on it, apparently. Then I get a phone call back... there will be a delivery. They can't say when. They can take my name and my number. They can't sell me more than 100g, cause the law's on their back. But they can do me two packets, if I can come in at lunch time.

I go in at lunch time. I sidle up to the pharmacy assistant. Got any citric? No, all out. She eyeballs me. I'm on the list, I try feebly. Oh, well, she says. That makes all the difference, she says. She unlocks a drawer below the till and takes out 'the list'. She crosses my name off and hands me two small boxes of acid. I pay cash, and stash them in my handbag.

Got to be careful round these parts, anyone'll have you for 100g of citric acid.

Sunshiny Sunday: Barbecue Halloumi Skewers

2009-06-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

Sunny Sundays prompt the lighting of barbecues across the nation and after niffing the lovely smells weekend after weekend, today we joined in. We invited our fishy friends around (which is no insult, they are vegetarians who eat fish - pescetarians officially but 'fishy friends' makes me chuckle) so we were to prepare a mostly meat-free barbecue. Halloumi first came to mind.

Great minds thought alike and our friends also brought ingredients for halloumi, and tuna, kebabs. As per the natural order, the boys took charge of the barbecuing and sat at the table threading the skewers: halloumi-courgette-cherry tomato-pepper-mushroom. They too took charge of the cooking:

'Just chuck the oil over as well, it'll be fiiiiiiiine'

The tuna kebabs were first to be cooked (brushed with garlic infused oil and lime and sprinkled with salt and coriander). Consensus was that they were the best things to have ever come off a barbecue.

We were, however, mistaken. The halloumi skewers - picture at the top of the page - (brushed with lemon infused oil and sprinkled with salt and mint), slid into a lightly barbecued pitta bread were absolutely delicious. The courgette-cherry tomato-halloumi combination was particularly good!

I now have a spare chunk of halloumi and a recipe from said fishy friends for a halloumi salad including spinach and oranges...

(As a side note, we started the barbecue by supping some English wine from very close to where my parents live. It was the 2007 Sharpham's Dart Valley Reserve, and very nice it was too! I've had English white wine only once before, from a place called Wissett in Suffolk and it was NOT good. This, however, was light and crisp and I don't know if we were simply overcome with summer, but we could definitely sense a taste of the most summery of fragrances: elderflower.)

UN-birthday cake

2009-06-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

My heart skipped a beat when Heston Blumenthal, experimental chef extraordinaire, brought out a completely edible insect-filled garden and vibrating absinthe jelly at his Alice in Wonderland themed feast. My own Mad Hatter Tea Party had been planned for some time and now the bar had been raised and I had to do something special (for other pictures of the party, see here)

My head was filled with images of psychedelic, towering, toppling cakes exploding with colour... but it had to be achievable. And it had to give up a special secret at the last minute.

So I made a cake, smothered it in pink icing and stuck cards all around the base. And I kept the surprise all to myself. So as the cake was brought out to me and people sang my a happy UN-birthday, I was sniggering inside knowing I had my Heston Blumenthal moment to come. With great mischievousness, I cut the tall cake open to reveal...

A six-layered rainbow cake!

It was incredible to see the astounded faces of my guests. I can now completely understand the feeling Heston gets when he makes someone fill with childish smiles over the food they're about to eat.

It was completely worth the effort, especially as it was straight-forward to make, and I recommend it to anyone. It was just a Victoria sponge, a WHOLE jar of jam to stick it all together and a slathering of butter icing to hold it all together and make 'operation: wonderment' complete.

Admittedly, there was some special food-paste dye (which can be bought online and is worth the investment as it is vivid and doesn't alter the texture of the cake mixture) but there was a lot of washing up...

Luckily my mock-turtle kitchen assistant took care of that :)

UN-birthday cake (serves 25-30... which is just as well considering the ingredients)

450 g self raising flour
450 g unsalted butter or margarine
450 g caster sugar
8 eggs
food dye

(1 jar of raspberry jam for sandwiching the layers together)

for the icing...

250 g unsalted butter
500 g icing sugar
dash hot water
food dye

How to make it

To make the cake, cream the butter and sugar together until soft and white. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Alternate adding the beaten eggs and the flour in to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix until combined, but not totally smooth. Separate between six large bowls, add the relevant food dye and mix/beat until smooth (if you beat till smooth first and then added the food dye and beat again you'd probably get rid of all the air). Pour into sandwich tins (I think mine are 23cm) and cook for 15-20 minutes, depending on the amount of mixture (you're bound to have somehow misjudged the batter for one of the layers). Cook the sponges, two at a time, in the middle of an oven preheated to 190 Celsius.

Leave the layers to go absolutely cool before sandwiching together with LOTS of jam. Don't worry if it's a big mess, it will be fine once covered in icing.

To make the icing, beat the butter and sugar together, adding a little water if needed and the food dye of whatever colour you like. Ice the cake from the bottom up using a knife. Don't get too neat.

Decorate the outside however you like and then wait out the moment of the big reveal!

p.s. A special mention should be made of my mother who, though she can't cook, is an outstanding seamstress (a skill that sadly eludes me) and made me a fantastic costume:

also thanks to dad who scared the rain away by spending hours putting up tarpaulin, and a big hello to people visiting because I outed my blogging habit after a little too much sparkling wine (and absinthe?!) drunk from teacups!

Welcome to Wonderland...

2009-06-09T11:07:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to share a few snaps from my party before I post about the most exciting part...

which wasn't falling down the rabbit hole...

or meandering through the (tarpaulined) Tugley Wood...

It was of course the UN-birthday cake...

Jamie's Italian

2009-05-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

crabmeat spaghettini

This past week we've been having a bit of a 'home holiday' - both off work, but no plans to go abroad. I've been collecting leaflets for galleries and walks and researching for the best cycle routes and river swimming spots in preparation. We had a fantastic start to our week with beautiful weather and we embarked up and down the canals on our bikes with picnics and had a lot of gratis fun. As the week progressed and the weather got worse we spent more time and money indoors (cinema, spa etc) but because we chose not to go away we were able to place no restrictions on ourselves - if we wanted to get some cheese from the ridiculously expensive shop we absolutely could! So one day last week we went into Jamie's Italian on a whim as, for once, there appeared to be no queue outside.

We were greeted by a rather scatty but charming hostess who told us we could be seated in about 15 minutes, showed us to the bar and gave us a pager that would bleep and flash red when our table was ready. We availed ourselves of some drinks and as we waited a member of staff walked around offering samples of bread and cheeses, and a member of kitchen team stood at a pasta machine machine small nests of tagliatelle. Although it was about 2pm the restaurant was still busy (a good thing in my books) and had a lovely informal atmosphere. Just as we were settling down our pager started flashing at us with fury and we were whisked upstairs to our table.

You'll notice the coats on the backs of chairs and absence of tablecloths in the picture below, and it did feel a bit like a plush canteen, but I liked it: it had clearly been very well put together. We were given plenty of time to scope out the menu and we decided to go for a combination of starters to try as many different things as possible.

Below:
The higher board (balanced on tomato tins, which I personally felt was a bit contrived)
Is the meat antipasti plank selection. It had buffalo mozzarella, Italian coleslaw (squash, beetroot, celeriac and carrot with a lemon, mint and olive oil dressing), pecorino cheese with chilli jam, San Daniele proscuttio, mortadella with pistachio nuts, a special piquant Tuscan salami.

The lower board
Is the bruschetta which came as a bit of a DIY affair with chargrilled sourdough bread, a clove of garlic to rub the bread with and a selection of: ricotta, mixed tomato salsa, rocket and Parmesan pesto and something that resembles artichoke houmous (this differed from what was on the menu so I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was delicious)

We also went for the bread selection, which came with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The bread selection included grissini sticks, foccacia, sourdough country bread, and 'music bread' with a rosemary gremolata (it's the stuff that looks a bit like a poppadom).

Our starter selection also came with pickles, olives and caper berries - but I'm not sure which dish they were technically supposed to go with.

OK, so where to begin?! I really enjoy starters in a restaurant - it's like a savoury pick'n'mix and, as someone who would chose crisps over chocolate, this is my idea of heaven. When all this loveliness arrived, my eyes just lit up. It took us such a long time to work through the starters and I spent so long nibbling, enthusing and enjoying everything. TLM particularly enjoyed the breads and the Italian coleslaw. I really enjoyed the somewhat unexpected artichoke concoction and tasting the pecorino, as I'd not had it before. The foccacia was amazing - definitely on my to make list next! The only thing I didn't really like was the mortadella, but that stems from deep-rooted associations with pink luncheon meat. I wasn't sure about the bruschetta being disassembled, but it worked for our purposes as I could eat the bit I chose, and he likewise. I didn't like the way they did the balsamic and olive oil as the balsamic sat completely unreachable under the vat of oil and I didn't want to sop the lovely bread in tons of olive oil to get the merest smidge of vinegar. It was tantalising (and I mean that with the original negative connotations). What shone through was the quality of the food and how wonderfully flavourful it was. I was very happy, and bordering on full, after the starters.

I ordered the crabmeat spaghettini (pictured at the top of this post) which also contained fennel, capers and anchovies and came in a spicy chilli sauce. The chilli tickled my lips before giving way to the saltiness of the anchovies. The crabmeat was divine, and there was plenty of it, and the fennel added a delicious fragrance. There was only one caper in my entire bursting bowl, but that didn't bother me so much as I don't really like capers. If I did I might have been a bit miffed. The fresh pasta was very good, and extremely filling. Next time I go, I'll definitely go for a smaller-sized portion if I have so much to start with as I had to leave half! I did find a few lemon pips in my dish (well, I found them in my mouth and had to spit them out) but have excused this as enthusiasm on the part of the juicer. The crab shell was a bit less excusable.

TLM had the traditional spaghetti bolognese, and allowed me to take a snapshot (all the while menacing me with his fork).

Hang on though. I looked at my plate of spaghettini, then to his of spaghetti. Are they not the same thing? And aren't they supposed to be different? Surely his spaghetti is a little on the spaghett-teeny side? I don't profess to know much about pasta, but I do know that they're designed to set off the sauce and that changing the pasta must make some difference? TLM tucked in with vigour though and allowed me to have a taste and it was particularly tasty - really moist without being slathered in tomato sauce. It didn't matter, but I was curious.

When the waitress asked us if everything was OK with our food, I did ask what the difference between spaghetti and spaghettini was and she said that spaghettini was thinner. I just looked at the plates again. Hmmmm - they were clearly the same thing on our plates. We carried on with the same level of enjoyment though, it was more an academic point on my part.

When we finished, the waitress came to offer us the sweets menu and very diplomatically told us that she'd asked the chef as she was curious too and that, indeed, they'd run out of spaghetti and were using spaghettini. It was really good of her to find out without being asked and it was all goodhearted and I was so pleased I wasn't mad!

I finished off with a delicious teapigs peppermint tea (my favourite) but we decided against pudding as I was just too stuffed and TLM wasn't sold on the gelato. We saw the size of the gelato scoops coming from the kitchen and, knowing the Italian-family-owned icecream shop with scores of flavours was just around the corner, TLM decided we should stop there on the way home.

So all in all we had a lovely meal. The staff were really great and made a big difference to our experience. The food was delicious, though there was too much fancy pants faffing in places (the tinned tomatoes, the discombobulated bruschetta) and not quite enough attention to detail in others (the lemon pips and crab shell in my pasta, subbing one pasta for another without notice). I would, however, not hesitate to recommend Jamie's Italian and will certainly enjoy going again for a late and leisurely lunch. The food was good value for such quality (we paid £45 in total for our meals and an alcoholic drink each - though we did buy a round separately at the bar before the meal) and it's clear why there is nearly always a queue of 40+ people waiting to wait for a table!

p.s. We spent a good 2 hours there, sipping and scoffing with our courses and drinks coming at a nice slow pace. I do wonder if they whole experience would have been different if there was the strain of the hordes outside and inevitable pressure to move along?

Malta-eser Cake

2009-05-16T07:44:00.001-07:00

Every year I watch Eurovision and every year I flounce out of the room at around midnight, fed up having wasted three hours of my life watching it.

This year we're going to friends' for dinner and to watch the show, hopefully in better humour. I will be taking a Malta-eser cake (geddit, geddit?) in honour of the country that always gives us some points. [[it's the Chocolate Malteser Cake from Nigella Lawson's Feast book]]. I've been wanting to make it for some time and had a practise during the week and it was so good - I'll definitely be making it again! I promise to make it for my dad who is such a fan of Maltesers (Whoppers, apparently in the US) and will find this not at all too chocolatey!

7 Things I Hate About You

2009-05-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been given an award which, sneakily, has a meme tacked to the back of it. I generally either find internet memes mildly amusing or pesky and presumptuous. Maybe I’m in a contemplative mood today (or the fact my lovely chap is working late) but this one given to me by the Heavenly Housewife, which requires you to pinpoint seven of your personality traits, had me totally taken in. So, egocentricity number one, right?

Some time ago I attended a session which involved a lot of navel-gazing, identifying your learning style blah blah blah. Over dinner that evening I innocently asked TLM if he thought I had a Type A personality. He slammed his cutlery down, mouth full, looked at me incredulously, remembered to swallow, and declared, “I have never met a more Type A specimen than you in my life”. He picked up his cutlery, carried on eating and I smirked to myself. Type A! A is my favourite mark! A for ace, awesome, amazing! Nambawan!

I later looked up what Type A meant and came across the following descriptions: competitive and achievement-orientated; over-developed sense of time-urgency; overwhelmed by frustration; highly-strung and intense; has free-floating hostility; is essentially an extrovert crippled by intrinsic insecurity.

*gulp*

It sounded like one of the descriptions in Theme Hospital (you know, deaf as a post, smells of cabbage, gets people’s backs up). And my nearest and dearest had declared me a prime example.

I know he isn’t wrong. When something goes awry in the kitchen I stomp my feet, blame the oven and vow never to bother again seeing as I’m so clearly terrible at everything *humph*. I still try and ice cakes when they’re too warm, even though I know better, and end up in a self-inflicted Sisyphus-esque task, scooping melting icing from stand to cake top. When I’m inconsolable over a split custard it’s probably hard to see the upside to a Type A personality, but I’m sure there are benefits to having such a restless character.

So here are the seven personality traits I have selected – as honestly as possibly – that are probably worthy of loving and loathing in equal measure.

1. WILFUL I will stubbornly persist in what I want to do. This has generally served me well, but can mean I have to have my own way. This is a trait I dislike intensely in myself. Unfortunately I don’t hate it as much as I hate not getting my own way. You see my conundrum.

2. FLIGHTY I go through life slightly delirious and given to frivolous flights of fancy. This is not to say I’m spontaneous as I love to have everything planned. But I will be taken by the idea that, say, I simply have to skip in the park, wearing my favourite dress and humming a certain song or NOTHING CAN BE RIGHT WITH THE WORLD. And it will be done (see: 1. WILFUL). This is partly why I like Chinese/Thai food so much – all the ingredients are chopped and ready to go, but I can still veer from fish sauce to hoisin to black bean and make my decision at the last second.

3. AFFABLE Maybe my only actually nice quality is that I’m very warm and approachable and I want everyone to be included and happy. Group hug? Er, no. I’m not tactile and I will bristle if you are not one of the select few people I am happy to cuddle.

4. INGENUOUS I found this word today and really quite liked it. I’m honest to a fault, often gullible, generally a bit naïve. This has served me less well as a lot of people out there in the world are able to lie, con, scam and cheat. I don’t know how they live with themselves. Oh and being artless also makes me open up in memes.

5. UNGUARDED Following from ingenuous, I am emotionally transparent and this generally disarms people – in a good way. I am, however, given to histrionic episodes (fancy way of saying tantrums) but keep my fits of pique to myself wherever possible.

6. IDEALISTIC Ah, youth (someone said that I was still a spring chicken today – huzzah!) I am prone to perfectionism, and set horrifically high targets for myself. I don’t apply these exacting standards to other people though: I lavish heartfelt praise on other people and enthuse about their achievements.

7. DO-ER As in, “She’s a do-er…” Creating and achieving… and then analysing how it can be better next time. I’ve only got one speed and it’s fast (or, rather, two speeds like a squirrel: pelting along or stopped stock still).

I found this task really cathartic, so thank you Heavenly Housewife! Rather than pass this on to 7 people (see, I will get my own way) I'll let people reply with what they can love and loathe about themselves if they want to.

Why lunch is sometimes bad for you...

2009-05-06T10:23:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I work in town, near some very lovely cafes, delis and shops. Previously it was the pastries that called to me at lunch time, but since my health kick I've shut their siren calls out. So...

Well I did need a carving board (I was fed up with meaty juices trickling slyly onto the floor and subsequently being slipped on). There was 30% off and it was actually a lot more reasonably priced and more robust than others I have seen. Moreover, the apron-clad people in the shop looked at me as though I lived in a barn-conversion with a stable door and a small lamb to incubate the the warming oven...

Have I done a very bad thing? ;)

Black Forest Fairy Cake

2009-05-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered a truly delightful side-effect of my blogging. After a long day at work, followed by a hard slog in the gym I came home to TLM who presented me with the cake pictured above. What has this got to do with blogging? Well, he has just come off nights (so has a short reprise before getting back on the wards) and, unable to sleep, pootled on my food blog. Spotting these, he decided to go to town making a full-sized and thoroughly him version...

To paraphrase the method he described:

He started by doubling the chocolate sponge recipe which produced six (muffin-sized!) fairy cakes. An unsuccessful foray to the local supermarket meant he decided to make his own cherry jam (wow!) to, and I quote, "smear inside the hole". He then divided some cream, leaving some plain and combining the other half with "mashed-up" cherries. The pink cream went into the hole, followed by some more cherry jam, topped off by the excised sponge lid. A dollop of cream, a cherry and a sprinkling of chocolate - et voilà!

I am so ridiculously impressed! They were delicious and, knowing he might get a spot on my blog ;), beautifully presented. What a winner!

Thin Crust Pizza

2009-05-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

sun-blush tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, mozzarella and a whole heap of rocket

Had a productive bank holiday - got a lovely tray and new bike at a car boot sale. The weather left a little to be desired, leaving some dull light for photos, so we had another DIY spree (spice rack was the last one...) and made a lightbox. See results above - I'm so pleased!

Until six months ago I'd never cooked a pizza from scratch, but since I first tried to make my own I haven't looked back. This recipe makes enough for 6 individual-sized pizzas (I cut the dough into threes and freeze two batches) or 4 big sharers. These pizzas are great for a dinner with friends if the dough and toppings are ready to be assembled as each person likes.

It's really straight forward to make this dough, which is happy to be frozen after the first rising stage, and the pizza itself doesn't take much more time than throwing a frozen pizza into the oven. Honest. I sometimes make this dough before work and leave it rise in the cool, slowly. Today I whacked it together and hot-housed it in the oven by turning the oven on to its hottest setting, turning it off right away and then leaving it to rise in the residual heat.

For a white dough pizza (wholemeal coming up in another post) I like it thin and crisp.

Makes 4-6 pizza bases

500 g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsps sugar
1 sachet (7g) yeast
2 tbspn oil (I try and use oil reserved from sun-dried tomatoes or similar)
300 ml lukewarm water (not too hot or the yeast will not perform - trust me here!)

Mix the sugar, yeast, oil and water together in a jug and leave for 5 minutes to bubble up. Weigh out the salt and flour. If using a mixer (I know I am so very lucky to have one!) then you bung it all in together at once and leave it to do its thing for about 8 minutes. If going by hand (and I have done this as well) you plonk the flour and salt onto the surface, make a well and then add the watery mixture. Incorporate by bringing the flour into the well of water, gradually. In theory this sounds easy. In reality, it starts OK and then gets ahead of itself and there is generally a rabid scramble to stop yeast and sugary water running down the surfaces and onto your feet. Just go fast and think about the mess later. After this it's just a case of really pounding, kneading and showing the dough who's boss. After ten minutes and much huffing and puffing you begin to get there. Feeling it change under your hands is really quite special.

Whether you mix by hand or by machine it goes through three stages:

The shaggy, messy stage where you think it will never become dough.
The pastry-ish stage where you think it might be ready already...
The glossy, smooth, springy stage where the dough comes to life - you have reached your destination.

After this stage, slosh a bit of oil in with the dough and turn it around to get it nicely covered. Cover with a damp cloth and leave until it has doubled in size. Either in the cold (a long time), a warm room (an hour or two), or hot-housed in the oven (half an hour).

Once doubled, cut the dough into whatever size you want. I usually go for something the size of a satsuma. I copiously cover a counter in semolina (which gives the bobbly texture you can see in the photo) and roll out to about half a cm thick. Cover with a plastic bag for about quarter of an hour to 'prove'. This term, I believe, comes from 'proving' the yeast is still working as it puffs up the last time before baking.

Slather on your tomato sauce (I just cook down a can of tomatoes with loads of herbs and garlic and freeze some extra to go along with the frozen pizza dough), then place your toppings. Try not to go wild with them as the more you put on the soggier the base will get. Cook on the hottest heat you can muster. The above was about 20 minutes which is just before it starts to burn!

In future, for a healthier pizza, I might omit the mozarella (shock horror!) in place of a bigger pile of rocket.

p.s. I have been listening to 'Rocket Man' as I've been writing this post - have only just realised the unconscious connection!

The Boot Sales are Back!

2009-05-04T06:04:00.001-07:00

I do love a good car boot sale and now that the weather is better they are out in force. We are lucky to live near a very big, very good one and so trotted along this morning. I love keeping an eye out for interesting kitchen things and today I spotted the pink tray (above) which I bought for 50p to sit my little tea set on (which my dad found for me in a charity shop). I think it'll look splendid with some shortbread too.

As I was trying out my other car boot bargain (Raleigh, 18 gears) I heard something scrabbling around in the tree. You might recognise it from last week. Oh dear.

Spaghetti with Shrimp and Spinach

2009-04-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

What a weird day it's been. There have been bursts of glorious sunshine interspersed with dark clouds, thunder and heavy rain. Wonderful for the garden, I suppose. With the month coming to an end (and therefore awaiting payday) we pottered around the house and garden for most of the day. At about 5pm though, we saw a window of sunshine and made the most of it by dragging on our running shoes and having a good run up and down along the river. We returned with tanks empty, to find equally Old-Mother-Hubbard bare cupboards.

A quick scout round the kitchen and a vague recollection of a meal a friend ate once, I knocked this up. I cooked some spaghetti and while it cooked I toasted some ciabatta. In a pan I gently cooked two cloves of garlic, half a lemon, wilted the spinach, threw in the shrimp (tinned) and stirred in two teaspoons red pesto and one teaspoon harissa. Lumped together, it gave just the right hit of carbs. I think I will definitely keep this as a reserve dinner (thinking frozen spinach at a push). Would have been even nicer with more spinach but we are woefully low in the food department at the moment - roll on payday!

----
In other news. We had an unexpected guest who took full advantage of the fact we left the back door open.

Can you guess what it is yet?

After making itself fully (un)comfortable on the bookcase:

It (he?) leapt straight towards the only breakable thing within its radius. Luckily, it is VERY heavy and unlikely to be knocked over by a gambolling beast just out of kittenhood.

And, on cue, he came snuffling in as we ate our shrimpy dinner.

Salsa

2009-04-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

At the weekend we had our first barbecue of the year (actually, the first barbecue we've ever hosted) and had a startling sixteen people round for the inaugral session. Can you tell we're the only people with a garden at the moment? We put a lot of time and effort into the garden before winter and, over Easter, did the final blast and it's really a lovely space now. I forsee lots of summer social activity, and luckily our friends are very civilised: in bringing food and drink, not getting on the wrong side of the neighbours and also, to my immense pleasure, in tidying up afterwards (and even sorting into recycling!).

Whenever I do 'hosting' I always make salsa and without fail it is the one thing I'm pestered for a recipe for. In fact, I got this recipe by pestering someone else at a party. What goes around comes around eh?

This recipe makes for a LARGE bowl (the above is one of about 6 smaller ramekins) and goes well with tortilla chips and, as we found, with barbecue goodies.

Ingredients

1 can chopped tomatoes
4 large red tomatoes, sliced into small cubes
1 large red onion, finely sliced
1 pepper (whatever colour - orange here) sliced extremely finely
1 chilli (whatever colour - green here) sliced extremely finely, WITH seeds
juice of 2 limes
1 teaspoon cumin
generous seasoning of salt and pepper
1/2 bunch of fresh coriander roughly chopped

Chopping and mixing is all that's required - and leaving it to macerate for an hour or so (though I tend to add the fresh coriander at the last minute). When I asked for the recipe I was really surprised about the tinned tomatoes, but that and the lime make it just the right consistency.

So next time someone asks me for the recipe it is here for all to find!

Willie's Cacao

2009-04-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

TLM and I have been enjoying our home-based Easter holidays (saving for the wedding means we need to 1. not go on frivolous holidays and 2. spend free time scoping out venues and visiting vicars etc) and so we popped down to my parents in Devon and had a wonderful sunny time and have been enjoying our flat, our garden and the city since we returned.

Yesterday we were plodding around town and I suddenly spotted a large poster for Willie's Cacao and felt compelled to go in and buy some. Who? What? I would have been asking that myself a few weeks ago - as we don't have a television - but whilst at my parents' house, and with their recommendation, we watched a programme about a whackily enthusiastic chocomaniac who prizes the purest chocolate. His name is Willie and his most recent adventures have been a foray into the world of eating chocolate (as opposed to 100% cacao cooking chocolate). Not all has run smoothly - the lack of a wrapping machine, leaving 24,000 bars to be wrapped by hand, springs to mind. You can read an interview with him here. So that, combined with a Westcountry loyalty lead me to buy two of his bars:

The first, Peruvian 70 which is 70% cacao and has 'subtle tropical fruit notes' and the second, Venezuelan 72 which is 72% cacao and has 'smooth fruity notes'. Marco Pierre White could taste the difference. Would I?

First things first, the packaging is exquisite. Small, square boxes containing two 40g bars of chocolate. The fact that 'delectable' was written down the side of the box was noted in the programme, but what won me over was the clever little note on the inner tab of the lid:

Inside, the bars were slightly less swish-looking but I assume these were part of the hand-wrapped batch? I forgave it.

I could smell the chocolate by this point and started to get quite excited. I had my glass of water ready and best tastebuds prepared. I slipped the square of chocolate from the wrapper and it was glossy and thick. I hate those Lindt chocolate bars that are firstly too thin and ridged, and then far too creamy. These bars though, looked fantastic. As I looked at one I thought about how much they cost (£3.45 per box!) and tried to justify it to myself - not just because we didn't go abroad, but also because you'd spend £3.45 on a bumper Toblerone in duty free. As someone who has worked her bum off (literally?) to lose two stone since January, it seems perfectly sensible to spend the same on something smaller but better quality.

I felt good about the bar before I even began. I took the Peruvian first and snapped it in half - and it had a great snap. I compared with the Venezuelan and it too cracked leaving beautifully distinct halves - none of this rumpled, wrinkly looking stuff that melts as you try to break through its prescriptive lines.

I felt more at home with 70% cacao so started with the Peruvian. To taste, it had a sweet, pineapply tang and in terms of texture it was smooth: it didn't try to stick to my teeth or taint my mouth like some dark chocolate does. Smooth and sweet without being cloying or creamy - excellent.

The Venezuelan next. We were both stunned to find that not only could we taste the difference, but we could detect a difference in texture too. TLM immediately declared it his favourite. It was mellower than the Peruvian, not as zingy or surprising. In texture it was noticeably chalkier than the other bar, not unpleasantly so and only really dry in comparison to the first. The only thing I can possible compare it to are the short, thick coffees you have at the end of a Middle-Eastern meal.

Neither had that vicious bitterness you find with dark chocolate - and neither was dry or claggy in texture. Sometimes dark chocolate feels insubstantial - they tend to pour it quite thin maybe? but snapping this off just as I wanted it was wonderful. Truly excellent chocolate, like I've never tasted before.

I still have a bar of each, and wonder if I can bring myself to enjoy them without analysing - there was almost a reason to have such expensive chocolate if I was dissecting it. Will I enjoy it quite so much in the bath? Watch this space!

Roast Chicken Dinner

2009-03-29T09:55:00.001-07:00

The roast dinner is the cornerstone of great British cooking, and the roast chicken the foundation of so many dishes. Considering this, maybe it seems a bit strange that I've not blogged about it yet. Or is it really so strange? I've been reluctant to blog about it. Everyone has their own idea of what a perfect roast is, and really anything slightly different from that is just not good enough. I don't mean just in terms of when things go clearly awry (dad, I'm thinking of those Yorkshire flops I made last week!) but also when a vegetable you love is missing, or prepared differently. Wondering if the dinner would be better still with your favourite Parmesan parsnips can sour an otherwise lovely meal. Think of all the pressure that's put on Christmas dinner - and how it ought to be perfect. Smugsters point out that a Christmas dinner should be fairly easy as it's just a roast dinner with extras. True. But they're probably the same lot who don't recognise all the expectation that goes into a weekly roast dinner. When anyone presents a roast dinner it is instantly open to judgement: the roast is subject to examination and scrutiny unlike any other meal. This is why I've been shy in showing you a roast dinner.

I'm happy to show this, not because I think it's perfect (the gravy certainly wasn't) but because it's about bloomin' time and I admit that I was fairly pleased with this one. I present this as a version, not even my own definitive version, and as a record of how it worked today - because I did a few things differently and they seemed to lift my roast to a better level than before. So, blow by blow, here is my roast:

First, the chicken. I started the chicken much earlier than I wanted the roast. This leaves time to make the gravy, and vitally lets the chicken rest so it can be carved with ease. As I used a small chicken, I put half a lemon, two cloves of pink garlic (it's very strong but I would ordinarily use a bit more), three sprigs of thyme and some sage leaves into the chicken cavity. I chopped an onion in half and sat it in the same pan as the chicken. I cook the chicken at about 190, and I keep it covered for 2/3 of the cooking time and uncover it for the last 1/3 of cooking. I baste about three times in total. Now, I never really do cooking times, but I always just if a chicken is cooked by yanking on the leg. If there is 'give' in the leg and it doesn't resist yanking on it, and deep down in the thick of the carcass the meat isn't pink, then it's cooked. This is usually about an hour and a half for a small chicken. Now, I ran out of kitchen foil, so without wanting to leave it uncovered I used greaseproof paper. This was a revelation. The chicken didn't steam during the covered cooking time, but there was still plenty of juice. I'm definitely going to use greaseproof in future! Plus, when it comes to carving it holds the juices well (I'm clumsy and often stab the foil and end up with juices dripping on my feet).

At this stage I start on the potatoes. The first step is to peel and cut them. I use Nigella Lawson's method of cutting on the diagonal, so that each well-sized potato makes three roasties. I then par-boil the potatoes, until a knife goes in without much prodding. The potato should need a little shake to get it off the knife (rather than falling off under it's own steam which tends to make them a bit over-cooked and liable to disintegrate in the oven). I strain the potatoes and then run cold water over them and then shake them up to get future crispy bits. I don't know why I run cold water over them, but that's my hocus-pocus part of roast potato cooking (and you'll find everyone has their own - covering in semolina, using hot hot fat etc).

I then made the gravy by removing the chicken and onion (I wrapped the chicken in greaseproof and left on the side and threw the onion in a stock pot), putting the pan on the hob and stirring like mad - getting all the crispy bits off the pan. I then added some salt and pepper. I added cornflour (always mix it with water first in a small bowl and add gradually so that it doesn't make the gravy lumpy or too thick!) Now, I could and probably should have strained it as there were some oniony bits floating around. But c'est la vie. I poured the gravy in a jug and left - you can scoop off some extra fat when it's cool and it's easy enough to heat in the microwave at the last minute.

Later, once the chicken was cool, I carved it. To carve the chicken the first step has already been achieved: a well-cooked chicken that has cooled. Your hands are the key to this, and a bird that's too-hot-to-handle is a nightmare. First, the legs and wings come off (they should come off easily with a tug if the chicken is cooked properly) and then gently ease the meat away from the bones and set aside. The breasts will come off easily too. BUT, the first thing I do is to run a knife down either side of the cartilage at the centre of the bird. I then get to its neck end and find the wishbone and pull this out. Now, it's a matter of gently separating the breast and under-breast from the carcass. DO it slowly and you'll leave less waste on the carcass. You then end up with white meat and brown meat separately and very little wastage.

I slice both breasts and tear up the brown meat. We use one breast for a roast dinner, and the rest of the breast for weekday sandwiches. A little brown meat makes it to the roast plate but most goes to a chicken pie or other chicken-leftover meal.

You remember I said that cold water was my superstitious way of cooking roast potatoes? Well I clearly overlooked the fact that I will only cook roast potatoes in a glass/pyrex dish. My reasoning behind this is that a bad metal pan is the enemy of crunch - metal holds on to the crispy bits and strips them from your roast potatoes (same rule applies for wedges). So I always use pyrex.

Today I used half sunflower oil, half garlicky olive oil to cook the potatoes. The garlicky olive oil is just olive oil I put garlic in and left to infuse... nothing fancy! Sometimes I put some shallots in to roast with the potatoes, sometimes I put whole cloves in. I have come to decide that they detract from the potato cooking so I think I'll stick to garlicky oil from now on.

I don't baste the potatoes, but rather turn them so that each side gets an equal crunch. As the success of a roast dinner often hinges on the potato, when I see this:

I see a 20-minute time to extraction, and know it is time to put the other veg on. When the roast potato is cooked completely, it should look like this:

Well, it would be great if that ALL looked like that, wouldn't it? That was the best of its batch, but it was a fine bunch. When I see the potato above, I set them out on kitchen roll to drain and I zap the gravy in the microwave for a final time. By this time my chosen veg should be cooked. (I try to limit veg, as otherwise I find myself eating vegetables just to see the wood for the trees! It's easy to add peas as well, oh and broccoli!, and parsnips of course, and cauliflower... and you end up overwhelmed)

One vegetable portion that is a firm favourite is the leek. More specifically, when it comes as leek sauce, also known as creamed leeks. I cook the leek sauce in industrial batches and freeze, partly because it's a total faff to make it as and when desired, but also to make the most of leeks when they are cheap. I think I made this batch when they were on St David's day special offer.

To make leek sauce, I slice the leeks as finely as I can bear to (the finer the better really) and then sweat them with a little salt and butter. Keeping a keen eye on them is key, because one bit of burnt leek and, to me, it spoils their taste. When they go glossy, tip them out onto a plate. Make a white sauce as you would, and once that has cooked through and thickened, turn off the heat, stir in the leeks and add a little white pepper to taste. I always cook this in the morning of a roast if I cook from scratch, to allow the leek flavour to permeate the sauce. Cooking it ahead is by far the easiest way of ensuring lots of lovely leeky sauce:

As you can see from the picture at the top, I also cooked carrot and cabbage for our roast. The carrots I just scrubbed and cooked whole, and the cabbage I cooked by pouring boiling water over, letting it come to the boil on the hob and then immediately turning it off. This way, the cabbage doesn't seem to over cook.

Finally, I put the carcass along with the onion it was roasted with, the garlic (but not the lemon), some pepper corns, a bay leaf, a carrot and some celery into a pot which will be boiled for stock. I had some bacon (the fatty parts that we cut off when having bacon for breakfast) and threw that in for good measure too.

So....

How do you do yours?

Beef Gyozas and a bit of a breakthrough

2009-03-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

We do love a gyoza now and then, strictly as a treat as we enjoy them in their unhealthily cooked forms. I've recently found a local shop that stocks gyoza skins, so they're back on the menu.

Now, our favourite place to eat gyozas is Wagamama, and I've long-marvelled at how they get the pastry so dry and crispy, yet the inside moist and delicious. It's not just deep-frying as I've tried that before (and I actually find them far too fatty when deep-fried) and didn't get quite the same effect - see gyozas here. Tonight, however an experiment and a brainwave combined to solve the problem. So I now present my (current) favourite way of cooking gyozas.

How to cook a gyoza/ dumpling/ pot sticker

Put the filling in the centre of the pot sticker (about a teaspoon, or just under)
Wet the edges of the gyoza all round (keep a small bowl next to you)
On a flat surface, gather the edges of the gyoza up, and crimp together all along (this way the gyoza will sit upright with the crimp along the top rather than fall sideways)
Place gyozas into a steamer and steam for 5 minutes (I used a microwave steamer and it was fine)
[[At this point, I think you may be able to freeze them for a later date so long as you used fresh gyoza pastry - I will try this in the future]]
Finally, remove the steamed gyozas, then shallow fry for a minute or two on each side

And this method is my new way of cooking them. They sit upright, the pastry is crisp and the inside is moist still.

(Wondering why this comes under 'frugal food'? Well, the filling was comprised mainly of roast dinner leftovers. You know that nub of beef that can't be carved and is use to neither man nor beast? I simply shoved it in the whizzer, then added two cloves of garlic and two shallots. I finely chopped some mangetout and added it to the whizzed mixture, before sprinkling in a little white pepper, sesame oil, hoisin sauce and Chinese rice wine.)

Alfresco Tapas...

2009-03-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

... almost.
The weather was so nice today that we would have liked to spend it in the garden (the daffs have come out!) but the nip in the air drove us indoors. We are fortunate enough to have a conservatory, so we decided to set up home there today for a lazy Saturday reading the paper.

We went out this morning to Lidl and stocked up on tons of fruit and veg, continental meats and cheeses and baked goodies. As we'd not had breakfast, and it was about 2pm by the time we got back, we decided to get some nibbles sorted and eat them almost-alfresco. It's not truly tapas of course, more a pan-European finger food selection, but it certainly did the job.

We had:
Chorizo cooked with sage (pictured above)
Bruschetta (courtesy of TLM)
Home-made houmous
Some little crispy snacks
Ciabatta with vinegar & oil
Serrano ham
Cheese, with Ducth crispbakes and celery
Crayfish tails
Olives, sun-dried tomatoes and peppers

A feast that took plenty of time to munch through and we're only just considering something light for dinner (fruit or salad) now at 8pm.

I think we might have to do this more often on a lazy Saturday (though the washing-up generated may make for a busy Sunday morning ;))

DIY Saturday

2009-03-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another guest post from The Little Medic. Missbliss has been moaning for weeks about her inadequate herb, spice and seed storage so we spent many hours yesterday looking for something which would suffice. Unfortunately we failed to find anything remotely big enough. So began a DIY adventure. I scribbled down some plans (which missbliss doodled over) and we set off to homebase. We managed to find a stash of power tools in the garden which although rather rusted, still just about worked safely.

Several hours of hard work later I emerged with a rather nifty (if I do say so myself) looking spice rack which is adequately sized to house missbliss burgeoning collection of culinary complications. Missbliss was then forced to label them to confrom with my OCD tendencies (incidentally - those tendencies do not approve of the mismatched containers on the top two shelves which missbliss thinks have character)

Pancake Day!

2009-02-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

Pancake day today, and we're having just pancakes for dinner tonight - with some freshly made raspberry sauce, lots of lemon and sugar and golden syrup! Yum.

I use my fail-safe pancake recipe which is rather immodestly titled "the best pancakes known to man" in my recipe folder.

Hope there's lots of flippin' pancakes going on where you are!

"aight peppas a paaand"

2009-02-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

I hope I'm not alone in finding 78p for a single pepper in a supermarket highly objectionable. On the whole, I usually get a big bag of the value peppers - especially if they aren't just green ones - and we eat things with peppers in for the whole week.

Unfortunately, my meal plans were scuppered when I couldn't resist eight red peppers for a pound at the local market (yes, that's the translation of the title!) So I snapped them up, and walked home wondering what to do with them. On the way I stopped into Waitrose (for a browse round the bargains - none - poo) for inspiration. I spotted a jar of peppers in oil for £3.99. Well I can do better than that, I thought.

Coming home, I found an appropriate jar and cleaned the label etc off. I topped and tailed the peppers, gouge out the middles and chopped them into thick slabs and preheated the oven to 250 C. I boiled a kettle, poured it over the jar and lid and then put the jar into the oven to dry (thus, sterlising it... I hope!). I also popped the trays of peppers in. After a good 15 minutes, when the peppers were charred and the jar dry, I carefully put the peppers into a plastic food bag and left them to cool. Leaving them like this makes it dead easy to get the skins off because the condensation does all the hard work for you - and you don't burn your fingers!

I got the peppers out of their little plastic bags and rubbed them under a running tap to get the skins off. I then chopped them into thick slices and put some in the jar, followed by a bit of oil, then some more peppers until the jar was full. They just fit!

Well, it's been about 5 weeks since I did that and we're nearly through them all and we've not yet died so hopefully I can carry on doing it when I see the bargains! The peppers are useful for salads, cous cous, sprucing up a cheese sandwich, for putting on the tops of homemade pizzas etc etc. Be sparing, of course, because they're quite oily but they are a scrummy treat and incredibly useful.

Zingy Fennel Salad and Fish

2009-02-04T10:43:00.001-08:00

Being wise with your money is partly about knowing when it's worthwhile spending it. After a really exceptionally hectic and stressful 15 hour day, I decided TLM should come home to a lovingly laid table and a big hug.

So after work, I got some sea bass (which incidentally had 25% off - woo), a nice loaf of bread and a decent bottle of wine. It ended up being a sort-of posh fish'n'chips and we both ended up eating the fish and salad together and having a chip butty on the side!

To cook the sea bass, I popped the fillets into foil, added some tiny slices of lemon, a slosh of the white wine and some lemon-infused oil (sounds fancy, was just olive oil on offer that I put lemon rind peelings into before Christmas - I fully recommend doing it!). To cook the little chip-ettes I just sliced some salad potatoes into wedges and bunged them in the oven with some oil and salt. If youdo this, make sure you use a proper non-stick pan as otherwise all the crispy bits get ripped away. The lemony fish, sweet little chips, buttery bread and the zingy but delicate salad work beautifully together.

Now, the fennel salad is abit special. Last weekend I saw fennel everywhere and so I picked up a bulb for about 50p as I've been wanting to re-create a fennel salad I had at a restaurant for a long time. To make the fennel salad...

Ingredients

Fennel, shredded very finely
small bunch of coriander
small bunch of mint
half a red chilli, de-seeded and sliced
juice of a lemon or lime
touch of salt

and then just leave it to infuse for a short while. I love this salad, it goes so well with fish (in fact there was some leftover and I bunged it with tinned tuna for my lunch and it even tasted good then!). I'll definitely be making it again and forcing as many people to eat it as I can!

Dinner was yummy-scrummy and TLM had a set-up like this at his endof the table too (we just have a big table so end up sat at either side like lord and lady of the manor! hehe!)

Twas certainly a lovely dinner, when we finally sat down to eat it at about 10pm!

The chicken that keeps on giving

2009-02-01T01:29:00.000-08:00

A classic way of being frugal - I wrote a poem at primary school that went along the lines of 'I hate Mondays/Let me tell you why/I have to wash the dishes/after eating chicken pie/Again'. So my mum was up to the trick of making a chicken last seemingly forever. So last week I did the same:

SUNDAY I roasted the chicken, with a whole head of garlic a lemon and some sprigs of thyme. We had one of the breasts for our roastie dinner - it's easy to eat more for no reason when you've got all those trimmings to fill you up!

I then covered the chicken in cling film and let it go cold so I could dismantle it properly.

Sandwiches for the week were made from the other breast, thinly sliced.

Chicken Pie (enough for two meals - frozen after the first meal) was made from the 'under breast' (I don't know what it's real name is!) and some of the thinner bits of leg to make the filling. I used the left over gravy and a leek to make the filling, and it was surprisingly good.

Carbonara sauce for pasta was made with the final scrappy ends of the breast, to which I added some mushrooms and sliced bacon. Just enough to keep it interesting. (I had leftovers for lunch)

Chicken Stir-fry was a bit of an experiment, and it worked! We had been to Yo Sushi before christmas I noticed they used what appeared to be already cooked chicken thigh in one of their salads. To replicate it at home, I broke the legs up into fairly hefty chunks, put them in a bowl with a fair swig of: soy sauce, sesame oil, a large grating of ginger, lime juice, some rice vinegar and a dash or mirin. I left them to marinate overnight and sat them on top of stir-fried vegetable and noodles the next evening - very tasty!

All in all, not a bad outcome! The little hearts on the chicken pie are inspired by another of my mum's tricks - using a little quirk to make the food more interesting. She always drew little faces in pencil onto boiled eggs :-)

Recession Bites...

2009-01-25T01:43:00.001-08:00

While not a particularly cheery way to start 2009, I hope my pun went some way to brighten the mood! So, it's apparently official that the UK is in recession. Everyone is talking about it. All the time. And here I am, adding my 'voice' to the chicken-licken situation.

I've not been blogging very much of late, for various reasons and I think it was because I'd lost my purpose. So I've decided upon a new spin, related to penny-pinching. Now, we are not in dire need of being frugal - but as we're young and getting married, we're trying to push as much money as possible into savings (without becoming misers who sit round a candle, with the heating off, eating gruel).

For this reason, we have come up with an ingenious scheme: strictly writing a weekly menu before shopping; not buying any lunches (though we have always done both these things, not with such fervent adherence); and now we add keeping our food receipts, sticking them on the calendar and at the end of the month we staple them and tally up how much we've spent. So far in January we've spent £109.26. For a five-week month (and having had friends over for dinner too), I feel very proud!

So what's changing? Well I've always been a big freezer-user, but now I'm making meat go further by getting ratty-ish ends into little sachets that can be used in soup or made into spring rolls. I'm making stock religiously to flavour otherwise dull dishes. I've started to make my own bread and pizza dough, to which I am utterly converted (though I try to bake the bread at the same time something else is cooking). We've set a cupboard aside for 'storage' which is currently host to about 20 cans of tomatoes that we got on offer recently. I'm nipping to the market in lunchtime. In all, just being a bit cleverer. Another thing is realising that if you're making a nice pudding, dinner can be scaled back! Smaller portions, saving dinners for lunches. Great for budget and belt reduction...

And we're still eating well. Today I'm making a red pepper, lamb and lentil soup (stock from lamb shanks we had as a treat the other day) with home-made rye bread. For pudding I'm making rhubarb crumble and am toying with the idea of custard too! TLM is doing a 12 hour locum shift today, so I can spend as much time cooking as I like!

I'm not quite sure how this new spin will work out, but hopefully I'll at least get my mojo back.

Wedding Scheming...

2009-01-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

'Wessex' theme: think Tess of the d'Urbervilles with Angel Clare (in the white dress, not at Stonehenge), bunting, daisies and sweet peas in jam jars, folk music, Kate Rusby, sparkly wine.

Cream teas after the ceremony, during photos? As pudding after main meal?

Blue and white stripy cake, like UN-birthday cake, with butter icing and blue sugar flowers/blue check ribbon.

Thinking of whittling some wood and making a version of these personalised cake toppers.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

Since I've been cooking Christmas lunches, TLM has been snapping photos just after I run in with the gravy (always the last item, always in copious quantities). I always print the picture out and pop it in the 'Christmas' section of my recipe folder for reference for future years - things to work on, things that burnt, things that worked really well etc. This year's was the biggest effort so far (roasties and mash!) and was based on the freezing-as-much-as-possible-beforehand method. We only got a little crown, which I cooked better than last time by stuffing an onion and lemon up it to raise the lower part up, but could still to with being moister for next time by decreasing cooking time and increasing resting time. Ho-hum.

There was one rather exciting and momentous Christmas occurance - I was given a bright red KitchenAid mixer by TLM. An object of lust that looks totally glam and indulgent on the side. I am of course completely spoiled and I can't stop stroking it as I walk by (which I must stop because I'm leaving my pawprints all over it). I've not used it yet, as TLM has been working long shifts since Christmas day and I felt its first use should be witnessed. He finishes at 9pm tonight - or thereabouts barring any catastrophes - so tomorrow we will be having pancakes for breakfast and we will marvel at how good the mixer looks as it does what we could very well do with a whisk. I think I'll have to get googling on batters and mixes and doughs to make full use of my new equipment. I think TLM may be thinking that effort saved in mixing will be redistributed elsewhere...

Happy Christmas all!

2008-12-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

Festive Fanices

2008-12-21T01:17:00.001-08:00

I got the recipe a few months ago, and have made them every couple of weeks since - for my work colleagues, for his work colleagues, for our parties, to take to parties - and they are by far my most successful offering. Having cooked them about 6 or 7 times means that I've finally got the recipe and method to work perfectly. Everyone comments on how lovely they taste and, after much tweaking, they now look the part too! The cakes themselves are cooked in the teeniest of petit four cases so noone can get away with the old 'you're going to make me fat!' quip. If you eat 10, it's not my fault. They are quick to make, but do require a piping bag but I think that's a price I'm willing to pay. This recipe makes about 30ish.

Ingredients

for the cakes

55g butter
55g caster sugar
1 egg
55g self raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp milk

for the icing

100g plain chocolate
100ml double cream
a couple tbsp icing sugar

How to make it

After much experimentation, this is the best method. Preheat the oven to 190 celcius.

Start by making the icing so that it has plenty of time to cool. Microwave the chocolate and cream together on a low heat for a couple of minutes. It's best to have it under-melted and leave it to melt a little than to have it zapped to death. Leave to one side to cool.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Beat in the egg, then fold in the sifter flour and cocoa. Stir in the milk. This should be quite a sloppy batter.

Lay out your mini petit four cases on a baking tray (you don't need anything fancy) so they're easy to handle. I used a silicone tray first time. Not recommended!

Spoon the batter into a piping bag with a medium sized nozzle (it can be plain or fluted, it doesn't matter) and pipe a little mixture into the cases - they should be about half full. Cook the cakes in the top of the oven for 10 - 14 minutes. No longer. After cooking, put them on a rack to stop them cooking any further. The secret about these delicious cakes is that the sponge is not dry at all. Leave the cakes to cool.

Using a whisk, beat together the cold chocolate and cream mixture for a good 5-8 minutes until it starts to thicken. As it starts to thicken, add the icing sugar as needed until the mixture becomes very stiff. The reason I add icing sugar and make the icing very stiff is that I've made it slippery before and it fell from a glorious glossy pile on the mini-cake to a flat ganache. It was most disheartening.

Once the cakes have cooled (it won't take long but they must be cool otherwise the icing will simply slip off - voice of experience here!) you can pipe the icing on top.

Now I've used mini-smarties, fancy dragees and even crunchie nuggets to go on the top of these, but a raspberry is the perfect topping. It cuts through the rich cake and really is the best topping (even if out of season at Christmas...)

Christmas Fruit and Carrot Cake

2008-12-16T10:52:00.001-08:00

This cake needs some tinkering still, but was deliciously Christmassy with some mulled cider.

Due to my poor maths skills, I miscalculated the amount of fruit I'd need for my Christmas cake and pudding by around 250 g (I don't know quite how). My Christmas fruit was a mixture of glace cherries, candied peel, dried cranberries, currants, raisins and sultanas steeped in cherry brandy, Cointreau and Amaretto.

I'd been hankering after a carrot cake for a while, so I thought I'd combine the two ideas and cook a fruity carrot cake. Unfortunately, the only recipe I liked the look of was in American cups and had some spices I didn't have in (ground cloves, nutmeg) so I altered, substituted and below is my metric rendering of the cake:

Ingredients

175g brown sugar
85g butter
200 ml milk
2 eggs
225g plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsps cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
140g carrots
250g steeped Christmas fruit

How to Make it

Cream the butter and sugar together (the better you do this, the better a cake seems to come out), then add the milk and eggs alternately with the flour and dry ingredients. Then add the carrots and Christmas fruit, pour into a 8 or 9 inch tin (I had a 9 inch which is why it's a bit flat!) and bake for 45 mins to an hour.

For the icing - I used 100g cream cheese and 100g butter and just added icing sugar until it looked like the icing I've seen before on carrot cakes. Not precise, I know, but it worked OK.

When I make this cake again I'll likely cut the quantity of milk. I thought it looked a rather wet batter and after an hour of cooking, the cake still came out a little damp for my liking.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

2008-12-12T11:36:00.001-08:00

Festivities gearing up here, Christmas cooking is under way. Hooray! And baby, it's cold outside. Snuggle up with some mulled cider...

An Autumnal Weekend

2008-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

This weekend we both took the Friday off work and we enjoyed a long weekend up north. We started at a place called Shugborough in Stafford - an estate and grounds. We rolled up on Friday, the estate was closed and the whole place was deserted so we played Lord and Lady of the manor and enjoyed the autumnal surroundings and the various lakes and canals

We had lots of fun playing in the dry leaves and running around the paths and past the follies to stay warm.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of the swans, they were so graceful and elegant. I really like this picture, though a bit blurry, because it looks so serene. It was freezing cold though!

As we were strolling up and down the canals, we saw this travelling cheese boat!

and duly bought a pickled onion and a chilli variety of the Welsh wax-wrapped cheese. Can't wait to have some wodges of it with crusty bread or a long-baked jacket potato.

The next day we braved the British weather so TLM could go on his special driving day. I was so cold, I could barely move my fingers. It was a true test of love and devotion!

But it was all worth it as TLM sped round the track

We then made our way up to Manchester for a friend's firework party (she made some delicious leek and potato soup and some peanutbutterchocoaltethingies and I will try and wrest the recipes from her).

Unfortunately, I got a rather nasty vomiting bug from somewhere... (dodgy Chinese buffet?) so the 4 hour drive back from Manchester was -ahem- interesting. But the whole weekend was delightful, and I'm really glad we took in the autumnal goodness before the torrential rain that seems to have invaded.

Warming Lamb and Pumpkin Stew

2008-11-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it shows that I was never allowed to partake in all things Halloweeny (I wasn't even allowed to watch Scooby Doo because it was 'demonic') as a child?

On Friday we decided to have a low-key evening in, watching the Buffy Halloween specials and eating some warming winter fare. During the day, I picked up some small edible pumpkins (99p a kilo rather than £2 for a big carving pumpkin or 79p each for a little pumpkin!) and on the way home I made a good deal with the florists over the church candles and orange-and-white bouquets.

To make the stew, I used the FLESH of two small ~~children~~ pumpkins and improvised:

Ingredients

1 red onion
1 carrot, cut into large cubes
1 can chopped tomatoes
flesh of two small pumpkins, shredded
small packet of diced lamb
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons brown sugar
black pepper and salt

How to Make It

Simple stew drill, really: brown lamb, remove. Fry onions and pumpkin together with sugar and a little salt. Add tomatoes and spices. Cook for an hour and a half.

With it we ate couscous with black pepper, paprika, diced sun-dried tomatoes and toasted pumpkin seeds.

I also made some Halloween biscuits, to come in the next post!

[usual run-of-the-mill reasons for lack of posting: 1. busy 2. computer still not got all programmes e.g. picture editing software 3. dark weather really dampening my motivation]

Fish Works Part II

2008-10-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we went for our dinner at Fish Works, following the disaster that was the last time we attempted to go.

The evening started well, as we arrived our waiter was told with *knowing eyes* that "table four is here". We were led to our table, complete with champagne glasses and a bottle of Laurent Perrier was produced, as the waiter discretely reminded us that the evening's meal was complimentary. It was most certainly interesting seeing the service from the other side, with our coats whisked away and scrupulous attention paid to our glasses.

With such special treatment, of course the dinner was perfect. I had a starter platter, with mussels, squid, prawn/shrimp/crevette cocktail, smoked salmon and fish soup. The fish soup was not quite to my taste (maybe it was drinking it out of an espresso cup designed to sink into the thick wood platter that the starter came on?) but it was lovely to take in a variety of starters in minature. TLM had smoked salmon (with thick brown bread, tarragon butter and shallots). I was a little sad not to have the bread, ailoi and salsa varde (the only thing we managed to eat last time!!) but the champers was flowing and all was well.

For main course, I ordered from the specials board. To me it seems the specials board is where it's at. The normal mains and grills are a little more conventional (salmon, sea bass, swordfish) while the specials are often spicier or more interesting affairs. I suppose it keeps customers coming back, but I'd like to see some more of those interesting dishes on the everyday menu. I ordered salt-baked sea bream and a fennel, mint and chilli salad. TLM went for sea bass and a side of chips. Both mains arrived promptly and both fish dishes were moist and perfectly cooked. The sides were equally delicious and the waiter introduced the chips as "to fight over" and he was quite right.

As our mains were cleared away, another waitress came over with... our precise main course and side order again?! I don't know what's going on with their communication, or whether our order was sped through or what - but surely someone along the line may have noticed two identical orders, non?

A pudding and digestif course followed, I had creme brulee (tasty, but over grilled on one side and under grilled on the other with only the perfect crack in the middle) and TLM had Eton mess - which I tasted and it was absolutely divine. We both had a glass of something or other with almond tones. Very pleasant. Coffee, coats returned and no bill, off we went to meet some friends for a drink afterwards (who were duly filled in on the evening).

It was a rather perfect experience, but it does make me wonder about the disparity between normal service and special treatment in restaurants. It also made me want to be treated like that every time and everywhere... I could get used to it.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-10-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to a guest post from The Little Medic. It's not often you find me in the kitchen unless I'm washing up, not because I'm lazy you understand, but because apart from your stereotypical male dishes, spag bol and the like, I can't cook. If you've read my last post you'll know that I'm on holiday this week and for some reason I had an irrepressible urge to bake cookies this morning. So, armed with an ingredients list I ran off to the local shop, we didn't need much as missbliss keeps a well stocked baking cupboard but I was relieved to find they had everything I needed.

So began a morning of baking.

The first problem was the fact the recipe I'd found online was measured in cups. Cups?! I looked at our cup shelf, is that a big cup or a little cup I wondered? I grabbed a medium sized one and hoped for the best.

Ingredients: (makes approx 43 cookies)

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 cups of flour - minus a bit because mymix was becoming too thick
3/4 cup of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 cups chocolate chips

How To Make Them

Cream butter and sugar together (I wasn't quite sure what 'cream' meant but I mixed it all up and it worked out ok).

Add in the 2 eggs and vanilla extract and mix.

Blend in cocoa powder, salt and baking soda (I hope this is the same as baking powder as that is what I used).

Mix in the flour (by now my mix was already quite thick and I was sceptical about the flour but it swallowed it up quite well and I added the majority of the 2 cups of flour).

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Now you should have a big bowl of cookie dough.

Spoon small balls of mix onto a baking tray and bake in oven at about 220 degrees for 9 minutes.

I ended up with 43 cookies from this mixture, you're supposed to be able to make 36-48 according to the original recipe but I tweaked it a bit.

I must say I was rather shocked when I got the first batch out of the oven and they looked like actual cookies, I was expecting some kind of chocolatey coloured mess. I was so proud of the first batch that I immediately emailed a picture to missbliss at work. I was so excited that I almost forgot about tasting them, but when I finally did they were amazing!!! Unfortunately I forgot about one batch of 6 as I got in the bath so these are just extra crispy. The rest are crunchy on the outside and a bit chewy in the middle, just how cookies should be! I managed to restrain myself to eating only 8 before missbliss came home.

These are easy to make and they're really really good. If I can do it anyone can so go on, go and make some all for yourself!

A Turn Up For The Books

2008-09-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Because we had had such an unpleasant afternoon, I felt I had to email Fishworks. Cue reply...

Thank you very much for your feedback about FishWorks. I was concerned
to hear you had such a disappointing experience during your recent visit to the
restaurant. All customer feedback is extremely important to us as it helps
us to improve the services we offer and has helped us to build a strong
reputation over the years.

*************was the original restaurant
Fishworks and I do agree that certain areas are looking a little tired; we are
however planning a full refurbishment of the site in the coming months. We
have also over the last week had a complete change of management in the
restaurant, with a new head chef and new restaurant manager with their first
service on Saturday - The standard of service was not as high as FishWorks would
have liked, which is in no way acceptable to you. I am very grateful to
you for taking the time advise me of your experience.

As a gesture
of goodwill and to win your faith back in the restaurant I would like to invite
you back for a complimentary meal for 2 at your leisure over the next 6
months. If you are inclined to return please contact me and I will handle your booking
personally. Furthermore if you would like to discuss this with me further
please don’t hesitate to call me.

Well! That certainly was an excellent example of damage limitation. I've replied that in the coming months we'd like to take up the offer - when everything has settled down. When we do return, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Fish Supper

2008-09-13T23:36:00.001-07:00

This story is a big higgledy-piggledy. Yesterday, the weather was absolutely glorious, so when we were out in town we impulsively decided to have a lovely lunch at a Fish Works restaurant. An expensive choice no doubt, but we had high hopes. Unfortunately the whole experience was inept and unsatisfactory, we certainly won't be going again. First, the waiter introduced us to a boggling array of menus - some handed to us, some chalked on a board right behind our heads, some explained to us with a tray of fish shoved in our faces, and the option to order anything to be cooked from the downstairs shop. A bit overwhelmed, we asked for a few minutes to which the water said he recommended I should be drinking champagne. Excuse me? I ordered what I fancied to drink, to be told 20 minutes later that they didn't have any in. We finally came up with an order and looked forward to our food. One hour, two glasses of water, some bread and salsa verde later, the waiter returned to tell us that there had been 'confusion' with our order and so it hadn't gone to the chef. As he said this, and I thought about the 12.5% service charge suddenly everything lept out at me - the people at the next table who'd unwittingly ordered a £56 sea bass, the bashed up side plates, the scuffed decor. We took the opportunity to cancel our order and GET OUT OF THERE (not before paying for our water and bread!). I felt like I was visiting a restaurant from Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen nightmares and not a rather full-of-itself cafe. It was sad really, as we'd wasted a couple of hours of a lovely Saturday afternoon. However, I knew I could do better. We stopped off at Waitrose on the way home and got some lovely smoked salmon, oysters, scallops, mussels, sea bass and crusty bread. We'd bought some fresh greens earlier at the farmer's market. We laid our own al fresco table in the garden:

Had our starters (salmon, oysters and scallops), then I had mussels and TLM had his sea bass.

We had chocolate banana bread for pudding (recipe to come)

And as we settled down to finish our wine, a hot air balloon drifted over our house.

So our Saturday redeemed itself, despite the Fish Works's best efforts to thwart it.

Scrummy Scone Stuffed Tomatoes

2008-09-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

Life, it seems, has a way of working out. Everything has come together over the past month and two trips to A&E aside, everything is going well. Hooray. On that theme...

Last week, I finished early and was able to pop to the bakery just before they shut. I got my bread and the lady behind the counter threw in a scone for free so it wouldn't get thrown away. Cue TLM arriving home from owrk some hours later with two beef tomatoes and the proclamation "I want to stuff these with something but I don't know what". We scooped out the tomatoes, cooked them down with some herbs and onions, and stuffed it back in the hollowed tomato. Crumbled the scone over the top, grated some cheese and baked for 20 minutes.

I've had many disappointing stuffed veggies before but this was absolutely delicious. I might have to get some savoury scones in for this particular purpose... (also, might slice the tomatoes in half to get more cheesy scone topping in - hehe)

A Slight Set Back

2008-08-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

We finally have the internet installed at home now. Unfortunately, I managed to slam a Chinese cleaver 3/4 of the way through my thumb this weekend. It was a bit of a shock and it didn't stop bleeding for over an hour. TLM was of course forced back to the hospital on a lovely sunny Saturday, poor him. I had an x-ray which showed that I very narrowly missed the bone. I now have steri-strips holding my thumb together and a comedy bandage. It might take a little while for 1) this strange woozy-sick feeling to go away 2) me to be able to actually get cooking again (as the thumb needs to stay clean and dry) 3) me to regain sensation in the tip (if it doesn't fall off that is!)

I hope to resume normal service as soon as I can.

Well, Bowl Me Down The Work Tops and Spin Me Round The Tiles

2008-08-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Remember that time I was bemoaning the pokey little kitchen? Well, I finally have a kitchen fit for culinary olympics. The criterion that I should be able to cartwheel in the kitchen is fulfilled (I laid down on the floor to measure the length - three mes). I think the spice racks in the two photos give a particularly effective comparison.

I am very happy with the new place, though getting used to gas marks might take some time. It's great to finally have somewhere homely and happy and with plenty of room. Very importantly, there is also a garden. A garden that was brimming with fruit to gather (in wicker baskets for added romance...)

Two large baskets of damsons:

and

A huge basket of apples:

Of which, more later. (It took me hours to process it all)

Quadrelli's Gelateria, Sandbach

2008-07-30T01:36:00.000-07:00

During our last week in Manchester, we made an effort to visit everything we either hadn't visited for a while or that we'd yet to visit. We went to museums, galleries, markets and stately homes.
We also managed to get to the much-hyped-amongst-our-circle-of-friends gelateria: Quadrelli's in Sandbach. Tales of molten chocolate or syrup in the bottom of cones were enough to secure a visit. We made our way to Sandbach - a small but busy town about 45 minutes outside Manchester - on a Tuesday morning to sample their wares. It's a sweet little shop open completely at the front, as they do on the continent, and with a view of some old houses and municipal flowerbeds. It offers all sorts of Italian fare, but we were just in it for the gelato.

I've never much liked icecream (partly to do with my sensitive teeth, partly because I prefer to indulge in savoury) but it's accurate to say that icecream is TLM's one true culinary love. What can I say? This was delicious. TLM had a hefty two-scooped waffle cone, with raspberry and strawberry gelato. I had a lick, and it was vividly fruity and sweet.

I had a brownie sundae with caramel and chocolate/hazelnut icecream ("we don't usually do that, but because it's quiet..."). It was divine with at least three hunks of brownie. I actually had to concede defeat and leave some at the bottom. Unheard of.

So if you're ever in the neighbourhood and need a fix of delicious gelato with embellishments I would highly recommend it. Remember, chocolate filled waffle cones ...

Bring On Summer

2008-07-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

This summer, it's all change again and this weekend, we're finally moving 200 miles South. As with all moves it's ending up being complicated due to accommodation, job and storage issues. We have to move in a very convoluted way, which will mean TLM living at hospital for a few weeks (in staff accommodation, not bedding down on the wards) and me living a futher 100 miles South at my parents' house, coincidentally when my brother and his children are descending - which will mean 9 people in a very small house! This is all because the beautiful flat with the BIG kitchen (I am SO excited) is only available two weeks after we need it. So we have to store our stuff, and ourselves, until that point.

Today is the last day of the school term and tomorrow some of my friends are going to Brazil, so it's a final sleepover for them and those not going tonight. I will be very very very sad to not be so close to them, BUT it means every time I see them from now on will have to involve a sleepover. (I feel that has shades of Pollyanna's glad game).

To follow on from all the lovely fruit we've been getting in the shops (cherries, strawberries and grapes in huge punnets for a quid seem standard at the grocers and markets here at the moment) TLM and I went to a Pick Your Own farm today, which was a new experience for me. It was great fun and we got far too many raspberries!

I don't think this swan was very happy about us being around, as he stretched his neck in an intimidating gesture.
On the way back we drove past the place where we stopped by the car accident three months ago - we are fairly sure everyone was OK, but due to patient confidentiality we will never know for sure - and it felt like another chapter closed.

I took my last trip to Wing Yip at the weekend to stock up on ingredients before we're thrust into a place that only sells soy sauce in 200ml bottles! I also impulsively got the BBC's book to accompany the Chinese Food Made Easy series (even though I find the presenter almost unbearbly cutesy) as it was reduced to a reasonable £6 on Amazon. I have a few posts stored up to keep the blog going over the next few weeks, and I'm sure there will be more nieces and nephew enduced cookery.

Warming Lamb and Cous cous

2008-07-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to the World Famous Bury Market (of which, more in a later post) and picked up some meat and veg to use before we move next week as I've almost completely depleted the freezer now. The next stage is pulling out the last ingredients from the cupboard to use up (tins of beans, jelly in abundance, dregs of dried things etc). I'm trying to get to the Mother Hubbard stage. Those of you who read 'delicious' magazine might be ahead of me on this one, as I was making use of the Ainsley Harriot spicy cous cous that came as a free gift with the latest issue.

Lamb was suggested (ahem - demanded) by TLM. He is definitely of the he-likes-what-he-likes variety and so this often means "I really liked what we had last time, I want that again." Which wouldn't be such an issue if I didn't have an ulterior motive (and none of the right ingredients). So this recipe ended up being a bit of a conflation of my sweet lamb casserole and flavours to try and compliment the spicy cous cous. With negotiation and some stealthily applied herbs, this was a hit. So next time I can go the whole hog for how I want the flavours to be.

Ingredients

400 g lamb (this was rather a lot...)
1 onion
1 tin tomatoes
1 carrot (there's no escaping)
1 lamb stock cube, made up with half a pint of water
1 tablespoon honey
1 1/2 teaspoons dried mint
1 1/2 teaspoons ras el hanout
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons ground almond

For the next time, I will either add some rose harissa or some dried chilli. Perhaps also some cinnamon? I might also season the lamb in some flour, salt, pepper and ras el hanout rather than just browning it as is. The almond helped to thicken up the sauce. I'm not quite sure why I put it in... but more experiments in future will need to be held.

How to Make it

I fried down the onions a little, then put them aside on a plate before browning the lamb in batches. Chucked it back in the pan, adding the carrots, and poured the tomatoes and stock on top. I added the herbs/seasoning/honey and then left it to simmer on the lowest setting on the stove for about an hour and a half. Towards the end of cooking time, check the seasoning and that it's suitably thickened.

We had this with the spicy cous cous and a long sweet pepper that had been halved and then grilled for about 10 minutes. I generally approve of cous cous because, and I'll level with you here, I never really cook rice properly. Despite trying to learn during the two months we ate nothing but rice, I was always terrible at it! The cous cous here was definitely warming and TLM liked it. It had an overall flavour but it just seemed so processed. I like to see my chunks of onion and garlic - not have the flavour come in powdered form. The inclusion of sunflower seeds was clever though. So next time I will bump up the spices in the lamb, and use spices, onion, garlic and toasted sunflower/pumpkin seeds in my own version of the cous cous.

Stuffed Peppers with Potato, Leek and Mushroom Gratin

2008-07-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight's dinner was improvised from various leftovers, which might make it harder to follow this post than usual as it's a little stream-of-consciousness.

Stage One: dinner started this morning when I was sorting out the leftover rogan josh from last night. As usual, there was sauce aplenty for another dinner but most of the meat had been eaten. To bulk it up, I peeled and cubed some sweet potato, zapped it in the microwave (so it can be easily heated at a later date) and stirred it into the curry before bunging it in the freezer. This, however, left me with half a sweet potato as it was a big'un!

Stage Two: later in the afternoon with half a sweet potato, some small salad-type potatoes and a leek I layered up a gratin (sweet potato, white potato, leek). Realising I had no idea what to do next, I googled for a gratin recipe. It called for cream.... hmmm... no cream. Then I remembered I had some homemade mushroom soup in the freezer, which was mainly a cream mushroom puree really, so I defrosted that, added it, and topped up the gratin with milk.

Stage Three: realising that a gratin alone isn't very balanced, I used two big red peppers I'd bought with the intention of roasting at some point, and filled them with vine cherry tomatoes. Hmmm, not great. Emptied out the cherry tomatoes. Hmmm... what could I stuff it with? I remembered some leftover frozen bolognese sauce we had in the freezer which I stabbed, slotted frozen into the peppers and then put three cherry tomatoes on top and gave a grating of parmiggiano reggiano.

Gratin and peppers went in at the same time, for about 45-60 minutes.

Dinner turned out to be much better than anticipated. The sweet potatoes, of course, cooked faster than the white potatoes which gave a lovely variation in texture. The leek was crisp, and the mushroom soup made the whole thing sing. Unfortunately, the mushroom soup isn't the easiest thing to whizz up just for a gratin BUT I have decided that blending some mushrooms, cream and garlic together will give much the same effect. So that I shall do next time. Somewhat unconvinced about sweet and normal potatoes together in a gratin, but I think a sweet potato and red onion gratin-esque concoction (maybe with yoghurt?) would be the next to try.

Rhubarb and Orange Sponge

2008-07-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

I promised to make TLM a cake for graduation. He grew up in Yorkshire and munched rhubarb straight from the garden, sometimes dipped in sugar. When he saw the rhubarb in the greengrocer's he knew he wanted some sort of rhubarb cake...

I've been wedded to my Marguerite Pattern sponge recipe for many years, as it provides a very light but modest Victoria sponge. I was tempted to switch to Nigella Lawson's skyscraping Victoria Sponge as it claimed to work well with sugary, orangey rhubarb. I needed no more convincing. I cooked down 400g of rhubarb, chopped into pieces roughly an inch long, with 100g of sugar (I baulked at the amount, but apparently it was necessary) and the juice of a very big orange. The rhubarb was strained, the syrup cooked down further and then all set aside to cool.

Ingredients - makes two 21cm sandwich tins

225 g unsalted butter, very soft
200 g self raising flour
25 g corn flour
225 g caster sugar
4 large eggs

I added a tablespoon of Cointreau so the orangey zing would go through the sponge too.

How to Make it

Cream the butter and sugar (this is why it helps for the butter to be very soft) and then add the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour and corn flour mixture between each. Divide the mix into the two tins and bake for 25 minutes at 185 Celsius, or until the cakes begin to come away from the edges. and a cake tester comes out clean. (I found this to be slightly too long, and would change it back to 200 degrees for 20 minutes myself)

Assemble the sponge and rhubarb when everything is suitably cooled. The recipe called from cream in the middle, but we dolloped it (with some of the reduced rhubarb syrup) on the side.

TLM was given a bran spanking new Canon 400D digital SLR camera (phwoar!) as a graduation gift, so I have purloined it already and am trying to get to grips with it. These are my first pictures, taken on the first day with it. Hmmmm, still lots to learn (especially keeping it straight, as the other camera projects little lines on the LCD screen)

Thai Fish Soup (Tom Yum Gai)

2008-07-03T10:20:00.001-07:00

My hilarious attempts to speak Thai should not be left in Thailand, so I present to you: tom yum gai nam kohn - what I believe could mean fish soup with coconut milk. I can't find exactly what 'tom yum' means, it could describe the sauce or could be the word for soup, but it is a very popular dish in Thailand. Tom yum goong (tom yum with prawns) was one of my favourite meals during out trip and so when I saw tom yum paste in Wing Yip, our local Asian supermarket, I had to get some.

I know mixing a sauce in with some vegetables and protein isn't much of an achievement, but I was pleasantly surprised by how this came together. Guided by the servings per jar, I used a tablespoon and a half of tom yum sauce (which made the soup -ahem- very very very spicy), fried it with onions and green peppers, then I added reconstituted creamed coconut, juice of half a lemon (lime is the best, but we didn't have any), some carrot, some cabbage and at the last minute some cubed fish. I used monkfish because we happened to have some in the freezer from the last time I fell foul of the fishmonger, and its firm and meaty texture really stood up to the spices.

I added some rice noodles, which sucked up some of the soup but it was worth it! Next time I will use less tom yum sauce (oh the joys of a new ingredient!) but overall I was very pleased, and it proved to be a less fearsome version of a hot and sour prawn soups I've made in the past.