Saturday 28 October 2017

Recipe corner: Parkin

Parkin is a glorious bake which appears to be particular to the North of the country, where it is a Bonfire Night staple. I first encountered it nearly thirteen years ago, at The Star Inn at Harome. The chef there, Andrew Pern, is a tremendous champion of all things Yorkshire and he served slabs of warm parkin as a dessert, with spicy poached rhubarb and rhubarb ripple ice cream. A very beautiful thing.


But, as I said, for many Northerners, parkin is chiefly associated with Bonfire Night and I suppose the inherently comforting sticky, dense spiciness is ideally suited for wintry nights. The addition of oats give it a slightly rougher, more interesting texture than gingerbread, the dark treacle lends a liquorice depth to the sweetness. It's well worth making it a couple of weeks before you intend to eat it as, like Christmas cake, it will sit quietly, wrapped in foil, and do nothing but improve.

Now. I've baked Andrew Pern's recipe several times but, until this year had not made it in my current oven. My current oven is a BEAST. And I foolishly ignored my instincts and adhered to the cooking time thus ending up with a sadly over baked parkin which tasted familiar but had a texture somewhere between flapjack, cake and Hobnob. I have suggested an hour in my recipe below, but just keep an eye on it. It is ready when it is lightly springy to the touch and the top is gaining a tawny, caramelised look.

Edited August 2018 to add: if you are following the Weight Watchers Flex programme, this parkin works out at 8 Smart Points per 16th portion. Steep, but worth it.

Ingredients

175g golden syrup
50g black treacle
100g butter
100g soft brown sugar

100g self raising flour
Pinch salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp mixed spice
75g rolled oats

Egg
Splash of milk

Grease and line a 20cm square tin and preheat your oven to 140.

Place the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar in a saucepan and set over a very low heat. The aim is to melt these together into one golden liquid. Keep the heat low to prevent it from boiling and avoid stirring - pick up the pan and give it a good swirl every so often to ensure it melts evenly.

Meanwhile, sieve together the flour, salt and spices into a large bowl, then stir through the oats.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine. Stir through the egg and a little milk - just enough to ensure that the batter has a semi-pouring consistency.

Put the mixture in the prepared tin and bake - mine took 45 minutes and Andrew Perm says 90. If you have a relatively normal oven, I'd start checking after an hour.

Monday 23 October 2017

MPM: 23rd October 2017

As meal planning posts go, this is likely to be a short one owing to the fact that we are having an unusual week - one with social activity.  We are out Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, Monday and Thursday are fast days, so that is just two meals to plan! 

But first a note on last week - despite the fact that I did a 6:1 rather than a 5:2, I still was a pound down this morning which is good news and sees me edging ever closer to my Post Op Lowest Weight of the Year (or POLWY, as no one is ever likely to call it).  A similar drop this week would put me in the next stone bracket down which, as any dieter knows, is one of the most pleasing of milestones.  Fingers crossed!

Mealwise, I really enjoyed everything that we ate.  Every time I have a jacket potato I wonder why I don't eat them more frequently - and really, with a small can of beans, a sprinkle of cheese and a decent helping of green salad, it is an incredibly satisfying dinner.  Last night's pork belly went down very well too - the braised red cabbage recipe, which I first blogged about nearly seven (seven!) years ago, remains an absolute triumph of a side dish.  For the first time ever, I made it overnight in the slow cooker which worked really well and I've updated the original post accordingly.

Moving on, the plan for this week:

Monday: Fast day - soup

Tuesday:  Chicken schnitzel, potato salad, lightly pickled cucumber

Wednesday:  Out

Thursday:  Fast day - soup

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  D's birthday meal part 1  (A.K.A. "A celebration of all things 70s"):  Classic prawn cocktail, steak frites, stem ginger creme brulee.

Sunday:  Out

Sunday 22 October 2017

TWTWTW: Winter is coming

It appears to be one of the depressing truths about getting older that time is permanently getting away from you.  I am sure that when I was a child, a single weekend would stretch out for days, summer lasted pretty much forever and a year was a lifetime.  And now, at the grand old age of thirty-ouch the whole play reel has sped up to an alarming degree.  I don't know how it can possibly be nearly the end of October, and 2017 approaching its final throes. 

I mean, I understand logically that we must be nearly into November, and thus practically at Christmas, because I made my Bonfire Night parkin today.  It was my second attempt, I am very sorry to say, the first being an abject lesson in trusting my cooking instincts.  Basically, we have an absolute beast of an oven and always have to reduce both cooking temperatures and times whenever we make anything to ensure that it isn't overdone; even bearing this in mind, I still managed to over bake my first parkin until it resembled nothing so much as a big, spicy HobNob biscuit.  Nothing wrong with the flavour, and, if you're happy to lose a few teeth, perfectly edible.  But not squishy, sticky parkin.  For those unfamiliar with this particular bake, I'll stick the recipe up next week.  The key thing to remember is that if it looks ready, smells ready and is only slightly springy to the touch DO NOT PUT IT BACK IN THE OVEN.  Even if you've only baked it for half the specified time.

I've titled the post, winter is coming, but last night's weather - full on wind and rain screeching and battering at the windows - made me think that it is pretty much here.  It was a perfect night to be inside, with all the sparkly loveliness of Strictly on the TV and a fire blazing in the log burning stove.  That stove, which we had fitted back in early summer, finally seeing off the Gawdawful 70s-style gas fire monstrosity, has proved to be our most worthwhile purchase of the year.  It was the first real stamp we put on this house after we bought it from our landlord and it's fabulous. Every home should have one, plus a cat to stare wistfully into the flames.  Example:


I say wistful.  That particular emotion might be slightly beyond her but she does a good impression, no?

In addition to the fire, we were also warmed on the inside by the delicious Rafi's curry that we had for supper (do you see how elegantly I segue into food chat?  Seamless!)  It had been quite a few years since we'd used one of their curry packs, but, now they have a permanent presence in Kirkgate market I can see us buying them much more regularly.  The Xacutti curry, which we made with chicken thighs, red peppers and onion, had a wonderfully rich, almost smoky quality to it.  We both agreed that we could have taken more heat, so, if we repurchase will request the mix be made hot rather than medium.  Served with nothing by rice and a supermarket naan bread it was a perfect Saturday supper.

Monday 16 October 2017

MPM: 16th October 2017

Full disclosure - last week was not so much 5:2 as 6:1.  Although since we (and by we I mean D) cracked fairly late in the day on Thursday, total calorie consumption probably still came in at less than 1000.  I'm learning the art of moderation in my old age and am sometimes forgetting to eat for the sake of it.  Hurrah for personal growth.

This, plus the fact that I am currently Sober for October, led to a very pleasing 2lb loss this week.  3lbs more and I will be back down to this year's low, which occurred about a week after my operation when I was basically subsisting on copious cups of tea and the occasional biscuit. 

I'm not really talking about the Sober for October thing (it feels deserving of capitals for some reason) because I am sick of making proclamations on this blog and then failing and doing the written equivalent of falling flat on my face.  So, there it is, it's the 16th of October and I haven't had a drink so far this month but it's not a big deal and I promise not to mention it again.  Actually, on Saturday night I did accidentally eat a whisky caramel truffle so in the most puritannical of eyes, I've already blown it.  It was a really good chocolate though, and probably worth it.

Moving on to this week's meal plan.  I am away for work on Wednesday night in EDINBURGH and trying hard to be cool about it because D will be left at home alone to weep into his solitary supper.  Every other night finds us at home, and the plan looks like this:

Monday: fast day - soup

Tuesday: jacket potato with baked beans and cheese, salad, coleslaw

Thursday: bangers and mash with red onion gravy

Friday: spaghetti carbonara

Saturday: chicken Xacutti (a form of Goan curry.  We're making this using a Rafi's spice pack and have high hopes)

Sunday: roast pork belly with white beans, black pudding and braised red cabbage

Another 6:1 week (we decided that fasting on a day involving many hours of travelling would not work out too well.  Yes, it's an excuse.  Yes, we could have slotted in another day.  Yes, we are, in fact, rubbish).  Lots of comforting, autumnal type dishes, most of which are being sourced, in whole or in part, from our freezer so shopping is being kept to minimal levels. 

Have a lovely week les touts!

Monday 9 October 2017

MPM: 9th October 2017

I'm fasting today, and it is making me rather grumpy so forgive me if I don't dwell too long on this post.  Thinking about food might tip me over the edge and our office is heaving with cake.  My beady little eye is particularly snagged on some Colin the Caterpillar mini rolls.  I used to love a Colin the Caterpillar birthday cake and I suspect the mini versions are just as full of chocolatey goodness. Damn them.


Meal planning - nothing currently in the diary, so we've lined up seven meals.  Plenty of hearty, robust dishes going on here, including two midweek pastas which is slightly unbalanced but a) they are very different dishes and b)  I'd eat pasta every single day without a qualm. 


Monday: fast day (sob!) - soup


Tuesday: tuna pasta bake (hurrah!)  D says that this is something of an abomination and that no Italian would ever support the tuna and cheese combo.  I say: I don't care, this is one of my favourite comfort foods and is just what we need to use up some odds and ends of cheese, a rather sad green pepper and half a punnet of mushrooms.


Wednesday: cacio e pepe - we've been wanting to try this for AGES.  I can't wait!


Thursday: fast day (sob!) - more soup


Friday: sticky pork belly with noodles


Saturday: D's homemade fennel sausages with mashed potato and onion gravy.  We put this on because we happen to have the sausages in the freezer that need eating but who wouldn't want sausages and mash in front of Strictly? 


Sunday: roast chicken - various trimmings yet tbc.


Have a wonderful week all - I'm sure mine will improve rapidly when I can actually, y'know, eat.

Sunday 8 October 2017

No news is no news

Not quite sure what happened there but I appear to have blinked and found myself in October.

When I sat down to write this, I tried to figure out why I sometimes feel that I have less to say nowadays.  I'm certainly not eating or cooking less.  I've realised that one key difference is that I am a much more confident cook than when I started blogging seven (seven!) years ago.  Although we still meal plan, the plan tends to be more fluid.  Both of us abhor food waste and will often tweak things to a greater or lesser extent in order to accommodate leftovers, or ingredients that look set to lapse from sadness to inedible at any given moment.  Some of the nicest meals that we have eaten in the last few week have been just thrown together.  And I always feel a bit of a cheat, blogging a dish if it is full of splashes and dashes rather than properly measured ingredients.  But I'm not sure why - Nigel Slater, a food writer whose prose I adore even if I do find his TV persona a little grating, has built an entire bloody career on such a methodology.

So, I am going to try and be better about putting up posts that just describe a successful coming together of ingredients.  Something less formal than a recipe, just a vignette.

Of course, the ability to freestyle more is almost certainly a result of me not following any sort of formalised diet plan.  I think the last time that I was a paying member of Weight Watchers was a good eighteen months to two years ago (I'm sure that a quick trawl back through the archives could tell me if I really cared to know).  Interestingly, I am certainly no bigger for forsaking my membership and probably a little smaller thanks to some initial success on 5:2.  But, as every catch up post that I have done recently seems to repeat, after a good couple of months I seem to have spent the rest of the year trying to reclaim the 5:2 mojo and failing, for various reasons.  Sigh.

Still, I am in a good mood today and unwilling to get too introspective about things.  It's been a beautifully calm weekend of reading, baking and Strictlying.  There's a pork belly joint being pressed on the dining room table ready to be served with braised lentils and a punchy caper sauce.  The cat is chasing a fly. Life is full of quiet, Sunday pleasures.

Very Sunday