Recipe corner: Tonkatsu “baoger”

Saturday night tends to be fakeaway night here. In recent weeks we have had homemade pizza, burgers and even D’s attempt at KFC. I will blog the latter in due course once we have got the recipe perfect.

This week, though, we decided to do a bit of fakeaway fusion by creating the Tonkatsu baoger. 

Tonkatsu is a Japanese dish which consists of a breaded pork fillet that is fried until crispy and drizzled with a ketchup based sauce. Bao buns, meanwhile, hail originally from China and are particularly popular in Taiwan. Bring the two together in a burger type fashion, add a dill pickle and put fries and slaw on the side and, lo and behold, you’ve insulted a minimum of two great cuisines. But you’ve made something yummy in the process.

I’ve written about making bao buns before - my original recipe is here (and by mine I mean David Chang’s). But Chang calls for skimmed milk powder and, alas, I had none. I only keep it in for the odd occasion when I make bao and last time I checked it had completely solidified so I got rid. As an alternative, I used this recipe from BBC Good Food and was pleased with the results. Maybe one day I’ll do a side by side taste test (although given that bao are a bloody faff, and I am fundamentally quite lazy, maybe not). Anyway, for the baoger, you want to follow the methodology but make the end product bigger: a baoger bun has the equivalent amount of dough to three normal sized bao buns. I won’t reproduce the recipe here, but I will remind you that if you intend to make these, allow plenty of time. You can make them in advance and revive them when you come to eat (instructions on my original post).

The sauce, incidentally, is Tim Anderson’s from his lovely book, Namban. I’ve reduced the quantity here but you might still have some leftover - it’s a strong flavour so you don’t want to use TOO much at once.

Ingredients

2 large bao buns (see above)

1/4 cucumber

3tbsp rice vinegar

3tsp caster sugar

100ml just-boiled water

Tsp salt

Tsp dill

2 pork loin steaks, visible fat removed 

50g flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp white pepper

Egg, lightly beaten

Panko breadcrumbs

Tbsp vegetable oil 

3 tbsp ketchup

1.5 tbsp Worcester sauce

Tsp mirin

Tsp soft brown sugar

Tsp tamarind paste

1/2 tsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp English mustard

Pinch of garlic powder

Pinch of white pepper

Tsp wasabi

Serves 2 

Prep begins early in the day. Trim the pork (if necessary) and, using a rolling pin or similar, bash the steaks out so that they are nice and thin. Exact thickness will be to your preference of course; ours were about 5 mm. The important thing is to have them as even as possible.

Season the flour with the garlic powder, salt and pepper. Toss the pork well in the flour, cover and chill. If you remember throughout the day, turn the pork steaks in the flour to make sure it absorbs as much as possible and that all sides are well coated.

Combine the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Reduce the cucumber to ribbons using a potato peeler, sprinkle well with salt and set in a colander or sieve over the sink. Prepare the pickling liquor: whisk the sugar into the vinegar until dissolved then pour over the just boiled water and season with salt and dill. Allow this to cool for around 10 mins before rinsing the cucumber, squeezing out any excess water and transferring it across to the water-vinegar combo. Set aside.

About an hour before cooking, remove the pork from the fridge to come up to room temperature. 

Just before cooking, take two flattish dishes. In one, lightly beat the egg with a little salt and pepper. In another, strew across half the Panko breadcrumbs. Dip the pork steaks in the egg then transfer to the breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the other half on top of the meat. Turn a couple of times to ensure that the steaks are well covered.  You could double dip (in the egg and then back in the breadcrumbs) if you're feeling particularly fancy.

Set a frying pan over a medium high heat, and get the oil nice and hot. Fry the pork steaks until cooked all the way through - depending on the thickness this will likely only take a couple of minutes on each side. While the meat is cooking, revive the bao buns and spread them liberally with the sauce on one side and the wasabi on the other.

Transfer the meat to the buns. Remove the cucumber from the vinegar and again squeeze out to get rid of any excess. Place on top of the pork, fold the bun over and devour.

Recent Eats (a "Summer in Lockdown" edition)

Hello, hello, hello!  How is everyone?  Hopefully well, as we continue to be...although perpetually slightly tired, slightly grumpy, slightly fed-up.

Working from home has long ceased to be a novelty and now the days drift, inexorably, into each other with very little to distinguish between them.  The weather in Yorkshire has been rather grey for the past few weeks which rather exacerbates the monotony.  When we first went into lockdown, I found the sunshine to be irritating - as if the universe was mocking us with its glorious blue skies and golden warmth while the world went to shit.  Now, I miss it.  But I was ever contrary.

Although lockdown has begun to lift in earnest, we are staying put for the time being.  As long as we are able to work from home (and no return to the office is being mooted for a good few months) and can get all shopping delivered, it seems silly to take unnecessary risks, however much part of me longs to go and sit in a pub.  In common with many people, anxiety over the immediate threat of the virus has now been replaced by anxiety at venturing back out into the world.  In fact, that might end up being our biggest challenge.  But plenty of time to think about that later.  July, at least, will see very little change chez Seren.

Cooking continues to be my preferred form of distraction - well, cooking and reading, although my attention span hasn't been great so not all books are grabbing my attention.  My favourite discovery of the last few months has been the two Hawthorne books by Anthony Horowitz - if you enjoy classic police procedural novels then these are great, and they have a pleasingly (to this former literature student) meta twist - although D found it to be slightly annoying.  I'm quite sad that he hasn't written more, as I gulped them down. 

Anyway, food! Yes.  I uploaded a few photos to Google to prompt this post and, because I have long since ceased to have any shame about my complete lack of ability to make ANY food look decent in photography, I will share them here.

Possibly the prettiest dish of lockdown was this lovely dish adapted from a Diana Henry recipe - chicken baked with nectarines, honey and lavender.  I adore Diana Henry and own most of her books but if you don't, she has been making useful recipes available throughout lockdown on the Telegraph website where usually they lurk behind a paywall.  The original recipe is here - although obviously I'm not sure if this will remain freely available for ever.  This dish sounds like it will be too sweet and perfumed to be palatable but I found it to be incredibly well balanced.

Less pretty, but still a magnificent beast - this is the roast rolled pork belly that D cooked a few weeks ago for Sunday lunch.  I know that pork belly is not for everyone with it's unctuous layer of fat, but we really enjoyed this and LOOK at that gloriously crispy skin!  D has been using Farmison and Co every month to source our household meat.  It's not the cheapest but everything we have bought has been of excellent quality and we are sure to stretch things as far as possible.  Also worth noting that they experienced very little by way of delays or supply issues even in the height of lockdown.

Ah, and now back to pictures of beigey brown slop.  Delicious!  But, truly, we have a newfound respect for pulses as a household and a VERY well stocked dry food pantry now where we used to rely on tins.  The top picture shows an attempt at a sort of cross between egg and beans and shakshuka which was delicious but I just can't get the cooking of the eggs right when I do these sort of dishes on the hob, which is so annoying as I love shakshuka (try Ottolenghi's recipe if this is a new one on you).  I have consulted the internet and next time I make something like this I am going to transfer to the oven for the final cooking stage.  If I crack it (ooh, egg pun!) I'll report back.

And curry - pretty much every curry we have at the moment has some sort of dahl on the side.  This split pea dahl was from the blog archives - 2011, can you credit it?  But, actually, the star of this dinner was the humble looking flat bread you see acting as a baked parasol type thing.  This was a peshwari roti, the recipe taken from Meera Sodha's wonderful "Made in India".  I fear I have condemned myself to produce these every time we have curry in future.  But, like every other recipe we have tried from this book, it is relatively quick to do, simple and tasty.  Probably not a tome for people who are advanced practitioners in the art of spice, but as a source of speedy weeknight curries, excellent.  I'm eyeing up the rest of her oeuvre.

Finally, Saturday nights have been fakeaway nights recently,  Pictured here is D's first attempt at a homemade KFC (DFC???) which was delicious - I'll blog it once we've got it absolutely perfect.  There is also a recipe for a tonkatsu "baoger" to follow shortly - yes, another crappy pun and (according to Google) not even one that I am first to use (although I was so proud of myself when I thought of it that if I was capable of patting myself on the back I probably would have done).

Hope things remain safe (and delicious) with all out there in the ether!  

Recipe corner: 61-hour duck breast

I first became aware of the concept of brining meat for a short period when I saw Nigella, wearing some sort of silky dressing gown if I remember correctly, immersing a turkey in a bucket of salt water.  The overnight bath was said to improve both the flavour and texture of this sometimes maligned bird.  I have never done this myself (we don't tend to have turkey at Christmas) but I think my brother has.  Anyway, the point is, it is the first time that the concept of a short, sharp brine flickered on the radar, as opposed to the longer process that is undertaken for cured meats such as corned beef.

Short and sharp it may be, but it still has a massive impact on texture and flavour.  We had brined duck breast when we went to Restarant Joro in Sheffield and couldn't believe the difference it made.  And duck breast is good anyway so imagine doing something to it, relatively low effort, that makes it even better.  I would definitely urge you to try this.

You need to start preparing your duck 61 hours before you want to eat - hence the recipe title.  But be assured the amount of work you need to do is minimal so it requires more organisation than it does effort.

The flavours in our brine, and the subsequent rub, tend a little towards the Orient - so chosen to suit the accompaniments - but you could definitely switch this up a bit.  The ratio of salt and sugar to water is what is important here - D spent quite a lot of time researching brine solutions to ensure that he got this bit right.  

Ingredients

500ml water

75g salt

25g sugar

2 star anise

5 allspice berries

5 juniper berries

2 garlic cloves (unpeeled but bruised)

Bayleaf

Tbsp coriander seeds

Tbsp black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice

2 duck breasts (skin on)

Make the brine: but all the ingredients in a large pot, bring to the boil (stirring, if necessary, to ensure that the salt and sugar are fully dissolved) then allow to cool.

Place the duck in a suitable container (ideally one with a lid, otherwise you will need to make sure it is well covered with clingfilm or similar) and pour over the cooled brine.  Place the duck in the fridge for 48 hours.

Now (and this is important if you want a properly crisped skin), 13 hours before you intend to eat it, remove from the brine, dry with kitchen paper and place uncovered in the fridge.  This will dry out the meat.

1 hour before dinner, remove the duck from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature before cooking.

Rub a small amount - approx 1/4 tsp - of Chinese five spice in the flesh of the duck and then season both sides well with salt and pepper.

We have found that the best way to cook duck is to preheat the oven to 180 and then place it, skin side down in a cold pan over a medium heat.  As the duck begins to cook it will start to render its own fat.  The timings will depend somewhat on the size of your breasts and the heat of your hob, but after 5-7 minutes you should be able to see that the skin is getting golden and crispy.  Follow your instincts here - you want to get the skin perfect before putting it in the oven.

Flip the breast so it is now skin side up and place in the oven.  Again, the timings will massively depend on the thickness and the oven but here, there is no need for instinct - for a perfectly blushing pink duck breast you are aiming to get the internal temperature to 52.  If you don't have a meat probe then a) buy one and b) try giving it a prod after, again 5-7 minutes.  The texture should be nice and springy.

Serve with whatsoever you desire (but check out our anniversary dinner post for our most recent iteration).

An engagement anniversary dinner

12 June was eleven years to the day when D and I got engaged.  I've just looked back to see if I blogged it, but it turns out that I started blogging the following year so, a setting of the scene first.

It was a very warm evening.  We had drinks at Gordon's on The Embankment and then walked down The Mall towards Belgravia and our dinner destination: Restaurant Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley hotel.  It's called "Marcus" now; it was re-branded a few years after we went to make it more relaxed and, to be fair, I do recall it being a little on the starchy side when we were there.  Great food though.  About halfway through - definitely after the starters but, I think, before the main course, D did the whole getting down on one knee thing, much to the delight of the women at the table next to us.  I noticed, however, that he waited until a waiter was approaching the table to ensure (as he told me afterwards) that we got stuff.  Reader, as a plan it worked; not only did we get a congratulatory dessert, but I was taken to the kitchen at the end to meet Marcus Wareing himself, who signed a menu now framed on our dining room wall.  We don't really do photographs in this house - we don't even have any wedding photos- but we do have that, and the wedding breakfast menu that my lovely brother and sister in law got signed and framed for us, and the memories they invoke are precious.

Obviously there is no eating out at the moment so we cooked something a little bit special instead.

To start - a large canape more than anything else - roasted new potato halves topped with sour cream and "caviar".  I think I've mentioned these before but it's worth saying again that these are such a nice way to kick off a special occasion.  The potatoes were tossed in a little oil and seasoning and roasted, cut side down, for 45 minutes and allowed to cool slightly.  Meanwhile, I combined sour cream with some finely chopped shallot, lemon juice, dill and a hint of mustard and piled it on top along with the fish roe.  Of course, the potatoes, rather like the more typically used blini, would also be suitable for any sort of similar topping.

For a main course - 61 hour brined duck breast (recipe to follow) mashed potato flavoured with green chilli and coriander chutney  (gorgeous combo, slightly peculiar colour), plum sauce (painted in somewhat clumsy stripes across the plate) and, finally, some lovely pickled plums with ginger and chilli.  I'm just going to come out and say it - we felt pretty smug eating this.

And further smugness ensued when I served dessert - baked cheesecake pots.  Baked cheesecake is a great favourite of D's and, of course, everything looks cute served in a pot.  I just quartered a standard baked cheesecake recipe to make this (which does make it quite a hefty portion but...we're greedy!) and it turned out beyootifully.  I was so pleased.  

Not quite Marcus Wareing standard, then, but not bad.  And we ate it while watching episodes of Taskmaster which is one advantage the home dining room has over that of The Berkeley.  A lot has changed in eleven years but some fundamentals stay the same, even in the midst of a global pandemic: love, friendship, food.  

Blog admin

This poor old blog has been a little bit neglected of late so I have started doing a little bit of tidying up and sorting out and updating.  The Eating Out page now, finally, stretches past 2017.

I have also added a couple of pages  On the first, foodie shopping bookmarks, I have started putting together a list of some of the online resources that we use when we have cash to flash.  Some of these will be local to Leeds but they will be marked so it is obvious.  Lockdown has made us even more reliant on deliveries than usual and lots of places, local and national, big and small, have really come through.  Just last night we enjoyed a bread and cheese supper courtesy of the very wonderful George and Joseph and Bluebird Bakery.  The latter does the nicest sourdough that, I think, I have ever had,

Just below that we have a recipe bookmark page.  This is an opportunity for me to bring together and share fantastic recipes from around the Internet.  Everything I list on here I have cooked myself and think the recipe can be trusted.  If I change something extensively, I will likely post it myself in which case it will continue to appear on the standard blog Recipe Index.  But I've always been a little bit wary of just typing up other people's recipes for the blog and this feels like a more sensible way of doing it.

I'll add dishes as and when they occur to me, but for starters there is a gorgeous basic wholemeal loaf, a storecupboard pasta dish, a mushroom curry that tastes far more than the sum of its parts and the very cake that led to my recent minor meltdown.

Happy cooking everyone!

Recipe corner: a basic template for houmous

It's been an up and down few weeks since I last posted.  In reality, very little has changed.  Our household (me, D, the cat) remain much as before the lockdown in the UK started lifting.  Because we are in the very fortunate position that we can both work full time from home, and have pretty much been able to get all shopping delivered throughout, we have decided to keep more or less to ourselves for the foreseeable.  Although the world has become very small, some days - most days - that feels OK.  I miss my extended family and I miss my work colleagues and I miss sitting in a bar with a pint and a packet of Scampi Fries, but the longer this goes on, the more "life before" takes on a certain dream-like quality.

But there are down moments.  I was broken by cake a couple of weeks ago.  It was good cake too - Nigella's Clementine Cake which is usually pretty foolproof but, on this occasion, because I was trying to deal with it alongside cooking something else, I rushed and it didn't come out of the tin properly; I ended up with half cake, half crumbs.  Such a small thing but I had a proper, screaming tantrum.  And then, for the next few days, found myself bursting into tears at random intervals.  To be clear, I don't think this was really about cake (and, in retrospect, it may have had a lot to do with hormones) but it made it obvious that I'm not 100% OK.  I don't think anyone in the world is 100% OK at the moment.  The fact that I'm OK an awful lot of the time puts me among the very, very luckiest of people.

Anyway, I post the below recipe more for my future reference than anything else - but if you are a houmous fan and have never made it yourself then I think it is well worth it if you happen to have a decent little food processor handy.  The secret to the perfectly whipped texture is, of course, the liquid that the chickpeas were cooked (or canned) in.  I came quite late to this realisation and had all but given up making it before I found out because I only ever produced an oily, claggy disappointment of a mess.  It's taken me a few goes to get the proportions quite right but I think that I'm there now - so I record it for posterity.  

This recipe produces, to my mind, the perfect basic houmous.  All the flavours are in harmony, nothing is too strident.  Once you have that you can play around with your flavours. I didn't weigh out exactly how much this produced, but in terms of volume was probably about the equivalent of the size of standard pot you buy in a supermarket.  Precise, eh?

Note: A true aficionado will probably:

a) remove the skin from the chickpeas before blitzing but, I'm going to be honest, I am not that person.  The results without removing the skin are perfect for my unrefined palate and

b) shudder in horror at the prospect of "flavoured" houmous.  But again, I am not that person.  Caramelised onion houmous is my particular favourite - and it goes beautifully with cheese.  So there.

Ingredients

50g dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 fat clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed

3 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tahini

Tsp sea salt (or, a generous pinch if you don't tend to measure such things)

NB: if you are using tinned chickpeas, this amount dried equates to about half a drained tin.  Simmer them gently in the can liquid for 10 mins or so to soften slightly and then proceed per the recipe.  Then buy some dried chickpeas and try it that way next time - you'll never go back!

This is barely a recipe but...

Drain the soaked chickpeas and then put them in a large saucepan, add enough water to cover them by about a centimetre, add the bicarb and bring to a boil over a medium heat.

Boil until soft - by which I mean it will crush easily, with minimal pressure, between your thumb and index finger.  The timings will depend on your chickpeas - I gave my last lot just half an hour, but it can take longer.  Keep the water topped up to roughly a centimetre or so over the pulses throughout and skim off any of the grungy looking foam that rises to the top.

When cooked - drain RESERVING THE COOKING WATER.

Put the chickpeas in a little processor - nothing else initially - and blend to a coarse paste.  You then want to add enough of the cooking water to create a perfect texture - and should do this gradually, a tablespoon at a time.  I have found that my optimum texture comes from between 5 and 7 tablespoons of liquid.  What I would suggest is take it down to ever-so-slightly too thick (for me, I would check at 3 or

4 tablespoons).  Then add the other ingredients so you can gauge what effect these have.  And only then finish adding enough water to get it to where you need it to be. Remember, it may vary as it is partly dependent on how much liquid the chickpeas have absorbed during soaking and cooking.

Now you have your basic houmous you can go mad!  Drizzle with olive oil and strew with pomegranate seeds!  Whack up the garlic!  Throw something entirely incongruous (like, say, caramelised onion chutney that needs using up) in there.  Have fun.  And eat smeared on pitta, or toast, or just with a spoon.

With love to all of you out there who are not quite OK.  Rather like the weather today, things remain changeable and sometimes rather gloomy, but the sun, always, inevitably, indubitably, comes out in the end.

Recipe corner: cheese and pepper chickpeas

Lots and lots of food writers are doing sterling work at the moment across all of social media, making loads of recipes and cook-alongs and tricks of the trade available to us mere mortals.  I have always been an avid Ottolenghi fan anyway (his book "Plenty" remains one of our most utilised) but he has had some fabulous stuff over on Instagram which he saves to his Stories. When he mentioned doing a sort of take on cacio e pepe, but with chickpeas, then I had to give it a go.

You will note that lockdown has not improved my food photography skills any.  Sigh.  Although I suspect it would be hard in any case to make a pile of gloopy beige chickpeas look attractive (not really selling it there, am I?)  Anyway, forget about the crappy picture, these chickpeas were DELICIOUS.  Look, so good it made me shout.  D was less enamoured and, of course, he is entitled to his opinion (he is WRONG.)  I suspect that the problem here was partly that I didn't quite get the sides right.  I served them with a tomato and chorizo couscous salad and flatbread which, while nice in their own right, weren't quite...there.  

Anyway.  My chickpeas needed less cooking and slightly more water than Ottolenghi's so I've included my timings and quantities on the below write up - a lot is going to depend on the peas themselves, the soaking, your oven...you just need to cook them until they are nice and soft and most (but not all) of the liquid has been absorbed so that you're left with a very slightly soupy texture that will thicken up into a silken, clinging sauce once the butter and cheese has been added.

Cacio e pepe should really just be about cheese and pepper so don't be afraid to be bold with the latter.  Since Ottolenghi himself supported the initial addition of garlic, I'm going to go one step further and chuck a couple of aromatics in at the cooking stage, but you could quite happily omit these.  Oh, he also originally suggested a couple of pickled chillies as a garnish.  I didn't bother as I had a bit of heat coming through from the couscous, but I think that they would be a lovely addition.

Ingredients

150g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight

Tbsp olive oil

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

Couple of Parmesan rinds

2 bay leaves

Sprig of thyme

750ml water

Pinch of bicarbonate of soda

50g butter, fridge cold

25g Parmesan, finely grated

Heaped tsp black peppercorns, roughly crushed

Serves 2

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan).

Take a pan large enough to hold all the soaked chickpeas comfortably and that will go in the oven - some sort of casserole dish is ideal.  Over a low heat, warm the oil and then fry off the garlic for just a minute or so, until the raw edge has disappeared from the smell.

Drain the chickpeas and add to the pot, tossing well in the garlicky oil.  Then throw in the rinds, the bay and the thyme and cover with 750ml of water and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda.  Bring the lot to the boil and then cover and transfer to the oven.

My chickpeas were cooked perfectly after just an hour in the oven - the original recipe called for an hour and forty five minutes.  I would suggest checking after an hour.  Cook until the chickpeas are tender and the consistency is still slightly soupy.  

Remove from the oven and discard the Parmesan rinds and the herbs.

Add the butter and the Parmesan in 4 lots, stirring well each time to ensure that they have melted completely.  The residual heat in the dish should do this without the need to apply any further heat from the hob.  Then finish by stirring through the black pepper and a pinch of salt (if needed).

Serve.  With...something.

Recipe corner: spicy pineapple pickle

So you remember how in my last post I gave you a recipe for a pineapple cake?  Today we find out what happened to the other half of the pineapple.  You may, of course, wonder why we didn't just eat said pineapple and I couldn't tell you the answer.  I tend to eat more fruit at work, when it is in my lunchbox and just there than when I am at home.  It's not that I don't like it, I just tend not to think of it.  Definitely an area for improvement.

Anyway, pineapple pickle.  This was a last ditch attempt to save some pineapple that was going a bit brown and (no other word for it) manky.  It was a dying pineapple.  It was on the brink between this life and the next.  And it made a fantastic pickle I am very happy to say.  We had it with a curry (paneer and red pepper, if you're interested, from Meera Sodha's lovely "Made in India").  We had it with some jerk chicken and potato salad (our food combinations are somewhat random at the moment but don't judge - this was delicious!) And we had it in ham and cheese toasties wherein it was EPIC.  

Talking of random - I realised once I had started that I didn't have any mustard seeds (don't worry, they've subsequently been ordered online - the importance of a fully stocked spice cupboard is not to be under estimated) so I, er, rinsed off a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard.  It clearly didn't affect my enjoyment of the finished product but it felt a bit weird.  Mind, I read somewhere the other day that Jack Monroe, who has managed to carve out an entire career telling people what to do with random tins of food, recommends rinsing off spaghetti hoops in one of her books to make a store-cupboard version of cacio e pepe*.  So rinsing is apparently a thing in times of desperation.  

*I will, most very definitively, not be trying this.

Ingredients

2 dried chillies, soaked in boiling water (I see no reason why you couldn't sub in a fresh chilli if you didn't have dried.  If you do use dried, then soak them for at least an hour or else they won't be soft enough to blitz.

1 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated

1 garlic clove, grated

1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp ground turmeric

200ml white wine vinegar

Tbsp light brown sugar

Half a ripe pineapple, cored and cut into chunks

Drain the chillies and put in a pestle and mortar along with the ginger and garlic and a good pinch of salt.  Pound to a paste.  Add a tiny splash of the chilli water if it needs a little bit of help to amalgamate.

Heat a small, dry frying pan and then, when it is nice and hot, dry fry the mustard seeds until they start to the pop.

Transfer the seeds, and the paste, into a bowl large enough to hold all the pineapple, then add the turmeric, the vinegar and the sugar.  Set aside for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often, until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Taste at this stage.  You may wish to add a bit more sugar if your vinegar is a particularly sour variety.

Add the pineapple and a decent pinch of salt.  Stir to ensure the fruit is coated in the liquid.  You could transfer it to a jar at this stage if you intend to take a nice picture of it for your blog (which you then forget to do).

Don't eat straight away - let it sit and collect itself for at least an hour before serving, and preferably longer.  The original recipe said that it would last three days in the fridge but I reckon you'd get a bit longer out of it than that.  Still, once you try one of those toasties you'll probably run through it in no time.

Recipe corner: pineapple upside-down cake

I make no apologies for publishing something so unashamedly retro because it is, without a shadow of a doubt, exceedingly good cake.

I've been baking quite a lot over the last few weeks.  For one thing, barely going out means that I need to keep a supply of potential snack food on hand.  For another, it is a very soothing activity and makes me feel very content in a sort of 1950s hausfrau sort of a way.  Also (and this is particularly pertinent to this post) we have been getting all sorts of random fruit and veg in our weekly box which we wouldn't normally buy and baking is a good way to make sure everything gets utilised.  

I read through quite a few recipes before settling on this one, which originates from the BBC Good Food site.  The method, of smearing the butter and sugar mixture all over the bottom of the cake tin rather than melting it down into a caramel, seemed to me to be pleasingly faff free and it worked a treat.  When you look at the ingredients list, the scant amount of sponge mix might seem like an error but I think it produces an excellent ratio of fruit and caramel to cake.  

Treat this recipe as a blueprint to pull out whenever you have some random soft fruit that you need to use (perhaps in your weekly box, or a tin lurking at the back of the store cupboard).  I had great success with making an upside-down plum cake the other week (in fact, D preferred the plum version to it's pineapple cousin).  Inspired by that, and again in the quest for the perfect distribution and ratio, I would encourage you to imagine a plum cut into eighths when slicing your fruit.  When I made the version in the picture, my pineapple chunks were a bit...chunky.

Incidentally (and I'll stop whiffling and get to the recipe in a second) I make this in my silicon cake tin and it works like a charm.  I am slightly obsessed, I won't deny it, even if it does fly in the face of tradition somewhat and means that I run the risk of losing my 1950s hausfrau badge.

Ingredients

50g light, soft brown sugar

50g softened butter

Tsp ground cinnamon

250g pineapple, cut into smallish chunks (see note above)

100g softened butter

100g caster sugar (golden if you happen to have it)

100g self raising flour

Tsp baking powder

Tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan).

Combine the 50g butter with the 50g sugar and the cinnamon until it reaches the texture of very damp sand.  Spread this across the bottom of a 20cm cake tin and about a quarter of the way up the sides (you don't have to be too precise here).  By far the easiest way to do this is with your hands.  Pretend you're making sandcastles.

Arrange the fruit across the caramel mixture.  Aim for as even a distribution as possible.

Now for the cake.  Cream together the rest of the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy.  Then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one, and stir through the vanilla extract.  Finally, sift in the flour and the baking powder and gently fold through so that you have a soft, smooth batter.

You now need to spread the cake mix on top of the fruit.  It may look like there isn't enough, so spend a bit of time, preferably using a silicon spatula, to make sure the mixture is evenly spread.  

Bake in the oven for 25-35 mins (my oven is a beast so I start checking after 20).  The cake is ready when a skewer (or a small piece of dried spaghetti, my weapon of choice) comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool for 5 minutes and then you need to turn it out onto a plate.  This is less scary than it sounds.  Place your hand flat under the cake tin (use an oven glove if it is still too hot to handle at this stage) and cover the exposed cake layer with a large plate then turn over in one swift, smooth movement.  Believe me, I am the clumsiest person in the world and I have managed several times without incident.

This cake is lovely warmed, with cream or ice cream for a school dinners-tastic pudding, but cold with a cup of tea is good too.  Whatever floats your boat.

Made in Oldstead

We can't eat out at the moment but fortunately some restaurants are making it possible to eat out at home.  That sentence makes NO SENSE.  But you know what I mean - some restaurants have moved into the takeaway business.  Or perhaps, more accurately, the posh ready meal business.  I, for one, am glad and wish that I was rich enough to buy from all of them all of the time.  I want these places to survive and be around when we emerge, blinking, into the sunshine of non-lockdown.  Although knowing Britain, the end of lockdown will coincide with a period of monsoons.  Our weather systems tend to have a finely tuned sense of irony.

Anyway, back to the point.  This weekend we donated £70 of your English pounds to the "Save the Local Restaurant" fund that is The Black Swan at Oldstead's food box scheme.  Another cracker of a sentence there. 

We love The Black Swan.  Well, I say that.  We've been twice.  We loved it on the second occasion and liked it very much on the first.  The food that they are making for the food boxes is not the equivalent of the food that you would get in the restaurant.  Of course it's not.  It needs to be packed and transported and reheated.  It needs to be plated up at home.  This all calls for dishes that are robust and simple with minimal garnishes.  Not necessarily adjectives that you associate with Michelin starred chefs. 

Having said that, if your expectations are set at the correct level, this is a very enjoyable experience indeed, and it was nice to have a weekend "off" from cooking.  I've been cooking a lot during this period; the kitchen has become even more a place of solace and escape than usual, but it is still nice to be cooked for.  And when it is Tommy Banks and team who are doing the cooking, it is especially nice.

As I said, the cost of the box was £70 but for that you get two lots of two three-course meals.  We decided to have the starters for lunch and then the main event and puddings in the evening which meant we effectively got four meals out of it.  That is pretty decent value to my way of thinking.

On Saturday, there was a tartiflette made with Ogleshield - a fabulous British cheese that rose to the occasion admirably.  There was bacon and caramelised onions and creaminess.  The dish required a smidge more time in the oven than specified in the instructions (the potatoes were sliced quite thickly and weren't quite as yielding after 20 minutes as we might have wished).  And we roasted the accompanying asparagus rather than boiling and dressing in butter as were directed to do.  Yeah, rebels.

This was followed by a beetroot treacle tart served with a schnapps-laced marscapone.  The tart looked beautiful (I am quite the fan of pink food) although the beetroot didn't seem to add much to the flavour profile that I could discern.  The marscapone was excellent.

As for Sunday's meal: I would say it was pretty much the definition of British comfort food.  There was ox cheek pie with the most gorgeous beef dripping crust.  On the side, a portion of pickled manglewurzel which is apparently, is a type of beet commonly eaten by livestock.  Lucky livestock, say I - this was lovely.  Reminiscent of sauerkraut.  We may, may have snuck some mashed potato onto the plate as well because I am from the East End of London and it is practically treason to not serve pie with mash. Also, we are greedy.  But I've upped the exposure on the picture so that you can barely see it.

The theme of comfort food continued with the dessert of elderflower cake with duck egg custard.  Cake and custard is pure school dinners as far as I am concerned.  Actually, (and here is a sad tale) I never had school dinners when I was at primary school.  My cruel mother insisted on making me a packed lunch every day.  So while I know of the concept of school dinner cake-and-custard I have never experienced it firsthand.  I suspect TBS's version was considerably superior to St Mary's RC Primary School.

An indulgent weekend then but worth it.  For anyone reading who lives in the Oldstead, York, Harrogate or North Leeds area and wants a treat then I would recommend this most highly.  For everyone else, I hope that the restaurants round you are similarly rising to the challenges faced by the industry.  I don't think it is possible to quantify how much joy these pubs and restaurants bring to our lives and we will miss them if they go. 

A journal of the plague year

Greetings from what feels like day 10,367 of lockdown.  Here in the UK, we are supposed to be in phase 2 or level 3 or something but since I (in common with much of the population) didn't actually understand an awful lot of the government guidance issued earlier this week (I mean, I understood some of the individual words themselves just not what they were supposed to convey when squished together in a sentence) I am just staying exactly where I am. 

The world is very small right now.  There is the house, the little garden, the occasional foray to the Sainsburys Local on the corner and, on one memorable occasion, a jaunt ten minutes down the road to the pharmacist.  That is it.  Certain things, occasionally, will come to mind and I will realise that I miss them and long for them so strongly that I experience a momentary flash almost akin to physical pain.  But then it passes, and I sink back into my little life, not contented exactly, but certainly not unhappy. 

Work is busy and that helps a lot.  D and I are both able to work full time from home so we have two stations set up - one in a little study at the front of a house (with a proper desk and a view of the street), one at the end of the dining room table (colder, feels less "professional", but closer to the kettle).  We alternate between them.  We have our little routine; whoever is based downstairs makes the first cup of tea of the day, we always stop for Popmaster (and the second cup of tea) at half ten, lunch is twelve on the dot.  As I said, a little life.

We've been eating well though, I'll say that for us.  I'm going to try and publish some recipes on here in the next few weeks to make sure some dishes get saved for posterity.  Quite a lot of baking (our flour stocks remain healthy for now), some random combinations (food waste, always something of an anathema has now become an absolute no no.  D baked up potato peelings the other week - NB: good, but probably needed slightly less time in our beast of an oven) and lots of comfort food type dishes.  This weekend a glorious treat; The Black Swan at Oldstead (of Michelin star and Tommy Banks fame) are doing food box deliveries and this week have extended to Leeds.  Two three course meals for two people (so four meals in all) for seventy of your English pounds.  I will share pictures.  And if you happen to live in the vicinity (they're delivering to Oldstead, York, Harrogate and North Leeds) then check out the website (not an ad.  Not sponsored, although if they'd like to, I am shameless, shameless.  I will extol their virtues to all 5 of my readers all day in return for some nice food.)

I hope that all of you out there are staying safe and well; and to all on the frontline - not just the doctors and nurses but the people who man the checkouts in the supermarkets, the delivery drivers, the posties, everyone, thank you very much.  I am acutely conscious that the only reason I am able to whiffle on from the safety of my own home is because you are out there facilitating that.

Molehills in the time of COVID-19

We continue to adjust to life in lockdown.  It’s not the staying indoors that bothers me at all – I am, by nature, a hibernator and quite happy to spend my days pottering around the house.  As long as I have my cat, my books, Netflix et al, I can be quite content.  But this has made me realise how incredibly, desperately spoiled I was with regards to food and shopping.

In my entire adult life, there has pretty much never been a time that I have not been able to get something I want to eat.  All those meal plans where we said: “I fancy aubergine this week!  Dover sole!  Chicken thighs!  Taramsalata!  Scrambled eggs!”  And then, boom.  COVID-19 happens, and food shopping becomes a thing to be feared rather than a quick ten minute sojourn before you get on with the business of whipping up a meal.

I don’t like the modern phrase of “Check your privilege” but it is so applicable here.  I am definitely checking mine.  I took so much for granted and with it, all those people toiling away in the supply chain, probably for minimum wage, to ensure that my every whim was met.

And the privilege continues to a certain extent, because it is a privilege at the moment to be even fretting about something like this but I do think that my anxiety has hooked on the issue of food availability and supply rather than dealing with the bigger, more frightening things happening outside these four walls.

It was eggs that I fixated on at first.  Eggs were in short supply.  We are genuinely trying to go out as little as possible, and certainly avoiding large supermarkets. But the little Sainsbury’s Local that I ventured out to, in that first week, was stripped.  Suddenly, all I could think about was – what if we can’t get any eggs?  What will we do?  I never realised that I was so very fond of eggs or that they formed such a staple part of my diet. We’ve now signed up for a weekly delivery of milk, eggs and butter (from The Modern Milkman if anyone is interested and in the supply area – only two deliveries in but have been extremely impressed with the whole process and the quality of the produce.)

Less pressing, but stll, niggling at me like an itchy cardigan, I began to worry about our supply of beloved Maldon Sea Salt, and the sriracha chilli sauce that we tend to strew with abandon over half our meals.  Ebay, and an online Asian supermarket, have solved these problems for now, although the fact that I have three boxes of salt in my pantry probably means that I am turning into one of those stockpilers that I so despised at the outset of all of this.

Flour and yeast were then the next obsession and I became frankly Gollum-esque protecting my precious jars.  I’ve just been able to order a few bags of plain and bread flour and some fresh yeast (which I can freeze) at Shipton Mill who are, very sensibly, releasing a limited number of delivery slots on a daily basis as and when they become available so that has solved that immediate problem.  I await, resigned, to see what will strike next.

I am genuinely curious to see if this has a long term impact on shopping and eating habits when things revert to normal.  Will we revert away from the current culture of little-and-often-as-whim-dictates more towards a weekly “Big Shop”?  Will we continue to use these small suppliers who have been there for us when we needed them or will we abandon them in favour of supermarket convenience and competetive pricing?

If nothing else, I just hope that I remember to be a little bit more aware of how lucky I am.  And never, not never, take eggs (or salt, condiments and flour) for granted.

The WW Foodie’s slightly over complicated guide to meal planning

In these straitened times, and probably beyond, people are going to have to start shopping in a different way and those of us who have been meal planning for years may feel, amongst all the worry, anxiety and sadness, a very vague hint of smugness that we were obviously right all along. Stay at home, plan your meals, save lives.

I’m not serious really...I don’t think that I have the mental energy to be smug at the moment since most of it is taken up with coming up with different things I can do with the five kilos of dried beans that D purchased yesterday (our forthcoming Waitrose shop has been stripped of tins so he ordered from an online wholesaler) and trying to gauge what 2 metres actually looks like (“It’s the distance between you and that bin!” “Well, that’s fine for now but what happens when I am not standing in this precise spot? How do I judge then ?”)

But yes, meal planning. People have said to me, both online and in real life, that they couldn’t possibly meal plan because they don’t know what they will fancy at any given time. That they need spontaneity. Which I get, but spontaneity is not the priority in the midst of a global pandemic. So let’s proceed with some very basic tips.

One - plan meals you like. Sounds simple, no? And then, if you don’t fancy the salmon you’ve got planned for Monday then switch it for the chicken you’re having on Tuesday. If you want to eat everything on the plan then you’re unlikely to ever be in a position where you don’t fancy any of it. If you are someone who really can’t deal with the idea of planning what you’re going to eat in a week’s time then you could do it three or four days at a time. We tend to go for a week...well, I’m not quite sure why, except that we always have done. Also “Monday” is the only day of the week that alliterates with “Meal”.

Two - anyone who is already reading this blog (hi Mum and D) already has a vested interest in food. Cooking is fun, eating is fun, so try and look upon meal planning as an extension of that. I keep a note on my phone so that if, while day dreaming on the bus to work, I suddenly think “Ooh, I haven’t had that in a while!” I can jot it down and it can factor in to a later plan. There is nothing remotely chore-ish about that. D and I each try to pick out three or four dishes apiece during the week so that when we come together to plan we both have some items to contribute.

Three - prioritise what you have in the house but not to the exclusion of all else. We keep an inventory of what we have in the freezer and I’m always aware of what I have in the fridge that needs using up. And it’s important to keep an eye on that - we’re trying to minimise food waste here. But if you plan meals for the sake of using up that yellowing head of broccoli then you’re in danger of not adhering to point 1. And if you’re not adhering to point 1 then, guaranteed, you are going to end up resorting to takeaway or ready meals. I’ve started trying to use odds and sods up for packed lunches as far as possible. Yes, it means that our lunchboxes can end up being slightly...random. But food tends more towards the fuel when it is scarfed down at the desk. Having said that...

Four - leftovers and meals thrown together from random things lurking in the fridge CAN be surprisingly delicious. So there’s nothing wrong with planning an invention test on Thursday to clear the decks for the weekend, especially if you’re a reasonably competent cook. Maintain a decent larder (if you possibly can - I know it’s hard at the moment) and have a few basic techniques up your sleeve - I find a white sauce, a basic risotto, a frittata and a basic flatbread recipe are all useful ways to bring stuff together.

Five - don’t forget about side dishes. Most of us Brits are a big fan of meat and two veg but when meal planning I find that I tend to think in terms of recipes rather than component parts (if that makes sense?) But good side dishes are lovely so why not base a meal around that? You could put “gratin dauphinoise” on the meal plan and then serve it with whatever protein you have in the freezer or you happen to find yellow stickered in your local supermarket.

All the obvious stated? Everyone feeling sufficiently patronised? Then my work here is done! In all seriousness, I hope someone found something vaguely useful. Just the act of writing this post has distracted me for a few minutes so it’s achieved something.

As ever, stay safe and well dear readers.

Meal planning from the bunker

Well, first full week of working from home completed. At the moment, I have set up shop on the dining room table while D is up in the study. This has proved to be an ill thought out plan on my part since it means that I tend to get landed with all the tea-runs.

The cat remains delighted with the situation and divides her time between sunbathing and jumping up onto my keyboard to take part in the many, interminable calls that are taking place at the moment. I have learned to mute the microphone so other people are spared her contributions to the conversation or the inevitable commotion caused by me attempting to scoop her down.

And we, we are ok. Our families and friends remain ok and for that I am extremely grateful. I woke up from a dream early this morning with a song in my head and I realised that it was the one that Rosemary Clooney sings to Bing Crosby in “White Christmas” about counting blessings instead of sheep. So my subconscious is obviously trying to encourage me to focus on the positives. It is never easy, especially when one is naturally of an anxious, pessimistic frame of mind, but those of us who are not on the frontline at the moment should be doing our very tiny bit by keeping calm and carrying on.

Those of you who know this blog will know that I have always been a meal planner. In fact, meal planning is one of the highlights of the weekend, often taking place over an end of week pint. It has become a slightly different beast at the moment as we are trying, in accordance with guidelines, to avoid shopping as far as we can, so it is all about looking at what we have rather than what we want. We already had a shopping delivery slot booked in for early next week (it’s our practice to do one big shop at the start of the month) but it looks like we won’t be able to get one after that since neither of us (very thankfully) fall into the vulnerable category and it also looks like many of the items we order a matter of course are unavailable. We’ve got a fruit and veg box coming Monday from a local firm and I’m hoping to make that a weekly, or at least fortnightly thing, so that we are not entirely reliant on the small Sainsbury’s Local for fresh produce and can avoid venturing out as far as humanly possible.

Anyway, we’ve just done a full inventory of the garage freezer so meals for the next few days are done:

Sausages, mash and onion gravy - every time I have been forced to break cover and go to Sainsbury’s, there have been sausages in the otherwise denuded chilled produce section so I’ve grabbed a pack. We batch cooked some sausage and bean stew this week (also throwing in some chopped cherry toms that were on the way out, harissa for a touch of fire and a handful of red lentils to thicken the whole) and there are a few left to produce a comfort food classic for tea.

Chicken breast, sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes, honey roast carrots, peas. We always have a stock of chicken breasts in the freezer so we’re going to have a Sunday lunch. I’ve got plenty of root veg with more coming in the veg box, so am prioritising using these before it turns. I’ll probably do more potatoes and carrots than we need and freeze at the parboiled stage.

Turkey curry with rice and flatbreads - the curry has been in the freezer since Christmas so needs using up. I’ve got a cauliflower stalk that I’ve set aside and will blitz up and combine with the rice to up the veg content here (but don’t tell D!)

Ottolenghi’s dirty rice - well, sort of. The original recipe is here and it is DELICIOUS. We had some chicken livers in the freezer that we had earmarked to make a batch. We don’t have any pork mince but I am going to experiment with using some red lentils cooked nice and soft (for bulk and texture) with some finely chopped, rehydrated Shittake mushrooms (for a meaty flavour).

Tortellini soup - chilled, filled pasta is one of my favourite things and we discovered half a pack of prosciutto cappelletti which is not enough for a meal for two but I’ll use some butternut squash and carrots to make a light, creamy soup then throw the cappelletti into that to stretch it out. Garlic bread on the side - if we’ve cracked and eaten the last remaining garlic baguette by then I can make garlic flatbreads easily enough.

So, that’s five days worth of nice meals out of a quick freezer trawl which is quite gratifying and means I have five days where I don’t have to venture out. Hurrah.

Thoughts and prayers to all of you - hope you and yours are staying safe, well and nourished in these trying times.

Hell in a handcart

So I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of all the ridiculousness going on at the moment. Anyone else fancy a return to the mid 90s? I seem to remember that my main issue back in those days was whether I would be able to pass for 15 and thus manage to watch “Speed” at the cinema at Lakeside shopping centre. Kids, this was back before the Internet when we used to check cinema times using Ceefax which could take up to half an hour. But in these simpler, happier days, when we were not subjected to a constant, 24 hour barrage of global misery via our phones, we didn’t mind being a little bit bored. Whole summers would pass and we would just sit around in the park, passing round a single copy of Just Seventeen magazine and drinking Calypsos.

Yes, I’m probably guilty of a bit of rose tinted remembering but can you blame me? It’s bad enough that we are in the throes of a pandemic which WOULD occur during the Premiership of a man who can’t manage to grasp the very basic concept of hair brushing, let alone anything more complicated. But we also appear to dwell amongst the very worst kind of selfish, self-serving, overly entitled crap weasels who think as long as THEY have enough pasta and loo roll to see them through until 2030, everything is ok. To the worst offenders out there I would say: I don’t personally believe in karma. But if I did, I wouldn’t love your chances against COVID-19 you selfish pieces of plankton.

Anyway, D and I are fine for the moment. Minx is fine. I am ignoring the news as far as I possibly can and concentrating on my first true love, books with some cooking as well. I can see me becoming almost obsessive over the next few months about eking out what produce I can buy as far as possible and am thankful for all those years of experimenting in the kitchen, not to mention the well stocked pantry that will facilitate this.

Keep safe and well dear reader; be thoughtful and kind to those around you, reclaim that Blitz spirit and hopefully in a few months time this will all seem as odd and implausible as a bus rigged to blow up if the speedometer drops below 50.

Meal planning Monday: 24 February 2020

I can't believe that we woke up to snow this morning!  It's a shame I have to go out and earn a living because I could quite favour spending the entire day wrapped up in a blanket staring wistfully out of the window.  There is something about the extreme quiet that always seems to accompany snow that prompts in my a very enjoyable sense of gentle melancholy.  Mind, put me outside in snowy conditions and said gentle melancholy turns to verging-on-blind-panic.  I'm not steady on my feet at the best of times and I hate slippery conditions - or conditions which look as though they should be slippery even if they are not.

Meal planning this week - obviously, Tuesday sorted itself, we are going out for supper on Friday (pay day!) and two freezer dive meals, so not a sterling week for cooking but some nice winter warmers on there.

Monday: Pasta alla Genovese - a bump from last week.  We continue to build our repertoire of quick and easy store cupboard pasta dishes and I like the sound of this one - albeit, we are going to cheat and use store bought pesto.  I know that every telly chef out there rebukes one for using pesto out of a jar but have you ever made pesto?  Do you know how much basil you have to buy to make a couple of spoonfuls?  And how expensive fresh herbs are if you are forced to buy some in a supermarket?  I like Sacla pesto, anyway.  Yes, it probably tastes different to freshly made but it has a charm all of its own as far as I am concerned.

Tuesday: Pancake day!  As per usual, we will be having pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, courtesy of April Bloomfield's recipe.

Wednesday: First of the two freezer dives - Thai fish curry.

Thursday: Macaroni cheese because it is forecast snow again and one must eat stodgy pasta bakes when it snows.

Saturday: Rice bowls with pepper and lime crusted tuna and mustard dressed cucumber.  A slightly different iteration of this dish.  There will probably be other garnishes as well, but D hasn't quite decided where else to go with it yet.

Sunday: Second of the two freezer dives - coq au vin.  With mash.

Have a good week all - and stay warm!

Meal planning Monday: 10th February 2020

It is Sunday night and a storm is raging outside. It has been raging all day - a proper storm, all howling wind and lashing rain. I have not left the house and am not delighted at the prospect of going out tomorrow if it stays like this. It is weather for curling under blankets and drinking tea.

The cat concurs.

A couple of bumps from last week on this week’s plan. And I’m supposed to think of something romantic to cook on Friday but I’m coming up blank at the moment. I blame the weather.

Monday: Thai curry butternut squash soup

Tuesday: roast aubergine with saffron yoghurt, couscous salad

Wednesday: chicken satay noodles

Thursday: D is out so I’m likely to be on cheese on toast or prick and ping

Friday: Valentine’s Day

Saturday: roast pork belly, langoustines, roast fennel, corn maque choux

Sunday: roast chicken with lemon and herb orzo

Happy Monday and I hope, wherever you are, you are safe, warm and dry.

Meal Planning Monday: 3 February 2020

Last night, I discovered the beautiful thing that is aligot. If you haven’t come across this before, it’s basically a cross between mash and a cheese fondue. It is staggeringly rich and (if you happen to like mash and cheese) staggeringly wonderful. Although you do end up, at the end, wondering exactly how you will ever move off the sofa again.

What with that and a delicious but rich meal out on Friday night (to celebrate pay day) we decided a relatively light, veg heavy week was in order for meal planning purposes, although we’re sneaking some pork belly in on Sunday as we happen to have a couple of ready pressed pieces in the freezer that require attention. And roast potatoes.

Monday: spinach stewed eggs. This is from Rachel Khoo’s Swedish recipe book and I think it is available online - I would urge you to check it out because it is lovely. We’ve had it as a brunch dish but I think it will also make a very satisfying supper. Don’t be tempted to leave off the garnish of lightly pickled onion, chilli and dill which lifts the whole thing to another level.

Tuesday: pasta with rose harissa, black olives and capers. We often favour a simple pasta dish on a Tuesday, and this one from Ottolenghi sounds like an interesting fusion.

Wednesday: a (very) old WW Foodie recipe - gnocchi with butternut squash. We’ve eaten quite a few gnocchi dishes already this year and think both of us are really appreciating the wonderful stodgy, comforting qualities.

Thursday: another Ottolenghi dish: roast aubergine with saffron yoghurt. I’ll serve it with a couscous salad pretty similar to this one here.

Friday: fish on Friday - kedgeree in this case.

Saturday: definitely a curry night, and a chana dal is locked in, but not quite sure what else yet. Possibly a second curry, possible a vada pav (spicy potato cakes squished into a bun).

Sunday: roast pork belly with a couple of seasonal sides.

Hope everyone has a splendid week.

Recipe corner: Ecclefechan tart

I know I still need to put the recipe for Christmas pudding cheesecake up but that is at home and I am not. I am currently in Edinburgh, waiting for a train back to Leeds and so it seems fitting to be talking about Scottish food.  If you have never been to Scotland (or, weirdly, Waitrose which sometimes sells little ones at Christmas as some sort of mince pie alternative) then you will probably never have come across Ecclefechan tart and that is a shame because it is lovely. I think it is nicer than its more widely known distant cousin, the Yorkshire curd tart.

I made D go to Ecclefechan once. Reader, there did not appear to be anything there. We spent the evening playing cards in the hotel bar. But we did have Ecclefechan tart. And when I told the proprietor of the Ecclefechan House Hotel that I was basically there because I was a tart groupie, she was kind enough to let me copy the recipe which had been in her possession for donkey’s years.

So, some notes. The first: I have not provided a recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry here, feel free to use your own. Or, you know, Google it. The recipe does not call for blind baking so we did not and I have not mentioned it below. It was fine. But if you are a pastry purist and you want your bottom super crisp, then you might need to improvise a little here.

The second: I was slightly short on dried fruit so I made up the weight with some mincemeat that I had hanging around. Which isn’t quite in the spirit as it will have introduced a slight element of booze and spice which shouldn’t really be there. But it still tasted lovely so it’s worth considering if you have any leftover from Christmas that needs a good home.

The third: the vinegar will smell very pronounced when you first add it, but will cook out to a mellow, slightly sour back note in the finished dish, so do not be tempted to skip.

Ingredients

1 quantity of sweet shortcrust pastry, sufficient to line a standard tart tin (ours is 9 inch)

100g butter
2 eggs
150g soft brown sugar
1 tbsp vinegar
200g mixed dried fruit (sultanas, raisins, currants)
50g chopped walnuts

Cream, to serve

Serves 8 

Roll out your pastry, line your tart tin and place in the fridge to chill until required. Preheat oven to around 160 (fan).

Place the butter in a saucepan and melt over a gentle heat.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and then tip in the sugar and whisk again to combine.

When the butter is melted, remove the pan from the heat and set aside for a couple of minutes to allow it to cool very slightly.

Stir the melted butter, the fruit and the vinegar through the eggs and sugar mixture.

Pour the whole lot into the tart tin and transfer to the oven to bake for around 30 mins. I covered mine with foil halfway through to stop the top from catching (but our oven is a beast).

Allow the tart to cool slightly before serving - it is best warm, not hot. Lovely with a good splash of cream.

Edited - 25 January 2021

We have been marking Burn's Night with a feast of Scottish food and revisited this recipe - but with individual tarts rather than a large one. To make two individual sized (5" diameter) tarts I used the following amounts:

35g butter

35g beaten egg

50g soft brown sugar

1 tsp vinegar

65g mixed dried fruit

15g chopped walnuts

Also - this sweet pastry recipe worked a treat (and I'm very nervous about pastry handling). I halved the recipe and there was enough for two individual tarts plus offcuts for a few mini mince pies. A sterling success.

Notes from my Christmas kitchen (2019 edition)

I didn’t take a single photo of the food that we ate over Christmas - which, for those of you who know my (startling lack of) talent for food photography may come as a shock. The trouble is (and I’ve complained about this before) while you are trying to line up the perfect shot - or even just trying to line up something that you can make look half decent if you Instagram the bejesus out of it - the food is a) smelling yummy and b) getting cold.

I think, though, this was the year that we really nailed Christmas dinner - our version. We still serve confit duck legs - the method very closely based on Valentine Warner’s recipe detailed here. We have now introduced an additional meat element: the duck and black pudding bonbon. To make these, D roasted two duck legs until tender then removed the skin and shredded the meat into a bowl, alongside two thick slices of black pudding. The mixture is soft and pliable enough to easily fashion into balls before rolling in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and deep frying - all of which, with the exception of the frying, can be done well in advance.

There is mash, because there has to be a potato element. And there is braised red cabbage which has been a staple for many years being both a little bit sour, a little bit sweet and a little bit buttery all at once and providing some moisture to the plate in the absence of any gravy.

This year, as well, inspired by a Thomas Keller recipe, we softened an onion in a little butter and oil then added a pile of shredded sprouts with a couple of sprigs of thyme. Covered the whole in chicken stock and reduced right down before adding a splash of cream and a good spoon of Dijon mustard. The bitterness of the sprouts were tempered, but not entirely diminished, by the flavour of the rich sauce and it really worked well to pull everything together.

Usually, we end up eating pudding on Boxing Day because we’ve maxed out. But keeping things light on the snacks and starters type meant that this year, after a couple of hours digestion time, we just about made room for the individual Christmas pudding cheesecakes that D had carefully prepared earlier in the week. I love Christmas pudding and I love cheesecake so this was a match made in heaven! I’ll post the recipe here for future reference - it would be great if you were entertaining a lot of people since you could make a full sized one, get it done well in advance and then just slice and serve on the day.

Meal planning Monday: 20th January 2020

We continue to eat our way through the freezer which has kept food bills low this month and been proving extremely delicious. Well, I say food bills have been low - we did have a bit of a splurge in the Indian supermarket yesterday to restock the spice rack and get the wherewithal for a batch of D’s famous green stuff which, we have decreed, must be in the fridge at all times. Also, D keeps buying prawns because the cat has decided that they are her Favourite Thing and she has her father firmly under the paw.

This week is an unusual one because we are both away with work for one night. While D is living it up in Nottingham I will probably be eating a ready meal. While I travel to Edinburgh, he will be having steak. We have very different standards when it comes to solo dining! Elsewhere:

Monday: green chilli chicken soup

Tuesday: gnocchi (from the freezer) probably with tomato sauce, pesto and mozzarella

Thursday: D’s homecoming meal - creamy salmon pasta

Friday: we have some bags of Christmas nibbles left in the freezer because we always, always buy far too many. So nibbles. And maybe some homemade bread if I get round to making it.

Saturday: Burns Night, and my Dad’s birthday. We are going to make Balmoral chicken, from this month’s Good Food magazine. Chicken, haggis, neeps and tatties- I’m already excited!

Happy cooking les touts!

Recipe corner: coconut and ginger mussels

We got five new recipe books for Christmas which added to an already huge collection. All too often, much wanted books come into the house, get read, drooled over, maybe even tagged and then they get consigned to the shelf. And, come meal planning, it’s the internet that is called upon as the main resource. It’s ridiculous.

So, despite our plan to spend most of January eating down the freezer, we decided to make an exception for the new books. Last night, we pulled out “Made in India” by Meera Sodha. This was a gift from my Mum who has been raving about it for years. On the basis of this dish, I see her point. It wasn’t complicated food but it was utterly delicious and one we hope to revisit soon.

I love mussels in any shape or form and they are so cheap! D picked up a bag in the market for just over £3 which served two of us very generously and felt like a luxury. We just had some well buttered baguette on the side - Sodha suggested paratha which would have been lovely but was an effort too far after a long week at work. Next time!

Ingredients

1kg mussels, in the shell, debearded and cleaned

Tbsp vegetable oil
2 small onions, finely chopped
Small handful dried curry leaves
4 fat garlic cloves, crushed
Chunk (4-5cm) root ginger, grated
Red chilli, deseeded and chopped

Hefty tbsp tomato purée
1/4 tsp chilli powder
200ml coconut milk
Handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Serves 2

In a large pan (with a lid) gently heat the oil then tip in the onions and the curry leaves with a decent pinch of salt. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and cook for 8 mins until the onions are very soft and beginning to turn golden.

Now in goes the garlic, ginger (be generous with the ginger!) and chilli and cook off for another minute until the garlic has lost its raw smell. Stir through the tomato purée and chilli powder, again cook for a minute to get rid of any raw spice, and then pour in the coconut milk, up the heat and bring to a gentle bubble.

Time to tip in the mussels. Swirl the pan gently then put on the lid. Cook for 6-8 mins - it will be dependent on the size of your mussels, but you want all the shells to be wide open and the meat glistening and tender.

Use a slotted spoon to dish the mussels then stir the coriander through the sauce and check the seasoning before pouring over and serving with some sort of bread for dunking.

Meal Planning Monday: 6th January 2020

The first meal plan of the new year, nay, the decade! How exciting. 

The month of January has two themes. The first is: our chest freezer is full. How is it even possible to fill a chest freezer? We’re broke after Christmas, let’s spend the next few weeks eating it down. The second is: oooh! New cookery books! 

Monday: tuna pasta bake. Using some remaining Christmas cheese. This is obscenely cheesy which is just what’s needed after the first day back at work.

Tuesday: gnocchi with Parmesan butter, sage and walnuts. Hmm, apparently the third theme is cheesy stodgy. But - gnocchi from the freezer, leftover walnuts and the Parmesan butter comes from the Marcella Hazan book D got for Christmas.

Wednesday: I’m travelling with work. So, whatever I can get that’s close to the hotel and under the expenses limit.

Thursday: I don’t get home till nearly nine, so likely a sandwich on the train.

Friday: fish pie, using various odds and sods of fish from the freezer.

Saturday: burgers (from the, yawn, freezer)

Sunday: a Rachel Khoo recipe from “My Little Swedish Kitchen”. Slow roasted salmon fillets which I’ll serve with pink pickled onions and lemon and dill scented rice.

Happy cooking!

Into the twenties

Towards the end of last year I was pondering the future of this blog.

When I first started, I had a vague USP - or at least an SP, as it was hardly U. I was someone who enjoyed good food who was following the Weight Watchers diet. It was supposed to be a record of losing weight while cooking nice meals. It was also a nice way of interacting with other people in the diet blog community.

Well, times have changed. I may still be Weeble shaped but I no longer follow Weight Watchers and have come to believe that, for me at least, anything which involves endless counting and measuring of food is not really a good idea. And many of the blogs I followed back then have disappeared, their authors with them.

I still wanted somewhere, though, to act as a virtual recipe repository and a record of special meals. So I toyed with the idea of a new blog and even went so far as to investigate domain names. But, nah.  There might be stuff on here that makes me squirm a little bit (encouraging the use of half fat butter and cheese to make macaroni cheese springs to mind) and I wish that it didn’t have WW in the title (would anyone believe me if I pretended that it stood for something else? World Wide? Whimsical, Wobbly?) But it’s mine, dammit. And I am very fond of it, crappy food photography and all.

So, this year, as challenged by D, I am going to blog more regularly and make sure all our favourite recipes and meals are recorded. I might even go back and revise some of those earlier abominations dishes.

Happy New Year to all, may your 2020 be a good one (and may your shadows never grow less).