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).

Meat, then seven veg

Greetings Earthlings! The year is disappearing so fast and it has been the quietest ever on my little blog so my end of year report is likely to say must do better. Sigh.

We are not (that) long back from Berlin and we had a wonderful time - there’s definitely a post in that. And WW have, apparently, changed their plan again and I sort of want to find out how and then do a post on THAT but then...I suspect the WW ship has long since sailed for me. Perhaps I need to rename the blog - any bright ideas? Cooking with Cats quite appeals; then I would have a legitimate reason to stick up pictures of my beloved Minx for no particular reason. But as a name it doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone be cooking with cats? Are the cats actually helping out in the kitchen or just looking on reproachfully and bemoaning the lack of attention? Is it possible that the name would be open to misinterpretation and people would assume that I was making dishes out of cats? I mean, the Internet has its Dark Corners and I would hate to attract someone who would make that kind of assumption but...

Anyway, the meat in the blog post title refers to the food we ate in Berlin. Which was fab - I loved it! But wow, not a cuisine for vegetarians. To make up for it, we have just planned out seven days of entirely vegetarian meals. At this time of year, some of the veggie dishes that I am drawn towards are certainly too full of cheese and butter to count as strictly health food but that isn’t really the point of the exercise. I adore vegetarian food (although, for me, vegan will always be a bit too far) but I want to eat food that isn’t trying to pretend it’s something that it’s not if you see what I mean? Dishes that are glorious in their own right. Here’s what we’re doing:

Monday: roast root veg and pearl barley soup

Tuesday: pasta alla Norma - a gorgeous dish which combines a rich tomato sauce with aubergine, roasted until it just starts to melt through with a smoky flourish

Wednesday: “Arabbiata” pizza - basically, cheese and tomato but the tomato element is spicy with chilli as garlic. I’ll be topping this with lightly wilted rocket

Thursday: Ottolenghi’s ultimate winter couscous. Well, there had to be an Ottolenghi dish on there. And this is one of our favourites. The recipe is here if you don’t have a copy of “Plenty” on your bookshelves

Friday: Vegetarian dirty rice (another Ottolenghi dish) with corn maque choux (basically, sweet corn cooked in cream and spice).

Saturday: Mushroom curry, creamy chickpea and spinach curry, pilau rice, flatbread and Strictly on the telly. Bliss.

Sunday: Cauli cheese pie with mashed potatoes and Parmesan roasted parsnips. A cheese fest to end the week!

Back soon with...well, an account of Berlin (alternatively titled Pictures of Pork).

MPM: 21st October 2019

Oooh I haven’t done a meal planning post in ever so long which is a shame because we’ve cooked some fantabulous dinners in the last few weeks of which I now have no permanent record. I think we’re getting a lot better at bringing balance to our weekly meal plans - saving more complex event cooking for the weekends and building up a good repertoire of quick and easy midweek meals. Monday remains soup night, but the soup is batch cooked at the weekend and frozen in pots. Tuesday seems to have become “storecupboard pasta day” which takes minimal effort to produce maximum enjoyment - and means you get to Wednesday and feel you’ve barely had to slave in the kitchen at all. Not that I don’t enjoy slaving in the kitchen - putting the radio on and pottering around while I try and wind down after a working day can be very therapeutic but, equally, sometimes the lure of the sofa and of cat cuddles next to a roaring log stove is too much to resist.

Speaking of easy cooking: we recently acquired Diana Henry’s new book, “From the Oven to the Table” and I can see that this fantastic collection of one pot, minimal intervention dishes are going to see us comfortably through the winter months. There’s a toad in the hole with baby leeks and cheddar in the oven as we speak (I’m writing this on Sunday evening) and a duck dish planned for next week. If you’ve never tried any of Diana Henry’s books then I really would commend them to your attention. She’s a brilliant writer and she always seems to provide recipes for food that I really, really want to eat.

So, this week. We’re well and truly autumnal here now, so warming food is the order of the day. And we’re off on holiday a week on Monday so not much planned with regards gallivanting, beyond an early birthday lunch for D next Sunday.

Monday: roasted cauliflower, bacon and caramelised onion soup

Tuesday: spaghetti puttanesca

Wednesday: blackened salmon with a creamy Cajun spiced sauce, mashed potatoes

Thursday: Ottolenghi’s winter couscous

Friday: mussels with leeks and bacon

Saturday: roasted duck breast with plums, green chilli and coriander rice

Sunday: out for lunch

Bacon bao for breakfast

I made bao buns at the weekend, trusting to the advice of 2014 Seren.  I'd forgotten what an absolute faff they are to do, especially given that we have a tiny steamer in which only two at a time will comfortably fit.  Fortunately, I had nowhere else to be and not much else to do, so I cranked up Pick of the Pops and bimbled away in the kitchen while steaming each pair of buns.  The result: a steamy kitchen and 16 of the puffiest, fluffiest buns you ever did see.  2014 Seren did not steer me wrong.

You can, of course, buy bao now far more easily than you could even just five years ago.  When we had them in New York they were quite the novelty.  Now, if I'm ever seized with a craving I can pop along to Little Bao Boy here in Leeds who currently serve their wares in North Bar's latest venue.  And very good they are too - although I can't help thinking mine were a little bit better.

For reasons best known to myself, I decided to make three different fillings all of which worked well.  The first tranche of buns were filled with cauliflower florets, breaded and baked until crispy then dunked in a Korean barbecue sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds.  Like Korean Fried Chicken but cauliflower.  And, er, not fried.  It was very good - the recipe I used is here and it's well worth a look!  Even D, who was exceptionally sceptical, thought it was nice (although he has requested that I try it again with chicken).

Then we moved on to a fish course.  I blitzed eight raw prawns (two large ones per bun) up with a tablespoon of cornflour, salt and lots of black pepper and then formed them into moist little cakes.  These were then fried in plenty of oil and served with shredded lettuce, spring onions and mayonnaise spiked with sriracha. 

Finally (and we head into fusion (or confusion?) territory here): hard boiled egg, chopped and mixed with a bit of mayonnaise and a good squidge of wasabi was squished into the buns alongside a slice of seared fresh tuna. 

I would say that I was hard pressed to pick a favourite of these, but the best was yet to come.  On Sunday morning, as an homage to those served by the aforementioned Little Bao Boy, we had bacon bao for breakfast.  The streaky bacon was baked until crispy then snipped into bun sized pieces and drizzed with still more sriracha.  Look at this - doesn't it look amazing?

I am determined not to leave it so long until I make these again - which means coming up with some more filling ideas!  I'd love to come up with some variations that put a bit of a spin on the classics - as ever, suggestions on a postcard!

Recipe corner: cacio e pepe

You may recognise this dish as having been particularly trendy - oooh, a good year ago, maybe more. Now, obviously, the cool kids have moved on but I still think it is worth posting this methodology for posterity. This is the sort of simple, quick pasta dish that I can imagine will remain on our regular meal rotation for many years to come.

This recipe comes, with a few tiny tweaks for personal taste, from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen blog. I must admit, I follow very few American food blogs and cook from them seldom. The reasons for this are neither sinister nor snobbish; when I first started really getting in to blogs, and bookmarking recipes, I soon found myself with a “to make” list that would never get made if I lived to be 500 and cooked something different every day. In order to get things to more manageable levels, I decided to restrict myself to UK sites. I recognise that I’ve probably missed out on a lot. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Smitten Kitchen somehow survived the cull I would never have learned about this fabulous foolproof method for cacio e pepe.

I would recommend warming the plates or bowls before serving. The pasta will start to cool while you’re tossing it in the sauce and if you don’t want it to be cold within a minute or so of starting to eat, a warm plate is a necessity.

Ingredients

200g dried spaghetti

90g pecorino cheese, finely grated
Half a teaspoon black peppercorns

You will also need to have some water to hand, and a small processor / chopper

Serves 2

Put a large pan of salted water on and bring to the boil.

In a pestle and mortar, grind the peppercorns. How fine you take them is up to you - I want a good flavour without crunchy bits being caught in my teeth, so I take it quite fine.

Set aside a small amount of the cheese for garnish. Then, put half the remainder into the mini processor along with a tablespoon of water and blitz - it will start to come together and clump. Add the other half of the cheese in with another tablespoon of water and half of the pepper. Blitz again. Continue to add water, a tablespoon at a time, until you have a paste roughly the consistency of cream cheese. This was about four tablespoons for me last time I did it. Add the pepper to taste (note: I would probably always end up using the full quantity but I like it peppery).

Cook the spaghetti in the boiling salted water for around 8 minutes, or until al dente. Use a mug to scoop out some of the pasta water before draining and returning to the pan.

Add about half of the cheese and pepper paste along with a couple of teaspoons of pasta water and toss vigorously (I must admit, I tend to stir vigorously rather than tossing - I am messy by nature and don’t want to end up splattered in sauce). Continue to add the paste - a generous tablespoon at a time alongside a teaspoon of pasta water, stirring again each time, until the pasta is coated in a light, silky sauce. If you add it too quickly, you will end up with gummy lumps of cheese stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Plate up and garnish with the reserved cheese and another grind or two of pepper.

A sojourn by the sea

We’ve just got back from a very pleasant couple of nights in Whitby. We’ve been so many times that we’ve pretty much exhausted the tourist attractions so our trips now basically consist of wandering around and, er, eating. There are many worse ways to pass the time.

I was planning to do a photo food diary post for the blog, since it’s all been a bit quiet recently. But the reality of most of the food served at the British seaside (in my experience anyway; I have yet to visit Padstein) is rather beige. So posting pictures of everything might prove a little dull. Let’s have some edited highlights instead.

The Bay Hotel in Robin Hoods Bay is slightly famous as it marks one end of the Coast to Coast (which I’m determined to do someday). They have a book there that walkers can sign. We popped there for lunch and bagged a little corner table that looked out over the eponymous bay. Haute cuisine this is not, but I can confirm that the chips are good and the prawn sandwich generously filled. D ordered the fried seafood platter for reasons best known to himself and ended up with a pile of vaguely fishy tasting goujons. The menu mentioned squid, scampi, prawns and salmon which one would have thought would be individually distinguishable - not so! He did, however, agree that the chips were of a decent standard.


Excellent chips

Lunchtime view

Monday night found us in The Star Inn The Harbour which I like but find to be slightly inconsistent. Last time we were there we loved it, the time before it was good not great - which we assumed to be teething issues given that it had, then, not long been open. On this occasion, there was plenty to enjoy but a starter of squid, which cost £11 for a startlingly small portion left us feeling a little ripped off. Oh, and D found the apple sauce served with his pork belly and scallops to be overly sweet. I thoroughly enjoyed my halibut with a rarebit topping and candied walnuts but, again, the £24 price tag felt a little on the steep side.

Mimsy squid

Hmmm, what else? Oh, well, it feels a bit daft to pick out a tuna sandwich as a highlight since it’s one of the most ubiquitous fillings there is. But The Rusty Shears’ trick of adding chopped olives, red onion and gherkin to the mix really gave it a lift and is one I shall be copying at home.

A most excellent tuna sandwich

Sadly it was an all too brief trip and it is back to work tomorrow, but we have fish from a Whitby fishmonger still to enjoy for tea tonight...and a trip to Berlin on the not so distant horizon so it’s not all doom and gloom. Hope everything is well with all of you out there in Blogland. I will try and post more regularly between now and the end of the year (but I won’t promise because, well, pie crusts and all that... )

MPM: 12th August 2019

For the first time in a long time, last week we cooked, and ate, all seven meals as planned. It felt good to be in control to be honest.  All to often, if we deviate, it is because we have "accidentally" gone to the pub after work and ended up ordering a takeaway or eating toast in lieu of an actual meal OR it is because we have been infected with a generous dose of ennui and ended up not eating a proper meal at all but grazing.  To make a plan, stick to a plan and actually enjoy eating all meals on said plan was really nice.

Oh, and Beth - chickpea mash?  The recipe is here.  A pleasant twist on the classic bangers and mash although I found that the chickpeas did need a judicious whack of seasoning and lemon juice to perk them up and the inclusion of a scattering of caramelised onion was a welcome note.

Onto this week, and the plan is to be in every night again and eat as follows:

Monday: carrot, tomato and feta soup (the other half of the batch we started last week.)

Tuesday: a freezer dive - chilli con carne with rice and a decent dollop of cooling sour cream.

Wednesday: pasta with nduja pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes.  Now, this pesto is part of the Sacla range which tend to be pretty good for a weekday meal.  But I'm not clear on how nduja pesto is different from just plain old nduja.  I guess I am soon to find out!

Thursday: a red wine and mushroom risotto, from The Silver Spoon.

Friday: and diving once more into the recipe book library, tonight we will be cooking Gung Bao chicken from Fuschia Dunlop's fantastic "Every Grain of Rice".  If you are a fan of Chinese food then I would highly recommend this tome.

Saturday: lamb seekh kebabs - sides tbc.

Sunday: Pollock (or whatever white fish looks good at the fishmongers) with chickpeas and chorizo, courtesy of Mr Tom Kerridge.

Have a good week one and all!

Recipe corner: carrot, tomato and feta soup

A beautiful soup is a wonderful thing and I haven’t posted a soup recipe for AGES.

It was partly, perhaps, a reaction to Weight Watchers (where zero point soup, aka joyless, fatless veg purée) is heavily endorsed that I had all but stopped making the stuff. But one day, after yet another disappointing pot of ready made supermarket offering, fishing around for the one, desultory chunk of chicken in what purported to be chicken soup, D pointed out that we should really go back to doing it ourselves. He’s right; given that one only has a finite number of meals, why waste your time on crap?

Here then is a delicious, sweet and summery concoction, courtesy of Nigel Slater. I did mine slightly differently to him in that I blitzed the carrot element to be quite silky smooth (I like a smooth soup) and then stirred the tomatoes through to add texture at the end. The carrots were the mellow backdrop to the peppery, sprightly basil flecked tomatoes with a final zing from the feta. Lovely. I must admit, I also used a bit less oil than he recommended. Weight Watchers habits die hard...

Ingredients

Tbsp olive oil
Large onion, roughly chopped
400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
Litre of very dilute veg stock (I used a tsp of Bouillon powder in total)

Tbsp olive oil
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
Garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
Small handful basil leaves, shredded

To garnish:
120g feta cheese, crumbled
Basil leaves, torn
4tsp olive oil

Serves 4

Place a nice, large saucepan over a low heat. Warm the oil and then cook the onion until pale and soft. Then in go the carrots with a hefty whack of salt and pepper to cook slowly for a further 10 minutes. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble away for half an hour until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before blitzing to a smooth purée with a stick blender (or in a processor). This can all be done in advance.

Shortly before serving, put the quartered tomatoes in a second pan with the oil and garlic and cook down, over a low heat, for 10 minutes or so until you have a sweet mush. Season, stir through the basil and then add to the carrot mix and heat the whole gently.

To serve, garnish with the crumbled feta, some torn basil and a drizzle of olive oil.

MPM: 5th August 2019

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of "the only blog post of the week" aka Meal Planning Monday.  This week posted on a Tuesday!

Is anyone else wilting in the current weather?  I feel like I am physically melting most of the time.  I completely take on board that I have more insulation that some other people but combine that with general warm-bloodedness and a genetic propensity (thanks, paternal grandmother) for a sweaty brow and nose and you do not end up with a pretty picture.  The current combination of heat and humidity is a particular killer and whatever I try, the cat refuses to fan me with palm leaves as I drift off to sleep, so I end up tossing and turning and harrumphing and generally being most annoying and annoyed. 

I don’t, however, seem to be one of these people who lose their appetite in the heat, which is a shame.  I’m permanently thinking about ice cream, which is also a shame.  If you’re a fan of Lotus Biscoff and haven’t yet tried the Lotus Biscoff ice cream stick then hie thee hence to your nearest supermarket frozen-food aisle and buy some.  You can thank me later.

Anyhoo, meal planning.  D picked a few of the meals this week, direct from the archives of The WW Foodie, which is exciting.  We were originally going to be having a third WWF recipe on Saturday night but this has now been bumped to next week in order to use up some chicken we have going spare.  Someone may or may not have accidentally cut right through a chicken breast on Sunday when he was preparing homemade Kievs and that same someone may or may not have stormed off to the supermarket in an expletive studded squall of self recrimination to buy a second pack rather than try and patch the hole with trimmings.  The remaining chicken, and, indeed the remaining breadcrumbs from the Kiev, will be put to good use.

Monday: sigh.  Still soup but now we are going homemade, having come to the conclusion that most shop bought soup is shit.  The aim is to try and make it at the weekend so that Monday can still be a night “off” cooking.  Last night, we made a Nigel Slater recipe: carrot and tomato with feta.  And, to be fair, it was miles ahead of anything that we might have recently had from a supermarket. 

Tuesday: there is half a cauliflower lurking in the fridge and I fancied making mustardy cauliflower cheese, a recipe from Ottolenghi’s “Simple”.  D suggested throwing in some pasta and making it a mac-and-cauli-cheese.  Excellent suggestion.

Wednesday: roasted veg with feta and couscous.  A bump from last week.

Thursday: corned beef hash.  Woohoo – a house favourite!  In an exciting twist, we don’t have any homemade corned beef to hand so we are going to try it using a tin.  Given that tinned corned beef is one of the definitive tastes of childhood for both me and D, I am genuinely looking forward to this.

Friday: lemon sole with brown shrimp butter.  Classic, easy, delicious Friday fish.

Saturday: homemade chicken goujons (or nuggets if that feels right) with oven fries and possibly (this is still under discussion) a wedge salad.  Just because I am intrigued by the idea and want to make one. 

Sunday:  another Nigel Slater recipe – I am loving his work at the moment.  This time, sausages with herbed chickpea mash.  Sounds like a lovely, summery twist on a classic.

Have a good week everyone! 

Meal planning and catching up

*Slinks back in with a new post.  Torn between starting with abject apology for absence (which always feels slightly self-aggrandising since it pre-supposes that anyone actually missed self in the first place) and just acting like it never happened.  Wrestles with dilemma.  Deletes and rewrites and deletes same chunk of text multiple times.*

Anyway (in lieu of any excuses, I’ll opt for an aggressive stance), in this day and age how many people still read blogs?  Especially little backwater blogs like this one where the writer still uses their original Blogger template and eschews any sort of decent photography preferring to stick with everything look like primordial sludge.  The blogging scene ain’t what it was all those years ago. Feel free to shoot me down if I’m being an unreasonable cowbag but I reckon that it used to be about sharing personal experiences with like-minded people in a nice, low-key manner and creating a little virtual community of kindred spirits.  Now, you get people who actually put the career of Influencer on their passport (or would do if you still had to list your career on your passport).  So everyone who has a blog wants it to be the biggest, shiniest, shoutiest blog in the world in order to attract attention and, thus, money.  Oh, not to mention the bloggers have to have a presence all across social meeeeeja.  Which kind of puts paid to the fact of anonymity.

I think that it’s a little bit sad.  But then, I suppose if someone had Discovered me and offered me ludicrous sums of money / amounts of free stuff to write about what I love, thus saving me from a life of Desk Bound Drudgery, I would probably have taken them up on it.  So maybe it’s just envy talking.

ANYWAY.  What’s going on with me?  Work – busy, busy, busy.  But good.  Food – we’ve cooked some really lovely stuff lately that I hope to get round to posting, but there may not be pictures because I think I have to really give up on the whole pictures thing.  I’ll just illustrate everything with a photo of my cat.  Weight – well, still there.  At this stage of the game I think it’s going to take a serious bout of novo virus to kick-start things on a downwards trajectory again. 

And as for meal planning this week…

Monday: as long term friends will know, we often have ready-made soup on a Monday night.  This is partly a hangover from our 5:2 days, ensuring a relatively low calorie start to the week.  It also means that after getting through Monday we don’t have to worry about any elaborate cooking.  But D finally cracked and said what we were both thinking – soup can be a bit dull.  So now, Monday is going to be soup-and-bread-and-cheese night. We’ve got some chicken and vegetable broth along with a lovely looking piece of Caerphilly to enjoy.  I’ve had some baguette dough defrosting in the fridge since this morning – I’ve not tried freezing it before, so not sure how it will turn out but am hopeful it will work well.

Tuesday: currently, spiced monkfish with chutney and flatbreads, but this may end up bumped to the weekend.

Wednesday: spaghetti carbonara – D is out for a couple of pints after work but I should be able to whip this up quickly when he comes home starving.

Thursday: roasted vegetables with couscous and feta.  We used to cook a stove-top version of this on a regular basis when I was a student.  It was the go-to “We’ve been eating rubbish for several days and require some proper nutrients” meal. 

Friday: we’re both out for a leaving do, so no current plans in place.

Saturday: might end up being the monkfish.  Otherwise, we have steak in the freezer all ready to be turned into steak sandwiches.

Sunday: D has a yen for chicken Kiev.  So he’s going to make that.  He has done a homemade version before and it worked out very well, so I have high hopes for this.  What could be nicer than crispy chicken drenched in garlic butter?

And that takes us nicely back round to Monday.  Quite a meaty weekend, so might need to balance that out with a few more veggie based meals next week (never a major hardship).  Hope whatever you find yourself cooking and eating is lovely. A bientot! 

MPM: 24th June 2019

It's a brand new week and a typically grey, muggy day here in Leeds.  I am not a fan of heat at the best of times, but this particular brand of damp stickiness is particularly unpleasant.  Either we need to get on and have a bit of a summer or admit defeat and lurch straight into the cool, crisp days of Autumn.  Sort it out, weather.

Today also marks the start of my fourth week in my new role which has been full on and busy from the get-go but which is all going well so far.  I feel a little bit like a hamster on a wheel, and I don't think that I will ever see the bottom of my inbox again, but at the moment that still feels OK.  A few months down the line, if I am tearing my hair out in fistfuls, please feel free to refer me back to this.

Meal planning this week - I'm going to a bottomless brunch on Saturday, so it is unlikely I will still be upright come tea time.  The planned curry is going to be made in the slow cooker in advance so will be there if I need it.  Otherwise, a quiet week (well, it is the end of the month).

Monday: soup, as per often.  Crusty bread on the side.

Tuesday: spaghetti in tomato butter sauce and with turkey meatballs.  These meatballs are not, to my shame, homemade, but have been lurking in the freezer for a while and need using. 

Wednesday: trout fillets, minted hollandaise (again, the hollandaise is not homemade!  My foodie credentials are taking a battering today), potato salad, asparagus.

Thursday: fishcakes, but I'm thinking of going down a slightly Scandi route.  This Rick Stein recipe for "frikadeller" with remoulade looks nice.  I've got half a fennel bulb in the fridge that needs using, so I'll probably thinly slice that and add it to the remoulade to boost the veg content.

Friday: I'll keep back some of the tomato butter sauce from Tuesday and use that, alongside a batch of frozen dough, to put together a Friday night pizza.

Saturday: cardamom butter chicken

Sunday: a D choice - steak and chips

Hmmm not a bad selection at all, although it would be nice to see a couple more veggie options on there - something to balance out next week.  Have a good one everyone, and happy cooking!

Foodie abroad: Brat, Shoreditch

Shortly before we went to Brat, it just so happened to be voted the second best restaurant in the entire country by the National Restaurant Awards.  This was a happy coincidence.  D had chosen and booked it months before off the back of, I believe, a glowing Jay Rayner review.  But coincidence or not, it definitely added a certain additional frisson of excitement as we headed across town to Shoreditch on Wednesday night.  Shoreditch is becoming increasingly trendy now, isn't it?  I mean, I don't really keep track given that I am safely confined to Yorkshire for most of the year and tend to come over all Country Mouse whenever I visit London, but judging by Brat itself, and the surrounding venues, it's certainly nicer than it used to be and boasted quite the collection of hipster beards.

Brat was very nice.  I enjoyed my meal there very much.  But I have to start out by saying that while I have no idea what criteria the panel of the NRA were using, I disagree with their conclusion.  Let's get the moaning out of the way first.  I think I must be getting old because the general layout of the dining room - with tables so close together as to be practically communcal - was not particularly to my taste.  Although D and I did enjoy singing a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" to the nice gentleman sitting next to us.  Also, while I welcome the move away from the starched linen and hushed tones that accompany traditional fayne dayning, part of me does want a little bit of ritual and reverence and...well, special fairy dust, if for not other reason than to soften the blow of the inevitably hefty bill.  For me, I found the atmosphere Brat to be a little frenetic and (possibly as a result) the pacing of the meal overall was not quite perfectly judged.  Finally, for the love of all that is coverd in chocolate, if you're advertising a baked cheesecake on your menu then WHY would you not give it some sort of biscuit base, or at the very least, a garnish of crumbs?  Why this modern trend for puddings that entirely lack textural contrast?  I do not approve (although, in fairness, the cheesecake tasted very nice).

Burnt cheesecake with rhubarb

These whinges aside (and I am very aware that many people will disagree with my take on the general ambience being, y'know, not a seventy old trapped in the body of a thirtysomething) all was lovely.  Brat's thing is that nearly everything on the menu is cooked on a specially designed, wood-fired gril which imbues the food with wonderful char and smoke.  At its best, this makes your dinner here akin to the most amazing barbecue you've ever tasted.  In common with pretty much every other person in the place, we ordered the turbot.  Oh, the turbot.  Brought to the table partly boned out, the pearlescent flesh tinged with flashes of gold and black, this was a thing of beauty.  It is sprayed with vinegar while it cooks and then seasoned to salty perfection.  A mouthful of this carried a faint memory of traditional fish and chips, as eaten next to a beach bonfire at dusk.

Turbot.  A heavenly thing.

Elsewhere, the smaller plates were mostly miniature masterpieces.  A highlight for me was the grilled bread, crunchy and blistered and smothered in wild garlic and summer truffle.  And the smoked cod's roe, a current household obsession, was utterly amazing.  We definitely needed a few more portions of this.  It takes a brave chef to serve dishes of such simplicity, but the execution, in general, could not be faulted (cheesecake aside).

Grilled bread with wild garlic and summer truffle.

Smoked cod's roe on toast

Is this the second best restaurant in the country?  Subjectively speaking, if I was the head of the NRA judging panel then the answer would be no (and, also, I would be tremendously fat and have the liver of a foie gras goose).  To my mind it lacked the innovation and flair and touch of quirkiness of, say, a Raby Hunt but then, the two respective chefs are aiming for completely different things and vive la difference!  For the turbot alone, I will forgive Brat much.  But please.  Put a base on the cheesecake.

Recipe corner: oven-baked onion bhajis

I must admit, onion bhajis are not something that it would ever really have occurred to me to make from scratch until I did (or, rather, D did) and discovered that the homemade variety are absolutely amazing - a hundred times better tasting that the ones you can buy in the supermarket and far less greasy than the standard Indian restaurant version.  I am in love. 

D's feedback was that he would have liked them a little bit crispier, so next time I make them, I will cook them at a lower temperature for slightly longer to allow them to dry out properly (I've reflected this change in my instructions below).  But I don't think the aim is to get them really crispy.  He agreed with me that the flavour was very good and particularly liked the fact that they have a decent whack of heat. 

The original recipe calls for you to just spoon them onto a pre-prepared baking sheet.  I actually used a silicon mini cupcake tray which was great for keeping them an even shape but probably meant that they were slightly deeper than the originals.  Again, an increased cooking time should ensure that they are cooked through and not at all doughy in the middle.  If you don't have a tray, by all means revert to the original method.  It may slightly affect the number of bhajis that the recipe produces.

Here, you see them served alongside Nigella's cherry tomato curry, coriander rice and coconut flatbreads.  My team's "Tea of the Month" theme this month was vegan and this was my entry.  If it doesn't win my pride shall be very hurt indeed...

Ingredients

1.5 cm root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped or grated
1/2 green chilli, chopped
Tsp cumin seeds

250g brown onions
Tbsp rapeseed oil

45g chickpea (gram) flour
20g fresh coriander, roughly chopped
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tbsp lemon juice

Makes around 10 - 1 Smart Point (WW Flex) each

These can be prepared in advance, but if baking straightaway then preheat the oven to 170 and either have a silicon cupcake tray to hand, or line a banking tray with a piece of lightly oiled foil.

In a pestle and mortar, bash together the ginger, chilli and cumin seeds with a generous pinch of salt to make a paste.

Peel and halve the onions and then thinly slice them into half-moon shapes.  Gentle heat the oil in a large bottomed pan and then add the onions and fry for around 15 minutes until they are soft and translucent.  If they look like they are catching, turn the heat down and add a little splash of water.

Transfer the onions to a bowl and add the ginger and chilli paste, along with the other ingredients and another decent pinch of salt.  Mix well and trickle in a little bit of water - a couple of teaspoons should be fine - in order to form a thick batter.

Use a tablespoon to put these on the pre-prepared tray - make sure you leave a bit of space between each bhaji if you're baking them freehand.  Place in the oven for around 35 minutes until they are starting to brown on top. 

Serve, alongside a delicious homemade curry or just a dollop of chutney.