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 In common with many people, anxiety over the immediate threat of the virus has now been replaced by anxiety at venturing back out into the world.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!
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