date food

No, not the sticky, dead locust-looking dried fruits, but the kind of dates where you meet a person with romatic possibilities. The lottery of the night out, where you feel lucky if you come away having had the person (a) turn up (b) not try to molest you (c) not try to convert you to their religion, politics or favourite brand of shampoo.

At some point you will eat together and this is known as a First Date Meal. Almost always suggested as 'grabbing something to eat' so as not to look uncool. I'm going to go ahead and use the D-word, so look away now if you're scared of it. Eating corn-on-the-cob last night, with fingers and chin shining with butter, my flatmate informed me, corn between her teeth, that this was not a good First Date Meal. As always, when tickled by the muse, I felt a list coming on... thanks to those who were quizzed for contributions.


Things To NOT Eat On A First Date

Smelly: garlic / onion related. But less offensive if you both indulge.

Smelly 2: if you are imagining stretching the evening for more than a couple more hours, it would perhaps be advisable not to eat chick peas, baked beans, lentils... you get the picture.

messy: spaghetti / linguini, or anything that might whip puttanesca sauce round your chin.

messy 2: lobster, crab, escargots - anything you could accidentally flip onto the next table. Which usually brings on my story about performing silver service, french fries and the man's suit... another time, perhaps.

messy on your looks: spinach, poppy seeds, indeed anything that gets caught in the teeth.
messy on your looks (subsection: colour): blueberries, beetroot juice and, I'm sorry to say it, red wine. Blue, purple or red lips, teeth and tongue are comic, but not sexy. NB almost everyone of my acquaintance preferred red wine over vanity and would drink red wine despite spooky blue teeth. Candle light has possible softening effects.

messy on your ethics: foie gras, veal... or, if eating with a vegetarian, even eating a bloody steak can look insensitive and, thus, offputting. Possible remedy: if vegan, eat with vegans. If omnivorous, don't date vegetarians. Look, what do you prefer - food or a stranger?!
messy on your squeam: proposed by Bert. She said she couldn't kiss anyone who had put offal in their mouth. Just passing it on...

Other meal time faux pas:

• eating too much and thus looking greedy
• eating very little, for some reason a bit uncomfortable in a fellow diner
• eating your companion's food, uninvited
• turning up late: don't keep a hungry person waiting.
• drinking too much, you lush
• the paying debacle ... eek! a whole other subject altogether

Coda

But. I wrote all this before a First Date Meal last autumn, in which I ate with a vegetarian who was a bit insipid on the decision front. I chose red wine for both of us, because I like it, and short pasta with bacony chicken and cream sauce, because it wasn't long pasta. And thus not ugly to eat. And didn't have any spinach or garlic in... but which was a bit strange with the wine. I was following the advice of friends, as outlined above, but it felt a bit uptight.

At the next First Meal a deux I had a fat Eds Diner burger and peanut butter milkshake, with an Irishman, in a two-fingered gesture to being considerate and attractive. My only regret was not having extra bacon and cheese.

In true story telling fashion, the third new gentleman friend I had a first meal with was 'treated' to mediocre linguini carbonara, eaten messily and greedily, with second helpings, listening to Tom Lehrer. So after all that my outcome would not be advice on what to avoid eating, but to ingest the food you like most, and take it in the best company you can find. People who like food are preferable to people who like dates. Both the activity, and the dried fruit.

Fiesta! Fiesta!

...today's the day of fiesta! As Joyce Grenfell once sang. It wasn't so much a fiesta as a food festival on the South Bank, and it was on Saturday 20th September rather than today, but what is such poetic liberty between friends?

HG drew this one to my attention and endured the Saturday crowds with me, despite food not being her number one entertainment. A good friend indeed. We began by ogling the cake stalls, then moved round the back of the Hayward, following round curry stalls, a kids fun! tent, rustic-looking fruit and veggies, coffee, ice cream, oyster mushroom sandwiches, cooking demonstrations, chorizo hot dogs and much more.

'Mushroom Table' had the smart idea to write 'Vegetarian friendly' on a blackboard, the advertising proved itself by the queue that ran away from the stall. Unhappily, the queue didn't move for five or ten minutes, so I left HG in the unexpectedly hot sunshine and foraged for something to complement a cold. I had had the remainder of a potato and onion curry for breakfast, so erred on the side of protein and delighted in 'butter chicken and rice' from a nice curry man whose company name I forget. I blame the cold.

The nice curry man only had four dishes on the menu, which was perfect: two starter-type dishes (one chana chat, another pancake-like which I vaguely recall utilised sweet potato) for around £3-4, a vegetarian green curry with coconut sauce (£5) and the butter chicken at £6. Yes Mother, it was extravagant to chose the most expensive. Happily, the very beautiful, pale sauce was spicier than I anticipated, which was very welcome: about six choice pieces of chicken in the mouth-tingling sauce, with a small cup (timbale?) of rice moulded next to it, was the perfect amount. I even loved the plate, which looked eco-happy and made of cardboard or somesuch. I don't like photographs of myself, especially when ill, but these show how happy the food was so I make an exception!

Back at the mushroom stall, run by two super-laid back dudes, the queue had progressed a little, thanks to one of the dudes returning with 'refreshments' (ale) for the two of them. With two people on board, the cleaning, chopping and frying of some frankly amazing-looking fungi continued and a few more people were fed. It must be good food to keep the punters there, despite the wait. HG finally joined me with her mushroom 'burger' and despite not being a fan of mushrooms 'if they taste too much like mushrooms' she was pretty enthusiastic about her lunch. It consisted of a chewy, crusty, white baguette filled with fried oyster mushrooms, into which a generous amount of green herb mix had been added, with parmesan shaved freeform over the top. It didn't taste at all of garlic and was in lots of oil or butter. My verdict: 'bluddy yums'. HG commented approvingly that it was 'not slimy', from which I understand that she meant the mushrooms weren't overcooked - indeed, had quite a nice bite to them.

Purchases of cooking apples (HG, for a crumble) and a pumpkin (me, for goodness knows what) made, we headed back to the cakes. HG and I bought matching chocolate cupcakes with a blackberry decoration from an utterly charming stall - The Cupcake Boutique - with a sweet lady who let me take this photo. HG and I agreed that we have made better cakes ourselves, these being unfortunately dry (perhaps being out on a hot day?), but ate every last bit appreciatively and, perhaps, with a slight smug superiority.

No doubt the pumpkin will taste all the better for having been carried round all day, and on to the theatre in the evening! Note to self: I have never had churros and chocolate... do this at the next opportunity!

The Monday review: autumn equinox

It has just come to my attention, courtesy of Google, that today is the autumn equinox. I'm thrown into quite the panic about how to celebrate... given the beauty of the battered orange pumpkin I bought at the South Bank food festival on the weekend, and the dearth of other tasties in the house, I can only conclude that the pumpkin is for the chop!

Anyway, more on that later, I'm sure. Today I am reviewing .... my lunch! Now working a four-day week, I find my finances even more pickly than usual, so I tore my pleading eyes away from the Thai on Upper Street (lunch menu for £6.50 - perfect for credit crunched-out Islingtonites) and headed to the bakery. Initially charmed by the tall squares of coffee and walnut cake; then the apple crumble; then the cream split, I realised I had no proper food in the house, so instead bought a big sunflower seed, brown tin loaf. For some reason I felt like a grown up waving aside the small round one: let's not play about here, I mean business! And, I mused, re-housing coins in my 'Bertie Blue Shoes' purse, at £1.55 it is cheaper than my old favourite the Tesco oat loaf. Far tastier too ...

I intended to have tuna mayo, my slightly-disgusting favourite which I don't like admitting to, but then I espied another two tiny tomatoes on the plant in our garden. Together with the two already picked, this made four miniscule, baby tomatoes. Plenty. On the way back up the steps I became completely decadent and plucked three rocket leaves: the salad plants died long ago, however two weedy stragglers self-seeded, and from these I took my lunch greens.

Look at these beautiful ingredients, and the delight it compiled into. Perhaps, a triumph of compromise for the indecisive lunch-maker -? Doesn't it look good? I sat outside and the September air - with its teasing dash of sunshine - was like an added ingredient or extra seasoning to complete the dish!

This is how it tasted: the tuna one first. Tuna mayo exactly as I always make it: a squeeze of lemon, half a tin of tuna (it was left over from the cats' lunch yesterday!), an afterbite of black pepper, sloshy with mayo. And the classic move of being too lazy to buy scallions or cut onions into it, which would have made it even more tasty. No butter on the bread, as I like the mayo to seep into the bread a bit. This bread was strong enough to take the challenge and didn't sag or split.

The tomato slice had a spread of unsalted butter, halved or thirded cherry tomatoes squished into the bread; delightfully heavy-handed with the salt, a grind of pepper, and fiery, youthful rocket pepping through at the fore. Each mouthful clean and redolent of late summer. Well, if you close your eyes and wear a jumper, it works!

Entirely gorgeous bread, by the way. Dense so it didn't tear as I pulled butter across, and that slightly flaky crust that tastes a little nutty. Seeds all through the bread but, as the crowning glory, sunflower seeds encrusting one side and the top, burnished by the oven. Just opening the bag reminded me of hot Saturdays working in a bakery, as a teenager.

But then, the most difficult decision of all: which 'mouthful to end on'? as my sister Rose puts it. The last mouthful should be the best, as it lingers longest...

Vintage cook books

Just found this 'Vintage Cookbooks' page on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagecookbooks/
I always harboured a bit of a dream for a cook book shop, until I realised it already existed in 'books for cooks' in West london. Seeing all those vintage books makes me want to at least increase my own collection.

I need to go back and have a look at it... and some of the many related topics such as this vintage kitchen goods group. I have a weakness for kitchen items and have been keeping out of ebay so I don't end up with things like this, as I have no space for it:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/thevintagekitchen/pool/

...and when I have a moment I really should think about joining the 'mid century supper club' - !
http://www.flickr.com/groups/midcenturysupperclub/

Four day week celebrations

Today is my first four-day week for the next three months, and I celebrated by making JoJo blueberry pancakes for breakfast. I completely smudged a batter recipe (putting in a third of the flour, which was self-raising not plain, omitting the butter etc. etc) but it turned out ok. Batter always turns out ok! I was aiming for a thicker batter so the little cakes were fat and small, and then dropped blueberries on top: when flipped over, the berries popped or squished.

On the plate, the squished-berry side was half covered in greek yoghurt, more blueberries and the maple syrup that Deb brought me from Canada... pancake folded over: yum. I am having to write this blog and do desk-things rather than go swimming now as intended, because I ate everything that Jo didn't and am afraid of sinking :/ I'll wait until after Stephen Fry on Radio four, and then get my cozzie.

Last night's news was about a chicken and chorizo stew, which I must have mentioned before. I was in Selfridges food hall - intending only to look, as always - when I remembered this stew and that my butchers isn't open on a Sunday. So I availed myself of the chorizo man, bought six hot cooking chorizo sausages, and also came away with a lump of 75% reduced of the eat-me-now type of choirzo. Sales patter is lost on me, I just say yes.

So I browned three legs and three thighs of chicken, removed them to a plate, then in the same pan sweated three chunkily cut onions, added in four chopped up garlic cloves, several carrots (to finish the end of the veg-box-carrot saga), an oversize courgette and two tablespoons of smoked paprika. At this point I admitted to myself that I really did have too much oil in the pan, but never mind. Then in went a tin and a half (left overs, again) of chopped tomatos, some water, a couple of handfuls of pot barley (I don't know the difference between this and pearl barley, but I suspect it is organic naming shenengans as it looked and tasted the same...) and a tin of aduki beans. For some reason I thought I had a tin of canelleni beans in my hand, so it was a bit of a surprise to see tiny red aduki; and it was all because we didn't have my first choice of chick pea anyway.

I returned the chicken to this mix, slipped in the chorizo, and after an hour in the oven, with the lid off for the last twenty minutes to let it thicken, it was perfect. Jojo was my taster and said FOUR times how much she liked it.

I even did knubbly new potatos and cabbage with it... with the result that I have at least four more portions left of it. Happily, I don't think I could get bored of something so rich, spicy and unctious... I am just pondering what else to do with this smoked paprika.