yule have a good time

I was in such agonies choosing only two pictures to illustrate Christmas. I have so many of the lunch itself, over the years, that I thought I would make a break and show the behind-the-scenes; after all, we spend so much more time on the lead up and preparation than the actual meal itself!

So here is the cranberry sauce in process, with peeled, prepared vegetables - and the hot ham lunch to reward us after.

This year the storms meant we skipped some last minute shopping in favour of staying dry and off the road. We walked to the village to scour pre-apocalyptic shelves bereft of goods and managed to salvage our smoked salmon on Christmas Eve tradition, and also found the last bag of prunes for our lovely, lovely devils on horseback (pre-lunch, Christmas Day).  This year Ma called them 'devils-on-donkeys' which, unfortunately, stuck.

Some things had to be jettisoned though, so instead of using orange juice and zest in the cranberry sauce, I slugged in some sloe gin, and would do it again next year.

Cooking the ham on Christmas Eve is a practical move, so it is ready for next day's lunch - and saves space in the oven the next day. More, though, it is such a lovely simple meal to have when most other meals are rich or erratic or just not part of a usual routine. My Mother is always the Christmas cook; although I learnt from her I sometimes forget how very simply she can cook - and how surprisingly tasty this is. This year the ham was roasted, very plain, and served just with boiled potatoes and white cabbage.  The intense saltiness of the meat provided all the flavour the dish needed. 

The ends of the joint were sticky with almost burnt fat, and when no one was looking I pulled at the fat and ate it up. 

routine, interrupted

Christmas lunch reminds me of school and how we used to spend the hour before school Christmas lunch making hats to wear. 

Hats!

The full turkey roast in a pub today at 3pm was terrific and made me very happy, but I was so confused when I wasn't hungry again by 6 pm. My routine - if it deserves such a name - was interrupted!

This is my quail's eggs and nacho supper. It hit the spot all right. The dusty stuff in the dish is celery salt, adding another dimension to the eggs, as this season adds a salty pinch of zest to the cold, dark winter.

chicken and rice re-vamped

A little addenda to previous chicken and rice mentions.

I got boring about a very plain chicken recipe some years back, re-ignited my love of it when Melly Bo said it was basically the same as Asian chicken and rice, sans rice (such nice comfort knowing it is a family staple somewhere else), and then promptly forgot all about it.

A year or so later Rosie, staunch robust little Rosie, actually gave in to being tired and unwell and said she'd love to eat something like it: soupy, savoury and nourishing.  Well it only takes chicken pieces, water and a handful of any veg so I gussied some up for her in no time and have been back on the wagon ever since.

Last night I made enough for four frugal portions: 4 big chicken thighs, 6 chunky cut carrots, 3 leeks cut in wedges and a heavy grind of pepper, covered in water and simmered for 40 minutes or so.  Three portions were boxed up for another time.  With the remaining portion, I threw half a cup of rice in the cooking water for the last ten minutes, and some shredded cabbage, making perfect chicken and rice.  I ate it with a dash of English mustard and a nod to Nigella and her 'Praised chicken'.

Tonight I got home late and tired yet again, and was pleased for a little chicken dish waiting.  Having had rice at lunchtime too, I needed a change.  I am simply so excited about this: how easy and speedy it was, and how very filling!

The little portion of plain stewed chicken heated up in no time.  When it was at a simmer I pushed in a scant bowl of pasta shapes (peculiar little ones I get from my local shop, small enough to cook in 6 minutes) and a leftover few florets of broccoli.  After six or seven minutes the pasta was ready and I had an unctuous, soupy mix; into this I grated some parmesan, plonked on a couple of heaped teaspoons of wholegrain mustard and set to.

Perfect.

payday treats

A supernaturally bright, November day in which it would be hard to be anything but cheerful.

Also, I realised, the day after payday!  So I celebrated with a walk in the sunshine to Arloe and Moe, where I enjoyed their excellent coffee and some 'sexy toast' (avo and feta: it works just ever so well); this spun into a long break, reading my book, drinking coffee, feeling the sun through the window beating into my bones. 

Then onwards for MORE pay day treats: the market! Here is my haul, all for under ten pounds, I think.

Those are field mushrooms to be fried with butter and garlic and put on toast, for breakfast. There were organic hens eggs for the pantry - and, very likely, to make a week night, working-girl carbonara with.

Pears, eating apples and Bramleys for porridge, stewing, making into crumble, lunchboxes - anything else? The carrots are destined for a winter stew with lamb and rosemary, or a warming chickpea and chorizo version, and the cauli... well the cauliflower could just be steamed and eaten as is. Or its modesty semi-covered by a blanket of cheese sauce.  I could rhapsodise all night about King Cauli's clean flavour and grainy florettes. 

Cauliflower is one of my favourite vegetables.

Indian summer

Unexpected nirvana found on a sunny back doorstep.

Mint tea and Middle Eastern treats* whilst looking up a favourite stew in a favourite cook book. And stewing steak in the kitchen, ready to cook!  Quite unexpectedly the grey, chilly days have blossomed into picture book autumn: so hot that I am in my birthday dress, worn on the first day of July's heat wave (as I recall it, anyhow). Arms bare to the sun. It feels good.

* at a guess, sponge made with ground almonds, covered in cashew and pistachio nuts and doused in a honey, rose water syrup.  Baklava-lite, if you like.

two hungry bees

Just a tiny word about the most delicious Vietnamese meal.  Saturday night saw me at the Hill Station Cafe, attending a pop up evening hosted by Two Hungry Bees (find out about them on Twitter as @twohungreybees).  I have walked past the Hill Station many times and, day or night, it is always inviting, buzzing with activity.  But each time I walk on and think 'soon! Another time'.

But back to the food.  I had that wonderful experience - rare as an adult - of tasting new flavours and ingredients.  An inauspicious nettle-looking leaf with a very distinctive flavour (Red Perilla) was beneath some shredded salad; we wrapped it all up in the leaf and dunked it in the dipping sauce.  Heaven!  Later, making our own summer rolls I found the pretty 'heartleaf' to add in with the salad.

New, too, were combinations of flavours, which made me completely redress the way I look at some very ordinary ingredients.  Zinging herbs, chilli, lime, noodles - all turned into something quite new when put together.  I have no idea what is in it, but always, always I love the thin, astringent dipping sauce for spring and summer rolls.  New to me too was the rice pancake we wrapped the summer roll in, with its improbable thin, brittle texture transforming into sticky cling film, in which to envelop a modest few items.  Rice pancake and vegetables with a few flakes of salmon somehow transformed into the most fresh, flavourful mouthfuls. The stock to make Pho is a mystery to me - and can stay that way, as long as I can get to Mo Pho or the Two Hungry Bees market stall once in a while!

But most of all that evening, I enjoyed the warmth.  Our hosts talked about their family food and demonstrated how dishes are usually eaten.  From this lovely, intimate presentation, to the welcoming people I sat with who shared their evening with me, to the pretty Cafe itself, which always exudes laughter.  Only this time, I was on the inside.

three colours hungry

Beet red
Brockley market's second birthday was a wonderful thing to behold! Heaps of stalls, many customers and more goodwill than you could shake an organic cabbage at.  I had a dark fluid coffee as an especial treat to myself, and then got two bunches of beets and a big head of celery for four quids.  Not a big haul, but then it is the end of the month, my traditional time for scraping the bottom of the barrel.  And anyway I find a particular pleasure in making the most of modest things.

On Sunday evening, as I was pottering around pulling weeds from the patio, picking tomatoes and trimming an unhappy geranium, my beets were being roasted into this happy dish.  Lovely sweet carrots and beetroot, with onion, garlic, potato and celery; roasted for 45 minutes, then draped with fat slices of salty halloumi and given another 10 minutes in the oven to turn good.  Hearty, warming, carb-heavy.  And I had a leftover glass of wine to indulge in, too.


Blackberry blue
Sunday lunchtime saw me furtively stalking in the bushes of Brockley / Ladywell cemetery.  To be more precise, I was astonished at the amount of bushes that had turned into brambles and, therefore, were proffering up bright berries.  The sort of 'astonished' that led me to arrive with a plastic tub, ready for collecting fruit in, though...

It felt wrong, wrong, wrong to be berrying amongst the dead, however if the dearly departed are of as one mind with me, then I'd say a berry gone to waste is a sorry thing.  There were loads, to the point that many were going mouldy on the branches: I certainly wasn't depriving the birds of snacks.  The fruit are very nearly over, many being over-ripe and mushy, however I was selective and collected around half a kilogram which is perfect for the blackberry clafoutis I made recently and have declared a winner.  The berries are in the freezer, awaiting someone to help me eat the clafoutis!


Carte blanche white
Finally in my frugal trio, we see those three blackening bananas on my kitchen counter get their comeuppance. Yes, banana bread AGAIN.  This year I have mostly been using a Mary Berry recipe from a book I can only assume my Mother gave me.  Mrs I. adores Mary Berry.  Having recently seen an episode of 'British Bake off', I myself am now also a staunch supporter of both her baking and fashion sense.  Anyway, feeling heady and reckless after this weekend's adventures, I gave myself carte blanche to fiddle with the recipe.  Not to improve it, but because I found a pack of poppy seeds which I felt would cheer things along, and also because ground almonds feel positively healthy, as well as adding wonderful moistness.  Instead of the usual 225g flour then, I used 50g ground almonds, 20g poppy seeds and 175g flour.

NOTE TO SELF: I always have to look this up, so maybe writing a note here will help.  Self raising flour =150g flour plus 2 tsp baking powder.  I never have self-raising flour in the house and end up guessing.

I also finally trusted to the instruction, which is to put everything into a bowl 'and beat'.  I always follow the sponge method of creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs etc. etc.  But my gorgeous KitchenAid mixer was making eyes at me so I let her do the work whilst I washed up.

I can't wait for breakfast tomorrow: my coffee pot sits ready, next to the cake.

Lambgate

Melly Bo and Phil ventured all the way to south London, for a First Day of The End Of The Summer lamb roast. I chose a lamb shoulder - my resolute favourite cut - and made a lamb roast which started life as Hugh's weeping whatsit and has since morphed, as all dishes do, to suit my natural leanings. Despite this, still bluddy yums.  The company was even more delicious than the lamb, and the food warmed our souls and made autumn seem a cosy prospect. 

The next night I was out at my local community choir, which was such fun I am tempted to ramble on about that instead of food. Even the bit where, on the walk home I made a voice memo of a song, accidentally pressing the 'start' button only when complete, then recorded 18 minutes and 26 seconds of the inside of my pocket. Technical dunce!

I finally arrived home at 9.30, ravenous: what to eat?

Out came the brown dish and in went all the left over roast veggies, new potatoes and the fattiest chunks of lamb.  After15 mins in an un-pre-heated oven optimistically set to 200 degrees, with wine and 'Girls' on the go, I could bear it no longer and tucked in.  But not without a photo for posterity: you know me. 

The flavours had become more intense, and this was even more wonderful than the original roast.  How I love left-overs!

Sunday brekker, cordial and a ripe tomato

In which I rise late, have a good breakfast and pick the first ripe tomato from my plants.

Fit the first: Rosie's elderflower cordial.

Just look at that heavenly, homely little bottle.  Gorgeous. It wins on looks alone and yet, and yet, it actually tastes better than it looks!  Lovely with a lemon-ice-slice (TM): this is KK's invention to make the most of lemons that are leaving youth behind, and with no immediate use for them.  Slice, bag and freeze.  Lovely in gin or just with cold water and mint.


Fit the second: late breakfast.

Discerning chums of mine were surprisingly vehement in their opinion of Nigella's 'Eggs in purgatory'. Runny egg and tomato appear to be a controversial combination. Yet an irresistible dip into Malcom Eggs' 'The breakfast bible' reignited my curiosity.  I was agog over some Middle Eastern breakfasts, and when I saw sumac, my new and undiminished crush, I knew I had to give this combination a second chance.  I didn't follow the actual recipe, which I quite forget now, but instead took a scratched milk pan and fried some halved tomatoes.  When soft and crisp in the right places, I made little gaps in which to crack eggs.  A little sumac storm later, I piled it all out onto some buttered toast.  And dang me if it wasn't just really lovely.  A little heartburn-ey, I'll warrant, but I was feeling manful.
 

Fit the third: just look at that tomato. Either fully embarrassed or trying to be individual; either way I hope it is a fashion the others follow. 

raise the steaks

No photo for this one. Just warning my Mum who likes a photo to cheer her along through the technical bits.

Sunday afternoon, an empty brain, train leaving in 15 minutes and a guest who doesn't like sauce. What to cook? What could Waitrose Chichester offer a harassed consumer?

I instinctively reached for a few salad things and a reduced price 'frying steak' of unspecified cut. It all nobly lasted the journey back to London, whereupon I DELIGHTED myself with this low-effort, but ever so rewarding meal. You can probably tell that I speak as much with surprise as self-congratulation.

I prepared everything bar the steak as soon as I walked in the door, and the prep was really very minimal.  The steak takes only a couple of minutes at the last moment, so is even less drama than cooking the potatoes.

• 3 adequate tomatoes, sliced*, arranged elegantly over a jumble-sale-bargain-plate and drizzled in Spanish virgin olive oil, from a picturesque tin. Seasoned.
• Too many new potatoes, boiled with a few mint leaves: drained, and dashed with a spot of oil.
• Ruby baby gem lettuce, roughly torn or chopped so the big leaves are in 2 or 3 pieces, arranged over a shallow dish. Bunch of spring onions - or scallions as they are sometimes, pleasingly, called - diced and scattered over; chopped mint and fresh red chilli also evenly decorated about. Half a lime squeezed over, a thin drizzle of oil, if you feel so inclined. Grind some medium-coarse pepper over the meat.  Now sear the steak until appealing without and soft pink within. Rest 5 mins if you can wait, whilst recalling that the meat will continue to cook. So. Don't mis-judge that. Slice thinly - across the grain if you please - into long strips and drape over the salad.

Self-congratulate. Masticate. Celebrate.

* horizontal, which is my OCD only way of slicing them.

summer supps

Still obsessed with fattoush, I naturally made it king of the table when Herb, Al and PJ came for a summery supps.

Its attendant dishes were very basic, but heavy on summer flavours: lemon roast chicken, mint new potatoes, rocket and orange salad.

To keep our hunger at bay to begin with, there was soda bread with oil and za'atar to dip into, and olives and gins... then lovely bubbly from Al.

And after we were sated, beyond really needing anything more, we still found a place for chocolate pots and cherries, with almond and apricot tart from Al and Herb again (via Konditor and Cook), and Turkish nuts and dried fruits from PJ.  No one, but no one wanted coffee, despite having two fresh bags from Monmouth at the ready!

But the most zingy, happy dish has to be fattoush. Incidentally, you can do anything with it should you have left-overs: stir through cold, leftover rice; put with pasta and chicken; cram into a pitta with falafel.  The apricot tart was breakfasts for a few days, and I am still enjoying the coffee ... along with the afterglow of a wonderful evening in good company.

fattoush fetish

Sometimes I have such a good time that I actually get jealous of myself.

I might taste something delicious and think 'that is so wonderful, I would LOVE to have that every day until I get sick of it'.  Then I realise that I made it, and that there is no restriction on when or what I eat and that, in short, my heart's desire was just granted.

Can anyone else be as lucky as that?

After a sustained but unsuccessful campaign on the national supermarkets I finally found the spices sumac and za'atar in the restaurant Comptoir Libanais which, it transpires, also sells Middle Eastern ingredients.  I had been impatient to make Fattoush, a fresh, zingy salad, which looked as if it could be different enough to feel like I wasn't eating yet more tomatoes and cucumber.

To sustain me while I prepared the salad, I ate Mallorcan sobrasada on oat cakes, with a spot of Oloroso sherry, standing on one leg, leaning over the sink.  As is my glamorous wont.

In a model of time-efficiency (I'm so jealous!) I put soda bread in the oven, along with some chicken thighs rubbed with oil and za'atar: whilst they cooked, I took a well-earned shower.  As my friend Anun said, so delicately, of hot weather and body odour "by noon, I am AWARE of myself".

Emerging like a bespectacled Venus from the waves, I found the bread baked to perfection - no room for modesty today - and the chicken thighs begging for a basting.  I appeased them, saucy wretches, and cracked on with the salad.

I started out following a recipe - of COURSE Nigella, of COURSE 'Forever Summer' - however I sort of lost myself in the salad drawer of my fridge and this is what I actually put together:

• 2 plump tomatoes, diced
• 1/3 cucumber, diced
• about 6 skinny spring onions, chopped big and rough
• a handful of radishes in quarters
• a very few baby gem leaves, torn. Almost tempted to say don't use these.
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon sumac
• pinch salt
• a little glug of virgin olive oil
• juice of half a lime
• mint leaves, shredded

With the first mouthful I unravelled and nearly had to telephone someone - anyone - to tell them about it.  It is the taste equivalent of dazzling.  It is 'fresh' cubed.  It also leaves you with terrible garlic / onion breath.

I gathered myself together, put a roast chicken thigh* and quarter of soda bread onto the plate of fattoush, and ate fast.

*Something for the more sleazy eater: the chicken leaves a lot of za'atar-spiced oil/fat in the roasting dish which you might like to mop up with your soda bread. Do consider it...

Mallorcan munchies

Day 2 on this highly populated desert island and there is already a routine. Ham and bread is the routine, though it is by no means unvaried.

That international favourite supermarket, Lidl, was open on a Sunday and provided chorizo salame, jamon Serrano, Lomo, jamon al corte (cooked) and others. For a varied diet, I also chose some aged Manchego-like cheese and fruit. 

In another supermarket the wonderful ham counter, dangling with whole cured hams, quite took my breath away. I did a quick, mental calculation as to how many books & clothes I would have to jettison in order to fit a bulging jamon beauty into my suitcase (and would customs allow it?): sadly, not possible this time.

Breakfast, then, might be cereal or seeded bread and cheese, and fruit and coffee, eaten to this view of palm trees, pool and sea.  Lunch could be Ham Various with avocado or tomatoes, accompanied by a perky San Miguel. And ice cream.

Evening meals so far have been resolutely calamari-based, however a reluctant foray into the salad section means that tonight we will be navigating choppy Ham And Salad waters.

As I said: a routine, but not without variation. I don't see myself getting bored any time soon. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to cool down with another dip in the briney...

birthday treats

I invented my own birthday breakfast tradition a while back. Each year I think I will deviate from it, but then the lure of cherries, strawberries, raspberries - with granola and yogurt, or some bread and cheese - and always a little espresso, pulls me back. What could ever be better on a newborn summers day?

This year the berries were from the Bloomsbury farmers' market. The cherries were from the enormous and fertile tree in my neighbours' garden, its branches so wide and the boughs so laden, that at least half lists over onto my patch.

The weather was straight from a Laurie Lee poem.

Lunch was a surprise, and I love surprises. We sat in the open window of Randall & Aubin in Soho, refreshing ourselves with champagne and oysters. Such pretty little soft oysters, tinged sunrise-pink with shalotty-red-vinegar. I have so often passed this place and peeped in to see the (to my imagination) terribly sophisticated diners, sitting in the cool shade; how novel to now be inside, looking out of the open windows into a sunny, dusty street.

As if this didn't sate my senses enough, we then lounged over some tapas in Blacks. I say tapas, but you know it involved a chorizo scotch egg just oozing red pimento oil, with a rocket jumble of salad; olives, bread, oil. I was grateful for the bitter little espresso which jolted me awake from the lounging reverie I had fallen into, as we draped and murmured amongst threadbare and lumpy sofas, in an old townhouse in the middle of a working day, in high summer.  

I needed three hours with my girl friends and a stiff gin in the dusky evening, just to come down from the sensory high of the day.  Magical.

lunch al desko #2

The success of the ripe, warm tomato and damp mozzarella pairing continues, unabated.

I baked soda bread and took it to work wrapped, cooling, in a tea towel.  One quarter of the bread is perfect for lunch: salty and wheaty and filling.  I liked this even more than yesterday's lunch with oat cakes.

My soda bread recipe has somehow knocked down to the following:

• 200g wholemeal strong flour
• 120g white strong flour
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• some salt - quite a bit, really; maybe 1 or half a teaspoon of flaked maldon salt
• carton of buttermilk, usually around 280ml

190 degrees and 30 minutes.

I am such a tiresome organiser that I even measure out all the dry ingredients the night before, so that of a morning I just turn on the oven, mix the buttermilk into the dry ingredients (very briefly, not even kneading it) and bung it in the oven while I take a shower or fight with flimsy contact lenses.  It is very telling that putting lenses in my eyes takes more swearing and fight than making a loaf of bread.

lunch al desko

Warm, ripe tomato and cold mozzarella, with only scrunched salt flakes and olive oil for company. Oat cakes alongside.

Then chocolate Guinness cake, a few days old, and therefore more moist and sticky: even better than when it was first baked.

rice is nice

I couldn't be happier with my new rice.

I am being all homey in my new flat and my particular delight is buying in bulk. The opposite of my uncharacteristically Mother Hubbard life of the past year or so. Five litres of fabric conditioner stashed beneath the sink, pasta by the kilogram, family-sized shampoo... and now a 5 kg sack of Jasmine rice!

I delight in the feeling of plenty. Of knowing that if all goes wrong there will always be rice and nam pla at the ready. Most of all, I like dipping a cup in the rice sack; it reminds me of the grain bin from which I used to feed my chickens when I was 17.  To pour rice out of a bag into a cup now seems so very mean and ungenerous an act.

Amazingly, I hadn't even thought about how the rice would taste until last night when I had some salmon to use. It turns out the rice is that gorgeous, fluffy, slightly sticky stuff that doesn't go to mush despite my lackadaisical handling of it. I was genuinely astonished it was so good.

It was one of those days when I could only cope with minimal cooking - and washing up. I thinly sliced a small fennel bulb and dressed it with a tiny dash of virgin olive oil and wine vinegar (no citrus in the pantry: Mother Hubbard). The salmon I lopped into fat chunks and bunged in a milk pan with a little oil and a finely chopped clove of garlic; this cooked gently and slowly, then I chucked in two tbsp sour cream. I know, very odd!   But everything was served with the astonishing rice, on a summer evening, with contentment pervading, and it really couldn't have been nicer.

sparagus

Bounty from the market.

I only went to show KK the sights and came back laden with delights.  First up, the first asparagus of the year.  I cooked it as my Mother did, the first time I ate it - aged 18 and back from university, a rare occasion when there was just the two of us.

Snapping the stalks is my very favourite vegetable prep of all time.

I steamed / boiled them in a little water, in a covered pan, until just short of cooked; drained and dashed with cold water; laid out in a warm bowl with melted butter poured over and a crunch of salt.
Perfect, perfect.



Naturally, woman cannot live on asparagus alone (although I'd give it a jolly good go, if I won the lotto), so I roasted carrots and swede, potato, onion and garlic.  Once done, I draped over slices of Halloumi and put it back in the oven for ten minutes.  Then put on my box set de jour and filled my face with carbs.

arloe + moe

Wonderful coffee with Mrs I, having a chat and watching the rain.
In fact, the coffee was so good, and the rain so rainy, that we stayed for another!

They use Dark Fluid coffee and their cakes are also terrific.  
There is no website for the cafe, however they are on twitter as @ArloeMoe

chicken + rice

A few days in a row I had the ever-faithful chicken stew – so plain, so homely.  Each evening I would take a few ladles from the casserole, into a little pan to heat.  By the last day I had one scrappy portion left, with plenty of stock and vegetables and a scrawny thigh – but no potatoes.  I brought this scrappy remnant to boil, then threw in half a cup of rice and covered it for ten to fifteen minutes, by which time I had perfect chicken and rice.  Some seasoning and a dab of mustard and I had the tastiest, savoury, filling and soul-filling meal ever.  For the absolute minimum of effort.  

Sometimes I pretend someone else has cooked it for me so I can work late, or do battle with a briar patch, then say ‘how glad I am I don’t have to cook!  And can just sit down to some nice chicken and rice!’.

As you can see, I ate it in the patio-jungle of blue weedy flowers, with a cup of mediocre red wine. 

Very. Heaven.

raising the bread

The delight of soda bread, for those that make it, is how mindlessly easy and quick it is to knock up.

This morning I lay in bed, feverishly debating whether I had enough time to have a swim before work.  I then debated many other things, equally feverishly, until I was out of time.  Just before jumping in the shower though, despite the late hour, I knocked up a loaf of bread and put it in the oven.  Not really a time-saving feature of any morning, but it just goes to show that someone with 5 things on their mind (and an abysmal multi-tasker, at that) can still squeeze in a morning loaf.

Naturally the reason for this speed is the lack of yeast-faff: the ingredients are merely flour, bicarb, salt + buttermilk.  And the method: twirl it around a bit, drop on a tray, cut a cross-shape and bake.  It really is that easy and unskilled: no waiting, no kneading.  I have lost my trusty old recipe so used a James Martin one – chosen for being half-and-half wholemeal / white.  A skirt round the Internet bedazzled me with the many recipes and I’m going to try a few in turn until I land a new favourite. 

Rachel Allen admonishes that you shouldn’t knead soda bread, as this renders it ‘heavy’, and who is going to argue with her?  But I must admit to enjoying a bit of kneading, however early it is: when I have exhausted my inevitable forthcoming pash for making soda loaves, I think I’ll go back to the lovely cold, slow-rise yeasted bread I used to make as a student.  Made up the night before, it just needs an early-morning fist-fight (knead) before baking.  Yes, that is next on the cards.  But for now I am in the thrall of the soda.

And the delight of soda bread for those that EAT it, is… well.  Try it and see.

spring has sprung

And this is my heavenly Sunday: a walk to Blackheath, mackerel lunch in the sun, then lounging with a book + espresso. Against advice I didn't don my regular, fastidious factor 50 sun cream ... and of course ended the day with a blush-pink neck!



Lunch was a beautiful wedge of sesame seed bloomer (from Costcutter, of all places) with smoked mackerel flaked over. Alongside was my surprise buy at the farmer's market: a veritable BUSH of celery. I had no idea what to do with it all, but after a couple of these lunches and a sturdy beef stew, I have done it justice and run it into extinction.

Roll on the next sunny weekend!

perfect eggs

After a weekend of feasting, and feeling the need for a light, nursery supper, I unintentionally made the most perfect eggs.

Just-done whites, soft-as-melting-butter yolks and a dash of coarse salt. On buttery wholemeal.

The ONLY way to recover from Andy's amazing feast on a Saturday, followed by KK's sublime Sunday roast lamb.

giving up

When I say I am giving up on myself, I mean it in the good way.

'Giving up' as in lunching on the most gross panini imaginable.  Meatballs and cheese!  No lovely vitamins, but boy did it warm me up and cheer me through a boring afternoon of emails.

'Giving up' as in eating the best part of an M&S coffee swiss roll in one sitting.  Because I haven't baked a cake in forever, and it looked Quite Nice.

And 'giving up' as in not being able to face pasta again, then remembering my friend Sarah making oven baked risotto carbonara from a Delia recipe.  So I made more than I needed and ate it straight out of the baking dish, which was swaddled in a tea towel and cradled in my lap.  As I listened to the FIRST episode of a NEW series of 'In and out of the kitchen' from radio 4.  I was delirious with joy.

Despite taking longer to cook than the 15 short minutes for linguine carbonara, this risotto somehow feels a little more leisurely and relaxing to put together.  The proper Delia recipe is below, however I was cooking from memory so veered from her genius.  If you would like the quantities for one person, then this is what I did:

• Preheat your oven to around 160 degrees, pop in a baking dish to warm.

• Put half a tub of pancetta cubes in a medium saucepan to crisp up.  Chuck in a washed and thinly shredded leek, and one finely diced stick of celery (about 2 weeks old in this case, but don't feel inadequate if you only have a fresh one): cook low until soft.  Bung the last bit of butter from the pat: melt.  

• Now add in 4 oz risotto rice and stir until 'slicked with butter' seems to be the writer's term of choice. Put this mix in your pre-heated baking dish, pour over 420 (very ish) ml marigold stock and return the dish to the oven.  Yes, without covering the dish.

• After 20 minutes, remove dish from oven, look disappointed at the thin liquidy contents, and fret it won't turn out very well after all.  Add in enough parmesan to make you smile, stir + return to the oven.  

• In another 15 minutes remove from oven and DELIGHT over how good and crusty and perfectly cooked it is!  Whisk together an egg and a splash of full fat milk, mix into the risotto, and leave to stand for two minutes.  

Serve with some steamed cauliflower, to make up for not having any vegetables at lunchtime.

The proper Delia recipe from the lady herself:

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/italian/oven-baked-risotto-carbonara.html 

Addenda: I was initially defeated by the quantity. I hope you are too.  Having seconds in lieu of washing up is just the kind of exchange we all enjoy.