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.