Perfect Persian

The first recipe cooked from my Persian cook book was chicken and orange stew. I found myself itching to fiddle with the ingredients - as always - but decided to cook it as suggested, then make changes next time. I think it only fair to give a recipe a fighting chance on its first outing. Hard as it was, I didn't even add cardamom or otherwise mess with the ‘plain boiled rice’ suggested to serve alongside.

Despite having few ingredients, the stew took a surprisingly long time to prepare. I was sorely grateful to the gent who quietly set to julienne-ing the orange peel and carrots whilst I got on with the rest: without him there would have been fluster and hunger. The orange peel is boiled and drained several times, presumably to remove some of the bitterness, but which creates a gorgeous marmalade fug in the kitchen: as Seville oranges are not in season, the book suggests to use sweet oranges and add lime juice to achieve the required sourness.

The outcome was a very delicately flavoured, thinly juiced stew. It wasn’t as sour as I expected (or hoped) so I am keen to try again with Seville oranges, as the recipe calls for, when the season arrives. The tangle of bright shredded orange peel and carrots was visually beautiful as well as adding the sweet/sour flavour, and the pistachio and almond nut garnish added a fantastic contrasting texture. In fact it seemed to crown the dish and make it doubly beautiful.

Although labour-intensive with some fiddly stages, the ingredients for the stew were not expensive or difficult to source. As such, I think it a perfect January weekend dish for when there is time to potter in the kitchen, and the bitter oranges are bountiful. I hope to find a few more treasures of this sort in the Persian book; dishes that have a sense of ceremony in the making, are a notch above average when cooking for friends, and yet not be elaborate to the point of onerous. Curious but, I sense, curiously addictive.

Two delicious things to do with a pheasant

A delightful visit to the coast brought magnificent eating gifts in the form of Mrs I's roast lamb, a visit to the Millstream (more of that, later), and a pheasant and home-grown butternut squash to bring back to the big smoke. A delicious, Sussex pheasant already plucked and prepared and be-headed. Phew. For some reason I never got round to the gruesome bit of being a country girl, so not having to prep the pheasant was a great relief.

Half of the butternut squash was put to service immediately. It was chopped in two, roasted until soft and roughly scooped / chopped on top of a very plain risotto, made only with white onion and vegetable stock. Sage leaves fried in butter went atop, and some greens alongside. I love some green. It was sweet, filling and heavenly.

A couple of days later, it was time for pheasant. I peeled and chunked the rest of the butternut squash, roasting it with red onion for about half an hour before popping the bird on top and giving it a thin blanket of streaky bacon. After 30 minutes the pheasant was still a little too pink, but another 5-10 minutes rendered it perfect. The gent brought a beautiful red wine along* using his ever-ready skills to match to the dish, and we used a dash to de-glaze the roasting pan and make some gravy. Sprouts are my absolute favourite so I am undoubtedly biased, but I think their bitterness goes amazingly well with the sweet squash and salty bacon (indeed, almost anything): a mid-week feast which ended in a hands-on, thigh-bone-sucking delight.

The gent and I had pretty much demolished the whole pheasant but still the carcass looked tempting, so a few days later the remaining handful of roast flesh was set aside, and the carcass was boiled into a dark stock. Onions, garlic and streaky bacon made the basis of a risotto and the pheasant stock silkily ladled in. Once cooked, a chunk of butter and the handful of leftover pheasant flesh was stirred through, and left for a couple of minutes off-heat. Meanwhile, some roasted chestnuts had been roughly chopped up and nubbled around in foaming butter to pour atop the mound of risotto. The gent came armed with gifts in either hand: a bottle of red he had been nurturing in his wine nursery** and a cheeky young savoy cabbage to steam and sit alongside the risotto. Parmesan was unanimously rejected as being completely wrong.

I actually think I enjoyed this meal more than the roast: using a proper stock makes such a different dish to using vegetable stock (Marigold powder being the staple chez Roy), the whole dish tastes just that bit richer and the rice is more unctuous and never claggy. I can never decide if the leftovers-meal is actually more delicious, or if the joy of using up scraps somehow heightens the eating pleasure? Frugality as salt? Either way, I always save a cup of rice or a few naked bones in the hopes of an unexpected delight the next day.

Well there are three recipes when I promised only two: that's the kind of good service you get round here. Have a nice day! Please tell your family and come again soon!



* el gent: it would be a complete delight if you could name it, for posterity... it was the easy-going fruity one which gave up its delights without a blush

** Casillero del Diablo -?

Food, glorious food!

What isn't made better by food?
After a trying couple of days and a few black moments, I came home to a bowl of sugarless alpen and a mint tea. I will grant you, it didn't look promising to my cold soul, but somehow it revived me marvellously. My nerves are calmed, the ghosts vanished from the corners of the room. The most meagre meal and yet still it has such a good effect.

It goes against my nature, but tomorrow I'm going to get up early and eat a proper breakfast including sharp cox's apples to wake up my tastebuds, and museli. And a nice Monmouth coffee - this is about making the world look better, after all!

thank you, Ikea

That rustling noise is me turning over a new leaf. Yes, again.

I am going to cook more and I start tonight. Ikea is partly the reason, the other being that autumn feeling of plenty - of harvest, pumpkins, deep stews and sticky meat that creeps through me like sap rising, to show it is autumn. Another wave of my cooking mojo returning.

In January I decided to cook a good deal from my book of Persian food* and, as with all resolutions, I tell someone so that I can't forget, or back out. Ten months later I haven't so much as opened the book and am vexed to my very soul about this. I really wanted to discover how to use some new ingredients and find some canny little recipe that just does in that sad, hungry, post-work moment. I also really wanted to use some of the fantastic cook books that I read as novels - on the bus, before bed - but never cook from.

What has Ikea to do with it? I only needed one bookcase of specific proportions, but knew it would be a gruelling evening as any trip to Ikea ends in hating oneself and everyone in sight. I saw a picture of the famous meatballs and, with jollity, decided to pre-empt the horror and head straight to the cafe. To try the meatballs! They looked awful but at least I will have tried them and be able to criticise them 'from the heart' as they say on Master Chef. There was one poor man serving a queue of about 500, the meatballs were counted onto your plate, potatoes added, and then you are given the option of 'berries and gravy': the former is jam, the latter a strange yellow liquid. If I could have found a fork I would have been happier. Or a table to sit at. Plus, it was no cheaper than an Itsu duck soup. Let's draw a veil over the rest: sadly, I never discerned what was in the yellow gravy.

Generic Ikea horror ensued: after 15 minutes I was bedazzled by choice and hadn't even got past stroking sofa covers, and admiring incidental vases. The hour mark saw me in a pretend child's bedroom gazing at an ugly lampshade. Another 10 minutes and I was in tears of indecision about which of the 47 bookcases I really wanted, and in which colour. The mist only really cleared as, Billy bookcase paid for and too heavy for me to lift, I realised the delivery service would be twice the price of the goods. So I hand-picked the most angry taxi driver to get me home. Of course, if I hadn't had the meatballs I would have had the right cash to pay him... and when I realised I was missing a crucial screw, I blamed the meatballs all over again.

My room is a pile of boxes and half-built shelving, which will have to stay like that for the next ten days (or-Royal-Mail-so) until the screw arrives in the post. The best I can make of the situation is to use this as an excuse to ignore my room - which still needs unpacking - and any chores therein, and spend my evenings in the kitchen instead. I also need to override the food-memory of those meatballs: and so, I cook.

The nursery slopes for a tired Monday night: red Thai curry. My love of it never really went away and I had a beautiful bit of cabbage left to use up. My main change is being less afraid of the nam pla, which I really disliked at first, and being much less scared of making it spicy. I now also have leftovers for lunch for a couple of days, and a warm glow that might just be smugness.

For the past hour I have been at the kitchen table reading Nigel Slater's 'The kitchen diaries' and my Persian cook book. Bliss. I am also writing a list of my fantasy-best coffee morning cakes, in anticipation of getting some cake-lovers around the table on a Saturday morning. I'm so excited I have even started choosing which coffee to get from Monmouth. Is it too much to match coffee to the cake?

I've written three lists already, am planning a family meal I won't have to do until 2010, and my head is half-way to having cooked everything. If only I could get up tomorrow and head straight to the butchers! Some days work really gets in the way of living.





*For bibliophiles out there: 'The legendary cuisine of Persia' by Margaret Shaida, Grub Street 2006, and first published by Lieuse Publications 1992 for those, like me, who find such things interesting. Purchased with a token given to me by a librarian committee I sat on until last year. I like to remember that as I gaze on the 'jewelled rice' illustration.

'The kitchen diaries' by Nigel Slater, Fourth estate (an imprint of HarperCollins), 2005

bloggers-block

I have had so many fantastic meals recently, and seen so many inspiring recipes, that I now have bloggers-block. Where to start? Does entrecote and dauphinoise really take priority over the discovery of more things to do with a quince? Can I look myself in the face each morning, knowing I haven't yet made comment on the sublime chicken soup - accompanied by the clever-clever phrase I found about it being Jewish penicillen?

Not to mention the eye-popping Pirate feast with regular toasts with grog ('here's to swimmin' with bow-legged wimmin.. argghhh!' - from the un-PC mouth of the pirate cap'n).

Instead of tackling the backlog I am having a coffee and pumpkin cheesecake to ease the panic. Oishii !!

Coq and bull story

Do you think that coq-au-vin is complex and time-consuming to make? I always thought this, but one glorious warm September day - perhaps our first lazy day since Cornwall - the gent and I royally trounced this myth. We started the day with brownie and banana bread for breakfast - with special thanks to HG, who bought them for me at the South bank 'Slow Food Fair' (probably on looking at my face which spoke of a work-home vortex of hell). Then, over the paper and after tending plants and clearing a cupboard, decided on the day's food.

Waitrose and Mrs I's garden provided. Lunch was Mrs I tomatoes, basil and salad from the windowsill, fig chutney - invented and made by the gent - two types of cheese, and baguette. The Cornish Nettle Yarg was amazing, rather subtle but with complexities: the strong and silent type, if you will. For fact fans, I just read that 3500kg of nettles are required by the Lynher Dairy for this cheesey purpose alone, each year:
http://www.lynherdairies.co.uk/press-releases.html

Preparing the coq was great. The gent read out Elizabeth David's stern advice on the subject (it isn't strictly necessary to use a cockerel, we were relieved to hear) and also Nigella Lawson's low fat version from 'How to eat'. She is much vaunted as the epitome of lush larding, but everyone forgets her low-cal roots. Anyway. We took the latter recipe, but left the skin on the chicken and chose streaky bacon etc. to re-lard the dish. Between us, it was no more work than any other stew or casserole, even with the flashy finishing touch of igniting brandy. Would it be vin-glorious to say it was completely delicious?

Discussion of the day: does it matter which wine you use to cook with? One school of thought suggests you shouldn't put it in the pot if you wouldn't drink it; whilst the other says you can't appreciate the wine properly once heated - so why waste the good stuff? We didn't - discuss - but I feel the gent and I fall fairly neatly either side of this divide! Thoughts on this very welcome...

In brief

Browsing some Coren back files I found a review of 'The Drapers Arms' which, delightfully, is in my area. More delightfully, it was compared - but not contrasted - to St. John. Some of the dishes sound almost identical to ones at St. John when we visited in July and I had an immediate yen to do it all again: same people, similar food, different place. And quite a lot cheaper, too.

Incidentally, one of my favourite lines was: 'travel only broadens the mind if the mind starts off narrow'. Which will get added to: 'Travel narrows the mind and broadens the waist'.

This link is to the article in the Giles Coren backfiles at the Times Online:
http://tinyurl.com/lpy2xe

Drapers Arms, 44 Barnsbury St