Beet poet

And the reason I had leftovers to use up: a TV night in with my friend Mel.

We had Campari soda, naturally, before this salmon and salad. I never usually relish a supermarket cooked beet, but these baby beets with black pepper were luscious! 

I have nothing to say about poetry, I just enjoy a terrible pun.

Radishes are my vegetable of 2016 and at any one time I have a pack on the go. My only complaint is that they are a little mild, but I intend to grow them next year and will try a few peppery varieties. Recommendations gratefully received!

Slugged!

So my lovingly hand-reared courgette plants, and several tomato plants, made a fine delicacy for the slugs and snails. Oy! The remaining two weedy squash plants are now sulking inside next to a window. They would rather be outside in some soil but I have turned protective parent.

A regiment of underdeveloped toms are perched on a radiator (don't ask) in my Steptoe and Son back garden (really don't ask). I am going to plant these out; I can't think egg shells and coffee grounds will deter these Amazonian slimies but the toms have one last chance. Grow prickly and hairy, wee Monemakers!

In a funk of vegetable failure, I gave in to reality and signed up for a veg box delivery. Iam now looking forward to it - hungry anticipation mixed with admiration for large scale growing. Imagine the slug patrols on a farm! The first box arrives this week so to make room I cleaned my fridge and defrosted the tiny ice box. I am also eating everything up.

Tonight I'll eat the final courgettes with pasta. Lunch dealt with the rest:

(A lousy photo but it'll jog my memory for next time!)

June salad with bacon and Dijon potato salad

Scant teaspoon of Dijon mustard, mixed with mayonnaise. Add in cold, cubed, cooked potato (made twice this amount)

Pile up in a dish:

4 radishes (halved), third of a cucumber (sliced), half a yellow pepper sliced, a good handful of mange tout (blanched then run under cold water), a spring onion sliced.

My sister & her family were at a hog roast today so, feeling a little pork-envy, I fried some pancetta cubes and added them - along with bacon fat from the pan - on top. 

A squeeze of lime.

May days

April is the most astonishing month.

From misty to hail to sun, the weather is petulant.  And the garden follows suit! Hidden behind the ungiving frosty mornings the ground must secretly be warming, because suddenly the green flourishes. I had been anxiously seeking my peoney plants, worried they had been carelessly squashed or murdered by boisterous fence & shed replacements. I found them on a bleak Sunday in the gloaming evening, their red alien fists punching up through the soil; three weeks later and they were lush, green and a foot tall! Everything is burgeoning. Even the weeds...

I really enjoyed weeding in winter.  My battle with brambles and that sneaky, tenacious ivy actually seemed to be progressing - in my favour. But bring on the April showers and shy first sun and I have a dispiriting handicap, as if I am now fighting with one hand behind my back.  I see I can no longer be a weekender; it begins to seem as if longer days are provided for the sole purpose of keeping on top of the growing vegetation.

For the first time, I have been nurturing* seeds to life. I thought I had over-watered and rotted them, but it turns out that even they are keen to thrive. After 3 weeks of being ignored they sprang to life and now I am thrilled to be growing tomatoes (moneymaker), courgette, patty pan squash and butternut squash. I have some herbs on the go and Rose & Al gifted me two sturdy strawberry plants they have been bringing on.  

I put the seedlings outside yesterday to harden off, only to find it was warmer outside than inside the house. May has over stretched itself into July temperatures: such hot weather! Like being dropped into summer for a day. So today I shelter inside (ironically less hardy than the spindly, baby tomato plants) and make lunch.

 

Surprise-Summer lunch

1) Discover last year's elderflower cordial hasn't gone off & have with fizzy water & lemon.

2) Rootle in the fridge for salad items.  Layer up in a flat bowl:

Watercress; cucumber, cubed; radishes, halved, a spring onion, thinly sliced; avocado; red chilli which later turns out to be disappointingly mild, very finely diced.

Lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper & salt... you know the drill.

3) Make like the Larkin poem and enjoy it with all windows down, all sense of hurry gone.

* neglecting

Mrs Hubbard

When I looked, on one of those dark days between Christmas and New Year, the cupboard was bare.  When my Mother looked she found this:

Hubbard soup (minimal version)

For making something out of nothing, this beats even the tomato and lentil soup that KK makes. Chop one white onion, soften in oil; add a tin of tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato purée.  Cook for a bit - maybe 15 mins - then blend roughly and season well. Serves 3.

Ridiculously Good Sausage rolls

Caramelise some onions by slicing an onion in half, then slicing the halves into slim half moons. Add to a pan with a little oil and cook on a low heat for 30 mins. Add a teaspoon of balsamic and half a teaspoon of sugar and cook a further 15 mins.

Roll out puff pastry into a long rectangle. You will soon fold this in half, lengthwise, so bear this in mind as you place on sausage meat (from Jonathan the butcher, "hardly any fat in there" as Ma kept telling us): keep it to one side, with space all round. Top the meat with caramelised onion then fold the rest of the pastry over the meat, like a long blanket. Tuck the sausage up cosy, press the edges together, and brush with milk. Slice the roll into big chunks; they need to be pretty hefty or the pastry will bounce open as the rolls cook. Bake hot (190 degrees) for about 20 mins.

This was a very warming lunch.

hello? Is it me you're looking for?

The cooking dry spell continued, making me more grateful than ever for other people's home dishes. Jimmy's classic ham, rice and salad; an Ottolenghi-salad lunch crafted by Mel; Alex's barley and black pudding risotto.

And then, after two days alone in the burnt ochre palette of English autumn countryside, I noticed my cooking mojo sitting next to me.  He looked like this:

I had picked courgette, tomatoes, rosemary and thyme from Rosie & Alex's garden. So I made ratatouille and chipolata sausages for supper, and also a lamb stew for school nights this week.

Mojo Lamb

Brown the cheapest of stewing lamb in Alex's nice, deep pot, then remove to a dish. 

In the lamby pan, add more oil, then in it sweat sliced onion and cumin seeds.  

Add diced celery and cook a bit more, keeping the heat low. 

Return the lamb to the pan, cover with water, then add in rosemary, diced carrot and a few odds of courgette that had gone mushy at one end, but you wanted to rescue the edible bits.  

Leave on low for a couple of hours, happy in the knowledge it will taste even better when re-heated after work.

Pour a glass of wine and let the aromatic rosemary smells sharpen your appetite. 

house salad

After a series of increasingly bizarre meals, culminating in 'left over curry with sweetcorn to pad it out, with penne pasta' on Friday, I was ready for real food again. Thank goodness for the weekend!

At Deptford's Big Red Bus on Friday night Jamie and I had wonderful pizza. Saturday's falafel salad at Maltby street market had gorgeous crunchy falafel and silky aubergine. We took in the Ladywell Tavern for beers, lovely coffee and cake at Fee and Brown, and late night chips at a local chipper.  

After all the excitement and sunshine, Sunday evening felt a little quiet and back-to-school sad. So I made House Salad which, being in the Flamingo house, had to be pink.

• New potatoes; boiled, cooled a bit, and quartered lengthwise
• Cos lettuce chopped or torn
• 2 spring onions, sliced
• 5 cherry toms
• 5 radishes
• The end of a tin of sweet corn 
• A skinny fillet of salmon, fried then left to rest

Put it all together with the salmon last, warm, on top. Dash over the frying pan oil, half a lime, and a grind of pepper. Eat while listening to radio 4's 'Boswell's life of Johnson' - delightfully distracting and with Miles Jupp to boot. Enjoy with a bitter Campari and soda, contemplating the sweet / sad nature of life.

hot cross bacon savouries

When the corner shop didn't have any hot cross buns on Easter day, my Mother wasn't put out. 

"Let's have some hot cross bacon savouries instead!" she said, somewhat eccentrically. 

Unsurprisingly, they weren't available to purchase, so we made 'em.  Back home I made a pot of coffee while Ma did the following. If you have an oven, and a spare 7 minutes, I suggest you do the same.

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees, or gas equivalent. 
• Unwrap and unroll some puff pastry (bought fresh, pre-rolled); cut into 6 squares.  
• Over these squares grate some strong cheddar and lay over a rasher of bacon. I favour smoked streaky. We didn't have much bacon to hand, so cut up 4 rashers and shared this out equally.
• Bring diagonal corners of the pastry together (as in the photo), brush pastry with milk and bake for 20 minutes or so.

Enjoy with coffee, sitting in the Spring sunshine, with your parents, if you are so very lucky as to have some.