This is where I write crap

Lost the will...

2011-01-13T11:38:00.002Z

Wow. It's been a long while since I've written anything here. Things haven't been very settled at home lately and I feel in a kind of limbo. Maybe if we ever find a house to live in I might get my mojo back. It's not as if we haven't been cooking - we did a full Ukrainian Christmas dinner last weekend, teaching ourselves how to make borscht with vushka and other delightful things like that. Sadly I forgot to take pictures again.

Life has been pretty tough. Not compared to most people - we have a very nice life all in all - but relatively speaking. I feel like luck, in work, house-hunting and selling, has not been on our side recently. Not one little bit. I have all my fingers crossed, I work hard (ish) and yet nothing is going right. Sorry about this. I just need to moan a bit. I feel like hitting something really hard.

Pierogi

2010-08-25T10:31:00.003+01:00

Remember this post? I promised myself to learn how to make these kind of dumplings myself, and last night, in our new kitchen, the husband and I made some using the recipe from the Veselka cookbook. I loved Veselka when we ate there in New York last year - such wonderful, homely food that was the kind of thing that the husband grew up eating. We made boiled spinach and cheese pierogi, and mushroom and sauerkraut (pictured). They were fantastic. Not fantastic to photograph, but fantastic to eat.

Vietnamese rice paper rolls

2010-06-18T11:28:00.004+01:00

I have been wanting to make and eat something like this for YEARS now. I can't even remember the first time I saw this kind of thing, but I always knew I would love the crunch of the raw vegetables against the chewiness of rice vermicelli, livened up with a punchy, hot-sweet-sour-salty dipping sauce.

I kind of used this recipe for the basic idea and dipping sauce, but put pickled carrots in it like this recipe and used lettuce, cucumber, prawns, vermicelli, coriander. Gorgeously tasty, refreshing and healthy!

Would be good with crab cake type patties I think and other, probably heretical, things like crushed toasted peanuts, or other veg.

Cremation

2010-06-08T13:07:00.001+01:00

From an article about carbon footprints on the BBC News today:

8. Getting cremated is likely to be less than a 10,000th of your life's carbon footprint, at At 80 kg CO2e. On this one occasion you can treat yourself to whatever form of disposal you prefer, safe in the knowledge that you have already done the most carbon-friendly thing possible.

Most carbon friendly thing possible? Do they mean dying? I'm laughing my arse off.

OMFG

2010-06-07T17:43:00.002+01:00

Do ALL babies have eyes this big? If so, I will never have one. A sentiment reinforced by THIS. Terrifying.

(Sorry, no offence to the parents of those small people, but really? You wanted one?)

note to self

2010-05-17T10:53:00.002+01:00

Remember how amazing spinach is on a pizza. This was one from last week with artichokes, spinach and red onion. The wholemeal base we made (because we were out of white bread flour) was perhaps a bit heavy, but the spinach, oh the spinach!

you know it's bad when...

2010-05-07T15:50:00.003+01:00

things that look like this:

taste really good.

It means I haven't had the will to make anything new, to try particularly hard to learn a new dish or anything of the sort. I have been a bit depressed and lost recently, only cheered up when more work comes in (I know, I'm weird). I should be celebrating the new asparagus, making spring-inspired dishes. I should have grown vegetables this year, but since we are selling the house I haven't bothered. Idiot - we will be here for at least broad bean season and well into the summer.

Those dumplings above were procured at Tesco on New Street in Birmingham. They have a magnificent Eastern European food section there and these pierogi were smiling up at us. There were two flavours - meat, and sauerkraut and mushroom. And they were surprisingly good, although the pork fat content of the former was a bit high and made you feel like you were killing yourself as you ate them. Nevertheless, they made an easy meal for a pair of tired people. We really must learn to make them from scratch... this was shameful.

oh dear

2010-04-05T13:26:00.002+01:00

I have been lazy. I have thought very few thoughts for the past few weeks that merit mentioning here. I'll think of something soon...

Chicken with coriander and spinach rice

2010-03-19T11:04:00.000Z

I love rice. I grew up eating it and occasionally hating it, but I never knew as a fussy five-year-old that so many wonderful and exciting things could be made with it, nor even that rices other than jasmine rice existed. We ate it every day, with steamed fish and vegetables, the occasional bit of poached chicken and various other things. We didn't eat a lot else and I fought against it sometimes, especially when the tough old pak choi leaves would get stuck in my throat and make me gag. If we were ill and didn't feel like eating, we would have plain rice sprinkled with sesame oil and soy sauce, which was a wonderful, comforting thing. Even to this day I love the smell of it. But in general I was a terrible eater up until the age of six or seven, and mealtimes could be difficult, especially if it only involved boring fish and Chinese greens.

These days we carry five types of rice in our house at the same time and cook regularly with each of them. There is a whole world of things you can make to eat with it. But what I like best, especially when I want something wholesome, is a gently cooked rice dish with lots of vegetables in it. When I see pictures of rice with things in it, especially green things, I am sucked in every time. I like it flecked with bits of spinach and herbs, or as a mixed vegetable risotto or paella style with any old veg from the fridge thrown in and served with a wedge of lemon. So when I saw the photo of this dish (much better than mine above), I was instantly taken. I had to make it. This is the second time I've made it and it was even better this time. I don't know why. It is just lightly spicy but fragrant, and utterly moreish with the spiced yoghurt on the side. You could try making this without the chicken - maybe add half a diced onion to the vegetables for a bit more flavour instead.

This is a dish from 'Falling Cloudberries' by Tessa Kiros, taught to her by her Peruvian friend. I have adapted the recipe to serve roughly 2 people. I have used a small amount (only three thighs between two people) of boned chicken thighs without skin instead of pieces of chicken with bones in (if you want to use the latter, which would be nice, use pieces of a chicken cut into eighths and serve one or two pieces per person).

chicken (I used three boned thighs for two people. You might want more.)
1 carrot, finely diced
1/3 red pepper finely diced
a big handful of peas, fresh or frozen
1 garlic clove, chopped
50g spinach (I used frozen, and I always use more than this. I probably used nearly 100g! :-))
a handful of fresh coriander
170g long grain rice (Tessa uses short grain rice)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or if you don't have any, use half and half chilli powder and paprika)
olive oil
salt and pepper

for the yoghurt:
50ml yoghurt (that's a guess, I used three big dollops without measuring)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper

Brown the chicken pieces in light olive oil over a moderate-high heat until they are golden on the outside and nearly cooked through (this is especially important if they are on the bone or they won't cook through later). You have a choice here and it depends on your pan. I'd recommend browning it in a non-stick pan rather than a regular saucepan or something - makes your life a bit easier not to be anxious about things sticking! If the chicken has skin on you might be OK with just a regular pan. Set the chicken aside.

Meanwhile, either roughly chop the spinach and coriander in a food processor with a splash of water, or if you are using frozen spinach, defrost it, chop lightly and add the chopped coriander to it.

Now put some new oil into the pan you want to cook the rice in - a deep saucepan is good - or if you were already using the saucepan, discard the oil and add a splash of fresh oil. Add the garlic, and as soon as you can smell it add the carrots, peas and red pepper and cook gently for about 5 minutes to soften. Stir in the cayenne pepper and season well, then add the spinach and coriander mixture and stir for another minute or so. Now return the chicken to the pan, add one and a half cups of water and bring it to the boil, then simmer for about 15 minutes (you can do it for 10 if there are no bones) until the chicken is cooked. Take the chicken pieces out again and keep them warm. Add the rice to the pan, give it a stir, add one more cup of hot water and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, for 5-10 minutes until it looks like the rice has absorbed most of the water. Turn the heat down to the lowest point, cover the pan and continue to cook for up to 15 minutes. Stir it only occasionally to check that it isn't sticking to the pan. If it looks dry but the rice isn't cooked yet, add a splash of water from a kettle. Check and adjust the seasoning towards the end.

Whilst the rice is cooking, mix the yoghurt, cumin and some salt and pepper in a bowl ready to serve.

Because I like my food hot, I like to put the chicken back into the pan to steam over the rice for the last few minutes. It's up to you! Once the rice is cooked and there is no liquid left in the pan, serve it with the chicken pieces on top and a big dollop of the spiced yoghurt on the side. If you like things hot, add a drizzle of chilli oil to finish.

today I'm craving...

2010-03-15T16:18:00.001Z

the taste of home. My parents and sister visited us last weekend. It was lovely to see them - we don't see each other often enough. My parents made Chinese dumplings and brought a big bag of them for the freezer - whilst I will love eating them, they will mostly serve to make me jealous of my Dad's cooking and access to things like Chinese (garlic) chives, and his superior seasoning skills. He is one of those chefs who will actually taste, by licking, his pork mince mixture whilst the meat is still raw. I haven't crossed that boundary yet, nor do I think I will soon.

They love to bring me food, as if I live in some backwater where things like fish and oranges are a rare sight. My mother has a way of slipping odd things into my cupboards whilst I'm not watching, so as well as a papaya the size of a house (presented to me with much pride by my sweet Dad), we have ended up with all the chocolate and biscuits that no-one at my parent's house will eat, two random boxes of cereal and some Chinese herbal junk that I will never consume (I think it's ginseng).

What I really want, though, is a big batch of zongzi. Even better, I would love to learn how to make them. Sure, I've wrapped them at home with my parents before, but I was never taught how to make all the bits that go in the filling. Zongzi are glutinous rice parcels stuffed with wondrous things like mung beans, chicken, pork belly, dried sausage, salted duck eggs... all manner of things. You wrap the parcels in fragrant banana leaves and boil them in batches, then stick them in the freezer for those important times when you want a huge lump of stodge that will make you (or me at least) weep with nostalgia and homesickness. Eaten with a good slug of both dark and light soy sauce, they are the perfect comfort food, if a little on the heavy side. Have one of these and you'll not want to eat again for a week. (Image from Wikipedia)

Again, I am delighted by the food parallels that can be drawn right across the globe: one of the foods that I would love to try, but simply can't be found easily in England, is Mexican tamales. I have watched and drooled over Jamie Oliver (the food, not the man!) in Los Angeles being taught how to wrap them by some Mexican immigrants, but they have never passed my lips. One day!

Posting has been light here - we've not been particularly interesting people, nor cooked anything mind-blowing. Just the usual assortment of pasta and rice things, and a bit of junk too.

just a link for today

2010-03-11T18:33:00.004Z

I've been uninspired this week. Going through a busy/rough/tired patch. We have eaten lamb, celeriac mash again, some random pasta... It's not been anything to write about, anyway.

Remember I was waxing lyrical about the bánh mì we ate in New York? I've been on the hunt for good recipes ever since. I came across this site, Ravenous Couple, written by a young Vietnamese American couple, and they seem to have some good suggestions. I will try making something from this site soon, I think. I'm just being lazy!

Ricotta, spinach and courgette pasta with tomato

2010-03-08T12:29:00.003Z

Well, there's no suitable short and snappy (or even vaguely Italian) name for what we made the other night. Our intention was to make spinach and ricotta cannelloni but upon discovering that we neither had enough spinach nor cannelloni tubes, I improvised something else. In order to replace the spinach I grated up a courgette and turned the whole dish into a kind of pasta bake with tomato sauce layered under the ricotta and vegetable-coated pasta. This is a travesty, a veritable joke, but my goodness it was a tasty joke. If you're going to be snooty and purist about Italian style food, look away now.

Serves 2
180-200g dried pasta (we used elicoidali - short fat tubes like rigatoni that crisp up nicely on top when baked)
125g ricotta
a good splash of milk
about 30g frozen spinach, defrosted
1 medium-large courgette, coarsely grated
a big handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
a large handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, about 25g
250ml tomato passata
1 clove of garlic, left whole but lightly crushed with the side of a knife
a pinch of dried oregano

Pre-heat your oven to 180C. Put a small splash of olive oil in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic clove. When you start to smell the garlic, add the passata, the oregano and some black pepper, and turn down the heat so that the sauce bubbles intermittently. Now put your pasta on to boil - cook it until just under-done e.g. 7.5 minutes if it says 10 on the pack. Meanwhile, defrost the spinach in the microwave, refresh it under cold water and squeeze it dry. (You can use fresh spinach, in which case wash it and place in a pan just with the water that is left on the leaves and place over a moderate heat, shaking the pan occasionally until the spinach has wilted. Cool and squeeze dry with your hands.) Grate the courgette and add it to the spinach in a bowl. Add the ricotta, most of the Parmesan cheese, a good grinding of black pepper and the torn basil leaves, reserving a few leaves for later. Mix it all together. Now add a little milk to let the sauce down a bit, just so that it's not too stiff to stir into the pasta. When the pasta is done, drain it and stir the ricotta sauce into it until they are well mixed. Remove the tomato sauce from the heat and take out the garlic clove. Now spread the tomato sauce all over the base of an oven-proof dish - a lasagne dish or something similar will do. Now tip the pasta on top of the tomatoes. Tear over a few more leaves of basil. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan cheese. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until golden and lightly crispy on top. That's it! Serve it with green vegetables or salad.

Sometimes the best things are the ones you make up in times of need. A variation on this would be to use some tinned tuna and a handful of peas, or blanched, chopped green beans, or sweetcorn if you like it. Or try cooked salmon and broccoli chopped into small florets and parboiled.

Risotto alla Toscana

2010-03-05T13:42:00.001Z

It's been a sadly quiet food week this week - hence the lack of posting. And I've been super-busy with work so have had very little to say for myself. It is starting to feel like spring here - even though we woke today with a frost heavy on the ground. The sunlight has taken on a different slant, a warmer hue and I get the feeling that things, weather-wise at least, are on the up. It has been a long winter - I think all the snow we have had since December has made it seem even harder than usual.

A couple of weeks ago now, when the skies were leaden and it was freezing and wet outside, the husband attempted this meaty Italian dish - something really rich and wintery. The Tuscan risotto is a cold-weather dish and certainly not for the non-carnivore. It is pretty challenging even for meat-eaters - with liver and about three other meats (I think I'm exaggerating here), it tastes richer than it actually is but has a real meaty punch that means you won't want to eat a lot - but for that time of year it was perfect. The picture looks horrible - blame the unnatural lighting! Taken from the January section of Twelve, by Tessa Kiros, here is our version, adapted for two.

Risotto alla Toscana (serves 2)
500ml stock (she recommends meat stock, we used a light chicken stock)
7g dried mushrooms
85ml warm water
70g chicken livers
olive oil
1/2 medium red onion, chopped
1 small garlic clove, crushed
50g minced (ground) beef
1/2 Italian sausage, skinned and crumbled (OK, so we can't find stuff like this for love or money where we live, so we used a small garlicky sausage instead)
85ml red wine
170g risotto rice
20g freshly grated Parmesan cheese, reserving some for serving
a small handful chopped parsley

Make the stock and keep it warm over a low heat.
Soak the mushrooms in the warm water for about 10 minutes. Strain the water and set aside. Chop the mushrooms. Clean the livers and chop into 1cm cubes. Heat some olive oil in the risotto pan.

Add the onion and sauté until soft. Add the garlic, beef and sausage meat and sauté until golden. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Add the mushroom water and mushroom together with the rice and chicken livers, and stir for a couple of minutes to coat the rice. Add a ladleful of stock and season with pepper (we don't add salt because the stock we use is salty, but feel free to add some now if you like).

Lower the heat and continue to cook, adding the stock gradually as it is absorbed by the rice. Keep stirring it to prevent it from sticking and to make the risotto creamy. It should take about 20 minutes to cook the rice - taste it after this time and see if it is ready - it should be soft but firm in the middle. When the rice is done, stir in most of the Parmesan cheese (Tessa adds 18g of butter at this point, we do not!). Turn off the heat, place a lid over the pan and let it rest for a minute or two. Serve it sprinkled with parsley and the rest of the Parmesan.

This is not for the faint-hearted, but if you want something really wintery, this is just the thing. Thanks again, Tessa!

not much going on

2010-03-03T10:02:00.003Z

The husband is in Italy, we have run out of the bottled gas that we use for our gas hob and I have been eating soup from the freezer (my old friend the jerusalem artichoke again), salad, bread, cheese, toast... all because, with my silly weak body, I can't safely lift a full bottle of gas. So there have been very few food adventures since last week. We were away at the weekend where we had some lovely wedding food (prize-winning bangers and mash! Wonderful!) but not much else of interest. Maybe I'll cook something once our hobs are back in use and I have a husband to cook for/with. Until then, I leave you with a proliferation of speech marks courtesy of the BBC News online last night. What's going on with that?

Plus I have noticed a proliferation of people, journalists that is, misusing the word phased when they actually mean fazed. God, are people educated at all these days? Spellchecker isn't infallible, you know. (Sorry to get all hoity toity but it pisses me off!)

Improvising: a kind of curry thing

2010-02-26T14:22:00.000Z

I have made a few dishes from this book and found it quite accessible and easy to make things that not only taste good but aren't full of fat, like you find too often in restaurants and take-aways. The other night however, in the husband's absence, I decided I would improvise something because I couldn't be bothered to find a recipe to cook from. I just breezed into the kitchen, knowing that I had a drop of tomato passata to use up from a previous meal. I didn't intend to cook a curry or anything like that. I thought, indeed, that I would end up with some dull pasta dish, thrown together without thinking. I find cooking for myself a chore sometimes - I like to feed someone other than myself, and then the passion kicks in. However, whilst staring disconsolately into the fridge, I spotted some other things that needed using - ginger and fresh chillies. So I grabbed them and some other ingredients and started cooking with no plan in my head other than it would be a curried tomatoey thing to eat with rice.

This turned out surprisingly well. Proper Indian cooks would laugh their tits off at this, but it tasted rather good and was superb the next day eaten cold for lunch. This is what I made (serves 1 generously):

1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 large clove garlic
1/2 medium onion, chopped
ginger - I used about 1/2 inch sliced off a regular sized root, peeled
1 green chilli, slit down its length
50ml tomato passata (for a more authentic ingredient, use one or two medium fresh tomatoes, not too ripe, puréed)
Some random vegetables of your choice, I used 1/2 carrot and a small handful of green beans chopped into short lengths
frozen vege (soya) mince (this is entirely optional! I threw it in for some protein)
50g frozen spinach, or a very large handful fresh spinach
3 tbsp natural yoghurt
1/4 tsp garam masala
salt
A handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Chop the garlic and ginger finely and bash together in a pestle and mortar with a drop of water until it is a kind of paste. In a clean mortar, grind the fenugreek and cumin seeds into a coarse paste, add the ground coriander and turmeric. Prepare your vegetables and purée the tomato with the yoghurt (or if you are using passata mix them together). Set these aside. Chop the onion. In a deep non-stick pan, heat the mustard seeds in a little oil until they start to pop, then add the onion and cook until lightly golden. Put some rice on to cook. When the onion is golden, add the powdered spice mix and the ginger and garlic paste. Cook, stirring often, for a few minutes. Now add the tomato and yoghurt mix and a good slug of cold water. Throw in the slit green chilli. Cook over a moderate heat, stirring all the time, until the sauce (or masala) is reduced and starting to 'exude' its oil (you will see a faint trail of oil in the wake of the masala as you stir it). Now add a good 100ml water, the vege mince and the vegetables, but not the spinach. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, making sure that the sauce doesn't dry out. If you're using frozen spinach, add it to the pan after about 5 minutes. If you are using fresh, add it a bit later just to wilt it into the sauce. When the vegetables are tender, add the garam masala, some salt to taste and adjust the water in the sauce (boil some off if your spinach was particularly watery or add a splash of water if it's looking dry. You want enough sauce to be able to soak into the rice). At the last moment add the chopped coriander, stir through and serve on top of the cooked rice. If there are leftovers, stir the sauce through the rice, chill, and eat it cold the next day with a dollop of natural yoghurt.

Some notes: I have not been able to prevent the yoghurt I use from splitting in any of the curries I have made so far. This is not attractive or desirable. I think it is too hot or too acidic and my yoghurt is too low-fat or something. Any suggestions welcome.

The vege mince was not my first choice - I was looking for some Quorn pieces or something like that, not mince! It was OK, though. You can use meat in the dish, in which case add it after the masala is ready, and brown it a little before adding the tomatoes and water etc. Cook for longer before finishing the dish and make sure the meat is properly cooked.

Profuse apologies to anyone who is offended by my pidgin Indian cooking. I was only trying! :-)

Improvising: yakisoba

2010-02-24T13:19:00.001Z

This is the yakisoba we ate in Japan, with red pickled ginger on the side. It was divine, if a bit greasy. I tried to make my own yesterday.

So it turns out that it is bloody hard to find out what goes into yakisoba apart from the obvious things - most recipes state that you should use shop-bought 'yakisoba sauce' in this or that brand, but the contents of which remain mysterious. Upon looking up home-made recipes for this sauce, I turned up a load of very different opinions and was all confused and annoyed. There are some funny recipes out there - this one annoyed me in particular, even though it didn't seem bad. So I ignored most of them, took what I had in the kitchen and improvised.

This is my very inauthentic and imperfect version of yakisoba sauce (enough for 2 servings):
1tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1 scant tsp light soft brown sugar
1 tsp tomato ketchup

Mix them together in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved. When you taste it neat, it nearly blows your head off, but it's fine in the noodles. It was very good, but not great. It didn't have the depth I wanted, and even with all those sauces, it wasn't quite salty enough (at least not enough to taste quite right. I think I would up the soy sauce content, knock back the worcestershire sauce, add a tiny bit of ginger, and add a tbsp or two of mirin and/or sake if I had either. Maybe this would be sacrilegious, but to add colour and depth some dark soy sauce might have been a welcome addition. I'll work on it. I was obsessing over it last night after dinner to the husband's bemusement. When something isn't quite right but I know I can make it better, I can get a bit funny about things!

As for the rest of this dish, there are plenty of recipes out there. I used soba noodles (they MUST be soba, not anything else!), onion, carrot, pointed cabbage, garlic. These are essential. I also added beansprouts and a little turnip because I felt like it :-) The turnip was great. Meat (thinly sliced pork or chicken) might have been a good addition, but wasn't essential. Sorry there are no pictures, they weren't great. Next time, eh?

The last of Japan

2010-02-23T11:04:00.001Z

I kind of got distracted there... I had a few last things to write up about Japan. On our last day there, we travelled from Himeji to Kyoto where we stayed for a few hours before heading back to Tokyo. Kyoto was beautiful - with many more old buildings than Tokyo, there seemed to be a greater sense of history and tradition. I thought it was wonderful, with the surprise of a beautiful temple or row of old houses around every corner.

What did we eat? First up when we were struck by a pang of sudden pre-lunch hunger, there were three sticks of mitarashi dango which are little rice dumplings (dango) in a sauce. The sauce was both sweet and salty (soy sauce!), god help us, but quite nice nevertheless.

For lunch we ate a Kyoto speciality, nishin soba, which is a soba noodle soup topped with a piece of semi-dried herring which is again both salty and sweet and reminded me of lots of other oriental preserved fish snacks I've consumed before. It was delicious and light. The cooking in Kyoto is said to be more delicate and subtle than in Tokyo and I think this dish demonstrated the difference.

See those yellow and green things on the side dish there? They were horrible. I say that so infrequently about food, but my LORD, these were just too weirdy for me. I couldn't tell if they were dessert or what. One was mango flavoured, the other lime. In a weird sticky paste that was also savoury and salty and ricey with bits stuck on it and just plain yuck. I shudder to remember them. The husband didn't think they were too bad. I would run screaming if someone made me eat them again. OK, I exaggerate, I would eat them if they were the only thing left in the world, but that's it. That's it.

Back in Tokyo that evening, we ventured down to the famous yakitori bars that nestle beneath the railway arches near Tokyo Station. These are the places where trendy young Japanese come for a bite to eat and a drink after work. We found the noisiest, busiest place and went inside. It was raucous, cramped, and utterly delightful. The food was some of the best we had in Japan - a selection of yakitori including something like gizzards and some cartilage, a good tomato salad and the most beautiful yakisoba I've ever eaten. It was simple but wonderful. We are going to attempt to cook a home version of yakisoba tonight. I'll tell you how I get on.

Jerusalem artichoke soup (with a digression on celeriac)

2010-02-19T12:38:00.001Z

Leg two of the jerusalem artichoke journey - I made soup. It's a classic - it's how I ate these vegetables the first time and I wanted to see whether I could make something as good as what I had. This soup should be earthy, creamy, nutty and infused with that unmistakeable aroma that only these little tubers have. It is the perfect winter soup - tasting much richer than it actually is and pressing all sorts of comfort food buttons. But I don't like my soups too rich, so I don't add cream and only use a little butter.

Butter is essential - even a little bit adds a depth and moreishness that oil can't bring to the dish. The other night we ate a celeriac and potato mash with some lamb - no cream, no seasoning, just two medium potatoes, a small head of celeriac about the size of my fist. Peel and boil the potatoes for 15-20 minutes depending on your potato type; in a separate pan boil the celeriac, peeled and cut into chunks, for a good ten minutes until tender enough to mash. Mix the potatoes and celeriac together and add a large knob of butter (we used about 10g - or was it less? - for two people) before mashing. This would go wonderfully with some game or a good sausage too.

Here is the soup recipe, with some guidance from Nigel Slater.

Serves 4
a knob of butter
light olive oil
1 medium onion
1 medium leek
500g jerusalem artichokes (unpeeled weight)
2 bay leaves
about 1 litre light stock or water
a small bunch of parsley to serve

(changes I made: I use much less butter and add a little oil instead. Nigel Slater uses 40g butter. He uses two large leeks and no onion in this recipe. I used what I had in the house!)

Melt the butter with the oil in a pan over a moderate heat. Wash, trim and slice the leeks finely and chop the onion finely, then sweat them in the oil and butter for about 20 minutes over a low-moderate heat until very soft. Be careful not to let them brown, just soften them without colouring. Peel the artichokes, dropping the peeled ones into a bowl of cold water to which the juice of half a lemon has been added. This stops them from discolouring whilst you peel the rest. Once they are done and the leek and onion is soft, chop the artichokes into chunks and add to the pan. cook for a few minutes before covering with your stock (I used Marigold bouillon powder at half the recommended concentration) and adding the two bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then let it bubble over a medium heat with the lid slightly ajar for about 25 minutes. After this time, let the soup cool a little before blending it in batches in a blender or food processor. If necessary, reheat to serve and add lots of chopped parsley just before serving.

Some people would add cream to the soup just after it has been blended. I think it's completely unnecessary because the soup is naturally so rich and moreish. This was simply beautiful and didn't cause too many gut troubles afterwards (some people say that peeling them helps with this).

Chinese New Year

2010-02-17T15:27:00.003Z

Happy Chinese New Year (OK, OK, a few days late, I know. Forgive me). Since we had a guest (my wonderful brother in law) on Sunday night, we decided to initiate him to the delights of the Chinese dumpling. I have said this before, and I'll say it again - I will write up a recipe one day. I'm just lax and because I improvise, they turn out differently every time. You might be better acquainted with the Japanese version, gyoza, which for some reason have made it into trendier eateries whereas the Chinese type remain largely the preserve of little backstreet places and of course the home.

Normally, and for the sake of our health, we just boil them and eat them with a dip made with vinegar and raw garlic (I like to make a Thai style sweet-hot-sour-salty dip too). The next day, though, because I made heaps and there were leftovers, I fried them for lunch (picture above - don't mind the weird shape of some of them). I cannot describe to you how great that was. Probably the best lunch I've had in months.

torta di limone e mandorle

2010-02-15T09:14:00.006Z

I don't bake. I'm no good at it. That's what I've been telling myself for the last ten years. I think I was scarred by the screaming torture of school home economics classes where I made hideous Greek syrup cake, flat, dry sponges, godawful biscuits. Things have changed. I can now bake (or at least I can with the help of the husband).

For said husband's birthday there was chocolate cake from his family, but we also made an Italian lemon and almond cake from Twelve by Tessa Kiros (again!). It was beautifully moist and light, and the tartness of the lemons balanced wonderfully with the sweetness. We largely stuck to the recipe, only reducing the sugar to suit our taste. This is a great everyday kind of cake which could be dressed up with fruit and some mascarpone cream to make a simple dessert.

Lemon and almond cake, adapted from a recipe by Tessa Kiros.

125g butter, slightly softened
110g caster sugar (Tessa uses 125g but we don't like things too sweet. You may prefer to use the full amount of sugar as the lemon juice is quite tart)
3 eggs, separated
125g finely ground almonds
60g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
juice and grated zest of of two small lemons
icing sugar to serve

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and flour a 20cm springform cake tin (we only had a loose-based tin so I greased and lined it with greaseproof paper instead). Beat the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until fluffy. Separate the eggs, then add the yolks one by one, beating the mixture well in between additions. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mix, add the almonds and beat in well. Add the lemon juice and zest, and again beat in well. In a separate, clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks then quickly and gently fold them into the cake mix. Don't worry too much if there are streaks. It's more important not to overwork it. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and place in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin for a while before taking it out. Serve warm or at room temperature.

More pork!

2010-02-11T08:53:00.006Z

We are having a porky week here. I don't really know why. We don't normally eat a lot of pork. Nevertheless, at the supermarket last weekend we were dithering near the meat counter and I spotted some pork shin or, as they called it, pork 'ossobuco' which is a name usually used for braised Milanese veal shin. Now I had seen a recipe for ossobuco in gremolata in Twelve, the Tuscan cookbook by Tessa Kiros so I thought I'd have a go at that.

Sorry, no photo. I was too greedy. There is a good picture here.

Part of the appeal of this dish is apparently the bone marrow that you can suck out of the bone shank. I used to love bone marrow, poked out with a chopstick from the bits of bone my parents used to flavour congee or soups with. It has been many years since I've eaten bone marrow. It has a very particular taste that I can't describe and a texture that some people might find offputting. I will eat, and like, nearly anything so this is just great. Sadly our pork bones didn't bear much edible marrow, but I managed to tease a little out of mine. I am such a carnivore sometimes, it's sick. Sorry if you're vegetarian or squeamish.

Here is my version of the recipe, with thanks.

Serves 2
2 thick slices of pork ossobuco (Mine were about an inch thick, but maybe a larger quantity of thinner slices would work better because I had to keep turning the meat in the casserole dish so it wouldn't dry out)
white flour for dusting
1 medium carrot
1 medium onion
1 stick celery
125ml red wine
water
salt and pepper
zest of 1/2 lemon
one small clove of garlic (or 1/2 a regular clove)
a small bunch of parsley

Pre-heat the oven to 150°C. In a food processor, pulse the carrot, celery and onion until finely chopped. You can do this by hand if you haven't got a food processor. Heat a little oil in a sauté pan and cook the vegetables over a medium heat until softened.

Dust the pork all over with flour. In an ovenproof casserole dish, heat some more oil over a high heat, then add the pork and brown on all sides. Season with salt and black pepper. When the meat is brown, add the red wine and reduce until almost all of the wine has evaporated. Then add the sautéed vegetables and enough water to generously cover the vegetables.

Put a tight lid or aluminium foil over the dish and place in the oven. As I said above, my bits of shin were poking out of the top of the sauce so I turned them over every half hour or so. Top up the water if it is looking like it will dry out. You want it to have plenty of sauce. Cook in the oven for 2 1/2 hours, checking regularly. Check and adjust the seasoning during cooking. Remove the lid for the last half hour, but watch the sauce and make sure it doesn't dry out.

Towards the end of cooking, make your gremolata. Finely chop the garlic, chop the parsley and mix with the grated zest of half a lemon. Set aside.

Once the cooking time is over, serve the slices of meat with the sauce spooned over and liberally sprinkled with the gremolata. We ate ours with potatoes and kale. It is more usually served with a Milanese (saffron) risotto but I didn't know that at the time.

It was perfect, especially with the gremolata, and just the thing for a very cold and snowy day.

last week

2010-02-09T17:04:00.005Z

I made my first pie since 2001. I know, that's a long long time ago and I have no proper excuse for it. It's not that I haven't EATEN pie. I've eaten a lot of pie, but when it comes to choosing something to cook, I find it very hard to overcome my fear of pastry. But this was good. I forget how the taste of a pie can make me ignore the fat content. And since this was a top-crust-only chicken and mushroom pie, made in our lovely enamel dish from Labour and Wait, I can forgive myself. The recipe? I made it up and forget how I did it. It involved chicken, mushrooms, flour for dusting, fresh thyme, garlic, onions, some weak home-made vegetable stock and some luck - it turned out great.

I made oat cookies with cranberries and white chocolate. Ditto about the taste and fat content. They looked more like a cross between a cake and a cookie but that's probably a good thing.

God, these photos are ugly! sorry.

jerusalem artichokes

2010-02-08T13:27:00.000Z

Taking a break from the Japanese food...

I have only eaten Jerusalem artichokes once before in my life: in a beautiful soup at some gastropub in London, around Christmas 2006 (yes, I have a scarily good food-memory). About an hour after I ate the soup, my troubles started. I know, it happens to everyone. The vegetable is famed for its flatulent qualities and I should have been prepared, but I have to admit it put me off eating them again until yesterday.

At the farmer's market in our little town, they have been selling a wonderful selection of local veg - celeriac, cavolo nero, beetroot, all sorts. And on Saturday they had a box of perfectly pale, smooth-skinned jerusalem artichokes, with the mud still clinging on to them. Like I have said before, I don't like not liking things. I feel like all food is worthy of a second chance even if it bothered me in the first instance*. These artichokes called out to me, nay pleaded me to try them, so we bought a few and put them in our Sunday lunch. Needless to say, the aftermath was, uh, windy. Was it worth it? Oh my lord, yes.

We made, from Tender Vol.1 by Nigel Slater (a great book especially if you like growing your own veg), 'a casserole of artichokes and pork for deepest winter'.

The smell of the dish was incredibly seductive - earthy, vital, sweet and aromatic. It was almost misleading - there was little hint of the lemons in its scent, so the bright zip of acid was a wonderful and uplifting surprise in the mouth. It reminded me of something Chinese, but I couldn't place it. Perhaps it was the fennel, combined with pork and that indescribable artichoke aroma. Seriously, now I would eat these despite any amount of wind they gave me. If I inflated and floated off into the sky, I would still eat them. I am a convert.

Here is a transcript of the recipe, adapted for 2 servings. Thanks, Nigel!

Jerusalem artichoke and sausage casserole
2 large good quality pork sausages (or use two regular sized per person)
olive oil
2 medium onions cut into wedges
1 clove garlic sliced
125g mushrooms halved or cut into chunky pieces
250g Jerusalem artichokes, skins on, well scrubbed
half a tsp fennel seeds
light stock or water to cover (about 250ml)
a small handful of parsley, chopped
half a large lemon, cut into wedges

In a deep casserole dish, brown the sausages well in a little oil. Set aside. In the same pan (adding more oil if necessary), soften the onions for about 20 minutes over a moderate heat until they are tender and can be crushed with a wooden spoon. Add the garlic and mushrooms, then halve your artichokes lengthways before putting them into the pan (don't cut them before, or the cut sides will discolour). Let the artichokes brown a little bit, then add the fennel seeds and return the sausages to the pan. Tuck the wedges of lemon around the dish. Cover with stock or water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 30 minutes uncovered. At the end, if there is too much liquid, turn up the heat and boil some off. Stir in the parsley. Serve with kale, tenderstem broccoli or anything that's very green.

Honestly, it's SO worth it.

*OK, I can do without cheese and pineapple together, emmental (does anyone else smell that ammonia whiff?), milk as a drink... they've had their chance. I can't be bothered with them any more.

then it got better

2010-02-05T11:48:00.000Z

After the pizza low, things got better. We sampled odd Japanese pasta salads and salmon onigiri at breakfast alongside the usual bread and jam provided by our hotel in Himeji. It was odd but good.

I ate a lot of noodles for the rest of our time in Japan. I live for noodles - they are one of my soul foods - in soup, stir-fried whatever. I need them like other people need potatoes, bread, chocolate or caffeine. First lunch in Himeji I went to a place called Menme where the head chef hand-makes his udon noodles fresh every day. You can watch him making them in the corner of the open kitchen whilst you eat. The udon were amazing - just the right kind of soft, just the right side of chewy. I had kamaage udon, which is a big pot of plain noodles that you dip into a soy and dashi sauce with spring onions and ginger before you eat. Plain but tasty, and you can control how much salt you eat this way. In the photo you can just see the udon in their frothy water.

The List of Shame

2010-02-03T11:53:00.000Z

I'm afraid the next couple of days in Japan were a gastronomic embarrassment. It was the salt, the evil sodium chloride that was to blame. Here is my list of shame:

dinner - ridiculously salty ramen noodles - nearly killed us.
breakfast - pastries and tea in the ubiquitous Doutor.
lunch - mediocre pizza and salad in Tokyo train station.
dinner - (we were both exhausted from jetlag and dehydrated) I raided the amusingly-named 'Natural Lawson' for buns with indescribable (but good) fillings, three tiny sandwich halves and fruit.
breakfast - pastries and tea again.
lunch - from Daimaru's wonderful food hall we shared a salmon bento box and half a fruit cream sandwich (that's two slices of bread with, you guessed it, fruit and cream inside - amazing!) whilst travelling on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Himeji.
5pm HIGHLIGHT: perfect green tea ice-cream.
dinner - slightly depressing vegetable curry and rice.

I know. It was bad, it was a waste, but that's all we could manage. It was utterly depressing to have to avoid certain things - both very salty and fried things were off the menu because our mouths were sore. Things got better from here, including a solo foray into the Bon Marché supermarket where they sell wonderful things like dandelion flowers and fish heads, not to mention the most amazing looking deli lunch selection.

They had a whole load of delicious looking things - bits of meat on skewers, aubergine stew, noodles and warm rice. I could have eaten it all right there if I weren't on my way to lunch with the husband!

next...

2010-02-02T13:56:00.003Z

Lunch on the same day as the sushi was in a brightly decorated okonomiyaki and monjayaki place, hidden behind an art gallery in Harajuku, a great shopping area in Tokyo. These dishes are both types of pancakes containing vegetables and meat that are brought to you raw in a bowl and you cook them yourselves on a hotplate in the centre of your table. The okonomiyaki is a heavier pancake made with eggs, and is more common than the runny monjayaki that you eat directly off the hotplate with a little spatula, burning your mouth as you go along. Of course the husband and I had absolutely no idea what these things were when we walked into this restaurant, but they had a vague English instruction sheet and we unsubtly watched all the other young people around us to see how they were doing it. It was definitely not the height of Japanese cuisine, but it's always great fun to play with your food. I would put a picture up, only the one that we took was woefully out of focus. The picture is from this cafe - every wall was hand-decorated by different artists and it was really quite impressive.

the things we ate...

2010-02-01T11:02:00.001Z

I don't like not being able to eat things. I don't like to think that there is anything (apart from, say, domestic animals and primates) that I won't eat. But in Japan I hit a wall. A salty wall. I just couldn't do it - my lips and skin were like sandpaper, I wasn't sleeping right and I was thirsty all the time. After only two days of being there we had to scale down our Japanese food consumption and revert to Western breakfasts in a coffee shop and limit our choices to the less salt-laden items on menus. Dammit, we even ate pizza for lunch once. I know, I am purple with shame.

But that aside, we had a fantastic time eating our way through just one week in Japan. Even though we had salt troubles, we had them under control by the time we left and I think I could have kept on going. There were so many things we didn't get round to tasting and I was quite sad to leave.

Where to start? At the beginning, I guess. First meal, Sunday in Tokyo: lunch - minced chicken and shiitake mushroom kamameshi in some back alley in Ginza. It was a big pot of rice topped with stuff. It was tasty and good, and reminded me of Chinese steamed rice dishes. Dinner on Sunday - in some random restaurant in Nihombashi we ate a beautiful, if saltily dressed, salad, then fried tofu in miso soup followed by a chicken teriyaki dish with rice.

The highlight of the week, however, was on Monday. One of the top items on our list of things to do was to visit the Tokyo wholesale fish market at dawn to watch the auctioneering of the tuna, to see a myriad of fish and seafood for sale in this loud, bustling and frankly terrifying (watch out for the little trucks!) place, and most of all to sample the best and freshest sushi breakfast you can get. Anywhere.

So at 6am on Tuesday, full of jetlag, we were fully awake and eager to go. We squeezed in to witness the tuna auctions, and spent a long time wandering the hundreds of fish stalls, dodging trucks, being hurried along by impatient traders and wondering where on earth these famed sushi bars were to be found. Eventually we worked out that they were in a block just next to the main market warehouse. Each bar is tiny and only a handful do sushi. We didn't really know which one was the best, but we took the plunge anyway and joined a queue. Queues of locals are good. They usually mean the food is worth waiting for.

When we were eventually seated, elbow to elbow along a bar facing the sushi chefs, we simply went for the set menu. The chef at our end, who had mesmerisingly long eyebrows and a friendly, paternal smile, started to load the boards in front of us with food. I got the feeling that he likes to test people to see how far they will go, what weird sea creatures they are willing to put down their gullets. It was magnificent, bewildering, utterly gorgeous. I don't know the half of what we ate. There were tuna and salmon egg maki, raw prawn and raw squid nigiri, an assortment of unnamed fish nigiri, a little fried morsel of spicy shell-on prawn, raw octopus, eel, and a pile of wobbly, moreish roe (herring?) balanced precariously on top of rice. It was heaven. I love food which gives you little shivers of 'what on earth is this?' pleasure. It was like that, even though I've eaten my fair share of sushi before. I ate too much soy sauce even though I had told myself not to. It's not cheap at about £20 a head in the bar we went to but my LORD it was worth it.

More next time!

Pumpkin

2010-01-18T09:35:00.005Z

We ate another of my pumpkins last night, in a kind of yellow curry with chickpeas from Tender, volume 1, by Nigel Slater. OK, I messed with the recipe because we didn't have yellow mustard seeds, so you can see my substitute black mustard seeds speckling the curry instead, and we didn't use dried chickpeas because I can't plan ahead like that. Here is our adaptation of his recipe.

To serve 2
1 tin chickpeas, drained
1 medium onion, chopped
vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic
a piece of ginger about 2x2x2cm
1 stalk lemongrass, outer leaves removed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
3 green cardamoms
1 hot red chilli (we only had dried chilli flakes - about half a tsp)
a small pumpkin (he suggests about 250g prepared weight)
150ml vegetable stock
half a can of coconut milk (we used reduced fat)
half a tbsp black mustard seeds (he uses yellow)
coriander leaves - a small handful
a lime (we only had lemon!)

Saute the onions in a deep, lidded saute pan or casserole over a low heat until soft. Make a paste (using a food processor or chopping finely with a knife) of the ginger, garlic and lemongrass, then add to the onions. Crack open the cardamom pods and crush the seeds in a pestle and mortar; chop the chilli and then add both to the pan alongside the ground coriander and turmeric. Meanwhile, prepare the pumpkin, peeling and cutting it into bite-sized pieces, then add to the onion mix with the chickpeas and the stock (don't worry if it looks a bit dry - the pumpkin will give off water as it cooks. You may want a drop more water/stock during cooking). Cover with a lid and simmer.

At this point, we put some basmati rice on to cook. The pumpkin takes about 15-20 minutes to cook.

When the pumpkin is tender and your rice is ready, stir in the coconut milk and continue to simmer. Taste and adjust the salt if necessary (we used Marigold vegetable stock, which was salty enough without needing to add any more). In a separate frying pan, heat the mustard seeds in a splash of oil until they start to pop. Add this to the pumpkin, along with the coriander leaves. Serve with rice and lime to squeeze over.

foot in mouth

2010-01-15T14:47:00.003Z

I seem to have a magical ability to insult certain people inadvertently and repeatedly, and last night my victim was the Master of Pembroke College. Now, the Master is the head honcho, the big cheese, the daddy of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where I studied my first degree. In my first year there, whilst hideously drunk at the Dean's Christmas party, I slurred something like 'I'm f***ed and the Master's f***ed too', whilst the man himself was standing right behind me. Oop!

I went for my first dinner at high table last night in college with the husband. Since I left, the old Master (whom I would recognise) has been replaced by a shiny new one, ex-MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove. During pre-dinner drinks I was talking to someone else, but was interrupted to shake hands with a grey haired, bespectacled, slightly solemn-looking chap. I said, 'Sorry, I didn't catch your name...'. He looked a tiny bit startled, even through his steady compusure, and replied, 'I'm Richard. Richard Dearlove. The Master.' I think I squealed with embarrassed laughter at that point. He turned away pretty quickly (after politely assuring me that it was OK!). Oh dear. We didn't speak again.

Otherwise it was a good do. Saw some people I haven't seen in years and got jolly drunk. Not really. I keep tabs on my drinking when the Master is involved these days. Not that it helps much.

Image from the Daily Mail.

home-made baked beans

2010-01-13T15:13:00.003Z

I wasn't too sure about baked beans as a child, and only liked them if they were piping hot. As soon as they started to cool, I thought they were weird and gross. I still like them hot, but I do have a much greater fondness for legumes in tomato sauce these days. These home-made beans are nothing like the stuff from tins, but are just as good, if not better.

There are lots of recipes out there for home-made baked beans. I am sure mine is not the best, but I love eating these with anything. They are moreish, creamy, savoury and not too sweet. And I don't put bacon in mine like a lot of recipes do. This time I used two tins of butter beans and one of cannellini, but the bean choice is flexible. You could also cook the beans from dried, soaking overnight first and then boiling them for an hour with some celery and bay leaves, but this is much quicker and makes not too much difference. Anyhoo, this is what I made the other day, served with grilled sausages and broccoli.

3 tins beans in water, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp light olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
500ml tomato passata (or you can use a tin or two of tomatoes)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp smoked paprika (If your variety is hot, then maybe use less)
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp English mustard
a little pinch of ground cumin
a little pinch of ground cinnamon
a dash of soy sauce (because I can't help myself!)
salt and pepper
1-2 tsp red wine vinegar to balance the sweetness

Preheat the oven to 170C. In a lidded casserole dish, saute the onions, garlic and celery for about 15 minutes until soft. Add everything else except the vinegar, bay leaves and beans and bring to a simmer, stirring well. I like to taste the sauce at this point and I will probably add a little vinegar because I don't like it too sweet. Season the sauce and then add the drained beans, bay leaves and enough cold water to cover everything. Bring to a simmer then turn off the heat, cover the dish with the lid and place in the oven. Because we are using already cooked beans, this can be ready as soon as you like, but about an hour and up to two hours in the oven is best, I think. Check it regularly to give it a stir and top up with water - don't let the beans dry out! Taste at various points and adjust the seasoning/vinegar/maple syrup to your taste.

The random pinches of spice were added by me to an old recipe, just because I like to mess around with things. I think they add a bit of depth. I also use less maple syrup than others - you can use 2 tbsp if you like. And I sometimes add some chilli powder for a little kick of heat. Whatever works for you...

Buns!

2010-01-11T12:11:00.002Z

I have many weaknesses. Mostly for food. One of my greatest loves is the steamed bun, Chinese style. Generically speaking, we just call them 'bao', meaning buns, but they have lots of different names, including baozi, salapao in Thailand, or mantou if they are unfilled. The bread casing is always a little bit sweet and is especially good, in my opinion, combined with savoury fillings.

I've had some amazing baozi in restaurants and in Hong Kong. They remind me of eating breakfast with my paternal grandmother and family when I was seven years old, in a Tai Po restaurant that she still visits to this day to meet her friends and gossip. They remind me of the best home breakfast surprises (I had a pretty weird breakfast upbringing, sometimes even involving beefburgers or pie! Pizza featured once at breakfast too!). My favourites are filled with char siu (roast pork), meat and vegetables, or sweet things like lotus seed paste or yellow custard.

On Saturday, armed with a package of 'Tippy salapao mix' (buy it online here) from the Chinese supermarket, I attemped my first home-made baozi. OK, so I haven't got a clue how to make the bread casing - it involves wheat flour, raising agents of various types, sugar and some kind of magic. I think some other mixes include yeast, but this one did not. One day maybe I'll try making my own!

I filled them with chicken breast minced in a food processor, finely chopped spring onion, Chinese leaf, garlic, ginger, salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, coriander a tiny pinch of Chinese five spice and a dash of white pepper. The quantities, as with most of my 'made-up' cooking, were arbitrary. Basically, a mix of two chicken breasts, three leaves of Chinese leaf, two spring onions, three cloves of garlic, a 5mm slice of ginger, chopped finely, a small bunch of fresh coriander and the other ingredients to taste, was more than enough to generously fill the twelve buns that one package of flour mix can make.

If I were to make them again I would add some pre-soaked dried shiitake mushrooms or some chopped water chestnuts to the mix. You could also try making them with pork, adding chinese chives, or try a vegetarian version.

They were surprisingly easy to make - this flour mix only takes a few minutes to make up. Filling them without leaks is harder, but I think we were trying to cram too much into each bun! All the instructions are on the packet and they take only 15 minutes to steam, even with raw meat inside.

These are pictures of the ones we made and I was jolly proud of them for a first attempt. True fluffiness will probably always elude me, but they were tasty nonetheless.

EDIT: I just found a recipe for baozi dough here. I will try it some time, when I have a few hours to spare!

Feeling low

2010-01-09T15:38:00.003Z

I'm having a really bad day today. Everything seems so futile and pointless. I'm crying my eyes out over nothing and can't shake the feeling that I am crap at everything I do. Or just not good enough. I struggle a lot with self confidence and conviction in my abilities and always look for the negative in everything. Some days it's worse and today is one of those. I feel like the biggest, most miserable, useless loser. Anyone else ever feel so desperately bad about themselves? I feel like I'm going nowhere.

God, I sound like a self-indulgent manic-depressive on this blog. I think I need to go and bake something, even though I can't actually bake.

Shiny and new

2010-01-07T16:27:00.003Z

Happy new year! Well, I would be happier if I didn't have to work and could go somewhere with a sledge instead. With all this snow around, working should be banned. Sadly, the snow seems to have mostly missed our little patch here in Essex. We have only had about an inch, when everywhere else in the country seems to have had many more! Plus there are no slopes around our area for quality sledging.

What has been happening here? Not much. Christmas was lovely, but by the end I couldn't wait to be alone at home again. I like company but I get tired of having to be sociable after more than a week of it and just want to hide away not having to talk any more. Sounds awful, but that's how I am.

Food-wise, Christmas was pretty good - my first, proper, traditional turkey meal on Christmas day with my in-laws, then we had a wonderful Chinese steamboat or hot pot at my parents' house on Boxing Day. We ate out with family a lot in Birmingham so I'm craving normal food terribly. We haven't quite settled back into our normal routine, though.

I will try and be better at posting here. I keep making nice food and forgetting to photograph it! We made a spicy aubergine stew served with roast sweet potatoes the other day. Last night we were experimenting with the incredibly fatty Hungarian sausage that was part of the special Christmas hamper I compiled for the husband. We ate a traditional Ukrainian meal for Ukrainian Christmas last Saturday, and there was a lamb and green bean stew at some other point. Any photos? Any recipes? Not from me, sorry! I'll try to be better next time.

booooooo

2009-12-14T16:46:00.003Z

Wow. It's been a long time since I was here last. It's not because I haven't been eating, or thinking weird things, I've just been hit by that awful winter laziness and simply can't be arsed to do anything at all. What have I been up to? Trying to work, trying to sell Christmas cards with little success, dreaming big dreams about moving house to Wales and then feeling very sorry for myself that this is probably a dream that will have to wait a while. What have we eaten? Nothing much of note - some amazing salt pork congee at my parents' house yesterday which blew my own version out of the water with its wonderfulness; a great, simple pasta last night that reminded me how nice things can be when you don't use too many ingredients :-); some more stuffed kabocha squash, this time with a spicy red pepper and tomato rice that I improvised. It was more-ish and squidgy - perfect for winter.

That's kind of it. I am behind with Christmas shopping and resenting it increasingly as the days pass. I don't really believe in big presents - just a token gesture and good company should be enough, don't you think?

The image above is of some hasselback potatoes that we made yonks ago. I think they need less butter than most recipes state - probably because we are not huge fans of really buttery potatoes, but it was good all the same. Here is Nigella's recipe for them. We used a different recipe, by Tessa Kiros.

brassica heaven (with anchovies!)

2009-11-19T11:54:00.004Z

Oh my word. We made a version of baked cauliflower and broccoli cannelloni last night, from a recipe by Jamie Oliver. OK, so we didn't use cannelloni tubes and made it like a lasagne instead, and I didn't use nearly as much crème fraîche, nor any mozzarella (we used a tiny sprinkle of grated half fat cheddar instead), just to keep the fat levels down! But it was amazing. Like it-might-kill-you-with-the-salt-content amazing, but wonderful nonetheless, especially if you like your brassicas. I guess you could leave out the anchovies (with which no extra salt is required in my opinion!) and just season with a bit of salt for a veggie version. Not as fussy looking as the length of the recipe makes it look - I'd definitely make it again. Takes 1 hour 10 mins including about 35 minutes in the oven.

Again I took no photos because I'm greedy and useless, but the one above is one from Food Network.

a time for everything

2009-11-17T09:27:00.005Z

It's never too late to try something new, right? Well, the other night I had my first experience of blancmange. Yup, that weirdy, wibbly, pastel-coloured stuff that most other people who grew up in the 80s or earlier have experience of, but I haven't, or at least not until Sunday night. Did I like it? Yeah, I guess so - I have a weird fondness for fake strawberry flavouring (used to HATE it as a kid, but it's grown on me), but I dislike milk (although I like ice-cream, cream and yoghurt), so it was a fine balance of good and bad. Thanks to the husband for this, uh, introduction! Best thing about it was that I got to use my vintage pressed glass jelly mould - bring on more blancmange!

What it made me think of was that there were plenty of things that I never ate as a Chinese child growing up in England, and things that I tried only at other people's houses and birthday parties. I remember my first taste of proper English (ha!) spaghetti bolognese at my friend Susan's house. I liked the 1980s dried Parmesan cheese - it was feety and different. I thought Angel's Delight was disgusting (still find it a bit of a retro oddity if faced with it). I hated cheese and pineapple at parties.

But mostly English food was almost a treat, a luxury. I remember sharing special roast dinners with my sister on Sunday trips to Makro and thinking how great it was, even though it was canteen food. We grew up with a very different slant on food, where cheapo chicken and mushroom pies from the bakery five doors down were magical rather than humdrum, but steamed whole fish with ginger and spring onions was gaggingly boring.

On the other hand I didn't know that a lot of English people don't like and can't deal with bones in their food - we grew up de-boning fish and chicken in our mouths from toddlerhood and learned the anatomy of a duck not through a book but by looking at it on the plate.

Most of all, I remember the cringingly odd lunches we would sometimes take to school. Usually lunch was boring ham sandwiches, but sometimes my Dad would make the lunch and we would get crimson-edged Chinese roast pork and lettuce in our bread, which would bring choruses of 'urgh! what's that?' at the lunch table. I would love sandwiches like that now, but at the time I wanted to disappear into the floor. Not great for a shy little girl. I looked at my friend's pâtė sandwiches and wondered what they tasted like. No-one picked on her. Susan's daily Marmite sandwiches didn't appeal so much, and I don't think I tried the wonderful stuff until I was about eleven years old. It's amazing how much I missed out on, good and bad.

the things we ate...

2009-11-02T15:11:00.007Z

You know how I waffled on for days about the things we ate in New York? Now, it's not like there's nowhere good in London, only we don't go there very often since I moved away and had kind of forgotten how great it can be. We went there on an indulgent shopping trip yesterday and discovered a few things that I'd never gotten round to doing whilst there, or had not come across in my limited explorations. It's a common affliction of the London-dweller - this blindness that keeps you going to the places that are most familiar, whilst making you forget to go out and have a good rummage somewhere else.

Now, I'd been down Brick Lane and environs before, but never on the best day - Sunday. Luck had it that just as lunchtime arrived, we passed by the legendary Beigel Bake at the top of Brick Lane, where they serve the most incredible salt beef in sweet home-made bagels with a slick of mustard for added punch. I swear I nearly died, it was so good. (Image from londontown.com)

Onwards down Brick Lane, we stopped to look at shops, we spent money down Cheshire Street, but as we drew towards the Sunday UpMarket at the Old Truman Brewery, we were ambushed by the smells of cooking. Inside the market there were dozens of stalls selling wonderful-looking food - mostly not the trashy, sweet-and-sour stuff that is pervasive in such markets, but instead lots of home-style, honest food cooked by people with an obvious passion for their cuisine. There were (praise the lord!) bánh mì, dumplings, Moroccan, Sri Lankan, you name it. The choice was so huge I nearly wept with excitement. Yeah, that's how sad I am. No photos, I'm afraid - I never remember to bring the camera with me.

So of course we had to have a second lunch. What did we go for? A vegetarian 'three-sauces wrap' from the Ethiopian stall. I don't quite know what was in it - green lentils, some familiar curry-like flavours, plenty of heat, a great cabbage salad, a pillowy, thin pancake... it was spectacular, like oh-my-god-why-can't-we-eat-this-all-the-time? We couldn't SPEAK, it was so bloody good.

We proceeded, via a juice bar, into central London for shopping. And when that was over, we headed over to a Chinese supermarket in Chinatown where I bought salt-laden, MSG-pumped instant noodles that are my secret indulgence, and buns to steam for breakfast. Then I led the husband into a tea shop where I had iced Hong-Kong style coffee with tea which is much like Hong Kong milk tea, but with coffee in it too. Had we not been heading straight for dinner afterwards, I definitely would have had tapioca 'bubbles' in it for fun. I used to love the milk tea when I first tasted it as a seven-year-old in HK - it's probably a bit sweet for my taste these days, but it was an amazingly nostalgic experience yesterday and quite a treat.

And could we fit in dinner after all that? Of course we could! At Busaba on Wardour Street, where the food is to die for, especially the violently garlicky goong tohd prawns. Needless to say I'd eaten too much by the time we went to bed and spent the night having weird itchy episodes intermingled with peculiar dreams about pink, man-eating cockatoos and a bear that ate my finger. No, I'm not lying about the dreams - that's what a surfeit of sugar and shellfish can do to you!

squash

2009-10-30T15:40:00.002Z

It's been a while, I know... been busy, tired.

The other day I cooked two squash that we picked up in a back-alley farmer's market in our local town. I had no idea what they were or what they tasted like, so it was a pretty fun experiment. I think one was a kabocha squash and the other was like an all-green carnival squash. Now I don't love butternut squash - cooked badly it tastes like sick, so I approached these tentatively. I halved and roasted them with olive oil and a bit of seasoning for about half an hour. Whilst that was going on, I sauteed onions, garlic and celery until soft, added bacon, mushrooms, thyme, black pepper, a tiny bit of dried chilli, then stirred in some long-grain rice and covered it all with water to cook the rice for about 20 minutes. Then I scooped out most of the squash flesh, keeping the two squashes separate so we could taste the difference, mixed it into the rice and stuffed it back into the squash shells. Then it went back in the oven for about 10 minutes just so the rice was starting to catch on top. Was it good? Oh yes. Especially the Kabocha type squash which was like a nutty, sweet pease-pudding textured thing - gorgeous. The saltiness of the bacon balanced the sweetness nicely. No photos I'm afraid. I was too busy stuffing my face.

it's been a while

2009-10-23T13:19:00.002+01:00

Profuse and profound apologies for my absence. Things have been getting a bit too crazy for me lately to even think about things other than working, and then being asked to make changes to that work again and again... I don't mean to moan - the client comes first, right? I have had enough of working now, though. I could do with a week off, but no, it keeps pouring in.

Have I done anything interesting in the last week or so? Nope. Not a sausage. Most interesting thing? Uh... a man in a red top hat outside Beyond Retro in London - I love love love how you can do anything you like, be anyone you want to be in that city - if I'm going to wear the weird patterned Norwegian cardigan I picked up on eBay last week, London will be the city. Out here in the countryside people will think I'm the village idiot.

hong kong curry

2009-10-13T16:32:00.003+01:00

My dad used to make curry on Sundays for the take-away. The whole town was addicted to his curry - you could smell it cooking all the way down the main street and it was glorious. I have asked him for his recipe but, like most instinctively good cooks, he is vague vague vague. He goes to a cupboard and ferrets around, coming back to the table with a box full of spices that he doesn't know the English name for. He presents them to us to smell and we recognise them in this way - cloves, cassia bark, star anise we know, but there's something like fennel seeds in there, and a curious little pod like a shrivelled fruit. What it is called I have no idea - I guess a trip to the Chinese supermarket would probably enlighten us. As for quantities of everything, well, only he knows and he can't be arsed to tell me. One day I'll force him to cook some in front of me. I must know this. This is the one thing that I would kill small mammals to be able to cook and the stuff you get ready made to water down is simply not the same.

Curry and chips! Oh my god. I need to lie down.

2009-10-08T09:33:00.003+01:00

We ate our first pumpkin the other day, our tiniest one, roasted and added to a salad. The skin was thick and leathery, the flesh bright orange and delicious. It's the time of year now that I start dreaming of soup, cassoulet, lentils. Beef stew I made the other day was warming and just right for the weather. I just wish I had thought to make some herby dumplings to simmer to pillowy perfection in it too. Well, there's a portion left, so all is not lost.

Someone has too much time on their hands...

2009-10-07T10:58:00.006+01:00

Thanks to Barry for this morning's link - The Brick Testament - Bible stories illustrated with Lego. It's quite funny, especially the nudey scenes... :-P

I'm sorry I've not had much to say recently. I'm so tired. This morning I woke up, then kind of had what I call a 'mini-dream' where I was ostensibly awake and communicating with the husband, but during a small lull I had a clear vision of Boris Johnson with his hair all wet and slicked back, which I thought made him look much older. And no, it wasn't a sex dream.

this and that...

2009-10-06T17:44:00.003+01:00

Urgh. I am swamped with work right now. I sound resentful, but really, it's amazing and I'm horribly, snivellingly grateful for it all - it keeps me from going mad, it gives me something to moan about, it could possibly be the best work I've ever done! Well... the last sentiment is only accurate when the brief drops like a shiny new penny into my inbox, but it rapidly fades into dull fantasy when I realize that I'm drawing a load of crap. I don't feel like that right now, but it happens quite a lot.

The cabbages are being attacked by slugs. The weather has finally broken and we have been deluged with miserable, drippy rain today, which means I really should go out and set some beer traps or something to keep the little bastards away from my veg before tonight. Can I be bothered?

I really haven't got much to say for myself this week. I think it's a seasonal disorder. Just when I want a break so I can curl up on the sofa in ugly knitwear, suddenly I have to sit at this machine and draw pictures of trees...

mournful

2009-10-02T11:05:00.004+01:00

I'm having a slow and sorry week. Lots of unpaid work, lots of anxiety, poor sleep, no husband to cheer me up, bad diet... I'm all maudlin today and will be until the weekend when hopefully things will cheer up. I think I need to get out of the house more - things are a bit monotonous and grey indoors.

That said, happily I have new cabbage plants to shove into the ground for next spring. The thought of home-grown cabbage is all that's keeping me going. The potatoes I grew this year were honestly some of the best I've ever tasted.

now where did I get to?

2009-09-29T18:19:00.006+01:00

I got distracted from my slightly crazed recollections of what we ate in NY. Crazed because we don't get to eat out a lot, and both the husband and I come from rich cultural backgrounds that have imbued us with some very strong food memories and their concomitant cravings. So in New York we indulged first my congee habit, and that evening we went to satisfy Mark's Ukrainian needs at Veselka.

Now, I've had a bit of Ukrainian cooking before, courtesy of the husband's mother and grandmother and it was very good. This was spectacular. We had borscht to die for, various crispy, moreish pierogi, a giant cabbage roll and beetroot and horseradish salad. We were both more than satisfied and the husband pleasantly surprised at my enthusiasm. But then I have a lot of enthusiasm for starchy products involving mostly pork and root vegetables, so what is there not to like?

you know you're getting old when...

2009-09-28T15:10:00.002+01:00

this turns up in a vintage online shop and you remember having one in the house as a child. Oh deary me!

the husband goes to Prague and he gets me...?

2009-09-24T09:49:00.003+01:00

PICKLED SAUSAGE! I can't bloody wait. He knows me too well. We also have a jar of pickled peppers. A match made in vinegar heaven!

saturated

2009-09-22T17:01:00.005+01:00

with work and snot. I've somehow caught a cold. Since last Monday I have only been out of the house once and I guess I must have caught it then. That's what you get for hanging out in too many charity shops.

I have been pondering the saturation of the internet with blogs. It's ridiculous. What are we all trying to do? It's like mass diary-writing and the vast majority of it is TRIPE. There are just SO MANY of us, all writing pointless shite in the hope that one day we'll either:

1) Have enough readers in order to be able to monetise our blogs and make a living out of writing shit.
2) Get noticed by a big publisher and be commissioned to write a book about our sad little lives

Or both. I try not to be cynical. I try not to think like this. I'm just here writing down stuff that I like and the things I think about, right? And it's all bollocks, so if I don't get any readers I don't mind. Who wants to read endless posts about congee anyway? I'm not even being useful and writing any recipes down. Not I - I keep these things to myself for no good reason.

Anyhoo. I'm going to go and snivel into a wad of tissues for the rest of the day and try to think up new ways of trying to be interesting to other people.

more...

2009-09-21T10:31:00.007+01:00

The congee I made the other day was pretty good. I was really quite impressed with myself. The reason why I have started to make it was because of a wonderful congee experience we had in New York. Now, it's not rocket science making this stuff, it's not clever or difficult. I grew up on the stuff - with meatballs and crispy vermicelli, chicken, dried scallops, salt pork, thousand-year egg, pork liver, whatever... It's the ultimate comfort food. It smells like home. Eaten with hot pickled turnips and pickled tofu, it is the food of the gods. I'm not kidding - rice boiled to within an inch of its life is one of the best things in the world.

So for breakfast we headed out to Chinatown and Big Wong in particular, looking for congee. The restaurant is simple and cheap-looking, just like places in Hong Kong, with water served in plastic tumblers and a bottle of soy sauce on the side - you'd never know from looking at it that it would be worth going inside but with this place it's all about the food. We had one bowl with salt pork and thousand year egg and another with pork meatballs. It was creamy and well seasoned but didn't have the horrid taste of MSG or anything odd. It was like home, where I like my congee with white pepper and soy sauce. It was like balm to a stomach that had been overfed on weird shit the day before.

After that we went in search of bubble tea, a very popular drink in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. In HK I like what they call 'yin yang' - a mix of tea and coffee, and unsweetened if possible. We didn't get that - I had a sweet milk tea that tasted a bit odd, but it was fun nevertheless to sit in a little candy-coloured shop and suck up the chewy tapioca balls through fat straws.

the things we ate...

2009-09-18T10:15:00.008+01:00

Most of the things we did in New York pale in comparison to some of the joyful eats we had. Actually, most of the things we did in New York were acts of joyful eating. We didn't bother to do the touristy things - I've seen the Empire State Building from the street - who wants to pay $21 dollars to go 84% of the way up (it costs $15 more to go from the 86th to the 102nd floor!)? We went to the awe-inspiring Met, and I made pilgrimage to the American Museum of Natural History, but that's about all we did that was standard. Nay, we had better things to do.

I won't bore you with a long list of everything we ate, but the highlights were many. Before we left, I'd determined that I would eat bánh mì. I don't make promises like that to myself and then break them, so for our first lunch we went to Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich near Chinatown and satisfied that urge. And my lord was it satisfying. There's something about the combination of meat and pickles, hot sauce and coriander that really makes this really special. We ate it sitting in a park and washed it down with mangosteen juice. I know it's vulgar to put up pictures of half-eaten food but really I couldn't wait to eat at least some of it before I took a photo. Be grateful, I nearly couldn't stop eating to pick up the camera at all :-)

Next up was dinner that night - Jewish. We ended up in a seedy-looking diner that, from the outside looked like any other greasy burger joint in London: all neon signs and laminated menus in the window, glass counter with days-old food in plastic tubs and take-away boxes on the side. It looked empty. I wasn't sure. But Fine and Schapiro is one of the bastions of the New York Jewish deli scene having been in business since 1927 and is not to be sniffed at nor feared. Sure the interior is shabby and dated but that is part of the character and joy of this place. The night we went it was populated with two lone male diners. One of them looked like he went there all the time, so I ordered what he had - a pastrami sandwich. It was fabulous. An enormous, meaty, fatty, caraway-seed-peppered thing of beauty. Everything here is served with a big bowl of pickled gherkins and home-made coleslaw. It was cheap and tasty - what more can a girl ask for? Here are another couple of vulgar pictures under bad lighting for you:

Enough for today. I have to go and tend the congee I'm attempting to cook. More next time!

Well well...

2009-09-14T13:01:00.005+01:00

I am exhausted, overwhelmed, sated. New York was magnificent - a cacophony of wonderful things that I will eventually get round to writing about. First I must make lists or I will be drowned by the volume of the joyful things we did. It's like a new infatuation...

Image above: Clinton St. Baking Company & Restaurant at breakfast.

a little note

2009-08-27T15:12:00.000+01:00

Whilst reading about bánh mì yesterday, I came across this foodstuff amusingly called 'head cheese'. I mean, REALLY? Head cheese? That makes it sound like some kind of discharge from a man's unmentionables, or at least something fungal and bodily. Wow. It's chopped up bits of pig head and other things like scrotal sacs, all bound in a tasty jelly.

Somewhere down that page is a little note about a foodstuff that is familiar to me, called 'yaorou' (肴肉), which is a kind of cold pickled pork dish that I used to watch my dad make for special occasions like Christmas (imagine it instead of your turkey!). My sister didn't like it too much. I loved it. I don't know if my dad used trotters or some other cut of pork, but the skin kind of goes jelly-like and crunchy, and the pickling vinegar and punchy spices are wonderful. Sounds gross, huh? Well, I am a bit gross.

Getting excited

2009-08-26T11:48:00.004+01:00

On Monday, the husband and I are off on holiday. We are spending four days in New York, followed by six days in the US Virgin Islands. I can't bloody wait - we've not had a proper holiday all year. For poor Mark, the Caribbean bit is actually a work conference, but I'm tagging along to take advantage of the free room in this magnificent resort. I have a feeling I won't belong in such a swanky, super-rich place. I will most likely be surrounded by people who don't carry a little pouch of fat below their belly buttons or have issues with the wibbly bits on their haunches... I have so many hang-ups, but I try not to care too much these days - it's no fun being self-conscious. It's not as if anyone's looking anyway. Or we could be hit by a hurricane, in which case I'll be stuck indoors alone with my problems.

Caribbean, schmaribbean! Who cares what I'll look like in a bikini? What I care most about is FOOD in New York. Yeah, there are loads of flea markets in NY but they are all open on weekends only, and we are there only weekdays this time, so where should I turn to but my next love? I am looking forward to every meal. I want to eat Vietnamese bánh mì, which sound like great lunch food. I even read about congee in Chinatown, which of course you can get in England or make yourself, but they make it sound better over there. Available in 13 varieties in one restaurant! But of course there is proper American food to try too - I wonder whether my little paunch will grow a bit before I get to the beach? Will I even give it a second thought whilst I'm stuffing my face? (Image below from battleofthebanhmi.com)

green green vegetables and a thing called pickled tofu

2009-08-25T16:33:00.009+01:00

My lovely friend Kat suggested grating courgettes and sautéeing them in butter with a bit of seasoning. We tried that last night, only I used light olive oil instead of butter and slightly overdid it with the pepper. Oh my lord! I could eat a whole plateful of that stuff - the mouthfeel, the bite and the taste were all perfect. Sometimes I love to eat a big pile of green veg that has been gently messed with in some way or other, served with nothing else to detract or distract from its singular moreishness - I love stir-fried green cabbage with a load of oriental chilli sauce and a fried egg, thanks to Orangette; I love old spinach, like the Chinese eat, steamed and stirred through with preserved bean curd (which Wikipedia rather charmingly calls 'pickled tofu' - I've never really given much thought to what it might be called in English. Chinese cheese is another rather delightful name it takes). The latter is something I used to fight over as a child. Thankfully my sister wasn't as fussed about it as I was - for a kid who wasn't too keen on slimy green things that got stuck in your throat halfway down, this was the vegetable dish of the gods and I could eat a tonne of it.

When we were last in Hong Kong we ate a few times at the magnificent Tai Po Market. In the evenings, when the rest of the market is shut, one of the upstairs floors comes alive with cheap and cheerful restaurants serving the most stunningly delicious food. Forget going to more expensive places outside - this is where the locals go. We had, most memorably, poached chicken in chilli oil and spinach done the way I love it. I was fighting my young cousins for the stuff. The place is happily also open for breakfast - what on earth could be better than silky ho fun noodle soup with fish balls and - wait for this - the most earth-shatteringly, mouth-wateringly beautiful fried fish skins. Oh yes, fried fish skins. Served with the ubiquitous and indispensable chilli oil, of course. I am salivating. Why can't English breakfasts be as good as this? I mean, noodles and congee - unbeatable.

Image from Wikipedia

you know you're getting old when...

2009-08-24T14:05:00.003+01:00

1. You've been to a party, had too much to drink and it takes you two full days to feel normal again. I didn't start getting hangovers until a few years ago, and I don't drink a lot normally, but this was a tricksy cocktail trap, set cunningly by my friends and those who encouraged me to keep drinking the bright green stuff in my glass... Granted I wasn't the only one to have a sore head the next day, but I thought I'd left the world of excess alcohol behind me...

2. Your fourth wisdom tooth starts growing... in the roof of your mouth! OMG, it's coming through on my palate, on the inner side of my upper left row of teeth. I had an ache there a few months ago, then a lump appeared. The pain went away, then I got this funny little textured bit on the lump a couple of weeks ago. I only deemed to scrape at it with a fingernail last night, and lo and behold it is a tooth. In the wrong place. I feel like an ageing mutant.

Courgettes

2009-08-20T11:29:00.004+01:00

I have a glut of courgettes. Not little, tasty ones, but fat overgrown monsters that I didn't have the time or energy to harvest last week. I should be grateful - both my dad and Mark's grandma have struggled with them this year, but what to do with so many? I've already made and frozen a vast quantity of courgette soup, I could make fritters with some feta and mint, but they aren't the healthiest thing. I could roast them and freeze them to throw into pasta dishes as and when I please... We have given two away this morning, but there are more to come and the fridge is getting full! Last night we tried Jamie Oliver's courgette carbonara, albeit horribly bastardised. I won't say how I cheated here, because it's just too shameful. But I admit I've never made a proper carbonara! Oh how I cringe!

I have spent too many days in the last week working and mooching about in London, perspiring from body parts which surely don't have the capacity to do such a thing. It has been sweaty and hot, smelly and tiring. I am back in the countryside now and relishing being able to hang around the house in my slobs. Bliss.

Here's a good one - I got stopped by the police for the first time in the car on Tuesday night. I was going to pick Mark up from a birthday do in Cambridge and got stopped for forgetting to turn my headlights on. Oop! I think the policeman thought I was retarded and that Mark was on narcotics. Good-oh!

I have nothing left

2009-08-17T11:44:00.003+01:00

Wow, I've been away for quite some time. This was not intentional. I have had some problems. Not mental or anything, just a big pile of work suddenly landed on my head and I nearly suffocated. Plus I have no computer of my own this week. Boo hoo. God, I don't half whinge sometimes! Moan, moan, moan...

What have I been thinking? Not a lot. On Friday whilst driving to Yorkshire I briefly considered the merits of eating dog food. You know how it is, you're listening to the radio and an advert comes up for some joint-care dog treats and I wondered if it would be beneficial for humans to eat the treats themselves... yeah. I think I'm going nuts. Too little sleep. And then on Sunday, I asked the husband, who is a lapsed Catholic, what the communion wafers tasted like. He said they were like Crackerbread, only with less flavour. So here's an idea for a rubbish business: flavoured communion wafers! Salt and vinegar! Prawn cocktail! The mind boggles... but then why don't they just buy a tube of Pringles and be done with it? I mean, the shape of them isn't that far off, and there's a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from holding a Pringle in your mouth without chewing it. Well, no, it's horrible, but better than a disc of pap, huh?

cryptic crosswords

2009-08-07T10:52:00.002+01:00

Oh no! We have found a new thing to waste our lives doing: cryptic crosswords. Yup, I'm addicted like a crack whore. The problem is though, we managed to nearly finish one from the Guardian last night but we are not Guardian buyers. We get The Times, and the crosswords are mroe difficult in there, so maybe we'll have to change newspapers... No, I can't change! And I don't mind admitting this - I like The Times. I find The Guardian too idealistic, too cheerful - it's for young, liberal, eco types who want to change the world for the better - whilst I do my bit for the environment and care very much about it, grow organic food and want everyone in the world to JUST BLOODY WELL GET ALONG, I'm too cynical for this newspaper. No offence to Guardian readers - most of my friends indulge in it and I love them all. I think I'm just stuck in my ways, I'm a bitter snob, plus I like the jumbo crossword on Saturdays.

Anyway, Mark and I were pleased as punch that on our first attempt at a Guardian cryptic crossword we got all of them bar about four (which we didn't get because of a spelling irregularity, another was a mistake, one was near unfathomable, and another was a word we'd never heard of). Eek! It took WAY too long. I think my crowning glory so far has been the solution to this clue (actually from The Times):
Digger, a merry young soul, might one say? (4,5)
The solution, I believe, is coal miner - Old King Cole (coal); coal digger, coal miner; young=minor, therefore coal miner. Geddit? I don't think it was a particularly hard one, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

One that the husband and I got together was:
Type of school game obligatory for most high fliers (8,5)
Solution: boarding cards. Type of school=boarding; game=cards; boarding cards are required for anyone taking an aeroplane flight. Whoop!

Now I'm sounding like a PROPER geek. Someone get me a life?

self help

2009-08-05T11:18:00.000+01:00

So what's the deal with self-help? It's pretty sad, really, isn't it, the idea of hiding away alone and reading books to try to make yourself more confident, more successful etc.? I readily admit I'm probably a prime candidate for self-help, but my god, I'd far rather be pathetic without help than a tragicomic self-help reader. You can spot these freaks a mile off. Or am I being silly? Should I start reciting mantras to myself in the mirror every morning telling myself I'm wonderful and beautiful and various other lies?

And there's that nagging feeling with these books that they are written by people who are even more needy than you, the reader, are. Like Greg Kinnear's character in Little Miss Sunshine, who tries to follow his own programme of self-help, and pushes it on his kids, but is nonetheless quite a tragic figure of repeated failure and disappointment.

Well, I'm not about to start reading these books, but my goodness, do I need some help sometimes.

setting boundaries, creating focus

2009-08-04T09:34:00.006+01:00

You know, I'm always looking at stuff or reading things and responding to them in my head, but I wonder sometimes how much of it I should write about here. Should I set myself more boundaries so that I don't say something that could be bad for my career or my personal life? I guess the answer of course is yes - when you edit all the thoughts in your head down to something that you will commit to paper, as it were, I think you have to be quite careful to not end up sounding like a lunatic. I am quite scattershot when it comes to making these selections and I think maybe I should focus a little more on certain things (like, perhaps, NOT spending most of your time on here wondering about the point of blogging at all, silly girl...).

So for today's random post, I thought I'd mention this site I read about at the weekend called F my Life where people can go anonymously to write up things that happen in their life that make them think 'fuck my life' because it sucks in some way or other. For example, the latest entry that was there when I opened up the site this morning was: Today, I had my first blow job. My girlfriend thought it would be sexy to "caress" my ball sack. By caress she meant bitch slap from side to side. FML. Yeah, I think anonymity is a good thing if you're going to write about stuff like that... Jeezus...

Maybe next time I'll write about something more interesting. I dunno. Maybe a lack of decency and boundaries would make me more interesting... ha!

Dumplings and sausages

2009-07-30T14:03:00.007+01:00

I spent a good fifteen minutes reading about dumplings on Wikipedia the other day. I guess the things one can do with food are limited, but that knowledge never stops me from finding it remarkable that there are so many dishes that seem to have evolved in parallel within different cuisines, as it were. For example, noodles and pasta have similarities, there's calzone and the Cornish pasty, and of course there are dumplings and wontons from China to Eastern European pierogi/vareniki to Italian tortellini. I suppose the dumpling/pasty thing is simply a neat way of serving lots of different fillings, but it's still interesting. My husband is half Ukrainian, so imagine our delight when we discovered that whilst I can make jiaozi filled with pork and vegetables, he makes vareniki filled with cheese and potato, both of which are cased in a flour and water dough and shaped like stuffed half-moons. Of course I prefer mine, though - I mean, what's the deal with the Ukrainian stodge pie? To be fair, vareniki can have other fillings, but this is the recipe that has been passed down to him.

Then there are variations on salami. The Chinese have one called lap cheong or lap cheung (yeah, no, my surname doesn't mean 'sausage' - that would be too funny. Sorry, different word) that (I think) literally translates as 'wax sausage'. It is often eaten steamed, sliced and doused in soy sauce, which balances its inherent sweetness and fattiness. Oh lord, I could do with some now! But it's so bad for you... There are certain foodstuffs that take you to a particular experience in your life - this sausage reminds me of the first meal we would have at home in England having arrived back that day from Hong Kong. Because the quality of imported products such as these in England isn't as great as in its native land, my parents would smuggle (well, I don't know how legal it was) things like dried oysters, dried sausage, preserved duck and salted fish back in these enormous blue-striped canvas sacks back from HK any time we went there. My god, did we exceed our baggage limit! It was embarrassing - and I guess it must have been allowed because the pungent reek emanating from our luggage would surely give its contents away. Anyway, after we had got home from the airport and had a rest, when it came to food there was nothing in the house, so what better to do than crack open the preserved goodies and re-live the HK experience? You'd think that after weeks of being away from home we would want something not Chinese, but this stuff is something else entirely. You might hate it if you didn't grow up eating it - it's kinda weird, but I still like it now.

Cauliflower risotto

2009-07-28T14:22:00.002+01:00

So we ended up making cauliflower risotto last night, served with finely sliced runner beans from my vegetable patch. We are experiencing a bit of a glut of runner beans and courgettes at the moment. The weather has been rainy and sunny enough to cause everything to go BOOMPH! in the garden. I am faced almost daily with a new monster courgette. I will make soup, I think.

This risotto recipe is one of my favourites - even if you're not too sure about cauliflower, this dish will surely, SURELY, make you a fan. You are a lost cause if this doesn't get you excited. It is sprinkled with an anchovy and chilli pangrattato (dry fried breadcrumbs that many less wealthy Italian families used to use instead of expensive Parmesan cheese). To make it, you need Jamie Oliver's basic risotto recipe, which is the base for lots of different risottos, coupled with the recipe for cauliflower risotto. The florets are simmered in the risotto stock as you cook, and then crushed into the risotto later, almost disappearing into it. Sorry, I don't have a photo of my own. I was too eager to eat last night to stop and take pictures. This dish I could eat until I'm sick.

Cauliflower

2009-07-27T14:37:00.003+01:00

Hmm. Enough rubbish film critique. Tonight we are eating cauliflower. It has become such an underrated vegetable that many farmers are considering not growing it any more. I think that would be a tragedy. Anyone who doesn't like cauliflower either has never had it cooked nicely or is barking mad. It has a lovely delicate flavour but is sturdy enough to be the perfect vehicle for much stronger flavours like cheese, garlic and anchovies. Cooked to perfection it is soft but nubbly, crumbling in your mouth under the slightest pressure - the perfect comfort vegetable if such exists.

I was nearly put off it as a child when one day my sister and I were given a bowl of caulifower each. I think we were being pests in the take-away so were sent off into the front reception room to play with food. We added tomato ketchup and mashed it up. It was horrible. However, rescue was at hand - my dad used to sauté some garlic and a sliced pork chop in some oil, then add cauliflower cut into chunks, followed by a little water, seasoning and a dash of oyster sauce and soy sauce. Simmered until tender it was salty, chewy, lumpy perfection.

And the leaves are perfectly edible and actually rather lovely to eat. I hate to waste food, so I try to use as much of the vegetable as possible. Here's a great way of using the whole thing:

Sautéed Cauliflower (I could eat half a cauliflower by myself, but then I'm a bit weird so quantities are arbitrary)

Cut all parts of the cauliflower (leaves, stems, florets) into chunks. Lightly boil for about five minutes, then sauté in olive oil with sliced garlic, dried chilli flakes and a few anchovies for a good 10-15 minutes or so until there are nicely browned patches on the pieces of cauliflower. Check and adjust the seasoning and serve. You can add parsley, pine nuts, capers... anything you think would work. I could eat this with anything. I bet it's a marvel just on its own with toast, or maybe as a side dish with some fish.

the weekend...

2009-07-27T13:49:00.004+01:00

was busy. We spent four and a half hours cleaning the house and getting back to its normal state on Saturday. It was boring to say the least. The football on Friday was great fun - Wembley Stadium at night is magnificent. Sadly, Tottenham sucked and we finished up third place out of four - ouch.

We were watching the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yesterday. In a similar vein to what I was writing on Alternative Eagle today, this film is successful because of good storytelling - such a simple premise told with wit and imagination. I like how it sits on the boundaries of being funny and sad, sweet and cynical. It never leaves you feeling just one thing - you run a whole gamut of emotions, and that kind of story, to me, reflects life better than something that is purely funny or grim as hell. Beneath its relatively light mood it has an intriguing dark heart - an exploration of whether anyone could hurt you so much that you'd rather not remember them at all, good or bad. Even through its surrealist filmic devices it says something very resonant - that in the end it's all about the balance between the good things and the bad.

we did it!

2009-07-24T11:16:00.003+01:00

We've finished the kitchen floor! I am inordinately, ridiculously happy. It looks good, which is rather surprising given how little we knew about tiling before we embarked on this. We're bloody experts now... We wiped the last grout off at 11.45 last night, having only started the grouting after dinner, first spending a good hour or more dithering over how thick the grout should be. Cheapo vanilla ice-cream is the texture we went for in the end. Half melted.

Here is a before and after... We had to let it all dry out, de-mould it, seal it, then lay a flexible underlayer before tiling... it took up too much of our lives.

(above) Before. Sodden fungal mess.

(above) After. Huzzah.

The verdict is that whilst we like to think that we would one day like to renovate a house, really we're not the world's most enthusiastic DIYers. I think we won't be tiling anything for a good long while after that. And all that was because the washing machine leaked and destroyed our old kitchen floor. Nothing worse than non-self-inflicted DIY emergency repairs.

Today we are off to Wembley stadium to watch not one but TWO games of football. My beloved Tottenham are playing Barcelona in this random competition called The Wembley Cup, but first we have to watch Celtic play an Egyptian team called Al Ahly. We couldn't get Tottenham tickets so we will be sitting with the Al Ahly fans. I'm quite excited. Sad, aren't I?

oh dear

2009-07-23T17:47:00.003+01:00

I've been neglectful this week. I have not written any pointless posts here until today. I have not even had any pointless thoughts recently, nor any weird dreams to talk about. I've been busy.

I cannot understand why anyone would be a tiler for a living. It destroys your hands and is boring as fuck. That is what we have been busy doing. snore!

course-mixing

2009-07-19T17:54:00.008+01:00

When I was very young we used to occasionally have gammon with pineapple. I always took the pineapple off immediately and ate it separately, but the gammon had already tainted it and vice versa. Or there might be sweet and sour pork with pineapple chunks loitering in the sauce like a gustatory ambush. And what on earth is the deal with ham and pineapple pizza, or that abomination, cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks? I remember having the latter inflicted on me at birthday parties in the 1980s like a punishment. As you can see, I wasn't too sure about the whole fruit and savoury thing as a child (or was it just pineapple?). Later at university, friends would turn their noses up at the occasional apple parading as a suitable partner for pork, or cranberry with turkey, stuff like that. I think we called it 'course-mixing' - I mean, what on earth is dessert doing in my main, dammit?

I have to say, though, I've grown to like fruit in savoury dishes - it adds a frisson of uncertainty. Is it going to work? Will it be horrid, or just unnecessary? I like the pineapple in sweet and sour now because I'm still not all that sure about it and it's a bit exciting eating things that are a bit weird. Like the bloke in Oldboy who eats a live octopus - or not that weird :-). Yeah, it was on TV on Saturday night but we chickened out and went to bed after that scene. We loved how the tentacles were wrapping around his nose as he ate it but I think you have to mentally prepare yourself for such wilful oddness, so we quit early.

Anyway, back to the subject. A few weeks ago at our friend's house the husband and I mentioned a recipe that we had been wanting to try out: strawberry risotto. Our friends were slightly dubious when we said with glee: 'no, this isn't a sweet rice pudding, it's a full-on savoury risotto with Parmesan cheese, no less!'

The recipe is from Twelve, a Tuscan cookbook by Tessa Kiros. Her books are wonderful. Her recipes and writing embody how I think food should be: homely, comforting, delicious. The design and styling are magnificent, especially in the child(and grown-up)-friendly Apples for Jam and Falling Cloudberries, a collection of family recipes from around the world. I could look at them for hours.

So yesterday we tried out the risotto recipe with lovely English strawberries. Here is my best picture of the result:

And here is the recipe:

Risotto alla fragola (adapted from Twelve by Tessa Kiros, serves 2):

(Tessa uses 20g butter - half to fry the onions, the rest added at the end - we leave it out for the sake of our health)
1/4 medium white onion, very finely chopped (she uses 1/2 a French shallot)
125g strawberries, hulled and halved
75ml white wine (she uses 1 1/2 tbsp brandy, which we don't have)
90g risotto rice
750ml vegetable stock (she uses chicken or meat stock)
a small handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, sweat the onions in butter (we use light olive oil instead) until soft, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, put your stock in a saucepan over a low heat and keep it simmering. Add half the hulled strawberries and cook for a further two minutes. Then add the wine or brandy and simmer until the liquid has just about evaporated. Then add the rice and stir to coat all the grains. Season with pepper and salt if you wish, depending on if your stock is salted or not, then add a ladleful of stock to the pan and stir until the liquid is absorbed into the rice. Continue to add stock by the ladleful, stirring until all the liquid is absorbed before adding the next. Keep going until you have used up all or most of your stock. This should take about 20 minutes. When the rice is cooked but still has some bite, turn off the heat, stir in half of the Parmesan and the rest of the strawberries, then cover and leave the pan to sit untouched for two minutes. Serve with black pepper and the rest of the cheese sprinkled on top.

Was it good? Oh yes. The strawberries that are stirred in right at the end are quite sweet and took a little getting used to - in some ways I thought I might prefer it if I'd cooked them in a bit more. They were a bit desserty, perhaps. But the risotto itself was lovely - not at all sweet, it had a tangy note from the fruit that cut through the risotto's inherent richness. I wouldn't serve it to people who have full-blown course-mixing issues, it's probably a step too far, but if you like your food to be a bit exciting I'd certainly recommend it.

There are plenty of quite unusual risotto recipes floating around - Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy has a few wonderful recipes, in particular the cauliflower risotto and another with roasted mushrooms and lots of parsley. I'll waffle on about them another time.

OMFG

2009-07-15T11:22:00.004+01:00

I don't like to laugh at people, it makes me feel mean, but sometimes it's just too bloody funny. Thanks to the magnificent Barry, here's a bit of, uh, eye candy from a seller on eBay who has touchingly painted this tribute picture of Michael Jackson's chimp, Bubbles, alongside old MJ's glove and hat combo. I'm hyperventilating with disbelief. Here's the description from the seller:

Here is a painting of a child's impression of Bubbles, Michael's beloved Chimp.

The painting is done in acrylics and measures approximately 7" x 10". Painted on good quality acrylic paper, it is not mounted or framed, and leaves the buyer to choose a suitable mounting/frame to suit their own decor.

This lovely chap is bound to enthrall a young child - or maybe and older one too!

It is a tribute to a great star, who sadly died this week, far too soon, and now is reunited with Bubbles.

To suit their own decor?! I'd advise fire, or at least a bin. Starting bid is 99p. Any takers? It's too much. I think I need to lie down.

lost

2009-07-14T12:08:00.002+01:00

Went to Bridge End Garden in my local town yesterday with a friend and got lost in a hedge maze for quite some time. It didn't help that all it made me think of was that scene at the end of The Shining where he's chasing the kid through the maze - plus I was regaling my companion with this story so didn't take note on where we had been or not. Sadly it wasn't snowing, which would have made it more fun, but it was starting to rain.

I've been busy doing random things with friends since last Wednesday, so haven't had time to think much at all.

I ate a small but decadent chocolate pudding yesterday without looking once at the nutrition label. For someone who's a bit fussy about fat and sugar content this was a feat of brilliance. I think it enhanced the experience of eating it. From the way it tasted, it probably had enough calories to fuel a rocket.

night-hunger II

2009-07-10T13:43:00.003+01:00

well, last night I had some horrible dreams about buildings collapsing and being stuck inside with my family without being able to get the padlocked door open and stuff like that. Not good. I also had a dream in which my dear husband was eating a piece of chocolate cake with some kind of vanilla icing, oh yes, I remember the icing very well. He was meant to leave a bit for me, but as I turned around, I saw the last piece disappearing into his mouth. All he did was shrug and say 'want?'. Jesus, was I annoyed. So annoyed that it woke me up.

night-hunger

2009-07-08T13:36:00.002+01:00

Last night I dreamt about a huge canteen in which I was queuing for lunch, but I lost my meal ticket not only once, but twice. What meal ticket? I think I've only ever had about three such things in my life! I think there was chicken involved, and possibly tomatoes. Those kind of foodstuffs are certainly within my experience, but the panic of not being able to have my lunch because I kept dropping the damned ticket was pretty new and quite frightening. Funnily enough, I woke up just after those dreams absolutely ravenous with hunger. There is nothing worse than night-hunger, the kind that talks to you in your sleep and wakes you up feeling cavernously empty. I think I'm quite anxious this week.

this is how things are

2009-07-07T16:48:00.003+01:00

well...

the weekend...

2009-07-06T14:58:00.005+01:00

was strangely symmetrical. Drove to my parents' house whilst listening to poor old Andy Murray losing to Roddick at Wimbledon; drove home on Sunday listening to poor old Roddick losing to Federer. By the way, the world has me to thank for ending that increasingly boring latter match. Yup, I went for a pee in a service station about two points before it was over, leaving Mark to listen to it in the car. When I emerged from the harrowing bowels of the McDonald's loo, he was standing there grinning because I had done SUCH a good job of finishing off the match. It's true, you know.

Families are screwed up, aren't they? I sometimes feel like mine is scarily near the tippy top of the pile of crazies. There are some things I won't write about here, but one of the more minor (yes indeed) things was that upon our arrival on Friday night, my mother took me out into the hallway and showed me that she and my dad have just covered the entire wall next to the stairs with mirrored tiles. I nearly died of horror. Apparently they have been listening to some random quack feng-shui-inspired friend and decided to make a few 'changes'. This also involved my dad hanging a heavy art-deco mirror somewhat precariously over my bedroom door like some kind of booby trap. Nice mirror, bloody weird idea. They are nuts. I love them, but they are absolutely out of their trees.

this is how things are

2009-07-02T11:22:00.002+01:00

You cannot imagine the trouble we've had because of our washing machine...

Dumplings

2009-07-01T13:46:00.000+01:00

I am getting to grips with Chinese-style dumplings, the ones filled with vegetables and minced pork and then steamed, boiled or fried. I think I have them pretty good now. I always seem to be lacking one ingredient or another when I'm making these, but somehow they always turn out OK. But maybe I'm kidding myself and my Dad would wrinkle his nose at them or laugh at me. I'll maybe write up a recipe one day, but that might be telling...

The ritual of chopping, mixing, making dough, rolling and filling is something best shared with other people. It's something I remember doing at home as a teenager with my parents teaching us how to make these little purses over the kitchen table. I never had the patience in those days to do very many, so I'd wander off after a while. It is the kind of thing, though, that brings with it that marvellous feeling of tradition and familial closeness, like pasta making, or the kneading of bread. And then you all sit down to eat it together, which surely is the best thing in the world.

So it is that with my surrogate family of university friends, some of my best memories are of the dumpling 'parties' we used to throw, sometimes with just my flatmates, other times with friends too. We used to gather in the kitchen whilst I made the mix for the filling and kneaded the dough for the cases, and then they would all have a go at filling them and striving to make the perfect shape, curved and pleated like a pair of plump horns. It would take so long that we wouldn't sit down to eat until late, slightly delirious with hunger, but it was always, always worth the wait. I would make a whole load of different dipping sauces and we'd steam piles of baby pak choi to eat with it. Even when we were all full up, if there were any left over there would always be room for a couple more.

Not what I was looking for

2009-06-30T09:46:00.001+01:00

I just came across a link from Google images to a site which teaches you 'how to draw anime hot girls'. I'm not joking. It's so pathetic: I imagine these men who can't get a real girl to like them sitting in their bedrooms at night fantasising about these impossibly proportioned, big-breasted woman-child creatures, trying to draw their own and then having a wank over them. Jesus!

Why, you might wonder, would I be searching on Google images for girls? Well, I'm doing a little job drawing a female character for a charity website. In search of inspiration I innocently (but half knowing-squirmingly) typed 'girl drawing' into the search bar. Really, the stuff that comes up when you hit return is not exactly inspiring me, put it that way.

Obscenities

2009-06-29T13:13:00.004+01:00

Firstly, it is obscenely hot. We have just devoured the leftovers of yesterday's lunch, seated in a most civil manner at the garden furniture outside. I knew it was hot, I know I don't burn easily, but I was definitely getting a little pink out there by the end of the meal. Not good. By the time I'm fifty years old I'll be wrinkled as a scrotum. It's so quiet out there, as if nothing can be bothered to stir itself to do anything. I certainly can't stir myself into action today. I put in a titanic effort to get some roughs sent off before lunchtime, and having crawled painfully, brain bleeding, up to that difficult target at 12.17pm, I duly scoffed as my reward the wondrous foodstuffs we had brought home from our friend Naomi's house. I am now back indoors, belly full, watching my skin gradually grow less radiant and writing this.

Naomi's salads yesterday were a triumph. Pearl barley, tenderstem broccoli, butternut squash, red onions, pumpkin seeds, all brought together companionably under a dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic and parsley. I could eat that salad until I'm sick. Which would be obscene.

Speaking of which, the obscenity I intended to write about was something that I thought I was alone in noticing. That bald one from Masterchef - Gregg Wallace - is it just me or does the way in which he eats make you shudder too? I mean, what kind of weirdo puts cutlery in his mouth so deep and for so long that you think he's trying to eat the bowl of the spoon or see what the metal tastes like? Those poor forks sometimes get fully two seconds of in-mouth action, I swear. When it's his turn to taste the food, I have to look away. It grosses me out. To my delight yesterday, I discovered that Naomi shares my horror - we laughed like drains about it.

I mean, seriously,

2009-06-27T15:13:00.003+01:00

what is the matter with me? I spotted a word I recognised whilst being traumatised by those pictures of the mucous plugs and typed it into the enlightening Wikipedia. What horrors awaited me! Meconium is this horrible dark brown shit that babies pass in the first couple of days after birth. Go on, go and look at the pictures in the link. Sometimes the babies pass it in the uterus and breathe it into their lungs by accident. I need to lie down, this is too much.

I must stay away from these things! I should be working on an illustration and I'm reading about childbirth?

OMFG

2009-06-27T14:47:00.004+01:00

Dear lord, I was just doing a bit of light reading (ha!) over on Dooce and came across this post on mucous plugs. When you're pregnant, a plug of mucus (unsurprising, given its name) forms at the neck of the cervix to block it up. Now sometimes it falls out when a woman is close to her due-date, yeah, it just slips out like some kind of slug or a giant vaginal bogey. I have never heard of such a thing. I Googled it for images, which was probably a big mistake cos now I NEVER NEVER NEVER want to have a child. I thought it was already pretty gross to have to squeeze an enormous thing out from between your legs but holy Christ this was properly sick. I can't believe she wrote about that. Dooce is very funny in places, but it also scares the crap out of me when she jokes about childbirth and other random stuff. That's one brave lady.

Homicide Saturdays

2009-06-27T13:02:00.005+01:00

Today is one of those days when you wish you'd never got out of bed. Everything is a chore, even eating breakfast. We've been to town to do our weekly food shopping. I thought I might die, or at least someone might die at my hands. Saturday mornings in Waitrose easily induce thoughts of homicide - you get the grumpy mothers with three brats in tow, who treat you like you've personally offended them if you don't move out of their way; you get the dozy old couples who can't find anything or reach it once they've found it; you get the impatient young couples like us, who spit out swear words scattershot at adults and children alike. I don't care if your fucking daughter hears me swearing - leave her at home if it matters that much. It would certainly make me swear less or maybe I'll just run my trolley over her head next time. How does that sound, hm?

Right. Calm. Spouse is making soup. I'm sure it will cheer me up. It worries me that food makes me so happy. We bought a crab to have with some pasta tonight, and that will probably make me the happiest person alive for about eight minutes while I'm eating it.

Cheese Fridays

2009-06-26T12:56:00.005+01:00

Nah, I'm just kidding. I can't remember what we ate on Fridays, only that as children my sister and I were left to our own devices on Friday and Saturday nights. Both of my parents worked incredibly hard in the take-away when we were young. I never really appreciated how much they did for us - they sent us to private schools from infancy because they cared for us much more than themselves, and we lived quite an impoverished early existence, sleeping all in one bedroom and sharing the upper floors of the take-away with our employees and other friends. My childhood was filled with their many different faces, most of whom have gone away, but some who remain very dear to me - my aunt and my cousins especially. Most of the people who worked for us always had time for my sister and I - I don't think as an adult I am quite as patient or indulgent with children as they all were.

So on Friday nights, when everyone was busy downstairs with the orders of chicken chow mein and chips with curry sauce, we would run amok, making tents and pretending to be tramps, creating trains of cardboard boxes, trying to brew our own perfume. Our upbringing was crazy - the antithesis of careful parenting. We watched the TV adaptation of Susan Hill's 'The Woman in Black' far too young and I'm still scarred by that experience many years later. I still remember the terror of having to go to bed that night. I'm sitting here in the middle of one of those almighty June thunderstorms and watching clips like this. This bit nearly killed me as a child of eight years old.

Duck Thursdays

2009-06-25T13:31:00.001+01:00

When I was very young and we lived above my parents' take-away, Thursdays were always duck days. My dad would be preparing and roasting ducks all day in his enormous oven, hanging them up on big hooks as they became ready. On those evenings we would each have a leg of duck for dinner accompanied by pak choi or Chinese broccoli and plain rice, with plum sauce for the duck and lots of soy sauce over the whole plate. It was divine, one of the greatest pleasures of my early life.

My dad is probably the best cook I have ever known; his knowledge and skill are so instinctive. I really need to get him to show me how to make some of the things he used to feed us, things that to me are still the purest taste of home. It would be tragic if he didn't tell me the secret of braised belly pork or his unparallelled Hong Kong curry, how to make that weird steamed pork patty or what on earth fish he uses to make homemade fish balls. These are things I must know.

The best Duck Thursday I remember was when one day after school, instead of being brought home, we were taken to the local forest for an impromptu Chinese-style picnic. It was just normal food, which to us was our roast duck dinner, eaten out of foil trays whilst sitting on the water tanks that are dotted around that bit of woodland. I can still recall the way my food looked, all crammed into the tray with the dollop of plum sauce starting to seep and disappear into the rice. I still recall climbing with my sister on those water tanks. My parents were full of surprises, making the ordinary just that little bit extraordinary.

Tonight should be Duck Thursday, but I watch my waistline these days :-).

I was angry last night

2009-06-24T09:54:00.000+01:00

So now what?

2009-06-23T15:25:00.004+01:00

What on earth have I done? It's not like I've got anything interesting to say.

Pillow talk last night was on the subject of the 'value' of art and whether the monetary value of a piece of art (well, we were actually talking about ceramics) is directly linked to its emotional value. How much are we influenced into liking something simply because it is expensive, or is it the opposite case that if we like something that we give it a higher monetary value? Is this always the case? Was it ever the case and if so is it still now? We digressed onto the exclusivity of modern fine art and how buyers such as the Saatchi brothers take it upon themselves to be the tastemakers for the wider population. Are they to blame for all this shite, wanky modern art that is expensive as well as ugly and pointless? I don't think I want to write about that too much today. It was too much of a headfuck last night. This is what you get when two over-educated people get married. It's that thrilling.

But you know, I found it thrilling. I couldn't sleep afterwards.

here we are again...

2009-06-22T15:49:00.003+01:00

So I've decided to start this blog because there are sometimes things that I'd like to write about that don't really fit into my other blogs. I like to rant. My soapbox gets lots of usage in normal life, but these kind of things aren't always suitable to put on a blog based on illustration, design and other arty pursuits. So here I am, writing crap for no particular reason, just being me...