just a link for today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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.