AGAhst

Yes, I know.

I’ve just about got the hang of the stove top – you slide things around sideways rather than turning a knob – but I clearly haven’t quite cracked the ovens yet.  I know that the top one is very hot and the lower one quite cool, and that within either of these the shelf position is crucial in determining the actual cooking temperature, but fine tuning is obviously still beyond me.

I know this to be so because after my best efforts it proved hard if not impossible to distinguish the carrots from the turnips from the onions.  In gas cooker terms I roasted them at gas 6 for about 25 minutes then turned it down to 3 for another half an hour or so.  Clearly I need to practise more, because they all ended up black.

The oxtail stew was still superb though.

DROs

Earlier this evening, I mistakenly described making risotto as boring, which it isn’t. *  Z put me right by pointing out that, in the right circumstances, making risotto can be quite comforting.  So boring it isn’t.

It is a routine, though.  At least the early stages (the fun comes at the end, when you transform this soggy mess into something uniquely exquisite, or thereabouts): soften the onion, add the rice, then half an hour of ladle of stock, stir, ladle of stock, stir, ladle of stock – with exact timing and quantities, so you’re not even allowed to wander off and do something else.  But you are allowed to think, so naturally my thoughts turned to breakfast.

Now that’s a routine!  Everybody must have one.  (Or at least everybody who actually eats breakfast.**) How else would we get to coffee time?  I’m not suggesting it has to be the same every day, of course; but the breakfast routine is the default when any or all of imagination, energy and willpower fail.  I won’t bore (ha!) you with the details of mine, except to say that feeding the cat figures in there, somewhere between the tea and the toast phases, and that timing (which I find is a key attribute of a good routine) has to be flexible: which keeps the routine from becoming a habit.

Which brings me to what I really wanted to say.  Routines are good, because they can be pulled in to take care of unimportant but necessary business.  Habits are bad, because they can’t be pushed out to make way for anything.  The trick is not to let the former turn into the latter.  Thinking helps.

 

 

* I will never tire of repeating my definition of boredom, which is wanting to do something but not having anything you want to do, even though I know I delighted (not to say bored) you enough with it years ago.

**Marco Pierre White once claimed he always had a three-course breakfast: a coffee, a cigarette, and a cough.

Best laid plans

It’s been an unusual couple of days, which has to be good.  Unusual is good.  About eleven o’clock Wednesday, as I was finishing my cold coffee and mapping out the plan, which entailed all sorts of domesticity, the phone rang.  Well, there’s an event!

Sam, who’s between jobs and delivering cars around the country to scrape a living, was stuck at Reading station, having missed the train to Newbury by four minutes.  (I was subsequently told that the timetables have been shifted forward by four minutes due to the absence of the scheduled leaves on the lines; I’m not sure I believe this.)  Could I help?  Course I could.  Pick you up at Reading station in about fifteen.

If you’ve been to Reading station recently, you probably need counselling.  There’s been a huge cosmetic makeover, which as far as I can work out has halved the number of platforms whilst doubling the time needed to get between any two locations.  (I’m probably being unfair; after all, they’ve only been at it for three years, hardly enough time to break something which was working fine, let alone repair it.)

I go there rarely nowadays, and he even less, so neither of us was particularly aware of the various  ‘pick-up’ or ‘drop-off’ points.  We had a hilarious series of phone conversations – “What can you see?”  “Cars in a car park.”  “I can see a pub called, um –“  “You’re in the wrong place…” “So are you!” – before we finally hooked up and set off for Greenham Common.  We had a really good chat, which wouldn’t otherwise have happened. 

Next day, Bee phoned me to let me know that someone had done a bit of road rage and seemed to want to reverse into her as she was parking, so she’d switched on her hazard lights, seen the aggressor off and caught the train to London.  When she got back six hours later, the hazards were still on, but the car battery  wasn’t.  She called the rescue people and spent some time wandering round Waitrose until they called back to suggest that she’d best be getting a taxi home. 

The taxi driver, on learning of her predicament, suggested that, instead of taking her home, he used his jump leads to start her car.  Naturally, she snapped this offer up.  He then thought he’d better follow her, just to make sure she didn’t break down on the way.  I don’t know yet whether he made any charge, I’ll find out; I suspect not.  Aren’t people decent?

The other good news is that Waitrose now do ossobuco cuts of veal, so that’s Saturday’s dinner sorted.  It does mean that I’ve had to buy a pack of the despised saffron, but hey! One in ten years is pardonable, innit?  Not even I would put turmeric in a risotto alla Milanese.

Bouillabaisse – an update

Well, after last Friday, I know how to spell it, and, sort of, how to make it.  All I need to do now is find out how to pronounce it.  

It was agreed that cod cheeks are nearly as good as monkfish fillets, at a fraction of the price.  And that clams are a waste of space – you end up with empty shells.  Whole prawns too.  I’d rejected the giant nine-inch prawns (Dublin bay, langoustines, whatever they’re called) at £5.50 each, beautiful though they were, in favour of the smaller, though still huge, basic ones; but once you’ve picked the meat out of all that head and crawly bits and shell, you end up with quite a small bit of actual edible.  The picking’s fun, though: large finger bowls, plenty of napkins, and a sense of humour essential.

Also, is saffron the biggest con since Ponzi schemes?  (Answer, no, it predates them by centuries.  Or does it?  A question for another day.)   The stuff smells mildly nice and costs more, by weight, than avruga caviar.  Which, I told, at least tastes of something.  By the time you’ve diluted half a teaspoon of saffron into a litre of fish stock and white wine, all you’re left with is yellow.  Next time, I might try a pinch of that turmeric that’s been in the spice section for three years and probably doesn’t taste of much either by now.

I used Rick Stein’s recipe from ‘Taste of the Sea’, which worked fine, mostly, though it does contain a few quirks.  For example, you have to peel your tomatoes (no problem) and retain the skins – which are never seen again.  And he suggests that you should slice your mussels before adding them in the shell.  I somehow missed out the celery in the vegetable base, but I think I got away with it.

I have resolved to visit Frost’s in Smelly Alley more frequently (not hard, given twice in the past six years), buy whatever they tell me to, and take the meal from there.  Real-time cooking, as Keith Floyd used to say between slurps.

Gujerati(ish) cabbage curry

(Requested by Blue Witch.  The most appealing cabbage ever?)

For two with other dishes:

Half a savoy cabbage**

Half a medium onion

1 teasp. each black mustard seeds, fennel seeds, kalonji*

1-2 small dried red chillis.

Salt

Vegetable oil

Garam masala

* You can leave this out, but don’t omit the mustard or fennel. 
** Save the other half as cow bait.

·         Finely shred the cabbage and slice the onion.

·         Heat some oil in a heavy flameproof pan and chuck in all the spices.

·         Cook until the seeds start jumping and the chillis turn blackish.

·         Add the onion and cook until it starts to brown.

·         Add the cabbage and a little water and salt.  Stir and cook until the cabbage wilts, then add 1 teasp. garam masala.

·         Cover and cook in a slow oven (gas 3) for half an hour or so.

Aubergine Pepper and Tomato “Moroccan” Braise

Viv was an instinctive cook, with creative flair, who rarely followed a recipe to the letter, never mind wrote one down.  So it’s not surprising that when I looked more closely at this I could see that you might have some difficulties recreating it.  As indeed she probably would’ve too; it was only at my insistence that she recorded her successes in this book, and then, as I remember her telling me, just as aides memoires.  I don’t think she ever made the same thing twice, except when she intended to.

I toyed with trying to convert it into a proper recipe, with quantities, temperatures, times, and so forth; but then I thought ‘don’t destroy its spirit.’  So here’s the original: make of it what you will.

 

 

I’d like to think the dried ginger and the sultanas made their way in there at some stage.

Anchovy stuffed mushrooms

(Requested by Z and Lo.)

This is a Viv* recipe, which I’ve never tried, but it looks pretty tasty, and very easy.  I do remember the richness – at a dinner party, I seem to recall.  I suspect the size of the mushrooms is important, so as to provide enough stalk for the filling.

6 anchovy fillets (in oil, drained, not the dry salted ones)

6 medium cup mushrooms

Olive oil

Small bunch parsley

Pepper

• Heat the overhead grill (preferably over a solid griddle plate).
• Pull out the stalks of the mushrooms and mince, or whizz in a blender, with the anchovies and parsley.  Season with pepper to taste.
• Brush the mushrooms all over with oil and grill bottom up until slightly brown.
• Turn and fill with the mixture, and grill for a further few minutes until beginning to sizzle.

 

Good as part of pre-dinner canapés.  Very rich so allow 1 – 2 each only.

 

*For those who don’t know, Viv is my much-missed late wife.

Recipes – the rethink

Well, this afternoon I looked through that book of homegrown recipes I mentioned a few posts ago, and, er, can I back off a tad from my rashly offered proposition, please?  The broccoli soup was the best of the bunch.

I remember them, more or less.  Some were one-offs; others get revisited occasionally; others still have become trustworthy staples.  Don’t get me wrong; they’re all good dishes.  I know they are, they wouldn’t have been written down otherwise, would they? 

And therein lies the problem.  The writing down was often done in a state of post-prandial “that was delicious”-ness, and so was not necessarily as complete, accurate, or indeed legible as it could have been.  I’ll say no more, but my fledgling reputation as a ‘cook’ would be trashed if I were to publish some of this stuff in its raw state.

I don’t do failure, so instead here’s a plan B.  Select the dish you fancy best from the list below, and I will do my best to write it down proper-like and post it:

Anchovy stuffed mushrooms

Aubergine, pepper and tomato ‘Moroccan’ braise

Lamb-stuffed aubergine

Gujerati cabbage curry

Carrot and lettuce soup

Duck with apple

Gwyn’s cheese straws

Kidneys in mushroom and onion sauce

Lamb with clementines

Meatballs in Med veg sauce

Mushroom soup

Prawn stuffed peppers

Thai prawn curry

Belly pork with peppers

Quick pea and leek soup

Rich squid sauce for pasta

Roast squash and tomato soup

 

 

 

Cook? Moi?

I've just been accused by my dear friend Z of being a cook, which I suppose I am, though I rarely do it properly these days, unless motivated.  But I remembered that I have over the years kept a book of things I, or others around me, have made up and thought good enough to preserve.  (The recipes I mean, not the dishes.)
So here's the first in an occasional series.  I will label them 'cooking', and you will get the original text: there's no way I'm re-typing that lot.