Va va voom! BMW (banana, maple, walnut) Granola

Posted on May 21, 2013

I’m not really a breakfast-y person during the week, because I don’t like eating in a hurry (and weekday mornings are always a hurry). The joyless wolfing of a lukewarm bagel on the way out of the door leaves me cold, so I’d rather do without, or settle for my patented standby of espresso and a couple of Medjool dates. However, a fresh batch of granola creates the exception to the rule. And not least because it’s impossible to eat slowly.

Yes, you can buy granola pretty easily, but making it is completely worthwhile and you won’t look back. Not only can you tweak it the way you want it, but it’s a soothing, quite nurturing experience, as you coax an oaty mess into aromatic, golden clusters. The basic components of granola are simple: oats (I use Flahavan’s jumbo oats because they keep their shape well and if I’m honest, I love the packaging too) + syrup (the sticky mixture which will bind, flavour and sweeten) + bits (the nuts, seeds, dried fruit or whatever else you want to add). I was inspired by too-ripe bananas, and idly wondered whether they would translate to a granola flavouring. And they do.

175g jumbo oats
150ml water
around 3 tablespoons soft brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 ripe bananas, pureed (easiest to pass through a sieve; a few lumps are OK)
knob of butter
sunflower oil
soft brown sugar
salt
generous handful of walnuts
5-6 dates

Preheat the oven to 170 and line a wide tray with a reasonable side (so that you can stir and coax without pinging it everywhere) with greaseproof paper.

Then make a syrup with the water and sugar, and let it reduce a little, before beating in the knob of butter and maple syrup, off the heat. Stir in the banana puree. If you wanted to add spices (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg etc), now would be the time to do it. Pour in the oats and a good slug of sunflower oil, and stir quickly and carefully – you don’t want to crush the oats. It’s now a sticky, unappealing mess, and that’s fine. Spread it onto the baking sheet, sprinkle over a good pinch of salt flakes (try smoked salt if you like – it works really nicely!) and put in the oven.

Timings will depend on your oven entirely. Give it 20-25 minutes or so and review. You’ll probably find that the outside is toasting nicely and the inside is sticky and doughy. Carefully dislodge the lumps that are forming, making sure that you move the crisper edge bits to the middle, and the sticky middle bits out to the edge. Sprinkle over another spoon of soft brown sugar and put it back in the oven. You will probably need to do this 2-3 more times, at intervals of 15 minutes or so. Keep the mixture moving so that it toasts evenly, and add a small spoon of sugar each time.

When it’s looking golden pretty much all over, take out and cool. The lumps may not look quite like perfect clusters yet, but they will dry out and bond as it cools. Now you can toast the walnuts on a separate sheet in the still-hot oven – they won’t take long. Crumble those in to the cooled granola, and add chopped dates. A nice tip, if you can stand the thought of more sugar, is to roll the chopped dates in some Billington’s golden icing sugar. If you haven’t tried it, this stuff is amazing, with a butterscotch-y flavour, and will add a bit more mellow, maple warmth to the whole thing.

Stick it in a jar and enjoy breakfast heaven for a few days.

Once you’ve got to grips with the oats + syrup + bits rule, you can pretty much go wild. Try apple compote in place of bananas and add hazelnuts and sultanas. Rhubarb works, with some gingery syrup. I reckon when plums are in season, that could work too, with almond syrup… and maybe some toasted bits of marzipan added to the final cooled crunch.

Categories: Food

Tagged: banana, breakfast, granola

How do you learn to cook? Delia says ‘not with books’

Posted on May 14, 2013

Today’s news is that Delia Smith says that you cannot learn to cook through books alone and that lessons are essential. I knew instantly on scanning the headline that I didn’t agree, but I thought it was worth more rumination. Which follows.

Firstly, to put it into perspective, Delia is launching an online cookery school, so her comments are largely weighted towards wanting to promote that. Which is well and good. If anyone can take food online, and make it make sense, Delia surely can. But what made me a little bit sad about this proclamation from a cook that we’ve grown up with and widely admire, is that it implies a little bit of ‘right and wrong’, or ‘competence or non-competence’. That books are well and good, but you still won’t be doing it right. There’s also the cymbal-bashingly-loud irony of this from the author of ‘How to Cook’ and many more, but that’s not really the point.

I think what Delia is missing is that there are a hundred ways to learn to cook. There’s being inspired by a memorable meal, there’s experimentation with foods or methods you’ve never tried before, there’s the nostalgia of family traditions and foods you loved as a child. There’s necessity, when you simply have to do it. And there’s love.

I had cookery lessons at school, and hated them. It was a rather prissy girls’ school where we learned to cook a repertoire that was deemed necessary for every young lady to have in her apron pocket for all of the entertaining she was bound to do, once she was safely married off. Chicken liver pate featured heavily. I don’t remember enjoying it. I learned to cook for a number of reasons (you can read my post Why I Cook here for the whole, silly story if you like) but what informed me the most was just trying, making mistakes, using the inspiration from every book about food I could get my hands on, and later working in kitchens and getting really confident with food, and simply loving it. After my kids, that is my love.

Books were important. Sometimes, it’s all you have. It certainly was, when I was a 15-year-old in a Somerset village, before the advent of broadband. But so is a sense of adventure, and of not being afraid to make mistakes. It won’t always be perfect. Sometimes it will be a spectacular disaster. But hey, no-one died (hopefully) and you try again. And that’s why cooking is so brilliant, because the barriers to entry are incredibly low – all you need is some food and the willingness to try. Yet the suggestion that you cannot learn it without lessons rather drowns that particular beauty of it out, and that’s a shame.

I am not knocking lessons by any stretch of the imagination. Some elements of cooking are technical. Some are mysterious. Lessons help. Sometimes lessons bring a much-needed confidence boost to the unsure cook. I don’t doubt that Delia’s online lessons will be an excellent resource for those who want instruction. But I think the truth is that for most of us, whether we’re pro, complete novice or just really enthusiastic, it’s food – in the eating, the enjoying, the feeling – that teaches us to cook, not lessons.

What do you think? How did you learn to cook? I’m interested to know how you see it…

Categories: Food

Tagged: cooking, food

Orange Spice Cake with Orange and Ginger Glaze

Posted on February 24, 2013

I’ve been dying to find a way to cook with orange bitters ever since I bought a bottle with which to make Martinez cocktails. They are delicious, and I was convinced there was a further use for them.

Anyway, yesterday was a cold, oh-shit-it’s-still-winter kind of day, which led to some baking experimentation. And the result was quite nice.

Ingredients

125g butter
175g plain flour
Teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
150g sugar
Zest of a small orange
Tablespoon of syrup from ginger in syrup, or teaspoon ground ginger
Scant half teaspoon of each: ground cardamom, nutmeg
7-8 drops Orange Bitters (optional)
3 tablespoons icing sugar
Juice of small orange
Piece of ginger in syrup (optional)

Preheat the oven to 175 and prepare a loaf tin.

Gently melt the butter and beat in the sugar, then the eggs. Stir in the ginger syrup, spices, orange zest and sprinkle in the bitters. Stir well and sift in the flour and baking powder, combining to a soft mixture. Add a splash of milk or dollop of natural yogurt if it feels too stiff.

Spoon into the tin and bake at 175 for about 40-45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. While the cake is still in its tin and starting to cool, heat the orange juice gently in a pan and sift in the icing sugar. Warm through gently , stirring, until the sugar starts to dissolve. If you like, finely dice the ginger in syrup and add to the icing syrup mixture. Skewer the cake at intervals and spoon the mixture over while it’s still warm.

Leave to cool, or serve warm as a pudding. Some greek yogurt would be nice on the side, maybe with some segmented oranges sprinkled with orange flower water, too

Categories: Food

Tagged: baking, cake, orange bitters

Welsh gin (you heard me…)

Posted on February 22, 2013

I’m in Wales. On a solo break to the middle of Pembrokeshire, to think, and write and to enjoy not being in London. So far, so good. I’ve just ventured outside of Pembrokeshire to the heady heights of Tesco, Cardigan, just up the coast. On the hunt for essential supplies (gin, tonic water, ice), I assumed my choices would be limited to Gordons and Schweppes. Oh, how wrong I was.

Lurking on the shelf beside Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, Hendricks and own brand, I found something I’d thought belonged strictly in folklore: Welsh gin. Yes, it exists. I first heard about this last summer, in a gift shop in Laugharne (famous as the home of Dylan Thomas and of his boathouse, which you can still visit). Annoyingly, I was only allowed to stare at the dusty £25 bottle at the time and guess what it might taste like, as no tasters were on offer. However, this beauty appeared again this week, in the unlikely setting of Cardigan Tesco’ spirits aisle: Brecon Special Reserve Gin at £15.99. Reader, I bought him.

And the verdict? Well. First of all, here comes the science. The Welsh bit comes from Penderyn barley spirit and Brecon water. The botanicals are “from the four corners of the world”: juniper, orange peel, cassia bark, licorice root, angelica root, ground nutmeg, coriander seeds, lemon peel and orris root powder. It was even awarded “Gold Best in Class” in the Worldwide Gin 40% category at the International Wines & Spirits Competition 2011.

To the taste, it’s… well, it’s honest. I mostly drink gin to blend with tonic well (and knowing gin well enough – ahem – to enjoy the variety of different gins with different tonics), but for me the test is whether it stands up, with enough complexity, alone. On its own, Brecon is interesting and robust, like a whisky. But with tonic (Schweppes and lemon garnish), it’s somewhat lost. So, I’ll be taking the rest of this bottle home, to experiment further. I’ve not given up on it yet. Just because G&T doesn’t suit it, doesn’t mean that it’s a lost cause.

Interestingly enough, on the nose alone, it’s lemon peel and angelica that comes through. I suspect that, with a little love and understanding – perhaps to draw out some of the subtleties that are so subtle, they’re drowned out by tonic and ice – this gin can shine. I’ll see how almond-y Maraschino liqueur works with it, or maybe a dry, nutty vermouth. I can imagine it’d make a great sort of Gimlet, with lime juice and perhaps a less abrasive and more sympathetic elderflower cordial (rather than lime cordial).

But either way, I’m drawn to the idea of a gin from a place that I love, and perhaps will manage to muster up the ideal treatment for it in time for St. David’s day. I shall experiment and report back. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

You can buy Brecon Special Reserve online here.

Categories: Gin

Campari Aversion Therapy Experiment: Negroni-inspired Granita

Posted on January 13, 2013

The Negroni is one of those drinks – along with the bloody Mary – that I think sounds and looks amazing, yet tastes vile. We’ll talk about bloody Mary another time, but for now, let’s talk about the Negroni. It’s a sexy-looking, solid drink: like a molten sunset in a glass. It contains gin. It sounds nostalgic and exotic. And yet, I’ve never managed a whole one without grimacing. And I’ve identified the reason: Campari.

Before you write me off entirely – and I realise I’m in a minority here, especially with the people I drink with – let me assure you that I am working on it. I’d like to become a seasoned Campari drinker, who can nonchantly chug a Negroni on a warm summer’s evening and the wonder idly about having an Americano next. I’d mostly like not to be beaten by it.

So I decided to take the bull by the horns this week, but gently. And the vehicle for this Campari Aversion Therapy experiment? A Negroni-inspired granita. And before you get excited, I omitted the gin a genuine Negroni would contain on purpose, to keep the freezing-unfriendly alcohol content down.

Do you know what? It was pretty bloody good. I might even add more Campari next time.

Negroni-inspired Granita

400ml water
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 large oranges
slug of sweet vermouth
slug of Campari

Heat the water in a pan, adding the sugar and bubbling til it’s reduced by about a third. Chuck in a sliver of orange zest at this stage, if you like.

Let the syrup cool a little and then stir in the juice of the two oranges (a few pithless chunks of the flesh won’t hurt either) and a slug each of sweet vermouth and Campari. Taste and see whether you think it needs more.

Pour into a ceramic or glass freezer-proof bowl and freeze. After a few hours, take out and scrape at the surface with a fork, roughly breaking up the ice. Re-freeze and repeat this after another few hours. When you want to serve it, take the granita out of the freezer about 5 minutes before and scrape / bash it up with a fork once again. Campari officionados might like this with an extra shot poured over.

Categories: Food, Gin

Tagged: Campari, desserts, granita, Negroni

A Year In Real Life

Posted on December 28, 2012

I suggested a little Twitter challenge yesterday, because I feel so strongly about Twitter being merely a vehicle to enriching, entertaining and sometimes joyful in-real-life encounters… to me, “in real life” is the point. To illustrate why, here are some highlights of my Year In Real Life:

January: Barcelona

I was visiting Barcelona with a friend anyway, and DM-ed S, who I’ve known on Twitter forever, but had never met. Did she want to meet up? The three of us spent a beautiful afternoon in Parc Guell beneath a luminous January afternoon sky, and talked about the world. I will always remember it.

March: Tea therapy and photography

Twitter is great for info, requests and asking for help. I needed some pro shots of my flat and cheekily asked a few Twitter friends, who I know were handy with a camera, if they could spare an hour in return for lunch. P responded in the blink of an eye. “You know I will,” he said. We’ve chatted for years but never met. The photo shoot was the silliest and funniest hour, and by the end of lunch, it felt as though we’d known each other forever. Since there, we’ve spent many an hour drinking tea and counselling each other on life in general. We’re yin-and-yang friends – taking it in turns to give and receive help. I wouldn’t be without him.

May: Food

In May I went to a food festival and finally met up with G, someone who I’d enjoyed chatting to and who had been incredibly supportive of my fledgling food blog. In the ensuing months, we’ve eaten out plenty, cooked together and talked loads. I knew she was a keeper when she joined my kids and I on November’s Save Lewisham A&E march… and stoically carried a pasta maker the entire way, so that she could make ravioli after.

August: Girls, girls, girls

August kicked off with a holiday in Wales. So, on the way, we swung by Neath to have lunch with R, who has made me laugh like a drain pretty much every day with her tweets for a couple of years. Her amazing son and my nutjob daughters got on great, we laughed a lot, and Neath Harvester still probably hasn’t recovered.

Later that month I resigned from my job and, post-deed, finally met up with C, a Twitter friend and, as it turned out, fellow SE Londoner. I needed that drink, and as it turned out, I needed her in my life. She is now officially one of my favourite people and that of my youngest daughter, too. She makes life brilliant.

And, at the end of this bonanza month, L came to stay with me. She must be in one of the first hundred or so people I followed and therefore a constant in my Twitter stream. We’d shared some stories and words of wisdom when I was having a hard time earlier in the year, and in a funny way, we were already close. In real life, we are unstoppably ridiculous. She’s just spent Christmas with us. She is, honestly, one of my very best friends.

September: A blog post

In September, I wrote this blog post on Twitter and Depression, which I’d wanted to write for ages. It was a subject close to my heart. In doing so, I’d asked Twitter for their thoughts about the subject, and I received DMs and emails from people who were incredibly open and honest about their experiences, struggles and little victories. The best thing of all, though, was introducing two people to each other, who had experienced similar issues, and one was further ahead in the process and had a positive story to tell. They subsequently spoke, and I think they still do. That, to me, was worth it, alone.

November: Copenhagen

By November, it had been a tumultuous year, and I needed a break, emotionally, mentally and physically. H, a Danish angel with whom I’d chatted for about a year, egged me on to book a flight to Copenhagen. We knew we had plenty in common, from friends, to a love of London, to music and even the type of work we do. H pretty much handed over her beautiful apartment to me for a week, while she house-sat for a friend nearby. In a week, we talked about everything and visited beautiful places, but more than anything else, she was was incredibly nurturing when I most needed it – I suppose for some people, Twitter can tell little stories of their life, and she knew plenty about mine. That week was a turning point in the year for me, when I got strong again, and I will always remember her generosity and warmth. We will be friends for life, whether she likes it or not.

So, you see, dear reader, it’s possible. And not only that, it’s compelling. I’ve rarely been disappointed by people in real life – in actual fact, they are often an even more luminous version of that person who shares things, makes you laugh or just listens. There are less positive stories of course, but I believe good judgement and the goodness of people prevails. If you’re not a natural in-real-lifer when it comes to Twitter, think about that challenge. And if you do it, let me know what happens?

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: friends, Twitter

Strange fruit (well, veg)

Posted on December 17, 2012

I’m always a sucker for something new. Hurray for foodie adventurism, I say – it’s rarely failed me (main exception: Cheese and pickle flavour Cheddars) so you can imagine my delight when I rootled through Natoora’s SE1 sub-arch shop and found black radish. Now, that’s a vegetable that means business. Don’t let the radish description fool you: it looks like a black carrot on the outside, with the densest of black skin and inside, the whitest of clean, crunchy flesh. Flavour-wise, it’s peppery, like watercress.

Let me set expectations, first. You won’t be getting a taste sensation that you’ve never ever experienced before. Rather, that intriguing thing where something looks like one thing, but tastes like another. I’m a complete freak for anything peppery (I wish to be embalmed in wasabi when I shuffle off my own particular mortal coil. Please and thank you), so I was delighted to give it a whirl. But I’ll be honest: the main attraction was that it looks so darned dramatic.

So, one black radish. Two different ways.

1. The pretty plate: Black radish, truffle oil, pecorino, pomegranate and pea shoots

Beyond the last 3 elements being pleasingly alliterative, this combination actually makes complete sense (and I do believe Bocca di Lupo do something similar). Crunchy, slightly peppery radish (scrub, and mandolin into translucent slivers) brings a dramatic plot line. Truffle oil (muddled with light olive oil, salt, pepper and a spritz of lemon) provides a mellow cohesive element, that draws in the salty-sour tang of pecorino. You could leave it there, but the addition of ruby red pomegranate seeds and pea shoots works. I ate this on its own, but it would be excellent alongside some rare roast beef.

2: The whimperingly-good plate of goodness: Black radish, mushrooms, walnuts, miso dressing, spring onions, pea shoots

This was a different kettle of fish altogether and perhaps shows how adaptable some ingredients can be. From a delicate-pretty salad to a cor-blimey-woof plate of delight. I loved it. This time the scrubbed black radish was julienned, and mixed with a brown rice miso dressing (brown rice miso paste, a dribble of boiling water, a dash of lemon juice or yuzu seasoning, and a spot of sweet-sour pomegranate molasses – it’s all balance. Keep tasting til you’re happy). Pan-fry some button mushrooms, thinly sliced, until they’ve taken on a bit of colour, and add. Roughly chopped walnuts (the pale, freshly acidic-tasting, waxy kind – older, bitterer ones will do this no favours) and thinly sliced spring onions got chucked in, and a sprinkle of pea shoots for earthy goodness.

This is worth leaving for 20 minutes or so, to absorb flavour and come to room temperature. I can imagine that eating this chilled would kill off a lot of the flavoursome joy you’d otherwise find. If you wanted to make a meal of it, some plain udon noodles on the side would be ample accompaniment. There’s such a lot of intense flavour and texture going on, you need little more.

I’ll be the first to admit that these babies are not easy to find, but do try Natoora and watch out for them at markets and the quirkier veg shops. And, I’d give the above a try with pink radishes too. And possibly even the latter with raw Jerusalem artichoke for a variation on a theme.

Categories: Food

Tagged: black radish, Natoora, salad

A first lesson in activism

Posted on November 19, 2012

It’s sometimes worth reminding ourselves what activism really means.

I am taking my daughters on their first march next weekend. To be fair, it’s my first proper one, really, unless you count the delegation I led to our form tutor’s office at school to demand that the common room stereo be reinstated. I thought it was about time, and the reason was really very simple.

Last week, we found ourselves in the shiny and rather wonderful children’s A&E department at Lewisham hospital. My daughters noticed the posters dotted around, encouraging action over the proposed closing of the hospital’s A&E and maternity services, and asked what they were for. I explained to them (and this explains it perhaps more fully) that because another hospital was effectively failing, this prospering and vital hospital was being partially sacrificed. No, it didn’t make much sense to them, either.

Having ruminated, my 7-year-old daughter pretty much summed it up. “That’s stupid,” she announced. “Everyone must know that’s stupid.” Well, yes, we do all know it’s stupid. Beyond stupid. And we can huff and puff about it, and grumble and comment on blog posts about it and tell people to RT things about it. But actually, what good does that do? It’s just doing something to make us feel like we’ve done our bit, without actually having to get off our arses.

And this, currently, is my problem. I’ve seen too many tweets recently, commanding people to ‘RT if you agree’ with a certain cause. It has sent me into spasms, quite frankly, the short-sightedness and laziness of this ‘armchair activism’. So lots of people agree? So what? Because it’s not about agreeing, it’s about what you do with that collective agreement. Yet so many people seem to draw the line at actually acting, when it comes to their own brand of activism. Oh, the irony.

So on Saturday, my children will have their first taste of activism at the Save Lewisham A&E march and demonstration, because it is their chance to say what they feel. They will learn that if you don’t like something, you should say so. They will see that when something is unjust, it can be fought. They will know that their view counts. I will not have them believe that simply agreeing with a sentiment is enough, when something truly important is at stake.

Saturday’s march might not halt the closure of these vital local services. But this is no reason not to join. If the first lesson in activism is anything, it’s quite simply, to act. Seemingly simple, but worth the reminder sometimes.

The march for Lewisham A&E will congregate at the Lewisham roundabout by the DLR station at 2pm on Saturday 24 November. Follow @savelewishamae for updates.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: activism

In praise of the cocktail hour

Posted on November 5, 2012

Cocktail shakers, cocktail cherries, cocktail dresses, cocktail sticks, cocktail rings, cocktail napkins, cocktail cabinets. They had it sussed, in the 1950s, didn’t they? Of course they did. For they knew they pleasure of the cocktail hour, back then.

Fast forward to today, and as the traditionally-allocated Hour of Delights approaches, we are more often than not rammed into a train carriage at that very moment with a hundred other miserable commuters, all dreaming of pouring wine down our throats when we get through the door. But whatever happened to the cocktail hour? Where is that magical part of the day when the night is still young, and we are still brimming with gin-based hope and verve?

Somewhere, years ago, it slipped away, it seems. Holidays notwithstanding (although that tends to involve multiple hours rather than the more delicate and refined singular hour), the cocktail hour is becoming extinct. Gone is the will to freshen up and look a little sharp at the end of the day, recklessly exchanged for the want of a onesie, post-7pm. Dead as a dodo is the happy skip to the record player to spin some cocktail-friendly rumba, for the remote control is mightier than the stylus. Abandoned is the cocktail cabinet, for a wine box allows for a greatly expedited filling of the glass.

Yet consider this, while you toil homeward tonight: what could be more heartening than a pre-dinner cocktail, mixed with care, while some gentle mambo caresses your ears? What could be more gladdening than an excuse to slick on lipstick, or don that rather sexy hat? What, indeed? Well, the nostalgic glamour of the cocktail hour can be yours any day of the week, my friends, and life will be more refined for it. You have none of the paraphernalia, you say? Fret not, for here is the secret. Listening? The cocktail hour – the poor, wretched, forgotten cocktail hour – is now available as a state of mind. To be frank, it has to be, in this day and age. But it can exist! And we must embrace it.

So hurry home this evening, with a glint in your eye and a spring in your step. Glide through the door, kiss your loved one like a movie star and get mixing. Forget the television, silence the phones, don’t worry about dinner. Instead: look sharp, put your best cocktail glasses forward, lower the lights and allow Doris Day to murmur “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” in the background. Mix your chosen cocktail (and honestly, make it a glass of wine if you must) like you mean it. Like a sophisticate. Like a cocktail lover with an hour to spare.

Cin cin.

Categories: Gin

Tagged: Cocktails

It’s Autumn. So get your pie on!

Posted on October 11, 2012

Even if I haven’t been cooking much lately, Brockley Market remains a staple feature of my Saturday mornings. It’s like a form of weekend punctuation. The opening brackets to Saturday and Sunday, if you will.

Creature of habit hat I am, there are certain things I nearly always buy: Kentish pak choi, rainbow-hued carrots, Swiss chard, freshly laid eggs, whichever cheese makes me drool that particular week. It’s often supplemented by more whimsical buys, inspired by the weather or my mood. And let’s face it, Autumn = cosy food. Which = pie.

Fortunately Brockley Market has a least 3 good meat sellers every week, with pretty good ranges and as yet, nothing that’s ever disappointed. So, my pie mission began. Deep red chuck steak and lambs kidney secured, I tottered home to make what I consider to be the regalest of all pies. I’m no offal officionado and wanted to make sure that I got it right (many a kidney aversion has been sparked by chewing on leathery overcooked lumps of the stuff in school pies) so I looked to Nigella for guidance.

For the filling, I pretty much followed her recipe for Steak and Kidney pudding here, but substituted ale with red wine, and shitake mushrooms instead of fresh ones and used bought pastry to turn pudding into pie. It was pretty much on the money – tender beef, kidney cooked gently enough to meld and work with the beef rather than form a splinter faction, and a rich gravy to make it the pie of dreams. Steamed and still crisp Kentish pak choi was a really good foil for it, too.

Little tip – I glazed the pie with egg yolk before it went into the oven, and then once again about 10 minutes before it came out. Super crispy but still delicate crust, which even withstood the microwave when I served up leftovers for lunch the next day.

Categories: Food

Tagged: autumn, Brockley Market, pie

Things that are A Perfectly Good Meal

Posted on October 10, 2012

The observant among you will have noticed that I’ve not blogged much about food recently. It’s mostly because I’ve been in an odd, slightly transient patch of life, between jobs and with a lot of thinking and a faffling sort of doing. My usually ever-present urge to cook tends to sit best with routine and general contentment. So I’ve cooked a bit, but not with my usual joy and verve.

But this is not a bad thing, I now realise. I’ve delighted in the simpler side of food, listening to my cravings, giving in to laziness and enjoying the kind of basic pairings it’s easy to forget. And I’ve cut way down on washing up.

So, in my strange few weeks of late, I’ve reminded myself of the simple Things That Make A Perfectly Good Meal. Here are some of them:

Cheese and fruit. Why don’t we do this more? Strawberries and Comte, goats’ cheese log and figs, feta with peach or watermelon. A genuine delight
Cornflakes and cold, cold milk (ideal eaten at 10pm, standing in your pants in the kitchen)
Cookies dipped in milk (pants optional, bed recommended)
Crisp, thinly sliced cucumber sprinkled with rice wine vinegar, maybe with a few slivers of red chilli
Salami and cornichons (Lina Stores and Natoora – via Ocado – do brilliant fennel-y finnochiola)
Bread and butter – the best you can lay your hands on. Sprinkle of Maldon salt for life on the edge
New potatoes – boiled and crushed – and herbs – parsley, sorrel, basil, mint, whatever you got, really
Heinz cream of tomato soup (but we know that already, right?)
Steak (try M&S flat iron steak, it a good cut and flavour, reasonably priced and easy to grab with your after-work wine and tub of mini Rocky Road Bites) well-seasoned, flashed in the pan, hacked up and sprinkled with rocket (get dressed for this one)

It’s not to say I haven’t cooked, and more posts to follow on my pared down food adventures, but the break has been rather nice.

Categories: Food

Tagged: food, lazy, no pants, pants

Kapow! What I think about the Telegraph’s Wonder Women

Posted on October 5, 2012

This week, the Telegraph launched ‘Wonder Women’, which is a new section for (although not exclusively) and by women. In editor Emma Barnett’s introduction to the concept, she explains, “all too often ‘women’s content’ is either lipsticks and handbags or BMW – bitching, moaning and whining about the ‘plight of being a woman’ – a tone of coverage this generation of women rarely identify with or enjoy reading. Wonder Women….aims to articulate views which will get both women and men fired up, shine a light on individuals, issues and stories people will want to discuss with their mates down the pub and crucially, make readers laugh too.”

I couldn’t agree more. I welcome an active push towards thoughtful and challenging journalism with a female-oriented agenda. Serious and light-hearted too, varied, topical. Yay! And, yet.

It’s a well put-together section. The writing isn’t bad. There are some laughs. But the agenda worries me. Because I’m not sure it knows yet quite what it stands for. Yes, in theory, it’s pro-women and therefore sitting on the feminist side of the fence. But I sense that feminism is still a slightly squirmy word for the Telegraph, because in essence, the content isn’t really moving on much from Daily Mail-esque hysteria in some cases.

For example, on Monday, we were told that “Most Young Women Want To Have It All”. According to a poll of over 1000 young people, commissioned exclusively for the Telegraph, “fewer women than men are willing to have their partner stay at home to look after the kids while they went out to work, suggesting those that do want to run their own business also want to play the role of housewife and mother – “having it all”.

It’s that very definition of “having it all” that offends me deeply, and the way it becomes the leading headline of the article. Is this how we talk about ourselves? Is it? The headline might as well have been “Most Young Women Want To Breathe”. Working and motherhood is not having it all. It’s just life. There were some interesting stats worthy of further analysis in there, but instead, this hackneyed, dated and offensive accusation leads. I was confused, to say the least.

On Tuesday, the same poll formed the basis for a piece the mulling over of that old chestnut, “Are Women Less Ambitious Than Men?”. The accompanying image was that of Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Ann Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, which, we’re reminded “tells the story of three ambitious women confronted with putting their careers in front of their relationships”. OK, that’s the tone set then. With a slightly baffled facial expression I read on.

Actually, it kicks off with a very positive stat, namely that 1 in 6 women aspire to earn an annual salary of over £100k, compared to 1 in 5 men. I think this is interesting. Why can’t we talk about this? Again, it’s not a bad piece, but the framing – lazy headlines and suggestive comparisons with fictional characters in films is patronising and frustrating. And more importantly, it’s missing a trick.

The Telegraph is a great media brand. It has gravitas, influence and reach. The journalism isn’t bad in the main, even if the politics aren’t my cup of tea. Each to their own. The point is, it’s all to play for, and I’d really hoped that a devoutly female focus could be a brilliant step for the brand – and for the way women are represented in and served by the media. Upping the game, encouraging other media behemoths to do the same.

But despite good writers, great ideas and potentially strong content, the way it’s framed is all wrong. And this brings me back to what they stand for. So far, it’s a weak cheer for the girls rather than a resounding roar. It’s good news for women packaged up in a way that we’ve seen a million times before, which doesn’t challenge traditional right-leaning patriarchal editorial. Now, I understand that the Telegraph doesn’t necessarily aim to start a feminist revolution here, but by shying away from showing its feminist teeth, it’s doing no-one any favours.

I want it to succeed, and hope that Wonder Women will find its feet soon. But I would urge that team of bright women to examine what it is they really stand for here, and to reflect that in principles that shine through editorially. Enough of the daft headlines and soft premises: you’re better than that.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: journalism, women, writing

Autumn colour (with a hint of summer) – Rainbow slaw

Posted on September 6, 2012

You’ll probably have gathered by now that I’m a devotee of Brockley Market and most Saturdays I do a fair chunk of the week’s food shopping there (as well as enjoying the amazing street food there, which is somehow just perfect for a Saturday morning). Last week, as the summer slid gracefully and balmily towards autumn, it was all about colour. Rainbow organic carrots in hues ranging from the palest yellow to the most regal of purples. Swiss chard with its riotously coloured yellow, red, orange, white, purple and green stalks. Gaudy heritage tomatoes, the last of the summer berries, beetroots and herbs…

The rainbow carrots were too beautiful to cook – and organic, so ideal for raw, flavoursome eating. Using these as inspiration, I decided on an autumnal slaw, full of colour, earthy sweetness and a hint of summer nostalgia. Grated carrots and mandolined red cabbage (or chop as finely as you can) were tossed in a bowl with a handful of tarragon leaves, which lent a fresh, aniseed-based flavour. Fennel seeds would do, as a store-cupboard alternative.

Coleslaw dressings are tricky. This slaw needed to be lightly dressed in a way that wouldn’t muck about with the vibrancy of the colours, nor the combination of sweet and earthy. I used a slosh of olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon juice, and to counter the acidity, a teaspoon or two of some fig syrup (don’t ask) I had kicking about in the fridge. Other sweeteners to use are pomegranate molasses or even a touch of maple syrup. As ever, it will all come down to seasoning and tasting. I added black onion seeds because I’m obsessed with them.

I had this with lasagne the other night, and it was lovely. The rest was then yesterday’s lunch, and I added strips of Milano salami, which worked really well in terms of texture, taste AND colour. If I were to be an idealist about it, my favourite finocchiona salami would be the absolute business here.

Categories: Food

Tagged: autumn, Brockley Market, carrots, salad, slaw

Mojito Ice Lollies

Posted on August 31, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, for a hot August weekend, I was inspired to try my hand at ice lollies. But not just any ice lollies – I wanted to make grown-up, rendolent of exotic hot places ice lollies. Cue the bunch of mint I had in the fridge for inspiration, and mojito lollies it would surely be.

Freezing alcohol, as we know, is tricky. Water freezes at 0 degrees C, yet when it comes to alcohol, the higher the proof, the lower the freezing point. So spirits in particular present a problem. I can’t claim to have a scientific solution (especially not with only a bog-standard domestic freezer compartment to rely on), but I figured out a few things.

First, mojito has a blend of interesting flavours, which lend themselves to frozen goodies: mint, lime and the rounded sweetness of brown sugar, as well as the rum. So, judicious use of the flavours beyond rum is a good idea. I did roughly the following:

Make a syrup with approximately 3/4 water, boiled gently with 5 tablespoons of sugar (I used golden caster sugar) with the zest of one lime and a sprig of mint. As soon as the sugar is dissolved, take it off the heat and let it cool.
When it’s cooled to hand temperature, add the juice from 2 limes, and around 20 small mint leaves.
Then, add a slug of rum. I used Havana Club Anejo 3 Anos white rum.
Now, you taste and really think about it. The thing with freezing food is that the flavours are not so pronounced as when food is warm. So bear that in mind when tasting – and add more lime if you think it’s needed.
Pour into lolly moulds and leave to freeze, preferably overnight. You might not get the rock-solid icicle of a lolly we’re used to from the Mr. Whippy van, so take care when unmoulding and be prepared to eat it quickly! That’s exactly what I did, enjoying them on the front door step, with sunshine and friends in unseemly haste.

And that’s why there’s no picture of them. Ooops.

Categories: Food

Tagged: freezing, lime, lollies, mint, mojito, rum

A late summer / early Autumn salad: Golden beets, goats cheese, thyme and honey

Posted on August 30, 2012

I’ve written before about how I take inspiration for what to cook from inside my fridge and from weather, mood and context. Well, today, I felt the need for soothing yet uplifting food. Something beautiful to look at and guaranteed to make me feel good, despite the blustering wind and threatening skies outside.

At last weekend’s Brockley Market, I bought some smallish golden beetroot… and they were the answer. The flavour of golden beetroot is less earthy than traditional red, giving a rather purer sweetness. The added bonus, too, is that they are way less messy than finger-staining red beetroot to prepare. I simmered them gently until they yielded to a sharp knife, then cooled and skinned them. The golden orbs were then quartered, and tossed in a bowl with a splash of olive oil, a teaspoon of runny clover honey, a good splash of sherry vinegar (to give some resistance to the sweetness of the beetroot and honey), salt and plenty of fresh thyme leaves. It’s a good idea to let it all stand together for a while – 15-30 minutes – if you can bear to wait. And needless to say, check and tweak the seasoning according to what tastes good to you.

To serve, the beetroot was piled up with slices of goats cheese (I used a log, but crumbled soft goats or sheeps cheese would work too), with some toasted and crushed hazelnuts – another rounded and mellow flavour – on top to add a some bite.

Late summer flavours, eaten from the comfort of a blanket-strewn sofa, while the weather raged outside. Not too shabby.

Categories: Food

Tagged: autumn, beetroot, goats cheese, hazelnuts, lunch, salad, summer

In praise of preserved lemons (and 3 ways)

Posted on August 24, 2012

I had a sudden craving this week for the taste of preserved lemons.The salty-sharp, citrus intensive tang, and the yielding yet slightly chewy texture – there’s nothing else quite like it. If I were more of a domestic goddess, of course, I’d have a jar of home-preserved ones in the cupboard (and they are easy to do – there’s a good recipe here) but I am not. So the hunt was on. Nearest port of call was local deli Handmade Food in Blackheath and hurray! They had them, preserved by their own fair hands in their fabulous kitchen. £1.25 bought me a whole, good sized preserved lemon and frankly, it’s been the best thing I bought all week.

Monday’s supper combined market-fresh Kentish runner beans with soft goats cheese, rocket, soused red onions (slice finely and let them sit in some red wine or cider vinegar, spoon of sugar and pinch of salt for as long as you can wait – but even 10 minutes makes them sweeter, mellower and more civilised) toasted hazelnuts and diced preserved lemon. As suggested by Fergus at Handmade Food, I sliced away the fleshy bit (but keep it and use in dressings for the acidic element) so that I had a perfect quarter of preserved peel and pith, rinsed it well in cold water and then chopped it up and added to the salad.

Wednesday’s lunch was a last-minute job. I wanted something light and summery, and I had half a bag of Chantenay carrots (the wee ones) in the fridge. Diagonally sliced ordinary ones would work just as well. These got boiled up in salted water, drained, tossed with a slosh of olive oil and a teaspoon of Belazu rose harissa, then dressed with chopped parsley and diced preserved lemon. The spice of the harissa and the tang of the preserved lemon is, of course, tried and tested in North African cooking, and the carrots were a lovely English flavours foil for them.

Today’s lunch will be grilled salmon and I fancied trying another take on a classic gremolata (fresh lemon zest, finely chopped garlic, fresh parsley). So today’s more Autumnal gremolata is less zingy and more intense and mellow: fresh lemon zest is replaced by fine slivers of preserved lemon, and I added some sliced Bella di Cerignola olives (my favourite) too. It looks beautiful and tastes good, so suffice to say, I’m looking forward to lunch…

Other places to buy preserved lemons are Sainsbury’s and Waitrose – Belazu brand (I haven’t tried them) are recommended.

Categories: Food

Tagged: preserved lemons, preserving

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s only an actual recipe for blackberry friands!

Posted on August 16, 2012

I never meant to post actual recipes to this blog. For a start, I don’t follow recipes much. Secondly, who am I to tell you the right way to make things? But, I realise that this isn’t much help if I don’t even give you a clue. So here goes. My first, actual recipe, and more than that – for baking.

Baking, I accept, is far more scientific than other kinds of cooking, and it’s where quantity and active ingredients and temperature actually count. That said, of late, I find myself consulting baking recipes for reference, then closing the book and doing it my way. Heaven knows why. Just pig-headed, I suppose. But I fancied making some kind of delicate cake at the weekend, mostly because I had just augmented my vintage china stash and wanted to make something lovely for my pretty plates. My daughter trotted in, almost on cue, with blackberries from the garden and I decided: Blackberry friands.

A friand, for the uninitiated, is one of the best kinds of cakes. Small, simple, unpretentious, not overly sweet and decidedly unisex. No icing nonsense or mucking about. You know where you are with a friand. I consulted a few recipes and wasn’t convinced by any of them (I knew how I wanted it to look and smell and taste… ), so I made it up.

I hope some of you might feel brave enough to follow my sort-of-recipe, or at least be inspired by it to try something similar. This is not a purist’s recipe, nor a failsafe one, but it worked for me and I reckon that the following, with your own touch and common sense, will work for you.

Cream together 100g of soft unsalted butter, 2-3 tablespoons of caster sugar and a splash of vanilla essence. When it’s looking pale and lovely, add 2 eggs and beat together gently. Then stir in 100g ground almonds and a tablespoon or two of plain flour, plus a sprinkle of baking powder. The texture needs to be firm, but still easy to stir. If it goes over, a splash of milk will get you back on track.

Spoon a good dollop of mixture into greased oval friand moulds if you have them – let’s get real, who does? I don’t, so I used a shallow bun tray, the sort you’d make 12 fairy cakes on. Greasing is important though – butter is fine. Back to the dollops. Press, gently, a blackberry into each dollop. Otherwise you could leave them plain, or use raspberries. Bake at 170 in a fan oven, or 180 otherwise, for about 6 minutes to start with. They’ll probably need another minute or two after that but you can judge that, once you’ve assessed where you are after 6 minutes. You want them golden, and gently firm to the touch.

Leave your little beauties to cool a little, and when handle-able, use a palette knife to gently ease them out of their moulds or tray. A pretty plate and lashings of tea are recommended.

So there you go, the day I never thought we’d see. Me and an actual recipe. Try it, have faith in yourself and your oven, and see how it turns out.

Categories: Food, Uncategorized

Mussels and cockles

Posted on August 9, 2012

Five perfect days in Pembrokeshire have been had, holed up in a tiny cottage on the beach near Fishguard. It’s been wonderful to become so acquainted with the beach and its rockpools, tides and wildlife in their comforting daily cycle.

Each afternoon, we look out at the receding tide and watch the waders and gulls in the shallow water, industriously feeding, and squawking over their spoils. We wade out to see what they’re catching.

As we pick our way across sand, rocks, seaweed and clear shallow water, we find, further out, banks of what look like smooth pebbly rocks. Tabbi wonders out loud if this is what the surface of the moon looks like. We peer closer, and the rocks are mussels shells, most closed and full, others pecked open and discarded by the birds. In among them we find the odd cockle, and occasionally, a clam.

Pockets are soon bulging with shiny black treasure, and skirts become makeshift sacks for even more. We pick, alongside the fearless gulls, companionable and silent, apart from our own occasional squawks. And when our knees are stiff from crouching, and our pockets are truly full, we pick our way gingerly back across the beach, up the garden and into the kitchen.

Fresh as can be, the mussels need only a good sluice from the tap and quick scrub of shells. The tough beards found on rope-grown mussels are non-existent here. Onion and garlic are swiftly fried up, and a handful of aniseedy fennel fronds, the only herb we can find in the garden, thrown in on top of the shells along with a slug of wine. Lid on, heat up a little, wait. Three heads pore over the glass lid – it reminds me of making popcorn, except that the metamorphosis here – while just as a quick – is less dramatic. We smell the sea in the steam from the pan, and inhale a little more. A shake, another few seconds for luck and we lift off the lid.

Shells clatter into bowls, cups, whatever we can find. Bread is torn into handfuls, ready to soak up the broth, spoons are found. We eat the sweetest, most tender and fresh mussels and cockles we have ever tasted. Less than 15 minutes from beach to bowl. Perfect.

Categories: Food

Tagged: beach, mussels, Pembrokeshire, travel, Wales

Here’s the kind of interview I hate. Because it’s so FORMULAIC and LAME.

Posted on August 2, 2012

Standard and unimaginative play on words with something to do with stars: An interview with Blah Whatever

Blah Whatever is eating a foodstuff that bears no relevance to this interview. As he leans back in a cream leather chair in his spacious office overlooking the entire universe, he pauses before admitting, “I really feel like this is my year.”

It’s clear he’s on top of his game. More pointless interviews have been published this year than ever before, and sheer the sheer volume of nonsense within them is testament to his ascendance. How has he achieved so much in so little time? How has so much been written while saying so little? Blah stares intently at something aspirational in his office. “It’s really about focus and saying nothing meaningful,” he concludes. “My soundbites are really what define me.”

“Statutory industry figure quote”

And he has a point. Just looking at the figures, his meteoric rise is largely down to his consistency in the business of blah. His industry cohorts agree. “It pains me to say it, but Blah has done in just a few years what could usually take a decade,” says Generica Figure, once CEO to Whatever at Thingbob Corp, remembering an ambitious, gun-slinging management trainee. “He always showed promise, and I think some quite generic thoughts about that.”

But fast-forward to present day and Blah Whatever isn’t done yet. There’s still plenty more to achieve.

“Obsequious column inches”

I ask what drives Whatever in his relentless trajectory. Could it be the obsequious column inches, or is it something deeper? Handsome brow furrowed, Whatever searches for the right words. He hesitates. “It’s hard to define. I mean, I’m just an ordinary person after all.” This, it seems, is typically self-effacing of Whatever. Despite his self-effacing dashing looks and mandatory descriptions of his self-effacing Balmain suit and Breitling watch, his feet remain firmly on the ground. Incidentally, in Loakes, which adds a lot to this piece.

“Name drop”

However, it is no secret that Whatever enjoys the spoils of his privileged position, weekending in aspirational places, and reportedly packing quite a punch on the polo field. A dichotomy, then. An actual human who eats things and is good at something and also plays polo with Prince Harry.

A sudden flurry of activity outside his office and a relentless ringing of his cutting-edge-technology-handset UberPhone and it seems that Blah Whatever is needed by his executive board. Rushed goodbyes and a suggestion for the benefit of readers that we got along famously and are now bezzies, and he is gone. It’s still hard to get a sense of the complex layers that have been hinted at, yet not fully revealed. As I think up some new and pointless figures of speech to describe this boardroom version of Usain Bolt (there’s one), it strikes me that no-one can possibly know more about him from this interview. And that’s the point. Whatever.

Categories: Uncategorized

The perils and pitfalls of ‘meeting eating’

Posted on July 26, 2012

I did one of those lovely Twitter IRL things yesterday and met up with someone who makes me laugh and actively encourages bad puns. I know it would work out – and within 10 minutes, we were ensconced in deep debate about the perils and pitfalls of meeting eating. You know, those meetings where there’s breakfast or lunch laid on in an effort to squeeze every last productive minute out of the working day, but which are frankly fraught with anxiety and dashed hopes.

Picture the scene:

12.30 and it’s meeting time. You all troop into some meeting room expectantly and there, nestling beside the screen markers and speaker phone is your lunch. Part-nemesis, part-mirage, it’s just the start of your problems. The first being choice. That sandwich selection is designed to suit all, so the usual suspects abound: Egg mayonnaise, ham and cheese with some sort of astringent-yet-indefinable chutney, chicken with disintegrating tomato and limp lettuce… and so on. Just when you’ve resigned yourself to a sub-gourmet experience, the second pitfall becomes clear, as a weird awkwardness descends and people try to figure out when exactly they can and should avail themselves of these bread-based timebombs. No-one wants to be first. Worse still is where there’s a hierarchy at play. Can you get stuck in before a client or your CEO? Should you?

12.43 and the meeting’s underway. There’s been some half hearted picking at the spoils and you’re mostly wondering how the hell people consider a solitary tiny triangle sandwich to be an adequate lunch. Maybe it’s because the meeting is FAR TOO INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT to be distracted by mere foodstuffs. Oh. If you’re really unlucky, the peril of crisps may have already struck. A seemingly benign and joy-inducing foodstuff becomes turns into a deafening weapon of war. They are suddenly so loud. There’s no quiet way to eat crisps – we know this – but still we persevere. And wish we hadn’t. Because just as you’re relaxing into this meeting and have finally found a good moment to ask for the plate of sandwiches to be passed down (average waiting time for this: 12 minutes), boom! Some smartarse suddenly remembers you exist and asks you for your input, just as you’re chowing down on a mouthful of pseudo-Thai-prawn-wrap. Cue furious and inadequate chewing, that wavy hand “gimme a second” thing and inevitably, the lamest response you’ve ever come up with. It’s hard to be on top of your game and ingest coriander stalks simultaneously.

13.03 and the meeting room smells pungently of cheese and despair. Everyone’s focussed on wrapping up so that they can get the hell out of there and drown their sorrows in a Pret baguette in the comfort of their own ergonomically designed shared workspace. Finally, the ordeal comes to an uneasy end, as resolutions are agreed and actions are allocated. The table is a warzone, with unexploded sandwiches discarded on plates and grated cheese shrapnel scattered around.

The meeting room refugees disperse and we realise that once again, we simply haven’t learned that one should never, ever, enter a meeting room hungry.

Categories: Food

Tagged: food, meetings

Why I cook

Posted on July 14, 2012

This post is from my Tumblr, originally posted in March 2012 (pre- this blog… yeah, I changed my mind).

I was in Wales a few weeks ago, staying in a ridiculously cosy and perfect cottage with friends. What I loved most about it was the fact that there were books everywhere, clearly collected and enjoyed and brought and left and cherished over the years. Then I found this, which, in retrospect, I realise was a somewhat profound discovery: The Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cook Book (1980).

This, my friends, is the book that taught me to cook. But more than that, it is something that unlocked a single vein of creativity and passion I never knew I had, and which has carried me to (and through) adulthood. Food – and more specifically, cooking. Perhaps I protest too much but I feel bound to point out at this stage that I have no pretentions when it comes to cooking – I love it, I need it, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s almost personal – and a rather interesting barometer of my state of mind, closely tied as it is to my emotions. I purposely don’t blog or write about it (beyond posting Instagram foodporn) because of that, and because there are a million people who can do it better than me.

So back to Wales. I pounced on this tattered tome with joy, recognising the cover in an instant, from the days in the summer of 1989 when aged 13 I had a lot of time on my hands and a mother who believed that school holidays should not be spent idly. And I was as lazy as a 13 should be. So, as my parents went off to work each day that summer, leaving me in a house on the edge of a sleepy Somerset village, I decided to look busy in the least boring way I could think of: cooking. Each evening my parents came home to ridiculously extravagant 3-course meal inspired by Good Housekeeping’s 1980 “bible” (Crab gratin with banana garnish, anyone?), and I’d had a blast doing anything other than ironing. Cooking, I discovered, was “work”, but I liked it.

After that, I never stopped cooking. I remember being bought my first “proper” cookery book, aged 14, by Anton Mosimann. It was terribly 90s and poncey but I loved it, and I grew beyond slavishly following recipes, preferring to use them as inspiration… and then go my own sweet way.

I spent my teens working in pub restaurant kitchens and dining rooms and never felt more at home. Cooking became second-nature, as did an interest in food, an appreciation of its scents and sights and sounds, and the sheer happiness to be found in feeding someone well.

So, in Wales, leafing through book whose illustrations were so familiar from hours pouring over them as a teenager it was almost painful, I realised quite how powerful that discovery in 1989 was. It’s guided me since. Being able to cook means I can feed myself and others. Loving to cook brings me comfort I can’t describe and the means to do what I long to do most – make people happy. It helps me know myself too. When I’m happiest, I’m a kitchen demon. At my lowest, I don’t even want to think about food. Cooking can be a handy mechanism to drag myself out of a blue spell, because I simply cannot cook without love. So, forced it sometimes may be, but therapeutic too.

It’s no surprise that when I bought my current home, its lovely sunny and sociable kitchen is what seduced me from the moment I crossed the threshold. It’s no coincidence that my friends love food and cooking as much as I do. It’s a joy that my kids want to cook and love to eat. So, thank you, Good Housekeeping, for your frankly ridiculous 1980 “bible”. That, and my aversion to ironing, kickstarted something that I couldn’t be without.

Categories: Food

Tagged: cooking

London Gin Club

Posted on July 11, 2012

The smartarses among you may have surmised that I like gin. You’d be right, of course, for it is indeed my chosen nectar at the cocktail hour(s). And it’s having a particularly pleasing resurgence, with more brands now available as smaller distilleries pop up, bars devoted to the stuff and a lot less stigma of ‘mothers ruin’. Gin is in demand, and we don’t want to drink it in a manky pub from a cheap wine glass, either.

One particularly welcome development has been the London Gin Club setting up shop at The Star on the corner of Hollen Street and Great Chapel Street. If you haven’t been, you might be wrinkling your forehead and trying to figure out where that is – vaguely familiar, right? It’s tucked away behind Wardour Street on the south side of Oxford Street and it is a find. Unassuming, wooden-panelled, checked table-clothed and candle lit. There’s a hint of the 11th arrondissement in Paris – that coolly, nostalgically vintage, take-us-as-we-are chic.

The London Gin Club celebrates all things gin and they certainly know their stuff. 35 types of gin (at the last count) on offer, and a gin and tonic menu alone (notwithstanding an extensive cocktail menu) offers over 40 permutations of the mighty G&T, blending different gins with different garnishes (of the fruity, herbal variety by and large) and different tonic waters. Better still, the list changes with the seasons. How great is that? Now, despite considering myself one of London’s most enthusiastic gin enthusiasts, I had no idea that the G&T could be so many different things. And for a lover of all things meta (it’s the little details, after all…) this is a heavenly discovery. All at £7.50 a G&T. Knocks the socks off pretty much every other bar in London when it comes to gin, charm and dedication. Such is the London Gin Club’s desire to educate us, tasting sets are on offer too, changing on a monthly basis and are excellent value for money.

My favourites? The SW4 gin is pretty special, garnished with bay and lemon. Bay is massively underrated, I think, but actually entirely logical with the botanical layers that gin offers up. I’ve taken to raiding the bay tree at home at cocktail hour. I’m converted. Also magnificent is my new favourite, citrusy Tanqueray Rangpur, garnished with basil and lime peel. G&Ts are served, unusually, in the kind of huge balloon glasses that you’d usually expect to drink wheatbeer from. But, these guys are experts, and assert that the round glass helps you appreciate and enjoy the botanicals, rather as you would a fine wine, all the while keeping that baby crisp and cold. They have a point.

It’s not all gin either, with a pretty good wine list and a full cocktail menu. In my two visits to date, it’s been clear that Julia and her team know exactly what they are doing (ask them anything, they’re incredibly knowledgeable) so I don’t think it’s even possible to get a bad drink there. There’s food too, from a really simple, tapas-y menu and fairly priced. But the star is the gin. And rightly so.

The London Gin Club is at the Star at Night, at 22 Great Chapel Street. You can join for free and enjoy special offers both there and at gerry’s of Old Compton Street, if you’re stocking up the home bar. Check out the website for more and events – plus a lovely blog that really highlights their passion for the cause.

www.thelondonginclub.wordpress.com

Categories: Gin

Tagged: gin, London, The London Gin Club

Rainy with a chance of meatballs

Posted on July 9, 2012

I suppose one benefit of this year’s un-summer is the opportunity for me to carry on cooking comfort food that’s usually better suited to colder months. I’m currently in the grip of meatball obsession. Not big scary ones in jammy tomato sauce, but more benign perfect little balls of goodness in a gentle, aromatic broth. Comforting to make, comforting to eat. And really easy too. Best of all, plenty of scope to be intuitive and inventive about what goes in them.

This week I made veal, lemon and sage polpette in a lemon cream broth and tonight, more veal with walnut and basil, in a clear vegetable-infused broth. No need to accompanying pasta with these beauties, I think, although you could. I’m not a recipe-follower nor a recipe-writer but here’s a bit of guidance if you’re inspired:

Basic technique

Grate or use a mandolin to get an onion very finely chopped. Add some crushed garlic if you like, and think about flavours. Here are some ideas for additions and flavours, based on the different kinds of ground meat you might use…

Veal: Sage, lemon zest, parsley, finely-chopped walnuts, nutmeg, basil, tarragon
Beef: Thyme, smoked streaky bacon, oregano, grated parmesan
Pork: Paprika, chives, lemongrass, coriander, freshly grated ginger
Lamb: Cinnamon, a few finely chopped yellow sultanas, onion seeds, chopped hazelnuts

Mix the meat, onion and garlic and flavourings with your hands really well. Lots of squeezing. Season. I’m not keen on egg to bind or breadcrumbs/semolina because I don’t think it’s necessary. But that’s just me.

When well mixed, start to form small balls of meat with your hands, rolling well between your palms to get them really smooth and round. The ideal size, I think, is that of a cherry tomato. Obviously bigger won’t kill you either. Chill them til you’re ready to start cooking.

To cook, I’d recommend doing so in a sauce or broth. A classic tomato sauce is great (once it’s made, drop the meatballs in – don’t stir – and let it cook on gently), or try a brorth made from good stock (or, in my case, half a Knorr stock pot thingy) with carrots, half an onion (no need to chop) and a bit of parsley. Simmer it for a half hour or so until it starts to go viscous. Take out the veg and get the stock on a low simmer. Carefully drop the meatballs in, spoon some hot stock over and put the lid on. They need to sit in gently bubbling stock for a few mins (3-5, depending on the meat) – use your judgement.

If you want to make a creamy sauce to serve, spoon a few ladles of the hot broth into a separate pan, add a good dash of cream, seasoning and maybe some sage leaves and lemon zest. Again, gentle heat. Stir and spoon over the drained meatballs.

Lamb meatballs would be lovely cooked with a vegetable tagine for the last 5-10 minutes, too.

Veal, lemon and sage meatballs, lemon cream sauce

Veal and walnut meatballs, carrot broth

Categories: Food

Tagged: comfort food, meatballs

So, about this DM thing…

Posted on June 29, 2012

The other night I was merrily tweeting away, and having a few private, Direct Message conversations at the same time. This is not unusual for me. The DM subject matter was varied. This is also not unusual. So I idly started wondering about all the DM conversations going on, behind the twitter veil, if you like, at any one time. Who are we talking to? What about? And how do we make the decision to move from open stream to private, concealed messages?

So, I asked, and got some surprising responses. First, what I expected: “Jobs” was one. “Smoking cigars”, “meeting up with family” followed. But mostly, the responses I got surprised me. “What’s wrong with email?”, “I don’t use DMs”, “I’ve only ever replied, never instigated”. So, from the 25 or so people who responded, DM use was a minority sport. This baffled me, because I always assumed that we all do it. It’s just that, unless you’re the one doing it, you can’t see it. So, shows how much I know.

What struck me is that here’s a great, almost additional channel, that we have available to us and yet it’s still not used so much. Yes, it’s limited to 140 characters, but it’s so seamlessly there when you’re tweeting that to switch between the two can be not only a godsend (as in, “hey tell me more about the job you just mentioned”) but also good manners (we don’t need to share micro details of tonight’s drinks logistics with everyone). And let’s not forget the comedy value. A well timed DM in the midst of the openly tweeted conversation is the equivalent of passing notes in class, and done right, can be a cacklingly good wheeze.

But also consider this: I have email addresses of a lot of people I know, but not (of course) of those I don’t. But since you can DM people who follow you, Twitter offers a private channel to a far wider scope of people. That’s not to say it should be abused – it’s just as easy to spam via DM as it is by email – but consider how much wider this makes your reach, and the potential conversations you might have. To be able to ask for advice from an expert, or pass the time of day with someone you admire but don’t know… well, surely there’s value to this?

So, if you don’t partake of the DM, don’t be shy. It’s a handy thing that can take conversations to a more interesting – and perhaps, relevant – one on one dimension. I’d love the Twitter API to develop to allow a small group conversation privately – again, mostly for good manners and sheer handiness. But for now, it’s there, so see what’s beneath the veil.

Of course, the elephant in the room at this stage is the cheekier side of DM-ing. But that’s an entirely different blog post….

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Twitter

In praise of Echiré butter

Posted on June 24, 2012

I am a butter obsessive. I probably have at least 3 types in the fridge at any one time (salted, unsalted and the TREAT butter). The treat butter is the one that I’ll happily spend top dollar on and attack with a spoon. Echiré is king (white, almost sweet Italian Alpine butter is queen). On dark sourdough, thickly spread it is the most perfect of meals.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: butter

Dare to rare

Posted on June 18, 2012

This weekend, I celebrated my birthday by cooking for 16 people. Y’know, low key. Anyway, I wanted to do a summery, English-y lunch, so one of the things I wanted to cook was cold, rare roast beef with peppery rocket and radishes. A pink and green triumph – so long as you can keep the beef rare.

I called upon He Who Knows, Mr Thomas Blythe, in a panicky late night text conversation and I have to say, the man delivered. Now, this is a test of nerve… for a scarily large 2.5kg lump of meat, it needs shockingly little oven time. For an English cook, albeit a rare-meat loving one, it’s slightly counter intuitive. But, daring won out and it worked.

Here was the advice, pretty much verbatim:

Me: “I have a 2.3k lump of topside that i want to roast quite rare and do cold, thinly sliced. How the f*** do I not overcook it?”

TB: “Brown on all sides, cook for about 20 minutes on a rack over a roasting tray. Turn out of oven, open door, slide out shelf so it’s warmish, rest for 20 mins.”

Me: “WOW. Only 20 mins full on in oven after browning??”

TB: “If you want it RARE. Give it 30 if you want it more med/rare. Resting is the key and bear in mind that means it won’t be oven hot when served but that’s secondary to texture.”

Me: “When do I baste?”

TB: “Give it 10m in the oven and baste really well [Note: I used the pan juices here and seasoned really well again]“

And that is it. So go on, dare to rare. I served with a bowl of good bought mayonnaise mixed with Dijon (about 60/40). There was none left.

Categories: Food

Tagged: beef

Summer food for a languid day: Asparagus, mushroom and duck egg

Posted on May 30, 2012

Photo credit: Paul Clarke

I’m a geeky perfectionist about food, and guided by whims and inspiration. On a hot and languid summery day last week, I was in one of those moods where I wanted to faff a bit…. potter around in no particular hurry and create something as beautiful and delicious and fitting for the day as possible.

So here is what I ended up with: English asparagus, halved to reveal their delicate pale insides, blanched. Mushrooms fried long and low so that they almost caramelised, and butched up a bit with truffle oil. Delicate, paper thin slices of radish. A few rocket and baby spinach leaves – but only a few. And the star: soft boiled duck eggs, peeled and gently broken open. Simple, lemon and oil dressing with a tiny bit of mustard and a scattering of chives.

Food like this is such a pleasure to make. It made my heart sing.

Categories: Food

Tagged: asparagus, duck eggs, lunch, summer

Breakfast sorted: Cheap, easy, healthy, delicious (and in under 5 mins)

Posted on May 14, 2012

I struggle a bit with breakfast. I often can’t be bothered, hate eating on the run and don’t get too excited about cereal. But the rediscovery of Bircher muesli rocks my world at about 7.30am each day, and what I love is that it’s always different. As Spring makes way for summer, it’s the perfect breakfast.

Virtue in a bowl

Traditional Swiss Bircher muesli is a rib-sticking affair, packed with nuts, fruit, creamy yogurt and sometimes a bit more cream for good measure. My version is the Lazy Girl’s Bircher Muesli and I swear takes me less than 3 minutes to prepare. It’s not totally authentic, and that’s the beauty of it – you make it according to what you have / feel like. The variations are endless.

Here’s my formula for the best breakfast you can imagine:

Step 1: Soak 2-3 tablespoons of jumbo oats overnight in enough apple juice to just cover (pineapple juice also works, and I quite fancy cold sweet black Earl Grey as an experiment…). Failing that, just water would do. This softens the oats so you don’t have to cook them. And before you roll your eyes a the overnight thing, I promise it’s quick. I’ve developed a habit of slinging them in to soak while I’m cooking dinner. 2 seconds and it’s done.

Step 2: Rise and shine the next morning and when you’re ready for breakfast, grab your soaked oats, pour off any excess liquid and stir in a tablespoon or so of your favourite yogurt. Plain or Greek is great, Rachel’s rhubarb or gooseberry also lovely. But it’s up to you…. Then it’s time to follow your breakfast-y whims by adding your choice of fruit and nuts. Suggestions below:

Fruit: Grated apple (as is traditional – I can’t for I am allergic, but I am considering pushing the boundaries with grated carrot soon, with apple compote, raisins and lashings of cinnamon), chopped strawberries, banana, raspberries, figs, grapes, fruit compotes (rhubarb, apple, plum, apricot), dried fruit…
Nuts: Hazelnuts (I buy bags of whole toasted ones), cashews, walnuts, almonds, etc

Then add honey, sugar, mint to taste, and enjoy.

Some of my favourite combinations are as follows:

Natural yogurt, apple compote, cinnamon, walnuts and raisins
Coconut yogurt, fresh mango, cashews and passion fruit
Rhubarb yogurt, strawberries and sprinkling of pomegranate seeds
And today’s winner: Natural yogurt, raspberries, hazelnuts, brown sugar and a sprinkle of mint (divine thing pictured below)

Raspberry, hazelnut, brown sugar, mint

Categories: Food

Tagged: bircher muesli, breakfast, muesli

Breakfast Bread and Butter Pudding

Posted on April 29, 2012

Breakfast done properly is a thing to behold, which is why weekend breakfasts tend to be late, involved and well planned. Last night, I was dreaming up what I could make with the contents of my fridge (I do this approximately 22% of the time) and arrived at this thought: Why should bread and butter pudding only be for pudding? With bread, butter, eggs and dairy it’s halfway to breakfast already. Lo! I thought, I shall morning-ify it. So here it is.

My thinking was this:

White bread and butter – perfect. Salted butter, to cut through the sweetness a little
The batter needs to be soothing and not too too sweet
Dinky and little portions (anathema to me, sadly) are the name of the game

My breakfast version has a batter made of 1 duck egg (just ’cause), a big scoop of blood orange curd (lemon would be nice too) and a slug of natural yogurt let down with a little milk, until it’s a thinnish custard-y consistency. Creme anglaise consistency, if you like. I briefly soaked some raisins in warmed orange juice on the stove and chucked those in too. Soak your buttered bread quickly in the batter, arrange in a little buttered dish, pour over the rest of the batter, tiny sprinkle of brown sugar and bake for 10 minutes or so (depending on your portion size) at 190c. It’s best right then, maybe with a bit of yogurt on the side.

Of course, there are marmalade variants of B&BP, but for breakfast I wanted something softly aromatic and yielding, rather than more aggressively citrussy. I can imagine that if citrus ain’t your thing, a little layer of stewed apple beneath the bread, with an eggy, nutmeg-y batter would be rather lovely. And there’s nothing to stop you toying with a hangover-busting savoury version with cheese batter, bacon bits and maybe some corn and green chilli….

Categories: Food

Tagged: breakfast

The word that cannot be spoken: N*m

Posted on April 26, 2012

Those who know me will be aware that that there’s a certain word that fills me with rage. I make no secret of it: I despise ‘nom’.

Here, on the one hand, we have food. One of life’s great joys, bringer of pleasure and delight, comforter, saviour, deliverer from the ravages of hunger and hangover. And here, on the other hand, we have an infantilised, overused and frankly lazy word to describe it? It simply isn’t right, is it?

So, I say cease and desist. Fight against the n*m, and consider the following beauteous prose, friends. Words about eating to delight as much as the food itself… Would du Maurier have uttered such inanities? No, she would not. Bring back elegance, I say.

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.”

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

“And the crab was good, the salad excellent, the pastries light as air, the strawberries nectar, the wine perfection.”

Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman’s Creek

“The general feeling was now very much against Sauveterre, whose fault the whole thing clearly was. [...] The climax was reached when he was seen to be putting away a huge breakfast of porridge and cream, kedgeree, eggs, cold ham, and slice upon slice covered in Cooper’s Oxford. Very un-French…”

Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate

“He had produced a toasting fork and from his study, and set Tom to toast the sausages while he mounted guard over their butter and potatoes; “cause,” as he explained, “you’re a new boy, and they’ll play you some trick and get our butter, but you can toast just as well as I.” So Tom, in the midst of three or four more urchins similarly employed, toasted his face and the sausages at the same time before the huge fire, till the latter cracked; when East from his watchtower shouted that they were done, and then the feast proceeded, and the festive cups of tea were filled and emptied, and Tom imparted the sausages in small bits to many neighbours, and thought he had never tasted such good potatoes or seen such jolly boys.”

Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days

Categories: Food

Tagged: literature, nom

Morning, beauty… peanut butter and banana muffins with peanutbutterscotch glaze

Posted on April 22, 2012

It’s the eternal conundrum of well-meaning banana buyers: what the buggery do you do with ones that are a bit to ripe to actually enjoy? And I think we all know that quite often the answer is bin-related.

Guilt assuaged this morning, however, in the form of muffins. And no, I don’t feel replacement guilt about the sugar and stuff. Screw it, it’s the weekend.

These Banana and Peanut Butter beauties were dreamed up in bed this morning (I cook a lot of things mentally first) with my clearly disaffected, unaspirational bananas in mind.

It was a no-recipe job, I’m afraid. But tell me if you want to make them and a recipe will be yours.

The key though, is to do it to taste (bearing in mind that it will taste very banana-y until the oven mellows it). I like sweet and salty so for me the combo of babyfood-smooth ripe bananas and salty, crunchy peanut butter is a winner.

I experimented with echoing the sweet-salty theme on the glaze too: Golden icing sugar (I am a 100% convert – it’s more nutty and butterscotchy than the toothachey white stuff) made up runny-ish with boiling water, with a spoon of crunchy PB and a pinch more salt to taste. Drizzle over while the muffins are still hot.

Categories: Food

Tagged: Muffins

You can’t hurry duck…

Posted on April 18, 2012

Balding drum-botherer Phil Collins has a lot to answer for. That whiny voice, “Buster”, and the annoyingly catchy Can’t Hurry Love for starters. My inimitable version of that song relates to duck, because it vaguely rhymes and because you cannot hurry it. If it’s a leg. Phil Collins definitely said that. Look it up.

Duck legs. I’ll be honest, sometimes the offers on Gressingham duck at the supermarket are too much to resist. It won’t be the best duck ever bought but you sure can make it taste good. Low and slow in the oven with a good bit of seasoning (air the skin first, rub salt in) and you’ve got a bit of magic on the go. Low as in 150-160C, slow as in at least a couple of hours. Lower and slower if you want.

I turn ugly supermarket duck into the swan of suppers by way of a bit of low ‘n’ slow, a sweet-sour Persian-inspired sauce from sweated onion, thyme, stock, walnuts and pomegranate molasses. Put the duck fat to good use by syphoning off for extra crispy roast potatoes (unless you have 2 ovens, wrap up and rest the duck for 30 mins while you blast your spuds). Then you’ll find meltingly mellow duck falling off the bone under the crispy skin, with sweetness and astringency in the sauce. Take that, buster.

Categories: Food

Tagged: duck, supermarket

Puri time!

Posted on April 17, 2012

My cooking is mostly driven by whims and instinct. I had a whim, while in Somerset, to attempt some puris. I hadn’t made them before so – shocker – I actually followed a recipe. Ish. The Good Food puri recipe served me well for basic technique, although I confess to using gram (chickpea) flour instead of chapati flour. Just because I was dying to use gram flour for once. It worked!

For the prawn bit, I made it up. Raw deveined tiger prawns got a good dousing in turmeric while ginger, garlic and onion softened with a mixture of spices that was more to do with what was in Ma’s cupboard (more turmeric, coriander, garam masala, mustard seeds) than authentic spicing. The prawns got chucked in with a good seasoning, a splodge of coconut cream and then, that magical grey-to-pink prawny sizzle. Bedecked with fresh coriander on little puffy panfried puris, and it was the perfect lunch.

Categories: Food

Tagged: indian food, prawns, puri

A roundabout way of making granola

Posted on April 16, 2012

I was at home in Somerset last weekend and, as is my wont in the last few hours before leaving for London, my mind turned to my fridge and what was in it (yes, I know…). Ooooh, I thought, that lovely buttery apple sauce from the other day is still there. Oooh, I thought further, GRANOLA. I became obsessed. We hoofed it down the A303 and the M3 and within 60 minutes of getting home, some spectacularly fragrant granola was doing its thing in a low oven.

The apple sauce (spiked with a couple of star anise… I made it to go with pork belly – recommended) was mixed, sans star anise, with some rye flakes (in the absence of jumbo oats) with a splash of vegetable oil, some honey, pumpkin seeds and lashings of cinnamon. Spread on greaseproof paper and slung in the oven on 160 for an hour or so.

Making granola is brilliant – the apple sauce, oil and honey coating crisps up and, with a bit of gentle spatula encouragement throughout cooking, clusters together. I didn’t add pumpkin seeds and hazelnuts til the end, because these little buggers can burn pretty easily. When it was all golden, I took it out, added a handful of raisins and let it sit for a while. Stir it half an hour later and you’ve got crispy golden boulders of sweet, spiced deliciousness which, if you’re anything like me, you’ll eat the majority of before breakfast time beckons.

Categories: Food

A little bowl of loveliness

Posted on April 16, 2012

I was given a bunch of wild garlic yesterday. It’s so pretty, I nearly stuck it in a jug with my daffodils but then thought better of it. No, I thought, this stuff needs to go into something equally pretty and soothing. So onion, potato and celery sweated in butter and oil and a slosh of stock later, the bouquet of loveliness was reverently laid on top of the simmering mass and left to its own devices. Minimal stirring. I actually left it to cool overnight before blending (not a tip, just me being disorganised), but blend I did this morning, to create a pale green sludge with jade-green flecks. A subtle, soothing little bowl of loveliness that, I suspect, will taste equally good chilled.

Categories: Food

Tagged: wild garlic

Chicken with clementine and orange bitters

Posted on March 16, 2013

My love affair with orange bitters continues. Open the bottle and you smell zest, but also the kind of oozy stomach-warming richness that can only come from alcohol. I’ve ben obsessed with the idea of cooking with them – and it works. Bitters sprinkled over the seasoned skin of chicken works perfectly when applied to a slow roast – caramel on caramel, but with a zesty dimension.

I think slow is they key here. Personally, I think chicken thighs are best unhurried, cooked long and slow on something that will infuse flavour. With a well-judged amount of liquid and a watchful eye, it won’t dry out. And your reward after 90 minutes of blissful smells wafting from the oven is tender meat, ready to part from the bone, crisp on top and plenty of thickened flavoursome juices beneath.

Chicken thighs
a red onion, sliced
a couple of clementines or small oranges, sliced
Orange cocktail bitters (such as Fee Brothers)
a few sprigs of thyme, leaves picked (nice alternatives: a few star anise; a couple of bay leaves)
a glass of white wine
drizzle of olive oil

Dry and season the chicken thighs, and sit them on top of the sliced red onion and clementines in a deep-ish ovenproof dish.

Drizzle over some olive oil and sprinkle with thyme, then liberally shake your cocktail bitters bottle in the chicken’s direction – a good 6 or 7 drops on each thigh (but seriously, don’t count). Pour the glass of wine (or water or chicken stock) and the juice from the squeezed end slices of the clementines or orange along the side (not over – you need the bitters to do their work on the skin), and stick in a gentle oven (I did it at 150) for 90 minutes (for 8 thighs), keeping an eye on it at 30 minute intervals in case you need more liquid. That’s literally it.

Categories: Food

Tagged: chicken; orange bitters; slow cooking

In which I fear Twitter is turning us into douchebags (and accessories to douchery)

Posted on March 14, 2013

This has been brewing for a few years, and you’re not going to like it. Today, I share with you my theory that Twitter is turning us into douchebags.

I know. It’s not pretty. But hear me out.

For a start, I realise this is a huge generalisation, but you could argue that this is what theorem actually are. That’s not the point, though. The point is this: day after day, year after year, I see (and experience, and hear about) people behaving a certain way – on, because of or enabled by Twitter – that isn’t OK, but because of some gradual shift towards this behaviour being mainstream, it seems OK, or at least harmless. Until you stop and think about it.

And here’s the bit you really won’t like. In this case, I’m talking about you, chaps*.

I’m talking about the conversations in the stream that suddenly go to DM, and become clandestine.

I’m talking about the married or attached men who do that.

I’m talking about the married men who hit on you, behind DM lines.

I’m talking about the guy who hits on you and various others at the same time behind DM lines (hint: friends talk).

I’m talking about the guy you’ve tweeted with for ages, who invites you for an in-real-life drink and forgets to mention he’s married. Then remembers, but asks you to his hotel room anyway.

I’m talking about the guy who fills his stream with flirting and sly mentions of conquests days after a break up.

I’m talking about the guy who attention-bombs you with flattery until he remembers to mention he has a girlfriend. And then keeps doing it anyway.

I’m talking about the guy who thinks it’s OK to comment on your genitalia, which he can apparently picture clearly, despite having had any first-hand experience of them.

I’m basically talking about douche-y behaviour that seems possible on Twitter, because, well, it’s not really real it is? The worst thing is, these people are not necessarily bona fide douches. In most cases, they’re nice guys. But we’re all human, of course. Despite coming over a bit Mary Whitehouse here, I’m possibly the world’s foremost fan of flirting, and romance and sex.

However, my list of felonies here makes me sad, because what it all amounts to is the cheapening of romance and flirtery. It’s turning flattery into a strategy, that’s neither genuine nor kind. It’s making getting to know someone an accelerated, highly-edited process that creates false intimacy. It’s turning love into a playground game. It’s doing the trust placed in these trainee douches by their partners no justice.

My theory – entirely open to debate, of course – is that people who do this kind of thing probably didn’t before Twitter. Probably. Thing with Twitter though, is that it makes us all a bit more sexy (we’re presenting our best side to the world, which is often also the funniest, kindest and cleverest side) on Twitter. We might feel or be aware that we have a certain amount of influence on Twitter – people are listening, and taking notice. Let’s be honest, even our avi is the version of ourselves we want people to see. And Twitter encourages expression, sociability, banter, escape.

I love Twitter and will defend it to the ends of the Earth. I’m also a highly sociable person who just likes people. I also set great store by IRL – the holy grail of meeting someone in real life. That, to me, is the point of it, and I’ve made many friends that way.

But perhaps by creating a distinction between Twitter and life beyond (as IRL), we’re creating a false reality that allows us to behave in a way that is less than honourable, and to accept this behaviour as normal. Twitter IS real life, and our commitment to being a decent and honest person there should be as strong as it is when we’re holding our partner’s hand, or kissing our kids at night.

If we don’t see that, it’s making monkeys out of all of us.

*These are the experiences that I can relate, as a heterosexual woman with mainly hetero friends. I’m not saying for a minute that women don’t or won’t do similar, but the principle is the same.

Categories: Uncategorized

Destruct / Construct

Posted on March 5, 2013

This week was always going to be hard. It’s the two year anniversary of the day I self-destructed. We’ve most of us self-destructed part or all of ourself, somehow. From the promise we broke, to the car we wrote off, the hurtful thing we said, or that thing we cocked up. I sort of did all of that in one go: I told my husband our marriage was over and that I didn’t want it saved.

It’s one of those slo-mo moments, where you know conceptually that everything will change, forever, but you have no idea how. At that time, I was numbed and reckless by depression, dumb with sadness and tired – just so, so tired. This was bigger than self-destruction. The collateral damage was unimaginable.

Now, two years on, I’m realising that the destruction part was perhaps necessary, albeit ugly and painful. Because often what follows destruction, and what might have necessitated it all along, is construction. Construction is positive, and it is powerful. It cannot replace what has been destroyed (and nor should it), because destruction is irreversible. Construction is deliberate, and it is painstaking. It cannot be hurried, because that would do destruction no justice.

As I emerge from the desperate, depressive fog of two years ago, I find my voice again and I start to feel again. I have moments of dazzling clarity that are almost blinding, and they energise me for a while. I even feel happy sometimes, content even more often than that. But I’ve been frustrated and disheartened too, because after the hardest two years of my life, I can’t see the construction. I can’t see a shiny, new, better me yet. It’s made me howl.

And then another moment of clarity creeps up, like a stealthy sunrise, and I see something. When you knock down an old building, you can’t just build a new one straight away. There’s all the debris to be cleared away, space to be surveyed. And then you still can’t build because, well, you were never just going to construct the same thing again, were you? So you have design something, consider what’s needed from that building, take time to see what materials you have to work with, maybe think about new ones. You have to figure out boundaries, what’s allowed and what isn’t. You have to find a way to make it safe, and practical, but also beautiful. You need ways to let people in and out. You need a view. But none of that is possible without the groundwork, without foundations.

It’s the most thinly veiled analogy in the world, I realise, but it tells me perhaps, where these two hard years have gone. They weren’t lost. They weren’t the universe punishing me. They were just the hard work that was needed to get to point where construction can start. And although it might have felt like there’s nothing to show for it all, there are actually some solid foundations that add meaning to all of this. And when I construct the life I want and choose, I’ll know that the bit you can’t see, that I’d not even noticed these past few years, is the most important bit. Foundations which take something from before, from the strength of friendship and love that my ex and I have managed to retain, and something new, in all that I have learned and become.

I’m still not sure what I’m building, or how I want it to look. But I know I want it to feel safe, and to be built with good and beautiful stuff. And more than anything, I want a good view.

Categories: Uncategorized

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