That's amore

When the moon hits your eye...

PIZZA, baby!


Because I had the good luck at 17 to meet the best person I'll ever know (although granted, he was well-disguised as a scrawny self-important teen with a prog rock fascination I will never understand) AND the good sense to stay with the ornery cuss for 33 years, I am in the fortunate position of living with someone who loves and knows the very soul of me. As a result, his gift selection is brilliant.

I was dreading Christmas this year - the first year without Mum and to a large degree without Dad too because he needed to ignore it all for his own wellbeing. Mark found things to rekindle my excitement and engagement in the world. The man's a magician.

First amazing gift was from my parents-in-law at M's suggestion. They got me a wildlife camera so we can see who and what visits our garden at night. I'm absolutely delighted. I know we've had some hedgehogs over that past 2 years and that foxes visit to hope for a wandering hen (never mind the rodent corpses our cats thoughtfully provide) but actually seeing what comes when, and how it behaves is very exciting.

I've spent my Christmas money from my brother on a large charger and lots of rechargeable batteries so I can run the camera down the bottom of the garden. My plan is to move it every few days until we discover where we are most likely to see our nocturnal visitors.

The next brilliant gift was my own personal Springwatch experience.

I love Springwatch. I love Chris and Michaela and poor deposed Martin and I'm bearing with Gillian hoping she finds her feet as a presenter eventually but above all I love Iolo Williams. He's the lanky Welshman who bubbles over with enthusiasm and delight at all wild encounters in this tiny but remarkable country. Iolo's the reason we went to the Farne Islands and why I wanted to see a murmuration - I didn't know such things existed and he inspired me with a desire to seek them out.

He's doing a talk at a centre near my Dad for a local wildlife charity. Mark's got tickets for Dad and me and a copy of Iolo's book about UK wildlife so I can get it signed. I'm beyond delighted.

So far, so middle aged twitcher. Which is an identity I am proud to acknowledge, by the way.

But the third gift...

That's the "yeah, great, thanks for the two scented tree resins, Caspar and Melchior, but where's Balthazar with the gold?" gift.  Not just ace but brilliant.

A pizza oven.

assembled inside, but for OUTSIDE use only

I know it's a fairly shameful claim, but we eat more pizza than any family I know. Luke would eat pizza for every meal of his life if he could. I love Roman, Neopolitan, Chicago style -  all of it. I remember my horror moving to the UK in 1985 and seeing the ghastly cardboard discs passing as "pizza" here, and my cousins' bemusement at my disgust. (Britain, I love you but your food prior to the 90s was a damned disgrace). I've experimented with lots of different dough recipes, various cooking techniques, bought pizza tins, stones and peels. Ever since my Very Excellent Mate Nic talked about how she and Ady built a cob pizza oven on their croft on Rum I've been trying to persuade Mark we need one.

The Ooni 3 is a work of genius. Like my beloved Eglu did for hen-keeping, it makes wood-fired pizzas a doddle in your back garden. It's portable, it takes 15 minutes to heat up rather than the 4-6 hours of a cob oven and the pizzas cook in under 2 minutes. They are beyond anything -
I can't recommedt them enough. I made around 8 of them today, I think, maybe more.

The dough recipe I used was a very simple one - 500g strong flour, 300g water, 7g quick acting yeast and a heaped teaspoon of salt. I put it in the kitchen mixer for 10-15 minutes then moved it to an oiled, covered bowl in a warm spot in the kitchen. The first batch was done while the kitchen door was open and it was really cold so I popped it in the Instant Pot on the "yogurt making" setting for 90 minutes. The second sat in a sunny window.

Each dough batch made 5 balls weighing 160g. After a second prove I kneaded and stretched each into a 24-30cm circle (this is a lie, they were weird splodges). I put flour on the peel (official name for that metal flat thing that gets pizzas out of ovens) and plopped carefully placed the dough on it. 2 spoons of pizza sauce, a scattering of olives/pepperoni/nothing, a generous sprinkling of mozzarella and a quick shimmy to get it from peel to oven.

The thing cooks unbelieveably quickly. I charred the first one because I couldn't believe 30 seconds was enough before turning. (it was)

in which we learn 60 seconds a side is too long

Using the peel, I pulled the pizza out every 30 seconds or so and rotated it 180 degrees. Within 90 seconds to 2 minutes (depending on the temperature of the baking stone at the heart of the oven) each pizza was perfectly cooked.

one of many misshapen but delicious pizzas

I had a brilliant time. I was supposed to be making dinner for everyone but I got overexcited and made pizza for a late lunch first. This was serendipitous, as trying to use an unfamiliar cooking technique with FIRE and at up to 500 degrees Celsius in the dark would have been a nightmare. I did have a second batch in the dark but it was much harder to see whether things were cooked/burnt/undercooked so in future I'll stick to cooking with actual visibility.

It was wonderful to find things that are fun and exciting, especially when I'd anticipated this season with a fair amount of dread.

If you need me, I'll be pitting olives and sourcing 00 flour online for the foreseeable future.

Happy New Year, and may the coming decade be kinder than the last.

A bit of a catch-up

As Storm Ali turns my tree into a Whomping Willow, I'm hunkering down inside. The chimney and the window gaps are making spooky noises and the animals are jumpy so I'm banishing the eerie atmosphere with smells of spices and cooking vegetables. I have pans of pulses simmering, batch cooking underway. 

Next Week Me will be very grateful.

The younger two are back at school and thriving. Z is in Sixth Form and absolutely loves his courses. He's so full of enthusiasm, I do love to see that. He's also exhausted - lots of work! Miss B is about to go on one of the highlights of her secondary school experience - the Year 8 trip to Butlins Skegness with the whole year group. 300 kids taking over the place for a week, living in apartments with their friends and having an incredible range of activities and workshops put on for them. I know she'll love it and throw herself into everything.

Familial relations have broken down still further amongst our feline residents.  Ferris Mewller has ceased coming home entirely, even when his adopted family went away. I looked for him and called for him, but he refuses to enter the garden, never mind the house. He hisses at us when we try bring him inside and ignores offers of food. 

I miss my special lad, he was very much My Cat (or I was very much His Person) until I ruined things by bringing Gonzo to live with us.

Poor Isaac Mewton is suffering too. Gonzo's only 2 years old and he's ENORMOUS. He is the alpha cat now; eats all the food, fights with Isaac every time they are together. He's a thug - bites Isaac while he sleeps, claims every sleeping place Isaac prefers. This morning they were fighting on opposite sides of a glass door for heaven's sake - it's madness.  I have to chuck Gonzo outside and feed Isaac separately; they work the house on a timeshare system.

I'm definitely not the cause of any trouble

This autumn I can appreciate the advance planning of Winter and Spring Me, as all those events I booked tickets for are finally coming around. We have a lot of standup comedy to look forward to, some workshops, activism, Yarndale, theatre, music, a meal at a Michelin starred place we've been looking forward to, and of course the mighty Hamilton. It's lovely having all these things on the horizon. I start getting tense about the coming dark months around now, and having so many interesting things to focus on is such a help.

I've not done a great deal of crafting for a long while. This year I have been focusing on cooking new things, expanding our meal choices and overcoming my unease at cooking with meat. I don't eat meat myself much (pastrami and pancetta are my exceptions because they don't have the texture that puts me off) and I've always hated handling it. However, the point of a blog called Fearlessly Attempting is to have a go at stuff that made me nervous.

I've done pulled pork, poached chicken, pork loin steaks, cooking meals with mince, chicken curries, meatballs, fajitas.  I still hate the smell, especially of the fatty meats like the pulled pork, but the successes of getting B to try more food combined with how delighted Z is with the meals makes it worth it.

As well as the many Indian recipes from Meera Sodha's wonderful books, I've done more Mexican influenced food too. (OK, TexMex, and not remotely authentic, but tasty anyway!). There have been  refried beans with additional chillies, spicy tomato and paprika rice with onions and peppers, guacamoles and fresh salsas. Pulled jackfruit was pretty good, although at heart I do prefer a veggie chilli. Miss B and Z like tacos and wraps, Mark prefers a plate, and I don't care as long as I get to eat it.

Of course, having settled down to type what I've been up to,  I've completely lost track of time. I am dragged back to painful reality by the acrid smell of a pan burnt dry.

Aw hell.

That's going to take a lot of scrubbing to make it useable.

No refried beans today. 

In a pickle

One of the things I missed most when I moved to the UK as a kid was the lack of dill pickles. The lack of good food generally, come to think of it. Sure, the chocolate was better and you get a lovely cup of tea, but the food was almost uniformly lousy, the pizza were appalling and you couldn't even get a nice crisp dill pickle to liven up your sandwich.

The North Wales culinary landscape was pretty miserable in 1985.

Things are much improved. However, I still find the dill pickles a bit hit and miss. Too sweet a lot of the time, or too floppy, or just a bit 'meh'. So I'm making my own.

As I'm not sure how they will turn out, I'm starting with two different recipes.

My new friend-of-a-friend-via-Facebook, the very ace Lisa D, suggested this particular recipe. She's an ex-pat Canadian with excellent taste in many things (i.e. we agree with each other) so that's my first attempt.

Refrigerator pickles aren't proper preserves; they are only good for 2-3 weeks. I'm not sure how many pickles I'll need in that short a time, so I'm only trying one jar for this one. What I have in the cupboard is a much smaller jar than the recipe uses so I've halved the amount of vinegar. I'm using a generous sprig of fresh dill, a peeled clove of garlic (because I like it) and a teaspoon of sea salt. I've sliced the pickles about pound-coin thickness because I prefer them thicker than her wafer thin style.

It takes about 3 minutes to do, and is an absolute doddle.  If these are good I'm going to be delighted.

I liked the idea of longer-lasting pickles too, so I'm doing a more traditional recipe with the majority of jars.

Unlike the massive farms these people seem to have, producing kilo after kilo of cucumbers that require industrial scales of production, I have one plant that escaped the slugs. Downsizing needed.
I swapped the unit of measurement from 1 cup to 1/4 of a cup, and kept proportions the same. so: 1/4 cup table salt, 1 1/4 cups of water, 2 3/4 cups of white wine vinegar, simmered for 10 minutes to dissolve the salt. I put a large sprig of fresh dill, peeled garlic and one fresh chilli pepper (also from the garden) in each jar before stuffing them as full of cucumber as possible.
Because my cucumbers aren't a specific "for pickling" cultivar, they do have more seeds than is usual for dill pickle.  I'm doing some jars with slices and some with spears that I've trimmed the seeds from to see if that keeps them crunchier.
I also read on a number of recipe sites that the blossom end of the cucumber contains enzymes that make it go floppy, so I followed that advice too and trimmed the ends off.

To allow the pickles to last long term, I put all the jars on a folded tea towel in my big stock pot, covered them with boiling water and simmered for 15 minutes. The Internet assures me that will work just as well as a pressurised canner (and obviously the Internet is always factual - ha!) so that's what I did.

Don't worry, I did add more water

When I lifted the jars out (carefully) I could see one wasn't sealed properly so we'll not store that one and eat it soon. The other 4 looked much better, bulging because of the heat, contracting to a vacuum seal as they cooled. They are the duller green I associate with pickles, and I'm very much looking forward to trying them! A shame I have to wait about a month before opening them - I promise I'll update you.

Having been away for 12 days, I had rather a glut of produce to deal with.  I have now washed, trimmed, blanched and frozen over 4kg of French beans, swapped 2 dozen quail eggs for courgette to make fritters, and enjoyed salads of tiny tomatoes with red onion.

I know I say it a lot, but I really do love my garden.

Eating Ramen here in my Pyjamas

Given how often we sang The Virtual Life here last year, you'd think I'd have made ramen before now. I mean, I LOVE ramen. Zach loves ramen. Mark would probably love it and even Miss B will noodles in soy sauce and miso. The Big Lad is never going to like them but if I can get 4 out of 5 of us eating something that's a gold medal in this house.

The online recipes I found initially had me retreating in fear. So many ingredients! So many I'd never heard of! And most crucially, instructions to make a stock over a day or two.
2 days making pork belly stock?
Not going to happen.
I don't even eat pork.
I asked my top mates Suzanne and Hannah for recipes and advice.  They are ramen-scoffing fiends, if anyone would have an easy recipe, they would.
As always, they came up trumps and my first attempt was pretty darned tasty. I picked bits and pieces from all their suggestions and made something I thought worked well.

I'm sure it won't pass as remotely authentic, but as a a family dinner it was delicious. Before I totally forget how I did it, I thought I'd write it up in case anyone else fancied a go (if there is anyone left who doesn't make them already - tell me I'm not the only noodle noob out there!)

The main components of the dish are the broth, the protein, the noodles and the toppings. Lots of recipes use chicken or pork belly in meaty stocks; I'm using salmon and a vegetable stock. A hint on the BBC website suggested using the stalks of the coriander along with a while fresh chilli pepper to infuse instant stock with more flavour and I think it was pretty successful. When I get a chance to pop into town I'll visit the Asian supermarket for some dash or kimchi to spice things up a bit, too.

Beginner's Ramen

1litre veg stock
bunch of fresh coriander
1-2 fresh chillies
1-5tbs soy sauce
1 tbs mirin
1 tbs fish sauce
1 bunch spring onions
4 cloves garlic finely grated or crushed
fresh ginger about half the size of your thumb, peeled and finely grated
large handful of mushrooms
2 salmon fillets
handful of frozen prawns (optional)
2 pak choy
chinese noodles
1/2 tsp bicarb

Bring the stock to the boil; add the stalks of the coriander and half to a whole chilli. Turn off heat, leave to infuse while you chop the other ingredients.

Finely chop the spring onions right up to the green parts. Put the green aside in a bowl. Chop the remaining fresh chilli and the coriander leaves, add to the bowl of toppings.

Toppings ready

Slice the mushrooms and fry on a medium heat with the white parts of the spring onion and the grated garlic and ginger.

Remove the coriander stalks and chilli from the stock. Stir in the mushroom mixture, soy sauce (depending how salty you like things), fish sauce, mirin and a cup of water. Simmer for 10 minutes and taste - add chillies, sugar or soy sauce to taste. Keep it on a low heat ready to use.

I think the mushrooms added depth to the broth

Season the salmon and cook it skin side down for several minutes before turning it over to complete the last bit of cooking.

Cut the pak choy in quarters lengthwise. Put it and the noodles (usually 1 nest per person) in a pan of boiling water with the bicarb. Cook according to the packet instructions (usually 3 minutes). Drain.

Assemble the bowls with noodles first, the pak choy and salmon pieces divided equally, broth and finish with a scattering of the coriander, spring onion tips and fresh chilli to taste.  I decided at the last minute to add some cooked prawns I had in the freezer that just needed warming through in a mug of boiling water, so I added them at the same time as the salmon.  Not sure they were entirely necessary.

If you feel like going all out, add a halved ramen egg to each bowl.  These are soft boiled eggs marinated overnight in soy sauce, garlic and other nice things.  On Hannah's recommendation I used this recipe . I even had a go with some quail eggs; they were delicious but not soft boiled because they are so darned small it's hard to judge the timings.

Fool that I am, I was so flustered bringing everything together that I totally forgot the eggs I'd done the day before so we had them after like a snack. Really lovely!

Thou Shalt Have a Fishy

Gone fishin'

It's a cliche for doing nothing, sloping off, taking it easy.  And it's been an aspiration of mine for a-g-e-s

Number 1 on my list of Things To Do Before I'm 50, fishing for my dinner, was a highlight of my summer.

Thanks to miscalculating how long it takes to get from Teeside to Whitby, and then the total lack of availability of parking spaces Whitby in the summer, my reservation of 4 places on a fishing boat came a cropper.  Luke had obviously opted out as he doesn't eat fish, hates strong smells, and refuses to be involved in the death of animals but I'd booked the rest of us.  As we got more and more frenzied, stuck in traffic with no parking, Mark told me to ditch them and head straight for the boat. Despite the lack of travel sickness pills, Zach agreed to join me.

The day couldn't have been lovelier. It was hot, still and beautiful.  The swell of the tide was pronounced as we were half an hour outside the harbour, but I was fine. This was not the case for everyone.

We fished with just hooks and feathers. Zach was first to reel in two enormous mackerel on his rod, although he was horrified at the prospect of wrenching the fish from the hooks. Sadly, that was it for Zach; seasickness overwhelmed him and he spent the rest of the 3 hours curled up in a ball trying to hold it all together. His good humour whilst feeling wretched was astonishing. He is the most gracious human being I've ever known. "I wouldn't have missed it, Mummy. You were having such a wonderful time that I was happy to be there, no matter how sick I felt. I know how long you've waited to do this."
I wish I could take credit for Zach's aceness but he does it all himself. He's honestly that lovely.

Possibly the nicest human alive, and his mum

I was as happy as it is possible to be when surrounded by slimy fish guts and having not eaten for many hours. That is far happier than I would have expected. The skipper moved us to 4 different sites over the afternoon and we brought up unbelievable quantities of fish.

Mostly I caught mackerel. However, there were whiting, a member of the cod family, and one very small but exciting gurnard.
The skipper yelled, "Don't touch it!" while the rest of the fishing friends leapt backwards.  Gurnard isn't venomous but the spines can deliver a very nasty injury. We removed the gurnard from the hook, threw it back in the sea and it swam off to freedom.

Little gurnard to lived to swim another day

While we paying punters fished and fished, the skipper kindly gutted our catch.  We motored back into Whitby harbour and transferred our fish into great big bin bags.  Zach emerged from his cocoon  of queasy and we joined Mark, Luke and Bonnie on the path.  Being the type to plan ahead, I'd put a styrofoam cooler in the boot. I picked up three bags of ice from the supermarket and tipped it into the cooler with the ice so we could drive the fish home in good condition.

We got home late that night, having detoured to my Very Excellent Mate SJ's house to collect The Great Gonzo, our new kitten.  He's exceptionally naughty and quite spectacularly cute. Sorry, Mark! I can't resist a tabby cat, in whatever colour.

Then Mark cooked a couple of fillets so we could enjoy the very fresh fish.

The next day Mark filleted the many, many fish and I invited friends for a meal. We had potato salad, horseradish dressing, chilli and lime dressing and grilled toasts. It was fantastic sharing food I'd caught. I loved it and so did our friends. I'm delighted than my chance to catch this sustainable and delicious fish resulted in meals for my family and friends.  I couldn't be happier.

Spice of life

I'm a lucky woman.  I live in a city I love and I know truly wonderful people. They are interesting and fun, they have a mass of knowledge I lack and - HURRAY - they are generous with it all.  Most importantly they respond positively to the question "Can you show me how?"

My lovely friend Sabrina (mother of Miss B's also very lovely friend A) seemingly thinks nothing of knocking up meals for 18 people arriving in 3 separate sittings as her extended family call in over the weekends. She told me she and her sister-in-law used to churn out 80 chapatis twice a day when she lived in her in-laws' house. I was agog.

I've never really got to grips with Indian food. If we eat it, it comes from a jar, an insta-dinner or a takeaway. I'm more Italianate than sub-continental.  Sabrina generously agreed to teach me one afternoon.

I'll say now - she spoilt me rotten.  I'd had an accident with the bread knife the week before and had only just removed my bandage. Sabrina was concerned it might be uncomfortable for me so she'd acted as commis chef and done all the preparation.  Everything was sliced, peeled, chopped or otherwise ready to go.  It was brilliant.

Here's what I learnt:

It all starts with garlic and ginger. A full bulb of garlic, peeled, and a lump of fresh ginger half the size of my palm blitzed together into a lumpy paste -

 

This lives in a sealed jar in the fridge to be used as needed.

To get the curry underway, we fry chopped onions in vegetable oil.  Where I'd have gone slow and used olive oil for most meals I eat, Sabrina had the temperature much higher and cooked them until they were starting to caramelise.  

Once the onions have a fair bit of colour, a heaped tablespoon/serving spoon of the garlic and ginger paste goes in.  Cook that for a good 2 or 3 minutes.  Then the pretty bit -

Doesn't that look gorgeous?

So, a good teaspoon of turmeric (the central one) and 1 to 4 teaspoons of the chilli powder (at 12 o'clock) depending on taste. We love a bit of heat, so went for 3 teaspoons. A generous teaspoon of Basaar mix (at 3 o'clock) and a spoon or two of the seed mix, panch puran (at about half five)


Basaar spice mix is a Kashmiri spice blend.  Panch puran is an Indian - or Bengali - 5 seed mix.  There are mustard, fennel, onion (or possibly nigella?), cumin and we *think* fenugreek. Sabrina regards it as essential.  She also says she gives the kids the little black seeds - the ones we couldn't decide on as nigella or onion seeds - on a cold day to warm them from inside.

As soon as they hit the pan they the smell was AMAZING.

Sabrina says it is very important to cook the spices before adding the tomatoes. We stirred things around for a minute or two, then in went masses of chopped fresh tomatoes.

 The mix cooked at a high temperature for a good long while with the lid off, to get rid of excess water.

Isn't that starting to look good?  For the vegetable curry, that's all the cooking the sauce needs. If we were adding meat we'd have cooked it still further. For fish, we'd have cooked it down to a much thicker sauce and pureed it smooth before coating the fish in it and cooking slowly with yogurt.

However, with vegetables a bit of texture from the tomatoes is fine.

We tipped in a mass of fresh chopped carrots, courgettes, cauliflower and some frozen peas.  We could have gone for just cauli and potato to make aloo gobi, but we had for a broad mix.   We stirred thoroughly and covered the pan while the veg cooked through.

To serve, we made chapatis.  Sabrina kept an almost straight face as she watched me attempt to make these quick flatbreads.  First, she suggested I roll each lump of dough into a ball inside the flour drum, to keep from getting too sticky.  Then roll it out thin or slap it from hand to hand until it is a very thin round (ish) shape.  Slap it on a VERY hot dry pan, flip it over to cook the other side, and put on one side while you do the next one.  She can do two at once.  I could barely manage one at a time, but I had a great laugh trying.

 Not exactly a great looking chapati, is it!

I made 6 in all. I was very proud.

We topped the curry with chopped fresh mint and coriander. It was a delicious lunch - veg curry, chapatis and fresh thick yogurt to subdue the heat. I've never cooked a curry half as good.

I did take a picture of Sabrina while she was cooking, but her scarf had slipped back so that would be impolite.  If you picture a pair of women standing at the hob, one rather quiet, gorgeous and wearing a beautiful headscarf and dress and yet not splashing any food on them,  the other one much more expansive and wearing an apron with damp handprints and plenty of spice stains on, and both are talking and laughing, you've pretty much got us.  

It was a fantastic afternoon.  I'm so looking forward to making more of Sabrina's curries for the family. Saturday night 'round at mine, everyone?

Wide Awake

"I am wide awake"

It's 1 am. Mark and the kids are in bed. I'm doing the last round of chores - folding the stuff from the dryer, putting another load in the washer, feeding the pets, loading the dishwasher, locking the doors. You know, the usual night time stuff.

I'd made fish cakes for the kids today. I bought lots of coley and a small piece of smoked haddock, poached them in milk while I peeled, cut and boiled spuds. I mashed the fish and spuds together with an egg to bind it, formed it into patties and dipped them in flour, whisked egg white and matzo meal before frying them. I'd made Grandma Curl's potato salad, complete with finely diced boiled egg, green pepper and onion. Mark and I were having fresh mackerel fillets but, knowing the kids didn't like them, I bought ingredients and made a replacement.

This lead to a total hissy fit from two of my kids.  OK, they didn't like the fishcakes, fair enough. I won't make them for them again. But today it is the dinner. Today it's what they need to eat, even if it's just a very small portion.  Because this isn't a restaurant and you can't order a different meal if you don't like the first one. That's it until breakfast.
(If they have a good go and eat a fair bit, we do offer a piece of toast to fill them up a bit more, but not if they've just had a tantrum. You can judge my parenting if you like.)

Miss B tried to negotiate for a good hour - "I've had a mouthful and that's enough." In the end she was sent to bed after scraping her dinner into the bin.  She'd been really rude to us and we decided it was better she not be with other people for a bit.

This was not the punishment it might otherwise have been. For a week-long trial our guinea pigs, Snowy and Pippin, are moving inside to B's room. The cage is clean, I sewed fleece pads to line it and  B tidied her room ready. I bathed the guinea pigs and treated them for fleas just in case, and filled their dangling feeder ball with fresh veg and fruit. The guinea pigs were running around exploring their new environment. B would have gone up to her room anyway rather than join the rest of us laughing at The Apprentice on iPlayer.

As usual, I popped in to check on her in the evening. She was fast asleep, but as I leant over to turn off her light she muttered "I'm not asleep at all," before drifting back to light snores.

So, at 1 a.m. when I'm finally going to bed I opened her door. It's a bit stiff and made a noise as it opened. (We have to keep it firmly shut or Isaac the cat barges it open, wakes B and generally is disruptive.)

At the sound, Miss B called out "I am wide awake," in the voice of someone very asleep. I put my hand on her hair, which usually settles her right back again.

"I am wide awake," she murmured again. "It's ok, go to sleep, sweetheart."  "Oh, are you wide awake, Mummy?" she asked, rolling further under the duvet, "that's OK then."
And back to sleep.

I have no idea why it was so important B claimed to be awake. Maybe the ignominy of being sent to her room 45 minutes before her actual bedtime made her think she was determined not to go to sleep. Maybe the novelty of guinea pigs in her room made her want to stay up.

Whatever it was, the fact that I was "wide awake" meant she didn't have to be.
Sweet dreams, my stubborn girl.

Mellow Fruitfulness

Ah, Keats.   Of all the poems I learnt at school, Ode to Autumn is the only one strangers quote t me. There is something about going for a walk and coming across someone picking elderberries or sloes in the hedgerows that seems to compel ramblers of a certain age to say "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." Every time. Seriously, it happens every single time.

It's a corker of a line, of course. In fact, I like the whole first stanza -

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;	10
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

The apple and pear trees have been wonderful this autumn. I've had crisp, sweet Discovery apples from the cheap little tree from Costco we planted 18 months ago.  There were two freakishly large Red Delicious apples, each as big as a baby's head, from a cordon tree SJ gave us. I can't bring myself to eat them, they're just too ridiculous. Miss B's apple tree has had a less successful year but after last year's bumper crop probably needed the break.

For the first time our little pear tree has been properly productive. Up until this year it's lost most of its fruit before they'd ripened. I've been plucking ripe pears from the branches for a nearly a month - I must have had at least 15, which is good going for such a small tree. They are so much nicer than any pears I've had before, but I suspect that's sentimentalism on my part.

This week my lovely pal Suzanne took me to visit our friends Jo, Ang and Lucy for a visit of walking, sloe picking and a big shared lunch. Lucy is a keen walker and cyclist. When she said there were blackthorn bushes 'near' her house, I hadn't realised she meant a 4.5 mile round trip rather than a gentle stroll along the lane. However, it was a beautiful sunny day, the company was good and the sloes plentiful. It was a lovely day, the kind I will look back on to keep me going during the dark winter days.

People say things like "wait until the after the first frost" to pick sloes, but that's rubbish. Most years, by the time we have a frost the sloes have been eaten by the birds, picked by foragers quicker off the mark, or have wizened on the bush. The frost breaks down the cell structure, which is helpful for making sloe gin. I guess that was pretty useful in times past.

However, we don't live in the 18th century.  We have freezers.  Bobbing your freshly picked sloes in the freezer for a couple of days does a fine job of rupturing the cell structures, with the added bonus of killing off any unwanted passengers.

After picking over the frozen sloes for stalks, leaves or deceased insects,  I poured 1kg of them into a 2 litre Kilner jar. In went just over a litre of gin and 200g of sugar.  Traditional recipes call for a lot more sugar, but I don't like it too syrupy, and I'd rather add more sugar later than end up with something tooth-dissolving.

I've left the jar on the counter this week so I remember to shake it every day. in about a fortnight I'll banish it to the cupboard under the stairs until near Christmas.  Then I'll test the sweetness, adjust as needed, and leave a while longer.

The other autumnal thing I did this weekend was roasting 2 large butternut squashes for soup. I just hack them into big slices or wedges, skin on, and rub a little olive oil across them. Then I bang them in the oven for about an hour.

I pull them out when they are all soft and look like this -

Cooled, rinds removed and whizzed up with stock and pepper, they become pretty much my favourite fall lunch.  That's why I make such a lot at once - I will eat it for days given a chance!

A Snack For Europe

Ah,  the Eurovision Song Contest. Possibly the most confirmedly bonkers night in the TV schedules.  Masses of countries, many of which aren't even in Europe, competing to be chosen through arcane rules and cronyism as winners of a Song For Europe. Sometimes a pop song, sometimes an easy listening song, occasionally something truly demented. Scandinavian Death Metal band Lordi, I'm looking at you, lads.

When I first moved to the UK I was 16. I sat in the lounge of my Auntie Doh's house, utterly mystified by the relish with which she anticipated an over-long evening of crimes against music and taste. I was appalled. But sort of fascinated.

Within 4 years I loved it - sitting in Mark's student digs while housemate Dave wielded the Mop Of Shame. He was sitting in an armchair a mop's reach from the cheap second hand telly, mopping the screen whenever we wanted to banish a contestant. Many, many beers were consumed.

We never manage to pick winners, Mark and I. We tend to favour the madder-than-a-box-of-frogs entries, the crazy showboaters with a sense of fun.  France and Germany take turns being mentalists most years although Iceland does its share.

Anyway, because I had Very Important Work to do which demanded some truly momentous procrastination, I decided this year to make snack food from as many of the finalist countries as I could manage in 5 hours. You know, for fun.

I am clearly batty.  I know NOTHING about the cuisine of most of the finalists. Azerbaijiani and Armenian snacks are not amongst my repertoire. It was one of those "Google is my best friend" moments.

So here we go - our Snack For Europe menu:

First up, Ukraine. Their song was Tick Tock, which required a man flollop about in a giant hamster wheel for no discernible purpose. The item I cooked was Deruny: a grated potato and onion cake. I followed the recipe except I didn't peel the potatoes. I think a lot of the goodness is in the skin.

Next, Cheesecake from Belarus. Regrettably not the delicious dessert but instead a really awful song about wanting to be some girl's 'cheesecake.'  It included the line "I'm not Patrick Swayze and you're no Jennifer Grey." I think that much was obvious to us all, Mr Belarus.

Then Azerbaijian - Lass in a red dress accompanied by a woman on a trapeze. Or, in our house, a fresh cheese made from yogurt and dill. It's called Shuyudlu Suzme and I confess I reduced the raw garlic by two thirds. I quite liked it, especially spread on the potato cakes, but the others weren't sure.

One of my own highlights of the evening came next - Iceland. As I mentioned, they are often good fun (or off their heads mental. Which amounts to the same thing) and they didn't disappoint. This year they sent a bunch who had raided The Wiggles' wardrobes. In fairness, they sang better than The Wiggles; more akin to Imagination Movers, I think. Bright and daft and entirely fitting to children's TV. It was called No Prejudice and had the line "Perhaps you're thinner, Or someone who likes his dinner..."
I laughed and I nominate them for a guest appearance on Sesame Street.

Musically, quite a lull now. Norway fielded a bloke wearing Morten Harket's leather wrist straps from the mid 80s, but he was too husky for them and looked like they were cutting off the circulation to his hands while he sang a tedious dirge.
Romania sang something louder and with a faster tempo but all I can recall is a circular keyboard the male of the pair pretended (badly) to play (probably also badly).

Incidentally, it only hit me at 7:12pm that our friends were arriving from 7:30 and I hadn't got any bread for all these dips. A somewhat frantic recipe search brought me Armenia's entry: lavash, an unleavened flatbread cooked in the frying pan (because I don't have a tandoor). It was so quick and delicious I'll make it in future. Flour, salt and water can make wonderful things. Sadly, Armenia's song was utterly dire and so forgettable I could barely recall it even while their lounge lizard bloke was still singing it.

From this

To loads of this in under 15 minutes

Little Montenegro at least had the courage of its convictions and submitted a song in its native language. Bloke singing about something or other  - probably love or loss but it could have been about Torville and Dean - while a woman on roller blades dressed as an ice skater swooped around him. The floor lighting effects were cool - lighting up where she skated like Fantasia's Waltz of the Flowers - but the song was not.

 Poland decided to have some buxom woman in an undone peasant blouse "churning butter" and "washing clothes" into the camera while similarly clad women sang about shaking what their mama gave them,
 I'd say she was doing it suggestively, but that implies far more subtlety than the the 'here are my knockers, let this Pole rub your pole" soft porn approach she was taking. It was like a Benny Hill sketch from the 70s. Three of the six fellas watching it in my living room gave it top marks. The other 3 are related to me, so through being decent feminist types, prudes or just wisely knowing which side their bread is buttered, they roundly condemned it. Good lads. Miss B liked their skirts bought thought they should do their tops up.
I rather regretted buying Polish crisps and pretzels. because, y'know, ewww.

Greece was the family favourite, hummus. Ah, hummus. We can never make enough of it. Then, because it goes so nicely with hummus, I made baba ganoush. 

I know, I know,  I was going off piste a little but it's my party and I'll dip if I want to.

Incidentally, Greece's song was a boy band with a trampolinist behind them. No one is sure why.

Then came Austria - bearded drag queen singing a Bond theme was their musical entry; no food from me as it's either meat based or a complicated dessert. No time to spare for Sachertorte and the like, it's a procrastination too far. 

Germany - big cheer form the sofa as Z is studying German and is off there in October while his pal Tom got them in the sweepstake. Blonde lass with a quiff, accordion. I rather liked it, but I was a minority. Again, bad wine and too many sausage based foodstuffs so I skipped over them. Germany seems no place for a wine-drinking pescatarian.

Sweden - tipped as the favourite, this was a lovely ginger and cardamom cake from my Nordic Bakery book.  I mean, it was a dull ballad thing in true Eurovision tradition. A millions of ABBA fans cried out in anguish and were suddenly silenced. Or it could have been terror.

I just likened Euroviosion to the Death Star, didn't I. Hmm, does that make Terry Wogan Grand Moff Tarkin? Is Graham Norton a camp Vader leprechaun? Disturbing images...

Back to the food. 

Some chèvre flew the flag for France, except I forgot to put it out on the table so I had a lovely goat's cheese omelette for lunch the next day. Win!

In retaliation, a pack of lunatic Frenchmen capered about singing of their earnest desire to grow a moustache. Full points for insanity, null points for musicality.

Russia - pfft. Can't be bothered investigating recipes from Russia. Not in the current political climate.  They sent a poor pair conjoined twins - the first case recorded of twins being joined at the ponytail. Very odd. 

Italy - yay! Salad! I did a quick caprese salad of mozzarella, baby plum tomatoes and home grown basil with olive oil. It was a nice accompaniment to all the dips and flatbreads. 

I enjoyed the Italian entry's commitment to white leather, metal embellishments and over the top 80s styling. Just demented.

No dishes for the next lot - Slovenia (jazz-flute woman); Finland (indie pop boy band, I rather liked it. I was slightly embarrassed by this fact); Spain (Good lord, someone we actually knew! Ruth from the only series of X Factor we ever watched. Still rubbish); Switzerland (he whistles! he has a bloke on banjo! His lyrics are a bit sex-pest!); Hungary (cripes. Song about being a victim of child sex abuse. That was unexpected.)

Malta was a challenge. All the recipes I found on assorted Maltese or ex-pat websites were recipes I associate with different countries. I realise this is true of many countries - food doesn't respect political borders - but I had still hoped to find at least one thing I didn't already associate with somewhere else, even if I didn't actually cook it.

In the end I made "Black Olive Pate" which was really tapenade. Looks sludgy because it's made from black and grey and green things whizzed together, but as an olive-loving soul I enjoyed it very much.

Denmark flew the flag with a 2 minute blue cheese spread - just Danish Blue let down with some soured cream until more spreadable. In retrospect I'd have made it thinner still and dipped veg or crisps in it.  Truly AWFUL song called Cliche Love Song. It wanted to be Axis of Awesome's How to Write a Love Song but wasn't.

Then things got better. THE NETHERLANDS! Yay! An actually tuneful country song performed by  a competent duo without howling, whistling nor grandstanding.  It came as a relief after the previous noise. 

The Netherlands won our Eurovision Food Competition too, as the new dish of the night with top marks from Mark and Russell. It was Bruine Bonen Salade (brown bean salad). The beans were tossed in a dressing of minced red onion, mustard, red wine vinegar, oil, parsley and tarragon. I took down the tarragon amount by half and would have reduced it still further for my own taste as I don't like aniseed, so I bumped up the flat parsley.  I love flat parsley.

The kids, obviously, voted "crisps" as the winner. I'm ignoring them.

The final two songs were something forgettable from San Marino - a place I couldn't even start to find on a map - and the UK's entry with the cringingly awful title Children Of The Universe. It was like watching a less energetic Shakira.  I'd decided that should we require food from Britain we could open the pack of custard creams. The kids were too busy eating crisps to care.

All in all, it was a great night. Mates, chatting, bad music to disparage, funny things to applaud, masses of new things to try.
The final score, the one that would count the most the next morning, was this:

Number of garlic cloves used to prepare the food: 9

I apologise to anyone who came into contact with us on Sunday.

Ringing the dinner bell

Mmm, dinner. I love dinner. I especially like new dinners - a change from eating the same handful of familiar meals. I particularly especially like new dinners that my kids eat without complaining.
(OK, that didn't quite happen. But nearly)

I got the very marvellous Ms Jack Monroe's cook book for my birthday a few weeks ago. There are some things she and I will not ever agree on - tinned fruit in dinner! No! - but she cooks many simple things: tasty, affordable things that I could knock up in not much time. Reading her book reminded me that I can like making food for my family after all.

I dread cooking meals for my kids. My eldest was an extremely picky eater from infancy. Which particular meal he would approve for a year at time would change - homemade cauliflower cheese with diced boiled egg, spaghetti, fish fingers and potato smiles, veggie burgers and margarita pizza have all taken their turn as Sole Acceptable Meal over the years - but the pattern was exhausting. No fruit, no veg, no rice, nor meat, nor pulses nor even chips. I went wrong somewhere and never quite got back on track. (Yes, you can judge me. Go ahead. It won't be anything worse than I've thought myself. Even CAMHS said we'd tried everything they would suggest and let's just hope he grows out of it.)

My youngest is playing monkey see, monkey do with the eldest and my middle child - formerly an enthusiastic eater of anything - has decided to object to some of the few foods the other two will actually eat. There are nearly no meals they all like. Home made macaroni cheese is the only reliable one.

And that's why I hate cooking for them. At best, at least one of them will push the food around glumly and not eat. At worst two of them will moan and strop, making enjoying a meal together hard going. To save my sanity by reducing the emotional investment I have in the success of a dinner, I never spend more than 25 minutes of prep on a meal for them. Otherwise I am a ball of seething resentment when no one eats it, which is fair to no one. They didn't ask me to spend 90 minutes on a fancy dinner they won't eat.

So, knowing I was really experimenting for my own enjoyment, I had a browse through Jack Monroe's book. I made the red kidney bean burgers for Mark and I for lunch one day - delicious! Then I looked at the carrot and coriander felafel recipe and had an idea.

Mark, Z and I love felafel. Miss B loves hummus. She and Z also love assembling their food. Luke likes wraps, although only if they contain melted cheese. A "build your own wrap" meal could work.

I shredded some lettuce, sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, peeled ribbons of carrots. I knocked up a quick bowl of hummus, made the felafel's according to Jack's recipe and set everything on the table.  But what to offer Luke? I had a ball of cheap mozzarella in the fridge, so I tore that into fat chunks, dipped them in flour, beaten egg and flour again (because I meant to use matzo meal and realised we hadn't got any - oops) and dropped them in the pan of oil with the felafel. There was a plate of warm pitta and wraps in the centre of the table and a small plate for each person to assemble their own dinner.

It was a big success. Announcing she didn't like vegetables, Miss B promptly ate most of the cucumber and a fair few carrot ribbons before stuffing herself with a mound of hummus. Luke liked the daft mozzarella melts in his wrap - ok, not a healthy food, but at least we were all eating together  - and Zach made a gargantuan wrap filled with loads of everything. For him, the felafel were the stars of the meal. He had an extra portion later that evening when he came home from Scouts. Mark and I loved it too.

So a big Thank You to Jack Monroe for inspiring me to try something new for the kids, and a huge thumbs up for her book. Get a copy if you can.

Oh, and if you buy hummus rather than make it, I recommend having a go at home made. Much cheaper and easy to adapt to your taste.

Hummus:
1 tin chickpeas
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon (ish) of tahini. Peanut butter will do at a pinch
lemon juice
olive oil
salt and pepper

Drain the chickpea water into a cup. Tip the chickpeas, garlic and tahini in a blender. Add enough lemon juice, chickpea water and olive oil to the blender to allow it to be just wet enough to whizz the chickpeas up. My guess is 2 parts chick pea water, 2 parts oil oil to 1 part lemon juice. Add the liquid sparingly and taste as you go so you can tell if it is too thick, too tangy (add more olive oil) or too bland (add lemon juice). Put in a generous pinch of salt and a grind of pepper to taste.

That's it.

Seriously, that's hummus. Tip a few things in a blender, whizz them up, taste it, whizz again until smooth and Bob's your oyster. See why I never bother buying it?

PS - You can add all sorts of things - fresh coriander, ground cumin, roasted peppers - but I still like it best as it is.

Turning Japanese

I'm still in the lucky position of having great piles of veg ready for eating. The summer sprouting broccoli is up, green and yellow courgettes are everywhere, the red onions and the carrots are all reaching decent sizes

A few of the courgettes had graduated to significantly less appealing marrows. It seems size isn't everything. However, the hens regard marrows as a high treat, so they made short work of the whoppers. The smaller and more tender fruits are much more my thing.

Mark and I had totally failed to do the supermarket shopping this week. We've been popping to the smaller shop at the end of the road for milk and bread and I've been using up the contents of the cupboard and freezer to cobble together meals. The garden has been a great help with this. However, I was getting a bit bored and wanted something new to eat.

I'd read about making vegetable tempura a lot but I've never tried it.  For a start I know nothing about Japanese food aside from having noodles at Wagamama. And for another thing, it looks a bit scary. It's the deep frying. I don't deep fry anything. At all. I like fish and chips from the chippy but that's the full extent of my deep fried dabbling. Partly, all that oil seems pretty wasteful, partly I'm scared it will spatter terribly and burn me, and partly the episode in the first series of Spooks that Mark told me about - I hadn't even watched it - horrified me and I think of it every time I hear the sizzle of fat.

However, that is wussy and daft. It's not wasteful if the veg going in it is free, as long as I am careful and also don't get water near the oil there's no reason it would spit and burn me, and ... well, I couldn't think of anything to banish the Spooks thing but I pushed on regardless.

I picked carrots, broccoli, courgettes and grabbed an onion that had been drying. I washed them all thoroughly to get rid of any insects; I know eating bugs is bandied about in the Guardian as a good form of protein in an overpopulated world but I'm not going for it just now, ta.
I sliced the small courgettes and carrot into narrow lengths, the larger courgette and the onion into disks and left the broccoli florets as they were.

Excuse the rubbish photography - frying dinner and taking quick photos with my phone at the same time mean one or the other will be badly executed. I chose good frying and poor pics as the wise balance.

Anyway, I read a number of tempura recipes that are scattered across my cook books. They all called for sparkling water or, in one case, beer. I don't know about you, my lovely webby mates, but if I am cobbling together a dinner because i haven't done the shopping, sparkling water is not something I will have to hand.  In fact, other than when making a drink with my elderflower cordial that calls for some soda water, my 'water' options are only ever of the tap or tonic varieties, and the latter is only since I discovered how nice a gin and tonic is.

So clearly sparkling water was out of the question.  Then again, tempura is a traditional Japanese dish and I doubt they had sparkling water back in the 1500s. The thing seems to be to keep the batter as light as possible, and both fizzy water and cold water are supposed to help this. But other things help a batter remain light, and they didn't involve a trip to the shops. I went for a 50/50 split of corn flour (cornstarch) and plain flour to achieve that. (I am the sort of person who has corn flour in her cupboards) I added an egg yolk, which 3 of my 4 recipes advised, and ice cold water.  In retrospect popping a couple of ice cubes in the batter would have helped keep it cold for longer as I fried the veg in shifts.  Oh, and I seasoned the batter with salt.
I mixed enough to get it to come together and added enough cold water that the batter would coat my finger when I dipped it in, but only thinly. I dipped and fried the veg a few at a time, for about a minute.
 When I lifted the cooked vegetables out of the cooking oil I placed them on a tray lined with paper towels to absorb any excess oil.  I actually popped the first few in a lined bowl but that made them go a bit soggy as the heat from each piece sort of steamed the batter of its neighbours. 

I had intended to make a dipping sauce based on soy sauce. Unfortunately, as I rooted about for the sauce I noticed its expiry date was 3 years ago. In the end I just sprinkled a little salt over the top and we tucked straight in. They were just LOVELY. My 11yo, who is usually game for anything, looked at them in disgust. But once he tried a piece it was hard to stop him from scoffing the lot. 

Next time I will make a sauce first - something with a vinegar and chilli kick, I think.  I'd keep the batter cold by either adding ice cubes or having it in my metal mixing bowl sitting inside a bigger bowl lined with ice. I would make the batter slightly thicker, but only slightly. I sloshed a tad more water in than I meant to when I was thinning it down the first time. And I would definitely try it with some prawns or strips of fish as well as the lovely veg if I had any in the kitchen.

Here's my current version of a tempura recipe:

125g corn flour

125g plain flour

pinch of salt

1 large egg yolk 

Very cold water (sparkling if you are feeling all fancy)

Sift the corn flour and plain flour together. add the salt and egg yolk. Stir in just enough water to make a thin batter - I found somewhere around the 1/2 cup/ 125ml level was pretty close. It doesn't matter if the batter is a little lumpy. It makes nice crispy bits on the food that way.

Dip small pieces of vegetables in the batter. Deep fry in hot vegetable oil for a minute or so. Eat while they are still hot.

Do you know what? Even the Spooks thing won't stop me from making this again
J xx