The Sacred Art of Eating

I tend to be of the ‘leftovers’ school of risottos, where any lone vegetables, final scrunts of salami or roast meat in the fridge or end-of-bags-of prawns in the freezer find a happy and multicoloured home together. I have been known in the past to make a mushroom risotto but such deviations tend to be short-lived.

I was round at Shona’s the other night and she served this WI tomato-flavoured risotto topped with rocket and roasted butternut squash. I liked it so much I cooked it myself, within the week!

The risotto itself ‘contains’ no vegetables or flavours, it is a simple fried up onion/stock cooked rice affair with tomato purée and bay leaf adding colour and subtle flavours. It is topped with fresh rocket (you can stir it through but I served it just draped on top as this was prettier) and roasted butternut squash. Preparing butternut squash is one of the dreariest jobs in the world and our knives weren’t very sharp at the time so I used half a bag of pre-prepped butternut squash and sweet potato. I always grab these at Waitrose when they are on reduced to clear and sling them in the freezer as for bulking out curry or serving with pasta they are worth their weight in gold in terms of convenience. We didn’t top with toasted pine nuts as Dougal is a) unsure about butternut squash at the best of times and b)not so keen on dishes with scatterings of pine nuts and I felt to combine the two might be a bit mean!

However the rocket on top is not to be omitted- we used lovely locally grown stuff picked up at The Village Store, although this week we’ve been on a bag of Lidl British Grown Unwashed Rocket and it’s pretty powy too. I have friends who grow it in their garden who say it is easy peasy, so why not give it a try yourself?
We are growing some little herbs from seed, including rocket, although I think they are sown too thick at the moment. But they are very pretty!

I was rather impressed with this dish. Easy (and pretty quick, for a risotto!) and tasty with interesting flavours. I think I’ll revisit this.

I appear to be amassing a collection of recipes (mostly from my Dad although some by my request) on my desktop, ‘to be cooked’. Perhaps as a mini challenge for the month of August I shall cook all the recipes he (or others) has ever sent me that I’ve never previously blogged. That might be fun!

What do you call scrambled eggs with left-over pasta mixed through? The internet is covered with references to it but no good names. I thought perhaps it might turn out to be authentically Italian but no. In any case, the other weekend at bunch-ish time, I was going to make some curried scrambled eggs, but noticed that there was a (small) amount of spaghetti sitting from the night before. It seemed logical to combine them.

Not exactly beautiful, but oh-so moreish. I fried up some garlic and spring onion, and softened a chopped tomato with the two. Then in went the snipped up spaghetti to heat through, and some warming, rather than ‘curried’ spices- tumeric, cinnamon, cumin- and several well beaten local organic free range eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper. Topped with ripped-up coriander and parsley, this was an excellent way to use up an insubstantial quantity of pasta and set us both up nicely for the rest of the day!

This time in the form of some pigs cheeks, sold by Waitrose as ‘forgotten cuts’. Also known as Bath Chaps, the fashion seems to be for braising them. These had sat in the freezer for A LONG TIME. I bought them on impulse (they were very cheap) not long after the end of the challenge, but it turned out that we had a busy schedule that week, so they went in the freezer. Once or twice I looked online for recipes (having been surprised to discover they didn’t get a significant mention in Meat) but didn’t really feel inspired.

However, Dougal insisted recently that it was high time we tackle them. Suddenly there seemed to be a myriad recipes online. The Waitrose website even had one, which I suppose makes sense if they are going to sell them, but they do rather spoil the point of  a lovely cheap cut of meat by then suggesting you serve them with scallops on top!

In the end we followed this recipe, braising our cheeks in cider. When it came to unwrapping them they were much larger than I’d remembered!

We loaded all this into the pan; browning the meat first before giving it a fizzy bubble bath in cider and whacking it in a lowish oven for an hour and a half.

The house filled with wonderful smells- very French. We shared out the remaining cider and prepared to tuck in to our meat with some buttered tagliatelle on the side. It looked a bit watery but we’d followed the instructions exactly (well, okay, apart from using onions instead of shallots and chestnut mushrooms rather than button) so we decided to give it a go.

The wateriness meant this really wasn’t a very beautiful dish. But Oh My! did it ever taste good. The meat was meltingly soft like a slow cooked stew, and the combo of flavours took me back to chalets and snow and French bread.

However we both agreed that it was generally too wet for our tastes. The following night we ate the leftovers with rice having first added more mushrooms (the other half of the original packet we’d bought) and then vigorously boiled it down to reduce the juice. Not very green but exceptionally tasty and a great improvement. I shall be looking out for pig cheeks again!

Yet again we’ve been at Leith’s Village Store, and yet again come home with some scrummy goods:

Broad beans, more peas in pods, and beetroot- this time the right colour! We scrutinised the beets on sale and noted that some were very pink skinned, whilst others were darker purple with the colour continuing up the stem, rather than green stems. The latter did not disappoint! But I digress.

I have never in my life cooked with broad beans. I figured the internet would see me right, and it did! In the end I arrived at the Good Food Website and baked Ainsley Harriot’s Broad Bean and Lancashire Tart. I’d only really bought broad beans to do for two, and this was a full sized tart, so we supplemented the beans with the fresh peas. I couldn’t get lancashire in Leith on a Sunday night, so opted for Wensleydale instead- I say opted but it was more a case of what there was in Co Op.

We invited LeCabinet and El Ferd round to share this with us; they brought some lovely cold white wine and didn’t mind at all that we were running a bit behind schedule. I’d not made pastry nor blind baked a tart case in about eight years (apart from a couple of abject failures recently) so this was a little testing at times, but turned out just scrummy. Left overs went into packed lunches the following day: delish.

Just after my exams and term finished, at the end of May, I had the pleasure-finally- of attending Taste of Edinburgh. Previously house moves and holidays have kept me away, but I was not to be beaten a third year running.

Those of you with keen memories will recall my excitedly posting that I could now blog from my mobile…and then falling mysteriously silent. Well the excitement had been partly at the thought of live-food-blogging, a dish by dish account, from Taste. It wasn’t to be. Wordpress, sort yer iPhone app out!

Lots of things happened at Taste, mostly revolving around eating free samples. However, partly to escape the cold, the girls and I ended up watching a cookery demonstration. It was given by Annette Sprague of Redwood in Stockbridge. Now those who know me well will know I am a big fan of Calistoga- was there to be room for a second Californian restaurant in my life?

Annette was a very endearing chef to watch, largely because she clearly wasn’t a seasoned pro in giving demonstrations. She was a wee bit chaotic and thrown by the kit available to her. I liked this; she reminded me of me. The recipe she made, for a Californian salad, seemed not-so-appealing as we watched her cook it on a dreich May day. It poured with rain just after she finished. However, I was intrigued, and, when the sun came out a few nights later, made it for D.

This is a Chicory, Asparagus and Proscuitto Salad. Or, to give it its proper name and a link to the recipe, Shaved Asparagus Salad with Chicory, Crispy Proscuitto & Lemony Vinagrette- how awesome they are for publishing this!

It has raw asparagus in it. Somehow, despite growing up in a home which grew its own asparagus, I had somehow never eaten it raw. Annette used chicory (with a lovely story about a Kurdish friend fighting with her sisters over who got to eat the heart, ‘the sweetest bit of the thing’ yet the very bit we throw away as bitter) a leaf I’ve always been a bit wary of- I mean, it’s so unergonomic! However the idea here was to slice it to much the same shape as the asparagus, which you could julienne with a mandoline if you had such a thing but if not, slice into very slim lengths. Harder than you might think!

The dressing has more ingredients than I’d ordinarily use- olive oil, vinegar, mustard, honey- I’d probably use one of those flavourings with oil- and Annette taught us a neat trick of using a bit of salad leaf to test the dressing- like dipping a bit of chicory in to see if the seasoning is okay. So obvious but sometimes you need told these things.

The other oddness to this recipe was the addition of a microplane-grated hard-boiled egg to the salad dressing. I don’t know where she gets this from either! But wowee it works.

All in- despite weird egg additions and excess veg in forms I’m not sure about, this pushed all of my salady buttons. I ended up making it when the girls from DGS came over for dinner again a week later. Now the asparagus season is done, and I shall have to wait another year. Counting down the days! Perhaps in the meantime I’ll have to check out Redwood…just don’t tell Calistoga!

For the third week running we visited the newly re-launched Leith’s Village Store on Saturday. In fact, last weekend we were there as volunteers, selling locally grown potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, peas, rocket, chard, lettuce, radishes, courgettes to the people of Leith. Each week there are more customers and therefore more stock for the following week. When we were selling we ran out of eggs (twice! We even sourced an extra dozen but they went in a flash) and so this week they had stacks of the things!

We also had the task last week of securing this beautiful hand-painted sign. It’s on paper (?lining paper) with strings through reinforced corners….but there’s nothing really at the Drill Hall to attach it to, so we had to use a lot of parcel tape to stick the strings to the stone….and hope….

Despite being a very blustery day it survived, yay!

Back to this week. I was pleased to see, for the first time, bunches of very fresh looking beetroot. (Frustrating that I was thwarted in my attempts to buy beetroot last week, but such is the nature of things). We also got some local grown rocket- 40g to be precise, how nice to be able to grab it by the handful and take as much or as little as you need! – as well as courgettes, broccoli and chestnut mushrooms.

On Saturday night we decided to roast the beetroot to have with pasta. I cast about on the internet for timings and came across this delightful VideoJug vid on how to cook beetroot. We didn’t have any thyme but basically followed their instructions. (I was also on the hunt for an Ottolenghi recipe for beetroot with maple syrup and sherry vinegar without success…found sweet potato though, will have to assume is the same!)

So. Step one, prep the beetroot.

Um…what?

I’ve seen stripey beetroot before. Looks dead exciting raw but if you cook it with regular beetroot it gets dyed and the effect is lost. I’ve seen golden beetroot before (although now I think about it I’m not sure what colour its skin is. Brown?) But white ?

It should be noted that externally, all these beets looked exactly the same. Very pink, compared with most beetroot I’ve seen, but nevertheless kinda normal. The first one I sliced into was tiny, about the size of a cherry tomato, and when I saw the white inner I thought “b***er, I’ve bought blimen’ radishes!’. But they smelled of beetroot. And when I hit a striped one I was more reassured. So we ploughed on regardless.

We roasted them in the oven glazed in, essentially, salad dressing. The smell that wafted through when D checked the oven at half time was glorious. Served over a bed of buttery spaghetti and some of the rocket, it all tasted fantastic.

Visually, we’d have been better with normal, red, beetroot. It looked a bit like roasted garlic or perhaps parsnip. Not the glorious contrasting colours I’d originally envisaged. Had it not been for the rocket this would have been close to a one-colour-meal. But it was just the two of us and it tasted great. And now I know; beetroot can be pink on the outside, white on the inside. And I wonder….is it really normal to be red, or have I simply been brainwashed by the supermarkets and the force of consumer expectation? Ach, it’s always been red when I’ve seen Ken dig it up out of the garden!

We’ve been a bit better, lately, at getting out to the Farmers’ Market which takes place every Saturday in Edinburgh. When we lived in Dalry we walked up their at least once a month, drawn by the lure of porridge or ostrich burgers for brekkie, but the thought of trekking across town on the bus of a Saturday makes it less appealing. And D doesn’t have a bike.

On a recent trip (who am I kidding it was ages ago!) we got some fresh ricotta, made by Italian/Scots couple Gabriele Caputo and Adriana Alonzi (yes, there is a distant connection to Ariana!) down at Yester Mains Farm. No website, but there’s a wee article from the Herald here and (possible related) an awesome photo set  by photograher Gary Doak here. We felt, as it was our first experience of cooking with properly fresh ricotta, that we oughtn’t overwhelm the flavours, so served it with spaghetti and herbs. (This may have been on the advice of Mary Contini although I don’t recall). It looked gorgeous.

If anything, it didn’t quite taste of enough for my liking. Perhaps I am unsophisticated. Perhaps it was a little too wet? In any case it wasn’t expensive, so I think we shall continue to experiment. As an aside, both the mozzarella and smoked mozzarella from this stall are gorgeous too!

The following day we knocked up a recipe I’ve been meaning to make ever since Kate carefully transcribed it from the book for me, Jamie Oliver’s One pan Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake. Kate and Ben cooked this for us back in January and it was *gorgeous*. I adore the J&M Craig tomatoes (from Carluke) available from the market- they taste the my mum and dad’s, straight off the plant and hot from the sun. It seemed correct to make the two meet in the middle.

You do need a LOT of toms though. But that’s all good with me.

It did seem rather wrong, this recipe, in that tomatoes are at their best at precisely the time of year that you don’t want to be roasting things in the oven (half the reason it tasted so good in January!). However, this is Scotland, and even in the spring and summer there are always grim, miserable days (like, ooh, as I write this!) where having the oven on is just fine. Slurp it up!

So, what was I up to? Well my dear friend Ari  is leaving our team at work to join our sister lab, and these were a little homage to her in her last week.

Ariana lives in the ‘burbs, and is very attached to her car, which causes problems when she heads out to be seen in Edinburgh’s stylish cocktail venues. If she has the car, she’ll have a raspberry vodka and lemonade at the beginning of the night, and nothing thereafter. So, in her honour, these cakes are called

Just the one for me, thanks, I’ve got the car!

The cakes are lemony, with a rasp or two hidden inside; the icing is buttercream coloured and flavoured with the juice of half a dozen or so rasps pushed through a sieve. Makes for a rather soft buttercream, but that’s okay. I prefer not to eat hard icing anyway.

I adapted the recipe for the Orange, Raspberry and Yoghurt Cupcakes for these, although along the way I was very much inspired by Alauna’s Lemon-Raspberry cupcakes.  As you can probably tell I attempted to emulate the look of hers, although I should probably have stretched the batter to 18 rather than 12 cakes, to give flatter tops, if I’d wanted the elegance of hers. I’d also not handled a piping bag in about ten years, so my icing was verging on the pink poo! Practice makes perfect I guess.

I decided against a hidden blob of raspberry jam as I only have a little of my mum’s excellent jam from last year left- I didn’t want to finish it all up on cupcakes for other people. And it’s lost its intense red colour with age so I thought it might let the aesthetic down, even though it still tastes wonderful. However as I said, these cakes are still in beta, so perhaps the next attempt will take the rasps *out* of the cake and put some jam *into* the cake.

There was also the discussion of whether, to be truly authentic, there ought perhaps be a single shot of raspberry vodka in the icing. My concern is that at the moment it tastes wonderfully fresh and natural and the vodka might push it into the synthetic. (I’m sure Absolut will lynch me for suggesting their Raspberry Vodka is made with synthetic flavourings, but you know what I mean!)

Annoyingly I didn’t take any pics of the fully iced batch, and despite a great deal of care being taken one or two did fall over in the tin on the bus to work on Thursday, after which they were not so photogenic. And there are none left. So you will just have to imagine their over all glory. Perhaps version 0.2 will be fully catalogued from conception to execution!

I was up to past midnight the other night, experimenting. I don’t have time to tell you all about it just now, so here’s a wee sneak preview. Can you guess what I was up to?