The Sacred Art of Eating

This morning Edinburgh was bathed in dazzling sunshine- and another 4 or 5 cm of snow, which fell last night. I decided there was nothing for it but to stride out and appreciate the views at the Botanics.

We packed up a lunch of Dougal’s bread and my mum’s New Year Ham- with mayonnaise and dijon mustard- and I filled my brand new thermos with hot chocolate. Really pushing the boat out, I used the left over blue milk I’d bought for yesterday’s lasagne. We took the last two stroopwafels from my stocking (The Leith Santa is well aware that Helen expects a stocking rich in foodstuffs!) and also pocketed D’s new hipflask, to complete the road test.

By the time we made it to the Botanics the bright winter sunshine had gone and the skies were grey. Nevertheless we enjoyed stamping around; we ate the sandwiches atop a hill and felt like kings. Cold Kings.

We had taken our squeegee with us and cleared the dedications from about two dozen memorial benches. There is one dedicated to my Granddaddy Hare at the Botanics, although I’d no idea where, and I had a fanciful idea we might find it. In any case I really like memorial benches and the idea of clearing their dedications tickled me.

Lo and behold, we found my Granddaddy’s bench! Off the main strip, so a bit more peaceful than some, and just behind the UK’s largest fossilised tree, which wins him Geek points too. This seemed a fitting time to crack open the hot chocolate (we declined to sit down- the snow was frozen to the benches so even with squeegee they were pretty unappealing) and eat our biccies.

The hot chocolate was creamy and wonderful, but best of all, steaming hot- hot enough to form a skin, and hot enough to need blown on before drinking. We shared two cupfuls before our feet began to freeze on the uncleared path, at which point we moved on. Down at the new entrance way (which I watched being built as I cycled to and from work since we moved to Leith) we had the pleasure of bumping into John and Julie and the weans. There was also a smashing exhibition of craftspieces made from a Wych Elm which had had to be felled at the botanics- although sadly, for an exhibition about a wood with a fantastic grain, you weren’t allowed to touch anything.

A lovely, lovely day out. New Year’s Resolution is to take a full thermos out whenever walking is anticipated!

a good bun maketh the bbq…

One of the great things about Dougal now being so comfortable making bread is that he can whip up a batch to suit any occasion. Right now (although yesterday by the time you guys read this!!) he is putting together two types of bread sticks for the Bring-A-Dish Picnic I am having as my send off (part two!) from work tomorrow. And, when earlier this year we were invited to our first ever 4th of July BBQ (‘America, Fuck Yeah!’) he was able to save us all from the horror of foamy burger buns and hotdog rolls with some preservative free brilliance. Even better, out friend Mat (who’s been baking for *years* but really come into his own recently, I feel) brought some too (he brought burger buns, D, hotdog buns- kinda like stars and stripes, y’know?) which complimented each other brilliantly.

Some people at the barbeque still ate the foamy buns in bags they’d brought. There was no shortage of bread (we took some home) but maybe they felt it was wasteful to leave theirs. Or maybe they didn’t like chewing…

that is Dougal’s home made brioche plus Nutella that I am having for my breakfast this morning, thanks for asking!

On Sunday we hosted the second of what we hope will be a long running event, Potluck and Prose. The idea is simple; in these recession-hit times (did I really just write that?) sharing and swapping is cool, so: bring a book, bring a dish and bring a bottle!

The first P&P was hosted by Bex, the lovely evil genius mastermind behind all this. I took some standard issue Delia’s Oven-Roasted Ratatouille, which went down brilliantly as always. Great staple for parties that one. We had got the wrong end of the stick about its start time so I don’t think D brought any bread, and further to that no pictures were taken, how sad. However, we did offer to host the second swap.

So, one month later and I had really enjoyed Timoleon Vieta Come Home whilst Dougal had failed miserably to make any headway into Swallows and Amazons, much to my disappointment. The impetus of having 12 or so strangers turn up at our house (we only really know Bex and Dave, although we’ve met most of the others at repeated parties!) did amazing things to our getting the front room finally shipshape (with some sterling help from Ken who attached the bookshelves to the walls!) and all that remained was to do some cooking!

The really nice thing about hosting a pot luck supper is that, contrary to ones instincts, there is no need to spend the day cooking frantically! A dish or two will do it. Dougal did a double batch of bread (some lovely sesame seed plaits, displayed beautifully here in his new hand-made basket) whilst I opted for a savoury and a sweet dish, just to ensure we had something of each, regardless of what the other contributors brought.

My main course was lifted entirely from a scrummy but faulty salad I had when my very kind father took me out for lunch a fortnight ago (rescuing me from the horror that was the prospect of a Ginsters sandwich for lunch for the second day running). We went up to the Dean Gallery where I had a salad of puy lentils, slow-cooked red onion, beetroot, goats cheese and rocket. It was delicious but seriously let down by the rubble-like puy lentils. Call me unsophisticated but they just weren’t cooked!

I decided to recreate the salad, using Merchant Gourmand pre-cooked Puys in order to avoid any rubbley issues. Altogether it worked pretty well; I oven-roasted my red onions for ease, rather than standing over a hot stove, but otherwise stayed pretty faithful to the original as I remembered it. Bex even recognised it from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (the sister gallery to The Dean)! My only regret is that I forgot to add any garlic; I think beetroot goes so well with lashings of garlic that if anything it was lacking in its absence (to me, at least!).

For pudding I had planned in advance- I’d got up promptly on Sunday and made Nigella’s Ice Cream Cake from the Razzle Dazzle chapter of NE- you will recall I made it for D’s birthday last year.

The making of this beaut of a cake is easy peasy- you soften some ice cream and then mix in a good quantity of scrummy things: honey roast peanuts (have faith!); chocolate chips of a variety of colours; butterscotch chips if you can lay your hands on them; broken up bourbon biscuit and smashed up Crunchie. Then the whole lot goes into a clingfilm lined springform tin and back into the freezer until just before serving. Then, the cake is topped with more bourbon and choccie chip rubble, before being sliced and served with both butterscotch sauce and a hot chocolate sauce (with a dash of Camp Coffee to give it a dark kick). Now I am absolutely certain that, having topped the cake, I turned to look for my camera to take some pics. But clearly I didn’t get that far. You’ll have to make do with the pics from last year!

The cake went down a storm; we all politely had a delicate slice each, with Dougal slicing, me pouring sauces, and Richard providing much-needed assistance catching the drips of sauce with a spoon before passing plate&spoon onto the grateful guests. After 14 portions, we reached a problem. There was a decent sized chunk left, but pretty much everyone wanted some. The solution was simple and inelegant; slather the cake with the two sauces and just let everyone wire in with spoons. It was a feeding frenzy! The on-lookers took pictures with camera phones but all that came out was a blur. Success!

Last weekend, while we were doing the below-mentioned painting, Dougal put together a batch of spelt bread. He tells me that spelt was the main cereal crop of the Romans, and I was happy to believe him because I had read elsewhere only that day about wheat being a tricky crop to grow in parts of Italy.

With the glorious sunshine flooding into our kitchen at tea time, we had bread and cheese and accompaniments for tea. Dougal felt wine was not the order of the day, so we switched to a light lager instead. We were a bit short on vegetables so our salad consisted of leaves, celery and tomato. The celery must have been really fresh as it managed to taste nutty and light and fennel-y, making for a quite extraordinary salad. I added a cut up apple to the table too, to counter the richness of the cheeses (camembert, manchego and caerphilly) and although I barely ate any of it, there was also chorizo and serrano ham.

The bread itself was very dense, not especially risen, but nevertheless not heavy. The spelt flavour was almost walnutty and was particularly suited to the cheeses but I daresay would go very nicely with nature’s finest cream cheese too. We initially went for quite doorsteppy slices, but as the bread held together very well, slimmer worked fine too, in fact I think I preferred it that way.

Next time D reckon’s he’ll work a proportion of normal white bread flour in too- a bit more gluten in the mix will give a better rise and might make for a slightly more ‘everyday’ loaf- plus one which is easier to handle on the way into the oven (these ones looked awfully close to just suddenly sinking into a heap!).

I like greatly that Dougal has bread skills. It means he can think- ooh, frankfurters would be nice, but if only they weren’t always spoiled by those awful plastic rolls- and then actually do something about it.

Check out these beauties….awesome, as in, ooh, a whole peck of hotdogs!

We had a wee crowd of friends over the other night, for eats and hanging out. I’d asked Dougal to pick up meringues and double cream as I already had strawbs (and in the freezer, raspberries and ‘mixed fruit’) and had in mind some sort of foxy eton mess.

This plan didn’t bear out: we were all too full of other yummy foods (cornichons and pickled onions, greek salad, Ken’s funky beetroot, roasted tomato tart and Dougal’s pizzas) to face pudding. So the ingredients stayed put in the fridge.

The following morning, not wanting the strawberries to go to waste, I improvised. It turned out Dougal had accidentally bought extra thick double cream, so no whipping was needed. A meringue in the bottom of the bowl, topped with a heap of strawberries and a blob of cream made for a really simple Eton Mess. The piece de resistance, however, was the idea of snipping across the top some of the left-over mint I’d bought for the Greek salad. That mint goes well with summer fruits is one of those ideas you know that you know…but which is nevertheless pleasantly surprising to rediscover! This tasted fantastically fresh and I would definitely repeat the minty addition in future.

We are just settling down to watch a film. The miramax icon has faded from view, the closing strains of the fanfare still fading from the speakers. And D pipes up… Actually, I probably ought to be doing something to my bread just now, you know.

Not complaining, of course. (He was very quick about it. But I fear we will still be pausing the film later on.)