The Sacred Art of Eating

There has been quite a bit of cake-making of late.

First up, D’s birthday was a fortnight ago, and it wouldn’t be right to have a birthday without a chocolate cake, would it? I assumed Delia would see me right but in the end I turned to Nigella for a Classic Chocolate Cake. It wasn’t as easy to make as it could have been; if your food processor is big enough you just pour all the cake mix ingredients in the top and press go. My food processor has a pretty small capacity so I made this the long route, creaming butter and sugar etc…

I was pleased with the outcome: looked a lot like a chocolate cake, tasted a lot like a chocolate cake!

Dougal needed cake to take to work too, as the choccy cake was going nowhere, so I whipped up a quick batch of simple vanilla cupcakes (made with vanilla sugar and a splash of vanilla extract) topped with raspberry icing and raspberries- the icing is made with raspberry coulis rather than water. Ecstatically pink and rather tasty!

These got eaten on the day. Next up was his ‘party’; on Friday night a bunch of people came over for beer and a bit of food. Inspired by the true Queen of Cupcakes, Miss Carpico*, I made some cocktail cupcakes- White Russians, of course! These babies had kahlua and sour cream in the mix, and were iced with a kahlua, sour cream and white chocolate icing. The recipe book I used had them decorated with a fine dusting of cocoa and a rice paper rose; this I felt was *all* wrong. Surely the White Russian cupcake is an angular, masculine, 1980s dude-abiding cupcake? I went for a chord of thick cocoa across each cupcake and thought they looked damn fine. So I am gutted that the one and only photo I took of them ended up corrupted and gone :o( Just have to make more I guess.

The following week we made it down to Dunbar to see Dougal’s parents and granny for his birthday. Sadly, his brother (having come all the way home from China to Scotland recently) was in fact in Glasgow for the weekend. Such is like. So, it not being a birthday without cake, I made another batch of cupcakes, using the recipe that Ari reckons is the best of all. These beauties are almost muffins, being made with oil not butter, but they differ from muffins from containing quite a bit of ground almond and Greek yoghurt. The is orange zest and orange juice for flavour, and there are a pair of sneaky raspberries hiding in the middle of each cake. The icing is made with more Greek yog and of course, topped with a rasp. Moist and scrummy plus the surprise fruit is always good for giggles.

*Miss Ariana Carpico thinks nothing of whipping up 100 cupcakes for afternoon tea, “because that’s only four batches”. Armed with her shiny red kitchen aid and a formidable volume of icing sugar, she recently made over 260 cupcakes for a charity tea party held by her mum, raising thousands of pounds for Cancer Research UK along the way. This lady has taken the Nigella Express Challenge ethos and is busily applying it to her cupcake book (but missing out the biscuits, because biscuits are bo-ring!)(I see this as an oversight but hope to talk her round yet). The pictures that follow below are from her first tea party, to raise money for The Eve Appeal which raises money for gynaecological cancers.

Anyone make a really great beetroot salad? When I spent a summer in France in 2004, I discovered that my enjoyment of beetroot could extend beyond one recipe and one alone (coming soon to a blog near you, I hope). This was an important discovery; prior to this I had rather avoided it on menus and certainly never cooked with it. Now it is one of my favourite veggies.

The recipe which changed everything for me was a simple beetroot salad; cooked beetroot (from your garden or a packet, whatever is possible) finely diced and mixed with loads of garlic, and dressed as a salad. I have tried to recreate this several times myself and yet feel I am missing something. Perhaps it is just that the original salad was eaten on a scorchingly hot day; that it was made by someone else, not me; that I probably had a beer in my hand as I ate it; I might even have spent the afternoon surfing flailing about on a surf board and building up an appetite. At the very least I was somewhere else and that can do amazing things for flavours.Nevertheless I wonder if there’s a simple fix. Do I use too much garlic? Should I use a different kind of vinegar? No vinegar at all? Is there anyone out there who can help me?

Fab little supper this evening of baked potatoes (always good to have an excuse to have the oven on for an hour and a half in February) with Eggs Florentine (recipe via my Dad, Happy Birthday!) and a wee tomato salad (complete with nasty interlopers, as far as D was concerned)(M&S Mixed Marinated Olives, as far as I was concerned).

Now heading out for Tea and Mr Pilflod’s Chocolate Guinness Cake. Excellent.

Cripes, it was ages ago now, but we had my family over on the 2nd (prior to seeing the excellent Off Kilter at the Fezzie Theatre- catch it if you can) for a big lunch and an afternoon of Monopoly.

It being the depths of snowy winter (actually, by the morning of the second it had all melted)(the evening was another matter though!) I wanted to make something simple and warming, where the brunt of effort could be carried out in advance so that I was calm on the morning. Lasagne seemed the obvious choice.

I decided to follow a recipe on the grounds that to do lasagne off the top of my head would be to try and emulate my mother’s lasagne, and let’s face it it’ll never be good enough (for me) will it? So I turned to Hugh F-W. His recipe for lasagne was published in the Guardian in Nov 08 and, in true Hugh style, has about a million ingredients. Beef mince plus bacon plus chicken livers plus milk in the sugo? Wow! (The internet has just informed me that milk is an addition typical of Bologna, interesting). But apparently it is not a Hugh original. Seems he got it (probably via his mum) from Katie Stewart. Which wasn’t a name that jumped out at me until Dougal pointed out that she is the author of his Young Cook’s Calendar, from whence our fabby flapjack recipe comes.

Like all good sugo, this requires a long cook- three hours. It smelled and looked amazing after just one! I decided that if I were going to follow someone else’s recipe I might as well go the whole hog, infusing my milk with bay and onion to make the béchamel and then weighing the ingredients (rather than just doing it by the light of day). I bought fresh egg pasta lasagne sheets (which have the advantage of being big and square, which is nicer than the quick cook dried ones you get). I also bought a 500ml tub of beef stock from Waitrose. I wasn’t going to go for the expense, but we didn’t have any beef stock cubes, I wouldn’t really have wanted a whole packet of beef stock cubes, but most compellingly, when I picked up the tub of stock in the shop it wobbled. It was abundantly clear that this tub was chock full of protein. The real shizzle. So I bought it. As I heated it up to add to the sugo it smelled wonderful. Definitely worth going for it you need a decent stock base for something, even if it costs a lot more than stock cubes (but less than a bit of beef to roast for bones!).

All in the lasagne definitely came up to scratch. It was warm and rich and lovely, with some baguettes on the side and a wee warm courgette salad. We were stuffed and had to go and play monopoly to work up an appetite for pudding!

Dougal had made a wonderful chocolate stout cake from the Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipe Book. I’d seen Nigella’s recipe before in Feast, but this is a slightly different beast. It was black as anything and looked as if it would be quite heavy but was in fact very light and easy to eat, but with a really silky rich flavour. Gorgeous!

It was actually a bit of a fiddle to make- you have to beat 100g of cocoa (clue: a lot ) into 400ml of Guinness which is hard going- next time we’d pour the Guinness at least an hour in advance to get rid of the head. But it was well worth his effort I feel!

The ice, more than anything, kept us from our invited shindig on Hogmanay. That and the aforementioned rubbish buses. So we decided to have a party for two!

We put our party gear on…

…watched the fireworks from beside our lovely tree…

… we even had our own fireworks!…

..there was Champagne, and scrummy nibbly bits- D’s finest pain de campagne, parma ham, smoked salmon, sundried tomato stuffed olives, cornichons…

…there was no standing in the slushy snow, but plenty of lolling on the sofa…

…and in the morning it was an easy skip to the kitchen for a New Year’s Breakfast of Irn Bru, Coffee, Pancakes, Bacon, Maple Syrup and Lizzie’s raspberry jam…magik :o)

If anyone hadn’t noticed, in September I quit my job to go to university. You know, for a second time. I had two leaving do’s, to allow for maximal food consumption.

For my formal do, the lab all went to the frankly marvellous Calistoga for a Wine Tasting Dinner. We’d opted for a Snazzy tasting (as opposed to the shorter Snappy option- they’ve all been renamed now however) which gave us 75 mins in which to be talked through five wines (and a mystery wine at the end to try and identify!) with canapés along the way, before going on to a three course dinner with coffee. My boss very kindly offered to buy wine for dinner, based on our group’s favourites from the tasting. Luckily for him none of the wines we tasted came in too pricey —although we did all love the mystery wine which retails at £20 (or the bargainous 2 for £25, not sure why I haven’t been back to pick two up!)—and they sell their wines in the restaurant for retail+£5.

Whilst I was a little surprised and disappointed that this included only one round of canapés it was nevertheless great fun and well received by everyone. We discovered that some people really like Shiraz where others do not, that Austin can spot a Zinfandel at twenty yards, and that yes, you can taste the difference in a well chosen bottle of expensive wine. We all also agreed that we’d be happy to pay fifteen or twenty pounds for a bottle of wine (circumstances prevailing) if only we knew it would be nice when we got it home. The biggest fear with spending that kind of money is that you’d get something unpalatable.

Dinner was scrummy too although by the end I had consumed rather too much to really taste my pudding- one of Calistoga’s famous pancake cheesecakes. I was then thrust into the spot light for a speech….I had taken some refreshment at this stage, so I fear was rather rambling. However I am told I said lots of really nice things about the lab, so I came off okay!

After that they indulged me with dancing at the Citrus Club. I was wearing uncharacteristically high heels (enough for Pink Justin to not recognise me ‘that looks like Helen- but Helen’s not that tall’) and had drunk an uncharacteristic amount so danced like no-one was watching and had to be held up at times. It was wonderful and I was ever so touched that one special friend managed not to let slip all evening of her disgust for the place (some months later, in passing conversation ‘and then they decided to go to the Citrus Club, and you know how much I hate that place’) and also that so many of my colleagues stayed out dancing into the wee small hours. 80s tunes for the win!

The following week, on my last day proper, we had a Molecular Genetics Lab Bring-a-Dish Picnic.

It wasn’t a full house as a lot of people were on holiday- hence the early leaving party- but there was still an admirable feast of food. Dougal (on special request) made two types of breadsticks. Dorsy made tablet. Hayley made brie and cranberry filo parcels. Ari made an Italian chickpea and rocket salad. Corinne made chocolate boobs (or perhaps they were nipples). Donna L made frickin amazing banofee pie. Jon made a huge caprese and a massive platter of salami and cured meats. I can’t remember what I made but I can remember that no one cared as much about it as they did that did that D had made bread. Spurned!

And then they gave me presents! I was la bunny le plus happy du monde, to steal a phrase from dear old Harv.

When we went down to Dunbar to visit my folks about a month before Christmas we were met with an instruction- make a Whisky Sours wi’ this!

This was the reserved juices from a selection of citrus fruits which Ken had used that day to make glacé peel. The glacé peel would end up in the Christmas Cake; the juices in our belly that evening. Preparations had begun- some whisky had been added for a starter- but then the drinks makers had lost their nerve and it was agreed to wait for Dougal, maker of the Whisky Sour.

The educated opinon was that more whisky was needed; more was added, this was shaken, and shared between the grown ups. Quality stuff- highly recommended- never to be repeated- probably needs a new name! Whisky Marmalade?

Edible Table Decorations. Doubleplusgood that recently-married couple!

A fortnight ago now (at least; I’m losing track of time) one of Helen’s cousins came up from London with her boyfriend, so we had them round for dinner on Saturday night. Helen spent the day doing medical student stuff so it was largely up to me to prepare the meal.

I pulled out The River Cottage Meat Book and chose Beef in Stout, because it could be made ahead of time, with minimal active involvement, and it is just the kind of dish I’ve always wanted to make.

Up to a certain point, Leith provided everything I needed. Although I was refused the beer at Co-op for looking under-age. I didn’t have any ID because my driving licence was away to get the address changed. This is Murphy’s Law, but I’m not bitter. I just went elsewhere. Helen had to pick up some lardons on her way back from the library but everything else was available locally.

The inclusion of two types of mushrooms — whole button mushrooms and thick slices of open cup mushrooms — really lifted the whole meal for me. I also made some simple mash to go with the stew, and home made bread too. We had beer from Bath Ales, and Helen even got the guilts about not doing any cooking, so did a Nigella sticky chocolate brownie pudding.

I halved nearly all the quantities for the stew recipe (originally for 8 to 10) but it still managed to make about 9 servings. (The recipe in the link has been halved already, and is a fairly accurate picture of what I put in the pot.) We eked the final leftovers out by adding boiling water and noodles, to make a beef and mushroom soup.

I will definitely be doing this dish again, especially if we need to serve a full table of people this winter. Fantastic warming meal.

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…