The Sacred Art of Eating

Last weekend Dougal attempted a new kind of bread, ciabatta. This required making a starter, a biga, and letting it ferment for 24 hours.

The results were smashing. They looked and tasted like authentic ciabatta and, unlike many, weren’t especially chewy or hard to get your teeth through, which when you have a jaw as finicky as mine is an important consideration.

We ate these all week- with mozarella and tomato and basil for lunch at work one day, plain old cheddar and tomato the next. The highlight though, was night two, where we grilled ‘em, rubbed the raw surface with garlic, and then topped with chopped, seeded tomatoes, freshly griddled bacon, and a generous sprinkling of basil. Brill!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have several trips through to the West to see friends of late. The standard of cooking has been very high:

Chickpea and Feta Salad with chilli and (slightly cooked therefore no indigestion) red onion and spring onion

And, by the same sexy chef, a fantastic Carrot Cake (with walnuts on the icing!!)

Then, elsewhere, there was home made strawberry panna cotta. I can only assume this was made with vegetarian gelatine, but it was delicious. The strawberries managed to taste like the smell of strawberry jam cooking in my mum’s kitchen. Brilliant!

The next morning, in honour of (and made possible by) our wonderful, sorely missed already, canadian guest, we had pancakes with proper Maple Syrup.

Thankfully I don’t feel I’ve let the side down too badly. I had Miss Canadia and KK her host over for dinner last week….more on that to come.

This new, bread making Dougal, is definitely worth living with. Breakfast this morning? Pain Viennois with a slice of chocolate inside. Coffee with blue milk. Tres Francais…. tres bon.

Since acquiring Dough by Richard Bertinet (on the recommendation of Lawrence), Dougal has been making a lot of bread. Fougasse, bread shots, focaccia, sesame plaits, gruyere and cumin loaf, pain de mie, baguettes and more, it has been a delight to eat each and every one thus far. I don’t have the words to describe this lovely bread. Here are some pictures instead.

I’m on holiday now (a long weekend in Croatia starting tomorrow but with a day off first today) so to celebrate we had cocktails last night:

However it was only a Tuesday night, so they were in fact Virgin Cocktails- Gentle Sea Breezes to be precise. Going the whole hog with the crushed ice and the sprig of mint on top meant you got all the sensory aspects of a cocktail- woo, colours!- but without sliding gently under the table later on.

Dinner was inspired by a gift from my boss, JPW, who appeared at work with a bag of micro potatoes for me and a growing pot of Sarriette. This was a herb I had never come across (although the smell was familiar, in a herby way) and shock horror, there was no Wikipedia entry for it! A bit of further digging suggests that its English name is in fact Summer Savoury. In any case JPW suggested that it was best had with beans; as we had some green beans needing used up in the fridge that’s what I did.

So, tea consisted of: gruyère and cumin bread; fabulously melty camembert; teeny tiny anya and charlotte potatoes dressed in walnut oil, white wine vinegar, chives, salt and pepper; fine beans in sarriette and butter and some vine tomatoes. It felt like a right proper party! I even wore a dress while I cooked it all. We both agreed that the only thing wrong was that we were not enjoying it all on a verandah some where in the warm summer air. Such is life- the sunset was still gorgeous.

Not one to tell your cardiologist about, but we had the most fabulous rice pudding the other night. We had some full cream milk needing used up, and also a carton of cream that was over a week out of date but which had not been opened so was still in perfect nick. So this rice pudding had about 150ml of cream in it. Eek. If anything it was a little too much like cooked rice in cream but it was warm and comforting and I was knackered when we had it, so I can’t fault it for aptness at the time.

Looked great too :-)

Valentines would generally seem to be a celebration of a love of food, rather than anything else, in my flat. What with my recent return from an excellent skiing hol in La Savoie with a whole Reblochon it seemed fitting that we had a Tartiflette. Properly warming for a nasty February night.

It took me a while to find a recipe I liked- most seemed to include crème fraîche or cream which seemed all wrong- and in the end my dad came up trumps. We had a nice little bottle of (not French) rosé Cava- in lieu of pétillante de Savoie, which, let’s face, I wasn’t going to be able to find in Edinburgh- and a walnutty french salad.

It was, though I say it my self, smashing. Fitted beautifully in my bigger Phil Revell dish. I should have cut up the top half cheese, as it wasn’t a particularly young cheese and so the top rind was a bit tough. Otherwise though, no faults.

Dougal was in charge of pudding and he did not let the side down. He turned to Nigella, but to an earlier book, Feast (which I bought him for our anniversary three years ago). He made the Sticky Chocolate Gingerbread, and although we discovered as the shops were closing that we did not have enough icing sugar to do the full thick and unctuous layer called for, I’d say it was pretty perfect. We’re still eating it (he made a roasting tray-full!) and it is getting stickier by the day.

Lovely!

On Monday night, a propos of nothing in particular, apart from having a genuine Savoyarde saucisson in the cupboard, we had a little supper in the French gourmande fashion. Or so I like to think. It wasn’t really an Assiette Savoyard as there were no gerkins and the cheese was from Normandy, and my olives were distinctly Mediterranean. The bread was home made… only, in Scotland. But I strayed from my usual balsamic ways and did a walnut oil and dijon mustard dressing for the salad, and we drank red wine on a Monday so I feel we were reasonably French, if not wholly.

Well. We’re not quite back into the swing of things post my-holiday, but I was concerned that we were letting the side down on the gastronomic adventures front, and thought I’d share with you our little Breakfast Party this morning.

We had genuine French chocolate brioche (bought in Dalry, Edinburgh); cafe au lait from bowls (okay so the milk was cold but we did have to get to work) and zingy citrus juice (orange, tangerine and mandarin, if I’m not mistaken). And we had good chat, and we practised finger spelling over breakfast. Now to work!

It’s the 25th of January, so that could only mean Burn’s Supper. We did our own twist on things and rather than ending with a dram (although the night is yet young and there’s both Aberlour and Highland Park in the kitchen) we started the night off with a whisky sours. One of my favourite drinks and a great way to start my holiday, thought I do say so.

The meal was a largely traditional fare although the Toast to the Lasses consisted of “Chicks have boobs, wayhey” and the Reply from the Lasses of “Cheers”. Clearly we had worked long and hard on our speeches.

Next year the plan is for a modern Burn’s Supper: deep fried haggis supper and a can of irn bru. Bonus!