The Sacred Art of Eating

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.

Never let it be said that I don’t occasionally balls things up in the kitchen. I had made some pancake mix by the light of day, proceeded to cook it in what was probably not a hot enough pan, and this is what happened:

I tinkered with the mix slightly, and then perhaps with better judgement regarding the pan, Dougal produced this:

We all have off days, eh?

Clearly I am being tempted by the yellow label brigade. I got all these lovely pork, rosemary and honey chipolata sausages, which should have been £5.99/kg, for the princely sum of 39p!

It’s not a bargain if you don’t want it though- but we needed tea that night and the leftover sausages went well in pieces the next day. Similarly I can assure you that you will never find me driving from supermarket to supermarket in search of the best price for tuna for the cat…I know how economy works and it ain’t like that!

We had a smashing little supper yesterday, in what might be described the style of Nigel Slater. Yummy rye-ish bread (à la D) topped with happy chicken softly scrambled eggs, through which I stirred some hastily roasted baby toms (a good glug of garlic oil, a sprinkling of wanky salt and ten or fifteen minutes in a very hot oven (which was on anyway)), some chopped fresh basil and some baby mozarella balls which needed using up. Gorgeous!

To be honest the mozarella got a bit lost (the occasional intersting fudgy bit, nothing more) but the basil and roasted toms were gorgeous with the egg. Easy peasy fine fare.

Ought I be worried that the very first thing I cooked in 2009 was a recipe from Nigella Express? I whipped up a batch of the breakfast pancakes, albeit only with maple syrup, not blueberry maple syrup.

We had the leftover pancakes with savoury fillings (parmesan, parma ham, rocket, roquefort etc) as rather high class sandwiches for lunch!

Or at least my dad felt we did. So he created for us a mid-week party.

• A Night Off Nigella

This recipe began with that marvellous cheese, the super stinky yet surprisingly mild époisses, so soft you could pretty much drink it.

It then added some fine bread of our choice/creation: rather than creation we chose to crack open a loaf of my mother’s finest wholemeal bread.

For the required funky red wine I chose something somewhat at random- it was a Spanish red, aged in French barrels and was pretty yummy I have to say. I see from the Wikipedia page for Époisses that we should have served this with a Burgundy or a Sauterne. Oops. That would have saved my blank staring at the wine in Waitrose too! Next time.

There were few other ingredients, but several helpful instructions, including the warning that those sharing genetic material with my mother might find an apron prudent when eating this cheese, which has a consistency not far off that of golden syrup. Wise words!

To accompany this recipe I’d bought two other cheeses. The Doux de Montagne was chosen entirely at random as something a bit unusual; it was, as the name suggests, quite sweet and in fact reminded me a great deal of bouncy cheese. But that’s alright because at one time that was my favourite. The second cheese was a Manchego (hence the steer towards Spanish wine) but just this once I went all out and bought some Membrillo paste too. I’m not sure I’ve had this since I’ve become a quince fan. Let me say I *loved* the combination (who needs bread!) and if my Dad has any quinces to spare this autumn I’ll maybe make him some (I have a recipe) as a thank you for this super super tea.

Inspired by the Hairy Bakers (as watched on our fabulous new tv) I made a rather smashing aloo gobi the other night. However, on the programme the curry was a mere vehicle for the naan bread they made and sadly I failed to rise to the challenge. The curry were mighty fine though (adopt Geordie accent to comic effect!)

We took a trip out to the nearest Asian supermarket to stock up on spices, at rock bottom prices. Honestly, the only benefit to those little schwartz jars is the getting of the jars…although truth be told I’d really prefer somewhere that sold spices loose.

The addition of some fresh veg- cauliflower, potatoes and tomatoes- and we had a lovely zingy flavourful curry, which did us last night and also tonight. Brilliant. I would definitely check out the recipe if you are lacking inspiration and fancy something light yet hearty.

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.