The Sacred Art of Eating

As previously mentioned, D and I volunteer at The Village Store, a volunteer-manned food stall held at Out of the Blue with the aim of reducing Leithers’ carbon footprints by giving them the ability to buy yummy produce on their doorstep.

There are various things I love about being involved. I’ve met loads of new, like-minded people. I recognise more people around Leith now- customers of the stall. We’ve had a couple of great wee social events with the other volunteers. But one of the most fulfilling things for me is that every time I turn up to the stall, either as a shopper or a volunteer, I am made to think. What is there this week? How can I cook it? What will go with what else? It’s just so different to turning up to a supermarket knowing that red peppers and mangetout and sweetcorn and tomatoes and onions and broccoli and sweet potato and butternut squash will all always be available.

The stall’s produce is properly seasonal. There’s nothing flown in from Peru or Thailand- at a push stuff comes from that far-flung England place but generally everything comes from within an hour of Edinburgh. This means that, since June when we started, there have been shifts in what’s on the stall. At the beginning there were Kentish cherries- and fantastic wonderful Scottish Raspberries. I brought home broad beans and peas to pod. For the first time in my life I cooked with gooseberries!

Now, though, the summer fruits have gone and we’ve moved into the wonderful colours of Victoria Plums, of pumpkins and squashes and even, yes, local long red peppers.

We pretty much always have mushrooms and so D and take some every week. The last time we volunteered there were little bags of Sage for sale. Since an inconsiderate neighbour/neighbour’s builder killed out sage bush in the garden I was happy to buy some. (I’d planned to do pork chops à la this or this but have yet to make it to the butcher’s). That night before going to a party we had a speedy tea of pasta with the mushrooms, fried up in olive oil (in which I’d crisped then removed a few sage leaves) with garlic and pancetta, with cream and loads of fresh snipped up sage added right at the end of cooking. Not so healthy, it’s true, but awfy good!

I also picked up some long red peppers. They looked like what I’d call Romano peppers although weren’t sold as such. They got roasted in the oven with a filling of puy lentils (cooked and then frizzed up with a bit of garlic) lemon juice and mozzarella. Inspired by a Waitrose recipe I’ve followed properly in the past. I flung some cherry tomatoes in the roasting pan alongside them and used the soft tomatoes and a tiny drop of cream left from the day before to make an unctuous sauce for some pasta on the side. Gorgeous and scrummy!

This seems a better way of cooking. More real, more in touch with where I live and what’s going on around me. If you are in Leith and haven’t made it to the Village Store yet I genuinely encourage you to come along. As well as the fruit & veg & ecover stall I help with there is Greener Monday (think eco deli- chutneys and marinades and honey and chocolate. Plus some beauty/homewares made with wax from the Bee People) and Jo Jo’s Danish Bakery and often the Cheese Man (whose name I do not know) and the incredible Tinker Tailor Mending & Learning Service. 10-2, every Saturday. It’s simple but lovely. What’s your excuse?

We had a wee party on Friday night; I felt the need to mark the end of my freedom before returning to Medical School this week, and we haven’t had a proper ‘big’ party in ages. As it turned out, this was not a ‘big’ party either, September seems to be the holiday season for the childless professional (or Friday night is the new staying-in night?) and we little more than a score of guests. Nevertheless it was one of the nicest parties I’ve hosted.

We didn’t actually do all that much food, partly because of expected low turn out, but largely because life got in the way of the preparations. So we went for low-stress, easy prep options.

This glorious frittata is one of the suggested flavour variations from Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food, a book we are rather fond of. The frittata itself is easy peasy to make, but I think what wins it for me is how beautiful the curling slivers of roasted peppers from a jar (given a wee fry first to bring out the flavours) look. Easy to eat with your hands too. This was a nine-egg-er…clearly we need a smaller pan or I need to master a proper Spanish tortilla (recipe recently received via Hélene) if I am to ever make one to a decent depth.

There were also little cocktail sticks of red or orange baby plum tomatoes, a chunk of seasoned mozzarella, perhaps a leaf of basil and in some cases, a twirl of proscuitto.

Whilst I wasn’t best impressed with the ready-made puff pastry Tesco had on offer (it’s just not Waitrose; no all-butter stuff to be had. Try not to think about the ingredients of the no-butter-puff-pastry) these little pesto, sundried tom and goats cheese tartlets managed to hit the spot. I probably should have rolled my pastry a bit thinner and cut some of the tartlets a bit smaller, but I was working against the clock a bit.

It wouldn’t be a Hare party without crudités. I didn’t buy peppers on my party shopping trip as I was sure we had both red and orange in the fridge. We had only orange and so the crudités were looking distinctly Hibernian (with celery, runner beans and cucumber providing a green and white striped effect) until I adorned the plate with a spray of (exquisite) cherry toms on the vine. To accompany there was a plain and a herby Southfield Dip, although curiously these proved far less popular than they usually do (hence the inclusion in our roast veg pasta the other night).

There was also the previously mentioned flourless choccy cake (I’ll be making that again!) and some foxy ‘Edible Peat’ made by the lovely Richard Bell. Something of an experiment, it combined dark chocolate, shredded-wheat style cereal and a peaty Whisky (Lagavulin 16, I believe, but there was discussion that a Laphroig 10 would’ve been better suited). This is all melted together and, once set, cut into chunks using the type of tosg favoured by your village and then nibbled, at intervals. On the first one, you think ‘hmm, not sure that works’. Then you realise you’ve eaten a second. And a third. Then you have to step away for fear of making a pig of yourself. These aren’t particularly beautiful and as such did not get the attention they deserved. For that reason in future I would probably make a point of serving them- with coffee at the end of a meal, perhaps- rather than leaving them for opportunistic grazing.

About a week ago we took delivery of a sack of Aberdonian home-grown veg; most was grown by our pal Emily but some was grown by her neighbours, who, in a fit of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses grew a whole bunch of veg then realised they didn’t like veg and gave it to Emily. Double Veg!

There was a courgette, some toty wee beetroot, a neep, and something we were informed was a swede.

A bit of looking around on the internet seems to suggest that what the Scots call a turnip is what everyone else calls a swede, and vice versa. So perhaps this is a ‘turnip’? In any case we don’t really know what to do with it. The neep (purple) is going into a curry (at least that was the plan, but I think that plan also involved me cooking it tonight, hmm).

We went with Chris Scott’s advice: Root veg? Roast ‘em. Which worked really nicely for the beets and the courgette (willing stand-in root veg). But the white thingy above? Came out really bitter. Not nice.

Our veg was roasted with olive oil, lemon juice, smoked garlic, thyme, and a wee touch of butter. We combined it with our pasta with some left-over Southfield Dip from our party last night. Creamy and delicious (apart from the white alien!) with some lovely East Lothian runner beans on the side.

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!

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!

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?

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?

I was in the big useless Scotmid at the bottom of the hill last week and spotted a pack of six slices of black pudding for something like 70p. Typically we only have black pudding for the once-in-a-blue-moon fried breakfast but I was reminded of something else. Helen’s dad once cooked some kind of delicious stew for her birthday, which included slowly cooked black pudding in with everything else. I only have the vaguest recollection of what else was in the stew, so I decided to reinvent it with what I had anyway.

In the end I used

• two small onions
• a handful of spring onions
• a dozen-or-so thin slices of chorizo
• a tin of plum tomatoes
• about a pint of weak vegetable stock
• a courgette
• six slices of black pudding

The whole thing was built up in a sturdy pan in fairly short time as I was heading out the door shortly. I cooked the onions down a fair bit; not quite to the stage where they’d be suitable for onion soup but more caramelised than I usually have them. The spring onions and chorizo went in for a few minutes and then the liquid, tomatoes and courgette, cut into thick coins and then halved. The plum tomatoes were a good find, as they rarely seem much use and we always end up with more in the cupboard than is really necessary.

I brought everything to the boil while I quartered each slice of black pudding. Then I just dropped all the slices of pudding in, the lid went on and I turned the heat off completely. I came back to the house two hours later to the most amazing smell. :-) I gave it some gentle heat to move things along and made some rice alongside. Helen was late home from Glasgow that night and I think this was the best welcome home!

Leftovers the next day were eked out with a garlicky peppers concoction. I don’t think salad is the right word but I don’t know what is. It was very lovely though.

I am on my own for lunch today: Dougal is taking his mammy for a well-earned treat in the form of lunch at Calistoga (I am sad to miss out but a)she’s not my mum and b)I have work to be getting on with!) but my mother is in Italy so gets no special treatment today.

I am currently writing up a big project we’ve just finished- using Rapid Appraisal to perform a community diagnosis of the area of Anderston in Glasgow. We had to look for signs and symptoms- by interviewing people, looking at statistics, making observations, make a diagnosis of the health or otherwise of the community and then come up with what is essentially a ‘treatment plan’ for the area. We presented this as a group on Friday to an audience of our peers and some medical educators. Now I am cooped up in my wee study trying to write 2000 words on the subject. Which isn’t really enough and I’m wondering how to approach the matter. I’m not clear that the same structure as worked for a 10 minute presentation will work for the essay.

For a quick lunch giving me brain power, I cooked up some spaghetti and whilst it was on the boil, frizzed up some cooked prawns (oot the freezer) in an indecent quantity of garlic. I then tossed through some mulched up sundried toms, and at the point of mixing it all together threw in lots of toasted pine nuts. Scrummy….if a little antisocial!

Aesthetically it could have done with some green, I feel. Rocket? Basil? Had neither to hand, in any case.

I was walking towards the door of Waitrose in Glasgow the other night, on the hunt for something I wouldn’t get in Leith (I think it might have been thick sponge wipers, how pathetic!) and through the big window spotted their smoked mackerel in the end of a chiller cabinet. I was sold!

We used to have mackerel fairly often when I was a little ‘un and I really like it but for some reason it isn’t really on my internal shopping list. Perhaps because I never really make it to the fishmongers (and our lovely, lovely fishmonger on Ferry Road appears to have closed!).

Dougal and I feasted like Kings on this for lunch at the weekend. Brilliant in a toasted bagel with Southfield Dip, lemon juice and parsley.

Sadly I forgot to take it for lunch on Monday or Tuesday so I think the final fillet (of four) may have to go in the bin. I know it’s smoked and all but how long does it last once the packet is opened? It’s not been handled at all. Who’s to say. I shall sniff….