healthy but nothing in the cupboard.

fried 1 leek and 1.5 celery stalks finely chopped with 2 cloves garlic in olive oil until they were soft and translucent. poured in 2 handfuls of frozen peas and a slug of white wine and simmered for a couple of minutes. then emptied in a packet of merchant gourmet "mixed grains" as we happened to get that in the post recently. it is a good and saintly combination of pre-cooked Bulgar Wheat, red quinoa, toasted soya flakes (???) and lentils.
It comes out of the packet in clumps and lumps so i bashed it all up with a wooden spoon and ladeled in some chicken stock - probably about a cupful just to loosen it all up a bit. when this had warmed through completely I stirred in a teaspoon of grainy mustard, a teaspoon of rocket pesto and a teaspoon on creme fraiche and seasoned with salt and pepper. tore in an old bunch of watercress and served with ripped up basil leaves on the top. it was surprisingly great actually, and max said it was the best neeps and tatties he had ever had. which is sort of like when someone at a festival in Hackney thought I was Scarlet Johansson but then qualified it with the fact that they had had acid for breakfast.

the best food in the world.
steam tenderstem broccoli for five minutes in a saucepan with about 2 cm water in the bottom of the pan and a lid on. when it's done it should be vibrantly bright green and maintain some bite. Drain off the water and drizzle a slick of the magic ingredient "white truffle infused extra virgin olive oil" all over. crunch over a BIG pinch of salt and toss it all around. eat straight out of the pan, fight off any surrounding ganets. it is SO delicious. it tastes like you have drenched the entire thing in oceans of butter. but you havn't.

magic sweet potatoes.
steam diced sweet potatoes for about 10 mins? or just until you can spear them with a fork. then mash with olive oil and seasoning. I used smoked paprika, smoked salt, and garlic granules. good.

cooking with lads Vol III

poaching an egg

do you want me to tell you about poaching an egg, just a quick one. trial and error, its taken danny years, not the ones we used to have in paper pockets. they were ace. then it comes out a perfect poached egg. i did the one where you spin it. you lose a lot of the white though and if you do it wrong you get a solid orange pebble which is terrible.
so boil a lot of water. its a bit of a waste of water. if you can just have a boiled egg do that. if you do two are you poaching two different eggs or does it become one big egg?
"are they discreet?"
i boiled loads of water in a tall thing. a pan. thats it. a tall pan. a deep pan. yeah quite a lot of water and you get it to boiling point and its bubbling away, and you've broken the egg into a bowl.
and you could drop it in with vinegar. that keeps it together.
i didn't have any vinegar. so it was just spinning round and it was a vortex, like a whirlpool. remember them. then it's spinning and you've got the egg but don't break the yolk. thats a disaster. then the eggs in the vortex. then you cover with a plate thing maybe and it's spinning round like mad *dances* and its hot still and bubbling. then you leave it for two minutes and you leave the room. for two and a half minutes. imagine you're probably using your phone and just adding two, but you need to know the thirty seconds cos it goes quickly. then you need to take it out with a slotted spoon otherwise you pick up loads of water.
then you come back in and take off the lid and look inside and it will probably look like an orange pebble. you lose quite a lot of the egg as well! unless you get good at the game.
"you should get good at it"
"what was the end result was it good?"
NO it was crap.
i tried to do two but it didn't work and it broke the yolk.
i don't think it makes them taste better.
i had it on a piece of toast. the one i made didn't look very nice. did it.
"madeleine was a champion egg poacher"
she gave kari 8 slices of toast for a ferry ride.
danny's quite good at it though. he eats it with a salad for breakfast.
pepper. lots of pepper.

cooking with lads Vol II

Lamb koftes

I  made lamb koftes for the girls Angharad lives with. The gallies. I cooked in the kitchen while they were all in the living room playing Mario cart and laughing. They were going out and I didn't want to go out so I just cooked and went to bed without any real interaction. I did a bit of a dance for a while, to an 80s compilation of war reports interspersed with Lucky Star by Madonna.
Ok so. Angharad and her friends came round and I made lamb koftes.

If you wanna know how to make it;

lamb mince and I put it in a bowl. Dun a big bowl. Glass bowl. It has a picture of Wallace and Gromit on it which I've never really understood as that's not really about cooking. Why not a big screwdriver? Or a dogbox?
Theres a bowl and its got all the mince in.
Silas right, when he makes bolognese he makes a big thing of it. I've said to him countless times that I do not think Liverpool have a chance at winning the league. I need to publicly state right here and now that 2 years ago Silas said he might start supporting Arsenal if Liverpool keep being shit. He's the hideous factor.
So Silas when he's cooking, says "it really brings out the flavour when you take the mince and you just squeeze it into a ball and throw it in." it doesn't, it just makes lumps. like fuck it does, it brings out the IDIOT that I live with.

So put the lamb in the bowl. A bit of mint, cumin (does that sound right?) an egg as a binding agent - doesn't matter which kind of egg, small or large, I think it's just important that it has a yolk and lives in a shell. What other spices? Salt and pepper. Oregano chopped up small because it GOES IN. Then I put an onion in, probably not, I don't think I put an onion in because I'm not very good at chopping.

Smooshed it all around into 10 balls of meat. I mean balls. Dip them in flour, to give them a coat. and it keeps them together because you're going to be eating them out of a pitta bread. They are meat balls, they have a form which you want to adhere to. Even if they do roll around your plate.  Good for  bonfire night.

I fried them in a pan in a little kind of pool of oil. It's like a puddle, its all very very hot. because when you cook them you want them to have a hard coating. They might be big or they might be small. I imagine the cooking time might depend on the size of them. They get all black and burnt, in a nice way. If they're pink and sticky in the middle, it's not their fault, you just put them back on.

Pitta bread I did in the oven. baked'em. Because you can get more in an oven, and it's more authentic. and I kept the heat in by not cutting them in half. Sometimes they release hot air and try to scald you. Pitta bread coming out of the toaster is one of the hottest things in the world. that's science though.

tzatziki - I stripped a cucumber. Shaved it. Cut it in half, scooped out all the seeds and then put it to dry in between some sheets of kitchen paper. If it's too wet your tzatziki will be too watery. Cucumbers and people are 80% water.
Then I chopped up the cucumber really really tiny then put it with more mint even more mint, so thank god we had the mint tree, even though it no longer yields large leaves, it only yields small leaves which Danny says are not so flavourful. Then it was greek yoghurt, and I made too much.
People can put it together themselves, you don't have to worry, and then you just tell em to do one.

Mum: can you eat these last two bits of apple?
Max: do i have to?
Mum: No.

kicking the health kick

A powerful health faction has taken up root in the kitchen - where once lurked packets of biscuits, tubs of cream and sliced bread there new resides a collection of seeds (chia, flax, pumpkin...), almond milk, coconut oil, quinoa and rye flour. The fruit bowl overflows with apples, pears, oranges, lemons and so on and the juicer is constantly on stand-by. You can barely hear Bargain Hunt on the telly over the roar of health-conscious machinery. And just as a shift from the centre ground breeds extremists from the opposite end of the political spectrum, so does the presence of a health nut force the meat-eating, cake-eating slob out of the shadows.
'I... must... have... some... meat...'  bellowed the 18 year-old one lunchtime, 'where are the pork pies and the sausages that used to be here? There's nothing in the fridge but spinach and bloody parsley and nothing on the shelves but tins of tomatoes and chickpeas...'
So fed up was she that an unprecedented event took place... she got out of bed and went up the road to Tesco and came back with a packet of sausages. The resulting lunch (which was cooked by another, the 18 year-old having returned to bed, exhausted by the outside world) looked deceptively healthy on the surface, but had within its depths a clandestine layer of sausage meat. It was very good

kicked health casserole
feeds 2

olive oil
2 sausages, skin removed
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tin tomatoes
half a tin of chickpeas, more if you like
3 olives (you can add more but that was what we had in the fridge), chopped
2 oz, more if you like, pasta
handful of spinach leaves, roughly chopped
handful chopped parsley

heat some oil in a pan over a medium heat and fry the sausage meat  until browned and starting to go crispy. Add the onion and fry until translucent and soft. Add the tomatoes, the chick peas, swill the tin of tomatoes out with some water and add that, and then add the pasta. Add the olives. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for five mins or so and then add the spinach leaves and half the parsley. Continue to cook until the pasta is done, adding more water when necessary. Serve sprinkled with the rest of the parsley and a grating - if you feel especially rebellious  - of cheese.

slush mush week continues...

Eventually Tatler and Teen Tatler ran out of steam and i could no longer feign interest in anybody called Cressy or Peeves. I was beginning to feel like I was experiencing quite an intense comedown from my painkillers/not enough painkillers. I tragically had to go and make my own soup for entertainment/survival.

tchuh have to look after yourSELF green soup

1 leek cut into rings

2 garlic cloves chopped

big handful each of kale and spinach leaves

1/2 cup peas

nutmeg

splash sherry (deeply sorry for myself)

1 pint chicken stock

sour cream (*weeps*)

sweat all the vegetables for about 5-7 mins until soft and stewy. 

grate in a long shower of nutmeg and a splash of sherry and after about a minute of furious bubbling (ie alcohol has cooked off) calm everything down by pouring in the stock. 

bring to a simmer and leave it for another 5 mins or until you feel the kale leaves are wilted enough, or until you can't be bothered.

whizz in the blender in batches as once a build up of steam blew the top straight off mine and painted a small green ring on the ceiling. 

try to make the soup as smooth as possible  for the useless-toothless. add more water if you want it to be thinner, and stir in a swirl of sour cream as a special treat (the only happiness in my tiny dark mush life.......sobs brokenly)

Later Mum came home and took charge of matters. This is her recollection of how she made even more bloody soup for me:

mum soup

1 potato (diced)

1carrot "

1/4 chopped squash "

1 onion "

1 can 200ml coconut milk

1/2 pint stock

Fry onion in olive oil until translucent and tenderish. Add the potato and the squash (orange thing whats it called?) and the carrot. Add a dash of sherry if you're feeling extravagant. Let it cook off until the alcohol evaporates, then add the stock and the coconut milk. Bring to a simmer and let it bubble away until the veg is tender then blend with a blender stick stick blender. Perfect for useless people I mean toothless people. Who can't eat.

No Teef

I had a wisdom tooth removed on thursday and ever since have been reclining forlornly in my bed of pain unable to eat anything but slurry and taking a lot of painkillers scavenged from years-old bathroom cabinet supplies. Clementine, like a sister of mercy, made me some delicious healing jelly. This is her story:

" ok, do you want to tell it?

I went to Tesco to buy your tragedy pack ie mush. which consisted of jelly, banana, tinned peaches, raspberries, a flake yoghurt and Tatler. then I came home. 

If you really want it detail for detail, I went into your room and asked you what fruit you wanted which took some time, one of the harder decisions of your day. peaches and bananas it tuned out.

- I got the measuring jug and put jelly cubes into it (obviously not the whole big).

- Poured half a pint of boiling water on it, stirred it with a fork - felt like that was right - 

then when all the little cubes were no longer, I poured half a pint of cold water into the hot water mix to make one full pint. *coughs*

- then, mum was sitting outside because it was sunny, on the little table by the horse's head. I decided to ask her which bowl I should use. And whether I could put fruit in the mixture or into the bowl first and pour the jelly on top (!!!) There was some confusion and we just stood in the garden in silence, puzzling over it. then she exhaled gruffly and came inside and we thought we should chop up the banana and put it into the bowl (which was TOO SMALL MUM) then I decided to put the peaches in separately one bit by bit. 

- I regretted not putting them in a lovely design. 

- I got mum to put it in the fridge so i wouldn't spill it on myself and we had to move all your stupid spinach and kale.

- It set after three hours and then I gave it to you when you were at your lowest ebb and your nearly choked on it and spat it back out. "

Turkey

monday turkey hash

1 packet of turkey breast meat cut into smallish pieces
1 leek cut into strings
1 stick celery as thinly sliced as possible
a handful of mushrooms cut up
1 clove garlic
peas
sprinklings of dried tarragon, salt with dried mushrooms in, black pepper
dijon mustard
sour cream
1 tsp veg stock powder + water
mashed sweet potato

Quick write this down before pointless starts... you've got eight, no seven, minutes...
first of all, smell the turkey (I make Mum smell it as she has the definitive standards for off food) and make sure it's ok, then cut it into small pieces.
fry in a small amount of neutral oil (eg grapeseed/canola/rapeseed) until it is slightly browned. I use grapeseed oil because I think that doesn't burn.
Next I added the leek strings and some finely chopped celery and just sort of shoved it round the pan until it softened. Sprinkled in a big pinch of salt with dried porcini mushrooms in it, and a bit of dried tarragon, then I remembered I hadn't put in a garlic clove, so I added a pinch of garlic granules instead. Stirred through about 2 tsps of strong dijon mustard which had come in the post, part of the mustard collection, and a tsp of veg stock powder and a wine glass of water. I let it bubble a bit (about 5-10 mins) until it got thicker. Finally, I threw in a tablespoon of sour cream - all that was left in the pot, a small handful of chopped parsley and a bit black pepper. I ate it with mashed sweet potato and it was delicious

Pauper's soup

When it is so freezing cold and there is no food and no money (and no hope!) I am inclined to make this kind of pauper's soup. It is certainly the warmest and most filling 12p meal I can imagine and it makes me feel capable and vaguely wartime-ish, or at the very least, some way towards being as Irish as I claim.

I had one rasher of bacon left so I cut it into small pieces and fried it in a small amount of oil.

Then chopped one onion and half a stick of celery, chucked them in with the bacon and fried until they began to soften.

I Peeled the green skin and alien eyes off a large potato chopped it up into small pieces and put that in the pan.

After about 7 minutes I poured in a pint of boiling water mixed with a vegetable stock cube some green peppercorns and some old parsley stalks.

This simmered away until I considered it to have reduced enough, about 15 mins? 5 minutes before the end I threw in a handful of frozen peas.

Then I smashed roughly with a potato masher until things had come together a bit more and made a thicker texture, and ate it too quickly scalding my mouth. Just like old times. It was delicious.

cooking with lads

i was like good gracious....i can't buy fish in brighton! but it's where the sea lives! so i went to a restaurant and asked for 4 breams to impress some women.

I was wearing sunglasses and cycling around on my 34 year old peugeot bicycle. in brighton where i live, it's not just for mods and gays any more. it's actually quite cool. i asked some next brer, some top nerd, the peakest egg, where i could find some fresh fish.

interlude

"he'a the greatest dancer, i woinder why!!!!"

concludes.

I got 4 breams. from riddle and finn in meeting house lane. which is....phwer au uhh in the lanes. next to the tramp who makes origami.

paolo wanchope and rest of costa rica fc got promoted that day. yikes.

wooeaaooow.

ok so anyway, i wasn't allowed to build a fire in our garden, there were noise complaints, we had this party. the police came.

say something about that little tchuchi man josh cook not letting me build a fire indoors, even though like, fred does it, like every day. THANKS MUM! yeah we gon git him.

(don't be threatenin, we'll getdone over")

so my 4 breams. lined them up then salted them by putting salt on my hands then slapping them. and oily. oh then we made a drink. not a drink. a sauce. lemon juice, a bit of balsamic something, like vinegar but like a paste. in a tube. some crushed up capers, some salt and some pepper. some rosemaries and some thyme. we crushed all that up into a thing, then i covered the fish. we put 2 slices lemon and 2 cloves of garlic in one, a few capers, didn't count them, don't care. time was tight. ladies be arriving

a bit of chilli.

then,wrapped them up each in a little tin foil house, put them in all ext to each other. 4 little friends.

then i baked them, on a really high heat. prolly like a million or something. according to the interweb it was half an hour, which was brass, farily brass, because it was actually fiddy and they were perfect.

done me proud.

i was like chelsea last season, no mata. no juan mata.

then georgie made a salad, but i don't know how she did it.

it was with the fish paste thing. yeah marinade. but she enhanced it with some boiled potatoes. and it was banging. and we drank ribena. if you care.

and josh painted his room. but as you now know, josh is a pig egg. actually i can't say that twice, scrap that, josh cook aka super-mild dyspraxic.

Sunday night meatballs

A fridge almost exclusively full of pork products delivered in the post. everybody here feels that pork is the inferior meat. but we are hungry and we need something fortifying to broach serious subjects like "i'm not always having a go at you, you are just defensive" and "you smell like TCP gross you make me sick" and "have you done any homework at all this week?"

-brown some pork meatballs in a small amount of oil. we had 12 from 'the black farmer's daughter' which were v good in the end.

-1 onion and 1 stick of celery finely chopped and fried until soft in a bit of olive oil.

-add this "soffrito" to the meatballs with some smoked paprika (about a tsp?), smoked sea salt, ground black pepper, ground coriander seeds (about 5?) and 2 bay leaves. fry gently for about 3/4 mins.

-pour in 2 tins of chopped tomatoes and 1 tin of throughly rinsed flageolet beans (otherwise ugh so claggy) and a bit of chicken stock. I only had about 1/2 pint leftover, but it is just for rehydrating as you cook, so no need for precise measures.

- bring to a harsh bubble then simmer for approx 30 mins or until you can persuade people into the kitchen. I added a slick of double cream to slightly take the paprika heat off for my sister.

serve with masked potato

i can only provide so much

12 minutes to eat, and 400 back copies of vogue to consume. this happened...

4 mini chicken bits fried in a bit of oil and torn into even smalled bits

1 courgette peeled into long thin ribbons with a potato peeler

2 big handfuls of spinach chopped into strips

1 packet instant noodles

2 small cloves of garlic and a small lump of ginger finely grated and soaked in about 2 tablespoons olive oil

1 miniature fennel bulb sliced

1 shallot thinly sliced

smooth peanut butter

sweet chilli sauce

sesame oil

soy sauce

With the garlic and ginger soaking in the oil get on with chopping all the vegetables otherwise you have to do terrifying speed cooking which is too stressful and always ends up burning.

fry the garlic and ginger in about 2/3 of the oil in which its been soaking for about 30 seconds then quickly throw in the chicken, fennel, spinach and courgette and stir fry for a few minutes. meanwhile (you may have to employ a sous chef at this point if like me you can't handle the speed cook) mix together peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce, sesame oil soy sauce and the left over garlic and ginger infused oil. I used about 1 dessertspoon of peanut and chilli and slightly under a teaspoon of the others but it completely depends on your taste, add more or less as you require then pour the whole lot in the wok with the noodles and fry for a further few minutes. serve with strips of cucumber and chopped peanuts.

oh yes i remember this

new years day
...doesn't count. surely no one else does anything more than cooking three packets of tesco value chicken flavour noodles and dribbling them down themselves while they stare mindless at 'the big fat quiz of the year' reruns either. surely...

new years day 2
The problem with our fridge is that it is always full, but, mysteriously, contains nothing to eat. Several jars of condiments and pickled, chutneyed items arrive in the post, in bulk, and stay untouched until these moments, such as post-apocalyptic party cleaning, when you are frankly ravenous, and willing as never before to eat sweetcorn relish and Baobab Tree of life jam.
On this occasion
the fridge is bare apart from beer and some extremely questionable minced beef and I have just been tidying for 2 hours only stopping to realise that the kitchen looks exactly the same. In a bid to be a bit january '10 new leaf etc I decide not to eat half a baguette and instead concoct this salad, vaguely mexican- therefore exciting!, far healthier and uses up some limp bits of fridge growth that used to be lettuces.

dressing:
1 teaspoon of mexican salsa verde from tub lurking in fridge
3 dessertspoons olive oil
1 dessertspoon white wine vinegar
1 squeeze lime juice (this was nigh on impossible for me, the only lime to hand being about as juicy as a bullet)
chopped parsley (about a pinch full)
1 pinch each salt pepper and white sugar

-whisk this together with fork.
-chop up end bits of tragic lettuces
-slice up very ripe avocado (half of)
-cover with thin strips of smoked salmon
-dress and consume.

Her Goose was cooked
by Bella

You used to eat goose at Michaelmas, the quarter day on which rent was due. The goose feast afterwards must have been some compensation for the fiscal transfer. Now we seem to have goose only at Christmas, though you could give it a go for Thanksgiving.
The first goose I ever saw cooked was produced by a woman who turned out to be having an affair with my husband and I hadn't felt much like cooking one since. That is, until one turned up recently in the post, sent by the remarkable outfit Donald Russell. They provide meat for the royal palaces and everything that arrives from them, packed in dry ice in smart white polystyrene boxes, is of really excellent quality.
I thought long and hard about cooking this goose, but in the end used a method so simple and so delicious that I have been kicking myself ever since for not cooking one sooner. It made a fantastic feast for 7 people
Here's how we did it

1 goose roughly 4kg
6 oranges, halved or quartered depending on size
a mix of freshly ground salt and pepper
8 or 9 good sized potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks, boiled for five-7mins and gently floured, for roasting

Preheat the oven to 200c. Wipe the goose, making sure it's completely dry and put it in a roasting dish (make sure goose and dish fit in the oven). Put the oranges inside the cavity, rub the salt pepper on the skin and pour a little water round the bird. Put in the oven for an hour. At the end of the hour, drain off any excess fat into a bowl and reserve. Put the goose back into the oven at a lower temperature (say 180c) and continue to cook until the skin is brown and golden and crisp and any juices run clear (stick a fork into the leg, as this is the bit that takes longest to cook).
One hour or so before the end of cooking time, put the reserved fat into a roasting dish, heat in the oven and add the potatoes. Turn once or twice so that they brown evenly. Serve with the goose and a bowl of red cabbage and a dish of apple sauce.


Red Cabbage
A great accompaniment to goose, or you can turn baked red cabbage into a dish in its own right by adding sausages, pushed into the cabbage mix, about 40 minutes before the end of cooking
serves 6-7

1 medium sized red cabbage
450g cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
450g onions, finely chopped
150ml red wine
150ml wine vinegar
4tblsp brown sugar
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
several strips of orange peel
chopped herbs, eg parsley, sage, thyme
1 teasp ground cloves
half a cinnamon stick

Preheat the oven gas mark 4. Find a deep oven proof casserole and put in a layer of cabbage, a layer of onions and garlic and a layer of apples. Season with salt and pepper, add the herbs sprinkle on half the sugar and half the cloves and add the cinnamon stick. Continue the layers until the casserole is full. Pour in the wine and vinegar. Cover and cook in a very slow oven for 3-4 hours



Apple Sauce
I make apple sauce if I can't find a jar of it in the cupboard, consequently it's a bit of a hit and miss affair, using any ingredients that seem vaguely suitable that I happen to have to hand.

3-4 old apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1-2 cloves
half a cinnamon stick
a bit of lemon peel
knob of butter

Put the apple, cloves, cinnamon stick and lemon peel into a saucepan. Add a little water and put over a low heat until the apple is soft and breaking up. Stir in the butter, put in a fancy dish and serve

Boiling an orange
by Bella

We first met Paul on a beach in Andros. He was cooking a fish on a fire in the dark. It was an exciting meal as it was hard to know whether you were going to get a mouthful of sand or a mouthful of fish. There was lots of wine too, which added to the general sense of danger and well-being. Before the fish was demolished, we'd collected quite a crowd, including a small boy with a rubber dinghy who became my son's inseparable companion for the rest of the holiday. No one ever knew his name, my son maintaining that after spending a week in his company, it was now too late to ask.
The holiday ended, as holidays do and the next time I saw Paul was in our kitchen. He had made the intrepid journey from Bow to Dulwich and arrived on the doorstep clutching an orange.
'I must boil this orange' he stated firmly
'Why?' we said
'It's absolutely vital' said Paul, 'In fact, I have to boil it twice. It's to go in the cake.'
In a house not known for its puddings, cake sounded good but, it transpired, this was a cake not destined for this evening's entertainment but for the next day when Paul's 'other friends' would be benefiting from the boiled orange.
It's hard while eating dinner in a kitchen not to notice the presence of a boiling orange, especially the twice boiled kind, and especially if it's an orange that you're not going to eat or benefit from in any way.
The orange boiling took on the character of some pagan ritual, designed to propitiate the gods. It bubbled and hissed in the background and when it was time to catch his train back to Bow, Paul turned off the orange and took it away with him. I wondered whether it had been some kind of timing device, more tactful than setting an alarm clock
Later he sent a recipe for the cake which he had stolen from his friend Dom. We make it all the time, but the mysterious thing is, that Paul and the cake have never been seen together in our house...

Cake recipe, which I stole from my friend Dom:

Boil orange (you have probably never seen this done before; many haven't). Change water after first minute of it boiling, then let it simmer away in new water for a couple of hours. Remove. When cool, cut off tiny ends, then quarter. If there are any surviving pips, remove them. Otherwise blend the bejesus out of said orange.

Beat three eggs with 250g sugar until pale and thick. (We've all dated such people.)

Fold in 275g ground almonds and 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder.

Add orange pulp. Mix gently.

Cook for an hour at 180 degrees.

Serve with some marscapone mixed with caster sugar, and the juice and zest of one lime to taste.

You can cook cake with poppy seeds if you like.

Take it to someone else's house

mystery

lost in the annals of time:

This recipe was saved by me, although now I can't remember why or what on the earth the point of it was. It still sounds good, albeit needing an ending...

Cut a small onion into long segments and fry in some butter and olive oil. Add 2 cloves of garlic and 2/3 rashers of bacon cut into small slices. Fry gently until the onions are soft and the bacon is starting to brown. Add in 4/5 chopped chestnut mushrooms and continue to fry until they are soft. Throw in 2 large handfuls of spinach, a generous grating of nutmeg and a bit of white wine, and leave to cook gently with the lid on for about 5 minutes.

sandwich time

mmm. Sandwich time. The last 20 minutes of This Morning with Philip and Holly and they are making Beouf Bourgignon and hilarious double entendres. I accidentally made an amazing and completely vegetarian sandwich. I had to make another one afterwards in case it was a dream.
Toasted sourdough bread and butter, 2 slices of very soft mozzarella, a handful of spinach leaves, a layer of mashed avocado and a few sprinkles of pizza express orignal dressing. squash it down - all sandwiches taste better squashed - and devour. (I hurt the roof of my mouth) accompanied by a last swig of red orange juice from the carton, 2 cornichons, a small morsel of smoked salmon and a plum. Easily in the top 5 lunches.

fireworks night stew

In a considerable improvement on last year's display, entitled "near-death experience", at least 1/3 of this year's fireworks got into the air and exploded there as planned. To accompany this spectacular event, we needed a cauldron full of hot, spicy, smoky stew.
We also had; hundreds of sausages, onion marmalade, salads, cakes (cherry and almond loaf from Nigella's domestic goddess) and a delicious concoction from Nigel Slater in The Observer magazine, baked potatoes with rillettes (although his assertion that potatoes would need only 1 hour baking was taken well by mum.)
As it turned out, We may as well have been feeding 500 people from a thimble but they were all very polite about it.
feeds about 8-10 people sensible portions.
- 3 thickly sliced chorizo sausages, fried in oil for about 6 minutes, then remove from the pot
- 2 chopped red onions, fried until soft in the oil and chorizo fat.
- add 4/5 small salad potatoes cut into equal sized chunks
- a handful of mini carrots
- 10 cloves of garlic slightly squashed
- 5 tomatoes chopped roughly
- add the chorizo back into the pot
- pour on about a glass of sherry
- an over-enthusiastic heaped teaspoon of smoked paprika, a large pinch of saffron strands, a teaspoon of fennel seeds, and a hesitant sprinkle of chilli powder ground together in a pestle and mortar and stirred in.
- 3 bay leaves, a strand of thyme leaves, and a handful of chopped parsley leaves and stalks.
- 2 tins of chopped tomato and 2 tins of beans (flageolet/haricot)
- 1 litre stock (we had goose but anything would do)
let it simmer away for hours - it was more convenient for us to leave it on very low for most of the day, but you can just simmer away until you like the consistancy and the level of spice.
Served in cups to an army of disappointed pyromaniacs. Thank god there was beer.

ninja soup

It came from nowhere, no would ever have suspected it...
The kind of evening where everyone's hungry and no one can be bothered to do anything about it. There is very little in the fridge inspiring you, apart from half a bottle of wine. You just have to throw things at a saucepan, and ask everyone not to be picky. In the end this turned out to be quite good, an amalgamation of vaguely Asian ideas put together with odds and ends and hot enough to be comforting and a cure for colds.
- 1 fat clove of garlic, one thumb-sized lump of ginger, 1 small red fiery chilli, a handful of chopped parsley stalks and leaves and about a tbsp frozen chopped lime leaves, blended together with olive oil to make a paste.
- Fry the paste in a deep pan with a bit more oil and a teaspoon of assam paste. (this had been lying around in the fridge, and was included purely because I didn't fully trust the rest of my ingredients to be flavoursome enough. You could instead add a stick of lemongrass and replace the parsley with coriander for a much more authentic and homemade approach.
- After this has fried for a while, add a pint of chicken stock and a can of coconut milk (depending on how much you love coconut you could add more, I LOVE it and always want to break open a second can but I know this to be bad and wrong) and bring to the boil.
- As it's boiling I chuck in some baby new potatoes cut in half and a tablespoon of fish sauce (nam pla) and a squeeze of lime juice.
- After about 5 minutes I also add some quartered tomatoes and some green beans. After a few minutes more I add 2 portions of dried noodles, a packet of bamboo shoots from the "miscellaneous" shelf in the cupboard and 2 handfuls of frozen prawns.
- The timing of this dish is absolute guesswork. but the last few ingredients shouldn't have more than about 4 minutes.
- Serve with an extra squeeze of lime juice.
- The hardest thing about the whole experience is an even distribution of ingredients throughout 4 bowls, and apparently it is not cool to ask someone else to do that for you.

"sorry i couldn't coq it up tonight"

Inspired (sure, we've all been there) by This Morning chef, Phil Vickery, I wanted to make a coq au vin for dinner. He made it look so easy and delicious (whilst being VERY defensive about his method - embarrassed about simplifying things to such an extent that us jobless plebs could understand him...) and having 4 hours to spare of an afternoon, I gave it a go. I used a book called "the french kitchen" for professional guide whilst scrolling through Phil's "quick recap" in my head for comedy value - eg, in most french kitchens they will be able to bring an old coq in....
We only had a whole young chicken so I had to pull my socks up and do some serious butchery like a masterchef: the professionals contestant and joint it into 6 pieces. Worryingly, I found this to be pretty much the most fun you can possibly have in a kitchen, and my brother and the dog lurked around behind me like a 2-headed Monica Galetti pointing out that I had raw chicken in my hair and trying to eat it (respectively).
To accompany the coq au vin i made some parsnip mash with two ludicrously huge parsnips that had been sent to us in the post. Despite being by far the simplest part of the menu it was actually delicious, due to the last minute judgement on seasoning by my sister.

Parsnip mash
-Put 2 parsnips peeled and chopped into evenish chunks, on to boil for about 20 minutes or just until they are tender.
- when they are done and drained, mash them up gradually, adding double cream bit by bit and a pinch of salt and bit of grated nutmeg. When the mash has reached a consistency you like, stir through a knob of butter letting its melt slowly in and serve.

When we'd finished eating I recieved the above title in a text from a friend that I'd invited to dinner. awesome.

food fight

I am paid a visit by my friend who is struggling to honour her commitment to vegetarianism - to which I am aggressively opposed.
She sighs, " if only everyone on the planet would stop eating cows there would be no drought and no famine.
I say, "if only you would stop eating all the best bits of leftover beef in my fridge."
In an attempt to avoid a fight, (nothing pretty about a hypocritical activist and a carnivorous barbarian scrapping on the floor) we settle on eating a nourishing soup made with a gnarly bit of celeriac - which is just exotic enough in this house to be considered a treat for me on a par with, say, a slice of salami.

celeriac and apple soup:
1 potato
1 apple
1/2 celeriac
2 bay leaves
3 juniper berries
handful of chopped sage
Salt and pepper
splash of sherry
chicken stock cube


- Fry finely chopped onion in a walnut sized knob of butter and a small splash of oil.
- when the onion has softened slightly, add in the (peeled and cubed) vegetables and fry them for about 6 minutes making sure they don't get stuck to the pan and burn.
- add the sherry, then throw in the bay, sage, juniper, salt and pepper.
- while this is sizzling away mix up a stock cube in abut a pint of boiling water and pour that in slowly.
- bring to the boil and let it simmer on its own for about 20 minutes or until you're satisfied that everything is cooked through. (or your vegetarian friend is so ravenous she is threatening cannibalism)
- blitz the soup to a consistency you like and serve.