Ginger Tablet

Warm Green Dinner and Gooseberry Crumble

Without wanting to jinx anything, it looks like Glasgow might be the recipient of a summer this year. (knock, knock, knock on wood) Sure it won't be a endless string of crystal clear skies and steamy afternoons, but so far we've definitely seen the sun, our muscles relaxing into the rising heat.

Still these tentative summer days don't demand the same kind of food that's compulsory in a hotter climate; grilled meats and fresh salads, cold noodles and spicy chilies, endless fruit, infinite ice cubes. It's just not that warm. And even when it is, the day could turn back to cool and grey in a second. Just like it did yesterday. The morning and afternoon were brilliantly warm and sunny, enough to require extra water on our bike ride and to punish me for not wearing sunscreen with an attractive red burn across my back. But although we arrived home sweaty and hot, within an hour the sky had clouded over, the wind picked up and cardigans were once again being drawn across our shoulders.  

This specific kind of summer demands its own kind of meal. One that makes use of all of the produce bursting forth, while still being comforting on a blustery evening. And the foods that seem to fit are the green ones. Beautiful green vegetables, gently cooked. And veiny green gooseberries, tart and hairy; how could you not want to bring them home?  

The menu last night was whole steamed artichokes (bottom and tops chopped off, placed in a steamer for about 45 minutes over lemon water), served with a dipping sauce of melted butter, mustard and white wine vinegar. Next was an almost panzanella: leeks, fresh peas, yellow courgette, cherry tomatoes sauteed in butter and loads of chopped parsley, raw fennel added in right at the end. This was ladled into bowls and topped with chunky croutons, dripping in melted gruyere.

Then a gooseberry and elderflower crumble. This combination of hedgerow treats is a new one for me, but its so perfect for the season that I'm making it a mandatory summer flavour from now on. Sour, sweet and redolent of blossoms, this taste takes you outside into fields and meadows. This crumble is as easy as any other. Gooseberries are topped and tailed (a bit tedious, admittedly), placed in a dish, sprinkled with sugar and a swig of elderflower cordial. Then the topping. The crumbles of the UK tend to be pale and dusty, using a good deal of flour. I just don't think this is right. While I improvise my topping every time, I think it should be dark and chunky, using less flour, more sugar and a bunch of oats. Chopped nuts and cinnamon are encouraged. My method is to melt roughly 50g of butter and then mix in brown sugar until most of the butter is absorbed, next adding flour until the mixture isn't shiny anymore and enough oats that everything gets lumpy and well, crumbly. Spices and anything else can be added at this stage. I know it sounds vague, but it's a hard dessert to mess up. That's why they're always making it on Masterchef. Once the topping is on the fruit, it just goes in the oven at 350/180 for about 40 minutes.  

And all of this was just right. Green and vibrant enough to make us feel July, warm and filling enough to keep out the wind.

Arbroath Smokies

A couple of weeks ago my friend came to visit from Arbroath, a town famous for its twinned, brown smoked haddock. These fish are tied in pairs and then hot smoked over oak or beech chips in small batches. They've been granted Protected Geographical Indication or PGI, so you can't smoke some haddock in your garden in Pollockshields and try to pass them off as the real thing. Or, I guess you could try, but it wouldn't be right. 

I had never tried them before, and they were just incredible. I normally eat more commercially produced smoked fish so the flavour of the wood coming through the flesh was a miracle. You can't replicate that on a large scale. After splitting them open and removing all of the aggressive little bones, I fried them in a bit of butter. Served with boiled new potatoes and peas, this was one of the easiest and most delicious meals we had and nothing has been better than "easy and delicious" this past month. 

Lemon Polenta Cake, For Passover, For the Gluten-Free

This is a cake recipe that you can keep on a spare piece of imaginary paper, folded and memorised and tucked safely in your brain until you need it. Because a flour-free recipe that can be quickly assembled and only has five ingredients is a very handy trick. Especially if you happen to have dear ones who don't eat wheat or you happen to celebrate Passover. But the thing that really endears is that it doesn't taste like a subsitute. Like something you're eating because you've been denied normal food. As someone with a few obligatory and restrictive diets in her past, that is a damn fine trait.

I got the recipe for the Lemon Polenta cake from Nigel Slater's lovely, lovely site (that makes me want to have a garden urgently and immediately. Read that section and tell me your not a) getting on the waiting list for an allotment, or b) plotting the death of your lawn for the sake of dense fruit, flower and vegetable plots). He makes it into a layered cake filled with lemon curd and cream, and who would argue with that approach? I decided to keep it as one layer, brush it with a simple lemon syrup and cover it with whipped creams and some blueberries. I served it for tea, thought there would be leftovers and was totally wrong. I think anything remaining on the plate was, um, tidied up, as we made dinner that night.

And although there is of course no reason why you wouldn't eat flour normally at Easter, this would still be a festive little cake with all of its eggs, bright yellow colour and its ability to mate happily with cream and berries.

This cake will also save you if you want to bake, but find yourself without nice butter. One of the cruellest tales of the kitchen is The Fate of Baked Goods When Made with Crappy Butter. There's no need to relive this nightmare. Don't delude yourself and think it won't happen to you. It will and you'll cry.

Lemon Polenta Cake, for when you can't eat things, but don't really wish to be reminded of that fact (from Nigel Slater)

The cake serves not so many people. If you were making it for a seder, try doubling the quantity, baking it in two tins and making it a real layer cake.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs, separated
• 110g sugar
• 50g fine corn meal/polenta
• 30g ground almonds
• Lemon

Method:

1. In a mixing bowl/stand mixer combine the eggs yolks and the sugar. Add in the zest of the lemon followed by the polenta and the ground almonds. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add it in, too.
2. In another bowl, whisk up the egg whites until they're stiff (a pinch of salt helps here). If your bowl is large, you can place a tea towel underneath one side of it, gently tipping it away from yourself. This makes the pool of egg whites a bit easier to whisk and also stabilizes the bowl so you don't have to hold it. I used my eggbeater for this part and it was great.
3. Fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture in the following fashion: Add a dollop of egg white into the yellow mix and fold it to lighten it up. At this stage you can add the rest of the egg whites in two additions. To fold, use a broad spatula to scrape around the perimeter of the bowl and then cut through the middle of the batter. Use it like a blade so that is mixes it thoroughly, but you whites don't deflate.
4. Pour the batter into a butter/flour/parchment papered cake tin (8 inch) that you prepared earlier. Around the same time you also preheated the oven to 180/350.
5. Bake for around 30 minutes until it's golden and your trusty cake-tester comes out all clean.
6. Garnish at will, but think about boiling a tiny bit of sugar and water and lemon juice/zest while the cake is baking and giving it a gentle syrup shower once the cake is cooled. The lack of fat could lead to a dry cake, and this step will prevent that from happening.

Fame and Homemade Granola

So the most exciting bit of recognition I've ever received for this blog has been getting contacted by Kellogg's because, in their words, I'm a "discerning food lover". They asked if they could send me a sample of a new cereal, and I momentarily thought I might be giving my details to an identity thief, decided to say yes anyway just to see what happened, and then I forgot all about it. 

The anticipation didn't kill me mostly because I thought they were going to send me sample-sized samples. Food in small packets is simply dissatisfaction all wrapped up in over-packaging. I knew I would just relegate it to a cupboard while I ate items that were more guaranteed to satiate. Big foods, shoveled in. 

When I retrieved the very large and heavy box from my neighbours a couple of months later, I thought it was some sewing paraphernalia. I only started to clue in when I noted that it was addressed to Ginger Tablet, not a nom de plume I've ever given the sewing machine man. Nope, this was a load of cereal directly from the kitchens of Mr Kellogg. But not only cereal! Inside the box was a straw-filled wood and wicker crate, a rustic (questionably food safe) wooden bowl, a single hefty spoon and four boxes of cereal. One of each flavour of their new granola. I got all of this in exchange for filling out a little questionnaire online. 

Now, I was never asked to blog about these products, but I can only imagine that they thought that by sending me such a winsome array of props, I could stage quite the photo. Unfortunately I won't make that dream come true, but I did have some thoughts on their offering:

- Freeze-dried fruit is weird. These blends have half dried fruit and half freeze-dried. One part chewy and one part foam-y. It's an unappealing contrast. Although the cherry/raspberry turned out to be our favourite once the foam berries reconstituted themselves in milk, the apple/black currant variety with the foam apple chunks was pretty strange. I didn't dip into that box very often.

- I like my granola 100% oat-based. Wheat and barley do nothing for me in this context. 

- The product range is called "Nature's Pleasure". This horrible bit of branding is fertile ground for many a suggestive joke at breakfast time. And perhaps all of our breakfasts should be just a little bit dirtier. I know we sure giggled a few times. 

- The overall design and promotion of this cereal is a little something I like to call "twee as f**k". This aesthetic that earnestly embraces cupcakes as a political lifestyle choice. An attitude that privileges cuteness and the preservation of ignorance. This can be fine in a small business on Etsy and adorable in your first art school girlfriend, but when Kellogg's goes for hand-drawn graphics and the word "yum!" and a breakdown of the ingredients and how wholesome they are, the general effect is both creepy and obscuring. One does not read the label and think things are just that simple, one feels lied to. I also do not like packages addressing me directly: "as it's such a beautifully simple process we thought we'd share it with you". This is awfully forward. They totally don't even know me.

- Realization: I enjoy overproduced free things and for the first time wanted to be very, very famous 

- Realization: I will never be able to understand the enormity of advertising budgets that can promote these products in such a ridiculous fashion. How many rustic crates did they send  out?

Overall verdict: It was fine. A bit boring. Not quite crunchy enough or sweet enough or full enough of fruit/nut bits. None of the flavours were horrible, although our last box is languishing a bit. And the suggested retail price of 2.49 is cheaper than I would have thought. Basically, if you're stuck for a cereal, then this would be fine. I think it's going to hit the shelves in April.

But I love cereal and feel that it can be so much more than whatever. I've been making a batch of granola every Sunday since January and not only is it easy, it is phenomenally good and completely adaptable. You can put in whatever you want. The basic premise is that you mix some vegetable oil and your sweeteners of choice (applesauce/honey/maple syrup/brown sugar/etc) in one bowl and your oats and chopped nuts in another bowl and then smush them together, spread the mixture on a baking sheet and pop it in the oven at 350/180 for half an hour, stirring it around now and then until it browns evenly. If you want to add dried fruit you can just dump it in once the mixture is out of the oven. I've read that you should keep it in the fridge, so that's what I do. It's not a lot of work and the result is (technically) delicious x 1,000,000. 

In conclusion, you can do exactly the same thing as Kellogg's and not spend very much time or money, but instead of ending up with a product that's meh, you get the cereal of your fantasies (if you're into granola). In the concluding section of the on-the-box essay concerning Nature's Pleasure, Kellogg's goes onto say that the process of producing it is "so simple anyone could make it. Anyone with time. And an oven."

Dear reader, I would like to suggest that you are indeed such an anyone. 

Granola Any Way You Like It (if you like it to begin with)

Dry ingredients

Oats (6-7 cups)

Nuts! A couple of handfuls, whatever kinds take your fancy! Chop them up!

About 1/3 c of brown sugar

Wet Stuff

1/3 c vegetable oil

Honey

Applesauce - or if you live in a country where that's an exotic substance, finely grate a peeled apple instead. Very similar texture.

Maple Syrup

Other sweet liquid

Maybe some nice juice (I used apple/rhubarb once with great success)

Extra stuff

Cinnamon

Ginger

Vanilla Extract

Fruit

Anything dried, and chop anything big

Method:

Turn on your oven 180/350

1. Mix all the dry stuff together

2. Make a custom blend of your favourite sweeteners. The exact ratio doesn't matter. I use oil, one grated apple, a good glob of honey and maybe some juice. Try to end up with roughly 1.5 cups of stuff.

3. Mix the wet and the dry and add any some spices if you want.

4. Spread the mixture on two baking sheets. Pop them in the oven and every now and then rotate them and stir the oats around. When everything is lightly browned (25-35 minutes) remove the sheets and let them cool. Don't worry if things appear soggy. It will crisp up as it cools.

5. Break it up into the kind of chunks you like best. Add fruit if you're one of those people. 

To increase the overall smug quotient of making your own granola, have it with plain yogurt and pomegranate seeds after your swim in the morning. Take it into work. Tell people that you not only went for a swim, but you made this granola with your own dear little hands. This is a surefire way to gain admirers and allies.

Sticky Toffee Pudding for the Last Miserable Days

 

Oh, we're all going to get our little hearts broken. Was it nice where you were today? It was pretty nice here and it's supposed to be that way for the rest of the week, and, if we're really really good, maybe even into the weekend. It's time to feel pretty smugly pleased with ourselves for once again witnessing these stretching days as they warm right up. Flowers everywhere. Trilling and chirping birds. And bike rides with jackets open and warm breezes and later sunsets. So lovely. We're just so optimistic and full of love and hope. We are so headed for a fall. 

Because it's March. It won't last. Wherever you are in the Northern Hemisphere, however well the weather is currently behaving, we will be delivered with some really awful days in the next little while. March is a tease and never a safe bet. April is no better. Even worse because our expectations are higher.

So here's what I'm proposing the next time we get walloped with a chilly and mediocre and grey day: make Sticky Toffee Pudding. Because oh my god it's one of the best things that will ever enter your mouth if you like concentrated sweetness, warmth and toffee. And it's easy. And it's really good for any lazy night curled up in front of a film. And because it won't be that appetizing by when it's properly warm outside. 

I had been meaning to make it for months, ever since those first autumn shivers. I knew I had to get my act together and fortunately this past weekend was gross and kindly accommodated. We sometimes buy pre-made versions of this pudding. And I love them. So I was pretty concerned that my at home attempt wouldn't equal the grocery store equivalent. But it was even better. The crisp outer edge of the cake that gives way to the soft, cakey centre all smothered in toffee sauce and served with a pool of warm custard. This is a dream in a bowl. 

Last week a study claimed that some celebrity chef recipes contained dangerous amounts of saturated fat. In particular, Gordon Ramsay's STP recipe was targeted. Why this was front (of the Life and Style section) page news when, duh, obviously recipes that are primarily made with cream and butter are high in saturated fat, and the study was funded by a margarine company, so there might have been a bit of bias and anyway, hasn't saturated fat been given the not-totally-terrible-for-you clear when compared to some of the weirder and more horrible people-made fats, is a mystery to me. But just so you know, this recipe is not great for your saturated fat levels. It is very good for your emotional well-being. Eat vegetables before and during the day that follows and forget about it.

Do you want the recipe? Here it is. It's mostly taken from the BBC's website, but I added raisins to the mix. If you are a raisin person, I feel like it's an essential addition. It breaks things up. If you're not, then whatever. This has a lot of dates in it. If you're weird about dried fruit maybe you should just stop reading all together and have a long hard think about what's wrong with your palate.

I've also adapted some technique from David Lebovitz because the toffee layer on the bottom of the pan is crucial. I cut the recipe in half, poured it into a loaf tin and baked for about 20 minutes. It served the two of us twice. But this is the full strength version in case there are more of you.

Here we go! Sticky Toffee Pudding!

Ingredients for the cake:

225g whole dates

150g raisins

boiling water

175g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

85 g butter

140g brown sugar

2 tbsp black treacle/molasses

100ml milk

custard!

 

for the toffee sauce:

175g brown sugar

50g butter, in pieces

225ml double, heavy cream

1tbsp black treacle

1. Place the dates and the raisins in separate bowls. Cover both with boiling water. Let them sit.

2. Grease your baking dish or mini pudding dishes and preheat the oven to 180/350

3. Make the toffee sauce: Put butter and sugar and half the cream in a heavy pot and bring to a boil. Stir all the time! It's going to bubble and slowly turn brown. After about 5-7 minutes, remove from heat and slowly whisk in the remaining cream and the treacle. Pour half of the sauce in your baking tin and put the tin in the freezer. (At this point I added a bit more cream and butter to the remaining sauce so it wouldn't solidify completely and I would be able to easily  heat it up again).

4. Make the cake: cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time and the vanilla. Now beat in the treacle. Combine the flour and the baking soda in a separate bowl. Add it to the batter in 2-3 additions, alternating with the milk. All the recipes said not to over-mix, so just in case, I'll warn you of that as well. Drain the dates and mash them up with a fork. Add them to the batter. Drain the raisins and put them in there as well. Pour the batter in the pan (on top of chilled toffee layer) and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until your cake tester comes out so fresh and so clean.

5. To serve, heap the cake into a bowl, add warm toffee sauce on top and surround with custard. Die of pleasure.

 

French Leek Soup and Lunch All Week

Let's say that any meal comprising solely of slow cooked onions, such as French Onion Soup, makes you an unpleasant person to be around a few hours later. Let's not say anything more than that. Let's say that you know this and you don't want to be that person, but the idea of lovely onion soup topped with toasted bread and a lot of melted cheese torments you. You get bitchy when other people casually mention eating or making it. Well, if this is you, I have something to share: Put cheesy toast on another kind of soup. It works! It will satisfy you! You won't be embarrassed to share a room/couch/bed for the following 24 hours.

This is what you do: Chop three leeks and soften them in a fair amount of butter. Like a lump and a half. I had 5 big white mushrooms, so I diced them into wee bits and threw them in. I also very thinly sliced two small potatoes and when the leeks were soft added them as well. I added a splash of vermouth (but white wine would have been good), a bay leaf and some dried thyme, and topped everything up with vegetable broth to simmer for an hour or so. Now this is a fair amount of time to simmer a soup like this, but that was a productive period. Because while the flavours were becoming fantastic, lunch for the week was being prepared.

We're into packed lunches around here for pretty much every reason going: better for us, better for the planet, better for our wallets, often more delicious. Of course making them is a pain. But I find that if I have various delicious things I can scoop into a container, I can still get out of the door in the morning. How come making a sandwich takes so long? Sandwich making definitely will make you late. Salads are key.

So I made the spread you see before you while the soup was maturing. There's an eggplant, pomegranate and pine nut salad in a garlic yogurt dressing, a tabbouleh of sorts with diced zucchini and pine nuts, a grated carrot, beet and celery salad with a honey mustard shallot dressing and some cooked sausages purchased from our lovely local butcher. All things that work together and all things that are even better cold. 

And although it looks like a lot of work, it's pretty simple. Here it is in Nine Simple Steps:

1. Prep your eggplant. Turn the oven on to 350/180. Cut two eggplants lengthwise and then score the flesh. Rub with oil and sprinkle with salt. Place them skin side up on a baking tray and roast them for 30-45 minutes. Until they look like this:

2. Dice half a large zucchini (or one whole small one if that's what you've got). Place the pieces in a bowl with about 1.5 cups of bulgur. Turn on the kettle. Cover the bulgur/zucchini with boiling water, put a lid on the bowl and let everything steep for a while. Just forget about it.

3. Toast a bunch of pine nuts.

4. De-seed half a pomegranate.

5. Mince three cloves of garlic. Your co-workers will really like this.

6. Remember those pine nuts! Don't let them burn!

5. In a mixing bowl combine 3/4 cup of plain yogurt, a glug of olive oil and one of those minced garlic cloves. Add the pomegranate seeds and pine nuts, combine and set aside.

6. Quarter some cherry tomatoes and chop a big bunch of parsley.

7. Throw some sausages on. Use the pine nut pan!

8. Check on the bulgur and zucchini. They're probably just lovely. If so, add the parsley, two remaining cloves of garlic and the pine nuts. Squeeze a lemon over them. Add some olive oil. Stir. You're done! One dish out of the way!

9. Make a dressing for the carrot salad. Finely dice a tiny shallot and place in your dressing-making device (like a tall glass). Add a spoonful of Dijon mustard, honey, salt and white wine vinegar. When making vinaigrettes, always put your water-based ingredients in together first before adding oil. This helps you get a better emulsification. Now add a trickle of olive oil. Just a bit. Stir a lot. You should see it thickening. Add some more oil and keep stirring. Eventually it will get quite thick and glossy and you can start adding the oil faster. Taste and adjust sugar/salt/vinegar/oil as needed.

7. Dice one stalk of celery and grate two carrots and one big beet. Toss them with the dressing. Another dish done!

8. How are the sausages? Getting close? Burn them just a bit. They're ready, too!

9. Your eggplants should be mushy and fragrant now. Take them out of the oven, give them a rough chop and add the pieces to the yogurt/pomegranate mix. That's it! Four dishes made while you were waiting for dinner to cook.

Tomorrow you can have a mound of each of these babies with a sliced sausage on top and not only will this be pretty healthy and colourful, but your co-workers will be jealous little suckers.

But back to tonight and back to this soup. 

This will feed four people or two very, very greedy people. Whatever. We were watching Tampopo at the time and how can you watch that movie and not continuously eat soup if there's soup to be eaten? Anyway. Cut four pieces of bread and toast them. I used a seeded rye and it was actually ok. Grate some emmenthal or gruyere.

At this point you could put the soup into individual bowls, top each one with a slice of toast and a bunch of cheese and broil, or if you don't have bowls you know are over safe, just put the pieces of toast right into the soup pot (carefully, so they float), cover the whole thing with cheese and stick the whole thing in the oven under the broiler/grill until it bubbles.  

Ugh. How did you manage to make so many delicious things in such a short period of time? What will you do now except feel full and smug?

****************

J has just told me that this will definitely not last all week. That could be because he's eaten three sausages today alone. Something tells me he'll see to it that there's still some grated carrot and beet for my lunch by the time Friday is here, though.

Pancake Day and Rhubarb Curd

I can remember the day when my mother suggested we have pancakes for dinner. I thought she was crazy and absolutely wonderful. Shrove/Fat/Gras Tuesday/Mardi was never really invested with greater cultural meaning when I was young. For a few years at least, I saw it solely as an example of my mother's occasional, gentle eccentricities. Because growing up in the United Church there was never much talk of giving anything up for Lent. This was not a fat fest before forty days of misery and penance. Deprivation of any sort didn't really seem to be much of a thing at church. As far as I can remember, it was mostly people being nice to each other and sugar bowls just begging to have their cubes stolen during the after-service tea time. Eventually I realised that other people in our church also ate pancakes once a year for dinner and that they too just returned to their normal food the next day. 

Although there is now even less religious significance to this meal than there was when I was growing up, I still like to mark the day. It makes me think of my mom. I like the idea of a dinner that clears out the pantries and makes use of what's on hand. And I still feel like a naughty and spoiled princess who has somehow managed to get away with not eating her vegetables, at least for one day.

Tonight I made pancakes with two fillings. The first one was made of apple, raisins, cinnamon, pine nuts and very dark chocolate bits. It was based on Samantha Clark's pancake tip in The Guardian, but I improvised the chocolate and we ate it with sour cream. Extremely delicious. The second filling was a rhubarb curd, similar to a lemon curd, but a beguiling pale pink, and served with bright stewed rhubarb and more sour cream (we had some sitting in the fridge, we were just being frugal). This was also amazing. And I've wanted to try and make a rhubarb curd for a long time. It was on my list of things to do. It's a dorky list.

Now you can fulfill that ambition too. Bet you didn't even know it was in you.

Ingredients

300 grams rhubarb 

approximately 1 cup of sugar

6 egg yolks

a pinch of salt

half a lemon

100 grams of butter, cut up into chunks

Method

1. Cut the rhubarb into chunks and stew it gently in a bit of water and some sugar. This is to taste. Perhaps about 1/4  cup. Set aside when it's a bright pink pulp and all of the pieces have dissolved.

2. In a heat-proof bowl, whisk your egg yolks, 3/4 cup of sugar and the pinch of salt. Whisk them well. 

3. Set the bowl over a pot of simmer water. Not too hot, or your eggs will scramble and that will be gross. Just simmering. Just warm. Whisk the mixture.

4. Incorporate about a cup of the stewed rhubarb. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon half. A bit of zest is nice too. Keep whisking! Don't stop! You can add more fruit if you want, just taste it and see. But keep whisking! Do it for about 10 minutes. 

5. Once it seems nice and thick, take the curd off the heat and stir in the butter. Butter. Delicious butter.

6. Now use it or chill it. I don't know how long it will last in your fridge, but probably best not to push it. A few days. Eat it on everything. Eat it with any leftover rhubarb pulp you might have. Eat it straight from the bowl. 

Happy Pancake Day! I hope it was a soft and warm one.

Kedgeree, Absorption Style

Kedgeree is the kind of dish that seems entirely mysterious when you read about it in British novels. Both exotic and a staple, its the kind of food that protagonists fortify themselves with at breakfast before heading out to sea/off on the moors/away to do colonial things involving the Raj. No one thinks kedgeree without thinking about the Raj. It's also one of those words that I've read many times, but never really had the chance to hear or say out loud back in Canada. Sometimes, when my relationship with a word has been primarily visual, I'm not that careful to actually decode the correct sounds. So even though I read k-e-d-g-e-r-e-e, my mind says kedegree, as in rhymes with 'pedigree'. I know this isn't right, so now when I do say the word (it happens sometimes), I have to pause for a second, get the right sounds in place, and then proceed with the sentence. Overriding these transposed letters that my brain won't keep straight. Trying not to sound like an idiot. It's tiring.

But this is about more than just an intriguing dish with a tricky name. About once a week I want a simple and healthy dinner featuring lots of vegetables and fish. The truth is, if the oceans weren't so barren and poisoned, I would eat fish and vegetables for dinner every second night. Pasta would go in between. Food like this just makes you feel so clean and light. Plus it is excellent for dodgy digestive disorders. There's just nothing for your body to reject.

I have a standard recipe that I normally turn to and which we can discuss at a later date, and it's a lovely colourful plate of food. But I wanted a change. I wanted something involving fewer ingredients. I decided on kedgeree.  The dish as it is understood today is a corruption/amalgam of both a Scottish dish and an Indian dish that gained popularity during the time of British rule and then was brought back to the UK where it is still eaten fondly. It was traditionally served for breakfast made with just-caught fish. 

Typically the dish involves frying cold, cooked rice in onions and spices and serving it with parsley, boiled eggs and smoked white fish (often haddock). Guess which parts Scotland and India contributed to the mix. Now, I love fried rice, but I wanted a less greasy meal. So instead I approached my kedgeree a bit like a risotto. I started the onion and uncooked rice and spices in oil and then added broth until everything was cooked. Not only did this make for a bit of a lighter dish, the flavours of the spices had a chance to really infuse the rice over the longer cooking period. It worked - this method is good. It was delicious and it made me feel Victorian for half an hour.

Two things:

1) If I had some already-cooked rice in the fridge, I would do it the fried way in the future. 

2) This is an excellent application of pre-mixed, mild yellow curry powder. Every once in a while this spice blend is the ticket. I know it lacks cred, but it's taste and colour are so specific, in an application like this there's no sense in messing around with anything more complicated. Get the old, mostly forgotten jar from the back of your spice rack and use it with abandon. Bright yellow!

Ingredients:

(serves at least 4)

4 boiled eggs

400g smoked haddock (thanks Grier)

one chopped onion

approx 300g (long grain) rice

yellow curry powder (or your own precious blend)

chicken/vegetable stock

parsley

cream/whole milk (optional)

Method:

1. Boil your eggs if you haven't done this already

2. Gently fry the onions in some oil, add some salt and the curry powder. I ended up adding loads during the cooking process, so just adjust as needed.

3. Add your rice, coat the grains in oil and after a few minutes, ladle in some stock.

4. Continue to add stock and stir the rice until absorbed, just as you would if you were making risotto. Stop when the rice is cooked through, but before it gets mushy. This will take about 20 minutes.

5. 10 minutes before the rice is done, place the haddock in a pot and just cover with water. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer for approximately 6 minutes. Take the fish out, remove any skin and bones, flake the flesh and reserve.

6. Once the rice has finished, stir in the parsley, a bit of cream if you want it, adjust seasoning and add the flaked fish and chopped egg.

7. Eat!

A Salad of Seduction

 

Ugh. We're back at that time of year when dubious claims about the aphrodisiac qualities of pretty much everything are touted and our tongues' erogenous zones are endlessly charted. Stupid Valentines Day. Even as a loved up, shacked up girl, I think it's all a bit of a pain. Chocolate recipes everywhere start to make my eyeballs feel cloyed. Obvious, clicheed ideas of food sensuality just end up feeling like textbook lessons. I can't imagine a really exciting, hot night coming from any of these how-to guides. Of course small, spontaneous tokens of affection are always sweet and always encouraged, and I do have some plans to make an elaborate breakfast, convince J to go out for the paper and then have a lazy morning. But after that I'll probably just try to get on with my life. Grand gestures are exhausting.

But just in case you think my heart has turned to coal, there is a new crush in the kitchen. We've been quite taken with this little number over the past few days. It's an herb salad that comes from the one cookbook I've really lusted after recently, the pretty newly released Ottolenghi Cookbook. I can't remember the last time I flipped through the pages of a cookbook and was curious to try not only the meat dishes, but also the numerous vegetable dishes, the salads and the pastries. THE PASTRIES. I dropped a few hints about wanting it for Christmas, but J firmly objected to the photographs in the book. They are numerous. The composition is sometimes arranged so that the actual food is barely in the frame. There are loads of pictures of blurry people. Yes. Yes. Yes. I could clearly see all of this as well. But I had faith that our dinners would truly benefit from bringing it into our home. He wasn't swayed. I'm an independent lady with a well-used amazon account. 

I love it. I took it to bed with me the morning I got it and read every page. This was one of the recipes I was most excited to try out.

Now, salad is not the food of love and I am not going to argue otherwise. But this salad made of the picked leaves of basil, dill, parsley, coriander, tarragon and some rocket topped with butter-fried nuts and a citrus dressing will put a spring in your step and a smile on your face and a song in your heart. The mix of herbs seems strange at first, but it makes a lot of sense in your mouth. There is clarity and truth in this combination. If you are planning a big Valentines dinner,  I'm suggesting this as a palate cleanser in between your slinky oysters, rich meats and deep chocolates. If you don't care about any of that, you should still try it. It'll make you feel healthy and vigorous, but with a hint of fried-in-butter. And who doesn't want to feel vigorous and a little bit rich right now?

I'm not going to type up the recipe because I really want to go to sleep and I think you should buy the book. It's on sale right now even. But if you're not yet sold, you can check out the blog. There are a few recipes on there that look very tempting, too. You could even improvise from the description above. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is that if you want to feel fantastic, just put it in your mouth. 

And that is the most suggestive sentence I have ever written on this blog. The end.

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(I've been very actively working on my new web project (www.katiemcgown.info), so if you feel like things are too quiet here, go there. It's being updated e.v.e.r.y. s.i.n.g.l.e. d.a.y.)

Mussels, Fennel and a Barely Cream Sauce

 

Few things instill in me a greater feeling of fear, uncertainty and dread than the sound of a mouse scratching unseen in a corner. Especially when you were under the illusion that you were co-habitating with no such creatures. I hate living with mice. I hate trying to kill them. I hate that my lease won't allow me to get a cat that could patrol the perimeters of our flat, releasing its killer pheromones and dissuading little rodents from investigating our pantry. I've lived in places that were overrun and I am now scarred and scared. 

But Saturday afternoon, that's exactly the sound I heard.

After an exhausting afternoon foraging and shopping, I came home, dropped the shopping bags on the floor of the living room and slumped down in front of my computer for a few restorative minutes. I find the exhaustion that comes from shopping exceptionally mysterious. I feel far more drained going to a few stores than I ever do going to the gym or after a day at work. Something about the noise, the poor show that humanity puts on while they shop, the slow pace, the absence of the endorphin rush that comes from real exercise. This combination turns me into a vegetable capable of little more than facebook-surfing for a least 45 minutes. Even taking off my coat is just too hard.

It was in this state of advance slothfulness that I first heard the tiny bastard rodent. It seemed to be chewing electrical cables behind J's computer. While I was of course concerned about the damage it was causing, I couldn't help think that it was there because of J's errant toast crumbs. He had inevitably brought this beastie upon us and I wasn't going to worry too much about the technological fallout. Maybe he needed a lesson in consequences. I went through all of the possible mice-killing methods, made a note to thoroughly check the kitchen cupboards and came to the conclusion that we should probably move.

Then I remembered the bag of living beings in the room. It wasn't an industrious mouse, it was a kilo of mussels. Opening, closing, bubbling, somehow jostling. Inspired by a the picture of clam fettuccine in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, I had journeyed to the Blas Store, a perfect wee fish, seafood and game emporium just off Dumbarton Road on Hyndland Street. Although they had sold out of clams early in the day, there was still a bag of fresh mussels. And so a kilo was measured into a plastic bag and away I went.

Now I know that mussels are alive when I buy them, but I always forget that there will be the corresponding movements and sounds. I certainly never realised they could sound like mice. I would bet that they make a far better bowl of fettuccine. Because this was a very good bowl of fettuccine. The fennel and tarragon paired with the wine and mussels is so perfect and delicious. Their bright orange flesh and the pale green leeks look beautiful wrapped around the pasta strands. The cream is there just for body and mellowness, but there is not enough to clog the texture of the flavour of the sauce. It felt cleansing and filling. We wept when our bowls were empty.

There's a bit of work in preparing this dish because the mussels, first scrubbed and then steamed with leeks, fennel and wine, are then taken out of their shells and added back to the sauce naked. Unlike tiny dainty clam shells, these would prove too awkward to mix right into your cooked pasta. It's just a lot easier to eat this way, even though it's a lot more fiddly. I ended up buying twice as many mussels as I needed, so after they were cooked and de-shelled, I threw half of them in the freezer (with some of the cooked leek and fennel). This means that out of one labour intensive dinner, I will have a much faster one in the future. I'm already excited to eat this again surrounded by a stunning lack of vermin.

Ingredients

• 500 grams of fresh mussels (or use 1kilo for 4 servings, or leftovers for the freezer)

•  one leek

• fennel bulb (I used half of one because that's all I had, you could use a whole one if it wasn't too large)

• A couple of finely chopped garlic cloves

• olive oil

• butter

• white wine

• tarragon

• a splash of cream

• pasta

Method

1. Place your mussels in a large bowl and fill it with cool water. Let them soak for a bit. Prepare another large bowl of water and start pulling the beards (the fibrous bits) off the mussel shells. Once cleaned, place them in the second bowl.

2. Chop your fennel, leek and garlic. Heat up some olive oil and butter (you determine the amount, you need maybe 1.5 tablespoons of each) in a pot that's big enough to hold the mussels, and add your chopped vegetables. Let them cook and soften and get transparent. Add a glug of wine.

3. Drain the mussels, add them to the pot, cover it fast. Leave it. After five minutes or so you can lift the lid. The mussels should be cooked and the shells should be open. If there are any that aren't, throw them away.

4. Using a slotted spoon, remove the mussels from the pot. Take the meat out of each of the shells and reserve it. Roughly chop it if you want. If there are bits of leek and fennel clinging to the shell, save those too. Throw out all of those shells. Or make a beautiful craft project. 

5. While this is going on, you should have quite a bit of liquid in your pot. If not, add some more wine. Let it continue to cook and reduce.

6. Put some water on to boil for your pasta. You probably want fettuccine or linguine. When the water is ready, throw in your pasta of choice.

7. While the water is boiling, add the mussels back to the liquid in the lovely leek pot and slowly add a dash of cream. You really don't need that much. It will just go white; it won't get too thick. Adjust seasoning; you probably won't need salt, but you might want some pepper or a couple of chili flakes. Add some chopped tarragon right before the pasta is done.

8. Toss it all together. Add grated parmesan if you're uncouth like me.