Ginger Tablet

The Ease of Feeding Eclairs to Parisians

I'm back to the baking club this month.

Last month I made the challenge from June, a danish braid, but I did it on one of the only properly hot days we had in Glasgow this summer, during a period when we also had a wonky fridge. This meant that my carefully laminated dough never chilled properly between rolling sessions and everything was just a bit messy. I was going to photograph the braids, but then I started to feel weird and J started to emotionally eat and ended up finishing them before I could document my results. My fillings were very good, though, and one day soon I'll make something else with them because they're worth sharing.

But let's forget all of that chaos and focus instead on chocolate eclairs.

This month's challenge was to recreate Pierre Herme's chocolate chocolate eclairs comprised of a chocolate pastry cream in choux pastry covered with a chocolate glaze. Delicious. But as we were given leeway to change one of the chocolate elements for another flavour, I decided to be traditional and make a vanilla pastry cream for the middle.

Eclairs are one of those desserts that seem extremely intimidating, but are actually quite simple to approximate. While I messed up each element a bit, it was easy enough to fix my gaffes:

1) Grainy pastry cream: Despite it's renowned versatility, I don't really care for pastry cream. I find it doesn't quite have the decadence of other creams nor the slippy thickness of other custards. It feels lacking in body to me. But I made it anyway, and I made it perfectly. I didn't scramble my eggs when I added the hot milk, the vanilla pod that I added to the milk made it smell amazing, and I stirred it like a maniac until it thickened up beautifully. If I was going to like a pastry cream, this would be it. Then I poured it in a chilled bowl and fixed my hair. Then I re-read the instructions where it said to continue to stir the cream after it was poured into the cool bowl to avoid lumpiness. Oops. The texture was definitely off. To recover, I beat the living life out of it and added a few tablespoons of very, very thick (i.e. solid) cream. It worked. And the cream made it creamier, too. I think if I had to make it again, I would remember to stir it a lot as it cooled, but but I might still add some cream, too. It felt more luxurious.

2) Flat little pastries: I halved the recipe, and decided that I would make little eclairs. The dough came together easily for me, despite having to rely on my strong muscles instead of a stand mixer. Then I pipped tiny logs onto a baking sheet and put them in the oven where they puffed up and got all golden. Then I took them out of the oven and they became pancakes. Terrible. I re-made the pastry, got an additional upper body workout and this time when I made little logs, I built them up and made them three layers thick. I basically pipped compressed Zs. Can you picture it? Try to, because it really worked. This time they got severely puffy and tanned and when they came out of the oven, they kept it up. The picture above is of the runt of the litter, a profiterol-shaped baby that used up the last of the dough.

3) Separated chocolate glaze: The glaze was an elaborate ganache that had the most amazing chocolate sauce added to it. If I could marry anything about this recipe, it would be this chocolate sauce. It was glossy and perfect. The glaze was nice too, a little less sweet, but easy to make. The problem came when I was pouring it over the pastry. The glaze was too cool and so I heated it up a bit, but then I heated it too much so I put it in the fridge. And in the fridge it decided to separate and to get a little gross. To fix it, I had to do a lot of chilling and beating and this got thousands of tiny air bubbles in there which sort of turned the glaze into a mousse. Delicious, but not the slick veneer it was supposed to be. I couldn't really fix it, so I went with it. My eclairs were a bit ugly as a result, but certainly not ruined.

To make this a double challenge, I invited my Parisian friend over to try them out. She's normally a vegan, so I bribed her with an otherwise animal-product-free dinner. It wasn't a difficult deal to broker, actually. I think French vegans are used to having to make tasty concessions to their ethics.

Here she is enjoying the eclairs:

The verdict: they tasted like they were supposed to taste. Easy as that.

And J and I were left with bowls of chocolate glaze, chocolate sauce and pastry cream and a few eclairs in the fridge. They were all way better cold. We put it on everything: oatcakes, bananas, spoons. Then we got heart disease and died, but at least our chocolate-smeared faces were grinning.

If you want to see what other people made go here.

This is the book with the recipe.

This month's challenge was organized by Meeta at What's for Lunch, Honey? and Tony.

On Being Fooled by a Photo and Finding Love Again

 

In my previous post I alluded to some recent recipe disappointments. The soup above was a little heart-breaking trickster. I made it because I think that photograph (by Romulo Yanes for Gourmet) is really lovely. Those are some beguiling zucchini tendrils. There seems to rarely be a midpoint in food styling between "rustic" and "poncy" but I feel that the casual elegance of this bowl gets it just right. I'm a sucker for a good sense of line. And for green. I think green is the nicest colour to live with.

Now, I was skeptical when I read the ingredients. There's not a lot to this soup. It's basically boiled zucchini with some basil thrown in. It doesn't even use stock and that always makes me nervous. But all of the reviews on Epicurious were really positive and I believed the masses. 90% of them would make it again!

Stupid philistines. 

Even though I made a compensatory spicy nut mix to go on top and even though we added some grated cheese as well and even though we ate it with very nice bread and lots of butter it was B-O-R-I-N-G. In describing her recipe, Shelley Wiseman says:

"This smooth puréed soup manages the near—impossible feat of being velvety and creamy without any cream. Ribbons of zucchini add a final soupçon of elegance."

I'm respectfully disagreeing. Some cream would have been pretty good, actually, and those elegant little ribbons would have been more useful had they imparted a soupçon of taste. We were unenthused.  So much so that we left the remainder to languish in the fridge were it grew a million new friends and J almost died when he cleaned out the remains. His nose is still scabbed and scarred from the caustic fumes it inhaled. Metaphorically.

Then this soup came along and healed all our wounds.

The picture for this recipe is appealing because it efficiently conveys how this will be the most delicious and satisfying thing you will eat in the near future. You won't ever remember the composition of this shot, but you may remember how nice your kitchen smelled while it was cooking.

It's a minestrone-esque vegetable soup with sausage and pasta that made good use of some aging produce, my diligently saved parmesan rinds and our last batch of chicken stock. I bulked the recipe out a little: one extra zucchini, a whole spiral of cumberland sausage, probably more pasta than a handful.  And although the recipe says it serves two, these small additions fed three of us two servings each and there was still a bowl of leftovers the next day. That was not relegated to the depths of the fridge. We ate it greedily, standing up, half an hour before dinner.

You can find the beautiful and dull zucchini soup recipe on epicurious.com here. Millions love it, but unfortunately they are wrong.

Or, you can try out Allegra McEvedy's charming little bowl here. This recipe will be your pal. (Perfectly good photo by Linda Noland for the Guardian.)

I'm Back. And I Brought Cake.

Sorry about that silence.

All of my normal activities ceased while my body developed some severe with-child symptoms. I had a good old-fashioned pregnancy scare brought on by some seriously out of whack hormones (now back in balance). While I waited for definitive test results two things happened: my brain immediately split into five sections, each one tasked with anticipating an outcome to this situation and then determining the absolute best way of dealing with it. In this state of evolved multi-tasking my brains figured out where a changing table would fit in our flat and how much of a tax credit I'd be entitled to. I quickly amassed a wealth of knowledge that I will now forget for an undefined period of time.

The other thing that happened was that I got bored with food. I was feeling a bit sick and pretty tired and more than a little freaked out and cooking suddenly dropped off my daily activities. I ate a lot of crackers and fruit and yogurt. Nothing to write about, even if I could have persuaded one of my five brains to stop thinking about knitting tiny mittens and beauty regimes that would allow me to be *very* sexy while knocked-up long enough to complete a sentence. 

J spent this time eating every last piece of stale candy left over from Halloween and pouring over our cycling maps, imagining all of the trips we would now never be able to take.

Domestic Bliss.

Now that my body has decided to behave again and I can again party with my best friend, Beer, it's also time to make some magic in the kitchen. I had a very small but pretty luxe dinner party this week where I tried out three new recipes on the guests at my mercy. And miraculously, they were all really good. I've had some less-than-stellar results from recipes recently, but my faith in the printed word has been deliciously restored. It created an awkward situation for me during dinner because I wanted to continuously exclaim how delightfully wonderful I found the food, but actually voicing that would be pretty intolerable. Instead I said things like, "this is good, but you know, it was so easy" or "I really like this chef, I think their food is great".

I wasn't lying. It wasn't my skills that made the meal. These were solid, simple recipes and their creators get all the credit. The ease of the recipes was the only way I managed a four-course dinner on a weeknight. Honestly, it was doable. Especially if, like me, you don't have kids. (ha!).

I'm going to share these recipes over the next little while, and the first one up is this almond plum cake. As August unravels, I want cakes with dark purple fruit pressed or folded into their batters. A honey cake with figs, a blackberry clafouti, a blueberry cobbler. They both make use of the season's dark and sweet bounty, while easing the palate back into food for chillier days.

My step-great-grandmother used to make a plum cake similar to this when I was growing up. I remember eating slices of it all of the time, sitting in her condo, looking out over the Ottawa canal. It was lovely, moist and sticky with fruit, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. It's the food I most closely associate with her. Slowly the cake stopped being made. As she grew into her nineties , her vision and hearing became less reliable. She became a bit frail. But despite these changes, her mind never left her. Everything was still intact up there.

One day, knowing that our time wouldn't last forever, I asked Granny for her plum cake recipe.

She just gave me a look. "I've never baked a cake like that."

"Yes you did! You used to bake it all of the time!"

"I have no memory of that at all."

"oh. okay."

It would have been difficult for me to win an argument like that, especially since her stubbornness, already robust, only distilled with age. Instead, I accepted that I had unearthed Granny's only forgotten memory and that I had to come up with a recipe of my own.

This isn't it. But it's not that far off, either.

It has all of the important parts, a soft, spiced cake with tart plums baked to the point of collapse. It also has ground almonds because I had some in my pantry. That's the main point of departure from my memory of Granny's cake. I found the recipe, by Ursula Ferrigno, online and you can get it here.

Basically, you make a simple cake batter, sprinkle it with ground almonds, place halved plums on top and then pour a mixture of butter, sugar, cinnamon and eggs over everything. The final step seemed a little strange to me, but everything just turned into one delicious layer of dense almondy sponge. Perfect for a dinner on a gloomy, chilly day when our thoughts started to turn to the darkness of winter and the necessity of wearing tights again. Cake, wine, laughter and gossip acting as our insulation from those long months.

When I get home tonight, I will cut myself a slice in the perfect silence that comes from not reproducing. I might make a cup of tea. I will then eat the cake and sip the tea and maybe have a little conversation with Granny. A small chat to let her know what I'm up to these days. And she will be vivid to me then, as vivid as each bite of that spicy plum cake.

The Blood and Vegetables Commandments

Well, I lied. I said I would post every day for two weeks and then I really didn't. My reasons were complicated. First of all the executive committee of Ginger Tablet took one look at me and decided I needed to get out of the house more. They prescribed a weekend of parties, field trips and excessive drinking. I complied. Once I had met their requirements and demonstrated correct dancing techniques to artist populations in Glasgow and Dundee, I returned home to commence the blog once more.

That's when an important component in my computer decided to die. More specifically, the "power tip" for my ancient Dell. I had to order a new one and wait patiently for it to arrive, consoling myself in the cool glow of J's deluxe and powerful Mac.

Plus, after I gave blood last Thursday I died a slow and miserable death and that really got in the way of my life goals. Oh boy, am I joking. I don't mean to proselytize like a rabid new convert, but giving blood is exactly like what they say on the guilt-tripping commercials: easy+fast+painless+feel good smugness+COOKIE. Honestly. I know the trust is broken, but I'm not lying now. A few years back, some "doctor", some pimple on the ass of the otherwise majestic city of Montreal, misdiagnosed me with cancer. During that time I had a lot of blood taken for tests. Other than the thought of dying and having my lymph nodes constantly probed (they reside in delicate places), extruding blood was the thing I hated most. I was pretty worried it was going to feel the same, but it actually hurt less. And even though they were taking far more, it only took about 10 minutes. I've also fainted around needles twice in the past, but I didn't even feel funny standing up after the bloodletting. Plus, not only did I get a cookie, it was a Tunnock's tea cake! I'm doing this again, as soon as possible.

I know a lot of people have very genuine reasons for not doing this, but if you're not among them, just do it. Sermon over.

Another one beginning:

I strongly suggest that you make some mushroom pate (and that you forgive my lack of accents). Are you tired of your normal sandwich fillings? Is that acrid store-bought hummus making you sad? Is that unsettling flop of luncheon meat turning your stomach? Mushroom pate, my friends, that is the answer.

Admittedly, this doesn't sound like a sexy proposal. It sounds a little vegan in fact. A little like a "substitute" for something that actually tastes nice. But I'm pretty sure I had a dream about this spread last night, and I couldn't wait to unsnap the lid of my lunch box today.

Happiness can be yours. Just buy some regular mushrooms. That's what I did; one of the massive supermarkets was selling a 2lbs box of mushrooms for 1.50 and I couldn't pass up that bargain. So to deal with this very large quantity, I cut up an onion and some garlic and added a bit more butter than I normally would into a pot (a couple of tablespoons). I sauteed them and then began slicing my mushrooms and throwing them in there, too. At first I wasn't going to add the lot, but the smell of them cooking weakened my will. I sliced all of them and sent J out for a bottle of white wine. While he was gone, I added some rosemary and thyme, and just kept on stirring them now and again. At this point they were dark and slippy and small and amazingly delicious. Especially with a bit of salt thrown in. When the wine arrived, one glug was added and after a couple of minutes the heat was turned off. I made one piece of toast. I put half of the mushrooms and the crumbled piece of toast into the blender. Blitzing occurred, my love was instant.

With a texture like raw silk and a flavour that seemed impossibly deep given the basic ingredients, I only managed to dislodge the spoon from my hand with the thought that the pate would (crazy as it seemed) be better tomorrow after a night in the fridge. AND IT WAS. The method I used was a simple one, but you can added in loads of other things like shallots, different booze, cheeses like parmesan, cream and maybe mascarpone, different herbs; your choice. You could make it properly vegan and use olive oil instead of butter. This is also perfect for sensitive geniuses who want a vegetarian spread but find beans difficult.

With the rest of the lovely mushrooms we made a risotto. That was easy too as the mushrooms had already been cooked and flavoured. I just put in a bit of oil, added the rice and a dribble of wine. Then the stock, stock, stock and it was done and it was perfect.

To review, that was two delicious things made from one pot of sauteed mushrooms. It makes me think that sauteed mushrooms could in fact be a staple of the kitchen that I should always have on hand. Not only so I can eat pate for the rest of my days, but also for their skills with eggs, dark meat and pasta. Buying two pounds at once is starting to seem like a paltry amount. But then again, I've just roasted seven peppers and baked a couple dozen banana muffins. As I've been temporarily taken over by a squirrel preparing for winter, my voluminous leanings should perhaps be avoided.

Three Things to do with Melon

Glasgow has been experiencing perfect weather. Bright, sunny and very long days that warm up enough to warrant throwing off our jackets and strolling around in sundresses. Those of us who are so inclined, anyway. In my experience, this is a standard routine for Glasgow. It teases us with a few amazing weeks at the end of spring and then delivers a dreary and chilled summer. But I'm not thinking about that now; I'm still clinging delusionally to idea that this will last until November.

And until it gets miserable, I'm going to eat melon. There are crates of them sunning themselves outside my local shops right now. So perfectly ripe that I can almost smell them around the corner. The best ones at the moment are the compact, pale green Galias. Each bite is a fragrant deluge in your mouth. Yup. A fragrant deluge. I'm sticking to that description.

Now of course, the best thing to do with melon is just to eat it the way it is, coating yourself and anything around you in sticky juice. But if you want to justify eating more melon, here are other ways of getting it into your food (in order of complexity):

Melon and Cucumber Water

This is very, very basic, but very, very lovely. All you have to do is take a long slice of cucumber and a slice or two of melon and put them in a pitcher of water. Put it in the fridge to cool. Drink it a couple of hours later. You'll be surprised with how melon-y it is and you'll want to drink it forever and ever. A couple of slices of lemon is nice in there as well.

When I organised enough to do this, I end up drinking litres of this magic water. When the levels get low, you can just continue to top up the jug with water for a day or two. After that the melon and the cucumber get a little sad and should be replaced.

Melon with Coconut, Ginger and Pepper

This is an easy solution if you want your melons a little saucier. And, really, who doesn't?

You take:

• one can of coconut milk
• four tablespoons of ginger marmalage
• 20 peppercorns

Put everything in a small saucepan and simmer until the liquid is reduced and slightly caramelized (it will turn pale gold). At this point you can strain it through a fine sieve to get the peppercorns out, but you'll lose the chunks of ginger. I just left it and warned people to avoid the peppercorns.  Let it cool and thicken. Cut some melon into bowls and spoon the syrup over top.

Melon and Mint Tabbouleh with Feta

This recipe was adapted from one I found on epicurious. The original one is here. I've added more bulgur and reduced the amount of oil. I also put in some feta because I thought it might need a bit of a salt kick to balance all that sweet melon. It's good. I could eat this anytime of day.

• 1.5 cups of bulgur
• 2 cups of fresh mint leaves
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• salt
• Finely chopped red onion
• some lime juice
• half a small melon, chopped into small pieces
• as much feta as you want, crumbled

Prepare the bulgur according to your favourite method. I poured about 2.5 cups of boiling water over mine, covered the bowl and let it sit for 40 minutes.

While you are doing that, take 1 3/4 cup of the mint and blend it with the oil and salt. Roughly chop the rest of the mint and stir it into the mixture*. Throw in the onion and melon and lime juice.

When your bulgur is ready, drain off any remaining water and combine it with your melon and mint mixture. Crumble some feta in or on top. Toasted pumpkin seeds would be nice, too.

Eat this with a big spoon so you can really shove the lovely stuff into your mouth. No one will see.

Now that I've shared this arsenal of melon techniques with you, I need to go. I have a new sundress on, so I should clearly be outside and away from this computer and making the most of the remaining afternoon. Take a bite out of a firm and succulent melon for me.

xk 

*The original recipe didn't call for any chopped mint, but I actually found the mint taste too weak when I blended the leaves with oil, so I added chopped leaves to perk it up. You can ignore this step.

 

Perfect Fries

This is a crappier picture than I would normally post. Why is that, Gentle Readers? Because I cared more about stuffing these glorious fries into my mouth than taking a really nice, really bragging picture of them.

What you can just make out in the image above is a pile of fantastic fries with a juicy steak and a blob of homemade mayonnaise (it's that yellow because the yolks were really orange).

Yes, this was an exciting meal. In fact it was the *most* exciting thing that happened to me this past weekend. A fact that made me suspect that I might be getting old. That the era of spending (at least)four days of the week marinating at the pub before trying to find parties to crash only to walk around in the heavy aquarium of a mild-to-middling hangover the next day may be quietly ending. At least the food is better these days even if I am being groped by fewer strangers.

Another food-related sign of age arrived late last week in the following conversation:

(J called me at work to share some very good news)

K: That's great! Do you want to celebrate?

J: Sure! What should we do?

K: I have to go home after work, but you could come over and we could make dinner and get some wine.

J: OK. That sounds nice. I have a cauliflower we could use.

K: OK. Do you want me to make cauliflower cheese?

J: Yeah!

K: I have custard and bananas that we could have for dessert.

J: Yeah!

K: Did we just agree to celebrate your big news with a completely pale yellow meal?

J: Yeah!

***

You know, you move to Europe to become an artist and the glamour just doesn't end.

In celebration of all of the gentle pleasures of gently aging, I am going to dedicate the methodology for these perfect fries to my dad who just celebrated his birthday on Monday. You would have loved these and I'll make them for you the next time we happen to be on the same continent.

Here it is:

I cut the potatoes (thin skin on) into little strips with my mandolin.

The suckers were parboiled for about 15 minutes and then were drained and rinsed in very cold water. After they were completely cooled, they hung out in a colander for a while to dry off.

A thick layer (but not that deep, not that scary) of oil was heated in a large pan and chopped rosemary was tossed in.

Once the oil was hot, I put half of the potato strips in. Enough to cover the bottom of the large pan without overlapping. I then threw in some chopped garlic.

Nothing happened for a number of minutes.

Then, all of a sudden, they started to firm up and brown and become delicious. I tossed them about to get their pale bellies crispy, too.

The done ones were fished out, salted, and shoved into a warm oven. Then, the second batch of potatoes went in to the oil and everything was repeated.

Two portions of steak, fries and homemade mayo were divvied up and then promptly and utterly consumed. We didn't look at each other while we ate, we didn't make conversation, we didn't touch our wine. We just ate steak and fries and smears of mayonnaise. I think we made some guttural noises of animal satisfaction. After the demolition, we leisurely turned our attention to our glasses and the crisp bowl of salad between us and had a little chat about how this is a meal that should be repeated. But not too often. This perfect fry-making ability is a dangerous new skill to have discovered.  I'm turning into a wise and deadly old broad.

Orzo in a Deep Tomato Sauce with Spicy Zucchini

 This is the list of food items I brought home with me to Glasgow after Christmas (not including edible presents):

* one kilo of chocolate chips

* four boxes of PC Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese

* two kilos of orzo

* fluorescent food colouring

* Hibiscus and Rosehip tea  (J noted that bringing tea back was "like bringing coal to Newcastle", and while I agree in principle, the British seem to currently have an obsession with making all of their herbal teas flavoured like sickly sweet fruit. I don't want Strawberry Lychee Pineapple Sparkle Sensations, I just want a standard, respectable herbal tea.)

And even though I cleverly brought an empty suitcase with me, when this haul was combined with the spoils of Christmas and my other shopping binge (~2 kilos of fake pearls), not everything fit in my bag. I had to very, very sweetly (for what else is in my nature?) ask J if he would mind terribly carting the orzo and chocolate chips with him in his bag. He was obliging, but not thrilled. It did look like a pretty grotesque amount of chocolate and pasta. And really, pasta and chocolate are both available in Glasgow on almost every corner of the city.

"But not in these shapes!" was the eternal cry echoing through the Gatineau hills.

Shape matters. Every now and then one would like to make a faster, brothy and light orzo risotto to accompany a nice piece of chicken, or turn the grains into a pasta salad that is actually of a palatable consistency and hardy enough to pack for lunches or a picnic. No, these are not daily urges, but they may strike half-a-dozen times or so in a year and wouldn't you be pleased to see the little pasta guys waiting for you in the cupboard when that happens? The answer is yes. Yes you would.

And sure I can chop up a bar of dark chocolate to throw into some cookie dough, but sometimes you want the uniformity that the chips provide. Sometimes you don't want the chaos of the chocolate shards popping up here and there in your baked goods. Sometimes you just want everything in its right place. You need chocolate pieces that know how to behave properly! (Now smooth your apron. Pin your hair back up. Good. Phew.)

A few days after we returned home, I clearly needed to make something that would convince J that his efforts had not been in vain, so I cooked up this dish. I had been thinking about Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce for some time now after reading about in a couple of blogs. It really is that easy: butter, half an onion and a couple of cans of tomatoes. For a couple of years this sauce was a standard in my father's repertoire and although he is a cook capable of great finesse, I think he relished the idea of just throwing a couple of things in a pot roughly and letting them cook. I remember the first time I witnessed this I asked when the garlic or the basil would be entering the equation. "This sauce doesn't need it. It's just the simplicity of the butter, tomatoes and onion cooking together for a while" was his (paraphrased) reply. And he was absolutely right and I ate it pretty regularly for the next couple of years.

So I had this idea to use that same sauce as a rich base for an orzo risotto. The sauce was started in the usual way except I never took the onion halves out. Normally you do this before serving, but the really soft and buttery onions were always my favourite element of this sauce. I would sneak pieces of them out before they were thrown away. In my sauce, the onion stays. While it's still in a rather large pieces, if it cooks for long enough all of the layers separate and become more manageable to eat. I then added some white beans, some orzo and a couple of finely chopped sage leaves for a bit of depth. Then a lot of stirring happened. When it started to look a bit less soupy, a bit more gloopy, I added some stock and kept on adding some at intervals until it was perfect.

While all of this was going on, I sliced some long lengths of zucchini on my new and trusty mandolin. The first zucchini was sliced on the finest setting and the second one on a wider setting. This way, the two thicknesses cooked at different rates and the skinnier ones got sweetly browned while when the thicker ones were supple and succulent. They were sauteed in olive oil, salt, garlic, pine nuts and chili flakes. You want these puppies to be a bit spicy because the sauce, especially if you leave the onions in, will be quite sweet. 

And then everything was ready. The pasta was cooked, still still firm, the zucchini were spicy and juicy and golden. Everything was just waiting to be served up and enjoyed. And then J was 45 minutes late for dinner. Jerk. Sure he had a good excuse, but still everything had to be turned off and then re-heated while I made indignant huffing noises. In the end, the dish was so flavourful, especially with grated parmesan and some pepper, that I forgot all about J's tardiness and he forgot all about carting my weighty goods across the ocean. Aww. Food bribery; the pathway to forgiveness and emotional eating.

      

Disappointing Produce: Curly Parsley

I'm not going to rail against my local produce shop. These people perform a minor miracle in keeping pretty beautiful and often seasonal products on their shelves. Trying to buy vegetables at the major grocery stores in Glasgow can be a nausea-inducing joke. Sometimes, if you go in the early evening or late on a Sunday afternoon, most of the vegetable aisle (the very small vegetable aisle) will be picked clean. Nothing but rows of empty boxes where over-packaged and over-refrigerated produce once stood. So this little place is amazing in comparison with heaps of ripe fruit, various jumbles of potatoes, onions and garlic and ginger, pretty crisp green vegetables, including spotless okra, and loads of South Asian vegetables that I don't know much about. And it's really cheap. And really close.

Normally, they also have a fine assortment of fresh herbs and what I was looking for the other day was a huge bunch of flat-leaf parsley and a couple of zucchinis. I was going to make Daccia's zucchini pasta because 1) I missed her and 2) it's a standard meal in my quick-dinner repertoire. But when I got to the shop I couldn't find any of that parsley. I wandered round and round the aisles in a daze, looking for those oh-so-flat leaves (the people who run the place are pretty used to my dance of indecision so they didn't bat an eyelash. They didn't notice that I was pouting slightly this time, not just being a space cadet). Because my decision was borne from the powerful twins of emotions and laziness, I couldn't change my mind. I couldn't suddenly think of something new to make for dinner. I had to substitute the parsley. And I had to substitute it with the curly stuff.

Now that it's not the 80s anymore, no one likes this parsley. It's because the flavour-to-abrasion ratio doesn't make it worth eating. It's not a pleasant thing to put in your mouth and the flat-leaf kind tastes nicer. It also never looked that great on the side of a plate. Who came up with that lie? Flat-leaf generally looks better in finished meals, it's little chopped leave stay put, they don't curl about in stubborn little clumps. But I had no choice and, I decided, in Glasgow one is often given potatoes when one is trying to make lemonade so innovation is a necessary skill.

If you are ever in a similar situation, here are two things to do with a huge bunch of curly parsley:

1) Parsley Pesto with Zucchini and Linguini

Daccia's normal recipe involves slicing the zucchini in long, thin strips and cooking them in a lot of butter, olive oil, garlic, salt and chili until they are tender. The zucchini is then tossed with pasta and loads of fresh parsley and cheese are added on top. This is very, very nice even when made by someone else.

I cooked the zucchini in exactly the same way as D, but I didn't add the garlic. Instead I took a few handfuls of that wiry parsley, a couple of cloves of garlic, the juice of one lemon and some olive oil and whizzed it up with a hand blender. I also cooked some linguini while all of this was taking place. Three activities at once. Because my timing is perfect, the pasta was ready to be drained just when the zucchini started to get nice and soft and smooshy (well, you actually have a fair bit of flexibility with the zucchini; it's not that delicate). The pasta was coated with the pesto, and the zucchini was added in and I topped it with grated cheese.

Really good, and you would never know that the uncool parsley had been anywhere near my kitchen!

2) Green Hummus

Despite what more famous people say about hummus, I really think it's much better to make it from scratch and with a lot of tahini. The texture is more interesting than anything you can buy in a store and you have a lot of control in adjusting the flavours, accentuating the ingredients that you think are tastiest. It's also good if you put a whole ton of parsley in it.

First, soak some chickpeas overnight. Yes, you could use a can, but I think that you shouldn't. We can disagree about this and still be friends. I used some organic ones, (about 1.5 cups dried) so my end product was both delicious and pretty smug.

Boil the suckers for over an hour the next morning with some salt. Then dump all those little guys in a blender, or a bowl that's deep enough for a hand blender. Next you just need to add some garlic (I used 3 cloves), lemon juice (I squeezed two), tahini (maybe 1/4 cup, maybe less), as much olive oil as you need to make it the consistency you want, and all of the parsley you have in your house. Whizz everything up. Maybe you need salt, too, depending on how much you used to boil the chickpeas. Taste it and see. The end result will have a lot of character and will make you question why you ever bought that junk in the plastic tubs. Remember, the garlic will get stronger with time, so don't go too crazy if you want people to kiss you in the near future.

I ate this with some tomatoes and toasted potato scones. Don't they look like an exotic flatbread in the picture below? Scottish cuisine is full of surprises.

(When was the last time you saw a garnish like this?

Don't answer the question if you live somewhere unfashionable. If it was last Friday night, just pretend that it's really been over two decades. Say this: "Oh! Look at that! It reminds me of Italian-American food from when I was a small and parsley-ignorant child! Ha! I know so much more now." Good. They believed you.)

Detox Chicken Soup Followed Quickly by Fruit Salad

One of the saddest realizations a young food snob will face upon moving to Glasgow is that social gatherings are not necessarily centered around food. On the official tourism site, they describe the traditional Scottish attitude to food as a "disinclination". I think this is such a perfect and polite way to phrase it. In fact people here can forget to eat all together in favour of continuing to drink. When the beer starts making you feel hungry, there are always crisps or peanuts at the pub or chips and kebabs on the way home.

On Saturday's social calendar there was an early appointment at the pub to secure seats to watch the Scotland match, followed by a party later in the evening. Knowing that enough beer and whisky would be consumed during the five hours at the pub to make going home to cook unappealing, I resigned myself to a fate of procuring food on the streets of Glasgow. Here is the disgusting list:

- Bacon sandwich for lunch (delicious. Made by J. This was to line our stomachs pre-pub.)

- Peanuts at the bar shared amongst friends (both regular salted and dry roasted variations)

- A portion of chips with a topping so indulgent and so revolting that it will have it's own post one day

- A few crisps and a couple of spring rolls at the party in the evening

- beer, whisky and really, really good mojitos made by Anna's strong arms. Those were some muddled leaves. Amazing.

- Apple juice (one of my 5 portions of fruit or veg a day. Can you spot the other four? Whatever.)

This is gross, but the day was super fun and in Glasgow you quickly learn that you don't need good food to have a good time.

(Out of concern for my camera's wellbeing, it was not taken along that evening. Instead, here are the Sauces of Excellence trio offered up at the chippy:)

The next day I woke up early and felt fine and started work on my knitting project. This is because I am obnoxious and still young enough to not have significant hangovers. J is not quite so young and was feeling like garbage.

Time for some food that won't kill us!

Now, while my head was ok, a day like Saturday does leave me tired and stupid. I had two naps and I didn't make the best food decisions.  On the menu that evening was a ginger and citrus chicken soup with watercress. That sounds healing. In theory it wasn't bad: I simmered 1 lb of chicken wings with a load of sliced ginger, some smashed lemon grass, dried orange peel and watercress stalks. It was pretty fragrant and flavourful. I drained it off into another pot and added some noodles and some watercress and lemon juice right after taking it off the heat. But I decided to put some dried tofu in. I quite like the stuff, but had never cooked with it before. Although I soaked it according to instructions, I don't think I let it cook enough in the soup. A bit gross. And because I realized that the tofu needed more time than I had anticipated, I left the noodles to cook for too long. That wasn't the best: tough tofu and soggy noodles. It was fine, but not as bright as it could have been.

A potful of green tea was made to activate the enzymes in our liver. Delightful!

Then I made a fruit salad with grapefruit, pomegranate seeds, chopped ginger preserved in syrup and a teensy tiny bit of Triple Sec:

Just a tiny splash. Don't worry all of the alcohol cooks off! Ok. So that's a lie. It probably just soaked right into the grapefruit and then right into our tender flesh. But it tasted healthy. And perhaps homeopathic. Here's what I did:

Beautifully segmented two grapefruits, pulled the seeds from half a pomegranate, cut one lump of candied ginger into really small and sticky cubes. Mixed all of this in a bowl with about a tablespoon of brown sugar (only necessary because the grapefruit were really sour) and a small glug of booze. They all played together nicely while we ate our soup and picked out the unsuccessful tofu from our bowl.