Things that make me smile

No matter how gloomy things are, there are always things that can make me smile

This fork, for example, always makes me smile.

I bought it years ago… years and years ago.  I had left home and was a student, living in a ramshackle flat. I couldn’t cook in those days and probably only used it to stir tinned soup.

Still, things gradually changed and I started to cook properly and so the fork got more use.

Look at it – you can tell I am right handed because over the years it has worn down on the left hand side.  We must have been eating fork for years. Well, tiny little bits of worn away wood from the fork, anyway.

Probably the Health and Safety people would say that it is a heinous kitchen crime to feed people wood. I don’t care. It makes me smile. It makes me think of the hundreds of hours I must have been standing at a cooker, stirring away

It’s cold outside, bitterly cold and we spent this afternoon visiting a relative in a hospital. That’s not going to make you smile but coming home to a warm fire and a hot drink…. and crumpets

Well, that makes you smile.

I made crumpets not so long ago, when my sister in law was visiting us, but today I just bought a packet. Hot and dripping with butter – perfect.

Here in the North it’s snowing and it is lying deeply . It’s bright and crisp and while it is like this, I really like it

Ankle deep in snow, in the bright sunshine. That’s good and I smile at that. Especially when I can see my mother’s house

And I know that inside the family will be waiting….

Last night, one of my oldest friends came round to my house with her husband to celebrate her birthday.

We drank  Moet & Chandon Rose Imperial and smiled. Who wouldn’t?

And the other thing that always makes me smile is this

It’s a picture hanging on the wall in my kitchen. I have no idea who painted it or what it is called. It was on a card that I was given for my birthday once….

I think it was meant to resemble me…. but it always makes me smile anyway.

See? I don’t need to win the lottery to be happy.

Find the simple things in your life that make you smile!

Boxing Day Breakfast Bonanza

Boxing  Day is so much more relaxed than Christmas Day, because there’s time for idling about. I can’t be bothered, nor can I afford, to go shopping in the sales, so Boxing Day to us means a slow start.

And with a slow start comes a desire for a proper breakfast. None of this leaping up before 6 am and having a fruit smoothie in a rush to get ready for work. Today involves a gentle amble round the kitchen, looking out of the windows at the snow piled up outside, while drinking a coffee.

A slow start means you are more than ready for a more substantial breakfast… smoothies are fine, delicious even, but somehow on days like this your mind wanders towards some sort of fry up.

As it is Boxing Day there are leftovers from Christmas Day… sprouts, carrots, roast potatoes… and a couple of pigs in blankets.

There are even some carrot and parsnip parcels wrapped in Parma Ham

All of  that would fry up nicely. Not exactly bubble and squeak but as near as possible….

So start chopping those vegetables

You want lots of edges so they can brown and crisp in a big frying pan with a spoonful of oil

Give it all a good stir round

Now those browned bits are slightly carmelised… there’s a sweetness and a hint of charring.  And who on earth would not like fried potatoes?

What other day of the year would you look at a cold Brussels sprout and say to yourself that it would be all the better for frying up for breakfast?  All you need for breakfast perfection is a fried egg

Fantastic Focaccia

The weather over the past week had made us wonder if we could get home for Christmas. There were all these weather warnings telling us not to travel unless it was absolutely essential.

Essential? This is Christmas. Of course it is essential.

When I got up on Christmas Eve morning and looked out of the bedroom window there was thick, freezing fog and snow

We should be able to manage, we thought….. and after packing the car to the roof with food and general essentials (we were going back to my empty house… with its empty kitchen) we set off.

Christmas traffic wasn’t as bad as the motoring organisations and the police made out.

It was snowy and foggy but everyone else seemed to have paid attention to the warnings and stayed at home. It was probably the fastest time we had ever made it north

You really know you are getting somewhere when you see signs for Scotch Corner.

For a Northerner living in the Midlands (which seems like the Deep South to me) getting to Scotch Corner is the first part of the true north. It always makes me smile because I know I am nearly home.

We arrived back in the village to an empty kitchen… luckily I had packed boxes of food and essential ingredients.

I’d brought olive oil, garlic, eggs, flour, yeast, white truffle balsamic glaze, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, salt, tea bags, coffee, tinned tomatoes, chickpeas and chorizo.

A pork pie made by our butcher, some bacon, cream (single and double), butter, champagne, white, red and rose wine.

Vegetable juice, pomegranate juice, fig molasses, Marmite, Parma ham, leeks, cheeses and pickles. All essentials, as you can see.

I could make anything…. anything but a cup of tea. I’d forgotten  to bring the milk,  so I had to drive to the next village to buy some so we could make a cup of tea. And there was me thinking I had all the essentials covered…….

Thing is, I hadn’t really thought of what we would eat that night. I know we had some left over cold sausages that I had put in a plastic box but we really needed something more than that.

I decided that if I made some foccacia that would help the situation…..

Usual thing… 300g of strong bread flour

7 g of instant yeast, (that’s a teaspoon and a half, I suppose, if you aren’t using the sachets)

Maldon salt

150 ml of warm water

2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Now, I was in a kitchen that I had more or less stripped of equipment, so instead of leaving it to the Kitchen Aid to mix for me, I had to do it myself

Just goes to show how easy it is to make this. One large bowl, a wooden spoon and off you go.

It comes together quickly enough.

A quick squirt of garlic puree wouldn’t go amiss

And then knead it…. dust a board with flour and stretch it, pull it, roll it and fold it.

You will feel it changing in texture… there’s sort of lumps and bumps in the dough at first and then it becomes smoother and silkier.

It’s still not perfect though and you have to let it relax. Only then do you get really good smooth dough.

At this point you have to let it rest and rise. You need to stop it drying out so either cover it in cling film or, do as I do, and put the bowl over it. That keeps the dough moist and stops it forming a crusty outside which is certainly something you don’t want while it is loitering about

It will take maybe half an hour or so

You can feel the difference as well as see it… it is resilient and springy… the lumps have disappeared and it is smooth and silky to touch.

Wipe down the bench and spread some oil on it and then put the dough down.. stretching it into shape with your fingers if you haven’t a rolling pin at hand.

You can see how wonderfully puffy it is becoming.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

It needs to have fingers poked into it to get the dimpled foccacia look and some oil drizzled over it.

And this is when I had the idea…. add bacon!

I snipped two rashers of bacon and scattered the bits over the dough.

Now that is a way to stretch your ingredients. A bacon sandwich would have used those two rashers for one sandwich. This makes it stretch over a lovely big bit of bread….

Then just put the whole thing onto a baking sheet – the oil in the dough will prevent it sticking, so don’t worry if you don’t have one of the incredibly useful silicone sheets

Stretch it out to fit and then just put it in the oven for 15 minutes or so…See? Minimal ingredients, minimal work and the shortest time in the oven.

Waiting those 15 minutes gave me enough time to have a quick wipe down of the benches and open a bottle of wine and pour us both a glass

We sat there, eating garlicky bacon scattered bread, fresh from the oven and sipping a glass of wine.

It was Christmas Eve, the snow was whirling round outside and we had driven hundreds of miles to get back home. We sat on either side of the kitchen table and toasted each other.

Merry Christmas!

Sprouts, chestnuts and bacon

It’s Christmas. That means Brussels Sprouts. 

I went to our local  Farm Shop to get our eggs and there, propped against the door, were piles of sprouts sticks.

This is the best way to buy sprouts as you are certain that they are fresh. A stick like this had 43 sprouts on and cost £1.

Now sprouts can be delicious… or not.

It’s when people boil sprouts into mushy oblivion that the problems start. How can you possibly like a ball of green sludge that when you bite into it, dissolves into hot, watery, slightly smelly goo?

But if you treat a sprout carefully you can have a delicious, nutty-flavoured vegetable. If you combine that with a sweet tasting nut like a chestnut and some salty, crisply fried bacon shards… well then you have a dish that is worthy of having at a celebration.

Cut off the sprouts with a sharp knife and remove the outer layer of leaves so you are left with lovely, shiny green nuggets.

Steam them, or boil them lightly, so they are still firm. This will only take a few minutes, so no wandering off  and leaving them for ages!

Put some oil in a frying pan and, on a gentle heat, slowly fry some good streaky bacon.

If you fry it slowly the fat renders down, leaving you with a wonderfully crispy and tasty piece of bacon, which is perfect for crumbling over the finished dish.

Now chestnuts are the perfect thing to go with sprouts… they are available at the same time as sprouts and they are also much the same shape and size.  Makes sense then to put them together.

If you can get fresh chestnuts you need to roast them and peel them… that’s fine, I always think, if you want to eat them as you peel them. Somehow you don’t mind the burnt fingers and the mess and the bits everywhere when the next thing you do is put them in your mouth.

But when you know you are doing all that and you are only half way through a dish… well, that’s when you give thanks that someone else has already done that for you when you buy then vacuum packed!

I mean, how easy is this? All you have to do is open the packet! I always have a couple of boxes in the larder because I do use them in all sorts of recipes.

And then, the only thing you have to do is put everything together when it suits you.

When I’m ready I toss the sprouts in some hot butter

Add the chestnuts

And then  either crumble or snip into pieces with the kitchen scissors and scatter over the chestnuts and sprouts….

The chestnuts are sweet and nutty and the sprouts seem to take on some of the nuttiness. They are firm and are good to bite into – no mushiness there and no awful, overboiled cabbagey smell either. Just a good and slightly bitter tang to them…..and the bacon adds a lovely salty counterpoint to the sweetness of the nuts.

That would be welcomed on any Christmas table!

Puy lentils and peas

One of the most delicious vegetable  dishes the Bear and I have is made from what might seem to be an unlikely combination of lentils, peas and onion…. it’s quick and easy as well as low calorie. What more could you want?

Puy lentils are a beautiful browny-green colour and they have a lovely nutty flavour

They just need a quick rinse and then put them in a pan with twice the amount of water and bring gently to the boil.

I sometimes add stock granules to the water and that adds another dimension of flavour to the lentils.

While they are gently boiling, finely slice a red onion

and put the slices in a bowl with some olive oil… maybe three or four tablespoons

This starts to soften and mellow the onion.

Then squeeze half a lemon

Pour the lemon juice in and stir round

Add a few handfuls of frozen peas and no, you don’t need to defrost them.  They start to defrost gently and not boiling them keeps them full of flavour. That lemon juice and olive oil dressing seems to emphasise the sweetness of the peas.

By now the lentils will be cooked – they keep their firmness to some degree but they shouldn’t be hard.

Drain them quickly… and then…while they are still hot add them to the bowl

Stir them through the mixed peas and onion, making sure they are all covered with the lemony dressing.

The heat of the lentils softens the onion to perfection and takes the last chill off the peas.

This really is an excellent side dish to serve with roast meat… one of our favourites is roast lamb. The lentils and peas are all you need to serve with a few slices of meat – we don’t even bother with potatoes – which means it makes one of the simplest suppers ever

Macaroni Cheese

Well… it’s cold outside…. I wake up and go to make coffee

… it’s been snowing… and more snow is forecast. If this is the morning

What will the evening be like? I want to be snowed in.

I know I have enough food for an army and I can think of nothing better than being made to stay in. It wouldn’t be my fault, would it? Just imagine the bliss…. not going to work, just tucked up, nice and warm, looking down on the city below us. 

We have an enormous sofa and it would be so lovely to be sitting, curled up with the Bear, both of us clutching a lovely bowl of…. what?

I want something savoury and soothing… soft and warming….. comfort food at its finest. And then I thought of macaroni cheese. That would be perfect – pasta, all soft and oozing cheese sauce, the top crisped and brown… I dare say an Italian would look on this with horror but it is truly an English dish now.

“…we can establish the venerableness of the dish we call macaroni cheese from the following recipe which must have been introduced from Italy… into the court cookery of Richard II [1367-1400]. Macrows. Take and make a thin foil of dough, and carve it in pieces, and cast them on boiling water, and seeth it well. Take cheese, and grate it, and butter, cast beneath, and above as for losenges, and serve it forth.’ It was apparently not made in England during the next few hundred years, but it returned from Italy in the eighteenth century…when Elizabeth Raffald published a very good recipe entitled “To dress macaroni with Parmesan cheese.”
—Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson (p. 252)”

So, macaroni… lots of it

Into a pan of boiling salted water to bubble away until it is cooked. Now real Italian pasta meals are served al dente but this is macaroni cheese.. it is going to be baked after this… it is going to be soft and gorgeous.

While that is cooking, get started on the cheese sauce… you need good butter, some cream

some onion and some cheese. I had a big slab of Farmhouse Cheddar just  asking to be used

Now, I always add onion. I like the contrast between the slight roughness of the pasta and the smoothness of the onion. It lightens it up just a fraction.

First thing is to chop the onion and gently saute it in butter until it is translucent

When the macaroni is cooked, drain it and put it into a lightly buttered dish with a knob of butter to melt over it

and then stir in those soft onions

Now back to the sauce – melt two tablespoons of butter and stir in two tablespoons of flour.  Season it well with Maldon salt and fresh ground white pepper.

You need to cook the flour properly so stir it round until it all comes together then start stirring in a mixture of milk and cream

It becomes a smooth and silky, glossy looking sauce.. which is when you add the cheese

If you have some parmesan or Gran Padano then add that, too… it adds an extra hint of cheesy sharpness

Stir it all round till the sauce becomes smooth again and then… well, then  you pour it over that glistening bowl of macaroni and stir it round so all the cheese sauce can seep into the macaoni, filling the little tubes…

An extra grating of the two cheeses on the top makes a lovely, golden bubbling crust

All that needs now is maybe 30 minutes or so in the oven at 175 degrees until the top is browned and you can smell that it is ready.

In that time, plump up the cushions on the sofa, pour a couple of glasses of wine… look out of the window and be glad you are warm inside…..

Look at it…….

Of course, a true romantic like myself likes to make sure the Bear feels loved. Well, with macaroni cheese, a tomato sauce heart, a glass of red wine and someone to cuddle with on the sofa, he definitely feels loved.

That was lovely…we were in our top floor apartment, with three walls of windows, watching  the snow whirling about all around outside,  while we were inside with the  best comfort food in the world.

What could be better than eating a bowl of that with the one you love?

So simple and so right for days like this.

Pomegranate and Saffron Lamb

 I was looking in the freezer for something to cook while I was at work and found some lamb neck and decided that would be perfect for the slow cooker but the gloom of December is getting to me and I need something with a bit of zing to it… some brightness to cut through the dark…

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Lamb neck is inexpensive and, if cooked correctly, incredibly tasty. Those four fat slices cost just £1.70.

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There’s a good amount of meat on them, with fat running through it that, if cooked slowly and cossetted with spices, will turn the meat into something that is so tender and melting and so mouthwateringly lovely you can’t help but  smile.

I wanted spices with it, spices and a touch of sharpness and thought that a kind of Middle Eastern theme would work. In my cupboard I had a bottle of Pomegranate Molasses which would be perfect. The flavour it adds is a rich and tangy one – a mix of sour and sweet and it goes perfectly with all sorts of meat, particularly the fattier kinds as it cuts right through, really letting the meat flavour expand , if you know what I mean.

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As with any kind of slow cooking, the best thing to do is to brown the meat – not only does it add a deeper flavour but it makes it look better too.

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Then, maybe other Middle eastern flavours…. garlic and ginger – crush some, or squeeze some from a tube and fry it off in the pan after you have taken the meat out.

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Add some stock and stir it round to loosen up the caramelised meat bits and the lovely garlic and ginger.

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A good pinch of saffron will add a deeper note and the most wonderful colour.

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And crush some cardomom seeds – break them open first and then crush the little seeds inside the papery cases…. they are the bits with the flavour… sprinkle them over the bits of lamb in the slow cooker..

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Add a couple of teaspoons of honey

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And a couple of tablespoons of pomegranate molasses, then pour over the saffrony stock.

You know the chilli oil I made? Well those chillies are soft now after their long bath but just as hot… one of them dropped in there will add another layer of flavour… a spike of heat

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And that’s it.

Well that’s it till the next day, anyway. The slow cooker can go on before setting off for work in the morning and then,  on getting in from work?

Then you will find your home filled with the most beautiful smell and know that you are going to eat the perfect supper for a dark and gloomy night…. oh it was gorgeous.

There was this deep, rich smell blended with a  fruity sharpness and the underlying tang that comes from saffron. Quite mouthwatering

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The meat was falling away from the bone… all I had to do was make some couscous and then spoon the tender, aromatic lamb and gravy over it….

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And then tuck in…..

Broccoli slaw

Those of you who know me, know I adore broccoli.

 Those of you who don’t know me yet will soon learn…

I REALLY love broccoli……. once when  I left a temping assignment, they bought me presents… chocolate and wine, a lovely card…. and a  head of broccoli! OK, so that was a joke but it reflected the fact that there were so many packed lunches of mine that involved broccoli.

I thought I had broccoli cracked… I’d make soup, or steamed with chilli, or Thai green curry, or eat it raw, broccoli puree, broccoli with lemon, broccoli hot.. broccoli cold…. anything really. I love broccoli. I thought I had worked my way through the entire broccoli cookbook.

And then I read The Weekend Carnivore and Sarah Jayne wrote about Broccoli Slaw…. she added apricots, which I would never do,  but even so.. broccoli? Something new to do with broccoli? Oh I was happy!

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I often make coleslaw and we love it but this was different… using the broccoli stem instead of cabbage.

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Simple enough… just slice the broccoli stem into slices across and then across again and again until you have pieces the size of matchsticks.

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… and grate the carrot

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When you make cole slaw, you really have to add onion but I really don’t like lots of it. If I eat big bits of raw onion I get a headache… weird, eh? So what I have done to get round that is to use a microplane grater and grate some raw onion so it comes out rather like a puree….

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and what I do then is add it to some mayonnaise to give the taste of onion without too much harshness.

I love making my own mayonnaise because I can tweak it according to what I intend to eat it with… lemon, perhaps, or chilli. This time I just wanted plain mayonnaise so the clean crisp flavours of the carrots and broccoli could shine through.

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Stir in all that lovely, sweet, grated carrot

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Then add the broccoli and a sprinkling of lovely Maldon Salt and stir it round…..

 

This is gorgeous. Really gorgeous.

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And when fed to Bears? Bears who swear they won’t eat broccoli? Well………. it was eaten. And enjoyed!

To think that some people  throw the stem out….

Cold, dark December

I  get up in the morning in the dark, I drive to work in the dark, I leave in the dark and get back in the dark.

Sometimes I wonder if the world has ground to a halt and it is permanently dark outside.

Last night everything was shrouded in fog  as well as being dark…..

view from my window

I’m tired and I can’t think of what to cook – well, I can think of lots of things but they all involve me being around to cook them.

I might have to drive back to the North at short notice, which will mean there will be no cooking going on…. there will be, perhaps, reviews of the delights of hospital sandwiches and what kind of coffee can be had from a clapped out machine in a corridor.

So, if you don’t hear from me,  think of me and the family and say prayers for my digestion…..

Pauper’s Pea and Ham Soup

I bought a bacon shank while I was out because I had a fancy for pea and ham soup…. and because I haven’t been paid since September, I am being very cautious with what is left of my cash.

What could be better, then, than a thick and savoury soup, where the ingredients come to less than £2?

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99p for a big and hefty bacon shank….

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49p for 500g of split peas

A couple of carrots, some onion and a few bay leaves from the tree on the balcony and you have all you need to make a delicious supper.

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The thing is, it does take time to do this but the way round it is to start the day before. This amounted to a few minutes work and then leaving it to simmer for a couple of hours. That was OK by me because I knew that the following night I would come in to a perfectly cooked soup that would just need a few minutes work.

I’m a great fan of food that you can spend just a short time on and then leave it to cook quietly….. I work full time and I don’t always want to spend hours cooking when I get in at night.

So…. carrots cut roughly, as was the onion, and then they were put into a pan with the bacon shank

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I poured in the full bag of split peas

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And then brought everything up to the boil.

See? That isn’t much work, is it?

You do have to hover about every now for the first ten minutes or so  because you need to scoop off the froth that come up…. but it’s no real hardship

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Doesn’t take long though and once it’s done, put the lid on and leave everything to simmer for a couple of hours.

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That’s it, for one night… just turn the heat off and leave it, you will finish it off the following night.

So, when you come in the next night, you will find a big pan of cold and solid soup. That’s good – it shows that the bacon shank has done its job.

Heave the shank out of the pan… and I do mean heave….I had to lever it out

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Look at how it has set!

 

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 I like a smooth texture with a few split peas, so what I do is take out a couple of ladlefuls of the peas, remembering to remove the bay leaves and blitz the rest to a glorious silky smooth base

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Now all you have to do is shred that shank….

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There’s a lot of meat on there…

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Remember I said I took out a couple of ladles of the peas before I blitzed the rest? I put them back in now to give just a bit of texture to the smooth base

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… and then add that lovely, shredded bacon

And just to show how easy it is, I made foccacia bread.. this time chopping  sage leaves and garlic into the mix

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It really is the easiest bread in the world to make and takes maybe 15 minutes in the oven

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Another 30p maybe for the flour? Pennies for the yeast and salt and oil? The sage leaves I got from the pot on the balcony….

Still under £2, then.

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And truly, the work involved for soup and bread was minimal… a bit of chopping the night before, scooping off the froth from the boiling peas and then leaving it to do its thing…and tonight? Shredding the bacon and blitzing half the soup… mixing some dough….

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That made 4 huge and sustaining bowls of soup…..

……the bacon shreds were delicious bites in the silky soup…. ohhh it was delicious.

I loved it and my purse loved it. I’d make this even if I wasn’t almost penniless.