Irresolution/Arson

“Oh, isn’t being wheat intolerant quite fashionable nowadays?” Asked somebody I hadn’t previously thought was so irritating.

“Why yes!” I replied, “What happened was, is that I found out that Lena Dunham was wheat intolerant, and I thought, I’d really like another pseudo-intellectual complaint.”

It’s a hard life this, being the new new voice of my generation. And it’s hard finding out that you’re not supposed to eat things you love like wheat, or dairy, or tuna. Really, sometimes I don’t even know how I make it through the day.

(For reals, tuna! It gives me itchy gums. When I eat it, I spend the rest of the day kissing my teeth like a sulky rudeboy. It’s an incredibly rare affliction. There’s only one question about it on yahoo answers)

It’s also hard when you flat out refuse to accept this and eat them all anyway. Like, in the last 24 hours.

Along with the yelping: ‘CAL-luuuuuuuuum. WHY did you LET ME eat the pizza?? I’m DYING. I am on my LAST LEGS. Can you carry me please?”

It all comes down to indecision. As in, I am undecided whether it will be worth it to eat something deliciously buttery, and then be housebound for 24 hours whilst recovering.

I’m feeling indecisive about a lot of things these days. I usually find that talking about a confusing issue, or writing it down, helps me to sort through them, because you can begin to rationalise.

But it doesn’t always work, sometimes you just end up going round and around in circles. Sometimes you just need to bully yourself out of inaction.

After two weeks of ambivalence towards the idea of leaving work to pile up, leaving relationships, or not, and leaving bed, at all, what I really needed was a good, fiery, smack back to reality.

Like, a szechwan slugging. A piquant pummelling. An actual sinus-searing, dragon-wheezing, cactus-swilling clobbering of a chilli bitch-slap.

And to be fair, making this was the first time I’d roused myself from library or bed since the sun fucked off down south.

(Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimised by the winter solstice. Yah. Sames)

The thing with chilli, I find, is the difference between spiciness, and heat. I’m a fan of the latter, and find the former a bit more difficult to negotiate.

To my mind, spiciness is an immediate singeing of the tongue that obliterates taste. To achieve this, it’s probably best to use fresh chilli peppers… But I don’t get on with fresh peppers, due to personal ethics, so we’ll leave that there.

What we’re looking for, is a slow, cumulative heat. The kind that, initially, makes your mouth water, and enervates your taste buds, subordinate to – and serving only to accentuate – the other flavours of the dish.

But it’s sly, this heat. It builds a cocoon inside those cheeks of yours and when you least expect it, when you really think you’ve got away with it, just when you’re congratulating yourself on a supercilious chilli tolerance, a peppery papillon of knee-trembling fire is born to wipe every thought from your brain.

You are temporarily blind, no idea who or where you are. Nothing more than a sweating, exulted mess of flaming synapses. You open your mouth as if to speak but the only thing that can emerge is a pleading, pathetic whimper of desire… “More. I need more.”

Somewhere, we’re all fashionable.

Of course, I have no idea how to instruct you properly on cooking spicy food. Everyone’s taste is different. Lets put it this way. Follow my recipe to a T like the charming little minions that you are, and if it’s not spicy enough, then add some tabasco.

If it’s TOO spicy, you have three options:

1. Dilute. Add some yoghurt, or just eat small amounts of the lamb with larger amounts of the hummus. Genius, natch.
2. Add a pinch of sugar. No idea why this works, but it does.
3. Add acid. Pepper is alkaline, so some more lemon juice or vinegar will balance things out.

Happy melting, amigos.

p.s. Sorry Callum

p.p.s. Sorry to the rest of you, I lied. In my last post I said that this one would be about tomato soup. Then I remembered that it’s December, and there aren’t any tomatoes. Soz. I dithered around, wondering if I should just write the recipe using tinned ones, but I couldn’t make up my mind. So I gave up, and ignored the issue. If one of you reminds me I’ll write about it if I’m still alive in three solstices time.

 Extra Spicy Lamb with (Optionally) Super Smooth Hummus

Serves 4. Surprisingly filling. You’ll need a pestle and mortar, and a hand blender.

Ingredients for Lamb:
500g Lamb mince. The fattier the better.
2 thumb sized knobs of Ginger
2 cloves of Garlic
1 tsp Honey
5 dried Chilli
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp White Pepper
1 tsp ground Cumin
1 tsp ground Fennel
1 big glug Alcohol. I used about 4 shot glasses worth of some Cognac I had leftover from a home-made moonshine session a few weeks ago (the less said about that, the better), but you could use brandy or chinese rice wine or sherry.
Good handfuls of chopped up Coriander, Parsley and Spring Onions each, for garnish
1 small glug of oil – light olive or veg – for frying
Soy Sauce. Little drops at a time, to your taste.

For Hummus:
3x400g cans of chickpeas OR 400g dried chickpeas
160g Tahini paste
juice of 2 Lemons
1 small clove of Garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a few tablespoons worth

Salt and Pepper, naturally

Also: scooping foods, eg. pitta bread. Or something else for people who really really don’t eat wheat.

See that red oil? That’s your opponent.

1. If you are using dried chickpeas, they need to be soaked overnight in plenty of cold water, and a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda if you have any to hand (it softens the skins). In the morning, rinse the chickpeas thoroughly in a colander and then place in a saucepan with fresh water. Bring this slowly to the boil, and then simmer until the chickpeas are plump, and soft. You can drain them, let them cool, and then keep them in the fridge for a day until needed.

2. Lamb. Grate one of the knobs of ginger. Mince one garlic clove. Place together in with the honey and alcohol, and a teaspoonful of soy sauce, and pestle/mortar about till its nice and mushed. Add to mince in a large bowl and mix well. I place importance, at this stage, to making sure the mince is really well smushed, to get rid of those wormy shapes that it comes pressed into. Because they are gross, and nobody wants food that resembles maggots. Set aside to marinate for 10 mins while you prepare everything else.

3. Measure out your spices and mix them up in a little bowl or cup, ready to be used later. Grate the remaining ginger, and crush the remaining garlic.

4. Put a small amount of oil in a large frying pan and heat. Not too high, just medium. Tip your lamb mixture in and get to work separating out the mince using the thinnest edged wooden spoon you have (a flat ended one is probably best). Essentially, what you’re doing is chopping up the mince as it cooks, while continually stirring, to ensure it cooks evenly, and not in big lumps. Don’t let the pan get too hot, or it will cook too quickly, and stick together. Don’t be concerned if quite a lot of moisture comes out of the mince – it should have evaporated by the time it’s all browned.

5. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the herbs and onions, increase the heat, and stir fry until most of the liquid in the pan has evaporated, and everything’s nice and aromatic. Taste, and add a little more cayenne pepper if you don’t think it’s spicy enough, and soy sauce for saltiness.

6. Remove the pan from the heat, cover with a lid or large plate or cling film, and ignore it for an hour. This gives all the flavours time to zsusz together.

7. In this time, make your hummus. This is very easy, and there are two methods:

Method one involves draining and rinsing your chickpeas, placing them in a large bowl with all the other ingredients and probably a mugs worth of warm water, and blending until it looks like hummus. Add more water or olive oil if it’s too thick. Simples.

Method two is basically the same thing, but for insane perfectionists such as myself. This method aspires to create the smoothest hummus there ever was, and so devotees of this method may choose to spend a short/long while peeling the chickpeas before commencing with the rest of the recipe. It’s really not hard, you definitely get into the swing of it after a while, by the end I could just pick a chickpea up with two fingers, squeeze it, and it would just pop out of its little jacket very neatly indeed. I had two jolly boys to keep me amused while doing so, and I would recommend some form of entertainment for the rest of you.

I’ve just remembered that I also put a can of butter beans I had languishing at the back of my shelf in the hummus. These didn’t need peeling, and were a delicious addition.

8. Now we reheat the lamb. Pour enough cold water over the mince to cover it, and put it back on a medium-low heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the water begins to simmer. Taste and add soy sauce as necessary. If it’s still not spicy enough, some tabasco or sriracha or equivalent can enter into the equation at this juncture. Continue to cook until the mixture has become dry again.

9. Stir through the herbs and spring onions.

10. Place a big dollop of hummus in a bowl or plate, place a smaller dollop of lamb in the middle, and pour over some more olive oil. If you pour the oil directly into the lamb, you’ll see it leaking out from the lamb into the hummus, and its colour will have changed to an inviting, traffic light red.

I made this a week ago and have left my bed every day since then. Don’t underestimate the therapeutic powers of food.

Overcompensation Part I

…And there I was, Friday night, totally trussed up (and having forgotten that I will always be a turkey). Attempting to flirt.

Having decided to (try to) limit my smoking, I’d found a reliable replacement for my previously discussed oral fixation in the apple flavoured Chuppa Chups.

Annoyingly, the utilitarian nature of the lollies soon dissipated when I realised that sucking on them whilst maintaining (courteous) eye-contact was a leeetle bit distracting for my companion.

Well, we all appreciate life’s simple pleasures.

So many things wrong with this choice of image.

Everyone will tell you that “Cool” is Effortless. The coolest people are those who aren’t trying.

“Sexy” is often an incongruous extension of this.

My arrogance hasn’t quite reached the level where I can say I’ve given up on trying to be Cool, which is in itself an admission of failure. On the other hand, with regards to this blog, I’m definitely doing myself no favours.

Anyway, it’s quite obvious that both adjectives are entirely subjective. If you think digital ontologies, pasta machines and livestream cats are cool, well… I probably think you’re sexy.

However, I long ago conceded defeat in trying to look Sexy (in a traditional, genderhuh?mative kind of way), along with a surrender of high-heels, body-con and limb-shaving.

Don’t get me wrong, I have abounding appreciation for those who put the time in, but it just seems exhausting: pouring protuberances into uncomfortable underwear, uneasily jamming jambs into squeezy glad rags.

I am incorrigibly lazy. Spending ages getting dressed was something I used to take pride in doing before I learnt to sleep (quite late in life – another post for another time), and came to know about napping.

…Furthermore, Sexy reeks of adulthood, and this is something that I will not compromise on in my unwillingness to participate. Wendy was clearly the most boring character JM Barrie ever wrote. Much better to be Michael, dreaming of flamingos, and flying lagoons.

I digress.

The point being that on Friday, as soon as I realised that I had, without trying, Achieved Sexy via lolly-sucking, my brain and it’s Limoncello (oh, you again) drenched synapses went into a kind of prophylactic cosmogirl meltdown.

Because, like, how embarrassing that my drunken melty face, puckered around an acid green ball of tacky phallic goop, thought for one second it was going to get away with continuing to be sexy, when there is actually NOTHING sexy about what I was doing, and any sexy that had artlessly evolved would subsequently dissipate the moment I tried to maintain what was clearly now a total facade. It can’t get any more embarrassing, right? Do I stop sucking? What do I do instead??

Ah, reader… the sedative sorcery of alcohol.

It’s amazing that the above paragraph of frenzied paranoia was in actuality – that is, at the time, inside my head – just a jarring moment of hazy indecision followed by that old friend, a comforting instinct that things will always go back to being so much nicer if you just light a cigarette, Rose.

It is wonderful, isn’t it, when you know that you’re drunk enough that any thought figuratively skidding across your brain will have evaporated just moments later. Like when anything you eat after midnight isn’t real, and so doesn’t count.

And indeed, moments later, having given the lolly to my companion to hold while I lit said cigarette, and he now slurping away and diverging from any idea that lolly-sucking is sexy, I had totally forgotten that anything uncomfortable had ever occurred.

I swayed back into the conversation as if no time at all had passed and was happily, probably mindlessly, chatting away, and I suppose that what happened next was another interesting feature in our study of memory and alcohol.

Lets talk about muscle memory. The power to recall that resides deep within your very joints, that which bypasses conscious thought, and is responsible for the strange feeling you get when you step onto a broken escalator. Your body is so used to lurching forward with the movement of the machine that even though you acknowledge the stairs to be unmoving, you still feel like jelly whenever you get on.

So, I had been sucking on this lolly all night and now I was clearly too drunk to remember that this was no longer the case.

Up went the cigarette, lollypop style, into my mouth, and out. Out on my tongue.

RIP, momentary Sexy.

It was therefore to my absolute surprise when somebody described THIS BLOG to me as sexy, the very next day.

I think he was, in particular, referring to this post, which was probably one of the most miserable things I’ve ever written, and the whole thing confused me. OR, maybe he said it because, in response to the considerate sweetheart* that post is about, I’ve had particular enjoyment in not-so-subtly referring, in writing, to all the things that have been making me UN-miserable, ever since.

Either way, it got me thinking. Clearly, looking sexy is not something to which I’m naturally adept. I would do something stupid like try, and then be wearing velcro trainers.

So for a short moment, I thought, maybe I could do SEXY FOOD! But then I thought, I already wrote about that and not many people cared.

So I made a roast.

Can’t go wrong there…

Not just a roast! As well as this! A fabulous recipe for leftovers! Waste not, want not, etc.

I spoil you guys. Stay tuned for Part II of this blog/story (hopefully next week but spare me your enthusiasm why don’t you, guys) for a lovely Cumin Spiced, Roasted Tomato and Wild Rice Soup that can be made using the remains from this dish.

This is a great way of cooking a bird. The marinade sets around the outside to contain heat and moisture in much the same way as the salt did in this recipe, and you end up with a moist, succulent dinner.

*Today was very briefly opposites day. No I will not grow up.

Kinda Indian-ish Roast Chicken with Lovely Minty Relish

This is so fucking easy. When I do things like this, I wonder why I don’t do them all the time. Then I remember that it’s because meat carcass’s terrify me. But, v important to face your fears. Although in the spirit of this, I should warn you that raw chicken really horrifies me and I apologise if this comes through in my writing and puts you off.* Don’t be put off.

Serves 5 – You will need a pestle and mortar or a blender, and a large roasting tin
Prep, 1.5-12 hours, cooking time 1.5 hours

For the chicken:
1 Whole Chicken.
I would recommend buying an organic, free-roaming, enrobed in cashmere during winter, only ate Gail’s bird seed, babysat by Big Bird bird, but I reckon most of my friends are yuppy enough without needing much encouragement, and it’s not like I can afford one of those. The one I bought had words kind of like that on the label, but I don’t have much faith in supermarkets to not be lying, so…
250g Greek Yoghurt – v important that you get the unsweetened kind, cos otherwise, ew
4 big yellow Onions
A Nice Knob of Ginger. Imagine a roll of 10p coins, as tall as your thumb. That’s about the size of the knob you’re going for. If you’ve bought a piece of ginger larger than this and you know you won’t use the rest before it goes soggy, cut it up into chunks and freeze them for future-grating into curry pastes.
1 big green chilli, deseeded
4 teaspoons Hot Chilli Powder (I used hot paprika, but you could use normal chilli powder, or even dried chili flakes)
2 tsp Cumin
2 tsp Turmeric – BTW did you know that you can actually buy fresh turmeric roots in some fruit and veg shops? It looks kind of like ginger and it’s sooooooooooooooo great. Fab for the anti-inflammatories. Definitely get it if you see any.
2 tsp Ground Coriander
3 cloves of Garlic
1/2 a teaspoon Caster Sugar

For the Relish:
2 tablespoons of Greek Yoghurt
2 big handful of Fresh Mint Leaves (I used all the leaves from a whole supermarket bunch)
1 big handful of Fresh Coriander Leaves
A big glug of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 big Green Chilli

1. Prep your chicken. DON’T wash it, it just gets gross raw chicken juice all over your sink, and spreads E.Coli for all, and it just isn’t necessary. Cut off any strings that have been used to keep its legs closed: take a stand, you and your avian cadaver, for women’s lib.

Place it in the roasting tray.

Wash yer hands. Wash them again and again. Don’t think I ever wash my hands so often as I do when I am touching raw chicken. Bleurgh.

(Please remember to wash your hands guys. Otherwise you might get food poisoning and die. I have no idea who you are, dear readers – I can barely believe that there are hundreds of you, since all my IRL friends stopped reading this months ago – but I really like it when my stats don’t go down, so don’t fail me now. Also because I am quite fond of you. Of anyone, really, who gives me attention)

2. Cut all of your onions in half, and then cut each half into thick slices. Stick a big handful of these up the chicken’s bum, so that the cavity is about half full. Reserve the rest.

3. Take your ginger, don’t worry about peeling it, just grate it all using a cheese grater. Chop up your green chilli, and now place it with the ginger and garlic into your blender or pestle and mortar (GUYS!!! I got a tiny little blender!! It’s the BEST THING EVER and it was on offer in waitrose, it’s one of those ones with the stick that you put in a mini chopper house thing, it’s also got a spinny whisk attachment and a hand liquidiser blender attachment, and I’m totally in love with it)…

Whizz/mash the chili, garlic and ginger up together, with a generous pinch of salt, to make a paste.

4. Add all the other ingredients listed above that aren’t the chicken or the onions, and mash/whizz a bit more.

5. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the top of the chicken.

Now, there is no un-messy way of doing the next bit, so if you are alone, I recommend that you turn the tap on before you start to avoid having to do it with goopy chickeny fingers later.

Pour the yoghurty spicey mixture all over the chicken, and use your hands to coat it all evenly with the mixture. Make sure you get it underneath and in the holes also, and if you can get any of it underneath the skin where it hangs over the edges, great. Some of it might slide off, but that’s fine, just poke it underneath the bird if you can.

WASH YOUR HANDS!!! Or you will die.

6. Take loads of big bits of cling film and put it right on top of the chicken, so it sticks to the marinade, and wrap it up as tightly as possible (you don’t need to do the underneath, just press the edges down onto the roasting tray). Now take some more, and cling over the chicken and around the edges of the tray, so that it’s all nice and sealed.

Stick it in your fridge and marinate for at least an hour. I let it sit for about 5, but you could definitely allow it to wallow for a whole day, it only gets better.

It will need to cook for 1hr 15mins, and rest for another 10-15, so factor that in if you’re worried about timings for when you serve.

You also need to remove it from the fridge about an hour before it’s ready to cook, to let it come to room temperature before you put it in the oven.

7. When you’re ready, preheat the oven – just put it on the hottest temperature.

8. Retrieve the remaining onion slices from wherever you hid them earlier, and sprinkle them around the edges of the roasting tray, and drizzle some olive oil over them. Cover the entire thing in tin foil.

9. Turn the oven temp down to 200C. Place the covered chicken in the oven and leave for 50mins-1hr, after which, remove the tin foil and return to the oven for another 15-30mins.

10. When you suspect that the bird is done, remove it from the oven, and let it sit until it’s hot enough to handle.

Now, let’s just take a minute to admire it: the way that the spices have coloured the bird with a magnificent gingerbread hue, how the yoghurty mixture has dried to a coating at once crispy, and yet, so delicately fine, and the onions! they have dessimated into sumptuous lagoons…

Yah ok you’re hungry. But still, you cooked a whole creature. Homo Sapiens Pride.

Pull a leg away from the body and stick a knife in to the side of the bird as deep as you can. Wiggle it around until you can see inside the hole you’ve made. Firstly, you’re looking for juices, which should run away from the bird CLEAR. As in, not cloudy, not pink, clear.

Furthermore, the meat you’re looking at should look cooked – set, and not pink or translucent. It is sometimes a kind of dusky, brownish pink nearer to the bones, but it should definitely be opaque… you’ll know the difference. You know what cooked meat looks like, right? RIGHT?? (Please don’t die)

11. You want to give it about 10mins to just chill (inclusive of ‘are-you-cooked-enough?’ poking time) once it’s out of the oven. Something about even distribution of heat that you honestly won’t care enough to want to know about if you are hungry.

While it’s resting, quickly make your relish. Basically, take all the relish ingredients, chop them up and mash them together with some salt and pepper, using a blender or a pestle and mortar. Drizzle some olive oil on top.

I remembered to take a picture of this bit! Props to Rose.

This one time, I went to art school, for like 5 minutes.

Unfortunately I didn’t remember to take a great picture of the chicken. BECAUSE (before you all yell at your screens) SORRY THAT I WAS HAVING TOO MUCH FUN ENJOYING MY DINNER PARTY TO TRY AND MAKE A DEAD BIRD LOOK PHOTOGENIC.

Yeah. Exactly.

Here is a shite, post-terrible-carving picture anyway. No, I am not sorry.

I really hope you do a better job of carving the chicken than Marcus did

I served this with some coconut rice, into which I’d stirred a little more coriander. Coconut rice is super easy to make, the beeb has a good, basic recipe for you novices. I have to be honest with you though, I literally made it up as I went along with the rice, and it was fine. You can’t go too far wrong. Drizzle the mint relish all over everything, and stick some salad with a lemony dressing down too.

Enjoy.

In cooking this, I was more excited for the part that comes next! I was totally going to put the soup recipe in this blog post too, but enough’s enough already, I will write about it in the next post. I am totally kidding myself that anyone has read this far.

But, in case one of you has, I reward you with this. It’s a real pick me up.

* Not as much as pork though. Have you seen the pigs they have hanging in the butcher? That shit looks like human skin and flesh. No gentile, no.

New World Orders

This summer I went on holiday to a place where nobody cooks. In spite of this, everyone there feels entitled to judge the food-making abilities of others. Everything is served with kale.

My favourite thing is arriving.

Perhaps it’s because I’m so glad to finally emerge from the airport, where border control will ALWAYS question my reasons for being there for an hour or two of wasted time, each and every time I arrive.

Friends, top tip: these people take interrogation very seriously! Don’t smile at them while they’re doing it. Nobody is allowed to be happy at immigration.

Nevertheless, back to arriving:

Blaring excitement wells up inside as you fly at night over bridges and under tunnels on the booming roads into NYC. An unavoidable, swelling overture. A wily yank of the pigtail from a jazz trumpet.

Hulking cars; refracted light sliding down telescopic skyscrapers; the heady gauze of airline sleep, whistling away through the window; your sweating, farting taxi driver…

All amplify into a clamouring to already be out of the car, and on the streets.

My favourite part is the rewarding fidelity of neon Americanisms. As you descend into the city, these nouns tremolo up and over you: motel, beltway, diner, lube.

I love this about New York. It’s so much like you think it’s going to be.

You’ve seen the films and the TV shows. You get a weird sense of déjà vu whenever you notice it, a furcated sense of the foreign and the familiar, right there in the dollar-slice menu and enthusiastic TV adverts for antidepressants.

It’s intriguing unheimlich. Even if you haven’t been there, you have. Norah Ephron and Woody Allen took care of that.

Paradox: How can one small geographical area make you feel like you’ve got so much in common with people as annoying as Meg Ryan or Lena Dunham? It’s not something I’m comfortable admitting.

New York is a city of meretricious cuisine, much more so than London. Here is the culinary NY equivalent of the Bechdel test (for the equal representation of food):

1. Is your waiter hot?
2. Are they working alongside other, exclusively hot waiters?

If you answered ‘yes’ to both, shame on you. You’re being judged for eating anything in public.

The tasteless food on your plate is your punishment for thinking that swanky NY restaurants are for eating in. Everyone knows that these restaurants are miradors for judgement. Instagram your ‘jalapeño spiked’ cocktail and get out. There will be a food truck near by to revive you.

On a cheerier note, the customer service is excellent and includes such adorable incidents as a thoughtful waiter, cognisant of ‘British’ idiosyncrasies, trying to put milk in my peppermint tea. Or the sweet waitress, explaining as she throws salt down your cleavage and left armpit that you can leave your good luck for the day up to her. A saltcellar has fallen over on the other side of the restaurant, but “[She] got this.”

I have lived in Manhattan a few times. Throughout all of these instances, I cooked about 5 meals. It is cheaper to eat out or get a takeaway.

This approach will necessitate the occasional bout of cheap-sushi-food-poisoning, but this at least counteracts the insidious weight gain I attribute solely to deli sandwiches.

The most important meal of the day in NY is Brunch. Within this context, I do not share what seems like the entire world’s irrational devotion to bacon. I understand that from out the hangover cometh the desire for protein and salt, but let’s stop kidding ourselves.

Bacon is nothing but an inadequate goyish excuse for salt beef. *

There, I’ve said it. Call me racist, see if I care. To appease you I’ve incorporated some of it into the following recipe anyway. As a mere seasoning, which is all it’s really good for.

What we really want in our morning malnourishment is nice, friendly, low fat leguminous nutrition.

Everyone knows that feeling of waking up on a Sunday morning, realising you drunk-munched everything in the fridge last night and that there’s now nothing to feed you and any appendages who’ve also woken up in your flat.

“To Brunch!” is the resounding opinion.

Lets save the rant about how brunch is so often disappointing. About how you wanted Eggs Benedict AND pancakes but couldn’t afford both, and the hungover misery this Sophie’s choice always engenders. Lets jump straight to the part where you didn’t want to have to get dressed today.

Let’s cast our memories way back to my first ever post on here. Cooking someone a good brunch is one of the top 10 easiest ways to make them love you.

I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that I am the kind of person who gets up on Sunday mornings, bright eyed and bushy pastel-haired (this week it’s blue), to make my own baked beans.

I do not suggest that you get up and make this in the morning. Make it the day before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Make it weeks ahead and freeze in individual portions. This is the kind of thing that tastes much better after it’s had a chance to cool. Here’s why:

Umami. Google it. It’s the thing in some savoury food that makes it soooooo moreish. It’s particularly evident in foods that require ageing, like cheese, vinegar or steak. It’s what happens when freestanding amino acids are released from proteins as they are heated. It’s more evident in next-day foods because these proteins have broken down more than when they are first cooked, and thus more umami compounds have been unleashed. Additionally, as you reheat proteins, their continued breakdown means that the dish become more viscous, and it feels thicker and creamier in your mouth, which is lovely.

This umami is less evident in poached eggs that have been sat in iced water for an hour by lazy chefs or sad spinach that’s been sitting under heat lamps for too long at your trendy local brunch spot.

Slow cooking (and re-heating) sounds like a hassle, I know. But if you’re not putting your energies into eating well… why did you read this far?

Superlative Baked Beans

Serves 4 extremely hungry people

1 large or two small Onions, diced
2 400g tins of white beans such as Haricot Blanc or Cannellini – or you could buy the dried ones and soak 400g of them overnight. This would definitely be better, but who is even that organised?
2 400g tins chopped Tomatoes
2 cloves of Garlic, minced
250g Smoked Bacon or Pancetta – in slices, in cubes, whatev.
2 dessertspoons (who my age owns tablespoons? nobody) Tomato Puree
250g dark brown (muscovado?) Sugar
200ml Red Wine Vinegar
1.5 tsp. Sweet Paprika
1/2 tsp. Mustard Powder
Oil, for frying – veg or rapeseed is fine
Salt, obviously; Parsley, if you like.

1. Lots of oil in a frying pan. Like, enough so that the whole base of your pan is covered in a good layer of oil. Put your bacon in and then turn on a low heat. This goes against normal bacon frying tactics, but we want the oil to get really flavoured by the bacon, so let it heat up really slowly.

2. Once cooked to your taste, remove the bacon with a slotted spoon to reserve the oil. Set aside bacon for later consumption if it pleases you. What’s happened here is, you’ve flavoured your oil with the bacon, so its taste will permeate throughout the dish, but it isn’t going to lounge around in the pan for the rest of the time you’re cooking, getting gristly and chewy. It’s the same idea (although different method) that I used for the garlic mayonnaise, here.

3. Drop your onions into the oil with a pinch of salt and fry on a low heat, stirring occasionally but mainly just ignoring them with the lid on, until they’re soft, translucent and golden brown. You want them to caramelise a bit, everybody knows the best thing about baked beans is their sweetness. Turn the heat up, add the garlic, paprika and mustard powder, and stir for another minute, until it’s become fragrant.

4. Add the tomatoes, vinegar and sugar and another small pinch of salt. Fill one of the tomato cans up with water, and add that too (the water, not the can). Bring to the boil, then add the beans. Add a little more water if necessary, then turn the heat right down and leave to cook for at least an hour, if not two. Stir very occasionally, just to make sure it’s not sticking, adding a little water if it is.

5. When it’s finished, the sauce should be thick and sticky. Season with more salt and pepper, and sprinkle over some chopped parsley if you desire.

To serve, I’d have some thickly-cut, garlic-rubbed toast and poached eggs, drizzled with lots of extra virgin olive oil, and the bacon, if you must.

* All of you protesting should try some proper hot (salt) pickled beef, not the slimy slabs from Brick Lane.

Malaise Mealtime

“Only boring people are bored!”

Said nobody helpful, ever.

Boredom can be energising, inspiring. Boredom is elegant.
Boredom seeps venom.

In twilit depths of lethargy we find, blooming, the dawning of A Good Idea.

From out the languorous ennui of many wasted afternoons has slouched the viscid contours of A Ruinous Plot.

Look past the minute masticating inertia of a summer Friday geography lesson, and notice – rippling in the back row – the squirming purl of libidinous teenage daydreams.

ELOPE! ACROSS MONUMENTAL MOUNTAINSCAPES OF EDDYING APATHY AND HARK!….

…you get the picture.

Obviously the above also proves the vast amount of bullshit one is capable of constructing when one has too much time on one’s hands.

This week, I’ve been bored. My boss has selfishly given me the week off work. I’ve spent this time filling up on some of the compulsory reading for the course I’ve just started.

But you know what? I’m a primate. I’m a sociable animal. I don’t like keeping my thoughts and opinions to myself. I’m a talker.

Sometimes, I don’t even know that I’ve GOT so many thoughts or opinions, until I’ve disagreed with someone about them, or written them down in an “I’m Right And This Is Why” kind of way (the very core of the humanities).

I’ve read all this stuff and I’ve got nobody to tell about it. Everyone’s at work. It’s too sunny to sit indoors writing essays just for the sake of it.

And you know what the most boring thing is? Cooking for yourself.

It can be difficult to accept that once you get to a certain stage of life, there won’t be somebody to pat you on the head and say “well done” every time you do something good. But really, what is the point of spending ages making oneself a gourmet, three course lunch, alone on a wednesday, just because it breaks the monotony of epistemology texts, if there’s nobody around to share it with.

Spending too much time alone brings the “If the tree falls…” question a bit too close to home. Thankfully the internet provides assurance that I still exist.

The other option is to just eat cereal until there is someone else around, but I refuse to sink to that level. I already feel enough like a disgusting student. There are two bottles of Smirnoff Ice currently languishing in the crisper, I won’t exacerbate the situation.

The Question of Lunch is also, naturally, one of mechanics.

If one does nothing but sit and read all day, which this one does a LOT, then what can one make to eat that will be conducive to an optimised physical state for a sedentary lifestyle that excludes the need for nap-time? (translation: carb-free or broke)

Furthermore, what if one is fucking poor because one has spent all their money on Uber, hair removal, cool aubergines with stripey skins (that she already ate, and is annoyed about buying, because they never taste different from normal aubergines, and she blames our materialistic society, and probably the patriarchy, for making her susceptible to useless, pretty things), and fluffy handbags?

The answer is Soup.

Soup is the best one because you can keep on eating it for days with different variants – flavoured oils, different herbs, an assortment of floating extras. It’s also great because once you’ve put all the ingredients in, you can absent-mindedly stir it one-handed, with a book in the other hand, until you finish your chapter/it’s ready.

Refer to an earlier post of mine and you will see that I do impecuniosity extremely well. I have learnt to be responsibly insolvent.

Know Thyself.

If thyself is going on holiday to New York and will almost definitely spend all of thy money on Brunch (post upcoming) then thee must buy thine lentils before leaving. Every single ingredient of this soup can be stored or frozen before or after being used to make the soup, and the freezer is every thrifter’s best friend.

This soup apparently harks from Libya, but I’m not entirely sure. As with most things I cook, I ate it once when I was probably drunk and couldn’t remember if I had got it from a Sudanese, Egyptian or Libyan takeaway. But it was amazing, so I tried to recreate it, and I LOVE alliteration, so Libya (and post-colonial idiocy) wins.*

Some thoughts on preserved lemons. They are excellent. They are more lemony than lemons. They keep forever in the fridge. Shove one up a chicken’s arse or delicately arrange within a tagine for a starburst rush of intense fruit flavour (!). There is no need to spend tons of money on actual fresh fruit and vegetables, kids.

Although sometimes it is nice, which is why I’ve included both kinds of lemon in this recipe. If you can’t get hold of preserved lemons (make your own!!!), just add an extra fresh lemon’s juice.  The sourness of this against the sticky sweetness of caramelised onions is where it’s at guys.

Libyan Lemon Lentil Soup with Caramelised Onions

serves 4

2 large white or yellow Onions
2 small preserved Lemons, rind only (flesh removed. Best way to do this is to quarter them first)
Juice of 1 fresh lemon
300g red split Lentils
3 tsp Cumin
1 kettle-full of boiling water + Chicken Stock (let’s not pretend that we actually make stock before adding it to things; obviously we just put powder and water in at the same time)
1 packet of Feta Cheese
1 handful chopped Parsley (easily frozen, in ice cube trays with a little olive oil is a great way to do this)
1 big dessertspoon Butter

1. Thinly slice one onion and chop the other. Melt half the butter in a lidded frying pan (you can improvise with this) and put in all the sliced onion. Toss to coat in hot butter, turn the heat down to the smallest flame possible, cover, ignore for 20 minutes.

2. Heat the rest of the butter in a large saucepan, add the chopped onions when it’s hot, and cook until soft and translucent. Add the cumin and preserved lemon rinds, keep stirring until the whole thing becomes lovely and fragrant.

3. Add lentils, stir well, then add stock. Adjust the heat so that it’s just simmering and cook for at least 40 mins. Stir often.

4. Check on your onions. Give them a little nudge. If they’re starting to burn, give them a good stir, but otherwise, leave them. The trick with caramelising onions is to leave them be. If they’re starting to dry out, sprinkle with water to keep’em going. But essentially, don’t hassle them. It’ll take at least an hour for them to get there but it’s soooo worth the wait.

Don’t worry too much about your soup in the meantime, there’s really no limit to how long you can cook this kind of lentil. If it’s becoming to liquid for you, just turn the heat off and leave the flavours to mingle. This is the kind of thing that tastes better the next day.

5. When everything’s looking ready, chuck in the feta and stir well until it’s dissolved, along with the parsley. Serve with caramelised onions on top.

When I am in a vitriolic mood, I will tell you all, my darlings, about the time that I dumped someone because they said that they didn’t like soup. A word of warning to naysayers who protest that soup is not a meal. This is goddam filling and you won’t regret it.

* For real, I am that person who orders lentil soup at 3am in the kebab shop. It’s always on the menu and it’s always the cheapest thing too.

Professional Bitch Super Mussels

Yes, it’s been a very long time since I’ve posted anything. Yes, I know, you’ve all been utterly bereft in my absence.

To sum up my most recent, time consuming and thus blog hampering activities: Interning, working, general hustling, sunning, festivaling (it’s a word), and some extra pleasures for which I have private proclivities.

It’s been quite strenuous at points but now I’m tanned, rich, and happy to get back to wasting time, writing.

People have continued to give me encouraging feedback about the blog and I’m very grateful. However, I keep getting requests for pictures, and this bothers me.

As I suspected, this isn’t because people need to know what the food looks like at every stage. In any case, I put some in the last post, and they were crap. I doubt any of you have actually tried making these recipes – you just like the sporadic updates on my life of unreserved ignominy (in which case, keep reading, you’re in for a treat).

The real reason seems to be because a large mass of text now needs to be broken up, Buzzfeed style, for all of my lovely friends with compromised capacities for concentration. 

Hey guys, the shit pictures in this post are for you.

There have been several contributing factors to the reasoning behind a lack of pictures here:

Firstly, because I don’t own a camera, and until recently did not have one on a phone.

Second, because writing a public blog already feels like such a disgorgement of vanity I was loathe to escalate this by posting coy pictures of myself holding sexually suggestive edibles.

Hands up who’s bored of fetishised female chefs.

The main reason, however, is that my food is for eating, not for looking at.

Obviously, food is infinitely more alluring when it’s presented to you in a visually pleasing way. Many of us are guilty of seeking a kind of proto-nostalgic sensation by imagining that the act we are engaging in is in some way picturesque.

It’s the same reasoning that created such atrocities as ‘festival fashion’ and almost the entirety of Instagram. Thus, if you’re eating beautiful food, you become – by association – beautiful

But there’s a difference, isn’t there, between chopping up and chucking on some fresh herbs for a garnish, and spending half an hour letting the food go cold while you artfully impart dainty micro-herbs in geometric patterns on top of it using tweezers and a ruler.

One of the saddest things I ever read about food bloggers is that they never eat the food that they make, because they spend so long arranging it nicely that it becomes congealed and inedible.

There’s this fashion for taking photographs directly over the food, which wouldn’t work if it was piping hot, because the steam clouds the camera lens.

They do things like brush salad leaves with raw egg white to make them shiny and turgid.

This waste seems like the height of senseless immorality, the very crust of the banality of evil.

Just, no. No beautiful food for me.

Strangely enough, I do actually spend a lot of time looking at beauty blogs.

This is not because of any enthusiasm to understand the intricacies of skincare. I’m well acquainted with that peroxide demon in the mirror but I wouldn’t say we were good enough friends to support a visage-based relationship. I will concede that she has an excellent wardrobe though. Bang on.

The actual reason being that my friend Annie has been a beauty editor at various internet publications for a while now and I enjoy reading her work. 

Annie once gave me some fancy exfoliator that was probably wildly expensive. To me, it looked like yoghurt and muesli, it felt like yoghurt and muesli, and it smelt DELICIOUS. I ate some, it was extremely appetising, and no harm was done.

Annie currently works at a magazine run by a woman who’s often been haunting my thoughts of late. Emily Weiss appeared as SuperIntern, featured Frenemy on the much beloved and oft yearned for, regrettably cancelled television masterpiece that was The Hills.

This year, I’ve worked (paid and not) for several restaurants, two ad agencys, a literary journal, a film director, an art collector, a Punk historian, a PR house, an auction house and a newly re-launched fashion house. The last one was entirely an accident.

I’ve spent whole weeks just folding pieces of fabric. I’ve organised an exclusive sausage-themed party, been Editor-In-Chief of my own magazine, spent a sweltering day in July up to my ankles in fake snow at a fraudulent christmas in faux lapland, and read only the first half of every new book published during the entirety of last winter.

I have made and delivered every coffee variable known upon this earth. At one point I was the sole owner of every baby-gem lettuce in Central London.

I’ve been fired from jobs and had jobs invented specially for me.

Fuck you Emily Weiss, I am SuperIntern. And when my MA begins and I can give up my life as a Professional Bitch, I will probably cry of happiness.

It’s been good, bad, boring, useful, but mainly, exhausting. I’m not ashamed to say that sometimes, the only thing getting me through the day is the thought of what I’m going to cook for myself when I get home. Sometimes it’s cocktails.

Schnapps Diet

I wish that more dishes had names. This blog would be easier to write if there was an elegant, concise phrase, possibly in french, to describe the process of coming home after a long day of coffee runs, throwing dubiously fresh ingredients into a frying pan with garlic, calling it breakfast, dinner and lunch at once and hoping for the best.

The basic requirements for post-work eating are currently:

1. Does this “recipe” require the use of more than one hand and if so, where will the cigarette go?

2. Will it be ready before I become hypoglycaemic with hunger and faint?

3. Will I pass out in a carb coma after eating and is this a desirable reaction?

4. Is it fine if I smell of it tomorrow? (No hair will be washed tonight)

Today’s recipe fulfils almost all of the normal necessary requirements.

Guys, I tried so hard to come up with something that would be pretty, so that I could take pictures. I know how much it means to all my loving fans and admirers. Really, I do.

Unfortunately, I am arrogant and stubborn and only wanted to make one thing, comprising some of the ugliest ingredients ever used.

Unfortunately, the attention I get from you lot does nothing to physically sustain me and thus I can bite your proffered, metaphorical hands as much as I like and still be well fed.

But this recipe takes so little time and time is currently of the essence. And everybody loves it. Only people who have never tried it think that they don’t like Moules Marinière.

It’s not really my problem that mussels take the fetid form I imagine the back of a rotting eyeball to resemble.

The thing that’s so appealing about them is how light they are, how fresh, but still deliciously homely, at once elegant and a refined balance of tastes, yet also so comforting, the ultimate one-pot fast food. As with everything I make, this is also also pretty cheap, especially if you’re using leftover wine.

Moules Marinière

I instagrammed the shit out of this picture.

For two.

You will need:

A dessertspoon amount of Butter
2kg Mussels. (You probably won’t eat this many, but sainsburys sells them in 1kg nets, and that’s definitely not enough. If you can get them weighed out at a fishmonger, I reckon 1.5ish is a good amount, depending on how much bread you think you’ll eat alongside them)
1 large, white, ‘Sweet’ Onion. They are labelled as such. If you can’t find them, a good handful of the little, spherical shallots would also be fine, although the long thin ones aren’t quite meaty enough.
1 clove of Garlic (literally the most restrained with garlic I’ve ever been)
A good handful of Lemon Thyme
A good handful of Flatleaf Parsley
1-2 glassfuls of White Wine
120ml Single Cream (optional)

You will also need a large saucepan with a good lid, and plenty of fresh, crusty bread, for mopping.

It’s not difficult to prepare mussels, but it’s kind of weird. However, be not afeared: it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be, and it doesn’t take very long. Just remember not to be freaked out that you’re handling an actual living thing.

Firstly, tip all of the mussels into a large bowl of water, and swill them around for 10seconds. Any dead ones and extraneous seaweed will float, so quickly skim these off the top. Swiftly remove from the water (exposure to tap water for too long will kill them).

Pick up a mussel. If it’s open, give it a little squeeze to check it’s alive – it should close if so. Discard if it doesn’t.

See that seaweedy-netty thing sticking out of its side? That’s what it uses to cling on to it’s home, called a beard. Just like Eleanor Roosevelt. We’re going to pull that off and out this mussel to the world.*

It’s important to pull the beard TOWARD the hinge of the mussel, at the back. If you pull it the wrong way, the whole thing comes out and you may find yourself apologising to the tiny thing, devastated about having killed it prematurely, even though you’re actually about to boil it alive…

I never really got over the inherent dichotomies of what I was doing when preparing this.

Lots of recipes will tell you to scrape off any barnacles that are stuck to the outside. In my experience this is usually impossible.

They also tell you to clean them well but if you scrub them too hard, the black colour of the shells begins to leak into your sauce and that ruins it. A couple of good strokes with a clean washing up brush should suffice.

Once you’ve de-bearded them all, give them another quick rinse, and stick them in the fridge. You can do all this in advance and leave them in the fridge all day if necessary.

The rest of the prep is very easy. Very finely chop the onions. Teeny tiny. Small enough that a couple of pieces can work their way into an open mussels shell. That small.

After you’ve expertly chopped your onion, prepare the garlic. Use a garlic crusher if you have one.

Garlic is usually a peerless addition in all foods, but mussels have a very delicate flavour and don’t like to be dominated. We want the garlic to be so fine that it essentially disintegrates in the sauce, so you don’t get any big chunks.

If you don’t have a garlic crusher, just roughly mince the garlic and place in a pestle and mortal with a pinch of salt, grind for a minute, and it will become a paste very quickly. If you don’t have a pestle and morter, use a mug and the end of a wooden spoon.

Heat your butter in the pan over a medium heat and add the onions when it’s all melted. Stir well, and after about 2 minutes, add the garlic and the leaves from the lemon thyme.

Keep stirring, and two minutes later, when the onions are almost soft and cooked through, add the wine. Turn the heat up to full and let it bubble until it’s reduced by about half.

Put the mussels in, close the lid, and leave for about 3 and a half mins. Use this time to finely chop the parsley.

Strip all the leaves from the stalks, put them in a mug, and snip with upturned scissors.

When you remove the lid, the mussels should have all opened. Discard any that haven’t.

Turn the heat down, drop in the parsley and pour over the cream, give it all a good stir, eat immediately. Don’t forget to put a large bowl on the table to collect the shells, and lots of napkins for hand-wiping.

* I do not condone the ‘outing’ of anything else. All humans and molluscs, great and small, should have the chance to come out of their shell about their sexuality in their own time.

An exception can be made in this case, however, because you’re about to brutally murder all the mussels anyway, so the scale of ethics in this situation becomes a bit more… subjective.

Hermit’s Balls

Two disclaimers:

1. Wish I could say that this weeks’ preamble has more to do with food and less to do with my own idiocy but I’m sure if this was the case, less of you would be still be reading.

2. I did not want to put pictures on the blog, I do not like having pictures on the blog, and I do not think they are good pictures. But you asked and I’ve obliged.

A few weeks ago I was flouncing through London in my favourite clothes. Just your run of the mill arrogance.

You know that feeling, when you’re strolling, and you know you look good, and then shuffle sends you a song with such a superlative walking beat that you slam from norm to STORM in the space of an intro riff?

 

Try it. Try walking down the street listening to this gyrating silken deluge of a bisexual disco masterpiece and TELL ME you don’t start to strut.

I was feeling especially pleased with myself because of my new hot pink lipgloss. (Buy it, it’s INCREDIBLE. Total Vinyl Lips). And because of something to do with one of my internships, blah etc.

So I had a big smile on my face and a swing in my step, and I was off to meet my favourite lady for the only snack it’s acceptable to eat while wearing bright pink lipgloss – Sweet Potato Fries.

(Because firstly you can situate your lips carefully in relation to the fry, thus avoiding the dreaded smudge, and secondly because orange fries and pink lips clash so very excellently together)

Obviously, careering down Carnaby street, grinning like an idiot with the face of a sea anemone is enough to turn a few heads.

So this guy starts running after me, imploring me to stop. I pretended to ignore him for a little while, basking in my own falsely perceived celebrity, but after a bit I could hear him getting out of breath and I felt bad (one is never above one’s fans, Rose), so I turned around.

He catches his breath and explains that he’s a hairdresser, and he’d like to cut my hair. I immediately refuse.

He asks why and I explain that whenever people ask you this, it’s because they’re students, whom I will not trust. It’s also because I have very curly hair, and most hairdressers are useless when it comes to this.

I have very expensive hair. I do not mess with it lightly. Except to make it lighter.

“Look at me.”

I look up to a luscious cascade of meandering curly locks and realise I may have been a little rude.

“I’m a senior hairstylist at the flagship Vidal Sassoon Salon on South Molton Street. We’ll do everything for free.”

It was obviously too good to be true but I’ve been a student for too long not to be misled by the idea of gratuity.

A few weeks later, after two ‘consultation’s’ to ‘discuss the look’, I only discovered once he actually started cutting that he actually WAS a student. I also discovered, much too late, that he’d rendered a patch of the back of my head practically bald.

No, I’m not being hyperbolic. He cut hairs on my head to be milimetres long.

Strangely, he didn’t cut anything into the front, so I genuinely had no idea what he’d done until he proclaimed it finished and held up a mirror.

Until this moment, the ginger biscuits brought to me alongside a cup of tea had been studiously ignored. Obviously at this point they vanished in an instant.

The haircut kind of looks like a topiaried attempt to recreate the look of one of those weird hunting hats with inexplicable ear flaps.

Because that’s what this haircut is.

Inexplicable.

I don’t think I am exceedingly concerned by my appearance, but when somebody violates your head in such a ruthless manner and then grins at you the entire time you’re yelling at him, there is only one thing for it.

I calculate that it will take about a year for this monstrosity to grow out, so until then, unless you are a deep fried carbohydrate, we’re not friends.

This particular recipe fulfils every standard an FDA certified Comfort Food needs to realise. Crispy, mushy, salty, sweet, with lots of cheese.

I have talked before about why foods centred around delayed gratification are the ultimate pick-me-up, so I won’t elaborate too much here. Besides, nothing about this recipe is hard, and most of it requires little to no concentration, even if it does take a while to make.

However, I will add that when the hidden depths of inner vanity envelope ones head in a thundercloud of anger and regret, it’s nice to return to a work ethic that has nothing to do with conceit and remember that the harder you strive to achieve something, the more rewarding the result.

I would recommend that you don’t do the deep frying part of this alone. It won’t be hard to find someone to help you when you explain what their reward will be.

Arancini

For the Risotto:
1 dessertspoon of Butter
1 large, sweet Onion, or a small pack of little round shallots, finely diced to around 5mm²
2 large cloves of Garlic, either pushed through a crusher or made into a paste, as described here. These aren’t essential, but I don’t believe there’s ever such thing as too much garlic.
400g Arborio or other risotto appropriate rice
1kg Garden Peas, podded, but don’t throw the pods away! They are extremely important. It takes a while to pod peas; just do it in front of the telly or something.
1.5L Chicken or Vegetable Stock
150ml cheap White Wine
Rind of 1 Lemon
100g finely grated Parmesan, or Grana Padano, because it’s usually cheaper, and is nearly as good
1 Egg, beaten
Salt and Pepper, to taste.

For the Middle and the Outside:
100g Breadcrumbs. Usually I’d be a snob about this and say you should make your own, but as they’re going to be eviscerated when deep fried, go ahead and buy them. Paxo make adequate ones, and you can usually buy panko crumbs in big supermarkets.
2 Eggs, beaten
1 large ball of Mozzarella cheese
1 big handful of Basil leaves, very finely chopped
10-15 Sage Leaves, also very finely chopped
1 small glug of Olive Oil or a teaspoon of very soft Butter
1 small clove of Garlic, or half of a big one, crushed or in a paste, as above
1L Vegetable Oil

Method: Risotto

I have written about how to make a risotto before, the recipe is here. This risotto is much more simple. You don’t have to spend ages chopping up this and that, just fry the onions, add the rice, and ladle over wine and stock until the rice is cooked through, then stir through the lemon rind.

However, I have some pointers:

Firstly, unless you’re vegetarian, or cooking in your parents Kosher kitchen as I was, I’d go for a chicken stock. They tend to have a bit more subtlety, and less sodium.

Make the stock as you normally would, and then cram as many of the discarded pea pods as possible into the pan, bring to a boil and then turn off the heat.

There is plenty of pea-wonderful flavour in those pods; it will happily seep into the liquid and give your rice an excellent aroma and taste.

Second, make sure you stop as SOON as the rice is cooked. It will be sticky enough anyway, but you don’t want to lose the definition of each grain from overcooking.

Third, don’t add the beaten egg and the parmesan until you’ve let the risotto completely cool. This will take a few hours, if not overnight.

Use this time to get become suitably inebriated. Drunkenly call your latest interest and insist that they come over, even though you may not be in London, on the promise of tasty treats when they arrive. Dunno bout you guys but this usually works for me… You will need a co-pilot for the next stages.

Forming Arancini

Combine the chopped basil and sage with the crushed garlic, butter or olive oil, and leave that to marinate.

Once your rice is completely cooled and you’ve stirred through one beaten egg and your parmesan, fill a big bowl or pot with cold water and place it within easy reach of your work surface.

Tear up your mozzarella into pieces that can be rolled into balls of about 2cm², and set aside.

Wet your hands and take a handful of the risotto. Your finished Arancini should be around the size of a small orange or large tangerine, so to begin with, you want half of an amount comprising this. (Arancini means oranges in Italian)

Shape the rice into a semi-spherical mould, with a small central indent in to which you will place the mozzarella.

Dip your mozzarella into your herb and garlic mixture, then place in the middle of the risotto.

Wet your other hand, grab some more risotto, and press a lid onto the first hand. Roll between your hands to get a nice, solid, round shape.

Once you’ve used up all of your rice, place the balls back in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up.

The poor soul you lured over with assurance of treats will by this point be wondering why you have been faffing about in the kitchen for so long. Use this window as you see fit.

The Deep Fry

Once your rice balls have had a little while to firm up, bring them back to your work surface. Put a bowl with the other two beaten eggs nearby, and alongside, a plate onto which you’ve tipped a cm-thick layer of breadcrumbs.

Take each ball, dip it entirely into the egg and then roll over the breadcrumbs until it’s evenly coated all over.

Place a large plate, covered with kitchen roll, as close to the hob as possible. Your comrade must be on guard to replenish the kitchen roll as necessary.

Now pour your oil into a tall saucepan and set on a medium-high heat.

This part is not as scary as I once thought.

You do not want to start messing around with turning the balls over in the oil, because you could splash yourself, and that would not be pleasant. The important thing is that there should be enough oil in your saucepan to completely cover the rice ball. If there’s not and you’ve run out of oil, just squash the ball a bit until it isn’t as tall.

Once your oil is hot enough (check by dropping in a breadcrumb – if it fizzes and rises to the surface, you’re in business), place one ball on a slotted spoon or ladle and lower carefully and SLOWLY (avoid splashes) into the oil.

Depending on how hot your oil is, it should take between 1-4minutes to get to the right, golden brown colour. The longer it takes, the more melty the mozzarella inside will be.

Smoothly lift the ball out of the oil and place on the kitchen roll. Express delight at how much easier that was than you thought it was going to be, and how hard and crispy the outer shell of the Arancini appears.

Repeat until all your balls are done. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can start doing them in batches, and the whole thing won’t take longer than 5mins.

Serve immediately, with some salad, to make you feel better about the other stuff. Eat the Arancini and reward your helper. It’s up to you whether or not this things mean the same.

Laying avocado on toast is not a recipe

Blog is on hiatus for Glastonbury. Not that I’m going, but everyone else seems to be. In this instance, you all do actually have something better to do and I know how to pick my battles.
If you are not going to glasto, I’ve got loads of recipes I wanna try out. If you know me and you wanna be experimented on, get in touch. All subsequent food poisonings are strictly on purpose.

Sadly Delicious Stew

One hot and sultry night, one balmy summer, a new inamorato and myself poured the ingredients of what we hoped was to be a succulent fish stew into a pot, closed the lid and set it on the hob to slow-cook for an hour. Barefoot in my parents kitchen, we grinned at each other in tacit delirium.

We were intoxicated by ardour, enthralled by the enticing supper awaiting us. We were enraptured by the setting sun’s heady glow, the sovereign show of our affection, Dusty Springfield on the radio.

We took a bottle and the radio out onto the balcony, drank to ourselves with heedless self-satisfaction and danced until the wine ran out and the air turned cold. We were happy, drunk, in love. And abundantly, incoherently, reprehensibly stupid.

An hour later, giddy and hungry, we knew our stew was nearly ready and turned to go back inside. It was then that we realised that my parents had, without mentioning it to me, replaced the balcony doors. The new ones did not have a handle on the outside.

I was fully aware of, and had no desire to cause, the upset that would arise out of that inevitable conversation: ‘Mum, Dad, I’m goysexual.’ My family and I operated a comfortable ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy surrounding my distinctly non-Semitic romantic life.

So, words cannot describe the excruciating, the actual physical as well as mental anguish that arose from having to yell until the old couple in the neighbouring flat came out and lent us their phone, then calling my parents late on a Thursday night to tell them that I’d stealthily taken my never-before-mentioned, um, friend to their beachside holiday home for some illicit lovemaking, had locked myself on the balcony in little more than my underwear and, like, it was actually quite cold now that the sun’s gone in, and, um, could one of them maybe make the 90 minute journey from London to come and save us.

Yeah. Really fucking stupid.

For all involved it was not the time or place to get into the technicalities of the situation. My beleaguered father forbearingly pretended not to understand who I was with, called the cleaner, and within an hour she’d let herself in and us too.

However I will never forget that hour, sat huddled together on the floor of the balcony, wrapped in an insubstantial blanket that the neighbours had tossed over for us, unsure whom, if anyone, was coming to save us.

Visions of that long-feared introduction snaked their way around my brain. One half-naked, uncut boy; one pyjama’d, orthodox father. Meeting, for the first time, as our longed-for stew casually dried itself out on the still lit stove… which was probably about to catch fire! The flat was going to burn down, I was about to be disowned! And the sea air was definitely turning my hair into dreadlocks.

Some good things came out of that weekend. My parents have never mentioned it again and we’ve all gone on pretending it never happened. The cleaner introduced me to the joys of electric cigarettes (smoking indoors! all the time!). The boy and I became a couple and stayed that way for a while.

And yet, sadly, most good things come to an end. The secret life I thought so well hidden from my family unravelled far beyond my control. Electric cigarettes lost their novelty. The boy eventually absented himself.

And what am I left with? Something decidedly more permanent. The knowledge that if, for any reason, you become stuck somewhere and must leave this stew cooking for an extra two hours, it will be even meatier, even sweeter, even deeper, richer, more hearty and definitely more tender than whatever dish you were expecting, or any love you thought was true.

This was originally a Raymond Blanc recipe, but now we have learnt this inorexible life lesson, we can laugh in the face of his feeble suggestion of only cooking it for an hour.

I may have tweaked the ingredients a bit since I first made this. I was cooking in a kosher kitchen that time. I’m definitely not anymore. The beauty of this dish lies in the squid. Usually when you get squid, it’s flash-fried, and often just for that tiniest bit too long, so it becomes rubbery. Slow-cooking allows it, literally, to relax. It becomes melt-in-the-mouth soft, and releases a sweetness that most people don’t know is there.

Hazardously Slowly Cooked Squid and Chorizo Stew

To feed 4 (or 2, with enough leftovers for lunch)

1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
1 sprig of thyme
1 big pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tbsp sundried tomato paste
1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, which you could substitute for 700g of fresh tomatoes if it’s summer and it’s worth buying them – if you do this, add a tablespoonful more tomato paste, for richness.
1 big glass of white wine 400g squid, skin and quill removed, cut into 5cm pieces. Set aside the tentacles to flash–fry for a final garnish.
200g cooking chorizo, in cm² chunks or thin-ish slices
200g new potatoes, peeled and halved
1 good handful of parsley, to garnish

Optional: 200g of any fresh white fish you like – cod, etc. Add this in chunks, two minutes before you take the pot off the stove.

You will also need a large pot, with a good lid.

First, heat the oil and fry the onions, garlic, herbs and spices until soft and golden, around 7 minutes. Add the wine and boil for a couple of minutes.

Next, add the tomatoes and tomato paste, and cook for a few more minutes until the tomatoes have started melting.

Now, add everything else to the pan, throw in hearty pinches of salt and pepper, close the lid, turn the heat down to the absolute minimum, and leave for 2 hours. Stir every half an hour, if you can’t resist looking, tasting and adjusting the seasoning if you wish.

A good tip: If you find it’s become too salty, throw in an extra potato – it will suck up the excess salt and level out the seasoning.

To finish, if you want to, flash fry the squid tentacles until they curl up and turn pretty pink serve over the stew; scatter the parsley over everything.

RAHH

GUYS RLY THIS IS NOT OK

http://www.buzzfeed.com/samimain/simple-and-elegant-avocado-toasts

Mollycoddled Eggs

I made these eggs over a week ago, but neglected to write anything about them at the time because I was too busy having Lots Of Fun. This Fun then spitefully teamed up with the office air-conditioning and came haunting back to shred my immune system into thousands of tiny foul fettle fractions. So now I’m sick in bed, and miserable about it. Always the victim!

I had actually written an entire blogpost about a cheesecake that I never ended up making. Last week was Shavuot, which I wrote about here. On Shavuot, we eat cheesecake. It’s the kind of Mean Girls mandate that I hate to love abiding by.

The cheesecake was to have been inspired both by the scrumptious saffron and cardamom flavoured sohan brought to me by a delectable Persian friend, Sogol, and by some hilarious comfort-food-encouraging journalism inside everyone’s favourite complimentary tube reading, Stylist magazine.

Stylist had imaginatively managed to transform one segment, a tribute to the life and work of Maya Angelou, into a crass yet empowering piece on how to survive bad breakups. My flatmate (who is an actual, professional, political journalist) and I, both having recently navigated the aforementioned treacherous waters in very poor form, applauded the effort.

NB. My incredibly talented flatmate made a documentary which is being aired at 8pm on Monday, on Radio 4. I suggest you all improve your minds, and listen to it (here).

I had a great comparison lined up between this blog and Stylist. To sum up: both totally unnecessary, often highly erroneous, and prone to recasting what probably began as quite sensible ideas (eg. making a risotto, discussing gender equality in the workplace) into quite discouraging writing (eg. why only miserable people make risotto because it’s such a bore, whether it’s better to cry at your desk or in the loo).

I also suspect that both Stylist and this blog appeal to my readers for similar reasons, as a sort of schadenfreude-esque guilty pleasure.* There are inconceivable amounts of you. At first I took it as a compliment but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps you all really do have nothing else that’s better to do. That’s how I came up with posting this on Friday afternoon, when this is most likely the case.

Unfortunately, the cheesecake never got made. I, unslept, was sprawled somewhere in Clissold Park watching  dejectedly as handsome babydaddys patiently played wholesome games of catch with their adorable yet clumsy toddler children in some sort of ovary-heaving tableau of yuppy apartheid while I listened to a very clever, sunburnt, friend drunkenly tell me just how clever he was.

As I said, both the non-cheesecake and the actual eggs occurred over a week ago but I’ve spent the last three days in bed, feeling sorry for myself (above paragraph indicative of present state of mind), eating loads of eggs (my throat can only tolerate soft food), resentful of the fact that as an adult I am in charge of taking care of myself when ill. When I obviously can’t be trusted to do this during times that I am WELL, I think the entire arrangement is completely unfair.

Worst of all, this illness has torn away from me the thing that I enjoy using the most, my voice. Tolerably, I have this joke of a blog, so goddamit, SOMEONE will hear (read) me moan.

Having had to pamper myself all week with kleenex and ibuprofen very much amused me when I remembered that I was originally going to talk about how this dish is a version of coddled eggs. How fitting.

Coddled eggs are eggs that can be made in a variety of ways but nearly always involve some sort of very involved poaching. A coddled egg involves some of the poaching method, alongside lots of extra prodding, fussing and manoeuvring. If you thought simply poaching eggs the normal way was a big enough hassle… you’d be right.

However, this is actually a great way of cheating when making poached eggs. You don’t have to worry about them tasting too vinegary, and you have much better control of how cooked you’d like them. It’s also an interesting way of injecting flavour right into the very texture of the egg’s white, and it looks extremely pretty.

I did actually remember to take pictures this time, but I’m holding them hostage to punish you all for possibly also being the kind of people who read blogs like the one in my penultimate post, and who should be punished for liking BAD food writing and photography.

Mollycoddled Eggs (with herbs)

2 eggs per person (or however many you want, I don’t care)
2 sage leaves per egg
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 small handful of finely chopped herbs – parsley, chervil, chives… whatevs.
You will also need at least one small cup, some cling film, and a wide saucepan or wide, deep frying pan.

First, to make crispy, aromatic sage leaves. Simply heat the oil in the saucepan and fry each leaf for about 5 seconds on each side. The leaf should retain its bright green colour. If it starts to discolour, your oil is too hot. If after 10 seconds, it’s not become stiff, your oil’s too cold.

Remove the leaves from the oil and pat dry with a paper towel.

Fill the large saucepan with 1-2 inches of water and put it on to boil.

Take a large square of cling film (maybe 25cm²) and use it to roughly line the cup. Drop your sage leaves and a pinch of the chopped herbs into the bottom. If you’re nervous about the egg sticking, put a drop of oil or butter in too, but I didn’t find this was needed.

Crack the egg into the cling film and, using your finger, lightly prod the yolk down until it’s completely surrounded by the white.The only reason for doing this is to ensure, if you’re fussy, that all the white is cooked while the yolk doesn’t get cooked. If you don’t care about a bit of runny white or firm yolk, don’t bother.

Crack some pepper over the egg, if that’s to your taste, and sprinkle a few more herbs on top. However! Do not put salt in there. Michel Roux Jr. told me (on telly) that it compromises the cellular structure of the egg while it is cooking if it comes into contact with salt, so it won’t set as firmly. I always do what Michel Roux Jr. tells me. I wouldn’t dream of testing his judgement now, but I did once rebel and put salt in while I was scrambling eggs, and I regretted it. Because MRJ is always right.

Firmly clasp the top of the cling-film, so that a couple cm’s of air remain above the egg. From this point, tightly twist the cling film together until it’s well sealed – if you’re nervous, tie a knot, or secure it with an elastic band but, as before, I don’t find this necessary. You want there to be enough room between the top of the egg and the bottom of the cling film twist so that you can see inside how things are cooking.

As quickly as possible, drop the little egg parcels into the boiling water (carefully! But so that they all go in at around the same time). The water should come to just past the top of the eggs inside the parcel.

Use this time to assemble whatever you’re going to be eating your eggs with. We had some puree’d cannellini beans with lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil, spread on toasted brown bread rubbed with garlic, with some really thinly sliced, raw, seasoned baby courgette (I used a potato peeler for these, because I don’t have a mandolin, because I am SO HARD DONE BY). Delicious and nutritious.

You will be able to see, from the little cling-window you’ve left yourself, how the egg is cooking. If the top of the white looks pretty firm, I reckon you’re done.

It’s not hard to unpeel the egg from the cling film when you’re ready. I tend to take the eggs out a tiny bit before I think they’re ready and just let them sit for a bit letting the residual heat finish them off, based on some vaguely scientific understanding of things shrinking when they get cooler, but I have no idea if this is an actual thing.

Just use your flattened palm to support the base of the egg as you slide it out of its wrapping.

The herbs should have gathered around the sides of the egg and look lovely. The flavour should have steeped into the white a little and will definitely colour each mouthful. This is really quite foolproof.

YUM

* I did get some puzzling feedback on my blog during last weekend’s rampage (my best friends are triplets, it was their birthday, three best friends’ birthdays in one weekend is fucking tiring).

At about 6am on Sunday morning, a man named Petros declared the blog, and myself, to be “feisty”. This word was then confusingly tossed at me nearly every time I spoke for the next two hours. I was perplexed by the exact meaning of this word and Petros, perhaps too tired or too afraid (see below), could not produce an explanation.

These are the two definitions that the dictionary gave me:

• (of a person, typically one who is relatively small) lively, determined and courageous

• touchy and aggressive

One is quite patronising and the other, quite rude. I usually think that I’m generally quite a self-aware person, but the choice between the two interpretations of this word with relation to myself has completely stumped me. Sort of worrying…