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Sunday 22 July 2012

Thought Processing Food


One of the reasons I still slightly despair of the Man occasionally is that he doesn't have the 'what have we got in the fridge' skill.  He has no concept of what is likely to be in the cupboards at any one time, and what this means.  If I leave a fridge 'full of vegetables' as he puts it, he will go out and buy ready-made pasta and sauce.  Which means that by the time I get back, some of the veg is past its best.

I haven't been crafting much recently; there's a frock I adapted from a pattern which needs finishing, but I've run out of cream cotton.  So I thought I'd fill the airwaves with a train-of-thought recipe, so that you can see what whipping something up looks like.  It's half inspiration and half being prepared.

What Have I Got In The Fridge?
A couple of days ago, when I went shopping, I got a butternut squash and one of Waitrose's large bags of individually-wrapped chicken breasts.  These bags of chook would be a true lifesaver if there were any room in the communal freezer; as it is, I had three breasts left.  That sorted the meaty angle, as I had known it would when I got them.

There was only the large bulb part of the squash left.  A couple of days ago, I had chopped the top off, peeled and cubed the tubular section, steamed the cubes in the microwave for 10minutes and then chucked them in the oven with some rosemary to get a bit roasty and interesting.  At the same time, I peeled and de-seeded the main bottom section of the squash and clingfilmed it.  I had expected to need the whole thing at that meal, but now I had a big hollow thing I had to stuff it.

Luckily I also had a few sprigs of rosemary and a few cloves of elephant garlic left over as well.  Elephant garlic is, I have decided, a useless thing.  It takes forever - I mean forever - to roast through, and when it is cooked it tastes so much milder than real garlic.  It had been a present from the Mother-Out-Law, who meant well; and then another one turned up when I wasn't looking.  It might make a decent centrepiece if cut across the middle of the bulb, doused in pepper, sea salt and olive oil; but right now the few leftover roast cloves were chopped and went in the food processor with two torn ends of brown bread from last week's sandwich loaf, and the rosemary.

The bulb of squash I halved, rubbed with 2tsp of olive oil and set to roasting cut-side down for about half an hour.  Meanwhile I processed the bread, and got out the third of a bulb of fennel I had found in the fridge.

Fennel is a wonderful thing.  Like white wine and lemon it is equally happy with chicken or fish, and comes with a free bunch of green 'garnish' if you're feeling posh but don't have any dill.  Chopped, with a finely chopped red onion and a smidge of olive oil in the pan, it caremelises beautifully.  The smell of softening fennel-and-onion in olive oil will always remind me of Saturday pasta nights with my father.  It is the smell of an Italian curryhouse, if such a thing were to exist - hot, fragrant, exotic.  The Man dislikes its liqorice taste usually but a little wouldn't kill him.  Mixed with the crumbs it would beef up the filling for the squash.

Half a courgette found snuggling up to a spot of broccoli made the green for the meal.  My art teacher used to walk past people's plates in the canteen putting cucumber on their plates 'to balance their palette'.  You should almost always have something green going on.  Tha's vitamins that is.

Also in the fridge was half a bottle of ready-to-use tomato passata, which makes for a very bland pasta sauce and an excellent inspirational base.  Three teapoons of harissa paste and the juice one one lemon made it fit to cook large chunks of chicken in.  The squash halves, turned hollow-side up and filled with filling, roasted another fifteen minutes while the chicken warmed through and we were ready to go.

So there you have it.  The secret to last-minute relatively luxurious suppers is: buying portions of meat in bulk; always having vegetables and seasonings to hand; red onions; flavourings in jars of the sort which never go off (harissa, chilli paste, curry paste, capers, anchovies, mustard) and olive oil or butter, which in small quantities make everything better.

Monday 9 July 2012

Knitted Baby Jumper Pattern


I say pattern.  Really this jumper is an experiment and a mess and I have no idea if the proportions are correct for the average baby of whatever age.  I just wanted to make something nice for the boss' first grandchild, and a teeny jumper seemed like the way to go.  I would follow a pattern, but they all rely on specific gague and I utterly cannot be arsed to find the wool/needles to fit a gague when I have non-matching wool and needles waiting to be used.  So I made it up.
Use these patterns for the contrasting details.

I think modelled on the man's teddy it looks a bit like a biker jacket.  Hopefully on the real Baby Boss it will look just as cool but in a less odd way.  Colour was intentionally picked to be gender-neutral, as were the barbed spear/flower patterns on the borders and back.

Baby Jumper From Scratch
You Will Need: Needles 3.5mm, 2 colours of soft DK wool, at least 2 balls of your main colour; 3 small buttons, darning needle (with really large eye), scissors.

Back
Cast on 45 sts.
Row 1 purl.
Six rows of 5 knit 5 purl ribbing.
Knit in stocking stitch until 3 inches long.  Insert the large flower/toothy ethnic pattern in a sympathetic colour of the same kind of wool. Finish pattern and continue in plain stst until the whole thing is 7 inches long.


Round off with another six rows of 5 knit 5 purl ribbing.
Cast off.

Front - No Buttonholes
Cast on 25 sts.
Row 1 purl.
Six rows of 5 knit 5 purl ribbing.
3 rows of plain stocking stitch.
Follow the pattern below for the border in your contrasting colour.

Knit another 2 rows of stocking stitch.
Begin decrease rows: begin every knit row with a knit-2-together until you only have approximately 10 stitches.  Check for length against your back piece - the front should come up to the bottom of the ribbing.
Finish the front with 6 rows of 5 knit 5 purl ribbing.
Cast off.

Front - with Buttonholes

Cast on 25 sts.
Row 1 purl.
Two rows of knit 5 purl 5 ribbing.
Button row: knit 2, yarnover, knit two together, knit one, finish the ribbing as usual.
Three rows of ribbing.
Button row: stitch two stitches, yarnover, stitch two together, finish the row.
Two rows of stocking stitch.
Insert the pattern; in the third pattern row, add a further yarnover and decrease stitch two stitches in.
Just after the pattern, before you begin the decreases, add another yarnover and decrease stitch two stitches in.
Complete the decrease rows and ribbing to finish, with the two fronts the same length.
Cast off.

Sleeves x 2
Cast on 20 stitches.
5 rows of knit 1 purl 1 ribbing.
3 rows of stocking stitch.
Insert the pattern for the border.  In the sixth row of the border, increase 1 at both ends of the row.
*Knit five rows of stocking stitch, then increase the next row at each end.*  Continue this pattern until your sleeves are as long as the back is wide.

Assembly
Weave in any loose ends from the different colous on each piece, using the appropriate method for your needle.  Using as much of your cast-on and cast-off ends as possible, seam the long edges of the sleeves.  Join the top edge of each front to the back, and seam around the round edge of each sleeve.  Finish off by joining the back to the fronts, putting extra strong stitches in the armpits which go / \  - across the seams on every piece.  Sew on the buttons, using a thin strand untwisted from your main wool colour as thread so that the stitches are invisible and strong.  (I hadn't done the buttons when these photos were taken).  Do up the buttons and you're ready to hand it on!