Toffee Banana Crackle Trifles

Crap!  Dinner party in half an hour, haven't bought ingredients yet!  Smooth organising there E!
-Buy bananas, pasta stuff, peas (for soup).
-Make soup.  Cook half the pasta things, get pan of hot water going.  Toast porridge oats (bear with me).
-eat soup.  Finish my soup first, leave others chatting, finish pasta things.
-Eat pasta.  Finish my pasta first, start making pudding.

This is a super-easy, foolproof (if you time it right) good-looking pudding with minimum Faff Index (I would say a Faff of 4/10, because other than watching a grill (bear with me) it has absolutely no difficult steps) - which is perfect for small or large dinner gatherings.  They went down a storm, with only one complaint/suggestion from the Man which I have incorporated here.  This was lucky as I spent some of the evening going OMG why did I agree to make nice food at 5 minutes notice per course I am an idiot, and having a successful, bloggable pudding makes me feel worthy and nice again :)

Toffee Banana Crackle Triflets (Serves 4 +)
You Will Need: serving bowls; chopping board and sharp knife; baking tray; two teaspoons; small saucepan.

Number of bananas equal to number of people who deserve them
Extra thick double cream OR vanilla / nutty icecream
porridge oats
walnuts
caster sugar
butter

1) Scatter the porridge oats on the baking tray, and toast them under the grill until branflake coloured and fragrant, about 4 minutes.  Allow the tray to cool.
2) Cut the bananas into narrow diagonal pieces and arrange the pieces in the bowls, one nana per person.
3) Dollop cream or icecream on the nanas.
4) Scatter porridge oats on the cream to give a good scatty coating.  Chop the walnuts not too finely and scatter these too.
5) In the small pan, heat about a heaped dessertspoonful of caster sugar per person and a *tiny* slither of butter over a high heat, until the sugar has completely melted and is a rich dark brown.
6) Using your clean teaspoon, drizzle the toffee crackling over the puddings.  Listen to the crackly noise!  Try to avoid getting the crackle on the sides of the bowls as it will dry on and be harder to get off.

ProTip: When washing up toffee apparatus, boil a kettle and use to rinse / soften baked on sugar, and scrape at it with wooden implements.  Don't try to pick at it with your fingernails or other apparatus it will just break things and you.

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.

Afternoon Tea Sandwiches

Afternoon tea is a Great British Institution.  It is a Posh Thing.  It is something 'the Set' might have done 'properly' in the 17 and 1800s.  Messing it up is not done.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to mess up afternoon tea.  There are only a few boxes to tick, and there are multiple acceptable ways to experiment with the content, theme and context of the event (cupcakes!  Steampunk! Picnics!  Booze!)  Here is what I reckon constitutes a 'proper' tea:

• Teas, plural, available - preferably some to be served with milk (e.g. Assam) and some without (Lady Grey).
• Scones, with real clotted cream, and at least two kinds of jam - a red/purple one and an orange one, minimum.
• Cake - either individual chunks, such as Lamingtons, brownies, or other traybakes; or a single large and creamy edifice.
• Finger Sandwiches.
• Sandwiches must be able to be eaten in two bites or less.
• They must have the crusts cut off, or it's not posh.
• The shape of the eventual sandwich (triangle or rectangle) is immaterial.
• Fillings may include spreads, but these must be savoury (not peanut butter).  
• Faffless but uber-kitzch adornments such as cress should be rampant.

Of all the boxes, it is the sandwiches which are most often overlooked.  They do not make as photogenic an arrangement on the three-tiered stand as the cakes; it is the scones which are seen to be the true essentials, and 'tea and sandwiches' doesn't have the same ring.  Nevertheless afternoon tea is a Meal, a small meal but a Meal all the same, and all posh meals have multiple courses.  

The Approved Sandwich-Making Method (appropriated from Douglas Adams)
The chief among knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife. It must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist onto the beautifuly proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder.  With just four more dexerous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished.

Suggested Flavours For Afternoon Tea Finger-Sandwiches

Meats
Roast beef / steak and mustard.
CurryNation Chicken: to make simple sauce, finely chop half an onion, fry in butter with 2tsp of cumin, coriander and a sprinkle of turmeric, and add coconut cream until spreadable.  Coat diced fried chicken in the mixture and assemble the sandwiches as above.
Fish
Smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill
Mackerel and horseradish
Veggie
Cucumber.  N.B. I could write a whole post on the Correct way to make cucumber sandwiches; the key thing is to peel the cucumber, slice thinly and drain the slices before assembly in a colander, scattered with salt.  This stops them going soggy.  Dress with salad dressing to increase flavour.
Cheese and chutney.

Failsafe Chocolate Mousse Panacotta

Originally presented with strawberries and cream...

I say failsafe because I didn't use a recipe to make this first time and it still didn't fail.  There is a lot of literature out there which says that if you do the Wrong Thing to anything which involves chocolate, you are a Bad Person and your concoction will be a Désastre.  They then give a lot of proscriptive instructions.  I will try to make my instructions as much 'stir-it-and-see' as I can get.
The literature also generally involves a lot of 'milk or tea first in cup'-type arguments about whether to have hot chocolate and cold cream, or hot both, or hot cream and cold chocolate.  I went for the latter simply because my 'recipe' involves melting gelatine, and this seemed easier to do in cream than choccy.
People also talk a lot of guff about Valhrona and the importance of using 'really GOOD QUALITY' chocolate for any and all things.  I may be very middle class, but Sainsbury's cooking, Dark, has always been good enough for me and mine.

For the moulds I cannot recommend silicone cupcake cases highly enough - they give such a lovely even shape. But you can always serve mousse in little pretty cups (or even ugly cups) if occasion calls.

Chocolate Mousse Panacotta
  - to make well in advance of eating
You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, measuring jug, small saucepan, wooden spoon, 2 cups, small bowl, fork, whisk, large bowl, moulds/serving dishes.  If using silicone moulds, plates.  Serving platelets.

100g dark chocolate
150-160ml double cream, plus dribble to decorate
1 leaf leaf gelatine
2 eggs
fruit to serve

1) Break the chocolate and chop it into small slivery pieces.   Put in the larger bowl.  Soak the leaf of gelatine in a cup of cold water for about five minutes.  Meanwhile,
2) heat the cream gently in the saucepan until hot-bath-hot to touch.  Separate the eggs, with the whites going in the small bowl and the yolks into the second cup.  Beat the yolks with the fork and mix them into the hot cream to make a quick custard.  Fish the gelatine out of the water and add to the cream.  Stir to dissolve.
3) Pour the hot cream over the chocolate, and stir until the chocolate is all melted.  If choccy lumps give you trouble, rinse and refill your saucepan with water, plonk the bowl on top of the saucepan, and heat again, stirring continuously.  This gentle method will stop the mixture from curdling.*
4) Whisk your eggwhites to a stiff-peak stage, and gently whisk them 1/3 at a time into the chocolate mixture.
5) Fill your bowls or moulds with mousse mix.  If using floppy individual silicone moulds, you may find that sitting them on a plate stops them from wibbling EVERYWHERE as you move them to the fridge.

6) Allow to set in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
7) Cut your fruit decoratively; dismount your puds onto little plates, garnish with fruity pretentiousness and drizzle with cream á la Michelin.  This pudding should have a Faff -to- Posh ratio of about 1:5.

*This is as close as I get to telling people what to do to their chocolate.  Provided you heat it using the gentlest methods, especially when adding more fat (i.e. cream), it is much more forgiving than you might think.

ProTip: I did mention to my boyfriend (after he puzzled over the ingredients resulting in the stipple-effect look) that there was gelatine in these, and he made a face. 'I know it's fine, and you can't taste it, but...' Gelatine still means packets of cubular strawberry jelly to many people, and even though I was using leaf posh stuff (which is both a ProTip in itself and tasteless) negative associations are strong.  So if you want to keep your choccy-beneficiaries out of the loop and act all mysterious, feel free not to share the recipe too widely.

Moroccan Main Dishes

Here you can see the remains of the Easter Feast which i created on Saturday.  Although it felt like a long day of cooking had happened, none of these things actually take very much work - just monitoring.

Slow-Cooked Spicy Lamb Shanks

You Will Need: Oven tray, tinfoil, sharp knife and chopping board

1 lamb shank per person (or to share between 2 unhungry people)

jar of anchovies

clove of garlic per lamb shank

spice mix - to include coriander, cumin, salt, black pepper, chopped garlic

1) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.  Line the oven tray with tinfoil.

2) If you don't know the weight of your meat, weigh it.  Stab the lamb shanks in their juiciest bits.  Chop anchovies in half and garlic cloves into thin slices, and push an anchovy and sliver firmly into each stab with your fingers.

3) Arrange the shanks in the tin and sprinkle over the spice mix.  I used a bought tin of generic Moroccan goodness I had from years ago, but you could make your own.  Use enough to coat the shanks on both sides and rub well in.

4) Cover the shanks with another layer of tinfoil, and tuck in the edges.  Wham in the oven, then turn it down  to 150 degrees C.  Bake for about 40 minutes per pound and then some if you can manage it.

Lamb Kofta Kebabs

You Will Need: wooden skewers, oven tray, large bowl, fork, chopping board, knife, cheesegrater.

Mint to the left already looking limp

500g lamb mince
half a red onion
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
large bunch of fresh mint
1 egg

1) Soak the wooden skewers in water to stop them from catching fire under the grill.
2) Preheat the grill.
3) Grate as much as possible of the onion on the larger holes of the cheesegrater; chop the garlic and mint finely.  Add to the mince in the large bowl.  Break in the egg to one side and beat with the fork.  Now use the fork to mush it all together until smooth.
4) Get your hands in and make comfortably sized phallic lumps of meat; slide a wet skewer into each one.  Place on the oven tray as you go.  If you have any left over, make the meat into patties to fry like burgers - they won't need any extra fat.
5) Grill until well browned, turning once during cooking to get both sides.  These heat up well in the oven or back under the grill later if you should need to grill a big tray of something else:

Stuffed Peppers
You Will Need: Oven tray, chopping board, knife, small bowl, kettle

Large bell peppers, half per person or two for a veggie main
olive oil
couscous
sultanas or chopped apricots
flaked almonds or pistachios
cumin
salt
greek cheese e.g. feta

1) Preheat the grill.
2) Cut the peppers lengthwise, removing any seeds but keeping the stems on for decoration.  Pour a little oil into each one, roll it around the inside to coat and rub on the outside as well.  Grill on the oven tray until blackening, then turn over to do the other side.
3) Meanwhile, make your couscous as per packet instructions - about 2 dessertspoonfuls per pepper or less.  Add a handful of fruit and nuts and a pinch of salt and cumin to make things interesting.  Chop the cheese into small pieces.
4) Take the grilly peppers out, fill with couscous and top with cheese.  Put back under the grill until the cheese is browning and squidgy.

Moroccan Starters

Top right: couscous with flaked almonds, black pepper and ground cumin

This Easter I indulged my friends eating and my cooking by conceiving an enormous Moroccan feast.  There were six of us to dinner, and there are still leftovers to feed 2 people, so do take my measurements with a pinch of salt and pay more attention to the proportions to get appropriate amounts of everything.

Tabbouleh
You Will Need: Large bowl, large saucepan, colander, chopping board, sharp knife, lemon squeezer

300g bulghur wheat or pearl barley
6 large fresh tomatoes
large red onion
large bunch of curly-leaved parsley
juice 3 lemons
2 tablespoons olive oil

1) Bring a pan of water to the boil.  Simmer the grains for about 40 minutes, until nutty but definitely chewable.  You may wish to do this in advance, drain and keep in the fridge until you are nearly ready to make the rest of dinner.
2) Finely chop the tomatoes, onion and parsley.
3) Juice the lemons.  Mix all of the ingredients together in the large bowl.

 Grilled Tomatoes
You Will Need: Roasting tin, knife, kitchen foil
1 packet cherry tomatoes on the vine
1/2 packet Feta or other hard Greek cheese
flaked almonds
olive oil

1) Preheat the grill.
2) Chop the feta into small pieces. Line the tin with tinfoil, arrange the ingredients and drizzle with oil.
3) Grill until the tomato stems are blackened and the skins are wrinkled off, about 7-10 minutes.

Grape and Pine-Nut Salad


You Will Need: large bowl, lemon squeezer, small frying pan

1 bag sweet fresh salad
1 packet white grapes
pine nuts
2 lemons
olive oil

1) Toast the pine nuts in the little frying pan: get the pan hot, pour in the nuts without any oil and shuffle them until browned and fragrant.
2) Squeeze the lemons.
3) In the large bowl, mix the salad, grapes and nuts; dress with lemon juice and olive oil.

Scrumptious Pancakes for Pancake Day - rather late

Left to right - first cock-up, second recovery, third perfect!  Blueberry sauce top left

Ok, so I should have had this up on Monday probably so that you guys were all set to follow the recipe on Shrove Tuesday.  But given the number of people on my Facebook bemoaning that they missed Pancake Day, or are planning a binge at the weekend, and the fact that there is a Pancake Day every year - here is what we ate this year.
One batch of the Simple batter makes a 'round' to serve two people.  I recommend making one plain round, then having a rest while you make a sweet round for pudding.

Simple Pancake Batter - adapted from the GoodFood website
You Will Need: Scales, two measuring jugs, spoon, whisk, frying pan, trusty spatula with fine edge, kitchen roll, plate.
1 egg
100g plain flour
pinch salt
300ml milk
glug vegetable oil (about 1 dessertsponful)
butter for frying

For sweeter pancakes
1 dessertspoonful caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence

1) Turn the hob on, and begin to get your frying pan really hot.
2) In the larger measuring jug, stir together the  flour and salt.  (If making sweet ones, add the sugar at this point as well).  Make a 'well' in the flour by pushing it to the sides with your spoon; break in the egg.
3) Measure out the milk in the other jug.  Add half of it to the flour and egg, and whisk well.  Mid-way through, scrape around the bottom edge of the jug with the spoon to pick up any flour which is sticking there.  Whisk this in.  Whisk in the rest of the milk, the vegetable oil, and the vanilla essence if using until really smooth.
4) Cut a little knoblet of butter and put it on your frying pan.  It should froth almost instantly.  Get a bundle of kitchen roll, and use this to smear the butter evenly all around the pan.  Save this bundle for the next pancake.  When the fat is smoking, pour in a good measure of batter - this will depend on the size of your pan.  Too little is more fiddly to deal with than too much, generally.
5) Swirl around carefully to get an even circle.  The first one is always a cock-up - don't panic, it will still be edible!  Wait until the batter has turned a matte, beige colour rather than cream, then work your spatula around the edge.  Shake the pan gently to loosen the middle.
6) I will not advise you to attempt throwing your pancakes, as in my experience this always results in wasted food and mess.  Instead, shuffle your spatula right in under the middle, and if necessary grab the near edge with your (clean) fingers to pull the pancake over.  The second side only needs about 10 seconds.
7) Slip the pancake onto the plate, and put a sheet of kitchen roll or a piece of greaseproof paper on top of it.  Wipe the buttery  kitchen roll over the pan to coat it again, and splosh the next pancake in.  Repeat!

Frankie's Shaken Pancake Mix For Students
An alternative mixing method, first shown me by my friend Frankie, is suitable for those celebrating in a less well-stocked kitchen.  Save an empty 2-pint plastic milk carton.  Peel off the label so that you can see all the markings easily.  Making sure that the bottle is clean, carefully break in the egg.  Add plain flour level up to the quarter-pint mark.  Add milk up to the half-pint mark.  Put the lid on hard and shake as though making cocktails! This makes pretty thick batter which is more drop-sconny and easier to handle.

Fillings
Soggy Duck Pancakes
YWN: chopping board, knife, frying pan, small plates, ramekin, teaspoon

1 pack mini Gressingham duck breast fillets, cut into 1cm wide strips
6-7 spring onions, white sections of, cut into quarters lengthwise
plum sauce / Hoi Sin sauce
Fry the duck pieces until tender but not chewy, only a few minutes.  Serve the components on small plates with sauce in a ramekin, to assemble at the table.

Spinach, Asparagus and Goat's Cheese Pancakes
YWN: Oven, oven tray, tinfoil, dish/Pyrex/bowl and clingfilm, chopping board, knife, frying pan, plates

Bag of leaf spinach
bunch asparagus
packet goat's cheese
3-4 rashers unsmoked streaky bacon
Before you make your pancakes: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Line the oven tray with tinfoil.  Cut the hard ends off the bottom of the asparagi and lay them in the oven tray; drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper.  Jam in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Make the pancakes (as above).
Steam the spinach in a little water in the microwave, for about 7 minutes until mushy.  Chop the bacon into small pieces, and fry until crunchy.

When ready, take the asparagus out of the oven.   Put them on a plate for now.  To assemble the dish, plop a line of spinach down the middle of a pancake.  Add 2-3 stems of asparagus.  Sprinkle with bacon.  Roll the pancake around this assemblage, and put the tube into the oven tray.  When you have run out of ingredients, cut the goat's cheese into slices and lay over the tubes.  Bake cannelloni-style for a few minutes, until the cheese has melted and the panakes are warmed through again.

Blueberry Pancake Filling
YWN: Wooden spoon, small saucepan
Packet of fresh blueberries
Hank of butter
Splash of water
Heaped dessertspoonful of caster sugar

Bang all of the ingredients into a small saucepan and heat on a high heat.  Simmer until all of the blueberries have exploded, the sugar has dissolved, and the liquid has become a purple syrup which dribbles pleasantly off the spoon.  Serve with vanilla icecream if desired.

Horseradish

It takes some amount of work to turn these:

into this:

but somehow, over the New Year bank holiday, my man managed it.  Just occasionally he becomes obsessed with an idea, a Make or Do, in the same way that I will - and is determined to Make or Do it.  Advice will be sought from the internet, his mother, brother, and indeed all and sundry who wander into his line of sight, and he will panic about doing things 'properly'.  This is a man who will look up the 'correct' salad dressing for cucumber sandwiches.  The vagueness of advice available about dealing with horseradish did not perturb him for long, however.  Having once grasped the idea, and then the root, from his father's garden, and got said roots home, nothing would do but that homemade horseradish sauce was made. 

You will need a food processor of some sort.  Obviously in the old days this stuff had to be hand-grated, but even using the supergraters mentioned in my Orange Cake post this would take forever and be dangerously eye-watering.  He used his mother's Magimix to pulverise roughly chopped pieces of peeled root.

Having crumbed up your roots, you will need a saucepan and some creme fraiche.  At this point any mixture of the two will be either too mild or mouth-scrapingly hot; the best way we think to get the flavour correct is to very gently cook the mixture, taste-testing as you go.  Adding vinegar, a small amount of icing sugar and/or flour is also an option, although not one which I saw the application of in detail.  The key thing is correct flavour balanced with correct texture.

Once done the sauce will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, slowly getting milder and milder.  We've been eating it with cold cuts and smoked mackerel on toast.  Dyed green it's also a cheap substitute for wasabi.  Added to mustard it forms Tewksbury mustard.

Real horseradish is apparently very easy to grow in Britain; the leaves are also edible, although they have the typical popularity of tuber-top greens at the moment.  The boy's second rapidly-grasped idea was to grow our own, although he would have to indulge in some guerilla colonisation of his mother's garden to make this happen.  Maybe one day ... but for now, another seasonal jarred thing to Make and Do has been created which I'm sure will become a traditional part of our culinary year.

Book Review: Cooking Without Recipes

For some reason, I got given a lot of cookbooks yesterday.  Do you think that maybe people might be under the impression that I like cooking?

One of them was this.  My mother's note with it said 'saw this and thought of you' - and she was so right.    This book says what I have been saying for many years - that recipes are all very well, but that they are only a guideline.  Except when baking, you can usually just ask Nigella what she thinks chestnuts are for and just wing it.  Even when baking, start with a basic sponge mix at 180 and whatever else you put in it (except too much liquid) can't go far wrong.

Structure
The book starts nicely with a bit of family background, with the author talking about his aged, widower father finally learning to cook all the dishes he loved best.  It's a bittersweet tale as father dies before he achieves his goal of effortless cooking, but it's a lovely example of the 'if so-and-so can, then you can' school of encouragement from food writers.  Delia tries it with herself but I don't know if any of us believe her.

Moving on, he describes the basic tools needed for decent cooking - big pan, frying pan, pestle and mortar. Not much else.  The pestle and mortar is a very nice touch, non-obvious and an encouragement to get mashing unusual flavours.  No-one uses enough marinades and rubs in this country.  The big pan is the Etch-A-Sketch of the kitchen - create anything you like by twisting the gas knobs, and if it goes wrong just shake it all up and make soup.  Soup is Mr Dundas' fallback cock-up dish, which is again a philosophy I can get behind.  What happens to cocked-up soup however remains a mystery.

Then he goes into the main description of what sort of cooking you might try with various ingredients.  They're divided very roughly into meat, fish, veg, nuts and seeds etc. and there are some great suggestions for combos (eg. seafood and vermouth) and basic sauces with which to experiment.

Influences and flavours
There is a lot of French in this book I think, but then I was never quite sure what 'French' cooking was as a child.  To me, using a lot of garlic and herbs became second nature watching my parents, so I never made the distinction between French and British.  The big 5 flavours in this book are virgin olive oil, garlic, salt, peppercorns of various colours and lemons.  Not unfamiliar to many I hope.  I've already vowed to have more lemons in my kitchen when I get one of really my own, partly because the Man and I drink a lot of G&Ts and partly because Dundas is right - they are a very versatile flavour.

Suggestions, Hints and Tips
The biggest tip in the book, most repeated and consistent is 'look at the food.'  Look at it, poke it, prod it, smell it, know it, and start to work out what it is for.  Is it a crunchy thing, an oily thing, a gamey thing, a slow-cook or fast-cook thing?  Then you can start to mix and match it with other things.  He gives some guidance on meats, and how to get the best out of them; a couple of not-really-recipes along the way like 'squash whole tomatoes into the English Breakfast pan so that they explode tomato over everything else' (I'm paraphrasing).  Generally though you are left to make up your own mind, mistakes and -along the way -cock-up soup.  There is also the usual (nowadays) tiresome evangelisation of local shops and farmers markets etc, which we all know we should shop at more but won't.  I forgive him.

Writing
I forgive everything because the writing is so very lovely.  Pretty unsubtly Significant Othered (the mention of the many men in his life comes early in the intro) Dundas is constantly referencing how good it will be to cook for friends -or a lover.  Favourite turn of phrase about the necessity of lemons -'Being ill without hot toddy with lemon and Scotch whisky is like being in love without Champagne.'  Possible, but not nearly as nice.  Brilliant.  Unlike my other favourite gay cook, Nigel Slater (who Dundas is also justly fond of), his writing evokes not the simple, tasty but rather lonely supper for one man and his food but the joyous shared experiment.  There is a 'we're all in this together' about the whole book.  None of Nigel's small, perfect, seasonal portions here - it's all bold, random, hearty and 'whatever you fancy'.

Verdict
I recommend that everyone read this book.  It's great inspiration for even the most established foodie, and the best call-to-arms I could think of for anyone who's just trying to make it on their own.  Dundas and I share the despair at the cook-by-numbers, Delia generation who have no idea how food actually works, just do as they're told until it comes out 'like it should.'  Shake off the shackles of How To Cook, and pick up Cooking Without Recipes.  Then put it down, buy a pestle and mortar, pour yourself a G&T and wait for inspiration to strike.

Leek And Pig Pie

It would seem from the titles of pages I brought up whilst seeking the above image that there are many people who don't know what to do with leeks.  Have never tried them.  Never realised they liked them.  They aren't the most staple vegetable in the world - being a little more expensive than broccoli (to take a staple veg at random) does not help them.  But they are well worth the extra few pence a pound.  There's nothing like that smooth, onion-ish greenery sweet taste.

I always knew I liked them, or rather was going to be brought up to like them, because a favourite dish of Dear Mama's was leek and bacon pie.  It's a classic, just as good cold as hot, a lunchbox standby when buttering sandwiches was too much to bear.  I used to get strange looks pulling a corner slice out at school but who cares.  With the man away on holiday again, I can eat whatever I damn well want, and as he doesn't like leeks (!) I rustled up the following just to spite him.

Leek and Pig Pie
You Will Need: Rectangular pie dish, ovenproof and about 25cm x 15cm; scales; rolling pin; large bowl; dinner knife; chopping board; sharp knife; small saucepan; small bowl.
Plain flour
Butter
Salt
Semi-skimmed milk
about 400g thin-cut lean pork, or pack of bacon, or mixture
One large or two small leeks
Three or four eggs
Cheddar cheese

1) Make the pastry (YES YOU CAN don't be a wuss).  Measure out 4oz flour and 2 oz butter.  Cut the butter into lots of little slices.  In the large bowl, rub the flour and fat together with your bare hands until you have a fine breadcrumby mess.  Hot tip - take your rings off first and put them somewhere safe, pastry is hard to get out of gem fittings.  Add a large pinch of salt and a slosh of milk.  Stir about with the dinner knife until it looks solid enough to get a handle on.  Handle it into a ball.  Wrap said ball in clingfilm and jam it in the fridge until needed.  SEE WAS THAT SO HARD**
2) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (as usual).  Chop the leeks into 1cm circles, and push the middles so that they fall apart into rings.  'Sweat' these with a little more butter in the saucepan, by melting the butter, adding leeks and putting the lid on over a low-medium heat.  Toss the pan (with lid on) occasionally to stop them sticking. Do until softened.
3) Set the leeks aside in the bowl.  Cut the pig into small pieces.  Brown the meat in the same pan, until all browned.  Drain off any watery fatty liquid (this will only sog the pie).  Mix the leeks back in off the heat.
4) Scatter flour on your worksurface.  Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it into a rectangle about 3mm thick.  Shuffle into the pie dish.  Trim the edges; if there are places where the pastry reaches over and under the edge, cut the overs off and press them into the unders.  Scatter the pig/leek mix into the pastry case.
5) Beat together a few eggs, enough to mostly cover the meat.  Pour over.  If you think you'll be short of egg, beat in some milk to make it go further.
6) Cut slices of cheese and lay them over the surface.  Bake for half an hour until golden brown at the edges. 

**Note for pastry virgins: I was one of you once.  Never again.  But- if you feel I have been unduly harsh here, I may do a proper 'pastry 101' post soon.

Sun-dried tomato beef sauce

One of the first things that my mother taught me to make - or the first dish that I internalised - was spaggy bol.  It's not spaghetti bolognese, the real thing, the way the Italians make it; I highly doubt that they put julienned carrots in theirs, or use quite so much Lea and Perrins.  But it's bloody good.  Having said that, it can be improved upon.

The man puts red wine in it.  And more Lea and P.  And sun-dried tomatoes.  And he likes the mince to be in big lumps - or does he?  Maybe that's just how it ends up.  And slow-cooked in the Le Creuset in the oven.  And not on spaghetti.  Because spaghetti is a recipe for white-shirt-death.

Today I'm making something mincey and red and (according to the man's mother) 'oh my god Elisabeth garlic'y - but I can't even call it spag bol.  It's just going to be hearty and pleasant on something starch-related.  Here it is.

Stuff To Put On Stuff What Is Beefy And That
You Will Need: Chopping board; chopping knife; vegetable peeler; cheese grater; casserole pan; teaspoon; wooden spoon/spatula; oven gloves

1 jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
400g beef mince
(small lump of steak, thinly sliced (leftover from the other day))(optional) (lots of brackets)
one carrot
one onion
half bulb garlic
half bottle red wine
Lea and Perrins
tomato purée

1) Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C.
2) Heat a few teaspoons of oil from the jar of tomatoes in the casserole.  Finely chop the onions and garlic; into little squares, or half-rings if preferred.  If you have some, finely slice the steak.
3) Fry the onion and garlic on a high heat for about 2 minutes, then turn the heat down.  Add the mince and steak if using, and turn over until it's all brown on the outsides, more or less.  Add more oil from the jar if needed.  Turn the heat down some more.
4) Add half a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, draining them on the side of the jar with the spoon as you go.
5) Grate the carrot on the cheese grater.  Add to the pan.  Stir.
6) Slosh generously with Lea and P; add the wine.  Spooge generously with tomato purée.  Stir.
7) Bring to a simmer, then take off the hob and put in the oven.
8) Every hour or so, take the pan out, give it another stir and add water if needed to re-cover the ingredients.
9) Boil/roast starch of choice to serve.  Blob.  Nom.

How To Throw A Dinner Party As Far As You Can

Tonight in the name of Friendship, Love, Career Prospects, and all good things, I am throwing a dinner party for the boyfriend, myself and two very good friends with Rather Good Jobs which I hope will rub off on me.  The food has been calculated to delight the eyes (male friend) the palate (female friend) the stomach (boyfriend) and the nerves (me).  Calculated is the right word; like the Bistromatics in Hitchhikers' Guide, dinner parties have their own ratios, sums and correlations which must be measured before you can start.  Once you have your totals, you can throw a dinner party like a Lithuanian shotputter, which is to say well.

step One: Calculate the relationships between all the people you wish to invite, and subtract or add until everybody has at least one person to talk to.  When introducing a new person to a group, calculate the contents of the group so as to include your most welcoming and outgoing friends, so as to involve the new person automatically.

step Two: Work out what you want to make.  This involves several variables:
-Dietary requirements, including allergies and so-and-so who say they hate cream and are therefore not a human being
-Time to prepare.  Starters where possible should be cold and made the night before, or easily reheated before guests sit down (e.g. soup).  I have made things difficult for myself by making a cook-on-the-day starter, but it looks posh and comes with a preparable-ahead and impressive sauce.
Main courses should be started before guests arrive and ready by the time you've finished starters.  Time the arrival of guests and amount of booze available accordingly.  Once again I have broken my own rule by making something which will need to be prepared while starters are still happening for everyone else.
Puddings should always be reheatable at a moment's notice, to go in when the main course comes out, or cold and prepared the night before.  This time I have managed to obey; the pudding is already only awaiting presentation.
-Faff.  The Faff Index is personal and varies greatly.  A general rule of thumb is that you should never expend more Faff on a dinner party than 7:5, where 7 is party and 5 is your usual tolerance when cooking for yourself.
-Cuisine.  It's often nice to have all your dishes from the same area, like Spain or Italy, as it creates a Theme (i.e. Posh) and means you can use all the same cookbook.

step Three: Calculate the amount of food needed.  This is not the same as the number of people; some (like me) can only manage halves of everything (but being hostess I will tolerate leftovers.)  Boyfriends on the other hand usually go back for seconds.  Most people will eat more main course than everything else, and more pudding than they say they will. The sums are something like this:

Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to the number of courses
Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to number of eggs/floz cream used in meal total
Size of portions of courses is inversely proportional to the poshness of each course

Let Starter= s.  If S=1, Main Course =2 and Pudding (P) = 1.7 (Oh, Go On Then, Just A Slither).

step Four: Shopping For Posh
Regarding the Faff Index mentioned earlier, you can reduce the Index whilst increasing the poshness of your meal by adding what is known in my family as 'Garnish, that's what that is.'  For example:
-slices of citrus fruit, thin, cut along a radius and twisted to stand on things
-corainder, parsley or mint sprigs, or chopped and sprinkled chives
-grated chocolate off an ordinary large-hole cheese grater
-cream, oil, condiment or balsamic drizzled in an artistic drizzle
-chillies cut on the diagonal to reveal the seeds
And, my personal favourite and trick for this evening:
-Colourful, foreign and where possible tiny vegetables, and a variety of them.

step Five: Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!
You don't have to be all 'T-minus etc. eighteen hundred hours' about this, but do work out before you start what needs doing in what order.  Then when you're turning back to the cooking after five minutes talking and drinking gin, you won't have really forgotten where you are or what you're supposed to be doing.

Let's see how it goes...

Borscht

This is really a post about leftovers, especially garden leftovers.  Whilst (very sadly) unable to grow my own vegetables, I was bequeathed some home-grown things by the boyf's mother what was probably weeks ago now.  The potatoes and beetroot have kept well in the fridge, being roots which could traditionally keep a whole winter in a freezing Lithuanian cellar.  It is time they were used up.

It was (as usual) stepmother N who introduced me to borscht as a concept for home cooking; having previously thought of it as something foreign to be perfected by restaurants, I have now realised it to be as perfectable and yet homely as Momma's Apple Pie.  A quick search for a basic recipe on the Good Food website turned up some VERY angry commenters, each of whom had a different 'authentic' take on what is a national dish for about 9 different nationalities.  Given how little I have left in the fridge of any suitability, and my woeful lack of Eastern European ancestry, I present to you my riff on borscht - or what might be called Boish - 'almost Borscht', for the purists.  All nine of them.

Boish
You Will Need: Large pan, wooden spoon, large-hole grater, kettle and measuring jug, chopping board and sharp knife, potato peeler, apron or unfavourite clothes to wear (beets are super-purple), large dinner spoon and bowl :)

Knob of butter
Red onion
Two beetroot
Three potatoes, medium-sized
One sad tomato (as opposed to very fresh, happy tomato)
Remains of head of savoy cabbage
One teaspoon Bouillon veg stock powder (from all good retailers)
750ml boiling water
Approx. tablespoonful tasty vinegar
(sour cream optional serving suggestion - I didn't have any)

1) Peel and grate the potatoes and beetroot; chop the remaining nubs finely.  Set the striplets aside.  Peel and finely chop the onion.
2) Gently fry and soften the onion in the pan, with the knob of butter.  I use lightly salted butter for all my fat requirements nowadays, as it goes with pretty much everything, especially toast.
3) Boil the kettle.  Make 750ml of stock in the measuring jug with the Bouillon powder (that's a brand, and a good one, but it doesn't matter what you use.  It's best of course just to always have stock left over, but that's another story.)
4)  Add the beetroot and potato to the onion, and let the potato go purple before adding some of the stock.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to simmer.
5)  Finely chop the cabbage and tomato.  Add to the soup.  If it looks too chunky, add more stock.  SImmer for approx. 25 minutes, or one episode of 30 Rock.
6)  At the last 5 minutes before it's ready, add some red wine vinegar to taste.  Borscht is characterised by a sour taste, which is what the optional cream is for taking the bite out of.
7)  Serve hot or chilled, blended or chunky - although chunky is more authentic, and involves slightly less washing-up.  If you're feeling really posh, put some dill or lovage on the surface and get admiring cheffy glances from your co-diners.