To be cooked for

I say without a scrap of hesitation that one of the nicest things in the world is to have someone cook for you. The quality of the meal is irrelevant, but a tasty one is a bonus. The people who cook for me regularly I can count on one hand. I hardly help myself, though. I can't remember the last time I fed someone who wasn't one of the people in that list. So I take some responsibility. You have to give some love to get it back; but love is energy and I have been devoting my energies to things I want to succeed at, but in some ways enjoy much less. Cooking yields instant results and that holds massive appeal for a very impatient person like me.

Being cooked for yields instant delights for all five senses, if you are there while the meal is being cooked, as was the case last night. John is notorious for his weekend post-pub cook-ups, and I was invited to dine with John and Lee rather spontaneously, at this late sodium-lit hour. John didn't want my help, so I sat and read, getting hungrier and hungrier. I could smell cola, strangely enough, I could smell turmeric, and after a while it was done.

A delicious lentil, fish, and green pepper curry with brown rice. Tomato for tang, ground almonds for mildness. John recommends stirring in ground almonds and yoghurt if you want a creamy texture and don't have cream or coconut. The curry had cloves, ginger, cardamom and cinnamon - that was the cola smell- and I landed all three bay leaves. One of my final mouthfuls had me chewing on a bit of fresh chilli. I loved it. I never buy fresh chillies any more, sadly, because I always let them get past their best. Whatever opiate-like substances chilli produces in your body coursed through me as I cycled home at 2am, in control, but high as a kite.

Thank you John Dennison.

Bakemaster and the Cookie Crew

No cookies were baked any time immediately before or after this post. This is just a reference to a late 80s house track.

I am keen on using up leftovers, and there was a half a jar of black cherries in their own juice just waiting to go all green-white and fluffy. Something needed to be done. So I threw some fat, self-raising flour and sugar together, along with a stray egg, some baking power and vanilla essence and stirred the cherries in. I contemplated adding almond essence but then decided it was too overpowering and I just wanted the sour taste of the cherries to shine through. I tried to make a strudel topping for my pudding, but having failed to consult any resource ended up with a sweet crumble topping and something which looked like this after 45-60 minutes on Gas Mark 4 in the oven:




It was designed to be eaten warm with custard or ice cream or cream. And it was. And, boy was it good! I recommend any glut of tart fruit be used up like this.

The excess crumble topping I tried to make into muffins by adding more fat, more flour and a bit of milk to wetten it. Wetten isn't a word is it? Well, it is now. I didn't think much about flavouring, and chucked in a bit of cinnamon powder as an afterthought, forgetting we had apples in the fruit bowl. I also added baking powder and filled the cake cases liberally to see if I could pull the "spilling -over-the-top" thing which I mentioned in my last post. Lo and behold, I did:

The muffin top was not very stable. It fell off as soon as I touched it. I need a more stable muffin top. This isn't over yet folks...



I seem to be reporting the a lot of sweet cookery here. This is something I want to change. I mean last night I made a spinach potato and pea curry but it wasn't very good. It tasted all right, but I could not abide what I consider to be a lack of salt and oil. I'm such a trashy eater.

I've recently become an omnivore after being pescetarian for about 9 years. This has been a bit of a problem when eating out. Yesterday, I went out for breakfast and ordered a vegetarian one because the thought of all that meat on my plate was too much. Not a big problem: I could just ask for a hybrid breakfast next time.

However, I am concerned about the welfare of the animals before they get brutally butchered for my plate, but I am as yet too self-conscious to ask, in fear that I might sound dreadfully wanky. I really shouldn't care about the staff at the cafe / restaurant think, surely it's up to me to make them aware that I care and that they should switch to more humanely treated animals. And it's not that I am scared of how I will sound to the people in my company. It's just that I know with some places I have set foot in and ordered food, it will be a really stupid thing to ask because it's highly probable that they won't have thought about it. Maybe I should just bite the bullet with this one.