Note for Dan

Should you want to recreate the polenta pizza thing I made for our dinner earlier this week, follow the following:

1. Boil a kettle. Slice a medium-sized onion and fry it until soft and translucent. Add a heaped cupful of polenta and stir. Add the water from the kettle. Add slowly and make into a thick porridge, stirring continuously to make sure there are no lumps. Add a glug of oil, stir in a heaped teaspoon of pesto, a handful of frozen peas, salt, pepper and a glug of vinegar. Taste it. Polenta is ridiculously hard to make taste nice. If it's lacking in salt, hold your horses for a sec. Put the grill on. Generously grease a baking tray and spread the polenta mixture out onto it as thinly as possible. You might want to sprinkle some coarse rock salt onto it now. Stick it in the grill until it is crusty and has browned a little.

2. While the polenta is grilling, you will have time to do the toppings:

• Fry some mushroom slices with salt, pepper and garlic and set aside.
• Defrost 4 chunks of frozen chopped spinach (this will be easier when we get a microwave but for now, heat with a bit of water in a pan. When defrosted, season, add freshly grated nutmeg and stir through some cream. (If you're using non-dairy cream, make sure it's not too sweet. I used oat cream). You could probably do this with fresh spinach too. Keep warm.
• Heat up a can of chopped tomatoes with a bit of dried basil, salt, pepper, garlic powder (I was feeling lazy) and chopped black olives. Keep warm.
• Your polenta should be ready now. Cut into slices and slop your toppings on, er, on top.

It's really nice cold the next day for your lunch as well. You can have it next time. This is dish was too delish for pictures. Or mail me one.

A Boozy Stew

It started off with thoughts of red wine and red wine alone. This was to be my main ingredient.

A kind of Mediterranean stew

red wine
sausages
brown lentils
cannelini beans
1.5 cans of tomatoes
black olives (pitted) 
sundried tomatoes
onion and garlic cooked in olive oil
a dab of mustard
fresh roughly chopped parsley (added at the last minute)

No salt was added to this dish, as the sundried tomatoes and olives had plenty. The fresh parsley is important as it cuts through the richness and the salt.

No dumplings, potatoes or bread for this stew, just grilled polenta squares, to which I had added smoked paprika, bouillon powder and chopped sundried tomato pieces while it was in the porridge stage.

I used the stove-top to cook this, not realising that I could have made it as a casserole.

I have realised the food I cook is "feminine". Its function is not to bedazzle upon first glance, but to satisfy. It also tends to warm, comfort, nourish and sustain. I do sometimes wish the food I made were more "masculine", e.g. make fancy stacks of things with skid marks of sauce, or beautiful tiny things jewelled with even tinier feathery dewy things and painstaking detail, but the appearance of food is not my passion. The first bite may be with the eye, but where I can, I try to give the nose a head start.

One other thing before I go, it was Eid-ul-Adha recently. It reminded me of a Sudanese colleague an at old workplace of mine telling me that for Eid where she was from, a sheep or lamb is killed and cooked out in the street. The resulting food is given out to any passers by who aren't fortunate enough to have their own, and I thought how nice it was that people share their food without making such a big fuss about doing it. It has more Christmas spirit than Christmas in this country seems to have where we are all holed up, only interacting with a small group of people as we stuff our faces with mince pies and Quality Street.

A Birthday Feast

I had a birthday party, so this is an entry about what we had to eat.

I had lots of plain corn tortilla chips to serve with the following dips:

monkfish ceviche - a Nigella Lawson recipe, available on the internet. This was good. The dried oregano in it gave it a really nice taste. My friend Fintan liked it and he doesn't like any kind of seafood. That's what I call a result. WHEAT FREE

cannelini bean dip - this is my own invention and the nearest thing to hummus which was seen at the party that night. cannelini beans, lemon juice, oil, possibly some sugar, chilli, powdered cinnamon blended until smooth. It was nice but I still have a lot lefT. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

roasted tomato salsa - as with hummus, I sometimes get a bit bored of tomato salsa so decided to roast the tomatoes, onion and garlic before making a dip out of them. I liked this a lot and would make it again. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

roquemole - yes, another Nigella dip of mashed avocado, roquefort, sour cream and chopped pickled jalapenos. This tasted good, apart from the fact that you couldn't actually taste the avocado and then because of the lack of lemon, the avocado went brown very quickly therefore losing aesthetic appeal very rapidly. WHEAT FREE, GARLIC FREE

guacamole - thank you Nazmia for making this for me when I was rushed off my feet. You really can't go wrong with this. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

skordalia - I made way too much of this creamy Greek garlic dip made of potato and olive oil. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

Also, there was:

brown basmati and black beans - my own ad hoc invention just to provide a contrast to the very strong tasting food which was on the menu. With the rice and the beans was chopped fresh parsley and lemon. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

vietnamese dumplings- These had a filling of spicy soy mince and cabbage. Dan offered to make these from the book Another Meal is Possible by Isy Morgenmuffel. He made them for me once and they were very addictive. However, they were time consuming to assemble so I bought ready-made, ready rolled dumpling wrappers. He piled them altogether in a beautiful rose shape, but they all stuck together and were ruined. They could not even be saved by shallow frying. VEGAN

spring rolls - very labour intensive and a bit rubbery because too spring roll wrapper was wrapped on top of each other. Maybe make them bigger next time. The filling of fried spiced tofu sticks, fried oyster mushroom, pickled bamboo strips, carrot / red or yellow pepper / cucumber stick, fresh mint worked very well.These were served with dipping sauce. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

mango and fried halloumi - this was something of a centrepiece. I shallow fried halloumi with cumin seeds, adding lime juice to the pan as it cooked. Then Naz arranged it with thin slices of sweet mango e.g. alphonso variety, sprinkling with chopped chilli and fresh coriander. VEGETARIAN, WHEAT FREE

roasted peppers slices stuffed with herby cream cheese and capers on sticks - yummy and worth the fiddlyness. VEGETARIAN, WHEAT FREE

roasted aubergine rolled with artichoke dip on sticks yummy but not worth the fiddlyness. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

mojo verde and rojo with babas aggrudas- Dan and I made this a month or two back. Mojos verde and rojo are very garlicky vinegary dipping sauces -parsley and red pepper respectively- for very salty baby new boiled potatoes. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

salad leaves - I won't bother with so many next time. No-one ever touches healthy food. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE, A WASTE OF TIME AT A PARTY

potato salad - Alpa says potatoes can take a lot of salt, so thorough seasoning has been highly recommended. Dressed with vegan "mayonnaise", chopped capers, chopped gherkins, and chopped chives. VEGAN, WHEAT FREE

Thank you Mike, Jo, Victor and Helen for making cakes and cheesecake. And of course to super trooper Dan for realising the cherry chocolate gorgeousness which was my birthday cake.

I was left with excessive amounts of skordalia ad cannelini bean dip and there was too much to just eat. The skordalia is also too vinegary and garlicky to eat lots of, so here's what I did.

Soak some stale bread in water. Wring the excessive water out. Mix wet bread with skordalia, a bit of plain flour and a beaten egg / egg replacer. Shallow fry the patties until crisp on each side. Serve with leftover dips from party.

I'm not going to put in a picture because it looks a lot like the other things I have made and pictured, and I'm sure you get the idea. In the second batch I threw in some of the leftover cannelini bean dip and that also worked well.

Get Stuffed

I curently do not have use of an oven. This can lead to inventiveness in cooking methods or sloppiness, where you just end up making slop.

I had some vague idea of Persian / Middle Eastern / North African food in my head when I did this.

I stuffed some green peppers and hollowed out aubergine with a mixture of
the aubergine flesh, crumbled firm tofu, garlic, a smidge of miso paste, harissa paste, mint, orange oil, vinegar, roughly chopped carrot, pine nuts, almonds, and the scooped out aubergine and minced ginger. I cooked them in a heavy bottomed pan which had been heated up with a bit of oil. Lid on pan. A Dutch oven. I
had to finish them off in the grill so that the stuffing would brown a little. I couldn't turn them over in the pan because the filling would have just fallen out.

I ate it with basmati rice which had lots of stuff in: fried some onions in oil with cardomom pods and cinnamon stick pieces in it. I added grated orange zest, almond slivers, garlic, saffron, vegetable stock, chopped dried apricots and raisins. Added ground cinnamon and ground cumin to the mix. Maybe if I had some pomegranate seeds, it might have become some kind of jewelled rice.

I was particularly pleased with the rice, because many flavours were presen without drowning each other out.

I like saffron. It tastes really weird, don't you think? It's almost like the antiseptic TCP but manages to claw its way back into your heart before you spit your food out.

Sup(p)er.

I think you should know the score by now, if you see an entry about supper here, it's not likely to have photographs because hungry stomach and greedy mouth work faster than camera finger.

I made a shoddy Potato Gratin ("We're having your favorite, Wanda honey, Potatoes au Gratin!" "Mmmmmm!") to use up a splash of cream I had. At least, I sliced potatoes thinly, added some marrow slices, oil, salt, pepper rosemary, cream, slices of garlic between layers, sprinkles some dry uncooked polenta grain on it because I couldn't be bothered looking for the semolina. Covered casserole dish in tin foil, whacked the heat up to Gas Mark 9 for an hour. Left the foil off for the last ten minutes and added oak-smoked Lancashire to bubble on the top.

I also made a mash out of some unknown squash. It was mottled green and cream on the outside and I feared it would taste watery and boring but it was a bit like butternut squash. I roasted it with olive oil, paprika and cumin before blitzing with a bit of fresh ginger root.

Finally, a pea and mint puree, as I was still feeling inspired by the meal I was taken out for and the end of last month. Frozen peas, fresh finely chopped mint leaves, an onion I'd roasted in its skin while the oven was on, it all got the blitz treatment. Pepper, a squeeze of lime but no salt, which is strange for a sodium chloride fiend like me.

And that's what you can end up eating if you're not a house of flesh-eaters. I'm kind of glad I didn't take any photos because the presentation of the food was really poor. I rather fancied dribbling the puree artfully onto mine and my dining mates' plates, but in the end reality overpowered and my small aesthetic self was out for the count.

Even Courgetter than the real thing / Zucchini Kill

What can one do with courgettes? Anyone who grows them will know they produce veg (technically fruit) gluttishly and need using up. I was given some on Wednesday and I made Courgette Fritters:



I grated courgette, added beaten egg, polenta, cornflour, salt, pepper, paprika, mustard, crushed garlic and grated cheese. I had a drop of cream left over from making ice cream so I threw that in too. I also chucked in a handful of frozen sweetcorn. I then shallow fried patties of the mixture in a pan.

Verdict: a bit soggy in the middle. I may add more corn flour or polenta and then wait for the liquid to get absorbed. The addition of cream was a silly idea, making an already wet mixture wetter. Oh, and I couldn't really taste the courgette. The cheese and sweetcorn were great additions. Don't make your patty more than 7cm / 2 inches wide. They are good reheated the next day with butter. Serve with condiments.

Zucchini bread has never appealed to me much, as I don't particularly like making cake. Something which shows off the taste of the vegetable. My mother would sometimes use it as a replacement for doodhi, the huge mild milky-white radish in the dish doodhi chana, which is a chickpea lentil and doodhi curry. Anyone out there with a good recipe, the comments box is ready and waiting.

from the ex- U2 fan who doesn't mind a bit of riot grrl.

Dinner for one

I have been in Cambridge house- and animal-sitting for my sister and her husband since Wednesday. I tried to contact the one person I might know here but he hasn't responded to my e-mail, so what was I to but sit around cooking, eating and drinking? I can't get pissed though, I have furry and feathered responsibilities.

One is not fun, contrary to what Delia Smith said once, and it's even less fun in an unfamiliar kitchen. There are exciting things in the cupboards here such as pink peppercorns, slivers of mace, Amontillado sherry for cooking, hazelnut oil as well as some surprising ones (Oxo cubes? Come on! My brother in law is supposed to be something of an epicure, a gastronaut). However, I found no fresh ginger, no rice and no whisk. Not an electric one, not even a manual one. More about that later.

Since we've had a heatwave, I've continued on my ice cream tip and wanting to give Green and Blacks a run for their money made white chocolate ice cream with raspberries and meringue pieces. Here's a picture. Honestly, I need a food stylist and a steadier camera hand:



The ice cream itself tasted good good good, the tart raspberries provided a nice contrast to the sweet ice cream but they are little hard bits frozen raspberry - I did crush them first so they aren't whole blocks of raspberry-sized and flavoured ice. Note for next time: put raspberries through and sieve before adding, but definitely add them. They contributed such a delicious pink girly colour to the dessert.

I added meringue pieces to the mixture because I had four egg whites which I didn't know what to do with. I had to beat the whites using a fork and the strength of my arm, but I think my worn out arm gave up before the whites were stiff enough. My meringues were the palest brown when they came out of the oven and they were still squidgy in the middle. I broke the crunchy bits off and folded into the ice cream. The squidge I tried to recook in the oven. It changed the texture and not for the better, and tasted a bit like Sugar Puffs. Never mind.

This evening for dinner I had a splendid warm salad of brown rice, with tarragon, chopped tomato, onion and garlic fried in olive oil with some torn mozzarella pieces stirred in. Topped with Parmesan. It was lovely, the tomato had just the right tang to it.

I have never had tarragon before and in tonight's dinner it was just using up last scraps. I put it in a buttery lemony dressing for prawn salad the past few days. It has a nice pine-scented flavour. I'd use it again. If I had a big kitchen garden, I would grow it.

Heena 4 Chipotle 4-EVA

I am in love with chipotle (smoked jalapeno) chillies. This is better than love; this is addiction.

Such a hot hot taste, such a wonderful smoky flavour! I put it in with some beans, garlic, lime and red pepper and ate it with corn tortillas, tomato salsa, thick yogurt in place of sour cream and cheese. The dried chillies came looking like sun-dried tomatoes. I reconstituted a few and whizzed them up into a rough paste, and because they are so spicy hot, have a lot left over. I have been putting it into every meal I have eaten since I opened the packet.

I bought the chillies having been introduced to the taste by Matt, at whose house I ate some Guatemalan food; black beans with garlic and smoked chillies; salsa, guacamole, scrambled egg, rice and corn tortilla. He had spent time there and said that the Guatemalans he met often ate the same food with slight variation – probably depending on what was available- for many meals in a row. Imagine eating the same thing over and over again. I always thought I needed variety in my diet for taste's sake as much as nutrition- but maybe I wouldn't. I would like to think that I have more sophisticated tastes than my cat but she eats the same thing day in, day out and never tires of it. Maybe I could do the same. I'd like to eat the same thing over and over for a week, see how I fare. I think I'd be more than happy to do so if it had chipotle chillies in it.

A Simple Lunch

Yesterday I made myself a modest rice salad for a late lunch. I only had basmati white rice and I wanted a grain which cooked quickly.

White rice drained and rinsed, roasted tomato, finely chopped fresh mint, raw garlic and chives, a splash of white wine vinegar. I chopped a bit of cheese and stirred it in on top because I knew I would get hungry if I didn't.

I'm really not that great on the different types of rice. I have eaten arborio, red rice, sushi rice in sushi, generic brown rice and wild rice - which isn't actually a rice, but a grass, but I want to know more. I'll let you know when I do.