Winter Fodder

The snow has gone, for now. I didn't do much good cooking when my world was a crunchy sugar-coated doughnut, the only thing I did make was some sage and onion stuffing for Mike and Dan's Christmas dinner. I added bits of chopped apple to it, which worked rather well.

There were plans to mull some beer at said dinner, which never materialised. It's still not too warm to mull drinks, I hope to quaff some of this wassail (yes, mulled booze) before the cold spell is out.

Christmas was spent in the West Midlands with my parents. My mother made this while I was there. 

Cheesy, oniony mashed potato in a pie crust. Very comforting indeed. The only thing we were puzzled about was what kind of sauce to serve it with. Would gravy be acceptable here? I'm not too sure. 

Dan gave me this for Christmas:

Niki Segnit's Flavour Thesaurus. With this to consult, I no longer have any excuses for making bad-tasting food.

The taste of citrus salt (sea salt baked with grated orange, lemon and lime rind) to me tastes of the sea. The preserved lemons are ready and are perfect to nibble on alone. But I should really use them in a recipe.

There are still rinds of cheese in the fridge, which will be perfect for soup, but most of the rest has been scoffed down with crackers and fruit.

When life gives you lemons...

... preserve them. Lemons, salt, peppercorns, bayleaves, star anise, water in some preserving jars.

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.

This Space Has Been Left Unintentionally Blank

Well, it's been a while since my last update.
A few weeks ago, before it got cold, I made my very first bagels. Here they are all piled together like a bunch of multi-racial supermodels all posing nude for some top designer:

They are crusted with dried onion, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and salt crystals.
A pleasure to make, if a labour-intensive one. Talking of bread, Dan got me a rye sourdough culture after mine failed so badly and became very sour and too smelly. I hope to use it soon.

Two weeks ago, I was most pleased to find recently that the rosehip syrup I made  3 years ago fermented into something drinkable. And alcoholic!

I have been overdoing it a bit lately, and subsequently fell foul to a spot of depression. It's been very calming to slowly chop and cook vegetables to make some soup. It's a very symbolic slowing-down gesture. And a warm and tasty one too.

Grat/in/ification

The potato gratin / dauphinoise is aeons better if you make it with double cream and a little sprinkling of paprika. It's so good that it doesn't even need cheese.

Top of the Pops

I do love popcorn and all its lovely flavourings and toppings, from sickly sweet toffee popcorn with its indestructible crust, to salty buttery microwave popcorn which has never been near a cow.

Yesterday Dan flavoured popcorn with palm sugar, salt, Chohula chilli sauce and sweet mixed spice. He had to put a bit more oil over the popped corn so that the flavourings would stick.

My God, it was good. It was not unlike Spicy Tomato flavouring you get on crisps, especially those cheap little bags of maize snacks. 

It is now my favourite flavour. 

Prior to this, I also enjoyed: 

- Salt, turmeric powder and chilli powder

- Most indulgent melted butter and grated Parmesan

- dipping a piece of popped corn into a cup of hot tea. It made a quiet squeaky sigh as the fluid pushed the air out. Not so good for eating, but a very satisfying sound. 

Bake for good

The oven has returned! Welcome home, my friend.

Today I attempted Potato Dauphinoise today, one of them vegan. And if you're not going to use cheese, you better add a helluva lot more flavours to compensate. I didn't use vegan cream, having had a bad experience with the sweetly chemical Alpro stuff not too long ago (I've since been told oat cream has a lot more of a neutral taste*), I made a white sauce using soya milk instead. Into it I put:

- salt and pepper

- many cloves of roasted garlic, smashed

- a bay leaf

- light tahini

- grain mustard

- paprika

- dried onion flakes,

topped it with sesame seeds and more onion flakes and hoped for the best. I haven't tried it yet, but the whole thing shrunk nicely during cooking. The onions on top burned a bit, sadly.

The dairy one was a roaring success and was eaten swiftly with a salad of grated kohl rabi dressed in lemon juice, and watercress in a light film of olive oil and lemon.

*this in itself can also be a problem

The dairy one:

and the vegan one:

take your pick, I won't be offended.