The first Alphonso mangoes of the year

"There's little you can do to improve on the perfection of the deep yellowy-orange flesh of a ripe Alphonso mango. Its sweetly fragrant and deeply exotic flavour - you can detect notes of coconut and lime - tells stories of yellow sands and warm winds, tropical palms and beating sunshine..."

That's Joanna Weinberg, writing in The Times. And oh, she is so correct. They are utterly utterly sublime. I like mangoes; preferably the huge ones they sell at the market for 75p each, but even then a rock-hard Sainsburys specimen can sometimes ripen into something pleasing. However, there is always a gamble: 50% or more of times, these fruits end up ripening into a mass of stringiness lacking in real flavour and tasting slightly chalky. They are good in smoothies, though, and ripe ones are lovely mixed with avocado, coriander, basil, mint, chilli and lime juice to make a salsa for grilled tuna steaks. But generally, I avoid recipes that involve mango as it is too hard to find ripe ones. I cook with mangoes when I happen to have bought some a week ago and find them soft and edible in the fruit bowl; more coincidence cooking than premeditated cooking. 

However, the Alphonso mango is another thing altogether. It's hard to describe just how different they are to your average supermarket, year-round mango, but the main difference lies in the fact that they are imported (from Mumbai, usually) ripe (sometimes overripe - last year I bought a box of 12 that had gone a bit too ripe to eat...and they made a beautiful mango and lime sorbet), rather than solid, so you are guaranteed mango heaven. They have a short season of only a few weeks, which means they must be bought in abundance and gorged on, naturally. They are so juicy that eating them in the bath might not be a bad idea, and they have a very sweet and perfumed flavour unlike most mangoes. I had one today and the fragrance was almost lavender-esque.

I found them at the Pakistani deli (£7 for six), and I'm hoping they'll go down in price as the season goes on so I can cook with them - I want to make mango ice cream, mango smoothies, a mango and chickpea salad (more Ottolenghi), a mango fool...but primarily, I just want to sit and savour them until all that is left is the skin and stone, sucked of every last bit of delicious mango flesh. Yum yum. And then I will spend the rest of the year contemplating the sad solid specimens in Sainsburys and lusting for next year's Alphonso season.

A tribute to The Delicious Miss Dahl

The Delicious Miss Dahl is the food-TV equivalent of a meringue. Aesthetically pleasing, but totally lacking in substance.

For the last six weeks I have watched as Sophie, in her impossibly beautiful kitchen (which, it transpires, is not even hers and is being hired for the purpose), goes through the entire emotional spectrum available to human beings (melancholy, escapist, celebratory, nostalgic, selfish, romantic) and shows you how to cook dishes to suit each mood.

Except she doesn't really show you how to cook at all...she giggles away at the camera and talks nostalgically about her rather idyllic-sounding youth (all roast chickens and apple crumbles and learning cooking at her grandmother's knee, apparently), and makes risque remarks about certain foodstuffs (anyone else fantasise about mozzarella? Nope? Just her then) while pouting at the camera, and showing a bit of cleavage - but it's OK, because said low-cut item is nearly always teamed with a shapeless cardigan, no doubt to avoid charges of pornography. And as if that wasn't enough, there are utterly pointless interludes, all filmed in sepia, I might add, in which Sophie does things like sit in a train station or walk on the beach. Reading the BBC summaries of the episodes will give you some idea as to the totally arbitrary nature of such scenes:

"To ground her firmly back in Britain, she takes a nostalgic train journey through the countryside and finds herself on a windy British beach recalling chilly childhood holidays. "

"Next, Sophie locks herself away in the shed at the end of the garden and, while reading hopeless poetry, she treats herself to the perfect chocolate sauce poured over ice cream. But her soul craves the curative power of chicken soup and this brings her back to the kitchen"

"To banish the week's blues entirely, she visits a saree shop and acquires an exotic new tablecloth, which inspires her final meal of the weekend: Sophie's dhal with lemon and saffron spiced rice. By the end of this culinary adventure she feels ready to handle Monday again."

(What I love about that is that it makes her sound like a normal person with a dreary run-of-the-mill job, for whom Mondays probably are something to dread. Except Mondays for Miss Dahl probably mean a series of glamorous modelling assignments or photo shoots, rather than another day at the office where cups of tea become highlights in the day)

Other great moments included her trip to a graveyard for the sheer "romance" of it, and the bits where she sits in a chair reading poetry - particularly the one where she was reading Dryden, but the book in her hand wasn't Dryden. At least she avoided this scenario:

I guess we are meant to gather from all this that she has the perfect lifestyle, but is "just like us" in that she gets melancholy too. Except what average human being has bunting decking their garden all year round, Cath Kidson everything, and more vintage items (both culinary and sartorial) than you could shake a pearl necklace at? Similarly, what human being could eat an Omelette Arnold Bennett for breakfast, followed by huge pieces of mozzarella bruschetta for lunch, followed by halibut with sweet potato chips and a chocolate pot (chocolate and cream...that's basically it) for dinner and not consider bulimia afterwards? I can see why at one point Sophie was "round as a Rubens", as she herself professes.

You watch it to aspire to Sophie's fictional lifestyle. And to look at what she's making, think "Oh, that looks nice - I've seen something like that before", and go away without any real inclination to find the recipes out. I know how to make a victoria sponge, flapjack, chocolate sauce (she quite literally melted chocolate with some cream and put it on ice cream), salad, and Eton mess. I know how to cook fish and make crab cakes and chicken soup. Another great moment was when Sophie was extolling the delights of the perfect roast chicken as she made said soup - conveniently forgetting to mention that she is in fact a vegetarian (though eats fish). She did in one episode make a shepherd's pie, and inexplicably made it with beef rather than lamb, saying that she didn't think it mattered as it could refer to either meat. Er, Sophie, why do you think we have shepherd's pie AND cottage pie?

In order to determine whether Sophie's recipes are entirely a question of style over substance, I decided to try a couple of them - prompted by an excellent Sophie-viewing sesh with my friend Clare (artfully posing in true Sophie style with Dryden, above). Firstly, there was a chargrilled red pepper, chicory and squid salad with a herb and lime dressing. Characteristically, no real skill involved - I grilled some peppers, pan-fried some squid, shredded some chicory and put it in a bowl with a dressing made of basil, coriander, lime juice, garlic and olive oil.

And I have to say, it was absolutely delicious. One of those recipes where you can't quite imagine it working until you've tried it, and it was wonderful. I will definitely be making it again. I have to thank Sophie for that.

And then, in the spirit of "escapism", Sophie made a rice pudding with spiced plums. She for no apparent reason uses basmati rice instead of pudding rice, so I did too. And it was also quite nice. The plum compote - star anise, plums, orange juice, cloves, ginger syrup - was very similar to one I make for my porridge, and the rice - spiced with cardamom and cinnamon and sprinkled with flaked almonds - was lovely and fragrant but a bit too sweet for my liking.

Sophie, Sophie...she may make fairly generic dishes that aren't going to set the world on fire, but she does make a good squid salad. And obviously, the bitchiness of this post is entirely down to the fact that I would probably sell my pasta machine AND cook's blowtorch to look like her. 

Wouldn't you?

Two new additions to my collection

I've had the briefest of perusals and already I want to lock myself away in a kitchen and cook the entire Ottolenghi book from front to back. It's an entirely vegetarian cookbook featuring his recipes from the Guardian New Vegetarian column. I love his use of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours with every vegetable under the sun, and the way he makes even the most dull vegetables into incredibly delicious-sounding salads, gratins, omelettes, tarts, etc...now that I have my massive tubs of Za'atar and sumac I will definitely be trying a sumptuous-looking butterbean, feta and sumac salad. Along with everything else. Yum. I love vegetarian food like this, especially because I don't really eat that much meat anyway and these recipes are so scrumptuous that I don't know why you'd want to.

Masterchef also looks excellent - I really like the format of the book and the pictures are lovely. Naturally I flicked straight to the dessert section which has some enticing things like a rhubarb millefeuille, and the pear and roquefort souffle that I admired on last season's Masterchef: The Professionals and am now very glad I can emulate. Fantastic.

Of course, my finals are in three weeks, so all this may have to wait. But I should probably warn all my friends now that it is my mission to make them fat on Ottolenghi and Masterchef recipes by the end of term.

Waxing rhapsodical about rhubarb

This made me very happy last week:

Rhubarb, along with quinces, is one of my favourite home-grown foodstuffs. Unimpressed that the stuff I got in Tesco is in fact from HOLLAND - how ridiculous - but it was reduced and I think it would have gone to waste otherwise, so I was really being ethical. I love the taste of it, but also the colour - I can never quite believe how shockingly pink it is, almost unnaturally so. For that reason it can make any dessert look stunningly beautiful and also a little bit fun. I quite like sharp, almost sour fruit (underripe granny smith apples, underripe plums, passionfruit, cooking apples, raspberries...), and rhubarb has that lovely tartness in abundance, so I like using it in dishes where you would normally use, say, a Bramley apple.

The best thing I think you can do with it is slice it into pieces, put in a baking dish, sprinkle over the juice and zest of an orange, a bit of sugar, and then put it into the oven at 160C or so for about 20 minutes until tender. This gives you a whole dish full of beautiful soft rhubarb, the orange bringing out its sharpness, and lots of lovely rhubarby juice. You can use this in pretty much any recipe. Here are some nice things to do with it:

• I made an amazing rhubarb cake once that had sour cream in the cake mixture, and then pieces of rhubarb put on top of the mixture while it cooked. I made a gingery syrup and poured it over the cake when it came out of the oven, and it soaked into the cake and made it moist and sweet and delicious. I remember eating about half of the entire cake, such was its goodness.
• I also intend to try it in a dish with lamb instead of the more usual apricots/dates/quinces; a sort of Middle Eastern fusion thing that I reckon would taste delicious.
• Over the easter holidays I made a rhubarb tarte tatin using a Nigella recipe; it had a sort of scone dough for the base instead of the usual pastry, and the juices from the rhubarb soaked into it so it was soft in the middle and crunchy on the outside, and it was just beautiful. Again, I ate about half of it.
• Rhubarb sorbet - poach rhubarb as above but in water instead of orange juice, add the juice of a lime and blend, then add some sugar syrup, put in an ice cream maker to set.
• I also celebrated the start of the rhubarb season this year with a rhubarb cheesecake: the base was made of ginger biscuits (rhubarb and ginger is another classic combination), the cheesecake was a gelatine one so uncooked, and flavoured with seville oranges, and once set I pureed some poached rhubarb, added some more gelatine and spread it over the top of the cake to make a kind of rhubarb compote topping - like the ubiquitous forest fruit topping you often find on bought cheesecakes.
• Just eat the poached rhubarb with ice cream.
• Make rhubarb turnovers
• Rhubarb jam
• Rhubarb chutney

As if to prove the point, in the last week I used the above poached rhubarb for the following:

Rhubarb souffle:

A rhubarb and orange smoothie (by blending the rhubarb and juice with a bit more orange juice, some honey and a few spoonfuls of YOGHURT - a revelation I know...I admittedly had to stop myself thinking that I was drinking yoghurt before I was able to swallow it, but still...)

Rhubarb pancakes (pieces of rhubarb and a little bit of juice with a spoonful of yoghurt in the pancake - probably the best thing I have eaten in a while):

And finally, the rhubarb and juice makes a lovely compote for porridge mixed with dried cranberries and dried apple:

Four different meals (or components of them)...not bad for £1.74.

I sometimes wish I could paint my room in rhubarb.

An ode to the humble quince

"They call for dates and quinces in the pastry" 

~ Romeo and Juliet

Whenever I am cooking with quinces, it is inevitable that one of my housemates will ask what they are, and then remark that they've never tried one. I was on the Waitrose forum (OK, I am slightly ashamed to admit that...let's just move on) last autumn, and someone was asking whether Waitrose would be stocking quinces this year (autumn is British quince season). Their head of customer whatever replied that no, they would not, as there's not enough demand for them.

I find it hard to see why. They are the most luscious of fruits. Well, no, the Alphonso mango is probably the most luscious of fruits. But the quince comes a close second. It is absolutely divine. I would quite like to convert the entire world to eating quinces like they do cooking apples. Or just hoard them all for myself.

They are probably best described as a sort of cross between an apple and a pear - some are quite pear-shaped, others more squat, and their flavour has the perfume of pears and the sweetness of apples. You can't eat them raw, as they are rock solid and sour, but when you bake them, something magic happens - their flesh goes soft like a Bramley apple and they taste of honeyed loveliness. Not a very technical description I know, but you'd have to taste one to find out - I recommend you do. They have a lovely grainy texture which goes really well with soft meat in a tagine, or smooth vanilla ice cream as a dessert. If you cook them for long enough, they turn bright red - I remember Nigella has a lovely recipe for red quinces with pomegranate seeds on top. A scarlet feast of fruity delight.

There's all sorts of fun mythology surrounding the quince. It has been suggested that cultivation of the fruit preceded cultivation of the apple, so references to apples in early literature (the garden of Eden...the golden apple that Paris gave to Aphrodite) may actually refer to quinces. In medieval times, to give a quince to a lady was a declaration of love, and Plutarch reports that Greek brides used to nibble them before entering the bridal chamber to ensure their kiss was not "unpleasant". In Slavonia, Croatia, when a baby is born, a quince tree is planted as a symbol of fertility. 

The word 'marmalade' comes from marmelo, the Portuguese for quince, and so marmalade was originally a quince jam. That's just one of the things you can do with quinces - make membrillo, as the Spanish call it - quince paste. It's delicious with cheese or roasted meat such as lamb or pheasant, and I also quite like it on toast. I made it a few terms ago, and probably won't do so again - it was incredibly labour intensive, involving pushing quinces through a sieve to get a tiny amount of puree which was then mixed with equal amounts of sugar, boiled until gelatinous, then set like jam. Admittedly it was superb, especially with a chunk of crusty bread and some strong goats cheese, but in future I reckon I'll just buy it ready-made...especially as I never even got to finish the amount I made before it developed a "little furry jacket" (my mum's way of referring to mould) in the fridge. Rubbish.

The quince tree is native to Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Pakistan, but has been introduced to all sorts of places, especially the Med and the middle East. They're used a lot in middle Eastern cooking, either as a dessert or with meat such as lamb. I can think of endless uses for this goddess of fruits, but a few of my favourites are: served as a dessert, sliced and poached in a lemon and vanilla infused syrup; baked and served with ice cream; sliced and added to a lamb tagine (absolutely sublime); my stuffed pheasant recipe from a couple of weeks ago; in a compote with rosemary, served with roasted venison steaks; baked and stuffed with minced lamb, onions, pine nuts and cinnamon. It's also good in an apple or pear crumble, adding a fragrant note. Next time I can get my hands on some more quinces (at the moment they're hard to find, though there are some Turkish ones around, if you're prepared to pay £2 a fruit, or so...which I am) I want to try a quince crumble. Every time I spot some at the grocer's, my heart flutters a little. Shakespeare and I were clearly on the same page (no pun intended) - I would definitely call for dates and quinces in my pastry. In fact, I might try some date and quince turnovers. With filo pastry. Yum.

So I found a couple of joyous fruits in Cambridge while I was home for easter, and decided to make the aforementioned stuffed quinces. Sliced in half, baked until soft, then the inside scooped out and added to a mixture of lamb mince, chopped onion, pine nuts, cinnamon and allspice, which is then put back in the fruit and baked for another half hour or so. I served it with spinach and couscous, though a rice pilaff might also have been nice, or some chickpeas.

To paraphrase Edward Lear:

"We dined on mince, and slices of quince, which we ate with a runcible spoon"

No idea what a runcible spoon is. I suspect Lear didn't either. But the quince tasted nice.

Ravioli, chicken and a honey tart

Inspired by a dish I ate in a little trattoria in Bergamo a couple of summers ago, I thought I'd make ravioli filled with sausagemeat. I found Luganega sausages at David John's butchers in the covered market - wish I'd known they were there before, as I've been searching for them for a couple of recipes and had never thought - bizarrely - to look in the butchers famous for its sausages. Hmm. It wasn't authentic Italian Luganega, which is sold by the metre and not shaped into links, but its flavourings I think were similar. Anyway, I took the meat out of the casings, crumbled it into a pan with some garlic, tomatoes and fennel seeds, and just cooked it and put it into a bowl to cool. I made the ravioli with tomato puree, which I hoped would make it scarlet but actually just made it a sort of orange colour, but never mind. The filling went in the middle, I shaped it and crimped the edges with a fork, cooked it and served it with a sage butter sauce (quite literally melted butter with sage and black pepper) and lots of grated parmesan. It was lovely. 

Next I decided - in the spirit of this Ottolenghi phase I have previously referred to - to make one of his chicken dishes - chicken with sumac, lemons and za'atar. I found sumac and za'atar in Maroc Deli, although they were out of the smaller packets of the latter so I had to buy an absolutely enormous jar which I reckon will be enough to flavour everything I cook ever for the next ten years. It's a middle Eastern spice mix, consisting of dried thyme, salt, sesame seeds and other spices (I think this one had some aniseed in there). I'm pretty sure I now possess every middle Eastern ingredient I could ever possibly need. My friend the butcher kindly gave me two chickens for £7, so they were jointed and went in a marinade of sliced red onion, cinnamon, allspice, olive oil, sliced lemon, sumac, salt, pepper and water overnight. Then they just went in the oven in the marinade with some parsley and pine nuts with the za'atar sprinkled over. I had to turn the oven up quite high to get them to cook but it just gave them a nice crispy skin. Yum. We had it with couscous and a garlic yoghurt sauce that I made by crushing garlic into Greek yoghurt...except I added a bit too much garlic (convinced I couldn't taste enough when I tried it) and could still taste it while eating dessert. Oh well! It was delicious - the lemons and sumac were quite sharp and the meat was still juicy despite being in the oven at 220C. Clearly they were good chickens. Thank you, butcher man whose name I still don't know despite seeing you most days.

For dessert I made a sort of Greek variation on a treacle tart, with filo pastry. I baked the pastry case (filo sheets layered over each other and brushed with butter in a tart tin) and then poured in the filling, which consisted of two eggs, two yolks, the zest of two lemons, 150g breadcrumbs (which were quite large as my blender decided not to blend properly...but it didn't do the dish any harm), 8 tablespoons of creme fraiche, a tsp ground ginger (might add more next time as I couldn't really taste it...or some cinnamon would be nice), 150ml honey, and 250ml agave nectar. Agave nectar is marketed as a sort of "healthy" alternative to sugar, because it is much sweeter so you need less, and doesn't give you that sugar high and then low, or something. Apparently, anyway. Still, given that an entire bottle went into the tart, and it gave me a massive sugar headache afterwards, I still don't think it was that healthy. 

BUT it was absolutely sublime. One of my favourite desserts that I have made so far. The middle had a sort of cheesecake texture but a bit firmer, and was sweet and lemony and delicious, and I love the crispyness of filo pastry. Especially with some nice vanilla ice cream. Definitely making this again. I reckon it'd be nice with orange zest and cinnamon. Maybe with some candied orange slices on top. In fact, the thought is making me a little bit hungry. It's a good job I have two slices left over in the fridge...

An excuse to get out the blowtorch

(and no, it's not to torch my finals revision in a fit of despair)

Tonight, courtesy of my lovely friend Clare, I had the opportunity to whip out the blowtorch I was given for easter (cook's blowtorch, that is - I'm not into welding or anything) on TWO occasions.
Firstly, I decided to make Shakshuka, a north African dish of (in this version, anyway) sauteed peppers, onions, spices, tomatoes and herbs with cracked eggs on top. It's a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook, Plenty. I am having a massive Ottolenghi phase at the moment - I have his other cookbook and simply the thought of it makes me salivate (except not, because that is disgusting). More on that another time though - along with my ode to quinces which I am still intending to do. The eggs were taking a painfully long time to cook - watched eggs never boil - although admittedly it was quite fun watching their gelatinous forms slowly turn opaque in their little cocoon of tomato sauce. Clare had brought round a crumble to have afterwards, and I had the bright (and quite exciting - it takes very little to excite me these days, as my life is basically revision) idea of blowtorching the top to caramelise it. It then also occurred to me that I could cook the top of the eggs faster this way - normally I'd stick the pan under the grill, but someone was using the oven. It was amazing to watch - the surface of the egg sort of puckered under the flame and thickened, and then a little crust of white formed. Childishly satisfying. It was delicious, too - we ate it with warm baguette to mop up all the tomatoey goodness, and the eggs were just runny in the middle. I love sauteed peppers that have gone soft and sweet...add some caramelised onions, and yum.

The crumble, I have to report, was the most delicious crumble I have had in my life - and I am a bit of a crumble fiend (as anyone who has ever seen me rhapsodise over it at formal hall will know, or anyone who has seen me polish off several helpings, despite the two courses that have preceded it). Apparently it was a Nigel Slater recipe, and the reason it tasted so good was "massive amounts of sugar". Well, if tooth decay tastes that good, then I reckon I'll be seeing my dentist fairly soon.

Note the deliciously caramelised, toasted crumbly topping in the picture below...and be jealous that you don't own a cook's blowtorch. My housemates clearly thought I was ridiculous when I got it out of the cupboard...but I am clearly the one laughing now. Except I'm not laughing - I'm clutching my stomach and feeling slightly sick from sugar overload.

A home-grown mushroom omelette

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
~ Sylvia Plath, 'Mushrooms'


My mum bought me a "grow your own mushroom" kit for Christmas. Ignoring the slightly middle-aged connotations of such a present, I was quite pleased, and set it up in my kitchen a few weeks ago. However, it seemed only to become yet another endeavour that serves to prove I absolutely cannot grow anything. Anything. Herbs, plants, fruit, veg...and seeing as a mushroom is a fungus, which makes it basically mould, I took this as quite a personal failure. I can't even grow MOULD.
So I went home for easter and came back to uni a week and a half later, intending to have to part with said mushroom kit in the bin. Imagine my delight when I lifted up the lid to find the beginning of two small mushrooms. Apparently my neglect was actually more successful than my care. So, not quite "overnight" as Ms Plath seems to think, but at least I got there.

Naturally, I made an omelette. I had to supplement my two mushrooms (the third one is still tiny so will need a bit more neglecting before it can be harvested) with some shop-bought ones, but I like to think I could pick out the home-grown from the mushroomy mass due to their superior flavour - you can literally taste all the hard work I put in... Or something.

I now understand where the phrase "mushrooming" comes from. I swear yesterday they were too small to eat, and today they were rapidly on their way to Portobello-mushroom-size.

Pasta, round three

So I found two willing victims on whom to experiment with my pasta ideas. I made ravioli filled with spinach and bacon and served with a creamy (a word I hate, but it had cream it in, so there isn't really an alternative word) blue cheese and walnut sauce. It was superb...but incredibly filling and I now feel slightly queasy. Still, YUM.
It was fairly easy really...fry little pieces of bacon till crispy, add an entire bag of spinach (which cooked down to literally about three spoons of filling...absurd) and leave to wilt, and then cool a bit. Meanwhile, roll out the pasta into strips, put the filling in, put another sheet of pasta over the top, trim and seal...it sounds so easy, but I totally failed the first time I attempted this a couple of weeks ago. I realise now it was because I rolled the pasta too thinly and it just stuck to the surface and wouldn't move when I tried to lift it off. These happy images are something I have long watched on Masterchef and strived for:


Perfect. So to make the sauce I literally just put some creme fraiche and some Dolcelatte into a pan and melted it, and added loads of nutmeg. Because I love nutmeg. Fortunately I think it's only vastly excessive (sort of...truckload) quantities of nutmeg that can make you hallucinate, otherwise my morning porridge would probably have a fairly trippy effect on me. And black pepper. This went on the pasta, some nice pecorino grated over the top, and a sprinkling of walnuts that I bashed in a pestle and mortar. Very satisfying. The whole thing tasted truly delicious - the only thing I would change is I'd squeeze out the spinach before putting it in the ravioli, as it went a bit watery inside. But still - blue cheese, walnuts, bacon, spinach - can't really go wrong with that combination. YUM.

For dessert we had a Nigella recipe that I've wanted to try for a couple of weeks: poached apricots stuffed with creme fraiche (a bit of a creme fraiche heavy meal, it seems - which my housemate commented was "no bad thing"). Dried apricots, soaked overnight in water, the water then boiled with sugar, cardamom seeds and lemon juice to make a syrup, which was poured over the apricots and they were baked in the oven at 130C for an hour or so. After chilling, I then cut them open, stuffed with a bit of creme fraiche, and sprinkled some crushed pistachios (I have only just discovered how much I love pistachios and am fighting the urge to eat the rest of the bag) over the top, along with a bit of the poaching syrup. Delicious. Nigella comments that you can also use yoghurt instead of creme fraiche...however, given my aversion to yoghurt I will not be trying this. Even creme fraiche was pushing it a bit - I hate cold creamy things. It was lovely though. I reckon stuffing them with vanilla ice cream would work too...but I'm sure the Turks would consider this sacrilegious (it's a Turkish recipe).

And they look beautiful, too.

Pasta making

Seeing as I am currently facing a daily and uphill struggle to cram my saturated-sponge-like brain with even more English-degree related information, it is only natural that I have also been thinking about things completely unliterary. In a word, getting distracted. I figure distractions are necessary though, otherwise I would actually go mad and wouldn't be able to have a normal conversation with anyone without dropping in a reference to how Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie is all a large attempt to reconfigure the reputation of poetry as something masculine and thereby lament the decline of opportunities for martial prowess in the increasingly effeminate and inactive Elizabethan court.


See - I'm learning.

So since my darling mother bought me a pasta machine for Easter, I have been distracting myself by contemplating ravioli fillings that would work. As one does, you know - I might be cycling along and suddenly have a wild-mushroom-related inspiration...or cross the street and start formulating a blue cheese sauce.

I think my finals are doomed. And possibly my social life too.

So this is more of a "note to self" post than anything else so that next time I have a whim (ha...not really a whim when it takes several hours of hard labour) to make pasta, I can just be super-organised and look at my list of things to try...

Stuffed with spinach and bacon and served with a gorgonzola and cream sauce, with lots of black pepper, nutmeg and parmesan, and chopped walnuts on top
Stuffed with butternut squash, stilton, walnuts, parmesan, egg yolk, basil, and served with butter and sage sauce (have tried this, it was sublime - see left)
Stuffed with sausagemeat, tomato and fennel seeds and served with a garlicky tomato sauce and parmesan, or with a sage and butter sauce (had a variation of this in Bergamo in Italy and it was one of the best meals ever)
Stuffed with baked salmon, creme fraiche, peas, lemon and dill
Stuffed with braised venison with a chocolate and red wine sauce (sounds odd, but I reckon it could work - reduce the braising liquid from the venison, add some grated very dark chocolate...yum...must try this one soon)
Stuffed with chopped chorizo and tomato and either smoked cheese or halloumi
Stuffed with shredded duck leg and raisins with a mascarpone and marsala sauce
Stuffed with a sort of pork bolognaise sauce - pork cooked with bay leaves, lemon zest, nutmeg/cinnamon, white wine and dried apple.
Stuffed with roasted red peppers, goats cheese and pine nuts and served with caramelised onions on top (I reckon my boyfriend would like this one)

Oh and another note to self - basic pasta dough recipe.

225g plain flour (or the coveted 'Tipo 00' if I can find it)
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
Tsp salt
Tbsp olive oil
Tsp water

That makes enough dough for about 4 people.

"With which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings"

"That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper, of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings" ~ Jane Eyre, Chapter 8



Clearly Jane was a woman after my own heart. My food-related inward cravings seem to define my life...and today I was inwardly craving a nice big piece of warm banana cake and a cup of tea.

I physically cannot resist a food-related bargain. It is like a sickness. This does become problematic, however, when I am lured in by the man at the market selling bags of bananas for £1. Bananas are something I am fairly picky about; I like them on the green side, when they are firm and don't have that overly cloying banana-y taste and texture. Also, I tend to pile up my fruit bowls sky high, and bananas are not always top on my list to eat when I also have such delights as Pink Lady apples and mangoes. So, inevitably, I end up with browning bananas. Where this would once have been a sad thing (I hate throwing away food), I now relish this process. In fact, I actually bulk buy bananas with the express purpose of letting them go black and squishy. This is because I feel there are few things more delicious than warm banana cake. I suppose this recipe is more of a banana bread, really (hardly any butter in it, so I can even pretend to myself it's healthy), but it's less dry than most - the key I think is not to mash the bananas completely, leaving big chunks of them that will go all gooey and sticky in the oven. Today I decided to add some blueberries to the mixture, which has improved upon what I thought was the unimprovable. Delicious. I also have future plans to try it with cardamom and chocolate chips (in separate cakes).

The only part I did not enjoy was taking the black bananas out of the freezer (I had too many at once so figured I would freeze them - once black already, I assumed no damage would be done). They went all soggy and disgusting and I had to peel them while wet and slimy (the bananas that is, not me). In future I will freeze them without the skins. The banana-y mush in the bowl made me want to be sick a little bit...but the end result tasted amazing. So that is OK then. Thought I'd share that with you...don't be put off please.

Beginnings

After promptings from various friends, and far too many targeted Facebook adverts offering me diet pills (though I must add here that I am not in need of them, though I don't understand how, given my gluttony...my friend Nick once said something along the lines of, "Elly, you'll never get a job anywhere, because people will read your CV, assume you are morbidly obese and not invite you for interview"), I decided my obsession with food should no longer remain confined to random postings on Facebook and the occasional uploaded blurry iPhone photo. Admittedly the photography will still be quite bad, despite my excellent camera, because I have not yet figured out how to use it. Having had a look at various food blogs, I am saddened by the fact that I will never be able to achieve the same beautiful, thought out photos of my culinary creations, largely because my student kitchen is unfortunately not the most beautiful setting, being largely flourescent yellow and faux-granite, and my crockery collection is severely limited, normally to what I can find that is vaguely clean and isn't languishing in a mouldy pile next to the sink. But I like to think that is what gives my kitchen its charm...mismatched cutlery, blunt knives, an odd collection of random utensils.
It's almost a cliché to say that the cliché about students is that they live off kebabs and alcohol. I have actually found this not to be the case: students can be very inventive and resourceful when it comes to feeding themselves, largely because cooking facilities can be so abysmal. A friend of mine cooks pasta in a kettle due to his lack of kitchen: apparently the key is to just keep pressing the switch to keep it boiling. Another, also lacking a kitchen, had to make couscous in a bowl with a kettle on the floor of her room, because the room was so small there was no available surface on which to prepare it. As far as I can see, student cooking really isn't that bad - it's just not very adventurous.

Admittedly, I am probably not going to set the world alight with my culinary combinations, but I am always keen to cook something more interesting than spaghetti bolognaise. Five minutes from me are four excellent butchers, a fishmonger (how often do you see those nowadays in small English cities?), two greengrocers who are guaranteed to sell every fruit/veg ingredient under the sun, and a truly exciting Italian deli that I have loved ever since I saw the huge wheels of Panforte on the counter, having worried that I’d be deprived of its fruity delights until I next went to Siena. It also does excellent ciabatta sandwiches, but I think they frown on my slightly weird requests – seafood salad with marinated artichokes wasn’t a good idea; no wonder they raised an eyebrow. A bit like the time I ordered a gelato in Ravenna; I asked for a scoop of apple and a scoop of hazelnut. The waitress looked askance. “Insieme?!” she enquired (Together?!). “Si, insieme,” I replied, and only when I left with my ice cream did my friend comment that I’d clearly made a huge gelato faux-pas. Clearly the Italians have never heard of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut, and if they did I reckon they might just cry.

Anyway, my point is that with such excellent and exciting produce around the corner just waiting to be sampled and cooked, it would be a shame not to spend my days broadening my culinary repertoire. I think that is one of my favourite things about cooking: I love the raw materials. I find it oddly satisfying to unload my vast bag of shopping on the kitchen counter in preparation for that night’s dinner: huge vivid green bunches of coriander and parsley that sway like horse tails; bright blood oranges that somehow seem so much more racy than your average orange...perhaps it’s the mention of blood in the title; a big butternut squash, oddly comforting in its curved solidity; a large round of goat’s cheese (my favourite type of cheese); two fat mackerel, silvery and glistening as if they’d just come out of the sea to say hello; champagne rhubarb, which I always think is slightly outrageous in its shocking colour...the pre-teen girl of the food world, it insists on painting everything pink; maybe a bag of cinnamon sticks, for everything from fruit compote to go on porridge to a lamb tagine. OK, so I’ve probably never had all these ingredients out at once together – I’m not entirely sure what one would be cooking that incorporated everything on this list (and I doubt it’d be very nice), but they are some of my favourites, things that I always take a few seconds to glance over and appreciate as I put them down, excited about the prospect of transforming them into something delicious.

That’s another thing I enjoy about cooking; the incredible versatility of so many different ingredients, the art of adding a bit of this to a puree of that to a splash of that and a grinding of that in order to make something that just works. I suppose I could tenuously link my liking of literature to my liking of food by saying that ingredients are a bit like words; every so often, you’ll find them combined in a way that strikes you as novel and wonderful and just makes you want to relish said combination; but they also have their charm put together in time-honoured recipes that you savour again and again, like a good book. I have yet to decide what my ultimate Wuthering Heights dish is, one that I go back to again and again for the sheer enjoyment of its familiarity.

Though I do know that my last meal on earth would most definitely be scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on a toasted wholemeal bagel, with a grinding of black pepper and a squeeze (or three) of lemon juice. I am glad I have come to this conclusion; somehow, I feel my identity in the world has more definition now.

I will eat pretty much anything. The only thing I do not like is yoghurt, and even then I must qualify that statement: I like yoghurt when mixed with savoury food: as tzatziki, in curry, in cake, with desserts, in Middle Eastern cooking...the only thing I cannot stand is the notion of eating it on its own with a spoon. The thought makes me nauseous...I think it's the texture. I'm also not a huge fan of whipped cream. Basically any form of semi-liquid dairy...though bizzarely, I adore cottage cheese, I think because I ate nothing else as a child. I was a notoriously picky eater until about the age of 15 - lived off cottage cheese, fish fingers and cheese sandwiches. My parents left me to it, always predicting that one day I'd be ravenous for anything and everything food-related. It seems they were right. I will try anything once...I did once eat a mackerel's eye after a chef I worked for dared me to. It tasted a bit like a salty tic-tac. Not the next gastronomic sensation, I don't think. Other than that, anything goes.

A few of my favourite things, however, are: game, particularly venison and pheasant; any combination of savoury with fruit, like Moroccan tagine, or duck with orange, or mackerel with rhubarb, or goats cheese with apple; rhubarb; quinces; Medjool dates; orange flower water; any type of fruit (but especially pears, mangoes and ripe figs); mackerel; mussels; tuna and swordfish steak; lamb tagine; aubergine, grilled until shrivelled and then mashed with yummy things like lemon juice, garlic and pomegranate seeds; all cheese, but especially feta, goats' cheese and halloumi; granary bread; cinnamon; coriander; rosemary; couscous; falafel; almonds. I'm sure there are many others. There's a bit of a Moroccan theme to my cooking a lot of the time. I think if I absolutely HAD to choose my two favourite world cuisines, Moroccan and Italian would win. The latter because of the sheer simplicity, fabulous flavours and abundance of carbohydrate (my favourite food group, naturally), the former because of its incredible marriage of the sweet, the savoury, the spicy and the perfumed.

So, this blog is intended primarily as a personal way of reminding myself of things that I have cooked that I have been proud of, or that have been disasters (so I know to avoid them again). It will probably also play host to my frequent little moments of food-related excitement: the day the first quinces or rhubarb appear on the greengrocers’ shelves, promising a plethora of tagines and spring-coloured desserts to come; the day the fishmongers have a special offer on shellfish or red mullet and provide me with the excuse to make a beautiful seafood risotto; the first Alphonso mangoes appearing in the Indian deli (an event made known to me by the truly exquisite mango smell that lingers around the doorway even though the crates of mangoes are several metres away...you just don’t get that with those under-ripe, stringy, over-chilled specimens that come wrapped in plastic in the supermarkets); the finding of wood pigeon for £2.50 a brace at the organic butchers; the special offer on osso bucco, again at the organic butchers, which led me to first attempt this most sublime of Italian dishes; the reception of a pasta machine as a present, and the disastrous first attempt to make pumpkin ravioli; buying baskets of fresh figs for next to nothing at the market in Nice, warming them in the August sun on the beach and then eating them, warm and perfectly ripe (a ripe fig is a bit of a gold mine to find in England); flicking through the leaves of a recipe book to find a recipe it seems I’ve waited my life to find, and then cooking it to find I was right; the arrival of Jerusalem artichokes in the Riverford veg box, an elusive creature that I had heard many good things about but never before tried; returning from holiday to find two huge bowls of figs from a friend’s tree that my family had neglected, and managing to rescue them from the compost heap by transforming them into a truly luscious jam, after a frenzied trip to get preserving sugar from Tesco before it shut (and then finding out that they sell it at the corner shop); the day I made my own quince jelly (the labour to reward ratio is severely skewed...I think this is one thing I might buy rather than make from scratch); the first time I made fish stock and scared my housemates with a giant pot of floating salmon heads; the day I decided, in homage to that culinary classic, Masterchef, to cook a three-course dinner of some Masterchef favourites - scallops with black pudding and pea puree, rack of lamb with spring vegetables and minted peas, and chocolate fondant – and found that I was in fact able to achieve all three, and my fondant was not a cakey or a soggy failure.

There are lots of these moments, and I’m sure I would have a much longer list had I written them all down. So that is what I intend to do. Buy, cook, (photograph), eat, reminisce. And also discuss things I have eaten elsewhere...college dinners, restaurants, friends’ houses (though never in a critical way...so few people cook for me that I am eternally grateful whenever they do, and guaranteed to give even a plate of pasta the highest praise simply because I haven’t had to make it). It should be fun.