When Jack came to stay.

Cooking, Recipes

Jack is my sister-in-law’s brother…or my brother’s brother-in-law . . . surely there has to be a shorter way of saying this.

Anyway, Jack has been asking for my help to prepare for his new university course in digital games design. His background is in engineering which, excitingly, means all his digital designs of trains and cars would actually work if made in real life. The other students on the course are likely to have come from art courses and Jack wanted to hang out with me and try and get up to speed on arty fartiness! I found a timeline of art history, selected some examples of key pieces I like and why, and came up with this analogy to help him evaluate works of art.

“Lashings of Orange Juice & Lemonade”

The best thing I could come up with was “orange juice and lemonade”. Normally this is a mocktail, perhaps chosen by designated drivers down the pub or anyone in need of a quick thirst-quenching sugary hit.

I use it to explain art (I promise there is method to this madness):

  • The orange juice represents the conceptual integrity of the work, the idea, story or message that the artist wishes to communicate with the viewer.
  • The lemonade is representative of the aesthetic quality or the level of technical skill required to produce the work.

And finally:

  • The glass in which these liquids are poured is my perception of the piece.

For example; I feel that a painting like John by Chuck Close would be a full glass of lemonade – this is because of the incredible photorealistic quality requiring enormous technical skill. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp is a urinal (which he didn’t make himself, basically he just chose it to exhibit to challenge the art world). In its historical context this is a brilliant and humorous thing; a big glass of orange juice for me! Another of my favourite paintings is Empire of Light by René Magritte. In my opinion this is a large glass of both orange juice and lemonade in equal quantities. Check it out if you haven’t see it before.

I use this analogy because it reminds me to split my evaluation into an analysis of the concept and of the aesthetic quality. Also, it’s a little less risky to go around a small gallery whispering to your friend “barely a drop of orange juice in this one, no lemonade either” rather than “that’s a rubbish painting, the message it is trying to convey is weak and it’s not very well drawn”.

We spent the rest of the day loading up on coffee and creativity. We discussed conceptual art in the Tate Modern, grabbed a quick lunch from the stalls at Borough Market and then went sketching in the V&A. We arrived home with sensory and caffeine overloads and completely drenched from a downpour.

After a quick change I took a look in the kitchen cupboard to see what I could do for dinner. We were due at a party that evening; a fundraiser for the production of As You Like It which my boyfriend Richard is currently performing in – catch it quick before it ends on the 19th of May!

The party was 1920s fancy dress and aptly named Jazz You Like It! Knowing there would likely be a number of cocktails (and we all still needed time to get dressed up) a speedy-stomach lining meal was required. Manwiches seemed the only answer!

Manwiches

  1. Roast a selection of your favourite root veggies, garlic and onions in olive oil or cold pressed rapeseed oil.
  2. Toast some thick slices of bread and spread both sides with hummus (store bought is fine)
  3. Pile in the roast vegetables, sprinkle with zahtar mix and some crumbled feta and form the sandwich with the other slice of toasted bread.

Scrummy! If you are about to go out on the tiles I suggest you scoff these before you get your glad rags on- they’re mighty messy!

The party was brilliant, there was a raffle and Jack won an hour of personal martial arts and fitness training! We donated a dinner party for 4 which we shall be cooking in the winner’s house…a blog post for another day I predict.

Happy cooking!

Blogtastic Wedding!

Cooking, Events

So excited that my sister-in-law’s article has just featured on major wedding blog site Rock My Wedding! It was a completely brilliant day and a total honor to be asked to make their cakes.
The design process (for the cakes alone) I think took about 12 months, but I’m not complaining; I got to taste them too and what better excuse for churning out cake after cake than in the name of research!

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This Summer they will have been married a year and even now I cannot believe how much detail and creativity went into everything from the flowers to the cuff-links to the giant Japanese fish windsocks.
Do go and see the full account from my fantastic sister-in-law here: http://www.rockmywedding.co.uk/full-disclosure/

xx

In my bag this week….

In the bag

What does the snazzy London-based freelance food-writer carry around?

…no idea, but here’s what’s in my bag this week:

1. The end of the affair by Graham Greene. I love Graham Greene and I am enjoying this book very much. When I’ve finished it I might even book myself a table at Rules restaurant – it features heavily at the beginning of the book and is apparently one of London’s oldest restaurants

2. Graze boxes. These mail order snacks are super yummy and come in convenient little boxes to scoff anywhere. Great excuse to eat dried fruit, nuts and seeds; www.graze.com

3. These are my new sunglassess…what do you think? Cool? or used car sales?

4. So I’ve heard cold-pressed rapeseed oil is even healthier than olive oil…and because there’s a load of UK producers now that’s a couple less air-miles which I can spend on coffee and chocolate! This little bottle is from Culisse and I was given it by the Culisse people themselves at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair last year. This brand is nice, so is Borderfields.

5. TEA! This week my favourite teas are…Teapigs peppermint, Twinings Morning Detox and Pukka Night Time.

6. Oyster card in my Doctor Who Experience card holder. Brilliant. I also have the lanyard, T-shirt and Poster. I am cool.

7. This purse was £2 from Oxfam in Nottingham, I think it looks like it should belong to Mary Poppins

8. Chapstick, classic

9. Mini grater – I’ve used this for lemon zest, chocolate, nutmeg, garlic and even as a mini strainer, so useful.

10. It’s Easter and there are chocolate mini eggs everywhere! To stop me reaching for the sweet stuff I reckon that if I put a couple of these little chicks on my dinner I can pretend anything is an Easter treat, even salad! Might work 🙂

11. Lemons. Matches my bag and a zingy seasoning alternative to salt

12. AVOCADOS! I love these. My favourite breakfast right now is sourdough toast spread with avocado, topped with a poached egg and a little freshly ground black pepper – ace!

x

 

Sugar Free Easter

Cooking, Recipes

When you’re trying to stick to a new healthy eating plan celebrations and holidays can make huge demands on your willpower.

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I’m trying to make a permanent change to my eating habits to balance out some dodgy hormones. In a nutshell I realised I wasn’t getting anywhere near enough fibre and was consuming far too much sugar.
So far it’s going pretty well. I have been able to swap my firm favourites with very similar whole grain alternatives and am eating plenty of fruit. It’s almost easy, and I’m already feeling the benefits which is brilliant.
But now it’s Easter bank holiday weekend and I can’t have an Easter Egg, slab of simnel cake or a hot crossed bun. I figure if I’m struggling with this; how on earth am I going to get through Christmas?!
The only reason it’s been easy so far is because I’ve been switching things I can’t have (like butter) with things I really like but I can have (like avocados). In order to beat my Easter Blues I have decided to try and make a cake out of the things I can eat, but make it look like something I shouldn’t. Make sense?

Somehow Simnel Cake sounded like the easiest thing to mock up. Plus, I’m staying with a friend in Birmingham at the moment so this seemed like a recipe which wouldn’t leave the kitchen too messy.

I can’t really have cake because it contains refined sugar but I found this recipe for banana bread online. It seems there’s enough sweetness in the bananas so that you don’t need sugar- brilliant.
I substituted the plain flour for wholemeal because I thought I might as well make it as good as possible and I baked it in a round cake tin to further trick my brain. When it came out I let it cool and then sliced it in half through the middle. I sandwiched it back together again with a scrummy paste made from about 25-30 dried dates softened with around 4-5 tablespoons of boiling water (keep adding a splash and mashing them until they are the consistency of thick lemon curd). Add to the date paste half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a dessert spoon of cocoa powder. This made a really sweet chocolate filling ideal for this cake, but it’s also good on toast if you miss the occasional chocolate spread.
Obviously the marzipan was going to be the next hurdle, but i winged it and soaked some dried apricots in the same way as the dates (and about the same amount). Using a hand blender I processed 150-200g of whole almonds into the apricot mix. It turned out like a pale peanut butter. It tasted quite pleasant but I think next time a drop of almond essence would give it a more convincing marzipan flavour.
Finally I lightly grilled the cake to make it look authentic and that was it. Simnel Cake.
It was like eating cake, without the headache inducing sugar rush and probably at least one of my five a day; result!

Happy Easter xxx

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Gnocchi o’clock!

Cooking, Recipes

About a month ago a friend of mine posted this entry on facebook: “1st attempt at gnocchi making and it’s gone very badly wrong”. Underneath this statement was a photograph of a saucepan filled with the offending yellow paste and a wooden spoon which looked like it might never return. I invited her round for a gnocchi masterclass.

I say ‘masterclass’… I have made gnocchi before but that was ages ago and I cannot remember how it turned out. I think it went ok but I honestly have no memory of it either way. She seemed so disheartened that it hadn’t gone well that without thinking I invited her round to make gnocchi with me. I had been joking when I called it a masterclass, but I realise now that I haven’t actually known her for that long so she may have just assumed that I knew what I was talking about. (It’s probably better that I am concerned about this now and not on the day).

She arrived keen to get started and once the kitchen was free from coffee making housemates we got to work. I might not be a gnocchi expert but I know what it feels like when things go wrong in the kitchen. Usually this happens to me when I am being impatient or if I get distracted. It feels so much worse when it’s the mistakes you wouldn’t normally make; over-cooked veg, an undercooked casserole, burnt cake, in my case all of which are almost always followed by my flouncing off into another room dramatically exclaiming “I can’t cook” and “my career is a failure”. I hoped that if I helped my friend resolve her gnocchi nightmare I would simultaneously be sending a metaphysical drop kick to every failed flan, terrible terrine or that lumpy mashed potato I was sorry to serve to my boyfriend’s mother last year.

It was a really fun afternoon and I am pleased to say that we made some rather yummy gnocchi. It was a lot easier than either of us had expected/half remembered. We ate it in the garden until I noticed a hungry squirrel take a strong interest in the hazelnut butter so we ran in.

I really enjoy cooking with other people; sharing the labour of something which might normally be fiddly or complicated and swapping kitchen hints and tips.

If you want to make gnocchi too, here’s what we did:

  1. Take 750g of potatoes and boil them whole and unpeeled for 30 minutes
  2. Drain them, rinse with cold water and leave them to cool.
  3. Peel the potatoes and put them through a potato ricer.
  4. Gradually add 125g of plain flour stirring with a wooden spoon.
  5. Knead the mixture briefly and bring together into 3 lumps. Roll them into thin sausages and chop into small pieces (you’re aiming for boiled sweet size blobs)
  6. Press a fork into the sides to give small line indentations and drop a third of the gnocchi pieces into boiling water
  7. Once they rise to the top, give them about 10 seconds or so and then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and place in a serving dish.
  8. Repeat the process with the rest of the batches.

Add pesto or your favorite cheese or toasted hazelnuts tossed in melted butter. As you may know I’m trying to change some of my eating habits at the moment so I made mine with butternut squash in place of potato and used wholemeal flour. The mixture needed more flour than the potato version and I stuck an egg in too (for luck!) The butternut squash version is great with the hazelnut butter, mint leaves and feta and I served the classic version with a simple salsa verde made with mint, parsley, basil, capers, lemon juice and oil.

Say hello to these dudes!

Cooking

You know when people tell you they’re not good at cooking by saying “I can’t even make toast”, well whatever the gardening equivalent of that phrase is then I’m it. This is why I am currently jumping up and down at the sight of these dudes! My new tarragon seedlings, aren’t they cute. Wish me luck!

Sundays & Smoothies

Cooking, Recipes

Last weekend I went to visit my brother and his wife in Hampshire. We spent a sunny Saturday at the allotment getting the plot ready for their first crops and looking at creepy crawlies!

After a well deserved lie-in on the Sunday morning I woke to find my sister-in-law Em and her brother Jack in the kitchen making us all a big batch of blueberry pancakes.

They were really scrummy and made with blueberries and cornmeal they were superfoodtastic! Em used this recipe from Martha Stewart but made it even more exciting by laying out a great selection of toppings. We had maple syrup, honey, almonds, bananas, walnuts and seeds to choose from.

Blueberry Pancake Toppings

This weekend I’ve gone smoothie mad! Smoothies have always ended up being a bit of a fad for me as I’ve tried a few times to have one a day but I often end up finding that the effort involved in cleaning the juicer/blender/jug/processor always outweighed the yumminess of the end result.

This new wave of smoothie love started off badly with my 10 year old hand blender dying a death. With a sliced banana in one hand I hurled it into my housemate’s blender and haven’t looked back. It even has a smoothie setting and completely purees an orange in seconds. It’s easy to clean too, I just whizz up some hot water and a smidge of washing up liquid and then rinse it – hoorah!

This morning’s smoothie was really simple and made enough for 2 large glasses:

Blend 2 peeled oranges with 2 peeled bananas until smooth. Pour into tall glasses and top each one with all the innards of half a passion fruit!

Other smoothie combos I’m gluzzling at the moment:

  • Orange, banana, pear, fresh ginger, pinch of spirulina
  • Orange, carrot, ginger

To keep up my smoothie-enthusiasm I need to get experimenting, next up I’m thinking cucumber, mint, apple and limes. Maybe some herbs too; strawberries, lemon, basil and black pepper might be nice in the summer…would love to hear some of your suggestions or your trusted favourite smoothie combos. x

Sugar-Free

Cooking

I’ve been having some pretty loopy mood swings lately. This might all be fun on a good day but heaven help anyone who speaks to me on a bad one. Turns out, my whole body is in a spot of bother and it appears that if I don’t do something about it now my health could really suffer.

Sugar has been deemed the biggest villain here and has been banished from my usual diet until further notice. White flour, white pasta and rice have been shown the door. In their place come whole-meal and whole-wheat counterparts. This isn’t a diet. I have never properly been on a diet. (Although I did once spend a week eating special K for breakfast and lunch. This sounds like I was successful until you factor in that I was meant to do it for a fortnight! Oh, and another time I tried to cut out carbohydrates and fruit but that lasted as long as it took me to realise I’d just made a batch of soda bread).

This no-sugar-more-wholemeal-plan is a change in eating habits that I need to make permanent. I eat quite healthily most of the time but I am prone to having huge sugar cravings. I can easily bake a batch of fairy cakes and eat the lot. This doesn’t sound catastrophic but these sugar hankerings have been getting progressively worse.

If the only result of my heavy sugar intake was a little weight gain and furry teeth then I could live with that but in my case even a small increase around my waist throws my hormones into a right muddle. In a funny sort of way I hope I stay scared about this for a long time, or at least until I have settled in to an almost sugar free world and begin to feel a few benefits.

After glancing over a few books, doing an online search and chatting over coffee with sympathetic friends I gleaned a lot more information on this subject than I thought. It sounds naïve but I was genuinely surprised at the amount of differences even small changes in eating habits can make with so many health problems.

So far, so good, although let’s be realistic, I’m only 3 days in!

In order for this to be sustainable I have decided to face it with the following two-pronged attack:

1) Focus on the worse case scenario

If I don’t change then there are serious health problems ahead.

2) Be positive about what I can eat

I started listing the things I cannot regularly eat anymore (such as white flour, sugar, cakes, biscuits) and started to think of delicious alternatives or “swapsies”. This new healthy lifestyle actually encourages the consumption of some of my favourite things – a little red wine, dark chocolate, poached eggs and avocados; if I start to think of these things as medicinal then, well; happy days!

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When Richard offered to make me porridge this morning I felt a little sad. I’m one of those people who take their porridge with a metric tonne of golden syrup but I know that’s definitely off the menu. Instead I went for chopped dates and a dash of cinnamon and (thankfully) it was surprisingly delicious. Yesterday I made risotto with bulgur wheat instead of white rice and this evening my spaghetti carbonara became spelt spaghetti with avocado and goats cheese.

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Bulghur Wheat Risotto

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Spelt Spaghetti with Avocado, Lemon, Goats Cheese and Spring Onion

With all this extra veg, fruit smoothies, dates and a dash of spirulina I might be farting for England for the next few days but at least I’m on the right track!

I shall open a window and look forward to loosing a few pounds and my sweet tooth!

Ooh that’s new!

Cooking

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I often get asked “so what kind of food do you do then?” and I am usually pretty stumped for a decent answer. Mostly I just panic and say “whatever you like” or “everything!” and fling my arms about enthusiastically so that they think I’m quirky and they move away.

The truth is I eat almost everything (although there are a couple of flavours for which the jury is still out on whether I like them or not; things like aniseed and liquorish). Most of the time I am perfectly happy in the kitchen hurling something together from whatever the hell I can find, a style of cooking which doesn’t often fit with one particular type of cuisine.

The list of the dishes I have not yet attempted however, has sparked my imagination recently and I announced to Richard that I would be making chips for dinner for no other reason other than that I had never made them before.
As a kid we never deep fried anything, ever. We weren’t raised on a diet of quinoa and sea kelp or anything, in fact we had fish and chips many times, but they were always from the local chippy. I think it was probably the fire risk involved and perhaps the tricky business of having to dispose of large quantities of waste oil afterwards that meant the first time I successfully deep fried anything I was 25 and was tasked with making falafel for someone else’s Lebanese dinner party (mild panic ensued).

So, last week on a whim I fired up a large pan of vegetable oil, looked up a recipe and dug out a thermometer. I found this hairy bikers recipe and it worked a treat! The only change I made was to leave the skins on, after all I wouldn’t want to miss out on those minerals!

Other things on my culinary bucket list are doughnuts, puff pastry, pork pies, tempura, fresh noodles, onion bahjis, oh and I’ve never boiled a crab or a lobster.

What’s on your list, I’d love to know. What foods have you eaten loads but never actually made from scratch?
x

Ready, Steady, Brighton!

Cooking

Image“When we get back to our house can we lay out a load of ingredients we need to use up and then you cook something out of them? Would that be fun for you?”

Of course it would! I didn’t spend my teenage years watching ready steady cook everyday after school for nothing! I’m always up for a creative culinary challenge (and particularly any excuse to show off). Naomi and Martin are two splendid newly weds who live seconds away from Brighton beach.

They were married on the same day that Richard and I met. The only significance in this fact was that the first time I saw Richard he was looking particularly dashing in a suit. In fact come to think of it, I also happened to be wearing a suit then, and a top hat, as we met after the wedding at a Halloween party where I had decided to dress as an undertaker.

Anyway, back to the kitchen! Richard and I arrived back at Naomi and Martin’s to find a whole host of vegetables, jars and tins laid out on the dining table. I requested a piece of paper and a pen and after a moment of deliberation I somehow managed to scribble down a very vague 2 course menu for 4.

Everyone chipped in and we made corn cakes with refried beans followed by mushroom chilli with rice (which was more of a ratatouille in the end). Whilst I was frying the corn cakes Naomi and the boys devised a little song and dance consisting of lots of shouting the letters M.I.M and “Go FOOD” with cheerleader type actions and intonations. This (not surprisingly) fast descended into tremendous fits of giggles to the point where I’m surprised we served anything at all. We had a lovely evening, their home is a wonderful, welcoming space, full of homemade furniture, pictures painted by family & friends and a very particular collection of pebbles from Brighton beach – selected only if they clearly resemble a letter of the alphabet. With the letters obtained thus far Martin is able to write the phrase “gone swimming x” completely in pebbles for Naomi to discover.