Crunchy Christmas

Everyone keeps saying the words credit and crunch in conjunction as if it makes a well-known saying. I'm not entirely convinced that 'credit crunch' really is a proper thing, or that I actually need to economise, due to the extraordinary sales taking place everywhere. I may be the exception, however, so here's some thoughts on having a crunchy Christmas!

Now - turkey is a fairly low-cost meat (as well as being low-fat) and can be eaten for about a week after the event, so we're already off to a good start. Choose an extra-massive turkey for Christmas day and you're already economising on meat for the festive period. Buy a jar of Stokes Coronation sauce to whip up some tasty Coronation turkey sandwiches, salads or jacket potato toppings.

Christmas dinner seems to be made up largely of vegetables, which you can buy in large quantities in most supermarkets, making the most of the 2 for 1 deals. Either stick them in the fridge drawer in bags, or freeze them. If you cook vast mountains of vegetables all in one go for Christmas lunch, you can also enjoy bubble and squeak for the next couple of days, either with cold meat and pickles or with omelette and baked beans.

For me. Christmas is all about being able to eke out the supplies for days on end until the shops open again. I don't care if they're open all the way through these days - it's the spirit of the thing! Who cares if lunch is one sausage, some crackers and the last of the brie? It's Christmas!

Winter killing

It nearly happened again! Last Monday, at the first proper whiff of winter, I very nearly said "oh, it's my favourite season!"

I got as far as "oh, it ..." before remembering my solemn vow of loyalty to its older brother autumn.

I've been roasting parsnips til the cows come home (to be made into lovely fillet steak and eaten with redcurrant sauce and roasted parsnips!) and I caught a glimpse of some wonderful sprouts in the supermarket the other day. I've also got cupboards full of pickles, biscuits for cheese, nuts and chutneys for Christmas, so I'm all set for a happy, healthy, warm winter.

Thai-ing up loose ends

Non-authentic pad Thai

Ah, go on then! I've left you dangling long enough and I've even bought a wok in the meantime!

So, this is how I make pad Thai, based on eating it in restaurants and hastily reading a serving suggestion on the back of a noodle packet.

First heat a little bit of groundnut oil in a wok and fry chicken pieces until they start to brown. Shred them up into smaller pieces with a spatula as they're cooking. Add some beansprouts, a tiny bit of red onion and a little bit of shredded cabbage. You could also add some prawns at this stage, if everyone to be involved in the eating process likes fish.

Add some of those ready to wok noodles at this point - preferably the allegedly authentic ribbon ones. Toss them with the other ingredients and drizzle some lime juice, a pinch of brown sugar and a dash of soy sauce in as you're mixing. Fish sauce would be a traditional addition here (again, some people don't like fish!) but it's fine without.

Next, make a well in the centre of the wok and crack two eggs inside. It's a good idea to turn the heat up significantly so that the eggs start to cook immediately. Once they're showing the first signs of solidifying you need to jush them around a bit and mix them into the noodles.

The final topping for this dish is to serve it piled high in noodle bowls with crushed peanuts on top and a lime quarter on one side for extra squeezing!

Eastern promise

I'm reliably informed by a colleague that the programme I mentioned previously, with the apple-cheeked presenter, was called Chinese Food Made Easy. I quite enjoyed it, even though the homemade pot noodle item wasn't for me. The book accompanying the series is fab, too.

I've been on a bit of a mission to improve my Chinese, Thai and other kinds of oriental cooking this year, for various reasons. I'm actually quite proud to say that I've done rather well and some of my favourite homemade meals these days are Eastern-influenced. I'd even go so far as to say that's what I may cook if I was out to impress!

I've particularly got into noodles and I've been perfecting my not-at-all-authentic pad Thai. Remind me to give you the recipe sometime!!

Not poodle

I'm eating a Pot Noodle as I write this.

I've always wanted to start a blog post in that way! No, really - I am, though; I didn't just say it for effect. I'm two-thirds of the way through a Sweet and Spicy Pot Noodle. It's delicious!

There was a programme on TV a while ago in which the apple-cheeked presenter demonstrated how to create a homemade version of a pot noodle. It was essentially a pot with noodles in it, plus some vegetables and a bit of sauce, but she made it in five minutes (ie the time it would take to boil a kettle and follow the instructions on a shop-bought version).

Now, that's fine for her but I like Pot Noodles as they are! I don't want them to be healthier, tastier, more filling, etc - they're fine for me. I'm not even bothered about 'knowing exactly what I'm putting in my body' because, by the way, it really isn't a temple! I do a lot of my own cooking - as you've probably noticed - but sometimes I want convenience food and sometimes somebody else can do it better. There's a time and a place for everything!

Let's have an apple party

It hardly seems any time since the last Apple Day at Audley End House. Nevertheless, it has come around again already - and this year filled a whole weekend.

I went along last Saturday to take part and to enjoy the lovely autumn weather. I also took along an apple from the tree in my garden and was reliably informed that it's a good, healthy example of an Egremont Russet! Good for eating or cooking lightly on a tart!

I think Apple Day, however predictable and samey, will remain a part of my yearly calendar because it seems perfectly to encapsulate the beginning of autumn. The trees at Audley End House fade and shed prettily and the ranks of apples, pears and vegetables sum up a bountiful English harvest.

I love each season when it arrives and walk around for a fortnight telling myself (and anyone else who'll listen) that it's my favourite. I think, however, autumn really is my favourite! All the nicest food seems to be in season and all the nicest colours abound. I'll try to stick to it this time and not have my head turned by the frost of winter or the first whiff of spring!

Celebrate in your own style

It's 'birthday weekend' among my friends, acquaintances and loved ones. So what should one cook to celebrate?

Well, in some cases you can do no better than ham, egg and chips with some English mustard. I do great fried eggs, too. We used to own a deep fryer and I made my own fat, crispy, delicious chips. I miss them, but I don't miss the whole house and all my clothes smelling of chip fat!

For some, the onion soup I made last weekend would be the perfect celebration treat. It's ridicuously easy, too - chop up three or four onions (a mixture of red and white), cook them softly in a saucepan for about 20 minutes so they're see-through and squishy rather than brown and crispy, then add a pint of beef stock and some seasoning and simmer it all for half an hour. And that's it! I also made massive Paris-style croutons with some French bread rings toasted with Emmental on top. Some people, however, find too many onions annoying ... so it's best to check with the birthday boy/girl first!

Some like a picnic and we're having some splendid weather at the moment, so it's ideal for finding a quiet spot outdoors and bringing some sandwiches, cakes or pork pies. The problem there is that all the 'quiet' spots are overrun with other people trying to enjoy the last (and indeed first) of the nice weather.

Many people have a sweet tooth and for them I'd recommend the low-fat apple cake with some lovely tea. One year, for my dad's birthday, I made some cappucino and espresso cupcakes. They're basic fairy cakes made with instant coffee powder mixed in, and topped with creamy toppings - chocolate-flavoured for the cappucino and vanilla for the espresso. I think they're from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, or at least one of hers.

If it's your own birthday, though, and you don't fancy cooking (and can't find anyone else to cook for you), I'd recommend getting a massive curry from Tesco's Takeaway range. It's normally next to the deli counter with those ready-cooked chickens. Just shove it in the oven and eat it with loads of naan bread and some beer!

Happy birthdays.

Brave old world

Inspired by patatas bravas

I've been a bit flakey lately, haven't I? Ooh, pasta's too hard! Potatoes: what are they like?! Oh, I love ham, me! Well, to make up for it, here's an actual recipe.

Before you all scream at me, I have no idea if this is authentic. I've based it on eating patatas bravas and improvising with ingredients I had around the house.

Firstly chop two large potatoes into small cubes (about an inch across, I suppose). There's no need to peel them first, really. Place them on a large baking tray and drizzle them with loads of olive oil, adding a good sprinkle of salt and black pepper. Roast them in the oven for about 20 minutes initially.

After they've had a chance to start cooking, remove the baking tray and add a tin of tomatoes (I don't know quantities but one of the tall tins!). I normally use tinned cherry tomatoes because they burst in an appealing way. Also add a small sprinkle of chilli flakes, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a very small squeeze of tomato puree (I use sun-dried tomato puree but it probably doesn't make much difference!), a teaspoon of demerara sugar and a roughly-chopped red onion. Return the whole thing to the oven for about half an hour until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked and the tomato sauce has thickened.

I would normally eat masses of this with a tortilla and a bit of ham, in which case this amount serves only two of us. If you're eating it as 'proper tapas', however, it would probably constitute at least four portions.

Oh, and have red wine with it!

Fighting with ham

Serrano ham is one of my favourite types of food. Whenever I've got a trip to Spain on the horizon I find myself becoming more excited about the good ham I'm going to get than I am about anything else!

There's one particular delicatessen in Tarifa, which is imaginatively called The Delicatessen. It serves and sells a fine selection of ham, including some of the best Pata Negra I've ever tasted.

It's harder to get good ham in England, I've discovered, but some delis and tapas bars have the proper stuff available. Tesco's finest Serrano ham is pretty good, too.

Earlier this week I made a tapas-style dinner with some ham, tortilla and patatas bravas. On the same evening we watched the film Jamon, Jamon - subtitled 'a tale of ham and passion'. It was, unsurprisingly, a ham-based film and added significantly to my enjoyment of dinner!

What does the baked potato say?

Apparently if you eat the skin of a jacket potato, worms will grow out of your face. Or so I'm told, anyway.

A slightly more plausible fable is that a jacket potato is the healthy or low-fat option, but it's a fable nonetheless. I guess this would be true if we all ate baked potatoes as they come out of the oven, but we don't. Hands up who adds butter, some kind of butter substitute, cheese, mayonnaise or something else? Hmm - forest of hands!

I'm not trying to suggest that jacket potatoes are bad - in fact they're delicious and I'd recommend a huge pile of grated cheese and some black pepper on top, personally! I'm just saying that a plate of oven chips or some homemade potato wedges (with the skin left on, baked in a little bit of olive oil) is probably lower fat in the long run.

Not al my dentes

I had a thought the other night (I had been drinking ...): good restaurants should ask how you'd like your pasta cooked in the same way as they'd ask about meat!

Chefs always rave on about how pasta should be al dente - I saw Gordy on TV just the other day ripping seven shades out of some poor restaurateur in Spain because his penne was too mushy. But is it not down to personal choice?

I don't really like it al dente. That's just uncooked in my opinion and I don't like the feel of it. For me, that's the same as finding a hard, glassy bit in the middle of your baked potato or a still-chilly pea among your petit pois. Would it be so challenging to give me a choice? After all, I know that fillet steak tastes far better cooked rare, but if I were a chef I'd still have to give paying customers the chance to have it incinerated and leathery!

Or am I mad?

I've gone all brunch!

Scrambled eggs and asparagus on toast

I came back from Spain recently with a tremendous and very seasonal appetite for asparagus. I've been eating it a lot lately and, in my opinion, its natural partner is egg (and egg!).

One Saturday at about 11.30am I made up this brunch, based on egg/asparagus desire and a severe lack of food in the house.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call this a recipe but I'll tell you how I put it all together. First I chop the asparagus spears in half to create lengths of about 5-6cm and put them into a saucepan of boiling water over a very low heat for about three minutes. I cut some ciabatta rolls open into halves and toast them, drizzling on some olive oil about halfway through the process.

My egg-scrambling method is unorthodox, but tried and tested. I crack some eggs (normally three for two people) into a bowl and whisk them with a bit of black pepper and a dash of olive oil. I then microwave them for roughly two minutes, stopping every 20-30 seconds to do the 'scrambling' bit with a fork. The oil helps them to stay moist and a bit runny.

To make it all deli and brunchy I serve the eggs delicately dolloped onto the ciabatta, with asparagus criss-crossed on top and a spoonful of hollandaise sauce on the side.

Incidentallly, I recently received a fantastic Gordon Ramsey cookbook as a birthday present and he writes about a similar recipe, but with the addition of anchovies. Back off, Gordon!

Wining on

We celebrated English Wine Week by visting a couple of local vineyards. Chilford Hall, in Cambridgeshire, is fairly well-known locally as a conference centre and civil wedding venue. Unfortunately, this was the focus of the tour rather than the wine itself, which didn't make for a particularly interesting visit! We did get to see the wine-making equipment; their wine is mostly processed and bottled on-site in a small but highly organised 'shed' on the estate!

Of course, the major draw of any vineyard visit is the tasting session and we eagerly awaited our chance to sample the award-winning wine. The white wine, primarily made with Reichensteiner and Schonburger grapes, is fairly successful; I liked the Chilford Dry 2006 and the Schonburger 2006 in particular. I wasn't overly impressed by any of the reds or their sparkling wine, though. There's something too harsh and a bit yeasty about both the white and rose sparkling ones.

At the end of the week we visited Sandyford vineyard in Great Sampford (close to Saffron Walden). It immediately has a different feel as it's part of a farm and it's the home of owners Sue and Mike, who are always around to greet visitors. There's no wine production on site; the grapes are sent off to larger vineyards to be fermented and bottled. We had a stroll down to look at the vines themselves - again, lots of Reichensteiner grapes but also Bacchus, Rondo, Regent and Triomphe d'Alsace.

We've been here before so I already knew which wine I liked and I was looking forward to the tasting. Again, the red wine isn't very impressive; our climate just isn't suitable. The English rose, on the other hand, is amazing and completely converted me to pink wine! I am also a big fan of their sparkling wine - expensive, but as good as a medium quality Champagne for certain. It's made from Bacchus and Reichensteiner grapes in the traditional method (the same as Champagne) and has the typical English gooseberry/elderflower flavour. It's amazingly refreshing and uplifting on a summer's day.

English wine is now a far more common sight in supermarkets and it's well worth spending a little more - particularly if you're lucky enough to live in Essex and spot the Sandyford wine on the shelves.

Back in the saddle

I've been so busy lately I never did get around to reviewing the places I visited for London Restaurant Week!

I went to Brasserie Roux, for which I had fairly high expectations, only to be disappointed. It was alright - the food was nicely prepared and well cooked but was fairly unimaginative. I can't think of anything particularly outstanding about the meal itself. In fact, the highlight of the evening was the bar at the Sofitel which we visited before dinner. The cocktail menu was extensive and impressive and my vodka martini was mixed perfectly. I also liked the cute individual shaker and the plethora of delicious snacks that came with it!

My second London Restaurant Week adventure was lunch at the Cinnamon Club, not far from where I work. At the other end of the spectrum, this meal exceeded my already high expectations of this fantastic restaurant. I ate mutton with a delicately spiced onion sauce, mutton being something I had never tried before. It's sort of gone out of fashion, I suppose, but if this meal was anything to go by I'd recommend giving it a try.

I think London Restaurant Week, on the whole, is a good thing if it makes people try somewhere new and promotes some undiscovered gems. My own experience, however, made me think that I'd be better off browsing Toptable for special offers at places I already know and trust!

English Wine Week

I love where I live for many different reasons, not least because of the excellent food and drink produced in the area. Several vineyards can be found a short drive from my house and, from what I've tasted, the wine they produce is of a pretty good quality.

This is my main reason for supporting English Wine Week, which starts tomorrow (Saturday 24 May). I love to see bottles of local wine on sale in our supermarkets - it fills me with a bit of East Anglian pride (which sounds as if it should be a local ale)!

English wine is usually a little more expensive than wine of equivalent quality from other countries, because it costs more to produce. It's all done on a smaller scale and often the grapes are sent to other vineyards to be processed, which adds up. We can, however, bring the cost down if we support it and buy English wine when we find it for sale. It's worth our support, I promise!

Some weeks are longer than others

Hey everybody: it's London Restaurant Week! Oh, except it was really successful last year, so they've actually extended it to a fortnight, confusingly.

Anyway, it started on Monday 14 April and goes through to ... er, a fortnight after that. Lots of top London restaurants are offering a two-course lunch for £15 and a three-course dinner for £25. This is about the price you'd normally pay for a special offer, set menu or Toptable deal but, from what I've heard, the menu for London Restaurant Week is usually less restrictive and better quality.

I'm taking advantage of this wonderful event twice this year. I'm going to Brasserie Roux tomorrow evening and to the Cinnamon Club next Friday. Reviews to follow, I promise!

Super noodles

Sticky chicky noodles

I've never really bothered all that much about oriental food - Chinese, Thai, etc - because it's not my favourite kind of food and I had no idea how to cook it. Just recently, however, I've taken more of an interest for one reason and another and I've learnt a few recipes. Nowadays I'd say I'm pretty good at noodles!

One of my favourite recipes is one I found in Delicious magazine and have slightly adapted for my own tastes. So here you go:

First of all, mix together about four dessert spoonfuls of soy sauce, the juice of one lime, a teaspoon of chopped ginger (from a jar, in 'new Delia' style!), a few crushed chilli flakes and four dessert spoons of honey. Add to this two smallish breasts of chicken cut into smallish strips and leave it to do its business for ten minutes or so. Then transfer it to an ovenproof dish and put in the oven (medium hot) for about 15-20 minutes.

Next fry some suitable vegetables with a little bit of groundnut oil in a big frying pan or wok. I usually go for either a pre-prepared packet of sliced cabbage and leek or a bag of 'generic stir-fry vegetables' (I'm so Delia!). But if I was starting from scratch I'd use very finely sliced savoy cabbage, red onions, carrots and courgettes.

Separately cook some fine egg noodles and as soon as they're ready add them to the frying pan with the vegetables. When the chicken is ready, take the dish out of the oven and carefully pour or spoon the sauce over the noodles and vegetables. Leave the chicken in the dish for a while (in the oven to stay warm) and give the noodles a thorough jiggle around to make sure the sauce has covered everything. Serve massive plates-full of the noodles with the chicken placed on top, with a nice glass of fruit juice or guava Collins!

Ooh, and hey: remember I said I'd suggest some recipes for dinners that could also create leftovers for lunch? This one's the daddy!

Sunday service at the Church

We visited friends in Northampton a while back and, at long last, got around to trying The Church restaurant. It's a converted church (funnily enough!) and I've always thought it looked fairly classy as we've driven past. Although I'd never seen the menu I had read a few good reviews online and, all in all, had fairly high hopes.

Well, I can honestly say that I wasn't in any way disappointed. The entrance is quite impressive and we all looked around with 'ooh's and 'aahh's at the bar area with its high rafters and large stained glass window. We went for Sunday lunch so things were fairly quiet but it was clear to see that the bar could easily be lively with a good atmosphere on a weekday evening.

The decor of the restaurant itself is modern but understated to let the architecture of the church itself take centre stage. I sat next to another stained glass window and the sunlight sent beams of blue and purple light onto our table, which was rather pretty!

The food is at the high end of the 'gastropub' spectrum: a few brave, different choices but nothing pretentious and decent-sized portions. My starter of garlic mushrooms baked with pancetta and mozzarella was well constructed and delicious. One of my friends ordered scallops, which looked to be cooked excellently.

For the main course I ate a fish pie - perfect plain and simple Sunday lunch food cooked well with nothing fussy about it. One friend ordered the roast beef, served in the traditional way; he had good things to say about the quality of the meat but left quite a lot because the portion was enormous! The other two ate the salmon, which was apparently cooked well but was served with far too many 'branchy' bits of watercress and far too little lime dressing.

For me (strangely for me!) the highlight was the pudding. Everyone else had a hearty-looking slab of sticky toffee pudding (and none of it was left, so I'm guessing it was good!) but I chose three scoops of sorbet. The orange and raspberry scoops were lovely, but the champagne-flavoured scoop was utterly fantastic!

Add to this some excellent, well-judged service and some good music at just the right volume and I'd say the balance of everything was more or less right. So if you're ever passing through Northampton ...

Waste not, want not

The whole 'don't waste food and use up the leftovers' thing seems to be snowballing even more just lately!

Since my last post on the topic I've seen a snippet in one of the free London newspapers about leftover recipes, an article on BBC Breakfast News about food waste and landfill sites and, just this afternoon, an article in the Tesco magazine.

It seems that the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has recently launched an awareness campaign entitled Love Food Hate Waste (which has a fantastic website full of tips, recipes and statistics).

I've been posting to this site like a crazy with my tips and comments - let me know if you spot any of mine on the homepage!

In the meantime, here's my own personal five top tips to eliminate food waste:

1. Make a shopping list when you visit the supermarket and stick to it
   
2. Don't buy larger packs or special deals just because they are cheaper unless you're sure you will use them
   
3. Have loads of sandwich bags, foil, plastic pegs, airtight containers and cling film handy for storing things
   
4. Make sure you keep vegetables and salad in the crisper drawer thingie so that they don't wilt too soon
   
5. Always consider the possibilities for making the next day's lunch out of dinner leftovers (I might even post a few recipes for this sort of thing in the near future, because I'm awfully nice!)
   

It's amazing how much we all throw away and how much money we probably spend, not only on wasted food but also on buying new stuff to eat when there's perfectly good ingredients in the cupboards or fridge. So please let me know your own tips and recipes so that we can all be smug, thrifty, resourceful types now and again!

All patriotic and whatnot

I've got a real fancy for coronation chicken (or coronation turkey, in yesterday's case!) at the moment. It may just be the perfect sandwich filling for me and I can't help but think it would go down awfully well with some rice, too.

I'm not entirely sure how to make it myself, though, so I'm just off to investigate some recipes. If anybody has a tried and tested recipe for it, please let me know!

Nothing left over

Clayton-style bubble and squeak

It seems suddenly fashionable again to make the most of food leftovers and to shop and cook 'for the week'. This is probably part due to the fear of a recession, partly a concern about being green and sustainable, part reaction to the over-elaborate style of buying and cooking we've seen in the past few years and largely nostalgia!

I thought I'd throw my bit in since I love making the most of leftovers and spare odds and ends of food. The daddy of all leftover cooking, for me, is bubble and squeak. But not the proper nonsense (a sort of mashed-up and fried cake of potato and cabbage) - that's nice enough, but not a patch on the version my mum used to make!

So here's my mum's and now my own version:

Cut up loads of leftover roast potatoes, parsnips, Yorkshire puddings, sprouts (or cabbage, or whatever other similar vegetable) and even sage and onion stuffing if you have some left after roast chicken or turkey. Bung it all into a massive frying pan with a little bit of olive oil and fry it. That's all. It's just loads of nice things that are too good to throw away and taste fantastic re-fried!

I normally eat it with cold meats, baked beans and pickles. It's also good with eggs cooked however you like. It's the most comforting meal in the world and makes every day feel like Boxing day! If you can arrange to watch Herbie Rides Again, Moonraker or The Great Escape at the same time you'll be sound as a pound!

Joyous photo-sharing!

If you're feeling bored or blue
Or find yourself with nowt to do
Visit Chortleberry.com - the new photo-sharing community website.


Yeah ... I never was much of a poet.

But anyway, Chortleberry is a thriving new site where you can post your own photos to share them with others, view the work of many other budding amateur photograhers and generally have a bit of a chat. It's all lovely and free, too.

This has nothing to do with food - unless you count the photos of eggs.

Always do the hungry shop

The past few Saturdays seem to have taken a similar pattern: I wake up and realise there's nothing particularly exciting or appetising in the house for lunch. The sensible course of action would be to pop to Tesco for the weekly 'big shop' on Saturday morning and return in time for lunch with plenty of exciting options.

I'm not all that sensible, though. What we tend to do instead is try to postpone supermarket shopping for as long as possible in the following manner:

1. I suggest going out for lunch
2. We mull over this idea and discuss where, out of our collection of regular haunts, we should go
3. We get ready and drive to one of the lunch locations
4. While we're eating a plan for the afternoon formulates, which usually includes stopping off at Waitrose/M &S/local deli for wine and food for Saturday night
5. The shopping still hasn't been done by Sunday morning, but we've indulged ourselves gastronomically for at least half of the weekend, often at considerable expense.

Now, I have nothing against this and it means we get out and about on a Saturday, while exploring, supporting and enjoying our local eating places. We're now familiar with a fair few gastropubs, cafes, restaurants and delicatessens in the Uttlesford area, which is great.

However, there's a possible deviation from this plan and it should be resisted at all costs. Sometimes, when there's not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon, we give in and do the supermarket shopping just after lunch! This is A Bad Thing* and I'm here to warn you against it - and you never thought we'd get to the point of this post, did you?!

Last Saturday we ate a two-course meal at the Cricketers' Arms in Rickling Green (a reasonably well-known local gastropub). The food there isn't bad but, on this occasion, all four of the dishes we ate seemed to be over salty and incredibly oily! This isn't intended to be a review of the pub, though: I'm merely using this example as illustration.

So, fairly full from our large lunch of oil and salt we drove to Tesco to buy everything we'd need for the following week. But, of course, when you're full (and, in this case, bilious) you don't really fancy any more food and I found myself drifting aimlessly down the aisles unable to look a decent fillet steak in the, er, face! I just couldn't bring myself to imagine what I'd want to eat during the week, let alone that evening, and found that my powers of 'food matching' were severely under par. "Do green beans go with these noodles? Oh, I can't think about eating noodles at a time like this!"

I felt as if I never wanted to eat again (yes, me!) and the result was a whole week with no sensible food in the house. I'd hardly bought any 'proper' dinners and there was nothing to eat as a snack, so my stomach was rumbling almost every evening. I'd also failed to get anything for my lunches so I ended up spending over the odds by buying my lunch in London most days.

My advice to you, therefore, is this: always shop when you're hungry! It's the only way!

* Anyone who knows me particularly well will be surprised, nay shocked, by my use of Dickensian, teacher-style capitalisation. That's how bad a thing it is! You see what it's driven me to?!

And egg!

I just spotted this other blog on the Foodie Blogroll (in my right-hand column). It's entitled 'And the eggs'.

Some people will see why that's funny ...

If not, it still has some nice photos of food and a few good recipes!

Oh man, I love de cake

Low-fat apple cake

For the past few weeks I've spent some time at the weekend making a cake. The same cake every time: once I find a recipe I like I tend to stick with it for a while.

It's an adaptation of a recipe from delicious. magazine, although I can't find it on the website. The idea is that you replace most of the fat element from a normal cake recipe with pureed fruit and use wholemeal flour instead of the bleached variety, making it a 'healthy cake'. Of course, it still has a cartload of sugar in it and the fruit's probably cooked so much it loses most of the goodness but it certainly does have far fewer calories than traditional cakes. The original recipe included a lemony icing but I have dispensed with that because it just didn't seem to go with the cake!

I'm not really one for paying attention to quantities; I hardly ever weigh or measure anything when I am cooking. But for cakes and pastries one just has to because the results are weird and unexpected if one just guesses. So here goes with the boring formalities:

100g of either plain or wholemeal flour (or half of each)
100g of caster sugar
50g of raisins
25g of walnut pieces broken up into even smaller pieces
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon (ish) of ground cinnamon
2 large Bramley cooking apples
A bit of sunflower oil (around 25ml)

Phew! That's that over! Now the far more interesting bit.

To begin, peel the apples and chop them into small pieces, then cook them in a saucepan with a splash of hot water over a low heat. You're basically trying to break them down into a mush. When they're done, leave them to cool completely. While they're cooking you can pre-heat the oven to about 180 degrees (is that roughly gas mark 4? I can never remember!)

In the meantime, weigh all the dry ingredients and mix them together. Once the apple has cooled down, weigh out 250g of it and add it to everything else with a little bit of sunflower oil. It's approximately 25ml of oil which is such a small amount it's actually quite tricky to measure! I tend to sort of add it gradually until I have something resembling a wetter-than-normal cake mixture; if it looks a bit like wallpaper paste you are probably on the right track.

I use a loaf tin to cook this in - it's approximately 10cm x 20cm. There's probably a proper, official size for things like that but I know nothing about cake tins! Anyway - grease the tin liberally and dump in the mixture, then bake it at the bottom of the oven for about an hour. Stick a wooden skewer or toothpick into the centre to test whether or not it's cooked - if it comes out clean you're good to go, but if it brings mush and goo you need to cook it for another ten minutes.

The secret of this cake is not to be impatient and greedy (yes, I learnt that from personal experience!) and to let it cool sufficiently before trying to cut yourself a slice. Let it cool down in the tin for ten minutes or so before turning it out onto a wire cooling tray ... because we all have one of those lying around, of course! I usually use the metal shelf bit from my grill tray, personally! Either way it needs to be cooling down from above and below, because if you try to cut it while it's warm it'll be too soft and you'll just get a mushy, squished wedge (which is still delicious with a cup of tea but won't win any prizes for presentation).

If you've got the willpower and discipline this cake will last for several days wrapped in foil and a great big slice is ideal for elevenses!

(PS: hey everybody - surely you've noticed the enormous plea for votes on Fuel My Blog logo in the right hand column. Don't be afraid to click it ...!)

Who are ya, Delia?

So, just as I decided to write about ready-made things and 'convenience' cooking, Delia Smith brought our her new book on more or less the same topic! Cheeky madam.

Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking is about making use of pre-prepared food if you are busy or inexperienced in the kitchen. It's assembly cooking for work nights, making use of the storecupboard and freezer rather than buying everything fresh and spending your whole weekend chopping, pickling and making your own stock.

I think this is a pretty good idea but I'm not overly sure I care for her tone! "Who peels the potatoes? Anyone but you!" It's got a hint of 'I'm sick of cooking for you ungrateful lot and I've become slightly jaded but I'll be damned if I can't make a bit of money out of opening a packet of Smash, since you're probably all cheesed-off with chopping too'.

After all, it doesn't take a staggering IQ to read one of her old recipe books and substitute freshly-grated ginger with some from a jar, does it?

Ready-made goodness!

Apparently people imagine me spending most of my time behind the cooker and never buying anything ready-made!

I guess it's partly true: I do like to potter around in my kitchen at the weekends and I do spend a lot of my free time making or preparing food. I also enjoy the challenge of making things myself rather than buying them at (often) extortionate prices. But that's only half the story, because I'm often quite lazy and I'm heavily into comfort eating which, I find, is better if you don't have to cook first!

For a start, see my earlier post about pancakes. I don't see buying ready-made pancakes as a terrible thing even though they weren't anywhere near as good as my own ones. I never have much time for breakfast so I often resort to little pancakes I can sling in the toaster or cereal bars I can eat on the train.

I'm also a huge fan of oven chips. Well ... any chips, really!! But having had a deep fat fryer and having made my own chips regularly at one time, I know full well that it's not worth the sacrifice of the whole house smelling of oil just for fresh chips. The oven-ready variety will do just fine (and they're far healthier) with a pie (ready-made) and baked beans (from a tin!) in the evening when I get home from work.

I'd say it's all about getting a balance: some things aren't worth the effort of making from scratch when there's such good ready-made versions available at a good price from the supermarket. I enjoy cooking but I don't want to be spending all my spare time pickling onions or rubbing flour and butter together for the 'perfect' crumble mix or boiling chicken carcasses to make stock. I have other pastimes - such as writing this blog...!

Don't forget to add a little flower

It's pancake day, yes it's pancake day ...

Hands up who remembers the pancake day song from Maid Marian and her Merry Men? I taped it at the time and watched it time and time again until I knew all the words and actions!

I was a bit miffed this year to work out that I'd be out on Shrove Tuesday, because I love my annual pancake-making evening and look forward to it throughout the year. I'm not a Christian so it doesn't really matter what day I make them on, I suppose - why not Easter Sunday or my birthday?! But it's the tradition of the thing! I love a bit of tradition and if we all ignored these calendar milestones and did everything whenever we fancied, I'm sure the very fabric of British society would begin to unravel! At the very least we'd be a bit confused ...

So: this year I was forced to make my pancakes on Ash Wednesday! Bad from a tradition point of view but as close as I could get. I'm a traditional Delia-recipe pancake-maker, with only lemon and sugar as additions; I have no truck with chocolate spread or syrup. There's nothing better than hot, freshly-made pancakes drenched in fresh lemon juice (from a lemon, not Jif-style!), sprinkled with sugar and eaten with a fork.

Incidentally, to overcome my feeling of ickiness about missing Shrove Tuesday itself, I bought some ready-made pancakes to eat for breakfast on that day. They weren't great but, with enough care and attention to lemon and sugar, they were a chompy enough breakfast and fulfilled the requirement!

NB: If you didn't get the title, you didn't watch the video!

Beefmeat

Y'know how you get chilli sin carne, for vegetarians? Chilli without meat, basically. Well - I really like meat, particularly beef, and I like the idea of chilli con carne but I'm not a massive fan of the chilli element.

I want something mince-based, flavoursome and comforting to eat but without burning my tongue or having bad breath for a week. So I've invented carne sin chilli!

It's basically steak mince, onions, borlotti beans, tomatoes, tomato puree and a bit of stock all cooked together and served with rice. As a colleague said: sort of rice bolognese.

Well ... I like it!

PS: the title of this post refers to a restaurant we went to in Spain, which had 'beefmeat' on the menu!

Teaching your grandmother to cook eggs

It's a bit like the beans on toast post, this one. I know you don't need a recipe for ham, eggs and chips. So this is basically me telling you about really nice food I've eaten, and that's the extent of it.

But ... well, I had ham (leftover Christmas joint of ham), eggs (fried) and chips (oven, because I used to get so fed up with all my belongings smelling of chip fat when we made our own) the other day and it was delicious!

It's also really quick and undemanding to make, which is nice for a change. It was fairly economical too.

So if I've given just one reader a little bit of inspiration for an easy dinner, then it's worth me writing about it. Or, to put it another way: "If I bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes me feel as though my hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'!" [Lina Lamont]