Weave your own yoghurt. Or don't.

I had a rough old time of it last year, relatively speaking. I mean, I wasn't blown up, or rendered homeless, or made to socialise with Kanye West. Nothing THAT bad. But I did have some major surgery for my endometriosis, and it totally sucked big fat hairy balls. The operation itself seemed to be fine, albeit twelfty billion hours long. The day after, the nurses woke me up and told me there had been some complications. In my morphine addled state I failed to grasp the gravity of the situation, and so sent a text to The Bear along the lines of 'Doctors say I won't stop bleeding, no-one knows why, I am nil by mouth as they think I might have to go back into surgery. LOLS' and promptly fell asleep, only to wake up several hours later to 50 odd missed calls from Himself, my mother, and my many, many sisters.  I was alright in the end. I didn't die. Or need more surgery. But I did lose approx a third of the blood from my body, which as outcomes go, wasn't exactly ideal. This meant an elongated hospital stay. Hospitals are really odd places and you very rapidly become institutionalised and obssessed with the routines and habits of your fellow patients. I was struck foremost by the speed at which people who obviously took good care of themselves seemed to heal, as opposed to the ones who made their husbands bring in four cheese and bacon turnovers from Greggs every day. (One woman genuinely did this and would then spend hours noisily vomiting them up, creating noises eerily similar to that of Slimer from the Ghostbusters movie. The horror of this at three in the morning when wanged off your nut on opiates is incomparable.)

So when I got home I started reading a lot about food. First I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (good for turning you instantaneously vegetarian. I'm not quite there but have drastically reduced meat consumption). Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which is good for ensuring you never want to eat anything again, ever (Still worth a read though). And then, in a much more uplifting way, I found The Extra Virgin Kitchen by Susan Jane White. White is a food writer who recounts her interest in healthy eating as stemming from a hospital stay. The account opens her book and is powerful shit. She talks of the epiphany she had that her and all her fellow patients were essentially 'digging their graves with their teeth'. I wasn't on morphine by this point and the weight of that sentence hit me like a ton of bricks, and I properly cried. Snivelling, inconsolable body-shaking sobs. I suddenly realised that I could have shuffled off this mortal coil in blood stained Moomin pyjamas in a body that was a total fucking wreck, and decided there and then that something had to be done about it. Fortunately, SJW book is just the book to set you off on this quest. She is hilarious, and refreshedly un-po-faced. She doesn't want you to weave your own yoghurt or knit with hemp. She just wants you to eat a bit less processed shit.

This is obviously a bit easier said than done. I have accumulated some handy gadgets to assist in the last couple of months. Firstly, a Fitbit, to make me move my useless arse a bit more. If you have a desk job it is easy to become sedentary, but this evil little wristlet will render you the human equivalent of a hamster in a wheel. Secondly, a Nutribullet. This really just smooshes shit up like a fancy blender but is good to shove vegetables, seeds, and a wee bit of fruit into in the morning to start your day right. My friend Zoe has compared these drinks quite rightly, to 'being a bit like drinking somebody elses cold sick' but it is HEALTHY cold sick, so drink your medicine and shut your face. I'm just in the early stages of all this gubbins, as I am unsurprisingly still battling with anaemia which is a total and utter bastard. But I feel like baby steps are better than no steps at all. My life has become an endless round of walking, chopping things, smooshing things in a Nutribullet, and washing stuff up. The vegetably crud often left on many surfaces by the bullet and various other cooking detritus led to The Bear uttering the impossibly sexy sentence 'Why do you always smell of bleach at the moment?' when I got into bed the other night. Better than a diseased colon though I suppose.

Still, I am far from perfect, and neither are any of you bastards reading this. Every now and again you want something sweet. Sugar is getting a hell of a bad rap at the moment, and rightly so. It is something I have tried to exclude in its processed forms, but when the hormones come a-knocking they will not simply be fobbed off with A Fucking Apple. So whilst still in a pretty drug addled state I made these brownies one night a few months ago. They are pretty good and even fooled The Stepchild, who like any other teenager would usually smell a healthier alternative from seven miles away, like some sort of sucrose crazed bloodhound, and then dispense with it in the bin.

Ingredients

- 1 fairly large sweet potato (Yeah I am putting veg into cake, get over it, you eat carrot cake don't you?)
- 4 tablespoons of buckwheat flour (you could use regular flour but I avoid it these days, buckwheat is probably better for you and fairly easy to get hold of)
- 1 heaped tablespoon crunchy peanut butter (I like Whole Earth, the proper hippie shit)
- 2-3 tablespoons of honey. (Get local untreated stuff if you can. Even my garden centre sells these days it so it really isn't that much of a ballache to obtain. Don't act like I am trying to get you to procure a surface to air missile)
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (I like Green and Blacks in this one but you could use that raw cacao stuff if you want, but you would need less as it is stronger)
- 4 eggs
- Teaspoon of baking powder

Method

1. Bake your sweet potato in its skin at about 180C until soft, this will probably take at least 30 minutes. Leave to cool, turning your oven down to about 170C.

2. Meanwhile melt the honey, oil and peanut butter on a very low heat. Whatever you do, do not taste this, as it is literally the most delicious thing and you will end up wanting to drink it. Don't drink it. Or do if you want, I'm not your Mum. (But you will need to make some more up for the brownies.)

3. Beat the eggs in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder and cocoa, then the delicious honey-ey/oily/peanutty stuff.

4. Squeeze the innards of the sweet potato out into the mixture and give this a stir too.

5. Put in a lined tray-bake type tray. I use a square one which is 20cm x 20cm

6. Put in the oven for approximately 15 minutes (but check on it after 12).

7. When cooled I then cut this into 16 squares, each one is approx 76 calories for those of you that give a shit about that sort of thing.

Eat whilst feeling immensely grateful that these are not THOSE brownies that you had at Glastonbury sometime in the nineties which made you think you were A) covered in ants and B) having a conversation with Jimi Hendrix when you were actually talking to a rucksack.

Never too late

Well after the biggest blogging hiatus in the history of blogging and hiatuses, I am back. We had a house move, a jaunt to France and some pretty serious surgery for me to contend with, hence the absence. I was in two minds about whether to come back, what with it having been so long. But today's theme is never too late, inspired by my Mam's Christmas cake what I made at the weekend, which she has always called 'Never Too Late Cake', of which, more later.

My Mam is the absolute queen of Christmas, hands down.That Allsopp woman might think she has the monopoly on handmade Christmas gubbins, but my mother would craft her into a huddling, quivering mess of Boden-clad snot in about half an hour. When we were kids Mam made decorations, table centrepieces, wreaths, presents, cards, nativity costumes, her own mincemeat, pudding and cakes. This was less from some trendy nostalgia, but more because she just considered it proper. I once heard her and my Nanna discussing the woman over the road as 'the sort of woman who buys pies from a shop' in the hushed and horrified tones normally reserved for murderers and the like.

This wasn't always a positive thing. All of my sisters and I have fraught memories of Christmas Eve. Whilst our mates were going out getting totally shitfaced in the pub, we were usually seated in a production line bagging up Mam's home made sweets or biscuits and assembling hampers, sometimes until three in the morning. This sort of shenanigans probably also explains why my mother once wearily told me that her best tip for Christmas Day itself was to utilise alcohol like an anaesthetic, in a small but constant drip to yourself throughout the day.

These days, whilst Mam is no less enthused by the season itself, I think she is tiring of the real (little) donkey work of it. (See what I did there?) (Fnar). Hence this year for the first time I have not only been in charge of making the pudding but also the cake. I have mixed feelings about this. Mostly fear that everyone will taste it and scream 'WHAT IS THIS MUCK YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF THIS IS NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS MAMS'. (And in my family this could actually happen). To minimise the chances of this occurring I have used her recipe. The principle behind this cake is that rather than make it in August and pour booze into it until it resembles a whisky-sodden lump of peat, you mimic this maturation period by putting all of the fruit in a pan and cooking it in booze. Genius. Thus it is the 'Never Too Late Cake'. If you don't want an alternative to all the booze then I suggest you step away from this post, as this is not the cake for you my friend. (In our family even being a tiny child is no excuse for not eating alcohol soaked cake).

As a note before I begin - these quantities look a little odd as I had to convert them from the original pounds and ounces, which Mam still refuses to stop using.  These quantities make two smaller cakes (like the one shown below) or one enormous one. Adjust cooking times accordingly.

Ingredients

- 992g of mixed fruit - suggest equal mix of sultanas, raisins and currants. Not candied peel as it is the excrement of Satan.
- 226g of chopped dates
- Zest and juice of 2 lemons and 1 large orange
- 226g of ground almonds
- 283g unsalted butter
- 283g light muscovado sugar
- 340g plain wholemeal flour (or wholemeal spelt flour works well)
- 5 eggs, beaten
- 1 and quarter tablespoons of honey
- 1 and quarter teaspoons of cinnamon
- 1 and a quarter teaspoons ground mixed spice
- 141g chopped mixed nuts
- 141g chopped walnuts or pecans
- 170g glace cherries
- 75ml whisky
- 150ml sherry

Method

- Preheat the oven to 150C or Gas Mark 2. Double line your cake tin on the bottom, treble line the sides.

- Place all of the dried fruit into a saucepan with the booze and citrus juice and zest. Heat over a medium heat, stirring often then bring to boil. Switch off the heat. Leave this mix to cool (either naturally or by putting the pan in a container of ice water.

- In a seperate bowl cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, then fold in the flour and spices with a metal spoon.

- Once mixed add the cooled fruit and remaining other ingredients. You should be warned that mixing this is a Herculean effort, as you are not supposed to knock the air out, but the mixture is also incredibly thick. I got the husband to do it, which was bad for my feminist credentials, but good for my iron deficiency anaemia.

- Once mixed add to tins and smooth mixture down. They will need 1 and a half to 2 hours in the oven, and are done when a skewer comes out clean. They should then be left to cool completely in the tins.

- Once turned out, brush with honey and then cover with marzipan and then either fondant icing or for an authentic 1970's look, royal icing. For those of you, like me, who don't like marzipan or icing it is really only there for decoration and to stop the cake drying out, I have absolutely no concerns about chucking it away when I eat a slice. I have also topped mine with some of those molar-shattering silver dragees and terribly retro cake toppers. You could of course be more tasteful about it, but really, if you can't be camp at Christmas, I'm not entirely sure what the point of it all is.

Cake, making everything better since....forever.

I've been exceptionally lame at blogging for the last few weeks. Life has, as is its unfortunate habit, got in the way. More tedious hospital visits, and the final stretch of my history degree has taken its inevitable toll. Not to mention the business of buying a house. I always secretly thought to myself that when people described this as one of the most stressful things you will ever go through, that they were probably full of melodramatic shit. Turns out, not. I had also always believed that estate agents and solicitors contained at least 45% weasel DNA, but have now realised that this is incredibly unfair. To weasels. The constant moving of deadlines, and the lies! Oh my god, THE LIES! Constant, and increasingly complex and implausible. How do these people sleep at night? (Probably upside down, in an underground lair, having satiated themselves on the blood of cats).

It's just as well that I really love the house we are buying, as I don't think I will ever be able to deal with any of this lot again (In actual fact Mr H has done most of the contacting of them as there is a very real chance of me just wigging out, and we have to reserve this for emergency purposes).

In a further shitty turn of bad luck, our oven promptly imploded on itself a couple of weeks ago. In the middle of a roast dinner. Fortunately the meat was cooked, so roast spuds were replaced with mash and dinner was saved. This of course meant our poor landlord had to get a new oven. Not ideal when he has just sold the place, but from a purely selfish point of view I was pretty chuffed. So chuffed in fact that last Monday, whilst Mr H watched 'Useless Men On A Not Really Deserted Island With The Posh TV Survivalist' I made a coffee and walnut cake. This is a favourite of the husband, and actually mine. I don't like the cloyingly sweet type that granny's would make, but prefer the type that my mother makes, with exceptionally strong coffee. A small slice of this probably contains enough caffeine to have Andre The Giant buzzing his tits off for days, but that is how I like it. Diall the coffee down a bit if you wish. Pussies. I would actually prefer to keep the frosting to cake ratio in favour of cake. It's probably necessary to keep the cake from going too dry but for the most part I actually kind of hate frosting or icing of any description.



Ingredients 

The Cake

4 eggs (probably large but tbh mine come from the butcher so aren't graded)
225g unsalted butter
225g caster sugar
210g self raising flour
75g walnut pieces
4-5 teaspoons instant espresso
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Milk

The Frosting

2 tablespoons instant espresso
Splash of double cream
150g softened unsalted butter
300g icing sugar
Walnut halves

Method

1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and frothy looking. I do this in my stand mixer, but a handheld electric whisk also works. Only do it by hand if you are some sort of insane masochist.

2. Add the flour, coffee powder and other dry ingredients, along with the eggs, and continue to mix.

3. Once incorporated, add some milk. This might be a tablespoon, or two, or more. You want the cake batter to have a dropping consistency (this means it falls off the spoon, duh).

4. Now, using a spoon, stir the walnuts in gently.

5. Divide mixture equally into two buttered and lined 20cm sandwich tins and bake for 20-25 mins at 180c. Clearly I should have told you at the beginning to preheat your oven, but I didn't.

6. Cakes are done once golden brown and springy to the touch, and now need cooling on a rack.

7. Once cooled, dissolve the coffee for the icing in just under a tablespoon of boiling water to make a paste.

8. When that has reached room temperature add to butter and icing sugar and whisk the living Christ out of it to incorporate. A splash of double cream helps toward the end to give you a better, smoother texture. Again, I use my stand mixer, you do need an electric whisk here at the very least, or you run the risk of lumps of unincorporated butter, which makes me boke.

9. Spread frosting on the cakes to sandwich them together and decorate the top in an artful fashion that screams Church Of England raffle.

10. Eat with a cup of tea whilst noisily protesting at computer programmers and media sales twats inexpertly killing animals for their supper for the purposes of television.

Love And Marriage, Love And Marriage....and Butchers.

I have had a few weeks of blogging hiatus. Firstly, we had to find a new house, which is obviously massively stressful, then I had surgery last Wednesday. It didn't really go according to plan, and has left me extremely sore and drug-addled, with a beautiful range of yellow and black bruising across my abdomen (I realise this makes me sound like a wasp, but the reality is far less poetic). Fortunately Mr H is really excellent in the event of a crisis. Where I tend to just crumple into a weeping mess, smeared make-up running down my face like an emotionally incontinent version of The Crow, MH is ever organised, calm, and methodical. So he has taken over the household chores and taken incredibly good care of me, whilst I have lain about like something out of a nineteenth century novel. Except whilst wearing Primark pyjamas. And obsessively updating Pinterest (if you have never tried pinning homewares whilst off your tits on morphine, I highly recommend it). I have quite enjoyed being cosseted and looked after (I probably could have done without the pain and burgeoning opiate addiction but every cloud). It has made me extra appreciative of Him Indoors as well, and got me thinking about how marriage is generally A Good Thing (for me, anway).

Being married is brilliant for many reasons. I find my husband to be literally the funniest man I have ever met. He is much cleverer than me at anything science-y. He makes the world's best cup of tea. He gives the best hugs that have ever been given by any human ever. He has lovely eyes. And a nice arse. And he also does lots of jobs which I cannot bear. He manages, down to the last penny, all of our bills and banking. This is joyous to me, as even thinking about finances makes me have an attack of the vapours. In a further 1950's demarcation of household duties, he deals with anything to do with the car. Or tradesmen. Before you all start uncontrollably vomiting at this unbearable smug marriedness, I should also point out in the interests of balance, that he also has the capacity to irritate me to the point of strangulation. Cases in point:

1. When opening a bottle of beer, ALWAYS leaves the bottle top in the cutlery drawer. WHYYYYYYYYYY?

2. Gets undressed in stages throughout the house. A sock on the sofa. Another sock halfway up the stairs. Pants on the landing. I'm not sure if its some bizarre mating ritual or what my sister refers to as Clothing Confetti. Either way, its fucking annoying.

3. When we are getting ready to go out anywhere, I organise everything (presents, card, wine etc), tidy the house, feed the animals, and get myself ready. In the meantime, he sits about in his pants, then at the last minute, swoops downstairs, fully dressed, and declares 'Oh GOD aren't you READY yet?' just because I'm not wearing shoes.

4. After winning an argument (usually by bamboozling me with scientific stuff, which I emphatically do not understand) he will trail off the sentence with 'Soooooo....' and do his patented Smug Face.

5. When looking for something he has misplaced, he will always either blame me for tidying, or come up with a conspiracy theory, rather than acknowledge that it might just be that he is untidy and slightly chaotic. Case in point: he once seriously claimed that one of the cats had taken his phone.

6. When asked to get something from somewhere, if the item is not immediately visible, his technique for retrieving it is what I like to call 'Bear Getting Food Out Of A Jeep'. This is named after some footage I once saw on the Discovery Channel, where a grizzly violently shook an entire vehicle with a puzzled look on its face, then punched at windows and doors, until it could get at whatever was in there (presumably a picnic). His technique employs a similar amount of confusion, lack of methodical thinking, and brute force, and usually makes me wish I had just gone and got the item myself.

Smug. Until The Harman Rage arrives, anyway.

7. This brings me neatly onto Harman Rage. This phenomenon appears in the menfolk of my husband's family, and is characterised by outbursts of physical and verbal abuse, exclusively directed at inanimate objects. It is usually caused by the slightest of provocations, and results in a disproportionate response.  Such is the white hot rage of the Harman that they never realise how horribly embarrassing the Rage is. My father once looked on, helpless, as MH screamed at a golf club and bent it into a perfect 'U' shape round the trunk of a tree. When the mist lifted seconds later, he seemed perfectly nonplussed about the number of elderly gentlemen in plus fours staring at them in silent astonishment. My own experiences are too numerous to detail, but I did once have to contend with standing next to a family with very young children whilst he called an Expedit bookcase a 'Fucking cock-sucking motherfucker piece of shit' in the loading bay of Ikea.

But back to his excellent qualities. MH also deals with the butcher.  This may not seem like much of a big deal, but it really is. For some reason, I have always found butchers deeply intimidating. Part of this is because I fear they will cross examine me and find my food knowledge wanting, and part of this is the butcher sense of humour. They all seem so incredibly dry and sarcastic that I, ever gullible, am never sure when they are massively taking the piss. It creates a lot of anxiety. So when we decided, about two years ago, to make sure we went from occasional butcher visits to getting all of our meat from them, I was immensely relieved when The Bear offered to take charge. He works in the food industry anyway and as a result had actually been on a couple of butchery courses. This meant he could talk knowledgeably about obscure cuts of meat to impress the butcher, and win his trust. So our Saturday morning routine would consist of MH travelling out on his own, to acquire whatever I wanted to cook that week. Often I would offer to accompany him but always be told to just stay home and relax. How considerate, how kind. Not so.

We had occasion to visit the excellent breakfast place opposite our butchers with some friends, about six months after the butchers visits became a regular thing. It seemed natural afterwards for me to wander in too. MH became visibly agitated at this suggestion, insisting I sit in the car, or go and get the newspaper. I was by now hugely suspicious, and insistent on coming in. MH grumpily acquiesced, until we drew level with the door, when he hissed at me 'You can come in alright, but whatever you hear in there, don't say anything'. I was befuddled, and wondered what I was entering into? Some sort of Fight Club, but with meat involved? (the first rule of Meat Club...) Some sort of Mrs Miggins set up?

Turns out...it was just the butchers. Everything passed normally until the butcher took the money from my husband's hand and loudly said 'I tried your recipe for that Italian chicken stew, it was bloody gorgeous'. At this point I turned purple and nearly swallowed my tongue. MH is emphatically NOT a cook, but had been using MY recipes as some sort of bonding exercise with the butcher. Unbe-fucking-lievable. Still, I considered this deception a small price to pay for not having to talk to the butcher.

Another reason people are frightened of butchers is cost. This is a legitimate concern. I once airily sent MH in for a rib of beef, and he said the price made him rock back on his heels like he had just been punched in the clackerbag, and made his voice go all squeaky. But all is not doom and gloom. For one, the meat will taste better for not malingering under plastic and lights. It is usually more ethical, obviously. Things like mince, bacon, and sausages are no more expensive than a major supermarket, and are way better quality (certainly from ours anyway). The butcher also does some lovely cheap cuts that supermarkets don't always stock. Things like beef short ribs, or indeed, ham hock. Here is a recipe for ham hock soup that I made a few weeks back. A large ham hock in my butchers is £2.50 and this will make a good 6-8 portions, depending on how greedy you are.

Ham Hock Soup - serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

1 x ham hock
3 x carrots
2 x white onion
1 x leek
4 x sticks of celery
300g yellow split peas
150g orange lentils
peppercorns
bay leaf
vegetable bouillon powder
white pepper

Method

1. Put one of the onions, cut in half, one of the carrots, and two of the celery stalks into a large pot with the ham hock, a few peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Cover with water, put a lid on, and simmer the hell out of it, topping up water as and when you think it is running low.

2. After a two to three hours, turn the heat off. Once cool enough, remove the ham hock and start to remove the meat from it. This will: A) take forever B) thanks to the amount of sinew, be so grim you genuinely consider vegetarianism C) coat your hands in a weird oily substance that no amount of Fairy liquid will remove D) make you smell like a ham for days. Both my dog and husband found this irresistable, which was puzzling and distressing in equal measure for all concerned.

3. Now to the stock. You need to fish out the peppercorns and bay leaf. If you want to chuck away the very limp veg feel free to do so but I leave it, although I smush it up a bit.

4. Now to the stock add the rest of your veg, chopped a little neater this time. Add a decent pinch of bouillon (not too much as it is salty and so is the ham) and a shake of white pepper, to taste. Then in with the peas and lentils.

5. This will take a good hour to hour and a half, on a low simmer. For personal preference, once cooked and slightly cooled (when the pulses are soft) I tend to put two thirds of the soup into the blender. Then add the shredded ham back in at the last minute and reheat. This soup is not the prettiest. If you wanted a more ectoplasm vibe you could do what my mother in law does and add real peas instead of split peas, but I prefer the baby-foody texture you get from a split pea.

6. To serve you could gussy it up with some chopped chives/creme fraiche I suppose but this just makes me think of something Keith Flloyd would do whilst half cut on a trawler somewhere. Serve warm with wholemeal bread, or even soda bread, like what I made here

He has probably passed this off to the butcher as his recipe too.

Tales of The Unexpected

No, not the one with the women doing the swirly dancing. Just a situation where you plan a weekend of carefree researching of Victorian child murders (erm, not for fun, but because you have an interview for a masters and you are trying to be all clever and set yourself apart from all the other desperate history nerds. Honestly.) And then you find out that you have to move out of your house. Into a new rented house. With pets. Which is virtually impossible.What I actually wanted to do at this point was curl up in the foetal position and cry. But I had people coming over for Curry Night (note the use of capitals) and naan dough was in the Kenwood Chef, just lingering.

Having people over for dinner is pretty much guaranteed to create a kitchen anxiety attack of epic proportions, even without a homelessness crisis looming. My key advice on this is as follows:

1. Don't call it a Dinner Party. This conjours up visions of A) Actual Linen Napkins and B) Abigails Party. (I KNOW that was a drinks party, but still)

2. Call it Supper. It sounds way more sophistamicated to say to people 'Why don't you come round for a little supper?'. Also, their expectations will be much lower.

3. Cook something that looks impressive but that can be slow cooked. In this case, curry is a perfect option. Unless you are some sort of authentico-twat like me who wants to make naan bread. Which you probably aren't.

4. Give everyone drinks. All of the time. Take their coat, give them a drink. Give them a new drink about twenty minutes later. And so on, throughout the evening. This will cleverly conceal the fact that you are in the kitchen shouting frantically at the curry 'Why won't you just FUCKING THICKEN YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD' etc.


A few years ago I had the fortunate experience of becoming friends with a tiny, terrifying woman of Bengali origin, who is so East London it is untrue. I mean actual East London, not all the twats who came in ten years ago, with their fixies and fashion dogs and multi-directional hairdos, spending their weekends going to art shows where the only exhibit is one scuffed trainer on a plinth. Shads, AKA the Pocket Rocket, is five foot nothing of scathing put downs, good advice, and amazing recipes. The daal and saag are all her own work, but I did the curry and naan myself. When I asked her, about two years ago, if she had a good naan recipe, she looked at me like I was certifiably mad and said 'Faaaakin 'ell! Use Sharwoods bruv!'.

I perservered and found a recipe in one of my seventies cookbooks which I have tweaked a bit. Granted, it seems like a total ballache but shop naans have  a cotton wool quality I'm not crazy about. The veg sides that Shads has come up with are so delicious that I would happily eat them without any meat, which as a confirmed carnivore is quite a statement. Serve all of the below with some poppadoms, chutney, lime pickle, raita and a winning smile to conceal your inner turmoil and panic caused by MAKING naan.

Curry Night Recipes

Chicken Curry

Serves 6 greedy people


Ingredients
2 Peppers (I used green but any colour will do)
2 green chillies
12 skinned and boned chicken thighs (your butcher will do this, under duress, making a massive fuss, but secretly loving the fact he has to do some butchery)
Thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled
2 tins of tomatoes
2 white onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp hot curry powder
1 packet of creamed coconut
Oil  (sorry to be so non-specific but you will need...a bit)

Method 

1. Cut each chicken thigh into about three pieces. Check for bone shards, depending on how grumpy your butcher is about cutting things up (he may have left it in there to spite you)

2. Brown meat off in a little oil.

3. Cut peppers up into bite sized chunks.

4. Add onions, garlic, ginger and chilli to a food processor, and whizz. If you don't have one, chop laboriously by hand and think about BUYING a food processor.

5. Add vegetable smush and pepper pieces to chicken and continue browning.

6. Now add spices.

7. And tomatoes.

8. Then add the creamed coconut, you will have to chop this. This is awful as it feels like you are cutting up a candle but I promise it will melt down.

9. Cook in a slow cooker for about 6 hours, or a normal saucepan for about 3.

10. Eat it with all the other stuff you have laboriously prepared and secretly wonder who you are trying to impress with this. 

 

 Dahl By Shahida (In her words)

Ingredients

Orange/Yellow lentils- 200 g  - Wash first

1 - onion - chop up

2 dry bay leaf

4 green chillies - whole or cut in half

3- garlic clove mashed up with the equivalent amount of ginger

1/2 tea spoon of turmeric

1 tsp of salt (add more salt if you need it) black pepper for taste

****************************************************************************

You will also need

6 cloves of garlic finely chopped or mashed up

6-8 red birds eye chilli

4 table spoon of oil any oil would do but not smelly oil like olive oil

Coriander (Fresh, chopped)

Method

So in a pot add your washed lentils, chopped onions, bayleaf, salt, 4 green chillies, salt, mashed up 3 garlic and ginger and blast it on boil, with an inch of water above the lentils..... then turn the heat down a bit and cover for 20 mins, stir now and again until the lentils are soft, and most of the water is gone.

Taste to see if you're happy with the salt, if not add more. Then add some water ...depending on how runny you want your lentil dish and boil for another 15 mins

Next in a frying pan ......this is quite dangerous!!! ...heat the oil add the

6 cloves of garlic finely chopped or mashed up

6-8 red birds eye chilli, until it is brown.

Turn off all the heat fully and add this into the main lentil pot ...... it's gonna sizzle to the max bruv so be careful!! And cover.

Garnish with chopped coriander ... Boom !!!

Saag Aloo also by Shahida

Ingredients

Garlic 2 cloves - finely chopped

1 large onion - chop

1 green chillies - finely chopped

3 potatoes  - bite size or whatever size you want not too big though

Oil

1/2 tea spoon Turmeric

1/2 - 1  tea spoon Curry powder

1/2 teaspoon Chilli powder (optional)

Spinach - chopped up

Salt - 1./2- 1 teaspoon depending on how salty you like ur dish

Coriander - fresh

Method

Okay so blitz your garlic / onion green chillies in a food processor (even East London rude girls like a Kenwood - just buy one!!! - HH)

1 - Heat some oil in a frying pan, add your mixture

2 - add salt and turmeric, and fry until its brown

3 - add the potato and fry for 5- 10 mins

4. Add  1/2 - 1  tea spoon Curry powder and 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder (optional)

5. Stir for a bit then add the spinach stir and cover, let it all shrink, stir every so often for the next 10-15 mins on low heat.

6. Once the potato is soft enough, blast the heat and add some coriander.

7. Add some water if it is too dry or blast the heat up if it is too runny.

Naan Bread (Not by Shahida as only mentals MAKE naan)

Ingredients


150 ml warmed milk
2 tsp yeast
2 tsp sugar
1 beaten egg
2 tsp black onion seeds
450g strong white bread flour
1 tsp salt
2.5 tbsp oil
160ml natural yoghurt

Method

1. Add the yeast and sugar to the warmed milk and leave until it goes all frothy and starts moving about and looks repulsive.

2. In a jug mix the egg, yoghurt and oil

3. Now mix the yeasty stuff and other wet stuff with the dry ingredients and knead for about ten minutes. I use my Kenwood Chef because I am lazy but you could do it by hand. In fact Paul Hollywood says you can't make bread with a machine anyway as you can't feel when it is right. But A) I dont know when it is right because I am not a professional baker and B) Should you trust a man who looks like a human husky? I think not.

4. Now leave for about two hours, in a covered bowl, until it doubles in size.

5. Preheat your oven to as hot as it will go.

6. Place your heaviest oven tray in there.

7. Grease up the surface you will be using with lots of vegetable oil. Also grease yourself up.  Mainly your hands but also probably go a bit further up the arms. To the elbows. Or further. Think male stripper at a hen-do in the Circus Tavern circa 1987.

8. Divide the dough into six pieces (on the greasy surface) and shape into balls. (Hur hur. Balls)

9. Now take one ball and attempt to shape it, on the greasy surface, into a naan shape. Open the oven and try to throw the naan shape onto the hot tray. This will not work and you will probably end up with a phallic looking naan bread. It is done when the bread is browned and looking a bit bubbly, like a naan. But penis shaped. Probably.

10. Repeat five more times whilst being bored out of your tiny mind and envisaging being homeless with your dog.

11. Reheat when ready to eat for about five mins in a 200C oven with garlic and coriander butter smeared all over them (I like to use the lurpak garlic butter and smush chopped coriander into it).


12. Eat it. All of it. Whilst furtively looking at Rightmove.

Victoria Josephine Fox

Moving to Essex was hard. I was six, nearly seven, and went to primary school, ever the optimist, expecting to be knocked down by a stampede of kids who literally could not wait to be the new girl's friend. It didn't happen. I was weird, and kids have a special way of sniffing out weird. Not only was I about a foot taller than all of them, I insisted on having boyishly short hair to keep my bonkers Irish barnet under control, and I read Dickens. A seven year old. Reading Dickens. If I had children at that school, I would assume some sort of Let The Right One In scenario, and keep them away from that new kid completely. Not only that, but the first five years of my life in Australia had been followed with a year of hanging out with my bumpkin cousins from Suffolk. Take the Melbourne accent, combine it with the Newmarket one, and you have the deeply unappealing amalgamation of Antipodean Questioning Intonation where everything is uncertain (It's a nice day? I have some Barbies? I like chips? ) , and sentences like 'asssss an 'orrible chickun, ut boites' (Apparently I once said that but I refuse to believe it). In short, it's a combination that makes you sound like you were just beamed in from Planet Stupid.

 Then I went to First Holy Communion Class and it all started to look up. I was the only kid there who didn't go to the Catholic primary, so I assumed the worst, and prepared to be ignored, or kicked in, or both. The terrifying nun (all nuns are terrifying, The Sound Of Music is full of shit) looked me up and down and said 'Oh yes, you aren't from St Francis are you? You can sit with Victoria'. Thus I ended up next to this kid that was an exemplar of what would happen if you allowed your Irish hair to grow; a halo of wild growth and a fringe that stuck out in front like the peak of a cap. We were issued with blue folders and some pictures of Jesus to colour in. Because nothing says religious devotion like keeping within the lines. Victoria was silently regarding me with large blue eyes. As soon as the nuns back was turned, she did the sort of mucousy sniff a Victorian street urchin would do, said 'Awlrite?' leaned across, and with a green crayola, drew a massive penis on my newly issued folder. It was of course, love at first sight.

Vic didn't mind that I was weird, because she was weird too. There was the hair for a start. And her insistence that she could breakdance, and that everyone must watch her displays, even though she just looked like someone had flipped a stag beetle onto its back in some Vaseline. And the fact that she played the flute. And had a wrestler for a Dad. In fact, she won all the prizes for weird.

Incidentally I'm not writing about her in this mournful past tense because she is DEAD or anything like that. She is alive and well and living in Jakarta, which I have barely forgiven her for (how DARE she have a life. Abroad.). Our friendship is now nudging the thirty year point so I like to think I know her well enough to do a recipe for her (she won't read it as Victoria lives in some sort of self imposed cultural black hole and has only just worked out what the internet is). Vic likes traditional food, and when she loves a food stuff has the deeply unappealing habit of referring to it as 'smeary'. As in 'That jacket potato was really smeary'. Possibly from the idea that the food stuff is so good you end up with it smeared round your face? I actually have no idea.

I have chosen rice pudding as when Vic first got her own place, my mother would send her food parcels. Like she was a war-torn country, as opposed to a twenty year old who had just got a mortgage (she was actually really broke and living on crisps and wine so in retrospect Mam may have saved her life, or at least prevented scurvy). Rice pudding was always the favourite. So Vickie, if you have worked out what blogs are in the year 2038, and you find this, hopefully this is really....smeary?

Last day of secondary school. What a pair of bellends.

Rice Pudding for Foxy

Ingredients

100g pudding rice
75g sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or extract if you prefer)
900ml of milk
150ml double cream
20g butter
Whole nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 140C

2. Melt the butter, then tip in the rice and sugar. Stir on a low heat until well coated.

3. Add the milk and cream. Then the vanilla bean paste. To be honest this is just a culinary conceit, I really only buy it because I like to sniff the jar, extract is a good alternative.

4. Bring the mixture up to a simmer, then add to an oven proof dish. Probably one deeper than the one I used, so you don't get spaffy looking stuff all over the floor of the oven.

5. Grate nutmeg over the top, to taste. For me, this is about half of a nutmeg but that is more because I like my house to smell nutmeg-y and am then struck with remorse when I realise my pudding tastes like candles. So go easy on it. 

6. Bake for about an hour and a half, whilst your husband repeatedly nods off in front of The Bridge, then wakes up yelling 'Where is my pudding?'. In actual fact, I had to cook for more like an hour and forty, but my oven is v.bad, so check from an hour in. Test a little from the edge if you are unsure. Obviously the rice needs to be cooked, but texture is a personal preference, some people like it more liquid-y, I prefer it to be claggy. Mmmm. Claggy.

7. Eat greedily, and if you wish, smearily.

Smeary.

The Clapham Road Trip

I am an idiot where animals are concerned. I once owned a rescue cat that was so mentally disturbed that it rolled about in its own faeces, bit me every time I came anywhere near it, and lived exclusively in a two inch square gap under a desk. But I wasn't bothered. I loved Humbug. So much so that when my then boyfriend delivered the 'Its me or the cat' ultimatum I just shrugged and said 'OK' (he was a crap boyfriend anyway but I LOVED that cat.)

So when I met, and in very quick succession, moved in with my what is now my husband, it felt like the natural thing to do to get a pet. His Mum very kindly offered to get us a cat (all that we were allowed in our rented house) so we made our way to the RSPCA and did the responsible thing, adoption. What followed was a two month reign of terror at the hands of the tabby Bert The C**t.  The story is for another time, but he richly deserved that moniker and was eventually taken back by the RSPCA who were probably fearing a court case.

But was I beaten? Put off cat ownership for life? Nope. Like I said, I am an idiot. Where I worked at the time there was an online noticeboard. When a girl who I really didn't know posted that a feral cat had come into her house whilst on holiday, and given birth to two mangy looking kittens, which were now free to a good home, I thought 'Yeah, perfect'. Idiot. My husband was understandably much less excited than me. He thought we should just take one, or better still, none. But I whined and nagged, and dragged the welfare of my six year old step-daughter into it: 'Think how good it would be for her to have TWO pets' and he eventually agreed. So one summers morning one of my best friends and I set out in her rickety car to make the road trip to Clapham. It was fairly uneventful, we did some coffee stops, wittered on, and sung along to the radio. We also saw a tramp drop his trousers and crud into a drain on Clapham High Street, but you know, rough with the smooth. When we eventually found the house I started to have second thoughts. The woman had nine cats. NINE. Not including the recent new mother and two kittens. The place stank of cats piss and crusty cat food was smeared over everything. I was dry heaving and scratching myself. When the kittens were picked up to be put into the basket they snarled furiously and wrapped themselves round her hand like a really bitey boxing glove. Still, I didnt leave. Once in the car, Kaff exhaled deeply and said 'Soooooooo'. There was a lot loaded into that 'so', namely, that she thought I was clearly mental. But we went home anyway, with the two feral kittens screaming furiously for the whole hour and a half.

My husband had picked the child up that morning and she was completely beside herself with excitement. We placed the basket on the floor and she hugged herself and looked up at me, and whispered 'Oh I LOVE them. SO much. SO much'. I was feeling pretty smug, but then my husband opened the basket door. They slowly sauntered out, looked us both up and down, looked around our non-cat-piss-smelling kitchen and gave each other a look that said 'Fuck this shit' and promptly ran behind the washing machine. The kid looked with disbelieving eyes at her father, then me, then Aunty Kaff, and exclaimed 'Why do they hate me???' and promptly burst into tears.

Nothing was going to bring the two furry terrorists out of that gap. But I felt like such a terrible failure as a step-parent that when six o'clock came the next morning I was downstairs in pyjamas, laying on my belly, talking to two tiny felines with a tin of tuna in my hand, pleading with them to come out. When you think about it, this is an excellent metaphor for the exercise in masochism that is feline ownership, you wheedling and begging for their attention or cooperation, whilst they look at you with thinly veiled disgust.

Eventually, after a few days they came out and began to rule the house like the megalomaniacs that cats are. These days they mostly lie about in a stupor, shout furiously for food, and if I am really lucky, regurgitate an entire birds skull at my feet. But I've got a dog now, so I don't mind.

The point is, what I cooked for dinner that night was L's favourite, a bolognese. It might not have cured her broken heartedness completely but it probably came close. Here is the recipe and that.

This is a pretty simple recipe. It works well as a bolognese, and is also really excellent as the meat sauce in lasagne. A few words on ingredients. I get passata from one of those out of town bargain shops. A litre is about 60p, it is Italian and delicious. Ditto dried herbs. Mince always comes from the butcher. It won't cost you any more, but it will taste of meat, not plastic and fluorescent lights. There will be more on butchers in a later post, I know they are quite daunting for some people, but I promise it is worth cultivating a relationship with one, and not just so you can feel smug and middle class about it. Veg - play fast and loose with this one. You definitely need onion, carrot and celery. Apparently this is called mire-poix but I have a horror of using continental terms in cookery, it just makes me think of TV chefs. Like when one of them is doing a Spanish recipe, and everything is in mangled cockney, until they look at the camera and say 'Now add the cho-weee-thooooo' in a theatrical Spanish accent, and I involuntarily retch. So I just call it vegetable smush. Today I also added in other bits that needed to be used soon - courgette, mushrooms, peppers. They are all good in this, just increase your liquid content by a bit.

It won't win any prizes for its looks, but it makes up for that in taste.

                                                   

Ragu For Liv

Ingredients

 500g mince (I would probably go with half beef, half pork, but all beef is nice too)
1 jar of passata (large)
2 x white onions
2 x carrots
2 or three sticks of celery
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped fine
Beef stock cube
2 x cloves of garlic
Worcestershire sauce
Red wine
White pepper
Salt
Milk
Sugar
Red lentils (or not, if you have a horror of hippie food like my husband)

 Method

1. Brown the mince in a pan.

2. Chuck all the veg and garlic into a food processor. If you dont have one, try a blender. Or chop it by hand into a very fine dice. But this will be a ball-ache. If using a processor, you dont want a puree but you do want it pretty small. Use the pulse function if you like, to keep an eye on it.

3. Add the veg to the mince, and fry gently for a few minutes to soften it slightly. Now in with the herbs, a splash of worcester sauce to taste, your stock cube, and salt and pepper. Chuck in a good splosh of red wine.

4. Now throw in a handful of red lentils if using. I like these as they break down in the sauce, make your meat go further and boost the protein content. Plus they are delicious.

5. Now add the passata, and give a good mix. If you think it looks a bit thick, chuck in some water. I like to make my ragu thinner to start with and cook it right down so the flavour intensifies, but if you are pushed for time, don't bother.

6. Cook for at least half an hour. If I am making a big batch on a Sunday afternoon I will leave it there for hours. It is almost impossible to overcook, it just gets more delicious and makes your house smell amazing.

7. After it has been on for about fifteen/twenty minutes splosh in some milk - I would say probably no more than 100ml. This sounds like the work of a diseased mind, and I can't remember where I read about it, but I promise it works and the end result is so much better for it.

8. Once done eat with some spaghetti and grated parmesan, and rue the day you ever got cats.