Calf liver is my treat for when Goon is away. It’s an automatic reaction now. If Goon is going away to work on his business or visit his parents, I head straight into Borough Market, find my way to the Ginger Pig and buy myself the nicest bit of veal liver they have. You see Goon isn’t a big liver fan. He can cope with chicken livers providing I soak them in enough cream and alcohol, but he hates lamb liver and is ambivalent about calf liver.

At £25 per kilo, ambivalent isn’t allowed!

So calf liver is reserved for the days when I have the flat to myself. My problem is I always buy the liver without knowing what to do with it. Last weekend I was after a change from the usual creamy marsala sauce but the internet was providing little inspiration. In fact, the recipe websites seem alost saturated with straightforward liver, bacon and onion recipes. That’s not quite what I wanted for my treat!

Eventually an idea came from an old BBC recipe. A liver, bacon and onion recipe by Gary Rhodes involves serving liver with melting onions with marmalade. A bit of musing led to the recipe below. Unfortunately, due to the great Islington juniper shortage that hit last weekend, I didn’t sprinkle my calf liver in finely ground juniper as intended. Instead, I dusted it with 1 juniper berry I had left, after giving it a good soak in gin.

Then I gave my own liver a good soak in gin. Happy times.   

Calf Liver with Juniper, Caramelised Apples, Maple Cure Bacon and Tangy Apple Onions

• 200g calf liver
• around 8 juniper berries, finely crushed
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and cut into 6 pieces
• around a level tablespoon of honey
• around 30g-40g butter
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 2 rashers maple cure bacon
• half a small onion, sliced
• a tablespoon of apple sauce
• a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and sugar to taste 
• half a glass of fruity red wine

Sprinkle the liver with finely crushed juniper berries and press them in properly (or soak it in gin!). I suggest the calf liver is  cooked to pink in the middle. For the liver you see in the picture, that involved dry frying for approimately 30 seconds on each side and resting for 5 minutes wrapped in foil.

Melt 3/4 of the butter over a low heat in a small saucepan and stir in the honey. Add the rosemary sprigs and allow to infue for a minute or two. Add the apple slices, sir to coat in the butter. Turn the heat up slighty so the apples caramelise. They should be golden brown on the outside, but firm. Discard the rosemary sprigs before serving.

The bacon was grilled until crisp. Easy

And for the onions, the only involved part of the meal, soften them in the rest of the butter until golden brown, add half a glass of red wine, allow to bubble down until almost completely evaporated then stir in a tablespoon of apple sauce. Add balsamic vinegar to taste- this will depend very much on how sweet/tart your apple sauce was. Calf liver has a delicate flavour compared to, for example, lamb liver, so you don’t want the onion to be overwhelmingly tart, just slightly tangy. I doubt you’ll need to add sugar but it is probably worth having some on hand just in case.

I served this with some simple buttered wilted spinach but spiced braised red cabbage would also be good.

 …quick, easy, weeknight food. It’s just not like me is it? What happened to the days of the lemon and rose glazed lamb leg and the duck, pomegranate and blueberry salad  or the three hour marathon cooking sessions that resulted in these chilli tortillas. I miss those days.

In fact, I think two things happened……

Firstly, I left the foodie heaven that was West London. You might think it strange that I say this but, given that I have no car, the resources for food experiments were so much better in Hammersmith than they are here in Hackney. I remember the days when I felt aggrieved at not finding fennel on my way home on a Sunday afternoon and moaned about not having access to decent raspbery liqueur*. Now,even on a weeknight, I’m stuck with whatever the near empty shelves Holloway Waitrose can provide at 8pm and it has to be something I can cook quickly so I can get a reasonable amount of sleep before my 6am start the next day .   

And, speaking of the early starts, I knew there’d be dry posting periods during termtime but I wasn’t quite anticipating the extended periods of blogging silence that have occurred since I started at Highgate. But then, when you’ve got to the stage where you arrive home so tired you can’t even eat, let alone cook, the idea of maintaining a food blog seems downright insane.

The problem is that things went a little bit wrong for the maths department this term. A colleague left us, which we were expecting. What we weren’t expecting was the sudden resignation of his replacement shortly before the return to school. Needless to say, this has left us all a little stretched.

In theory, compared to some of my colleagues, I got a fairly good deal. I picked up one new class: the brightest of the GCSE year with some really lovely kids**. That meant only four hours extra teaching per week ( read that as approximately 7 hours work per week). However the timetable also had to change, cramming 80% my fortnight’s teaching into 4 days. Precisely two weeks ago, I was in the middle of that 4 day stint AND trying to write reports for all of my four sixth form classes.

I was exhausted. I had an impossible workload to complete before the next day. I left work at just past 8pm*** having arrived at 8am and with a 75 minute commute each way. I was promised dinner when I got home and, unsuprisingly, Goon found an excuse as to why he had forgotten to make it by the time I arrived. So, barely awake, and in an extremely bad mood, I rushed to the small Tesco Metro, picked up the best steak I could find and invented something suprisingly good given the limit on the lack of marinating time and ingredients. If I’d had the foresight**** to keep a marinating steak prepared in the fridge, this would have been absolutely perfect.

*****

Spice Marinated Sirloin Steaks with Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges and Coriander Pesto

Serves Two

For The Steak Marinade

• 100ml chilli oil
• a tablespoon finely chopped coriander
• 2 large cloves crushed garlic
• 1 cubic inch ginger, peeled and crushed
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground coriander
• 1 green chilli, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons cayenne

You’ll Also Need

• Two hefty sirloin steaks
• two medium sized sweet potatoes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 50g coriander
• 50-100ml of chilli infused olive oil
• 1 green chilli
• 3 minced cloves of garlic

Mix together all the marinade ingredients. Score the steaks in a criss-cross pattern. Brush all the marinade over the steaks and leave to marinate  (I fell asleep for two hours at this point which seemed to be just long enough. Overnight woud be better)

Peel the two sweet potatoes and cut into wedges. Coat with the olive oil mixed with the paprika and roast at gas mark 7 for 20 minutes or until tender.

Put 50g of finely chopped coriander in a blender jug with 50 ml of chilli infused oil, with the chilli and garlic. Blend until smooth, adding more oil if necessary.  Heat through in a small saucepan for around 5 minutes. Serve the steaks and wedges with the coriander pesto.

*****

* Yes, yes, I was spoilt. 

** and a few nuisances who make life difficult for me and the rest of the class, but such is life.

*** This is partially my fault. I started talking to one of the brightest year 11s about various maths-philosophy type things for an hour. But then, he’s one of those, intelligent personable students that genuinely makes teaching worthwhile, even if he is too polite to tell you that you’ve held the entire conversation with a streak of board pen across your face.

**** well, psychic ability I suppose

Since August, I have noticed something interesting happening to the comments I receive on this site. Around that time, this blog’s Google rating increased dramatically and I got a lot of new visitors.

Obviously this was good in many ways. I got lots of new commenters. Some left constructive feedback in my inbox and some left appreciative notes regarding recipes. Unfortunately this happened quite rarely and it seems that a lot of the people brought here by Google searches are illiterate morons.

I’m sure that my fellow bloggers experience the same problem: you look through your moderation queue and there are ten comments saying things along the lines of “EWWW BUTTERS!!!!” “LOL ROFL LMAO!!!” and “OMFG OOOOOEEEEEE!!!!” 

After a few week I became a little sick of having to manually delete this rubbish so Goon has helped me to install a new feature as part of my spam filtering for this blog. It’s called the idiot-auto-rejector. It checks a comment for bad grammar/lack of real words and then blocks any offending commenter from the site.  

The interesting thing is that, in its test stage, the idiot-auto-rejector didn’t just pick up random surfers. Some of my year 9 students had found the blog. Apparently the few of them who tried to comment don’t know how to write in sentences. I feel really sorry for our English department.

Clearly I’m not going to excuse poor writing in my comments box just because it is written by one of my students. I think they should know better. However, I did install a little extra feature in the idiot-auto-rejector just for them. When they try to access my site now they will see this message. Click on the link.

We’re quite proud of it, what do you think?

I’d have liked to put down something more offensive but I thought some parents might get cross. The irony is that I let Goon make that picture and as a result the grammar in the message is pretty bad, although it doesn’t hold a candle to my students’ efforts.

Of course, I’m also using my old secret weapon for disuading idiots from accessing the site: grossing them out with offal. So as the first proper food post I’ve made in a while, I bring you ox tongue.

Now that should have properly scared them off. Sadly that wasn’t my ox tongue although it is a good likeness. It came from a general web search as I am very bad at remembering to photograph things before I cook them. It’s big isn’t it? That’s about six main meals worth of meat. Goon cut our tongue into three pieces and a third was made into this.

It’s a very simple dish, so simple in fact I’m not convinced it needs a recipe, but it is a good way to be introduced to the flavour and texture of ox tongue. Since it was my first time cooking tongue, I specifically wanted to make something where I wouldn’t risk losing its flavour within a sauce, so I braised it on its own and then paired it with something that I hoped would complement it well.

This meat works well with piquant flavours which here are given by the sweetness of the tomatoes and the acidity of the red wine and a touch of balsamic vinegar.

********

Braised Ox Tongue on Penne with Tomatoes, Peppers and Red Wine

To prepare the tongue:

You’ll need 1/3 ox-tongue, 1 onion peeled and sliced into thick rings, 2 bay leaves, 5 crushed black peppercorns, 5 peeled cloves of garlic and a bouquet garni.

Ox-tongue is generally sold salted. So it is a good idea to give it a good long soak. We soaked ours for about 12 hours, changing the water every now and again.

Take a pan large enough to easily hold the tongue and put in the onion, garlic peppercorns, bay leaves and bouquet garni. Add the tongue, cover it with water and bring to a gentle simmer.

Simmer until the tongue is tender. This might take four hours if you are using a whole tongue. The third that we used took about two and a half hours.

Once the tongue is cooked, keep it warm until ready to serve.

For the red wine and tomato sauce

Ingredients:

• olive oil 
• 1 medium onion, peeled and finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced 
• handful of basil leaves, torn
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 2 green peppers, cored deseeded and  thinly sliced
• 300ml good quality red wine
• balsamic vinegar and brown sugar to taste (about two teapoons of vinegarand one teaspoon of sugar).
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 200-250g dried penne, cooked and drained

Method:

1. Soften the onion gently in the olive oil.
2. Add the garlic and, once that has cooked through, add the peppers and allow these to soften for about five minutes- the idea is that they retain some of their crunchy texture. Remove them from the pan.
3. Now add the tomatoes and the red wine, bring to a gentle bubble and allow to reduce while you cook the pasta.
4. Stir through the torn basil and return the peppers to the pan.
5. Add sugar and balsamic vinegar to taste. Adjust seasoning and stir in the cooked penne
6. Serve the sliced tongue over the penne. I found that sauteed courgettes made a good accompaniment to this meal.

A little while back I told you about my new job up in Highgate School. Time is certainly passing quickly and, with just a few weeks left before I start work, it’s time Goon and I found a new place to live.

Of course, the most important thing for me in a flat is a decent kitchen, not like the one we have now. I want worksurface space, a gas cooker and a freezer that’s big enough to hold more than just some ice cubes and a bag of peas. Goon just wants somewhere close to a tube station so he can minimise the time he spends on his feet. Sadly,even finding this combination has so far proved nearly impossible. 

It seems that a place to cook is a luxury in London now. With landlords rapidly converting every period building into 4 apartment blocks, we’ve seen many places with decent bedrooms but poor cooking and living space. We found several conversions which would have been fine but, all they had in the ‘open plan kitchen-lounge’ was one of those ghastly electric hobs and a sink. Not even a table to prep ingredients. How depressing. 

It was after seeing one of these conversions that we encountered what must be the most stupid bunch of letting agents in London. In desperation we had popped into a slightly dodgy looking agency in the vague hope of discovering a suitable flat. We were prepared for some scare tactics and a little bit of bending the truth in a place like this, but we weren’t quite ready for this level of idiocy.

“Oh, yes, this place is going to go VERY quickly,” said the young lady showing us around a particularly expensive one bed dump, “In fact we had a couple in today who wanted it right away.”

 Now, despite the impression he gives during his kitchen misadventures, Goon isn’t stupid.”So why didn’t they put down a deposit?” he asked. She paused for quite a while.

“Uh…….because…….. they left their cashcard at home. They’ll be coming in specially tomorrow all the way from….uh… Wimbledon….so they’re very keen. If you want it, you’d need to put down the cash before they came back.” I rolled my eyes. As if anyone in their right mind would want that place for that price. I took over the debate, somewhat sarcastically.

 ”Well, if we want this place, I’ll be sure to run over with the cash first thing tomorrow.” The agent looked worried.

Back at their offices, Goon was having fun winding another agent up.”So, that couple from Greenwich, they really like the place, huh?”
The agent looked confused for a second.”Couple from…oh.. RIGHT the couple from Greenwich, yes they were…”

“Wimbledon!”  The other agent interjected in a hurry. ”Remember? They were from Wimbledon?” She nodded encouragingly at him. I, frankly, couldn’t believe how bad this woman was at lying.

“Ah, yes, Greenwich, Clapham… these places South of the river are all the same to me.” He laughed nervously. His colleague gave him a look that could kill.

And, as if they hadn’t made big enough fools out of themselves already, the estate agents called back the next morning with this little gem.

AGENT:The couple interested in the flat have come back. Do you want the flat,because we’ll need the money today if you do.
GOON: What, they’re in the office now?
AGENT Yes.
GOON: Ready to put the money down?
AGENT: That’s right.
GOON:  And you’re asking me if we want the flat?
AGENT: Ummm…. yes? 
GOON: How could we possibly put the money down before them if they’re already there?
AGENT Umm… right.

(long pause)

AGENT: If they don’t put the money down now, shall I call you back?

Goon hung up.

So we spent Saturday tramping around again and by the evening we were tired and hungry and in need of some comforting and invigorating food. It was still very  hot  so it needed to be reasonably light and refreshing too. Plus I was knackered. So I didn’t want anything to keep me on my feet for more than an hour.

I was thinking a warm salad with some spicy, citrusy flavours would be good, perhaps with a South East Asian Influence. So I started improvising and out came this.

Vietnamese Style Noodle Salad with Seared Marinated Beef

For The Beef  (we used around 425g beef fillet for two of us)

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground nut oil
• 1 heaped teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 1 inch ginger root, grated
• a spring onion, thinly sliced
• 3 small green chillies,chopped (don’t mention this to Goon!)

Mix all the marinade ingredients together well in a bowl. 

Cut the beef fillet into thin strips, about  a centimetre wide. Toss them in the marinade and leave them to marinate for about 90 minutes, tossing them every half hour to make sure the marinade stays well distributed. While the beef is marinating, make the salad (below), then have a sit down.

Once the beef has finished marinating, get a frying pan very hot and sear the beef strips for around 40s per side (or until the outside is cooked). You may need to do this in batches. Place the beef strips on a warm plate and cover with foil. Leave to rest for about 5 minutes.

Arrange the beef over or around the noodle salad, squeeze over some more lime and garnish with chopped coriander if you like.

For the salad (intended for 2 but enough for 3)

• 1 carrot, peeled and cut into little 3 inch long, narrow batons.
• 4 inches of cucumber, cut like the carrot or maybe a bit thicker.
• 1 small pointed red pepper, deseeded cut the same as the carrot
• 3 spring onions, sliced 
• 250g of fine rice noodles,
• handful of peanuts, roasted
• handful coriander leaves roughly chopped
• 10-15 mint leaves, finely chopped
• juice from 1 1/2 limes and grated zest to taste
• A little salt
• enough groundnut oil to lightly coat the rice noodles.

cook the rice noodles according the the pack instructions, then drain andrefresh in cold water immediately. i find that this stops them overcooking and disintegrating. Then drain the noodles and toss them in the oil and lime juice to stop them sticking. 

Then just throw in the rest of the ingredients and toss everything together until its thoroughly mixed. Gently warm the salad through, then taste and  adjust seasoning.

***

This was quick, tasty and filling without being heavy. Goon loved the marinated beef but he seems to be less keen on the fresh chopped mint in this form. personally i think its great. I find the combination of lime, coriander and mint to be really refreshing.

That meal  was exactly what we needed after a hard day of flat hunting. I just keep hoping that eventually we’ll find our perfect kitchen flat, preferably BEFORE my new job starts.

A few months ago, my Dad brought me a few bargains from Borders. Among them was a £3 book on Mexican Cookery. Whilst I’m always up for trying new cuisines, I thought that this particular one was a bit out of my reach. The book described a lot of ingredients I’d never heard of before. For a start, it mentioned more types of chilli than I knew existed, strange vegetables like sliced cactus leaf paddles and a few cheeses I didn’t think I could find.

The book lay unused on my shelf for months. Then, two weeks ago, I was reading the BBC food boards when I saw that Charlotte (from Great Big Vegetable Challenge) had been looking for some cactus and had been pointed in the direction of an interesting company called Cool Chile, which imports a lot of Mexican ingredients and storecupboard items.

The next Friday I visited their stall at Borough Market, hoping to get my hands on the most common items mentioned in my book: tomatillos, corn tortillas and nopales (cactus paddles). The very helpful gentleman running the stall sold me the last two, but he didn’t stock the tomatillos at Borough. Apparently no one bought them. I couldn’t help wondering why.

However, he did point me in the direction of Cool Chile’s Taqueria, which happens to be reasonably close to where I live. So the next morning, I set off, eager to get my hands on the elusive ingredient. I was in for a bit of a shock. This was the can of tomatillos I found.

I don’t think that picture does it justice. I think this one puts things in perspective.

Apparently tomatillos are only imported into Britain in cans about twice the size of my head! No wonder they weren’t sellingfast at Borough. These things weigh around 3 kg. Still, I was determined to have my tomatillos, so I bought them anyway. Then the shop assistant told me they didn’t have any carrier bags.

So I walked the three miles back to my flat with my tomatillos cradled in my arms like an oversized baby, getting some very strange reactions from passers by. A few people pointed and laughed. Someone even tried hitting on me. Apparently the thing to do if you’re single and really desperate in London, is walk around with a large can of tomatillos. You’ll attract Goldhawk Road weirdos by the dozen.  By the time I got back home, my arms really ached and my throat was a bit sore from yelling at the weirdos to get lost.

The irony is that I still haven’t used the tomatillos. For my first attempt at Mexican cookery, I fancied beef enchiladas and, from what I saw in books and online, tomatillo wasn’t the best accompaniment. I’m saving them now for chicken and tomatillo burritos.

So, what did I make for my first Mexican style meal? Well, beef enchiladas like I said,

a salsa made from mango, finely diced white onion, lime juice, lime zest, green chilles and coriander leaf,

nopales and red pepper salad,

and sweet corn with fried onions and cream.

It was an interesting meal to make. Each particular dish was easy in itself but co-ordinating the lot was a bit challenging. I started early by making the beef.  I sweated off one finely diced onion with 2 cloves of garlic and 3 chopped green birds eye chillies. Then I added 500g of chopped braising steak and browned it. I put the lot in a casserole dish with a about a level tablespoon of  ground cumin, ground coriander, dried oregano and paprika,  then covered the meat with beef stock, added salt and pepper and let it braise slowly at 130C for about 5 hours. While it was in the oven, I made the the creamed corn and let my tinned nopales soak in fresh water to remove the salt from them.

After that I took the beef out of the oven, poured off most of the liquid and shredded the beef. It had picked up the flavours from the spices very well so I didn’t add any more. I just put a dollop in the middle of each of my 8 corn tortillas and rolled them up into enchiladas. These went into a baking dish and were topped with sour cream and grated mild cheddar (as a substitute for Monterey Jack) and baked until the cheese bubbled.

While the enchiladas cooked I quickly assembled the salad and salsa. The salsa was literally just the ingredients mentioned above, mixed together in a bowl. The salad was made from grilled, skinned and sliced red pepper, thinly sliced red onion and the nopales slices in a dressing made from a chile and garlic oil and white wine vinegar. The nopales had an interesting flavour that’s hard to describe. They were very slightly bitter and quite leafy but had a bit of a salty tang from being pickled. Their texture was like cooked runner beans. We liked them a lot.

I’d have liked to submit the tomatillos to Weekend Herb Blogging this week, but since I haven’t yet cooked with them, I’ll have to talk about the nopales instead. Nopales are the paddles of the prickly pear cactus. Over here they are sold pickled in brine. Apparently these things are full of vitamins and fibre, which is very useful as they are very tasty too!

For more information on nopales, see the Wikipedia entry.

This week, Weekend Herb Blogging is hosted by Anna from Anna’s Cool Finds. Head over there to see the round up on Monday. 

Exam season has ended and thesis draft 3 is currently being decimated by my supervisor so, for a rather lovely change this weekend, I had a day off! I think the last time this happened must have been August 2006 (yes, I even taught over Christmas and Easter). Unfortunately, my first days off clashed with one of Goon’s working weekends. This time he was attending Yahoo’s first European Hack Day.

No, I don’t see the appeal either. The good news was that I got a chance to visit my parents properly for a change and spend some time poking around our family home. I’m quite wary of doing this since our house tends to be a bit of a breeding ground for spiders. I’ve never understood the affinity they had for the dark spot under the stairs.

I did find some interesting things. A book of my old poetry for a start, a load of old music  I used to play and some stolen recipe books too. As you might expect, I also raided the cupboards. My parents frequently shop at Sri-Lankan grocery stores so there’s a rather interesting selection of tinned fruit and vegetables. This time, I took some jackfruit because Goon hadn’t tried it before. I also got my hands on what is possibly the best thing about Sri-Lankan cuisine.

These are string hoppers. A Sri-Lankan staple made from  rice flour dough. The dough is made from just rice flour, water and seasonings  but apparently you need to sift the flour several times and get the mixture just right or the hoppers fall apart or turn sticky.

Once you have your dough, a special hand press with tiny holes is used to press the dough into fine noodles. The raw noodles are allowed to fall onto a holder so they form little round, thin ‘cakes.’  These are then steamed until they are cooked and then eaten with  curries and coconut sambal. As with most carbs, they don’t have a very strong flavour of their own, but they have a marvellous texture. Not chewy, but soft and slightly springy. 

I have been forbidden from trying to make these myself. Apparently it is far too difficult and my parents have hidden the equipment from me . These hoppers were bought from a caterer’s shop and are particularly good. I took home enough to feed me and Goon with plenty left over.

When I got back to my flat I made some curries to accompany our hoppers. Firstly, a beef curry with coconut milk and Sri Lankan spicing. It’s not at all traditional to use beef since Sri Lankan Buddhists have some Hindu influences on their culture. Mutton and chicken are usually used, but I quite like curried braising steak.  I also whipped up some dahl with garlic, mild spices and black pepper. We had the jackfruit too, which was flavoured with tamarind.

I dived in, eating in the Sri Lankan way with just my hands. Well, just one hand actually. Like in many other cultures, using your left hand is a no-no. I find eating this way lots of fun. You use the hoppers to grab bits of meat and scoop up the vegetables. Goon looked a little intimidated by this method of eating. Then he went and got himself a knife and fork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen hoppers being neatly cut up before. It was a rather strange and funny sight for me. It’s a bit like watching someone eating fish-fingers with chopsticks!

Then again, a fork is useful for getting the curry soaked hopper pieces from the bottom of the plate.

I love this bit of the meal.

Goon really liked the hoppers and was intrigued by the jack fruit. I’d say it is an acquired taste, but I like it, especially in a sour-tangy curry sauce.

So, if you happen to live near a Sri-Lankan store, see if they make and sell string hoppers because I don’t think they’re found in any other cuisine and you’re missing out if you haven’t tried them. They’re definitely my favourite bit of Sri Lankan cuisine.

Unfortunately things haven’t eased off on the work front quite yet. My impending deadline was revoked when, in a fit of utter frustration, I visited my supervisor to inform him that I was getting nowhere with the proof he asked me to complete. It turned out there was a good reason for this. There had been a slight discrepancy between what he had ASKED me to do and what he actually MEANT,  which meant that I’d spent the last two weeks trying to do something that was probably impossible.

Such is the world of academia I suppose. At least I’m now on the right track and, since Goon has exams in a few weeks, he is spending most of his time at home revising learning the material. I thought that meant that I could indulge in some slow-cooked food as Goon was there to put things in the oven and keep an eye on them.

I first took advantage of this by trying to make a simple but rich dish of beef stewed in red wine - a bourguignon type thing adapted to include whatever vegetables and wine I had in the kitchen. I left the beef marinating in a rich, mellow red with the partially cooked veg and gave Goon the instructions to brown the beef, return it to the casserole with the wine and put it in the oven at 150C, adding a little stock if it looked like it would dry out.

You’d think that with such a simple dish nothing could go wrong. You’d be mistaken. I arrived home at about 9:30pm after failing yet again to finish my Chapter 4. Goon wasn’t around. I tutted, thinking he should have stuck around to check on the food, especially since it turned out that he’d left the dish in the oven uncovered. Closer inspection revelaed that things were much worse than I thought.

The extremely large casserole dish was full, and I mean FULL of liquid. I had intended to cook the beef in almost pure red wine but it looked like Goon had added a couple of litres of something to it. I removed dish from oven and tasted. Something inside me died. My beef was cooking two litres of plain water!

I panicked. There was far too much water to boil away. My best option would be to drain the beef as soon as possible, replace the cooking liquid with something appropriate and give it some extra cooking time so it developed a flavour. That is exactly what I tried to do, grabbing the nearest bottle of red from the worksurface. I relaxed slightly and tasted again.

Who’d have thought we’d have a bottle of red wine out that was OFF!?

It was at this point that Goon walked into the flat and immediately had to duck as every kitchen implement I could lay me hands on went flying at high speed towards his head. Once he’d taken cover in his room I drained the casserole again and found an unopened bottle of red, tasted that and added it to the dish. 

I was seriously worried that the food was going to be inedible. The casserole had retained some of the flavour of the slightly vinegared wine.  Goon, who’d stopped hiding in his room, wandered into the kitchen, picked up a spoon and tasted the casserole.

“What have you done to this? It tastes very tart to me!”

I very nearly killed him.

At this point the casserole turned into a stew and I did everything I could to save it. In went extra tomato and garlic plus a couple more bay leaves. I put it on the lowest heat possible and gave it another hour to see if it recovered.

Suprisingly, the tartness did start to soften. I added extra herbs and black pepper and a little bit of lamb stock, which really helped to alleviate the sharpness of the dish. In the end we actually had an edible and actively pleasant meal, although not nearly as good as I had wanted it to be. It took AGES for the flavour to recover and we ate at about 11:30pm, but still, it was better than beef cooked in water or off wine. 

So the lesson for today was, if the wine for your bourguignon is a bit tart, lamb stock, winter herbs, bay leaves and garlic seem to really help. Also, even the most simple instructions can be misinterpreted by a Goon.

When it comes down to it, although I like eating pancakes, I hate making them. They’re a bit time consuming and generate a fair bit of washing up. They don’t provide me with the creative license I like to use when I’m cooking (not until I get to making the fillings anyway) and there’s usually someone around who’ll eat them as they come out of the pan so that I, when I think I’m finally done, turn around to find an empty plate and a bunch of fat gits demanding more pancakes.

However, since it was Shrove Tueday this week, I thought I’d use the pancake tradition to give myself an excuse to try something I’d wanted to have for a while. I first encountered this dish in Renezio, a very nice little Italian eaterie in Shepherds Bush. I’ve since learned that it is an Italian classic.

The dish was a cannelloni filled with veal. The pasta was replaced by very thin, soft crépes. Apparently, back in the day, these crépes would be frequently be used to make a poor man’s version of cannelloni or lasagne. I thought the Renezio version was fantastic and I’d been dying to make some of my own. So, this Shrove Tuesday, I gave it a go. 

It seems that veal mince is rather hard to come by. I’m sure I’ve seen it at Borough, but I didn’t have the foresight to buy any last time I went and I quickly found that no supermarket would stock any kind of veal cut suitable for mincing. Since there also was no poultry mince anywhere, and I REALLY couldn’t be bothered to mince up some myself, I went with the next best thing: pork mince.

The rest of the recipe was close to the traditional version. The filling was essentially a marinara sauce with added pork mince, chopped spinach and ricotta. Once it had been rolled in the crépes, I topped the canneloni with bechamel sauce and mozzarella and baked it for about 15 minutes.

It looks like this electric oven is still producing the interesting spotting effect on cheese topped food.

And typically there was one roll that wouldn’t fit in the dish. Actually, it wouldn’t fit in our stomachs either, so I had it for breakfast this morning.

I suppose veal mince would have perfected this, but the pork substitution worked suprisingly well. I served my crespelle with a simple green leaf salad tossed in a dressing of lemon infused oil and balsamic vinegar.

In theory, I’m not supposed to be writing up any more recipes until that damned thesis of mine is finished but, I noticed that there are very few decent recipes for this dish on the internet so it seems silly to not record what I did. So here is the not veal crespelle recipe.

Have you ever been in the position where you’re so, so hungry that you can’t concentrate on anything? You know? The times when, whatever you try to do, all you can think about is food?  This was the position I found myself on Thursday evening, after eating nothing for the entire day and having the hangover from hell.

Wednesday night had been an interesting experience. Who’d have thought a group of PhD mathematicians could be quite such hardcore drinkers! I mean it isn’t exactly the occupation which makes you think ‘party animal’, is it?

I hadn’t been out drinking in about three months, after deciding that morning tutorials were less painful when I only had my compulsory glass of wine with dinner (and possibly a G&T to aid my creative cooking). However, I was convinced to head of for just the one drink……..

A couple of glasses of dodgy college wine on an empty stomach, while not excessive in themselves, were enough to convince me I could possibly handle another two small glasses. My very persuasive office-mate somehow turned those two small glasses into three large.  After five hours in the pub, I just escaped being dragged off to a late-license bar, then managed a semi-conscious stagger home.  Six hours later, I awakened with little memory of the latter part of the night (especially the half-eaten packs of Chinese food on my floor - how the hell did those get there!?) and realised that I had to get up to teach. Oh. Dear. God.

So after a very, very painful morning tutorial and a day of sitting at my desk, doing no work, shaking a lot and not being able to eat anything, my hangover gently started to subside. However, it was replaced by something almost as bad.

HUNGER MEASURABLE ON THE RICHTER SCALE!

It was like I hadn’t eaten for three weeks! With this sitution of near-starvation, my mind started inventing dishes. Creamy, comforting, fat laden dishes, with lots of meat….. rare, juicy red meat …..(drool) . It didn’t take long before the rumblings in my stomach led me to invent this artery clogger.

This is (lots of) rare fillet steak with a creamy stilton and wild mushroom risotto, crushed walnuts and a port reduction.

The risotto was made as a normal mushroom risotto except I substituted  soaked wild mushrooms. I added the soaking liquid to the stock I used too. At the end, I stirred in a ludicrous amount of stilton (about 100g) and then gently crushed some walnuts in a pestle and mortar before sprinkling them over the top.

I had a little trouble with not gagging as the port reduced. Those damn alchohol fumes! But once all the ethanol had gone, I was happy.

I seared my steak for 1 min 15 per side and let it rest for 5 minutes whilst I served up my risotto, then sliced the meat and arranged that on my plate.

Yes, it IS a lot of steak. What? I told you I was hungry! 

This was exactly what I needed after the pain of Thursday. Risotto is comforting however it is done, but adding great chunks of stilton to it made it even more so.

After eating I curled up into a ball and slept, vowing never to get drunk again. Well, until my next birthday, obviously. Oh, wait. That’s only until Monday. Ah well! :/

So during the holiday season, when everyone is away and I’m on my own, what do I do? I find the most expensive treat food I can and cook it in very self indulgent ways! Then I post about it to make everyone feel jealous.

That was the plan anyway. I was hoping that while everyone was away for Christmas, I’d be able to trash the kitchen and make whatever I’d like to eat. Unfortunately the market forces at this time of year made that a bit tricky.

It seems that the only thing that the supermarkets DON’T run out of at Christmas is traditional Christmas food. On the night of the 22nd, there were hundreds of shelves full of turkeys whole salmon, brandy butter and Christmas pudding. The other shelves were empty. Shame. I had great plans for some calves liver.

The one thing I could find was a nice, but rather expensive chunk of fillet steak hidden behind another turkey on  the meat counter. At the very least that it meant one night’s dinner was sorted so I snagged it immediately, to the very vocal annoyance of the woman behind me, and then fought my way to the checkout.

As I waited in the queue I coulnd’t help wondering what is it about Christmas that makes small  children cry all the time. I thought the point of the whole holiday was to make things fun for them, but on the whole they seem way more miserable than usual. At least their wails were doing a good job of drowning out Bono and co. on the shop radio.

The fillet steak turned out to be an excellent treat for one. I made it into thai chilli beef with deep fried basil and served it with coconut-lime rice and stir fried pak-choi with mushrooms and garlic.

This was a nice simple dinner to make after the stress of trying to find the ingredients. I got a tablespoon of fish sauce, a tablespoon of water, one large crushed garlic clove, 1 cubic inch of crushed ginger and a level tablespoon of sugar and mixed the lot to form a marinade for my beef. I cut the beef into strips and tossed it in the marinade.

Just under an hour later, I  deep fried about 10 large basil leaves until crispy and left them to drain on some kitchen paper. In preparation for the rice, I set some lime leaves simmering in diluted coconut milk (half a can, or 200ml of milk, plus half as much water. Then I went to sort out the beef.

I fried half a chopped red bell pepper with half a finely diced onion, another crushed garlic clove, 1 cubic inch of crushed ginger, 1 red chopped chilli and a bruised lemon grass stalk. When these had softened, I added the beef and stir fried until it was cooked on the outside. Then I took it off the heat.

I added two handfuls of rice to the simmering coconut milk, and while it was cooking stir fried the vegetables with some sesame oil. At the end I just served the rice alongside the beef topped with the basil leaves and some chilli oil. I had the vegetable stir fry on the side.

Maybe it is something to do with the food I brought up on, but I find the combination of coconut milk and strong chilli incredibly soothing. Combine that with the meltingly tender fillet steak and the great flavour of the fried basil and it make for an almost perfect meal for a quiet night in. For me anyway.

There were supposed to be four posts on my treats but I was so hungry when I had the last one I forgot to photo it . More on the other two soon, plus, when Dad gives me the photos I can tell you about the meal I cooked for him and Mum.