That’s an understatement. It’s f*cking freezing.

I swear there hasn’t been a winter this cold since I moved back to London. I have swapped my pretty fur trim gloves for big thick things that look like they belong in a boxing ring and still I can’t feel my hands by the time I get home. In fact yesterday I couldn’t feel anything below my knees either, which led to a very embarrassing tumble outside Tesco.

Even in weather like this, I still get bored of stews so I’ve been trying to vary them as much as possible. Veal blanquette has made an appearance as has a spicy root vegetable and lentil curry but this week’s favourite was the one below.It’s an interesting combination of flavours: slow cooked beef with warm spice, sweet sultanas and a slight bitterness from the pepper.I blogged it a few years ago before my hard drive crashed but that page is in quite a state so it is worth reproducing.

Cephalonian Beef Stew

• 3-4 large shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 very small, or half a large green pepper, cored, deseeded, sliced 
• 200g stewing braising steak
• half a small butternut squash, peeled and chopped
• a handful of sultanas
• 3-5 cloves
• a splash  (capful) of red wine vinegar
• 400ml beef stock
• a heaped tsp of crushed coriander seeds
• 1 tsp freshly ground cinnamon 
• cooked tagliatelle, tossed in marscapone and nutmeg to serve

1. Brown the beef in a medium suacepan (I needed to split it into 2 batches). Remove the heat and set aside.
2. In the same pan sautee the peppers until soft. Remove and set aside.
3. Add the shallots to the pan and allow to soften.
4. Return the beef to the pan and stir in the spices.
5. Add the beef stock and bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.
6. Stir in the chopped squash, vinegar and and simmer for another 30-40 minutes until the beef is tender and the squash soft.
7. Stir the peppers back into the pan
8. Taste and season and serve over the tagliatelle.

We are now on a tighter budget than ever before. In a couple of weeks I will be putting down a deposit for a rented flat. I suspect that many of you are lucky enough to not have to deal with the London rental market at the moment. To give you an idea of what it’s like, a small studio flat suitable for one person, that is not near any tube station requires an up front payment of just over £2,100. The ones near tube stations were approximately 30% more expensive.

This is why Goon and I will not be living together next year. He is still looking for a job and there is no way I can afford a flat to fit two people, especially not after I’ve supported both of us through the first year of my career.

Needless to say, I’ve spent most of this week with my head buried in various bargain bins around Hackney and Islington. Apologies to the peaople that I’ve hissed and/or snarled at for getting to the best deal before I could fight my way forward. Hunting for cheap food brings out the killer instinct in me. To make things even more exciting, as soon as the hot weather started, our ancient freezer let out a final wheeze, fell over and died. No more hoarding bargains for me- everything is now bought on the day. Of course, we’ve been having a lot of vegetarian food (more on that when camera is fully fixed) and eating meat only when it’s on offer.

Last Sunday, I was doing my usual rounds when I found a pack of two decent sized salmon fillets for just over £2. It was carried to the tills in a vice like grip. Salmon cheap! Salmon mine! Since it was the end of the week, I had spent all but £1 of our budget and so the salmon would have to be paired solely with things I had in the house already or could be bought at practically no cost. 

I carried out a cupboard and fridge audit and discovered that I have a lot of very useless stuff: little that could help me with the salmon. However, with a quick trip to the Turkish Grocers across the road, my remaining £1 bought me some coriander, three chillies and a red pepper, which combined with storecupboard stuff, made this.

I’ve heard it said that, in order to enjoy salmon, you don’t need to do much to it at all. Just grill it until the skin is crisp and the fillet is slightly pink in the middle before serving with a wedge of lime and some buttered new potatoes. Not this salmon. This salmon was from a farmed fish, a touch fatty and just about to go out of date. Simplicity would merely accent it’s lack of freshness. But this is what strong marinades were made for. The fish was subjected to a burst of honey, soy, garlic and ginger, coated in sesame and fried untll golden. Then i contrasted the sweet saltiness with some earthy, spicy noodles. 

Crunchy Marinated Salmon with Hot Coriander and Peanut Noodles 

For the marinade… 

• 1-2 tablespoons honey
• 1 level tablespoon light soy
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 teaspoons grated fresh root ginger
• 1 teaspoon five spice
• a touch of dry sherry or rice wine- enough to make this into a thin paste

and the rest….

• 2 skinned salmon fillets (around 175g each)
• sesame seeds- around 100g
• 2 portions egg noodles, cooked.
• half of a large bunch of coriander
• 1 large green chilli 
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1 red pepper, cored and sliced
• 100ml sesame oil

1. Mix together the ingredients for the marinade
2. Cut the salmon into bite sized pieces. Toss in the marinate and refridgerate for at least an hour.
3. Scatter the sesame seeds into a thick layer over a small plate. Keep another small plate at its side.
4. Take a piece of salmon, shake off the marinade, then roll it into the sesame seeds, pressing down firmly, until it is well coated., Put it on the spare plate and repeat with the rest of the salmon.
5. Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan. Fry the salmon pieces over a medium heat, turning every 30s or so, until they are golden brown. You may need to do these in batches, so keep a side plate handy.
6. Put the salmon pieces on a plate, cover with kitchen foil and keep warm.
7. Put the corianderand chilli into a food processor and blitz until smooth. Adding a little oil, at a time, continue to pulse until you have a medium thick paste. stir in the peanut butter and mix until smooth. This will prbably thicken the mixture, so you may want to blend in some more oil.
8. Quickly stir fry the noodles woth the paste until heated through and well coated. Keep warm while you finish up.
9. Sautee the red peppers in a little vegetable oil until they have softened slightly.
10. Pour over the excess marinade from the salmon and let it bubble down to a glaze.
11. Serve the crunchy salmon on the noodles with the peppers, pour over the reduced marinade and garnish with coriander leaves.

Typical! I finally get some time to blog and my stupid camera goes psycho on me! I had a post for last Friday but I’ll have to publish its follow up first, while I battle with the useless customer helpline for my camera.

Over the last academic year, my cookbooks have become full of little yellow post-it notes, urging me to try various things when I had a free moment. A recipe from one of my bargain books was top of my list: drunken chicken with Tequila and plaintains.

As much as I moan about Dalston with it’s horribly busy high street, drunken,noisy nightlife and the general lack of most useful things to buy, it is very good for finding cheap fruit and veg. There have been occasions, while heading home along the walkway that runs along our block, when I’ve turned to look at the Kingsland Road and noticed how much it reminds me of a city street in Sri Lanka. The shops include small eateries and little local barber shops where everyone knows each other. There’s also a feel of it being run down with several buildings that are graffitied and seem to have their shutters down permanently, but most stores here are grocery shops with vast arrays of fruit and veg on display, including some of the greenest potatoes I’ve ever seen and also the most wrinkly peppers. If it weren’t for the slightly out of place gastropub on the corner, I might forget that I were in England.

As well as general fruit and veg, Dalston is particularly good for Carribean ingredients. The liittle market stalls on Ridley Road offer a range of interesting produce that I intend to explore more thoroughly over the weeks before I move. This was useful when I suddenly decided that tequila chicken was on the menu for that evening and I needed a plaintain in a hurry. However, I suggest that, unlike me, you don’t wait until 7pm before you go shopping there. With most of the little stalls shut, the deserted market had a dilapidated and slightly sinister feel to it. I was glad that I’d decided to do this in the summer months while it was still light in the evening.

Only one tiny little stall was open. They had plenty of ripe plaintains, just what I was looking for, and a fair few other things I was curious about, including a box full of some kind of shelled creature that I was too cautious to invesigate. The guy running the stall was rather bemused when I just tried to order one plaintain though, and kept filling up the bag with more fruit. Ah, well, it cost 50p, and I suppose I can make myself eat sweet fried plaintain if really necessary.

Other than the plaintain, the ingredients for this meal are easy to find and the chicken is relatively simple to prepare. The accompaniment of green rice was a tad more time consuming than I imagined, but well worth it in the end.

If you’re going to make this, please note the rice is HOT! Goon didn’t know this, despite watching me puree the green chilli before adding it to the rice. His natural instinct when confronted with a hot dish is to cool his palate with starch. Sadly for him, this time it was the chicken that was sweet and soothing while the rice was fotified with jalapeno. It took him five quickly scoffed mouthfulls before he realised what was going on.  

The only real problem with this meal is that it included Tequila. I wasn’t expecting it but, through cooking this, I’ve discovered that I like this strange Mexican spirit. A lot. Possibly more than gin which is really saying something. I have consumed almost a bottle fairly quickly in the form of frozen margaritas and now I’ve nearly run out . 

More importantly, I couldn’t get that irritating song by Terrorvision out of my head while I was cooking.

Hmm…. I may need an excuse to buy another bottle… I’m thinking salmon cured in tequila with lime and coriander? Perhaps next week….. 

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

Sweet-Sour Tequila Chicken with Green Rice (adapted from Mexican Cooking by Jane Milton, feeds two big eaters generously)

For the chicken….

• small handful dried raisins
• around 100ml dry sherry 
• vegetable oil for frying
• Meat from 6 boneless chicken thighs ( I left these as 6 separate chunks)
• plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper- enough to lightly coat the chicken thighs
• 1 small onion, finely sliced into half rings
• 2 fat cloves garlic, minced 
• 1 ripe plaintain
• A handful of slivered almonds
• 2 small granny smith apples
• 200ml chicken stock
• 200-250ml tequila

1. Put the raisins in a mug and pour over the sherry. Leave to soak for around 20 minutes.
2. In the mean time, coat the chicken in the seasoned flour and brown over a high heat. Drain and set aside.
3. Sweat the onions and garlic together in some vegetable oil until soft.
4. While the onion is sweating, peel and core the apples. Chop the apples into small cubes.
5. Add the apples and plaintain to the pan.
6. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
7. Add the raisins, sherry, chicken stock and tequila. Bring to a gentle bubble.
8. When the mixture has reduced by around 40%, add the browned chicken thighs. Cover and allow to cook until the chicken thighs are fully cooked.
9. Stir in the almonds.
10. Adjust seasoning and serve with the green rice.

For the Green Rice……

• 4 handfuls rice
• 1 big handful coriander
• 1 big handful parsley
• 1 big green chilli (jalapeno was recommended)
• 1 green pepper
• 1 small onion/ half a medium onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 200 ml chicken stock

1. Cut the pepper and chilli in half and remove the seeds. Place under a medium grill, skin side up, until the skins are blistered and charred. Remove from the heat.
2. Cover the rice with boiling water. Leave to stand for around 20 minutes.
3. When the pepper and chilli are cool, peel the skin from them and roughly chop the flesh.
4. Process the pepper and chilli with the garlic. Then add the herb leaves and process until you have a smooth paste, adding a little chicken stock if necessary.
5. Drain the rice.
6. Fry the (now almost cooked) rice and onion together until the rice is golden brown. Add the herb paste and fry for around 5 minutes, allowing the rice to absorb the moisture in the paste.
7.  Add the chicken stock a little at a tiime (risotto style) and allow it to be absorbed until the rice is cooked.

Serve the chicken garnished with chopped herbs with the green rice and sauce and maybe a green salad if you want to be healthy.

*********************** 

Recipe notes 

This dish had a real kick to it, which mostly came from the sherry soaked raisins. The tequila imparted an interesting, deep earthiness alongside the sweet-tart flavour of the apples. I was pleased with the flavours in the dish, although I think it definitely needs something texture wise. The sauce is thick and the plaintain soft, giving it a bit of a gloopy feel at times. The firm chicken meat made up for this a little but something with some more bite would have turned this meal from good to fantastic. Any suggestions would be most welcome!

My favourite bit of this meal was the rice. It was flavoursome and had a good chilli kick. I think I may have used a bit too much herb paste though- I think it turned out greener and more moist than it should have. About 25g of each herb woul;d have been sufficient. 1 chilli was certainly sufficient although the recipe suggested 2.

As much as I like my job, seven weeks of 6am starts and 1am finishes has left me feeling a little drained and half term is indeed a very welcome thing. So, howcome I didn’t post until half way through half term? Well, the sad geeky truth is I got a little carried away with a mathemtical coding project related to my year 12s’ syllabus.

Yes, I know, it’s tragic. But don’t worry, I’ve still got things to post, I’ll just take a while to write them up.

My first 7 weeks at Highgate have been an interesting experience. I wasn’t expecting the ups and downs that seem to come with your average teaching day. On most days I will see my lower school set. They can be difficult and lessons with them frequently leave me totally exhausted and more than a little peeved. But then this is counterbalanced by an amazing set or year 12s who, no matter how badly the day is going, will somehow manage to make this job seem worthwhile.

The school day also makes cooking a little tough but, for these 9 days of holiday at least, I’m back on form and the first thing I made was this.

You can tell I had too much time on my hands that day, can’t you? 

I’m aware that a few cookbooks include fish lasagnas like this one with a smoked salmon filling but I think that the salmon on its own would be a bit overpowering for me. I wanted something to dissipate the strong salty flavour of the salmon and, at the same time, add an extra dimension to the dish.  I thought about adding prawns at first, but I didn’t want to alter the texture of the lasagne that much. Then I found some haddock on special offer and this dish was born.

Haddock and Smoked Salmon Lasagna

• 175g smoked salmon
• 200g haddock fillet, skinned
• half a medium onion, finely chopped
• a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley
• 3 sheets fresh lasagna 
• 2 eggs, poached and refreshed in cold water

For The Hollandaise Sauce

• one to two tablespoons chopped chives 
• 2 medium/large eggs  (yolks only)
• 100g butter
• two teaspoons of white wine vinegar

1. Start off by getting your poached eggs ready. 
2. Make the hollandaise sauce as described here. 
3. Cut the lasagne sheets in half and cook them, as normal, in salted boiling water. Brush them with olive oil so they don’t stick together, and set them aside. 
4. Sweat the onions in a little of the butter until they are soft.
5. Meanwhile, poach the haddock in the milk until it flakes. Drain the fish, flake it into small pieces and stir it into the cooked onion with the parsley.
6. Warm two serving plates. Using a quarter of the haddock minture, make a thin, rectangular base for the first lasagna on one plate. Try and make it the same size as  the lasagne sheets.
7. Cover the base one lasagna sheet. Over this, put down a layer of smoked salmon, using around a third of the salmon and cover this with another sheet of lasagna. Make the top layer of the lasagna in the same way as the first, but this time layer another third of the salmon over the haddock before adding the top lasagna sheet. Top the whole thing with the remaining salmon.
8. Assemble the other lasagna in the same way. Top each with a poached egg, pour the hollandaise sauce over them and scatter over some chopped chives.
9. Serve with steamed asparagus. 

***

This was the biggest success I’d had this term. The addition of the haddock to the smoked salmon and hollandaise did exctly what I wanted. The lasagna had that extra depth of flavour I had been aiming for but was still dominated by the classic pairing of smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce.

In fact, this would have been perfect if I’d been able to find our whisk. As it was, it had disappeared in our move two months ago and somehow I’d managed to get by without noticing it had gone. This left me with  two problems. Firstly, it is very difficult to make hollandaise sauce without one and secondly, those poached eggs were just not going to work. 

The hollandaise sauce was eventually made by beating things very fast with a fork. As for the eggs, Goon tried to replace the whisk with an electric stick blender. It didn’t really work.  

Well, it nearly held together. Next time I’m in this situation, I’ll try the oiled cling film trick that Trig described in his post on egg poaching techniques.

Undeterred by the witty and cutting insult  left for his previous culinary effort, Goon has agreed to go ahead with my plan to help him learn to cook. This is a great step forward for someone who has flatly refused to make anything more complicated than an omelette for the last six months.

Now, it is clear that Goon and I have completely different cooking styles. I never learned to cook at home as my parents had me on low calorie ready meals through my teenage years. Then, all of a sudden at age 22, when I finally got a long term boyfriend, I just started making simple things but without any recipe books. Those came later, when I got bored of making basic things and wanted ideas for new meals. I never followed a recipe as such, just got an idea of the ingredients and improvised. I find that I’m so impatient, I get bored reading instructions and just get them wrong.  Things are much more reliable when I make stuff up, which is why I’ll probably never be a good baker.

Goon is completely the opposite. He can follow a recipe really well but if there’s a typo (or the chef writing the recipe is a bit mad) Goon can’t make adjustments. He has no idea of how to compensate for things going wrong…. at least not yet.

So we’ve formulated a plan. Once a week (or more if he feels like it) I will go through my recipe books and find a recipe that I think will suit Goon’s cooking ability. Goon will try it with as little help from me as possible, then we’ll blog it. It should be a good way of reviewing basic recipes as well as being great for teaching Goon to cook.

For the first experiment of this kind, I found an exciting looking recipe by Nigel Slater from his book Real Food. It is a stir fry of pork fillet and cashew nuts with strong vibrant flavours of lime, chilli and mint. Since it is a stir fry, there wasn’t anything involved that was too scary for Goon. However, I didn’t agree with the recipe completely, so I adjusted the quantities to what I thought would work. There was a decrease in chilli, as Goon doesn’t like too much heat in his food, and I reduced the amount of lime because it just seemed totally ludicrous.

Of course, we need to go one step at a time. Goon can’t cook two things in parallel yet, so I made some fried rice to go with the pork and some wilted pak choi in oyster sauce, but he made the meat dish entirely on his own.

Pork with Lime, Cashews and Mint (Adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Food)

• 400g pork fillet
• flavourless oil for frying (vegetable, groundnut, etc)
• 75g cashews, roughly chopped (90g was suggested, but I ate some before we started. I think 75g was plenty and I prefer the nuts chunky, so I changed the ‘finely chopped ‘ stated in the original recipe to roughly chopped).
• zest of 2 limes plus the juice of one (the recipe suggested 3 whole limes, we used 2 and it was still a bit much.)
• 3 green chillies, deseeded and chopped (maybe go for the suggested 4 red chillies if you like heat.)
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 4 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal
• 2 inches of ginger, peeled and finely shredded
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce (the original recipe suggests 2, but I knew this would make it too salty for me)
• handful mint leaves, finely chopped
• handful basil leaves, torn to shreds

1. Cut the pork into 2cm thick rounds, then cut each round into thin strips.
2. Put the oil into the wok, get it really hot and then brown the pork by quickly stir-frying it until it is golden brown in places. Pour the pork onto a plate with its juices.
   [Goon observation: It says to use a wok for a good reason. If you use a big saucepan like Goon did, not much of the pork will be in contact with the pan surface and it will take longer to brown. Since it doesn’t seal as quickly, it may lose more water than it should. It’s not the end of the world. Just pour off excess liquid and carry on.]
3. Turn down the heat a little and add the spring onions, garlic, ginger and chilli to the pan. Fry, stirring constantly for a couple of minutes. 
4. Return the pork to the pan and add the cashews and continue to fry these, whilst stirring, for another minute or two.
5. Add the fish sauce, lime zest and juice and stir through.
6. Finally, add the mint and basil.
   [Ros observation: The original recipe stated ‘add the herbs.’ This confused Goon as he thought there weren’t any herbs in the ingredients list.  Sometimes it helps to really spell things out.]
7. Taste and adjust seasoning.
   [Goon doesn’t like doing this. In fact, he tasted it and just said, ‘it tastes weird’. It turned out he meant ‘the lime is a bit strong’. In compensation I added some more mint and garlic, which seemed to help in balancing it.] 
8. Garnish with a sprig of mint and serve immediately with some fried rice.

***

So how did it turn out?

Not bad I say! With the minor adjustments I made, this turned out to be an excellent recipe, with wonderful bold flavours and a refreshing citrusy-heat that wasn’t too much for Goon. The lime wasn’t so overpowering by the time it reached the table, although I would stick to the quantities above rather than using 3 whole limes as Slater suggested.

So I think we have a success! Hopefully in time, Goon will be able to do the rice and vegetables too.

It’s a miracle!

Yes, Goon is cooking! I think it has been at least 6 months since he last tried cooking properly and, even then, I had to take over.

The reason for this suprising occurence is a rather nasty bug that hit me on Tuesday. It really was horrible. I ended up spending most of the day on the sofa in pain. By the evening I was in pain and hungry. Goon’s first suggestion was take-away but there was no way I wanted junk food then.

Goon wasn’t too keen on the idea of cooking. He likes to have precise, failsafe instructions for preparing food and not many of my cookbooks are very good for that. They are mostly a collection of Borders £3 bargains (great for inspiration rather than reliable recipes) and  more difficult material that I like to use to challenge myself.  

The only option was for me to invent something for him to cook. In the end I adapted some instructions for a UKTV lobster dish to make an easy recipe ofr linguine with tomato based seafood sauce.

He followed it pretty well! If he hadn’t kept getting distracted by the TV, he might have managed it all himself, but I had to run in, stir and add liquid a few times to save it when the crummy cop show on telly got too exciting for Goon.

Simple Linguine with a Crab and Prawn Sauce

Ingredients (for one Goon and one ill and hungry person)

• 1 tin (approx 175g drained) crabmeat
• 200g shelled, cooked king prawns 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 or 3 green birds eye chillies, roughly chopped
•  a thumb sized piece of ginger root, crushed
• 1 small glass white wine
• 1 Goon sized handful (it’s a BIG hand) of coriander leaf, roughly chopped
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes in their own juice
• Olive oil (quite a lot)
• Salt and Pepper
• 225g dried linguine
• more coriander to garniish

Put the pasta to boil in plenty of salted water. 

Fry the garlic gently in about 1 tbsp of  olive oil. When it is soft add the crushed ginger, the chopped green chillies, the tomatoes and the white wine. Let these simmer for a while. 

If a Goon is cooking this, make sure you turn the TV off at this point, or disaster may follow.

Once the pasta has cooked, toss it in just enough olive oil to coat it and set it aside.

When the tomato sauce is thick, stir in a large handful of chopped coriander. Taste and add salt, pepper and more coriander and tomato puree if necessary. (I had to do this bit- Goon doesn’t trust his tastebuds.) 

Stir in the white crabmeat and the king prawns. Mix it up thoroughly with the linguine, warm it through, and serve, garnished with more coriander.

 ***

And the result?

It tasted very good indeed! 

The best thing about this, is that it has encouraged Goon to cook some more. This could be really useful because I’ll probably need a few nights out of the kitchen when my job starts. My plan is to try and make Goon cook something simple once a week. I’ve already found that some of the recipes in my Nigel Slater books might be suitable for him. If those work out well, I might even go and pick up Delia’s cookery course and see what he makes of it.

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.

I was VERY excited when I found a pack of this pasta. In fact, I think I terrified the guy running the stall with my enthusiasm.  But, how could I not be happy? I love squid and I love pasta so it was pretty obvious I was going to like this. Also the wonderful colour would let me play with the presentation and make a really dramatic looking dish.

Oddly, after my initial burst of excitement I found myself totally stuck on what to do with this strange looking ingredient. I’d heard that the squid flavour was quite prominent,  so it would have to be paired with fish. I thought about getting some red mullet for a while, but never found any.  Then, the next week, I spontaneously decided to buy some little clams at Borough. They would be perfect although, at their price, I couldn’t afford enough for two whole portions.

I also had a vague memory of reading about a dish with clams, pernod and tomato. The sound of anise with shellfish sounded really good to me, although I wasn’t really taken by the tomato idea. I preferred the idea of a creme fraiche based sauce with lemon, pernod and maybe some ground anise.I also had half a fennel bulb in the fridge, which was starting to look quite sad, so that would have to go in too. I decided to go the whole hog then and throw in fennel seed.

I chopped and sauteed the fennel with some onion, fennel seed and garlic until it was tender, then added creme fraiche, the grated zest of a lemon, a touch of ground anise and a generous splash of pernod. I let this bubble down a little then used it to cook my clams. Finally I stirred in some fresh king prawns (to bulk out the dish) and let them cook.

At the end I was happy with the flavour and the consistency of the sauce. What I wasn’t happy about was the colour. The pernod had given the sauce a really disturbing yellow-green colour which was not at all attractive. There was no way in hell I was going to have a squid ink spaghetti dish that didn’t show off the fantastic colour of the pasta.

My solution was to layer the sauce with the pasta. I put down a clump of spaghetti strands, spread them out, topped them with a few clams and prawns, then drizzled over some sauce. I repeated this, finishing with a layer of pasta and a couple of prawns and clams, so that the sauce was completely hidden.

Goon and I totally loved this. The pasta, despite looking like a bunch of black worms when it was cooking, tasted really good with the lemon oil I dressed it in. On it’s own it smelled and tasted very much like seaweed. The anise flavour was very prominent but was delicate enough to balance the seafood without overpowering it.  The only problem with the dish was that I managed to overcook the prawns a little. Silly me .

This dish looked so good garnished with lemon and with a colourful salad of rocket and cherry tomoatoes. I’m going to keep it in mind for entertaining my more adventurous friends or maybe even scaring my parents.

I recently was made aware of a blogging event that is entirely devoted to pasta. It’s called Presto Pasta Night and it is run by Ruth at Once Upon a Feast. I feel silly for having entered before since I really do love pasta, but this seems as good a time as any to join in. Check out all the entries here.

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.

It appears that it is time for teenagers all over the country to panic madly, as they suddenly realise that their mocks were a disaster and their predicted  A level and GCSE grades may leave them destined for a future on the checkout of Kwiksave.

At least that is how it seemed as my inbox filled up with mail from various tutoring agencies begging for people to provide maths lessons. It was good from the perspective of my bank balance but rather horrendous for my sanity, as I realised that I was going to have start teaching at from 9am on most days and not have a chance of getting home until 10pm.

On weeks like this I want to leave the cooking to Goon so that dinner doesn’t get served up too late and I get a reasonable amount of sleep before the next early start. After all, I’d taught him one or two things. For example,  salmon with creme fraiche and dill pasta was now in his repetoire and he had produced some paprika chicken almost completely unaided. On Monday night, I thought I would try this. I suggested he did something with fish and then went off to teach an undergrad until 8:30. After the two hour lesson, I was rather perturbed to find that Goon was still in his office, waiting for further instruction on what to cook. This of course, defeated the whole purpose of getting him to cook as he would get homeeven later than me!

So that ended up being a very late night and a painfully early start. The same late night and early start happened on Tuesday. By Thursday, I was looking a lot like something from a bad zombie movie. Goon, rather embarrassed by his behaviour on Monday, offered to cook again, providing I could tell him what to do.

After a very laboured think, (I wasn’t capable of anything else by then) I decided that spare rib chops cooked slowly in a sweet and sour sauce with stir fried noodles and vegetables would be nice and easy.

So I dragged Goon around Tesco to pick up ingredients and also got myself a nice pack of game paté, which I had been really craving since I’d just seen Jeanne’s delicious sounding home made chicken liver paté. Hopefully I’d  be able to enjoy some before running off the next morning.

The first thing I got Goon to do was make the sauce. It is a very easy one to make. You just get the juice from a tin of pineapples, add some sweetened water, ginger powder and then vinegar in small quantities until you  are happy with the flavour. A little tomato paste is added for colouring and, usually, I then add some onions and pepper which I have fried until just a little bit crunchy. Very simple!

Goon didn’t agree, and insisited I be in the kitchen to supervise. So I told him to start heating the pineapple juice and add enough sugared water to just cover the ribs in their little dish, while I chopped the vegetables. When I turned around I found that Goon had diluted the pineapple juice with enough water to fill the entire 1.5 litre pan. Admittedly I’d picked up some big chops but not THAT big.

Half an hour later, when the liquid had finally reduced to a sensible level, I helped Goon finish off the sauce and poured it over the rib chops, which were sitting snugly in a roasting tray and popped them in the oven for 1 hour 30 mins at gas mark 4.  

Goon had decided that this cooking business was all too difficult. So I ended up being in charge of the stir fry on the condition he would watch and learn. He sat on the floor while I made the noodles, describing carefully what I was doing at each stage. At some point I noticed that Goon was no longer responding to what I said. In fact it turned out that Goon wasn’t even sitting on the floor any more.

I eventually found him hiding behind the kitchen door with a sheepish look on his face. In his hand was an empty pack of game paté.

Grrr! Only Goon could eat a whole 150g of paté in the time it takes me to cook a stir fry.

Anyway, the pork was good. I added a tin of water chestnuts at the end because I think they have a fantastic texture. For the stir fry, I used rice noodles with spring onions, ginger, five spice, some left-over pancetta, and cashew nuts and fried them all together in a generous measure of sesame oil.

This wasn’t my best photography day, was it? Ah well. Apparently my parents have bought me a new camera. Fingers crossed photography should, at the very least, become more consisitent.