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.

This holiday it struck me how many bargain cookery books I have. There are more than two shelves full of those £3 Borders reduced paperbacks which specialise in cuisine from a certain country or continent. They look cheap, they feel cheap, heck, they ARE cheap, but I find these little books very useful.

I’d love to be able to go out and spend £25 each time I fancied trying out something new but sadly, if I did that, I probaby couldn’t afford the ingredients I needed to make good use of the books I bought.  Still, a book entitled “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” isn’t likely to fill you with confidence about its contents but, rather suprisingly, it turned out to be quite informative and inspiring. Most of the book focuses on cuisine from the Indian subcontinent but around a third of it is devoted to curries from Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Indonesia. There are several very unusual recipes in this section of the book which I’m determined to try. The first on my list was the prawn and quail egg curry.

This was a really delicious meal. The flavour of the curry is delicate but earthy, dominated by garlic, ginger and turmeric with subtle heat (which could be increased if desired) and the lemongrass coming through right at the end. The sauce is thin, almost like a broth, which made it a nuisance to carry to the table but was wonderful mixed up with the rice. It pays to go easy on the fish sauce as its pungent flavour could easily overpower the other ingredients.

A note on the use of stock here: As far as I’m aware most ‘wet’ curries don’t traditionally call for stock and instead get their flavour from the meat being braised slowly. For this reason I assume the use of chicken stock in this meal is not authentic. However, I find the right stock can be really useful in making ‘quick cook’ curries like this one. I’d use a light fresh stock that isn’t flavoured with herbs. I always make stocks like these from the carcasses from my roast dinners because they are so wonderfully versatile. 

I have come around to the idea of egg in curry. As a child, there was nothing more I hated than finding half an egg in an overpoweringly hot and salty Sri Lankan dish but the quail eggs suit the delicacy of flavours here. This is definitely a meal I will make again, especially since it is quick enough for a schoolnight dinner!

Indonesian Style Prawn and Quail Egg Curry

(Adapted from “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” by Mridula Baljekar, published by Hermes House)

Ingredients (for two people with big appetites) 

• 400-450g shelled  and cleaned king prawns
• 9 quail eggs, hard boiled, peeled and halved
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 3 fat cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 cubic inches of ginger, chopped finely and crushed
• 2 red chillies, finely chopped
• half a level tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon sugar (I assume palm sugar is authentic- I had to use demerera)
• one half inch cube of shrimp paste or up to 1 tablespoon fish sauce  
• 1 small stalk lemongrass, tough outer layer removed, trimmed and shredded.
• 300ml thin coconut milk (pass 350ml normal coconut milk through a sieve)
• 200ml unherbed chicken stock
• 110g pak choi, or similar leaf, roughly shredded
• shredded spring onion green part only) to garnish
• plain boiled basmati rice to serve

Method

1. Sweat the onions, garlic and ginger together gently until the onions are soft but not coloured.
2. Add the chilies, shrimp paste/fish sauce and lemongrass. Fry for a minute so they release their favours.
3. Add the strained coconut milk, stock and sugar and stir well. Bring the mixture to a gentle bubble. Let the mixture reduce by about 40%.
4. Stir in the prawns and leaves and turn the heat down so the curry is at a simmer. 
5. Stir gently until the prawns have just turned pink all the way through. This should ony take a few minutes and the leaves should also wilt in this time.
6. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning
7. Stir in the quail eggs. Turn the curry out into a serving bowl and sprinkle over the shredded spring onion.
8. Serve immediately with plain boiled basmati rice. 

Early last term, I had come home from school late. Goon was away visiting his family in Leeds and so, due to the fact that I live in a slightly rough area, I was cautious entering the house and double locked the door behind me before taking off my bag and shoes.

Suddenly, from the direction of the living room came a flash of movement and before I knew what was happening, I saw an intruder coming towards me. The shock sent me running backwards. I fell over my rucksack, smacked my head against the letterbox and, in my attempt to steady myself, ripped the electric doorbell off the door. My assailant stopped two feet away from me, considered me with her head tilted at an angle for a second and then sat down and started licking her right paw.

“Wh-what the hell…? ” I whispered. The intruder looked at me, then affectionately rubbed her head up against my arm. “How the hell did you get in here? We’re on the third floor! There’s nothing outside that window but a 20 foot drop!” I got up, rubbed the new bump on the back of my head and tried to salvage the squashed shopping inside my rucksack. The trespassing cat wandered around the living room then started nibbling our rosemary plant. “Stop it, stupid cat! That’s mine!” I said indignantly. I tried to shoo it away from my herbs but the cat just looked at me, then licked my shin. I could sense this would be a difficult guest to get rid of.

I was right. The problem is this cat is unbearably cute. It’s pretty, friendly and charmingly gormless. No wonder Goon loves it. they’re a match made in heaven. The first time I introduced them it was a matter of seconds before our feline friend had charmed Goon into lying on the stairs while tickling its tummy.

This cat fills a place in Goon’s life no woman could ever hope to. Never before has anyone sat patiently for hours, listening to Goon’s descriptions of his latest tactics in the on line role playing game of the moment or the relative benefits of various brands of computer hardware. never before has Goon had a head resting on his knee with which to share his favourite episodes of Stargate Atlantis.

Despite the fact the cat has an irritating tendency to get under my feet and walk on my keyboard when I’m trying to work, I like it being around. It makes Goon happy and that keeps him quiet. The only thing that bothered me about the cat was the fact it appeared to be a vegetarian. How is that natural!? A vegetarian cat?! It, in its first two months of its visits the cat refused anything I gave to it. It only seemed interested in the rosemary bush. Then, a few weeks ago, we found its weakness.

Due to Goon spending all his time finishing his degree and not doing any work as he used to, we’re a little short on cash. However I occasionally treat us and, with it being half term, I’d decided to go to Borough where I picked up a wild mallard amongst other things. I was intending that, during the short break from school, I would learn at least one new cooking technique, so the mallard would be roasted and served on a potato rosti with a beetroot, thyme and orange sauce and some wilted chard.

All was well and good. That was until I’d just served up and, having taken pictures of the meal for the blog, I came into the living toom to find Goon and that bloody cat on the sofa with Goon feeding it chunks of, not entirely cheap, mallard 

The cat ended up outside.  Goon ended up wearing half a pan of beetroot and orange  jus.  

Roasted Wild Mallard on Potato Rosti with Wilted Chard and a Beetroot and Orange Jus

Serves two (no cats allowed)

• 1 large wild mallard
• butter ( about 2 tablespoons)
• 1 medium beetroot, peeled and cut into  very small cubes
• 1 small glass fruity red wine
• the zest and juice of half an orange
• four or five thyme sprigs
• four or five rosemary sprigs
• 10 shallots, peeled and halved
• two handfuls of rainbow chard 
• the ingredients for potato rosti as descried in the link below

1. Potato rosti can be made as described here.
2. Wash and pat dry the mallard. rub softened butter over its skin and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put half a small onion inside its cavity and some rosemary sprigs.
3. Roast the mallard on gas mark 7 for 35 minutes. Rest for at least fifteen minutes before serving.
4. In the mean time, use a food processor to puree the beetroot. Strain the juice into a saucepan
5. Add the thyme  and a few chunks of orange zest and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
6. Remove the thyme sprigs and zest and add the shallots. Turn up the heat to a gentle bubble, add the wine and cook until the shallots are tender and the sauce has thickened to a yrupy consistency. Add a squeeze of orange juice. Taste and adjust seasoning.
7. Wash the chard thoroughly then wilt it in hot water for a couple of minutes. Drain and toss in butter.
8. Serve slices of mallard breast on top of the rosti. Arrange the now very purple shallots around the duck and drizzle over the sauce. Garnish thyme and serve the wilted chard on the side.

 …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.

I’m back, finally. For the next two and a half weeks I’ll be free of teaching, marking and pastoral duties, which means I can cook properly again. Hooray!

The last five weeks have been unbelievably busy. I think I’ve averaged around 4 hour sleep per night for the last fortnight. On top of the job, I have been preparing for my PhD viva, which came and went succesfully on Wednesday. Now I can officially call myself Dr Nanayakkara*. This has already had good and bad repercussions  at school. One of my year 9s has chosen to address me as ‘Doctor’ which is totally unneccessary but makes me feel very smug. However, one of my year 12s thinks it’s amusing to call me ‘Doc’. How rude - and after I’d brought them cake for their last lesson too**!

Immediately after the viva, I was plunged into the whirlwind of the last few days of term along with the inevitability of hyperactive students and evening drinks parties while already very, very hung-over indeed. When that was over, I slept for 36 hours almost consecutively.

Now I’m free and I’m contemplating what I’ll be doing with that enormous ox-tongue sitting in the fridge. Yes, a whole ox-tongue. Well, you didn’t expect me to come back from my extended blogging break with something boring, did you? ;)

I’ll keep you posted on what happens to it….

*and, more importantly, make other people do the same.

** This might be what sixth form detentions were made for.

Not long ago I got invited to a fantastic chocolate tasting event hosted by Hotel Chocolat. Now they’ve asked me to partner with them in holding a very exciting competition. 

******************* 

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