dinner a deux

oh hi, me again. as you can tell it's been a very busy week for me in the kitchen. which is just how i like it, to be honest. so i may have previously mentioned that i had my bff4lyfe laura over for dinner on wednesday evening after i'd completed my booze school course at work? well, this is the first time i've cooked for her. i don't know about anybody else, but the first time i cook for somebody i respect the opinion of, i always get performance anxiety. it never happens with, and let's be honest, someone i have decided i am going to sleep with, as i'm usually pretty confident in my ability to seduce (realistically speaking i have a high enough success rate to justify it), but i find with friends it's a lot more complicated.

i mean, take laura. she's pretty much the only person i socialize with in this two-horse town. i met her through my ex, and we insta-bonded over gender theory, literature, and an overabiding love of everything kanye west says. it's been what, about, seven months since i've known her, and even after things went right down the shitter with john, she and i have only gotten closer. it's a friendship founded on mutual repect and admiration, and, i know it sounds a bit overthought, but i'm neurotic enough to want my cooking to go perfectly in order to reflect that.

i decided, given that another of laura and my areas of common ground is love of thai food, the hotter the better, to keep things on an asian slant, but rather than going for something 'safe' like a red curry, i decided to make a laksa that caught my eye in (you've guessed it) good old nige's tender vol. I, to get the most out of the last of the pumpkins before i say goodbye to them until autumn. so without further ado:

a new pumpkin laksa for a cold night

pumpkin, unskinned, 350g
coriander and mint leaves to finish

for the spice paste:

red birds eye chillies, 3-4
garlic - 2 cloves
ginger, a thumb sized lump
lemongrass, 2 plump stalks
coriander roots, 5 or 6
coriander leaves, a handful
sesame oil, 2 tablespoons

for the soup:

chicken or vegetable stock, 600ml
coconut milk, 400ml
nam pla (thai fish sauce), 2 tablespoons (kirsty's note, obviously substituted for light soy)
tamari, 1-2 tablespoons, to taste
the juice of a lime
100g dried noodles, cooked as per packet and drained.

peel and seed the pumpkin and cut the flesh into large chunks. cook in a steamer or a metal colander balanced over a pan of boiling water until tender. remove from the heat.

for the spice paste, remove the stalks from the chillies, peel the garlic, peel and roughly chop the ginger and lemongrass. put them all into a food processor with the coriander roots and leaves and sesame oil and blitz until you have a rough paste.

get a large, deep pan hot and add the spice paste. fry for a minute, then stir in the stock and the coconut milk and bring to the boil. allow to simmer for seven to ten minutes, then stir in the nam pla, tamari, lime juice, pumpkin and the cooked and drained noodles. simmer briefly, add the coriander and mint noodles over the top, and serve in deep bowls.

okay, so, forgive the blurry picture, i was half cut by the time this got served, having been tasting wine and various spirits and mixers all day then hitting the chardonnay when i got home. this is, what i would refer to as a pretty good little midweek post-work recipe (did i not usually work until gone midnight), but then, i almost always have enthusiasm for my kitchen, so your mileage may vary. it only took about half an hour to cook in total, and that was mostly because the pumpkins and squash that make it to january are usually the monstrously big, slightly more fibrous specimens that have toughed out long periods of storage and therefore take longer to steam. it came up a treat, i mean, i loved it, but that's a given since it's precisely the kind of spicy bowl-food i go in for, but, despite having never had vietnamese food or squash before, it ticked all laura's boxes, too. she has, actually, after discussion over this, with no pushiness from me, cos i don't go in for that, decided to do a meat-free month in february. i like to think my vibrant, spicy-sweet little number may have helped.

for dessert, i stuck firmly to my comfort zone. the first desserts i learned to make, perversely, were cream and egg-white based. you know, the kind that usually daunt newcomers to the cooking scene? i've always been a bit like that, my earliest delve into literature proper was the russians, swiftly followed by kafka, so my accidental top down approach to things is a bit of a recurring theme, it would seem. i think, with the dessert thing, it stems from the fact i started out mostly baking as opposed to cooking proper, so i have no fear when it comes to whisking. i wanted something sweet and decadent that wouldn't be too heavy, so i flicked through my green and black's chocolate cookbook (an uncharacteristically thoughtful present from my little brother one christmas when i was an undergrad) and quite by accident, came up with another nigel slater gem:

white chocolate and cardamom mousse

8 plump green cardamom pods

100ml milk

3 bay leaves

250g good quality white chocolate, broken into pieces

300ml double cream

3 large egg whites

cocoa powder for dusting

crack open the cardamom pods and extract the seeds. crush them lightly and then put them in with the milk and the bay leaves in the saucepan. gently warm the milk until it is close to boiling point, then remove from the heat and set aside to infuse.

melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended over a saucepan of barely simmering water. as soon as it starts to melt, turn off the heat, leaving the bowl in place, and stirring occasionally.

whip the cream to form soft mounds, it should not be stiff. whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. once the chocolate has melted, remove from the heat and sieve the warm milk mixture into it. mix the chocolate and milk together until velvety.

stir in a spoonful of the egg whites to the chocolate mixture, then gently fold in the remaining egg whites using a large metal spoon. gently fold in the softly whipped cream. spoon into containers and refrigerate for 4 hours, dusting with cocoa just before serving.

so, as you can see from the picture (taken of a leftover one the next day, i was way too far gone at this point to be taking any pictures), these little puppies actually lost a lot of air in the fridge, but still somehow managed to remain texturally correct. i would absolutely recommend this recipe, it managed to be sweet without being cloying, something i find difficult with white chocolate (nigella's white chocolate mint mousse, for example, damn near gave me a migraine). if i'd been a little less time-pressed i might have whipped up some pistachio biscotti to go with these, but sadly my jam-packed bar superstar schedule did not permit it. it did the job pretty well on it's own, wowing my girl and even reducing me to almost silence in the eating (a feat more admirable than you may assume). in fact, laura enjoyed herself so much we're going to make this a monthly-at-least occurence. i'd call that a success.

preserving 2.0

okay, so yesterday we discussed the fact that when i learn practical skills i tend towards needing repetition in order to feel competent in my technique. hence my aims to both bake bread and practice preserving techniques once a week this year. with bread baking i feel i am deliberately keeping things slow and steady, i mean, a more adventurous person than myself would have probably made the basic bread recipe once and then skipped the chapter and gone on to something more adventurous, like, say, ciabatta, or pitta breads. not i darlings, i've still got several basic variants to experiment with; besides which i rather like the fact i'm creating a home environment in which there is always a handmade loaf on the go and one languishing in the freezer, ready to be refreshed in the oven, crisp and airy as new. i'm not going to mess with the formula, but i am going to move away from basic white bread via the medium of more interesting flours, nuts, and seeds.

with preserves, things are different. preserving is, naturally, dictated by the seasons; you want to preserve some of what is good for when none of it is around. so my patience-reliant learning technique pays off, here. january will naturally be spent making various types of marmalade, since there's not much more than citrus fruits available (although i'm getting seriously impatient about forced rhubarb. seriously, wherefore art it?). i don't mind this, i like trying slight variants on the same technique: see for reference the great houmous challenge of summer 2010, helped massively by living 2 seconds away from a middle eastern supermarket, not to mention shocking it's owner by my ability to lift several kilos of chickpeas with no visible strain. put it this way, they've got nothing on beer barrels.

so yes, you guessed it, i made marmalade again. i hunted high and low for seville oranges (i want some for a fabulous infused gin recipe i've seen, too) but could not find any, so had to make do with valencia oranges, which was a bit disappointing. i prefer seville oranges in general, and back in the days of being an omnivore, used them pretty much everywhere i would have used lemons for the entirety of their brief season. the flesh was particularly wonderful in a variant on a salad an ex girlfriend used to make to serve with fish, that involved rough chunks of it, black olives, mint, and the tiniest amount of feta cheese (the original salad was with pink grapefruits). this seville take on nostalgia was better with oiler fish like mackerel, than the grilled white fish she preferred, mind, which would have sent my calorie conscious ex into a stuttering fit of how long it would take you to burn them off. are you beginning to see why she had to go?

anyway, back to marmalade. i used the same recipe from the river cottage preserves handbook i used for my previous attempt but rather than use a kilo of lemons, i used a kilo of oranges, which meant i had to add 75ml lemon juice when i added the sugar. again, i have tried to take as many process pictures for you as possible, not just to keep as a record of my own learning, but to try and convey what things should look like at various stages of the proceedings.

this is my peel, shredded and soaking in water and its own juice, done the day before i want to make the marmalade. to the left of it you can see a plastic bowl in a debenhams back. this is the bread from the previous post rising, i'm a bit of a kitchen multitasker so i shredded my peel in the rising time. this having several things on the go at once and losing entire days in the kitchen was a habit i picked up in my dissertation writing days when i'd typically have written a chapter and therefore needed to get some headspace before i went back to edit. the peel swells up to almost double it's size at this stage, and honestly, i think i need to work on getting a finer shred (i am categorically not helped by the fact i'm the only one who ever sharpens the knives in this gaff).


okay, so having simmered said peel mixture for roughly two hours, this is my mixture after i added my 2 kilos of demerara sugar and my 75ml lemon juice. it is literally just coming up to it's full boil and as you can see it's about 2cm off the top of the pan. i know i am using a pan that is not big enough, and consequently at the boil stage i have to watch my mixture like a hawk to make sure it doesn't spill over. luckily this is only 20-25 minutes long, so ample time for caffeine and a cigarette and maybe a little singalong to the al green you're listening to. i got paid like, double what i thought i would this month, so along with a couple of books recommended to me by my trainer on wednesday about wine, i'm going to invest in a preserving pan. they're about 9 litres in capacity, and they have volume measurements on the inside so you can see how much your liquid has decreased. handy.

okay, and this is my marmalade after it has reached setting point and been taken off the hob to cool. i guess you can see that some of it did go a little crazy and go all over the hob (and was subsequently a bastard to clean off), but i managed to catch it before we had like, biblical levels of marmalade flood in the kitchen, so nothing too terrible. you can also just about see the lids in their pan of boiling water. at this stage i added 50ml (probably more, if i'm not pouring with a measure i get a little overeager) of scotch. i used glenturret 12 year old; which may seem slightly extravagant but it does have citrussy notes to it; so it seemed like a good little match. is it extravagant to use single malts in marmalade? yeah most probably, but i'm just that kind of girl.

and here are my little beauties all jarred up. the smaller jars are 300ml, the larger 450ml. the tiniest one is i think only a 250ml. you'd have to be hawkeyed to spot that one of these also says 'reserved for ed' on it, i reckon, but he will be the recipient of a jar from each batch when we go for a beer or several on monday (i owe him big time for listening to my whining earlier this year, but we've both since remembered the last time we got drunk together and are fearing for our livers big time). i am always fascinated by how pretty they look in their jars-there's almost a marine-life-in-sepia quality to them that i love.

okay, and this is a close up on one of the jars, just to show that while i did get a more even peel distribution this time, it was still far from perfect. i think perhaps, again, i needed more patience in the cooling time.

i'm not sure what i'll make next. since i'm going to be busy being drunk and then hungover in the early half of the week i thought that maybe rather than a two-part process like the marmalade i might perhaps make preserved lemons. given my love of the humble chickpea and my overliberality with the spices, i make a lot of moroccan influenced dishes and i feel that my own preserved lemons would be a fantastic addition to my storecupboard. i also have plans for early rhubarb jam the minute i find some, and i've still got enough sloes in the freezer to make a couple of bottles of gin, so the preserving every week will continue until i am overrun with jars and bottles.

may as well just list 'yeast' as an interest on facebook.

so ed restores order and then i disrupt it again. this is going to be a running theme here folks, so i'm not going to get into the habit of apologizing for it, lest it get annoying.

things have been busy my end. i have been, in terms of small-town barmaid who doesn't really socialize in this town, living la vida loca. yesterday was the killer; i was on a 9-5 course about wine and spirits, then i had my best mate laura coming over for dinner so she could nick some of the clothes i was getting rid of (and bitch about our respective exes; not to get all candace bushnell on you here, but why can't women as talented and successful as us seem to do anything other than go out with complete chiefs? oh, cos life sucks, right.). the course was excellent, particularly on the wine front; although the guy who came from the spirits company (it's a big one, and they also own guinness, for those in the know) got a bad write up from me because his attitude was terrible; which is something i've yet to encounter from anyone in my company. still, i learned a lot of ridiculous facts about booze; and luke, our wine-trainer referred to me as a 'know-it-all' when grilling me on blended wines, so yet again i've managed, despite my approach to office dress (it can only be described as 'luminous') to dazzle in the world of corporate bartending. i know, right? check me out.

but the earlier half of my week was spent on affairs much more domestic and routine. i made me some more bread. i may have mentioned before that learning, to me, is a series of cautious and mindful repetitions under the authority of someone i respect (which made the spirits guy yesterday all the more jarring to me; i cannot respect somebody whose attitude to those lower than him is condescending and offensive). it will, then, come as no surprise really that again i have made loaves of plain white bread. i will, here, direct you to the original recipe i used, from daniel stevens' river cottage bread handbook. i used this recipe again this time, but there were a few variants, so i took some process pictures for you. i don't mean, in any way here, to set myself up as an authority on breadmaking, because, well, frankly, i'm not, having only three batches under my belt, this is more an exercise in 'teaching as i learn' or, as my company would put it, 'training as i train'.

this is my starting point. as you can see i have used dried yeast, the kind you activate in water. i have as yet, not used fresh yeast in my breadmaking, although i have previously used it in sweet baking (cinnamon buns and the like). dried yeast is actually recommended by the book, for it's behavioural consistency. you can get fresh yeast from supermarket bakeries if you ask, but given their irreverence in storing other produce, i personally am not going to advise it.

this is the dough once mixed together and given it's slug of olive oil. i am always amazed, when i use the method stevens espouses, mixing with two fingers of your right hand, clockwise, when it all comes together.

this is my dough post-kneading, oiled and ready to rise. oil is recommended as opposed to flouring, because it creates an airtight seal on the bread. god bless anabolic respiration (can you tell i just got off a wine course? god yeast is a fascinating thing).

and this is my dough post-rise. i pop a carrier bag over the bowl and let it have at it. cos it's the middle of winter, it tends to take about an hour and a half, but i anticipate similar problems in summer since i have what can only be described as a breeze-fetish, especially if i'm in the kitchen. it was actually really handy having a before picture so i could measure it's rising pace; i think that's a procedure i may implement in future. good old technology, helping cynics like me who shun faux nostalgia in their cooking.

this is two of my lumps of dough, shaped into rounds after knocking back. i had a third, which i left for a second rise, which stevens suggests gives a more airy, elastic dough, and consequently, a lighter crumb. more realistically it was a question of oven space. mum and bob were cooking sausage kebabs (i find it better not to ask about these things) so the top oven was off limits.

and here are my first two loaves proving. i don't know if you can tell, but the one on the right is proving with nowt more than a rucked up cloth to support it, and the one on the left is proving in my approximation of a proving basket (loaf tin plus linen tea towel). proving baskets provide additional support, but you put the shaped loaves into them upside down, so when it comes to time to bake you can literally just heft them out of the pan onto the tray you're using. i hadn't previously used one so i figured in the name of experiment it might be a good idea. i also proved my double-risen loaf in a basket.

okay, finished loaves = success. pictured here, in the front of the picture, is my freeform single-risen loaf. i must have got shaping pretty much down pat because it doesn't have that weird bigger-at-the-ends shape that happened last time (also always happens when i roll cigarettes). at the back is my double risen loaf.

and here, i think is the one i am most proud of. this one was the single-rise one i proved in a basket. i actually had to text ed when i took it out of the oven (no one else quite gets how much this kind of stuff affects me) and i think i used the phrase 'oh my god' about a hundred times. i like being able to see visible improvements in my technique, and this loaf kicked the crap out of last week's, so i'm a happy bunny.

and here is my bread served with a soup so good i took five minutes off being hormonal and teary to do it credit. parsnips spiced with chilli, garlic, mustard and turmeric, plus stock and cream, blended and poured over diced gruyere. it was (obviously) a nigel slater recipe from tender vol. I, and i genuinely think it is the best thing i've cooked this month, simple though it may be. made even better by the fact i served it with my amazing homemade bread. there's something so pleasing about a meal entirely made by your own hand, i have trouble understanding people who don't get satisfaction from cooking. that's not to say i don't let them get on with it, cos who am i to preach to anyone, but there's just no empathy there.

on the grass being greener.

ok, wow. so of all the rash and ill-thought out decisions i've made in life, turning vegetarian and then starting a food blog with somebody talented enough to make me really, really wish i hadn't is right up there near the top. i had the luxury of seeing process-pictures throughout the day yesterday and they were so good i ended up showing them round at work, as and when i received them.

is anyone else surprised that the first ethics post came from the meat eater? you shouldn't be. realistically speaking, i am aware of the already massive count of preachy veggies in the world, and don't plan on joining their ranks. i am completely and totally with ed on the fact that if you will eat meat you should be responsible about it, and i agree with absolutely every point he makes in his thoughts on it. my own departure from the flesh was fuelled in part by disingenous friends and associates who were economical with the truth of the provenance of what they served, and discussing with my vegetarian friend (who was at the time studying a masters that involved numerous explorations into impacts on marine environments) the omissions and oversights involved in the labelling of seafood. 'responsibly fished, sustainably caught' langoustines are still trawled, which still means bycatch, which to me is very irresponsible indeed. it became something i couldn't think about anymore, and as someone who strives to live their politics it became something i simply couldn't do any more. it's a personal decision, however, and i really don't want to get into all the things i disagree with because i would be here forever, however i will say that if more meat eaters were as responsible as ed (and previously, me; i ate offal in my time), then there probably wouldn't be any need for angsty conscience-guideds like me to go vegetarian and make people feel carnivore's guilt in the first place.

i do, i have to admit, find it highly amusing that the weekend ed was making something so inherently animal-y, i was indulging in the kind of worthy, earthy cooking, that so many people associate with vegetarianism. you know what i mean, the kind that makes everybody think we're all neil from the young ones, not to mention undernourished and not real food fans. i find all those notions laughable. i have not, as yet lost any fierceness since i gave up eating body parts, nor have i declined in health. and as for not being a real food fan? well, really? i think we all know by now that i am almost childishly guided by appetites and within my dietary parameters and environmental beliefs, a total hedonist, it just comes out in different ways.

so, let's talk bean curry shall we? i have to say even when still an omnivore i made dishes like this allllll the time. why? because it's the kind of food i like. it's boldly flavoured and coloured, it fits in with my big-dish approach (you can blame my desire for abundance on my late northern-irish great grandmother's early influence), and it's, on a practical level, enough to keep your average highly strung barmaid going through a friday night shift. so without further ado, from nigel slater's tender vol. I, i present you with (the recipe for, fuck copyright law, i can reproduce seventeen percent of whatever i choose for educational purposes, and the author is correctly credited):

cabbage with beans, coconut, and coriander

enough for 4-6

dried haricot beans, 200g

onions, 2 medium

vegetable or groundnut oil, 2 tablespoons

garlic, 3 cloves

green cardamoms, 8

coriander seeds, 2 teaspoons

yellow mustard seeds, a teaspoon

cumin seeds, a teaspoon

ground turmeric, 2 teaspoons

chillies, 3 small, hot

chopped plum tomatoes, two 400g cans

a pinch of sugar

coconut milk, 250ml

fresh coriander, a large handful

a lime, maybe 2

for the greens

a soft, leafy cabbage, such as spring greens - a good handful or more per person.

soak the dried beans in water overnight. the next day, boil the beans till tender in deep, unsalted water. drain and set aside. (if you are using canned beans, rinse them under cold running water, then set aside.)

peel the onions, cut them in half and slice them thinly. add them to the oil in a large, deep pan and let them soften, colouring lightly over a moderate heat. this often takes longer than you might imagine, a good fifteen minutes at least. peel and chop the garlic and add to the onions.

crack the cardamom pods open and extract the tiny seeds. crush these coarsely, using a pestle and mortar or a very heavy rolling pin, then stir them into the softening onions. crush the coriander seeds and then the mustard, and add them to the onions, with the whole cumin seeds, ground turmeric, a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. cook, stirring regularly, for at least five minutes, so that the spices toast in the heat.

meanwhile, seed and finely chop the chillies, and add, with the chopped tomatoes, 400ml of water and a pinch of sugar, followed by the cooked beans. leave to simmer gently over a low heat, with the occasional stir, partially covered with a lid, for about thirty five to forty minutes.

mix the coconut milk into the sauce, simmer for a further five minutes, then add the coriander leaves and the lime juice. when the curry is almost ready, make a tight fist of the greens and shred them quite finely. steam or blanch briefly, then serve with the curry.

okay, so i'm going to let the colours of this badboy speak for themselves. i am such a visual magpie (note the bright red hair and penchant for chaotic sequinned clothes) that i insist on brightly coloured dishes like this in months like january. this really is the kind of food i love cooking. slowly adding spices to a big pot and filling the house with the smell (anyone who lived with me in university will attest to this; coming home to the smell of indian spices was a regular occurence for them). i think the only changes i made were using canned beans, and using a coffee grinder i devoted to spice-grinding a long time ago. i haven't been serving this with rice, but eating it by the huge bowlful, steaming the greens as and when i need them, as i'm not major on carbs where i don't think they're necessary (pasta with garlic bread, j'accuse). if i was making it for a non vegetarian friend, i might perhaps lazily fry some parathas at the stove, glass of wine in hand, just to stop it seeming so lentil-brigade, but myself i preferred to just appreciate the deep spiciness of the beans with the clean mineral taste of the cabbage. oh, and regarding cabbage; haters to the left. you don't like it because you've had it cooked badly. all kinds of cabbage are a thing of beauty and have their rightful place in cuisine. i mentioned that northern irish great grandmother, right?

Ethics on a plate

Unintentional blogging pattern partly restored.

So this entry has been a long time in coming.  By a long time I do actually mean only five days, but it has seemed like ages.  The first butchers I tried to get the meat I required from initially thought they could get everything but had to check, then thought they couldn't, and finally could but only in quantities much larger than I could use.  The recipe comes from The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy, the latter being chef and owner of Soho Italian restaurant Bocca di Lupo.  I first became aware of author and restaurant after purchasing Theo Randall's Pasta and Amazon subsequently assuming we were destined to be.  They were correct.  A bit of research later, the persuading of my parents to take me there for my birthday soon thereafter, and finally having received the book for Christmas and I am a fully fledged, cardholding Kenedy-ite.  As I've made this directly from the book, I won't copy out the entire recipe (not least out of due diligence towards copyright law.)  Instead I shall use this as an opportunity to delve into a subject that has come to the forefront of my eating awareness over the last year or so, that of the ethics of eating meat, specifically in this case of Ravioli Genovese al Tocco as it contains veal and offal from a calf.

I was brought up eating meat, and to be grateful for what was put in front of me and as a result didn't question the relationship between humans and animals raised for slaughter until it was something that I became aware of.  With the best part of thirty years of meat eating behind me, it's fair to say that it certainly feels natural, but that's not to say I couldn't bear the prospect of eating a meal that did not contain any meat.

There are many arguments and counter-arguments both for and against meat eating, and as such I'll keep it fairly to the point.  Not least because were I to go into significant detail I would just end up crudely regurgitating and paraphrasing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on many fronts.  I do thoroughly recommend The River Cottage Meat Book as a bible for anyone who eats meat and gives even the slightest damn about what they're putting in their mouth and the consequences of their actions (or more importantly, non-actions.)

I'm not ready to completely cut out meat from my diet, and may never be.  But knowing that somewhere a pig has been killed so that I can enjoy a bacon sandwich, or that a cow has been marched off to slaughter for my roast rib of beef on Sunday, it seems right to at least ensure that up until that point the animal has been treated well, and has not been abused, taken advantage of and generally enjoyed a good life.  This is beneficial on two fronts, namely conscientiously and unsurprisingly, the quality of the meat.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out that meat from a chicken that has never seen daylight and spent its entire life on the receiving end of the distress-induced aggression of the thousands of other chickens imprisoned with it is not going to taste as good as the meat from a chicken that has been free from obstruction to run around, inquisitively looking amongst the natural, nutritional food provided for it.  Like with all vague supermarket labeling, meat packaging will try and cover up what they're not telling you by alluding to something it probably isn't.  A 'British fresh farm chicken' is certainly not free range unless it explicitly says so.  After all, if you were selling something free range you'd shout about it as loudly as possible. 

So in order to do the most justice to the animal, it seems pertinent that not only do we demand the animal be treated well whilst it's alive, but also post-slaughter.  Of course this means cooking it well to get the most out of the flavour and texture of the relevant cut.  At this point I direct you to Jay Rayner's recent excellent article for Observer Food Monthly on the criminality of a well-done steak, and to Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential as to what many chefs may be doing to your requested well done steak (surely whoever coined that term was wrong in the head; forcing all the delicious, juicy moistness out of a steak is not at all doing it well.)  As for making use of as much of the animal as possible (after all, it would only undo all the good work to then throw away something that could otherwise be used) I again point you in Anthony Bourdain's direction, this time to the first chapter of A Cook's Tour.  This recipe marks the occasion of my first culinary encounter with two cuts largely consigned to the 'that looks/sounds disgusting' scrapheap of British eating habits; veal sweetbreads and calves brains (this is also the cause of the delay in cooking this, as they're not exactly the easiest things to come by.)  I'll briefly swat away the debate about whether or not veal should even be eaten with a well-aimed quote from Hugh's The River Cottage Meat Book (did I mention anyone who eats and cooks meat should own this?)

"...what few consumers realise is that to banish veal forever from our shopping list and our menu is to condemn potential veal calves to a fairly heinous alternative to being reared for meat.  If there is no market for veal, then the thousands of pure-bred dairy calves born each year that are neither suitable for beef production nor needed for replacing the dairy herd will be shot within a few hours of birth.  The fact is that the production of veal is not intrinsically cruel, any more than the production of pork, beef or lamb is."

The crates which lead to veal's tarnished reputation are now banned in EU countries, and British production includes a number of organic producers.  If this were not the case, or was unavailable, then I wouldn't be cooking with veal.

After my initial attempts at sourcing the ingredients stumbled, I obtained them from HG Walter's butchers in Barons Court, West London, which comes with high recommendation from Rose Gray, Nigella Lawson and er, Terry Venables.  Of course.  The dish consists of shin of veal slowly simmered for two and a half hours in a wonderful concoction of the bone marrow from the shin, a mirepoix of vegetables, soaked porcini (and the liquor), beef stock, white wine, tomatoes, bay leaves, parsley, cloves and nutmeg.  The meat then goes on to form the ravioli filling along with the the poached sweetbreads and brains, borage (which I couldn't get hold of so replaced with spinach), egg yolks and grated parmesan, while the cooking liquor from the veal is puréed down and strained to make the sauce.

                                               Assorted ingredients

                                     Simmering Tocco

                                                Sweetbreads and brains soaking in cold water

Earlier in the week I had been reading Thomas Keller's method of making pasta dough by incorporating the flour into the eggs in a circular motion on a flat surface.  Having already gone ahead and put all the ingredients in a bowl I thought I'd try this anyway within its confines.  Next time I will definitely be applying Keller's method to Randall's recipe as it resulted in the best pasta dough I've made yet - after repeated passes through the widest setting it had taken on a velvety texture, so smooth and pleasing to touch.  It felt the right thickness for ravioli having only been passed through up to the seventh setting, rather than the eighth, which I have previously espoused as ideal.

                                                 Finished ravioli

                                                The final dish

As a footnote, obviously when making something that uses so many egg yolks there is just as many egg whites left over.  It would be stupid, amongst many other things, to allow these to go to waste.  Therefore it is unadvisable to make pasta if you don't enjoy meringues, soufflés, or any other such things heavily reliant upon egg whites.  I suck at meringues (as demonstrated by the pavlova I made with the whites left over from the squid ink pasta earlier, since dubbed the spazzlova) so to further my ascendency to the state of Domestic God I adapted Nigella's recipe for Pistachio Soufflés to incorporate white chocolate and raspberries.  Here's photographic proof that they did in fact rise.

HG Walter butchers can be found at 51 Paliser Road, Barons Court, London. www.hgwalter.com

Jay Rayner - A well-done steak isn't a food choice: it's a crime
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/12/steak-meat-animals-cooking

she made some tarts

it almost feels a shame to break up the alternating pattern ed and i have got going on with this, but i am gonna be so busy over the next few days that i figured i'd better post when i could get away with it. it's been busy this week in fact, what with another day of filming, plus my normal shifts at work, plus finding time in the day to repeatedly annoy ed by text and do my homework for wine school.

still, i found time to cook. mostly because things got a little conclusion-of-a-jonathan-franzen novel with my mother, and family arguments, in my experience, are the ones that have the potential to wound the most. what has this got to do with anything, kirsty, and why are you whining about it to us? i hear you say, dear readers. well, it's a simple link; in that when somebody dents my carefully constructed ego, i turn to something i am good at immediately, to restore the damage. hooray for carefully crafted trauma responses developed in childhood!

i wanted to use up the unshelled walnuts we have leftover from christmas, as they are taking up premium space in the kitchen and it would be a shame to let them turn bad, so i turned my fruit-and-nut bible, my personal food hero nigel slater's tender, volume II. there were several recipes that caught my eye, but i have as yet, not touched the stash of green and black's bars i got for christmas (perks of being a food snob) and didn't want them all languishing in a corner waiting for me to be hormonal and eat them all at once, so i found a recipe that satisfies the use of both ingredients, in the form of:

chocolate, honey, and walnut tart

for the crust:

butter, 150g

plain flour, 200g

a large egg, beaten

for the filling:

butter, 150g

set honey, 180g

light muscovado sugar, 180g

double cream, 80ml

a drop or two of vanilla extract

dark chocolate, 140g, roughly chopped

walnuts, 220g, roughly chopped.

to make the pastry, cut the butter into pieces and rub it into the flour with your fingertips, then mix in the egg to give a firm dough. roll out and use to line a 22-24cm shallow tart tin. leave to rest in the fridge for a good 20 minutes. preheat the oven to 220 degrees c/gas 6

cover the pastry case with paper and fill with dried beans or ceramic baking beans. cook in the preheated oven for about ten minutes, till the pastry is lightly biscuit coloured. carefully remove the paper and beans and return the pastry case to the oven for five minutes, until dry to the touch.

for the filling, melt the butter in a small pan, add the honey and sugar and then pour in the cream and a couple of drops of vanilla extract. boil hard for two minutes, then remove from the heat and fold in the chopped chocolate and walnuts. pour the filling into the tart case.

turn the oven down to 190 degrees c/gas 5 and bake for twenty minutes or until golden. remove and leave to cool a good half hour before serving with cream or creme fraiche.

so, here is the piece i ate before work in all it's still slightly warm, oozy glory:

small, huh? i can hear you pondering the apparent self restraint. don't worry, i took about a third of the thing to work for my coworkers and ended up eating loads more with them. this tart was goooood, like seriously. when it was warm it was really sweet and syrupy, but the cooler it got, the more redolent of toblerone it was (albeit texturally much more pleasing, it retained a gooey give even completely cool). apart from me having to cycle to the next village to get some eggs (bitteswell browns because they're leicester-laid, which is as local as it gets unless you count northampton's totally inhumane chicken factory, that turned my entire sixth form fad-vegan after some of its members started working there) in the middle of cooking, the recipe was hitch free, but then i've always done a nice line in cream-based desserts.

it was strange working with pastry after bread. to go from something so big and hands on to fiddly delicate work was a real shift in mindset, but that's one of the reasons i love getting down to making everything from scratch, i guess, it shows you the versatility of ingredients and the cleverness inherent in even the most basic techniques. my family must have liked it too, because this morning there was only this much left:

which should hopefully make them less impossible to live with over the next few days. they don't call it sweetening someone up for nothing.

still i rise.

integral to the structural stability? well, get a load of that, folks, i thought i was the one with the ego round here but apparently i've got competition. and then ed goes and mentions me daring to venture into territories sexual that nigella would cringe at? honestly speaking he has a point. if nigella is an artfully-outfitted bettie page in food/sex terms, i'm probably somewhere along the lines of a gin-sozzled lil' kim. which is appropriate, because guess whose back catalogue i listened to on my latest cooking venture?

i previously mentioned missing the kind of day-in-the-kitchen structure my life had in university, right? well, obviously, december was hectic for me, job-wise, and i think i mostly lived on fried rice, soup, and whatever they fed me at work, given my hectic schedule of being at work more than i was at home. january has significantly calmed down, although this week just got a little bit more busy what with my model employee status being heavily in demand for the current filming of our latest training dvd (currently waiting on a phonecall from them regarding what they'll make me do today, since they enjoyed working with me so much yesterday- it's a hard life being a people person who is this beautiful, it surely is). this means that other than a brief trip to wine school at the end of the month i've got the opportunity to get a routine back in the kitchen. one of the ways i've been doing this is by making bread, with my river cottage bread handbook (i have other cookbooks, honest guv, though i'm starting to question their necessity).

i recently visited portsmouth, where i studied literature at undergraduate, and caught up with an old housemate, lara. we both got exactly the same model of sewing machine for christmas, and were discussing our approaches to learning to use them. i recommended a book to her; and realized i was summing up my entire approach to learning about things as i explained why i found it so useful. i admire the way people lara learn things, a kind of gung ho 'i can do this, and the bits i can't i'll wing and worry about later', but it's completely counter to the way i learn. maybe it's a hangover from academia, and a life spent learning in the theoretical, but when it comes to something practical my learning process involves deferring heavily to someone whose authority i respect, and a repetition that suits my levels of perfectionism. needless to say, lara and i used to make an unlikely, but excellent pairing in the kitchen, even if some of the suggestions she had for recipe alterations horrified me by being so spectacularly counter to my book-learnin's.

i am going somewhere with this, honest. i've been applying this learning process to my adventures in breadmaking. i have made bread sporadically throughout my life, but it has never been something regularly incorporated into my days. now that i have decided to i have taken the 'basics' chapter of the river cottage bread book to heart, and decided that i need to repeat each recipe several times in order to practice the (twelve page long) basic techniques, before i progress to anything more advanced. other than developing a huge food-crush on daniel stevens, the book's author, this has enabled me to begin understanding process as well as product, an approach i value in all my doings. so, this is my second batch of white bread, and i managed to keep all my teeth for long enough to actually eat some of it it. here's the basic recipe from my river cottage book:

basic white bread

makes 2 large or 3 small loaves, or 12 rolls.

1kg flour

10g powdered dried yeast

20g fine salt

600ml liquid (water, milk, half water half yoghurt)

1 tbsp of fat (various oils, melted butter)

first, mix the dough. this is the one stage method for doing so: combine the flour, yeast and salt in a large mixing bowl. add the liquid and with one hand, mix to a rough dough. add the fat, if you are using. adjust the consistency if you need to, with a little more flour or water, to make a soft, easily kneadable, sticky dough. turn the dough out onto a work surface and clean your hands.

knead the dough until it is as smooth and satiny as you can make it - as a rough guide this will take about 10 minutes.

shape the dough into a round once you have finished kneading. then oil or flour the surface and put the dough into the wiped out mixing bowl. put the bowl in a bin liner and leave to ferment until roughly doubled in size. this could be anywhere between 45 minutes and 1 1/2 hours, or longer still if the dough is cold.

deflate the dough by tipping it onto the work surface and pressing all over with your fingertips. then form it into a round.

now prepare for baking. switch the oven as high as it will go. put your baking stone or tray into position and remove any unwanted shelves. put an extra roasting tin in the bottom if you are using it for steam (in which case, put the kettle on).

divide the dough into as many pieces as you wish (two or three for loaves, or a dozen for rolls). leave them to rest, covered, for 10-15 minutes.

shape the loaves as you wish, and coat the outside with flour. transfer the loaves to well-floured wooden boards, linen cloths, tea towels, or proving baskets, and lay a plastic bag over the whole batch, to stop it drying out. leave to prove, checking often by giving gentle squeezes, until the loaves have almost doubled in size.

transfer the loaves for baking to the hot tray (removed from the oven), slash the stops with a serrated knife. bring the boiling kettle to the oven. put the tray in the oven, pour some boiling water into the roasting tin, and close the oven as quickly as you can.

turn the heat down after ten minutes to 200 degrees c/gas mark 6 if the crust is pale, 180 degrees c/ gas mark 4 if the crust is noticeably browning, 170 degrees c/gas mark 3 if the crust is browning quickly. bake until the loaves are well browned and crusty, and feel hollow when you tap them. in total 10-20 minutes for rolls, 30-40 minutes for small loaves, 40-50 minutes for large loaves.

leave to cool on a wire rack. bread for tearing can be served warm. bread for slicing should be cooled completely.

so again, for reference, here is a picture of my slightly imperfect specimens:

i also, in this batch, baked a couple of rolls, which came out looking like i'd not bothered to shape them at all:

as you can see, they went a bit siamese in the oven. i feel about this batch of bread the way my family probably feel about me; 'hmm, not quite where i was going with this, but okay, the basics are right, i can work with this'. i initially felt like a bit of a twat giving a recipe for white bread, but halfway through giving you the basic, pared down version i realized that this approach to baking is not basic or pared down at all, even with my softly, softly approach. this is my second attempt at the recipe, and i learn more each time, honestly. my previous batch had a lacy texture to the crumb where i'd ummed and aaahed too long and let the shaped loaves overprove. this batch too, had it's foibles. i obviously did not shape the rolls tightly enough, as they went mental in the oven. also, regarding the loaves, did you notice the one on the right had a random vertical split in the end? obviously i need to rethink my slashing policy, maybe slashing more, or deeper. i also am not sure i shaped them tightly enough, honestly speaking, since the ends are so much fatter than the middles. the texture of this bread was better though, less huge holes, a lighter crust. i will be making another batch next week but i am happy with the progress i have made with this one.

also, for note, and to show i do eat real food, like a normal person, rather than just indulging in days of cooking for the sake of it; this is how i ate my bread that night:

with soup. this was something i threw together to save a sad lookin' little calabrese broccoli mum had in the fridge, loosely based on a recipe from the new covent garden soup company's book, soup for all seasons, which i have lent to robert at work, and consequently cannot quote. the recipe is basically to soften an onion and potato in butter, before adding a chopped head of broccoli and some veggie stock, boiling for twenty minutes and then blending until smooth, and stirring creme fraiche through. i didn't have creme fraiche, so i chucked a fair amount of sauvignon blanc (which i was getting drunk on at the time, oh wine i love you so) in there before the stock, then used double cream instead. i used to make this soup all the time in university, it's kicks the shit out of leek and potato on flavour, and look at the cute pistachio green it goes. aww. more than makes up for my quasimodo rolls, right? right.

Squid Part II

Obviously marmalade and honey are the best things to put on toast because bears have the best taste in breakfast condiments.  Marmite forcing themselves on Paddington was the ultimate humiliation; due to children's TV becoming increasingly dominated by nonsensical rubbish they slipped him a few quid to endorse their horrible product.  His heart was never in it, though, and he spat it out straight after takes.  Also, I like how my jar is the one integral to the structural stability of that stack.

So, having made squid ink tagliatelle I needed something to serve it with.  Obviously, a dish with squid made perfect sense.  Despite having prepared and cooked squid many times before, this was the first time I'd ever slow cooked it for a long time.  I had been thinking of taking it in some sort of bouillabaise direction, but in the end decided to keep it relatively simple.  It turned out magnificently.

Without further ado, recipe; (serves 4)

3 whole medium sized squid
3 small, or 2 medium fennel bulbs, sliced
1 large white onion, finely chopped
600ml lobster stock, reduced by half
200ml red wine
600g tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and crushed
salt and pepper
4 tbsp olive oil

Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a large, heavy based saucepan (Le Creuset are obviously the best pans in the world).  Finely dice the onion and garlic and sweat for approximately 10 minutes until soft and translucent, but not coloured.  Place the tomatoes in a large bowl and pour over sufficient boiling water to cover.  Leave for about a minute, enough for the skins to split.  Remove the skins, quarter, remove the seeds and discard them.  Roughly chop the flesh and add to the pan.  Leave on a gentle simmer for 30-40 minutes.  Meanwhile, prepare the squid.

Preparing squid is a whole lot easier than it may seem.  A squid is a very anatomically simple creature, and consists of predominantly two parts; the main body of flesh, and the tentacles, head and insides, which are all connected and can be pulled out in one go.  Start off by, with a sharp knife, removing the tentacles from just above the eyes.  This may take the squid's mouth and beak with it, in which case gently squeeze the end you've just cut.  If a small, hard beak protrudes out, remove it. 

You can then remove the wings from the side of the body.  You should be able to find a gap around the wings through which to penetrate the thin membrane that covers the body and remove it.  The two wings can also be eaten, but need to be separated from the membrane.  These can simply be cut away from the part that was attached to the main body, which is slightly firmer than the rest of the flesh.

The plasticy quill can be easily pulled out from inside the body.  You then need to clean the main body of the squid and remove any further innards and membranes.  The best way to do this is to run it under a cold tap.  The flesh should be smooth and unblemished.  If you intend to cut it into rings, as I am doing here, you can turn the body inside out by pushing your finger into the bottom point of the body and forcing it in on itself, where you can then clean away all the various squid entrails inside.  This is open to all manner of overtly vulgar sexual imagery, the sort of depths that not even Nigella Lawson would plumb (but Kirsty probably would).  Once every extraneous part has been removed, turn the body back the right way, and slice into rings 1cm thick.  You now have your squid pieces ready to cook.

                                                 Squid; Body, wings, tentacles

Reduce the stock by about half in a small saucepan to intensify the flavour.  I've used lobster stock because that's what I had, although any kind of fish stock will do.  However, I think the rich, intense flavour from a shellfish stock suits this dish better than a standard fish stock would.  Strain the stock through a sieve to remove any bits still present and add to the tomato sauce, along with the wine, fennel seeds and bay leaves.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan and briefly fry the squid pieces - no more than 20 seconds each side and add to the liquid.  Heat on a gentle simmer (the kind where maybe a few bubbles break the surface every minute) for at least 2 hours.  About an hour before ready to serve, slice the fennel bulbs and add to the pan, along with the chopped greens from the top of the bulb.  This should enable it to cook through, whilst still providing enough bite to counterbalance the meltingly soft squid. 

I only cooked this for 2 hours, but ideally I would have cooked it for about double that.  As a result, the liquor didn't reduce as much as I would have liked, so I separated the liquor away into another pan and reduced it over a high heat.  This also gave me a perfect excuse to whisk in a large knob of butter.

I served this with the squid ink tagliatelle I made yesterday, which took three minutes to cook, so you can wait until the squid is perfectly done and take off the heat before cooking the pasta.  Pasta is best cooked in an abundance of boiling, well salted water, so use your biggest pan available.  Theo Randall advises 4 litres of water for every 250g of fresh, or 400g of dried pasta, and quite frankly as far as I'm concerned, Theo Randall is the authoritative voice on pasta.  I didn't weigh the amount of pasta I had, but I cooked it in roughly 7 litres of water.

preserving for beginners

oh how i miss squid. i think it would be disingenuous of me to put myself out there as one of those vegetarians who feels no deprivation whatsoever, when in fact i do. i hear it's a year before it gets any easier, but my good friend lizzy says some cravings never go away. hers is pork. mine will probably be seafood in general. it's something i used to go gaga for; i should probably be given some sort of marine conservation award relative to my previous consumption; as the seafood i will now not consume is probably a minor ocean in itself. if you're a marine conservation charity and you're reading this, just sling it in the post will you? i don't want a ceremony, i'm not very good with black tie.

i'm back, with more sweet stuff, which is no surprise given it was my gateway into cooking. in halls of residence i used to spend literally every wednesday baking something from nigella lawson's how to be a domestic goddess in preparation for an evening of literary discussion, darjeeling, and cake with my friend tallie. my flatmate's would get the leftovers, and given that wednesday was the day a lot of people's parents visited, i got the reputation of being some sort of kitchen saint and role model, when in fact it was usually me getting their kids hammered and into trouble. i do actually miss that structure; the idea of devoting a day to doing something in the kitchen every week for a reason, and i'm one of those annoying bastards who always wants to add something new to their skill set, so i have decided to make mastering preserves my goal for this year.

nobody whatsoever in my family ever made preserves. i come from a family very heavy on divorced females, all of whom grew up in the career-woman-you-can-have-it-all epoch of the twentieth century (i still cringe when my mother brings up how thatcher was a good role model for women), and i think such dedicated kitchen activity as preserving was seen as a backwards step; an affected hark back to the days of good old 2.4 housewifery. which is fair enough, i can see how things might've been for them, and i would never presume to say my take on things is superior. i grew up in what almost feels like another ideological universe, i have been exposed to fluid conceptions of gender that allow me to feel i am not 'betraying the cause' by continuing this strongly-associated-with-the-feminine tradition. i have grown to embrace environmental beliefs that lead me to believe learning such a skill is a practical and valuable use of my time and, eventually, garden produce.

i am completely new to most aspects of preserving; my only previous experience comes from making infused vodkas and gin (i still have some sloes in the freezer from this years sloe gin bottling; there were too many for me to handle at once and i keep forgetting to buy gin, shame on me). so this is my first attempt at preserving anything that has to be sugar set, and i am thoroughly proud of it.

honey and lemon marmalade (adapted from pam corbin's basic marmalade recipe in the river cottage preserves handbook)

makes 5-6 x 450g jars

1kg unwaxed lemons

1750g demerara sugar

250ml honey

scrub the lemons, remove the buttons at the top of the fruit, then cut in half. squeeze out the juice and keep to one side. using a sharp knife, slice the peel, pith and all, into your preferred choice of shred. put the sliced peel in a bowl with the juice and cover with 2.5 litres water. leave to soak overnight or for up to 24 hours.

transfer the whole mixture into a preserving pan, bring to the boil and then simmer slowly, covered, until the peel is tender. this should take approximately 2 hours, by which time the contents of the pan will have reduced by about one third.

stir in the sugar. bring the marmalde to a boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. boil rapidly until setting point is reached, about 20-25 minutes. remove from the heat. leave to cool for 8-10 minutes -a little longer if the peel is very chunky - then stir gently to disperse any scum, pour into warm sterilized jars, and seal immediately. use within 2 years.

5 jars of honey and lemon marmalade. look how dark it is! i was surprised by how dark it was. if you look carefully you will see that one of the jars has 'reserved for ed' written on it. this is because he and i have ridiculously invested arguments about what it is appropriate to put on toast. you would not believe the shit i cop for my preferred poison being marmite. it tastes amazing though, better than any marmalade i've ever had, i might even be tempted to recommend it to people who don't normally 'do' marmalade because the honey adds the kind of sweet richness largely absent from this particular preserve.

as the basic recipe is fairly light on details, i will fill you in. i do not have a preserving pan, i used a four litre pan i usually use for making soup i then live off for a week (something i do way too much of). this led to a few moments that, were i not far too vain, could be described as nail biting, since when bought to boil, the marmalade almost doubles in volume. still, it all came off in the end.

the way i chose to sterilize my jars was to wash them in stupidly hot soapy water (in my job you gain asbestos fingers) and dry them in a hot oven, where i then left them until needed. i sterilized my lids by keeping them in water at a rolling boil on the hob until i needed them.

to test for setting i put a saucer in the fridge before i started; when it came to time to test i dolloped about half a teaspoon of the mixture onto said saucer and gave it a minute before poking it. when it crinkles upon poke, you have your set. it's a bit of a pain in the arse cos you have to take it off the heat everytime you test for setting lest you let it continue to cook and end up with citrussy glue, but it was no big deal lugging that pan around; all the pints i pull have blessed me with some serious guns.

the only problem with my marmalade is that some of the bigger bits of peel floated toward the top of the jars on cooling. reading about this, i discovered there were two reasons why this might be. not letting the sugar fully dissolve before bringing the marmalade to the boil; or not cooling for long enough before jarring. i am inclined to think that given it was only the larger pieces of peel it was probably me not cooling it quite long enough. still, as far as flaws go for a beginner, i'd say that was a fairly minor one, and consequently i am pretty pleased with myself, and already planning next week's preserving project.

Squid Part I

I love squid.  I love cephalopods in general.  They're possibly the most fascinating creatures in existence.  I have an octopus tattooed all over half one of my arms.  Eating them is particularly enjoyable.  I'll readily admit that at least a small percentage of this comes from other people's obvious disgust at them. Euurgggh, tentacles.  Although the tentacles are obviously the best part.  I suspect that large numbers of people who claim to have tried and not liked squid just had it poorly cooked, as it has to be cooked for either very little or a very long time; anything in between and it'll be like eating rubber.

As I mentioned in my introduction, my first taste of squid was a case of mistaken identity amongst deep fried snacks in a pub masquerading as a bona fide tapas joint.  I think I was in my early teens, a time when my eating habits still had a tendency to dismiss things that were aesthetically uncommon.  Whether or not I would have eaten it if correctly identified remains to be seen.  In this instance it seems, fortune favoured the obliviously brave. 

So given my love for squid and my current propensity for making pasta it's a wonder that I've not combined the two before, even more so that it took a suggestion from a friend at work for me to even think of it.

My first two attempts at making pasta were using the recipe from a book I bought in Venice called Venice, Food and Wine.  Neither attempts were anything close to what I'd call a success.  Since the publication of Theo Randall's Pasta I have been using his recipe without even a hint of a sideways glance, let alone looking back.  In contrast to the recipe of my initial attempts, Randall's recipe uses more flour than semolina and a whole load of egg yolks.  This is the first time I've strayed from the book by adding ingredients, in this case squid ink.

The basic recipe calls for;

300g Italian tipo 00 flour (although I've used Waitrose Very Strong Canadian White Flour)
100g semolina
2 whole large eggs
6 large egg yolks

I've found Clarence Court Burford Browns to yield very good results as they have deeper, richer yolks than any other shop bought egg I've seen.  They do tend to run quite a gamut of size difference per box, so I've usually had to use seven yolks rather than six.  For this recipe I've substituted one egg yolk for two small sachets of squid ink.  This actually resulted in a more moist dough, but not so much as to make it unworkable.

I should point out here that I am in no way positioning myself as any kind of authoritarian voice on pasta making, neither should it be interpreted that way.  Far from it.  Due to my early failures I'm still running a fairly marginal aggregate of good-exceptional-poor pasta dishes made.  On a fundamental level, making pasta is relatively straight forward, but within that there is a significant range for fluctuating success, or indeed disasters of monstrous proportions. 

Theo Randall suggests it easiest to make the dough by simply putting everything in a food processor.  I've taken the, literally, more hands on approach of mixing by hand, not for any reasons of pretense, but simply because I've never been bothered to hunt down the food processor.  The resulting amount of dough is best cut into four for ease of rolling.

Repeatedly rolling the dough through a pasta machine allows the gluten in the flour to develop, which will result in a stretchy, elastic, and most importantly workable dough.  Pass the dough through the widest setting, then fold it back on itself, rotate and repeat.  (There may be a more specific reason for rotating, but at the very least if you pass it back through the machine folded end last you will most likely end up forcing bubbles of trapped air to pop out as it goes through.)  You can do this almost any number of times, and different sources will no doubt insist on varying numbers of repetitions.  I've tended to repeat as many times as has felt necessary rather than stick to a specific amount.  You can end up overworking it and making a mess of the dough, but one thing I've discovered is that you can usually atone for mistakes by reforming and rolling it through again.  Once you have reached a desirably smooth and elasticy texture, you can pass it through on incrementally narrower settings.  It's a good indication of the quality of your dough as to how well it stands up and remains manageable the thinner it becomes.  For the tagliatelle made today, I rolled it out to the fifth setting.  For ravioli I've found the eighth setting to provide the best results.

Tagliatelle benefits from being made the day before cooking, so mine has been put in the fridge on trays dusted with semolina to prevent sticking and covered with greaseproof paper.  Part two tomorrow.

sweet toothed.

hi. can we just take a minute to notice ed referred to me as esteemed? i am glad this is down in writing as our friendship seems to rely on a heavy portion of him taking the piss out of me, so we'll all just remind him he referred to me as esteemed when that happens, yeah? cheers guys.
so, this week had it's fair share of drama when one of my fake teeth decided to up and fall out, leaving me looking like an extra from shameless and woefully without capacity to bite after i baked three brilliant loaves of white bread from the river cottage bread handbook. it all got fixed on friday so i'm back to smiling without chronic insecurity and can bite things again. by this time, the bread that was left had, sadly, staled, and i was left perusing the 'things to do with leftover bread' chapter in said cookbook. i eventually settled on bread and butter pudding due to the fact that at my brother's 21st he had a mediocre one, so i figured i'd do a bit of culinary memory erasing for him by blowing it out of the water.

i really like this kind of cooking. i once, somewhat inappropriately referred to it as 'old testament cooking. you know that chapter where it's all 'barry begot jim who begot dave who begot blahblahblah'? think 'bread begot bread and butter pudding, leftover cream begot truffles' kinda thing and you're on the right lines. for someone who purportedly doesn't respond to structure, i sure do like allowing food to dictate the rhythm of what i cook and when. it feels like the home cooking that was largely absent from my childhood (although i am not pulling at that decidedly freudian thread right now).

so, bread and butter pudding, let's go:

serves 6

you need:

about 600g one or two-day old white bread

about 50g unsalted butter, softened

300ml double cream

300ml whole milk

1 vanilla pod

6 medium free range egg yolks

200g caster sugar

a good handful of raisins

butter a shallow oval baking dish, about 30 x 20cm. cut the bread into medium-thick slices, butter them, and halve the slices on the diagonal to form triangles.

pour the cream and milk into a saucepan. split the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon and add them to the pan with the empty pod. bring just to the boil over a medium heat, then take off the heat and leave for 10 minutes to infuse. in a large bowl, briefly whisk together the egg yolks and 150g of the sugar to combine. pour in the milk and cream mixture, whisking all the time. this is your custard.

arrange the triangles of bread in the baking dish - in rows, propped up and leaning on each other so they just come proud of the dish, sprinkling the raisins in between. continue in this way until you've filled the dish, cutting the pieces up and tucking them in to fill any gaps as you need to. don't try and be neat, the point of this is that the propped up ends stand clear of the custard and turn golden and crispy in the oven. try not to leave too many raisins exposed, as they are liable to scorch during baking.

now pour over the custard, making sure you moisten all the pieces of bread. let the pudding stand for 20 minutes or so to allow the custard to soak in. heat the oven to 180 degress c/gas mark 4, and boil the kettle.

when you are ready to bake, sprinkle over the rest of the sugar. sit the dish in a roasting tin and pour in enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of the dish (this bain-marie will help keep the pudding soft). bake for 20-30 minutes, until the custard is set in the middle - prod the top with your finger to check. serve hot or warm, with ice cream or cream.

here it is, served with unholy amounts of cream (my penchant for dairy will be a massive stumbling block should i take the plunge into veganism). the only alteration i made to the recipe was a little trick i picked up from nigella lawson's recipe for banana bread, in how to be a domestic goddess, which is to steep the raisins. literally just cover them in booze in a saucepan, bring briefly to the boil, then let sit for as long as is possible to swell and absorb before using. i used, and ed is probably going to be horrified at this, jack daniels in this instance, but i have used rum, kahlua, even in a pinch, earl grey tea in the past with success. as nigella says, the booze doesn't pervade, you just end up with 'aromatic, gently swollen fruit' (god how loaded is her language, right?). anyways, this recipe was an absolute triumph, and given i plan to be making bread again very soon now that my capacity to eat it has been restored, i will definitely be repeating this excessively vanilla laden delight. stay tuned to see if i still fit in my sequinned hotpants by the end of the month.