it's my party and i'll cry if i want to.

ok, it feels like a long time since i last posted, but i suspect that's more to do with the busy nature of the past few days than anything else (although, thinking on it, it has been about a week, which is very unlike me). i can only attribute this block in posting to the fact i've been overthinking food on an emotional and political level lately, due to the death of a friend from school last week. when i was a teenager i was hospitalized for quite some time due to depression, and i met this young lady on the hospital ward i was on, although we later attended the same sixth form. she, like many of the other girls i shared that time with, suffered from anorexia nervosa. last week i got to thinking about how i have moved on, and lived my life very differently since. granted, i still have my demons but they don't consume me in the same way they used to. and i've felt very lucky. because carly never got to escape hers. i thought about the things i remember of her, of revising together for our history a level, of me managing to get her to eat something in hospital (a willy shaped biscuit, actually, because i have never been very mature) to avoid her having to have a tube put up her nose, her at my 18th birthday party with all my other friends. i found pictures, and took some time to think about how much it actually just sucks that this disease, which is entirely culturally created, consumed a really sweet, intelligent girl. about how certain young women are so preoccupied with the cultural message of taking up less space in the world that they eventually opt out of it altogether. it made me think, as previously, as a young woman, i have mentioned how hard it is to blot out the noise of media and society and have a healthy relationship with food, my body, and self image, about those who don't quite manage to, and about how those of us who do tend to take it very much for granted. i was beginning to feel a bit guilty for my body politic creeping in on my writings here; but now i can't help but think it would be better to be as vocal as possible in every outlet possible about these things. this isn't just some theory exploration for the intellectual vacuum that is the university, this is the kind of thing that affects, and in the case of carly and countless other young women (and men), ends lives. so from now on i probably won't be apologizing for going off on gender-related tangents, because it isn't me who should be sorry.

anyway the reason the memory of carly just having fun, and being herself with other young people, on my 18th birthday hit me so hard was due to the other thing that was weighing on my mind. on saturday i was 23 years old. i have a bit of a love/hate relationship with birthdays; see for reference any other occasion that makes me take stock of where i am in life such as new year's eve, so i wasn't sure what to expect. i decided the best way to not sit around reflecting on things until i caved, hit the wine early, and ended up emotional pre-midnight, was to focus on cooking up a load of food for my guests. it sort of worked, i didn't hit the wine until gone six, and there weren't any tears until midnight. anyway, there was a lot of food, so i will probably have to spread this over the course of two posts, which actually makes a kind of spatial sense as i divided the cooking over the course of two days. anyway, before i make this post any more of a downer, let's get on to the point of this post, the food that saved my sanity:

flatbreads (recipe from daniel stevens river cottage bread handbook)

makes about 12

500g plain white flour, plus extra for dusting
500g strong white bread flour
10g powdered dried yeast
20g fine salt
325ml warm water
325ml natural yoghurt, warmed.

to knead by hand: mix the flours, yeast, salt, water and yoghurt in a bowl to form a sticky dough. add the oil, mix, and turn the dough out onto a work surface. knead until smooth and silky.

this was my liquids and yeast activating. it looked weird and erratic compared to the normal process, and took a lot longer to show any kind of action, so i was a bit worried that it wouldn't work, but i guess i should perhaps have expected the acid nature of yoghurt to slow down the process, i mean, it was flatbreads we were after here, after all.

shape the dough into a round, then place in a clean bowl. leave to rise, covered in a plastic bag, until doubled in size. deflate the dough, then if you have time, leave to rise for a second, third, even fourth time (this improves the dough but is by no means essential).

this is my dough after it's first rise. you can actually see from the shape of it that it was a lighter and looser dough than the usual bread doughs, as it seems to slump, almost incapable of supporting it's own rise. i gave mine three rises in total and every time it rose higher but became softer and in terms of touch, limper to work with.

tear off pieces the size of small lemons. shape into a round then roll out to a 3-4mm thickness and leave to rest for five minutes or so. this improves the finished bread dramatically.

meanwhile, heat a large, heavy based frying pan over the highest heat and set the grill to maximum. when the pan is really hot, lay the first bread in it. after a minute, maybe less, the bread should be puffy and starting to char on the bottom. slide the bread under a hot grill and watch your creation balloon. it is done when it starts to char on the top. slick some olive oil over it to finish. repeat to use all the dough.

so these are some of the finished flatbreads. they were such a monumental success that i didn't have time to take a picture until over half of them had gone. all my worrying about new techniques in breadmaking (and there was a lot of worrying, believe you me) was for nothing, as, even my mum remarked, i made making these little babies look effortless. that's right you guys, i'm one of those hateful people that doesn't do full on come dine with me style kitchen breakdowns, i just casually fry things off and sling them on the table like it's no big deal. even though these were a very big deal taste-wise. they were possibly the star of the evening. and despite bob's backhanded compliment of 'a kebab would be good in one of these', i think they were the unanimous favourite.

so if you're serving flatbreads, there's got to be something to dip them in, right? on to the next recipe:

Beetroot houmous (again, from the river cottage bread handbook)

1 tbsp cumin seeds
25g breadcrumbs

200g cooked beetroot

1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed

about 1 tbsp tahini

juice of one lemon

salt and black pepper

toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat, shaking the pan almost constantly, until they darken and start to give up their fragrance. crush the seeds using a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder.

add literally everything into the blender and blend until you have a thick paste.

et voila:

i finished mine with a swirl of greek yoghurt and some toasted cumin seeds. i double batched this recipe, and used maybe slightly more lemon juice than i ought; and all in all i kind of wish i'd amped up the garlic, too. having said that i did think this was an excellent variation on houmous proper, and after summer 2010's great houmous challenge (wherein i tried several different variations, some downright odd; broccoli houmous anyone?) i feel qualified as an authority on the subject. which brings me nicely on to:

regular houmous (taken from kirsty's brain, after making 1-2 varieties of the stuff every week for an entire summer)

i eyeballed the quantities of my houmous for the most part, but the ingredients were as follows: one can of chickpeas, the juice of one and a half lemons, two cloves of garlic, a tablespoon and a half of tahini, probably about 50ml olive oil, and a generous dollop of greek yoghurt. why yoghurt, you say? well, it's not traditional but it does give a really good whipped texture. i have tried all-oil variations and all-yoghurt variations, and i have to say i feel like using half and half is the only way to go in terms of both taste and texture. anyways, it's just a chuck-it in the blender until you get a thick paste situation, again.

so here it is:

i finished it with toasted pine nuts, olive oil, and a sprinkling of smoked paprika. again, not strictly conventional, but having tried serving it all kinds of ways in my time, i have settled on this one as the best.

so, that's the first lot of recipes up, my next post will feature falafels, preserved lemon relish, a moroccan carrot salad, and a brief run down of other bits and pieces i improvised. plus probably a hefty side order of my ramblings and over-emoting.