Good things come in small (filo) packages?

I was still thinking about green stuff when I read somewhere about spinach with tea-soaked raisins and pine nuts. As ideas sometimes do, it wedged itself in my head and at the next available opportunity I set to exploring this combination which I think is pretty well-known, though I have never heretofore either eaten or made it.

I decided on filo pastry - I suppose I was thinking of spanakopita and how happily spinach and filo get on in that. I made my filling with spinach, tea-soaked raisins (do you really need to soak them?), walnuts (which are more economical than pine nuts), ricotta and egg. I baked them and I sat as they took on a golden crispiness, hopefully anticipating the finished product.

And... well, as I bit into layers of flaky, then chewy pastry, and got a mouthful of slightly bitter spinach, I must admit to feeling a little deflated. What makes spinach go bitter? How do I get it less so?

However, I'd made a batch so I took one to work as part of my current drive to take packed lunches as often as possible. And, happily, it surprised me by being much better cold. Easy to eat, filing, and not at all bitter on the second day, I enjoyed the moist spinach filling, the juicy raisins and crunchy nuts.

Not perhaps the most succesful of ventures, but a pretty decent addition to my lunchbox repertoire. This is the recipe - adapt it as you see fit. I think blue cheese might fit in nicely instead of the raisins, or parmesan and dried tomatoes...

Spinach, raisin and walnut parcels

• Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan and drop a large bag of fresh spinach leaves in it, turning it over until all just wilted - leave to cool for a few minutes whilst you:
• Mix together a tablespoon ricotta, one beaten egg, salt, pepper and a touch of nutmeg
• Add a handful of chopped walnuts and a handful of raisins that have soaked in tea for half an hour or so
  Squeeze as much juice out of the spinach as you can, chop fairly finely and add to the mixture
• Arrange 5 filo sheets in a cross shape by layering them in alternate directions, brushing each one with melted butter as you go
• Put a large dollop of spinach mixture in the middle and fold in the sides one at a time, pressing down to get a tight fit
• Coat in melted butter and put on an oven tray in a 190C preheated oven
• Cook for about 20 minutes until golden-brown and crisp

Green and lovely

When I chopped this beautiful pointed cabbage in half and sneaked a couple of those creamy white, crunchy baby leaves into my mouth, the sweet crunch and the sheer joy of all those squeaky green leaves almost made me sad to adulterate it at all...

But then I tried this recipe that I saw a couple of months ago in Yoga Journal of all places, and oh, it didn't hide this cabbage's loveliness, it elevated it into one of the most satisfying pleasing dishes I have eaten recently.

That made me happy.


It's a gratin. The inside is creamy and full of green cabbagey goodness, and the top is cheese and breadcrumbs - and I can not believe there is anyone who can resist a cheese and breadcrumb topping on anything. (But maybe that is just me?)

I used a pointed cabbage for this recipe as I mentioned; the author of the article favours swiss chard and kale, but the original recipe calls for savoy cabbage, so go with what you like. Cheese is flexible too. Try gruyere instead of the cheddar and parmesan I used or any other hard tasty cheese you fancy. This is the version of the recipe I used:
Green Gratin

• Slice one onion in to the thinnest slices possible
• Melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat, add the onion, reduce the heat to low and cover to let the onions sweat, stirring them occasionally until they are very soft
• Cut one pointed cabbage into very thin slices and add them to the onion. Cover and cook for 10 minutes or so until it has all wilted.
• Remove the cover and continue to cook, stirring, until the cabbage is soft - about another 10 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 400F
• Grease a baking dish and set aside
• Sprinkle a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, and a tablespoon of plain flour over the cabbage, increase the heat, stirring still, and add one cup of milk a little at a time as you continue to stir, creating a sauce for the vegetables
• When it has thickened (about 5 minutes), spread the mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish. Mix 2 tablespoons grated parmesan with 2 tablespoons grated cheddar and 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs and scatter over the surface.
• Bake for about 20 minutes until the top is crusty and golden and the edges are bubbling - about 20 minutes
  

The original recipe apparently came from 'Great Greens: Fresh, Flavorful and Innovative Recipes' by Georganne Brennan, which looks really interesting.

Yay - how cool is my lunch box?

I got...

Homemade bread, Moro Carrot Salad, Rhubarb and strawberry compote...

Yum!

The carrot salad is straight out of the first Moro book and has been put to service a good few times now because it's really very good. You just:

1. boil 4 or 5 (preferably oldish) carrots, whole with their skins and tops and tails on until soft
2. when cooked, let them cool, and then scrape the skins off with fingers or knife and slice
3. toast a couple of teaspoons of cumin seeds in a dry pan over a low heat until fragrant and starting to colour
4. bash up the cumin seeds a little, and add to the juice of one lemon and about an equal amount of olive oil (and some chopped garlic if you so desire)
5. Mix the carrots with a big bunch of chopped coriander and the dressing

Lovely as part of a mixed mezze

As for rhubarb and strawberries, well you don't need me to tell you how good those two are together - I just boil them with a little brown sugar and freshly squeezed orange juice. But if you fancy something in a whole different league of rhubarb and strawberry chic check out this incredibly beautiful creation from La Tartine Gourmand's talented Bea...

Breaking it down

So, it's been a bit quiet round here. Not so much a feast as a famine of words. And after all that about posting once a week and so on...

This is what happened. This time it wasn't simply my natural tendency to laziness and abandonment of projects. I've been working away a lot again, eating crap, eating junk, eating far too much. And then in the few days I had back home I would suddenly get panicky about posts and about making something 'good'. I would spend some obscene amount of money at the supermarket with some hasty idea in my head - something photogenic and impressive. And then it would be a bit ill-thought out and not so good and I would feel all disappointed.

And then I started to wonder what I was doing... This did not accord with my position on food, the reason I started this blog. I was getting all caught up in the end result and losing sight of what inspired it all in the first place. It wasn't the number of posts or the photos and whatnot. It was an appreciation of good food, of food as nourishment and joy and as something which draws links all over our world, that is important and inspiring. Wanting to share that.

I don't believe in buying a whole bunch of new things frantically, stressing over the cooking, not enjoying the end result, throwing stuff away because you bought too much.

I wondered what happened to the days when I shopped once a week and I had a cupboard full of veggies and fruits and staples and I made dishes depending on what I had, what needed using up. Sure, I'd be inspired by recipes, by reading, books and magazines. I still love the art of food, the experimentation, the craft of it. Sure, I'd buy special ingredients and plan stuff. But I'd fit it around being sensible and resourceful and thrifty.

Alongside this, I was putting in less effort. I was buying all my lunches and dinners, and it was making me feel dissatisfied, or nauseous, or sticky or gross. Disappointed...

So, first of all I decided to spend a week recording everything I ate, thinking about it as I ate - about how it made me feel, and where it came from, being more conscious of my eating. Trying to get back in touch with food, with my beliefs on food, trying to identify better what it was that made it good, what made it bad. Which was really interesting for me. I may post a link to this at some point.

And now I am just trying to get back into the routine of making lunch, of shopping wisely, of thinking about what I eat. Of delighting in food again.

And mostly that has just been big fresh salads - grated carrot and new potatoes and lettuce drenched in vinaigrette, juicy tomatoes and smoked mackerel or houmous or grilled halloumi. Or things unashamedly simple like the roasted vegetables in the picture at the top of this post.

Not particularly pretty, and nothing like the recipes I aspired to be churning out weekly. Not really postable lamentably...

But good. And now I'm going to try and experiment and find some new recipes and work that in to the mix. And hopefully I'll have more exciting things to post soon...

For now, here are the veggies above - eminently simple but really rather good. Broccoli turns sweet and crispy like the 'seaweed' in Chinese restaurants - slightly barbecue-y and very moreish. Fennel is delicate and slippery and sweet and roasted tomatoes just make my tastebuds sing...

Roasted Summer Vegetables

Roast fennels chopped in quarters, big stalks of broccoli and tomatoes with a liberal splash of olive oil, a teaspoon each of salt and sugar and a good grind of black pepper for about an hour at 180C.

And enjoy.

Peaches on Toast

This is one of those things you make when you’re bored and you fancy cooking but there’s really very little to cook and you can’t be bothered to go to the shop or do something proper so you just gather up the few edible items around, apply your ingenuity, imagine you are on Ready Steady Cook…

… and most of the time you end up with horrible student-esque concoctions, things like the flapjacks I tried to make without instructions, which were just a sticky over-sweet mess that I nevertheless devoured in one sitting. Or like the soup I once made from swede and cabbage (it was awful; really truly awful, don’t try it). Or frozen broad beans fried with onions and bread and bits of old cheese… Yum.

Anyway, this one happened to be a more happy experiment. It’s very very simple, but very very good. All you will do is pluck a ripe peach (or plum, or nectarine) from the fruit bowl, stone it and slice it. You’ll dip the slices into icing sugar then lay them in a heated frying pan and cook them on both sides until they are soft and brown and bubbling.

Then you’ll slice some crusty white bread and pop it in the toaster. And you’ll lay the peach slices on top of the toast, drizzling over whatever juices you can get out of the pan. And you’ll eat it and it will be like super super deluxe bread and jam, monstrously fruity and satisfyingly sickly sweet and slightly naughty.

Mmmmm Cardamommm...

Was it just my imagination, I thought, or did the subtly spicy milky coffee I just supped as I reclined on the sofa, settle in my belly with a warmth like the physical feeling of happy contentedness?

I had got home a little earlier from a lazy day enjoying the city, and had decided to crack in to my treat to myself of a bar of the beautiful blue and white packaged Rococo chocolate. Discovering I had unwittingly bought white instead of dark chocolate I was momentarily disappointed. (I’m not a big fan of the pale stuff.) However, the cardamom it was infused with converted it completely from a sweet milky confection to something regal and intriguing and good.

I hadn’t had cardamom for ages - my first memories of it are of surprising chewy mouthfuls of a strong bitterness, when encountering whole pods in Dad Saucepan’s curries. And, its reputation stained by childhood distrust, I hadn’t afforded it a place in much of my cooking. Like much met with an older palate, it was joyous then to rediscover and re-learn the flavour and to find I really – really – liked it…

Inspired by this discovery, I found an old jar of pods in the spices collection, smashed some up and added them to the milk I heated to make the aforementioned coffee, with its feelgood aftertaste.

And, carried away on a wave of fondness for my new best spicy friend, I set to augmenting a recent VE&T cake recipe, which turned out pretty nicely...


Spiced Summer Fruit Mini Cakes

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Sift 200g plain flour with 75g ground almonds, 2 tsps baking powder, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds and ½ tsp salt into a bowl.
Beat 125g butter, 220g dark brown sugar together until pale and fluffy
Add 3 eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
Add 150g sour cream, beat until just combined and then stir in flour mixture, followed by 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits (I used frozen ones defrosted and drained).
Grease a muffin tin, spoon in the batter and scatter another 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits on top.
Bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Cool in tins for 5 mins before turning out.

PS - I’ve since discovered an utterly luxurious breakfast from a Jane Clarke article in the Times – you put a couple of crushed cardamom pods in with your porridge, and serve it with pomegranate segments and some thick greek yoghurt. It’s divine.

Lemon and Fennel Risotto with Scallops

It's a pity it couldn't be a little more pretty, but sometimes things just aren't so easy on the eye as the palate...

Imagine though, if you will, the creaminess of a risotto, cut through with clean, tangy lemon and studded with soft aniseed-y fennel. You place a little on your fork and add a slice of fried scallop with an almost caramel taste from the seared surfaces, and the inside all meaty and silky.

It's comforting and refreshing and a little bit special and chic all at once.

Make it. See for yourself...

Lemon and Fennel Risotto with Scallops

(serves 4)

• Fry off a finely diced onion in a generous slug of olive oil over a low heat.
• Once soft, add one fennel, cut into thin (about 5mm) slices.
• Add about 400g/14oz arborio rice, and stir until all the rice is coated with oil.
• Tip in a small glass of dry sherry or white wine and stir in.
• Then add the juice and zest from two lemons and continue to stir.
• Cover with a generous amount of vegetable stock, bring to a simmer and put the lid on. Stir every 5 minutes or so for the next 30-40 minutes, making sure the rice doesn't stick to the bottom, and adding more stock or hot water as required by the rice (I never bother with the one spoon at a time method - it's ever so consuming and I'm not sure it makes that much difference - do try not to forget your risotto tho - it will burn!)
• When the rice is cooked to your taste, stir in a little butter and parmesan for extra creaminess (optional).
• Heat a little oil in a frying pan til fairly hot, and sear 8 scallops on both sides. Turn heat down and cook for 3 or 4 minutes until cooked through.
• Serve the risotto with a little parmesan and then the scallops and top, and some green beans on the side.

Adventures in Dining Out - Andrew Edmunds; Le Cercle; Barrafina

I thought I would do a little round-up of restaurant reviews, as I seem to have been (prandially speaking) getting round a little bit recently...

A couple of weeks before my 21st birthday I was wandering through Soho and spied a hand-written menu pinned outside a building so dark and unassuming as to be almost invisible. The dishes described thereon impressed me, and the cute, small, apparently nameless restaurant to which it belonged charmed me. So, I declared, that's where we would eat in my 22nd year.

Four and a bit years on I finally made it to the place I later discovered was called Andrew Edmunds. (Soho can be tricky, I forgot which street it was on, we didn't know the name... For my 21st, we ended up at a Greek place and had a largely forgettable evening.)

Another birthday - Mum Saucepan's this time - precipitated the long overdue visit. We went for lunch on a cold rainy day a few weeks back, and spent a couple of pleasant hours in the cosy, crowded basement of the restaurant.

Aesthetically it really appeals to me - well-chosen flowers, candles, mirrors, plain tablecloths, a simple, comfy, stylish look.

The menu changes weekly, and features fresh, simple dishes - we had a scallop ceviche with guacamole; langoustines with lemon mayonnaise and a salad of jerusalem artichokes, artichoke hearts and snow pea shoots to start. All were good and clean and tasty.

Mains of smoked haddock on lentil and green bean salad, daube of beef and duck confit slipped down equally well. They taste un-tampered with, more homely than restaurant-y. Traditional, relatively hearty and yet stylish and somehow still very London-y. (I have got to stop this horrible habit of lazily adding 'y' to nouns to disguise the fact I'm all out of proper adjectives)
The wine list is extensive and the service is good. It's cosy and friendly and definitely recommended. Glad I got there in the end...

Since then, I've had the opportunity to eat at one place which I had no preconceptions of and found to be a real treat, and one place I had high expectations of and found to be merely good. (Sorry - no photos for either of these...)

To start with the latter, Barrafina attracted great press interest when it opened a few months back. The brothers who own it - Eddie and Sam Hart - regularly pop up in newspapers here and there, either with respect to their well-received smart Spanish restaurant Fino, or with Spanish recipes (though they are not actually Spanish, rather British hispanophiles). They added to their existing media-friendliness by setting up new venture Barrafina in a room barely bigger than my lounge room. Hence, only 20 or so people can eat at a time, and with a no-booking policy queues form, making it a rare spot and therefore in many eyes a highly desirable place to eat.

I visited Fino a year or so ago, and had some magnificent pork belly amongst other good and excellent dishes (along with a hearty amount of sherries, riojas and brandies which may contribute to why my memory of said dishes is rather patchy). The owners chatted with us, we had views of the kitchen from where we ate at the long bar, and the barman was lovely and helpful, all making it a rather pleasant experience.

Barrafina is a pared down kind of Fino. The few seats are all around the L-shaped bar, behind which the chefs work, and a narrow ledge on one side of the room holds the drinks of those waiting for seats to empty.

In keeping with the smaller, more casual venue, the menu is shortened and simpler. We went for a razor clam special, a classic tortilla and the now-ubiquitous chorizo, with watercress. Clams were rather
like I've found snails in the past - nice and garlicky and chewy, but really you could be eating any number of simple little life-forms. They were a lot smaller than razor clams I've had in the past. The tortilla was good - pleasantly less cooked than many, but really just a tortilla. And chorizo, similarly good but unspectacular. A santiago tart was unneccessarily accompanied by some kind of muesli-fruit mixture, and was not as good as others I've had.

One of the brothers - Sam - was there, welcoming guests, serving, clearing glasses; admirably involved. Our waitress however, albeit very friendly, was a little intrusive we found, and not altogether helpful.
At £22 a head with drinks, it's not bad value, but I wouldn't queue round the block for it.

A meal at Le Cercle on the other hand, I would happily wait in line for. I was a little sceptical - hidden away in the basement of a hotel on a side street just off Sloane Square, I was worried it would be overpriced and stuffy. A menu that could be considered somewhat gimmicky - small dishes are grouped into categories such as Marin, Terroir, Vegetal, from which you create a tasting menu for yourself or to share - didn't help allay my fears.

However, we soon stopped worrying when we started eating. In a tiny black pot, suitable it would seem for a pixie, or a squirrel, we found chanterelles in a port and wine reduction so full of flavour a single pixie-sized spoon seemed to spread flavour right throughout my body. Ravioles de Royan - a kind of very posh version of that lazy-persons favourite supermarket 3-minute pasta parcels - were bathing in a truffle juice, and were also delightful. A sliver of sea bass and some chunks of stuffed rabbit with a chicory gratin were similarly well executed and full of interesting tastes and textures. The piece de resistance however was a pudding which - I lie not - made me grin like a cheshire cat completely involuntarily. Roasted pineapple was somehow much more pineapple-y than I could have imagined and the accompanying spiced toffee ice-cream was one of the most dreamy things I have ever eaten - and this from someone who is not normally a massive fan of ice-cream.

The dishes are very small - so don't go if you prefer hearty, generous cooking - but we found that we felt fully satisfied without feeling full. I think the intensity and interest of the flavours means you savour the food for much longer and so fill up in a very grown-up kind of way.

The room is very smart and cosy - separated with chiffon-y curtains, and with views on to the wine cellar at one end (they have a large selection and recommend different glasses for each dish), and a cheese room at the other.

To me it felt somehow kind of foreign - I suppose because I don't frequent that style of restaurant all that often, and so gave me the pleasant impression of being out of London for the evening. A mini gastronomic holiday if you will.

life is not too short...

... to stuff a tomato. At least not in my opinion. I mean, how long does it take? 20 minutes maybe? I must confess, I am not such a busy efficient important kind of person that I don't have 20 minutes to prepare some food...

I'll admit though - in the past, I have been a bit suspicious of stuffing vegetables. I didn't really see the point. Often the vegetables were better off by themselves. It seemed a ploy to make vegetarians think they were getting something exciting; a proper dish, just because it was all shoved together.

However, I've been converted by these little tomatoes, which I tried the other day. The cheesy stuffing goes all soft and oozy inside the roasty red shells. They are a little messy to eat - cutting into one can initiate a kind of landslide effect; but to eat, pretty good...

Tomatoes with a Goats Cheese and Chilli Stuffing

Per person:

1 largish tomato

about 30g goats cheese

1/4 of an onion, diced

about 1/2 a small red chilli, finely diced

2 dessertspoons wholemeal bread crumbs

tsp chopped walnuts

1 dessertspoon Creme Fraiche

Sweat off the onions in a little oil, and add the chilli

Mix onions and chilli with the breadcrumbs, walnuts, goats cheese and creme fraiche

Slice the top off the tomato, scoop out all the insides and stuff with the mixture.

Rub a little oil on the outside of the tomato, replace its 'lid'

And pop in a preheated oven at 180C for about 10 minutes, until the tomato looks cooked.

Serve with a little salad perhaps.

failures and freebies

myah ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..

...that was approximate to the sound I made as I walked away from the new Daylesford Organics shop the other day with a bag of swag. No, I have not - as a mid-twenties crisis - taken up middle-class shoplifting; it was the sound of freebie glee, heightened by the fact that the freebies were not meant for me.

I had walked past the newly opened store in the morning, and - anything to prolong the pleasantness of walking in the morning air and delay the inevitable arrival at work - I stopped for a quick look. It's like a kind of foody roman palace - all made of marble, with completely ott displays of willow branches and other springlike decor. Food is piled up in seductive arrangements - bounteous fruit and veg, a well-stocked cheese stand, breads, beautifully presented cakes...

My eyes alighted on some jewel-pink rhubarb, sprouting proudly from a pot on the fruit table. A friendly man in a white coat informed me he had picked it personally at 6am that morning...

And so it was, that on my way back from the office I suddenly decided to buy the beautiful rhubarb and make a little pudding I had been sketching and planning in my mind for some time. When I reached the shop however, they informed me a prvate function was taking place. I explained my purcasing plans and they let me sneak in to get my wares.

The place was packed with people - your typical Daylesford clientele I would imagine. What I always find strange about rich people (or at least the kind of rich people who live in West London) is how clean they look. They look like they spend inordinate amouts of time being scrubbed and polished. Money may not be able to buy you happiness, but evidently it can buy you cleanliness.

Anyway, they were happily tasting English sparkling wine and various artful organic nibbles, comparing red corduroy trousers and bouffed up hairstyles, whilst I made my way towards the rhubarb and picked four superb looking stalks.

After paying some absurd amount of money for them, I made to make off into the night, when a tall man politely stopped me and offered me one of the goodie bags, no doubt for the official guests of the private event.

And so it was that I walked back to the tube grinning maniacally and inspecting my swag. There was a loaf! and a carton of milk! a pot of marmelade! a little spoon! (I think it rather a blessing, do you not, that free bread can cheer up my day so?)

As for the rhubarb - well, I had been thinking about a carrot terrine I had seen in The Cook's Book, where you layer up roasted carrot sticks, dipped in a carrot-juice and gelatine mixture, to make a glisteningly orange terrine. Rhubarb, I thought would suit it beautifully, make a grown up kind of jelly slice, which would be appealing on the eye, and tasty to boot. I was going to make a ginger cream to serve it with. Unfortunately I forgot how soft rhubarb gets when cooked, and how difficult then for it to hold its shape, even when set in jelly. So I ended up with a kind of sloppy cold rhubarb coated in jelly dish. Not so great. Ah well, nothing ventured nothing gained...

For more on Daylesford see here : http://www.daylesfordorganic.com/ . Yes, it is all a little bit expensive and chic - not your muddy farm shop kind of organic, but the food does look pretty good. And of course I am quite fond of them now, as I am easily bought with free food...

Home again, moving home again

So after five weeks working out of the office, crunching numbers in various delightful locations across the UK, I'm back to London for a little while. I've become inured to the humungous lumps of solid scrambled egg and tinned mushrooms that are customary to hotel breakfasts; sampled the delights of numerous staff canteens; got bored of a multitude of chain restaurants; sat in my hotel room eating avocados and grapefruit in front of the TV. And now finally I'm back; I've settled in to my second short-stay home of 2007, and I can cook for myself again... hallelujah.



So, recipes to come - soon I hope... Sorry it's been so long. What with the security on work computers preventing me from uploading photos, and the lack of a laptop, internet access, kitchens or fresh food recently it's all been a little difficult to stick to my regularity resolution... In the meanwhile, a picture of something green and fresh and unadulterated - the antithesis to the processed mass-catering I've had recently...

Savour it

...those moments that make you stop and smile and appreciate.

Some of mine from the week just gone:

• The novelty of staying in posh hotels for work - mini shampoos! cleaned rooms! new biscuits every day!

Daffodils and crocuses signalling the beginning of the end of the gloominess with their brazenly cheerful petals

Finding a new good book to get into on the tube - (Bel Canto by Ann Patchett)

Radiator-warmed trousers ready for post-work lounging

Surprisingly succesful crumbly sweet pastry

...

The last of which, I would like to share with you. I was planning to make cooked pears to eat with yoghurt for breakfast. I HEART cooked pears. It was a sunny lazy kind of morning however, and I found myself idling, vaguely thinking and reading the paper as I sliced. And they emerged from my fingers uniform and slim, not chunky for stewing. I was arranging them all neat in the bottom of the pan. Obviously my subconscious had been thinking about tarts. So, what else could I do but return to the little shop for butter and flour? Breakfast fell by the wayside, and I settled in to improvise a pear tart. I don't believe there are many better things to do with a saturday morning.

Now I wasn't actually going to mention the words, those alliterative beauties. But I can not kid myself that that was the platonic ideal - the mighty Tarte Tatin... But, you see, I have issues with tarte tatin. I tried it once and the caramel went wrong and it fell in a heap and the pastry was Awful, and I felt a little tricked and unamused.

So, I didn't put any pressure on. It's not a pear T---- T----, I told myself, it's merely a pear tart, upside down. Which really it is, because I couldn't be bothered with the caramel sauce.

And besides there are a million and one recipes for the TT. But in case you too are afeared of it, or you just quite fancy a plain Pear Upside Down Tart, then I thought I would share with you that this is: 1. very simple 2. fun to make (it's all that flipping out and watching the pastry float and brown above its fruity load) and 3. so tasty I polished the whole lot of in a day (NB - this is not recommended; try and make it when you are in the company of hungry people not avoiding white flour and sugar).

So, without further ado:

An Upside Down Tart of Pears...

4oz flour
2oz butter
2oz caster sugar
about 4 or 5 smallish pears
another few slices of butter (maybe 1 or 2oz)
another few spoonfuls of sugar (probably 4 or 5 dessertspoons)

1. Peel, core and slice the pears, and arrange in a frying pan that is ovenproof (I didn't peel mine, but I should have)
2. Put over a low heat with some slivers of butter and a sprinkling of sugar. Put a lid on and heat until it's all starting to cook
3. Add a little more butter and sugar and cook for a little longer with the lid off until it's going all brown and caramelly
Meanwhile...
4. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs
5. Drip in a little cold water - a teaspoon at a time, cutting it in with a knife until the breadcrumbs turn into bigger lumbs you can push into a soft dough - you will not need more than 2 tablespoons of water, probably more like 1. Err on the side of caution
6. Roll out your dough to a little larger than the size of the pan
7. When the pears are soft and covered in a sugary sauce, put a few more slivers of butter and sprinklings of sugar on for good measure, and then cover with the dough, tucking in the edges round the pears as best you can
8. Put in a preheated oven at 200C for about 20-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown
9. Cross your fingers, cover the pan with a plate and flip the whole lot over - hopefully it'll fall out, all golden and triumphant
10. Serve warm with greek yoghurt, or cream, as you like...

Drink and be happy

About 350 years ago some unknown someone, or somebodies, introduced to the island nation I inhabit a drink made out of the brewed leaves of the camellia sinensis plant. It had quite an impact. The people liked it so much its importation created trade deficits with China. The ensuing attempts to counteract this by selling opium to the Chinese, sparked the first Opium war. And after failing to set up plantations with illegally smuggled seeds in Britain's murky climes, they set about sowing great swathes of India with this special plant. Across the atlantic it was involved in another little ruckus when the residents of Boston destroyed crates of the stuff in a lively protest...

I can understand the fuss. There have been so many occasions when this ancient drink has been just the elixir to ease aches and pains and worries and weariness. It leaps to the rescue, it comforts, it soothes, it revives. It brings together, it refreshens. Morning tea, afternoon tea, tea break, after dinner tea, lunchtime tea, black tea, green tea, white tea, oolong, earl grey, jasmine, gunpowder, caravan. I love it all.


One day a little while back I was feeling a little grey, a little weary and tired, a little lost and uninspired. I was trudging through the streets of London, quite aimlessly, as I often did in the days before nine-to-five. And I noticed I was outside a little shop I'd seen often before, with blue and white awnings and windows full of pastries. It must have been nearly Christmas because there were rows upon rows of endearingly imperfectly shaped mince pies alongside the normal enticing confections.

I had nothing better to do. I went in and sat upstairs and ordered a pot of tea and a pastry. And the joy at having proper tea in a teapot with a strainer, at having the best pain au raisin I'd ever eaten, and sitting in this small scruffy smoky room strewn with handmade paper Christmas decorations, erased all the lacklustreness I'd been feeling. And I loved it ever since.



So if you find yourself in Soho, on Greek Street, in front of a little french patisserie/cafe with a blue and white awning, go in and have a cup of tea. They've been up and running for over a hundred years apparently and they're pretty damn good at what they do.

Maison Bertaux
28 Greek Street
Soho
W1D 5DQ

020 7437 6007


And look at the cake I had! (on my last visit, with little sister saucepan, partner in crime and cakes).



I'm dreaming of it all - tea and cakes and escape from the bustle - now, as I ache with mild wintery illness and irksome work travel. Oh, for a cup of tea.





"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future." ~Thich Nat Hahn

Warm food for cold nights

So, after all the excited newscasters telling us for days there would be the most snow in, like, a Million years, we got, a few days ago, a delicate smattering of the cold stuff; a dusting of squeaky white icing on trees and letterboxes and rooves and cars.

Enough to make me smile at this cute little bike, not enough unfortunately to mean gigantic snow drifts stood impassable in the way of my commute to the office. Enough for kids to create snowball crossfire across the morning streets; not enough to hold out until lunchtime before becoming soot-coloured slush. Enough, though, to make it feel wintery enough to search out the lentils and make this humble but classic dish from my childhood:

Oh I know, there's lentil and sausages a plenty in the cookbooks and gastropubs of the day. But we've been eating this in the saucepan household since I can remember. We've had it on Christmas day, we've had it with friends and without, for celebrations and just for long weekend meals. It's always been a 'treat' food, despite its rustic simplicity, and the unglamourous basis of lentils - how many children have lentils as the basis of their favourite food?...

And although I know there are a myriad variations i could do, I like it just like this. So I'll put the recipe here so you can see if you do too.

Lentils with Chorizo
Serves four

Lentille vertes - check the packet for per person quantities and then add some; it's good cold too if you're not greedy enough to eat it all (Btw - I don't know why similar recipes call for puy lentils - they seem to be much the same, just more expensive. The little lentille vertes do fine for me - not to be mixed up with green lentils, which are bigger, flatter and more mushy)
1-2 onions
1-2 carrots
A few sticks of celery
(Optional - any other bits of vegetable you want to use up such as an old pepper or some cauliflower leaves, etc.)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
4 or 5 bay leaves
A splash of red wine
A ring of chorizo (or two little ones like you get in Sainsburys)
Stock (or even just hot water, as the chorizo adds lots of flavour)
Salt and pepper

Chop all the veggies into small-ish dice and the chorizo into discs or half-discs, depending on your preference.

Sweat off the onion in some olive oil in a big deep pan, then add carrot, celery and garlic. Cook, stirring, until softened a little.

Add the lentils and stir round til coated in oil and vegetables.

Add splash of wine and stock enough to cover generously.

Add chorizo and bay leaves

Bring to the boil then simmer for about 30-40 minutes until lentils are cooked to taste. Season

Serve with potatoes (to mash in the juice) or crusty white bread. A green veggy or fresh salad will go nicely too.

p.s. apologies for those extremely unphotogenic potatoes. Actually, it's not much of a looker of a dish all round. Trust me though on this one - it tastes good.

Too cute!

Many, many years ago, before email and mobile phones and reality tv, two little girls lived in a small town in South West England. Every Saturday the older of the sisters would get a shiny big 10 pence piece - pocket money. Being a generally super kind of big sister, she would allocate one penny of this to the younger child. Both would walk up the road and over the bridge and across the crossing, and enter the kingdom of the little shop on the corner, where big sister and littler sister deliberated over which of the myriad of sugary delights to drop into the old Vitalite tub and purchase with the treasured pocket money. Aniseed balls or white mice or sherbet spaceships for me and my one penny probably. Maybe a blackjack or fruit salad, a cola bottle...

Predictably, the splendour and allure of pick'n'mix sweets has rather faded 20-odd years on. However, when I popped into Heals on Tottenham Court Road recently, that wide-eyed kind of wonder and greed flooded back as I found an impossibly cute miniature bakery shop where there used to be a flower stall.

Before I'd even got to inspecting the edible wares, I'm a sucker for that old-style type font they use. Cute! - especially with the soft lights and tiled walls and minty hand-written labels. As for the food... it had rows of pretty multi-coloured fairy cakes with far too much swirly icing and liberal scatters of sprinkles; it had hand-thrown pork pies and big, luscious looking slices of quiche; it had fruit tarts and hugely decadent looking frou frou cakes; it had hot pies and cold sandwiches; it had jams and stylish boxes of various teas; it had plates and plates of sweet-smelling biscuits and muffins and cakes...

I wasn't really hungry and I didn't really need a cake but as with those Saturday mornings at the sweet selection, the fun was all in the oohing and aahing and ummming about what to pick over everything else.

I picked a banana muffin. It was good. Not super, but pretty damn good. And now I'm just enjoying thinking what I'm going to spend my pocket money on next time I go in...

Celeriac - just in time!

Only two days left of this week to fulfil my resolution to post at least once a week!

So, before I'm off home for the weekend, I'm going to just quickly tell you about a gem of a salad we created a couple of days ago, after a wintery amble around the slightly eerie late-afternoon lit Wimbledon Common.

The humble celeriac has already been seen over at the magnificent Orangette having its praises sung, so it may be blushing with pride after I chip in my admiring two cents.

Yes it's an ugly lump of a vegetable, and sure, there are those that will screw up their faces at the very thought, but for those of us for whom neither its rooty bulbous nature or its sweet, strong celery-nut taste is a turn-off, it's quite a treat when it turns up at winter time; an interesting specimen to play with.

It just so happened that our particular celeriac was sitting there, awaiting its time to be cooked and eaten at just the same time some green beans were threatening to go off in the fridge, oranges were stacked high in the fruit bowl and chicory bulbs peeked out from the shelves. Chicory and orange is a classic combination in my family's repertoire of salads, and remembering a recipe I'd seen recently for a green bean and roasted squash salad, I imagined the celeriac playing the squash's role to perfection.

And lo! A gorgeous winter salad. Warming and refreshing. Light and filling. Adaptable to many different fridge situations. Super!

Winter Salad of Celeriac, Chicory and Orange

1/2 medium celeriac - peeled and cubed (about 1.5 cm x 1.5cm)
1 tsp each salt, black pepper, sugar
a splash of olive oil
2 heads chicory
2 oranges
a handful of green beans
juice of half a lemon
wholegrain mustard

Mix the celeriac cubes with the oil and seasoning and place in a roasting tray in a preheated oven at about 180C for about 40 minutes. At regular intervals give the tray a little shake to stop it sticking.

Meanwhile slice the chicory lengthwise or into rings, as you prefer, and segment the orange, reserving the juice for later.

Steam the beans until just tender and drain - run cold water over to keep their greenness.

Prepare the chicory, orange and beans on a plate and scatter over the roasted celeriac

Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, some olive oil and mustard to form a vinaigrette and dress.

Voila!

(Suggested additions - feta cheese, walnuts, toasted seeds, parmesan, red onion - experiment... )

NB - pre-salad walk under gloomy skies, past bare trees full of big black birds - optional!...

Getting there slowly...

‘Resolutions serve to ease our conscience’, I read at the weekend. It was one of about 300 ‘truisms’ scrolling across an electronic display board, a piece by American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer in the Tate Modern (more here).*

Well, and they do for a bit, don't they. I'd been feeling quite chipper in the weeks leading up to Christmas as I thought about how much better things'd be in the brand spanking new year. Plans, lovely plans, bubbling away in my head. I am one of these people who spend so much time stuck in the lovely invented future that I leave little time for the real-world mundanities of Actually Making Things Happen. *sigh*

Anyway, my conscience is now not feeling eased, but slightly sheepish. Time's marching on and my plans and projects are following me around like people I don't want to see, tapping me on the shoulder and pulling disapproving and neglected faces at me...

So, I'm going to turn around and try to placate them. Set them out in type at least, and thrust them into cyberspace for all to see (ok, enough with the dodgy metaphor already lydia; onwards!... )

Without further ado then, my belated new food year's resolutions (always best to start resolutions in February anyway; January is such a terrible month for discipline...)

1. I will no longer cross with silver the palms of those huge multi-national coffee corporations!

Yes, I admit it, I have in the past had a bit of a weak spot for a Caffe Nero pain au raisin and macchiato, a Pret cappucino and breakfast baguette, a Starbucks tea and cookie. But every time I do it I think what a sucker I am to feed their coffers. How much better food I could buy with that money. I have found it more easy recently to stop seeing comfort and a guilty treat in these overpriced, mass-produced soulless products, and have been able instead to see myself buying an image and succumbing to the lure of instant gratification, which is all too often hollow and dissatisfying.

So from now on, I will not eat and drink that junk. I may yet spend long pleasurable hours reading the papers and drinking a latte, or writing notes on minor mishaps or pleasant surprises whilst enjoying a pot of tea. But it will be occasional and at smaller, more individual establishments. And........... I shall buy a thermos flask for my own hot drinks at my convenience and a tenth of the price!

2. I will post every week! No, really, I will. I really will try and get the momentum going and sustain it... This will be the year of lydia saucepan...

3. I will determine my position on meat! I became vegetarian once, for about 18 months. It was a general kind of misgiving that led me to take it up, but it was a vagueness about my misgivings which meant I lapsed so soon after (that, and the fact I was in Australia and enjoying the hospitality of many meat-eating relatives who I didn't want to inconvenience).

I like meat. I really do like a perfect fillet steak, a plate of good cured ham, some chorizo here and there, the occasional sausage sandwich...

But I have an issue with intensive meat production. I don't like the sound of all the antibiotics and the dinginess of living quarters. I'm not sure about abattoir conditions, I really hate the thought of those hens who can't walk because they're bred with short legs and fat bodies that grow too fast.

So I think I need to come up with a better stance on this. I'm going to do some research and then I'm only going to eat meat which comes up to my individual standards of what meat should be.

4. I will learn new skills and recipes! Yes, some kind of course, many kinds of investigations and experiments. All to be documented here of course...

So that's it. That's the aim. And now it's all here as evidence I can't just feel my conscience salved and move back into inertia; they'll be mocking me if I do. I'll let you know how it goes...

Menu for Hope

I was just trying to think of a good title to sum up this post, and decided that, well, the title that's already been given me is pretty damn good already - there's the food bit and the giving bit (well, kind of). I just want to expand on the cool bit... It is very cool.

So... this is the third year of Menu for Hope, though only the first year I've been aware of it. Pim, of the legendary Chez Pim, has once again brought together an extravaganza of food-blogger-powered giving and foodliness to raise donations for a good cause linked to a subject close to all our hearts.

The idea is so perfect it almost hurts. Like all the best ideas, it's beautifully simple. And symbiotic. A load of lovely people give some lovely food prizes, a load of other people give money in return for chances to win the particular prizes they like the look of and then all the monies raised go to the UN Food Programme . Given our preoccupation with food, and the time of year there doesn't seem a more appropriate cause than those who will be at the very opposite end of the scale from our seasonal greed and gluttony.

Oh, and the prizes are GOOD... I have my eye on a voucher for the tasting menu at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon and half a kilo of Cambodian peppercorns.

So... GO!, as below:

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from the Menu for Hope.

2. Go to the donation site at http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhopeIII and make a donation.

3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code—for example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 for EU02. (Please use the double-digits, not EU1, but EU01.)

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so the corporate match can be claimed.

5. Please allow your email address to be seen so that you can be contacted in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Check back on Chez Pim on January 15 for the results of the raffle.

Hot Sour Good

Obviously there were good intentions. There always are. Home by 10, up early, that kind of thing. And, as is often the way with good intentions, their blithe little voices were soon drowned out by louder, bolshier characters - temptation, jollity, the first glass of wine...

I did have a good excuse for overindulgence though, having just finished the monster exams which brought an end to my recent intensive stint at college. Still, that didn't do anything to lessen the equally monster hangover which took hold of me the following day.

By about mid-afternoon I started to fantasise about soup. In my experience it's a surefire ameliorator when plagued with a hangover. A little while later, the thought of chillies slipped into my soupine daydreams. Guaranteed to clear out a foggy head, and packed full of vitamin C.

As if that wasn't enough, the idea was cemented when I started googling for hot soup recipes and came across this article . Hot and sour soup it was...

This is my take on hot and sour prawn and scallop soup then. It's fantastically easy and it did the job to perfection. It just tastes like goodness. And the chilli-effect (watering eyes, streaming nose - the birdseyes were stronger than I anticipated) you can imagine (if you so desire) is tantamount to purging all those excesses of yesterday. The broth is deliciously spicy and flavoursome and comforting. Scallops, pearly and smooth, are - without wanting to be hyperbolic - heavenly, and meaty prawns, crunchy sugarsnap peas and mushrooms add enough interest for it to be like a whole meal in a bowl.


Scallop and Prawn Hot and Sour Soup

(serves from 2 very hungry people to 4 polite people)

6 scallops (no roe)
8 raw king prawns
150g sugarsnap peas
150g chestnut mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1/2 red chilli
2 to 3 green birdseye chillies
2 sticks lemongrass
Juice of 2 limes
tsp Thai fish sauce
about 600g good chicken stock (sorry, I don't know the liquid measurement as I bought it in pots that measured in grams, not litres)
3 spring onions - finely sliced
Handful of mint - sliced

• Chop and crush together the garlic and red chilli




• Put in a pot with the chicken stock, fish sauce, lime juice, lemongrass, sliced birdseye chillies and mushrooms




• Bring to boil and simmer until mushrooms are cooked (add more boiling water as necessary according to your desired liquid:solids ratio




• Add peas, scallops and prawns and cook for just a minute or two until the prawns have gone pink and the scallops are cooked through




• Serve topped with a handful of chopped spring onions and mint

Of Fat Slugs and Acorn Houses...

An interesting food-related fact for you: "In the Thames Valley area alone, 1,000 tons of fat enters the sewage system every year. Eighty per cent of this is estimated to come from restaurants and takeaways.

"The fat quickly congeals, forming plugs that can cause raw sewage to back up behind the blockages - just like in a domestic sink. This is particularly bad in Soho, in central London, where in the year 2000 a 150ft-long, concrete-hard slug of cooking fat had to be cleared with pick-axes."

Yum.

This from this article in the Independent this Saturday. The article describes Acorn House, a new restaurant in London's King's Cross describing itself as 'London's first truly eco-friendly training restaurant'. Reading it consolidated in me a feeling of - what was it now? guilt? resignation? disgust? a melange of all these and others? - whatever; it has set off a constant simmering pot in the back burner of my mind over the last couple of days.

This linking food to the environment is nothing new of course. The ethics and consequences of what we put on our plates and in our mouths are everywhere nowadays. From all corners there's evangelists and doomsayers proclaiming the new food sins and absolutions. Books, articles, television programmes.

And of course, as someone with a passion for food - (and the world!) - it's an issue which has often piqued my interest. Though the terms of the arguments can sometimes annoy me - the 'good vs bad', the continual onslaught of what is in and out this week - in general it's a jolly good thing to have this raised awareness and noise about the tremendous and manifold global political, social, economic and environmental effects food and its industries have.

My particular current concern is not one of these big issues you read about though; it's more personal. It's the gap between what I proclaim to believe in and how I actually act. I rail against intensively-farmed meats and then blithely order beef curry with no knowledge of its sourcing. I tut as I read how much food we waste, and then find myself filling the bin up with sad mouldy creatures from the depths of the refridgerator. I wax evangelical on the joys of home cooking and then buy a ready meal from Marks and Spencers...

And I make some excuses for myself - about living in the city and working 9 to 5 and so on and so forth. But really I know they are baloney. To be sure, I don't live in a country idyll with chickens producing fresh eggs outside my kitchen window and a garden full of produce, and I don't have hours on my hands to whip up everything from scratch, BUT every single time I buy food or eat food I have a choice in how I do that. Noone frogmarches me into Wetherspoons for lunch, noone tortures me to make me buy cheap sausages...

I don't want to lessen the enjoyment of my food by getting all puritanical and dogmatic about it. I know I can't live in line with what my absolute ideals would be; but I do want to heighten the enjoyment of my food by knowing that I have made the best decision I can given the circumstances about what it is I choose to buy and eat and cook. And to enjoy knowing that I am putting my mouth where my mouth is, as it were, eating as a means of activising belief and ideals.

So, some soul-searching and researching to be done I think. It's not so long until 2007, a nice blank page, so watch this space for some new-food-year resolutions...