The getting of job

The getting of job is somewhat problematic, because it requires readjusting to what it's like not having acres of time to yourself.

So, I need to get back to blogging! I've got two weeks off now for the catch-up period, but I must keep up when I go back to work...maybe I should take my laptop and write on the train to work. Plan!

So what you've missed - as well as baking/making of desserts (lemon and lime syllabub, chocolate and banana muffins, blueberry and lemon friands, OTHER), I have also been concocting Christmas gifts with the help of my Marguerite Patten book, The Basic Basics - Jams, Preserves and Chutneys

They call her the "doyenne of British cookery" on that there page, but I believe she was once The Face of the WI.

Anyway, so I also made spiced pickling vinegar for my pickled onions (NB - if you ever make pickled onions, your fingers will smell and look like onion for several days)...and of course the pickled onions, apple and pear chutney, and piccalilli. The latter is the one I'm most looking forward to tasting, because is smelt SO good. My mouth is watering now, but then I do love a pickle.

I've made oodles of rocky road too, though I'm yet to make my housemate's preferred version containing glacé cherries and raisins. Lucky for her it's her birthday this week, so when she's back in London she can have some of that. I'll be interested to see if it tastes as good. My first batch was the best.

So, on to updating...

Honey fudge/ toffee

Another recipe from the River Cottage Family Cookbook but this time, not so foolproof.

This seemed so easy, but despite having my sugar thermometer carefully in hand, I made two batches - one that turned out as fudge-ish, one that turned out as toffee, neither of which were the same colour as in the book...

In fact, I think I nearly burnt the stufff that turned out fudgy. But I don't understand how I did that, and indeed how I got tofee, when according to my thermometer I hadn't even reached 116 degrees Celsius. According to the recipe, that's what I was aiming for and I'd have to get to 200 or so to hit toffee levels, but that's not what happened so...

My reliable fudge-making friend tells me that I overcooked the milk. I suspect I could've done with a deeper pan (so as to be able to do it all in one batch), with a heavier bottom and on a lower, less impatient temperature.

This one definitely requires further experimentation.

I haven't taken pictures of it chopped proper because...well, let's just say it wasn't pretty.

But here it is in a tray.

Delia's iced lemon curd layer cake

Ah cake! This particular one I've made once or twice before, and I recently recreated it as a house-warming gift for two of my lovely friends who have just moved in together for the first time.

It's a great house-warming cake - gooey and filling, yet light and lemony. I can't put my finger on what specifically makes it a cake capable of warming houses and cockles, but ah it does. Maybe it's Delia's magic touch! Except it was my magic touch, because I made it. So there.

I have to say, I never thought it'd be so easy to make lemon curd. I seem to remember that when I made it once before, I accidentally got lumps of egg white in it because the water below the bowl was too hot. So I had to sieve them out and it was a bit of an eggy palaver.

However, it all went smoothly this time...apart from the fact that my all-in-one cakes never seem to rise particularly well. I don't know if it's because of my particular electric whisk or what, but for this cake it doesn't matter too much.

Oh, and in cutting the top layer horizontally in two, I daydreamed a little bit and one side of one layer was very thin, hence the crack across the top (it was too wonky a layer to go precariously in the middle).

This cake is super tasty with the lemon curd freshly spread between the layers, but the next day (or the day after!) the curd will start to absorb into the cake - which is fine. It's still moist, lemony, forgiving cake!

You can find Delia's recipe here - maybe try a lime or lemon and lime version and let me know how it goes!

Profiteroles!

Having a snog in the oven.
A deceptively easy-to-make dessert! And universally taste-bud pleasing.

Perhaps I will make some more of these soon and take you through in a more step-by-step fashion. My trusty recipe is from the days of Home Ec. lessons at secondary school.

Christmassy cupcakes

I made these for a lovely Christmassy gathering last year - along with the sparkly brownies below.

They weren't my best cake ever, but they did look suitably festive!

Beer and cake. What more do you need for Christmas?

Chocolate Brownies

Mmmmmmmmm chocolate brownies. This is one of the best and most fool-proof recipes I've ever used (from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr in their River Cottage Family Cookbook ) and I've seen similar recipes from Nigel Slater and the like, so it must be good!

Now, for several delicious brownie pictures. One lot from September and one lot of sparkly brownies from Christmas last year.

Crumbles!

Yes, not a crumble but crumbles.

We seem to have acquired quite a store of ramekin dishes thanks to various M&S and Gu (where do I find an umlaut on this keyboard??) desserts.

So, with continuing abundance of apples and pears in hand, I set about making simple crumbles.

That means no cinammon and not much lemon juice. Partly, I've never had a pear crumble, so I wanted to see what it tasted like untainted.


I made some apple crumbles, some pear, some apple and pear, and toffee variations on those three.

I should've put more toffee in the toffee ones, but all-in-all they weren't too bad. Either warmed them and had them with cream, or with custard.

Yumalicious.

Toffee Pear Galettes

These were gobbled before I remembered to take a pic of them, but I had an abundance of apples and pears and this looked SO easy.

For the proper recipe on the Good Food website, follow the link above - essentially you require a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry, peeled and halved pears (or apples) and toffee sauce....resisting urge to say "DONE".

Halve and peel your pears (or apples - I used one of each) thinly slice, but keep joined at stalk end. Take your circles of puff pastry, spoon on your toffee sauce and fan your fruit out on top - glaze with a whisked egg. Put in a hot oven for 20mins, et voila.

Serve with cream or ice cream and devour.

Click on the title of this post for the recipe.

22nd October - broc-cauli cheese with bacon

Abel and Cole delivered a mini-cauliflower and two mini-broccolis in my latest box and lo - broc-cauli cheese with bacon was born. In fact, the cheese sauce was made with blue cheese...it might've been Roquefort...and some mature cheddar for extra cheesiness.

Chopped and washed my veg. Fried the bacon while starting to make the white sauce (which is very easy, by the way), put the veg on to blanche and pulled out my ceramic dish. Now's the time to switch the oven on on a moderate heat too - say 180 degrees C.

When the veg was nearly cooked through, I drained it thoroughly. Meanwhile I switched off the heat under my bacon and chopped it up with scissors, and made my white sauce into cheese sauce.

Then it's really simple - tip your veg into your dish, sprinkle over the bacon, tip over the sauce and make sure all your veg is covered, put some grated cheese on top and stick in the oven until nicely browned.

Mmmmmm. This was perfect wintery comfort food...and despite feeding me and my housemate, there was still enough left for lunch AND dinner the following day.

Only drawback was that eating that much cheese in that short a space of time is perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done...

21st October - The Vaults, Cambridge

Ms. Hammer and I headed to Cambridge on this evening to see Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, talking on the subject of The Public Understanding of Risk . For free!

It was good. But even better was The Vaults - we decided to hang around for dinner, but not knowing Cambridge and having no map, we went for the "wander aimlessly into the dark and peer in windows" approach.

So how we ended up choosing somewhere with no windows, I have no idea.

The menu was outside the door and looked tempting - it was only on the way out that I saw the TopTable Gold award on the door.

There are some fairly steep stairs that open out into a bar area, with divided up dining areas - each area being in a Vaulted room. Geddit? For some reason it was re-named The Depot for a year or so, but it's not back to being called The Vaults.

There's a lovely ambience in this place, and despite there only being a couple of big groups and being sat cosily in a little cubbyhole of our own, the atmosphere was lovely.

Bit dark, mind.

The service was amazing and the food was DELICIOUS. We went for the tapas-style dishes (seemingly the main draw on a relatively simply menu) and a bottle of red.

The wine was lovely, as were our dishes - they recommend two to three per person, but even ravenous as we were, we struggled with five between the two of us.

We had - slow-roasted pork belly in some sort of fruity sweet-and-soury sauce (that's not what it said on the menu), Thai sticky rice with ginger and coriander, goats cheese tart, roasted mediterranean vegetables and, the piéce de resistance, wild pigeon and chorizo combined I-don't-know-how, but I want to eat that again and again and again.

Sadly we were overstuffed, but the dessert menu looked yum.

If you want to visit this little gem, you can find it at 14a Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TB

Mm pigeons and pigs. On one plate.

21st October - sausages, mash and onion gravy

This was one of those days where it was approaching winter and it was my last week at work (following Redundancy) and I needed to comfort eat. I normally wouldn't have this sort of lunch unless a) hungover, b) grumpy, c) cold, d) haven't eaten for two days (this last one never happens).

It's possible I was slightly hungover. It's also possible that normally Benugo - the provider of this meat and potato-based lunch item - only do pies, and it really has to be Friday for a pie, but I got overexcited at the sausage option.

They were fairly average sausages...bit dry...pretty salty. But their mash and gravy is always warming.

I must've been hungry again - only remembered to take the pic mid-way through my munching.

20th October - pasta bake with a twist

Another one courtesy of my mum - I found this one lurking in the fridge when rummaging for some lunch.

It was only when I started to heat it up in the microwave, and remembered that my mum's favourite condiment is Tabasco, that I smelt the chilli.

Given the tomato content of said-bake, along with the green bits of basil and possibly marrow (I think...failing of memory, rather than oversight resulting from greed), I couldn't find the chilli as I was eating it, but boy could I taste it.

Ah, and it looked so innocent.

Tasty, but ow.

19th October - mother's delight

After a particularly horrible journey back to the midlands, comprising a Thames Clipper full of tourists, an inordinately long journey, and an over-melted tuna melt baguette, this is what my mum had made for dinner.

By this point I was so cranky from travel blah, lack of sleep and lack of food, I would've been happy eating stones, but this was better than stones.

There was naan bread (coriander something...from le supermarché, warmed up in the toaster), coconut chicken, began ka bhrtha (aubergines smooshed up with onion, lemon juice and mustard oil), runner beans from the garden with red onion and Things and a successful rocket and chickpeas item with cumin and possibly something else. Ah my discerning palate (!). I was hungry.

There was also some beautifully fluffy white basmati rice on the side, along with a small bowl of chopped red pepper and carrot - this was dressed with sesame oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic powder. Try this if you haven't - it's strangely moreish.

I was substantially less grumpy after eating this, but substantially more sleepy...mind you, I still had room for a puff pastry mince pie (source unknown) heated up and served with a dollop of clotted cream.

16th October - bolognese sauce and garlic bread

This was my dinner on this day. I was reallllllly ridiculously hungry. I got some beef mince on the way home with the intention of making bolognese and having it on a baked potato. Perhaps using up some carrots from my box of goodies.

But then hunger was getting out of hand, so I got some bolognese sauce too, because I was doubtful I could hold out until I cooked bolognese from scratch.

Then, on the way home I noticed the sauce actually already had meat in it.

I got home, and had no stamina whatsoever to even wait until a potato was baked, so ended up having bolognese sauce with garlic bread from....I can't remember where from.

This was speedy, but the sauce was SO tart that it made me make this kind of face. I had to put some black pepper and half a teaspoon of sugar in, but it was still a bit Wrong.

Still. Wasn't hungry anymore.

11th October - fennel and potato gratin

My latest food adventure has been to sign up to get a small mixed organic box from Abel and Cole - less because they were organic, more because I can get surprise fruit and veg to my door every other Tuesday.

This serves several purposes - the box often contains things I wouldn't voluntarily buy. Unless I don't like the taste of anything on the list (a rarity) I won't remove it from that week's box. But I do have to think of something yum to make with it! Somewhat inspiring.

Aside from that (and how selective it is - hate aubergines? You'll never have to have a single one) I ordered some soups (Mushroom Soup with Tarragon and Juniper - yum, Caremelised Onion - don't bother) and some brie too. In fact, I can add bits and bobs to my delivery as and when I like, then just send the boxes back with them the next time.

I get a box every other week, but now that I've been made redundant and can eat all meals at home, I think I might try getting one every week for a bit.

So, this particular week I got fennel and potatoes as two of my ingredients.

Fennel is YUM. Potatoes are good comfort food. Throw in cream and nutmeg and milk and put parmesan on top and you'll decide not to eat cheese for days...but then you'll have leftovers!







Before it went in the oven...I was too greedy after it came out to remember to take a picture!

My life in food

Seeing as I spend a LOT of my time secretly busying my mind with questions such as, "what can I do with that cabbage?" and "maybe I could use that dinner up if I bake a potato, and..." - I thought it might be interesting to document all my lunches and dinners. And my baking, of course. A combination of sweet and savoury - though of course there are many bakeable main meals.

At the moment, there's no thrilling outcome I expect from this - I don't plan to dazzle you with my, er, variable diet. I don't have a hypothesis - I'm just curious about what'll happen if instead of ruminating internally about my next meal, I write my ponderings down. And given some of the things I've eaten in the past few days, maybe I can switch people on and off things. I don't expect any kind of miracles, but maybe you will be tempted by my mum's Indian attack on chickpeas and rocket, for example.

My battery's running low (not just the one in my laptop...) so I'm going to sign off for now.

Just a reminder that there will be lots of events in honour of National Apple Day tomorrow - from what I can work out, it's always 21st October. Seems Gloucestershire are going particular loopy on the apples, but if you are a Londoner like me there are plenty of events this weekend.

It's pretty yum to have National Baking Week AND National Apple Day all in the same week...I better make the most of it; I've got some Cox's apples lurking in the kitchen and have been thinking to turn them into mini crumbles with cream. If I was a free woman, I might see how they are in tarte tatin but I think I might need Bramleys for that...I'll investigate.

Baking beginnings

Something tells me that a little after midnight on a Monday night (though I keep thinking it's Sunday) is not the best time to finally start writing my blog. But I've had my eyes in my screen so much today that now is by far the best time...well, the best time today, at least.

I started baking when I was a young'un - my mum taught me how to bake what you might call a bog-standard cake, which she'd been taught when she did home ec. at school...I can't remember how I went from that, to being limited to baking no more than two things a week - if I kept on, we were going to have to eat dessert morning, noon and night to get through it all.

The book I remember using most (in the early days) is The Dairy Book of Home Management. Amazingly there's a copy going for 50p on ebay.

We never had The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, but the home baking section of our copy of the former is well thumbed - it's where I first rummaged for recipes to make scones, and rock cakes, and pancakes and such.

I also used to get wide eyed at all the food and kitchen gadgets on offer when we'd go to the Ideal Home Show - the most pertinent memory is that they'd always be giving out an endless stream of kiwi fruits with plastic, luminous green spoon-knife thingummies so as to best devour your kiwi fruit.

Somewhere around this time, or maybe a bit before, I'd use the hatch in our kitchen to present my own cooking show to the dining room (the invisible audience got bored of me making rotis, I'm sure) and when I was a tiny toddler my mum would sit me in my pushchair in the kitchen and I'd watch her cook.

Never mind the baking - I'm not surprised I start pondering what to have for dinner around the lunchtime mark.

SO - my point is this. Anyone can be inspired by food and baking and get used to 'nutrition' being as much about enjoying your food and all the rituals that go with cooking and baking - rather than it just being a means to an end, eating a meal can be more than just putting food in your gob.

When you've got the Sunday blues, baking's one of the most therapeutic mid-afternoon activities you could imagine!