Back from the depths and a Xmas present...

I have been on a hellish "Jacob's Ladder" style journey to the depths. I have paid the piper for my Christmas gluttony. A stomach bug. A bad boy of a stomach bug that slapped me around nicked my wallet and installed a perpetual motion machine deep into my cranium, making me feel like I was permanently at sea in a gale. I have only really just got my appetite back and even then I have to avoid anything too daring. The soft, the warm and the bland are as far as I can take it right now. I was doing some shopping today and the smell of various fast food emporia hit me like a freight train as I passed them making me gag and making my vision swim.

Anyway, despite my lack of enthusiasm for cooking generally I had my very own Italian Mama to hand in book form. When feeling low and liverish, incapable of even considering cooking a meal, you need The Silver Spoon, every Italian mama's secret arsenal for the last 50 years and now translated into English. I love it, from its very encyclopaedic nature to the short, staccato instructions; no flowery writing here, just to the point and with a level of expectation regarding the cooks abilities that most English cookbooks blushing. Not that this is sophisticated stuff, it beautifully simple, a depository for every familiar Italian dish to others you have never heard of and would never consider trying. This may well become my favourite cookbook.

Bloody Chilli

We had our first noticeable snowfall in London this morning. About 20 minutes of swirling thick snow with that strange darkness that accompanies it and then it was over. Everything was coated in a dusting of white that lasted about an hour before the clouds broke up and the thin winter sun melted all sign. I spent a couple of hours reading some Xmas acquisitions with numerous cups of tea and it has provided an entertaining backdrop, the kind of day where every time you look at the sky it's a different colour. It has, however, done nothing for the temperature, which has plummeted. The kind of cold that catches the back of the throat and makes your nose run instantly. Normally, this would call for some rib-sticking fare, some stew and dumplings, boiled meat and mash, big thick flavours to warm the toes. However, after Christmas an' all (crickey, even the word makes me wince), those soft warm tones and flavours are the furthest things from my mind right now. I need flavours that sing, that smack you in the face, that energise rather than sedate.

I made a red curry paste, which has to be the most fun you can have with a pestle and mortar without needing a visit to the casualty department afterwards. I love the alchemy of making Thai food, the roasting of spices and grinding them down, chopping things very finely and then the pounding in the mortar. Culinary gold from base ingredients, I just need a wizards hat with some cabbalistic runes etched upon it to complete the look. I have to go now. I've just rubbed my eye and it seems I missed a bit after washing my hands after pounding all that chilli...

Aftermath

I could have posted about the stunning rolled pork loin my brother roasted yesterday, or the foie gras with port reduction pinxhos I knocked up, or even the sherry trifle that nephews and nieces demanded, made with pan d'oro. I could have even posted about the amusing brasserie vs brassiere mix up from Christmas Eve's post. However, as much as I'd love to, and I probably will at some point, I wanted to reflect on the moment at the end of the meal since I'm feeling, as the French say, with their usual brilliant economy of phrasing, "grey livered". When I say the end of a meal, I mean right at the end. After the coffee. Washing up. I have to admit inspiration came from Kate Bush's new song Mrs Bartolozzi, a classic Kate song about the emotional depths that a new washing machine can plunge one into. So that got me thinking about washing dishes.

The dishwasher has made familial dishwashing a very rare occurrence. It's rare that you get that chain gang of parents, siblings or friends formed up around the sink pulling gleaming plates from the sparkling suds and into waiting tea towels. And to be honest given that it is a colossal pain in the arse most of the time, that's all for the good, though I find there is something quite satisfying about cleaning down work surfaces. However, at Christmas, when the sheer weight of things that need cleaning after the meal means that you can actually enjoy doing the washing up. Swigging at a glass of wine in the company well fed and hopefully relaxed family members is quite a laugh. The actual cooking can be fraught, as my brother told me earlier in the day when I told him to chill out during a tense moment in the kitchen, "This is NOT about relaxing." Breaking things down and washing dishes is a reflective time. It's a meditative time, resetting the kitchen, putting things where they should; a kind of psychic stock take, you can tell a great deal about a persons mood by the way they put cutlery back in a drawer and even more by the way they dry a sauce pan.

Room with a View

London has traditionally had very few places that you get a good look at her from high up. Primrose Hill is probably the most famous vantage point for a wide panorama and Tower Bridge a good spot if you wanted river views. These days, of course, we have the London Eye and for the more gastronomically minded the Oxo Tower, and what a view it is; a majestic sweep down river with St.Paul's Cathedral bang in the middle and then veering off to the battle lines of re-generation with the Gherkin as the battle standard. The perfect place for a buzzy fun lunch with a romantic edge.

We got to the Oxo Tower Brasserie (as opposed to the Restaurant) this afternoon and it was absolutely rammed, the wait staff slightly de-mob happy and looking forward to their works Christmas party. Not the best omens for a successful pre-Xmas lunch. I needn't have worried too much, the crowd was pretty good natured and our waiter a charming combination of public school boy and tattooed biker. It is a bit cramped in the brasserie at Oxo tower I don't mind saying, they probably refer to it as intimate in the literature but they could do with spacing the tables a bit more, if only for the poor bloke on crutches at the tables next to me.

This Toulouse sausage with lentils was probably the stand out dish of the meal, along with the osso bucco gnocchi I had to start. But it has to be said the food it almost secondary here, you certainly not paying just for the pleasure of eating it. You paying for the view to a certain extent, and I have no problem with that. The foods a good modern take on brasserie classics and more than competent, so you can sit back and not worry too much about the grub enjoying the sunset over St.Pauls.

P.S. Merry Christmas, have an excellent day everyone!

Achilles 'eel

I dragged my sorry cold-ridden self into the fishmongers this afternoon and was confronted with a truly Dickensian sight. Huge bubbling pots of lobsters, the pink cooked fish thrown into steaming piles, sleek fresh quicksilver salmons stacked up like glittering torpedoes, eerie wide mouthed carp and best of all, I thought, a bucket of live eels. They were slithering around snapping those prehistoric looking jaws of theirs and I figured there was something I could get my head around, fish so fresh it was still wriggling when thrown in the hot oil. Brilliant Idea. So when the fishmonger sporting a very fine mohican pulls one those slippery suckers out and asks me if I want him killed and cleaned, I'm all cocky and shake my head knowingly. He stares at me a moment. You ever done this before? he asks. Nope, says I. Trust me, he says you don't want to be doing this at home and off he goes to dispatch my fish. 30 seconds later I am handed a still wriggling plastic bag and told to have a Merry Christmas. I kid you not, that fish carried on thrashing about for a good 5 minutes as I walked back to the office.
So, I get the eel home and having spent sometime researching how to cook it I pull him out of his bag and he instantly flies out of my hand into the fruit bowl about 5 feel away from me. They weren't joking about how slippery these fish are. I manage to get a firm grip on him, I even had some pliers as advised by many other cooks, in order to skin the bugger. First, he slips this way and then he slips that away. I simply cannot get the thing to stay still. I try pinning him down with a knife, holding him down with a tea towel. I am frankly at a loss. I have been trying for the best part of an hour now and I fear that the combination of eel mucus and my head full of cold may be the undoing of me. I'll persevere after I finish this up otherwise I may have to hide him in the freezer or something, the shame of being beaten by a slippery fish may be too much to bear.

Game On

It is with the inevitability of Christmas falling on the 25th of December this year that I have started to catch a cold. I can feel that deep ache in my bones and that slightly hazy sluggish feeling creeping into muscles. I cannot count the Christmasses that have been marred by the appearance of a cold, I remember vividly one year having to spend the day with tissue stuffed into my nostrils to stop the unending tide of snot that poured forth. Another year croaking yule tide platitudes from my stinking pit of a bed. My body figures it out far far in advance. It looks to the first available opportunity for being completely at rest and then lets down all the defenses. With enviable Christian charity it lets any stray bug have a bed for the duration of the holidays. Plenty of room at the inn let me tell you.

However, I am in combatative mood. I figure this example of British cooking at its very best will ward off any Spanish flu that may be lurking. Bring on that bacterial armada, I have a hefty game pie to stuff in its gunnels. This beauty is a Wild Boar, Wood Pigeon, Hare and Turkey Pie made by a lovely northern couple who's name I did not catch through the thick haze around my head this afternoon in the incredibly surprising Croydon Christmas market. I will endeavour to find out tomorrow what the name of the company is because their pie is a delight. The rich dark meat that is crammed into this pie had me moaning with pleasure between sniffs and sneezes. The massive helping of mashed potatoes and pickles finished off the comfort fest. This was truly everything a pie should be. Heavy, meaty with thick crispy pastry. I know I'll be cutting myself another slice in a while. That is inevitable.

P.S. This is Monkey Glands 100th post on Jamfaced. Man, I been slack!

Christmas Beer

I'll freely admit that I am writing this post under the influence. We had after work Christmas drinks with a client of mine, though it has to be said after work drinks with a distinct difference. Down the road from this clients office is a bar that specialises in speciality beers called Circus of Beer, it's not exactly in the most salubrious part of town (in fact you'd be hard pressed to call it town at all) but they have a rather unique cellar and at this time of year they have a whole clutch of very tasty buy very very strong Christmas beers. I suggested that it might be wise to get a random selection of the hundreds of beers that these guys have.

It started innocently enough with a Belgian Hoorgarden Grand Cru. Not strictly a Christmas beer but a fruity one to get us all started. This is a fine refined wheat beer that drinks rather like champagne; lemon zest flavours combine with a biscuity tone that slips down rather easily despite its 8.5% volume. Next up was a darker and sweeter Belgian beer, Dubuisson Bush De Noel. A real hoppy treat this, loads of sweetness and dark malty flavours, a beer to be sipped and mulled over. At a rather heady 12% this not a beer to be taken lightly but it is full of Christmas cheer and a depth of cinnamon tones, real classy stuff. The final beer for me was a mighty English Christmas ale made by the Dark Star brewery called Russian Imperial Stout. This is an ink black ale with heavy liquorice overtones and a long lingering bitter sweetness. At 10.5% this is an absolute beast of a beer, especially when your served up a pint of the stuff. It is deep, dark and complex, like getting mugged by a Christmas pudding smoking a liquorice paper roll up. Divine stuff but like a hammer blow to the head, damn good thing I don’t have that much to do in the morning. And please excuse the focus on the image above. I'm not to blame. Much.

flickr fun

Up until a couple a weeks ago my flickr account was just somewhere to stash my photos so I could publish them here. So it's been quite a laugh recently to have a look at what various foodie types are up to. There seems to have been a rush as of late (actually, more like I have only just noticed) to form flickr groups dedicated to food, with some serios pro type behaviour going on. I like these:

Food and Wine Bloggers Group
Professional Looking Food
Too Pretty to Eat

Have a butcher's. It's always entertaining. You find yourself going ooooh!... aaaaaah!... blurgh!

Coffee spoons and Sunday blues

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room
So how should I presume?

I'm sure T.S Eliot wrote The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock on a Sunday afternoon. Every student who spent too much time loafing about in coffee shops smoking ludicrously strong cigarettes knows the poem. Since my school days I have despised Sunday afternoons and old Prufrock seems to capture that lost time perfectly. It gets to the hours of twilight, about 3.00pm/4.00pm in London at this time of year and I feel like a school kid with too much homework and a rapidly shrinking opportunity to get it done. I get tetchy and childish, behave oddly and generally make the girlfriends eyes roll as "Sunday MG" throws another tantrum. Sunday afternoon holds no small measure of terror for me. A nameless one, but real and unrelenting. So, it was with no small relief that I found myself drinking what is reportedly London’s best coffee at the Monmouth Street Coffee Company this Sunday afternoon. With a Sally Clarke mince pie to help ward off those potential blues.

From their communal farmhouse tables and piles of bread, butter and jam to which you can help yourself, to the quality of the coffee, which they roast on the premises, it's hard not to like this culinary landmark. It had become clichéd to say that they serve the best coffee and town and to be honest I very much doubt they do. I could name a couple of down at heel Italian sandwich shops where they have been seasoning their Gaggias for a couple of decades and make an espresso to make you slick back your hair, put cotton wool in your cheeks and start looking for a horses head. Having said that, they make a spectacular cappuccino and you can rest assured that the cakes will always satisfy. Was all this enough to ward off the Sunday blues? Almost, but not quite. I threw a hissy fit about 10 minutes after leaving.

Heavy Christmas

I've pretty much had my fill of Christmas already. I'm looking forward to the day itself, getting together with family for the first year in a while and cooking up a storm with my brother. Should be entertaining. I'm just a bit done on the whole Christmas food thing. I was hankering for a different season this lunch time. I wanted to step away from the heavy rich flavours and hues of December and get some spring lightness. Some fresh tastes and colours, get away from all those browns and reds. This recipe I found in the new Jamie Oliver which as cookbooks go (see my rant earlier in the week) I really rate, despite the fact his idiot gurning mug appears on nearly every page! The writings very him, laddish and light, but the tour through southern Italy that it represents is full of gems. This simple seared tuna with a lemon, oregano and oil dressing is typical. Not exactly local I know, but welcome never the less.

Tea and Sympathy

Back to basics tonight. A cup of tea. Tea cakes dripping with butter. Some days that's all I want. Tea and cakes and a chat with the girlfriend. Time spent catching up.

What price authenticity?

We all love cookbooks, yes we do. If your reading this and you don't love them then I'm afraid you've stumbled into a deeply fetishistic world, a world where photos of food and recipes are tokens of deep dark desires for fame, money and ultimately some sort of TV show on the Food Network.
I've been thinking about the books on my shelf. I bought myself an early Christmas present, David Thompson's Thai Food and a real beauty it is. Everything a cookbook should be, encyclopaedic, well written and lovely to look at, and best of all for us cookbook fetishists, authoritative and dictatorial. I attempted the green curry this evening and it took some creative rejigging. The list of ingredients was not that onerous but I was missing about a third, most of those I had a replacement for, the others were no hopers.

See, I have a theory. That deep down in all of us food lover types (we really have to come up with a better word than foodie) there hides a dark secret; we like nothing better than to be told we have to achieve the near impossible and that we should feel slightly guilty if we don't. We love nothing better that a list of ingredients that will have us traipsing round back alleys in dodgy areas of town. We get a rush of shadenfreude if we see others not living the ideal, hot with envy when we see the success of others.
Cookbooks have a hold over us like ancient tomes of alchemy; we pour over then, revelling in the fantastical creations we can see therein, modern day bestiaries, where the strange and the wonderful are on display never to be recreated in the burning crucibles of our kitchens. Ok, so I may have got a bit far there, but you know what I mean. Cookbooks can be so tyrannical at times, they can make us feel small and I think that's a real shame. The best writers, for me, are the ones that temper the desire for authenticity with regard for the practical. That doesn't mean the cheapen a dish but accept that location and practicality mean that things must inevitably adapt and that local conditions are as important as re-creating what is authentic. We are cooking in our homes with these things, we invite them in, the least they could do is not stare down their noses at us.

Then again, the green curry was seriously good, which begs the question, would it better with all the stuff I missed out? Only one way to find out...

Turrón

Picture the scene if you will, a young Monkey Gland sits at a Christmas day family table. Small, bald and fat men sit around a table strewn with the wreckage of a Christmas dinner, huge snifters of brandy are swilled, short stubby cigars are smoked and deeply impenetrable card games are played with much shouting in deeply impenetrable accents. Everyone has been there a very long time and various older members of the family are snoozing in other rooms. On the table huge slabs of turrón sit amongst the coffee cups and cigar wrappers. Young Monkey Gland takes a mouthful and his theory that all adults are frankly insane is given a further boost.

Turrón, a hard almond nougat, is a staple of a Spanish Christmas and one of those sweet things that is designed for adults. No child I know ever liked turrón, it was purely the preserve of aunts and uncles, along with ammaretti, Turkish Delight and anything served in a small glass that made you grimace when drinking it. They were adult sweets that we as children would view with suspicion every time they appeared on the table. Sweet, yes, but difficult to eat and needlessly complicated to a kids palate. Actually, even now I can only handle a tiny piece of this at a time and I only then with a coffee and a grappa close by.

Perfect G & T

Whatever kind of Christmas you're planning be sure to remember that the single most important thing on that ever expanding shopping list is bottle of good gin. There is no other liquid that will get you through the minefield that is Christmas relatively unscathed. The girlfriend insists that most of Christmas day is spent in a mild gin and tonic induced haze, arguing that this limits the scope for any of the major Christmas disasters. That evil-incarnate maiden aunt getting you down? Through the gin goggles she'll transform from cantankerous old witch to jolly eccentric game old bird. However, be aware that the gin buzz is a delicate beast and can easily descend into self loathing and recriminations if not nurtured carefully, gin will make you sicker than the sickest dog in a dog hospital if you go too far.

You'll be horrified to learn that traditionally the recipe for a gin and tonic calls for a 1:1 ratio of gin to tonic. This was in the bad old days when you couldn't trust the water so now it is more usual to adopt 3 parts tonic to one or two parts gin. Now, most old school bartenders will tell you that as a spirit mixer this will need to served in a lowball, I prefer a highball filled with ice. Coat your ice cubes in the gin and then pour your tonic water and wipe the rim with a lime wedge and then throw it in. Lemon is wrong. I don't care if you like it. Wrong. One other tip, you've probably bought good gin, like Bombay/ Bombay Sapphire, Tanqueray or Citadelle (yeah, I know it's French, but it's still good gin). Don't then ruin all that hard work with cheap tonic, I don't know how many times I've watched in slack jawed horror as someone pours flat shitty tonic into my drink.

Wassail and Wine

I'm staying on the seasonal fruit tip despite the glut of orange posts that appeared this weekend! We spent the early evening indulging in that most British of pasttimes; letting our feet freeze into solid blocks and singing christmas carols. When we got back I'd had the mulled wine steeping on the stove for an hour or so after letting it simmer for a while. Along with the traditional cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, oranges and lemon I'd let a healthy handful of cranberries soak in the liquid. These added a dry tone to the mulled wine, which is usually too sweet for me. Also, I filled a third of each cup with cranberry and elderberry tea before pouring in the wine to dilute it a little and soften the flavour. I made sure plenty of cranberries made it into each cup along with a generous pinch of lemon and orange zest.

Clementine Vs Satsuma. FIGHT!

The true sign of Christmas being on the horizon is for me the day that there are oranges everywhere. Clementines, tangerines and satsumas seem to be everywhere in December as the gluts of Spanish and North African winter oranges hit the chilly climes of northern Europe and we all go a bit nuts for them. People gorging themselves on mandarins is a common sight in the office in the hope that it will ward of that seasons cold virus. The smell of someone peeling a mandarin is one of those great Christmas smells, like chestnut roasters in Covent Garden, mulled wine at a friend’s house and photocopier toner at office parties.

For the uninitiated (like myself a couple of hours ago) who are a little unsure as the difference between all these types of small orangey fruit then here's a quick heads up. Clementines, tangerines and satsumas are all types of mandarin. Mandarins have been cultivated in China for a couple of thousand years, where they were deemed a fruit only suitable for the upper echelons of society and so were only exported to Europe in the 1900's. Of the various types of mandarin, clementines are smaller and tend to have fewer seeds, a very thin easily peeled skin. They are seemingly named after one Father Pierre Clement who, the story goes, inadvertently bred the hybrid orange in his orphanage garden in Oman. Tangerines, with loose skin and less sweetness, where named after their original port of origin in Tangiers, in fact, the word tangerine was already in common parlance before then as an adjective describing something from Tangiers. Satsuma's are just that. Satsumas from Satsuma, the Japanese province in which they were first cultivated, though, confusingly they are sometimes called mikans.

One potted history of small oranges later, we are left with the fact that for me they say Christmas more than mince pies, toy advertising and comedy visits to casualty at four in the morning after the office party. The stunning bag of clementines awaiting me when I got home tonight filled the house with the heady tang of southern Europe whilst we put up our Christmas decorations.

WBW #16: Judge a bottle by its label

Wine Blogging Wednesday (this month hosted by Derrick @ An Obsession with Food) has been one of those blogsphere events that I've always wanted to get into. Unfortunately for me I'm rarely organised enough to get through my life let alone buy the appropriate bottle of wine for a blogging event. Not so today. Strange forces where brewing in the fundament that meant I had seen the perfect bottle of wine for this month's event. Judge a bottle by it's label they said! Is there another way to choose wine? I replied.

So here we have a bottle of the single cheapest wine I think they sell in my local wine merchants. It cost 3 quid and they have a lovely big sign around it saying "Cheap as chips, actually probably pretty good with chips". Being a lover of card games the label had a certain charm and I have to say I quite like the no nonsense "Vin de Table de France". The wine makers themselves in their notes prided themselves on the good honest down to earth nature of their wine; "Le Prince Rouge is an unpretentious, uncomplicated, fruit first French table wine", they boast. I have to say I agree with them.

This is wine to get your sense of proportion back with. It's a bottle of red wine. Perfectly drinkable red wine that goes well on a Wednesday night with a pile of fish and chips. It is rough around the edges, yes, there is no length to the finish , ok, just a jolly burst of ruby red fruit in your mouth and then you're ready for another chip. A perky nose and good fun colour. I like it, I honesty do. It doesn't taste cheap, not at all, no nasty chemical over tones, no palate spoiling harshness, just a bundle of fruity tones wrapped up in brown paper. You'll need good chips though, don't scrimp there.

What's the beef?

Is there anything that hits that primal part of your brain as a piece of beautifully marbled meat waiting for the pan? Is there anything as sexy as a woman eating a bloody steak? Is there any dinner more deeply satisfying than this?

Later that same evening...

I'm sat up at nearly midnight, cup of camomile my only ally, having tossed and turned in bed, sleeplessness cause most likely by the massive protien hit I gave myself earlier in the evening and so I got thinking thinking about food, some would say as per usual. I got thinking about that steak and the way it made me feel, the way I got excited about it and thought of it as something to marvel at, something to cherish. After all this is a piece of meat, a bit of animal; A rather noble shaggy Angus, in this case, munching away on heather and the like. Yet, some foods excite the psyche, a great meal is up there with a good book, a great song, a fondly remembered love affair. Something vital, something extraordinary. Few of those meals are in Michelin starred restaurants, they are the simple ones, they remind us of friends, long gone relatives, good things and bad times. I suppose these things are so transitory, so ephemeral, cooking & eating with friends, with lovers, with family, so mundane, so everyday, you can easily forget how lucky you are to have them. Eat well!

And I'd just like to thank.....

For the 2nd year running Accidental Hedonist hosts the 2005 Food Blog Awards and nominations are open for a whole host of prestigious awards, so get over there and give me props, go on, big me up!

I tried to think of a pun for liver...

...but couldn't think of anything that appropriate. 50 Ways to Leave Your Liver; doesn't make any sense. Liver and Let Live; a stretch. Anyway, this is seared lambs liver with some stunning smoked organic back bacon and onions. The onions were caramelised slowly and finished with a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Liver is a pain in the arse to cook. It takes a fraction of a second to screw up, to go from lovely pink flesh to iodine flavoured cardboard. Cooked badly it is the worst meal imaginable, I remember school dinners that would make you gag even before you made into the lunch hall, but seared quickly it is a deeply visceral pleasure, that rich slippery flesh with a hint of blood is as sexy as a piece of animal gets. I floured mine with a little mustard powder to give it a slight devilled edge which works with the heavy smoke tang of the bacon. A great traditional British supper served with a fat Bordeaux on a cold December night and some schlocky TV. Perfect.

Sweet Dreams are made of Cheese

I went off on one of periodic cheese hunts yesterday, there are a couple of spot on shops in the area, including one called The Cheese Block which is probably one of the cities best, they boast over 300 cheeses don't you know, I'm not sure if I could count that many but I found a few choice items to snaffle down. First up was the pictured rosemary manchego, a hard Spanish pasteurised sheep’s milk cheese that is wrapped in rosemary as it cures, imparting a strong herbal tone to the mild peppery flavour. I've waxed lyrical about the combination of manchego and quince before, so won't bore you again, but suffice to say, the combination worked a treat here.

The addition of a ripe pear seemed appropriate with the next cheese, another Spanish number, Picos de Europa, the sweetness complementing the salty blue veins in this creamy cheese, a mixture of cow, sheep and goats milk again wrapped in leaves to cure. This is usually served with honey, but I liked the pear a little better, not as cloying and refreshing at the same time.

Lastly, British goats cheese called something like Tickledon, I say something like because my notebook got a touch water logged by an unexpected deluge and my memory is not what it used to be. Anyway, a stunning creamy goats cheese with a fresh lemony zest to it that held its own against the armada of Spanish cheese on the plate. I'll go back and find out what it was called, probably good excuse to buy some more.

Breakfast of Champignons

Mushrooms on Toast. Worcester Sauce. Salt. Pepper. Man, that's the way to start the day, if only I'd had some kidneys and a pint of Guinness in the house it may well have been damn near perfect. Still, these fat mushies did the job with a cup of builders tea, the newspaper and all the pre match commentary on the radio. Hmm, this post is remarkably similar to last Saturday's post...Must be getting into a routine...You got one on a Saturday morning? Give me a shout if it's more exotic than mine.

Red Kale

My favourite wintery green is kale, I love the strong flavour and on wintery nights there's nothing like it to feel like your bolstering your immune system against chills and colds. This red kale found it's way into my vegetable box and is awaiting some garlic, chili, and a fierce fiery wok.

Kitchen Time

Sometimes I enjoy the preparation of food more than sitting down to eat. There's the pleasure of being by yourself in the kitchen; just you and the the radio, the soft clunking sound of the knife on the chopping board and the odd swig of wine. Rustling in bags and putting things away, cleaning up as you go. There is a meditative quality to it, like an all too familiar dance. I know things can get hectic in the kitchen, it can be quite a stressful place if things go badly, but when your in tune with your task, it's a magical feeling of things coming together almost effortlessly.

Tonight, I set about cleaning squid, a fiddly messy task but one that I really like. It's one of those things that I get a lot of pleasure from, the knack needed to pull the skin off, the simple smell of sea and metallic twang of the ink and the sheets of pearly white flesh that your left with at the end. The cooking is a little more fraught, one of my favourite starters from the first River Cafe book, a lightening fast searing for the squid served with chilli, lemon and rocket.