Griddled lemony courgettes

This year I am growing yellow courgettes which makes them easier to spot before they turn to marrows. I keep hoping that I am going to get a courgette glut any minute, but so far none has materialised. I'm not sure if this is because they are yellow or if it's because the evil bastard snails almost destroyed the seedlings so they too a long time to recover and subsequently went into the ground late. Who knows?

This recipe is incredibly easy, delicious and can be eaten hot or cold (or something in between). I think I fist ate it at Carluccio's but I can't honestly remember. We often have this as a side dish but it works well mixed with pasta, too.

If you don't have a griddle you can just as easily use a grill. Come to that you could probably fry them if you so desired.

Serves two.

A couple of courgettes
Half a lemon
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the courgettes. I usually cut them into strips or on the slant to make longish ovals. Griddle them until they are soft and covered with thick seared stripes. I have trouble waiting and turn mine a lot so they are are usually criss-crossed. When they are done put them into a wide bowl or plate with a rim. Squeeze the lemon over them, the glug on some olive oil. Stir to coat, then season with salt and pepper.

Roasted Carrots with Fennel and Lemon

While we were in Devon earlier this month we went to Riverford Field Kitchen to celebrate P's 40th. The menu is entirely seasonal and although meat is served, the vegetables definitely star. Amongst the many delicious dishes two really stood out. The first was roasted carrots with fennel seeds and lemon*. This elevated the humble carrot which my Mum always cooked 'for the colour' and which P remembers from school with great distaste to something actually delicious. I came home and hunted through my Riverford cookbook, but no joy. A little experimentation later I've come up with the following. You may notice that fennel seed features: it's my new favourite spice (herb?). This year I'm going to harvest the seed from my plant instead of having to pull up 60 million seedlings which look terribly pretty but actually have roots that reach to Australia. Let me know if you want some, my plant is huge.

Ingredients

Some Carrots ( The above pic was for two. They were quite small). Fresh ones are best but sad bendy ones from the depths of the fridge work OK too.
A glug of oil.
Lemon juice.
Fennel seeds.

Peel the carrots if they've gone a bit funny in the bottom of the fridge. Otherwise just scrub them. If they are small then leave them whole. If they are thicker than an inch then chop off the thin end and split the thick end into two, chopping them into roughly two inch lengths. You could probably cut fat coins, if you felt like it. (Go crazy: carve a goldfish, I dare you.)

After you have finished artistically chopping, chuck them into a roasting tin, and glug some oil in. One glug, I reckon. A big knob of butter instead of oil would probably be delicious if you aren't watching the saturated fat. Then squeeze some lemon over. I found that a whole lemon was too sharp for two people, so let's say half a lemon. More carrots, more lemon. Then sprinkle on about half a teaspoonful of fennel seeds, unless you are feeding six in which case try a whole teaspoonful. Stir the lot around to coat the carrots then season with salt and pepper and bung the lot in the oven at gas 7 for 45-60 minutes. In our case this time is determined by how long the roast takes. The carrots are ready when they are tender. If they happen to be ready before the rest of the food then shove them at the bottom of the oven to keep warm.

If you feel fancy you can chop some parsley over them to serve, but I'm usually too busy making gravy.

Here are some exciting carrot facts:

1) carrots contain more beta carotene cooked than raw.
2) Carrot vitamins are just below the surface of the skin, which is why it's better not to peel them.
3) Pre-scrubbed plastic packed carrots are evil.
4) The variety of carrots most commonly found in supermarkets is grown not for its taste, but for its resistance to breakage.

One of the above facts is the opinion of the author.

*The second was a beetroot salad, of which more later.

Runner beans with tomato sauce.

I wouldn't normally reproduce a recipe that I haven't at least fiddled with, but this one from the Able and Cole cookbook is so simple and so delicious that I shall make an exception. The brilliant thing is that just about everything in it is in season right now, so you can either use up your tomato and bean glut on it, or it'll be super cheap to buy the veg.

Serves two, mixed in with pasta. Good as a side too, apparently.

Oil
A handful of runner beans, cut into inch long strips
4 largeish tomatoes
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
a large clove garlic
a small chilli (optional)
slosh of wine (I used vermouth, I drink the wine)
1 tsp sugar
1tsp cider or wine vinegar
small handful of basil
salt and pepper

Deseed the tomatoes by making a small slit in the skin and squishing them over the compost caddy or bin or whatever. Chop them roughly. Steam the beans for 3 mins then run them under cold water to stop them cooking further. Next time I'll probably bung them in with the past for the last 3 mins and skip that step. Glug the oil into a pan and heat, then fry the garlic and fennel seeds. Do not allow the garlic to go brown, it tastes nasty. Add the tomatoes and chilli if using, along with a slug of wine/vermouth. Simmer for 20 minutes. The Able and Cole recipe says covered but my tomatoes were very wet and my wine slosh very generous, so I took the lid off so it'd reduce a bit. Once it's nice and saucey-looking add a tsp of vinegar and a tsp of sugar (these are magic ingredients which make tomato sauce taste fabulous), stir in the beans and cook until they are warmed through. Stir in some chopped basil and add another glug of olive oil if you are not dieting. Season to taste.

I stirred ours through pasta twirls and we had a bit of parmesan on top. It was bloody lovely.

A significant cake.

I asked P what cake he would like for his significant birthday and then proceeded to ignore his request for my Grandma's frankly delicious fruit cake. Fruit cake for a birthday? No, no, no. You can't put candles in a fruit cake. Well, maybe you can, but I don't hold with it. I know that the best birthday cakes are chocolate cakes. (You may wonder why I bothered to ask him. I do, too.)

The recipe is my mum's and was written on a scrap of paper by me in 1980-something when I first left home. A few years ago I scaled the recipe up as my cake tins are wider than my mum's (mine are about 8 inches) and the cakes were consequently coming out too flat. The recipe is for a straight sponge but includes instructions for making it chocolate. It is so easy-peasy to make that I honestly wonder why anyone ever buys a shop bought sponge.

8oz sugar (should be caster really but granulated does OK)
8oz marg/butter (my mum always used half and half. Proper birthdays get all butter around here. If you use all margarine and then you don't have to wait for the butter to soften.)
8oz flour (6.5 if making chocolate) My recipe at this point says 'sieved' but frankly I don't always bother.
4 eggs
a little milk or water

If you want a smaller cake then do 6,6,6, 3. A tiny one 4,4,4,2. A huge one? 10,10,10,5

If making chocolate cake
1.5oz cocoa (Green and Black's is my preference)
1tsp baking powder


1. Cream the fat and sugar. According to the Blessed Delia this is the most important part of cake making and you should cream until the fat/sugar mixture changes colour. I can't actually remember why.

2. Beat the eggs and add them slowly to the mixture. If you add them in a hurry then whole thing will go all curdled-looking which is not actually a problem, but you will feel much less of a domestic goddess.

3. Fold in the dry ingredients. If you are adding cocoa it's probably worth sieving it all in as cocoa can be a bit lumpy.

4. Add liquid if needed, says my recipe. Perhaps that's if you are using small eggs. I usually use medium eggs and can't say I have ever add extra liquid.

5. Divide the mixture between lined greased sponge tins. For goodness sake sake do line and grease the tins boring though it is. It is soul destroying when your cake sticks as I have learnt to my cost.

6. Cook in the middle of your oven at 350 degrees/Gas Mark 4 for 20-30 minutes. Try not to bang the oven door when you put the mixture in, and resist the temptation to check the cake for at least 20 minutes as a sudden change in temperature can cause the cake to sink. The cake is done when you can touch the centre and it springs right back. I also usually stick a skewer into the middle: When it comes out with nothing stuck to it then the cake is done.

7. Turn out and cool on a cake rack (aka the grill rack in our house).

For the buttercream filling soften 2oz butter (you can use margarine but it won't taste as good) and mix it with 4oz icing sugar. In my family we always flavour the filling in a chocolate cake with coffee. Mix a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee (I have tried making espresso and using that but it isn't really strong enough) with a little hot water, and mix slowly into the buttercream. Spread on the bottom sponge layer and slap the other one on top.

Normally I'd just dust icing onto the top, but a special birthday calls for a chocolate covering. I usually use supermarket cooking chocolate but I do make sure it's got a nice high cocoa content. Melt it in a bowl over a saucepan of gently boiling water. Try and avoid getting water in the chocolate as it goes all funny and grainy (still tastes fine though, so not a complete disaster). When it's good and runny pour it over the top of the cake. A whole bar is very generous so it will probably run down the outside a bit (yum!).

I had a brainwave and decided to add silver balls to P's cake. I like silver balls.

In praise of pink things II

Another vegetable I don't exactly yearn for, I bought the beetroot seed on the basis that a) it grows in shade b) it was 38p. I then proceeded to drop most of the packet when I was trying to sow it, so that far more got planted than I was planning. It has grown well enough under the mini fruit trees and the pink-ribbed leaves are pretty, and edible. I am told that when you have beetroot with leaves on you should remove the leaves as soon as possible as they draw moisture from the root. As you can see from the photo my beets are tiny (about 1.5 inches long). This may be due to the shade or it could be my desperation to pull them up and see what they look like.

A couple of weekends ago I mentioned the beetroot to P's mum. Her immediate reaction was 'You can make Prickley salad!' Cool name, I thought. The only thing I can actually remember from her list of ingredients is sultanas.

P did a bit of googling, and found a recipe which I proceeded to almost completely ignore, leading to the following:

Prickley Green Beetroot Salad*

1 raw beetroot, grated (or chopped small if you prefer to avoid the pink splatter factor)
a couple of delicious spring onions
a handful of sultanas
Chopped beetroot stalks (if available)
a slosh of vinegary salad dressing (I used half vinegar half oil: will try lemon juice another time.)
half a tsp cumin seeds

Combine the ingredients in a bowl and leave for 15 minutes for the sultanas to swell and the flavours to combine. I'd have served it with some fresh coriander on top, had I had any.

The earthy sweetness of the beetroot and sultanas are nicely balanced by the acidic dressing and spring onions. The cumin was a last minute impulse addition but I thought it worked really well.

*why on earth is it called prickley and green when it is neither?!

Ginger cordial

I seem to be on a quest for the perfect cordial. I quite like my water to taste of something occasionally, but I really don't like the super-charged stuff you get in supermarkets. It's far too sweet and I'm not a great fan of cordialised orange/lime/blackcurrant flavours.

I bought some Rhubarb and Ginger cordial the other day which was...quite nice, but it lacked any kind of gingery kick. What's the point of ginger without the kick? I ask you.

I resolved to make some myself. You can tell I'm on holiday. Oh how I love being on holiday. A bit of googling later:

Ingredients:

1 large lump of root ginger (about 120g, actually)
1 lemon (might use 2 next time)
1l water
10fl oz sugar
square of muslin (I've been known to use a clean dishcloth..)
funnel
sterile bottles

Method

• grate the ginger and put it in a largeish saucepan with the water
  
• add the zest of the lemon (I took it off with a potato peeler)
• squeeze the juice of the lemon into the pan
• bring it to the boil
• simmer for about 20 mins
• leave the mixture to cool and infuse. I left it overnight. It tasted considerably better in the morning than it did 2 hours after it was cooked.
  
• sterilise* your bottles (wash and dry in a low over for 10 mins)
• scald your muslin/bottletops/funnel (pour boiling water over them in a bowl)
• bring the ginger liquid back up to a simmer (I do this because otherwise it spits and boils when I pour it into the bottles which are still hot from the oven because I am too impatient to allow them to cool).
• pour through the muslin/funnel into the bottles. Seal.

And guess what? It tastes great! Gingery, and everything. Not too sweet. I bet it'd be nice with sparkling water. I bet it'd be even nicer with vodka....

*I'm not sure my bottles are the most sterile of sterile things, frankly. I'm keeping my open cordial in the fridge, and keeping a close eye on the one in the cupboard for signs of fermenting. Though would fermenting be a bad thing? Ginger beer...now there's a thought...

Weekend soup: broccoli and parmesan.

This soup was born of a happy accident involving week-old broccoli. Mostly I throw soup together from whatever is sitting in the fridge, and it's not often that the result sounds like something that came out of a recipe book.

Erin recently introduced us to the joys of adding our parmesan rind to soups. It's amazing how cheesy the soup comes out, and I now get quite excited when it starts to get low (yes, I do need to get out more). I actually saved this Christmas' cheese rinds to add to soup. Unfortunately I forgot all about them and when I found them again they were a bit greener than is strictly healthy.

Anyway: soup.

Ingredients:

1 large onion
2 sticks of celery
1 large carrot
1 clove of garlic
1 head of broccoli
a parmesan rind (or you could add a finger's width of parmesan, or another cheese rind).
Stock (we've run out so I used Miso soup powder).
Salt and black pepper.

Method:

Fry the chopped onions in a glug of olive oil until they begin to soften. Add the chopped celery and carrot along with a goodly grind of black pepper and some salt, and fry them gently while you chop up the garlic and the broccoli. Stick those in the pan (I added the whole head of broccoli: stalk and all) and stir to coat them with the oil. Put in the cheese rind. It will melt entirely during cooking and leave cheesy dots in the soup. Add the stock and top up with water until the vegetables are just covered. (If you're not using a pressure cooker then you'll need slightly more liquid to allow for evaporation.) I cooked mine at high pressure for ten minutes, though I probably could have got away with seven. If you're not using a pressure cooker then put the lid on your pan and cook until the vegetables are tender. I'm guessing 15 minutes.

Blend and serve.

Sweet potato and cumin soup.

Soup: it's a weekend thing. I saw a recipe for a soup of this name on MyDish, and then changed it. I'm difficult like that.

Oil (I used olive oil)
One large onion
One tsp cumin seeds
One medium leek
A couple of sticks of celery
A large sweet potato
A palmful of ground almonds
Chicken (or vegetable) stock
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper



Chop up all the veg. Actually I do this as I go along but you may like to chop them all up and put them into little bowls so that you can pretend to be Keith Floyd. You'll need a glass of wine for that..

Heat a small sploosh of oil in a large pan or pressure cooker. I try not to use much oil as I eat too much cheese and cake. Add the onions and fry gently until they are beginning to turn translucent.

Add the cumin seeds (you could use ground if you have no seeds) and wait until they begin to sizzle and release their smell. Put in the leeks and unless you are in a tearing hurry (as I usually am), wait for them to wilt a bit before throwing in the chopped celery and sweet potato.

Next add a palmful of ground almonds. These are a thickening agent (taste nice too, plus almonds are right good for you: high in calcium and magnesium don'tcha know), so if you have none you could use flour, (I'd rather have thinner soup.) Stir the whole lot around a bit then add enough stock to just cover the vegetables.

At this point I bring it all to the boil, stick the lid on the pressure cooker and cook on high pressure for 10 minutes, but if you have no pressure cooker and like waiting longer for your lunch then you can cover and simmer for 20 mins (or until the sweet potato is soft).

Liquidise, then stir in a squeeze of lemon juice (I used half a lemon but your lemony threshold may be lower than mine) before serving. This cuts the sweetness of the sweet potato and almonds and just lifts the whole thing a bit.

Happy Souping.

I see no-one's ironed the tablecloth....

Cheesy Valentine Hearts

So you have spare egg yolks because of a minor indiscretion with a chocolate roulade, what are you to do with them?



Duh, you make cheese straws. Or in this case Cheesy Valentine Hearts. Because of Valentine's day: geddit?

My Cheesy Valentine Hearts were made with wholemeal flour and half fat cheese, because I am a masochist. They still have butter in, because I'm not yet completely insane. I strongly suggest that you use proper white flour and proper cheese for the full saturated fat experience. Alternatively, you can have them hippy chewy like I did and pretend that they are a bit healthy (they aren't).

Here is P's mum's recipe, for a modest quantity. Naturally, I made double. We will never be thin.

2oz flour
2oz butter or marge (butter tastes so much better)
3oz mature cheddar
1 egg yolk (I added an extra egg yolk to compensate for the wholemeal flour)
pinch salt
pinch cayenne
teaspoon chilli flakes (optional, for chilli addicts)

Combine all the dry ingredients, then add the egg yolk. It's that hard. It's even harder if you use a food processor. Roll out to 1/4 in thick on a floured surface, and either cut into strips about half an inch thick or have fun cutting out pretty shapes. I used stars at Christmas, and am now looking for an excuse to use my flower-shaped cutter. lay on a baking sheet* and cook at Gas mark 8 (450) for 5-9 minutes. You do need to keep an eye on them because the window between 'nicely browned' and 'burnt and horrid' is quite a narrow one.

*they have so much fat in them that there's no need to grease, but they will stick a bit because of the cheese meltage. A fish slice is handy for scraping them off, and if they break you are allowed to 'test' them. Them's the rules!

Chocolate Roulade

We're supposed to be on a healthy diet here, so naturally any excuse to step off the low fat low carb high fibre regime is eagerly embraced. Naturally Valentine's day is such an excuse. We decided to cook a meal on Saturday night, and when P said he'd do the main course I volunteered to do pudding. Then out of my mouth, as if from nowhere came the words 'Chocolate Roulade'.

Chocolate Roulade has been a stalwart of family celebrations since roughly the mid 1980's. It's something I have eaten hundreds of times, but never made. I had to ring my Mum for the recipe.

6oz plain chocolate (yeah baby)
5 eggs, separated
6oz caster sugar
3tbsp hot water
1/2 pint double cream
something nice to go in the cream (optional)
icing sugar
13 1/2 x 9 1/2 inch shallow tin*

1.Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of slightly simmering water.

2.Separate the eggs. Put the whites into a glass before you pour them into a bowl, that way you might avoid having to use three extra eggs because you accidentally got yolk into the whites so had to throw it away, like I did. Actually later Mum told me it probably would have been OK with a bit of yolk in the white, but still.

3. Whisk the sugar into the egg yolks. It seems like a lot of sugar into not much egg yolk, but it's OK. Whip until the yolk/sugar mixture goes paler. (That's the air going into it which will help it rise, innit.)

4. Remove the melted chocolate from the healt and allow to cool a little. In this instance I decided 'a little' meant 'until you can dip your finger in and lick it without fear of burning'. Stir in the three tbsp of hot water, and marvel as the chocolate changes colour and thickens. Coo!

5. Stir the chocolate mixture into the yolks and sugar. At this point I had a major panic that the yolks were cooking, but later I realised that it went instantly much stiffer because the yolks were cooling the chocolate. Phew!

6. Whip the egg whites until stiff. I now have a food processor. It's bloody marvellous, it would have taken an age by hand.

7. Fold the egg whites gently into the chocolate mixture with a metal spoon, then pour into a tin which has been oiled, lined with greasproof paper and oiled again. The oiling is key. Do not skimp on the oiling.

8. Put in the centre of the oven at gas mark 4 (350 degrees) and cook for 20 mins.

9. After 20 mins remove from the oven and allow to cool for a bit. In Emma patience terms this means 10 mins. Place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of the tins, and then cover with a damp tea towel. You are then supposed to leave this overnight. I left it for about four hours. It was fine. It basically needs to have got soggy enough that you can roll it up.

10. Whip the cream until it is stiff. At this point I added the zest of two oranges. I remember my Mum adding raspberries. My Dad said that sometimes they add Grand Marnier, or Creme de Menthe. You could add anything that goes with chocolate. You could even add more chocolate.

11. Turn out the chocolate sponge onto a sheet of greaseproof paper which has been dusted liberally with icing sugar. Do not panic if it breaks (mine did). Spread the cream over the sponge, mending any breaks.

12. Roll up the sponge and cream from the narrower end. I found the I could lift up the geasproof paper and get my hands under to help it roll and squish together.

13. Eat. It's very rich, so you will probably need a friend to help you. If you do not have a friend, this will almost certainly buy you one.

Thanks Mum! :)


*I do not have a tin of these dimensions. I used two smaller ones, so now I have a spare Chocolate Roulade in the freezer (yes, it freezes well too). It is available for parties, christenings and bar mitzvahs.

Anything to swap?

I went to Plummy Mummy's house on Friday for an Indian cooking lesson. The original intention was to swap skills; I was supposed to show her how to crochet in return for her okra curry making lesson. Unfortunately (or possibly luckily for her) she worked out how to crochet a square all on her own using only the power of the internet. So in the end I definitely got the better deal, and very very good deal it was too. My goodness the curry was delicious. So was the other one, with the vegetable I have forgotten the name of. I hope she will also post that recipe (hint, hint). I wish I'd taken a picture to jolly up this entry, but I was too busy scoffing. No change there, then.

Despite the one-sided swap, I did think: this could be a Good Thing. So many people do things that they could teach other people. What if more of us got together and exchanged our skill? I reckon it'd be brilliant.

Here is a list of stuff I reckon I could show other people how to do.

1) How to crochet a square, and then crochet another one and join it on as you go.
2) How to play the ukulele.
3) How to knit a seamless hat with magic loop.
4) How to cook various cakes.
5) How to make chicken stock.
6) How to make gravy.

I'm sure there is other stuff, too. I have a slew of printmaking skills but those slightly require a studio and specialist equipment. I am really thinking of more ordinary, every day stuff.

Do you have anything you could skill-swap? I bet you do.

Yellow Soup

For reasons too tedious to go into, I am attempting to cut down on carbohydrates in my diet. This has had a knock on effect on my soup cooking, which frequently involves potato. I like a bit of potato in my soup as it improves the texture and makes it a bit more filling.

This weekend I devised a soup which has no potato, but still has a smooth texture and is plenty filling. Here 'tis:

olive oil
1 small onion
1 medium leek
2 sticks of celery
a large carrot
1 clove garlic
1tsp tumeric
4 good handfuls of red lentils
about 2 litres of stock. I used chicken stock from the freezer and supplemented that with a tbsp of vegetable stock powder.
salt and pepper

Slosh some oil into a large pan (I used my pressure cooker) and heat. Chop the veg and garlic into whichever size you fancy (I was having a small day yesterday), and sautee gently in the oil for about five minutes. Add a tsp of tumeric and stir. Chuck in the lentils and stir them around to coat with the oil, then add the stock, a good pinch of salt and some pepper.

At this point I brought the soup to a simmer and pressure cooked it on high for ten minutes. This meant that the lentils almost completely disintegrated, leaving a smooth sauce for the rest of the vegetables to sit in. If you don't have a pressure cooker* then could probably need to simmer the soup for at least 50 minutes to really cook down the lentils, which means you'll have to add extra water to prevent the pan from boiling dry.

The resultant soup is a cross between a thin dahl and a thick soup. The tumeric, which I seem to remember is supposed to be good for colds (I just like the taste) gives the whole soup a lovely golden yellow colour.

You could probably do something fancy with browned onions as a garnish, but I had a bit of toast. I can't give up carbs altogether, can I?!


*get one, they are bloody brilliant.

oops

A quick heads-up about the recipes from the Hairy Bikers programme. They seem to have been written down by the women who cooked them on the show, and many of them contain errors of omission which extreme familiarity with a recipe can bring. P made a delicious Key Lime Pie from the show yesterday, but as the recipe forgot to mention that one should add the caster sugar in the list of recipes to the egg whites for the meringue, and he's never made meringue before, the topping was not as successful as it might have been. (It was still yummy.) I had a similar problem with the Pakora recipe but fortunately it was fairly obvious that they should be fried (plus I'd seen the programme).

I've had a little moan about this on the BBC forum about the show. I expect they'll leap into action and double check them all (!), but in the meantime take care with them and if it's a recipe you aren't at all familiar with, perhaps google and compare with another similar recipe just to make sure nothing obvious is missed out.

Pakoras

Let me just begin by saying that the Hairy Bikers irritate me. They are no substitute for the Two Fat Ladies, and many of the eleven year olds I teach are more mature and infinitely funnier. Usually I give their programmes short shrift.

Having said this, I have become strangely addicted to Hairy Bikers: Mum Knows Best. If you are not familiar with the format, the hairy pair travel the country talking to mums and collecting their family recipes. If you can overlook the rampantly sexist assumption that only women cook for their families, then there are some genuinely interesting and manageable recipes. The segment when the hairy ones cook in front of an audience indicates that their banter works live, too.

This week's gem was the Pakoras. I've never fried anything in more than a couple of tablespoonfuls of oil, let alone attempted the sort of Indian street food I salivate over in Plumstead, but it turns out that they are ridiculously easy to make, and delicious. Apparently Garam flour does not absorb oil as much as wheat flour, so they are virtually a health food, too.


Ooh, they were yummy. I suspect they would have been even crispier and yummier had the gas flame not gone out without me noticing for a while. I used carrot, onion and chard (from the garden!) in ours. Next time I shall also make some fresh chilli and coriander chutney to go with them. I'm salivating already.

Oat cakes

When I got the River Cottage bread handbook for Christmas I was excited to see a recipe for Scottish oat cakes. I love oat cakes, and what doesn't taste better homemade than shop bought? Home made oat cakes: must be a definite yum yum. In between casting on another hat and ripping it out again and swearing and casting it on again and ripping it out again, I dived into that recipe the moment I had a moment.

I had a false start involving a misunderstanding about oatmeal* (you can't food process porridge oats and use that instead of oatmeal, OK? It's different stuff despite also coming from an oat.) A trip to a health shop later I returned to the recipe armed with proper actual oatmeal (chopped rather than rolled like porridge oats), and set about combining them with equal parts porridge oats, a pinch of salt, 2tbsp of sunflower oil, some just boiled water and a hefty pinch of salt.

Things didn't look too bad as they went into the oven: They held together in the cookie cutter I was using and went into the oven undamaged. Thirty minutes later we were standing over the oven waiting to taste (and waiting to go out for lunch).



I am sorry to report that my oatcakes mainly taste of plain old oat, with perhaps a hint of sunflower oil. A rather noticable and not very pleasant hint. I realise that given the ingredients this should not be a surprise, but somehow I expected them to taste a bit better. They may improve when introduced to some mature cheddar, but I suspect that the oatcake will have to be balanced on the cheese, as they are considerably crumblier than is practical for the other way around.

It is a disapointment: I cannot lie. I suppose I'll have to go and cast on that hat again.

EDIT: We tried them with cheese. Not only did they not taste that good, but they were incredibly hard work to eat. Hours of chewing.

*confusingly, the Americans call what we Brits call 'porridge' 'oatmeal', so if you google it you get a lot of pictures of porridge.

Preserved Lemons

Preserving lemons is absurdly easy. All you need is lemons, salt and a jam jar. My main difficulty with preserved lemons was that I never quite knew what to do with them. Who needs all that salty lemon? Fortunately it turns out that they last for ages (mine have gone a year in the fridge although the liquid they're in starts to look a bit scary), you only use the rind anyhow, and they make a delicious addition to cous cous. Anything which makes cous cous taste of something gets my vote (add some raisins while you're at it, and toasted pine nuts if you're in the mood for actual cooking). You can add them to rice or salad or even make a traditional tagine. To be honest I've never made a traditional tagine (one of these days...) but if I did I'm certain I'd need a preserved lemon.



Anyway, make them: it's fun. Quarter the lemons without cutting them all the way through, pack them with salt and stuff them into a clean jam jar. I've discovered that a tight squeeze works better, and there's always the comedy value of lemon juice squirting in your eye as you force them in. Stuff in a bit more salt, add a bay leaf and some coriander seed if you feel fancy, then screw on the lid and leave for about three days. The juice theoretically comes out of the lemons and fills up the jar, but when it doesn't you can top up the jar from the tap. Shove them in the back of the fridge and after a month you can have fun hoiking them out and slicing off bits. Cous cous that actually tastes of something. Who knew?