Late

Chocolate cupcakes with Whisky buttercream

A fracture in my life is stopping me cooking. I did have a go this afternoon and half created some hemp felafel inspired by the Chocolate Lady but although I spent a pleasant hour grinding flax and hemp seeds and watching The Ghost and Mrs Muir the mixture that evolved tasted so revolting that it didn't even get as far as the oven but went straight into the compost.

So in anticipation of a hungry man arriving home and no dinner for him I literally whipped up some cupcakes like a good little woman. Oh it's not that I won't eat a cupcake but there's just something not right about their modern incarnations. And anything that requires me to do origami with parchment paper to make a piping bag (where is my piping bag?!?) is an abomination. After piping a couple with this construction I decided they looked prettier with hand swirls from the back of a teaspoon.

So there you have it, I'm late to the party again and I'm wearing the wrong shoes. Hope to be back soon.

Had them

The perfect chip. So many people think they have this cracked. I happen to be one of them. Although Heston's version, cooked three times is gilding the lily in my opinion (and the ones he did with an infused aroma of hay and injected with tomato ketchup - or did I dream that- were ridiculous) you can't make a good chip without cooking it twice.

More importantly still, you must have the right potatoes. In the Stripey Cat household we can make chips out of anything and often do but for proper chips, real chips that hold the attention completely through each crisply melting bite until the last scrap has been lovingly located and captured from the serving dish you need a variety of spud called British Queen. Oddly enough, this isn't a potato that is much grown in the UK anymore, but in Ireland where they know their chips it's a still a widely planted crop.

The oil is quite important too. We like a peanut oil for its high smoke point but olive oil is good handled carefully. Don't use it more than two or three times for health reasons. Fill your frying container not more than 1/3 full and have a fire blanket in the kitchen in case of emergency. I know you can use one of those automatic deep fat fryers, but why? Don't try to cook too many chips at one time.

Carefully chop your spuds into chunky pieces, leave for a while, say 15 minutes to an hour, in a bowl of icy water. Drain them, dry well on a clean tea towel.

Heat the oil to hot enough, and this is where I'm going to fail you all because I don't know the temperature. It's the temperature at which a cube of bread takes a minute to brown but what does that mean. I know, because I cut the cube (and eat the crouton!) but it's very imprecise. Nevertheless, with all the due care necessary when dealing with hot oil plunge your dried chips into the sizzling bath. It will foam up impressively. Let the chips sizzle away for around five minutes, they will not change colour much in this time, should not in fact, but will seal their outsides and stop taking in oil.

Lift the chips from the pan to a place of draining. Reheat the oil, just a tad hotter than it was before and return the chips to the pan. Another 4 minutes should see you with chips that are both golden and delicous!

Scoop them out and allow to drain for a moment, then salt liberally and serve.

Pissaladiere

Sorry for the short interruption in posting. Mr. Stripey Cat has been here and very sadly the poor old Black Cat has died. We've been a bit quiet and miserable.

This pissaladiere is a variation on tradition, the well known version from Southern France includes anchovies, olives and sometimes capers on the onion topping. This one has mushrooms and some strips of roasted red pepper for garnish. It also forms another entry in my informal series of 101 things to do with a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry.

Chop plenty of onions, any sort will do and cook very gently in plenty of olive oil and a good grinding of black pepper until they are very soft and beginning to turn golden. Stir in some fresh thyme leaves stripped from their woody stalks. Remove the mixture from the pan and set aside to cool. In the same pan quickly fry off some fresh white mushrooms so that they take on a golden glow and lose a little of their moisture.

On a greased baking sheet, unroll your puff pastry. Spread the onions over it to within 25mm of the edge. Top with mushrooms. I used some lemon thyme for herby seasoning and it was o.k. but I think I'd stick to the more usual form in future.

Decorate with thin strips of roasted red pepper. If you have none you can lightly fry off strips of a fresh one before starting assembly.

Cook at about 200C for 25 minutes until puffed and golden. Serve with a green salad and a good chilled rosé.

Salad Plate

Although anyone who knows me well will find this difficult to come to terms with I'm off my food this week. A combination of warm weather and anxiety in the trough of a depression has stolen my appetite and with it any inspiration I may have had for inventive cookery.

Still, I like to be thrifty and I have freshly dug potatoes and a pot of soya yoghurt that needed eating up. I made a potato salad with a dressing of mustard enhanced yoghurt and some capers.

I also have many courgettes. Some toasted hazelnuts, which would tempt the dead to eat, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar on some lightly stir fried cubes of courgette made another simple salad.

Finally, a tricolour of avocado, melon and marinated roast red pepper makes the plate look pretty.

And since even the photograph looked dejected and flat I've bumped the contrast dramatically which is what gives it that rather interesting 50s colour plate look.

Bon Appétit

Bread with Beer in it

The perfect solution to the vegan need for soda bread without the buttermilk, soda bread with beer in it instead.

This is a profoundly easy and extremely nice quick loaf that slices, toasts and would probably make excellent 'eggy bread' (I think some people call this French toast) although I've not tried that yet. The texture is firm on the outside, tender within and it keeps for a day or two wrapped in a clean cotton teatowel. Rather nicer than all the Irish soda breads I've tried over the years if the truth be told.

When I first read a recipe for it on Farmgirl Fare it seemed to call for extra flavourings and fat in the form of added cheese and egg washes so when I came to veganise it I added nutritional yeast, garlic powder, herbs all of which things did nothing to improve the quality and in the case of the nutritional yeast flakes (I blame that Gayelord) contributed an unpleasant bitter flavour. So the next time I tried it I gave all those extras the push and kept it simple, and that worked.

400g fine wholemeal flour
400ml beer, I used a german lager, these are usually vegan, it would be nice to try this with a wheat beer sometime.
25g brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 sachet (11g) baking powder.

Heat the oven to 200C. Mix all the dry ingredients together then add the beer and mix quickly into a thick batter. Make sure you stop mixing as soon as all the flour is incorporated.

Pour and scrape the mixture into a greased large loaf tin and cook for 55 mins to an hour. Test with a skewer to make sure it's cooked through, remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack for a few minutes before slicing.

Polenta e minestra

A bit of Italian for Sunday. This is one of the dishes that interested me when I read the cookbook; The Vegeterranean recently. What was particularly intriguing was the method they used to create the polenta croutons but when it came down to it, I didn't actually try that out today not least because the recipe says it will serve 8 and I'm on my own now until next weekend.

A quick whirl around the web (I wish I had my copy of the Silver Spoon here) is enough to assure me that this is a very well established dish originating in the poorer parts of Italy but none the worse for that. It's filling, delicious and cheap, which are all good things.

In my garden I have an unusual vegetable, Good King Henry, a sort of chenopod that has been first gathered and then cultivated for millennia as a sustenance food crop. As a substitute you can use any greens in season, from spring cabbage to spinach, chard, callaloo, kale or foraged greens like nettle tops and wild sorrel, all you need to do is adjust the blanching time according to the quality of your vegetables. I also used the first garlic bulb of the new season. Lucky me.

Polenta Croutons:

75g quick cook polenta (or traditional polenta and cook it longer!)
600ml cold water.

Mix the polenta with the water, bring slowly to a simmer, stirring continuously and cook for 3 or 4 minutes, then turn out into a wetted shallow dish or tin so that it is between 1 and 2 cm thick. Smooth the top, allow to cool and firm up for an hour or two before the next step.

Turn the polenta sheet out onto a cutting board and make neat cubes of it. Drizzle a little olive oil over the top and gently turn the cubes about in it until they are coated in oil. Lay them out on a tray and bake in a hot oven for 30 minutes to an hour (depending on the oven temperature, they easy to cook at the same time as something else). They will turn golden and crisp up a bit on the edges.

Minestra:

Take a handful of greens and cut into large shreds. Blanch the greens in a large pan of salted boiling water until they are softened. This will be quite quickly for tender cabbage, much longer for tougher veg. like the Good King Henry. I gave mine five full minutes. Spinach should be wilted in its own washing water, no extra needed.

Chop some garlic, to your taste, and a chilli (I didn't have one and used some shreds of red pepper and some chilli flakes). In a frying pan cook the garlic and chilli in a splash of olive oil until just beginning to colour, add your drained greens and stir all around. Finally (for 1 or 2 people) add 300ml of tomato stock (see below) or another vegetable stock, even made of your favourite stock powder, and let everything simmer for a moment to combine the flavours. Taste for salt and add some if needed.

Put polenta cubes into a deep soup bowl and top with the soup and abundant greens.



Tomato Stock or Broth:

4 large tomatoes, overripe is o.k.
600ml water
1 small onion
1/2 teaspoon salt

Chop the tomatoes up, skin, seeds and all and put them in the stock pan with the water, chopped onion and salt. A few celery leaves or a sprig of lovage may be added but don't overdo the flavourings.

Bring to a simmer and let cook gently with the lid on the pan for twenty minutes or so. Blend with stick blender and strain through a fine sieve. Yield: about 1 litre.

Seven Vegetables

Last night I made Seven Vegetables Couscous for my visitors. It's a rather easy meal that allows for chatter and distractions during the cooking which was just as well, I'd not seen Chris and Martyn for months and received a couple of phone calls while I was cooking as well.

The seven vegetables bit is almost poetic, you can vary them at will and make your own mind up whether garlic counts as a herb or vegetable as required. We had the basic essentials of onions, tomatoes and chickpeas, with potatoes (Stroma from the garden), courgettes, carrots and garlic. Other nice additions are green beans, aubergine, celeriac, pumpkin, what have you really. The tomatoes can be fresh or tinned. The chickpeas should be cooked beforehand (or use a tin).

Chop everything into bite sizes, fry off the onion and garlic in some good olive oil, add the rest of the vegetables, a little water and let everything stew. The seasonings are a piece of cinnamon stick, cumin, ground black pepper, hot pepper flakes to taste, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme (or any combination thereof) and a final addition of some chopped green coriander just before serving. Harissa is traditional but optional.

I don't have a steamer here so used instant couscous made with boiling water, allowed to swell and then fluffed up with a fork and some melted margarine.