Date Night

Dating is a bit of a mystery to me.  Sure I’ve been on a few dates, and more often than not, meeting up for coffee or a drink is a valid way to get to know someone.  When I am asked to dinner, or lunch, however, I get really nervous.  There’s the usual, what am I going to wear?  What if he doesn’t come?  What if he hates me?  What if I hate him?  How am I going to leave?  These questions are date questions, regardless of the setting.  Going for a meal however prompts one more question, one very important and difficult question: what am I going to eat?  I am a messy eater under the best of circumstances.  I get food on my dress almost every time I eat, and I get food on my face a surprising amount of the time.  I’m just not an attractive girl to be around whilst there’s food, so one of the key concerns for me on a date involving eating, is to try and choose the tidiest thing to eat.

There are the obvious ones.  Spaghetti and noodles are definitely off the table.  Pizza’s ok as long as I can use my knife to cut bit-size pieces; I’ve too often been the victim of stringy cheese.  Burgers are a no.  Sushi is a no.  Anything needing chopsticks: no.  I’m not bad at wielding them, but usually, if I slip up, my dinner will be in my lap.  Salad is a huge no, those deadly leaves are always flicking vinaigrette on my face, dress, and hair, and I don’t want to spend the whole night scented with a garlic and lemon dressing wafting from my person.  Garlic is obviously contentious.  I don’t mind smelling of garlic if he does, but I have a friend who, although he loves eating garlic, cannot stand the smell, and you never know how the person sitting opposite you feels about it.  I once read that there is a state law in Minnesota declaring that you’re not allowed to go to the cinema within five hours of eating garlic. Perhaps the person I’ll be eating with is a supporter of that law? 

The thing is, though, I usually get so nervous by the very idea of eating in front of someone who I don’t know that well, I turn up either so hungry I’ll eat anything that comes with mashed potatoes, or too nervous to eat more than soup (dangerous: so many things can go wrong). All my deliberations are, therefore, thrown out of the window.

When I am cooking for a date, however, I am most definitely in control.  There maybe a little added pressure on whether he’ll like my cooking or not, but generally I’ll cook something that’s going to make me happy, and if it doesn’t make him happy, well, he’s not the man for me.

So when cooking for a man this weekend, I was feeling, although still a little nervous, more confident.  I picked something I could eat with a spoon (my weapon of choice) and out of a bowl (higher sides to catch any splashing).  Made sure there wasn’t any nuts (he’s highly allergic, and I’d already made a joke about killing him) lit some candles, made a playlist and felt pretty much ready to go.

It turns out, however, that there was one thing I probably should’ve thought about a tiny bit more.  When I refused to let him eat until I’d photographed his bowl, I was met with a some-what puzzled look.  I had, of course, neglected to mention that I write a blog about my cooking, and that comes with photos and stories.  I told him in the end, as an explanation, but I didn’t tell him what it was called.  If I’m not happy with him knowing I’m a messy eater, I’m really not happy about him knowing about my neurosis surrounding being a messy eater, or in fact dater, as I have so coherently chronicled here.

Pig and Beans

enough for about four people

five sausage sized chorizo, in chunks

eight chipolatas

six rashers of streaky bacon, chopped

one onion, chopped

two small leeks, chopped

two carrots, chopped

four cloves of garlic, finely chopped

a large glass of red wine

400ml tomato passata

two bay leaves

one can of butterbeans, drained and rinsed

to finish

juice of half a lemon

a handful of chopped parsley

a large handful of coarse breadcrumbs

Heat the oven to 200c

In a heavy casserole pan, fry the sausages and chorizo in a little olive oil until they've got some colour and the fat is beginning to run.  Remove from the pan and set aside.  Fry the bacon in the same oil until crisp, and remove that from the pan too.

Turn down the heat and cook the onion, leeks and carrot with the garlic until they're all soft.  Add the wine, stir and cook for a few more minutes.  Then add the tomato.  Throw the sausage, chorizo and bacon back into the pan with the bay leaves and the butterbeans.

Leave to cook over a gently heat for twenty five minutes.  After that, you can remove from the heat and put in the fridge for a day or two if you need

Otherwise, stir the lemon juice and half of the chopped parsley into the pan, cover with breadcrumbs and put into the oven for another 25 minutes.

Serve with the rest of the chopped parsley sprinkled on top, and perhaps a green salad.

What we ate last night

I haven’t been doing all that much cooking lately.  It’s been a busy few weeks, and there have been a few changes going on.  In reaction to all this business, I’ve been surviving on a diet made entirely of cheese, sushi and Yorkshire tea.  Not at the same time, but usually at hourly intervals.  So when I invited a few friends round for dinner, I realised I had no idea what to cook.  I couldn’t just give them cheese; no matter how much I wanted to eat the cheddar that I knew was in the fridge.  So I thought I’d ease my self back into cooking with my favourite Nigel Slater recipe.  But the thing about using a recipe you know off by heart is that you always end up experimenting.

Honestly, I don’t know how many times I’ve been shouting at the TV when someone on masterchef says they haven’t practiced their dish.  I mean, come on, it’s masterchef.  Masterchef.  Why on earth would you experiment on masterchef?  Now I’m not saying that the friends I had round for dinner were John or Greg, but still, as I meandered through the shops, picking up what looked good, I did worry that if it wasn’t delicious, I would be giving my guests cheese.

So at home, faced with my new knife, which, incidentally, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever owned, my new casserole pot, which is also big and very beautiful, I started cooking.

There were no disasters.  The stew was, well, a stew.  There’s not really so much that can go wrong.  Once I got into the routine of stew making, which, looking back at the past recipes I have posted here, stew making is something I am very well practiced in.  But the cake was what I was most nervous about.  Because you can never really tell how a cake is going to turn out until it’s done, and then there’s nothing you can do to rectify any mistakes.  And with a gluten free beetroot and chocolate cake there are a lot of things that could’ve gone wrong.  I was nervous that it was going to be too wet, with the beetroot and the ground almonds all together, but it was the best cake I’ve ever made.  I keep looking at the remains with warm affection, and a hefty dose of pride.

Chicken and Bean Stew

For five

Two chicken thighs per person

Three leeks, sliced

Eight cloves of garlic

200g pancetta or bacon, cut into small chunks.

500ml chicken stock

a large glass of white wine

a handful each of thyme and parsley

2 tins of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed.

Preheat the oven to 160°c

In a big casserole pot that has a lid, over a medium high heat, brown the chicken pieces in a little olive oil.  It might take a few batches.  When they’re brown all over, remove them from the pan.

In the same oil, fry the bacon, and remove from the pan.

Reduce the heat to a low heat before adding the garlic cloves, whole but flattened a little.  Then add the leeks.

Add the glass of wine and let it bubble gently before adding the stock and the beans.

Throw the bacon and the chicken back in the pan.  Tuck in some thyme stalks, put the lid on and put it in the oven.  Leave to bubble gently for an hour, turn up the heat to 180°c and take the lid off for the last twenty minutes, with a sprinkling of thyme leaves.

Sprinkle with parsley before serving.  It’s nice with a simple salad.

Chocolate and Beetroot Cake

Makes a twenty cm cake

250g cooked beetroot, pureed into a coarse paste

200g 70% chocolate

4 tablespoons espresso

200g butter, cubed

5 eggs

190g golden caster sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

100g ground almonds

100g buckwheat flour (plain flour or rice flour would be good too)

crème fraiche and poppy seeds to serve

Lightly grease a 20cm cake tin, and line the bottom with greaseproof paper.

Preheat the oven to 160°c.

Sift the flour, almonds, baking powder and cocoa in a bowl together.

Melt the chocolate in a separate bowl over a pan of simmering water, without stirring.

When it’s almost melted, pour over the hot coffee and give it all a stir.

Push the cubed butter into the mixture, take the chocolate off the heat and stir until the butter is melted.

Separate the eggs, with the egg whites in a big bowl, and mix the yolks with the chocolate, stirring until all the egg is combined.  Then stir in the beetroot.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and whisk in the sugar.

Lightly fold the egg whites into the chocolate, followed by the flour mixture.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes.

Leave to cool completely in the tin.

Serve with the cream and poppy seeds.

Home Life

I’ve been spending my evenings at home of late.  I think most people have.  It was fortunate for me, then, that I’ve begun to befriend my neighbours.  There’s something very strange about the fact that, living in such close quarters with so many people, I hardly know anyone round here.  It’s hard, with most people within my building working.  Leaving their flats at 7 and not returning until 9 means that I don’t often bump into anyone.  But a chance meeting, a shared love of knitting and baking, as well as our shared obsessions with John Lewis, means that there are some people living upstairs who have become my friends.

So, on Monday night, amid the chaos of the streets outside, and after a pretty disconcerting trip to the Sainsbury’s in Angel, of which I was ushered out of in a scarily hasty manner, a dinner party still managed to take place.  I’d invited a friend round, as it was nice to have someone to stay with my brother away, and two girls from upstairs came down for a little homely food and a thoroughly calm evening.

I’ll be honest; I’ve really enjoyed being forced to stay at home.  I did venture out yesterday, only to bump into a friend who declared ‘what are you doing out? GO HOME.  IT’S NOT SAFE.’  My explanation that I needed some milk just didn’t cut it, and I was escorted back to my flat, milk-less, but safe.  So instead, I’ve been doing some ironing, I’ve mixed up a sourdough starter, and spend a good long time watching it for any sign of life (none yet).  I cleared out the kitchen cupboards.  When I started hoovering the inside of the drawers, however, I knew something a little more exciting was needed. 

This is how the dinner party came about.  I love cooking for myself, but there’s something about cooking for others that makes everything you do a bit more purposful.  Laying the table, getting ready, tasting, chopping, stirring: when someone else is going to enjoy it with you, it’s not just cooking, but the whole preparation becomes part of an event.  The food that followed was somewhat an amalgamation of things I had in the fridge and things I could procure from the shops closest to me, but it was delicious in the end, and I think we all enjoyed a little normality. And we turned the music up just a little so that the stream of sirens we could hear were little more than background noise.

Chorizo and Harissa in a Pot

For four

Three shallots, finely chopped

Three cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Three carrots, chopped

250g smoked bacon, chopped

600g chorizo, chopped into fat chunks

four tomatoes, chopped

a large glass of white wine

500ml vegetable or chicken stock

two heaped teaspoons of harissa

one tin of chickpeas, drained

a big handful of spinach

coriander

parsley

juice of a lemon

In a big pot, heat a little olive oil over a medium low heat.  Add the shallots, then garlic and the carrots.  Let them sweat for a little bit.

Then add the bacon and the chorizo*.  Cook for about ten minutes.

Add the white wine and let it bubble for a bit before adding the chopped tomatoes.

Stir the harissa through, and then add the stock.

Add the chickpeas and bring to the boil, then leave to simmer for around half an hour.

Add the spinach, a big handful each of coriander and parsley.

Finish with the lemon juice and serve with crusty bread.

*if you've got some time, fry the bacon till crispy and till the chorizo had a crust.  Put aside, deglaze the pan with white wine and add that to the vegetables before the stock.  Then add the bacon and chorizo before the spinach.  It gives a nice bit of texture.

Plum Tarte Tatin

For six (I ate the leftovers for breakfast)

Eight plums

75g butter

6 tablespoons sugar

Pastry           

120g cold butter, cubed

180g plain flour

40g ground almonds

two tablespoons sugar, caster or icing

a little water

Make the pastry by rubbing together the butter and flour until breadcrumb-y.  stir the sugar and ground almonds through, and add some cold water, very gingerly, until you have a soft dough.

Make the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm, squash it a bit and leave it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 190°c.

Halve the plums and take the stones out.

Melt the butter in a pie dish, or baking tin, or whatever you think is suitable for a tarte tatin.  I use a mini casserole pot.  It’s really not the best thing to use, but it always comes out ok.

Add the sugar and leave until there’s a rich, medium to dark caramel.

Place the fruit in, cut side down and turn off the heat.

Roll the pastry out until it’s big enough to cover the dish, lay it on top and push down the sides to encase the fruit.  There probably will be holes, so just cover them up with any scraps.

Cook for forty-five minutes, maybe longer, until the pastry is golden.  Let it rest for about five minutes, before flipping it onto a serving plate.

Serve with cream

The House Guest

There are many things I am not good at.  I cannot ride a bicycle, or drive a car.  I’m not very good at remembering faces, or names, or my keys.  My hearing is awful, as are my eyes.  I’m awful at packing, I’m not very good at planning things, thinking ahead, gardening.  I am in no shape or form funny, I cannot tell a joke. And, of course, I’m not very good at roasting meat. These are things I have mostly accepted, and resolved to try harder to improve on.  There’s one thing that I do find very tricky, and I don’t mean to portray myself as a social outcast, but I’m not very good at talking to people.  In general, I’m a pretty awkward person; this obviously isn’t helped by my bad hearing, poor eyesight, and inability to make someone laugh.  I’d like to be charming and charismatic, but in reality, well, it just doesn’t turn out like that.  I’m always nervous, not often relaxed, and I’m scared of most things.  This is something I do try and work on, but it’s not something that changes easily.

We had a houseguest staying for a few days.  He was a friend of my brother, and after the second night he had been staying with us, I realised I hadn’t had a proper conversation with him.  This wasn’t entirely due to my conversational inabilities.  We were both at work all day, and I’d been out both of the evenings he had been staying.  The only words we’d shared were goodnight, as I wandered into the sitting room where he was sleeping one night, forgetting that he would be in there (did I mention my awful memory?).

So on the third day of his stay, I could think of no reason not to cook dinner for us all, sit down and finally talk.  Because although I’m no socialite, something happens when I’m sat at a table laden with food I have cooked that makes me relaxed.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m more worried about a person liking my food than liking me, it takes the pressure off me socially.  Plus, if it’s a dinner party, there are people around who aren’t me.  So I invited one of my friends.

All in all, it was a success, aided in part by the bottles of wine and cider littering the table, but also by the kind of table laden with homely, unpretentious food.  I say that like I could cook a dinner that would seem pretentious. Maybe I could.  But when I’m cooking for someone who I’d like to know better, a simple tart and a vegetable stew is, in my mind, the perfect way to strike up a conversation.

Tomato Tart

For six (it’s good for lunch the next day too)

1kg tomatoes

200g mascarpone

75g Gruyere, grated

100g Parmesan, grated

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

two big handfuls of basil

salt and pepper

500g puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 200°c

Roll out the pastry, place on a floured baking sheet, and put in the fridge until you’re ready to layer it.

In a bowl, mash the mascarpone with the garlic, add the grated cheeses and the basil leaves, and stir until all mixed together.  Season with salt and pepper.

Slice the tomatoes.

Spread the mascarpone mixture onto the pastry leaving a finger space around the edge.

Layer the tomatoes on top, they will overlap, and it might not look beautiful, but you want as many slices as you can possible fit on.

Sprinkle over a bit of salt and pepper.  Some thyme leaves wouldn’t go amiss if you fancied.

Put in the oven for 30 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 150°c and leave the tart for another 35 minutes.

 Summer Vegetable Stew

For four

500g charlotte potatoes, or other small waxy potatoes, halved lengthways

Four or five shallots cut into wedges

3 leeks cut into chunks

5 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 bulbs of fennel cut into wedges

6 big tomatoes, chopped

700ml vegetable stock

pinch of saffron

3 thyme sprigs

4tsp tomato puree

pinch of cayenne pepper

salt and pepper

lemon juice

grated gruyere (optional)

Sauté the potatoes, leeks and onions with the garlic for about 15 minutes.

Add the stock, the saffron, thyme, cayenne and tomato puree.  Season with salt and pepper, then bring to the boil and simmer until the potatoes are just becoming tender.

Add the fennel and the tomatoes.  Cook for another 10 minutes, until all the vegetables are cooked.

Add the lemon juice and cook for one more minute before serving with some crusty bread.  If you want some grated cheese on top, it is good, but we only had it because there was some left over from the tart.