Time to perfect a pickle recipe

Yes, I know I've been quiet. I'm well aware that my poor, neglected blog has spent more time ignored than attended to in its short life.

The past few months have been difficult - not proper, life-changingly hard, but difficult. Work stuff. And then spending happy evenings writing job applications and interview presentations demonstrating my creativity and writing ability. Strange how boasting about such things saps the will to actually use 'em.

But all the hard work has paid off, and before I start my exciting new job (no, I won't be saying anything about that one either, on account of wanting to keep it), I have a few weeks off, in which I can do anything I like.

Heavenly. I'm still planning to keep largely to the rhythms of a working day - starting with breakfast with the Husband in the mornings (although I'm going back to bed for an hour with a cup of tea, Radio Four and my knitting quite often - my definition of heaven) and having normal after work evenings with him most of the time.

But in between, the world is my oyster. And I have plans. I'm going to knit and read more, potter round the kitchen a bit, see friends (rather than just throwing the house keys at Blonde and her Best Mate when they come to stay and telling them where the gin lives, I'll be able to pour - and enjoy - the G&Ts. Or Gs&T, as she would no doubt style them), do some sewing, finish little fun jobs around the flat, and do some more exercise. And write ridiculously long sentences. And blog.

Yesterday, I went for lunch with a friend and her baby. We talked about my holiday, and I outlined all the things I wanted to do. She laughed, and said I had time to perfect a pickle recipe. I've never heard the phrase before, but I love it - it sums up everything I'm excited about. For the first time in so long I have time to myself, to devote to whatever I want, and right now, I want to concentrate on the purely domestic. When the holiday is over, I know I'll be desperate to get back to work and be a career woman again - but until then, I have a chance to relax and slow down. I might even try making pickle.

Yet more soup

I've realised that almost all the recipes I've posted so far have been for soup.

This will end soon. But not quite yet.

May I bring you a recipe for the best coloured soup in the world?

This, like many of my soups, has sprung from necessity. Every fortnight, I separate the veg box (yes, I know, bloody Guardian-reading smug middle class nonsense. Guilty as charged) into what will be used in our every day dinners, and what just won't. The alien lifeforms below? Just won't.

And recently, the just-won't pile consisted of not one but TWO celeriac alongside several beetroot. Necessity being the mother of invention, I turned them into the following soup. Just look at that colour - and it even tasted good.

Bright pink and surprisingly yummy soup
 (This being a made up on the spot recipe, the quantities are imprecise. Taste as you go along and see what you think)
Two small or one big celeriac
Three medium beetroot
Small tub sour cream or creme fraiche (or half of each if, like me, that's what you've got hanging round your fridge)
Stock to cover (cubes are fine - I used beef, but veg or chicken will be fine)
Juice of one lemon
Tsp ground ginger
A slosh of red wine vinegar
Serves eight

1. Attempt to scrub your celeriac. Chop off the bits that won't come clean, peel and cut into large dice.
2. Peel and chop beetroot. Don't answer the front door until you've washed your hands or you'll be arrested for murder.
3. Bung in a massive pot and cover with stock/boiling water and roughly the right number of stock cubes. Boil until soft - about 15 minutes.
4. Puree with a stick blender.Check texture - if it's so thick it resembles a bright pink building material, add more water and blend more.
5. Lob in cream, ginger and lemon juice. Puree again to mix. 
6. Taste. I'm deeply suspicious of sweet tasting main courses, so I tend to lob in a tablespoon or two of red wine vinegar to sharpen it up. If you like it as it is, leave it.
7. Divide up into lots of containers - we had enough for 8. Freeze or keep in fridge, depending on when required.
8. Reheat in the microwave at work and enjoy, admiring the colour.

 (That picture is the only picture in this post where I've messed around with the colours, as it was taken on my phone. The more unnatural looking pink in the first picture? That's the colour the soup really is).

Nice Easter. Shame about the boat race.

I'm slowly relaxing into an extra long Easter break - ten days of it! The husband has lots of annual leave to use up and we're both exhausted from working too hard, so we've combined my birthday and Easter into one long spring staycation. And solemnly sworn not to fall into the DIY trap where we decide to fix one small thing and then a week later return to work exhausted, for a break, after completely redoing half the house.

So today, fully relaxed at last, we took a little trip up to the amazing chocolatier up the road to buy each other Easter eggs. I'm afraid my inner eight-year-old took over when she saw a bigger than usual Lindt bunny, and it was indulgently bought for me. The Husband opted for the same, and we bought a family group to bring down to his parents tomorrow as well as a few extras to have around in case of visitors. (Or maybe I'll have to eat them).

The Husband arranged them beautifully on a shelf to admire. But I have to admit I don't like the look on that rabbit's face. Who does he think is going to get eaten - him or me?

We also made hot cross buns to my mother-in-law's recipe, but had to improvise slightly as every scrap of mixed peel in Morningside had already been bought. I'm trying not to be too intimidated by living in a suburb where making one's own hot cross buns is evidently not going the extra mile but just the done thing. The results were yum, but unphotogenic and not quite right - I'll have to try again next year. However, the peel did look fantastic up against the green chopping board.

For the first time in our four-year (well, nearly, three boat races) relationship, I also persuaded my husband to watch the boat race with me. Watching it reminds me less of being at university then watching it on TV at my grandparents' house. Always, always shouting for Oxford, long before I even dreamt of applying. (Not long before the first "If you work hard you might end up here one day" tour, though).

Edinburgh is my home, and I love it and the friends I have here. But not one of them gives two hoots about the boat race, and a few are likely to go off on rants about class and the English at the very mention of it. The Husband is a Geordie, second-generation Bloody Good Redbrick University, and it had never occurred to him to care about it. All of this can make me feel slightly isolated, rather far away from home.

When I suggested watching the boat race I was met with slight indifference, until I suggested it rather harder and The Husband realised that it was one of those odd things that mattered to me - like having the option of going to church on Christmas day (he now suggests church on religious holidays with the polite and faintly mystified tones of an anthropologist indulging a strange tribe's quaint rituals). Then he was very sweet, and even suggested buying Pimms - something his North Eastern taste buds had never encountered until he met me.

He also got rather into it, obviously cheering for Oxford because yelling for the Tabs would be guaranteed to get him sent to the spare room for a few days.

So now, alongside the sweetness of Pimms, I've introduced The Husband to the bitter taste of defeat in the boat race. I'll make a Southerner of him yet.

Madeleines and memories

On Thursday night, after dinner, I suddenly had an overwhelming craving for cake. Not just any cake, nor just anything sweet - it had to be a light, vanilla-scented sponge, full of subtle, clean flavours. I was seriously tempted to bake, but at gone 9pm, I decided I would be asleep before the cake was cool enough to eat, and had a glass of Cointreau instead. Not a bad cake substitute, actually. 

But by Friday morning the craving had crystallised. I wanted the almost-greasy stickiness of madeleines. A lunch hour mission to Lakeland provided me with a madeleine tin (and much more besides thanks to a 3 for 2 on bakeware) and, as soon as I got home from work, I started. 

At first I tried this recipe, as it looked by far the simplest, and I whisked the eggs by hand - quite an undertaking. Now, talking about madeleines and memories is now an unbearable cliché, and as I've never even read Proust, it's one I have no right to invoke. But whisking? That's a different story. And as I stood there, bowl in the crook of one arm, balloon whisk whizzing in the other hand, I remembered Mrs Harris standing over me when I was eight, teaching me how to mix a cake batter. 

My mum is a brilliant cook, but hates baking, and both my grandmothers lived a long way away and died before I was 12. So Mrs Harris - a short, stout, perfectly coiffed and rather glam 50-or-60-something who looked after my brother and me when my mum was at work in the school holidays, and who my father always said looked a little like Mrs Tiggy- winkle, stepped in. 

We were old enough not to need babysitters, and Mrs Harris didn't need the money, but as she once told me, she looked after other people's children out of love. She taught my brother and me how to play cards, with a pot of pennies as the stake 'so we would know not to gamble'. She kept her cards in an old B&H packet, and the gold looked so sophisticated - but she told us how long it had taken her to give up, and that we should never start. Not a hard lesson to take on board when both our grandmothers died of cancer. 

She taught us how to be Scrabble demons, with her official word book and refusal to let us 'throw away' high value tiles by not putting them on at least a double letter score square. And she supervised me baking, allowing me to be in charge, but gently showing me how to do things better, more intuitively - how to tilt the bowl in one arm while I mixed with the other. When my eight-year-old arms got tired, she would take over for a minute. 

She kept coming in, a morning or two a week, long after we stopped needing the supervision, long after we stopped needing the entertainment, because by then she'd become a surrogate grandmother, and we loved her as much as she did us. 

So it was probably only a couple of months since we'd seen her when she died of a heart attack in her sleep when I was 14 or 15. I was devastated - I was old enough to understand what it meant, and it was so sudden. But now, just as I hear my mother's voice when I'm making a bechamel (she's still going strong, by the way) I hear Mrs Harris when I'm whisking or beating and my arm gets tired, or trying to show the Husband the easier way to do it. I remember her best knitted red outfit, the B&H packet of cards, the smell of her powder, and the no-fuss unconditional love she gave two children she babysat. And I smile. 

Having said all that, those madeleines were actually a bit disappointing - light but anaemic, like a fat-free sponge. They disappeared quickly enough, so yesterday I could justify trying again, and I made this recipe - and used the beaters on my food processor rather than a whisk. The results are the madeleines pictured - and they're delicious, especially dipped into a cup of tea.

Sticks and string

Today's been an odd day in Edinburgh. It's now spring, the winter coat has been swapped for a mac and there's warmth in the air. But today there were leaden clouds and gusts of wind, and heavy air. It feels like a storm is coming, and the anticipation means I just can't settle. 

So rather than do the important but boring things I'd planned, I'm here, blogging. And - wait for it - it's going to be about knitting. 

I've been knitting on and off for years, but only progressed beyond scarves eighteen months ago. But since then I've got addicted. There's something soothing about the repeated actions, and the soft, beautifully coloured yarn. When I knit, I'm a perfectionist - no "that'll do", because I enjoy the process enough to rip it out and start again until it's right. And when what I do all day, while rewarding, interesting and sometimes even exciting, seldom gives me tangible results quickly, it soothes the soul to be able to point at an inch of even stitches and say "that's what I achieved today." Even more so to finish something beautiful, and know I made it.

More rewarding still, then, when I finish three projects within a month. So, here we have a boasting session. All links are to my project pages on Ravelry, where you can see more pictures and get the patterns - but you do have to have a login. But then, if you want to see lots of pictures of knitting, you should probably join anyway!

First of all, a shawl for a friend. Her birthday was in January and it's just finished, but in my defence she did only tell me what she wanted on Hogmanay.

Not the best picture in the world, possibly one of the worst, but you get the idea.

Then, armwarmers for me. A pattern I'd wanted to knit since I first saw Ravelry, and they go all the way to my elbow. Which for someone who seems to think wearing three quarter length sleeves in Edinburgh is a good idea, is quite exciting. I've been knitting these since Christmas, but they went on hiatus for the shawl.

And finally, a pair of experimental socks. Expermental, because they were my first "proper" pair, and I'm about to knit many, many more pairs. But more on that another time. Meanwhile, admire!

A chicken in the pot

Starting a blog, posting twice and then abandoning it for a fortnight really wasn't the plan. But life is what happens when you're making other plans, so onwards and upwards. 

When life gets hectic, which it has been recently, cleaning is the first thing to go in my life. Anyone who has seen my bathroom would correctly surmise that life is usually hectic. Tidying clings on for a little longer, but eventually that goes and I even lose the ability to put things away.

But one sure sign that everything has gone utterly tits up round here is when I stop cooking "real" food.

So after a fortnight at the Gin Palace involving five takeaways, two sets of leftovers, a dinner skipped in favour of canapés and several ready meals, when life calmed down and I'd had some sleep, it was time to get in back in the kitchen and wrestle culinary order out of calorific madness.

On Thursday night, the Husband worked late, and I was home alone. On Friday afternoon, I took back some of the overtime I've been putting in at work. With hours alone in the house, there were a thousand pressing admin and cleaning tasks to do. So I ignored them and cooked. Two cover-the-kitchen-with-vegetable-peelings, stuff-the-freezer-full cooking sessions. I cooked chilli, I cooked bolognese sauce and I cooked two types of soup, now safely stored in the freezer for work packed lunches and weeks as hellish as this one. And as I chopped, stirred and tasted, everything settled into place in my head, as well as in the freezer. Order restored.

So to keep it that way, on Sunday night we cooked a chicken, which is now feeding us for the whole week.

Normally we roast it, carve it all but only eat one breast, and then pop the rest in tupperware to feed us for a week while the carcass simmers in the stock pot late into the night.

But this week, frankly, I couldn't be arsed. So we poached it instead - boiling the chicken in the stock pot with the stock aromatics for 90 minutes, fishing it out and eating it with potato dauphinoise, and then saving the succulent, gently scented meat which fell off the bones and the dark, rich poaching liquor which became the most amazing stock.

Tonight, Tuesday, we're having straight forward leftovers - a bit of the chicken, warmed through in a few spoonfuls of the stock, and the remaining dauphnoise, warmed up, with carrots on the side. Bliss.

Tomorrow, we'll have risotto, frying up onion, bacon and garlic, before adding the rice, some wine, and ladleful by ladleful the rest of the stock, stirring in the chicken with the last spoonful of the stock, and a handful of parmasan just as it's all absorbed.

And on Thursday, we'll have an adaptation of what my mother calls "Swiss-style" chicken. I'm not sure if I can share the recipe without her hunting me down and killing me.

But yesterday, we had one of my favourite meals - chicken noodle soup. And here's what we did to make this fabulous, sweet, sour and hot steaming and delicious meal. An wonderful inauthentic hodge-podge. That just takes ten minutes.

Incidentally, to my mind there are two types of soups - the sort that make a very nice lunch, with some bread, healthy and virtuous but a teensy bit disappointing for supper. And this, which is in a class of its own.

Chicken noodle soup

Ingredients

Leftover chicken - two handfuls or so of meat, breast or leg or anything will do.

Two pints chicken stock - homemade is better, but cubes will do.

125g of noodles - I find very fine broken up soup noodles sold in the kosher section perfect, but failing that, the type sold for stir frys, or even little pasta stars, will do. 

2-3 tbls soy sauch

2 tsp Nam Pla (fish sauce)

Juice of 1-2 limes

LOTS of coriander

Small can sweetcorn, drained.

2-3 spring onions, or one small leek, peeled and sliced.

Dried chilli pepper

Serves 2-3 (2 round here)

1. Bring the stock to the boil and add the pasta, and the dried chilli. Boil for however long you're meant to - this recipe assumes 10 minutes, so if you're using the 3 minute type, bung everything in and *then* add the noodles.

2. Add soy sauce, nam pla and lime juice. If you're using bought stock, you'll need less soy sauce or it'll be too salty, homemade definitely needs quite a lot. Taste as you add - you want something that's salty, sour and lovely. Remember the heat will develop the longer you leave the chilli in - whack it out early if it's getting too hot for you.

3. Five minutes before the cooking time is up, add the chicken, leek or spring onions, and drained sweetcorn.

4. One minute before cooking time is up, sprinkle on the coriander.

5. Serve in large bowls and relish!

Sunday, lovely Sunday

Sundays have acquired a certain pattern here at the Gin Palace. After a Friday night of getting drunk in a dressing gown in front of the telly, a Saturday morning-into-afternoon of supreme laziness, and a Saturday night where at least a modicum of effort is made, Sunday is our day for getting things done. Partly this is done out of necessity, but it also helps fight off Sunday Night Syndrome - I find I can face the week if everything's sorted at home.

Today, the Husband has gone through some of the piles of junk he thinks I've forgotten about (I never forget), changed the sheets, done laundry and attempted to iron his shirts for the week, defeated after the first one by a blown fuse in the iron, and no fuses in the house.

Meanwhile, I've been pottering away on chores at the computer, and cooking.

Every fortnight we have an organic veg box delivered. Every fortnight we stare a pile of muddy organic vegetables and wonder what on earth to make with them. And every fortnight I make two piles - one of things to eat as they are, and one of things to make into soup.

This time's soup pile was promising - carrots, parsnips, fennel, and some celery left over from last week. I sweated some onions in my biggest pan with cumin, added the scrubbed, peeled and chopped veg and left them to simmer away in enough stock to cover (made from a cube as we haven't had a roast for ages) for about half an hour. I blended it and had to add another two pints of water as it resembled mash more than soup. But I now have six pints, divided into eight tupperware boxes which will see us through the working week.

And then it was time for fish pie.

My fish pie is based on my Mum's. She would make it once a year on Good Friday, poaching haddock in milk, using the milk to make a bechamel sauce, then topping the whole lot with piles of creamy mashed potato. As she lives 400 miles away, I now have to make my own.

One of the first things I learnt to cook was a bechamel sauce, to make macaroni cheese. My Mum would melt an ounce of butter, stir in an ounce of plain flour, and whisk in half a pint of milk. As I watched, she would stir it while it slowly thickened, explaining that this happened because the starch molecules in the flour heated up, expanded and burst. She also told me, very sternly, that it was always worth measuring out the quantities, rather than doing it by eye, or otherwise everything would go wrong. 

There's something so soothing about the process - the fact that it must be done slowly, that done carefully it will always work out, and the fact that the results taste of home.

So here's my fish pie recipe, bubbling away in the oven while I go off to sit down with Husband and a glass of wine. Suddenly, Sunday Night Syndrome doesn't seem so bad at all.

Gin Operated's Fish Pie

 (sorry for mixing metric and imperial, but for reasons outlined above, I can't do bechamel in metric!)

600g assorted fish (a mix of firm white fish like haddock or cod with whatever else you like - smoked haddock, salmon or cooked prawns are all nice, but you can just use white fish, frozen is fine)

1 pint milk

Celery, parsley, bay leaves - whatever you have in.

1oz plain flour

1oz butter

LOTS of parsley - 30g at least, chopped finely

Salt and pepper

800g potato

A splash more milk

A knob of butter

Heat the oven to 180C

1. Poach the fish (except for the prawns) in the milk, using a couple of sprigs of parsley, a bay leaf and some celery to add flavour if you have them in. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, until the fish is soft, opaque and cooked.

2. While the fish is cooking, peel and chop the potatoes and leave to boil in salted water for 20 minutes.

3. Pull out the fish, and strain & keep the milk. Take the skin off the fish if it has any, break it up into fork sized pieces, and put it in a low, flat oven proof dish - the type you'd use for a pasta bake.

4. Melt the butter in a small pan over a medium heat, add the flour and stir to combine, and then whisk in the milk slowly. Keep stirring for a while until it thickens (see description and my Mum's science bit above!)

5.If you're using frozen prawns, rinse off the worst of the ice and stir them into the sauce to warm them through. Add a generous pinch of salt if it needs it and the chopped parsley. It will go very green!

6. Pour sauce over the fish, and mix it all together so you get a different type of fish with every mouthfull. Obviously less important if you're only using one type of fish!

7. Your potatoes are probably done by now. Mash them thoroughly, with a splash of milk, a knob of butter, and salt and pepper. Use a bit more milk than you would normally so the mash has a spreading consistency.

8. Spread the mash gently but firmly over the fishy saucy mix. You can smooth the top with a knife, or decorate it with a fork. Or write "fishy fishy" on top and draw a big fish.

9. Either put it aside and heat it up later, or put it straight into the oven for 30-40 minutes, till the top has gone slightly crispy, and slightly golden.

This serves 4-6, depending how hungry you are and what you have on the side. The Husband and I tend to have half on Sunday night, and then the other half reheated on Monday - knowing you've already cooked dinner, and it's delicious, is always helpful if the day drags slightly.

First post

First posts are strange. I could write an introduction, about me, who I am and why I'm blogging - but I'm rather hoping you'll pick that up as we go along. I could write about what I'm planning to say here, but at this stage all I can tell you is that plans change. 

 

Or I could plunge right in, without even acknowledging that this post is a first post, that you know none of these things and nothing much about me. But that's not my style.

So I think I'll just pop a few ice cubes in a couple of glasses, add some wedges of lime, a splash of gin and some slimline tonic and just get started. I'm sure we'll get used to one another soon enough. Meanwhile, cheers.