Sunday 21 March 2010

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 clichĂ©, 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.

Thursday 18 March 2010

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!


Tuesday 16 March 2010

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!