Tea and cake

My brother-in-law gave me a mini Hummingbird Bakery cookbook for Christmas, as well as the prettiest pink cupcake cases.

I loved the look of the book instantly. Although I've made a lot of cupcakes in my time, I'd never got on to any flavourings more exotic than rosewater, and I'd made up my own techniques, using a classic sponge recipe which is perfect for a fairy cake but slightly too heavy for a cupcake. The book has ginger cupcakes and lavender cupcakes and the technique for capturing the more unusual flavours (soaking the ginger or lavender in a little milk for hours and cooking with the milk) looks transferrable. It also has some lovely looking savoury muffins I'll try later in the year when it's too warm for boiled eggs and soldiers for breakfast.

But I only got a chance to cook from the book this weekend.

This was baking on impulse, with ingredients from the store cupboard and the local supermarket, so I decided to go for the lemon cupcakes for ease. The Husband also asked for a baking lesson at the same time, so we baked together, in our tiny kitchen.

The process wasn't without hitches - without thinking I added the lemon zest that was meant to go in the icing to the cake mix and so substituted lemon juice for the milk in the icing, which worked nicely, but perhaps gave a sharper flavour. The book said to fill the cases two thirds full - but there wasn't enough cake mix for this, so I only filled eight cases. But then the cakes rose so much they were a little too high, so actually, the recipe would have been enough for 12, rather than eight.

And as it was The Husband's first time with food colouring, the cakes looked rather like someone had stuck a canary in a blender, rather than a nice subtle pastel yellow.

But the hitches weren't the book's fault - and the cakes were delicious with a cup of tea and the Sunday papers. So delicious, they're now all gone. Oops.

Yes, more soup.

Mmm.

Ok, ok... it does taste a lot better than it looks

Anyone who's stuck with me through various interruptions will have gathered one thing: I cook a lot of soup. It's really all about practicality - there isn't really a nicer, easier way to have a warm, healthy, cheap and delicious lunch at work, especially in the Edinburgh winters and the deceptively cold Edinburgh springs.

Now we've given up on the veg box, though, I'm not faced with a once-a-fortnight recipe challenge involving a pile of unappetising, knobbly-looking veg and a stock cube. This means I can have more variety - look, no beetroot! - but also means I've been running out of ideas.

So when I read this recipe for Black Bean soup in Saturday's Guardian I had to give it a go. It's a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, with tomatoes, beans, chilli and spices. I doubled up the quantities and there was enough for eight medium portions. I didn't bother blending any of it - he said to blend just half, but life's just too short for blending that can't be done easily with a stick blender in the cooking pot. I was out of ground coriander so substituted garam masala. I'm adding a dollop of sour cream and a couple of coriander leaves to each in the morning before taking it to work.

It's absolutely delicious. I was worried it would be too hot, but actually it just has the smallest kick - I might throw an extra chilli in next time. But it's both rich and fresh tasting. I can't wait to finish it all up.

Tempted by Jansson

Doesn't look like the beginnings of a luxurious dinner, does it?

We have had a jar of nice anchovies opened in the fridge for a few days now. The jar was part of Christmas present from my parents to The Husband - lots of nice foody bits and bobs from Carluccio's. I'd opened it and used a couple of anchovies to add depth to a pasta sauce last week, and knew I had to use them up but wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

The problem is, I'm not mad on anchovies. I love them as a secret ingredient, chopped up and melted into a sauce, but when I have them on a pizza, I end up peeling off all but one or two, and eating just the tiniest bit with every mouthful - I can't eat a whole one, they're too strong.

So when I read Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in Saturday's Guardian talking about canned ingredients and giving a recipe for an alternative version of Jansson's Temptation using sardines, but mentioning that the original version had anchovies, I was intrigued.

I googled, and found this recipe on Waitrose's website. I loved the story they gave - that the dish tempted a religious fanatic named Jansson who had renounced earthly pleasures. And I loved the frugality and simplicity - and the fact that the anchovies were chopped up finely!

Still not overly promising

So I made it for dinner last night, frying the onions in the anchovy oil - a thrifty touch I loved - before adding matchsticked potatoes, and finally the cream and finely chopped anchovies and putting it in the oven to bake.



Yum



It was the most delicious meal imaginable. It uses a tiny amount of cream, and yet was so rich. The flavour of the anchovies blended with the onions and potatoes to create a beautiful scented savoury taste, with little spikes of sweetness. It cost about tuppance h'apenny and took (thanks to the food processor) 10 minutes of work plus baking to make.

I'd recommend this one. Even if you don't like anchovies!

Springtime

Newhaven Harbour

Looking across to Fife

This weekend it felt like we'd turned a corner.

The sun shone all weekend. The sky was a deep, clear blue and the sun's rays coming through the windows made the flat sparkle and danced on the cat's whiskers.

The bulbs we planted back in November, days before the snow came, have finally started poking through. We'll have snowdrops, daffodils and tulips soon.

We went out for fish and chips at Newhaven and took a walk along the front, and out to the lighthouse, where I took these pictures looking across to Fife and back to Newhaven.

The darkness is lifting. It felt like a weekend of new beginnings, and of old things coming back to life.

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.