A Simple Supper

Nigel Slater is always banging on about pea and broad bean salads. Generally, I skip these bits of his cookbooks and move on to the bits where he's roasting joints of meat, slathering stuff in cream, etc, but after a week of eating far too many delicious-but-bowel-cancer-inducing pork products, I thought I'd give it a go. It turns out he's on to something. A salad of freshly podded peas, broad beans, pea shoots and shavings of raw courgette, a few fresh mint and parsley leaves, dressed with a simple lemon and oil dressing and topped off with some crumbly, creamy goats' cheese. Delicious. And it involves popping broad beans from their little grey skins, which makes me deliriously happy. Win-win.

Banoffee, King of Pies

Yesterday, I put an end to a lengthy Banoffee drought. When I first dicovered how easy they are to make, I was on several a month - not a healthy way to live, but definitely a delicious one. The combination of being simple to make and UNBELIEVABLY DELICIOUS is a dangerous one, but who cares? Here's my way of doing things:

Make a biscuit crumb base. I use dark chocolate Hob-Nobs. Crush them, mix with melted butter and pack into the bottom of a flan tin (ideally with removable sides). Put it in the fridge to harden up.

The next layer is the toffee. This process seemed utterly magical to me when I first did it, but it's probably very simple. Get a can of condensed milk, put it unopened in a big pan of boiling water, cover and leave it simmering for two hours. THAT'S IT. I don't understand how but when you open it, it will have turned into unbelievably tasty toffee-like-stuff. Oh, also, apparently this process is extremely dangerous and MAY RESULT IN DEATH. I'm not sure that this has ever actually happened, but every recipe I've read for Banoffee pie has come with this warning, so I thought I better pass it on. I think if you make sure the pan doesn't boil dry and open the tin at arm's length, you should probably survive the process. Assuming you have, spread the toffee over the biscuit base.

Layer slices of banana on top of the toffee, then whipped cream on top of that.

And that's it. There's lots of variations - in fact, the place where it was invented goes for a shortcrust pastry base rather than biscuit - but the above will make a pretty delicious pie. It tastes even better after the layers have been mingling together for a couple of days, so try not to eat it all in one sitting.

Scotland's for me

I would like to preface the following by saying that I love Scotland. It's pretty much my favourite place on Earth, and so the last thing I would want to do is reinforce any negative stereotypes you may harbour against that great nation.

However. While spending last weekend in Fife (attending Fence's lovely Homegame festival), not only did I witness my first drunken, bloody fistfight and taste my first lager top (delicious), I also ate my own bodyweight in pastry-based goods and hastened the heart attack which is creeping slowly but inexorably closer with every pie that passes my lips. But who cares about that when it's all so very tasty? First, there was the obligatory fish supper from the Anstruther Fish Bar: fresh fish caught by local fishermen in a crisp, delicious batter washed down with a can of Irn Bru from what is officially one of the country's best chipshops is a treat which no one should deny themselves.

Then there's Fisher and Donaldson. Oh my. If I were to single out one thing that Scotland does better than anyone else, it would have to be their bakeries. Sure, some people might argue in favour of the French on this point, and perhaps they'd have a fairly strong case, but it certainly wasn't the French who realised the potential of encasing macaroni cheese in shortcrust pastry. And if, in some bizarre apocalyptic scenario which I can't quite imagine the details of right now, I was forced on pain of death to eat only one type of sweet baked good for the rest of my existence, I would have no trouble at all settling on Fisher and Donaldson's fudge doughnuts. That is, a doughnut, filled with vanilla custard, and topped with fudge icing. Gosh. I have seen various versions of this in Scottish bakeries, but none seem as soft or as fresh or as overwhelmingly more-ish as Fisher and Donaldson's. Definitely worth making a detour for if you are ever in the area (and by "the area", I mean Scotland or its vicinity.)

Man cannot live on tea and cake alone

I tried my best, but it turns out lemon cake and a pot of Earl Grey for lunch just won't cut it. (Even when it's the most deliciously moist lemon cake I have ever tasted from the V&A's beautiful café.) Savoury snacks have always been a problem for me; the only things I can think of are inevitably pastry based (which, of course, there's nothing essentially wrong with, but if I gave in to all my pork pie-based whims, I would probably have had a heart attack by now.) If I had a fridge full of useful ingredients, I could make sandwiches (like in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There are better reasons to read Steig Larsson's excellent books, but the descriptions of delicious-sounding sandwiches of smoked fish and pickles are certainly up there for me.) Unfortunately, I'm not yet grown up enough to have a well-stocked fridge; there are three types of mustard and sometimes the odd bit of cheese, but that's about it. And when it comes to a mid-afternoon, post-tea-and-cake snack, pork pie is always going to trump cheese and mustard sandwiches.

For dinner: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Thai-Style Chicken Soup with Lime. It's the sort of warming bowl of goodness that feels healthy enough to make up for any number of pie-and-cake-based lunches, while at the same time making you forget that it's February and it's been dark since 4pm.

An Alternative Carrot Cake

Today I decided to make a carrot cake. Which was a fine idea until I took the strange decision to whisk the eggs whites manually. Considering that I do own an electric whisk, and considering that I am so lacking in upper body strength that even washing my hair is enough to make my arms ache, it was a strange decision indeed. The cake worked none the less. While it is my general notion to go with Nigel Slater in most culinary matters - his carrot cake being no exception - I figure it is pointless owning so many cookbooks by people other than Nigel Slater if I'm never going to use them, so I tried out the Ottolenghi Cookbook version. After all, if anyone knows cakes, Ottolenghi does. It came out quite delicious. While I have a vague notion that Nigel's is nicer, it's impossible to know whether this opinion is based on reality or just partiality. One day I will cook both and perform a proper taste test, but this is not that day. Either way, the Ottolenghi book is certainly worth forking out a few (25) quid for.

The wrong side of a fry up and just the right side of too much chocolate

When my mum does a fry up, it somehow seems almost healthy. I suppose this is because it’s not really a “fry” up – most of the elements are either grilled or baked and the difference in levels of grease-induced self-loathing is quite remarkable. For some reason, though, I haven't learned from her example. This morning I fried bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and egg all together in the same butter-smothered pan. Almost before I took the first bite I was regretting it. Maybe one day I’ll learn.

A walk in the fresh air to chase the bacon smell from my hair ended more successfully. I’m not a particularly chocolate-y person, in fact I can’t really bring myself to eat chocolate unless there’s a cup of tea nearby to wash it down with, but I can be persuaded to drink a good cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. Stumbling across Melt, a quite amazing chocolate shop on the Ledbury Road in Notting Hill, a good cup of hot chocolate is exactly what I found. I’m pretty certain it must be the most chocolatey hot chocolate in the world – an espresso-sized portion that seems to almost entirely consist of molten chocolate, with a subtle hint of mint (subtle being the important thing – if I hadn’t been told it was there I might never have known, so I’m not talking about some mint-choc-chip type horribleness) that managed to keep it just on the right side of too much chocolate.

However delicious Melt’s hot chocolate is, this doesn’t seem like an auspicious beginning. Hopefully future posts won’t paint quite such an unhealthy picture of my food habits, but to be honest, I can’t guarantee it.