Turkish Eggs

And sometimes blogging can seem like such an IMPOSITION. The thinking, the writing, the re-writing, the eating in different places even though you KNOW which curry is best and which vegetarian café near the Cathedral forces you to buy a salad you don’t want. It’s the taking of photos, the taking of photos again because the cheesecake just DOESN’T REALLY LOOK RIGHT in that one. The uploading, the “um, that one is slightly better than that one because on that one I look like I am mid-stroke but oh, um that one, oh GOD look at my chins, shall we re-shoot?” The editing of photos when you have time on your hands and the panic of OH SHIT I don’t have time to edit all the photos for THIS post but now I’ve made expectations and doesn’t it always pay to be average?

If I was a member of the upper class or a psychopath of any class, I would certainly hire an intern. What a splendid way to really give yourself a self-assured pat on the back: I’m so great that people want to do the SHIT parts of my life FOR FREE!!! What a ball!

Anyway, that explains the hiatus. I can’t promise that I will get any better at this but in the meantime, let me tell you about the time the local paper (The Sheffield Star) asked me to write a recipe for them.

“Write” is funny because yeah. So, instead, I regurgitated one from BBC Good Food and wrote this long drawl about what was in my head at that moment. I sent it off, waited, had a photographer come round to my house and had to cook the friggin meal again. Then I had to ask a friend to ‘test’ the meal, which meant I had to eat it again. By this time, I’m thinking, Jesus, this is DISGUSTING.

Anyway, the paper didn’t print everything I wrote. In fact, they printed perhaps one sentence and I got to be a musician or a celebrity or a politician and complain loads:

ME: “I’ve been misquoted!”

FRIEND: “But that is what you said – exactly! Look, it’s written in this Word document that you sent to them.”

ME: “But it was taken out of context!”

That was it, really. Most of the page was taken up with a picture of my big, pale, make-up free, frizzy-haired face.

So, here, for my real fans, I will post the unabridged version:

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a princess and dinner like a pauper” said someone with no children, no job and a vegetable patch in the back garden.

In reality, I tend to do the whole shebang in reverse order. Occasionally, I will almost get it right by eating a large lunch. Unfortunately though, those days tend to conclude with less of a pauper dinner and more of a family-sized bag of Maltesers with no hope of utilising the “seal up and save some for later” sticker (does anyone actually use those?)

And so, when I got some time off work the other day, I decided to make a hearty, healthy breakfast (or brunch – after all, I was off work) to see if the pauper dinner naturally followed on.

Scanning through the BBC Good Food website (the Holy Grail for all my cooking), I came across a Turkish recipe called Menemen. It’s basically like Nigella’s ‘Eggs In Purgatory’ but without the doomsday name.

There are different variations of Menemen. Some choose to leave the eggs whole, frying them into the mixture and others prefer to scramble the whole lot together. Seasoning is also a bit of a free-for-all, meaning that oregano, thyme and parsley are all welcome in the frying pan.

The eggs, vegetables and pita bread in this dish mean that you’re getting vitamins, protein and carbs before you’ve even left the house. If you’re fussy about your carb intake then a) does your breath smell a bit dodgy? BUT b) the morning is obviously the best time to enjoy them.

Did the motto serve me well? Yes! The meal was delicious and I definitely wasn’t hungry until around 2pm. I then whipped up some brownies and ate quite a bit of the raw batter but thankfully redeemed myself in the evening with a Greek salad.

All I need now is some motivation to get up at sunrise and to be blessed with non-blurry morning vision for chopping chillis as opposed to fingers. Hm. Looks like it’s back to toast and Marmite until further notice then.

This is my housemate, Rachel, testing the recipe. This photo is mainly included to show off my hologram of a cat and dog (behind).

The article is here.

Serves 2, Vegetarian

Prep: 10 mins

Cook: 25 mins

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1-2 chillis, chopped (and de-seeded if you’re a wimp!)

2 large red onions

1 red pepper

1 400g tin chopped tomatoes

A sprinkle of caster sugar

4 eggs

A handful of parsley

2 pita bread

Method

1.      Heat up your oil in a large heavy-based frying pan and add your garlic, chilli, onion and pepper. Cook on a medium heat until the vegetables soften.

2.      Pour in the tomatoes and sprinkle with roughly a teaspoon of sugar to take away the sharp taste of the tomatoes. Cook until tomatoes have reduced, about 5 minutes.

3.      Make four ‘wells’ in the mixture and crack eggs into each one.

4.      Cover the pan with a lid or a chopping board (keep an eye out as the latter is almost certainly a fire risk).

5.      Warm up the pitas under the grill.

6.      When the eggs are firm and cooked (but still wobbly), take the pan off the heat and sprinkle with parsley.

7.      Serve with pita on the side to dip into the runny yolks.

                                                                                                                                                  

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Squash & barley salad with balsamic vinaigrette

Last week was mainly formed of intense yet unwanted debates about Oscar Pistorius. My colleague became incredibly absorbed in the trial and as a devoted Oscar fan, she took it upon herself to become his Sheffield-based chief defence lawyer ("I love Oscar, me! He's the only reason I went to the Paralympics!"). After repeated "What do you think? What do you think?" type pestering, I wearily took my place as the reluctant prosecution.

My colleague read, verbatim, the Twitter feed of the bail hearing. The nature of Twitter, of course, is that the information comes from various different sources, meaning that it repeats itself. Constantly.

"A cricket bat was found and testosterone tablets have been found. Testosterone tablets have been found on the premises. A cricket bat was used to break down the door. A cricket bat is reported to have been found. Testosterone tablets have been found in the bedside cabinet.”

All day. Every day. Until the court adjourned and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. And then they reconvened and I had the Pistorius bathroom described to me in minute detail; wall by wall, window measurements to the millimetre and the precise position of toilet bowl. Oh and the condition of Reeva's bladder (it was empty by the way, which, surprisingly, is consistent with having just had a piss).

If there is one good thing to come out of all this though, it is that my colleague has had a sort of philosophical overhaul. Normally a hang-draw-n-quarter them type justice seeker (whether the trial has happened or not; a police charge is enough to begin the execution process), she now seems to have mellowed.

"They might not let him take his legs to prison!" she tells me, outraged.

And that, for me, is a humanitarian triumph.

Anyway, in the event that this week requires such high levels of endurance, I have (with the help of the trusty BBC Good Food) made myself a Sanity Salad to take with me to work each day.

I have varied the amounts slightly, based on what I had but follow the link above for the original recipe.

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into long chunks

1 tbsp olive oil

250g pearl barley

280g Tenderstem broccoli

A handful of sundried tomatoes, sliced

1 red onion, diced

2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

1 tbsp capers, rinsed

15 black olives, pitted

20g basil, torn

5 tbsp balsamic vinegar

6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Place the squash on a baking tray and toss with olive oil. Roast for 20 mins.

Meanwhile, boil the barley for about 25 mins in salted water until tender, but al dente.

While this is happening, whisk the dressing ingredients in a small bowl, then season with salt and pepper.

Drain the barley, then tip it into a bowl and pour over the dressing. Mix well and let it cool.

Boil the broccoli in salted water until just tender, then drain and rinse in cold water. Drain and pat dry.

Add the broccoli and remaining ingredients to the barley and mix well.

This will keep for 3 days in the fridge and is delicious warm or cold.

Vegetarian, vegan and dairy-free! A perfect, healthy lunch. Serves 8 but I'm hoping to finish it in 5 large portions to myself. YES!

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Lentil and Halloumi salad

A few weeks ago, I went out with some old friends from college. The meeting came about as a sort of reunion between me (2010 – 2012 spent sitting in various bedrooms on my laptop) and R (2010 – 2012 spent backpacking her way across the world and then living in Australia, where she long-boarded to work and got her nose pierced).

I was worried that R might come back to the UK a bit weird. You know how these free-n-easy people sometimes get – all cocky and self-important, as if they know more about the world than a person who has watched all of the documentaries on Queen Victoria’s children.

Luckily, she was still R – funny, nice and normal! The meeting was also very exciting because on Christmas eve, R had met a guy in a pub and had invited him along to join us all. This was particularly thrilling because it meant I wouldn’t be the awkward friend who nobody had seen for a while. Instead, I would be the friend that everyone had spent the last hour with; basically a piece of the friendship group’s furniture!

So, the date guy (A) arrives and he is very nice. I have switched to present tense now because it’ll make you feel like you were there (to punish you via passive-aggressive means for me having to read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall). A works as a postman and we chat about how ideal a job it must be and wow, you walk around all day and probably listen to Radio 4 podcasts on your headphones and wear shorts. I explain that my dad's cousin once had a sort of “midlife crisis” and left his job as a solicitor to become a postman and we all say “wow, he definitely has the right idea”.

The night is going well, so we move on to another bar to drink some cocktails. We all order and we’re standing at the bar, waiting. A few people have left now, so it is only me, R and A, the date guy. I start to panic a bit because the less people there are in a social situation, the more pressure there is on you to talk and be funny. He obviously already likes R because he is on a date with her. So the stakes are high for me because unless I am nice or funny or something, he probably won’t like me.

So, I decide to ask him a question about himself: “Do you have to work six days a week then? Because we get post on Saturdays, don’t we? Um…”

Immediately, I realise what a shit, shit, shit question I have asked. We have already covered his job, in depth. We have moved on from lunch and are now well into the evening, where one wants to forget about work and talk about fun things.

“Oh, um sorry, I know that sounds like a mundane question,” I squirm “like I’m just making conversation but um, well I do actually want to know…the answer.”

They both look at me, puzzled. I must make a bit of a funny face because R quickly pipes up “Laura, it’s okay to make conversation; that’s why we’re here!” and it sounds so simple! Of course that is why we are here – to talk about stuff – anything!

That must have been something she had learnt whilst travelling and I briefly consider whether I should go travelling so I can learn some more of these wise, old life lessons. No, I tell myself, don’t be silly but do take note of this shrewd little nugget and have a pleasant evening, where you just say stuff! And so I did! And if what I said was a bit rubbish, we all just had a laugh about it!

Towards the end of the evening, things began to get so laidback that A started telling “cheesy” jokes and because we could just say what we wanted to say without having to issue instant apologies, we all laughed along!

One such “cheesy” joke was as follows:

Q: What did the cheese say when he looked in the mirror?

A: Halloumi!

I made a halloumi salad to take to work the other day and wow, it was good. It’s quite dry, which I tend to find with lentil dishes generally but for a salad that needs to be robust enough to transport to work each day and last the week without going soggy, it’s perfect.

I was unsure whether I should delete the hedonistic drawl above and just make this post an ode to halloumi. Naaaaah…but in tribute to the wonder cheese, here are some halloumi facts:

Halloumi is from Cyprus!

Halloumi has a higher-than-average melting point, which means it can be fried or grilled without turning into gunk!

Delia erroneously says of halloumi: “Not the most exciting cheese to nibble”!

Halloumi tastes very salty before cooking and quite salty after cooking!

This salad is easy. I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t because I am lazy and so I know how this kind of stuff works.

The recipe was from the good old BBC but I will write my version out here anyway because I changed quite a bit.

Ingredients

1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved

1 red onion, finely sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

Half a lemon, juiced (or if you use the ready-made stuff, 1 tbsp of lemon juice)

1 tbsp olive oil

150g green lentils

1 pack of halloumi cheese (buy any sort you want – light, chilli infused etc.), chunked – a word I just invented, meaning cut into chunks.

Some coriander, roughly chopped

Onion, tomatoes and garlic into a large bowl (or Tupperware if you’re not planning to eat it all freshly cooked). Olive oil and lemon juice and toss (read: mix a bit). Leave to stand while you cook the lentils, so the flavours infuse.

Here are the flavours, infusing.

 Cook lentils - perhaps do as it says on the packet but when I tried to do this, the following happened:

So keep an eye on them. Having made this dish again, I would say that you should put in as much water as the packet requires and boil for 10 minutes, turn down to a simmer for 10ish minutes more and as soon as there is very little/no water left, take it off the heat and drain, swill, drain. Plonk them into your onion/tomato mix.

You can start to grill your halloumi while the lentils are cooking. If you’re not going to eat the dish right away, then don’t panic because you don’t need the halloumi to be warm. If you’re eating it straight away, then get the halloumi on the fucking grill asap!

Season your salad and mix in the coriander. Once the halloumi is golden, you can mix that in too! Serve immediately if you want to eat it right away and if you’re storing it, wait for the halloumi and lentils to cool before snapping on the lid and refrigerating.

This gives you four fairly small portions. It would make a nice supper for two, with leftovers for one (I reckon).

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Carrot and Hummus Crunch on Sourdough (or Irish Soda Bread)

The final sandwich, complete with my mangled hand.

The national airline of Belgium is called SABENA. I know this because when I was 9, my family took me on a coach trip to the Black Forest in Germany. Obviously, it would have been very tiring to do the trip all in one go, so we had little overnight stops along the way. One such stop was in Brussels, where we stayed in a hotel that was rather close to the airport.

Upon arriving at the hotel, you couldn’t help but notice a big fuck-off sign spelling out SABENA on the side of the terminal. Obviously spotting a good opportunity for a quick quip, the coach driver’s sidekick announced “That’s the Belgian airline. It stands for Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again!”

Oh and how everyone chuckled. Especially me because a) that is what you do when a grown-up joke is made, to show that you “get it” and b) I was still at the stage where “bloody” was a bit risqué, as was “piss”.

Anyway, as I was making this sandwich and everything was going wrong, I thought about SABENA. I mean, the final deal was, well, okaaay…although perhaps my enjoyment was thwarted by the various disasters along the way. I have lots of leftovers so have a few more opportunities to work out whether I actually do like this meal or not.

I was initially attracted to the recipe, by Nick Sandler and featured in the Meat Free Monday cookbook, because it was very short. For a lazy cook, this is always a deciding factor (along with How Much Washing Up Will This Create?). The meal used soda bread (can be bought ready made), hummus (can be bought ready made) and some carrot/garlic/seedy thing, which I would of course make by myself.

However, I had read on Twitter and stuff that soda bread was really easy and that homemade hummus was in a completely different league to the supermarket stuff! So, in an attempt to impress my readers (ha ha), I boldly decided to make everything myself….from scratch!

Off I toddled down to Rotherham town centre to pick up the ingredients. I already had most of the stuff that I needed for the soda bread and the only outstanding ingredient, buttermilk, was surprisingly in stock. I also soon had everything I needed, in my basket, for the hummus, until I went off to find the tahini (ground sesame seeds and olive oil).

Buttermilk sourced from Rotherham!

 After a long, drawn-out search involving various staff members, every aisle in existence and Tesco computer databases, my search ended with a “Sorry love, this one is new on me. If it’s not with the curry stuff, I don’t think we will have it.” So, I put the chickpeas and other hummus-y stuff back and picked up a tub of ready made stuff. SABENA.

Back at home, it was time to make the soda bread. This actually wasn’t a disaster at all, despite the finished goods looking somewhat like the elephant man’s head. This is the easiest bread IN THE WORLD. The recipe says it takes an hour (including cooking time) and usually these timings are ambitious because not everyone has ingredients measured out in endless mini bowls. Anyway, it actually DID take an hour because it couldn’t possibly take longer!

Dah-dah!

I used the Irish Soda Bread recipe from Good Food and it was great. The method urges you not to overwork the dough and so my “loaf” did go into the oven looking more like a collection of pieces of dough, although it did work out well in the end.

Before cooking (a hodge-podge of bits of dough)

 To add another complication to the most complicated sandwich I have ever attempted, I had decided to join a band. Not in a serious way (eg; no one in this band would ever consider music as a career) but in a “let’s hang out in some really cold practice rooms and jam!” sort of way. Which is basically an excuse for some guys to smoke doobies…and that is why everyone joins a band, isn’t it?

My boyfriend was going to pick me up at 6.45pm and it was 4.45pm, so there was plenty of time BUT I had no carrots. “Don’t worry,” my Dad said “I’m going out, so I’ll pick you some up!” All was good, so I began to cut up my chilli and garlic. Over an hour later my Dad finally arrived home because there seemed to have been some kind of northern carrot shortage, so it was all rush rush rush and then, for some INSANEEE reason (self-sabotage), I decided to a) double the quantities and b) manually grate the carrots instead of using the food processor because I thought it would be too much washing up. SABENA.

Look how much fucking carrot there is and I STILL had more to do :-(

 The root vegetable God had forsaken me because the carrot grating step took just over half an hour. My hand was about to fall off, a bit of finger had been grated into the mound of orange stuff and wet carrot was sticking to every surface, towel, tap and floor tile in the house. This shambles went on for such a ridiculously long time that I missed band practice and spent another boring half an hour washing up instead. SABENA.

A literal MOUNTAIN of hand-grated carrot.

 So, feeling all sweary, sweaty and frustrated, I bundled the sandwich together and gobbled it down. SABENA! SABENA! I think, what with the sophisticated ingredient of caraway seeds, I was hoping to be a bit more bowled over by the taste than I was. I didn’t let the carrot mixture fully cool, so that may have been a problem. Like I say, I think I should try it all again another day, when I’m feeling a little less besieged, and then make my final judgement.

The carrots, cooking (obviously).

 Serves 2 (I doubled these quantities) (SABENA)

“Fry 2 coarsely grated large carrots in a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 chopped garlic cloves, ½ chopped red chilli and 1 teaspoon caraway seeds over moderate heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Cool before using in the sandwich. Cut 4 slices of sourdough bread. Spread 100g hummus onto the bread, followed by the carrots. Remember to scrape in the caraway seeds and chilli. Add 2 tablespoons Greek yoghurt to the bread in blobs, followed by a handful of chopped coriander. Season with freshly ground pepper.”

I just mixed the coriander into my carrot mix and I also forgot to season with pepper. Please note also, that after watching Jamie Oliver on (I think it was) the Jonathan Ross show, I jazzed up my lame supermarket hummus with cumin and paprika, plus a little parsley. It tasted a bit nuttier, I think. SABENA. Also, this dish is super garlicky, when you consider the hummus (which is enough to repel all people for at least a day aka very useful) AND the cloves added to the carrots. So handle with care, my friends.

Pimped hummus (cumin and paprika).

 NB: OH MY WORD, I JUST READ THAT BACK (proof-reading, you see) AND SAW THAT IT SAID SOURDOUGH, NOT SODA BREAD!!! What an unmitigated DISASTER! I baked and wrote about the wrong bread, which just shows how completely and unreservedly SABENA the whole thing is.

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Lemon Drizzle Cake

During my final year at university, around exam time, I had a major, major breakdown. To the point where I faked an illness to get out of an exam (diarrhea: a great excuse because no one wants to know) and found myself crying, HOWLING, in a public toilet cubicle at 7am.

Feeling like there was no where else to turn, I located the University counselling service and went down to make an appointment. When I got there, they handed me a little survey so that they could assess exactly how unhinged I was. It was all very straightforward: “Do you feel like you have no where else to turn?” etc. etc. and I woefully filled it in, reducing my muddled thoughts to “yes” and “no” answers.

And then came the final question: “Do you ever think about killing yourself?”. I ticked yes. I thought about it almost every day and I sometimes still do. I didn’t know that people didn’t. What a silly question, I thought! Everyone does!

I handed in the survey and got a bit of a worried glance back. “Right”, the calm voice said, “I think we will need to book you in straight away”.

They obviously thought that this was a code red situation. They didn’t differentiate between “thinking” and “doing” in the survey (I suppose if they did, some people would be dead and so the survey would be pointless). I mean, I think about it all the time as some kind of freedom and salvation but even at my lowest, I knew that I would never actually do it.

From the worry on her face, I realised that not everyone must always think about killing themselves. Some people in this world must think “Yeah, everything seems to be going ok and what I’m doing makes total sense”.

And that was that. More recently, I had a conversation with a bunch of colleagues who had never thought about killing themselves. The person most shocked about my thoughts, decided to build up a team of happy people (those who, as far as I can fathom, buy loads of things from achica.com on their lunchbreaks) by asking everyone that came into the room what they thought.

I was still alone on my miserable team, being sympathetically stared at by the team on drugs until this lovely pregnant lady came in and completed the death-survey. She answered: “Yeah, I do actually. Sometimes when I’m driving home, I just feel as if I could drive straight into the central reservation at high speed and end it all”. And I thought “I love you”.

There is one other thing that can get me out of this suicide-slump though and it’s not something that the University councillor advised because she would probably have created another problem. She was very good by the way, psyching me out within two minutes and sending me away with a book on anxieties. And I thought I was complex!

Baking something delicious will, without a doubt, make me feel MUCH better (until I’ve eaten it all, at which point I become depressed). In honour of my dark mood, I couldn’t bake something too sweet; it needed an edge. So I decided on something known for its sour flavour: Lemon Drizzle Cake!

I didn't use ALL of these - my mum was also cooking something citrusy.

 I have since read that Mary Berry’s drizzle cake is the best there is but this one came via the BBC from Tana Ramsay and it was delicious, moist and beautiful.

The recipe is here and I did everything it told me to, apart from the fact I used a lot more lemons (which according to my boyfriend was too much but I thought worked perfectly…I’m very sour, you see).

The sugar in the ‘drizzle’ on top didn’t quite crystallise like the photo but this didn’t matter because everything worked and it was good. Very good. One of my favourites and a super mood improver. Try it!

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Quinoa, feta and courgette salad

It doesn't look great but tastes great, trust me! 

When I was born, I was apparently transferred into a sort of baby nursery. Having never given birth or been present at a birth OR been the type of person to ask people who HAVE given birth to proceed with their story beyond the point of "and then I felt as if my body had torn in half and everything was being pulled out of it", I don't know what happens, exactly.

But apparently, once the baby is born, it’s whisked away to meet all the other babies. This must be really interesting because I'm sure a lot of them must meet again, later in life: future classmates, couples, enemies etc.; they could form a Facebook group or something. It is also really scary because I can only assume that this is the point at which most baby swaps generally occur.

 If I was a midwife, I think that would be my number one fear. Throughout my short working life (including a small stint as a reluctant PA), I have discovered that I really do get into muddles with remarkable ease. As long as I have more than one thing to do, it is inevitable that I will do everything wrong. I suppose the moral here, is to never ask me to do anything for you, especially where it involves humans who can't speak up and say "Oi you fucking idiot, this isn't my Mum".

Anyway, legend has it that in the dark depths of my mother's first night of interrupted sleep, she awoke to a nurse bellowing my full name followed by "PLEASE STOP SCREAMING". My mum probably drifted back off and tried to ignore her newly-created five-hour-old-problem ("Shit, shit, what have I done? Push her back in! Please!") before she was tapped on the shoulder by a different nurse who said that she was bringing me back to sleep with my mum, as I had woken up all the other babies with my howling.

Now, I obviously can't remember this happening but when I first heard this story, I thought....THAT'S ME!! THAT IS PURE ME!! I am needy and attention-seeking BY HEART and I suppose that this story provides a sort of a defence to being like that, doesn't it? Doesn’t it! I mean, it was my first act upon this earth. It is basically the most me I have ever been, before any social conditioning or lessons on selfishness. I'm a narcissist! A real, genuine, complete and utter cow! By nature!

I tend to be at my worst when the following align: I am incredibly bored and the person I am with is incredibly busy. However, over the years, thanks to a lot of "piss offs", I have largely learnt to curb this aspect of my personality. The ONE thing, though, that will undoubtedly bring this out of me is an overload of sugar. If this is the case, I don't just get annoying but irrational and depressed too and I do think that I could one day commit an attention-seeking murder thanks to a combination of sugar and being ignored.

I have therefore decided to give up sugar for a sort-of new year’s resolution (I'm not stupid; it will not last for a year) and let me tell you that, so far, it has not been a complete disaster! Day 4 and I am still flying high on only the most natural of sugars.

Look at all the healthy ingredients it has in it!

It has been, in part, thanks to this lunchbox salad from the BBC’s Olive magazine. Now, do not be alarmed, but this salad does contain raw courgettes. I was initially horrified, especially when I tasted some of the freshly peeled courgette, yuck. But thankfully when it has had its dressing on for a few days (eugh, sounds like a bad cut after medical treatment), it really does absorb the flavour and soften.

I did also have a catastrophe with the quinoa, which I had never cooked before. I don't know if it is as temperamental as rice apparently is (which I have never cooked the conventional way) but my water to quinoa ratios were clearly way out and I ended up with a very mushy lump.

The quinoa catastrophe (I still used this and it was fine)

If, after all that, you still fancy it (and you should because it is such a lovely lunchbox alternative to a sandwich or a boring unhealthy bought-lunch), you can go straight to the recipe here or follow the instructions below...

These quantities serve two, so I doubled the quantities below and used a full block of feta. This gave me four portions, which allowed me to have a treat on Friday!

Ingredients 
75g quinoa
1 large courgette
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
4 spring onions,finely sliced
100g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red chilli, finely chopped
100g feta cheese, crumbled
small bunch of parsley, chopped

1. Somehow, cook your quinoa. Obviously read the instructions on the pack. Mine said 1 part quinoa to 5 parts water. This was too much water...but that might be due to my dodgy measuring so make sure you do precisely 1:5 to avoid mush. If you do get mush, then don't despair because it's still worth it. For the last 10 minutes of cooking time, I dropped in a veggie stock cube for a touch of extra flavour. Drain, rinse and drain (again) your cooked quinoa with cold water.

2. Meanwhile, chop the ends off the courgette and use a potato peeler to slice into ribbons. At first, I peeled all the skin off and kept going round like this until I had a mini courgette left. This isn't the best way. Instead, scrape down the length of one side and keep scraping over the same place until you come to the other side.

3. Mix your red wine vinegar and oil, and season. My red wine vinegar was very out of date but after a quick Google, it seems that it doesn't matter - so get looking in the depths of your cupboards.

4. Put the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl, then pour over the dressing and toss everything together.

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Roasted Vegetable Lasagne

Well, well well. After STUPIDLY committing myself to “Soup of the Week” (see last entry), it all went down hill fast. There haven’t been any notable problems: I still have a home and an internet connection and a laptop and a brain and so there is no good reason why I have not updated since fucking OCTOBER.

I promise to never, ever promise about doing anything ever again. It just leads to disaster, in all of life’s departments. Here’s to a new year, a new start and a free and easy non-committal approach to blogging.

Talking about new starts, let’s talk resolutions. Unlike most people, I am actually alright at sticking to new years resolutions. They’re never anything too major, usually just read more (I did), eat less bread (I do), stop being lazy and do revision (I did and got a degree!).

However, this year, I have gone ALL OUT. I have become a vegetarian. There are various reasons behind this but I’m fearful of going into them because so many people get very upset and defensive about people who have become vegetarian. Instead, I’ll just tell you that I read a lot about meat and fish production and decided that it wasn’t for me.

So, in light of the above, my blog about food is going to harbour certain obvious limitations. Who knows how long this will last; as Soup of the Week-gate has proven, it is silly to boast about anything being forever. All I will say is that I am currently, at the moment, presently a vegetarian and here is a delightful recipe that a vegetarian or anyone…except a vegan…can eat.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagne

Ingredients

• 3 red peppers
• 2 aubergine
• 3 large mushrooms (not on the official recipe but I like it)
• 8 tbsp olive oil , plus a little for greasing
• ½ quantity tomato sauce (see link to main site)
• 300g fresh pack lasagne sheets
• ½ quantity white sauce (see link to main site)
• 125g ball mozzarella

Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Deseed the peppers, halve, then cut into large chunks. Trim ends off aubergines, then cut into slices about ½cm thick. Lightly grease 2 large baking trays, then place peppers and aubergines on top. Toss with the olive oil, season well, then roast for 25 mins until lightly browned.

Reduce oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Lightly oil an ovenproof serving dish (30 x 20cm). Arrange a layer of the vegetables on the bottom, then pour over a third of the tomato sauce. Top with a layer of lasagne, then drizzle over a quarter of the white sauce. Repeat until you have 3 layers of pasta.

To finish, spoon remaining white sauce over the pasta, making sure the whole surface is covered. Scatter mozzarella. Bake for 45 mins until bubbling and golden.

The full recipe can be found here: BBC Good Food.

A few notes:

1. The tomato sauce (which you can find on the main BBC Good Food site) is exceptional. It's like a soup. A really good soup. However, like making a homemade soup, it does take a bit of time. Therefore, I recommend making a batch of this stuff, to be frozen and used at a later date.

2. Aubergines are my new "thing". They really are great, for many reasons. Firstly, they are easy as hell. Most vegetables that are aubergine-sized, like butternut squash, are nightmarish to cut up and peel. The great thing about aubergines is that the seeds are ok to eat and you can eat the skin! Like a healthy potato perhaps. Secondly, they soak up flavours like nothing else, meaning they taste bloody good.

3. I was telling my Mum all about this recipe and so she made it for my Dad. It didn't go down well because my Dad missed the meat. Therefore, if you really are a fully fledged carnivore, this might not be the right blog for you anymore.

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Toad in the Hole

It’s coming up to the end of September and at work this means only one thing: it is time to start organising the Christmas party. In years gone by (when I have not been with the company) the Christmas do has been a thing of legend.

The other day, my boss (aka the Boss – he looks nothing like Bruce Springsteen but for obvious reasons, I will use the name regardless) boasted that last year’s Christmas party had cost a whopping sixty five THOUSAND pounds. However, much like the number of women men claim to have slept with, you are always advised to half the Boss’s claims and just to be safe, half them again. And again. Anyway, all exaggerations aside, the event was clearly lavish and plush and everything else that is wonderful.

Naturally, I was expecting big things this year. The line of business I work in doesn’t really get affected by recession and so there was no risk of the excuse that it had been “a bad year” or anything else like that. So, it was to my surprise when the Boss declared that we would not be having a party this year. Instead, we would go for a nice, hearty meal with drinks to follow.

The Boss said he wanted to go to a restaurant that was a “reeeeally good gastro pub that was reeeeally nice and very British and very Christmassy”. My colleague correctly pointed out that the only place that was really Christmassy at the moment was the Harrods grotto. Apart from that, pretty much every restaurant is going to be at least vaguely Christmassy come December 23^rd. So we decided to discount that requirement.

The first and only idea we managed was Rules but after calling up and being a little underwhelmed by the Christmas menu, we were already feeling defeated! The Christmas party plans are all still up in the air. However, I was feeling inspired to create my own British feast.

I’ve recently realised that I hardly ever eat British food. Since I moved out of my family home, I never have a roast and when I eat out, it is invariably Pakistani, Arab, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Greek, Italian etc cuisine that gets my vote. In a bid to alter this, my colleague and I took things into our own hands and decided that a good toad in the hole would not go amiss for the evening.

We used the BBC Good Food recipe and I honestly think that we did a pretty good job! My friend is so daring, that she actually GUESSED measurements. This was something that made me feel incredibly nervous but I somehow managed to stay calm and resist intervening (probably because I was at her flat, in her kitchen). The result was tremendous and delicious.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that ours looked BETTER than the toad in the hole on the website. As my friend pointed out, the toads aren’t really in their holes on the recipe photo, whereas our toads are all cosy and wrapped up.

The onion gravy was also spectacular and really easy. We averted major disaster with careful planning. The recipe for the gravy required soft brown sugar which we didn’t have! Luckily, I had cannily stolen a sachet of granulated brown sugar from the kitchen at work earlier in the day. Excellent preparation and highly recommended for cost cutting.

Try this recipe – there is no reason not to. It is easy and it tastes amazing. We ate half each and couldn’t move for the rest of the evening; now that is what I call a success.

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Fruity lamb tagine

I am terrified by everything. This ranges from the normal: flying (I have alerted the cabin crew on two separate occasions to suspicious looking possible terrorists) and being attacked (I carry a rape alarm and a small can of hairspray with me at all times) to the things that normal people do worry about but are hardly terrified of: going to a hairdresser, eating rare meat, failing at writing a blog, getting to the train station late etc.

It also doesn’t help matters that my boyfriend is more cavalier than your average. He would get to an airport twenty minutes before departure if he had his way. In fact, as I said in my last post, we recently flew to New York on a service that did actually allow its passengers to check in to the airport twenty minutes before departure. As I had sorted the flights out, I was toying with the idea of not telling him, hoping that he would assume we were on a normal flight. Obviously I am far too honest to keep something from my beloved and after a little erm, debate, we thankfully agreed on forty minutes. I was a wreck.

This general cautious nature also means that I worry about spending money. I am not one of these people who think nothing of spending five hundred pounds on a neck scarf. Although in a moment of madness a long time ago, I did happen to purchase a Luella jacket from Net-a-Porter, which I have never actually worn. I’m too scared that I might damage it.

Nevertheless, this week I grudgingly spent over ONE HUNDRED POUNDS on pots, pans, baking trays, hand blenders, wooden spoons, knives and so much more. Until today I did not cook because I was too tight to buy any cooking stuff. This meant I happened to eat out a lot (every day), which cost a lot of money. I was stuck in the most vicious of circles.

Thankfully, that stress is all behind me now and with my new found set of pans, I plan to revolutionise my life. Not surprisingly, I am normally a pretty safe cook eg: chicken or fish but usually vegetarian. In an attempt to loosen up, I chose a crazy, zany dish for my first act: a Fruity lamb tegine from the BBC Good Food website

Firstly, I doubt I had ever cooked lamb before and secondly, the idea of having FRUIT in a savory meal was simply something that was beyond me. Nevertheless, the recipe had five stars and it would be stupid to ignore something like that.

The browned lamb, taking a well earned rest.

I did have a few incidents along the way, so please take the following as a guide of what not to do.

Firstly, I was unable to find the Ras el hanout spice mix, which from the reviews seems to be pretty vital. To make matters even worse, my own attempt at blending the particular spices that the mix apparently contained did not really work because I had no cardamom and I just didn’t put enough of the other stuff I did have into the pot. My meal wasn’t spicy. At all.

As I am really quite poor at the moment, I was also unable to buy the full amount of lamb. I used about 250g (half!) but I still used the full amount of apricots, meaning the meal was a little bit too sweet. In fact, it was a lot too sweet and the only positive point I can draw from the apricot fiasco is that it was one of my five a day.

The introduction of the pesky apricots. If only I had take a couple of them out.

As I poured my stock over the mixture, I realised that most of the cube (yes, sorry – not at the stage of making actual stock yet!) had not dissolved. In a panic, I just sort of threw the gritty bits left in the bottom of the jug into the mixture. Not sure if this is okay to do or not. Presumably it is not advisable; otherwise why waste your time dissolving the stuff in a bloody jug beforehand.

The final result of all the risk-taking. Kind of worth it.

All in all, when you taste a spoonful of the meal with the correct proportions eg: one piece of apricot, a big piece of lamb, a big bit of carrot and lots of chickpeas, it really is quite delicious and it is true that the apricot does bring out the taste of the lamb quite beautifully (I feel so sophisticated saying that!).

So, do try this at home but probably stick more rigidly to the recipe than I did. It will probably take me the rest of the week to polish the leftovers off. Apparently it tastes better a few days after it has been made. Let’s bloody hope so.

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