The Cure

Who says there's no cure for the common cold?

For the first time in maybe nine or ten months, I'm sick. My nose is streaming, I coughed up at least one lung during the night, and I shocked even my mirror this morning. I look like a crack-addicted raccoon. A Crackoon, if you will.

I loathe myself a bit when I'm ill. This is mostly because - I admit - I do quite like having time to myself at home where I can do nothing but stay in my leopard print dressing gown and legitimately revert to eating instant noodles. However, I tend to get rather lost in the internet and I forget to brush my teeth and then usually have to run around like a mad thing 45 minutes before the Mister comes home to tidy up a bit and make the house look a bit less like my room in student digs.

Anyway, ignoring all that, today has been BRILL. I watched This Morning (it's been far too long - last time, Fern was still on it), Supernanny USA (wow, some parents are dumb), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which I've been meaning to watch for years, dosed up on lemsip, all wearing said favourite dressing gown.

It made me wonder if rather than looking for a cure, I should just enjoy another day at home.  Perhaps the cold was actually the cure for the burnout I've experienced lately. So rather than spurn my unwashed self, I've come to terms with her today. I am a crazy-eyed skank with nutella all over my teeth and tissues strewn everywhere and I Am Proud. And why the hell not? It's just for a day.

It's quite embarrassing to admit one's complete lack of perceivable work ethic I suppose, but I could probably live every day a little bit like this.

 Yee-haw.

Keep Warm and Carry On

As I started to write this post a couple of weeks ago, it was snowing heavily again. It's been hard to be warm in our Victorian terraced house, so we've taken to putting up extra sheets as curtains, stuffing old tights under the gaps in the doors, and I even clingfilmed our bathroom window in the hope of retaining some warmth. Look what I good job I did:

Hmmm.

With the ever-increasing need to hunker down and keep warm, we've been making lots of comfort food.

Kedgeree,

chicken noodle soup,

 huevos rancheros,

and polpette con ragù

...are just some of the things we've felt compelled to make - our calorie count increasing proportionally in relation to the temperature outside decreasing.

One of my friends over at I Think in Pictures has been asking me for a dhal recipe for a little while now.  I made it again this week and finally wrote down the ingredients. So, here you go, Neenen - this is a super easy recipe that has never disappointed.

Dhal 


Ingredients:
half a packet of split red lentils
2 onions, sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 inch piece fresh ginger, chopped
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
half a tin of chopped tomatoes, OR
1 tablespoon concentrated tomato purée
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/2 tablespoon garam masala
1/2 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
5-10 whole cardamom pods, if you have them
fresh coriander leaves, to serve
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, butter, or ghee, for cooking.

Method:

Fry up the onions in a small pan until translucent, then add the garlic and fry together until they are starting to caramelise (read:burn). You really do want them to have started to blacken. Add the mustard seeds to the pan and let them pop away happily. Keep everything moving around the pan so you don't get major burnage, and then add the ginger and all of the dry spices you have from the list above, followed by the tomatoes or tomato purée. Once everything has mixed together and cooked for a couple of minutes, turn off the heat and set aside for later.

In a separate saucepan, wash and rinse the lentils a couple of times, then cover with boiling water and bring to the boil, then simmer. Keep skimming the bubbles that will rise to the top of the pan, and keep topping up with water if it is being absorbed too quickly. You're going for a thick, mushy consistency to the lentils, which usually takes a good 20-30 mins of simmering time.

Once the lentils are done, drain off any remaining water (there shouldn't really be any) and add most of the fried onion mixture to the saucepan. Mix well, and serve with steaming hot basmati rice as a base, and the remaining browned onions and chopped coriander as a garnish. Watch out for those cardamom pods if you don't like them!

All Change, Please

"This country's seen better days," says the old lady on the bus again, as she steps past us all to alight, tutting to herself. She is wearing a fluorescent shell suit and plenty of gold jewellery. We're speeding up Brixton Hill towards Streatham.

She's just witnessed the same altercation we all have: it's between an overweight, ruddy lady in her forties who clearly needs to cool off, and the small crowd of people (two Spanish dudes in their 20s, chatting away animatedly, an older Rasta man, and the aforementioned old lady) sitting on the back seats behind her who have been getting a chill every time she opens the window. 

Whoosh.

The window opens. We all feel a blast of icy air. It's well after the Friday evening rush hour and the bus driver is going like the clappers, so it feels breezier than it is. It's open maybe a minute and a half before one of the young Spaniards sitting behind the ruddy lady closes it.

THWACK. 

It shuts loudly. (Is there any other way of closing a bus window?)

The ruddy lady looks back in annoyance, but her neck is a bit fat and she can't really see who has closed it. The Spaniards stare back in open defiance. You can hear silent cheers from the others on the back seats. 

She opens it again, but no less than five seconds pass and -WHUMP- it has been shut again. The window is cleverly positioned so that both she and the young Spaniard sitting behind her can control its opening and closing. This little pantomime happens maybe three or four times. You can almost hear the audience joining in.

"OH YES it is open!"

"OH NO it isn't!"

"Can you STOP closing the window, PLEASE?" The fat lady says, in a schoolmarmish way. The Spaniards look at each other for support. 

"No," says one of them, in his singsongy Spanish way. "Eees cold." They look like they might have been a team at school, as well.

Fat lady huffs audibly. She reaches to open it again. She gets halfway and the other Spaniard reaches over and shuts it, fast. WHUMP. He can move faster than her. They are enjoying the game now. They can sense they have the support of the Rasta as well. 

"ER ...EXCUSE me", she says, stressing the Errr. "I would LIKE it open!"

"Weeell too bad," sings the Spaniard, we would LIKE it closed!" 

The Rasta chimes in. "Yeah, it's freezin' back 'ere, man."

One more time, the last time, the fat lady pulls the window open. A gust of wind blows into the old lady's face. The window is slammed shut by the hand of the young Spaniard, this time with no hesitation whatsoever. He looks ready to stand up and face her down.

"You're VERY rude," says the ruddy lady.

"There are three of us back here who would like the weeendow closed. ONE, TOOO, THRRREE," says the first Spaniard, counting his allies with his finger extended and finally pointing to his chest. Have some reespect for us."

The fat lady has given up. It's her stop anyway. She gathers herself and her things up and bustles past her neighbour to get off the bus, breathing heavily. The Spaniards look triumphant.

Their victory smiles are broken by a sudden outburst from the old lady. She tuts as she moves one seat away from the crowd. "This country's seen better days," she says. "Bloody got to get home." She stands, falteringly, to get off at the next stop, before repeating herself. 

I look over to the lady sitting opposite me, on the other side of the back of the bus. She's stifling a giggle behind her copy of the Evening Standard.

"Is it a full moon?" I ask her.

"Must be," comes her incredulous reply.

Then comes the familiar announcement, in that strange faceless woman's voice, which is so incongruous in Brixton. 

"This bus terminates here. Please remember to take all your belongs with you. This bus terminates here. All change please."

We all decamp to the very cold bus stop to await the next one.

Operation Easter Bunny

Easter weekend is coming up, and I'm buzzing.

Here's why - on Thursday last week I got this happy little message in my inbox from the Mister:

Operation Easter Bunny requests your presence:

Date: Friday 2nd April

Time:

08:30hrs

Location:

London Railway Station (need-to-know-basis)

Kit:

Wee suitcase containing enough clothing for 2 night stay, toilet bag (own toothbrush optional), scrabble, notebook, book, make-up, waterproofs (we hope these will not be needed), swimming gear (optional but I'm taking mine)

Rendez-Vous at [our home address] - ready to leave at 07:30.

We will be returning to above address late afternoon on the 4th April 2010.

How sweet is that? Never did I think that those casually-dropped hints would have been taken on board so readily by the man in my life. "Wouldn't it be great to be surprised with a call to say, meet me at the airport with just your passport and toothbrush, you've got the next few days off work," is a sentence that has passed my lips many times, but has never been put into action. Until now (well, within reason). Actually I don't know if I'd want someone else to sort out my holiday dates with work. Scrap that.

He's a special one, and I'm an extremely lucky girl. The only trouble is: I'm also an extremely sniffly girl. I seem to have come down with a cold just in time to be a bit worried about whether I'll enjoy being whisked away as much as I'd enjoy my own bed, my slippers, fleece blanket and the entire back catalogue of Come Dine With Me. So today I'm at home resting up to make sure that wherever we're going, I'm going to give Operation Easter Bunny my best.

It's quite exciting, though, isn't it? I wonder where we're going. Waterproofs? Well, clearly we're not leaving the UK. Swimming gear? Does that mean a pool? Or does it mean some crazy Scottish urge to throw ourselves into subzero waters to prove some kind of point about hardiness?

His 'own toothbrush' clause points to a long-standing discussion (debate would be too strong a word) about why I won't share a toothbrush with anyone, not even my beloved. I'm sure my mum won't mind me blaming this on her microbiologist habit of analysing the likelihood of bacterial growth on any surface at any given time. It took me a long time to be able to share a can of coke. I know, it's sad. I'm working on it.

Anyway, I'll write all about it, wherever it is we're going, once we're back. Here's wishing you a wonderful Easter break too.

Whisking Away the Winter Blues

Mid-February, and it's still miserably, brutally cold.

Maybe everything seems greyer after our return from Marrakech two weeks ago. We bathed in sunshine there, our limbs lengthening, our skin shimmering, our eyes blinking, disbelieving - like puppies tipped out of a box, I believe is the expression. We lapped up our five days there. The feeling of shedding a layer of chapped winter skin, stripping to our sandals and short sleeves, was so welcome; like the faintest whiff of summer, the briefest whisper of days to come. We basked every morning in that glow, at breakfast if we could. We swam. We got pink noses. We marvelled at having to buy suncream. In February! How decadent!

Coming back to London, we hissed at the pilot who announced it would be 4 degrees when we landed. 'Damn and blast it all to hell', we cried. 'We're out of here. No more than another two winters here. It's bloody awful. How does anyone do it?' etc, etc. You get the idea. We started to look for jobs in the Cayman Islands and plot our escape.

To get over the shock of the return, we did what any shell-shocked and depressed couple would do: we ate. We tried to relive some of the holiday, recreating dishes similar to those we had eaten in Morocco. This was our first attempt, the day after we unpacked:

Moroccan Harcha (semolina flatbreads)

Ingredients:

2 cups semolina flour

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

good pinch of salt

1. Mix together the semolina, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter, and blend well with your hands.

2. Add the milk, and mix until a moist dough takes shape.

3. Shape the dough into balls and leave to rest a few minutes.

4. Preheat frying pan. Roll, then flatten the balls into saucer-sized circles.

5 .Cook over a low heat, about 7 to 10 minutes on each side, until they become golden . Turn only once, and check regularly that the heat is not too high, so they have time to cook all the way through.

These Moroccan crumpety-biscuit type things were made by the Mister's fair hand, and were a warm treat for our first cold morning back, which was mostly spent cosying up to the radiators and catching up with our laundry. They were sunny little things, light and fluffy and great with butter melting on their doughy insides and jam or cheese jazzing them right up. We served ours with some typically Moroccan sliced oranges with orange flower water, cinnamon, icing sugar and as I didn't have strawberries, some reduced cherries from the Co-op.

Yum. After a few of these we were just about coming to terms with the winter again.

Greensmiths, Lower Marsh

The Bitter: Cold (still less than 2 degrees Celsius outside and the UK continues to not cope very well)

The Sweet: Discovering the great little café at my new favourite shop, an independent supermarket made up of local food retailers - an idea I wish I'd put into practice!

Monday, 11 January 2010

7. The good, the bad, the café and the cold

Greensmiths on Lower Marsh is fast becoming my most favoured shop, ever. I think they already know me in there now, so numerous have my after-work trips been. The greengrocer guy definitely recognises me and his eyes light up, because I have often fawned over the endive or asked about where their samphire comes from. The staff are extremely friendly and clued- up about their produce, to the point that they can explain how to cook something or what other foods it would pair well with. And there's little pretension - it's all quite straightforward supermarket shopping, except there aren't ever any queues, the food is locally sourced where possible, there's a sweet café upstairs, and - fundamentally - the people at the tills aren't dead-eyed and devoid of any charm, or pushing reward card points like smack.

Tonight I went with my friend Dany to see if we could get some food there after work, before heading down to Scooterworks (see my previous post here extolling the virtues of this other Lower Marsh gem) for their regular Monday night film at 8pm. Sadly the café, although replete with people, was no longer serving food (they do excellent-looking breakfasts until 11am, and then serve lunches from 12-4, I think). So we went to Sino Thai down the street instead, where we had some fairly standard chicken with cashew nuts and some sweet and sour prawns with coconut rice. It was average food, but came with friendly service and was inexpensive. I felt sorry for the man in the restaurant as we were his only customers and it was a bitterly cold evening with little chance of him encountering anyone else.

Poor Sino Thai dude.

So next time you're on Lower Marsh before 4pm check out the Greensmiths café and let me know what you think. Their cakes looked mighty good and I'd love to know what one of their bacon sandwiches would be like. Pigs have died for less noble reasons, y'know.

New Year's Bastard Chicken

The end of 2009, and the dawning of a new (very cold) year has seen a few structural changes take place, which may go some way towards explaining a shocking lack of regular posting ettiquette.

Here's a roundup of the major events of the last couple of months in quick-capsule format...

November

• decided to move out of shared house in Clapham and into flat with boyfriend
• began search for new replacement person for my old room and held viewings
• found suitably nice person to take on room; started looking for flats
• saw some horrendous hellholes advertised very unscrupulously by lettings agents (how do they sleep at night?!%@)
• had some crazy dealings with insane neighbour in shared house - had police over on my last morning living there - fun!
• moved out of old house; moved possessions into storage; moved a couple of bags to my mum's in Orpo
• found a perfectly lovely flat on gumtree and arranged to view it
• went to Leeds and Edinburgh for work
• went to see boyfriend's mum in Yorkshire; got heavily rained upon and saw beautiful scenery
• saw flat in SW2 - loved it; wanted it; took it
• Went on a crazy work trip that took in Berlin, Warsaw and Vilnius in 4 days
• came back and flopped with exhaustion; went back to work for 4 days

December

• Spent 4 days in Switzerland for work
• returned from Switzerland and went back to work for a day; attended work Christmas party - a predictably boozy car crash sort of evening that ended up with me hurling a camembert across the room (long story)
• picked up the keys for the new flat; moved in with a hangover
• adored everything about the flat and bought lots of little housey things to put in it
• had a housewarming/Christmas/ farewell party for two good friends leaving to return to Europe; made blinis and quaffed cava
• had nearly 3 weeks off work (but why no posting, you may well ask? - see next point)
• spent maybe two hours of my life that I'll never get back speaking to 4 separate BT call centre workers based in Sheffield, who bless them, tried, but couldn't have plugged in a wireless router between them, let alone place one.bloody.broadband.order. Still, it was Christmas, so I was lovely and patient with each of them and wished them seasonal tidings.
• finally manged to get into a a tight pair of jeans bought in the Barcelona sales in Feb last year and crowed at my reflection
• then ate my own weight in Turkey and sprouts and promptly undid said jeans
• started on the old one-pot soup and chilli routine, post-Christmas overindulgence and overspending
• had a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve, danced to Song 2 in a Smithfields club and went to bed at 6am
• woke up at 3pm, had breakfast (we called it 'tea' to make it less weird) at 5.30pm at Nando's, watched Avatar 3D and had possibly the most perfect New Year's Day in living memory.

Which brings us up to date.

So after the excesses of new year's eve and some fairly rich meals over the past couple of months, I found myself poking around in our fridge for something to inspire me on Monday - the first day back at work. We had chicken thighs, some reduced corn on the cob from the Co-op, some fresh chillies, red and green peppers and plenty of cupboard sundries. I thought about a gumbo type of thing because I figured it would be in one pot, bubbling away for a while and would take minimum effort. I also looked in the Levi Roots cookbook we'd been given for Christmas and looked at some Jamaican stewed chicken recipes, then bastardised them to make my own thing with my ingredients. And so New Year's Bastard Chicken was born. Here's the recipe, should it interest you to try it out.

NEW YEAR'S BASTARD CHICKEN (STEW)

4 chicken thighs

4 cut corn cobs

2 bell peppers, varying colours, chopped

1 sweet potato, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

2 fresh chillies, chopped (the long Thai kind will do)

1 piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped (thumb-sized)

2 large onions, chopped roughly

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

juice of 1 lime

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 cup basmati rice

a handful of fresh thyme

2 tsp Madras curry powder

pinch of turmeric

pinch of dried chilli or cayenne

salt and pepper to taste

Marinate the chicken in the lime juice, and season with ginger, salt, pepper, turmeric and dried chilli. Leave for as long as possible to soak up the flavours.

After as long a marinade as possible, fry the chicken pieces with one onion until browned on both sides for at least 10 minutes (mine got burnt a bit, but that kind of works). Set aside for later.

In a large saucepan, fry the other onion in a little olive or sunflower oil. Add the garlic and cook until soft. Add the curry powder and fresh chillies. Leave to cook for 1-2 minutes.

Add the tinned tomatoes, sweet potato, carrot, corn cobs and thyme. Pour in half of the stock. Cook for 10 minutes on a high heat to soften the corn, carrots and sweet potato. Add the rice, peppers, the rest of the stock and the pre-sooked chicken pieces. Leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes until rice is cooked through.

Serve heaped in bowls while piping hot. Eat with fingers as necessary. Serves 4 very hungry people or makes 2 main meals and about 3 extra packed lunches (you'll be sick of it in 2 days, though). Beware - it comes out spicy, so ensure your constitution can take a bit of heat...

Happy January, folks.