Pumpkin pie

Oh readers, I've been neglecting you so terribly, haven't I? Let's blame the baby. He's not arrived yet, but the little tyke is dreadfully distracting, I assure you.

This post was going to be called 'Pastry is a bloody bitch and I fucking hate it', but I figured that wouldn't work so well for google searches. None the less, pastry is a bloody bitch, and I do fucking hate it.

I think every cook has has a dish which will always elude them. I know I have several. But pastry is my ultimate nemesis. It just never works the way I want it to. I've tried so many recipes and so many techniques, yet on every attempt it shrinks and shrivels away from the edge of the tin. Or swells up at the bottom. Or burns around the top. Or if I allow for extra around the edge, and attempt a post-bake trim, it cracks and ends up having to be stuck back together.

With most things that are this consistently infuriating, you walk away, but the problem with pastry is that it's also delicious. And it acts as an edible receptacle for other delicious stuff. So it's become a bit like a cheating lover, who I can't stop myself returning to, time and time again, no matter how much it hurts. Hence this pie.

Like most households in Britain last week, we found ourselves with a load of pumpkin innards, having turned the outards into a ghoulish face (a ghoulish face which we then hid in our dining room, so that no actual Trick or Treaters saw it through the window and assumed we might want to give them some of our chocolate). I was loath to throw it away, so decided to make it into a pumpkin pie; something I've never actually had before. It was nice. Like a slightly vegetal custard tart. And we all know that puddings with fruit and veg in are basically calorie free.

Did I, on this occasion, find a new magical method which made perfect pastry? Did I fuck. I got it out of a packet and it still went to shit, but I chose to photograph the one slice where you can't tell. CUNNING.


Pumpkin pie

Clearly I don’t know how to make the pastry, so let’s assume you’ve got an 8”ish shortcrust tart shell, blind baked. We don’t need to talk about how you got to that point.

500g pumpkin flesh

100g soft brown sugar

150ml double cream

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp mixed spice

½ tsp ground ginger

3 eggs

Boil your pumpkin until soft, then puree.  Allow to cool slightly and stir in the rest of the ingredients. Transfer to the tart case and bake for about 40 minutes, until the filling has set, but is still fairly bouncy.  Serve with ice cream.  

In The Family Way

(Selfie)

That got your attention, didn't it? Well it's true. Big Life Announcement: as of December I will have a new sprog-shaped accessory to clutter-up your timelines with. In fact I'm hoping I can give up on this cooking malarkey all together and just show you pictures of the baby. That's what everyone else does, right? To be honest, since that test showed positive I've lost all skill to string a sentence together, so we all better hope it's cute.

Having spent most of my adult life trying very hard not to be pregnant, it's very strange to suddenly be booking maternity leave and buying stretchy jeans (WHY haven't I always had these?). You kind of expect someone to tell you off. But everyone's being very nice about it. Mum's started knitting. Step Dad is trying to rebuild our house. And Ben and I are thrilled, I should probably point that out too (yes it was planned/yes we will find out the sex/no I haven't ever changed a nappy - why would you do that unless you absolutely had to? Gross.).

I've never been entirely sure how I feel about announcing such things on the internet. I suspect it's considered a terribly vulgar thing to do, but I figure if I'm going to go to the trouble of growing a whole new person, then it's probably worth a mention somewhere along the line. Plus it's only fair to let you in on the secret, seeing as I plan on doing a fair amount of complaining about the (seemingly many) less glamorous aspects of offspring production.

It also explains why things have been a bit quiet around here. Basically I don't like food anymore. Or at least I haven't for the last three months. I started off wanting raw, crunchy things and protein. I thought to myself, 'Dude, this is health, you're gonna LOSE weight having this baby'. That lasted all of three days before my staple diet became chips, pasta and Cornettos.

Of course I was expecting cravings and nausea, they warn you about that, but I wasn't expecting to go off everything I have ever loved. It's hard to maintain a food blog when your recipes stretch to 'pour Rice Crispies in bowl' or 'ring boyfriend demanding Fondant Fancies'. And I've become a complete glutton to advertising. Anything vaguely junk like, mentioned by anyone, anywhere, and I want it. It's been primitive around here, man.

Things seem to be returning to some semblance of normality these days, so I'll bring you some proper cooking very soon, I promise. But for now, just spare a moment of sympathy for my waistline. And the cat. He's going to blow a fucking gasket when the small person turns up.

P.S. I'm sorry if you're my best friend / closest relative and I forgot to tell you personally. There's always one.

May Outline article: The Shooter's Sandwich

As a child, I was a fussy little shit. The list of things I would eat could fit on the back of a teabag, and mainly involved cheese, e numbers and an occasional slice of cucumber.  These days I’ll hoof any old thing into my gob (keep it clean, guys) but back in the day it was a battle of wills to get anything past my gnashers. This meant that school dinners were an absolute no go. There was zero chance of me eating mashed potato served in scoops, or that lumpy yellow custard, which everyone suspected to be closely linked to the class’ flatulence levels the proceeding afternoon.

Resultantly, I was a firm fan of the packed lunch. Sandwich, crisps, fruit, cereal bar. Sometimes my Mum might mix things up with a packet of raisins or a Petits Filous.  It was glorious.  And all held together in a Thundercats lunchbox, and a garish Disney flask which always, always leaked all over your P.E. kit. Good times.

As adults we get a bum deal when it comes to packed lunches. There are no sparkly containers or yoghurts with feet (do they still make Munch Bunch?). It generally comes down to whatever you can find in the fridge which doesn’t smell of egg and can feasibly be packed into a Tupperware.

So, how do we liven it up for the over 11s? Well, I’m pretty sure the answer doesn’t lie with Pret-a-fucking-Manger and a haphazard sprinkling of rocket. Instead, I think it comes down to the construction of the humble sandwich. We need to get more creative with our loaves; simply laying one slice of Mighty White on top of another just doesn’t cut the mustard for excitement levels during the daily grind. 

Some friends and I came across the recipe for this ‘Shooter’s Sandwich’ in a Sunday supplement a couple of years ago, and immediately organised an ill-advised March picnic to mark its consumption.  Whilst we all subsequently agreed, with chattering teeth, that the picnic was a terrible idea, the sandwich was a resounding success.  I assume it is named thus as it used to be consumed by hungry hunters, off in pursuit of a stag or something. Either that or its contents were traditionally the result of the shoot – but I’m not sure anybody in their right mind would hunt a cow...

It might seem like an overtly carnivorous option, but fear not, dear veggies, as this method can work with all sorts: a bit of halloumi and roast peppers; some goat’s cheese and caramelised onion. Or you could use fake meat stuff if you’re that way inclined. Basically you can bung all sorts in here.

Shooter’s Sandwich

N.B. The proportions of this recipe all depend on your loaf, so the larger that is, the more of everything else you’ll need.

Small round loaf, with a firm crust

2 medium sized steaks (I used rump)

Knob of butter

3 medium sized banana shallots, finely sliced

250g mushrooms, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Handful of chopped parsley

Shot of brandy

1-2tbps Dijon mustard or horseradish sauce

Seasoning

Slice off the very top of your loaf to form your ‘lid’ and spread it with the horseradish/mustard.  Hollow out the inside of the loaf and put to one side.

Cook your steaks to your preferred method and level of doneness. You can either keep the steaks whole, or slice. Use one steak to line the bottom of your hollowed out loaf – you don’t need to leave it to rest as the juices will all soak in. 

Fry your mushrooms and shallots in the butter, until softened. Add the garlic and fry for another minute, then the brandy, allowing the alcohol to burn of for a minute or two.  Lastly stir in the parsley, season, and transfer to the middle of your loaf.

Top with the second steak and replace the loaf lid.  Wrap the whole thing in greaseproof paper, sandwich between two chopping boards, and weigh down with something heavy, so all of the juices soak into the bread.  Leave for a good few hours, preferably overnight, then slice, as you would a meaty cake. Serve with some sort of vegetable, to make you feel slightly more virtuous.

Birthday cake trifle

Technology is well and truly conspiring against me at the moment. Nothing in my life works properly. We've bought a newfangled tablet thing, which doesn't seem to do anything useful. My macbook is so old that it's about to claim its bus pass, my phone hasn't been updated for so long that it's simply refusing to do anything, and the DVD player has now decided it doesn't like DVDs. And nothing rivals Ben's laptop, which has half a screen and no keyboard. Everything media based seems to involve connecting one crappy piece of hardware to another, to share around the elements of it which aren't crappy.

The tip of the iceberg is that the oven seems to have gone on the blink. Now I'm not entirely sure if this is just my paranoia, it's not clapped out completely or anything, but something has definitely changed since we moved house. Things only seem to cook if they're on the top shelf, and then they cook a little too much. If you put anything on the bottom shelf then you might as well just stand there and breath heavily on it for two hours

*Insert something about bad workman, blame and tools*

All this resulted in me well and truly shitting-up Ben's birthday cake a few weeks ago. A simple victoria sponge and I couldn't get it right. It overflowed like some sort of eggy magma, covering the entire bottom of the oven. And I've only just plucked up the enthusiasm to clean it, because oven cleaning just isn't something I think anyone should ever have to do ever.

I couldn't face trying to make it look presentable as a cake, but nor could I bear to throw it in the bin. If I were clever I would have marketed it to the crowd as 'Deconstructed Birthday Cake', but really it's a fucking trifle. And it doesn't really warrant a blog post, as the recipe is just throwing a bunch of stuff together, but it's a handy thing to have in your head, should you similarly shit-up a cake...

Birthday cake trifle

One layer of sponge cake (2 eggs, 4oz stork, 4oz caster sugar, 4oz self-raising flour, 1tsp vanilla extract - all mixed together and cooked in a greased tin for about 30 mins, gas mark 3)
1 bag of frozen fruit, defrosted - mine was optimistically labelled 'summer fruits'
2 shots of creme de cassis (optional)
300ml double cream
2tbsp icing sugar
1 pot of fancy shop bought custard
Handful of toasted almonds

Now, my trifle doesn't have jelly in, because jelly is rank, but you can add some in if you're a bit twisted.

Line the bottom of a deep bowl with the sponge cake. Mix the fruit with the creme de cassis and then spoon over the sponge.  Next the custard.  Whip the double cream with the icing sugar, and use to top. Scatter over the chopped almonds and chill for a couple of hours.

April Outline article: Tomato and basil soup

Below is my April column for Outline Magazine; on lurgy, tomato soup, and impure thoughts about Jon Snow (no, not the news presenter).

I’m generally all for a bit of cold weather. Summer is far too much like hard work – I spend most of it with a sweaty fringe and an overriding preoccupation with how to cover my upper arms. Winter is much more dignified. It has big coats and scarves; log fires, mulled wine, CHRISTMAS (remember Christmas?). As it approaches I can pretend that I’m living in an episode of Game of Thrones, and any minute now I’ll bump into the handsome, young Jon Snow. Jon and I will take his pet direwolf for a walk, feast on roast boar, and then he’ll lay a load of bear skins down in a snowy cave and hang his cloak up and we’ll...

BACK IN THE ROOM, MORGAN.

But Jon never showed up, and now it’s April and I’m still sat here wearing three jumpers and a balaclava in my living room to keep warm. My 200 denier tights have lost their elastic through overuse, the cat hasn’t a clue what stage of malting it’s meant to be at, and with every turn of the gas meter I can hear the pounds dropping into British Gas’s pockets and a fat cat grin spreading across the CEO’s face. It’s fair to say the novelty of a bit of a chill in the air has well and truly worn off.

Right now we should be skipping through meadows with lambs and baby bunnies, gathering daffodils as we pass. We should be getting overexcited about hanging our washing outside, or leaving the house without a coat, or planting a load of flowers and vegetables which will inevitably all die at the first sign of a heat wave. Really at least one of your friends should have organised an optimistic BBQ by now.

But alas, no, apparently we all fell through the back of a wardrobe when we weren’t paying attention and are stuck in fucking Narnia.

The biggest bore of the prolonged winter is the never-ending bouts of lurgy going around. Every trip on public transport is a stealth mission in phlegm avoidance; evenings are spent downing hot toddies rather than flaming zambucas, and we all have the complexion of Bella Swan with a hangover. Almost every person I know is suffering from some sort of affliction right now, be it cough, sniffle or pox.

The only advantage of this lack of health is a culinary gold ticket to eat whatever the hell you like. Of course, you can take the approach of snorting lines of Berocca and injecting orange juice into your eyeballs, but I view this as closing the stable door after the horse has legged it, somewhat. Instead I choose to eat what makes me feel good. I dose up on comfort rather than vitamins. Ice cream for sore throats, macaroni cheese post-noro, seven bars of Green and Blacks for anything vaguely resembling a menstrual cramp.

Tomato soup, I believe, is the epitome of ill food, and this is my version. Don’t get me wrong, at times of poorliness I’m all for the stuff in the can, but on one particular bout of near-death I was forced to create my own. It was either that, or leave the house to go and buy a tin, and the prospect of washing my hair and replacing my pyjamas with a snow suit was just too much to comprehend...

Tomato and basil soup

Serves 4

1 onion, roughly chopped

4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

3 tins chopped tomatoes

1 ½  pints vegetable stock

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp dried chilli flakes (optional)

Large handful of basil, stalks and all

Glug of oil

200ml single cream

Salt and pepper

Fry the onion in the oil until softened, then add the garlic and fry for another minute. Throw in the tomatoes, stock, sugar, vinegar and chilli and bubble away for about 30 mins or so. Add basil and cream and blend. Taste, and add more seasoning etc if needs be. Serve and top with a swirl of cream or a handful of cheddar.  Another excellent accompaniment is the bread recipe from last month’s column...

Feta, tomato and basil muffins

Happy Easter, y'all. In some gross failure of grocery shopping (and boyfriend selection) I'm sat here without any chocolate eggs. Its tough being me. Hope the bunny bothered to stop at your house.

To really torture myself I've decided to reminisce about a load of baked sugary goods which were in my possession just two weekends ago, all in the name of the Make and Do pop-up shop: a selection of artists, and a couple of bakers, come together to sell their wares.

This was my first foray into baking professionally for a good few years, and an excellent reminder as to why I don't do it anymore. I had forgotten just how OCD I get about washing my hands. I had forgotten how the cashier in Sainsburys looks at you when you buy 3kg of icing sugar and 10 packs of butter. I had forgotten how your brain feels after a whole day of eating nothing but raw cake mix, for 'testing' purposes. And I've forgotten where I've put my favourite icing nozzle (of course I found it straight after I needed it). That said, it was good to get back on the diabetic horse.

It was a fantastic day, with a wonderful bunch of people. Rose (of Mountain Bakery) and I sold a load of baked goods, and then went and spent all of the money we made on other people's stuff. That seemed to be how it worked for everyone involved, like some sort of arty food chain, but that's testament to how wonderful everything was.

On the day I made the obligatory cupcakes (cookies 'n' cream and vanilla), banana and white chocolate blondies, and savoury muffins. I also made some meringues, but the less said about how they turned out the better, the traitors.









Because you've all probably had far too much sugar already this weekend, I thought I'd give you the savoury muffin recipe. But if you need more of a fix, the cookies 'n' cream recipe (and a breakdown of my love/ hate relationship with the cupcake) is here and the blondies are here.

Feta, tomato and basil muffins

Makes about 8
100g feta, crumbled
Large handful of basil, torn to small pieces
150g cherry tomatoes, quartered and deseeded (sun dried would also work well)
250g self-raising flour
80g butter, melted and cooled
200ml whole milk
2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp bicarbonate soda
2 eggs
1tsp salt
Black pepper to taste

Heat the oven to gas mark 6.  Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl (flour, baking powder, bicarb, seasoning) and the wet in another (eggs, melted butter, milk) then gradually add the wet to the dry. Once fully combined, add the tomatoes, basil and feta and stir.

Line a muffin tin - with muffin cases, or squares of baking paper - and fill about two thirds of the way up.  Bake for approx 20 mins, until the tops are firm and golden.

Outine article - March

Should you be interested, you can read my March article for Outline magazine here (p.34). The recipe won't be anything new to regular readers, BUT you can read my month's musings and blasphemous links between Jesus and artisan baking...

Pop-up shop

Attention Norfolkers - this Saturday, I will be selling baked goods at the above. How about you come say Hi and consume some mega calories?

Banana and Nutella cake

Excuse the absence. Bloody houses, bloody decorating, etc. Anyway, moving on....

There is a trend in the blogging word, it seems, to be constantly announcing exciting news on the horizon. The writers of many of the blogs I read - mostly the ones I follow specifically to make myself cross - are forever shouting about new projects and collaborations, soon to be revealed. But often you never hear any more about it, or it turns out to be something unnecessarily dull, like a new sponsor, or a competition to win a pair of mittens made out of cat hair.

So recently, when I got my own little bit of exciting news, I kept it to myself; hidden away in some secret place (a bit like the eyeshadow I stole when I was 13 and then hid under my bed for the next five years, in fear that a wondering policeman would spy my sparkly eyelids and just KNOW). I was reluctant to shout it from the rooftops, in case it never come to anything, or I'd sound like one of those knobends who constantly retweet praise on twitter.

But now that it's actually happened, I feel that I can make a bit of a fuss about it. Perks and compliments are few and far between in blogsville, so I don't feel too guilty about the ego trip. And it seems fitting, with Sod Nigella recently celebrating its first birthday *weak party blower sound*.

So my news is this: I am now the monthly food columnist for Outline magazine - a news/reviews/what's on type publication for the yoof of Norwich. Most famously it features a spread of photos of people on nights out, which as teenagers you would check furiously to see if you'd been snapped on the raz at Po Na Nas. Being the same age as me, the editor, Emma, has recently decided to start adding a few more features for the prematurely middle aged, which is where yours truly comes in.

Of course, I don't get paid vast sums of money or anything professional in THAT sense, but I do get to yell things like "Can you think of an example of X, it's for a thing?" and "Don't bother me, I'm on a deadline!" at Ben. The beach hut in Barbados is a while off yet, but I can say that my name is in print and being circulated to the masses of Norwich.

Wanna see? Well you can do so here (p.28). You can expect much of the same as what you get here - a lot of swearing and amateur cooking techniques, but within a word limit and on a less sporadic basis.

For my first article in Feb, I was tasked with writing about pinterest (a subject which I feel predictably cynical about, at the same time as finding it quite useful) and recreating a recipe from my own pinnings. This was the outcome: a banana and Nutella cake.

Turns out Ben doesn't like banana cake. Shame.

Bananutella Cake

4 eggs

8oz caster sugar

8oz stork/butter, softened

10oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1tsp vanilla extract

3 ripe bananas, mashed

2tsp cinnamon

Icing

300g icing sugar

200g cream cheese

2 heaped tbsp Nutella

Mix together all of the cake ingredients, except the banana. I’m a great fan of bunging it all in together, but you can cream your butter and sugar and so forth, if you’re that way inclined. When smooth, stir in your bananas.

Decant into two round, greased cake tins and bake for about 45 mins at gas mark 3/160C. Check after half an hour by inserting a skewer into the middle – if it comes out clean your cake is done, if it’s got some mix on, shove it back in for another ten mins at a time until done.

Once cooked, allow your cake to cool and make the icing by mixing the icing sugar (you do have to sieve that I’m afraid), cream cheese and Nutella.  Make sure to mix it well, so you have a smooth consistency. Then splodge it on to your cake in whatever manner takes your fancy, and scoff.

Mountain Bakery's easy peasy Dutch oven bread

Hands up who sees the words 'Dutch Oven' and immediately thinks of the tactical, under-duvet fart technique? You too? Jolly good, glad we've got that out of the way.

Moving on from toilet humour, I've got a bit of a confession to make....I've never made bread before. I know by now you've all come to see me as some perfect and peerless baking guru (ahem), but this is the truth of it. The problem is that I'm lazy; I like instant gratification. I can't be doing with sitting around waiting for the yeast do its magic and then go seven rounds in the kneading ring every few hours. I don't find it therapeautic, it makes my weedy arms hurt. 

But, whilst I am lazy, I am also a total lemming. I'm a fan of followng the crowd, and right now the crowd is making its own bread and social networking it in my face. I see the photos on instagram and I think to myself, 'I want a piece of what they've got'. So, I had to get my act together and make some goddamn bread.

CHEERS FOR THAT, YOU SMUG BASTARDS.

I browsed a few recipes and was about to relent and use one by that smarmy goblin, Paul Hollywood, but then Lo! Behold! Like some beacon from heaven, this recipe sprung up in my blog feed, which requires absolutely no kneading, and very little effort of any sort. It is so easy that is has actually changed my whole approach to bread buying, in that I've completely given up buying any from the supermarket. Throwing this together is as easy as walking to the shop (unless you need to walk to the shop to get the ingredients - in which case, may I recommend Ocado?) and a darn sight cheaper. All you need is a little forward planning, to allow for the dough to rise. Oh, and it's a bit of a bugger to wash up after, there's no way around that.



The recipe comes from the lovely Rose, of Mountain Bakery; a micro bakery, based in Noriwch. Rose runs Mountain Bakery in her spare time, as a distraction from the day job, and can be found at various fairs and stalls of a weekend. She also runs a genius bread club, whereby for £12 a month you get a weekly bread delivery (still warm from the oven) and occassional little extras which Rose thinks will compliment the bread. 



We had our first delivery on Friday; not to our door, but to the pub which we happened to be in when the bread came out of the oven. A gorgeous little spelt, rye, and fennel loaf, with a pot of rhubarb and vanilla jam. Having a warm, scented loaf in my handbag for the evening was somewhat torturous, and I have to admit to, after a few wines, passing the jam round the table and us all ungracefully sticking our fingers in for a try. We're pure class.



The jam is divine, and the bread is fucking excellent, so I recommend all of you Norwich bods get signed up to Bread Club (first rule of which is that you MUST talk about bread club and make this girl deservedly rich).

Whilst I am usually inclined to dick about with a recipe, on this one occassion I refrained, so I am simply going to quote Rose's method. You also get a lovely little instructional video, made by Spindle Productions.

No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread Recipe

No-knead Dutch Oven Bread from SpindleProductions on Vimeo.

¼ teaspoon of dried yeast

350ml tepid warm water (so that when you dip your finger in, you can’t really feel any change in temperature)

400g strong white flour

1 ½ teaspoons of salt

The night before you want to bake, start off by combining the yeast with the warm water. You should start to see little bubbles appear at the edges and the water should turn milky, this means that the yeast is waking up nicely.

In another bowl, mix the salt and flour together well and then add to the water and yeast mixture. Turn it with a spatula until everything is mixed, it will look wet and shaggy, but that’s fine, cover with cling film and leave at room temperature overnight. The dough will enlarge to at least twice it’s size as it proves – so make sure it is in a large bowl and has room to grow.

In the morning take some flour and generously coat your work surface. Scrape your dough out of the bowl – be careful with it, as you don’t want to manhandle it too much at this point, as you may knock out some of the air that’s developed inside it during proving, which will give you a nice holey texture when baked. Put your casserole pot in the oven, and preheat to 250 degrees centigrade, fold the dough over on itself once and cover with a tea towel whilst you’re waiting.

Once your oven is up to temperature, carefully take out your casserole pot, scoop up your dough and put it in. With a lid on, return the dish to the oven for about 40 minutes. You may (as I usually do) want to take the lid off the pot about 10 minutes prior to taking the loaf out, so that the crust is all crispy on top.

Et voila! Yummy homemade bread for breakfast or brunch, with hardly any effort at all!

Sweetcorn fritters

Are they fritters or pancakes? I'll be damned if I know.

I wasn't going to post these (hence the terrible photos), but someone on twitter asked if I would - and I'm totally swayed by even the merest hint of flattery - so here you go, people.

The reason for my initial reluctance, is that I fear you all know how to make these aleady and I'm preaching to the converted. I've seen a lot of recipes for them floating around. But then I made a - frankly, Nobel Prize worthy - discovery, which I decided I needed to share with the world. And that is....

YOU CAN PUT THEM IN THE TOASTER THE NEXT DAY AND THEY TASTE OF DREAMS

Seriously. Toast, spread with a bit of butter, a sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of lemon and ay, caramba!

Originaly we ate these with salmon, an avocado and spring onion salady thing, and a bit of crème fraîche. They go great with Mexican/Caribbean/Deep South BBQ style food - jjalapenos, cheese, sour cream, lime, ribs, jerk chicken, all that sort of stuff. Proper feasting.

God, I'm starving again just thinking about it. 

Sweetcorn fritters
Serves 4
2 cups milk
3 cups plain flour
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
Generous pinch of salt and pepper
2 cups of sweetcorn (I used frozen)
You can add a couple of spring onions into the mix too, but I prefer these separate

Mix together the milk, flour, eggs, seasoning and baking powder and stir until you have a smooth but quite thick batter. Then stir in the sweetcorn (if you're using frozen it might stick together, so make sure to break up any lumps).

Heat a non-stick frying pan to a medium-high heat and spoon the mix into the pan, to make whatever sized fritters you desire. If you have a good non-stick pan you shouldn't need any oil, but if you really need it use a teeny tiny bit - not too much as it just gets soaked up and the fritters get a bit saturated.  Also if they're really oily they might set your toaster on fire the next day (I don't know if that's true but I've got OCD so I want to warn you JUST IN CASE). 



They'll generally need a couple of minutes on each side. They'll look a bit sicky at first, but have faith. Flip them over when they start to go golden, then when they're done keep at a low heat in the oven, whilst you do the rest of the batch. 

Salsa verde

I don't think I'm alone in saying this, but...I fucking hate New Year's Eve. Always have, probably always will.

It started at the age of 16; the Millennium. A plan - of hanging around pubs that wouldn't let us in and flirting with boys in baggy trousers - somehow ended with me getting separated from my friends (before everyone had mobile phones) and being sat, at the stroke of midnight, on the steps of The Theatre Royal, sobbing like a beast and trying to convince one of my parents that they weren't too drunk to come and pick me up. I arrived home, an hour or so later, to find them all singing Joni Mitchell at the top of their lungs, and that the cat had pissed on our DIY cardboard millennium dome, which had come free with The Independent. Happy new year!  The following year a friend was seriously unwell once we'd gone out (not even through booze) - so unwell she couldn't walk home - so we spent about three hours in the rain trying to hail a taxi. Another year I was fresh from a festive dumping, dragged out in London, and trying to remember how to smile at potential suitors, when you know you've put on three stone since last attempting it. 

There have of course been some which weren't so bad, if I force myself not to be melodramatic. Those ones were largely based around big meals and going to local pubs, and didn't involve entry fees or public transport.

But it's just all so MEH and so BLEURGH.

As a result of this aversion, my main romantic aspiration in life became to meet a man who would be happy to stay in with me on a New Year's Eve. Being handsome and rich would be a perk, but the NYE thing really was the clincher. And, thankfully, I hit the jackpot two and a half years ago.  Yes, this one does have a penchant for brightly patterned trousers, and a great ability to ignore an overflowing bin, but for the past two years I've been allowed to spend the last evening of the year drinking fizz, eating steak and chips, and taking the piss out of people's dancing on the Hootenanny - and for that I am truly grateful.

And this is what accompanied my steak this year: salsa verde.  In my opinion, the best sidekick for steak there could be. When I lived at home we used to eat very healthily in the week, then the weekends were party time - started off with steak and chips on a Friday. My step dad used to make this salsa verde (although inevitably he'll look at this recipe and go 'that's not how I make it') and it has been a firm favourite ever since.

Don't be a wuss about the anchovies. You can barely taste them.

Salsa verde
Big handful of parsley (about a whole plant from a supermarket), finely chopped
3-4 anchovies, finely chopped
1 tbsp capers, finely chopped
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
Pinch of chili flakes
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Rapeseed or olive oil (a good slug, about 5tbsp)

There's not much to say, just chop it all up and mix together!  It's not an exact science of a recipe, so if you want it less vinegary or more mustardy or whatever then you know what to do...

Brown bread ice cream

GUESS WHO GOT AN ICE CREAM MAKER FOR CHRISTMAS?!

Me. I did. Just in case you're less clever than I give you credit for.

Just think of all the different flavours of obesity I can be! Chocolate obese, strawberry obese, rum 'n' raisin obese. Granted, January isn't the time when most people decide to start necking down the sat fats, but as you know I sit in the 'couldn't give a shit' school of fad diets, all year round, so it works out just fine.  I'll go for a run or something. Sometime. Maybe.

My ice cream maker didn't appear in my stocking as a gleaming hunk of magimix surprise. Oh no. It was part of a long running campaign of subtle hints by me, such as 'I really want an ice cream maker' and 'How about you buy me an ice cream maker' and 'Have you bought me an ice cream maker yet?'. I still didn't expect to actually get one, but the boy came through. He's a good'un. 

Ice cream makers come in two different forms - ones where you put the bowl in the freezer and have to do a bit more manual labour, and ones that have the freezing compartment built in and do everything quicker and more efficiently. Turns out that if you want one of the ones with an inbuilt freezer they're pretty expensive, so a secondhand one is your best bet. Unless, of course, you're totally minted. Ben did a cracking job by buying this one through a charity shop's ebay site, so every time I shove a spoonful in my gob I can think of all the puppies I'm saving. Plus, I don't have to feel quite so bad when it sits in the cupboard for six months at a time.

This was the first attempt with the new toy (actually, it was the second, but we won't talk about the first). I've never had brown bread ice cream before, but it's awesome. I don't understand why none of the big brands do it - it's sort of nutty and biscuitty and it uses up all the old odds and sods of bread you've got lying around. I'm pretty sure you could do it without a machine too, just take it out of the freezer every half hour or so and churn it up, then put it back in again, ad infinitum.



Brown bread ice cream

1 cup double cream
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1tsp cinnamon (optional)
4 egg yolks
Brown bread crumbs (about 3 slices of bread worth)
1/2 cup of soft brown sugar

Firstly, whisk your egg yolks in a bowl with the caster sugar, and put to one side.  Then, in a saucepan heat your milk, cream, vanilla and cinnamon, to almost boiling point. Once the cream mixture is hot, pour a little at a time into the egg, whisking as you go. Once all incorporated, return to the pan and heat again. Low and slow is the game here - if you have the heat too high then your eggs will scramble or the mix will curdle (if it does curdle you can probably rescue it with a quick whizz in a blender). Heat until it has thickened slightly. Recipes will tell you that it's done when it coats the back of the spoon, so go with that if you like.  Once done, allow to cool fully.

Whilst your custard is cooling, scatter the breadcrumbs and brown sugar onto a baking tray, mixing them together. Heat under the grill until the crumbs are toasted and the sugar has caramelised and gone sticky. It'll only take a couple of minutes and you need to watch it like a hawk. Allow to cool, then break up any big clumps.

When your custard is cool, transfer to the ice cream maker and switch on.  After about ten minutes it should be thickened and starting to freeze. Add in your breadcrumbs and give another five minutes or so, then transfer to a container in the freezer.

As I said, if you're doing this without a machine then you need to freeze the custard for about half an hour at a time and then take out and churn it by hand. But I am guessing at this somewhat, so you might want to google.

Eggnog (a.k.a. booze custard)

So, we moved house. We moved house, and it was utterly horrendous.

In the month's preceding the move, everyone took great pleasure in telling me how it would be the most stressful experience of my life. "Ha", I laughed in their faces, "you pussies obviously haven't done A LEVELS! Don't harsh my moving vibes, man!". I concluded, with joyful optimism, that they were mistaken, that they were all overreacting pessimists. Yes, of course I expected it to be exhausting. I expected the heart palpitations which came with spending more money than I've ever even seen. I expected to want to slam Ben's head against a wall repeatedly throughout the whole experience. And I expected that I would roll out the "I've actually got a curved spine" line more than once. That's all par for the course. But what I didn't expect was:

- That the woman who previously owned the house wouldn't actually move out of it on the day of completion, despite the whole legally binding contract thing
- That the woman who previously owned the house would leave it full of dirt and rubbish and a load of stuff her removal men 'forgot' to collect
- That all that stuff would still be sitting in my shed, waiting for her friend - who occasionally pops round to tell us when he can't come and collect it - to come and collect it
- That the woman who previously owned the house would leave the key to the side gate in the lock of the side gate and not tell us till three days later, by which time it had gone
- That the woman who previously owned the house apparently consumed nothing but fish for the 16 years she lived here and it would take two weeks to get the smell of mackerel out of the walls
- Spiders. So many spiders
- That the woman who previously owned the house would entirely fill the bins with the wrong stuff so the bin men wouldn't take it away and subsequently we've not had our rubbish picked up for 3 weeks.  And that someone would then steal our bin...
- THAT THE WOMAN WHO PREVIOUSLY OWNED THE HOUSE WOULD LEAVE A WHALE SKULL IN MY BEDROOM. I shit you not....



I don't think all those things happened when you moved house, did they?  No.

What with all that palaver going on, I am not feeling very Christmassy. This is a problem because I LOVE christmas. I feel that Professional Christmas Celebration might be my true calling in life, if only I had a big enough kitchen, adorable children and an extensive selection of craft materials.  But at the moment this is how Christmas is going down in our house.



Whilst I could pretend that my stepladder tree is me being terribly avant-garde, I am in fact quite distraught at the lack of spruce and sparkles in my life. I want to make my own wreath; I want to make a Christmas cake that nobody will eat; I want to have remembered to send my Dad in Cyprus a card before it's so late that it won't get there till Easter. To be honest I'd settle for having bought a single fucking present. But I've done none of that. Instead I've sanded and scrubbed and pained, I've looked at 7001 wallpaper samples, I've cleared out my garage and ended up crying in the middle of the street because it turns out my bike won't fit in my car and I have now broken my car. Home-ownership sucks festive balls.

So, to try and rectify all this unintentional bah-humbuggery, I invited my friend Ruby round last weekend for eggnog and Christmas films. To be honest I had no idea what I was letting myself in for as I'd never actually had eggnog before, but it sounded appropriate. Until that point, the thought of egg in a drink had conjured up images of protein shakes and hangover cures, but what the world had neglected to tell me is that eggnog is basically BOOZE CUSTARD. Why had I not realised this sooner? Well, I got drunk on pudding and it was the best day of my life.

Kirstie Allsop is going to have to watch her back from now on - as I am going to be fucking ON IT for Christmas 2013 - but for now, for this year, I am going to sit back and get sloshed on custard. 

Eggnog (serves 4)
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups whole milk
1 cup double cream
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 cloves
BOOZE (I used about two shots of Dissarono as I'm a girl, but you could use brandy or rum, which I think is more traditional)
Sprinkling of grated nutmeg

Whisk your egg yolks together with the sugar, till glossy and sticky, and put to one side. In a saucepan heat the milk, cream, cinnamon and cloves until it is just about to boil. Remove from the heat, and gradually pour onto the eggs, whisking as you go. Don't add too much at a time, or the eggs may scramble. Then return the mix to the heat for a couple of minutes to heat through again.  At this point the bastard stuff will probably curdle - because that's what custard does - but do not fear, just give it quick whizz in a blender (remember to remove the cloves) and it should be fine. Turn off the heat again and add booze, to your taste. Sprinkle on a little nutmeg with each serving. I believe the done thing is to then chill it and consume cold, but that requires some degree of patience....

Review: The Unthank Supper Club

You know the bit in Withnail and I where Withnail wakes up in the car and pronounces, "I feel like a pig shat in my head"?  Yeah. That. 

It's 7.30am on a Saturday (an entirely pointless hour, unless you have children), I've been awake for an hour - with the room feeling like the Titanic post-iceberg - and I've just eaten half a loaf of bread and butter to try and make myself feel less swirly. Ben - who is not troubled by the affliction of hangover insomnia - is still passed out upstairs, after elbowing me in the face at regular intervals throughout the night, and my companions for the morning are the Gilmore Girls.

Who's fault is my current state? You might say it's mine, for drinking all of the fucking wine, but I am holding on to the belief that it is entirely down to the Unthank Supper Club.

>It is now three weeks later. I had to give up after the above two paragraphs, as everything started to jump about the page. And then I moved house, which kind of got in the way<

You're all familiar with the concept of a supper club, yes? Well, just in case (before I go to teach my grandmother to suck some eggs) I'll give you a quick low-down. The idea is that someone (preferably with reasonable cooking skills) opens the doors of their home to paying guests and cooks them a lovely dinner, as an alternative to an expensive trip to a restaurant. You pay a fixed price, you bring your own booze, and it's generally a very relaxed, cosy affair.

I had only been to one supper club before this.  And in fact, whilst that called itself a supper club, it turned the concept completely upside down by actually being in the private room of a restaurant.  It was also one of the more embarrassing experiences of my life, after I found myself sat next to the editor of Delicious magazine, totally starstruck.  When asked what my favourite thing to cook was I replied, dumbstruck, "Er, sausage and mash?".  SAUSAGE AND FUCKING MASH.  She said she'd contact me about a feature for the magazine.  She never did, obviously.

Anyway, the USC is more of your traditional super club affair, but it is by no means basic or unprofessional.  The club is the project of husband and wife, Clarissa and Yusuf (Yusuf is a professional chef and Clarissa a very good home cook), whom I stumbled upon through the glorious internet. I'd been googling Norwich supper clubs, as a bit of research, and it turns out they are the only one. Clarissa and I ended up getting in touch through twitter, then ended up in the pub together, and from there on we've been nattering away about utter nonsense and helping each other argue with our other halves.

So that probably makes me a bias reviewer, right?  Not really. I'm a blunt bastard, so I'd probably tell them if I hated it, but that makes it all the more of a relief that it was great. And I got fantastically sloshed, which is always a positive, but I can't say it has been entirely helpful to the reviewing process. I have always thought that I would quite like to be a restaurant critic (wouldn't we all), but I have now realised the major downfall - you have to be relatively sober if you want to be able to comment efficiently. There are large sections of the evening which will be lost to me forever. Particularly the row that Ben and I had on the way home and what the hell it was about.  And also someone's hilarious comment about custard, which I was determined to commit to memory, but nope, poof, gone.

The USC takes place at the beautiful, grand house of one of Clarissa's friends.  It's a monthly affair, and they squeeze in about 25 people on a long banqueting table. £30, 4 courses (plus truffles, but C was quite drunk herself by this point and left them on top of the piano, which meant we got to eat them when everyone else had left) and you bring your own booze. Clarissa goes to great pains before the evening to reassure everyone that the club it is NOTHING to do with swinging, and I'm happy to report that nobody tried to touch me inappropriately (I left my car keys at home just in case).

So what did we eat? For an amuse-bouche (I LOVE SAYING AMUSE-BOUCHE) we had cauliflower three ways with charred apple. Unfortunately I can only remember two of the ways - but it was basically a cauliflower soup with some shavings of raw cauliflower and toasty apple. Yum yum, lovely. A delicate little portion, well seasoned and balanced flavours, with a garnish of sorrel, which C had gone and foraged that morning (yeah, it's OK, I gave her a stern look for being so bloody wholesome and annoying), and she severely berated anyone who left it. 



Next we had a starter of citrus cured smoked salmon with shallot and fennel ceviche. I am not the biggest fan of smoked salmon, but I wolfed this down in about ten seconds. The sharpness and crunch of the ceviche balanced out the richness of the salmon, and again the portion size was just right, as I was still ready to eat a horse by the time the main came.



But it wasn't horse, it was lamb. With salt-baked celeriac, celeriac puree, greens and a creamy sauce.  I must admit things got a bit hazy by this point, but I KNOW it was good. Lamb was perfectly cooked, and there were pureed carbs, which are basically my favourite thing.  I think it was one of those occasions where I ate the fat and gristle, because I have no class. 



(I think one of those blobs may be accidental, Yusuf?)

Pudding was a treacle tart with creme anglaise (posh custard to you and me). The tart was really fucking good.  You can tell I liked it, as I forgot to take a photo until I'd nearly finished it. Clarissa came over and told us how it wasn't a traditional treacle tart, as it had panko breadcrumbs on top. Ben asked what the difference between regular and panko breadcrumbs was, and together we laughed in his face at his culinary ineptitude (whilst I desperately hoped that Clarissa would explain as I didn't have a clue either). They're Japanese apparently.



The only thing which we didn't like was a little shard of nut brittle with the pudding.  It was a bit challenging for the ol' fillings and I think it had been slightly over-caramelised.  I had to come up with one criticism, otherwise Clarissa and Yusuf might get too big for their boots and move somewhere trendy to open a restaurant or something. But that's it, that's all I can come up with. 

Asides from the excellent food you can also expect such party tricks as a dog who eats wine corks and has been known to pick-pocket the guests, and Clarissa's ability to tell you your exact clothing measurements with a brief glance at you. She used to be a costume designer and can also tell you impressive celebrity stories. She wouldn't give me Alan Davies' number though, which was most disappointing.

So, in conclusion (I remember when writing school essays they always said you couldn't write 'in conclusion' in your conclusion, but I'm not in school now, so in your face, teachers), I had a wonderful time and will definitely be returning. I recommend googling supper clubs in your area, or checking this one out if you're a Norwich bod. Yeah, there is an initial moment of awkwardness with all the 'so what do you do?'s and trying to work out who you're sitting next to, but one glass of wine in and you're swell. It's cheap, it's sociable, and it's supporting good people doing good things locally. Go, google, now. 

For more details on the Unthank Supper Club, you can visit their blog or follow them on twitter.

AWOL

You might have noticed it's a bit quiet around here.  Actually you might not have noticed, you might think this is entirely in-keeping with the sporadic nature of Sod Nigella, in which case....pfffft, that's just the sort of lazy wild, free-living soul I am.

Anyway, my excuse is that we've moved house and those helpful little bastards at BT have said the earliest they can install my broadband is 7th January.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Kill me.

I am working from the pub this week - a challenge on every level - so hopefully I'll slip in a post from here.  In the meantime, my life looks like this, pity me.

Scandi spiced buns

So here is the promised buns post from last week, which I delayed due to a saturation of blog-based bun recipes at the time. But actually this works out terribly well, as it coincides with the return of the wonderful Forbrydelsen (The Killing) to our screens on Saturday.  I should make out that that was the plan all along, but I fear you are too clever to fall for that.

It's incredibly trendy to be Scandinavian at the moment. I can't tell you exactly why.  Perhaps it's because we all became suddenly obsessed by Michelin starred restaurants, and it was brought to our attention that one of the most intriguing was not in London or New York, but in fact tucked away in Denmark. Or maybe it's thanks to Ryan Air, who introduced 1p flights to places we'd not previously bothered with, and all came back and proclaimed them to be awesome. Or Wallander, maybe it's Wallander.  I couldn't tell you, but me and my Sarah Lund jumper are right on board this bandwagon. 

The truth is I've never actually been.  This is a fact which saddens me greatly - and one which I intend to rectify as soon as this goddamn house move is over and I have some pennies to my name - but regardless, I am still confident that it is probably my spiritual home.  I base this wild assumption on the following (sound the generalisation klaxon):
1. From what I can tell it shits all over us in terms of education, health care, and general political common sense
2. They make totally amazing crime dramas, largely featuring kick-ass (high on the autistic spectrum) female leads
3. Scandinavians come with an inbuilt good taste in home furnishings, as standard
4. They have wolves
5. MOOMINS
6. People seem to have a genuine interest in decent, wholesome home cooking, balanced with an understanding for the need of a lardy treat every once in a while. The most prolific of which: The Bun.

Every Scandinavian I have met has been so impossibly nice that it is very difficult to ever imagine them going to war with one another, but if they ever did then I'd say there's a high chance that it'd be over buns.  Browse a few recipes for these chaps online and you will find 1000 variations, not just between countries, but within them.  It's like ragu recipes in Italy or BBQ sauce recipes in Texas; no two are the same and each one is adamant that it is THE recipe.  Us Brits might be a pain in the arse in many ways, but at least we largely agree on how to make a Victoria sponge.

So in the name of diplomacy - and acknowledgement that this recipe is a complete bastardisation of what several countries hold dear - these buns of mine (*ahem*) are being loosely termed as 'Scandi' as opposed to Norwegian/Danish/Swedish. I have also gone for 'spiced' rather than simply cinnamon, as I've thrown all fucking sorts in there. 

This isn't the quickest of recipes - you kind of need to commit to being in for the day - but it's all in stages, which means you have convenient breaks for episodes of The Walking Dead*/your favourite drama.  I should also point out that I take zero responsibility for what these are going to do to whatever diet you are on.  I ate seven in the space of an hour and expanded like the proverbial yeast dough.  But hey, it's winter, we all need some padding.

*My favourite thing about the Walking Dead is when Andrew Lincoln talks to Morgan on the walkie talkie and I can pretend he is talking to me.  What? Shut up.

Scandi spiced buns (makes about 40 small)
For the dough
250ml whole milk
7g sachet of dried yeast
1 egg, beaten
500g strong white bread flour (plus a bit more for kneading and rolling)
100g salted butter
80g caster sugar
Ground cardamom (you can leave this out if you don't like it, but I used the ground seeds of about ten pods)

For the filling
100g butter, very soft
50g soft brown sugar
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground all spice
1 egg, beaten

So, let's start with the dough. In a pan, heat your milk until it is hot but not boiling (do not run off upstairs to the loo, as milk has a habit of boiling up and very quickly becoming a dairy based volcano, the evidence of which may or may not still be visible on my hob). Remove from the heat and then add in the butter, and leave to cool down a bit. 

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, yeast, sugar and cardamom.  Gradually pour in your milk mix, and start bringing together the dough with your hands.  Things will get messy.  About half way through add your egg (you don't want to add it too early as the warm milk might turn it to scramble).  Keep working away until all the milk is added, it will be quite sticky but you should be able to gather it together in a rough lump to turn out onto a floured surface (add more flour if it really is too sticky to handle).  Then it's time to knead - you've seen how they do that on the TV, right?  Knead away for a good few mins, get some of that pent-up aggression out, and you should end up with a nice ball or slightly shiny, springy dough.  Or, if you're a lazy son of a gun like me, fire up your Kenwood Chef and let the dough hook do the work for a couple of minutes, and hopefully end up with the same result. 



Cover with a damp cloth and put somewhere warm and dry for at least an hour.  This is a perfect opportunity for an episode of The Walking Dead.  Preferably one which has you on the edge of your seat with tension and graphic violence, as apparently watching scary things burns of loads of calories and you're gonna need that leeway for later. 

Check on your dough after an hour, you want it to have doubled in size. If it's not quite there, watch another episode.  If it's done nothing at all then you might have a dud packet of yeast, for which there is no remedy I'm afraid.



At some point whilst the dough is rising, make your filling.  Mix the butter with the spices and sugar, until you have a spreadable paste, as below. The smell should make your knees buckle with festive sentimentality.



Turn out your dough and give it another quick kneading.  Then split into four and place three bits back in the bowl, under the cloth.  One by one, roll each ball of dough out into a rough rectangle shape, and spread with a generous helping of the spiced butter.  You could also sprinkle on some raisins or sultanas, if you're that way inclined.



Then roll it up into a sausage shape.



And slice into rounds, about 2-3cm thick.



Position these in a greased dish or tin, with a bit of space between as they will double in size. I wanted mine to all bake together in a big clump, but if you want them all separate then leave even more space.



Cover the dish and leave for another half an hour somewhere warm (I sat them on top of the oven, which was heating up). This isn't quite long enough for a Walking Dead episode, so I would recommend Modern Family as more jovial alternative.  Although watching this is bittersweet, as I increasingly notice the similarities between Ben and I, and Mitchell and Cameron, the gay couple.



See, they've swelled up again, isn't yeast clever? Now give them a brush of the beaten egg and sprinkle with a bit more sugar if you like.

Now it's time to bake. Gas mark 5, for about 10 mins. They're done when they've gone a nice golden colour and your house smells of actual heaven (see, gay couple).



I got a bit distracted by one of the episodes of something and mine went a bit too golden. One of them also seems to have prolapsed.



These ones came out a bit better. 

Best eaten warm, but even I am beyond eating 40 before they cool.  For those that cool, keep them in an air tight container.  I iced mine with a maple drizzle (mix maple syrup and icing sugar into a runny icing).  You can also freeze them very well, I believe, but mine didn't make it that far.

Black Angel spaghetti, à la Jamie

I was going to do you a post today on cinnamon buns, but it seems that everyone and their second cousin thrice removed was making cinnamon buns this weekend, and evidently you don't need my help.  That usually wouldn't make any difference to me, but a blog that I very much enjoy (which essentially is a better written, more popular version of this one - and the writer happens to be married to Giles Coren, so she wins all the prizes) beat me to it by posting a recipe for them yesterday, so I'll come back to them in a few days when the idea seems wildly original again.

Anyway, moving on to a more important issue...
...I just don't know how I feel about Jamie Oliver.

This ambivalence may not seem like a big deal to you, and in the grand scheme of things I suppose it's not.  First I should probably address my inability to do anything till the last minute, or my fear of peaches, or the relationship my cat seems to be pursuing with my dressing gown, but this Jamie Oliver thing is taking up plenty of space in my brain. 

On the one hand there is good Jamie Oliver.  Good Jamie Oliver showed us that our children (by that I mean your children, I don't have any of the blighters) were eating pig swill for lunch and that nobody gave  a shit.  I have no doubt that there was a ginormous team behind him doing the graft, but nobody else was out there making a fuss about it. And one way or another it worked, a bit.  Good Jamie also gave jobs to struggling adolescents and at the same time made a decent restaurant out of it.  And he's got people back in the kitchen, given them unintimidating recipes to cook and showed that it needn't take forever to give your family something other than KFC.  AND it needn't be Mum doing all that.

Well done Jamie. He's a nice chap, isn't he?

But then there is bad Jamie Oliver. Jamie who made Toploader famous.  Jamie the brand. Or 'JME', to be more accurate, because those two extra vowels were apparently too much for the British public to comprehend.  You seemingly cannot buy anything these days without there being a Jamie Oliver version.  Want some oil? Here! This one's been pressed by the feet of Jamie's loving wife and children! Want to make a salad dressing with that oil? Here! Throw away that old jar and get a Flavour Shaker (yes it looks uncannily like a jar, but it's totally different)! Want to grow some salad to dress with that? Here! You can fertilise it with Jamie's own shit!

BOAK.

Nowhere does the Jamie Brand manifest itself more obnoxiously than at Jamie's Italian. One of which sprung up in Norwich about six months ago, and it has been solidly booked ever since by people who are too scared to go anywhere that isn't scripted.  I have, for my hypocritical sins, ended up there twice since it's been open; once to take advantage of a voucher (which OF COURSE turned out not to be valid at that particular time) and once through pure lack of anywhere else to eat in Norwich on a Sunday. And I will undoubtedly end up there again, but that does not mean I won't whinge about it.

Now I should be clear that I am not adverse to a chain restaurant. I will generally avoid them if there's an alternative, BUT, if a restaurant does something good then there's no reason it shouldn't be successful. That's how it's meant to work.  I can, however, think of about three chain restaurants who actually deserve their success and unfortunately Jamie's Italian isn't one of them, as far as I'm concerned. Below are my most pressing annoyances, because we all like a breakdown.

1. The menu is worded for gullible idiots. You know, all that over detailed crap which makes dishes sound so quaint and wholesome, like Jamie gave birth to it that very morning, when in fact it is just a friggin carbonara.  The one which ground my gears more than anything on my trip was the inclusion of 'Melkam farm (might not have been Melkham, they've taken it down now, but it was something like that) asparagus' on the autumn menu - trying to make it sound locally grown.  Well, Melkham farm would have to be in Kenya to be growing asparagus at this time of year. Also, making a point of using a free-range egg in a dish of turkey which has no mention of being free-range....good one.

2. This is a list of the words that staff apparently have to use to describe the dishes.  I don't think it needs further comment.

3. 'Posh Chips'?, 'Funky chips'? Fuck off.

3. The platters. The fucking platters.  Served precariously balanced between two tins of imported, retro tomatoes. There is absolutely no practical or logical reason for this, unless one of the staff has a condition whereby they will spontaneously combust if they are not within three feet of something pretentious.  FYI, Jamie, everyone hates your platters.

4. On greeting you, the staff will ask, "have you been to a Jamie's before?", to which the correct response is, "No, thankfully, but I have been to a restaurant before and this looks a bit like one of those, so I think I'll catch on pretty quick".

5. The interior. I dream one day to be able to afford a feature wall of William Morris.  Jamie has decided to rub my dreams right in my face by covering every feasible surface in Morris.  That is apart from the stairwell which, Jamie - being the hip young dude that he is - has commission some youngster to spunk graffiti all over, depicting the things we apparently love about Norwich; namely mustard and Alan Partridge.  William is not best pleased, Jamie, he'll see you on the other side.

6. Expensive, too much stuff on the menu, grumble grumble, ETC. 

I DID really like their toilets though.  And very friendly staff.  Credit where it's due and all that.

With all that in mind, it pains me to admit that the food isn't that bad.  Not in a mind blowing way, but in a, 'That's a good idea, why didn't I think to make that at home?' kind of way. Which is where this dish came from.  I had something similar last time I was there and I liked it.  I liked it so much that I wanted to eat more than 4 mouthfuls of it for £8, so I set to work.  And this is pretty close. I won't tell you how many places I had to go to to find squid ink spaghetti, but if you are a Norwich resident then I will save you the trouble and tell you the result: Clarke and Ravenscroft, on St Gregory's Alley - they also do a cracking sarnie.

Seafood spaghetti (for 2)
200g squid ink spaghetti (or any pasta will do, if you're less of a ponce, but it DOES look pretty)
Couple of handfuls of seafood - at Jamie's they used scallops, I used half a bag of Waitrose frozen seafood(defrosted), because I'm keeping it real. Just prawns or just mussels would work equally well.
200g cherry tomatoes (or half a tin)
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 glass white wine
250ml fish stock (if you were Jamie you would have this from boiling the shells of langoustine and heads of sea bass, but I used a knorr stock cube, FYI)
4 anchovies
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
1 tbsp capers, roughly chopped
Handful parsley, roughly chopped
Few good slugs of oil

In a pan, fry your garlic, anchovies and chilli, until the anchovies have broken down.  Then throw in the tomatoes, until they are starting to wilt. Then the tomato puree, then the wine and stock. And bubble, for about 20 minutes or so, until it has reduced to about half. If it reduces too much and becomes thick or is starting to stick then add more stock - you want quite a thin sauce. The skins of the tomatoes might float to the top, so fish them out if you're bothered, but it's going to get pureed anyway. 

Have a taste, make sure the seasoning and spice is good and adjust if necessary.  It will be quite rich, as you're reducing it to a small amount, so bear that in mind.  If happy, blitz with the blender, add a good slug of oil.  What you want is quite a thin, light sauce, which will coat the spaghetti rather than cover it like a normal tomato sauce.  Again, if too thick add some more stock.  Keep to the side on a low low heat.

Meanwhile cook your pasta and your seafood.  Assuming your seafood isn't frozen it'll only need a few minutes in a hot frying pan with a bit of oil.

Once all done give the spaghetti another good slug of oil, then plate up, topped with a spoonful of sauce, your seafood and a scattering of capers and parsley. 

A Breaking Bad cake for Rachel Boot

Last weekend, my good friend, Rachel Boot, turned 30.  This whole 'turning 30' phenomena is picking off my friends one-by-one at the moment, and it's coming for me in the not too distant future.  But you know what? I'm down with it.  I can take it.  I've been prematurely middle-aged for the last ten years so I may as well have the digits to correspond. 

And if you do have to deal with the big Three Zero, then you deserve to make a big fucking fuss about it; see all the people you like, drink till you don't recognise them, and hope that one of your awesome friends makes you a cake. OH HELLO, OVER HERE, THAT WAS ME!  And by the time the candle on said cake was lit I had drunk so much that I spent the rest of the time shouting, "DO YOU GET WHAT IT IS, DO YOU GET IT, DO YOU GET ITTTT???".

Not that you care - you want me to get to the cake, I know - but as it happens I had a wonderful time at the party. I got to have a weekend back in civilised London, drank a lot of stuff that I don't even remember, and nattered and screeched in the faces of lots of people I love. AND I drove to London.  I know you're all terribly clever and probably do that every day or something, but I was quite impressed with myself.  I did some massive roundabouts and didn't cry and everything.

So, how does one choose a theme for someone's 30th birthday cake?  Well, during the course of our friendship I've come to learn that Rachel Boot regards all of the below very highly:

1. Pugs
2. The phrase, "I know, right?"
3. Zombie apocalypses
4. The all consuming hatred of Tim Lovejoy
5. Pork products
6. Breaking Bad

Well I've already done option 1, option 3 isn't particularly appetising, and I wouldn't even know where to start with 2, 4 or 5, so I went for option 6.  Rachel Boot loves Breaking Bad as much as I do.  In fact she loves it more than I do, as she caught onto it in good time, unlike me, who catches onto everything late (see also: denim shirts, twitter, top-knots, BLOGGING).  So it was an obvious cake theme, albeit one which I came to severely regret when I was boiling molten sugar at half past ten on a Thursday evening.

If you haven't ever seen Breaking Bad then a) you need to take a long, hard look at your life and b) I'm sorry, this cake will make absolutely no sense. But seriously, hop to it, it's great, and Jesse gets hotter in every series despite being an intermittent meth head.

The most important element of a Breaking Bad cake is that you need to get some blue crystal meth in there.  If you don't then you might as well make a My Little Pony cake. It's not easy, you'll probably burn yourself and ruin your saucepans, but you just need to do it.

What you need is a solution of one part water, one part caster sugar (I used 2 cups of each for this).  Put this in a high sided pan, add food colouring, and boil to buggery.  You want it to get to boiling point quite slowly, but then keep it going till it gets hotter and hotter and bubblier and bubblier, making sure it doesn't start to catch and go golden coloured. It'll take about 10-15 minutes to get it to the state you want, which is basically a pan of glossy, crazy bubbles. A thermometer helps - you want to get it to 300 degrees Fahrenheit - but I sort of melted mine and had to freestyle. Corn syrup also apparently helps, but I'm English and don't really know what that is or have a supply of it in my pantry, but if you do then google 'hard candy' to find a recipe which incorporates it.



This is what you want your 'meth' to look like. Glossy bubbles, see? If you're not sure if it's hot enough then drop a little on a plate and see if it hardens. 



Once it's there you need to pour out onto a greased sheet of baking paper (take a piece of kitchen towel, dab it with a bit of vegetable oil, then give the sheet a rub), set in a baking tray. 



Give it about an hour to set and cool, it should be like boiled sweets, then SMASH IT UP. If it is still sticky then I'm afraid you didn't get it hot enough and there's not much to be done about it.  The lack of the corn syrup means it might go sort of hazy, and lose it's glassiness, so use it right away. I added some blue edible glitter as well, to up the sparkle.



The lettering on the cake is based on the titles of the show, which in turn is based on the periodic table, duh.  The letters Ra, helpfully fit with Radon, but there is unfortunately no element for which the symbol is Bo.  In this case I favoured the aesthetics over the facts.  And obviously the atomic numbers for both are not thirty, but those are the current atomic numbers for Miss Rachel Boot. 

It's not so easy to tell you how to do the lettering, but basically it's all the work of firm icing, stencils and colouring.  I use (click for links) this flower paste, these gel colours and these letter presses.  So you press your letters, then simply cut out a rectangle of black and two squares of green.  Do them the night before, to give them time to firm-up. To stick the pieces together just dab a bit of water on the back and position.

Then the cake.  Well that's just a basic sponge with buttercream, which I firmly believe everyone can achieve.  To prove this I invited my colleague Emily, a self-confessed baking novice, round this week (on the basis of a work matter, of course) and showed her how.  And she pulled off a blinder.  Look at her proud face.



So your basic sponge recipe, which you can multiply as appropriate (this was an 8 egg sponge), is:
1 free-range egg
2oz plain flour
2oz stork
2oz golden caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all together well and bake in a greased tin, checking after the first 20 mins, then every ten minutes until it's done (at which point you should be able to insert and remove a skewer, without any mix sticking to it).  For a cake of this size you'll need a rectangular tin, about 12"x8" and it'll take about 40 minutes.

The rule for buttercream is one part unsalted butter, two parts icing sugar, then a tbsp at a time of milk until you've reached the desired consistency.  In this case, 500g icing sugar (sifted), 250g of very soft butter and 4 tbsp milk.  Put all your ingredients in your mixer until done.  Use a palette knife to apply to the cake - do it gently, so you don't end up with crumbs in the icing. If there are a lot of crumbs then just apply a thin layer, then put in the fridge till firmed, then apply another layer on top and the crumbs should be covered.

Once the cake is iced, add your lettering to the top, then scatter the 'meth' around the edge.  Then....slice, eat and get off your tits on E numbers.

So, happy 30th, Rachel Boot.  I'm sure you'll agree that by using a 2 year old photo I'm doing both of us a favour.