Bloody Salad

Right. At the risk of sounding like the biggest tool in the toolbox, I am writing this blogpost on an iPhone. Which means: a) I'm so cool and b) This post is like tuning in to Knife 'n' Spork LIVE. Like we're actually living in the freaking future or something.

Anyway, here's the salad that we're troughing for lunch RIGHT NOW. I'm actually putting the phone down and eating a forkful between each sentence. That was a good one. The salad is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty easy to make: blood oranges (like, soooo seasonal), watercress, feta, pistachios, croutons on top and a dressing made from the orange juice and olive oil. Last forkful. Good. Now I'm off to make love to a robot. All hail the future.

A terrible beauty is born

It's Bank Holiday Monday. That End of Summer feeling. Helena and I on a morning walk through Victoria Park and along the River Lea to lift the spirits. The Olympic Park, its barricades and monoliths, to drag them back down. "We'll have to have pizza for tea." I go to get the ingredients but forget to buy stuff for lunch. Back home, face in the fridge-light, Helena rummaging the cupboards: Salad? Just lettuce. Cheese sandwich? Only a scrag of cheese.  Toast? Boring. Soup? No. Baked Potato? No No. Quiche? WHAT? No No No. Nothing's right. Then Helena suggests a banana sandwich just as I forage the fridge-back and pull out some Danish Blue from the other day. Dirty, dirty, disgusting thoughts that even the filthiest, firiest priest could not imagine. But it's right. It's bad but it's good. It's exactly what I want. Banana and Danish Blue cheese sandwiches for lunch. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!

Innocent ingredients...

Waahaha! Banana hacked up! Bread toasted!

Dirty cheese! Naughty cheese! In your bed!

Filth! Absolute FILTH!

In which we almost eat Peter Rabbit

Something of a Knife 'n' Spork holiday took place last week. Scott, Lucy, Helena and I got all 'Swallows and Amazons' in a glorified static caravan near Windermere. (I say 'static caravan' - I mean fancy shmancy log cabin with decking and a jacuzzi - Wordsworth wept! Good.) We've holidayed together before and have developed a merry pattern of dog-walking, movie-watching and face-filling - some of which I'll share with you now.

Before I do, I should explain that this post is really a failure. Scott and I had discussed a number of potential holiday/Lake-District themed post ideas: some would have been pleasant (documenting every main meal of the week;) some would have held literary merit (making a Rabbit Pie a la Beatrix Potter or buying some of the Beef Olives from the local butcher as in B.S. Johnson's novel "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry";) still more would have been outright disgusting (The Cumberland Sausage Challenge, The Kendal-Mint-Cake-A-Thon.) In the end we had too much fun for any ideas to come to fruition. Lost hopes. However, having cooked a proper good roast and a cracking curry during the week we were confronted with an impossible choice for our last supper: curry or roast? Roast or curry?

We chickened out, manned up and did both. Here's how:

We started in traditional curry fashion - Poppadoms!

For the CurryRoast meat Scott marinaded a joint of pork shoulder in yoghurt, cumin, turmeric and plenty of mustard seeds. This was left to marinade for twenty four hours and then roasted with onions and tomatoes added towards the end of cooking to make it a bit saucy.

For the CurryRoast potatoes we boiled new potatoes and diced them fairly small before roasting them with black onion seeds, cumin, turmeric, garlic and chilli.

In place of mashed potato we made mashed chickpeas by simmering a couple of cans of chickpeas with some grated ginger and garlic, turmeric, black onion seeds and plenty of salt and pepper.

We considered making cauliflower cheese with paneer but felt that this would probably be horrible. Instead we made a cauliflower and aubergine curry with tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic and the usual array of spices. Bubble bubble until delicious. We made loads of this so there was plenty the next day when it was even better.

The CurryRoast greens took the form of some hot and sour green beans. Mustard seeds and black onion seeds were heated to popping point in oil then onions, garlic, chilli and plenty of ginger were sweated down with the seeds. Ground ginger and cumin was added before adding the green beans, lime juice and a little water. Boil the water away leaving green beans and jammy spicy-tart onions to which we added chopped coriander.

On the plate it looked like this. And then...

...like this! CurryRoast!

Sunday Breakfasts #1

Asparagus and Poached Egg on Toast with Spicy Crumbs

I drank too much port last night. My Dad and my uncle Stu had rattled into Paddington that morning at elevenish. The three of us are Swindon Town fans – a hereditary disease. Swindon were playing Millwall, potentially for promotion to the Championship if results went our way. Our aim for the day was perverse: We didn’t have tickets for the match but we wanted to soak up the atmosphere, to drink in riverside pubs, to be part of it. On the other hand we wanted to avoid Millwall fans, to avoid the score, to be apart from it. That tryst of hope and fear familiar to any football fan.

The more we drank, the more fear won out. Dad and Stu had to catch their return train from Paddington at five. From Butler’s Wharf near Tower Bridge we scuttled back west along the river in a slow boat, disembarking at Embankment so they could easily hop on the Bakerloo up to Paddington when time pressed. A last drink to impress them before they went: Gordon’s Wine Bar. A drunkard’s crypt of a bar, all dripping catacombs, tallow-lit barrels and braying atmosphere. Port, sold by the schooner. Or the slightly larger beaker. Which we ordered. Twice.

Half a bottle of port each, then Dad and Stu bow-legged it, bladders bulging, for their train. We’d avoided the score so far, but now, alone, I was intrigued. I staggered up the road to find a pub with Sky so I could catch the results. Swindon had lost. The agony of the play-offs beckoned. I had another pint. I chatted to a Millwall fan. I was woozy.

Helena met me with a glass of wine back at Gordon’s. I was a bristling mess. I gabbled in cod Geordie at a goof in corduroy. Corduroy! Pah! Helena took me home.

So, last night I was sick. Twice. I drank too much port.

This morning I felt rough as guts and wanted something pure and fresh to put in my mouth and purge me of my sin. Something that tasted of grass and of the sea. Something smooth but spicy to hug and punch me. Something of an apology to Helena. This is the breakfast I made.

You will need…

Asparagus

Two large eggs

Wholemeal bread

Two anchovies

Some chilli flakes

Olive Oil

Parsley

How to cook it…

Blitz up one slice of bread in a food processor to make rough bread crumbs. Add the anchovies and chilli flakes with a slug of olive oil and give it a whiz to blend it all together. Pour the crumbs onto a baking tray and bung in a hottish oven to crisp them up.

Snap the woody ends off the asparagus by bending each spear. It will snap at its natural breaking point. 

Boil till tender in plenty of salted water then drain and keep fresh in cold water.

Poach your eggs as you like. This recipe works best if the yolks are runny as toddler’s tears though.

Whilst the eggs and asparagus are looking after themselves hew off two thick slices of bread and toast. Chop the parsley.

How to put it all together…

Put the toast on a nice plate and drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle with some salt. Put the asparagus neatly on top.

Put the poached egg on top of that and grind some pepper over it all.

Sprinkle over some of the spicy, crispy crumbs.

Sprinkle over some chopped parsley.

Eat it and get over your hangover!

Literary Grubs #1 - Bloom's Breakfast

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

            Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray.”

(Calypso from “Ulysses”, James Joyce, 1922)

There is joy in the mundane. The grit nuggets of the just woken eyes. The huff of night-old farts. The dozy, distant clink of teaspoons, mugs. The whistle of the kettle. The cuffing of a partner’s footpads over the carpet.

I had always felt that this – the simple sensuality of the bread and butter – this, above any creed, is what shapes lives, gives meaning.

When I first read Ulysses it was pottering, gobbling, pocketing, guzzling, mucky, naughty, fallible Leopold Bloom with whom I identified. I still do, and in particular I enjoy the celebration of everyday processes, the fuzzy filtering into the day ahead, and the smutty, workaday meatiness of Bloom’s morning routine in the Calypso episode.

Here is his breakfast which I cooked this morning:

1.

"He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white ... The shiny links packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's blood."

2.

"A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last."

3.

"He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers, ringwise, from the chipped eggcup."

4.

"He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over..."

5.

"Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it."

6.

"Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth."