Nostalgic for Autumn...

If you're anything like me, it feels like it has gotten very cold way too quickly. It seems like no time at all since we were doing stuff outside, enjoying sunshine and such things...

So to try to bring this back to life, here's a photo of just one day's harvest from our amazing little Victoria plum tree in the garden:

It yielded so many plums it was incredible - some went to next door, some went to family, and a lot went into Delia Smith's plum chutney (not to be opened until December). And finally, a fair amount went into a plum and ginger compote, which has been the key ingredient in many a delicious breakfast of yoghurt, compote and muesli ever since...

Missing the plums, missing Autumn...

Amazing things with hazlenuts and berries

On a trip up north visiting friends and family in Scotland, we popped in to see my good friend K and Man About Bathgate. Some friends you just pick up where you left off and it's like no time has passed. Fantastic.

One thing I had slightly forgotten was how good at cooking they both are...

So (and here's where women's magazines are worth their weight, particularly Red), much banter, catching up and stuff, we sat down to a gorgeous salad with roast hazlenuts, blackberries and crispy bacon. Really fresh and delicious.



And then... the most impressive cake with red berries with redcurrants and mint. M and I just couldn't help ourselves with the camera...



So, apart from a brilliant time catching up (not so long next time I hope...), an amazing lunch with some great ideas... Might just 'borrow' them....

What's been going on between May and August...

Well, it's been a very long time since my last post. Very long. Little and often is the sort of unofficial motto of bloggers everywhere, but I haven't even managed that! Ah well. The simple answer to what's been going on is... restoring a Victorian House (as if you didn't know..). And we now have two rooms that look absolutely tip top. So between May and August there has been a serious push to get our bedrooms looking perfect, and a sort of haven for us - kind of "this is what the whole house might one day look like".

Here is what our front room looked like when we got medieval on it. Since we're talking medieval, the latin tabula rasa kind of works as a description:



And here is what it looked like half way.

Highlights of this phase (personally speaking) were:

- Finally getting exactly the right wood for the job and sorting out floorboards like a pro

- Cutting beautiful 45 degree cuts and remaking new skirting boards. Much more fun to do it with a saw manually than with an electric thingy

- Watching our fabulous plasterer, Claire, get the most perfectly flat walls you could possibly imagine. She is an artist

- Restoring the 1930s fireplace with my mate Man About Dairsie and some spray radiator paint

And finally, here's what it all looks like once we finished it all! So chuffed with it - it's been hard work but really good.





Highlights of this last phase?

- IKEA wardrobes! So easy to make, so easy to get them looking fabulous. We love you, IKEA. And your meatballs. And your amazingly cheap cooked breakfasts.

- Painting. And more painting. And yet more painting

- The amazing carpentry of Alcove Queens - brilliant people who have reinvented a little original fitted wardrobe we had (see photo just above) and turned it into M's shoe palace. Nice.

Top tips if I were to do it again?
- Don't paint on really hot days. Rubbish finish.
- Measure lengths of wood really carefully before trying to bring them into a room - saves scraping your newly painted surfaces...

Oh and a final note - music for this phase generously provided by Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, God Speed You! Black Emperor, whatever radio stations our plasterer Claire listened to, lots of Radio 4 and lots of Radio 2.

Phew. It's good to be back on blogspot!!

Sausages after a long weekend of house stuff...

Kicking back with a pint of Old Speckled Hen, Pink Floyd on the stereo, waiting for something wonderful to come out of the oven...

Been a fairly busy weekend. We recently had the Gas Networks guys out to sort out a legacy of this house once being flats, or maybe bedsits. We had a live gas supply going up into the 1st floor with no means of isolating it, plus two really unpretty gas pipes going up the walls.

When you take a step back and think about it, not too safe really, as well as being a bit unsightly. So the gas guys dug up the road and renewed the live supply, cutting off the old upstairs one. Problem solved. Apart from getting rid of thick gas piping from our top floor...

Much sweat and hacksaw blades later, it is Done. No more pipes. Felt like a bomb disposal expert a little bit though - cutting through pipes that once contained gas, you do get a bit of a gas smell, and that all makes you think .. did they miss another live connection somewhere....

But all well, and now have lots of scrap metal that I'm hoping I might get a fiver for at one of South London's finest scrap merchants. We'll see...

So getting back to cooking, tonight is a little something the most excellent Nigel Slater proposes in Tender Part One. (I know I go on about this book a bit, but it's so good...)

For this, chop up 4 onions quite roughly and soften them in the same pan you're going to put in the oven later. Oh, and preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Meanwhile, chop up some parsnips (about 500g) into 'wine cork sized' pieces (Nigel's words, not mine - loving that!). Toss those in with the onions and let all that colour for a bit. Then chop up 6 sausages (good ones from the butcher, low in fat) into thirds, take the parsnip and onion out of the pan and brown the sausages. Once that's done, put the onion and parsnips back in, along with a few sprigs of thyme and 500ml of chicken stock. Let it boil then put in the oven for about 35-40 minutes.



I'm just waiting for all that to happen now - the photo was before it went in the oven, but looks promising I think.

Wonder if it's time for another pint of Speckled Hen....

Coping with Celeriac

Well then, the most excellent Abel & Cole veggie box yielded this week probably the two staples of organic veg boxes, but coincidentally the two most intimidating vegetables to the amateur cook.

I've written about Kohlrabi already, but that and a celeriac...

I turned to the mighty Google for advice, for my cookbooks are found wanting when it comes to these two. I stumbled upon a rather good site: Simply Recipes, which then gave a link to a fantastic site by Rosa Jackson, who is a Canadian food writer based in Nice and Paris. Her site is here, but her previous blog (where I found the recipe) is here.

Long story short, Celeriac and Kohlrabi rosti were fantastic, and pretty easy to sort out.

First of all, peel an entire Kolrabi and a smallish celeriac. Chop it into manageable chunks, then shred in a food processor. Once this is done, then add an egg, 50g of gram (chick pea) flour, 2 tbsp of water, some chopped parsley, and whiz it all in the processor until it's all nicely blended.



Actually, I found that more like 3 eggs were needed, probably a bit more flour (another 20g?) and a wee bit more water. I also thought it would be good with a chopped red chilli and some coriander.

Anyway, once all that's done, heat up some oil (about 3 tbsp) in a large frying pan on a medium heat, form the mixture into little 3cm wide thin cakes (use a dessert spoon), and fry 'em all up, keeping them warm in the oven in between batches.

Really nice! Especially with chilli sauce and a little salad.

Thank you to Rosa for this one - great stuff

London Skies...

Well it's been a long time. Kinda busy finishing off our first room in the house - the first one to look exactly the way we'd like it to look! Major achievement, and much bloggage to follow.

But this weekend has been absolutely gorgeous in the sun. And a little strange too. For the first time since probably 2001, the skies over London have been completely clear, with not a vapour trail or a low rumble of aircraft to be seen or heard. This just struck me as I was out in the garden the other morning and the sky was perfectly clear. And again when we were out with friends in the grounds of Cliveden House.


(The photo is from our garden, not Cliveden...)
I know it's extraordinarily difficult for various people importing or exporting, or for folks struggling to get back from holidays or organise anything that depends on air travel, but still, for a few days in 2010, we will all remember the clear and quiet skies over London and how it makes us think about what life was once like...

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Why Albums Should Live On

Some great news today about Pink Floyd, who have just won a legal battle against single track downloads. Check out Mashable for more details...

While iTunes is great etc, and it's just so much easier to access music than it ever used to be, there is a lot to be said about attention spans... I remember being so chuffed when I was able to download Horse With No Name by America, partly because I'd only heard it twice before in my entire life on the radio, and never actually knew who wrote it.

Yay for iTunes. But it goes back to endless debates I always used to have with friends about the integrity of the Album. Sometimes artists deliberately compose a work for extended listening. My mate ManAboutDairsie (he doesn't know that's his name yet...) and I always reckoned that too much got shoehorned into the 'new' CD format when it really took over from vinyl and cassette and it made albums a bit dull, just collections of tracks. And iTunes have proven us right, up to a point.

So that's why the Floyd should be saluted. Sometimes, the Album is the way to listen to music. Some Albums command you to make time for them - it may only be a few times a year or whatever. But it will be richly rewarded.

And purely from a cooking point of view, there is nothing better sometimes than making a roast dinner with Dark Side of The Moon on...

Another weekend, another new skill...

Well, it's been a busy weekend. Decided that some of our floorboards really needed some attention - that much sagging couldn't be healthy...

So the day started with a trip to Howarth Timber and Building Merchants, a cornerstone of probably one of the worst traffic complexes in all of London - Brockley Cross. You wouldn't have thought that much chaos could be engineered in such a small space. And yet..

Anyway, Howarth's was one of the slightly more intimidating hardware stores I've been to. Not often you have to ask if somewhere does actually do Retail! But for all that, they were really friendly and helpful and now if ever I need wood or anything at all to do with fitting or shaping or otherwise messing with wood I will know where to go. I think we must have seemed such rookies - the newbie DIY kids with no clue what do do...

Getting back to the house, sure enough it was an unholy mess underneath the sagging floorboards, with some of them resting on live electricity cables. Nice.

Bit of shaping, hammering, sawing later, it started to look pretty good.

I have two books to thank for this little feat. One a book my Dad gave me from back when he was doing something similar to a house from a similar era - an early 1980s Readers Digest 'Looking after your (you may as well add 'Victorian' here) Home' which is ace - all the basics including stuff that you don't even have to do anymore, like make your own rawlplugs out of wooden dowel... And another - The Victorian House manual. Which is by Haynes, they of the VW combi maintenance guide fame. Brill. But they make everthing sound like armageddon and what do you think you've done buying a Victorian property...

All things considered though, enjoying my foray into flooring techniques...

The wolf and the lamb will feed together....

We have two cats. One of the them, Arlo, is very fond of running about outside in the garden. This gets a little embarrassing sometimes as his idea of territory doesn't always coincide with convenient human notions of fences and boundaries and so on. In short, his 'territory' seems to consist of about 6 gardens, and if any other cat has the misfortune of being in one of them, they are assailed with the most aggressive wail/miaow I've ever heard... I don't know if our neighbours read this blog. If they do, I'm sorry....

Anyway, one thing that has always worried us is: what would happen if Arlo ever met a fox. There are a lot of foxes in Brockley, even during the day. Long story short, on Saturday, our local fox was sunbathing and washing up on the roof of the shed. So was Arlo. Not a murmur of complaint or warning from Arlo, not a flicker of acknowledgement from the fox.

So it seems cats and foxes can coexist just fine. Not sure if that's what the writer of the title of the blog quite had in mind, but there you go...

Alien Vegetables

Kohlrabi. Now there’s a vegetable you don’t see much of over here…. So much so that when it comes in Abel & Cole’s excellent veg box it really looks like an alien planted there to scare people. Even the mighty Nigel Slater seems to shie away – his excellent Tender part one doesn’t even mention the poor thing.

But receiving curious looking vegetables is a good excuse to go recipe-hunting. Good find today was the excellent Veg Box Recipes which yields receipes even for the forlorn Kohlrabi! Just peel, cut into 1/4 inch slices, mix with olive oil and a clove of garlic, and roast for about 20 minutes, then garnish with Parmesan. And there you have it. With stuffed chicken breasts from Drings (I'm sure I've posted about our favourite butcher before..) and roast potatatoes, it all works rather well:


Turns out, by the way, that Kohlrabi is very popular in Germany. We have much to learn...

1882

Thought it was about time I commented on a coffee shop that's opened up near my office. Caffe Vergnano 1882. It's actually been there over a year now, but has kind of achieved critical mass with my colleagues, who all universally love it.
And with good cause - it's fabulous. A wee bit expensive, ok, but such a great experience. Bottom line: the coffee is so good, lovingly produced by extremely professional and discreet baristas on an amazing machine, and then presented beautifully:

It's a great place to come and chat, think about stuff, sidestep a little. I've had a little look at their website too, and it does all the good stuff that a decent brand should do nowadays, which basically is total focus on the core thing that they do well, and a great customer experience.

Only question in my mind is: why 1882 in the name? It might be something simple like the first cafe they opened, but it might be something more significant going back into European history with the coffee shops in Paris pre the French Revolution, the barricades.... but then the date is a lot later than all that... The Franco-Prussian War was in 1870-71.. Oh, I don't know. Does anyone else??

On Simon Schama and Lawnmowers

An interesting coincidence this week. I've been getting the really early bus to work recently, which is an absolutely fantastic way to read a lot. Brockley has a great bus route that takes me practically to my office:



Anyway, I just finished reading Simon Schama's excellent 'The American Future' which is a book to accompany the BBC2 series of the same title.

Christmas gift from M. It's brilliant - a well written and conversational narrative that flits between contemporary interview and deep historical research. Basically its purpose is to trace current debates and controversies about the identity of the United States back to their various roots in the early years and decades of the country. Starting with war: what is the purpose of an American army? Then religious fervour - its contradictions, passions and aims. Then being an American - striking right to the heart of American identity and immigration, revealing all sorts of quite unsavoury elements that never quite go away... Then Plenty - the theme of being able to access/produce/conquer whatever is there, and where that might lead.
You could summarise it in Tocqueville's phrase "plus ca change", or in the words of Ecclesiastes "there is nothing new under the sun"...

But the coincidence I refer to occured the other night when we watched David Lynch's beautiful 'The Straight Story', film about an old man in the Mid West who decides to travel across to Wisconsin on his sit-on lawnmower to see his brother who has had a stroke and whom he hasn't spoken to in 10 years... (The lawnmower is because he doesn't have a driving licence...).
A beautiful film, and beautifully filmed, about coming to terms with age, settling your account, telling stories... It is really moving too. And this reveals the gentle side of life in the US, the importance of family, of doing the right thing, of making sure you treat people right, even if they're strangers, of imparting wisdom to the next generation... Inspirational stuff.
And it kind of made me think: as long as there are people in the US that resemble those of The Straight Story, in spite of all the troubled and conflicting undercurrents that Schama points out, we'll be OK.

Over and out - birthday tomorrow. 35. Ah well!

On Peeling Back Layers...

I've been meaning to write about this for ages. But something we're noticing a lot of in this house is the way layers have been added upon layers, covering up what was original about the house and its finish as people over the decades have 'modernised'. I've already written a fair bit about doors, which is one example, but over Christmas, I thought it would be interesting to explore the crazy paving in front of the house. Apart from anything else (its sheer ugliness for example...) the level was way too high and it was blocking the air vents...


So a bit of shoveling and pickaxe work later, what should we find but the original Victorian tile path! Very exciting.


Amazing what people will cover up in the name of modernisation. But then again, all things Victorian were deeply unfashionable in the 1960s and 1970s I guess. Looking ahead, maybe this poor path is destined for another 50 years under cover as we realise that our heritage and period obsession of the 1990s and 2000s was just a fad and that we had nothing to fear from the future after all...

The very best way to eat Fennel...

Oh now this one is really special. With a fennel bulb looking at me for days, how best to actually turn it into something nice? It's a very pretty, but very domineering sort of a vegetable. And Nigel Slater in 'Tender, Part 1' clearly doesn't have a lot of time for it - one page at about page 600...

Donna Hay however, has a recipe for Miso Crusted Salmon Fillet with Fennel Salad. Wow. Absolutely stunning. Definitely making this one again - and it's dead simple to boot.

First of all, very thinly shred half a cucumber and a fennel bulb. Next time, I think I'll grate the cucumber and let it drain. Squeeze a 1/4 cup of lime juice. Mix it all up in a bowl with a tbsp of fish sauce and 2 tbsp of sugar. You really wouldn't think fish sauce would work in a salad would you... Try it. It is very, very good.

Mix 1 tbsp of Tahini, 2 tbsp of white miso paste (I found it in Sainsbury's, by the way), 1/3 cup of water and 1 tbsp of sugar in a small pan, letting it simmer for a couple of minutes to thicken up. Lightly pan fry two salmon fillets on one side, then once they've had about 5 minutes, drizzle some of the miso sauce over them, then flip them over to cook the other side.

And that's it. Absolutely amazing, and really simple. Donna rules.

A Weekend of Doors and Dining

I went on a bit about doors a few posts ago.. It's a bit of an obsession. And this weekend I've sorted out two more doors in addition to the one in the kitchen. Turns out there is an unofficial door recycling 'scheme' along our road. In the space of two months, we have noticed 2 people leaving perfectly good doors in the street in front of their houses. Knowing that nothing stays on the pavement for long through our own experience of leaving old radiators, boilers and even light fittings outside for all of 5 minutes, we took these goodly folk up on their offer and took these two doors home... We figure that some of ours are a bit damaged after the experience of being panelled in for 40 years, so if we need spares...

And, nice coincidence, my father in law, R, left me his circular saw while he goes on holiday for a while. Absolutely terrifying, but brilliant for quickly getting a door from another house to the right size...

Needless to say, we have new bedroom door that fits, has no gaping holes in it, and fits in with the rest of the decor. Thank you, kind mysterious Brockley neighbour with the spare door... And R for the loan of a mean circular saw...

While all that's going on, roast lamb with mustard stuffing is cooking away in the oven. This is a Donna Hay recipe from 'Off the shelf'. Our friends at Drings (see previous post) 'tunnel-boned' a leg of lamb for us. I stuffed it with a mix of a cup of breadcrumbs, 2 tbsp of honey, 2 tbsp of mint and 2 tbsp of wholegrain mustard, trussed it all up with string, and it's now cooking on a rack above a baking tray with potatoes sprinkled with olive oil, salt and rosemary...

We'll see what that's like. An extremely respectful nod and thank you to my brother in law and his girlfriend all the way over in Southwark who last night had us round for an absolutely brilliant dinner of Boeuf Bourguignon with potatoes & onion, then ice cream with fig syrup and then cheese. Fabulous.

Just finishing this post in a spare second while some software downloads on my computer - the roast lamb from Donna Hay was ace. Could have done with cooking it a wee bit less time, but it was really good. Definitely roasting something on a rack above the potatoes is the way to go. Loads of flavour.

A+

An Anglo-Dutch Sausage Comparison...

It's been a quiet week on the blog front as I grapple with new responsibilities at work and lots of fun international office politics!
But evening meals go on (luckily!), and this week featured two interesting things to do with sausages. I'm a big fan of sausages - the butcher sort, that is - and with mash it's the perfect meal, in many ways.

First a comment about our favourite butcher, Drings in Greenwich, SE10.
They do probably the best sausages I've ever had. Favourites are the 'Londoner', which is a pork & leek number, and the 'Old English', which is full of black pepper. Drings generally is a rare find in London - an extremely high quality, friendly butcher that sells absolutely excellent things at not ridiculous prices. Everybody seems to know each other there too, which plays to my suspicion that Londoners generally crave two things: anonymity and a village atmosphere. I'll leave you to ponder the delightful contradiction in that statement. Drings recently won an award on one of the radio stations, but I can't find the story on the web - maybe someone else can, in which case pop it in the comments below...
Getting back to sausages though, another kind of sausage which never fails is the continental 'U' shaped one. We had one in the cupboard from a trip to Holland that we had to use up, from the rather excellent supermarket Albert Heijn. It's a great shop - sort of place where you can pick up Old Amsterdamer cheese for about a tenth of the price in London, not to mention 'Poiret', a pureed apple and pear really thick jam which is the sweet equivalent of Marmite, and which is amazing on pancakes... More another time.

Getting back to sausages though, we had rather a lot of cabbage this week, so out came Nigel Slater to out with a fantastic way of cooking it. For this, get the sausages under the grill and the potatoes cooking, then core and cut up the cabbage into finger sizes slices. Then grind up 2 tsps each of peppercorns and juniper berries. Bring a pan of water to the boil and drop the cabbage in for no more than 2 minutes. Once that's done, drain it in a sieve. Then heat the pepper/juniper berry mix in a bit of butter for a couple of minutes and add 150ml of cream. Heat that up a bit until it thickens, then add the cabbage and mix it all up. By this time the sausages and potatoes will probably be ready. Make potato mash, then serve it all up. Great way of eating cabbage (if a little high cholesterol!). It tastes a little bit like Gin - wonderful.

So compare and contrast with the traditional Dutch dish of Hutspot, which we made last night with the Albert Heijn sausage. Again, pretty simple. For this, boil up about 3 carrots cut into chunks along with potatoes and a very roughly chopped onion. Cook that til it's soft, then mash up. Meanwhile though, my own recipe (there's a first!) onion gravy. For this, very gently heat some sliced onion in some olive oil in a pan with the lid on for about 10 minutes. Add a tbsp of demerara sugar and let it sweat another 5 minutes. Then add a beef stock cube and some water, preferably from whatever you've got cooking (potatoes, veg etc). Bit of gravy browning (can't beat it!) and you've got really nice gravy. Better season it too.
To make the Hutspot, you have to make a pile of mash with an indentation in it for the gravy. Nice.

A final note on the Nigel Slater recipe - this is from his absolutely wonderful book 'Tender, part 1', all about his experience of growing and eating his own veg in his London garden. M gave me a copy for Christmas - It's a gorgeous, hardback volume, with a chapter on each type of vegetable. Each is described beautifully, and the man has clearly given a great deal of thought to the individual characteristics of the vegetable and what it works well with, and has concocted some extremely fine recipes. More to follow...

Sri-Lankan Soup

I'm told that the last post about Victorian door construction was a bit long and techy. Fair enough. It was...

So in the middle of all the door-related activity, I made a fantastic soup, using up some sweet pototoes and a butternut squash.

This was courtesy of Tamasin Day-Lewis, in a rather excellent soup recipe book we've got: Soup Kitchen: Spiced Sweet Potato and Red Onion Squash Soup. But works just as well with butternut squash.

Anyways, this one's complex, but worth it.

Start of off by gently cooking an onion and 2 garlic cloves in a bit of butter.
Then had a tsp each of cumin, coriander and sesame seeds, but only after you fry them gently for 30 seconds. Brings out all the aromas.

Then add to the onion/garlic mix, along with a thumb of ginger (grated), 1 or 2 green chillis, seeded and chopped, zest of a lime, and a tsp of honey. It's going to smell really, really good at this point - stir it all up a bit.

Then add 1.2 litres of veg stock, half the juice of a lime (you'll add the rest later), a bunch of coriander leaves and bring it all to the boil. Let it simmer for about 20 mins - everything should be cooked and tender at that stage.

Have to liquidise it now. We're lucky enough to have a kenwood blender which is ace (if tricky to wash up), but hand held blenders work well too. Add the rest of the lime juice
Then just serve - quite good with a wee bit of plain yoghurt. Nice and spicy!

On Victorian Door Construction

You wouldn’t think that door construction would be a subject of much interest. And yet… When you think about it, you take it for granted nowadays that there’ll be two handles, one each side, and a hidden mechanism. At least that’s how it’s evolved anyway. It’s all nicely standardized now too – you can use a wood drill (the sort of V shaped one) to hollow out a hole for the mechanism, then another one at right angles to make a hole for the spindle (the bit that both handles fit onto). Simples.Living in a Victorian house though, you can see how things have evolved. When we moved in to our new place, a lot of the doors were smooth and quite thick. This implied that they were so-called solid doors, where there’s a narrow frame right around the edges, filled in with wood chip. It’s a very inelegant and heavy construction method, but strong. We used to have one in our old house – clearly a very security conscious guy used to live there as it had 4 deadbolts in it. I’m not quite sure what he was expecting…

Anyway, M started tapping on these doors in our new place and bits of them sounded hollow. She reckoned there were original Victorian doors under a thin layer of plywood. I of course didn’t believe it – why on earth would someone do that…?

But after a bit of persuasion I was willing to give it a go and investigate, so a very small amount of tapping with my trusty wood chisel, and off popped two entire, door-shaped panels of plywood, revealing a proper 4-panel Victorian door underneath, complete with the shadow where the original lock would have been.My only guess is that the 1960s and 1970s were strange times. The people living here before us were here for 40 years, and I guess they covered up the doors in the name of ‘modernisation’.

So this weekend, I spend Saturday afternoon finishing and repairing one of these doors. This involved a trip to my favourite hardware store Wickes to pick up some 34mm pine to finish the edging. Thankfully I didn’t have to take the door off the hinges (it can be a real adventure re-hanging a door…) and it all worked fine with a bit of Wickes wood filler too. Sanded down and with a first coat of paint courtesy of M, the door is looking more like it's meant to be there rather than a Victorian remnant to be covered over. Very pleased. It's good to be able to reinstate some period stuff - I always reckon you're not so much the owner of a Victorian house, more a custodian...

Oh, and a final bit about Victorian door construction - you always had a mechanism on the outside of the door as in the picture, rather than drilled into it. I guess doors were thinner and it was just easier that way. Anyway so called 'rim locks' as they are known are quite hard to come by now - tucked away on the shelves where people don't look so much.

Wickes be warned - I'll be back for more rim locks for the other 5 doors that need them! Phew...

And who would have thought I'd ever write an entire blog post about doors...

The Swell Season in Piccadilly

So last night not much cooking was done. Instead, I did what I often do and take the advice of someone whose musical taste I trust, and went to a gig at St James Church, Piccadilly. I'd never heard of folk outfit The Swell Season before last night.

The potted history is that they've been playing since about 2005 when they recorded an album in Prague while working on the soundtrack to a film, Beauty in Trouble. That was the album 'The Swell Season', which in turn inspired an Irish Indie film 'Once' in which they starred and played. When I say 'they' by the way I mean singer and guitarist Glen Hansard and pianist, occasional guitarist and singer Marketa Irglova. They released a new album - Strict Joy - in October last year.

Anyway, last night was exquisite. Glen Hansard is one of those rare people who have instantly commanding stage presence - whenever he was on stage you were transfixed. Amazing voice and playing. At one point he came forward and did one song completely acoustically - takes guts to do that sort of thing. I don't know if Marketa Irglova is his muse or simply musical partner, but they complement each other amazingly well - subtle harmonies and tight performances. They achieved that sort of beatific state of having a really rich musical vocabulary with many heritages, but songs that were genuinely interesting, original and quietly intense. Kind of reminded me of Low (tho I've not seen them live), but obviously they belong to a long folk tradition.


Helps that Hansard has good banter too - I love a bit of between-song wit, storytelling and gentle humour. At one point he had a London crowd doing improvised whistling to a chorus. I don't think many people can do that...
Long set too which is rare these days (2 hours) and proper standing ovation at the end - it could have gone on much longer.. Nice set for them too - gorgeous church interior and quite clever lighting. Maybe a pint or two would have been nice (hard pews..) but then I'd have missed some of the subtleties probably...

Fantastic night.

Pasta and Death Cabs

Somehow recognising the important link between cooking and music, we recently moved my hifi equipment to the kitchen. I think this was mainly for aesthetic reasons (too damn big and ugly for the front room) but it suits me just fine - all CDs there are waiting while stuff happens on the stove. Yes, I still really, really like CDs and can't really see a day where I'll be entirely mp3. I could go on, but I won't (for now).



Suffice it to say that tonight was a mix of a new recipe and an album I've been listening to for about a year now (but which came out ages ago - as ever, I'm late to the party in my musical tastes...).

Last year we went to Australia to see friends, hang out and go to a wedding. We were staying with folks in Melbourne, and when we got there (hazy from the flights) they had a music TV channel playing. I remember being completely captivated by a video of Death Cab For Cutie doing 'I Will Possess Your Heart'. Absolute genius - and I'm a sucker for a really long track with not too many vocals...

So anyway, I got the album, and had a listen tonight while doing stuff with pasta. This is a goodie, especially when you're none too sure what to do with a whole savoy cabbage... Fry up about 10 slices of bacon or pancetta if you're feeling flush, then toss in a handful of thyme leaves (thyme freezes really well by the way) and a clove of garlic. Once that's a nice colour add an entire cabbage (quartered, cored, and thinly sliced, of course..) and a generous handful of grated Parmeggiano. Let it cook for about 10 minutes ideally with the lid on, while you cook farfalle in another pan. Once that's ready, drain and toss with the cabbage. Oh, and toast some pine nuts separately. Just when you're about to serve, throw in two mozzarella (about 200g) chopped into small dice and the pine nuts.

Very simple, and I only got 7 tracks into DCFC's Narrow Stairs. The other really stand out track is 'Cath', which apparently is loosely based on Wuthering Heights. It's really simple, but I love the segue from the previous song into the beginning of this one. Very special.

Enjoy the pasta.

O my wallet...

Once more I leave the house without my wallet, leaving it somewhere 'safe', probably. This is such a regular occurence that I've stopped panicking when I find it's not there...

Puts me in mind of a song by the marvellous Regina Spektor, simply entitled 'wallet' from her 'Far' album. In that wonderful Regina way, it's a little story about finding a wallet that belongs to an old fellow, taking it to Blockbuster where they'll have his details and imagining how pleased he'll be when Blockbuster phone him to tell him they have his wallet...

I feel a little like the gentleman in the song...

Ho hum

Somewhere to put our keys...

Well, finally somewhere to put our keys so we don't have to leave them lying around and lose them... Little box with hooks courtesy of M's online shopping. Getting used to wielding a drill and hammer at funny times of the day.

One of those evenings where we have to work out a little bit what to do with all the lovely veg that we have delivered every week by the excellent Abel & Cole. Always fantastic stuff - kind of keeps you on your toes about finding recipes that match up.

Salmon tonight with stir fried veg. Everybody knows how to stir fry, right? Cabbage, carrot, green beans, pepper, broccoli - start off with really hot oil, then green chilli, grated ginger, then everything else in order of consistency (cabbage last, in other words). Meanwhile, fry an onion, more chilli, ginger and a bit of sugar in another pan. Once it's done, put it on a plate to one side, then fry the salmon for about 20 mins or so, then put the onion mix back. Now add a tablespoon of soy sauce, fish sauce, lemon juice and let it all simmer for a bit. Stir fry will probably be ready about the same time, all being well. Oh, forgot to mention - Amoy straight to wok noodles in with the stir fry until it's all mixed.

Some of this is inspired by the fantastic Donna Hay, Australian food writer and author of brilliant books of very easy recipes to use...

Parsnip soup (reprise)..

Well, our old family Parsnip & Apple soup recipe was appropriately transformed with the addition of chilli flakes. Brilliant.

Very simple to make - peel and chop 2 big parsnips and a Bramley cooking apple into chunks. Also chop a medium sized onion. Heat up a bit of oil in a pan and heat the onions, parsnips and apples for a bit, then saute them with half a teaspoon of chilli flakes. Obviously this bit depends on how into chilli you are. I think we are largely immune, so it takes a bit more... Meanwhile make up a pint of chicken stock (could be veg too I guess). Once the other ingredients are a bit brown and softened, add the stock. Let the whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes.

Nice chance to sup some ale while you're waiting. Last night I listened to Noah and the Whale's "The First Days of Spring" while it was cooking. Really impressed - it reminded me of how great music sounded when you were 17 and it was all fresh... Kind of Leonard Cohen, Tindersticks, even Joshua Tree... The eponymous first track is spine tinglingly good - haunting and desolate. Don't know what it is about bleak, lonely music that really appeals to me, but there it is.

Anyway, once the soup has had its 30 minutes simmering, whizz it in a food processor until it's quite smooth, then back into a pan. Add a pint of milk and stir well - throw in a bit of seasoning if you think it needs it.

And then serve with nice bread. I've been reading a fair bit of Nigel Slater recently (more to follow in future posts), and he has taught me that the sweetness of parsnip needs balancing. Given that most of Asian cuisine relies of balances of sweet with sour, the chilli and parsnip combo (especially as there's apple in there too) works pretty well...

Not sure what my grandmother would have thought of this one - her orignal recipe used curry powder instead of the chilli - but I think deep down she'd have approved.


So, enjoy!

Winter Comfort Food

Been a bit of a parsnip-fest this month. We've had loads of parsnips. Loads. So this evening M tried a variation on an old family soup recipe - parsnip & apple. Chillies are great with everything, aren't they? So in went a teaspoon of chilli flakes. Nice.

Meanwhile, Man About Brockley put together an old Delia classic made a few days earlier - braised red cabbage - along with pan fried pork steaks and mashed spud. The cabbage recipe is probably the best way to eat red cabbage ever invented. It's from her absolute classic cookery course that's been around for a while now, and also here.

To do the pork steaks, gently beat an egg in one bowl, and in another, grate a slice of bread, grind in a bit of salt & pepper and a couple of pinches of parsley then mix it up. Then dip two pork chops in the egg, then in the breadcrumbs. Gently pan fry it in a mix of oil and butter for about 30 mins.

I can't really divulge how to do M's grandmother's mashed potato because that would be telling...

It was good though..