kitchendiaries: pretty paper. true stories.

Since The Boy went on a cookery course at Leiths, I must admit I have been learning a great deal from our collection of three Leiths bibles. Everything in there is so sensible and accurate and we haven’t made anything from any of them yet that didn’t turn out, and that’s high praise. But they lack in one thing that I find rather important…visual stimulation. I am sure the bible moniker comes from the sheer amount and detail of prose contained within, while mostly letting you use your own imagination for the pictures. And for whatever reason, it’s the pictures that make me fall in love with food.

Specifically Béa’s pictures. And Béa’s food.

La Tartine Gourmande is, in my opinion, the classiest food website in existence. My goodness, the woman can cook amazingly, take photographs of which the web is not worthy and manage to tell an amazingly wonderful food story practically everyday. What’s not to love? (Also, her web design is just perfect.) As an American ex-pat in England, her stories of being a French ex-pat in America make me giggle. Giggle in that way when you know exactly what the American is going to say and in a way it makes you cringe and yet you know it will be said anyway. It’s okay; I have been away long enough now that I find the funny questions quite endearing. But she retells the events just perfectly.

Since I can’t exactly ask her to come cook in our kitchen for a week (one, she doesn’t know me; two, she lives in Boston; three, our kitchen is so small!) I decided to just throw caution to the wind and plan an entire week’s meals from La Tartine Gourmande recipes. And so far, we have success! On Monday, we made papillotes with trout and vegetables, which was easier than I thought and tasted divine. Everything just wrapped up to bubble away…open it up and everything is perfectly cooked. (Well, as perfect as I could expect for a first attempt. My mange tout were never going to be snappy from the start…they are not in snappy season just yet. A bit limp, but tasting nice.)

On Tuesday, we had a lovely spring minestrone and something I have nicknamed aubergine castles. I do find it funny that since the Americans say eggplant but the Brits keep the French aubergine, Bea’s English/French recipe titles look all intermingled to me when she cooks aubergine. And I don’t ever find aubergine an easy one to get right. This is probably as right as I have ever managed. I’m not sure I would serve it to company without more rehearsal, but it was quite nice on our warm sunny evening this week.

And last night, we made gingered salmon with carrot sauce and tasting the sauce as I was going, I thought I’d come up with a loser for us—The Boy is not keen on savoury dishes that come up too sweet (evidence already provided!) and the carrot, orange and ginger combination on its own was quite sweet. But I should have known better. When everything was put together…rice, salmon, sauce, peanut and spring onion topping, it was just right and not too sweet after all. Quite a different taste to anything we have ever cooked before, actually. The Boy said this was not a loser at all, though the first meal of the three is still his favourite. (Alas, he was kind and did not mention that I had totally ruined the presentation of this one and therefore no camera was going near it.)

We still have a few more to go in our week of La Tartine. So more notes to come.

Comment

especially when he cooks.

Comment [3]

You know, it’s all very well to start something but you’d think I’d learn to keep up. Clearly I’ve still got room for improvement there. Since the last diary entry, we’ve still been cooking and taking photos and writing things down but I have been rubbish at putting it in some sort of permanent record here on la internet. Oh well. We can all get over it. And maybe one weekend I’ll find it’s too gloomy to do anything outside and everything indoors is as perfect as can be and on that weekend I will sit down with a hot beverage and transpose notes from the margins of cookbooks and the backs of oil-spotted index cards into electronic diary entires.

And maybe I won’t.

But I can start with these pictures and try to carry on, because the arrival of spring has meant the arrival of daylight and that has made photographing food a far more enjoyable experience.

Spring also means there are things that are starting to appear in stores that haven’t just been kept in a cooler for months on end so we can eat them out of season. Berries are starting to appear! And skinny spring carrots! Only just a little, and mostly from Spain, but okay for a tiny little splurge to kick away winter doldrums. And so we had very many things to stretch our single, beautifully sweet punnet of raspberries: raspberry angelfood cupcakes, raspberries on rice krispies (for I am currently obsessed with berries on rice krispies, no matter how childish that may sound) and this: raspberry almond crumble.

Raspberry Almond Crumble

Ingredients:
Raspberries (fresh or frozen)
Sugar
Chopped almonds
Oats
Plain flour
Unsalted butter
Almond extract
(no amounts listed because really, you won’t need them)

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Start with bowls that are the size you want, the number you want and safe to go in the oven. Fill each half-full with rinsed raspberries. Sprinkle a spoon of sugar over the raspberries in each bowl. Set aside to make the crumble.

In a mixing bowl, start with about half a block of butter if you’re in the UK or one stick of butter if you’re in the US. Roughly 100g, but seriously no need to measure. If the butter is super cold, zap in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it.

Add about two tablespoons of flour, four to six tablespoons of sugar (depending on your sweet tooth!) and one teaspoon of almond extract to the butter and mix or stir. Stir in the chopped almonds, oats and any extra flour needed until it has the consistency you want. I always think it needs to feel more dry than I imagine—if it has too much butter/not enough dry it will be more like pie crust and less like crumble. Not that I don’t like pie crust, but with this I want to taste the raspberries and the custard and let the oats and almond just break up the sweetness. And this is ever so simple to make, so no need to over think.

Cover the raspberries with the crumble and stick in the oven until the raspberries are bubbly and the crumble is just browned. Make custard while the crumble is cooking away. From scratch, I love Bea’s vanilla bean custard recipe. And when I don’t have a full box of eggs in the kitchen to make that, I use the non-instant Bird’s mix with plenty of whole milk and stir in vanilla seeds. Not quite as fabulous but better than serving crumble without custard and hearing no end of it for many, many days.

Comment [3]

As a teenager, I had a friend called Melissa who lived just around the corner from my top-rate job at the Dairy Queen. Her parents would host fabulous parties in the summer, with everyone coming by for something for the barbecue. The kind of party where you knew hardly anyone there but you still felt perfectly at ease. The kind of party that would end far too late for you to get home at a sensible hour, so you would just know you would end up crashing on the floor. Which in this case was very good because Melissa also had MTV and an amazing collection of Lisa Frank stickers. So cleaning up a little after the party was totally acceptable as it was rewarded by writing the cutest pen pal letters in the universe while watching Kennedy host Alternative Nation and squirming when they would show Joe’s Apartment. But also I think those parties were the first place I learned to cook anything outside the confines of the kitchens of my immediate family or, indeed, the Dairy Queen.

I can’t remember who taught us how to make these, but I distinctly remember that mystery person was cooking something else at the table while giving us instructions at the stove: boil this, heat that, add some of that. It was crazy-cooking, I tell you. The kind of cooking that required no measuring spoons. I didn’t know what hit me.

But they were yummy. So I made them at home a few days later and everyone there agreed they where yummy. For a while they were that dish I was expected to make when we would have guests, and I must admit I have always thought it was pretty cool when people start to hope you’ll make something. (The Boy’s dad makes this rice in the summer and I go into mourning when it is too cold to have it any more…so if it’s a summer event and there’s not the rice…oh goodness, there will be disappointment. I just hope he is cool with that, because it is certainly meant as a compliment.)

I haven’t made them in ages, but when I read this I was taken right back to Melissa’s kitchen, so I went to get some little potatoes and try them again. They are still yummy. And they are actually even better reheated the next day, so perfect to have a few for dinner one day and a few for breakfast the next. And so easy:

*Wash small potatoes.

*Boil in skins until just soft.

*Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan.

*Add the boiled potatoes (still in skins) and move around until coated in oil.

*Add salt, pepper and a handful of poppy seeds.

*Smoosh around in the pan until everything starts to go just a bit brown and crisp around the edges, then at that moment, stir in a spoonful of butter and mix around until all melted and absorbed.

*Eat.

And since I am still being a little nostalgic about France, it’s acceptable to pair it with this French-ish omelette (which I stupidly broke, so it is not very pretty). It is French because a) it is an omelette b) it contains a bit of Roquefort and c) it contains herbs de provence, which Ariel gave to us when she was living in Paris and I have used at least once a week ever since and still have plenty to go. Anyway, it was an ugly omelette but it tasted just like it did at the top of the mountain. Except it also had potatoes.

Comment [2]

Don’t you hate it when one bad experience ruins something for far too long? At some undetermined meal, an undetermined number of years ago, I tried a risotto and it was terrible. Really, really terrible.

For many years, I had the phrase ‘Oh no, I don’t really like risotto’ in my vocabulary. In a very polite tone, mind you. But I was quite convinced that I didn’t like risotto.

Then at some point last year, The Boy had the day off while I was at work, and he decided to cook something he had never cooked before. I came home to a house that smelled lovely, promptly got excited for dinner and then realised it was…risotto. And became terribly nervous.

Obviously I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, but after all, ‘I don’t really like risotto’. What’s a girl to do?

This is what: eat the flipping risotto and learn that you do like risotto after all. You just had the bad experience of eating a rubbish one in a restaurant that really should have been sent back to the kitchen, but being a risotto novice, you didn’t know this, and instead have spent upwards of five years of your life going around thinking you don’t like risotto when really: YOU DO.

Now we make risotto a couple times a month, just to remind me of my stupidity.

We are quite fond of one from the veggie Leith’s book made with courgettes and cheese, but I found myself with sweet potatoes and no cheese and this worked just fine. I am of the camp that you can do no wrong with sweet potatoes. I would eat them for all five of my five-a-day if it was allowed. But The Boy is rather paranoid about them currently, having read an article like this, and also, he thinks they are really too sweet for most dishes. But he ate this and didn’t complain. And more importantly, didn’t die. Which means I think I will make it again sometime, so I better write this one down.

Sweet Potato Risotto
(serves two people who are going to eat more than they really should, or more than two who know that there will still be food in the world tomorrow.)
3/4 cup (before cooking) risotto rice
1 cup white wine
4 to 5 cups very hot vegetable stock (no, I do not make stock. Unless boiling water + OXO cube = ‘making’ stock. It works just fine.)
3 sweet potatoes
salt, pepper, oregano and coriander
olive oil

*Wash the sweet potatoes and bake them until soft. Set aside to cool.

*Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan. Throw in the rice and mix around in the pan until covered with oil. Keep on medium heat until the grains start to become transparent (a minute or two). Reduce the heat.

*Start to add the liquid. Add 1/2 cup wine and 1/2 cup stock and keep slowly stirring. Set the temperature to just barely simmering.

*Then there is this lovely process of adding more liquid and stirring more. All very slowly. Like ‘bring a good book to read’ slowly. Or ‘practice your pirouettes on the kitchen floor’ slowly. If you just sit and stare at it, it may get a bit boring. Never fear. Just add little by little, stir it so it doesn’t stick and whenever it starts to get too thick, add more liquid.

*Once pretty much all the liquid is absorbed, add the salt, pepper, oregano and coriander. Keep stirring.

*Chop the cooled sweet potato into bite-sized pieces and throw into the saucepan. If the risotto is looking too thick or the rice isn’t soft enough to eat yet, keep adding more stock.

*That’s it. Put in bowls and eat. Try to come up with a good retort to ‘They are called sweet potatoes because they should be for dessert’, but fail miserably.

(Can totally be made without the wine—but seems to need more stock and a while longer to break down without it.)

Comment [2]