Easy Greens with Oricchiette

I’m shattered – 12 hours training today. Maybe the boy has prepared supper? Hahahahaha no chance! He’s practically putting himself up for adoption as a result of not being fed at a reasonable time. It’s late, I’m tired so this has to be very quick and easy.

We’ve got some early sprouting broccoli in the organic box, so that is our start.

250g Early sprouting purple broccoli

250g Orecchiette pasta

30g butter

2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

250g crème fraiche

170g Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

I think Orecchiette means ears. It’s a small disc-like pasta. I imagine that Farfalle would be okay too. There's a cute boy at my work that Toby and I call 'Ears' because his are so cute (you can have cute ears!). He also has amazing legs and has taken to walking around the office in shorts on his way back from the gym. Bliss. Anyway.

In separate pans, get water on the boil for the pasta and the broccoli. Trim the broccoli so any tough bits don’t end up in the dish (Includethe leaves though. Nyom). This is meant to be delicate and comforting, rather than challenging. It will be impossible for the boy to keep the bad mood up after a few spoonfuls of this. It’s rich, smooth and – to invent a word – blankety!

Salt the pasta water and drop the Orecchiette in. Put the broccoli in the other pan and give it 4 minutes so it’s not too soft. Drain the pan and add the butter and garlic, and when softened add the crème fraiche and cheese. Add a spoonful or two of the pasta water to add a silkiness and thin it out a bit. Cook for a few minutes.

Check the pasta is done and drain. Chop the broccoli up to the size that will fit on a spoon and then add to the creamy sauce. Tip the pasta in. Serve in a bowl with a spoon. It’s quick and simple, yet surprisingly good. It’s very soon clear that he’s forgiven you. Ideally I’d like him to have a salad with this, but it is late so he got away with it.

Qorma e Zardak

I was really hoping that the number of flavours in this would distract him from thinking this was just carrot & split pea stew. It would be fun to tell him dinner is carrots and peas and see how much protesting he does. It’s from Afghanistan

2 medium onions, chopped

2 tbsp oil

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1 Scotch bonnet chilli

1 cm fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp ea cumin & coriander

600g whole baby carrots, trimmed (Chantenay would be great)

300g yellow split peas

1 tbsp tomato puree

3 large tomatoes, chopped

Salt to taste

2 tsp vinegar

500ml veg stock

Fry the onions and when they soften, add the ginger, garlic and chilli. After a few minutes, add the spices, carrots and split peas. After a few more minutes, add the tomato paste and chopped tomatoes. Stir in and add the vinegar and stock and add the salt. Cook for 45 mins to 1 hour. A whole hour to spend with the young man. Treat him to a beer – watch TV with him, whatever he wants. Let it be his time.

Serve with flatbreads and the following salad:

½ cucumber

3 tomatoes

4 spring onions

Handful each coriander and mint (traditionally slightly more mint than coriander)

1 small onion

2 green chillies

Salt

Juice of 2 lemons

Chop everything up and squeeze over the lemon juice.

Not just carrots & split peas by a long shot. Generally the boy seems not to be put off vegetarian food so long as it’s interesting. He also has some theory about how fresh veg will improve his football. Watch him pick the chillies out of the salad though.

Pockmarked Mother Chen's Beancurd

A new Oriental supermarket has opened up in Wood Green so we stocked up on ngredients to make this. I’ve wanted to make it for ages, partly because of its name but motly because I love fiery Sichuan food. Lowell had never heard of it, but caught up in the moment insisted we make it.

500g firm bean curd (Tofu)

4 spring onions

100ml ground nut oil

150g minced pork

2 ½ tbsp. Sichuan chilli bean paste

1 tbsp black fermented beans

2 tsp crushed chillies

250ml stock, with a little ginger grated in

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp light soy sauce

Salt to taste

3 tsp cornflour slaked in water

½ tsp Sichuan pepper, ground

The dish gets its awesome name from the smallpox scarred face of its Qing dynasty creator. You can use less oil, but it won’t be the same. You could also skip the dried crushed chillies and just get the heat from the Sichuan peppercorns. Make sure you buy a Chinese brand and crush them yourself. I use Pearl River Bridge Band for the fermented black beans (Yang Jiang preserved beans with ginger) and Lee Kum Kee for the Chilli bean paste (Toban Djan).

Cube the beancurd and leave it to steep in a bowl of just boiled water with a little salt in it. Slice the spring onion on the diagonal – the Sichuanese call this cut “horse ears”. Lowell is dry roasting the Sichuan peppercorns and crushing them in a mortar. We're listening to a CD of Chinese pop hits. The cover is all in Chinese except it has 13+1+1 on it! 

Add the oil to the wok and get it very hot. Be watchful as this is a lot of very hot oil! Add the mince pork, and get it brown and on the way to crispy. Annoying that you can’t actually buy minced pork in 150g portions and it doesn’t seem right to ask a butcher for such a small amount. We’ll think of something else to do with the rest tomorrow.

Turn the heat down and add the chilli bean paste, until the oil takes on the red colour. Add the fermented beans and ground chillies and stir fry for another minute.

Carefully pour in the stock and add the drained beancurd. Mix it very gently so it doesn’t break up. Season with the sugar, salt and soy. Simmer for 5 mins.

Gently stir in the spring onions and add the cornflour to get the sauce thick enough to cling to the beancurd and meat. You might not need all of it.

Decant into a serving bowl and scatter the ground peppercorns on top. Serve with plenty of rice as this is spicy. Lowell is hopeless with chopsticks which is in my favour. If he drops anything on his shirt it will have to come off and go straight in the wash to avoid dying it permanently red.

Sake Steak with Cardamom Rice

Lowell’s up for the weekend, so we’re having something special, that won’t keep me in the kitchen on my own all night.

2 x 150g fillet steak

200g Basmati rice

2 cardamom pods

2 tbsp chopped coriander

Marinade

1 tsp English mustard

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp garlic oil

Sauce

70ml sake

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp English mustard

This is elegant but easy. A word on the ingredients. Get what you can, but I think Worcestershire sauce is Lea & Perrins, mustard is Colmans and soy sauce should be the dark kind. If you can’t get hold of sake, use sherry, as long as it’s good enough that you’d want to drink it on it’s own.

Combine the steaks and marinade ingredients in a freezer bag and marinate for a few hours in the fridge. We did this in the morning and then went out for the day. Gave it all a good massage when we got back and it was good to go.

Leave the steaks out to come up to room temperature. There’s no point in putting them in a hot pan if they’re freezing cold. Lowell & I are reading The Woman in White to each other and we have time to squeeze a whole new chapter in. It’s getting chilling. Who in that house do we trust?

If you don’t have a rice cooker, get one. The rice goes in. along with the cardamom pods (Bash them first). The rice will be perfect and hot, whenever the rest of the meal is ready.

Heat a griddle pan until screaming hot and give the steaks 2 minutes on each side. Wrap them up in foil and allow them to rest.

In your smallest saucepan, heat up the sake or sherry and evaporate the alcohol off. Add the other sauce ingredients. Unwrap the steaks and pour the juice into the sauce pan.

Slice the steak thinly on the diagonal and serve on a bed of cardamom-scented rice and pour the sauce over. Sprinkle the coriander on top.

We’re having this with a pinot noir that has a nose reminiscent of coffee beans. He’s starting to feel at home in my flat and I’m doing my best to encourage that. There are no left overs, which I’m taking as a good sign. Dessert has to be plain Madagascan vanilla ice cream and coffee. Elegant. Sincere.  Lowell.

Ensaladilla Rusa

Essentially this is Spanish 'Russian Salad'. Very popular in Spain apparently. All Russian salads involve dicing up vegetables really small. I’m not going to attempt to persuade the boy that this is a meal in itself and have bought some smoked sausages, some salami and some cheeses. Chicory has turned up in the organic box – I never know what to do with it so have broken up into big leaves for scooping up the salad. I won’t put any spoons out so that he gets the hint.

150g petit pois

500g salad potatoes, peeled

½ red onion, chopped

1 tbsp red wine vinegar with a pinch of sugar added

2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped

2 tbsp tarragon, chopped

150g decent mayonnaise

2 tbsp capers, ideally the ones in salt

Boil the petit pois and then scoop them out and set aside. Pop the potatoes in and cook for 15-20 mins, until tender. When cool enough to handle, dice them.

Chuck in a mixing bowl and add everything else and mix well. A drizzle of decent olive oil will help.

Serve on your prettiest plate surrounded with the chicory leaf scoops – face it there’s no way you’re getting him to eat them otherwise. There’s definitely something more Spanish than Russian about this, though they do seem two very unlikely cultures to be meeting. And it sounds nice – imagine telling him his dinner is going to be potatoes and peas in mayonnaise! But this is so much more than that

Banjon Borani

I’ve been wanting to make this ever since I first had it in Islington’s hopelessly disorganised, but wonderful, Afghan Kitchen. The boy likes aubergines and yoghurt – what could go wrong?

3 decent sized aubergines

Oil for frying – hard to say how much you’ll need

1 large onion, chopped

4 green chillies, chopped

1 tsp turmeric

4 tomatoes, chopped

1 small bunch coriander

Yoghurt Sauce

450ml very thick yoghurt

2 tbsp lemon juice

6 garlic cloves, crushed

Handful chopped mint

Salt & pepper

I don’t hold with salting aubergines, but kitchen traditions are important so do this if it’s what you do. Otherwise just slice them about 7mm thick.

Fry the onions and chillies until the onions are soft and set aside. Now fry the aubergines. This is where it gets difficult to predict how often you will need to top up the oil. You need them lightly browned. Assuming you’re cooking in batches, add them all back to the pan and sprinkle with the turmeric. Add the tomatoes and coriander (though save back a little of each for garnish). Tip the onion and chilli back in and add a little water so that the aubergines are just about covered.

Turn the heat down and simmer for 30 mins. Make sure it doesn’t dry out.

The boy is home early so he’s peeling and crushing the garlic – taking ages doing it too. When he’s finally there get him to mix all the sauce ingredients well.

This dish is layered up – Spoon about a third of the yoghurt over a serving dish and then layer half the aubergines on top. Then another third of yoghurt on top and then the rest of the aubergines. The final yoghurt third tops it all. Sprinkle with the reserved tomatoes and coriander.

This would be good with rice but we’re having it with shop bought warm naan breads. I’m slightly surprised he likes this as much as he does – I had a feeling the hot aubergine/cold yoghurt would jar with him but maybe it’s because he made the yoghurt. I love catching up with his day over a shared meal and like to keep surprising him with things he hasn’t had before. He’s surprisingly receptive to meat free meals.

Breton Galettes Complete

It’s pancake day in the UK and there’s no getting out of it – the boy wants pancakes, and so pancakes it must be. We’re not tossing them though as we remember what happened last year. This is a Breton recipe – we’re having ours with eggs, cheese and ham – known as a complete. This makes 6 but they do freeze. I’m assuming you’ll want 2 each. The boy may well manage 3.

112g buckwheat flour

112g plain flour

1 tsp salt

250ml milk

250ml water

60g butter

6 large organic free range eggs

6slices thin deli ham, chopped up

200g grated Swiss cheese

Sift the flours together with the salt. Make a well and pour in half the milk. Whisk to a smooth paste. Add the remaining milk in two batches, mixing really well each time to get it lump free. Normally I’d let it rest but he wants pancakes and so there is no time.

You need to heat a 30cm griddle pan or crepe pan – wipe it first with the butter and some kitchen paper. Test a drop of batter on the surface – it will set straight away if it’s hot enough. Ladle a small amount of batter into the centre of the pan and use a spatula or pallet knife to spread it thinly across the surface of the pan.

Now for the fun. Carefully break an egg into the middle of the crepe. Use the spatula to thin the white across the surface without breaking the yolk. Sprinkle some ham and cheese over the whole surface. As  the crepe sets and browns on the bottom, fold each edge over the egg white into the middle so it forms a square with just the yolk showing through the whole in the top. The egg white should be set and the yolk still soft.

Slide it off the pan with the spatula and on to the plate.

You can’t really make these to eat together as they cook one at a time, but that’s part of it. Wipe down the griddle and re-butter before starting again. My tip – for a quiet life make his 2^nd one before starting yours – it will buy you breathing space.

Olive & Parsley Salad

This is a side dish, intended to refresh between richer courses. Would be good as a meze dish too.

2 cups pitted black olives, coarsely chopped

2 cups, packed, flat-leaf parsley leaves

1 red onion, finely sliced

Juice of 4 lemons

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt & black pepper

This is very refreshing when served with a fatty meat like lamb. But good on its own too. The quality of the ingredients is key. I like to make this with wrinkly, oily Kalamata olives from Greece. Briny olives will just add too much acidity. The parsley will ideally be big and fresh enough to make you want to use it as a salad leaf.

The olive oil should be green and grassy. Combine all the ingredients and adjust the seasoning.

 The boy used the leftovers in a cheese sandwich with sourdough bread. He is probably really on to something. Wish he left enough for me to try this – it has to be good.

Chipotles en Adobo

This is definitely not for the young man. It’s all for me to hoard in cupboards and use at every opportunity. It’s wonderful for perking up Salsas, pasta sauces, dips – anything that would appreciate some smoky heat.

200g dried chipotles (approx. 60-70)

1 large white onion, roughly chopped

1 whole bulb of garlic, peeled and cloves roughly chopped

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 tbsp thyme leaves

1 tsp cumin seeds, crushed

4 tbsp olive oil

350ml white wine vinegar

50ml decent balsamic vinegar

3 tbsp tomato puree

7 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp sea salt

This recipe is from Thomasina Miers. She can always be trusted to deliver the goods and I plan to sample more of the menu in her Wahaca restaurants this year.

This is an epic cooking session so only Verdi will do. Il Trovatore would be perfect – ideally the Pavaroritti & Sutherland version, though I only have the highlights disc. It has to be the whole thing and so the Callas version it must be for me.

Chipotles are smoked Jalapenos. They come dried and this is a different way of preserving them in a kind of sauce. So far I find the best value mail order service is Chilli Pepper Pete (chillipepperpete.com) though my best mate is in Mexico this week and I have charged him with bringing me back a load. It will take ages to peel a whole head of garlic but this is an investment –and you do have the lovely opera to listen to. I often have the cookbook and the libretto open side by side in the kitchen.

So to cook. Il Trovatore, Act 1, scene 1. Begin. Wash the chipotles in cold water and then drain. Snip the stalk end off with scissors. Put them in a medium pan and cover with cold water. Bring up to the boil and simmer for 30 mins, or until the chillies are soft.

Put the raw onion, garlic, herbs and cumin into a blender. Fish out 6 of the chillies and add them along with 200ml water. Blitz until you have a smooth paste.

Heat the olive oil in a large pan, and when hot, fry the paste for about 3 minutes. Stir constantly so it doesn’t stick and burn. Add the vinegars, tomato puree, sugar, salt and another 100 ml water. Cook for another 5 mins and ad the rest of the chillies (drained).  Cook for a further 15 mins until nicely thickened. I usually snip randomly at the chillies with a pair of kitchen scissors so that you get some small as well as large pieces.

Pour into sterilised jars. This makes about a litre. It keeps for months in a dark cupboard so you can enjoy it in no end of dishes. Taste a tiny spoonful before you jar it up and imagine it calmed down a little after a month in a jar. Think of all the things it would be great with.

A final word of warning. You have been handling a lot of chillies. Wash your hands with plenty of soap, lots of times before there is any chance of touching the genitals. Yours, or more especially his! You don’t want to give him more reasons for you not to spend your Saturday making this.

Persian Gulf Prawn Curry

This is a not too hot curry – Persian, rather than Indian, though India is just across the Arabian sea from Iran. The boy loves all the flavours of this as it isn’t too hot. He goes a really cute pink colour and tuns rather damp if there is too much chilli. This is about right, and has a distinctly middle eastern flavour.

3 tbsp oil

2 onions, chopped

2 tbsp ginger, grated

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tsp Baharat (all will be revealed)

1 tsp chilli powder

2 tsp turmeric

1 cinnamon stick

Grated rind of 1 lime

1x 400g can tomatoes

¼ cup tamarind water

1 cup water

700g peeled king prawns

Basmati rice & lime wedges and coriander leaves to serve

Baharat is made up of 2 tsp each of black pepper & paprika. 2 tsp each of cumin & coriander seeds, toasted and ground. 1 tsp ground cinnamon, ½ tsp each ground cardamom, cloves and nutmeg. Combine.

It’s not as cold as it has been but a light, complex curry is just the thing.  Fry the onions slowly for 10 minute. You want to soften but not brown them. Add the ginger, spices, lime peel and garlic and give it another minute. 

Stir in the tomatoes- they don't have to be especially good ones, but break them up. Add the water and the tamarind water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.  It should reduce to  thick gravy.

He’s enjoying a compilation of radio comedies from the 1970’s. Turn the kitchen radio on to share them with him. Put the rice on in the rice cooker. Pop a few whole cardamom pods in to perfume the rice.

Add the prawns to the sauce. These are horribly expensive from the supermarket – find a local fishmonger or market stall. Cover the pan and simmer for 10 minutes. No more or the prawns will get tough.

Serve with the rice and a simple salad of tomato and cucumber slices.

As predicted, he really likes it. It’s lightly spicy, rather than searing-hot. He also likes dinner that comes in a bowl with just a fork. There are times for maximum chilli, but this isn’t one of them. It’s time for running your fingers through his incredibly coarse hair, and cooking things just the way he likes them, because you love him.