Let It Snow ... (but only if it's going to do it properly)

 It had to happen really. For days now there have been articles in the papers prophesying snowclouds of doom, and today they emptied their feathery, freezing little minions all over London.

Now, I am generally a big fan of snow. I never saw very much as a kid, but since moving to London I've had some brilliant snow days and made my very first snow angel. This time around, however, the snow has yet to settle, so we've got that lovely film of treacherous greyish slush on the pavements, and the snowflakes seem to be making a beeline for MY EYES, so I scuttle along blinking frantically like a bemused and shivery mole. In a hat.

A Staple: Pasta, Bacon and Artichoke

There's something immensely satisfying about making a really good dinner out of whatever you happen to have in the fridge and the cupboards. So, sometimes, I cheat, and make sure I have certain things lurking in the fridge, behind the jam, or in the cupboards behind one of Matt's 700 odd jars of Marmite (why one is not enough I will never know, not being a follower of the Marmitian faith.)

The items in question are jars of sundried tomatoes, and artichokes marinated in olive oil. Now, I'm aware that these would hardly be considered a staple food by many, but they are absolutely integral to one of my favourite dishes. This is a recipe of my mum's. It's really very easy, and it was probably (not counting the endless Victoria sponges and lumpy bread rolls I brought home from G.C.S.E food tech lessons) one of the first things I learned to cook.

Easy roast lamb

Matt again,

I've been meaning to finish this post for a while now, the meal happened a few weeks ago and I've been a little slow in getting it written up...

Jen was due back from Bristol at 7 on Sunday, and I wanted to have something nice for her to eat. This was perfect - easy, delicious and looks impressive. The whole recipe derives an extra sense of danger from cooking the meat direct on the oven shelf. Crazy. 

An autumnal syrup

Apples tend to get overlooked in our house. I for one view them as a rather dull fruit, and will always plump instead for a peach, pear, plum or cluster of sweet, red berries. However, last week I discovered a new way with apples, which seemed to fit the time of year to a T.

The recipe comes from 'At Elizabeth David's Table', and is essentially apples sweated gently in a fruity, sugary syrup until they're just on the point of falling to pieces on your tongue. The dessert as a whole was lovely, lifted delightfully by a large scoop (ok...two...well...actually three) of cinnamon ice cream. But, it was the syrup that really made it.

No apologies

I have a hunch that our dear Nigel Slater might have some competition for the role of this little blog's favoured chef. At least for a while. Nigel, forgive us, you have done nothing wrong ... it's just that I have recently acquired this.

Now, I am aware that I am late enough to this particular party for it to be bordering on the ridiculous, but I have not really come across Elizabeth David until now. I mean, of course, I knew who she was, but I'd never read her food writing or tried her recipes. Which is, as I have quickly realized, a crying shame.

Green park in autumn

No food in this post I'm afraid, just some pictures we took in Green park today...

Adventures (and mis-adventures) in pork

Hi all,

Jen was in Bristol this weekend leaving me to my own devices, and vices - in this case pork. I still haven't managed to persuade Jen that she's wrong not to like the stuff, consequently we don't eat very much of it.

So, when the cat's away....

Saturday night was a recipe from my head, but almost certainly stolen from the back catalogue of Mr Slater, although I don't know from which book - one of those recipes that just seep in through extended staring at desirable food.

Fried pork chops, roasted new potatoes with a make-in-the-pan sauce - tarragon, roasted garlic (odd choice perhaps but the oven was on, so why not) marsala, mascarpone and a squeeze of lemon. I also ate three uncooked, peeled carrots as an unconstructed salad. Tangy sauce beautifully complemented the pig and potatoes, matched of course with a fine bottle of becks. Cheese course was the majority of a goats cheese (La buche - available in Waitrose and Sainsburys, it's surprisingly good, get one that's near its sell by date). Dessert was Muller rice (another of Jen's hated foods).

All grown up ...

Yesterday was a bread baking sort of a day. Matt was out climbing, and I knew that on his way back he would most likely nip to the shops to grab some food for dinner, and that that food would most likely include a large block of cheese.

So, I decided to bake something to complement said cheese (I assumed we'd be talking stilton here...I was right). A fougasse maybe...perhaps a rosemary and sea salt focaccia...

But then it happened, as I was flipping through Richard Bertinet's book of contemporary bread, Dough. Now, granted, this isn't one of my most well-worn cookbooks (for one thing, it doesn't yet have splodges and greasy butter stains on any of its pages), but I thought I'd read it pretty thoroughly. Apparently not. Yesterday I discovered a WHOLE NEW CHAPTER at the back, about sweet dough, and all the beautiful things you can do with it.

Rising and falling

We have had a run of bad luck in the kitchen recently. First there was the apple cake that was ... erm ... accidentally grilled rather than baked (a delightful mixture of charcoal and raw cake mix ensued). There was the ill-fated batch of cornbread that was more like corn sludge - am still not sure how this happened, whether it was a bad recipe or, more likely, a bad chef (me) to blame. Then of course there was the unfortunate case of the curdled ginger ice-cream (the less said about that the better).

Then we come to Sunday night, and the sad tale of my cupcake tragedy. I had seen this recipe on the very lovely Smitten Kitchen and thought 'Good grief they look amazing.' This is because a) I have eyes and b) I am excited by cake.

Look at the link, go on. Then feel your mouth start to fill up unattractively with saliva! Are they cakes? Are they tiny tiny souffles? Does it matter when they're so amazingly light and filled with cream?

Basil gnocchi with sage butter

Matt here,

This was a mid-week, tag-team effort - I made the gnocchi, Jen made the sauce.

The night before last we had sausage and mash (with onion and marsala gravy) which I will modestly claim was excellent, but that's another story. Anyway, halfway through peeling for the mash, I was thinking about what I was going to do with the other half of the potatoes that I didn't really need. Normally what happens is that I cook far more than I can eat (but proceed to eat them all nonetheless) whilst leaving a small handful of potatoes to go green and plantlike because I can never be bothered to prepare such a small number of spuds...

The solution was simple, peel all the potatoes, cook them and then keep enough for the meal and put the rest in the fridge to have as gnocchi the following evening. I accept that we're not talking Einstein levels of genius here, but still...

Well, it turns out that gnocchi is really easy, oddly satisfying and tastes great when home made. This recipe was adapted from the top 15 search hits on googling "gnocchi recipe" - the most relevant was probably the one on the BBC site, it inspired the basil.