Friday's fishy and lemony dinner

I do find bank holiday weekends rather disconcerting. Having been confused by the days all week I’ve been convinced since I woke up that today is Saturday. When a “weekday” radio show has come on, rather than re-orientating me to (Good) Friday, it only goes to make me feel even more bewildered that that they are not airing Saturday’s programmes.

One benefit of the bank holiday is that I felt unusually enthusiastic for cleaning the kitchen. By about 2pm it was looking lovely and shiny (I had been doing other things in the course of the morning) and therefore I didn’t feel like messing it up. So I grabbed a quick lunch of my mum’s carrot cake and headed off for a swim. And 180 lengths later I think that I must have burnt off said carrot cake and most of last night’s rice and lentils. The main challenge of this swim was the paradoxical one of needing the loo and also being very thirsty.

Lucy and Barbara, my sister- and mother-in-law, were to be joining us for dinner this evening. Last weekend, whilst at my mum and dad’s, I had hastily purchased a whole salmon. Mum had said that it was fine to invite some friends round for dinner but that we’d need a bit more fish. When I got to the fish counter whole salmon were on a special offer just too good to leave behind. So mum cooked the whole fish, we ate about half of it last weekend and she sent me home with the rest.

So this morning, with a view to constructing a fish pie, I extracted the salmon, along with some pollack and prawns from the freezer. I’d assumed that there’d be some smoked fish there too but that was not the case but since I was going to have to visit the shop anyway it wasn’t too much of a problem.

After my swim the insufficiency of my lunch hit home. Firstly I missed the turning for the nearest supermarket. So I had to detour around one of my least favourite roundabouts.

Whilst trying to select broccoli I observed the man who was refilling this on the shelf cough all over it. Rather than go for the time sensible option of selecting some of the pre-packed stuff I decided that I would leave said supermarket and head to a different one with hopefully better food hygiene standards. Or at least I wouldn’t know otherwise. The main disadvantage in this course of action was that the supermarket that I was about to leave has the advantage of selling French set yoghurts with a lemon flavour in the pack.

I was then hit with indecision. Should I go to the slightly more distant but larger supermarket that would definitely have everything that I needed? Or should I go to the smaller but nearer supermarket which offers a more pleasant shopping experience with less risk of unnecessary purchases but a higher risk of not having everything I needed. I could tolerate almost anything else on my list not being available but without the smoked fish the pie would just not be right.  

When I got to the junction where I had to make a decision I took the gamble on the smaller supermarket. It was obviously my lucky day. Not only did I get the last pack of smoked haddock it was also reduced. Not only did they have French set yoghurts, these included “new” lemon flavour (replacing I think the slightly peculiar pineapple). Not only did they have broccoli, it was 50% extra free.

I made the fish pie with leeks and mushrooms. I used some bay leaves from our garden in the white sauce which I think I found disproportionately exciting. And chives from the pot that my mum had sent back with me last weekend in the mashed potato.

My mashed potato is slightly unconventional as I choose not to peel the potatoes – all the goodness is in the skins surely. I omitted to pre-warn our visitors but Barbara hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out and Lucy had noticed but seemed to think it was ok.

Whenever I eat with Matt’s family I am struck by how slowly I eat. Today everyone else had finished but I had only eaten my veg and had my whole portion of fish pie left. I always eat my vegetables first because I can’t stand them cold.

And then on to pudding. Lucy had asked for something fruity. I needed to use up a couple of lemons. I identified something that fitted the bill: “lemon layer pudding”. This is one of those recipes where you mix everything together and when it cooks it divides into a spongy layer (although in this instance more sponge-soufflé) and a sauce layer. Having cleaned the kitchen earlier I took extra care to avoid splattering the mixture all over the worktop with the electric whisk.

Barbara declared the pudding to be one of the nicest ever – and I don’t think she was just being kind.  Lucy and Matt demolished it swiftly. I feel suitable inspired to try it with different flavours.

We finished off the evening with some (more) wine (always a risk when Matt’s female relations are around) and a board game. I love games!

Thursday's lovely lentils

Bank holidays are all very well but that does mean that lots of us have to get 5 days’ work done in 4. Plus with sickness and holiday in our team it’s been a really hectic week. When I’m feeling busy one of the things that drops off is proper shopping. With hindsight it would have been a good idea to organise Mr Big Supermarket to deliver us a top up but as it was the kitchen was fairly poorly stocked. Tonight’s tea was therefore going to have to feature mainly store cupboard ingredients.

A while ago I’d made a rather tasty rice and lentil dish and tonight seemed a good time to revive this. It’s a very simple recipe. The main drawback is that it requires 3 pans: 2 more than I would like but since we got a dishwasher this bothers me less. It also requires some multi-tasking.

I usually like to make excess portions of dinners; either for the next day or to freeze for emergency reheat meals. But I’m always worried about rice since everybody seems to think that it’ll give you food poisoning if reheated. And I am nervous about rice as it is. So for a change I was planning to stick fairly closely to a recipe, but since my recipe was for 4 people I would need to take care that I remembered to divide everything by 2.

Pan 1:

The rice is cooked up with onion and spices. And really after I’d thinly sliced my onion that was the most taxing part of the preparation out of the way. Once the onion is cooked off nicely you’re supposed to add 1 ½ tsp of ground cinnamon and 1 ½ tsp of ground nutmeg (halved on this occasion). But I have some aging cinnamon sticks (a random purchase from the 2011 Devon County Show) so used a couple of those instead. And rather than getting all my ingredients ready before I started I went to add the nutmeg only to find it wasn’t with the rest of the spices. I am yet to find my perfect spice rack so in the meantime all the spices etc are stored in a shoebox. After enlisting the help of my husband, Matt, who always knows where everything is, the nutmeg was located next to the popcorn (at the opposite end of the kitchen to the spices). Unwilling to measure this I just grated until it looked and smelt about right. Then you add the rice. I used a mixture of basmati, wild and some sort of red rice (all our dried ingredients like this are in plastic canisters so the packet that would tell me exactly what it was was long gone). And then the stock / water. Cue narrow avoidance of adding too much fluid by the omission of dividing the original recipe’s volume by 2 – luckily I realised before it had gone in. And then you just cook it until all the water is absorbed.

Pan 2:

Boil some green (puy) lentils until cooked. (I think that a combination of red and green lentils would probably work ok.) Drain the lentils.

Pan 3:

Make a tomato sauce. I suppose that you’re supposed to use fresh tomatoes but I’m sure that tinned are nearly as good. Today’s sauce also contained a small pepper (going a bit wrinkly), some chilli flakes, a teaspoon of yeast extract (it makes loads of things taste brilliant), some tomato puree and some pomegranate molasses. The pomegranate molasses is even older than the cinnamon sticks, 250ml having been purchased for a specific recipe in December 2008 that required 1 ½ tbsp (for the scientific amongst you I’m sorry about my mixing of units). We are still looking out for opportunities to use it and this was just one of those occasions. Oh, and some black pepper. Today I proved that our new “artistic” pepper mill (long story) is resilient as well artistic; the kitchen floor may have been covered in peppercorns but the peppermill was unscathed after I managed to drop it from a height of about 3 feet (just to mix up the units even more). Boil it all up and keep warm.

To serve you mix the lentils into the rice pan. I needed to reheat a bit (the lentils not the rice obviously bearing in mind my food poisoning concerns) due to partial multi-tasking failure. The tomato sauce goes on the side. The recipe also says to serve with a cucumber and yoghurt salad. I had neither of these but did have an out-of-date pot of tzatziki which I had acquired during a fleeting trip to the shop one lunchtime. It didn’t taste out-of-date and filled the role very nicely.

I think that Matt found the tomato sauce a bit spicy (he does have quite a delicate palate!) but overall a success, plenty of carbohydrate and protein fuel for the long swim I have planned tomorrow. And at least I’ll know where the nutmeg is next time I want it in a hurry.

Saturday's cake marathon

After a late arrival at my mum and dad’s, a later pizza (my dad is now legendary for these) and an even later night I was not likely to be getting up early to complete this morning’s culinary tasks.

My athletic friend Alex had organised a bake sale to raise money for Farm Africa who she is running the London Marathon for next month. I had possibly been overambitious in my promised offerings: ginger muffins, lemon muffins, marmalade cake and chocolate brownies. Plus a quiz. And some reconstructed “vintage” cake stands.

Knowing that there would be a lot of cake to come this afternoon I skipped breakfast, topped up with caffeine and set to work on the cakes. Today’s bakes were to be tried and tested recipes, not wanting to be too adventurous in someone else’s kitchen. The limited time available, using my mum’s kitchen and her inevitable “help” would be challenge enough. (In fairness my mum’s seemingly continuous washing up was immensely helpful.)

The marmalade cake had to be done early as it needed to cool before icing. I first made this a few weeks ago in response to my glut of marmalade and it was certified a success by my friends Sarah and Andrew, and particularly by their 22 month old son. All went according to plan until it came to line the tin (recipes always say to do this first but I find it boring so don’t bother until just before cooking) and discovered that mum didn’t have the right size cake tin. This is a woman who has two, not insubstantial, cupboards dedicated to bakeware and an extensive baking history. It was not unreasonable for me to assume that she would have a 20cm round tin. We engaged my in some rudimentary mathematics and I was persuaded that I could bake the same volume of cake in two loaf tins.

Two cakes for the price of one into the oven.

While they were cooking I set to work on the lemon muffins. At which point I discovered I didn’t have the ideal ingredients. The basic was possible but I like to add poppy seeds for texture and lemon extract for turbo lemon flavour. So I despatched my husband, Matt, off to the shops.

And meanwhile I put the finishing touches to my cryptic bakes picture quiz. First devised on Thursday evening it needed modifying (apparently some clues were much too hard), adding too (you can never have too many cryptic bake quiz clues), and the answers putting into a visually agreeable format (the cryptic bake quiz makes a very pleasing PowerPoint® presentation). It was just like an assignment where you think that you’ve finished and nearly submit it when you realise that all your references are in a right mess.

Cakes out. Muffins in (but only just with poppy seeds as someone in the shop overheard Matt on the phone telling me that he couldn’t find any and kindly placed some in his basket). Quiz work on-going.

The excellent chocolate brownie recipe was given to me by a friend who doesn’t eat wheat and uses ground almonds rather than flour. It requires four separated eggs. I do not class egg separation as one of my skills. My success rate is usually about 50%. I often enlist Matt to do it for me but he was busy with glue and crockery so I went for it myself. And had 100% success.

Muffins out, brownies in. Quiz work on-going.

I had made two cake stands at home with top of the range super glue but had brought the rest to finish here. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the top of the range super glue. Cue crockery and glue fiasco. Suffice to say only the original two cake stands went to the bake sale.

I delegated Matt the task of icing, which as you know is not something that I relish. He completed this with aplomb whilst I did the next batch of muffins. Mum had baked some gingerbread and I thought that to avoid repetition I ought to go for a different flavour. In a moment of inspiration I decided on white chocolate and cranberry, never tried these before but the muffin recipe is very versatile and it’s usually a good flavour combination. Fortuitously both were available in mum’s randomly stocked kitchen.

Brownies out (smelling divine). Muffins in. Quiz work on-going.

Somehow it was now lunchtime. Still in anticipation of an afternoon of cakey goodness I just had a small mug of soup (I didn’t even have any cheese which is always such a treat at mum and dad’s as there is such a vast selection available). 

Muffins out. Quiz work complete with a little help from dad with the printing. Mad rush to get to the bake sale on.

It was great. Loads of people turned up and I was able to catch up with quite a few friends. And as planned eat lots of cake. I had some almond slice, chocolate biscuit cake, chocolate brownie and I’m sure something else but it slips my mind just now. All delicious. We won an embarrassing number of raffle prizes (but there were loads of prizes). The quiz seemed to be enjoyed and two small boys (who had been keenly selling raffle tickets) certainly enjoyed pressing the buttons for the PowerPoint® presentation. And I got a new spider plant. We used to have a fantastic one with lots of baby spider plants but it died some time ago so hopefully this one will fill that void in my life.

Apparently the event raised nearly £500 – fantastic and really helps Alex on the way to her fundraising target. So inspiring I think I might just plan a bake sale of my own.

Here's the link if you'd like to contribute to Alex's fundraising:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=AlexGrounds&faId=281414&isTeam=false

Tuesday's courgette emergency

I managed to pop home for lunch today and was reminded of the remaining almost festering courgettes. I’m going out for dinner at a local garden centre with Barbara, my mother-in-law, tomorrow and there was no way that these would last two more days. So tonight’s tea would have to use them up.

The courgette is not an inspiring vegetable. The best thing I have ever done with it is an amazing cake with pine nuts, sultanas and lemon. But that requires lovely, sweet, small courgettes. It might feature in the summer, maybe with home-grown courgettes. I once made some courgette / cocoa muffins which I thought were quite nice but my camping companions did not seem to agree, although they were too polite to say so in so many words.

By the time I got home from work I was afflicted by the unfortunate trio of tiredness, hunger and coldness (particularly my feet). I didn’t know which to address first. As Matt, my husband, was due to go out for some stag-do planning the pressure was on for eating so I decided to get straight on with preparing something to feed us. Having, predictably, failed to find any inspiration for the courgettes I reverted back to one of our regular teas. Roasted vegetables. Along with the two courgettes this also involved half a butternut squash, half a sweet potato, a green pepper (also often at a loss at what to do with these but they also put them in those bargain pepper multipacks), an onion, some tomatoes (the ones that had previously been destined for toasted sandwiches) and 3 big mushrooms that were well past their best. There should have been 4 big mushrooms but one of them was irredeemable.

Using this many vegetables produced lots of scraps that would be ideal for our new Wormery. Unfortunately we haven’t got the worms yet. So we’re storing up the scraps in bags / boxes in the kitchen in keen anticipation of their arrival. There is clearly a limit to how long this scrap build up can continue. This limit will probably be tomorrow unless the previously mentioned garden centre is able to supply some worms.

To go with the vegetables I did one of my favourites: camping couscous. First made for me by my mum on a campsite in Devon, this basically consists of couscous and tinned tomatoes. Over the last few years I have made lots of different variations on the theme. Tonight’s included onion, red pepper (left over from the dumplings), and celery.

Tonight’s tea really called for cheese. Having not featured significantly in our diet since the original slack lasagne (although frequently as a minor to moderate addition) I felt it acceptable to have some tonight. The choice was feta, soft goat’s cheese, cheddar or halloumi. Since we had four block of halloumi in the fridge I opted for this (plus it bakes fantastically with the veggies). The large supply of halloumi is not explained by it being either mine or Matt’s favourite cheese (mine is a lovely squidgy brie-like thing called Vignotte, Matt’s a strong cheddar) but by our difficulty last summer in obtaining any on barbeque days. So Matt’s solution is to stock pile it (it has a very long shelf life) so that it won’t matter if the shops sell out on barbeque days this summer (let’s hope there are plenty).

Due to Matt’s early start tomorrow (and I think that I’m supposed to be taking him to the train station) he rescheduled the stag-do planning (which also means he can get a haircut at the same time), so there was plenty of time to allow the veg to cook. I like it when they start to burn a bit.

Despite the fact that I probably let mine cool down a bit too much before eating (distracted booking a bargain holiday) it was delicious.

And now I can deal with my tiredness and coldness in one go: with bed and a hot-water bottle.

Sunday's experimental dumplings

Today saw the sad demise of the sandwich toaster. Probably inspired by the delicious fried bread I had enjoyed at breakfast, I felt inspired to make some cheese and tomato toasties for lunch. This included the slightly taxing task of purchasing tomatoes. Available were 2 packs (of 5) for £2 or loose for £1.99 per kilo. But the packs didn’t have a weight on them. And I’m dreadful at estimating weights. Having found some scales, weighed the loose ones and worked out that I could get five for just about £1 I went for this option. I don’t know why I bought five as the toasties would only need one.

But upon opening the sandwich toaster (which had lain dormant for at least 2 years), the inners appeared to have decayed. So toasties were off and reheat soup was on. This is always a bit of a gamble as I make soup in big batches and freeze in smaller portions which are invariably unlabelled. Today I extracted a tub at random, reheated and we enjoyed parsnip and apple soup, accompanied by toast with my favourite yeast extract spread. The soup was an improvement on its first consumption when I had failed to add enough water and it was more like eating runny apple sauce fragranced with parsnip. I don’t know why I didn’t think it out previously.

Suitably fuelled for an afternoon swim I left Matt with his skirting boards. My exercise was impeded (quite literally if this word comes from ”ped” which I think means to do with feet) by my blistered feet. Having enjoyed 2 night’s dancing in Torquay (hence the cooked breakfast) my feet were rather the worse for wear. Blisters the size of a 50 pence piece on the ball of my left foot and a 20 pence piece on the right, and on both little and big toes. Which resulted in diminished pushing off from the ends and discomfort from the turbulence of the water flowing around my feet.

And then it was time to think about tea. We had a butternut squash which I’d been intending on cooking today and when I inspected it there was a suspicious looking blemish suggesting that it needed using. We had both eaten butternut squash yesterday – Matt as a soup and me in a pasta dish. So the pressure was on to do something creative. Also present was somewhat of a glut of vegetable suet (due Matt’s supermarket enthusiasm a number of weeks ago) and he was keen for some dumplings today. So I decided to go for a vegetable stew. And I decided that as well as the butternut squash I’d use red peppers and mushrooms.

I set the stew off with some onion, celery and garlic. And when I went to vegetable drawer I was confronted with some rather sorry looking courgettes. So one went into the stew. And then I thought I might be putting too many vegetables into the pot. Hence the idea of putting the red pepper into the dumplings.

Once the veggies were sautéed off a bit I had to think about liquid. I would usually chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes but thought this might be too overpowering for the other relatively subtle veg. So opted instead just for vegetable stock. And then thought I’d add some sherry. This wasn’t totally random. I have made a lovely soup recently with squash and sherry so was this was an extension of that concept. It simmered away, smelling lovely, but not happy leaving well alone I threw in a couple of cups of red lentils.

And so to the dumplings. This was high risk. I am not an experienced dumpling cook but have had relative success when I have done them before so was prepared to be a bit adventurous. I chopped up the red pepper really small and fried it up in the little fried egg pan before adding to the dumpling mixture with some salt and mixed herbs. And then it was just a matter of hoping that the whole thing worked out ok.

Which it did. Not the most attractive looking of dinners but really tasty and the dumplings were lovely.

I’m looking forward to more adventures in dumpling land but first have two dodgy courgettes in urgent need of consumption.

Red pepper dumplings (will make 8 large / 16 small dumplings)

• 45g (vegetable) suet
• 100g self-raising flour½ a red pepper, chopped up as small as you can & fried so it’s soft 
• Sprinkle of dried mixed herbs
• Bit of salt (which is about as descriptive as “pinch”) 
• 70ml cold water

Mix it all up and form into dumplings. Cook in your stew for about 20 minutes, just before serving.

Tuesday's inevitable stir fry

Despite finishing work on time today (a rare event but something that I’m hoping will become more common) I didn’t have much time to make tea. This was because by the time I had watched one of my favourite celebrities doing some dancing on the television I was very hungry.

Matt often makes the tea on weekdays but was home late himself this evening after a (thankfully fruitless) trip to the DIY store. I had just come up with the bright idea of asking our neighbour who’s a carpenter if he has an appropriate saw we can borrow and so was pleased that Matt had avoided adding to his own collection.

The stuffed cabbage had only used up eight leaves of savoy cabbage and the rest was still lurking in the fridge. So this really did seem like the right night for a stir fry.

I think that all households have some meals that they eat over and over again and stir fry is one of ours. When Matt makes it it’s usually after he’s done the shopping online and bought some of those bags with all the bits prepared. He hates chopping. When I make it  it’s in a effort to use up an array of veggies. Today as well as the cabbage there was pepper, mushrooms, carotts, courgettes and mange tout peas. This was the first time I have ever cooked mange tout peas.

We had enjoyed some mange tout very much at a friends’ a week or so ago and I didn’t argue too much when Matt put them in the trolley, especially as they were on special offer and I love a special offer. This was the same occasion that I picked up the savoy cabbage. So it seemed in some way right that they were reunited this evening.

Yet again I misjudged the quantity of ingredients required and ended up with a vast mound that would not fit comfortably in the wok. Volume wise this was mostly made up of cabbage. But I was fairly confident that it would reduce down and I just had to be patient. I was and it did (but there’s still enough for tomorrow).

The flavouring of stir fries is something that I’m not particularly adventurous with. Matt will sometimes use the intriguing pre-prepared sauces but I like to add my own flavourings. This most often will be ginger and soy sauce and sometimes pineapple and / or chilli. Today I really fancied pineapple and it’s something I always assume will be in the tinned fruit section of the cupboard. But alas it was not so today. And I didn’t really think that tinned prunes, mandarins, pears or peaches (or any combination of the above) would really work. So I just added a shake of chilli flakes.

My diet earlier on in the day had been fairly dreadful (lunch had been some flavoured rice cakes and a cereal bar: at Matt’s request I now permanently carry such things in my car for occasions, such as today, where I fail to pack lunch) so I felt the need for some protein as well as all the veggies. We don’t eat that much of the “meat substitute” products, usually opting for “actual” vegetarian foods (like beans and lentils). But we do have a stock of the substitutes in the freezer and the bird like bits do go nicely in a stir fry. Sometimes I put some nuts in but I’m in a brazil nut phase at the mo (apparently they’re very good for selenium whatever you need that for) so had probably reached my daily nut quota by 9am.

Matt cooked the noodles. And we settled down in front of our current DVD box set (it’s naughty I know but the dining room is out of action due to current DIY / decorating endeavours and it’s really cold in the kitchen) with a big bowl of vaguely oriental inspired tea.

It tasted good but was tainted by 1) the guilt I had about the number of miles the mange tout had travelled to feed me and 2) the stringy bits of the mange tout getting twisted around my tonsils requiring unladylike removal from my mouth. Maybe that will serve me right for eating vegetables from Guatemala.

Sunday's unintentional sauce

It being Mothering Sunday we had invited my mother-in-law, Barbara, around for tea; my own mum apparently spending most of the day travelling across South East England on various forms of public transport.

Visitors are always an excuse for something yummy. Matt, my husband, had declared (after a week of attempting to fix skirting board in our front room) that this occasion would require him to spend most of the day in the kitchen. I did not argue. I think the alternative would have been another trip to the DIY store to acquire another tool. Probably a noisy tool. Matt’s special is pizza and he wanted to do some sort choclately thing for afterwards.

I chose to lurk around in my pyjamas. I made considerable progress in knitting three French hens, as well as some superglue and second hand crockery based craft.

After lunch (yesterday’s stuffed cabbage leftovers), and with this evening’s potentially extravagant tea in mind I decided that I really ought to get dressed and get myself to the pool. Thus far Matt had looked through some recipes but not made any decision on what he would like to bake for his mum. And as I was about to leave he put on his best “pretty angel face” and asked if I would mind making the cake. Which of course I wouldn’t as I love baking!

I narrowed down my options to a choclately ginger thing or a chocolately berry thing. The chocolate was in aid of Mothering Sunday, otherwise the cake would have featured marmalade since I have more than 3kg taking up valuable space in our store cupboard. I pondered over the choice whilst swimming (another good session but the superglue didn’t come off my hand despite an hour of chlorine treatment) but the decision was made for me as there were no appropriate berries available. So ginger it would be.

The recipe I chose was a rich chocolate and ginger beer cake. This was high risk from the start because it featured icing. I am not good at icing so tend to opt for cakes with interesting things in them rather than on them. But I am never going to get better at icing if I always avoid it. And Barbara likes it so it seemed like the right thing to do.

After deciding what type of ginger beer to use (there were at least 5 different varieties in the drinks cupboard), the cake mix itself was fairly straightforward, using one more bowl than I would prefer as I had to melt the chocolate into the ginger beer before adding to the flour, sugar, eggs and butter (although I did substitute with some branded buttery spread).

I have recently discovered the significant advantages of lining cake tins. I am yet to figure out if there is a right side and wrong side of the baking paper. So today I conducted a simple experiment and put it one way round in the first cake tin and the other way round in the second. I can share with you my conclusion that for the baking of chocolate ginger beer cake it makes no difference what way round you put the baking paper. It is not yet clear whether this conclusion can be extrapolated to other types of cake but I am looking forward to finding out.

And while the cake was in the oven I set to on the icing. The recipe required mascarpone and since Matt had to pop up to the shop to get mozzarella for the pizza I asked him to pick some up. He came back without mascarpone (not stocked) but they did have a good offer on loo roll. So I was going to have to improvise. So into my bowl went a tub of low fat soft cheese and some icing sugar. And then I heard “ooh, that was nice that ginger beer”: Matt had just enjoyed the 30ml or so that I had reserved for the icing. I was not keen on opening another bottle just for this so instead added a glug of the syrup from the preserved ginger in the fridge and whisked the whole lot up. And it was very runny. This is one of the problems that I frequently encounter with icing.

Unsure of the appropriate remedial action (it tasted quite nice so even if I had had some more icing sugar (which I didn’t) I wouldn’t have really wanted to add any more for fear of making it too sweet) I phoned my mum who is an essential source of cookery salvage tips. I first discovered this when I was at university and making an apple cake. I was sufficiently knowledgeable to realise that something wasn’t quite right before I put the mixture in the oven but insufficiently experienced to have any clue what had gone wrong. Mum managed to deduce that I had failed to use any eggs, which I duly mixed in and cake disaster was averted. Today she warned me off adding double cream (I thought it might whisk it up a bit more) but suggested I try adding in a bit of “marg” or blitz up some caster sugar in the food processor to turn it into something resembling icing sugar if I did want to go down that route. Not wanting to make any more washing up I opted for the “marg” option and added a lump of branded buttery before giving it all another whisk up. This actually did thicken it up a bit and it still tasted quite nice. I decided for good measure to add some glace ginger and then left it in the naïve hope that it would set a bit more before the time came to ice the cake (which by now had been removed from the oven and smelt amazing).

We all tucked into Matt’s delicious pizza and then I ventured back to the kitchen to assemble the cake. The icing was still way too runny but I could just about use it to sandwich the two layers together and cover the top and sides. The sides of the cake that is, as well as the sides of the kitchen. I had vastly overestimated the amount of icing that would be required but Barbara very generously suggested that it could be used as a sauce.

This was an occasion for the musical cake slice. To which Matt improvised some Mothering Sunday themed lyrics to the tune of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

As they say proof of the pudding is in the eating. And the eating proved to be very good. Very sweet and rich but washed down perfectly with a cup of tea. There are some lucky people out there who are going to get to sample it tomorrow.

Saturday's cabbage

The savoy cabbage is one of those vegetables that I have convinced myself is very healthy and good value. But when it comes to actually eating it seems to be remarkably un-inspiring. So I resigned myself to the fact that we would be eating some sort of soupy / brothy thing or a stir-fry this evening with a cabbage that was looking increasingly sorry for itself.

The day flew by but when looking back it’s not entirely clear that very much actually happened. I almost signed up to a store card but backed out when they said I couldn’t set up a direct debit to pay the full amount each month. They offered me the option of an old fashioned statement which I would have to organise to pay or a direct debit for a set amount and then arrange to pay the rest or accumulate interest. Either seemed liable to be a disaster.

Returned from said store and I made use of some lovely March sunshine creating the “Mediterranean” bit of the garden. By which I mean planting some herbs around the olive tree (actually spotted an olive!) and repotting the bay tree. Hopefully this will all survive next week’s predicted snow and soon I should be cooking with home grown flavourings.

After a quick lunch consisting of a bowl of my favourite crinkle cut salt and vinegar crisps I managed to get a good swim in today. The main hazard facing me was hoards of teenagers windmilling their arms on the poolside. It was some sort of regatta (if that’s the word for a swimming competition) and this apparently amounts to warming up.

I was certainly ready for dinner. But rather than choosing the straightforward option (the stir-fry had been on my mind most of the afternoon) I thought I would see if there was something more exciting to create. Two of my books had recipes for stuffed cabbage leaves so I figured that I could give that a go. Neither of them sounded brilliant but didn’t seem too complicated so I decided to go freestyle….

The obvious thing to stuff the cabbage leaves with would be rice. But I am useless at cooking rice and my husband, Matt, who usually does this task was out on a DIY-based mission. So I opted for pearl barley. This tends to work out best if rinsed before cooking and since I had just used the colander to rinse the cabbage leaves prior to blanching (it defeats me why this is called blanching, but there we are, and blanche I did) I chucked a cup or so into said colander (in an effort to reduce washing up). My misjudgement of the relative size of pearl barley and the holes in the colander resulted in pearl barley spattering all around the sink area so I had to revert to a sieve anyway. I decided that the whole thing could do with a bit of protein so chucked in a cup or so of puy lentils with the pearl barley and set them to simmer.

It struck me that the whole thing would need some sort of sauce. So I cooked up an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and a couple of carrots and then at a loss of what else to do threw in a can of chopped tomatoes. And on a whim I added some red wine vinegar and a teaspoon of brown sugar. And then decided that it would be better blended. By now Matt had come home and as well as cooking rice he tends to do most kitchen tasks that involve the use of a power tool and thus we had a nice tomato sauce and a spattered worktop.

I had evidently made a huge overestimation of how much stuffing each cabbage leaf would take but, determined not to waste my pearl barley and lentils, piled on the filling. And then tried to roll. Resulting in a lot of pearl barley and lentils joining the tomato sauce on the worktop, and a bit on the floor too. The leaves just wouldn’t be rolled. I had images of tying them up with string. But had no suitable string. So the only solution I could come up with was to “pin” them shut with cocktail sticks.

After arranging in an ovenproof dish I poured the tomato sauce (which miraculously was just the right quantity) over the stuffed cabbage leaves. Still not convinced on the outcome of this dish I grated over little bit of cheese (my culinary cure-all) before putting the whole lot to bake in the oven at 180°C for about half an hour.

And after careful removal of the cocktail sticks we tucked in. Matt declared it   a  “triumph”. It was yummy but if I was doing it again I wouldn’t bother with the cabbage leaves. I’d just make the pearl barley / lentil mix and serve with tomato sauce.

Which I guess means we’re back to soup or stir-fry for the savoy cabbage.

Thursday's slack lasagne

I’ve taken to posting pics of my culinary creations on the internet and one of my friends suggested that I write a cookery blog as I’m "a domestic goddess".

Well, if you could see the state of our kitchen (or indeed any other room in our house) that goddess bit falls down. But I’ve been thinking about writing something for a while (I have a job that doesn’t permit for much creative expression!) so here goes….

I think that you’re supposed to come up with an amusing name for your blog but that eludes me at the mo, so for now it will be called "slack lasagne" after this first entry. I suppose the “theme” will be loosely around my exploits in the kitchen but this is liable to tangentalise into other topics, as is my habit.

I am yet to develop the advanced skill of planning meals in advance thus much of my cooking is based on what we happen to have in the cupboards and fridge, and this was just one of those occasions. And after my husband Matt announced to me this morning that he had found some lasagne sheets next to his porridge there was no other option in my mind.

So I spent my day off buying tea cups and glasses in charity shops, knitting a swan-a-swimming and doing some swimming myself (before I was interrupted by the lifeguard requesting that I get out because someone had been sick in the pool – which put pay to my plan of 100 lengths today!). And before you know it’s time to make dinner.

I had stopped on my way back from the pool to pick up some crème fraiche which quite often comes to the rescue in my cooking but that was the extent of my planning. I have a box full of recipes which I’ve pulled out of magazines over the last 5 years or so, most of which I will probably never make but which I feel compelled to sift through every time I’m making something new. Just in case there’s a good recipe. There wasn’t. So then I browse through the indexes of my recipe books for the keywords.

Today these were spinach and / or mushroom and I was led to “spinach lasagne”. Checking the list of ingredients I was pleasantly surprised to see that mushrooms also featured – albeit the “wild” variety rather than my budget supermarket box. I didn’t have any cheshire cheese but there’s been half a packet of feta sat in the fridge for the last couple of weeks and some pecorino, which would join some cheddar in a happy trio of cheese and recipe adulteration. I didn’t have the stated amount of spinach (who seriously ever keeps more than 1 bag at a time?) but an excess of mushrooms would surely make up for this along with a generous quantity of white onions (instead of the suggested tiny amount of spring onions which I always find a bit awkward anyway). Sadly the recipe didn’t call for crème fraiche but I found half a pot in the fridge which needed using up so that went into the white sauce. The new pot will be put to use another day.

And 2 hours later, after minimal adherence to the original recipe and using more utensils than I generally like to, we tucked in to a delicious cheesy dinner. It took less than 10 minutes for us each to polish off a portion. Fortunately there’s seconds for tomorrow.

Slack lasagne

•  Lasagne sheets
• About 750g of vegetabley stuff all cooked up - today this was onions, garlic, spinach and mushrooms mixed up with feta and cheddar and a bit of nutmeg
• White / cheese sauce made with 600ml milk - today this had crème fraiche and pecorino in it

In a large oven proof dish put half of the veg stuff, then a layer of lasagne sheets, then half of the white sauce, then a layer of lasagne sheets, then the rest of the veg stuff, another layer of lasagne sheets, then the rest of the white sauce. Finish with a generous sprinkling of cheese. Bake at about 200°C for about half an hour (until the cheese on top is cooked up nicely).