Woodsmoke and Wild Strawberries
Musings and Culinary Endeavours: because blogs and food should be more satisfying than a rice cake.
Somerset House
Merry Christmas Everyone! I truly mean that. I know it is basically a month late, but this is the kind of reaction time I am operating at these days. My tree came down on 7th Jan, punctually, but all I felt I had to get off my chest just languished, unvented. So with a few temporal tweaks, without further ado, here is my very tardy end of November / Christmas post, in case you were wondering what was really lurking behind all those lovely instagrammed meals:
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This is a super-fast post, because I can’t seem to string together more than 15 minutes in front of the computer these days. I also slashed the tip of my thumb open on my mandolin making the sprouts recipe earlier this week and it hurts to type. This recipe was a rip-roaring surprise of a success last night and the 2, 5 and 7 year olds ate ADULT portions of it. Crucially for children, it is mild, but far from dull as it is very aromatic. I know my kids are not the norm, but I believe that if you expect a lot from them, they will deliver. I held my breath with my back turned as they first tucked in, and lo and behold, they did not complain, far from it!
I will come back and replace my iphone pics with high-res. photos to accompany this recipe when I next make it as this one doesn’t really do it justice. I instagrammed yesterday evening’s results and whole load of people asked for the recipe. I ate the leftovers for lunch today with my husband, it was so tasty, although I confess it was spiked with chillies for our palates and worked wonderfully too. You know something is good when you eat it several meals in a row with no complaint. I think you could substitute the chicken with sweet potato or tofu and make it veggie… I’ll give it a whirl and let you know.
I call it lightning curry as:
The short, basic formula for any easy, fast curry is as follows:
The detailed version, for this curry however, is:
The curry in the photo was a mild version in its original incarnation, but it morphed in to a spicy one once my husband and I were having it as left overs on day 2. If you like heat, then use chillies. If not, this is a great recipe, as unlike when I use quality, shop-bought Thai curry pastes, you get to decide on how spicy you want it to be. The cooking time of the rice (if you use a rice-cooker) is more than sufficient to get on with the rest if you use a chopper to mince up all your spices and roots etc. We use a rice cooker a lot in our house - I used to think they were just another unnecessary piece of kitchen kit, until my husband brought one into my life after being converted to its wisdom during a stint living in Asia. In actual fact I have grown to really appreciate this gadget very recently on discovering that I can cook dried beans or split peas in a fraction of the time and even then, they no longer give me bloating nor do they retain that grassy, overly "al dente" chalkiness that can make them so unappealing. The other advantage is that I can be on the school run or whatever, while the rice-cooker bubbles away, basically leaving it to get on with things. If I have understood correctly, a rice-cooker is not a pressure cooker, but the seal in the rice cooker somehow amplifies the cooking speed and thoroughness. Secondly, if you want to prepare ahead, you could chop your meat and marinate it in half the spices as much as a day in advance if you fancy (I did not, and it was still wonderful). The other half is best fried over with the onions and the marinated meat/spice mixture then added. Whenever you cook meat, be sure to let it come to room temperature before cooking as otherwise it will clench up like a scared mollusc and end up tough and chewy. The thermal shock on the muscle-fibres makes them shorten, whereas if you don't subject, it to unnaturally extreme spikes in heat, it yields and becomes tender. With this in mind, remove your meat from the fridge at least 15 minutes before you want to throw it in the pan.
The pattern of the legendary often national or regional dish vs the native reality really fascinates me. It’s like this Croatian-Canadian colleague I had years ago who described how at weddings in Canada the Croats had this “oompa” music with accordians and fiddlers (similar to gypsy music) because, having emigrated things had remained frozen in time, circa 1930. When she returned home to Zagreb for the first time she was shocked to find that most young people were dripping with designer gear, attending pilates classes, and listening to techno etc. and cringing at what she thought was local music. The same can happen with food, in a form of suspended animation – or sometimes in the form of gradual but irreversible gastronomic Chinese Whispers. When I watch the Sopranos, I definitely don’t think their food is in any way authentically Italian. My dad winces at the word “gravy” taking it literally – to him it signifies death-juice, not food! When I go the to US, I avoid Italian restaurants like the plague because it makes me seethe with frustration and indignation at how most are way off the mark. This is not just true of Italian cooking apparently – there are several dishes that are ultra popular in their adoptive countries that either simply don’t exist in or don’t at all resemble any of those in their country of origin. Indian cuisine has a few of these (hardly surprising in view of the breadth of their cuisine, the size of population and the extent of their world migration). One is the Balti (which apparently means “bucket”, and was supposedly a joke of the immigrant on the native UK patron) another is the Vindaloo, apparently fabricated to scratch the itch so-to-speak of the macho male customers who wanted to prove how big their balls were by imbibing the hottest food imaginable during the beer-athon at the local curry house. Lastly and literally, since we’re talking Chinese Whispers, there’s also General Tso’s Chicken (if you have time, please watch this very entertaining documentary on Netflix about it, it’s really fun).
My main criticism when I am asked by non-italians or reluctant-cooks how to improve their pasta and sauce-cooking technique, is usually that they rush and they don’t allow the ingredients to marry together satisfactorily (see here: “sugo fails”). With few exceptions (eg. seasonal variations) a cursory cooking through is simply not enough. Similarly, certain cuts of meat require long slow cooking in order to be at their best, so with something like a Ragù where you have the trinity of the soffritto AND meat AND tomato… well, you can only benefit from not rushing the cooking time.
Requests for an authentic recipe for Ragù keep coming up. Predictably it’s mainly men who ask me about meat dishes. Is it that they are attracted to the seriously macho task of sourcing, then marinating and caressing their chunk of flesh, a signifier of red-bloodedness perhaps? Or is it the peacock parade of conoisseurship, the serious financial investment of buying a prime rib or more likely, the return of the caveman instinct – primal and gutsy? … Slow and ceremonious cooking, the dazzling “ta-da” of a hunk of meat carried to the table is also an ego kick and suggests gravitas and culinary dedication, discernment if you will; not something to be casually rustled up on a whim. There is an element of the ceremonial with Ragù too. It was often a Sunday dish, made by mamma and served after mass in the way a British family today might serve up a roast dinner. Yet Ragù, for its usually female chef, has a softer, subtler input creating a more rounded, more mellow meat dish. I love it for its Yin and Yang qualities: the marriage of bold, paleo meatiness on the one side and the gentle, subtle, protracted stove-top simmer that is less confrontational. Ragù cooking coaxes out flavour, is a masterclass in tenderness and like a mother who negotiates cannily and with warmth and love, the dish is discreetly allowed to develop into itself. It is both brawn and brains, boldness and inner strength, male and female.
I would liken it in some ways to American southern barbecue for its “low and slow” approach. Just recently my husband and I whisked ourselves away for a romantic little midday meatfest à deux courtesy of Pitt-Cue (the no-bookings joint in Soho that houses just a tiny smattering of tables) for some delicious US style barbecue while we soaked up the hipster/wholesome vibe. Small digression: I even went as far as to buy him the Pitt Cue cookbook and it is really good both in terms of form and content. What American Barbecue (not at all like our UK BBQ) has in common with Ragù, is the need for long, slow cooking which unravels the meat flavours and gives the muscle fibres permission to relax, which all the while are drenched in deep and complex flavours which slowly permeate through the meat. This is something that takes gentle heat and lots of time, charging the dish with a yielding texture yet resonant flavour. A good ragù should also have these qualities, albeit with quite a different and wholly Mediterranean flavour.
In Bologna, the real home of traditional Ragù (capitalised, as opposed to any meat-based sugo which I shall refer to as ragù) it is no less than legendary. It is a pride-worthy regional dish, a labour of love, not a quick fix for a Tuesday night. There is no resemblance to the boiled, gristly, scarlet dissolved-meatball mess that is the fruit of a scant 20 minutes’ bubbling away in a pan, served with sticky own-brand spaghetti (yes, spaghetti!!) and doused in pre-grated vomity Parmesan dust. Excluding the vegetarian contingent I would wager that there is not a UK student that isn’t familiar with that awful description. Having researched this a little what I have found is a general abandonment of Spag-Bol as we grow and become fully-fledged adults. The reality is that NO Italian would eat anything like this. Maybe the only common thread between real Ragù and Bolognese is mince and the merest suggestion of tomato but the details, the proportions, the cooking time of the real thing vs the UK aberration are entirely different: it would be akin to likening the Wimbledon Final with a kids ping-pong game based on the premise that rackets, and balls figure in both games. Thankfully, the trusty if grim “Bolognese” gets put on a metaphorical shelf as we morph from students in to urban sophistcates. Often with the arrival of children I have noted that there tends to be a bit of a gentle back-pedal and we reassess our old “recipe”, and wonder how to “do it right” as it has all the criteria for an ideal family menu option: good for young and old, a one dish meal and keeps well and is often better on the second day. Perhaps this is why many parent-friends lovingly and sheepishly make it and ask for tips sotto voce. As much as we have cut right back on meat in our house, the kids are very carnivorous so about once a month, we make our Ragù which, crucially I must add, is not to be served with spaghetti, but with tagliatelle.
Without further ado, and in the spirit of objectivity of my much cherished “Best Recipe” cook book, I have put two recipes on here. Take your pick. (My own recipe is a hybrid of these made with pork products from the Abruzzo and slightly heavier in tomato than meat in terms of ratio). My friend Helena’s mother-in-law is Bolognese and makes spectacular tortellini, in brodo) and the Zip recipe link is her Ragù recipe. But since Helena has a wonderful company (Yummy Italy) that inducts people in to the culinary traditions and products of the Emilia Romagna region, of which Bologna is the epicentre, and the home of Ragù (and Massimo Bottura), she also recommends the following link which provides the version ratified by the Bologna Delegation of the Accademia Italiana della Cucina itself, back in 1982. Incidentally, if you want a bespoke experience, love and appreciate food, then get in touch with her – Helena’s hooked in to every major artisanal supplier / producer of some of Italy’s best and most lauded products (Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano etc.). Regardless – as with all recipes – there will be someone from Bologna in this case, who will have their own variation and objection I’m sure!
The longer your Ragù cooks, the better it tastes. I would recommend a heat diffuser under the pan to aoid it sticking when you are not around to stir it. It can be cooked for up to 10 hours in fact. Historically people would put it on at night and take it off the stove in the morning. The old ladies say that the 'ragù calls you when it is ready'. Add salt at the end of cooking when the ragù is cool because it reduces down and concentrates a lot so it could end up too salty if you don't take particular attention. If you make a batch as large as this, you can freeze it in portions to be served with pasta when you need it.
Although not many of you like to comment on here in person, (perhaps I have shy friends? Perhaps I am too vehement and I scare you off with my diatribes?) but I do get an awful lot of lovely feedback and also requests (via facebook, dm, sms and in person) from friends and acquaintances to share recipes of things which I share on Instagram. And it has been soooo gratifying to be on the receiving end of these. Especially so because I felt so sheepish sharing anything at all at the outset. I mean, does anyone care? I feel like these days everyone feels that their opinion counts, regardess if they have any credibility / expertise in the field and (worst aspect of all) there being no barrier to entry. Anyone can have a blog or be on Twitter or whatever – so you never know if you are just another annoying bit of static clogging up someone else’s life or whether there is a place for your contribution/perspective. I find this a horrifying thought. Normally I am (was) one of those lurkers just abstaining from joining the other lemmings navel-gazing and sharing it on the ‘interweb’. Sharing anything on Instagram – which I am relatively new to – I began to do reluctantly and purely as a stopgap, because I realized that I cook so much but am unable, due to time constraints, to publish it all on here. A mere fraction of it is actually written up and thoughtfully presented – perhaps about 5% of what is bubbling away under this roof any given week. Until I started snapping away at the stove and on my worktop, I never actually realized how much weekly cooking that amounted to, and that was only the stuff I remembered to shoot. It is also a reminder to me that I am, in some way, being productive even if it often feels the reverse. Instagram has also served as a surprising testing ground for what people are interested in eating and cooking for themselves: the feedback is instant and is shaping this blog in its infancy, which feels very positive in that it is living in the moment, it is current. Although it often results in the derailment or postponing of planned posts, it does divert me towards not just what I think may be, but what really is appealing to others and this in turn is exciting as it means engaging with a quiet community, despite the interaction not being face to face. It also means things are new and surprising, and topics organically arise rather than being fabricated. When I was writing this unpublished blog (for my sanity and the kids’ posterity) back in the Spring, I shuddered at the thought of having anyone peek into the chaos and intimacy of my daily life. But then my good friend Daphne, over one of my lunches, piped up with “what is the point of a blog if there is no audience? I mean, isn’t that the point? To share and react and have a dialogue?”. On the other side of the coin there is my husband who is extremely private and sceptical albeit very encouraging towards me, (I mean he got me into this blogging lark in the first place) who always needles me good-naturedly by referencing the famous tree falling in the forest – when no-one is there to hear it has it really fallen? eg. does the food we eat have any value if it is not Instagrammed, if noone is there to virtually see / “like” it? Ultimately we both know we enjoy the food and eat this way regardless of our audience but it is key to not become a slave to outside approval. They both have point.
With children to please – and, contrary to what it may appear I often don’t please my children at all with my culinary offerings – you can see why every micro-hit of appreciation from others is so addictive, so eagerly lapped up! My husband, who is trying to get me to unplug from technology at night and to be more present (I see his point and appreciate his concern for my welfare) doesn’t see that most of my mum-friends are most active at night when their time has fewer demands upon it and that they, or rather we rely on our cyber-friendships because we are a fellowship of mutual supporters, mothers struggling against the relentless “rinse and repeat” of daily child-rearing.
And this is the thing that I have come only very recently to understand:
…Our lives are lived in tiny modest, little increments, not attention-seeking flashes of public, marketable glory. Going repeatedly through the motions, whether they are “please hang up your coat” or “please eat your broccoli”, “have you finished your homework”, “please go and practise” – much like the Tiger Mom’s rule of 10,000 hours, eventually means that after apparently countless, relentless, seemingly empty and unappreciated gestures made in the hope of shaping your precious charges, these seemingly ineffective gestures, suddenly appear to have garnered value. Except it hasn’really been sudden at all, we just suddenly notice it, that is all. It has been the slow growing fruiting of our labours, we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labour or the progress we are slowly making. It may feel soul-destroying during the apparently invisible growth period because it appears that nothing is happening – we can all hear our enemy voice “what is the point?” and then, it suddenly catches up, just when you are at your lowest ebb and feel like throwing in the puke and tear-stained towel. Yoga is like this, also parenting and perhaps also giving birth…and they are three of the most rewarding things in life that I can think of. It is almost like a retroactive sprint that occurs to restore your faith in humanity after months, years of apparent going through the motions, of mindlessly repeating yourself of trying and trying and returning to the coal face. It is not dissimilar to when your first kid is not able to read and you sit there with them, countless bedtimes, and yet you think at the outset: “will he / she ever get there?”. With your first child you can’t even picture it. Same with potty training and sleeping through the night. Looking at your child and not seeing them grow on a daily basis doesn’t mean they aren’t growing, it is simply that for those closest to them, those in the eye of the storm, the changes are too subtle, too minute, to be easily detectable, but they are cumulative, they are real and they are there. But then maybe the season changes and you find yourself dusting off a pair of long unworn winter trousers and – it seems to have happened so suddenly – those trousers are just too small. There are tiny little increments in which we are living that are easily ignored or overlooked and which are in great contrast to the constantly revolving door of high-impact-instant-gratification-goldfish-sized-attention-span-heavily-filtered-overly-styled nuggets we are becoming accustomed to when scrolling on social media. Our obsession with instant gratification is making a chasm open up between “IRL” (in real life) ACTUAL living, breathing moments our and our online personae. No wonder we feel like our efforts are failing when they aren’t. We are too busy actually living and not necessarily documenting our own lives. AND THAT IS A GOOD THING!! The naked eye, much like the soul, doesn’t always see the progress being made and I have to remind myself of this. Scrolling back through my 70-odd instagram pictures lets me enjoy the otherwise immediately extinguishing trail of phosphorescence that is bringing up and feeding my lovely children. I used to love (and still do) any tv show that indulges me with ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots or accelerated time lapse photography of things being improved (Changing Rooms, Extreme Makeover, America’s Next Top Model etc.) it is like crack to me, someone who is constantly frustrated by all I don’t feel I achieve in one day. It is a hard line to walk, this dipping one toe in to social media and documentation, while the other toe is in the other camp, actually being present and doing without appreciation or thanks or yardsticks. There is a febrile sort of tension that many of us are struggling with: the living vicariously through technology on the one hand and the being present, the actual living of the very moment in which we exist. Then again feeling the need to immortalize, create umpteen time-capsules for every precious experience because everything feels so fleeting, when only a couple of generations before us, our very own ancestors were lucky if they had a family story passed on from mouth to ear or a single dog-eared photo of their wedding day or loved one. We no longer seem to appreciate the minutae of daily drudgery, or harbour the notion that it could have any positive elements. Well I am trying to, I want my kids growing up knowing how to make their own beds, do the dishes and sort their own laundry and manage their affairs. The thing that keeps me cooking (…documenting, photographing) is that I do honestly enjoy creating something beautiful, and then connecting with others emotionally through it. It may take time but for me it is not work, it is play. This is the antidote to all the other pressures and niggles of life. I can make things look appetizing (because to me they are) but it is not a fabrication, it is just a little tweaked with a filter here or there, in reality, with the smell and shared with my beloved it is even better. Just as it’s hard to find the middle ground between virtual and present, it can also be hard to be positive and not annoying, authentic but not boring and moany (plenty to bore with and moan about). I don’t want to create a moan-blog, nor an airbrushed one… I have a post pending following a terrible evening last week, and I can’t bear to read it and am not sure anyone else will either. Much like me sharing my terrible pregnancy snap however, chances are that, when I find the right tone (not the tone I adopted while hammering the keys in anger) I may share it too, because I have a blatant contempt for the overly curated lives represented on most social media and blogs. This is one of my favourite articles right here on the subject. I clearly have acquaintances like this and in the spirit of my very own basest of rubber-necking instincts I can’t bear to unfriend them because I cannot resist the so totally un-self-aware post-modernism, the black humour that they provide, the contemptuous grunts and guffaws they elicit from me.
Anyway back to the task in hand: Souped up Broccoli/Cauliflower Cheese. One very pertinent, interesting and thought-provoking interaction was thrown up by my instagram proffering of this broc-cauli cheese baked dish. It followed a thread initiated by an old school friend on Facebook, to whom I shall refer as NG, that had us all wading in. She had made a frankly gorgeous-looking ‘Spinach, ricotta, dolce latte & Parmesan gluten free lasagne’. She captioned it with : “Took me ages. And I bet all my coins that the children won’t eat it ???”
this is a piece of it here direct from her picture…
I mean who in their right mind, wouldn’t eat this? the answer was: “Well one ate it, the other one did the ‘I don’t like it!’ without even trying it”
This touched exactly on the notion that we try and often feel we fail to get our kids to be good eaters. I personally think it is an acquired skill, like sleeping and good manners, and that some are naturally easier eaters and sleepers and some a nightmare but that real, positive progress can be made with all of them regardless on all these fronts. It is the same idea that underpins much new thought on talent vs effort and how we praise our kids. Anyway, a few days later I had to follow my own advice with the broc/cauli bake…
I had (as usual) been seduced by the veg at the Farmer’s Market (see wistful veg still life photos of last week) and found myself not so much in a chard overkill mode but in broccoli and cauliflower overkill mode. I confess it does make me feel righteous and wholesome to cart back a trolley full of greens, (just like putting on yoga pants can make you feel fitter even when you don’t get around to any actual yoga). Since I then feel bad throwing anything left away, I force myself to use it up any which way, and then by necessity it finds its way onto the kids’ menu.
In this instance, all three put up an initial fight but ended up consuming quite a lot but all adults who came in contact with it devoured it. I will also be repeating this regularly because to quote what I told my son :”broccoli and cauliflower kick cancer’s butt! They are from a family of greens that are some of the healthiest things you can eat and I will keep serving them, even if you complain”. I then did a little dubbed “kick ass” sound effects with accompanying gestures and he eventually ate 75% of his bowl. I also held off serving the fish fingers until I had deemed they had eaten a satisfactory amount. I felt flat but in retrospect, when sitting in bed later that night, I was glad I just went ahead and did it. I need to keep going through the motions and they will eventually respond!
Now here’s the recipe, admittedly inspired by a Jamie Oliver I saw way back, but with the addition of purple cauliflower and romanesco and pine nuts and anchovies and stuff… Mmmm. I will put up some super-duper snaps when I am not rushing next time I make this dish, so for now Instagram ones will have to do… at least they are “before” and “after” shots which, as you know, I personally find quite helpful : )) As soon as a recipe has no picture, I start to doubt whether I am doing everything wrong – you? Anyway, whether it is a recipe or teaching your kids how to eat, the trick must be to simply repeat going through the motions, practise, practise, practise and in the end it will all be good!
Here are some pics to help you follow the recipe:
You can throw parlsey or thyme in to this roux to give it extra flavour…
Look how beautiful! I forgot that I used purple sprouting broccoli in this version, and it works so well in a baked dish because it keeps its ‘bite’
The aromatic herbs like thyme and marjoram and oregano are the perfect fit with other strong flavours such as the anchovies or the Comté cheese you can see here…
This is the buttery, herby mixture in to which I threw the breadcumbs pre-topping…
the nut, breadcrumb and herb topping, melding together nicely…
and this is it, pre-oven but already gorgeous with a fine scattering of cheese below and above the nut crumb topping…
as you can see it didn’t last long enough for me to take an intact ‘after’ shot…
As with all my recipes, the herbs / veg / seasonings pretty interchangeable! You will see similarities to my chard recipe but you could also use leeks and potatoes for this. This dish can be "vegetarianised" of course, just skip the anchovies and opt for capers and choose the right, animal-friendly cheese. Also you can make it gluten-free by using gluten-free bread or skipping the breadcrumbs altogether. It is still utterly fab with just the pine nuts and almonds. You can also make it nut-free and it will still be wonderfully tasty. For this recipe, these quantities filled a large oval dish measuring 25cm x 35cm. I reheated it in the oven the following day and ate as a main dish and since the cauliflower had been left satisfyingly crunchy the first day, it withstood a second heating really well and was still very tasty. If your kids like it, it also withstands shovelling into a hotpot for school packed lunch the following day. Basically this is a classic bake recipe in which you fold your puréed broccoli into your anchovy-and-garlic-enhanced white sauce and pour it over the raw cauliflower, top with cheese and crunchy bits then blast in a medium oven. You will find that the cauliflower underneath the crispy top, will still have a nice bite to it and not be mushy and sulphurous. This is key!
I know these look like they should be sweet, with their candy colour-scheme but in actual fact they are savoury veggie-purée pancakes – for a toddler lunch on the go… the pink ones are beetroot, carrot and sweet potato, the green are courgette and spinach, but you can make them with pretty much any veg.
Being a parent has taught me to stick to my guns and do things my own way. Whether it be your parents, in-laws, friends or the health visitor, there is always a mainstream line of action being touted and it doesn’t always fit with your reality. Statistics are based on averages and these are a good guideline but often let you down because noone is an average person all of the time.
One of the first ways in which I had to throw mainstream advice to the wind was when my babies decided to sprout teeth terribly early. They weren’t born with them – which can happen, apparently! (some say there is a correlation between early birth and teeth appearing) – and mine were on the early side of normal, but anyhow, there they were, my first two babies had 4 teeth by the age of 3 months. Even though I knew from my mother that I had got mine quite early, it still came as a shock when I felt those first points coming through while breast-feeding (I know). In essence the teething meant a year or so of very disturbed moods and sleep for them – and therefore me – but it also posed a specific issue when it came to weaning and self-feeding that I just hadn’t expected and for which no-one had prepared me. There are actual some practical considerations (read “risks”) when your child has teeth yet no skills in eating. Not only have they not had the practice or developed the fine motor skills required for chewing and swallowing, they also don’t have the molars to grind and chew their food once in the mouth. You really run the risk of them choking, and there is not mention of this in mainstream family health and advice. I remember feeling totally behind the curve on the BLW (Baby Lead Weaning) – an acronym that I had to look up online, bashfully at the time. It baffled and frustrated me then and still irks me – in how it is touted as a panacea for feeding and weaning – to this day. The statements from the NHS were along the lines of “let your child explore and feed themselves” (*yawn*) “and top up with breast milk where possible or formula”. Apparently human breastmilk is lighter and more digestible by the infant than formula therefore it requires more regular and round the clock feeding. Tie this in with teething at a young age and you get a picture of the 4 years of almost entirely broken sleep I was getting. There was no footnote for families like ours where the babies were big and heavy from the get-go, ravenous and betoothed, impatient and insomniac… I had huge hungry babies with huge, gorgeous pneumatic cheeks and huge curious eyes, who quickly pulled off the breast and craned their fold-decorated necks, manoeuvring their huge crania to see what everyone else was eating. They were hungry ALL the time. I just couldn’t keep up. When I did give up in and turned to weaning, at only just 5 months or so (scandal!!) to try and up their food intake in the hope of improving their sleep, on cue I was on the receiving end of plenty of disapproval that I hadn’t held out as far as the almost arbitrarily observed 6-month mark. I bore criticism from the health-visitor that my children’s BMIs were worrying (90the percentile and over for weight), and was told with conviction that it was a fallacy that feeding would improve their sleep. I really had tried every other line of approach and felt I had no other real choice. So rotund were they (even exclusively breastfed) that I had to prop them up for they were not even able to sit up well unaided. I had to buy them short bloomers for three year olds to wear as trousers and or leggings and tights otherwise their clothing was so restrictive they couldn’t sit with their legs apart. When I adhered to the “guidelines” which purported that the fool-proof method was not to spoon-feed and relentlessly puree, but to cheerfully present the child with an array of interesting textures and colours of food pieces that they would gingerly explore and gum and hurl to the ground, they grimaced and cried with frustration and then, famished, refused to nap. They also precipitated a number of “oh my God she’s choking, hang her upside down!” moments. The issue was mainly mechanical: My kids could lop off whole bites with their razor-sharp, new little front teeth instead of gumming their food into a digestible slop – only then to find that they had no molars to grind the food down in to manageable pieces once in the mouth. Too frequently for comfort they would turn mute their airless little rosebud mouths frozen in a horrifying O shape, panicking and going blue. They were a risk unto themselves unless I spoon-fed them or broke their food into minuscule particles once they could pick bits up on their own. There was an agonizingly slow phase between 5-8 months when they were bored of the boob, bored of puree and inefficient at self-feeding. Food had to be chewy enough to become sloppy with saliva or shredded very small. Every blueberry and every grape had to be squished manually by me, toast sliced into match stick thin battons. By the time my 3rd baby was around 9 months old, of necessity, I had bloody-well nailed a handful of perfect meals that dispensed with much of the fuss and this was one of them…
Lunch. This iteration is made with carrot, broccoli, sweet potato, chard and herbs.
These pancakes are so versatile. From the time they can start feeding themselves they are a godsend. My youngest is still – despite our attempt at intervention – napping at 11.30 like a little Swiss clock. This means he is sleeping over lunchtime (so inconvenient if you want to go out at the weekend!) and upon waking is ravenous and miserable unless he has a fast, light lunch beforehand, often consumed in the stroller while out and about. These are the perfect solution. Also, I defy anyone, even adults, not to enjoy them when slathered in cream cheese, humous or a plume of coconut or regular butter. They are basically jumbo blini’s for kids. In fact, in composing this piece, I remade them for the baby’s lunch and I am eating one myself as I type (see pic). Also, parenting will change what you appreciate in the short term somewhat – delicacy and refinement might take a backseat and practicality and convenience might get the upper hand… these pancakes encapsulate what many of us as parents appreciate: versatility, wholesomeness, endless customization to suit one’s needs and tastes, without compromising too much on flavour or something that is not visually appetizing. They are fab to have in your arsenal because:
Today when I remade these to test my measures and quantities for this recipe, I used roughly a brimming soup-bowl’s amount of raw vegetables (about 500-700g of veg) equivalent to about 2-3 cups of pureed veg (and herbs if you desire / have them to hand) – basically a mismatched rabble of veg that I had kicking about in the fridge drawer:
Usually I make these utterly by eye, as over the years making mistakes I have come to realize that the quantities change according to the levels of moisture in the vegetables you pick. I know some people hate cooking this way so today I will share what worked for me as a rough guideline. Please be aware that sometimes I have to throw in a sprinkling more flour or an extra egg (if they are small) or more milk or a bit of stock to puree my veg and so I might end up with 12 pancakes one time and 8 another. I was out of Khorasan (Kamut) flour today so I used wholemeal spelt and amazingly they were still fine, light and succulent. Kamut flour is the most like plain flour in these types of recipes and works a dream, with the added benefit of having a lower GI and higher protein level and, if you ask me, much more flavour.
The basic principle to adhere to is essentially this:
Here we go:
Basically you can use most vegetables and pulses to make these - but this is one recipe where you will have to be flexible because it will really depend on what you have to hand and modifying the moisture / dryness accordingly as all vegetables varieties and species vary greatly. Even the same vegetables will have a different outcome depending on how big, perky and fresh they are, and when in the season you are using them, as moisture content will vary significantly. The only rules to respect are : 1. that the consistency resemble that of congealing oatmeal or thick Greek yoghurt and 2. that you have a teaspoon of baking powder for every cereal bowl's quantity of veg so that they don't end up too flat and hard You can thicken up your mixture / batter when necessary by adding flour (and a pinch or two of baking powder) or by adding more vegetables that are water absorbent (lentils, potatoes etc.) You can loosen your mixture by adding milk or an extra egg or by gradually stirring in the buttermilk. I find that small variations in flour or buttermilk vs. egg doesn't radically affect the outcome as these pancakes are very forgiving. I also love to add frozen peas or sweetcorn to the mix as they are great for introducing texture and interest.
Once they are tender and a knife pokes through them easily, blend till smooth.
Add your other ingredients little by little…
stir and combine gently. Don’t overmix. Here you can see in this picture that a touch more buttermilk / liquid is required.
proceed with cooking! little bubbles should appear on the surface if the temperature is right. When these burst revealing a hole measuring 2-3 mm across then they are ready to flip.
Otto did some food styling and sat Flynn Ryder / Eugene in the shot…
voila’: the marriage of veggie virtue and cheesy decadence
Since I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook I have had a load of requests to provide the recipe for my Chard Gratin. I usually don’t have time to photograph my meals with a tripod and stuff so Instagram has been a godsend. Having said that it is not a vehicle for actual recipes. Please forgive the image quality… but here is the recipe.
The back story is that the other day I had trouble shutting the fridge because I had two huge bunches of chard spilling out of the veg drawer. I had whizzed round my local farmer’s market (which I have done almost every Wednesday since 2006) and bought too much – because first I bought from my usual stall as it looked lusty if imperfect and I felt in the mood for chard. Then I saw better chard at another stall, it was less gnarled and less stalky and not white chard but red – so I bought it there too… and then to my annoyance on a little way I saw an amazingly kick-arse rainbow-coloured bunch at a third stall. It was the super-model of chard. It was an utter firework of ochre and magenta and forest green and was so tender and unblemished that I had to get it too. Sometimes I can be so superficial that I will buy a thing for its beauty alone. I also went to the market hungry which is not recommended. In any case I knew I would find some or other use for – probably a soup or something that would wilt it all right down it and since I felt a detox was imminent I just paid up and hurried home.
After a few attempts at steaming it and serving it with just olive oil and lemon zest, maldon sea salt, pepper and garlic, my husband protested. Sighing: “It’s too much like hard work. It feels like punishment… like chewing on tin foil. Ugh.” At this point I realized I had to come up with a better, more lovable recipe.
In my mind I was thinking melted cheese makes everything better, especially for blokes. I had a sexy image of a “gratin / tartiflette-style” dish but I had no idea if it would work. Alternatively a soup. To check I thought I’d see if I could find any in my vast cookbook library. I flicked through about 5 books – fyi, Hemsley and Hemsley had not one chard reference in the index – which I found rather surprising. Sarah Raven’s “Garden Cookbook” (which I LOVE) had both a soup with coconut milk which appealed to me – but which was overruled by my husband – and a one pot dish which was a chard gratin with mussels (latter optional). I had recently made my first bechamel (I know, I know) to give a more comforting, luxurious layer to a potato topping for my shepherd’s pie. (It actually tastes nothing like a British shepherd’s pie and more like a ragu’ al bolognese with mince as the key ingredient and potato gratin on the top, I’ll provide this recipe shortly) and was utterly taken aback at how easy bechamel is to make. Raven’s recipe called for cream on the chard and also Parmesan and a browning sesh under the grill. I didn’t have any cream and I liked the idea of something rich-seeming but not so dairy-tasting so figured I could hybridize and rustle up my own chard gratin with bechamel and then grizzle the cheesy bits on the top.
Anchovies breaking down into a wonderfully savoury sauce when fried in olive oil (and garlic)
What takes this recipe up a notch is the anchovy element. Even my American, anchovy-hating husband has come round to loving them after 10 years of me secreting them into dish after dish. If they are broken down by frying gently in olive oil, they disintegrate into a wonderful granular dressing and provide a wonderful stock-like flavour and savoury kick that very little else can match. As this it the only non-veggie element to the dish, when cooking for veggie friends I tend to flex in with capers in their stead. Capers don’t break up and dissolve like anchovies do, but when blitzed in a chopper or finely sliced by hand, are great for mimicking that salty, marine-like flavour and punchy tang.
Here are some step by step images of how various stages of the recipe should look:
Cut the chard stalks in to 1cm chunks then…
…add the stalks to the pan of salted boiling water and cover…
after a couple of minutes add the ribboned chard leaves to the boiling stems and cover again
gently fry your anchovies and garlic and chillies (optional)
…and then throw in with the drained and dried chard and combine well
make your roux… it will bubble and look like this. Don’t let it burn, stir it every now and then while the flour cooks through (4-5 minutes)
add the milk gradually, stirring it in as you go to give this creamy kind of texture.
You will need a baking dish (ceramic or glass or cast iron) that is approximately 30cm in diameter. I like to use anchovies - particularly chilli-marinated ones I have found on ocado and alsobrought back from my hols in Italy, but you can choose the less fiery option, or recreate it by using fresh chillies. I also have tried putting anchovies in the base for my bechamel roux and in the dressing of the greens for the base and find this is more to my taste, but you can skip doubling up on the anchovies if you are not that into them and just salt your bechamel instead. If you are catering for vegetarians, then capers are a good swap for anchovies. I tend to make my bechamel by eye, and if I have some left over, it does form a skin when cold, but it can be re-used the next day if you remove this and whisk it back into to life with some love and heat. Incidentally, I have recently re-worked this recipe to finish of the remaining chard and left over bechamel and put a layer of finely sliced potato across the top and the bechamel and cheese on that. The kids ate it more willingly this way : )
Last week I went to Paris overnight. It was brill. I was reluctant to leave the family but was actively encouraged by my husband who is convinced that I am a much better person for seeing my best friends. I went to visit a dear friend who is super-high flying and who is having a hard time going through a divorce. On top of all her commitments she invited me over for dinner as an old colleague of ours who lives in another hemisphere was also in town and my joining the group was to be a surprise. We had a long catch-up, some great rose’ and a heft of spanking fresh seabass with a fabulous sauce she whipped up in an instant. Sauce is sooo French. I never have my fish with sauces, mine is always simpler and less adorned, but this was ace (see end of post).
…
Explosive colour and nutrition!
The beetroots were roasted with garlic and I just squashed it and incorporated it into the salad… it’s a great marriage of savoury garlic and sweet beets!
I have a mental list of “nostalgia foods” that bring me back to a feeling from my childhood or other poignant, memorable instant. On this list are a number of foods that can be so evocative but which I am afraid of eating regularly lest they be a let down and overwrite my memories. This list is not exhaustive clearly, but it goes something like this:
…and somewhere on there right alongside Polish Wjejska sausage, is my mother’s take of potato salad. …
Most Italians think nothing of cooking every meal from scratch and therefore I would get NO applause, back home. They think some of my Londonized Italo-fusion food is weird and wacky, but I am prepared to take that on the chin if it means we benefit nutritionally. I like to change the proportions of vegetables and herbs in classic dishes so I can shoehorn in all sorts of greens, then I blend them so I can hide them in pasta sauces so the kids will eat them with less resistance… More on all of those strategies later. What would shock them more than irreverence with Italian recipes, however, would be to not cook at all. It has taken years of my mother’s fabulous cooking and my brother and me following in her footsteps for them to accept that despite being mudbloods we have proven our worth are now in their very snobby and demanding Italian club. My other side of the family, the Poles lived in the Middle East for more than two decades and I remember my aunt explaining that they were appreciated and respected for their religion as religiosity was the key, not so much the religion one followed. It feels the same way with Italians. That you have standards when it comes to food is the key, not so much that the food has to be only Italian. These standards are obviously taste but also hygiene, integrity, aesthetics and health.
Italians are in fact, the biggest snobs when it comes to any nationality other than themselves trying to turn out Italian food, even if that individual is an accomplished Italianophile. Wanting to be like the Italians is not enough. It reminds me of my days working in a huge cosmetics company, when we used to blind test Chanel No.5 vs new fragrances we were developing. When tested blind (in an unmarked lab bottle), Chanel never did well at all, but when presented with the “marketing mix” of ad, concept, bottle, brand, then it smelled better to the testee and always whipped every other fragrance’s ass. This is because so much of the trust, expectation and enjoyment comes from the pre-conditioning of the smeller or in the kitchen, the taster. With the exception of people like Massimo Bottura, most Italians are ultra-conservative when it comes to food in general, critical even of each other. There is endless debate, for example, on what constitutes the best way to make sugo (pasta sauce – more on that later) as there are as many recipes and techniques as there are households and each one attests they are the right.
The more open-minded of them enjoy other cuisines but few and far between are those who feel open enough to credit a foreigner who attempts to cook Italian food. The prejudice is all-powerful. It took much longer for burgers, sushi, Chinese food, and other imports to crack the Italian market, and I am not surprised. It is almost a latent xenophobia, the suspicion that foreign food elicits. Thankfully and also in some ways tragically there is change afoot.
Italians are very demanding in general. This may surprise you as from the outside they may seem shambolic. With their knackered political system and last-minute organization of major events, you might assume they are falling apart at the seams but I can tell you that their houses are spotless, their hygiene is like no other and their kitchens are for the most part organized and shipshape. They also don’t tend to like gimmicks and in my experience, turn their noses up at restaurants if there is even a hint of corners being cut. I remember one of my best friends (who happens to manage her large family-run restaurant set up by her father) pursing her lips and explaining that the pasta she was chewing (we were out for dinner) had had “la cottura frenata” (direct translation = the “breaks applied” to the cooking it was undergoing). The result was that since her pasta had been par-cooked to almost al dente, then dunked in cold water and then reheated with the sauce just before serving, it had a chewier, less yielding texture which smacked of fast food and bulk-cooking. Here are a few other foibles / sins in the eyes of Italians that I know:
Digestion, manners, cleanliness, structure and punctuality around meals are equally all-important. The culture around food is not dissimilar from the huge crumbling millenia-old relics you see casually dotted about the land: both part of the scenery, taken for granted and immutable.
I aim to crack some of those myths by reporting back from my nearest and dearest, and present you with the “capsule collection” of failsafe family dishes cooked by my beloveds. What do we eat? How do we get our kids to eat? 
What are the things we insist upon at the table so that our kids grow up with sophisticated and discerning palates? Un-filtered home-cooked secrets are soon to be revealed…. Watch this space.
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