Sofa’s blog

From Prashad's in Bradford, we had samosas, some kind of battered fried sandwich with a garlicky pureed veg filling, round dumplings filled with spiced mashed potato. Dhokla, patra, snacks. I made a lassi with fresh coriander, garlic, fresh green chilli and a pinch of salt. Fresh baby tomato, and a little raita sauce.

I also made a quick trashy hot chaat:

Fry:
1 tin new potatoes, drained and cut into small lumps
1 tin pinto beans, or chickpeas, drained
2 cloves garlic, chopped

Sprinkle with powdered hing and fenugreek.
After about 5 minutes add half a tin of chopped tomatoes, cook til thickened.
Stir well and add 2 handfuls Bombay Mix or your favourite Indian crispy snack.
Heat through, take off the heat and stir in 2 tablespoons natural yoghourt.
Put in serving dish and top with dollop of tamarind sauce.

Served with warm rotis.

With a selection of sweets to finish, I am absolutely podged.

We really liked the Japanese style food we had over the Christmas break, and we've been experimenting a bit here and there since.

I still haven't tried rolling sushi, but it's half-term next week and I might clear the decks and give it a go.

Mostly what we have been doing is having a bowl of plain boiled rice, topped with small portions of a variety of protein and vegetables, some hot, some cold, wet, dry, soft, crunchy. It's been surprisingly filling, you can mix and match a whole range of tastes and textures so that each mouthful is a little surprise.

The toppings so far have been:

• cold smoked fish - salmon, eel, trout, mackerel (Waitrose do one with honey and soy), and lumpfish roe
• cold veg - avocado, cucumber, mooli / daikon radish, alfalfa or radish sprouts, shredded carrot, shredded nori
• pickles - Chinese mustard pickles, seaweed, gherkins, sushi ginger
• hot meat - variations on marinated grilled or stewed chicken, casseroled pork belly, steamed Chinese sausages
• hot veg - stir-fried pak choi, steamed edamame beans, miso-stewed white baby aubergines
• omelettes - made with mirin and egg, rolled, sliced, and served hot or cold - also cold quail eggs
• also some sprinkle mix of chilli, sesame seeds, garlic and powdered orange peel, the odd dabs of wasabi

I have some crabsticks, smoked and marinated tofu, and kombu seaweed ready to try next. At a northern Chinese restaurant last week I had a starter of sliced cold pork belly, which had been plainly cooked in a clear broth and then dressed with chilli and garlic. I've been doing ours in mirin and soy with ginger and star anise, so it's very dark and rich. This was a lighter and cleaner flavour, so I shall try that next time.

Also on the list for future experiments are:

• hot fish - stewed squid, grilled salmon, mussels, tuna
• more hot veg - green beans, aubergines with peanut sauce, something with candied sweet potato
• hard boiled eggs - soaked in tea, or soy
• lean red meat - venison liver, buffalo steak

And I want to try some of the mini-burger-type-things, meat and veggie, that are featured on the bento recipe sites.

Bento in a Big Way is beyond my energies at the minute. I could happily make a lunchbox along similar lines to the dinners, but the decorative stuff is so not happening. No colouring eggs, carving hot dogs,  or making little stars out of carrots and cucumbers. I'm up for arranging a box so that it looks appetising, but I'm not making a diorama out of it.

I keep thinking there's too much space in the fridge, but that's because the ham is in the oven and the goose crown is still in the freezer.

I've got the Ginger / Wasabi salmon on Day 2. The ham is lightly wrapped in foil, on a bed of fresh bay leaves, coriander and mustard seed, and allspice berries, in a Gas Mark 4 oven. It should come out around 7:30, which gives me plenty of time to decide what to glaze / crust it with.

We went to Beanies this morning and bought several sackfuls of veg, also to Fresh Asia in Broomhill to get some interesting things for the Japanese Experiment on Christmas Eve.

My thoughts so far are:

Tonight - venison liver, parsnip rosti, redcurrant jelly, cauliflower
Tuesday - main meal out at lunchtime in town, which could be anything. If we're hungry when we come home, individual baked baby camemberts with crusty ground hazelnut topping and bread and pear wedges to dunk.
Wednesday - last minute supermarket shopping, main meal in the evening of cured salmon, braised belly pork, miso-marinated grilled chicken, fresh pickled vegetables, carrot and sesame salad, cold green tea noodles, possibly some hand-rolled sushi, maybe some steamed aubergine with peanut sauce. There are some Sekrit Treats to go with this, and some bizarre pickled substances I bought this morning.
Thursday - roast goose, roast potatoes, parsnips, baby baby sprouts, braised red cabbage and chestnuts, cornbread sage dressing, gravy, ginger sauce, pickled pears - Christmas pudding
Friday - Ham, pork pie, salad, cheese, fruit, Christmas cake
Saturday - something fresh and spicy, maybe a set of veggie curries
Sunday - I have a joint of spiced cured beef, I may do something with that
After that we're into leftovers. 

In the past we've made this, which is wonderful, but I've had in the back of my mind a more oriental version that would go well with sushi-type things rather than the traditional blinis and cream. So, today I have taken:

• 2 fillets lovely dark pink wild alaska salmon, the same size and shape and weighing about 500 gms total
• 3 heaped tablespoons caster sugar
• 2 heaped tablespoons coarse crystal salt
• 1 teaspoon wasabi powder (freshly opened)
• 1 big hand fresh ginger, very coarsely grated but not peeled.

I put one piece of salmon skin-side down on some clingfilm, mixed up the cure ingredients, and spread them on top. Whacked the other bit of salmon on to complete the sandwich (skin-side up), wrapped the package up tightly. I've put it in a deep oval dish in the fridge, with a plate and the Christmas gammon on top to weight it. Today's the 21st, I shall turn it and look after it every day, with a view to serving it for supper on Christmas Eve. I'll wipe the cure off and cut it in slices, like a thick cut smoked salmon.

Purist Japanese foodies can look away now, but I'm going to do a variety of beginner dishes from Just Hungry, with what I can easily get locally, and have a munchie buffet.

I always get a good selection of the foodie magazines at this time of year, and look at what the trends are. This year was fascinating. Although a lot of these feature spreads are planned months ago, the credit crunch was obviously in the air already. There's a definite seventies feel about the recipes - retro without being fashionable, just what 50-year-olds remember as being celebration food without expensive frills. There is no new exotic cuisine - some Thai noodle salads but those are almost domestic standards now. Lots of cheap and seasonal fruit and vegetables, fish and meat. The treats use classic Christmas treat foods - glace fruit, chocolate, smoked salmon, booze.

The main recipes were almost all:

• Smoked salmon parcels for starters (the one that bucked the trend had prawn and avocado cocktail)
• Plain turkey with plain veg - roast potatoes, sprouts, parsnips, red cabbage
• Celeriac gratin
• Jerusalem artichoke soup
• Roast root veg with different spices and coatings
  
• Roast pork as the alternative big joint
• Nut roasts for vegetarians, especially en croute
  
• Old fashioned desserts - date pudding, fruit crumble, ginger sponge, apple tart
• Yule logs / sweet roulades - mostly chocolate, some with cherries (Black Forest, yay!)
• Baked Alaskas - especially individual ones, or with special fillings (orange and chocolate)
• Cocktails
• Home made things - including a recipe for home-made "Irish Cream Liqueur", haven't seen one of those for about thirty years

There were some minor things that seemed to pop up whenever the opportunity arose:

• Parsnip crisps - bought (M&S, Waitrose), or home-made - for soup garnishes, mostly
  
• White chocolate / cranberry mix - cookies, squares, cheesecakes, even trifle
• Leeks (in soups, pies, stews, and risottos)
• Hot griddled slices of pear - with pate, as a soup garnish, with sauce as dessert

The winner of the chef who's everywhere is Anjum Anand - and the recipes are simple and homely. We're trying her spiced lambshank with chestnuts tonight, although with rice rather than the official side of parsnip mash.

Now I've gone back to work, I'm finding it diffcult to guarantee enough energy to cook properly in the evenings. Plus it's COLD, and we want the sort of food that takes ages and ages. And we're poor. So I've been cooking several stews or similar over the weekend, that can just be finished off and reheated. Today I've made:

• red cabbage in red wine, with onions, bacon, goose dripping, thyme, bay and lots of pepper - to be finished with vacuum packed chestnuts and to eat with gammon steaks and baked potato if we're really hungry
• beef braised with fresh ginger, star anise, slices of mandarin orange, lots of carrots, beef stock and sake

I've got something with celeriac and blue cheese in the pipeline, but that will have to be last minute. There's a curry sauce and veg waiting to be stir-fried with some chicken. Which makes four huge meals and puts me ahead of the game. In the past few weeks we've had:

• goose legs cooked in fat with garlic and thyme in the slow-cooker, fished out and flashroasted
• venison liver braised with bacon and lots of red onion in stock and redcurrant jelly
• soft tortillas stuffed with beans, or veg, or chilli, coated with spicy tomato sauce, topped with cheese and baked
• giant suet herb dumplings cooked in thin veg soup

The larger Christmas meats are beginning to show up now, especially in freezers, and I'm thinking about how to do those and then portion them up.

I bought a tube of good sausagemeat at the farmers' market on Thursday. Today I spread it in the bottom of a square baking dish (it came out about a quarter inch thick). Then I topped it with some slabs of mature cheddar, and spread those with wholegrain mustard. I had a tin of pear halves hanging about, so I put a half a pear in each corner of the dish. Topped the whole lot with a square of ready rolled puff pastry, and baked at gas mark 7 for 40 minutes.

We ate all of it, with some peas, but with some more forethought and some potatoes and other veg, it would have easily served four.

I've been thinking of variations -

• cheese and branston pickle
• a layer of braised red cabbage, maybe with chestnuts
• apple sauce or chunks of apple instead of the pear
• cranberries
• a chunky tomato sauce
• hard boiled eggs
• apricots / dried fruit and maybe some curry powder
• blue cheese and braised celery or chicory

all of them easy to do, easy to make in advance, cheap, filling and tasty.

Cheap and yummy, what more could you want? Get a big baking potato, lay it flat and slice off the top. Scoop out a hollow in the big piece (a melon baller really helps), season it, and drop in a cored lamb kidney. Put the top back on and bake it at about Gas Mark 5 for about an hour and a half.

The potato is crisp, the kidney is gently cooked and moist, and the juices have oozed through into the floury potato inside.

I served it with broad beans in a mustard cream dressing. Next time I might put a bit of butter and mustard in the potato underneath the kidney. It would be good with a bitter green salad, or breakfast things like baked beans or mushrooms. I'll have to make spare next time, it drove the cat beserk - worse than catnip.

I never thought of kedgeree as a budget supper dish before, but the astonishing cheapness of smoked hoki the other day persuaded me otherwise.

• Cooked white rice
• Smoked fish (boneless skinless smoked hoki fillet)
• Hard boiled eggs
• Leftover peas from a roast dinner
  
• Leftover kashmiri veggie curry (sweet and creamy with bananas - about half a takeaway portion)

I used a wok. Cut the fish into bite size pieces, and stir fried. Add the rice and peas, stir fry again until hot through. Add curry (or mild curry paste and sour cream if no spare leftover curry), some pepper, no salt as the fish and curry are salty enough. Stir in chopped hard boiled eggs. I would have put in a load of fresh chopped parsley, but John doesn't like it.

It was gorgeous. One fillet and three eggs made about four servings, and it was creamy, rich and very moreish. Didn't need any side dishes or extras, and you could stretch it easily with more rice and green veg.