Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Whore's spaghetti.

There are plenty of stories as to how this rich tomatoey sauce got its name. The most recent version I heard was that it is so named because the Italian housewives could knock it up pronto as their husbands walked in the front door fresh from the fields while their lovers hot-footed it out the back door. Nothing to do with ladies of the night needing to keep their strength up, which was what I'd previously understood.

Since the excitement of Monday night, half term has been a fairly low key affair. The Husband had to go back to our camp site and recover the remains of our gear, Blue has gradually progressed from sitting on the sofa in his PJs watching TV and dribbling, to making paper aeroplanes, chucking them onto various hard to recover places, watching Minecraft videos on Youtube (who actually IS Stumpy Longhead???), and dribbling, and Pink has generally been very accomodating - biding her time, obviously. 

Food-wise, Blue has been on liquids. Smoothies and soup. I did make the tomato and potato soup that he started off with, but really, honestly, the thought of slaving over pots and pots of soup defeated me. I thought back to the time when he was on steroids and I was known to be up making meatballs at 7 a.m. because that's what he fancied, and gave in to common sense. 

Yes, part of me wanted to create beautiful smooth nutritious soups that would make him forget that he couldn't tuck into toad in the hole. It's a thing isn't it - providing food is such a basic act for the people you love, especially when they are ill or hurt and there is little else practically you can do. It certainly is for me, and I've written about this in the context of his leukaemia. But this time - well, I didn't as someone suggested, liquidise 'MaccyDs' (shudder), but as part of the camping gear recovery trip, the Husband made a trip to the supermarket and came back with various tins. And I'm fine with that. 

So he's been eating tinned soup for the last few days, and feeling pretty sore about it. Not sore that I haven't lovingly cooked up delicious broths for him, but sore that he can't eat proper food. 10 year old boys do not thrive well on soup and smoothies, but I didn't want to push him into trying something a little more solid until he wanted to. The breakthrough came last night as he sat with his lentil & bacon soup (which we'd had to liquidise) and we chomped through toad in the hole. "Tomorrow, can I just have what you have but liquidised?" he asked.

So whore's pasta it is, although I won't tell the kids that's what it translates as. I got the recipe from a wonderful chef who lead a pasta making course I went on recently. Of course we didn't just learn how to make pasta, but various sauces and pasta fillings, and this was one of them. It was also she who relayed the story above about how it got its name. She had plenty of other stories too, having cooked in private homes in LA for the last 25 years - but she swore us all to secrecy... I've been dying to cook up one of the sauces I learned, but just haven't got round to it - partly due to the fact that I haven't actually got a pasta machine, so the dough I came home with is sitting in the freezer just waiting. My intention has been to produce the whole caboodle - fresh pasta, glorious sauce - and bask in the glow of achievement...

Still, dried pasta is perfectly acceptable (after all it's what I normally serve up), so tonight's the night. 

Full of flavour, I hope it tastes as nice liquidised as it does in 'whole' form - I'll leave that to Blue to assess.

Spaghetti Alla Puttanesca

serves 4

2 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
3 anchovy fillets, wipe of salt and roughly chopped
1 tbsp of capers with juice
100g pitted black olives, roughly chopped
2 tins peeled plum tomatoes
salt & pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large frying pan then gently cook the garlic for a couple of minutes taking care not to let it burn.

Add the anchovies, capers, and olives, cook for a minute or so more, then add the tomatoes, crushing them in your hands as you go. Use a little water to swill out the tins into the pan, then simmer till rich and thickened.

Serve with spaghetti and plenty of parmesan.

Tomato & Potato Soup

I've been thinking a lot about babies and children recently, how they grow up, milestones, how they make you feel, that sort of thing. I've just become an auntie for the 3rd time - the first child for my youngest brother, which feels very emotional somehow. Next week, I am taking Blue for his 5 year check up since the end of his leukaemia treatment. Also very emotional, but for different reasons.

It amazes me constantly this passage of time, of the things we achieve as families - what we go through as families, and how the outcomes can shape us. 
 
I wouldn't be the first, and I expect I won't be the last person, to suggest that having children is an utterly terrifying. Joyful, magical, irritating, frustrating, hilarious, guilt-inducing, euphoric, depressing - all these things too, but also utterly terrifying. Right from the moment they appear - or the idea of them even appears on the radar, the terrifying responsibility of another person to nurture.

From the first moment you gag at a glass of red wine and realise something's amiss, up until - well, up until when? My kids are 10 and 8 now, and I am still terrified. There's the general ongoing 'gentle' terror of fulfilling Philip Larkin's gloomy prediction that whatever you do as a parent you will get it completely and utterly wrong. Then there's the terror of the future - of what lies ahead for them in this crazy world. I am not a deeply political being, but the results of the recent European elections, not just in this country but across the continent leave me feeling deeply uneasy and not a little terrified for the world my children may grow up in.

There's also the worst kind of terror - the terror that grips you when something awful happens to them - and you can do nothing about it. It doesn't lessen either, that terror, although it can disappear as quickly as it arrives.

On Saturday, we set off for a week's camping near Welshpool. As agreed, I came home on Monday afternoon to work for a couple of days with a view to rejoining the Husband and the kids on Thursday. 

The call came around 9 p.m. on Monday night. The Husband was on his way to A&E with Blue.

I am sure my terror was nothing to that the Husband must have felt when he heard the screaming - but for my part the feelings were compounded by being a good 3 hours drive away from them, with limited fuel. After a false start which took me as far as Aberaeron before I realised there were going to be no petrol stations open (I managed to ascertain that my last hope, Morrisons at Aberystwyth some 16 miles further on had already closed, it being Bank Holiday Monday), I drove back to my nearest petrol station to home where I knew the owners vaguely, and threw myself on their mercy. Fortunately, they proved merciful, so I set off again, across mid-Wales at 10.30p.m. with fear in my heart a full tank of diesel and an ETA of 1.20 a.m. 

I only had the bare facts - Blue had knocked out 2 of his teeth riding his bike. I didn't know if there was any risk of head injury, whether he had smashed up his face, had he broken his glasses? Were the teeth broken? WOULD HE BE ALRIGHT??? And along with the terror, the sense of complete injustice too. Blue has in his short life had to put up with a huge amount. Knocking your teeth out riding your bike is, objectively, a perfectly normal childhood type of accident to suffer, but for Blue with his leukaemia and his rubbish eye sight, well - hasn't he had enough?? Surely that gives him a get out for all other nasties? Apparently not. Driving along the winding A roads across mid-Wales in the pitch black, terror and injustice fuelled by an overwhelming need to be with my family, to give poor Blue a cuddle, gave me wings.

The Husband meanwhile had got as far as Shrewsbury A&E, jollying Blue along and looking after Pink too. It is a less happy feature of our new homeland that A&E facilities are few and far between. Shrewsbury - an hour away from the campsite - was the nearest. Once at Shrewsbury, he discovered that he needed to go to Telford for a maxilo-facial clinic, where he had to endure the joys of the bank holiday drunkards - tattoos and all, because Blue refused to sit in the children's waiting area. Fortunately (all those prayers I uttered on the way must have been answered) Blue was seen quickly and effectively, teeth wired back in, so that by the time I reached Welshpool, they were out of Telford. I stayed put until we rendezvous'd, terror mainly dissipated in favour of utter fatigue, and we convoyed back home, arriving just before dawn...

So with the terror back at bay, the practical aspects of looking after a 10 year old with a healthy appetite who isn't allowed to eat solids. Poor child. Smoothies have proved popular - oats, fruit, yoghurt, milk - and this tomato soup. When he can't manage with a straw, I've been feeding him - baby-style - with the Noddy spoon that we still have in the drawer, a throwback to his baby days. 

Tomato & Potato Soup

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled & chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 large potato, peeled & diced
2 tins of plum tomatoes
1 litre of chicken stock
1 tsp caster sugar
salt & pepper

Heat the oil in a large pan. 

Sweat the onion and garlic for a few minutes, then add the potato and cook for a few more minutes.

Tip in the tomatoes and swill out the tins with the chicken stock and add to the pan.

Add the sugar is you think you need it, and a good pinch of sea salt and some grinds of pepper, then bring everything to a simmer until the potato is falling apart.

Blitz till really smooth and serve - Noddy spoon not essential.

Tomatoes on toast

Did I mention that we are going away for a week? 

I'd like to say I'm being ever so casual about it, that it's no biggie, but who am I kidding? 

We are going to ITALY. To Rome, then to Naples.

I am very, VERY excited. 

Of course, in the run up to any holiday there is the finishing up of work. 

There is the 'weather checking and clothes washing' to be taken care of (you might not like me to mention that it's currently getting up to 28C in Rome - now where did I put my sandals?)



There is the consideration and purchasing of useful literature (I am very pleased with my 'overlay' book of ancient Roman sites (which has photos of the current ruins, with artists impressions of how they used to look which you can overlay onto the photos), purchased on Amazon for a mere 1p as opposed to the 10 Euros I am informed it will cost us in Rome)

There is the finding of the passports and the checking of the tickets. 

There is the daydreaming of how perfect it will all be as long as we don't try to do too much and wear the kids out on day 1 (actually unlikely as we are staying with friends just outside Rome first and we have been promised a relaxing day on Sunday revolving around lunch somewhere very lovely.)

And then there is 'Operation Fridge Run Down'. Easier said than done when the courgettes are still coming, as are the tomatoes.

I managed to get a whole yellow ball courgette into a quiche the other day - grated and squeezed out before I cooked it up with 3 thinly sliced onions. It made a delicious supper, and the courgette went completely undetected by those who did not know it was in there.

I could have cried when the next day, the Husband brought 2 more green courgettes in from the garden...

Tomatoes, on the other hand, are something I never tire of. The kids eat them raw and cooked, and it's very easy to turn them into soup, passata, anything really. Proper tomatoes, grown with some love, just smell delicious - of sunshine, of warmth, of halcyon days. If I had nothing else to do, I'd quite happily sit in a greenhouse of tomatoes and smell the smell all day. A bit like Ferdinand the bull smelling the flowers all day - but he was in Spain, and not many people know that story these days...





If you've never smelt a freshly picked gorgeously ripe tomato, you might think this all sounds a bit wierd, but I'm betting I'm not the only one who feels like this...

Tomatoes, of course, remind me of Italian food - the classic insalata tricolore with mozarella and basil, all that pasta sauce flavoured with basil, with chilli, with all sorts of things, brushcetta... I'm anticipating more than the odd stop during our sightseeing to partake of all things gorgeous, Italian and tomatoey - plus the odd glass of chilled white wine, of course.

For now, though, something much more English. I could have gone the bruschetta route for lunches the last few days, but these are English tomatoes, and oddly, bruschetta never occurred to me until just now when I sat down and started writing this. So I've been eating tomatoes on toast - inspired by a friend who's on the 5:2 diet and who advises me that if you use Nimble or Weightwatchers bread, 2 pieces come in at around 132 calories - including a dollop of Lidl's lowest fat mayo. Now I am no longer following the 5:2 diet. I'll tell you about it sometime, so my tomatoes were sliced and arranged on slices of homemade bread, drizzled with some (Italian) olive oil, sprinkled with some sea salt and pepper and served with some delicious Hampshire watercress. I decided to pass on the mayo...

Tomatoes on Toast (serves 1)

2 reasonably thick slices of good bread
tomatoes (the exact number will depend on the size of your tomatoes, how thickly you slice them, also the size of your slices of bread - may be 3-4 small to medium sized tomatoes as a guide)
Olive oil, seasalt and fresh ground pepper
Watercress to serve

Toast the bread lightly on one side under the grill. Flip the bread over and cover the uncooked side as much as possible with slices of tomato, drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, then pop back under the grill for a few minutes till the tomatoes are starting to soften. Alternatively, you could sprinkle a little sugar on the tomatoes for a more caramelised effect.

Serve on a plate with some watercress.

Ciao!

Pasta Ratatouille

This could be called desperate veg growers' dinner, but I prefer to call it 'pasta ratatouille'. It sounds much smarter, doesn't it?

Easy, undemanding, a great way to disappear some of the glut of tomatoes and courgettes that you might be lucky enough to have (yes, still, even in October) into a healthy and tasty dinner.

This is definitely one to take as a guide rather than a defintive recipe. Use whatever you have.

Pasta Ratatouille
(serves 2 aduts & 2 children)

300g pasta
3 medium sized courgettes (I had 2 green ones and a yellow ball one)
2 green peppers
5 large beef tomatoes
4-5 small onions
3 cloves of garlic
olive oil
1 tablespoon capers
grana padano cheese

Heat the oven to 200C, and when it is to temperature, put in a roasting tray with a good slosh of olive oil in the bottom of it to heat up for 5 minutes.


While the oven is heating, top and tail the courgettes and chop into bite sized pieces; deseed the papers and similarly chop up.

Peel the onions and quarter them; peel the garlic cloves and finely slice them.

Halve the tomatoes and cut out the woody bit where the fruit was attached to the vine - you don't need ti be fussy about removing too much of the seeds or anything.

Once the oil has had the chance to heat up, take the tin ot of the oven and chuck everything in, and roast for a good 45 minutes, shaking the tin every now and again to make sure it's all getting cooked.

While the veg is roasting, cook the pasta according to packet instructions, drain, and if the veg still needs to roast for a little, stir through a little olive oil to stop it sticking together.

When the veg is roasted, mix it in with the pasta and stir through the capers. Put it all back into the roasting tin and grate over some of the grana padano cheese, then pop the tin back into the oven for 10 minutes tilll the cheese is melted and everything's really hot again (you coud put it under the grill if you prefer).

Serve - with extra grated cheese, and chilli sauce - if needed

Tasty tomatoes, and utterly scrumptious Butterscotch Apple Pudding

I keep getting side tracked by cake and pudding. Brownie eclipsed the healthy bean and chorizo salad that the kids enjoyed last week, and tonight, instead of getting excited about some rather tasty stuffed beef tomatoes, what I really want to talk about is pudding. But I will talk tomatoes, because this year, for the first time in AGES, we have had lots of lovely red tomatoes with more still coming. So you 'll just have to wait for pudding - or scroll down to the bottom of this post.

In fact the last time we produced this many tomatoes was when Blue was in his first year of chemo in 2006. He craved cherry tomatoes during the courses of steroids he had to take, and consumed kilos of them - quite literally. The Husband proudly grew tomatoes, they ripened, and guess what. The craving stopped. I think Blue moved on to raw mushrooms and Shreddies at that point. We've grown tomatoes ever since, but never with the same success, and green tomato chutney has been a big feature of our lives. This year, though, it will be different. The tomatoes have ripened, and they have been delicious.





Today, some particularly fine specimens - beef tomatoes - were on the menu, along with some baby courgettes ('pick 'em while they're small', is my current strategy for dealing with them). I hadn't really thought about what I was going to stuff them with, but I found some pork mince in the freezer, and some giant couscous in the cupboard.

I'd like to be able to give you the full recipe, but I got distracted by the pudding, so didn't weigh out everything - or keep a note of what I did weigh. Essentially, I cut out the tops of 4 beef tomatoes and scooped our the flesh and seeds into a bowl. I heated a splash of olive oil into a frying pan, and fried 100g giant couscous for a couple of minutes before adding what from memory (when I put it into the freezer) was 250g pork mince. I browned off the mince, and added 2 baby courgettes which I'd chopped quite small, plus a chopped clove of elephant garlic, 1/2 tsp of ground coriander and a tsp of smoked paprika.

While this was all cooking, I seived out as much juice as I could and added it into the pan, bringing it to a simmer to cook the couscous. After about 15 minutes, I filled the tomatoes with this mixture, arranged the leftover mixture around the tomatoes, then covered the dish with silver foil and baked it for 25 minutes. It could have done with being spicier, but it was pretty good and the Husband and Blue (and I) all enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I started this all too late, so Pink had to make do with pasta before she went to Brownies.

You'll be please to know, though, that Pink didn't miss out on pudding. What could have been so delicious? Well, I'll tell you - Rachel Allen's Butterscotch Apple Pudding, for which I will be eternally grateful to the lovely Annie who writes Scrummy Suppers and Quirky Cakes. As I mentioned before, as well as tomatoes, we also have an abundance of cooking apples at the moment, and this was quick to knock up and totally delicious. If I had one criticism, it would be that it could possibly have done with a little more of the butterscotch sauce - easily rectified by making more next time...

Butterscotch Apple Pudding  

100 g butter

125 g self-raising flour  
200 g light brown muscovado sugar
pinch of salt 
1 tsp vanilla extract 
1 egg
200 ml milk
3 cooking apples, (about 500g total weight)
1 tbsp golden syrup & 1 tbsp of runny honey

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl with 100g of the sugar.  

In a jug, mix together the milk, egg and vanilla extract with the melted butter.

Peel, quarter and core the apples, then slice each quarter again lengthwise and then into half. You basically want large but still bitesize chunks.  Sprinkle these over the bottom of an oven proof dish - Rachel's was 20 by 30 cm. Mine was probably 22cm square-ish

Tip the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk quickly together - as you would for muffins. Tip over the apple pieces. and spread evenly over the dish.

Make the butterscotch - in a small pan, put the syrup & honey with the remaining 100g of sugar and 150ml of boiling water. Heat, stirring, while the sugar dissolves, then pour as evenly as you can over the batter and apples.

Pop in the oven for around 30 minutes. If you can resist, leave it cool a little before serving warm. It would probably be delicious with ice cream, cream or creme fraiche, but frankly it didn't need it.

Chicken, Chorizo and Courgette 'Chilli'

Sometimes, when I'm writing about something I've cooked, the angle I'll take with it is obvious. Sometimes, it's not so obvious, and sometimes I actually have a choice.

This, then, could be about cooking with the seasonal fruits (well, the veg, actually) from the garden - red onions, elephant garlic, bulbous yellow courgette - all of which I am currently blessed with.







It could have been a debate about what consitutes 'chilli'' given that I seem to apply it to pretty much anything I add kidney beans too, and yet equally, bandy the word around to cover meals that don't even include a sniff of even the mildest chilli or chilli powder in them. 

Chilli for 45 - but no kidney beans. Does that make it tomatoey mince?

Happy 'official' 40th to the Husband 

 

Indeed, I ended up with 8 cans of value red kidney beans and 3 tubs of guacamole, having cooked chilli for 45 for the Husband's 'official' 40th birthday camping & sailing weekend (it's not till December, but no one else wanted to camp/sail then), forgot to add the kidney beans in, and bought too much guacamole. Chilli without kidney beans - and then plenty of kidney beans to use up.


It could have been about how I am progressing with sharing the kitchen with the children, and how Blue chopped up a courgette, worked out how to use the tin opener and threw most of a tin of chopped tomatoes all over his school uniform, and I didn't get cross once (well, may be a little irritated, but, you know, little steps and all that).


Finally,  it could have been about those moments when you look in the cupboards, the fridge and the freezer when you haven't planned anything, wonder what on earth you are going to eat that night, and do it all on the fly with disproportionately pleasing results (always a winner!)

All are equally applicable, and I suppose intertwined, to this, so I leave it to you to decide which angle - or angles -  you'd prefer, and I'll just add that it's probably one of the best received meals I've cooked for a long time.

Chicken, chorizo & courgette 'chilli'

(serves 4)
 
1 large red onion
1 large clove of garlic
olive oil
125g cooking chorizo
2 chicken breasts
1/2 tsp each paprika, ground cumin & ground coriander (I would have used my favourite smoked paprika, but I had - gasp - run out!!)
1/3 large yellow courgette (frankly, how ever much you think you can get away with)
1 400g  can chopped tomatoes
1 400g can red kidney beans
2 tsp veg stock
salt & freshly ground pepper 
guacamole & sour cream to serve

Finely chop the red onion and the clove of garlic. The Husband's elephant garlic is massive, but not as strong in flavour, so a lot goes a little way.

Heat a splosh of olive oil in a large pan and add the onions and garlic. 

Cut the chorizo into chunks and add it to the onions. cooking for 5 minutes or so till it releases its juices. Cut the chicken and the courgette into chunks. Put the kettle on.

Stir in the ground paprika, cumin and coriander into the onions and chorizo, cook for a minute then add the chicken and stir it in, browning the pieces on all sides.

Add the courgette, stir, add the chopped tomatoes, then put the 2 tsp veg stock into the empty tin and top up with hot water. Stir, then add to the pan along with some salt & pepper.

Bring everything to the boil then simmer for 20 mins or so till the chicken is cooked.

Serve with sour cream and guacamole, on rice, and watch with satisfaction as every last bit is licked up off the plate.

Tomato & Chickpea Bake for the uninspired

So I bet you're all there producing delicious home cooked food for your nearest and dearest, loving it all, floating round the  kitchen, listening to the birds tweeting outside (no 140 character restriction for them), feeling like all is right with the world. 

Tell me you are, because I am most definitely not.

Yes, I am still stuck in a rut. Struck with kitchen paralysis. Needs must, however, and we all have to eat, so at the weekend, I gathered together my not inconsiderable stack of back copies of June Good Food, and worked my way through them, noting down any recipes I liked the look of - even in an "abstract-not-sure-I-can-be-arsed" type of way. For good measure, I did the same with Lorraine Pascale's Fast Fresh & Easy Food, which I got for Christmas and haven't really looked at, and also with the Leon Family & Friends book (ditto, although this one has at least made it to bedside reading).
   


The idea was that once the veg box arrived this evening, I could finalise a meal plan based on the recipes I had bookmarked, finalise an online shopping list (already full of the monthly supermarket staples such as washing powder and dog poo bags), get myself down to the butcher's tomorrow, and then just cook my way back into the groove. That's the idea, anyway. Instead, I'm writing this. But I will sort out the shopping soon. Honest.

Obviously, in the absence of the veg box till this evening, I have been making do. This evening's meal came courtesy of what was on offer in the Co-Op (tomatoes), what was in the garden (lots of parsley & thyme) and this recipe in Good Food June 2009...

Tomato & Chickpea bake

2 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion
1 courgette
1 tsp harissa paste
800g tomatoes, peeled & de-seeded (if you can be bothered)
Some sprigs of thyme, leaves only
fresh ground pepper
400g can chickpeas, drained
big bunch of parsley, chopped
4-6 slices of decent crusty white bread - baguette or similar
50g finely grated cheese

Pre-heat the oven to 200C

Heat 1 tbsps olive oil in a large pan and chop the onion and courgette quite finely. Add to the pan and cook on a gentle heat for 8-10 minutes, then stir in the harissa.

Add the chopped tomatoes and about 200ml water, half the thyme leaves and a couple of grinds of pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 8 minutes, then add the chickpeas and cook for another couple of minutes. Stir in the chopped parsley, and tip into an oven proof dish.

Brush the slices of bread lightly with oil from the remaining tablespoon. Mix together the cheese and the rest of the thyme. Lay the bread over the chick peas and tomato mixture, then scatter over the cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes till the cheese and bread are golden

The kids (and the Husband) had it with sausages. I just had it as it was. You might want to add some Tabasco, or other chilli sauce (or just increase the harissa, depending on the palates you are catering for).

As my blogging mojo has disappeared somewhat with my cooking mojo, I am attempting to get myself back up there by linking this up to a few blogging events.

All the parsley and thyme put this squarely in Herbs on a Saturday territory, and June's challenge is hosted by Karen herself on Lavender & Lovage. 

Bookmarked Recipes also applies here, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes, even though I suppose I haven't really cooked what the recipe was at all. 

Homemade Ketchup - for people with too much time - or too many tomatoes - on their hands

OK. So I reckon we don't eat that much processed food, and I'm taking part in the Tefal Fresh Week challenge which is about cooking from scratch every day for a week. 

One of the processed foods that does feature on our table is ketchup. If you look at the ingredients label of a reputable brand, there's not too much that makes me cringe in there.Then there's all the lycopene you get from processed tomatoes, which (anecdotally, at least) is supposed to be an anti-cancer agent. That's good enough for me, so ketchup makes it on to my own personal 'approved' list.

Still, the thought occurred to me that I could try and make my own. And fortuitously enough, the Husband returned from a night of back woods cooking with the scouts last week with nearly a kilo of tomatoes - the scouts apparently preferring to adorn their wood fire cooked pizza calzone with meat and cheese  rather than anything as damningly healthy as a slice of tomato.

The oven was on for shepherd's pie last night anyway, so I halved the tomatoes, drizzled them with a tablespoon or so of rapeseed oil and some fresh thyme in a roasting tin and bunged them in to roast for an hour.

Once out of the oven, and cooled for half an hour, I pushed the roasted tomatoes through a seive and into a pan. Fortunately, tomato seeds rate highly on the chickens' list of favourite things to eat, so there won't be any waste there.

I had about 300ml of sauce after I'd mushed it through the sieve (pitiful really! The recipe I was loosely following in Veg Everyday called for 1 litre...), to which I added 4 tsp of red wine vinegar and 3 tsp of soft brown sugar along with a pinch of mace and a pinch of ground allspice and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. The ketchup results from then bubbling this down gently to reduce it by half, before adding salt and pepper. And really, this is where it all gets a bit silly. Generally, if something's going to be on the stove top for a long time, I like to be able to bob back and forwards to it, doing other things, rather than be continually stirring. This is pretty high maintenance in that you need to keep stirring to stop it catching. For about 30 minutes. An excessively long time to be tied to the cooker - unless it's for making lemon curd, for which I am always happy to make an exception.

Check out the splatter

In addition, the low water content of the sauce (or something) means that it spits quite viciously. All the way up the kitchen wall. Now I'm not the most houseproud of people, but it really was quite annoying - probably because I was in one of those 'let's be a domestic goddess' moods, and tomato splattering up the walls was not part of that plan. It would never happen to Nigella...

I persisted though, and was rewarded with a pot - a whole 159g of pretty tasty tomato ketchup. 

The proof of course is in the eating, so I served it up to my harshest critic, for breakfast this morning, with eggy bread.

 

 



The all important finger test

And the verdict?

"Mmmm, yummy Mummy"


But does it taste like ketchup?

"Well not exactly Mummy, but it's very good."

And she ate it all up.


So there you have it. Homemade ketchup, splatter and all. Tastes pretty good, and overall Pink ranked it her second favourite type of ketchup (she's a connoisseur, you know), which is praise indeed.

Would I make it again? Well, you need a lot of tomatoes to make a decent batch. You could store it, as jam, in sterilised jars/bottles too, so perhaps, if the greenhouse yields bounteously on the tomato front, I might be persuaded to. But the greenhouse has never yet yielded tomatoes in such quantities. And then there's the time. And the stirring and splattering. And you know, there's something very pleasing about squirting ketchup out of a plastic bottle...


Old-fashioned cookbooks, bags of nostalgia and Boeuf a la movie - a random recipe

I have recently inherited a collection of old recipe books from my mum. 

A couple are 'fundraising' efforts, with recipes provided by the good people from a variety of parishes. In the case of "My Favourite Recipe" (circa. 1984), in aid of the Merseyside Association for Kidney Research, it includes Ken Dodd's 'Steak Diane', John Inman's Beef Wellington, and my personal favourite, Willy Russell's 'Midnight Madness' - which is essentially how to cook 2 slices of toast when you come home rather worse the wear for drink... reminds me of a story of a friend from law school who was once roundly berated by his wife, the long suffering Barbara (I never knew any more about her, and never met her) for frying ice cream wagon wheels one night, which he mistook for burgers. The mess was apparently something truly terrible to behold.  Willy Russell's method for toast fills just over 2 pages of the book:

"Switch on the kitchen light; you may have just put the world to rights and drunk eight pints of bitter beer but, and I am quite confident of this, YOU CANNOT SEE IN THE DARK, the best chefs of the best kitchens of the world agree with me on this." etc

The Carrier book "Childrens Party Menus" is one I remember flicking through incessantly as childhood birthdays approached.

Mum, why did you NEVER make me the carousel cake? Or hard boiled eggs decorated like mice and rabbits?

Best of all, the pile of books included 2 notebooks from a Great Aunt. Handwritten recipes, cuttings, little comments - I love them.




I was blessed with some great ,Great Aunts, though none of them are still living. I've already mentioned the one who not only worked full time but went home to cook a 2 course lunch every day for her husband - another Random Recipe entry, in fact.

The Great Aunt to whom these notebooks belonged was a cabinet maker and worked with the renowned (and currently in vogue) Edward Barnsley. I am lucky enough to have a stool that she designed and had made in the later years of her life by one of her own apprentices. I believe all her great nieces and nephews have one, elegant and beautiful.

She herself was a fantastic character. All tweed skirts and sensible shoes. She smoked like a chimney (indeed it was the fags what done her in, in the end) and lived with her devoted 'companion' (no other attribution or recognition could be given in those days, even though their relationship was far more devoted than many marriages I have seen). As I recall, they shared their home with a grey African parrot. I always remember how interested she was in anything and everything I was doing; What was going on at school, what I was studying. I was off to France for a year - fantastic! what a great opportunity. She spent hours telling me about her own travels. In fact, she sadly died while I was in France and I missed her funeral, but somehow being in the Languedoc at the time, an area I know she loved, made it more bearable. My memories of her are fading but I have some clear images of her and her partner, their house and beautiful garden, which I know will stay with me.

Having her notebooks has brought many of those images and memories that I do retain back to the forefront of my mind. I can't date the notebooks accurately. One of them includes recipes attributed to "(Delia Smith TV)" in the exquisite handwriting you might expect. In fact all the recipes that have been written out by hand are attributed - names I recognise from my childhood - Jessie (my granny), Mrs Godfrey, Beth - and some I don't. There is an article about aubergine, cut out and kept from a newspaper from the day before my 6th birthday (I am sure the events were unrelated, but it puts things in context for me). I am particularly tickled by the comment accompanying a recipe for Roast Duck: "Very satisfactory." Those 2 words transport me right back in time - the sensibleness and practicality of them. No flowery nonsense. Just "Very satisfactory". I can hear her voice now.

But what of the random recipe? Well, this month the randomness is down to us: Dom's challenge at Belleau Kitchen is to choose a book our own way but to be sure to select a recipe randomly from it.




Alas, the roasted duck was not the random recipe. You'll understand why I had to choose one of these notebooks as my recipe book, tbough, so I very scientifically held them behind my back, swapped them over a couple of times and in my right hand the ringbound, falling apart Sherwood Notebook from Boots Stationery Department. 






And the recipe? Well, the page that I opened included 4 recipes cut from newspapers. 2 veal recipes ('Veal Cutlets - Victoria', and stewed breast of veal), another one  for a 'Standing Pie' (lots of lard) and this one. I couldn't resist. I love the idea that whenever this was written (imperial measurements, oven temp in Gas mark/farenheit only), people were thinking about how best to make sure they had a hot meal on the table - even if they wanted to go out and enjoy themselves in the meantime.

I copy it out directly because I am sure that any copyright has long since passed. If it hasn't and you recognise this as yours, please let me know, and I will offer full attribution.

Boeuf a la movie (for 2)

So called because you throw everything into a casserole, go to the cinema (and come back and eat it)

1lb stewing beef
small tin tomato soup
glass red wine
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 medium onions, sliced
1 medium potato, sliced
bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon of salt, and some screws of pepper

Put everything in a casserole and cover it closely. Put it into the middle of the oven with the heat at mark 1, 275F and leave it for 4 1/2 hours. When you return, serve it with tinned Swedish red cabbage (heated).

And that's it.

I defy anyone to say "Wow, what a beautiful looking dinner" - because frankly it wasn't:

The soup in the sauce made it alarmingly orange, and the fact that you don't brown the meat first meant that there was really quite a lot of fat floating around, but it was all cooked and quite tasty actually. It was completely hassle free - as all slow cooking is - and for a day when I was out at a training course and backwards and forwards on the school run and then delivering children to Rainbows etc, it was super-convenient. The only changes I made were to slightly up the vegetable quantities and I used a large tin of soup to stretch it to 4 of us. I also couldn't bring myself to serve it with tinned red cabbage - indeed I couldn't find any (although I didn't look too hard), but in keeping with the recipe, I did liberate some red cabbage, left over from Christmas, from the freezer.

I'm not sure it's the kind of thing I'd want to come back to from watching a movie, but I can certainly imagine Vera & Freda (you knew they'd have names like that) coming home - more likely from a concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic than the movies (although you never know), kicking off their brogues and sitting down, with their napkins on knees, to a big plateful of this...

Feeding the Ravenous Hordes - Chickpea Ketchup 'Chilli'

Sometimes I get a little annoyed with even my favourite food writers. The thing that gets on my nerves is when their idea of something doesn't accord with mine. What might constitute the contents of a 'store cupboard' for example.

Apparently, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall thinks fresh ginger is the sort of thing you might just have lying around in your fridge waiting to be used up. Hugh, let me tell you this. I buy fresh ginger, and freeze it in chunks ready for use. It goes very mushy on defrosting but that's fine because I'm usually mushing it up in pastes for curry. However, it's not just lying around ready to be used in emergency suppers. The days when you really haven't given any thought to what you might eat until it's actually tea time and the ravenous hordes are, well, ravenous. 

On the day in question, then, while I didn't have the ginger available to make the Ketchup Curry which appears in Veg Everyday in the Storecupboard Suppers section. I was inspired by the suggested alternative of ketchup chilli and knocked up my own version with chickpeas - and no ginger.

This, for me, really is 'store cupboard'. The fresh ingredients are an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a red pepper, which I nearly always have in (onion and garlic I use pretty much every day, and if nothing else, I chop up the pepper in lunchboxes). You wouldn't need to have the red pepper - and if you are proper swanky, you might have a jar of them knocking around actually in your store cupboard (I aspire to this but in reality, there never is a jar of beautiful red peppers in my store cupboard). I'll admit to having far too comprehensive a selection of spices, but cumin and paprika are ones that I use regularly and always have in. You could use hot smoked paprika or chilli powder depending on the palate of your ravenous hordes. It does use quite a lot of ketchup, but again, it's always in the cupboard and I'm sure you could use tomato puree or a can of tomatoes, depending on what you had to hand.

I served it as a topping for baked potatoes, with grated cheese and some left over soured cream. There was also some watercress. In a surprise verdict from my own ravenous hordes (and my fiercest critics), Blue loved it, while Pink wasn't so keen (I was anticipating the reverse). I liked it a lot.

Chickpea Ketchup Chilli

Serves 4

1 small-ish onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, also finely chopped
1 red pepper, finely chopped
olive oil
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin
2 x 400g tins of chickpeas, drained
10 tbsp tomato ketchup

Put a good splash of olive oil in a pan, and gently fry the onion and garlic for 5 minutes or so and add in the pepper, the paprika and cumin. Stir together then cook on a gentle heat for another 5 minutes or so, stirring every now and again, till softened. Tip in the drained chick peas and add the ketchup, plus a little water, stirring as you go, to make a sauce. Make sure everything is heated through, then serve as your store cupboard or fridge permits - on baked potatoes, with rice, on its own, even...