CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE

If you like baking then at some point you are bound to find yourself volunteering.

Charity cake sales roll around and I find myself balancing cupcakes and loaf cakes on the bus trying my hardest to avoid icing sticking to the tin.

Birthdays come and the night before I find myself elbow deep in flour.

Working in Edinburgh there were five of us who could be relied on to produce cakes for any occasion, and sometimes (often) for no occasion at all. Sometimes the sheer quantity of birthday cake tipped into ridiculous but we ate it and we enjoyed it. Of course we did. Four out of five did the Moonwalk in 2007 and raised money by baking cakes to sell every other week. Banana bread, lamingtons, sponge with whipped cream and fresh passionfruit, brownies, cookies. Everyone was a little bit sad when the Moonwalk was over and the excessive baking stopped.

Then last March I moved to London and to my new job and someone's birthday rolled around and out came the boxes from M&S. Apparently I no longer worked with bakers so if I wanted cake to be homemade (which I did and do) then I would have to provide it.

So on Thursday evening I broke out the chocolate to make the quadruple chocolate loaf cake from Feast.



In a last minute fit of laziness I abandoned the syrup (even though I know it is delicious), it was pretty crumbly without and I think it's probably better to include it. It was good, although, to be honest, being the lone baker can be an embarrassing experience. I can only take so many people saying 'wow, Gemma, did you make this?' before the part of my character that hates anyone examining anything I do too carefully starts saying that maybe M&S cake isn't so bad after all. Maybe after a few more birthdays they will get used to it.

WALKING THE WALK

It was always going to take a lot to top snow day.

That sounded like the start to an amazing post didn't it?

Now I'm supposed to tell you how I have been searching for the recipe to end all recipes for the last two weeks, how I have not left the kitchen except to shop for exclusive ingredients with which to wow you.

But I'm not going to.

The snow was just too good. Nothing has beaten it yet, I don't think anything will until the first day of Spring.

Valentines Day was nice. The brunch at Albion was delicious (even if I suspect that the queues will only get worse). But it was no snow day.

The two big bowls of pho last weekend were yummy and left us sated with fragrant cleansing broth. But it was no snow day.

The packed lunch project has been going well with an average of two lunches a week coming from home (this is a big improvement on the previous average of zero) but not even the joy of enough roast beetroot and butternut squash mixed with feta and chickpeas to last not just me, but me and Chris, not just one, but two whole lunches was enough to outshine the snow day.

So with no more snow days on the horizon and too long to wait for a holiday and Spring still feeling almost unbearably far away the only thing I have to report is that I have signed up for the Edinburgh moonwalk. I did it two years ago and at around 21 miles I was asking myself why, why, why couldn't I just hand them the money and be done with it, why did I put myself through this, why were there people saying (cheerfully) 'only five miles to go' (every time they said it I wanted to throttle those otherwise lovely volunteers in their bright yellow tops). But true despair only really kicked in when I thought, for one irrationally joyous moment, that we were almost finished until realising that there were still 1.2 miles to go. I could have cried. So why, why, why, why, why? Sadism perhaps? Or maybe some sick twisted part of me actually enjoyed the torture, the lack of sleep? Maybe...

I'm trying to raise at least £500 which will go to breast cancer charities and, as I am doing this all alone, your pennies will really help me to stay motivated (I hope). If you want to see how I'm progressing just check out my justgiving page.

SNOW DAY

I had planned to write about a few different things by now.

I had planned to tell you about walking to Fortnum and Mason to drink a cappucino complete with miniature ice-cream cone...



and about the pistachio ice-cream that not only tasted delicious but matched the tables in the 1950's style ice-cream parlour perfectly.



I was going to show you the Chinese New Year lanterns in Chinatown.



And I meant to let you know that on Sunday the sun came out just long enough for a trip on the London Eye...



and later, when we were well and truly chilled to the bone, we sat in Pain Quotidien sipping from huge bowls of thick hot chocolate and eating bread and jam.



I had planned to tell you how we bought baklava from one of our local supermarkets and about the way they dripped honey and tasted of orange blossom.

I had planned to tell you all of this but then it snowed.



I woke up on Monday to a thick blanket of snow and no buses on the streets of London. Happily I am reliant on buses so had no choice but to take a snow day. We stayed inside and watched the weather and travel updates. We walked to the park and threw snowballs, we looked at deer with snow on their antlers and a snowman complete with moustache, and when the snow started to fall again we headed home.



It felt like a holiday, it felt like everyone had been given the freedom to play for a day. I think we need a snow day every year if this is what it does to people.

When we got home we ate scrambled eggs with chorizo and bacon and drank tea and I decided it was a muffin day. To be more precise I decided it was a maple syrup muffin day...



Maple syrup muffins
Makes 12
From 'Muffins fast and fantastic, 2nd edition' by Susan Reimer

1 large egg
240 ml (8 fl oz) milk
90 ml (3 fl oz) maple syrup
60g (2 oz) rolled oats
85g (3 oz) butter, soft
85g (3 oz) caster sugar
225g (8 oz) plain flour
3 teaspoons (15 ml) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt
60g (2 oz) chopped pecans or walnuts

Glaze
1 rounded tablespoon soft butter
60g (2 oz) icing sugar
1 tablespoon (15 ml) maple syrup (plus 1/2 teaspoon milk if needed)

Prepare the muffin tins and preheat oven to 190-200˚C (375-400˚F). In a medium-sized bowl, beat the egg with a fork. Add the milk, maple syrup and rolled oats. Set aside to soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. In a large bowl, blend together the soft butter and sugar with a spoon. Sift together (or stir well with a fork) the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter mixture and cut in with a pastry blender (or rub lightly with fingers) until it resembles fine crumbs. Pour all of wet mixture into dry. Stir just until combined, adding nuts during the final strokes. Do not over-stir. Spoon into the tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned and feel quite firm. Stir the glaze ingredients together until smoth. Spread on hot muffin tops immediately after baking.

BULGUR WHEAT PILAF

It was New Year's Eve 2007 and together we ummed and we aahed about how to celebrate before deciding on dinner for two and a late night visit to a friend's party.

We went to Waitrose for ingredients but the armageddon preparations required for a Scottish New Year meant the shelves were bare.

We drove on to Sainsbury's where we had more success but with a few substitutions.

We came home and we cooked and we ate and I mentally planned a blog entry in my head and then the phone rang. The other two, unnamed, people who were supposed to be with us for the bells had been a little over enthusiastic in their New Year celebrations and had to duck out due to premature drunkenness.

Midnight came, we opened a bottle of cava and realised that we could see the fireworks by leaning out of our sitting room window. It took us three years to figure that out even though there are fireworks every night for a month during the Edinburgh festival. It's sad that we only noticed on our last firework watching opportunity in that flat but at least we experienced it once.

We listened to Panda Bear and kissed while leaning out into the cold clear night. Then we wandered up the road to the party for a few hours.

I would love to say that it was a bit of a blur but actually I can remember it perfectly.

It was lovely until the next day when we woke up. I had a banging head yet was, somehow, still very clearly drunk.

If you have never experienced this then, I promise, it is not a good sign. The only way the day can go is downhill. So 4pm on January 1st 2008 found me bent double over the hob trying to fry bacon. All memories of our delicious dinner had vanished to be replaced by a desperate urge for fried food and a later, but equally desperate, urge for Chinese food.

So, back to 2009, we find ourselves back with Moro East propped open but in a different year and in a different flat and in a different city. I chopped and stirred and fried and ate and reminded myself to cook more Moro recipes.



Due to my unwillingness to buy Kenyan spring onions and a lack of cabbage in M&S at 6pm I used a leek and about 300g of brussels sprouts instead (after deciding that the density of sprouts meant we needed less and I thought it may be sensible to impose a sprout limit for other, more smell based, reasons). The leek was obviously sweeter than spring onions would have been but it worked. I forgot the parsley and had to nip back out to our Turkish mini supermarket to buy bulgur where (I love this shop) they had both coarse and fine bulgur in abundance and when I thought the man was asking whether I wanted a plastic bag, 'no thanks', he repeated 'no no, what are you making?'. 'Oh, pilaf' I said, 'but with bulgur not rice'.

Cabbage and bulgur wheat pilaf
Taken from Moro East by Sam & Sam Clark

Serves 4

75g of unsalted butter
8 spring onions, sliced in 1cm rounds, green and all (or 1 leek)
50g of pine nuts, or 80g of walnuts (I have only ever used the pine nuts)
1/2 rounded teaspoon of ground allspice
600g of white cabbage (or spring cabbage or Brussels tops), shredded (or sprouts, I used 300g but it you want to use 600g then I wish you and your nose luck)
200g of coarse bulgur, rinsed in cold water and drained
300ml of vegeteable stock
2 tablespoons of sumac (optional but delicious)
1 small bunch (about 20g) of parsley, leaves picked and finely chopped (I forgot this but don't recommend leaving it out)

To serve (I'm including this here as it is in the book but have never actually included it, my usual accompaniment is simply cooked white fish and a little squeeze of lemon)
1/2 garlic clove, crushed with a pinch of salt
200g good-quality Greek yoghurt, such as Total

Melt the butter in a saucepan on a medium heat. When it begins to foam, add the spring onions, nuts, allspice and a pinch of salt and cook for 5 minutes. Then stir in the spring greens and after 5 minutes, when they have wilted, the bulgur. Cover with the stock and season with salt and pepper. Lay a circle of greaseproof paper on top and bring to the boil over a medium to high heat. Put a lid on the pan and cook quite fast for 5 minutes. Now turn the heat down to medium-low and cook for anther 5 minutes. Stir in the sumac and parsley, switch off the heat and let the pilaf sit for 5 minutes.

Stir the garlic into the yoghurt and serve with the pilaf.

SPAG BOL

Isn't it ridiculous that something that should be made with care and cooked softly over a barely there heat could be reduced to such a throwaway name?

I suppose it fits the Dolmio vision of bringing the Italian out in you through opening a jar but the slow and steady approach is so much better.

What an understatement.

Among all the other childish food likes and dislikes I have already introduced you to mince was right up there with strawberries. It probably doesn’t help that it was usually paired with something tomato based but I think it was the texture that really got the gag reflex going. One traumatic experience left me at the dinner table having eaten the pasta that had been untouched by the dreaded ragu and piling the foul stuff into a roll to try and eat some of it in a cunning disguise. It didn’t work.

So, when did this all change?

No idea.

Sorry.

I think I had lasagne and realised I liked it and then gradually realised that mince was not the devil's work and that, while raw tomatoes may still be an abomination, in cooked form they are actually quite palatable. From there it was only a small leap into the unknown to say, hey, maybe I'll cook us bolognaise for dinner tonight. I remember the day and I remember the internet search. I remember finding this article online and knowing, because when has Nigel ever steered me wrongly, that this was the recipe I would make. I made it and the conversion was complete.



So when the recipe appeared in The Kitchen Diaries I was delighted. I used to have just about enough time to make this from scratch after work. Now that my journey to work is no longer a short ten minute walk this sort of post work cooking is, sadly, not realistic. Instead, in a rare moment of ultra organisation, I made this on Monday evening. I got home from work and chopped and cooked and left it to bubble away slowly. I popped it into the fridge overnight and on Tuesday we had a quick dinner of a slow cooked dish. In a rarer moment of ultra organisation I even had the forethought to cook a little extra linguine so that I could have more for lunch the next day.

Now the trick is to remember how easy this was..

MONDAY MORNING BLUES

On the most depressing day of the year (official statistic) I was woken up at an ungodly hour by rain hammering against the skylight above our bed. The day continued on its rubbish way with an aborted bus journey caused by North London gridlock, my late arrival into work, and the sort of endless mindless repeated tasks that make you wish you had stayed in bed. On the slow bus home I tried to read and think about food for tonight. I knew that I would be making a ragu to eat tomorrow and had been planning to roast some squash and beetroot to eat with feta for an easy dinner. Somehow though the midwinter misery made me long for the fresh tastes of sunnier days and while contemplating the squash I moved away from this and towards an old favourite.



Two years ago I blogged about my very unseasonal (bad Gemma) couscous salad which has been a standby tea for a few years. Since then the general theme - couscous, lemon juice, dried mint, cucumber, peppers, red onion, halloumi - had remained the same but with one key, and to my mind very important, adjustment. When the couscous is cooked fork it through and add the lemon juice first.

That's it. I know it's a tiny detail but but I suppose it makes sense. Adding the lemon first means it soaks into the couscous before you coat it with oil. If you add the oil first it just creates a little barrier to that all important fresh taste.

Oh, and for me a couscous salad, a glass of red wine, and lovely Heston Bluementhal making over Little Chef makes the most miserable Monday of 2009 just a little better. Although, based on the first episode, if that's really what the senior management of Little Chef are like he should have just left them to it.

TODDLING TOWARDS THREE

So I, at least in the world of blogs, turned two years old yesterday. Last year this was marked with this, this year it was marked with an Ottolenghi recipe for chicken with sumac and za'atar and an Ottolenghi inspired dish of roasted beetroot with baby spinach just moistened with olive oil and lightly seasoned. Ottolnghi seemed the obvious choice, it's always a good choice for a delicious dinner, the food usually looks beautiful, and since moving to London Ottolenghi has swiftly become a firm favourite. Even with 30 minutes marinading instead of 24 hours and chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken quartered and left on the bone it didn’t disappoint. Oh and memo from last night, roast more beetroot.



In the last two years I have learned a bit about blogging and a bit about myself through writing down my thoughts on food:

1) It is possible to have too many frozen bananas.
2) A dark kitchen with no natural light makes for a frustrating photographic experience.
3) A little bit of light pressure is good for motivation (and minor cuts).
4) You can waste a lot of time reading food blogs and getting blog envy.
5) I respond well to pressure so if there is ever a too long quiet period just shout at me or give me a deadline (see 3).
6) My list of things to make is getting longer rather than shorter but the growing (groaning) shelves don't help.
7) My go to dinners are oven cooked marinated chicken or meatballs in pitta.
8) When I'm tired I can easily succumb to the joys of potato waffles cooked in the toaster and made into sandwiches with cheese and ketchup, waffly versatile indeed.

I've already told you about some of my plans for 2009 but here are a few just for my third year of blogging (can you tell I'm in the mood for a few lists today?):

1) Practice taking better photos. I tend to get frustrated if I can't do something perfectly immediately (if anyone can tell me how I managed to crochet so that all the stitches were upside down then I would be delighted to hear from you) so am determined to practice this photography lark.
2) Write without any huge chunks of absence, to be fair there was a reason for this in 2008 so assuming we don’t move to the other end of the country again I should be okay.
3) Make new recipes. Don’t just pull Nigel Slater off the shelf whenever a roast chicken goes in the oven, more of a comfortable habit than a recipe requirement but anyway…

There, I think that's enough to be getting on with, after all I am still just a toddler.