THE COMMENTERS MEME

The very friendly Jeanne over at cooksister tagged me for a meme. Well I guess I actually tagged myself as she had to tag the last ten people to comment on her blog. Memes are funny old things, some I love and others I have been known to ignore, sorry if that was one of yours. This one is, I think, a great idea. It shows commenters that you actually give a damn about seeing them and their comments and about finding their blogs. So, I have a tiny request for you all, please come out of the woodwork and say hello if you’re there. I like my readers and I want to know who you are. And to my ten tagged commenters, I'm looking forward to seeing your lists soon.


The rules:

1. List the last ten people who have commented on your blog
2. If you’re on my list then you should do the meme on your blog too


Who were my last ten commenters? Well Jeanne should be one but as she tagged me already I can’t really tag her back. So…

1. Amanda from Little Foodies
2. Freya from The Cocoa Lounge
3. Solnushka
4. Kelly-Jane from Cooking the Books
5. Sarah from Sarah Cooks, Sarah Discovers How to Eat, and Sarah's Coffee of the Week
6. Maria Rose from Little Things are Big
7. Sam from Antics of a Cycling Cook
8. Lorna from Lorna at North Hill
9. Zarah Maria from Food & Thoughts
10. Carine from ...and other recipes


Now for the questions:


1: What is your favourite post from number 3's blog?

Her ‘About Me/About Solnushka/About You/About Blogging’ sections are inspired. I went straight to them on my first visit and felt like I really got to know her. I was hooked by her humour and by the fact that there are plenty of Russian nuggets on the site.

Little known fact about me: I went to Russia on a school trip when I was 13, it was 1993, the first McDonalds had just opened, and Russia felt like part of a very different World, it was exciting and at times scary but I want to go back. Plus I love the sound of Russian, all those soft consonants give me shivers.


2. Has number 10 taken any pictures that have moved you?

Carine’s photos are always beautiful and give me a little taste of Edinburgh now that I’ve moved away.


3. Does number 6 reply to comments on their blog?

I don’t know but I just had a quick look at some of her commenters and it seems like she has a lovely band of blog followers.


4. Which part of blogland is number 2 from?

At the moment she seems to be in chocolate heaven but normally I don't know. Freya, where are you?


5. If you could give one piece of advice to number 7 what would it be?

Selfishly my advice would be to please keep sending me lovely comments. It’s great to hear from people who read my blog as it is all too easy to feel like you are writing to yourself so it gives me a real boost to know that people are interested. Thank you Sam.


6. Have you ever tried something from number 9's blog?

No, sorry. I’ve only just started reading her blog and was partly drawn in because she is in Copenhagen, another favourite city, but all of the food bloggers I read give me great ideas for meals.


7. Has number 1 blogged something that inspired you?

Frequently. She and her children go on culinary travels while staying in the kitchen. I think it’s amazing that she introduces Little and Small to so many wonderful flavours and they seem so excited about discovering new cultures.


8. How often do you comment on number 4's blog?

Regularly. She has an enviable cookbook collection so it is great to see what she has been making from her books.


9. Do you wait for number 8 to post excitedly?

Yes, she is a very good friend who now lives on Orkney. I rarely get to see her so I want to know more about what she is getting up to.


10. How did number 5's blog change your life?

Sarah’s blog was the first I started reading regularly after meeting her on Nigella.com so it was her that gave me the idea to start my blog, thanks Sarah.


11. Do you know any of the 10 bloggers in person?

I was at university with Lorna, we were in the same halls and then shared a flat in second year. I know Carine through Chris and his sister and we recently shared organisational duties for a surprise hen party that involved Carine making delicious cupcakes and me making quite disturbing masks of the bride's face for us all to wear.


12. Do any of your 10 bloggers know each other in person?

I don’t think any of them have met but I might be wrong?


13. Out of the 10, which updates more frequently?

I’m not sure. I want to say Sarah but I think everyone has bursts of activity punctuated by lazy weeks!


14. Which of the 10 keep you laughing?

I have only just found Solnushka’s blog thanks to NaBloPoMo but I think she will give me a few giggles.


15. Which of the 10 has made you cry (good or bad tears)?

Not so far, I hope none of them ever make me shed sad tears.


There you go, a little bit about my commenters. Go and look at their blogs and see who they have on their lists.

LEMON, THYME, AND DIJON MUSTARD

You can blame Nigel Slater, not in a bad way of course, but he is definitely to blame. I remember reading about lemon, Dijon mustard, and honey as a good combination for grilling chicken in Appetite (I think). I added some thyme, marinaded chicken with the mix, cooked it in the oven, and always enjoyed the slightly caramelised, charred, sticky end result.

Then, one evening, I fancied a break from the ubiquitous spicy lamb burger (and when I say ubiquitous I just mean in our flat). I bought some pork mince and when it was time to cook I quickly mixed it up with some lemon zest, thyme, and mustard, as we almost always have all three, and a new burger star was born. We occasionally still eat the lamb but this has absolutely become the favourite. It is an after work staple because I can buy all the ingredients in the small supermarket near work, make them in about five minutes, sit down and watch some relaxing nonsense on TV and be eating a decent meal 30 minutes later. I’m sure we all have an easy, reliable, throw it together after work favourite up our sleeves so what’s yours?

Oh, one last thing, these aren’t attractive enough to warrant any kind of photographic effort, and I assumed you didn’t need to see a picture of pork mince because, really, who does.

PORK BURGERS WITH LEMON, THYME, AND DIJON MUSTARD
Enough to fill four pitas, for us that means two servings but that’s just us

500g of pork mince
Zest of one lemon
A pile of fresh thyme leaves
A heaped teaspoon or two of Dijon mustard, depending how much you like it
A generous grinding of ground black pepper and similar of salt

All you need to do is mix everything together thoroughly with your hands. Form it into eight small burgers and bake in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. I could make it more complicated but that isn’t really in the spirit of completely brainless post work food.

To serve we slice these up and pile them into toasted pita breads (if you are lucky enough to be able to buy fresh pitas then do, one of the great benefits of living in a heavily Turkish area is access to amazing pita bread in all the local shops and they are only 35p for five, I can’t get enough). So for an entirely inauthentic pita filling – slice up two pork burgers, add mayonnaise, some Dijon mustard, a sprinkling of sea salt, salad leaves, and finally some sliced cornichons just because I’m hooked on them, and enjoy.

CHOCOLATE AND PEANUT GRANOLA

Over the last few weeks I have been witnessing the slow spread of Christmas through the shops. But this week, post Halloween, it has sped up noticeably until, yesterday, while buying some satsumas and water in M&S I noticed something previously unseen, packs of two mini yule logs sitting innocently beside the bottles of water just begging to be slipped into my basket. Oh the cruelty. I can kid myself that flapjacks are healthy (with difficulty, but I can) but I cannot convince myself, much as I might want to, that little packs of thickly chocolate coated chocolate sponge rolls with chocolate cream inside are a good idea for anything other than a very occasional treat.

So, to strengthen my resolve on mornings when all that chocolate may seem like a very good idea indeed I decided to inject a little chocolate into my breakfast. This recipe is from Feast and is a variation on Andy’s Fairfield Granola that has been pretty uniformly raved about. The chocolate version uses dark cocoa powder for its chocolate kick so you can almost, almost, convince yourself that this is a virtuous thing to be eating while watching BBC breakfast news and drinking coffee.



CHOCOLATE AND PEANUT GRANOLA
Makes enough to fill a large jar, about 2.5 litres

450g of rolled porridge oats
120g of white sesame seeds
120g of white sunflower seeds
250g of raw peanuts
100g of light brown sugar
25g of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of sea salt
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
175g of apple sauce
120g of golden syrup, brown rice syrup, or rice malt syrup
4 tablespoons of runny honey
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl then add the wet and mix thoroughly, I usually use two large spoons, before pouring into two large baking trays. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. I check it every ten minutes and move the granola around every time so that it all has a chance to toast. Take it out of the oven and leave to cool. It will harden into chunks that need to be broken up before it is poured into a jar for storage. I had some leftover dried cranberries from my last batch of granola so added those once the granola was cool. I like this in a bowl with milk but have been known to get excited by a bowl of granola with Greek yoghurt occasionally as well.

CHEESE ON TOAST WITH MUSTARD AND THYME

I have a long list of blogs that I read regularly, some are friends, some are fellow food bloggers that I have met online, and then there are the others, that list of bloggers who just do it better. I am hooked on Shauna and Molly's writing and photography, inspired by Heidi's delicious ingredients, and that is just for starters.

One of the other blogs I always check is Luisa's and this week she has also signed up for NaBloPoMo so I am enjoying the daily read. Yesterday she caught my attention with cheese on toast with thyme and mustard. It popped into the recipe corner of my brain and may have stayed there lost and forgotten among the endless stews, cakes, and cookies if it hadn't been for Chris saying he fancied soup and toast for dinner tonight which brought it sharply back into focus.

I bought a glorious smelling loaf of roast garlic bread, some cave aged gruyere, and fresh thyme on my way home. A short while later I pulled a tub of last week's soup out of the freezer, put it into a pan with a little extra water to defrost and got on with the toasting. Four slices of bread were grilled on one side then turned over, I spread a smidgeon of butter onto the untoasted side along with a scraping of dijon mustard, sprinkled on some thyme leaves and then finally added a blanket of grated gruyere. This was put back under the grill until the cheese was melted and bubbling. This will be made again and I'm already trying to think of a reworking with goats cheese and honey, one of my favourite cheese combinations. Thanks Luisa.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND CHICKPEA TAGINE

I found myself thinking about tonight's dinner rather a lot through the day. Not that this is unusual but tonight I knew just what I needed where often my thinking can be a little unfocused and finding a main ingredient to work around can be a hard enough decision. I needed some comfort and some warmth and that, coupled with Monday evening tiredness, usually spells soup. But I have recently been pondering different ways of using both squash and chickpeas more and this became a choice between something curried with rice or something vaguely North African with couscous. The soft blanket of a bowl of couscous won. I found a vegetable tagine recipe in How to Eat and tweaked a little to fit what I wanted. It was softly fragrant but tasty. It could take a heftier dose of spice and maybe another day that would be what I would choose, adding a good bit dollop of harissa at the end of the cooking rather than the mere teaspoon that I used tonight. As with the spices just use more or less of what you like.



BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND CHICKPEA TAGINE
Serves 2 (with leftovers for tomorrow's lunch)

2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of coriander
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of paprika
1 pinch of saffron
1 large butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 2 cm chunks
1 400g can of chickpeas, drained
1/2 can or 200g of chopped tomatoes
zest of 1/2 a large orange
500ml stock (I used marigold vegetable bouillon)
Salt and harissa to taste

Heat the olive oil in a heavy based saucepan over a medium heat, I used a le creuset casserole, and add the onions leaving them to soften for a few minutes. Add the garlic and all of the spices, stir together with the onion and leave to cook for a few more minutes. Put the squash into the pan and stir it so that the spices, onion, and garlic evenly coat the squash and allow this to cook for about five minutes. Add the chickpeas, the tomatoes with their juice, the orange, and the stock. Leave this to simmer over a low heat for 25 - 30 minutes until the squash is cooked through and starting to collapse around its edges.

If you are eating couscous with this and want to make it the lazy way then put about 300g of couscous into a bowl and cover with just boiled water. Cover the bowl tightly with tin foil and leave for about ten minutes. Uncover the bowl and fluff up the couscous with a fork. I like to add dried mint and a little salt to my couscous and it worked well with the flavours in the tagine.

Taste the tagine and add salt. If you want a little extra heat stir in some harissa. I would say just add it half a teaspoon at a time as harissa can vary a lot. The one I used was quite mild and a teaspoon just brought a little warmth, others may blow your head off.

Serve the tagine with some of the couscous and sprinkle over fresh parsley if you have some.

YESTERDAY

Cold and wet and a friend from Edinburgh to stay

Clicia for breakfast - garlic salami, fried halloumi, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, cucumber, a fried egg just perfectly runny, a hash brown



A bus down to St Paul's

A blustery walk over the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern

Cildo Meireles



Mark Rothko

A couple of drinks on the 6th floor



A table by the window looking out at the rain



Back to N16

Takeaway from Rasa - spinach and paneer curry, lemon rice, uzhunappam

All good.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Name: Gemma (you knew that already)

Lives: Edinburgh via London via Edinburgh and Sussex with a craving for spending a few years in the US

Loves: Chris

Works: 9-5pm, Monday-Friday

Wants: a miniature dachshund and two cats, or the other way round

Wears: lots of sweater dresses with thick woolly tights and moccasins, jeans with checked tops or vests in summer and cashmere crew-necks in winter, a cheap gold casio watch, a gold and turquoise engagement ring and slim gold wedding band on my left hand, a small stack of rings on my right hand, and earrings that are mostly gold and if I had my way would all be from here

Wishes: I could enjoy more lazy mornings, oh and win the lottery (it would help with the lazy mornings)

Watches: rather too many cookery programmes (with an ongoing weakness for Gossip Girl)

Likes: long walks on bright but cold Autumn days

Dislikes: offal, pineapple, scary dogs, comic sans

Cooked: jam tarts as a child, of course, followed by pancakes, scones, shortbread. It was definitely all about the baking.