Gotta love the mackerel.

In celebration of the end of January and the long awaited payday, Dr W and I took Friday off to sleep in and potter around the shops.

It being payday and (almost) the end of January we decided we deserved fish and chips so headed to the local shop to find that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's campaign is making itself noticed!

I genuinely recommend mackerel and chips! Smaller but meatier than cod. Good stuff.

This song by folk singer Chris Wood is the most beautiful fish and chip shop ballads ever. Really. Listen all the way through.

Looky. A Carlton Ware orange preserve pot. Best find of the weekend along with an 80s/90s Viyella skirt suit and a pair of Bally court shoes. Love it.

But anyway. A visit to the farmers market has determined the theme of this week's food. Cheese. Lots of cheese.

Today, a very ripe Goat Willow from Loosehanger Cheeses. A mild, gooey, silky goats cheese in a little log.

Toasted Goats Cheese on Spelt and Rye bread (well done Morrisons) served with chicory and walnuts.

So while Dr "The Squirrel" W got to work on the walnuts (Christmas surplus), I prepared the chicory by slicing a little of the bottom and peeling the leaves off one by one. Gosh I enjoy doing this.

If you're not a fan of fuzzy fruit (think peaches, apricots etc) chicory may not be for you but it's delicately furry, crunchy and slightly bitter leaves are a fantastic alternative salad base.

Dress the chicory leaves with the following- toast the shelled walnuts in a dry pan, scatter some over the leaves. Mmmmm crunchy. Blend the remaining toasted walnuts with olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and honey to taste.

Toast the bread, spread the cheese, toast the cheese. Eat with the chicory.

Toast and cheese is an awesome combination anyway but this is sweet, walnutty (it's a word), toasty, creamy and crunchy. Really good and very easy.

Here's to The Week of Cheese!

AmSam recommends...Marmite.

Love it or hate it. Hmmmm, thinking... Love it!

Best with thick white toast sliced when needed from a loaf with real butter. Also good with toasted seedy bread and sliced tomatoes.

However, I am not wholly monogamous when it comes to tasty savoury spreads. Marmite's evil twin is much nicer on toast when eaten with soft boiled eggs.

But really, it's all down to personal opinion. So get tasting. Go on. Scoot!

Out with the old. In with the new.

Veg Box Wednesday! Was yesterday... But I was at the cinema seeing Black Swan. Chard, potatoes, little leeks, red pepper, round lettuce, carrots, flat mushrooms and savoy cabbage.

Butternut squash from last week. When I asked Dr W what he wanted me to do with it, he rather quickly replied that I was very welcome to use it for soup to take to work. Butternut squash and Dr W are not friends.

So I roasted the squash with whole garlic (just bash the unpeeled clove, delicately garlicky), olive oil, salt and pepper and made a salad. Nice.

Look at the pretty chard! Firm, crisp and very pretty! I had under 45 mins to cook and eat before the cinema so we had pasta with chard, anchovies and garlic. Super quick. Anchovies, not everyones cup of tea but these tiny, salty fish are surprisingly versatile and add a good kick of umami. Learn about this.

While the pasta is cooking, melt the anchovies on a low heat with olive oil, add thinly sliced chard and finely chopped garlic. Cook until the chard is tender (you may need to add a little water) and then stir into the cooked pasta.

I am very sorry to my fellow cinema goers for the wafts of garlic throughout the film. Hanging my well-fed head in shame.

But that's the new veg. Back to the old. Four floppy carrots, some wrinkly mushrooms, three dubious spring onions and a slightly dessicated leek. And potatoes. Always potatoes.

Shep-Un-herding Pie.

Dr W came up with that. The shepherds aren't herding. The lambs get to live. See? Dr W made it up. Humour him.

Cook the cubed mushrooms (as per picture) with olive oil until soft. Add chopped carrots, sliced leek, spring onions and 1tsp chopped rosemary. Sweat (I'm so sorry that I have to use this word) the veg with a splash of red wine until it's just about cooked but still with a bit of bite. Do this, a bit of patience will make it taste better!

Add passata or tinned tomatoes, chopped garlic and another splash (...) of red wine. Season to taste. As this point I debated whether it was wrong to add an OXO cube to a veggie dish. I decided it was. Of course it was. Simmer until soft while cooking the potatoes for the mash. Choose a deep dish, veggie mix in the bottom and mash with cheese on top. Grill until crispy.

Shep-Un-Herding pie really was very nice so you should make it.

I bought Dr W a present yesterday. A 50p fine wool duck tie. Today he bought me a present. A reduced boneless forerib of beef.

That's love.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

So, back to the grindstone after what felt like an awfully quick weekend. My beetroot soup received mixed reactions at work today. Not a lot of beetroot love around it seems (not a surprise) but quite a lot of love for the colour pink. Specifically Beetroot Magenta, which I feel should be an official Pantone colour. I have managed so far not to spill any soup (I fear for my beige carpet) but think it really is only a matter of time before something I like gets an unwanted splash of pink.

Tonight we will mostly be eating pork steaks with sagey apples, baked potatoes and lemony fennel.

Fennel's great. I came to it late having, like a lot of people, not really been a fan of all things aniseedy. Liquorice, fennel, aniseed balls, sambuca... But like with coffee, olives and goats cheese it is worth learning to love it. 

Slice the fennel into thickish pieces and cook on a low heat with olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, salt and pepper until tender. Mine was a little on the crunchy side due to Dr W's train being late and consequently my timings being a little off. Damn you South West Trains.

Sagey apples. Classic pork friends. Fry slices of apple in a little olive oil with sage until they start to caramelise which doesn't take long. Then, in the same pan fry the pork steaks seasoned with salt and pepper. Keep the fat on (do it) and don't overcook them. If you're unsure if they're done just cut into one. It should be juicy but not pink. Don't eat undercooked pork. Bleurgh.

Serve with the baked potatoes and lemony fennel.

This lemon juicer is one of my favourite ever finds. It looks like a lemon! How clever!

I would like to apologise for the poor quality of posts recently by the way. I have been trying to watch TV and write at the same time which, for me apparently, is quite hard. Simple person. Tonight's post has been written to the banjo musings of Charlie Parr. Love it.

Artic Roll

Ah, bacon. For me it should be smoked and it should be streaky. I'm not ruling other bacon out. A greasy spoon breakfast with suspiciously pink sausages and tinned mushrooms with do just as well in other circumstances. But today, real bacon from the market. Firm, dry and smelling of good woodsmoke. And it was only £1.06. Shop around!

You know the bacon's good when there is only a little fat in the bottom of the grill pan. No strange white liquid and absolutely no 'dane' or pak' in the title.

But back to the food. I forgot to mention that Veg Box Wednesday also brought us some little beetroot. I love beetroot but Dr W is not a fan so that's my lunches sorted for the next few days.

I use a recipe based on one by Nigel Slater. Quantities really aren't that important here. Depends how much soup you want. Cook onion in olive oil until soft then add chopped peeled raw beetroot.

Unless you are particularly keen on pink fingers, peel the beetroot using a vegetable peeler under a tap. Or go with the pink fingers and chase loved ones around the kitchen. This is also fun.

 Cover the onion and beetroot with stock (veg, chicken or beef) and simmer until very soft. Blend. Season and add sour cream to taste. The sour cream balances the sweet, earthy beetroot so trust me and put it in.

Tonight we jerked some chicken. No laughing. Grace Jerk Seasoning. Super hot. With Nigella's Rice and Peas. Except I used spring onions instead of regular onions, kidney beans not pigeon peas and no thyme. Don't be afraid to disobey Nigella. She loves it.

Careful with the chilli. Mind eyes and noses. Burny.

Viewing recommendation this evening, Ice Road Truckers. Tag line?  "It's arctic roll as you've never seen it."

Zowie.

The benefit of not having any milk on a Saturday morning is that Dr W will come home with not only milk but weekend papers too. Treats. I won't lie, I just read the magazines.

Quince jam, Dundee Marmalade. Simple breakfast after a lovely evening with the chaps. And some red wine. Ooof.

So after a very lazy morning of toast eating, coffee drinking and paper reading we ventured out into a cold, grey January day. But, judging by this beautiful florists window, Spring is just around the corner and a good job too. I'm bored of Winter now and I don't think I'm alone with this.

Cheery but cheap lunch needed today which was found in the form of the £7.95 lunch deal at the Eastern Eye.  As pictured, isn't it pretty. Onion bhaji and Lamb Mon Pasand for Dr W. The bhaji was not deemed somewhat lacking but the lamb dish was herby and very enjoyable.

Dahl soup and very hot chicken tikka masala (got to test the classics) for me. Bright, spicy and suitably cheery for a slightly hungover January day.

This evening's viewing was Moon. Absolutely excellent and original sci-fi from Duncan Jones a.k.a. Zowie Bowie.

Think we need to have a look at Zowie Bowie's Dad in one of his finest roles now. Are you singing along? I hope so!

Rah! Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Steak and kidney pie, chips and mushy peas. With salt and vinegar. And ketchup. It's Friday. So hush.

I am now the proud owner of a (rather cheap) piping bag, with the view to decoratively pipe some mash in the style of this, a lovely blog by the way and much more exciting and stylish than mine.

The strange dinosaur type creature is the main contributing reason why we have no useful plastic bags in the flat anymore. He unzips into bag! For shopping! I like the odd looks I get in shops when I take a cuddly dinosaur out of my bag.

Anyway, I am going out now to drink beer with boys. Yeah! Well, two men. One of which is Dr W. And the drink in question may be a G&T. Here's to the weekend.

Tea-total.

Ever so snoozy this evening. There was talk of fish and chips at work. Mmmmm. But pay day is next week. So if you use a bit of imagination, and squint slightly... Smoked mackerel, mash with chives and quick pickled cucumbers.

Thinly slice the cucumbers, place in a bowl and add enough vinegar to just about cover. Add salt and sugar gradually while tasting until it reaches a balance that you like. Please trust me with this one, they're great with the mackerel.

Mash potatoes and stir in chives, unwrap mackerel. Serve. Did I mention I'm very tired today. Too much tea. Too little sleep. So very rock and roll.

Beware Alligator Pear

Veg Box Wednesday! Avocado, butternut squash, beetroot, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, onions, potatoes, carrots... And a free copy of the Abel & Cole cookbook. As I already have it, it's up for grabs. First person to leave a comment may claim it!

I am definitely moving away from the 70s Horror Salad. Today, courgettes from last night (olive oil, lemon, garlic) with the last of the lettuce, a little "Italian hard cheese" and sunflowers seeds. Odd choice? Think budget pine nuts.

It was very nice indeed. Not a Marguerite in sight.

Oh avocado. Back to the 70s. That'll teach me to add cabbage temporarily to my 'dislikes' list. Sandwiches. Salads. Guacamole. That's where it stops surely? Apparently not. Avocado Chocolate Mousse? Avocado and Cheese Puffs? Huh. Yeah. We'll see. Dubious.

But this did give me an opportunity to share a fabulous gift given to me by my favourite Mexican! A china avocado salt & pepper shaker set. But I only have the pepper side. But this is absolutely fine because it is beautiful. Yes it is.

Supper tonight- Quick Very Easy Totally Non-Authentic Tomato Pasta Sauce (QVETN-ATPS)

All this on a lowish heat. Cook one thinly sliced onion in olive oil until soft, add two chopped cloves of garlic, sliced black olives (optional) and a teaspoon of dried oregano (or basil or parsley or whatever you think tastes nice). Cook for a minute or so then add a tin of good tomatoes. Salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar to taste. Simmer (delicately bubbly) for 10 mins while you cook the pasta of your choice. Enough for two.

Mexican Musical Interlude

Did you just cocotte my oeuf?

Despite my concerns, my Rainbow Salad was actually very nice today. Grated carrot, chopped celery, sultanas and sunflower seeds (an afterthought). Lemon juice and a little salt balances the sweetness. Just call me Marguerite.

Oeufs Cocotting

This week it's the lettuce left in the fridge.And it's gone a bit floppy. Hm.

Les Oeufs en Cocotte- quick, simple and one of the nicest ways to eat an egg. Take a ramekin and put a small bit of proper butter in the bottom. My ramekins came from M&S. And once contained crème brûlée... Place in a saucepan and carefully pour in boiling water until it's half way up the ramekin. Try not to get water inside the ramekin, this will spoil the nice eggy, butteryness. Keep the water on a low heat. When the butter is melted, crack in an egg and put the lid on.

Oeuf Lifting

The eggs will sound like they're doing a little tap dance in the pan but don't worry. Just keep an eye on the heat and don't let the water bubble too much. All they need is about 4 minutes so I'd suggest staying by the pan and watching them set.

Careful lifting the pots out of the pan. Hot things are hot and you don't want to get water in it. I used a potato masher. You may use whichever unsuitable kitchen implement you wish.

The white should be set and the yolk, as Elizabeth David says, should be quite soft. Served with the aforementioned lettuce and courgettes (also a veg box leftover) fried with olive oil, garlic and lemon juice.

Over Oeufed

Even though I am the proud owner of this book (wow) I do not usually garnish my own food. So the parsley is optional.

My oeufs were a little firmer than they should have been but they still tasted good which, in the end, is the main thing.

On a final note today. I am very lucky that my place of work provides fruit for the staff. Today I have eaten 2 apples, 1 date, 2 strawberries, 1 fig, 2 cherries, 1 lychee and a plum. Which has left me feeling a little bit like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
 

Learn from my mistakes.

Wow. Bad times for the food. All day I've been thinking about doing delicious things with smoked mackerel, sour cream and baked potatoes. Then I checked the use-by date on the sausages. Sausages. I don't want sausages! Ok, the sensible thing is to eat and not waste the sausages. So I overcooked the leeks. Made the mash too soft. And over-salted the onion gravy. Dr W was very polite.

Not sure things are going to improve tomorrow. I will be eating grated carrot, celery and sultanas, in what I think circa 1972 would be called, a Rainbow Salad. Or something that will fill you with a similar sense of impending disappointment.

With this in mind I had a flick through the salad section of Marguerite Patten's Cookery in Colour - A Picture Encyclopedia For Every Occasion. When eating my dubious salad tomorrow I will remind myself that I could be eating Tuna Whip and Salad, Orange and Cheese Salad Flan or indeed a Creamed Salad Ring, as pictured.

Unsettling use of the words whip, flan, creamed and ring.

Yes those are prawns. Yum.

Must set more foods in aspic. 2011- The Year of Aspic. Or should that be 'in'...

Please appreciate my plastic pineapple by the way. I love it.

I'd like it dirty please.

A small peak into the drinking habits of the AmSam/Dr W household.

I am grateful everyday that a cup of coffee magically appears beside the bed to wake me up. This is a lovely gesture but also due to the fact that Dr W gets up before I do. So, at the weekends it's my turn. And rightly so.

After much experimentation the coffee of choice is Kenyan. In bean form. Ground when needed in a handy little grinder. Kenyan coffee has a fruity acidity but is still smooth and almost chocolaty.

Today, inspired by my best friend's recent success, I poached an egg. Rather well.

In a regular saucepan, bring water to a rolling boil (furiously bubbly) then turn the heat right down to a simmer. Holding the egg as close to the water as you can crack it into the centre of the pan. Using a metal dessert spoon, gently circle the egg without touching it. This should create a gentle whorl pulling the egg together into a poached egg shape.

Leave it be for a few minutes then gently remove with a slotted spoon and place on a piece of kitchen towel so it's not too damp. No food should be damp. When lifting it out, it should not try and escape through the spoon. If it does, put it back until cooked!

This evening, Dr W cooked an awesome aubergine and chickpea curry. Seriously, I don't know how he does it. The man's a genius. No recipe. It's a mystery.

Vodka martini. Extra olives. Slightly dirty.

One shot vodka straight from the freezer. My choice is Russian Standard. A drop of dry vermouth. Three not very well-drained green olives.

Proper good.

Q. How do you get a bear out of a tree using cheese?

Good Morning. Cold and grey. No sign of the Somerset Riviera this particular Saturday. Elizabeth David's Staffordshire Oatcakes for breakfast. Soft, comfortingly oaty, slightly crispy around the edges.

75g strong flour - 75g fine oatmeal (I attacked some porridge oats with a hand held blender) - pinch of salt - mix 5g dried yeast with warm water (not too hot or you'll kill the yeast, it won't like this) & a little sugar until it bubbles up - mix to a soft batter with warm milk and a little water. Leave to rise in a warm place for an hour or so. Mine did not rise. Time to buy new yeast. Cook as per pancakes and serve with honey and butter. Or bacon! Makes six smallish oatcakes.

No no no, there was no beer for breakfast. Not today... I was treated to lunch at the White Hart Inn. The website does it absolutely no justice whatsoever. Recommended in the The Good Food Guide the pub is small, modern and comfortable but nothing fancy.

Two pints of Cornish Doom Bar. Lamb with mushrooms and parsnip crisps for Dr W. Ribeye steak, rare, with a herby, mellow garlicky butter for me. Served with seasonal vegetables which happily turned out to be carrots and a mixture of kale and cavelo nero. With butter. Nice touch. Well done the White Hart.

I know. The picture is too dark. Use your imagination!

After scouring the charity shops for china crabs and trying to find a longer chain for my Christmas present which the Royal Mail finally decided to deliver, it's back home to Total Wipeout and Kohlrabi Carpaccio. Who would have thought that kohlrabi, goats cheese and anchovies would work so well! Really, it was delicious.

A.Camembert. 

No.

Fill it. Click it. Cook it.

First, blet your medlar.

Pheasant day! A little bit scared of the pheasant if I'm honest. I had a bad experience with a Romney Marsh wild mallard once and have been a little wary of game ever since. But the pheasant was on deal with Abel & Cole (£3.05) so was delivered in a sheep's wool insulated box (very clever) with the veg on Wednesday. Also, I have an excuse to eat crisps with it. Or game chips. Or whatever. It's traditional.

There was a discussion at work about the latticed game chip. Some are latticed. Why? I don't know. I'm thinking maybe there is a game chip social divide. Those who lattice and those who don't. I don't. Pictured is the closest I could find in Waitrose. Not close at all.

But a medlar. What's a medlar? Think of a squat brown pear with a thingy like a pomegranate. You know what I mean. But it's not a pear. A rarely seen fruit now confined to National Trust properties, comfortable middle-class gardens and rambling ancestral piles. The fruit itself is rather hard and astringent until 'bletted'. This can be done by leaving the fruit on the tree or picked and stored eye-down in a nice, dark place until the fruit is soft and squishy. Rather like a very over-ripe pear. I enjoy finding medlar trees and walnut trees. Simple things!

The pheasant was cooked a la Nigel Slater with apples, butter and thyme. And this was all prepped and cooked in under an hour!

Pheasant rubbed with thyme butter and roasted with apples and a little lemon juice. Medlar jelly melted in the pan juices with a little extra butter. This was an excellent use of the jar of homemade medlar jelly from my mother. Thanks Mum!

Served with carrots and Burt's Chips. Burt's are amazing and most definitely helped me through 12hr shifts when working for Oddbins.

Channelling Masterchef's Gregg Wallace- soft, thyme-flavoured meat, sweet carrots, salty, crunchy game chips, buttery apples.

I'm quite proud! And will never be thin.

All this eaten to The Big Fish Fight. Very wise words in the typically upfront Hugh style. Eat happy fish.

The German Turnip

Veg Box Wednesday- carrots, onions, potatoes, leeks, MASSIVE round lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes and kohlrabi. And a pheasant.

This is the kohlrabi. It's rather like a large radish but with more potential. It did not come with eyes. Never be afraid to anthropomorphise your vegetables. For your information, Hugh "The Big Fish Fight" Fearnley-Whittingstall has some excellent kohlrabi advice and recipes.

According to High, the best way to store a kohlrabi is the trim off the leaves so that the moisture stays in the bulb.

Poor kohlrabi.

But back to the cabbage. Yes, still half a cabbage left from last nights minestrone, which was much better for lunch today when all the flavours had had a chance to come together. Tonight- sausage and mash.

Cook the sausages of your choice in whatever way you prefer.

Boil potatoes. Boil/simmer/steam cabbage and leeks until tender. Don't over cook it. Doooon't. Don't!

Mash the potatoes with olive oil and mix in the cabbage and leeks. Season to taste with salt and lots of black pepper. Except we've run out of black pepper and it was sadly missed.

Serve with ketchup. And cutlery.

Tomorrow? Pheasant!

Les choux?

Mmmmm cabbage. Hm.

A very pretty cabbage purple-tinted cabbage yes. But it has been sitting in our fridge for a week while we've been eating other, much tastier, vegetables. It's a vegetable with a bad rep. Cheap, plentiful and generally poorly cooked. I'm not a fan.

But as it's Veg Box Wednesday tomorrow it needs eating so I sat down with the books last night to find some recipes.

Being a more traditional vegetable, I thought I'd visit a more traditional book first.

How about Forced (meaning stuffed) Cabbage from Florence White's Good Things in England? First published in 1932 this book is described as 'a practical cookery book for everyday use, containing traditional and regional recipes suited to modern tastes'. On page 155 you will find instructions on How to Roast a Young Swan...

After this I moved my search forward to the likes of Valentine Warner (small crush) who is very good at simple seasonal recipes, Richard Corrigan (no crush) who is the man for big, hearty, comforting food and the River Cafe Cookbook, indeed some peoples Italian bible. Thinking Cavolo Nero here. Which, when put into Google, comes up with the site Discover Kale. Surely that needs an exclamation mark. Discover Kale! Yeah!

The main recipes appear to be make it into coleslaw, stuff the leaves, pickle it or serve it as an accompaniment. So I went with...

Minestrone! Courtesy of Mr J Oliver c.1999.

Cook onion, garlic, chopped rosemary, celery, leek and carrot in olive oil until tender. Add good tinned tomatoes and vegetable stock until just covered. Simmer for 10 mins or so then add not as much pasta as you'd think and the chopped cabbage. Simmer for another 10 mins and add as much fresh basil as you can reasonably afford. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Serve with some kind of grated cheese. But not Tex Mex cheese. That's just not right.

I love soup.