Tarka Dahl and other things

Toaster sports a number of pubs (really quite a few for such a small hamlet) and a rather good curry restaurant. Every time I go there I order the vege thali which is basically a selection of vege dishes plus pilau rice and a naan. This suits me because it saves me having to actually make a menu decision (I simply cannot ever make a firm restaurant ordering decision. It's one of my most annoying flaws I think! I also suffer from horrible ordering envy once the meals actually arrive. A sampler dish saves me much trouble), but it is inevitably miles too much food. And when it arrives and I start nibbling, I almost always realise that the last time I ordered this, I really only liked the dahl they served and had meant to just order that by itself. Sigh. Slow learner this one.
Anyhoo, today I felt like curry and naan for dinner so I thought I'd give tarka dahl a shot - from what I've learnt online and from my various recipe books, tarka dahl is much like your average dahl except that it has lots of garlic in it and it is made from yellow split peas, rather than lentils. I also made a different chicken curry for Andrew (he not really being one with the legume unfortunately).

Here's what I did:

Soaked about 200g yellow split peas half a day in cold water. This wasn't really sufficient to soften them but we'll get back to that point later.
Finely chopped half an onion and then very gently cooked it in 3 tbsp vegetable oil for about 10 mins. While that was happily sweating away I minced about 5 cloves of garlic and then added it to the onion. Various recipes were a bit vague on the required spices so I sort of threw things in as I fancied. The only thing I knew should be in there were black mustard seeds because the local restaurant version has these in it and I like the tapioca-like texture they add to the mushy peas. I added about a tsp of those. My version also included: 1/2 tsp (ish) ground cumin, about the same of tumeric and ground coriander and a healthy pinch of red chilli flakes. I cooked the spices with the onion and garlic for another 5 mins until the spices had darkened then I added the drained and rinsed split peas, stirred them about for a bit and covered them with 600mls or so of water. Basically then you bung the lid on and simmer until they are done. If you've soaked your peas properly (ie. overnight) then they should probably only take about 30-40 mins. I was both disorganised and impatient so when it looked like A's curry was ready and mine was still a wee way away, I realised some cheating would be necessary. I threw in about 1/2 tsp of baking soda, stirred the now fizzy mixture and let it simmer another 5 mins (while I cooked the naan - which were, may I just say, one of the best batches I've made. Their making did end up killing half a dozen rare-breed, organic, free-range eggs which made me momentarily bawl at the sadness of it all and then have to clean half a dozen broken eggs off the kitchen floor. Ever tried to sweep/scoop/mop up egg? Not easy! And they were such beautiful eggs. I really was looking forward to them for brekkie tomorrow). Anyway, I digress. The baking soda did achieve the required 'cheat' of disintegrating the split peas but it had the unfortunate side effect of turning the whole mixture a rather unappetising baby-shit brown colour. But, the proof after all is in the taste (and really, when do pulses ever look truly beautiful?) and the taste was pretty damn great actually. Every bit as good as the restaurant's version and exactly what I'd been hoping for. Success!

The naan, by the way, was the recipe I've got elsewhere on the page. No idea why they were so particularly delish today, but they really were. And yay - there's lots of spare dough in the fridge. I reckon they'd make a decent lunch-time pizza-base substitute tomorrow...

The curry I made for Andrew was basically this: http://www.curryhouse.co.uk/rsc/pasanda.htm
It was pretty good although I think it needed a tsp or so of sugar which I think I'd add next time. I also think I'd probably stir through another tbsp yoghurt at the end to add a bit more creaminess. But otherwise it was pretty good (oh, and I didn't bother frying the chicken before adding it to the sauce. Seemed like that step was just designed to make more dishes while adding very little in the way of flavour! It tasted fine without being fried first).

Ooh, and on an unrelated note, I bought some vanilla bean paste at the supermarket today and it smells divine. I'm dying to bake something incredibly vanilla-y with it tomorrow, so tune in later...

Hey Fishie Fishie

A year or so ago (gosh, could it really be closer to two years ago? Man time flies) I had a traumatising experience with some fresh trout from a less-than-impressive fishmonger (I'd include the link to the previous blog posting, but for the life of me I can't work out how to do that on these damn blogs). Such was the trauma of said fishie incident that I haven't considered the idea of whole fish since...until today (dum dum dum).

I was ordering the groceries online yesterday and none of the salmon options appealed so I thought I'd be brave and order some fresh whole trout. The website assured me that the fishies were gutted, scaled and otherwise cleaned (phew), so I did it. And you know what? What a bloody revelation. So lovely and fresh, incredibly cheap (really - under half the price of two scrawny white fish fillets and much less than the price of two salmon fillets) and actually very simple to prepare. All I did was pop some chopped garlic, sliced lemons and a bunch of random herbs (rosemary, lemon thyme, parsley) and some salt inside, then rubbed the outside with olive oil, salt and some chopped herbs. Threw them in a hot oven and 15 minutes later, hey fishie fishie. Yum! With the fishes we had new potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes and green beans. All in all, pretty damn tasty.

Fishies before their firing

I will say, though, that the fishies were quite bony and I did manage to get one of the tiny wee bones lodged in my throat (of course). I'd read somewhere that a quick swig of vinegar is an old Chinese remedy for swallowing fish bones and, rather impressively, it does actually work. Burns like bejesus going down and gives you the sensation of having recently thrown up (you know that acid burn feeling?) but it does seem to dissolve the fish bone.

Not raindrops nor roses, but these are a few of my current (not favourite) 'things'...

Thoughts for the day:

1. Diet cola and paprika flavoured Pringles are probably not the best food to help one get over a rapidly brewing cold. I wonder if Friday's leftover pizza will help?

2. I know I shouldn't laugh, but sometimes the mistakes my foreign-language students make in their essays are funny (repeatedly confusing speculators with spectaculars, for eg.)

3. They are predicting snow on Thursday. I am not sure I'm emotionally (or satorially) prepared for the complete onslaught of winter in all its icy glory. I do, though, have a massive stock-pile of dried pulses, so should a wintery apocalypse arrive, we'll live. We may not be best pleased about it come day 4 or 5, but we'd live.

4. I need a new fridge rather desperately. My FRACKING P.O.S fridge keeps freezing things and it is driving me completely mad. It has frozen an entire pumpkin for god's sake (which would be impressive if it weren't so damn annoying). But the damn thing is so fickle about what it's freezing so there's no real way of knowing its next target. The jug of filtered water (which surely has a pretty high water count) remains liquid yet the container of pre-cooked and previously frozen chicken which I'd defrosted has been refrozen (meaning I've had to throw it out or risk killing us both with salmonella). Cheese appears to be unfreezable (though I know cheese does actually freeze rather well since I always have some in my freezer for unexpected cheese-related emergencies), yet creme fraiche and yoghurt are susceptible. My vege have to be kept stuffed together on the top shelf as this is a lower risk area, and the condiments are on the bottom shelf (mayo also appears disinclined to freeze) - it's total madness and something Must Be Done.

5. I am trying desperately to eat healthily (in a manner that will actually result in weight loss - try to avoid mocking point no. 1 when you read this!) and am aware that my cooking repetoire is not really low-fat, low-sugar, low-carb. It is actually fairly high-fat, high-sugar and all about the carbs. I thus find myself rather torn...is there any way one can eat high fat, sugary, carb-loaded foods and still lose weight? Apparently excessive exercise results in bupkiss in the way of weight loss without food adjustments too. DAMNIT. I don't want to relinquish my Pringles or creme fraiche...DON'T MAKE ME DO IT.......

6. I really rather fancy a curry as soon as I start talking about cutting back. Mmm, garlic naan and dahl and bhajis. How ridiculous to have so little control over your own mind and body.

7. One of the things I've taught this semester has been 'constructions of the body', and in particular Shilling's theory of the body as a project/process. Thus, in addition to feeling frustrated about my own lack of control over my mind/body, I'm also filled with faint scholarly disgust and awareness of my own preoccupation with controlling and constructing my body at the moment. Oh the irony. And oh to be ignorant and uncaring.

8. In addition to the above, I find myself fixated with the story of the NZ miners and despite my wishes for a positive outcome (especially since two good family friends have loved ones trapped in the mine) I can't help but be filled with dread that this is not going to be a happily resolved story that Hollywood will want to tell.

Thus endeth today's odd collection of rambling thoughts.

In which my brain refuses to function

I can't decide if I'm tired or just useless. I don't know what it is about Fridays. I just have the hardest trouble doing anything productive at all on a Friday. It's as if my brain decides that a four-day week is perfectly sufficient and we'll just take Friday off thanks very much. The problem with that of course is that I actually have things to do on Fridays - work and otherwise. Apparently though, I have no ability to will myself to do things come Friday. All motivation has been exhausted Monday through Thursday and it's all I can do to haul my carcass off the sofa on the fifth day. Mind you, it doesn't help one's enthusiasm to wake up to the messiest kitchen in history (cleaning up after dinner on thursday night was clearly another step much too far). We've been trying really hard to get the sodding dishes done each night before bed because I just cannot cope with the idea of cooking at 8pm when I come home to find last night's dishes, but last night...well.

I have a two week gap in lectures which I think might be why I'm feeling so grey and fuzzy today - when the daunting task of teaching and writing lectures week to week started early October, I had this date in my mind as a period of respite to aim for. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the lectures and the interactions with students, really, but lecturing is a very draining process. I find it to be really adrenal (not sure if that's a word, but it's the closest I can come to describing the feeling...it's akin to going on stage for a play I think, and the buzz and exhaustion that you get when the curtain drops). So having a two week break, particularly as I'm also writing all my lectures on the hoof, is something me and my body have been looking forward to.

Friday is meant to me one of my 'research days' where I don't do anything bar my own research work, and I think that might also have something to do with the uselessness that seems to set in each week on this day (seeing as I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out just what direction I want to take with my research life). Ah maybe I'm just tired. I guess it's ok to be tired given I'm still adjusting to actually having a proper grown up job (for the first time in my life. Sad given I'm nearly 30, but I was doing productive things until now, honest). And I did go to the gym this morning, so I can at least feel mildly smug about that. So. Perhaps for the rest of the day, I'll aim to just get the house resembling something other than a poorly kept house of ill repute and won't beat myself about achieving nothing more. Frankly the Friday self-flaggelations are a bit tiring too.

Thank god there's a nice bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge and Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. When all else fails, ice-cream and booze will get us through.

Cold Stuff

My currently moustachioed man was last night kidnapped by the F1 faeries who employ him - he didn't make it home until 10pm (which even for him is pretty late). As a result he missed dinner and although I did save it for him, really, eating beef, vege and noodle stirfry with cashews at 10pm seems unnecessary (so he ate toast). This meant that for my lunch today, I had yummy noodly leftovers. Mmm, leftovers. I go through phases - sometimes I loathe the very sight of leftovers lurking in the fridge and would rather have anything but anything else (I'm a creature of diversity, you see. I bore very easily and that includes with food). Other times, though, I love leftovers - and today was one of those days.

I really really love cold noodles. I think the Japanese would support me on this front, but others think I'm mad. I also love cold pizza (because, really, is microwaved reheated pizza ever any good? No. Not even with the elaborate steam dispersal method to stop sogginess employed by my other half. Go cold I say!) and I looove cold pasta. Not in pasta salad form but rather, the bits that you really couldn't bring yourself to dish up into the already piled-high bowls for dinner. I can routinely be found hiding in the kitchen during a tv ad-break, scoffing clumps of cold, sauceless pasta from the pot it was cooked in. Mmm. I do have some limits - I'm not typically a cold rice fan, or a cold potato fan, but otherwise, bring it on.

What do you prefer to eat cold - or are you a 'if it's meant to be warm then warm it' person?

Catching pots and what-not

As is my normal activity in winter, I've been making soup today so that I'll have delicious lunches for the week and won't have to rely on campus catering facilities. But once again, my damn soup has caught to the bottom of the pot. This happens a lot and it really bugs me! I'm using my lovely Le Creuset, have the temp turned down as low as it can go and have plenty of liquid in the soup. Does anyone know how to stop things sticking/catching to the bottom of the pot?? I'm a fan of char-grilled flavour, for sure, but I wasn't really going for a char-grilled soup flavour. I'm not convinced it'll work...

Whispers of nothing

I have cooked nothing of interest this week despite being in possession of two new cookbooks (the aforementioned Nigella and Delia's genius tome which includes several pages devoted to the art of boiling an egg. Love it!). My monthly foodie magazine is all Christmassy at the moment which is a pain because A. I don't get to cook anything at Christmas since we spend it at relatives' houses and B. I get a bit Grinch-like if Christmassing starts too soon. So I find myself once again lacking in anything interesting to write about. You'd almost start to wonder why I have what claims to be a 'food blog' in the first place wouldn't you?!

Hm. What food related stuffs can I write about instead? Let's see...I was nearly run off the road by a piece of peanut-butter and banana topped toast (my fault, not the toast's). I ate (or rather, took one bite of and decided against any more) some seriously dubious 'bean salad' at work this week. Oh and some god-awful beige gloop mascarading as mushroom soup. I really need to get organised and start taking my own lunch because the pickings at work are seriously slim (unless you like sandwiches which most of Britain seems to. I, on the other hand, am not a fan at all - stale bread, mangy filling, slightly soggy, triangular packaging - no. Just no.). Ooh, mushroom soup though! That's what I feel like. Yay - inspiration, from a distinctly unlikely source. Must add mushrooms to my grocery delivery order...

And I am embracing my inner carnivore this weekend with some pork ribs to gnaw on while i watch the final F1 race of the season. Total cave-person in me, I admit. And unlikely to be appealing to the vegetarians among us, but I'm afraid I'm a strict omnivore. And they are organic free range pork ribs if it helps. Better that all of the animal is eaten and enjoyed than just the posh bits, surely?!

Are you cooking anything exciting this weekend and can you inspire me beyond my thoughts of fungus and bones?

From the barley to the ridiculous

I dreamt about Twistees the other night.* The weird thing was that the bag of snacks in my dream was actually the bag for Burger Rings** (ie. orange) and the name of the snack was Cheese Balls***, but they actually resembled Cheezels****. Yet I knew them to be Twistees. Weird.

You can't get anything vaguely resembling Twistees here in the UK. They sell things called Cheese puffs but they are singularly revolting and similar to Twistees only in the sense that they are orange. Every now and then (well, to be honest, there are more of the nows than the thens) I get a distinct hankering for Twistees. I suppose that's why I'm dreaming about them. It does seem a distinctly mundane thing to dream about, but there you go. My mind cares not for great philosophies or poetry...for me and my subsconscious, it's all about the fluro-orange corn/cheese snacks.

Your Unrequested Guide to NZ's Scary Snack World
* Corn-based cheese flavoured snack from NZ - and possibly Australia? Slightly bendy shaped sticks of cheesy, crunchy goodness. My favourite crisp/snack. So much the favourite that I now dream of them...
** Corn-based 'burger' flavoured snack from NZ. Shaped like a doughnut. Orange but a less fluro shade than Twistees. Second favourite crisp/snack, although it is certainly a close contest.
*** Balls of corn-based cheese flavoured snacks from NZ. Never really cared for Cheese Balls. Too cheesy I think. Also smelt distinctly nasty. Actually much closer to what they sell masquerading as Twistees here.
**** Doughnut-shaped orangey corn-based cheese flavoured snacks from NZ. Different doughnut shape to the Burger Rings - thicker? Acceptable as snack substitute if Twistees and/or Burger Rings aren't available.

WTF? Click here to read a review of possibly the most offensive cook-book to be published since 1947!

I can't decide what outrages me most about this book. The title (and infinite assumptions it makes about the stereotypical role of women in society), the seeming lack of any skill in actually writing or indeed writing recipes, or the assumption (as the author of the blog post notes) that cooking is a chore we should engage in purely to keep our (presumably) better half happy. It grates on so many levels and I'm offended by it as a feminist but also as someone who loves cooking (bar the occasional moment of 'I can't be arsedness'). Infuriating.

And when did post-feminism come to mean the exact opposite of feminism?? Post-modernism has some answering to do as far as I'm concerned.

I read an article in a NZ paper over the weekend which noted that gender equality in NZ is actually getting worse, not better, and that women are increasingly left out of the business board-room (except, one assumes, for when they have to bring in the coffee). Apparently the glass ceilings are little more than chipped, and part of me wonders what role books like this (with all their insidious sub-text) play in keeping women from truly shattering that ceiling. If mainstream publishing houses are happy to perpetuate the image of women as the timeless 50's housewife, if major sport continues to treat women as nothing more than the 'eye-candy' with which to decorate the male sporting plain, and if the WAG role continues to be what young women aspire to be, how will we ever achieve true parity?

Hm, not really a food-related post, but perhaps food for thought...

It's chicken soup time...

Brrr! And with a frosty gust of wind and some frozen shards of torrential rain, winter is upon us. So, for me, it's time for home-made chicken soup with barley. Not sure whether it's good for the soul, but it's certainly a delicious warming comfort on day's like this when you feel you're only just holding a bout of the dreaded lurgy at bay...

I'm not sure what it is about barley but I just love it. I think it must be a childhood reminiscence - homemade vege soup at Mum's and Grandma's always but always had lentils and barley in it. It somehow comforts me like nothing else I can think of.

What's your strange childhood comfort food...?

A story which has nothing to do with food except I am eating while writing it

So, a while back, I was accidentally abducted by a bus driver. He didn't mean to steal me away, but apparently forgot about me and the fact that I was still sitting on his damn bus, and so, deciding his bus was empty, thought he'd knock off early for the night and head home.

Unfortunately for both of us, I wasn't watching where we were going, so only realised my abduction once we were well off the beaten track and bloody miles from the bus depot or town (I was actually briefly terrified..."am I actually being abducted right now?? christ, should I panic or would that be an embarrassing over-reaction??" I love that I am worried about being polite when considering the idea of being abducted. But anyway...).

Once I made my presence known to the bus driver (startling the poor man half to death - 'But, but, the bus is empty?? What are you doing here??'), I had to listen to him repeating over and over (as he drove me waaaay back across town) 'You should have told me you were still on the bus'. Now, I was a little put out by this since I pretty much presume (as I'm sure most bus-users do) that the driver will assume you are on the bus until you get OFF. Simple, right? I'm yet to see a system of bus travel in which after every stop, all passengers must reassert their presence to the driver. Call me crazy but that seems inefficient. Apparently he had actually looked around the bus before heading home, and hadn't seen me...which seems improbable, unless we assume I now have powers of invisibility! V exciting. Always wanted a super-hero power. Unfortunately for me, this power seems distinctly person-specific. No one else I've encountered since has been prone to my powers, and as best I can tell, everyone can see me.

Until this morning.

I'm on the bus this morning and the bus driver forgot to stop and let me (and the one other poor lad who was also still on the bus) off at our stop after I rang the bell. Now, this is a fairly normal experience, I grant you except that....

...it was the SAME driver! The abducting driver!

So the questions I have are: is my invisibility power growing such I can now shield others as well?? Is that bus driver the only one prone to my invisibility cloak? And, more importantly, how the hell does this man fail to see me even when I'm STANDING on an all-but empty bus, with another live human shouting at him to stop?? Perhaps he just hates me and thus wishes to torment me by trapping me on his bus forever?

I just want to be seen and heard! :-(

Thank god for small mercies (in the form of lasange)

Last night (after a day of border line insanity wherein the crazy in me very nearly won) I forced myself to make a lasange while I was getting dinner ready. It was not quite the last thing i felt like doing, but pretty damn close to it. However, tonight, I've just gotten home after a decidedly dodgy commute (I really should have stopped for a coffee or a nap) with a long night of desperate last-minute lecture prep to do yet, and I can say with the utmost certainty that I have never in life been so glad to see a lasange. Thank goodness I forced myself to make it last night, and bless its deliciously microwaveable soul.

Reconnecting with Nigella

I love watching cooking shows on TV - all kinds and all chefs. I can (and do) easily while away the better part of a day mindlessly watching people saute and stir-fry.*

Nigella is one of my faves as far as TV viewing goes. I know she's completely over the top, but I can't help but feel enthused when I watch her glide seamlessly through the kitchen and her life. Sadly, though, I've never really been a huge fan of her recipes. I've got a couple of her books, sure, but they are not the ones I turn to when I need inspiration or to check on an idea. For some reason, our food styles have never really meshed. Until now...

Nigella's new book 'Nigella Kitchen' (oddly named...ought there be an apostrophe s?) is wonderful. It's part cook book, part food-autobiography (which is lovely - stories about people's connection with food are often more appealing than the food itself), but the recipes are lovely as well. And really, I feel I need to credit Nigella with my return to the kitchen and the foodie blogging. My lifestyle has changed immeasureably of late - I have become a commuter living in a house with someone who routinely works at the office until 8 or 9pm (after a 7.30am start). This has meant major adjustments, most notably for me, in the form of how and what I cook. To be honest, it's all been a bit dreary recently and I've found the very thought of having to cook something (anything) when getting home after an hour and a half commute at 8.30pm just far too much. I become immobilised and suddenly have a complete mind-blank. I know I'm meant to be a kitchen 'planner' which means you don't have to think at that time of night, and generally I do plan, but the last couple of weeks got away with me.

Enter Nigella.

Her beautiful book with its lovely, wholly realistic approach to feeding oneself and the family, has motivated me to remember what it is I love about cooking. For while it seems an effort, as Nigella pointed out to me (I feel as if we've had a conversation or two after reading her book!), I do genuinely enjoy cooking once I manage to drag myself off the sofa and into the kitchen. Even when I'm doing nothing more than throwing together eggs on toast (and I have come to the realisation that actually, eggs on toast at 8 or 9pm is perfectly reasonable dinner fare), the gentle rhythms of the kitchen are very soothing and do much more to relax me after a long day of navigating my way through a new job and rush-hour traffic than any amount of vacant staring at the TV with a certain food-chain's burger grasped limply in my hand could. So thank you, Nigella, for your realism and your inspiration. I hope that my sanity and my food will be all the better for it!



* The exception to this rule is Sophie Dahl who appeared tried to be a bit like Nigella but managed to kill the concept completely. Talk about over the top. If your recipes don't hold up, then no amount of reading poetry to camera with a soft-focus lens gently blurring life's edges is ever going to make up for it. God, but she was annoying. Even I couldn't watch her, and I am generally known to a have pretty low TV standards threshold.