cook more

Forgot to take a photograph until halfway through eating it, so excuse the rubbish picture.

I’m quite proud of this one: gazpacho to start (although that was bought, so doesn’t count), followed by a smoked haddock and quinoa kedgeree and scallops with curry dressing.

It was yum. Even if I do say so myself. (Well, if I don’t, who will?)

Sumit’s tips for making ravioli:

First and probably most relevant: If you own a pasta maker and some ravioli trays (as I do), it is worth digging them out. You may think it’ll be fine just kind of banging the dough out and cutting it into random folded shapes. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s not true.

Second, don’t just substitute any old flour for pasta flour. Wholemeal bread flour might sound like a healthy alternative, and it is! If you don’t mind ravioli with the flavour and texture of wholemeal bread.

Third, choose your friends carefully. Those who insist on unorthodox cooking methods should be ignored. Poaching is for fish, not pasta. On the other hand, if you are going to cook in a state of mild inebriation (cough) you should probably ensure that you’re in like-minded company. And they’re more likely to eat the end result.

Okay, this week’s meal was a bit of a cop-out, but sometimes simple is better.

_{And let’s not mention the hash browns.}

A bit behind updating this goal, like everything else at the moment, but I have been cooking more. Expectations were running worryingly high after the samosa and dinosaur pie triumph. The bar had been set high; perhaps too high.

Inspiration struck after an impulse purchase of a bag of okra, which led me a recipe for “Spicy Afrian Okra” [sic]. And to go with it, “African grilled tilapia”. (Yes, I realise “African” is a bit vague, but I didn’t write the recipes. With no evidence whatsoever, I’m going to pretend this is a meal typically cooked over an open fire on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.)

Two hiccups. First, I went with the recipe when it suggested deseeding the chilli for the sauce, which took off rather too much of its edge for my liking. Second, my crappy fridge deep-froze and then thawed the okra before I got to my friends’ house, necessitating an emergency late-night run to the grocers’ for replacements. But it came out all right in the end.

This week’s meal, inspired by this picture. Mine has a more conventional filling, tho. Made entirely from scratch, including the crust! Came out a tiny bit sour because I was using an American recipe and mistranslated the amount of lemon juice. (Oh America, when will your measurement
system catch up with the 18th Century? Bras are measured in cup sizes, not food.) This pie made a number of my friends very happy …

starting from a very, very low base. if you don’t count frozen food, then I barely ever cook – perversely, I’ve probably cooked more meals from scratch at other peoples’ houses than at my own over the past year.

Why? I’m out a lot, and I find cooking for one depressing and pointless. But! I need to rehabilitate my house as a home, and I have a flatmate at the moment, so it makes more sense to cook proper meals.

For the moment, I’m setting the unambitious target of one cooked meal a week. This week’s is already done: prawn laksa, based on a recipe from the Cranks book. It tasted much nicer than it looks in the picture. Yum.