Food Minia

  A few weeks  ago I went to the Schoolhouse Cafe in Paoli, Wisconsin with a couple friends for lunch.  Paoli is a tiny little town with a few shops and this wonderful cafe.  The schoolhouse was built in 1854 and became a cafe in 2008.  I've been there a few times and each time I've really enjoyed the food along with the atmosphere.     I had the Goat Cheese Salad (mixed greens, pecan encrusted goat cheese, pears, strawberries, grapes, blueberries with a balsamic vinaigrette).  It was so good, especially the fried goat cheese!  I don't know when I'll get back to the Schoolhouse so I had to try and recreate this salad at home.  I didn't have any pecans so I used seasoned bread crumbs and it turned out great!     The first thing you want to do is put the goat cheese in the freezer for about 15 minutes to firm it up so it’s easier to slice.  I used 4oz log of goat cheese but i t’s easy to scale up or down, depending on how many people you’re feeding. After sli

Mincemeat and apple streusel, what could be more comforting? Perhaps the addition of a big bowl of softly whipped cream or a jug of steaming yellow custard. Without further ado I will give you the recipe as I know that this is a cake that you will want to make immediately. 175g self raising flour 125g sugar 1 egg 125g unsalted butter a pinch of salt 1 large cooking apple, peeled, cored and sliced Half a jar of mincemeat, better if it is homemade. Crumble about 6 digestive biscuits. 1 baking tin approx 18cm x 27cm. It will not be a problem if it is slightly larger or smaller. Not too much though. Heat the oven to C160 fan or C170 top and bottom heat. Put the butter, sugar and egg in a largish bowl and beat well to combine. No need to cream really as this is not going to be a sponge. Fold in the flour to make a fairly stiff mixture. Sort of half wak between a sponge and pastry. Spoon into a  buttered baking tin. Smooth out with the back of a spoon or a spatula. Top with spoonfulls of min

I am not sentimental. My husband complains about it a lot. "Don't go near her, Sam," Giles will warn my son as he toddles towards me, eyes shining, with his chubby arms outstretched. "Your mother doesn't like clinginess. Don't ask for a hug or anything, she hates that. That's not the way to her heart. " "Oh fuck off, you dickhead," I will snap. But he is basically right. How I have ended up with the world's neediest husband and, in turn, the world's neediest toddler, must some sort of dastardly revenge wreaked upon me by some unknown force. At least there's Kitty. Thank God for Kitty! She couldn't give a flying shit whether I'm alive or dead. Anyway, I'm not sentimental. And I've never been more sure about anything as I've been about not having any more kids. I want to want to have more children, just like I want to want to enjoy clubbing, ski-ing and "girlie dinners". But I don't. Yet even I

This pastry cream is a standard of patisserie cooking and can be used in many of the cakes that you can buy in your favourite pastry shops. If you don't want as much as this then scale the recipe down. So to make it you will need: 400ml of whole milk 100ml of cream 150g egg yolk, this is approximately 7 yolks. It is best to measure as not all eggs are created equal. 150g sugar 36g cornflour 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence Put the egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and mix lightly.  Add the cornflour and whisk together fo a few seconds until evenly blended. Now add the cold milk and cream and mix to combine the ingredients.  Cook in the microwave for 2 minutes at high power. Open the microwave and mix well. This makes sure that the heat is evenly distributed. Replace the cream into microwave and cook for a further minute. Remove and mix well. Do this twice more and by the time that you have cooked it for 5 minutes in total it should be cooked. If you are nervous, you can cook for 30 seco

Yesterday I demonstrated how to use a thin sheet of genoise sponge to my wonderful WI. I had already made the sponge. To cook it I used the sheet that you can see in the image. I bought it last year or even the year before from Lakeland and luckily they still have them. So click the image to go to the Lakeland site. To make a thin sponge to just fill the sheet: 1 egg yolk 2 whole eggs 75g plain flour 75g caster sugar 25 butter melted and allowed to cool. It should still be liquid Grease and flour the silicone tray. If you don't do this, it will stick, I don't care what claims the manufacturers make.Put the sugar onto a sheet of ovenproof paper and warm gently.  Whisk the eggs until they are starting to lighten in colour.  Add the warm sugar and continue to whisk to the ribbon stage by which time the mixture shold be cool. Now remove about a quarter of the mixture and fold in the melted butter. Add this back into rest of the egg mixture and fold it gently into the mix. Pour into

Lemon curd is one of my favourite preserves and one that I try to keep in the fridge for when the urge takes me to make a lemon cake. Light sponge filled with a generous layer of lemon curd is one of life's real pleasures. So to make lemon curd you will need: 4 lemons. If your lemons are small then up this to 5. All in all you will need about 300g. 250g Unsalted Butter 350 g Sugar,  4 Eggs lightly whisked Zest of 2 - 3 lemons, Again this depends on the size. Put the butter and sugar into a saucepan and heat to about 40 degrees C. Don't get worked up about this, it is just a little warmer than body temperature. Remove from the stove and beat in the eggs a little at a time. Now return to the stove with the lemon juice and zest.  Bring to the boil, stiring all of the time. When it comes to a rapid boil it is ready. Remove from the heat. Delia suggests adding cornflour to the mix. If you do this, add it to the lemon juice before  mixing into the butter and sugar mixture.

I have rarely done video posts on this blog because I think my actual presence probably spoils whatever voice you have for me in your head. Historically I have posted videos and everyone has gone "Oh my god you're so posh fnar fnar!" which I have found embarrassing.  But in these last days, I feel I have less to lose, maybe it's time to throw a video into the mix just for a laugh.  So the way I did this was just to write a normal post in a document and read it out - recipe and all - sitting at my desk in my "study" (our junk room).  Here it is. This is what I really sound like, I'm afraid. Thank you in advance for not being mean. 

What's the point in making tikka masala if you don't have any naan to swipe up the leftover sauce?  If I had known how easy it was to make naan on the stovetop, I would've made it a long time ago!  Since I had some garlic and scallions lying around, I decided to make the garlic version, which let's face it, is so much better than the plain version. I found the dough to be on the wetter side, so make sure you work it on a floured surface and use a floured rolling pin or else it'll end up sticking everywhere and to everything.  Sadly, naan does not keep well so I would suggest eating it the same day it is made. Garlic Naan (adapted from Saveur ) makes 4 pieces 6 tablespoons water heated to 115°F 1/2 teaspoon honey 1 heaping teaspoon active dry yeast 1 cup all-purpose flour 1⁄4 cup plain, full-fat Greek yogurt 1 tablespoon canola oil 1⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon chopped scallions Melted ghee or butter, for

One of the dishes I knew I was going to miss the most when I gave up meat was chicken tikka masala.  I love that tangy, spicy sauce so much that sometimes I've even asked for just the sauce without any chicken to eat with naan.  So when I saw this recipe for a tofu tikka masala on Food52 I was pretty excited to try it out, especially since I've never cooked Indian food before. The Food52 recipe is itself adapted from the Cook's Illustrated chicken tikka masala recipe.  I love that America's Test Kitchen took this exotic dish and made it accessible to the typical American home.  All the ingredients are easily found at just about any grocery store, and you don't even need a tandoor to cook the tofu, just your broiler and a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet.  I'd recommend spraying the wire racks with cooking spray beforehand so that they're easier to clean after. I think I like the tofu version even more because I used to find the chicken kind of dry. 

I often marvel at how similar I am to my husband. Neither of us ring friends "for a chat", we are suspicious of ski-ing, believe Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves , to be the best film ever made, like to go to bed promptly at 10pm, get lonely and think about death, talk too much and too fast and don't think Monty Python is funny. Even after we had children, we broadly agreed on things - that we ought to do our best to make sure our children eat well, sleep in their own beds and get plenty of exercise, but that we ought not sacrifice a happy family atmosphere in order to achieve those things in paramount. But a sticking point has emerged. A terrible chasm in our marriage and parenting: THE TELLY. Giles thinks that ideally our children ought to watch no telly at all. He knows that this is not practical but believes that this would be best. No telly, no iPad. Ever. I, on the other hand, do not care. I don't care because I know that I don't let the kids watch telly all fa

I'm very late to chia seeds, like I'm late to everything, except when I have to be somewhere, in which case I am always punctual. Mostly I'm late to chia seeds because I dislike food fads - I don't like feeling like I'm a sucker for some stupid trend, (she says rummaging through her cross-body bag and kicking off her espadrilles). But I came across a recipe the other day for a chia seed "pudding", which is actually something you eat at breakfast time. It involved almond milk and a blackberry coulis and was perfectly disgusting. But the texture of the chia seeds, soaked overnight in the almond milk, was interesting. I thought... there must be something in this. And while I dislike very much stupid health fads and detoxes and exclusion diets, there does seem to be enough good things about chia seeds - (mostly, from my point of view that they are full of protein and quite filling) - for it to be worth having them in your diet once in a while. So after a coupl

Once upon a time, going bikini shopping for me was easy. The only stipulation was that the pants had to have NO TIE-SIDES because I find them annoying and they make my hips look w-i-d-e. Other than that, anything went. String, halter-neck, strapless: whatever! I had the world's most buoyant bosom. Literally pneumatic. But now. O God! O God save me! Two children later and bikini shopping is hell. Sheer hell. If I find something that supports my up-top drooping woman-flesh then it is so structured with so much padding that I might as well just be fully-clothed and be done with it. Or I find a top that is okay but then cannot find the bikini bottom, as I squat on the shop floor, rummaging through those awful clackety bikini pant hangers, clackety clackety RAGE WHY ARE THERE ONLY 40 SIZE 6s HERE????? I bought a collection of mad, non-matching things from TopShop and Asos. Then I went to the Selfridges bikini department and considered spending £300 on something from Heidi Klein or Melis

Genuinely the best thing about writing this blog for the last six years has been you. No, really - YOU. All of you. Thank you. But particularly anyone who left a comment. Any comment delighted me, but there have been some stand-out ones that I carry with me, in a small way, at all times. That I will carry with me always.  I have never excelled at anything. Not as a child, not at school, not really in life at anything do I feel truly brilliant or even really accomplished. It's my own fault - I'm lazy, I give up. I am not determined or thorough. Those are not the qualities you find in stars of track or field.  I suppose what I'm saying is that I haven't had much opportunity to be a praise junkie because it didn't come around that often. Until this blog. Suddenly, there was praise. I wrote it down and you fucking loved it. Just loved all the angry crazy boiling PISS going around my head - you LOVED it.  I certainly didn't do all that fucking cooking because I like

Of course, for all my new-life evangelical shit about how my kids are all so easy now and we're in the broad sunlit uplands and so on, it sort of only applies at home. Going on holiday with two children under 5 is a bit like being tossed back into the frying pan, having narrowly escaped the fire by clinging on to the mantlepiece and trying to hide behind some invitations and a Jo Malone candle. You think you're so bloody clever, then you strip away nursery and the au pair and everything familiar and suddenly you're not high-fiving yourself quite so much. So we found ourselves in Ibiza last week in a strange villa, dazed and confused. It was not our first-choice villa - we had booked that a full calendar year in advance, but then it was rented out from underneath us at the last minute by an owner dazzled and corrupted by a 3-month block-booking. The dead lizard on the front step of the replacement "real Ibiza", "rustic" villa was an ominous sign. The she