Another Food Blog

One of my favourite drinks when it’s sunny (warmth is a bonus) is lemonade or limeade with fresh mint. The juice of either of these, plus still water and sugar or Splenda makes a fine drink, but the mint elevates it to another level. I have drunk four large glasses of lemonade with heaps of bruised mint leaves today, even though it’s a bit chilly with the sun. The lack of heat has made it easy to resist the addition of Pimms.

Oranges and lemons in my kitchen this afternoon

Journalist and foodie author Nancy Rommelmann has the goods on the foolish Chicago foie gras ban.

Thursday night, we had a couple of friends (Brian Micklethwait and Patrick Crozier) round for supper. Brian has a thing about food which resembles in any way a school dinner – by which I mean he does not like that sort of food – so I picked a Tex-Mex menu, as I figured few schools serve that kind of thing. (That said, my high school did do a mean taco salad on Wednesdays.)

Pre-dinner nibbles consisted of chorizo slices laid out with roasted artichokes, roasted red peppers, black olives, and tiny hot banana peppers, alongside which I had some rye bread and French wholegrain mustard. Nobody touched any of this, so I sent Brian home with the chorizo and vegetables. Instead, they filled up on the tortilla crisps and salsa I had made.

I skipped the starter course and went straight to the main: spicy citrus chicken (made with a marinade of freshly squeezed orange and lemon juices, ground coriander, garlic, coriander leaf, and ground cumin), Spanish rice (recipe courtesy of Elise Bauer’s excellent Simply Recipes), and black eyed beans. Dessert was a trifle-type thing, though I also ended up offering everyone ice cream as well. Then I foisted all of our leftover Easter chocolates on our guests, as well as cup after cup of the best coffee in the world.

Brian, thankfully, ate everything that was put on his plate.

My instinct when having people over for a meal is always to go completely over the top in terms of food. I am never knowingly undercatered. But the truth is that when people come round for something to eat, their expectations really are not that high. Most would be perfectly content with a high quality tapas-type selection purchased from a good delicatessen. If you wouldn’t be, then I pity the hostess who has to meet your expectations. (Personally, I would offer you the option of contacting the Dept of Dinner Parties ombudsman, who will hear your complaint and offer you a full refund if he considers it a worthy one.)

For breakfast, I made myself scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, plus wholemeal toast and strawberries. (One of the perks of my new freelance status is being able to nip to the kitchen at 9.30 – which is much better for breakfast than, say, 7 – and rustle up something like this to eat.)

I was in central London for meetings this afternoon, and ended up having salad with steamed salmon at the food store Fresh & Wild in Soho. (Fresh & Wild is owned by the Whole Foods grocery chain, which I discovered – to my delight – in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. Their image is very crunchy granola, all organic this and wheat-free that, but the founder and CEO is a staunch free marketeer and self-discribed libertarian, so I’m happy to line his pockets.) You can buy your lunch in the shop and then eat it in a little seating area off to the side, with the useless wooden forks they give you. The salad was fine – and for £4.50, it ought to be – though the dressing was made with mayonnaise. I need to start carrying packets of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar in my handbag, methinks.

This evening I steadfastly (and easily, thanks to the salmon salad) avoided the canapes and champagne at an Adam Smith Institute event. When we got home, I made a simple dinner of salmon steamed with lime juice, soy sauce, and Tabasco, plus beetroot salad. I know the health alarmists say that one should only have this kind of fish a few times each week at most, but as the people of Iceland and Japan seem to be doing okay on their fish-heavy diet, I won’t lose any sleep tonight.

Supper tonight was a lemony pasta dish I have made many times before. It is quick to make, but the key is to prepare all of your ingredients while the pasta is cooking, because everything goes in right at the end.

While the (wholewheat) fusilli cooked, I grated a bit of Parmesan and the zest of one (unwaxed) lemon. I also washed and chopped lots of flat leaf parsley. (My boyfriend’s mother taught me a trick to chop herbs much more easily and quickly: Just pick the leaves off the stems, throw them in a small glass, and snip with kitchen scissors until they’re in bits.) Finally, I separated two egg yolks from their whites, which went in the fridge for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Once the pasta was cooked, I drained it and put it back in the pan, adding the egg yolks, grated cheese and lemon zest, all of the juice from the lemon, plus 500g of cooked small prawns, fleur de sel and pepper, and a few dessertspoons of Total 0% Greek Yoghurt (if I wasn’t being balanced about things, I’d use double cream instead). After giving everything a good stir over low heat, I added half the chopped parsley, plated the pasta, and scattered the rest of the bright green leaves over the finished dish.

This was the first time I’ve added prawns to this dish, and it worked very well. It’s the kind of thing you can make out of ingredients you’re likely to have around the house anyway, so is a good standby supper, while still being special enough to serve to guests. We had salad and fresh strawberries to finish off the meal.

Breakfast this morning consisted of two Weetabix, of which I am quite fond, with some semi-skimmed milk. Lunch was a sandwich from Boots in Charing Cross station. I normally stay away from packaged sandwiches, as they’re almost always full of junk, but I was en route to a meeting and distractingly hungry. Plus, I managed to find one of roast chicken with low-fat mayonnaise on wholemeal bread. I’m really pleased to see more sandwiches on wholemeal bread being offered in Boots, as it’s the only sort of bread that does one any good. With the sandwich, I had some red grapes.

For dinner we had a pulse stew; sounds vile, but it was very nice and is in fact an old, highly adaptable standby recipe of mine. I first cooked some chopped onion in a bit of Fry Light, along with some ground cinnamon, cayenne, and garlic. The smell of that combination was out of this world. I then added chickpeas, pinto beans, red kidney beans, and some other kind of bean that I can’t remember. Two tins of chopped tomatoes and a bit of chicken flavoured Bovril went in before bringing it all to a boil and then simmering for a few minutes. I prepared this before leaving the house today and when I got in I just heated everything up and garnished the stew with lots of chopped fresh coriander. We also had some brown rice and steamed green beans with Tabasco on the side, and a green salad to follow.

There was a huge quantity of the stew left over, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be having it for lunch tomorrow. I reckon we’ll have got six sizable portions out of it for a cost of about £1 – not bad. (Having just spent  £144 on the week’s shopping, I feel the need to remind myself just how good I am at stocking up on cupboard staples that will be feeding us even months from now.)