Cooking for One

For the past week, every night in Watford, all it does is rain, rain and pour down more rain.  I am secretly quite pleased, because local legends tell us that the Cailleach (a Celtic representation of the Crone) will soon be running out of fuel for her kitchen fire and so she will set out to collect more wood.  If the weather is clear and the sun is shining around the time of Imbolc (Jan 31 - Feb 2) then winter will continue, because it is only when the weather is foul and she is unable to gather any wood for her fires that she will use all her powers to bring winter to a hasty end.  During the days, however, the sun is shining, and the last of the snows have already long melted away and I am becoming concerned that we're in for another long haul period of the winter freeze.  Here's hoping the weather turns foul again soon!  If only for the next few days!

David feeding a hungry robin
along the trail

So the boys went on a roadtrip to Derby on the weekend (I had to attend a very important meeting last Friday so I could not join them in the end) so whilst they spent the weekend visiting one of the oldest and closest friends I have in England and walking around in the snowfall surrounding Dovedale (exercising their legs and building them up for the massive 26 mile trek that we plan to do this year from Stonehenge to Avebury (to raise money for Alzheimer's)), I too was tempted to wander far and wide from home but realising that I was also being given the opportunity to actually get some tasks done around the house that I'd been meaning to do for some time but never getting a round to it, I set to work creating the biggest mess and then tidying it all up again (something my cousin in Australia, Daniela, had predicated would occur, although she seemed to have less faith in my ability to get it all nice and tidy again before the boys returned home, which I'd like to point out that I did manage in the end).  Having so much "to-do" around the place the first thing I did was create a to-do list. Then I set about tearing the place apart. 

Fiona and Fox in Dovedale

It's funny how when you lose the crowd to cook for, the desire to cook can sometimes completely fly out the window.  Once upon a time,  when I found myself alone - before I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance, I ended up relying on take-aways.  Back in the day, David travelled more frequently to foreign locations and initially I would be a little jealous, although once I started to travel for work I soon discovered that it ends up not being as glamorous as we first assume it will be.  He spent most of his time abroad in conference centres or at client locations (factories that produce semi-conductors are not all that exciting it turns out).  So whenever he was away, I would simply sample a different local take-away menu every night.  It was a time of terrible dietary habits and sometimes, if i was feeling sad and lonely (and terribly sorry for myself) I would just skip dinner altogether and drink heavily instead.  However, once you have removed alcohol and cigarettes from your diet the hunger returns fairly quickly and as I am now gluten intolerant there was no way I could just ring up a take-away (sadly Watford does not cater much AT ALL for those afflicted, although there is a fish and chip shop in Rickmansworth that does use gluten free batter on request, it is just a little too far from our home for this man to go roaming and even on a bus it is about 2 hour round trip (and as the bus service is privately run, it is ridiculously expensive to boot!).  So having no desire to actually cook anything, I reached for the convenience food that we store in the freezer for just these lazy occassions.

We always keep several boxes of gluten free battered fish fingers - both Sainsburys and Tescos sell their own range and they always cost twice the amount of other branded non-gluten free varieties and they are NEVER on special.  However, they are a source of comfort for both David and myself as we regularly used to consume them in our childhood and they are one of my favourite "fast food" emulations [3-4 fingers, grilled (or fried, sometimes) between two slices of buttered bread with generous dollops of mayonnaise and tomato sauce and individually wrapped slices of processed cheese (the cheese truly has to be of this variety to turly emulate the fast food chain's plasticky texture)].   However, I noted that as we had completely run out of gluten free bread, the fish finger sandwich would not be on the menu tonight and so I had to come up with an alternative.

So with 10 fish fingers under the grill (hey, my Wii Fit board, after rudely declaring that I hadn't been using it for over 1200 days and intimating that I would be the size of a small elephant, did an about face when it mentioned that I had lost 8lb since my last visit and that I was actually 23 years old!  I DESERVED 10 fish fingers!) I returned back to my roots, my first ever cookbook, the Sarah Brown classic tome.  I actually didn't need to check this at all, because what I consider to be the simplest and tastiest recipe of béchamel sauce that you ever could make is one that I have made so often I have learned it completely by heart.  I have even gone as for as adapting this recipe to fit whatever ingredients I have to hand (I've added, on occasions, homemade curry powder (it's always homemade, because once you make your own, you NEVER want to have a store bought variety EVER again), chilli flakes, cumin seeds, fennel seeds... oh the endless varieties and combinations of flavours that this little sauce can contain).  I consider béchamel sauce, which Sarah and most folk tend to just call "white sauce" to be THE NUMBER ONE sauce in my repertoire, mainly because it is so easy to make (I would say Hollandaise is my favourite, but, if you've been following this blog or have any experience with making Hollandaise, you'll understand why this is not something I decide to make very often at all).  My mother may have made her own variety of this sauce (not that she ever taught it to me although her mustard version with mashed potato and hard boiled eggs was one of my favourite childhood dishes) and her mother once showed me how she made her version which used only the cooking water from the vegetables (and no milk at all - clearly it was a war time recipe and I remember painting a smile on my face as I ate it but secretly wanting to throw the vaguely tasteless gloop in the bin after the first spoonful) but it was Sarah Brown who taught me about the joys that could be gained when you infused milk.  Why had nobody ever taught me this most wonderful method of adding flavour to liquids before?  I vaguely remember my mother saying that she was aware that you could do this, but something about the extra time it took – now she did used to rush home from work to get the dinner on, and in the mornings of course she would get up extra early to do the vacuuming and cleaning… so I'll give her that one (and a few others).

Initially I used to religiously follow Sarah Brown's stove top method.  Add 300ml of milk to a saucepan, into this goes dried mixed herbs, 10 peppercorns, a bay leaf, 1/2 small onion roughly chopped and of course the obligatory salt and pepper.  After the advent and arrival of our first microwave oven, I also stumbled across my second most favourite Sarah Brown cookbook, the Vegetarian Microwave Cook Book, in a discount book store (for some reason, probably due to the fact that Sarah's BBC cookery shows were never actually screened on Australian television, I tended to find her books here heavily discounted, which of course was fantastic for me, because as a struggling student/unemployed actor [as I was for many years in my youth] I could rarely afford to actually purchase books from a bona-fide bookstore).  THIS cookbook is probably unlike ANY other cookbook ever written for a microwave oven – I have never found one quite like it – it was brilliant at teaching you how to use this little device to cook almost anything and everything in it.  I still use it to check how long a certain vegetable will need to cook, and once you learn how to cook rice or other grains, you'll never need to buy that stupid ridiculously expensive "Microwave" rice variety again (and I never did).

Infusing milk in a microwave, provided you have a pyrex or other suitable microwave proof measuring jug, is a convenience that every modern cook, once discovered, rarely returns to the more traditional method of doing so.  You measure out the quantity of milk required and then chuck in all the ingredients that you wish to infuse.  Pop it on the "high" setting for about a minute, leave to stand for a few minutes (just leave it in the microwave), then give it a quick stir and pop it on high again for another 30 seconds.  This really gets the flavours flowing into the milky mixture.  I now commonly add a stock cube instead of the salt and pepper and I have seen some recipes that call for a chopped carrot, but I've never noticed it making much of a difference.  I imagine celery would… now that I think of it…. and when I have an abundance of fresh herbs I use these instead of the dried variety for added flavour.

The next step in making the sauce is to melt a nice heaped tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.  Add to this a couple of tablespoons of flour and stir vigorously, I use a fork for this, until the mixture resembles "fine breadcrumbs".  I must admit, this terminology used to confuse me a little (having only ever been aware of the dried variety) and I find that I add a little more flour now that I use a gluten free variety.  The more flour you add, the thicker the sauce becomes and it is down to a personal choice whether you want to go for a custard like consistency or a less gluggy version - experiment until you get the consistency you desire.  I think I am still experimenting every time I make this sauce and from the outset I am never truly certain about what I am after until the sauce starts to thicken and tells me….!  Once you've got the flour and butter mixed well (commonly known as a "roux") you can start to add your milk – in quite small amounts.  If you add too much milk too quickly, you'll get lumps (which you can fix by straining the sauce through a strainer, but seriously…. this is right pain and you've added extra things to your washing up list now (and cleaning a glugged up strainer is never fun)).  If you add too little milk too slowly the milk evaporates and you're left with glue so you need to find the right combination over time but carefully does it is the best song to sing whilst you making this sauce.  Whatever you do, don't stop stirring (and remove the saucepan from the heat regularly to prevent the sauce from burning, as once you've got the flavour of burnt milk in your sauce, it is, I promise you, well and truly ruined).  Every time the sauce starts to thicken, it's time to add more milk, until you've added the final drops.  As I'm pouring straight from the Pyrex jug into the pan, I find using a tea strainer really helpful to stop the bits from falling into the saucepan.  Some folks will strain the milk into another jug prior to making the roux but again, you end up with more washing up that way.

While I was making the sauce, I was also boiling a large pan of water into which I'd thrown a child's handfull of salt (to make it "as salty as the sea" – no oil though, pasta won't stick together if you ensure that it is stirred while it is boiling and oil will just form a slick on the top of the water anyway so it is pretty pointless to add).  Into this, I poured a small amount of pasta.  I never mind too much if I cook too much pasta – it fries up very nicely the next day in a small amount of butter - and with fried eggs, grilled halloumi and some microwaved baked beans (along with oodles of ketchup) it makes a very nice brunch indeed.

To turn the sauce into a cheese variety, II will often stir a few tablespoons (or more, depending on how lardy I want it) of creamed cheese into the mix and, depending on how cheesy I'm feeling, I will add anything from half a cup to a cup and a half of grated cheddar.  This instantly turns the sauce into cheesy delight and no need to bake this version of macaroni cheese (although along with baked tomatoes and peppers, this can become a gorgeous baked dish), I often just throw some oven baked tomatoes in the bottom of the bowls before adding pasta and pouring oodles of this cheesy béchamel over the top without baking.

And that was my salute to the solo meal.  The cheese sauce was delicious with the fish fingers – I always somehow feel that cheese and fish should be frowned upon – if I have a tuna mayo sandwich and I add slices of cheddar to it, I feel like I'm breaking some gastronomic rule of thumb… but I like cheese with fish!  And regardless, I was on my own - I could have had fish fingers and custard if I had wanted as there was no one else present to tell me I should not.

Needless to say, when I got on the Wii Fit board the next day, I'd somehow managed to gain a few pounds.  When the board asked me why I thought that might have happened, I told it I had no idea.  "Do you really have no idea?" it questioned back.

Lucky it can't read my blog….. can it?

Terribly sad that in our history's pages, not every stage has advanced Australia fair

Australia Day approaches and I am starting to feel quite anxious about this day.  Having lived in England for over 15 years now, my favourite Australia Day is one that I completely forget - it just passes by and I haven't noticed any nonsensical racist statements about who "owns" the country or who "belongs" there, whether you should be proud of your flag or whether you should just "get out and go back to where you came from".

I'd love to just post my favourite "Lammy" (Lamingtons for the non-aussies out there) recipe and be all patriotic, but being a child who was born to parents who arrived there on a boat, this is not so easy for me to do.  That, and the fact that I still cannot get married there, and if I did get married somewhere else, say England (who will probably allow me to marry before the end of this year is up) it wouldn't even be recognised back in the country of my birth.  Oh, and that anti-discrimination bill, which actively discriminates against me and allows bigoted folks to pathetically hide behind their biblical interpretations and continue to spout homophobic nonsense to try and hurt, stamp out and destroy me and my family with their anti-family statements....

Here is a picture of Australia as it probably once was - when I first saw this, I nearly cried.  It moved me in ways that I had never thought possible. I say it probably once was because, to be honest, there is no way to be absolutely sure about very much of Australia's past because after the "invasion" of the white settlers and convicts, there was a mass genocide that nearly drove the original inhabitants to the brink of extinction.

When I was still in prep (short for "prepatory" a sort of pre-primary school class that isn't quite kindergarten, but it's not quite "school" either), my parents received a visit from a German couple and their son (who was quite a bit older than my brother and I) and they stayed with us for a good few months.  My parents had grown up with this couple together back in Germany and soon after they had arrived we all took the most amazing roadtrip around Australia.  I say around but if you look at the map I've displayed, we sort of started in the bottom right hand corner of the mainland (which I call "home") and then went up and followed the coast before turning left just prior to reaching "sydney" (about the end of the first yellow 'state') and then went inland after hugging the southern coast for a short distance.  Once we got to the dusty centre, we started to encounter the indigenous Australians.  They lived in "camps", often near modern day watering holes (pubs) and because my parents were rather beautiful in their innocence, I had been made aware that the descendants of the original inhabitants were "poor".  At least that's what we believed back then.  It was like my parents had fallen prey to believing in the meme of the "noble savage", which is far better than what some of the locals actually felt about these wondrous people.  These folks wanted to live in the desert - it was their way of life and they chose it.  This is what my parents believed.  I was, of course, dreadfully concerned that the children did not have any toys (being so poor) and as I had a bunch of toys that I neither wanted nor needed, I packed them all up and intended on giving these to the poor aboriginal children.  I've asked my mother about this since and she assures me that this was actually my idea.  I was about 6 at the time.

We had super 8 footage that my mother had taken of the event.  Although I believe this footage has now degraded and therefore discarded (a little too hastily, I'll add, but my mother went through a phase of eradication... of "clearing out the clutter" and I cannot blame her, really, as my parents downsized their accomodation to a small holiday cottage and there just was no room for anything anymore). Before it had we used to view it so many times that it has indelibly imprinted itself upon my mind's eye and I can still see those smiling faces, the teeth so white in contrast to their skin as I handed out these charitable "gifts" of bits of plastic to these kids who really didn't need any bits of plastic in their lives.  However, it was obvious to anyone, even me at the time, that they really loved them.  I also remember the three women (mothers, no doubt) who were supervising this process and muttering to one another all the time.  They really were not  particularly happy with this blonde-haired blue-eyed boy (as I actually was back then - my hair and eyes have since matured to a nice jewish/gypsey flavour - clearly we were of tainted stock - ironically, like Hitler himself was). I now have come to understand just how representative of the invasive pushy nature of white-might I was doling out toys to their children but at the time I just could not understand why they were being so indignant about it all.  Now that I am older and ergo wiser, I am actually mortified with shame that I did what I did back then. It's like when my mother filmed a bunch of "Aborigines" as we used to call them in our ignorance (Aborigine is actually the plural!) in Alice Springs.  They were angry and shouting and raising their fists at the camera.  My mother sent my brother (he was about 10) to them with $5 because she was quite taken aback by their rage and wantedt to placate them.  On receiving that, they all smiled beautifully and posed for him as he took their photo.  Then they went into the supermarket and bought a six pack of beer.

Not many people like to consider the reasons for why alcohol is a problem for the indigenous population of Australia.  For some actual 'facts' try this site for more information on the subject.  It's not nearly as widespread as people like to make out, but those that do abuse alcohol are often easier to spot, as they tend to hang about our drinking holes and town centres.  Alcoholism is a disease and it's one that i am now coming to realise is pretty much widespread in nearly every community.  We like to think it is safe to drink 7-8 units a night (or even more sometimes - hey, it's PARTAY TIME!) but in truth it is probably only safe to drink 1 or 2.  I spent a great deal of my life drinking to excess and becoming uglier with every drink.  When everyone around you is slowly degrading as well, you don't even notice it's effect.  Once you stop, you realise how terribly damaging and wasteful it all really is.  The most AMAZING thing about it was that I truly believed that I couldn't really enjoy myself without it - and I know Australians (and Germans) think it is almost unpatriotic if you DO NOT consume massive quantities of alchohol regularly (with them).  Since stopping the booze (and it's only been quite recently so I'm hardly confident that I have really stopped)  I realise of course that this is patently ridiculous.  In fact, I enjoy myself even MORE now and can actually hold some of the most amazing conversations... that I also get to remember the following morning.  I know I will always struggle with this disease because I believe my family have a genetic disposition to it and I also know that I have been socially conditioned to not view it as a disease for so long.  I hope that it will not kill me as it probably did my grandfather.  I CERTAINLY have never judged others for it and CERTAINLY will judge the Australian indigenous population who are suffering from it.  If you manage to wake up from this nightmarish hell without hurting others or yourself, then you are very lucky indeed (I was not so lucky).  You are even more lucky if you never fall prey to the demon of drink in the first place, but hey, I digress......

A few years back, Australia caught the attention of the international media when it was noticed that it was not allowing boats filled with refugees to land on it's shores.  A frenzy of interest occurred when one boat, after being met by Naval Vessels and forced to turn around, apparently showed footage of the refugees "throwing" their children into the water, supposedly so that the Navy would be "forced" to pick them up. Many of the children (and parents) actually drowned as a result.  The Australian population were naturally horrified and completely disgusted with this behaviour.  How could these inhuman parents do this to their own children?? The prime minister at the time (a right arse, if I do say so myself) even used this as an example for the heavy handed policy that Australia was raising against the refugees.  Of course, it all turned out to be completely untrue.  The boat was sinking, the parent's were desperate but there was nowhere else these folks go go but the water.  The Navy was aware that the boat was sinking but refused to actually allow the people to come to safer waters due to the orders from their 'superiors'.  As repulsive as this policy actually was, I had people in the UK actually congratulate me for my country's effective response to the refugee crisis.  I would die a little every time somebody did this - somehow, these refugees had become something that wasn't quite human, there was something about them that meant that they just did not deserve our compassion.
 
Over the years as I was growing up, I never understood why Australians were so racist towards every new wave of immigrants that arrived on their shores.  We were a massive country with massive resources (often poorly managed, but that's another terrible story altogether).  There was even a time when Australia was desperate for immigrants to come.  They actively canvassed (at first whites only.... but later they extended this to the some near-white races) for people to come and emigrate there.  Every wave faced a new onslaught of "unacceptance" from the local (white) population.  This policy was progressively dismantled from around 1949, but only by 1973 was it completely dismantled in its totality and then, the Asian populations from nearby countries were allowed into this "lucky" coutnry.  Up the road from our house in Nunawading, there was an actual refugee camp - I thought it was amazing and also a little exciting.  In round roofed tin sheds, masses of Vietnamese and Cambodians all lived.  All sorts of nonsensical stories were made up about these folks - some of them had smuggled in gold from their homeland, so they were ALL rich and raping the country with their claims of refugee status.....  At school, the "nips" as they were collaqually called, were pretty much ostracized to one quadrangle only.  Only a very few outcasts (like myself, but not really EVEN myself) actually befriended them.  When we finally learned in year 10 the history of some of these places, what these people had gone through, the stories they told of having seen members of their own families (sometimes babies) killed, impaled on spikes, the horror of it all - I could not believe that even afterwards, these folks were still hated purely because of the shapes of their eyes and the colour of their skins.  Maybe the whities just thought these refugees were making it all up - but even today the truth of what these people went through is still not widely acknowledged.  If you've seen a movie like the Killing Fields, or pictures like that infamous shot of the girl running naked through the streets screaming, burning, you surely would realise that this is not the case.  It's like pretending there is was no Jewish holocaust in Germany during the second world war.  It is utterly inhuman to do so and a total disgrace.

Australia has much to be proud of but to hold a day to celebrate the nation on the day that the largest genocide of the indigenous population began is, quite frankly, disturbing and incredibly insenstive.  To show pictures of a flag that represents this and to tell people that if they don't respect and love it, they'll be shown the door and helped to pack is equally disgraceful.  I hope one day Australia truly becomes a democratic peace loving republic that embraces all races and cultures that have had the luck and good grace to be able to reside on its soill.  I hope one day to be happily married with my man and to live and grow old gracefully, accepted by all the people around me.  I know that this is unlikely to actually happen anytime soon and probably will never happen but I can dream, can't I? I can have hope AND I can still love.  I wish that all Australians experience that love within themselves one day and that those who currenly spout this putrid hatefulness become enlightened.  And then on THIS day, when we all learn to love, THIS day becomes our special day.  Our Day to be AUSSIE and BEAUTIFUL and PROUD.  And we all celebrate it as Australia Day forevermore.

Hollandaise Sauce may well be from Holland (or Friesland… or Flevoland… or Zeeland… or Gelderland….)

Snow – and don't the English just love it!  I've often heard it said that the weather is usually top of the list of conversational topics when you don't really have anything to talk about.  For the English, this also includes complaining about the weather.  It's either too hot, too cold, too rainy and don't even get them started about the snow – the slightest chance of the white stuff falling from the sky and they start to panic buy, worry about how on earth they will get to work, and then on arrival, they will distract themselves with weather forecasts and glances out of the window and the constant worrying about how they are going to get home.  Admittedly, due to the scarcity of snow actually ever falling (let alone settling), particularly in Lahndahn Tahn, the freak reactions are perhaps a little more understandable.  However, you'd think that the English have no real memory of just how rare and how short lived the snow experience actually ends up being.

Clearly snow brings out the madman in me

We built a snow man.  Initially, I just made a very large snowball.  Having grown up in Australia I should have absolutely NO knowledge of how to do this, but many years ago I went on a school skiing trip to Mount Bulla in Australia and I, being incredibly unpopular as a child, was always quite desperate to make an impression or just to make some friends.  I tried this by creating a mix tape of all my brother's coolest music (Def Leopard, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and various other heavy (ha!) metal bands.  I later realized that these were just Metal Pop (maybe not Iron Maiden, they are probably best described as Metal Opera) but at the time, they were the only ticket I had to the cool crowd .  Quiet Riot's cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" eventually ended up having this mix tape confiscated (by Mrs White, a rather hip and cool young teacher who (a) was probably a little disgusted that I was so desperate to actually make friends with half of the bitches and little thugs that I thought then were the epitome of 'coolness' and (b) probably really wanted the tape for herself, as I was a bit of a genius in mixing and my brother's collection was pretty darn eclectic if I do say so myself).

The other way I managed to be noticed was that I was the only child on the trip who actually had the knowledge of how to create a very large snowman.  Whilst all the girls were busy trying to pat one into shape (it just doesn't work) I recalled the lessons that I learned from hours spent reading my brother's Archie comics.  For the UK readers, this is not something that they will be familiar with.  Archie is, quite simply, a US icon and his friends, Reggie, Veronica, Betty and Jughead lived in a part of America where it snowed every winter.

How to build a snowman (or, as I mentioned earlier, make very large snowballs) is actually quite easy.  Simply pat together a snowball and then roll the ball in the snow.  As it rolls, it accumulates more snow and grows larger and larger.  It takes quite a while to build up, but there comes a tipping point where all of a sudden you have reached the correct weight and size and the ball starts to grow exponentially.

This is not the time to push the ball down a hill (unlike in the Archie comics where it grows to the size of a small barn and manages to capture all the characters on the way down).  The girls I was so desperate to get noticed and acceptance from eventually realised that the only way they were ever going to be able to create a snowman of any great size was if they were nice to me.  Momentarily.  Then once I gave them my massive snowball so they could use it for a base, they quickly went back to being nasty to me again.  Childhood.  Makes you wonder how some of us ever survive it.

So, of course, the most exciting thing about waking up to a snow day is knowing that you are going to need a high calorie breakfast in order to get through the day.  All that flinging of snow at each other requires massive amounts of energy and this is something that can only be fuelled by a high protein and fat laden meal.  Carbs are necessary (fad diets that disallow them should be REJECTED COMPLETELY because, quite frankly, the last time in recorded history that we relied solely on protein to fuel our bodies was… oh…. let me think about that…. erm… that would be never, wouldn't it?) but they should always be consumed in moderation alongside a similar amount of protein.  This isn't about weight loss or gain – this is about FUEL.

Susie with her Double Ds

I woke up wishing I was in New York.  We have the most beautiful friend in the whole ding-dong world who refers to David and myself as her "Double Ds".  Once, when she asked us to accompany her to New York to celebrate her 40^th birthday and we declined because we were so broke and in debt up to our eyeballs, she insisted on paying for our airfare and accommodation.  This girl, whom I met whilst working at one the UK's top law firms (pretty much where I meet all of my wonderful friends here in the UK) was a £10 pom (as she describes it) – this is basically somebody from England who, whilst Australia was having it's "White Immigration Only Policy" pretty much asked people from the "motherland" to come to Australia for next to nothing.

We have yet to find a way to pay her back, but David and I both consider it an investment, not a gift.  We will, one day, surprise her with a very special gift indeed.  (And no Sue, the night out at a Watford Haunted Mansion being scared silly (emphasis on the silly) does NOT count as a very special gift – it has to be MUCH bigger than that).

Now New York is famous for it's bagels (in 2009 I was not yet diagnosed with gluten intolerance) and ordering a bagel from a local deli is a true delight in New York.  The filling (egg mayo for me, of course!) is SO thick that the bagel is stacked as high as the cup of coffee that accompanies it.  Your mouth often has difficulty in actually stretching that wide to accommodate the bite (oddly enough, mine did not….) and most New Yorkers sort of pick the filling out of the edges…. and eat it in stages.  It IS something that just HAS to be done whilst in the big apple.  I'm hoping that next time I'm in New York somebody will have had the nous to have opened a gluten free bagel bar.  Only in America (actually, please EVERYWHERE – somebody open up gluten free bakeries and delis EVERYWHERE!!!!).

Sue is the female version of me - she is the type
of girl who will start skipping down a New York
street simply because I ask her too and won't
even question why

For me, the most delicious Deli breakfast in New York and the most perfect hangover food AND the most scrumptious recipe for gearing up for a cold winters walk through central park has got to be smoked salmon, poached eggs, all served on toast in a bowl shaped plate where everything is then literally swimming in hollandaise sauce.  Now I won't eat bacon, and I must admit, pig is one of those animals that you just CANNOT get me to eat willingly.  If we were all starving and there was a pig and me left, that pig and I would starve together (actually, probably, the pig would eat me before I ate it but I'd like to think we'd die together, cuddling one another).

New York is famous for it's Jewishness which is why smoked salmon is served in Delis as a breakfast accompaniment as an alternative to bacon, but prior to that Yiddish culture it was first called New Amsterdam, because originally it was settled by Dutch immigrants.  Perhaps this is why I have always believed that hollandaise had something to do with the Netherlands and that the New York Deli's love of serving this sauce as a breakfast accompaniment is in homage to it's original founders.  In fact, the recipe for Hollandaise sauce has historically been noted that it first appeared in a Dutch cookbook around the 16^th Century, prior to it appearing in a French one! France, of course, now claims it as one of its five most important sauces and pretends it owns the recipe and always did.

We were always taught at school in Australia – erroneously, of course, that the country now known as the Netherlands was actually called "Holland".  Holland had dykes and windmills and tulips and clogs (and indeed the region of the Netherlands that does have some of these things is known as Holland – it's actually just a state or a district of the Netherlands).  Funnily enough, Australia was once known as New Holland, because prior to the English 'discovering' it, the Dutch did – but the Dutch only found the Western barren part of the country (now home to Perth and the area that is currently being mined (raped) by a woman called Gina Rinearse (well that's what David calls her).  But I digress – I woke up and turned to David's and declared rather confidently "I'm thinking poached eggs and hollandaise for breakfast!"

I've made hollandaise sauce before.  For my 40^th birthday party I had 2 dinner parties (I couldn't actually accommodate ALL my friends around the table at the same time) and hollandaise was served with fried chicken strips for that event.  I knew the sauce was labour intensive but I also knew that the effort was well worth it.  I don't own a Delia cookbook because, well, nobody has ever given me one but I do often read her recipes online.  Delia talks about how easy it is to make this sauce now that we own food processors…. well I wouldn't know because I haven't owned a food processor for quite some time.

We do own a hand blender (and a very cheap crappy jug blender because a cute South African Scallywag broke my beautiful glass jug blender a couple of Halloweens ago) but we don't own a processor – mainly because I'm never sure which one is actually the best one to actually purchase and also because I think that if Julia Child and countless other folk managed without one for so many years, then I really should be able to as well.  (I do have my eye on a Vitamix blender, and when we have a spare £400 I will purchase this crème de la crème of blenders.  I mean, it is so brilliant, you can grind your own flour from whole grains….!!!)

So back to the hollandaise.  I thought I better check a few recipe books to get the complete lowdown on how to make it (after all, it is a very old sauce, and that means there are countless varieties out there).  My favourite little book for sauces is one that is published by Penguin and is exclusively a cookbook of sauce recipes (US readers, try here).  This is the one that I used for my 40^th birthday and it actually contains a few different versions.  It was written by Ambrose Heath who was a culinary journalist who wrote for the Guardian and Daily Mirror and who died about 5 months prior to my birth.  I also checked out Larousse's encyclopaedic tome and there is one recipe for Hollandaise in there, called the "old version", that requires you to add a couple of tablespoons of Allemande sauce (as well as lots of egg yolks and masses of butter). 

 What is Allemande sauce, I wondered?  I thought I better check for this one, as having attempted several times to self-teach myself the French language, I was aware that 'Alleman' is the word that the French use for Germans (the southern Germanic tribe that bordered the North-Eastern parts of France were known as the Alleman tribe, so you can see the etymology of the word here).  Interestingly Germans don't use Germany to describe their country.  In fact, the word "German" has no Germanic roots at all, it's not a part of their language – unlike Alleman, which roughly translated in German means "All the people".

So here I am thinking that Allemande sauce must be Germanic in origin.  But to my shock and horror I have discovered that this is NOT the case.  It is French.  French?  And what about Espagnol sauce?  Not Spanish – but French!!!  Allemande sauce is famous for being THE white sauce that beats ALL white sauces.  Espagnol sauce is THE classic dark sauce.  You see what the French have done here?  I was SHOCKED!!  How racist (but sadly, what white culture does NOT have a history of racism clumsily hidden (sometimes not even hidden!) in their past.  And as for Hollandaise sauce, well, if the French truly did invent it, perhaps they thought the Dutch were all buttery and slippery customers?  Or lardy? I really have no idea -  and yet again, I digress….

In the end I went with Larousse's classic "old" recipe.  It states that you need 5 egg yolks, which you whisk together with a little bit of nutmeg, salt and pepper.  I've seen Nigella separate eggs by cracking them into the palms of her hands and then slurping the yolk from one palm to another (I was actually taught by my mother to carefully break the egg into two halves, and then slop the yolk from one shell half to the other but when I saw Nigella's method I immediately felt something within me go 'ping' and I thought interesting…. – the only problem with this method is that you end up with slimey hands (something my mother was not into?) but the downside to my mother's method is that the cracked shell can sometimes split the yolk (and, depending on the freshness of your eggs, sometimes they don't break so uniformly into two perfect halves). Also, if you're making meringues or any kind of dish that requires only egg whites, you cannot have even a smidgeon of egg yolk in the white or when beating them they simply will not firm up into lovely peaks (but instead will just become a frothy mess).  I wanted to try the slimey hand method for the first time (I mean, there is a sink in my kitchen and a towel nearby so it's not like I will be left with slimey hands for too long) and I was astounded at how easy it was to do the separations.  Huh – definitely the method to use when teaching kids (again, Mrs Foster was NOT in favour of this method – way too disgusting for her liking). 

 

In a Bain Marie saucepan where the water within is almost but not quite boiling (I use a small saucepan dangling in a larger saucepan which contains the water) you add the yolky mix, whisking constantly (and literally NEVER stopping this whisking process until the sauce is done – it requires endurance this recipe).  Then you add half a pound of butter in very small bits.  (I know, right??? Half a pound!!  See what I mean by lardy?) This will give you enough sauce for 4 generous portions.  Prior to starting this process I sent a facebook message to our son upstairs (hey, it beats shouting at them up the stairs) and told him I was intending on making this delectable treat. I still hadn't received a reply by the time I started.  Whatever you do, when you want to make a dish with this sauce, you must always make the sauce first – it can take you up to an hour to make it (depending on how you whisk, of course – I think men, who generally overdevelop their 'whisking' hand [as we'll call it] are better suited to this than women, but am sure some ladies can whisk as well as any man….).  Remove the small saucepan from the heated water often (and the water should be kept to near boiling temperature, but never actually boil), in fact, I recommend that you lean towards the side of caution here – if the yolks curdle, the sauce is pretty much ruined, so you must avoid actually cooking them.  Having started slimey, I continued slimey and whilst whisking vigorously using my whisking hand I broke off small chunks of butter with my left hand and threw them into the mix.  Don't worry if your sauce does not thicken immediately – what you really want is for the yolks to be completely merge with the butter first anyway and the only way to ensure this happens uniformly throughout the whole half a pound is to be very patient, and to constantly whisk.  I really feel like I'm burning most of the calories I'm about to consume purely by the constant whisking that is required.

Drenched with Hollandaise

Having nearly made the sauce, I could now concentrate on the eggs.  I noted that Zack had received and read my message (love that "tick" thing on Facebook, it's like a read receipt, but without the annoying email that starts to clog up your inbox if you have this setting switched on your email app) but he hadn't responded.  He later told me that he had fallen asleep again and that he was interested in the dish (minus the smoked salmon of course – he's just not a lover of fish unless it's battered and fried).  I put a large pan of water and added a dash of vinegar to it and brought it to the boil.  I always use a large Wok for poaching eggs - this just allows me to cook up to half a dozen eggs easily enough without overcrowding the pan. I had to use balsamic vinegar, which is not really recommended because of its tendency to stain rather the egg whites a little darkly but as I only discovered the cider vinegar at the back of the shelf after I had already splooshed in the balsamic (it really does pay to get your ingredients ready sometimes….).

Just before you crack the eggs in, the heat is turned down and the watery vinegary mix is brought to a nice simmering temperature.  Swirl the water to create a mini whirlpool (this does not need to be done vigorously) and then carefully crack in eggs – I usually serve 2-3 per person.  Toast your toast (or bagels, or muffins) - 2 slices per person (in a toaster, or under the grill) and DO NOT BUTTER THEM!  I mean, you've just used half a pound in your hollandaise! Layer on the smoked salmon (or bacon, if you MUST eat the pig that I love so dearly) onto the toast and then spoon on your eggs when they are done (the whites should be firm, but the yolks should still be slightly runny - not that you'll easily be able to tell if this is the case…). 

Whilst all this is going on, ensure your hollandaise is not setting completely by whisking every now and then and removing from the heat (and then returning… oh the tediousness of it all – but honest it will be worth it).   Finally, drench everything with a generous portion of hollandaise.  Everything should be literally swimming in the sauce on the plate.  Top with a sprig or two of parsley and devour.  Take your time (David wolfed his down) because you should savour it and appreciate the cook who made you this sauce – they won't be doing it again for approximately three months I am sure!

As an vegetarian alternative try thinly sliced and char grilled smoked tofu.  There are vegetarian "bacon" equivalents out there but like Ron in Parks & Recreation, I kind of think that these woody pieces of cardboard really deserve to be binned rather than served up.  Even Hollandaise will not be able to make these things delicious.

A horse is a course, of course of course....

Horsemeat!  In Burgers!  Shock Horror and shame on Tescos, Aldi & Lidl (but not Sainsburys… ha!, what a marketing boon for that chain).  Personally, I don't give a hoot, all supermarkets are inherently evil in how they manipulate the masses into purchasing the unhealthiest of items and as I couldn't kill a cow, let alone a horse, unless somebody offered me to give me a large plot of land where David and I could grow our own food, (I do have a price, it would seem) I would never actually eat a frozen burger from anywhere. 

 

I read the other day in the Sun (it was free, on the train, and something made me pick up this comic book excuse of a newspaper and actually read it) that a family gave up on the supermarkets, bought produce only from markets and local stores (for local people), and managed to save £100+ on their shopping AND they became healthier AND they became better cooks – aha!  I get it, they were buying all those ready made meal items - full of fat, salt and processed muck.  Ever since David and I were diagnosed with a Gluten Allergy/Intolerance* we haven't been able to eat pretty much ANY convenience foods – and those convenience foods that we can eat tend to be filled with trans-fats (barrel shaped lardy bodies anyone?) So that made us better cooks too but it did the opposite to our shopping bills, nearly doubling them at times and sadly made us even more reliant on the larger chains – back to the Horses.

I have a very dear friend on facebook (and in my life! Yes, we actually meet from time to time) who is always posting images of dogs and adorable puppies with cute captions and sometimes a message worth taking on board about the care of such creatures. Now I LOVE dogs, having had them in my life from an early age and although we aren't blessed right now with sharing our inside home with any animals (I actually really want a pet pig) as due to our inability to actually be able to commit to anywhere permanently and the fact that we both work full time jobs that often move us away from our residence we would never be that irresponsible.  I know people who keep their dogs in the laundry, in a cage, etc. etc. while they work – I find this intolerable myself and even IF the dog can cope, we certainly could not.

There are many myths associated with Korea and the consumption of dogs

So, my friend, let's just call her "D", one day posted a picture of a Korean market showing dog carcasses.  I was, initially distressed with the image as most of us Westerners tend to be because we cannot fathom the concept of eating "man's best friend", and most of us would rather starve than eat one, even it weren't our "pet".  Then it dawned on me that D enjoys a good steak from time to time, in fact, she eats all kinds of "acceptable" meat.  So cows are fair game?  Imagine if she moved to India, would she be able to understand why the local population thought she was horrendous for craving that steak?  Probably not because from an English point of view that animal is "fair game".  Now I, too, have my reasons for not eating certain animals – and it would be unlikely that I could ever kill a dog – but isn't it slightly hypocritical to campaign for one culture to "stop their animal cruelty" whilst continuing to participate in your own culture's "acceptable" versions of it?  It just doesn't make any sense to me – and so nor does the "horror" of the horsemeat scandal.  To me, there is not much of a difference between a cow and a horse – they are equally beautiful animals and they can both pull a plough to sow my fields for the vegetables and grains that we all can eat.  AND for the record, the practice of eating dog meat in Korea is not widespread - it's not an everyday dish, it's not available in every restaurant, and ultimately if you're poor (not that all consumers of dog flesh are, but, just saying...) you really shouldn't judge people for eating whatever protein they can in order to survive.  DON'T FALL FOR THE CRAP THAT IS ERRONEOUSLY SENT VIA VIRAL IMAGERY - don't even trust Wikipedia on this one - try asking a Korean.

My mother used to have (before she threw it away because it was 'old') some super 8 film footage of her devouring a horse sausage from a local stall - immediately upon returning to her home town of Hamburg, Germany. She did this with great relish (and I don't mean a tremendously good chutney....).  Whenever I recounted this story to my Australian friends they would reel with shock and disgust – even I found the practice of consuming horse-flesh slightly disgusting and this is purely because I was born into a culture where this practice was considered completely unacceptable (and also because there were girls who made love to their horses, were obsessed with horses, did nothing but think of horses.  Is there another animal that we all eat with great pleasure that is revered and loved like a horse or a dog?  I mean, I know that in India cows are considered "sacred", but do kids in India draw pictures of them and love them like those girls in my classes did with horses?

We have another friend (now only on facebook, because she moved to another country that we are unlikely to visit within the next few years) who collected strange characters and she had a tendency to bring them over to our house for us to entertain.  To date she has introduced us to more than a few transgender folk, a racist South African woman (whom she brought to a party filled with colour), a very masculine woman (whom we all thought was a transgender…) and many, many lesbians.  One day she introduced us to a vegan celiac who was also attempting to raise her 6 year old son as such on her own.  Whilst we all sat outside in the garden enjoying the sunshine, David offered to make the boy a smoothie (because the only thing he had eaten on our "picnic" was chocolate, because the mother, in her craziness, did not actually bring any gluten free produce and this was well before David and I were diagnosed with similar maladies.

 Obviously the boy looked sickly and was incredibly fussy about what he would eat, and so David started to make jokes about how the ingredients were things like 'pigs blood' (in hindsight, he realised later that this was perhaps not the best thing to entice a vegan to drink something).  His mother, to show the boy that it was okay to drink, took a sip.  David then rattled off the ingredients…. When he got to 'honey', those of us "in the know" immediately looked at the woman's face to see if she was that kind of vegan.

As our luck would have it, she was.  Now honey, although technically produced by insects, is still out for most vegans.  You wouldn't eat snails as a vegan, would you? Or prawns? (Actually, I never quite understood the problem with snails, being that they are rather simple organisms, although in comparison to lettuce, still awfully complex. I'll admit I used to think it was hard to anthropomorphise them, but if you've ever taken the time to watch a snail eat a piece of lettuce, it is, actually, rather cute the way that mouth munches little parts of it, bite by bite, munch by munch. Also, watching them reproduce is, well, it is just amazing [and kind of perverse, in a very alien, non-mammalian kind of way that only insects can be].

I had snails in Paris with my daughter on my 38^th birthday at a very expensive Parisian restaurant.  It was truly one of the most delicious mollusks I had ever eaten but it was probably all about the garlic butter.)  For David, of course, it was an eye-opening experience.  Really?  Honey is out?  Honey????  Yes, bees died to make that honey, David (although one can argue that there has developed a symbiotic relationship between bees and humans.  Similarly with cows – certainly of the milk producing variety, unless you tear away their children at birth and send them to the slaughterhouse so you can steal all that milk, of course…..)

Which brings me to favourite Vegan Cookbook – Leah Leneman's "The Single Vegan" (for US Readers click here).  Why do Vegans get to have a cookbook that is purely written for a single individual?  Probably because they are such difficult customers at the best of times and at the worst of times, they are just downright kooky.  Are they all hippy crazy loons?  Well of course not! Well… not always, I mean, well, not all of them…. I'll stop now before PETA picket my blog and ask for its removal.  I am no longer vegan, but I did become a vegan and stick to the diet for approximately 3 years before finally deciding that I wanted to have some ice cream. 

 Actually I'm belittling the reasons that I stopped veganism - for example, I was against ALL animal testing.  It was repulsive, said I.  It was disgusting and inhuman.  Then somebody put it to me that if I could choose between a chimp dying or my own child, I kind of caved.  I'd happily sacrifice the chimp (provided that the chimp's life was sacrified in order to find a cure for a horrendous hypothetical illness that was afflicting my child but equally the [ridiculous?] hypothetical situation of somebody making me eat a chimp or they'd kill my child....).  I'm still against the testing of some things – cosmetics, for example.  Do we really need to develop another type of lipstick?  Have we not created the most amazing cosmetics already?  And why do companies test things that have already been tested before anyway, by another company, 50 years hence?

I remember attending a vegan gathering when I was young (and vegan).  I had attended this with the then pregnant mother of my first daughter (who was Vegetarian… she had been Vegan, but on becoming pregnant had been frightened [perhaps correctly?] into believing that Veganism for a pregnant mother was just not healthy). At the gathering we met a man who declared that there was absolutely no way that he could ever be with a woman that was not a vegan.  Really?  Thought I?  That would severely narrow down the amount of seaweed in the sea.  At that stage my own sexuality was in a state of confusion, but even I realised how severely narrow this approach was to finding a partner.  It was like declaring that you could only ever go out with a black deaf gay man who had a desire to dress in women's clothing ….. I mean, seriously???  So Leah's book had a temendously large market - and truly, it is quite fantastic.

The book excited me on many levels – it had two sections – one for Winter and one for Summer and each section was divided into 5 weeks of recipes for evening meals (except for Saturday night) and 2 weekend lunches.  Each week had a shopping list which was divided into fruit & veg and other miscellaeneous items.  Each recipe had ingredient measurements for the UK and the USA. It was perfect for this little OCD boy, and, at the age of 21 I decided to try it whilst staying at my Auntie & Uncle's holiday home on "the Island" (Phillip Island in Australia).  I decided to spend a fortnight on the island on a writing holiday, and having bought 4 weeks worth of ingredients from the Winter section, my mother drove me to the house and once there, I, on my little ownsome for the next 2 weeks, cooked, wrote and walked my dog on the beach (a black lab called "Duke").  I quickly redeveloped a habit of talking to myself and it is probably the only time that I have ever had such fun writing on my little Mac Plus (that at the time was the most treasured (and expensive) possession that I could actually call my own.

At the end of the two weeks, the at-this-point-not-pregnant Mother of my daughter arrived with a 4 litre cask of moselle.  After playing drunken trivial pursuit until we were both utterly smashed, she rather openly suggested that we have sex.  So we did.  In the shower.  That very night was the night my daughter was conceived.  That morning I had consumed, for the very first time, an adzuki bean spread.  I still make adzuki bean spread today, in fact I started to make some this morning, and David chimed in to help out as I have been putting off finishing this blog entry for days now, and it was getting ridiculous how easily I would allow myself to become distracted.  It is, quite simply, the most divine little bean spread that you will ever taste – it should be served warm, on hot buttered toast.
 

Here's how you make it:  Soak a cup of adzuki beans overnight in some water (2 cups if you're not single).  It must be soaked for at least 8 hours and you will be lucky to find adzuki (sometimes also referred to as 'aduki') beans in a can – although if you do stumble across a canned variety (probably you're in a Health Food store if you do) then this will save you the hassle of soaking and cooking them – but be prepared to pay quite a bit more for this luxury – and as for ratio, 1 can will be equal to about 1 cup of dried beans).  Aduki beans are often used in Asian Cooking as a desert ingredient – the reason?  They are naturally quite sweet (but don't imagine that they will taste as sweet as honey or refined sugar – that is super sweet…. Comprehendo?). 

Boil the dried beans in a saucepan until they are tender (I always boil any pre-soaked dried beans quite rapidly for the first 10 minutes, skimming off any frothy 'scum' that accumulates at the top of the pan – this is often the toxins that are in the bean skins [some varieties, like Kidney Beans, for example, are more toxic than others – and nowadays many varieties of beans have been specifically bred to be (a) less toxic and (b) rapid cookers].  Then I turn down the heat and simmer them for approximately 45 mins to an hour – this is probably why canned varieties are more desirable – but 20 years ago you just couldn't find beans in a can unless they were boston baked and mixed with tomato sauce!).  Once you have your adzuki beans cooked – drain them (reserving the liquid) and mash them, adding some of the cooking liquid to make a nice mooshy bean mash.

Melt some butter in a saucepan (or vegan margarine, if you're a vegan or cooking for one) and then add the adzuki mash.  If the mash starts to dry out too much, simply add more of the reserved cooking liquid (or just water will do fine too).  Next add a tablespoon or three of tahini (sesame paste)– and a healthy splash of shoyu (soya sauce, or tamari) to the mix – stir until it thickens nicely.  Taste it.  You should get a lovely blend of the bitter sesame with the sweet adzuki - you then want to counter this (to taste) with the salty shoyu.  The tahini will thicken the mix, so add more if it is too runny.  It should resemble a pate, of sorts.  Once this has reached a consistency that will allow itself to be "spread", add some chopped parsley (I usually forget to do this, which is annoying as it really adds to the flavour of the dish, but I guess as I still eat the spread without it quite regularly this is not an essential ingredient  - funnily enough, I mentioned the ingredient to David this morning and he too forgot to add to the dish!).
 

As a final note - I have made this with canned kidney beans - which is still nice and I suppose you could really use almost any bean instead of adzuki, but as no other bean can match the sweetness of this little red wonder, I heartily recommend you take the time and effort to find and use them.

*David is allergic to gluten and I am completely intolerant (I know, I should really just learn not to judge my foodstuffs so harshly, right?)