Little tongues and big beans.

Linguine with broad beans.

Take some podded broad beans - fresh or frozen. Peel off the outer skin (you needn't bother if using young, fresh ones).
Sweat them gently in a little olive oil, with the addition of a couple of sprigs of freshy thyme and a couple of whole garlic cloves. (one day I'm planning to write a book about herbs called 'Its About Thyme').
Remove the garlic and tyme and add a squeeze of lemon juice and a shredded mint leaf or two.
Toss with cooked linguine and some crumbled ricotta. (Actually...instead of ricotta I've been using a mild, soft Welsh goat's cheese).

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Philosophical Poser #1: If Paris Hilton had sex and there was nobody around to film her...would she make a sound?

Philosophical Poser #2: Two penguins meet on an iceberg. One says to the other, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo." The other one says, "Maybe I am!"

Penguin walks into a bar, asks the barman, "Has my brother been in?" "Dunno," says the barman, "What does he look like?"

Stretch out and wait.

They were making fresh pasta in Laa-Laa's tummy, and Poop fancied trying his hand at it. So I dug out the pasta mangle, strapped it to a table in the gazebo and we got busy with a bag of tipo 00. For Poop, we made delicate, thin noodles (Linguinette? Linguinine?) and served them with Razzle Dazzle Sauce*. I prefer my pasta a bit chewier, so I made some tagliatelle on the No. 5 setting and served them with:

Tagliatelle with Potatoes and Asparagus

First mangle your tagliatelle.
Steam some good, fully-flavoured, waxy potatoes (I used Charlottes) until not quite done.
When cool enough to handle, slice. Not too thin - say 3mm.
Cook the spuds gently in plenty of butter with salt and pepper.
Slice some asparagus thinly, diagonally. When the spuds are cooked, add the slices to the pan.
Have a big pot of water on a rapid boil. Toss in the tagliatelle. When it resurfaces, drain.
Top with the spuds/asparagus and some coarsely-grated parmesan.

I'm wondering...might a couple of sage leaves be beneficial?

Coming Soon

The Mad Bag Special Edition

featuring:

The word 'haunel'.

*Our generic name for tomato sauce. This time, I simply fried up some cherry tomatoes and added fresh basil.

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“We all have different ideas of when it’s the best time to make fun of a public figure who’s died. We all have our own Dead Princess Diana jokes, but I got into a lot of trouble for what I did, which was to do a whole stand-up comedy routine consisting entirely of Dead Diana jokes, five minutes after the crash. While in Paris. Going through an underpass. In a white Fiat Uno.”
(Armando Ianucci)

I'm the strudel doodle man!

Jaysus, but isn’t immigration just fucking great? Definitely the best thing to have happened to Britain in the last millennium plus. Suddenly there’s all these dynamic people with the guts to make a new life in a strange, unwelcoming people and bringing their foodstuffs with them. Not to mention the fact that restaurants and cafés are now staffed by attractive, young East European women. And doesn’t the hijab set off a pretty face nicely? Ooooh, and Somali women with their high cheekbones, bright eyes, succulent lips and gorgeous skin tones. Mammmmmma!…

Ahem. Better stick to foodstuffs. So. On Friday I discovered a new Turkish/Kurdish shop, which gave me an opportunity to practice my rudimentary Turkish. I bought

• Pickled Vegetables (Turşu)
• Sigari Börekler - long, thin filo pastry rolls containing feta-ish cheese (beyaz paynir)
• Salep – the powdered root of an orchid, used for making a milky drink.
• Portion-sized cartons of Ayran – salted yoghurt drink, similar to salt lassi, but never spiced.
• A set of six tea glasses.
• Herbal teas – Lemon verbena with mint and aniseed and Yerba Maté. Much cheaper than in health food-y places.
• Pine honey (with a smokey, resiney flavour)
• Jars of jam: Bergamot, Sour Cherry and Carrot. (As we citizens of the EU know, carrots are a fruit. Just like rhubarb!)

But I’m not going to tell you how to make stuff with them. I’m going to tell you about strudel. I lie and say I bought the filo pastry for it from the Turkish shop…but I didn’t.

Take some butter and melt it in a microwave.
Cover a tray with baking parchment.
Lay down a sheet of filo pasty and brush it with the butter. Repeat until the pastry is used up. If your pastry is in small sheets, overlap two sheets, inna spliff style, alternating direction between layers.

Now…there are various good things you can put in this:

• Sliced Apples, cinnamon, a few sultanas (obviously).
• Mix some ground almonds, butter and sugar. Layer this on the pastry and top with slices of pear. It’s a good idea to add some lemon juice to the pears as you slice them. It stops them discolouring – and besides, the sharpness is good.
• This is the one – based on a strudel I had in Budapest years ago. The famous place for cakes in Budapest is Café Gerbeaud – stunningly good cakes, ornate surroundings, and waitresses in these really cool orthopaedic boots with cutout toes and heels. But the best cake I had in Budapest was also the cheapest, from a wee caff. And you can now recreate it using the bottled Polish sour cherries or cherry compote that we can now find in these parts. Anyway…Take some ricotta and sweeten to taste. A layer of ricotta, a layer of cherries, a layer of ricotta. (Trust me! The ricotta is transformed by cooking and doesn’t turn out all creamy).
  

Now fold your strudel. You’ll want to have put your filling on so that it occupies no more than ¼ of the width and isn’t piled too high. Plus stop a few cm from the ends. Fold over one side of the pastry. Brush its edge with butter. Fold over the other side so that it overlaps generously. Brush each end and fold them over too. Now very carefully (and possibly with the help of an extra pair of hands) turn the strudel over so that the joins are on the bottom. Brush with more butter. Bake. Dust with icing sugar. Serve sliced.

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There was a break in at my local police station. The thieves stole a toilet. Detectives say they've nothing to go on...

Then there was the robbery at the pharmacy when thieves got away with their entire tock of Viagra. Police are looking for a gang of hardened criminals...

A man goes into the doctor's wearing clingfilm trousers. The doctor says, "I can clearly see your nuts!"

Curried Eggs

Boil some eggs. Cool them. Peel them.

Get some fresh tomatoes, an onion, lots of garlic, lots of ginger, a chilli or two. Do the zizz thing with a blender.

Heat up some oil in a pan. Add salt, asafoetida, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, some star anises and a few bits of cinnamon bark. When the seeds start popping, throw in some curry leaves, stir a few times, then add the blended mix.

Cook it for a few minutes. Then add the eggs, halved, cut sides up. Cook a little longer.

Serve garnished with fresh coriander, with chapattis, yoghurt, pickle.

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It's said that all the best blues musicians have names that comprise:

a) an infirmity (eg Blind)

b) a fruit (eg (Lemon)

c) a US president (eg Jefferson)

Step forward...Asthmatic Kumquat Eisenhower!

(my porn name is Jinx Mt. Pleasant, btw)

Miso hornee

I'm afraid this one veers rather into zen macrobiotic hippy shite territory, but bear with me. I suppose it would be just the thing for those wanting to 'detox'. I haven't a Scooby what all these 'toxins' are actually supposed to be when they're at home, but 'Dr' Gillian McKeith 'PhD' claims you can get them out by sticking a big tube up your ass and pumping yourself full of cappuccino. Diff'rnt strokes, an a' that. I suppose that if you really are what you eat, she must've swallowed a scary witch with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Anyway...

Miso Broth with broccoli and shitake mushrooms.This dish is packed with oovaafu. Oovaafu is the 'fifth taste', after salt, sweet, sour and bitter. Oh, no...wait...I mean umami.

For thems as has never met it, miso is a kind of Japanese savoury jam made from fermented soy beans and/or rice. You can buy instant miso broth in sachets, or buy jars or squidgy packets of the miso itself and turn it into broth by adding to hot water. If the latter, you'd probably want to add make it with stock. Or if turning Japanese doesn't give you the vapors (geddit?) you could even use dashi, the authentic Japanese stock made from seaweed and fishes' dandruff. Not to be confused with dashiki.

So make your stock and keep it hot ready. Meanwhile, steam some broccoli - the long sort, 'flowering broccoli', with the thin, tender stems. In the steaming vessel, add some cubed tofu (yeah, sorry about that) so that it warms.

Meanwhile, take your shitake mushrooms, halved. Heat a wok very, very hot, with the minimum amount of oil. Stir fry the mushrooms until they're begining to brown (you're after a slightly charred around the edges effect).

Now assemble the soup. In a big bowl...broccoli, tofu, shitakes, big handful of fresh coriander. Pour on the soup. Top with a finely-sliced de-seeded red chilli and a few thin slices of mild onion.

Serve with brown rice, if you insist.

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Thought for the day

Never take Ecstacy before visting a Holocaust museum.

Cabbage ears.

The Italians have a really cute kind of pasta called 'orechiette' - little ears - 'coz they look like mouse ears (awww!). The packet I bought says that they were 'traditionally made in brass moulds'. But of course the traditional way of making them involves a mustachioed widow's thumb.

The traditional thing to eat with orechiette is some kind of greens - broccoli, cime di rapa, that sort of thing. In my case, I used cavolo nero. This is a kind of dark, crinkly, loose-leaf cabbage. You could substitute savoy or kale. Don't embarass yourself by asking for caballo nero, though, or else you'll be given a black horse. (A bit like that time I asked for a peccary at the pharmacist's).

So. Cook some orechiette until al dente.

Meanwhile, shred your cabbage finely.

Put some olive oil and a little salt in a skillet-y, wok-y type pan. Heat until the garlic just begins to colour yellow (no more! careful not to burn it).

Throw in the cabbage and stir fry.

Add just a little crushed chilli.

Drain the orechiette.

Toss with the cabbage.

Decant onto a plate, and while doing so, add in bits of crumbled, soft goat's cheese - not the rindy kind.

Top with coarsely grated parmesan and black pepper.

---

You'll have heard of the Rolling Stones tribute band whose most popular number was 'Hey! MacLeod! Get Off My Ewe!'

Then there's the Oasis tribute band. They stole all their riffs from The Bootleg Beatles.

BREAKING NEWS: And The Incredibly Bearded Man has just informed me of a new Glasgow tribute band - The Partick Monkeys.

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Have you heard of an Aussie Kiss? It's like a French Kiss, only it's given down under...

---

So batman came up to me, hit me over the head with a vase and says "T'PAU!"
So I says, "Don't you mean 'KAPOW!'?"
And he says "No...I've got china in my hand."

---

Then there was the cowboy who walked into a German car dealer and said "Audi, pardner!"

You can't make an omelette without breaking wind.

I got a stack of classic cookbooks for my birthday recently, including a couple by the great Elizabeth David. Inspired by her classic 'An Omelette and a Glass of Wine', I decided to make an...

Omelette aux fine herbes

Take a handful of herbs per person - I used a mixture of parsley, tarragon, mint (don't overdo it with the mint - but don't underdo it either) and lemon time. Other combinations would work - chervil sounds like a good idea. David says don't use tarragon and basil. (She's never wrong.)

Chop finely.

Beat two eggs well. Add the herbs and some pepper.

Put wee dash of olive oil in your omelette pan over a medium heat and a big lump of butter. When the butter stops bubbling, pour in the mixture. It should be thick enough with herbs that it doesn't spread out too much. When set on one side, flip. Don't overcook it.

Serve with good bread and a simple salad. And a glass of wine, obviously.

Jaysus - so simple yet so fucking good. That's what food should be about.

Clarissa Dixon-Wright used to run 'Books for Cooks' in London. One day she answered the phone to hear,
"Hello. This is Elizabeth David here."
She responded,
"That's a little like being told that God's on the phone."

Mushroom and Barley soup.

An easy one, this. I believe that in East European/ Jewish cuisine, it lurks under the name of ‘Krupnik’.

Take some pearl barley. Boil it in a lot of water until nice and soft.

Sauté a small diced onion in a little olive oil and butter. Add a couple of big mushrooms to it, finely chopped (the black gilled ones that the Germans call ‘Pilzen’ – to distinguish them from the smaller ‘Champignons’ or button mushrooms*. They’re both Agaricus bisporus at different stages of growth, of course), and a couple of garlic cloves, chopped coarsely but not crushed.

Sweat the whole lot together. Then add the barley with its water, enough extra water to bring it up to volume and a stock cube or two. Boil it all together for a soup-like length of time (remember – soup always tastes best on the second day.)

Season to taste. Just before serving, add a huge handful of finely chopped dill and parsley.

* Interestingly, in French, le champignon is the generic name for ‘fungus’ – including athletes foot. And the same goes in German for der Pilz.

Lieber Pils vom Faß als Pilz am Fuß! – Better a draft beer than athlete’s foot.

Crème Mont Blanc

'bout time I posted here, no?

This is an overlooked classic.

Take a tin of chestnut purée. Combine with caster sugar to taste and either a little vanilla essence or Masala wine. (Yes, they're totally different flavours, but either works).

Spoon the mixture into an icing bag and pipe* into some meringue shells/nests**. Top with whipped cream*** and some shavings of dark chocolate.

* Or just spoon it in.

**Or layer meringue bits and chestnut mixture in a glass. Or if you don't have any meringues, just pipe/spoon the mixture into a glass.

***Don't you dare use that crappy 'whipped' cream exuded from an arsehole aerosol. Get that wrist working!



My all-time favourite joke only works in a Scots accent:

A man walks into a cake shop and asks, 'Is that a macaroon or a meringue'. The lassie behind the counter replies, 'No, you're right. It's a macaroon'.

I'm the noodle doodle man!

Rrrrr, me hearties! Here's one for all you Pastafarians:

Pad Thai

I noticed that supermarkets have started selling squidgy packets of ready-to-cook pad thai noodles - ie the flat rice noodles used in Thai and Vietnamese cooking. Here's what I've been doing with them:

First, make some very thin omlettes. In a large frying pan/ skillet...lightly oil...pour in the beaten egg and make sure it coats the whole thing...cook, flip, cook, out. You need two or three for two people. Stack them one on top of another. Roll them up together. Then slice into 0.5cm strips. Et viola. You have 'egg strips'.

Next, get some stir frying shit together. It doesn't really matter what - one of those supermarket beansprouts+ combos will do fine (although usually like to make sure it has stuff like baby corn, sugarsnaps/mangtouts (mangetous?) and chinese cabbage). Stick it to one side a minute...

Heat your wok up nice and smokin', with a little oil. First throw in some salt and some shredded ginger. Then some sliced shitake mushrooms. I like these when they're fried intensely and start to brown - ot develops their flavour. Then throw in a thinly-sliced red chilli or two. Now the stir-fry veg. Again - intensity is the key with beansprouts. At around this time, add more shredded ginger and lotsandlots of thinly-sliced garlic (about 4 cloves). Keep on stirring and add some soy sauce - the sweet kind is best (eg ketjap manis) and (optionally) a sprinkle of the dreaded 'Flavour Powder'.

Next, toss in your eggs strips and noodles and throw it all around.

Finally...and this is The Big Important Trick...this blog talks a lot about the central role of 'shrubbery' in Vietnamese food. He's spot on! The secret is to throw in, at the very last minute before serving, great big handfuls of slightly-chopped coriander, basil and mint. How much? Take more than you'd think, then double it.

Serve garnished with lots of wedges of lime.



I can't think of an Italic bit at the end today, so I'll just shut up.

No I won't. Having nothing to say has never stopped me before. I've been reading 'Fermat's Last Theorem' by Simon Singh, so I'll tell you about The Catalogue Paradox:

A librarian is re-cataloguing all the books in the library. At the
end, he's left with a pile of catalogues, so he starts to catalogue them.
He notices that they can be subdivided into two types: thosen that list
themselves within their pages and those that don't. So he lists the first
lot and makes a catalog of them. Then he does the second lot...but he has
a problem. Should his 'Catalogue Of All The Catalogues That Don't List
Themselves' also list itself? If it doesn't, it's incomplete.
But...if it does...then obviously it's a catalogue that does list
itself, so by definition it shouldn't be listed. On the other hand...

My brain hurts.

I know what pakora are, but what are these 'leftovers' you speak of?

When I make pakora, I go for it in a big way. Here's what I did with the leftovers last night. I think it would also work with paneer.

Pakora Curry

Heat some ghee in your chosen pan.
Add some salt, asafoetida, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, a couple of bits of cinamon bark and a few star anise. Heat until its all popping away aromatically.
Add a chopped onion, some ginger (a fair amount), some garlic (not loads) and a finely sliced chilli. Heat until the onions begin to soften.
Add a few chopped tomatoes and soften.
Add some water and simmer until it's mostly evaporated.
Add some ground almonds and simmer a few minutes to get a creamy consistency.
Add the pakora and heat through.

(If using paneer, cut into cubes and fry until brown beforehand).

Of course, we all know about the guy who overdosed on curry and fell into a korma...

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Some letters from The Grauniad:

"No offence, but do you think I could ask Jack Straw to wear a veil if I had
an appointment with him?"

and..

"I'm writing to express my concern about the wearing of the kilt by certain
extremist Scots. In the first place, it clearly marks them out as separate from
our society. Second, I feel threatened by the thought of what might be
underneath"

An Anniversary Tart and a Birthday Pie.

There was a double celebration at Pie Acres this weekend. Here's what was eaten:

Chard Tart.

In a flan dish, bake a shortcrust case blind. (I was going to make a cheese pastry, but wimped out and bought ready-rolled shortcrust),

Then catch some Swiss chard. I don't know why this delicious vegetable is so hard to find in shops. You see it a lot in vegetable gardens - possibly because it looks so nice. It's about the only thing growing in my own micro plot. (I'll do the veg thing properly next year. Promise!).

Anyway - take the stalks/ribs and cut into .5 cm lengths. Sweat in butter until softened. Add the coarsley-chopped leaves and cook until wilted. Add a little pepper and nutmeg.

Stir in some crème fraîche (you don't want it too runny) and spread it in the baked pastry case. Dot in a few small chunks of Gorgonzola, top with grated parmesan and bake until lightly browned.

Serve with new potatoes with plenty of butter, parsley and a little mint.

Sheperdless Pie

For the bottom bit:

Dice some aubergine and courgette into small dice. Fry in olive oil until they start to brown. Add some onion and chopped shitake mushroom. Sweat some more. Add some cooked green lentils, with their cooking water, and some small cubes of smoked tofu. Add a couple of stock cubes and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

For the topping:

Mashed potatoes. Plenty of butter and some chopped parsley.

Put the bottom mixture in an oven dish. Top with the potatoes. Agigate with a fork to get a suitably rough texture. Dot with butter. Bake.

Serve with some finely-grated red cabbage which has been marinated in a mild vinegar for a couple of hours with some finely chopped shallots and a little salt.

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We shall pass over this news item without further comment. It's the "...boxes of Capri-Sun and packets of Cadburys shortcake biscuits." that intigue me.

Zucchini/ Courgette Tortilla...and a variation

For today's recipe, I am indebted to azahar from Seville (where the marmelade comes from)...and to Psychocandy from whose blog I stole it,

azahar's original recipe was:

Whip up a few eggs in a large bowl. Then grate a zucchini (afterwards use some paper towels to get rid of excess moisture). Then add the grated zucchini to the eggs with a bit of salt&pepper and pour the mixture into a heated frying pan that has a good amount of olive oil also heated up to quite a high temperature.

The size of the pan should be chosen to make the tortilla mixture at least an inch or two high in the pan.

Once the mixture sets (starts sizzling) immediately turn heat down to LOW and cover until the omelette is about 3/4 cooked through, then flip it over (I usually ease it out onto a cutting board, then put the pan over top to flip it) and then continue cooking on low heat - uncovered - until cooked through. Then top with grated cheese and a sprinkling of white pepper and stick under the broiler until cheese has melted.
It’s lovely served with a side salad and crusty bread and also with some of ‘The Sauce’ on the side, which goes very well with the eggs.

In my variation, I took the cooked courgettes/ zuchinni out of the pan and mixed in some cream cheese and some chopped chives, pars;ey and dill. Then I put halt the beaten eggs into the pan. When set, I spread the courgette mixture on top, nice and flat and even, then covered with the rest of the beatenn eggs. I heated a little more, then topped with parmesan (you could use grated swiss cheese, or even cheddar) and put the pan under the gorilla.

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Speaking of gorillas...

The libel action taken by Scottish Socialist Party MSP Tommy Sheridan is drawing to a close. For these as don't follow Holyrood politics I shall recount the salacious details
:
He took The News Of The World to court for alleging that he visited swingers clubs and was caught in a three in a bed situation in a hotel. What this has to do with politics I know not - but he's chosen to sue. The odds are not looking good for him, given that he admitted it all to his party. Plus he sacked his counsel half way through.

Amongst incidents from his trial:

• It was alleged that someone kissed him all over with an ice cube in her mouth. His wife dismissed this: "It can't have been very pleasant. My Tommy's like a monkey. She'd have got a mouthful of hair." Tommy has offered to prove this by stripping off in court.
• Tommy is known for his fondness for sunbeds. In a book on which the newspaper story was based, the writer claimed that her companion at the club had been a six foot six black man with a shaven head. Counsel (when he still had one) asked her: "Is orange the new black?"
• An alleged witness to his hotel romp was asked "By what body part did you recognise him?"

Then there's the reported incident in the a Glasgow hotel. A waitress went up to a table of six diners with a complimentary glass of champagne for those who were actually staying at the hotel. "Are you all residents?" she asked politely as the champagne bottle hovered. Obviously hoping for a free glass, but with only one of the couples staying, one of the diners told her: "Yes, we are all in the one room." Then added: "It's the Tommy Sheridan Suite."

Pasta with Fresh Broadbeans and Ricotta

Sorry. Sometimes the effort of dreaming up 'witty' titles just gets too much and I'm forced back into being descriptive.

I haven't actually made this yet. I bought all the ingredients and even podded the beans, but then a minor domestic emergency happened. But I'm looking forward to it tonight. It was one of those 'What if I...' ideas I have while waiting at traffic lights.

Signore Inginere Anton Gelli is one of The Pie's longest standing members. In time, that is. In stature he's a bit of a shortarse. He's been with us before we were even a website, let alone a blog. As he will attest, different forms of pasta have entirely different functions, and it's important to use a sympathetic noodle. I think this one would work with linguine, but as it was I settled on trofie. The site I stole this picture from tells me that they're Seattle's current 'it' pasta, but don't let that put you off. I nearly got orrichiete. That would have been quite wrong. For starters, they are too similar in shape and size to broad beans. I can't explain why that's important. It just is. Like...if you make a sauce with whole cherry tomatoes and basil, you have to serve it with buccatini. Serving it with spaghetti would be as wrong as serving garlic and chilli with buccatini.

But I digress...

Take your fresh broad beans and pod them. Some would also advocate peeling them, but life's to short. Just buy fresh, young beans.

Braise them very briefly in some olive oil, a little stock, some fresh thyme and garlic. I suggest leaving the garlic whole to keep it nice and sweet.
Cook your trofie.
Add the drained trofie to the broad bean pan.
Toss together with some crumbled ricotta, chopped flat-leaf parsley, a little fresh mint and snipped chives.
Serve topped with coarsely grated pecorino.

Sgr Gelli and I have also been discussing biscuits. Alexei Sayle once pointed out that a lot of biscuits seem to be named after Italian leaders:

"You've got your Bourbon biscuits, your Garibaldi biscuits and your Peak Frean's Mussolini Assortment."

(Links provided for the assistance of USAnian readers who may be unfamilar with UKanian crunchy comestibles. Oh...and we mean 'cookies', not scones with gravy.)

Following further research, Sgr Gelli has discovered Jacobs Jacobites. Leading Jacobite insurgent Bonnie Prince Charlie was, of course, Italian. Don't believe all those pictures on the shortbread tins! They're papist propaganda.

Eggy Bamyasi

A thoroughly misleading title, that. Not only does this ingredient contain no okra, but none of it's ingredients are canned (prizes for spotting the reference).

While I'm talking about okra...why do some cookbooks insist on translating them as 'ladyfingers'? I maintain that the only time one comes across okra is in relation to a cuisine that actually uses it. So why have an English translation. Mind you - I suppose it stops any quarrels about whether to call them 'okra' or 'bhindi'. Or 'bamya', even.

But this isn't about okra. No. It's about...

Cauliflower Kookoo

A kookoo is an Iranian omlette-y thing, similar to an Arabic eggah, an Italian frittata or a Spanish tortilla. Here it's the addition of herbs that gives it its particular Iranian character.

Take some cauliflower. Floretify it. Steam until it's a little soft, but not squishy.
Shred an oinion. Sauté it in olive oil in an omelette-sized non-stick pan until it just begins to brown.
Add in the cauliflower and a goodly amount of sliced garlic.
Once it's all nicely amalgamated, put in lots of finely chopped fresh dill, finely-chopped flat leaf parsley and a little fresh mint. Salt and pepper. Mix it all up.
Beat up some eggs. Four or so. Add to the pan and blend it all about, lifting up the cauli mix a few times with a spatula so that the whole pan is thouroughly eggy. Then start using the spatula to pat the top flat and start prising the edges away from the edge of the pan.
Continue cooking a while until it seems reasonably set. Then brown the top under a grill.
Ease onto a plate and leave to cool. (Putting a plate on top of the pan and inverting sometimes works).
Serve at room temperature with some nice bread, a crisp salad and Suitably middle Eastern pickles.

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Dick Cheney says that the suicides in Guantanamo were 'an act of war'. The Pie urges him and his fellow government members to retaliate in kind immediately.

Happy biiirthday to Pooo-ooop...

It was Poop's birthday party at the weekend. He had sweeties, jammie dodgers, jellies and a Fifi Flowertot birthday cake. He's a most enormous fan of Fifi.

The grown-ups had more sophisticated fare. Today's Big Bumper Edition of Flaming Pie lists all the recipes you need for a simple summer party.


Chilled Pea Soup.

Boil up some vegetable stock with some onions. Throw in some frozen peas and a couple of mint leaves. Allow to cool. Liquidise thoroughly. Adjust the seasoning. Just before serving, throw in lots of ice cubes. Serve with a spoon of sour cream and a sprinking of chives.

I love the German word for chives: der Schnittlauch. Literally, 'snipping leeks'.

Tomato, Olive and Basil Tart.

Preferably, make your own shortcut pastry:
Half the weight of fat/butter to plain flour. Rub together (or food-process). Add just enough water to bind. Wrap in clingfilm and chill thoroughly.

Take a flan dish. Grease and flour. Tip: Shortcust pastry is very hard to deal with. One way is to roll it between two sheets of clingfilm. Another is to grate it into the dish and just squash it over the bottom and sides. However this doesn't work so well with store-bought pastry, which tends to be more elastic.

Bake the pastry case blind. Either cover it in rice/ dried beans/ pebbles and bake, or cover with kitchen foil, pressed to conform to the shape, bake a little, then remove and bake some more until it dries out a bit. Either way - you don't want to cook it thoroughly yet.

Now take the best, vine-grown, small tomatoes you can find. Cut into quarters and scatter, skin side down, in the pastry case. Chop up a few black olives and instersperse amongst the tomatoes. Tear up a good handful of basil leaves and do the same. Drizzle with a tiny amount of olive oil (don't overdo it). Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Bake in a low-ish oven.

Curried Rice Salad

This was the surprise hit.

Cook some boiled rice. Mix up with mayonnaise, mild curry powder (one containing fennel/anise for preference), finely chopped red pepper, chopped spring onions/ scallions/ syboes, some almonds, some raisins, some chopped banana, salt to taste.

Cucumber Sandwiches

Peel a cucumber or two and slice as thin as you can. I used a mandolin (but I'm sure a banjo would do just as well). Put the slices in a colander, sprinkle with salt, add a little vinegar and leave for about an our. Pat them dry on a clean teatowel. Add a few twists of black pepper.

Butter some sliced bread (ideally Hovis, failing that wholemeal) with unsalted butter. Spread with a thin layer of cucumber and make a butty. Press firmly together. Slice off the crusts and cut either into triangular quarters or fingers. Chill before serving.

Lettuce

My Stalinist approach to salad.

Take a nice lettuce or two (Cos, Romaine, never Iceberg!). Tear it up (It's a French thing. Apparently the French never cut lettuce). Simply dress with olive oil, a little vinegar (I used the kind that Delia Smith pronounces 'Boar's Mick'), a little sea salt, a little freshly ground black pepper.

Fruit Salad

For the first time in ages, I managed to score some decent nectarines...in Asda, of all places. For starters, thety were actually ripe. They had deep red skins and white flesh and a wonderful, perfumed taste. They made a great fruit salad, along with watermelon, honeydew melon and Packham pears.

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The Italic Bits

According to the US State Department, suicide can be regarded as 'a publicity stunt'. Do you reckon that Max Clifford might pick up on this for his celeb clients? Here's hoping!


Open Source is a great idea. You can get Open Source Software...which means that you'll never again be stuck for something to do with your spare time...even Open Source Beer and (provided you can read Japanese) OpenCola. And coming soon...Open Source God. It seems that a bunch of geeks are getting together to make instructions on how to make a God Helmet publically available: a clever arrangement of magnets that allows people to...er...see god.


Radio 4's 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' continues to deliver outrageous lines into our homes in the early evening. Two recent examples from Humphrey Littleton concerning the scorer, the ever-delectable Samantha:

"Samantha has to shoot off to meet her new gentleman friend. She says he's going into business growing scrumpy apples. If his predictions are correct, he's going to be very big in cider."

and

"Samantha has to go and by a birthday gift for her gentleman friend. He likes to play with model boats in his bathtub. She's thought about him long and hard and wants to give him a little tug."

Ahfangew!

More Samantha smut here.

Wavy Gravy.

Risotto – not, contrary to popular belief some boiled rice with a few vegetables chucked in it. It’s best regarded as a sort of semi-solid cereal-based soup. The Italian word is ondine– wave-like. When you shuggle the plate, it should ripple.

But I’m not here to talk about risotto. When you make it with barley it’s called orzalano. And it takes a lot less stirring and watching over to get right. Lovely stuff, barley. It has a great flavour and texture. It’s far too nice to restrict it to Scotch Broth.

Anyway…Barley. It’s dirt cheap. Apparently ‘pot barley’ is meant to be the whole grain and ‘pearl barley’ the polished, but I’ve never noticed a difference. It can be a bit starch and gloopy. I recommend pre-soaking it and rinsing it thoroughly in one of those watchamacallits with the holes, and/or bringing it to the boil in lots of water, then changing the water and boiling again. Then simmer on a low heat until tender but al dente. (40 minutes to an hour – depending on pre-soaking etc. etc.). That’s another advantage over risotto, where you have to add the water to the rice gradually. You can just cook the barley in advance in plenty of water and then drain it.

So – you’ve got yer barley. Now get a big frying pan sort of thing. Sauté some shredded leaks and a couple of cloves of garlic in a little olive oil. Then add plenty of sliced/ chopped mushrooms. Make sure you use the big, flat ones. (Sensible languages use a separate word to distinguish these from button mushrooms). Porcini/ Ceps, dried or fresh, would be even better – only somehow last autumn I never got around to foraging. Then add your barley (you want to keep a decent veg-barley ratio), stir it all up and moisten with sufficient stock (including the porcini-reconstituting water, if applicable.). When it looks suitably ondine, slip in a big knob. Of butter. And a handful or two of grated parmesan. Stir a couple of times.

Serve topped with chopped parsley, a little black pepper and more parmesan.

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There are two more holes in Blackburn, Lancashire today as Jack Straw patronises both his constituents and Condaleeza Rice by showing her the delights of ‘modern, multi-cultural Britain.’ I don’t know whether to admire Straw’s chutzpah or to puzzle over his lack of social skills in inviting a guest to go places where she’s going to get shouted at all the time. I’d hope.

‘Hey, Hey, Condi Rice! Is murdering Iraqis nice?’

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Lynne Truss has made a fortune by pointing out that the meaning of some sentences is dependent on the correct placement of a comma:

'Eats, shoots and leaves.'

Then there's Kingsley Amis' (Amis's? I'm never sure) example of a sentence whose meaning depends on the placement of an apostrophe:

'Those things over there are my husbands'.

Now, for the first time in public, a sentence whose meaning is dependent on capitalisation:

'I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse.'

It's pronounced "Keen-wa", apparently

Well...it's been a while.

To make up for it, despite my disparging remarks in the past, here's a recipe involving Quinoa, the high-protein grainy stuff, known to the Incas as "The Food of Hippies"

Superfood Salad

First catch your Quinoa. It can come covered in saponic acid, so first rinse it well in one of those...damn!...things made from metal or plastic mesh...you know the ones...those things that I've got a memory like. (Don't try rinsing in a pan like with rice. Quinoa floats.) Then -

1. spread on a tray in a low oven until dry
2. toast in a saucepan with a little olive oil
3. add double the amount of boiling water to quinoa
4. cover and simmer gently for about 15 minutes, until the shells of the individual grains (the dermis) have burst open
5. agitate with a fork, turn the heat off and leave covered for a little while.
6. uncover and leave to cool.

If pressed for time, omit stages 1 and 2.

Next take either some fresh, podded peas or some sugarsnaps or mangetouts (mangestous?) cut up into small-ish pieces. Slice some radishes. Peel, de-stone and dice an avocado. Combine the lot with enough cooked quinoa to add texture without dominating - you're looking for an effect like Tabbouleh (proper tabbouleh, that is), plus a good quantity fof chopped, fresh mint and (optional) flat-leaf parsley and coriander. Dress with either a little lime juice or a proprietary Caesar's dressing of your choice. Serve in a pile on top of a bed of cos/ romaine type lettuce.

According to the French, lettuce must never be cut with a knife, apparently, only torn.

The italics at the end.

I'm grateful to Psychocandy for informing me of the best chemistry-related pun I've heard in many a year. It's guacamole...geddit?

From the dearly departed Ivor Cutler (15/1/1923 - 3/3/2006)

Thatcher is an eight-letter word.

And finally...

A diversion. If George get's stuck, you can slide him around with the mouse.

Mair just as soon as.

More Pumpin' Pumpkin

Another pumpkin recipe, today being All Hallows' Eve. First the usual warning: don't go using a cattle-fodder Jack O'Lantern pumpkin - they're not tasty. I used a butternut squash myself.

Dead easy, this one. A soup.

First off, chop an onion and sweat it in butter in a big pan. Add a carrot and a few potatoes, diced small. After it's suitably sweaty, toss in a can of chopped tomatoes. Stir a bit, then add boiling water and salt to taste. Continue simmering.

Meanwhile, take your pumpkin/squash. Cut it into chunks and peel. Put most of the chunks in a separate pan, cover with water and boil covered until soft. With a few of the chunks - dice them (Keep the dice reasonably chunky) and add to the other veg.

When the main lot of pumpkin, once soft, liquidise it with a hand blender or implement of your choice. Add the pulpy pumpkin to the main soup. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Stir in some single cream and serve. I reckon a topping of grated Swiss or Cheddar cheese might add to it.

(I get all my cheese from a delightful Palestinian fromagerie that's opened in my neighbourhood. It's an offshoot of the well-known Occupied West Bank company, Cheeses of Nazareth).


I've been carving pumpkins in exchange for donations to the Kashmir Earthquake Appeal. Here are some of the results:








Felllow Pastafarians will recognise the Flying Spaghetti Monster (all hail, me hearties). According to this guy, the theory that the world was created by His Noodly Appendage is a valid , scientific one ...get this...'...because it has been used to describe biological phenomena.' Sure, he was actually talking about Intelligent Design, but the same applies. Ramen!

By the way...did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine? He died of an overdose. (Bi-dum Tish!)

Hippy Food

Quinoa was a grain, much prized by the Incas. The conquistadors suppressed its farming, making the natives economically dependent upon them. I've never seen the point of it myself. So it's full of protein...yadda yadda yadda...but just because something's good for you, that's no good reason to eat it. I can certainly think of more appealing things to put in my mouth.

However, Space Girl has asked me what to do with it. Resisting the obvious answer, I've come up with this:

First, cook your quinoa. Space Girl has particularly asked for guidance here, following her notorious cous-cous incident, when she boiled it instead of steaming and ended up with 'cous'. First of all, the grains are coated with a saponin, as soapy substance, so rinse them thoroughly first. The consensus out there seems to be one cup of quinoa to two of water. Simmer gently as with rice until the water is absorbed, then fluff with a fork.

Since it's irredeemably hippy alreadey, I see no reason not to stuff it into peppers. Mix it up with some toasted, flaked almonds and some coarsely-chopped orange, apricot (fresh, not dried) or - my top tip - peach. Add a little salt.

Cut your peppers in half. Stuff 'em with the mix. Bake until soft.

Eat while wearing a caftan and listening to the Incredible String Band.


I have a theory. There's been a lot of too-ing and fro-ing about the Labour Party leadership. First Blair was going soon, now he's not. Here's what I reckon: The deal with Brown was that he was meant to serve two terms max after which, having taken Britain into the Euro, he'd go on to acclaim as EU president. Obviously that's not going to happen. But he's nive and cosy with his pray-pal Dubya, he's rumoured to be about to reverse his position on Kyoto, he's paying lip-service to 3rd world issues and he's banging on about terrorism as a global issue. Kofi Annan retires in a year. Clinton wanted the job, but that wouldn't sit well wit Hilary '08. Step forward Secretary General Blair. Remember, folks...you heard it here first.


Having watched the mighty Dylan documentary, I'm reminded of the time he was playing in Paris one cold November. As he came out of his hotel, a journalist asked hin 'Have you got a good quote, Bob?' To which he replied 'Man, if I had a good quote I'd be wearing it!'