for the love of friends

Particularly friends who swoop in to relieve me of my responsibilities while I snivel into my third box of tissues. Apparently The Boss will be returned, fed, in time for bed. I could just weep with gratitude.

I was so concerned about my daughter picking up every pre-school cold and snivel when we moved back to the UK. It didn't cross my mind that I might become the walking viral reservoir for over a month (and barely walking at that).

I intend to spend the next four hours knitting the puerperium from last week, sneezing, reading last week's newspapers, eating toast, blowing my nose, and sending self-pitying text messages to Mr Breadwinner somewhere in continental Europe. I might even do some online shopping on his credit card.

I do not intend to do any of the laundry, washing up, ironing, hoovering or emptying of the cat tray.

Normal Yarn Along service to resume next week (I hope).

culinary (con)fusion? rhubarb pork noodles

I don’t know of many people who’ve been to Singapore and don’t like it. The ones who scoff at its well-reported intolerance for everything that interferes with its harmonie communitaire – like chewing gum, litter or Western pluralist democracy – have never been there. Despite what my Guardian-reading brain dictates, my heart commands me otherwise: I love this place.

John Malathronas, Singapore Swing

Six weeks out, and we’re really starting to miss Singapore. The cool order of our little apartment, the convenience of our gorgeous swimming pool, the pure unbridled deliciousness of the food.

And so this weekend we decided to bring a little bit of sunny Singapore to dreich old Scotland, in the form of a rather nice bit of pork belly. My inlaws were staying. They happen to be hopeless with chopsticks and have a pathological fear of fat – even the slightest hint of rind turns them into picky toddlers – so this was going to be a test for them. But the rest of us fully intended to enjoy every mouthful.

Ever on the lookout for recipes to use up my triffid-like rhubarb patch, I decided to brave this peculiar Jamie Oliver recipe: hot and sour rhubarb and crispy pork with noodles. A friend had found it on the internet and almost dared me to give it a go. Out came the chopsticks, the noodle bowls, the Chinese spoons and the cleaver: pork belly is something that I want to do properly.

I wanted to write just a short blog post about this recipe because, if your rhubarb patch is getting out of control like mine, you must give this a go as an alternative to the ubiquitous rhubarb crumble. Not only does it contain the most obscure ingredient ever in the form of “interesting cresses” (sorry Jamie, I could only find cress cresses, but I’ll keep searching) but the rhubarb marinade cooks down into a spicy, tart, savoury, utterly fabulous sauce, almost like a mild rhubarb sambal - you could cook and jar this for so many different things (I have rhubarb ketchup with lovely sausages in mind).

The twice-cooked pork belly is obviously fabulous (except if you’re my MIL who refused to eat any – ho hum). An hour and a half roasting in the marinade followed by a quick, smoky wok fry rendered it both crispy and melting soft (as I set off the smoke alarm my husband rubbed his hands together shouting “wok hei!” in delight). And who knew that rhubarb and fresh coriander is a match made in culinary heaven? J-to-the-O-Dawg, we salute you. Especially after your lovely interview in the Observer Food Monthly at the weekend.

Totally bonkers recipe, totally seasonal major ingredient from the end of the garden, totally fabulous dinner.

Rounded off with cones of mango frozen yoghurt from JO’s 30 minute meals book (if you have the book and haven’t made this yet, you’re not going to believe how good it is), we all felt a little essence of sunny Singapore in our patch of grey British sky.

a right royal (random) knees up

So it’s the Queen’s birthday tomorrow. Her actual birthday, as opposed to her public birthday in June. I’m not a rampant royalist, I’ve never really given the whole thing much thought... my inner little girl thinks that Kate’s awfy pretty and isn’t it a shame she didn’t bag the princess gig, but other than that they’re just elegant people in photos.

But I do like that the monarch is still allowed to do some arbitrary stuff, like having two birthdays. I mean what’s the point in being Queen if you can’t say “I’m tired of the rain on my April birthday, and I do likes me a good picnic, so I’m going to have one in June too – MAKE IT SO toadies!”

If I were Queen I’d enjoy the random powers. Apparently she can actually appoint whoever she likes to be the Prime Minister! I could have some fun with that one. I would definitely proclaim a national cake, and that cake would obviously be a Victoria sponge. Because Victoria sponge has inherently perfect style.

Let me explain…

I had this maths teacher at secondary school, and he was all about solving your quadratic or geometric problems with style. It was no use simply to arrive at the correct answer with lots of squiggly calculations along the way. With him you got the real praise for getting to that answer in a way that made your classmates gasp at the clarity of your solution. Spotting the slick common denominator at the earliest stage, rendering the most complicated of equations effortless, that was the key. I loved maths, and will never in all my days forget him, striving for style amongst the cosine curves.

A proper Victoria sponge has precisely that style.

Choose your eggs according to your sandwich tins (3 eggs for 18cm, 4 for 20cm tins works for me). Before you begin, weigh the eggs in their shells, and then use exactly that same weight of soft butter, caster sugar and self-raising flour. Isn’t it genius? Blend together, adding a splash of vanilla if you like, divide into tins and bake for 25 minutes.

Every time I make a Victoria sponge I relish the pure stylish clarity of the recipe. (For an inspired and seasonal filling, look at this gorgeous variation published today by GoddessonaBudget… now I think that's a Vicky sponge fit for any Queen.)

But I digress, this week I was baking for someone else’s birthday: not royal but no less dignified is Dom from Belleau Kitchen and his 2nd blog birthday. For the occasion he asked his random recipe followers to make him something celebratory and randomly selected from a baking book. Now a baking book I have! Just look at these bad boys…

hurrah! the first things rescued from the unpacking chaos : )

Using a random number generator I selected page 12, which was Apple Cider Pudding Cake printed out from the Joyful Baker last autumn. (Curiously, it seems to have been the last post she wrote since then, I hope it’s not something I said…)

It’s a very American recipe, and I’m afraid we parochial small islanders do tend to struggle with those. Inches? Fahrenheit? Cups? I had to find an actual ruler and an online conversion chart, and rescue my measuring cups from my daughter’s toy kitchen. And I just don't understand two cups of Granny Smith apples, why not just tell me how many apples? I wasn’t feeling any pure stylish clarity by the time I eventually got started, but that’s likely my fault not hers.

It’s a squishy, treacley, appley pudding with a delicious crunchy crumble topping. I served it with a dollop of natural yoghurt, which it definitely needed because it’s quite sweet. If I were to make it again, I’d significantly streamline the ingredients. Less salt, less sugar, and definitely smaller quantities of spices (mine had a distinct aftertaste of both salt and pepper which I'm sure wasn't intended). I’d probably use self-raising flour rather than all the baking powder and soda. And comparing my photos with the Joyful Baker's, my sugar was clearly a grade darker than hers, which probably wasn't ideal.

The crumble topping is inspired, definitely the best bit. But ultimately, if I knew you were coming for tea Dom, I think you’d right royally agree with my conclusion: stick with slick Vic. (or Vik?!)

Happy Birthday Belleau Kitchen, and Gawd bless ya Ma'am.

all cakes taste better with tea and a doily

in search of...

...perfection.

I'm not asking for much, just a tiny bit of perfect. Sadly my life is not. It's in pathetic and woeful c.h.a.o.s. My brain stops working in chaos, anxiety and neuroses start accumulating, resulting in complete apathy and underachievement.

I want to make something for a special little baby in London who is due to arrive any minute, and I was inspired by the sheer flawless purity of this post by a blogger known as Pilli Pilli. From the way she writes, she clearly doesn't even consider herself a very accomplished knitter. Bah, some people are almost too clever.

Motivated, I got some navy blue DK out of my wool box (n.b. I've started to rail against the "s" word... you know the one... it seems a bit furtive and harsh. Just me?) and started the puerperium pattern that I've read so much about. I figure that navy blue can go either way gender-wise with the correct choice of buttons. Bugger it, there's something I'm quite hopeless at, choosing buttons.

Nevermind, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, for now I have to try and make a pretty picture for Yarn Along. But hang on... all my surfaces have sticky marks, dust bunnies, cracked paint (not in a shabby chic kinda way) or heaps and heaps of stuff from the container delivery, still piled up with no idea what to do with any of it.

Deep breath. Note to self: remember the New Years resolution, "hope in honest error" and all that.

So enough grumbling: the puerperium does indeed look like it'll turn out nice, if not quite as evenly perfect as Pilli Pilli's lovely pieces. Everyone's got to have something to aim for. And The Blue Afternoon continues to be one of the most brilliant stories I've read in ages, I hope it has a good ending.

In the meantime, I'm going to sow peas with The Boss. A little bit of perfect after all.

project 52: sacrifice

We made a massive sacrifice today.

A whole container pulled up outside the house yesterday afternoon, and within the hour all of our earthly possessions had been disemboweled into a big heap. Make that five big heaps actually, one in each room of our very small house. Without a flat surface to be seen, it looked like we'd been ransacked in a particularly gory whodunnit movie.

Today, due to the sheer volume of unnecessary bilge that we'd just knowingly shipped across the world (carbon footprint guilt) and with some destructive renovations looming, my husband and I made a decision to live differently, perhaps a bit more like the original 1937 residents of our home. Without something that I love.

Without so many books.

We had so many that we were keeping for ridiculous reasons like:
a) they were a gift, and we wouldn't want to offend
b) we enjoyed reading them (like, 12 years ago)
c) we like the look of them, books on shelves look interesting

The thinning out became addictive, brutal and ruthless. The Oxfam charity bookshop boxes very quickly outnumbered those that we decided to keep, and before we knew it we'd achieved what we set out to; four shelves of books. Yup. Four.

The eagle-eyed might spot that these four shelves cover everything. Gardening, cooking, fiction, knitting, child-rearing, travel, and even key texts from two of my previous professional careers.

sorry, iphone photo for today's p52, I don't even know where my camera is in the chaos

I feel purged. Especially as the bookshelf sits in the precise position that the tv once occupied. It is the one item that we asked the container men not to remove from its box.

Sacrifice, it can feel good. But I'm not sure the librarian down the road is going to feel likewise when I take my next reading list to him...






*disclaimer, our daughter's books aren't part of this deal. Her bedroom shelf inches now probably outstrip ours, but as a budding bookworm, she can never have too many!