Nourish Me

healing, nourishing

Friday morning: changed the cooking plans - parsley pesto, almond and pecorino crackers - according to the news that Peter's shin injury was not, as we'd hoped, trifling. Somehow the infection, now being hit with strong antibiotics, has sent him into the deepest of blue moods, knocked his ordinarily unshakeable confidence askew and if I am to speak truthfully, I find it troubling. Fishing around in the cold depths of the freezer for poultry bones, deposited there after a recent spate of roasted chicken dinners and one rather wonderful self-congratulatory weekend of duck confit, I do what seems to come naturally when one of us - and it has to be said, usually me - is down: start on a large pot of stock, or bone broth as I keep seeing it referred to, a name I find myself quite liking. Some to be sipped by the window at lunch, relieved to know that at least the leg is okay, the rest to be used, as one does, throughout the weekend for mood-enhancing, medicinal cooking.

A pot of broth to play with counts as one of life's little joys. Healing, nourishing. Satisfyingly frugal.

Braised vegetables surely must count as another of life's little joys. It was Nadine Abensur who alerted me to braising as a method most suited to them. Baby carrots and fennel are two vegetables I almost always end up thinking of being favourites of mine because of the way she taught me to cook them; simmered gently in liquid, then finished off over a higher flame, to glaze and catch their edges. Larousse describes braising as a method of,

cooking food in a closed vessel with very little liquid at a low temperature and for a long time

I usually add more liquid and simmer, on the stovetop at least, at a slightly higher pace, but that's experience talking, and the older I get the more I believe that cooking well is all about developing intuition (and not thinking too hard - this part is vital). With a pot of bone broth and a cardboard box of beautiful winter vegetables to use, I braised wedges of fennel and thickly peeled celeriac for Friday night, with wide diagonal slices of leek and celery, a little de-sprouted garlic, a splosh each of mirin, apple cider vinegar and olive oil and enough broth to sit a little over halfway up the sides of the vegetables. Simmered 'til almost soft, lid off, and simmered again until most of the liquid evaporated. Haloumi, crisped in a cast iron pan on the woodstove, and lemon wedges on the side. Eaten at our dining table. Pale green and healing. Would have been gorgeous with vegetable stock, of course it would have been, but those bones and their gelatinous richness lifted it all somewhere higher.   

Leftovers got stuffed into baked potatoes with a scrap of sour cream for Saturday. A salad of celery (Tod Davies loves a celery salad as, now, do I) and shredded red cabbage, with whey-pickled (oh, alright, lacto-fermented) ginger, tossed in the basic dressing Kathryn came up with for The Clever Cook. That dressing. So, so good. 

The healing continues. 

 

impossible

I have a lot of love for vanbar. Today ed cheered me up, told me that the impossible film comes with no guarantee. It's an expensive, arty sort of film, and results can vary wildly. When it works, your heart will feel happy, but inevitably there will be duds among them. You just have to suck it up. The difficulty is part of the (beautiful) deal. 

Red is hard to catch. Am fond of this photo, taken in March, when things were a lot warmer. Temperature is key. By mid-winter the film, and the 1971 metal frame of the camera it lives in, is bloody freezing, and neither seem to warm up at our place even when I've got the fire roaring. 

It was -3 up there overnight. Little wonder the film is less capable in June. The black radishes you can't quite make above (due to focus, ahem, as much as the c-c-c-old) are best when pulled, scrubbed and mandolined, fanned out on a nice plate and dressed in a light and lovely way, or with a thicker tahini-miso-lemon combination, thinned with water. A killer dill, yoghurt and walnut dressing I'll tell you about soon would work, too.  

 

lately

Of course I say lately, but this was taken in, what, April? I should note these things down more accurately - indeed, I can hear the voice of my first year lecturer telling me to do just that, and f-stops and shutter speeds andandand - but somehow that takes away from the joy of just seeing.     

Their skins were split by February's heavy rains, but perfect in tomato chilli jam.  

Celeriac - not my own, I am sorry to say - cooked Ottolenghi's way, suggested by our friend Ben who I happily converted to the book last year. It was the leek fritters that did the trick. Must make again.

All my own work, these. Swoon. Eggplant Love.

Then, there was this:  

The very lovely, very sweet Miss Alice, the latest edition to us, who arrived one morning in February.

And there I was thinking I was not a Cat Person. Thrilled to be wrong.  

a bunch of stuff i ate (part 2)

the brussels sprouts that made me fart all night long

the watercress that i floated on a clear golden broth of chicken

the ginger was for tea, the butter on my morning toast

a pilaf that was more vegetables than rice, the way i like the ratio these days

sneaky mid-winter tomatoes for my mid-winter birthday (they were goood)

and a mango juice in bali that i can't get out of my head, this rainy 'ole morning.

a bunch of stuff I ate

Using film pretty much exclusively now means there are some meals that were great then, but which, by the time the negatives come back, are completely wrong for the season. Others have been eclipsed by meals that were deemed better along the way, but most have just been forgotten.

When you cook most of the meals it can be a drag to write it all down all of the time, right?

Tidying up the files this afternoon, so here's a bunch of stuff I ate this year, with pictures I like, that didn't make the cut for some reason or other. 

Hang on. I know this one; Kathryn's gorgeous beetroot curry. I like that the greens look sinister, and just a little bit Sideshow Bob.

That bathroom had great light.

And the mangoes, well, I just ate those.

Some with lime and chilli and salt as a side dish, but mostly just over the sink.