Counting your life in cake spoons

GluttonBoy are currently enraptured with a programme on the Food Network, called Ace of Cakes. For those with better things to do than scroll up and down the outer reaches of the EPG, Ace of Cakes follows the fortunes of an 'edgy' bakery in Baltimore, called Charm City Cakes. Their USP, if you like, is creating cakes that are big, look like something amazing or are wacky. They achieve this with a lot of fondant and, often, making cakes that have no edible cake in them whatsoever. It's not what I'd spend £1,ooo on, personally, but what strikes me as interesting is that in the US people seem to mark more occasions than birthdays with a cake. All kinds of parties, gatherings and celebrations call for a baked creation and that is something that, as a greedy person, I applaud.

Like many work places at the moment, we're keen on baking and so keen to find any excuses for a cake (and to stop work for a moment to shove it down our faces to be honest). This week saw the departure of a my dearest work colleague, who is emigrating to Australia. She has been my work bezzie for many years, despite taking time off to shove out two strapping infants, so while this was clearly an occasion for her to celebrate, it was making the rest of us feel very sad face.

Clearly though, cake is a good thing, so I decided to whip up a pavlova (Australian, see?) and complement it with some scones bought from the local Tesco. Naturally, as I was doing it quickly after work, I didn't have enough sugar so made it half and half caster and dark brown muscovado, then lavishly covered the fractures (and there were many, I dropped it) with softly whipped cream and some dark, sweet strawberries. I had thought about using passion fruit to carry through the tropical theme but surprisingly Tesco Metro had run out.

While the pav didnt make me feel less sad face, it was delicious. The muscovado added a little whisper of burnt sugariness which worked well with the sweetness of the cream and the fruit. A friend suggested using banana rather than strawbs (in which case I'd add them underneath the cream) and drizzling the cream with caramel, which I think is inspired. Caramel out of a tin (Carnation) for example, or dulce de leche if you want to be fancy, would be fine, but a slightly burnt-tasting butterscotch, made with salted butter, would be good too. Anyway, if you want to make the pav, here's the recipe:

Preheat oven to 170C

Put a sheet of greaseproof paper onto a baking sheet

Whip four egg whites until stiff

Whisk in 250g caster sugar or a combination of caster and dark muscovado until stiff peaks

Fold in 1tsp wine vinegar and 2tsp cornflour

Shape into approx 20cm round and put in oven, turn it down asap to 140C.

Turn oven off after 1hr, 15 mins and leave in oven to get cool

Enjoy - will help mend a broken heart if much loved colleagues are leaving the country...

Lots of love

GG

Christmas in October

As I've mentioned before, I work in PR and years ago worked in the fashion/lifestyle sector. Due to the vagaries of publication lead-times, Christmas articles (gift guides, fashion) are put together in July/August in magazines. Consequently, I start thinking about Christmas some time in June.

Now, as befits someone whose husband suggests should have an epitaph of 'she bit off more than she could chew', I like to do things myself. I have never hosted Christmas at my house, due to family being spread far and wide, but that is probably no bad thing as I suspect I would be run ragged making a wide variety of breakfasts, nibbles, drinks, sides, main course choices, desserts, afternoon tea nibbles and accompaniments. Both gluttonboy and I think that, while we love Christmas day food, the best day of all is Boxing Day buffet. And by buffet, I mean not only the formal meal that is placed on the table at a set time, but also the general fridge grazing that occurs - every time you walk past the fridge (and for some reason that is OFTEN) you hack of a slab of meat, garnish it with some kind of pickle and shove it in your craw, chased with a slab of yule log and a handful of preztels and washed down with a Snowball, whatever the time of day.

Of course I always make a pudding and a cake. The latter has to be made with peak-style royal icing and my late mother in law's decorations, which have, to be frank seen better days. I will leave the cake saga for another day but suffice it to say, things aren't always what they seem.

I also love making pickles and chutneys and make a variety to eat/take to family/give as gifts. This means that from October onwards the flat has the taint of boiled vinegar. This year I have also made a plumbrillo for the first time, which I'm itching to try with some tangy British cheeses on the best day of the year.

Currently, the pineapple chutney is simmering away and I'm loving the thought of this with some thickly cut ham on a crusty roll (and the Christmas holidays, with the shops mostly shut, is a time when part-baked breads stashed in the freezer really come into their own).

I've also got the Christmas cake fruit soaking in cream sherry. The recipe calls for Pedro Ximenez but tbh, an Pedro Ximenez that doesn't end up in my glass is a waste, so cream sherry it is. I plan to also use the sherry in my mincemeat and christmas pudding, thereby creating a little bit of a theme this year.

On the pressie make is is whisky and caramel sauce, a meat rub and possibly some Turkish Delight vodka. Now I love making alcohols but again that is story for another day. It is at this time of year that I am most grateful for having: a garage, a spare fridge (in the garage) and a freezer (in the garage). And also grateful for being greedy, and having greedy friends and family - how boring would Christmas be if it was just about pressies and not about stuffing yourself silly wiht the ones you love.

Gluttongirl's Pineapple Chutney:

2 pineapples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks

2 large tart eating apples, peeled, cored, finely chopped

2 red onions, peeled and chopped

300g sugar (I used a mix of ordinary granulated and dark muscovado as that was all I had in the cupboard, but in retrospect, I like the idea of a tropical treacliness of the muscovado with the pineapple)

2 tsps turmeric

2 tsp mustard seeds

2/3 star anise

2 cinnamon stick (1 tsp ground cinnamon if that's all you have)

2ooml cider vinegar

Shove everything in a large pan, bring to the boil and simmer vigorously (not boil so much) until a thick, gloopy, gorgeous mess. Turn off the heat for a moment, and you should be able to draw a spoon across the pan without it immediately filling with vinegar.

Jar quantity is a bit variable, but makes about 1kg - might be less. I tend to prefer using smaller jars as I think no-one uses a massive jar that quickly and it'll spoil. Also, I love finding a jar of a favourite vintage at the back of the cupboard. It's a pretty yellow colour so makes a nice gift and ask you can imagine, it goes well with ham.

Enjoy!

GGxx

Food and family

So some people see food and fuel. And I feel sorry for them. In our (Jewish, of course) family, we ate to celebrate, we ate to commiserate. We provided food because it's hospitable. If there's one thing all the women in my family have in common, it's that we feel we've let people down if they leave our house without wanting their stomach pumped.

So I recently got back in touch with an estranged branch of my family- a half-sister, three nieces, a nephew and a great-nephew. It's all been a bit weird but really positive and has made me very happy. So one on my new nieces held a bbq and invited us - my sister and her partner would be there, my niece (obvs) who I've met before and her partner (who I haven't), his parents and various other friends, as well as a niece I hadn't met before. It's fair to say I was pretty nervous about it really so I did what I always do - bake something to take (peanut butter brownies). And off we trooped to deepest Essex.

And you know what, it was great. And I have genuinely never seen so much food at a barbeque. Delicious sausages from a local butcher in Suffolk, ribs, burgers and really tasty jerk chicken. I am not a huge fan of hot food but niece's partner had taken his mum's advice and made them both subtle and plentiful There were platters upon platters. His mum had also made Jamaican dumplings, which I can only describe as a slightly sweet dough, fried. I ate about 20 of them and eventually gluttonboy had to stage an intervention to stop me eating the whole tray.

So what's the point of this? It's that people share values and it is one of life's pleasures to share time with people whose values you share, even if you don't have much in common apart form that. And the pleasure of sharing good food with nice people you enjoy being with and getting to know is surely one of the nicest pleasures of all.

GG

Hunkering in a Bunker

Unless you're on the sort of holiday where you don't even read four-day-old copies of the Daily Mail, you will have noticed that many places in London were, last week, under seige from 12 year olds equipped with a PAYG blackberry and their older sister's scarf wrapped around their head, intent on robbing a pair of Nikes from Footlocker.

I live in Peckham, which is very much the South-East London badlands at the best of times and last week we were even more front line than usual, which resulted in the Tesco Express next door being boarded up for a week, plus the one a 5 minute walk away. My local big supermarket was also closed for a time, and the main street through Peckham was also closed to both traffic and people on foot. Which, all in all, has caused a fair bit of inconvenience, shopping wise.

What has this got to do with food? Well more than you'd think. As we have the little Tescos so close by and only a small fridge, we only shop as and when we need it. We don't have a freezer and aren't eating pasta/rice so have fewer store cupboard options. So when the shops locally are shut and the only ones open are the corner shop, what do you eat?

Post-riot, I had long-life madeleines for breakfast. GluttonBoy had a Mars muffin. For lunch I had a pot noodle and a packet of crisps. How quickly the norms of civilisation break down, right?

Which brings me to the main point. If there's one part of cooking that gives me endless amounts of satisfaction, it's preserving. A row of jars, neatly labelled and ready to be distributed while wearing a floral pinny and a self-satisfied smile, fills me with warmth and, have to be honest, some smugness.

This is a peak time of year for the jammy jammer. I particularly love preserving fruits you can't find in the shops. Damsons are a particular favourite and find themselves in jam, chutney and also some kind of white spirit, usually voddy or gin. Tbh, after the last chutney batch which took me HOURS to take the fricking stones out, I now usually sling them in a kilner with some sugar and gin and hope for the best.

I also love greengages with a passion and my nice local greengrocer in Herne Hill is overrun with them. Six jars of slightly runny jam are now ready for eating. Of course strawberry is the classic, but unless you have access to a PYO it can be a bit expensive. But the pleasure of serving homemade jam with homemade scones is pretty priceless. We bought a flat last year, largely for two reasons - it had a garage and there's an apple tree in the communal garden. Apples have ripened early this year and each neighbour recieved a jar of spiced apple chutney as a little treat. The look on their faces was worth the lingering smell of boiling vinegar.

Now I'm not saying that a shelf-ful of chutneys will keep us in rations if we need to pull up the drawbridge, but preserving appeals to a deep sense of self-preservation which, in these times of instant gratification, can help us all feel a bit more grounded and rooted.

GG

Village People

Now there is nothing that GluttonBoy and I like more than a bit of fine dining - a starched tablecloth, a highly trained and synchronised front of house crew, the theatre of the presentation of the dishes at table. But regular readers will also know that we also love a bit of rough- Meatwagon burgers at the pub next door, mac n cheese in front of the telly, fish and chips at the beach.

In the UK it sometimes feel like you have to be in one camp or the other. One of the reasons we love reading Saveur magazine from the US is that it celebrates home cooking and dirty (in the nicest way) cooking as well as cheffy cooking and a fancy resto.

So GB and I haven't seen much of each other of late, and with a Sunday in front of us and weather a bit unpredictable, I persuaded him to accompany me to Brixton Village. Despite only being a hop, skip and jump away, we don't often get to Brixton but we'd both been hearing tons about Brixton Village online. We're always late to the party but in case you don't know, BV is what the old Granville Arcade (a rundown, 1930s covered arcade) has become. It is home, possibly most famously, to the Thai restaurant Kaosarn, reviewed glowingly by the Observer's Jay Rayner and, most excitingly to me (as I love ice cream more than almost anything else) a artisan gelateria called Lab G which purports to offer an amazing salt caramel variety (I should also say I love salt caramel more than almost anything else too).

From the entrance we found, it didn't look promising. Happily, we couldn't have been more wrong and spent the next hour with a look on our faces like we'd found the promised land. It's a mix of great food shops and mini cafes/restos... some not much more than a couple of enthusiastic owners and a bench or two. Honest does burgers and triple cooked chips, Cornercopia has a cafe on one side doing really seasonal modern Brit/Euro food from brekkie to early evening, Agile does pizza/calzone and there were a few coffee shops, a cake place, a sweetie shop, a bunch of Colombian grills and probably lots more that I can't remember. And of course Kaosarn.

I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Thai. I don't really like spicy food and if there is one foodstuff I'd ban if I was in charge it would be coriander. But I'm quite bossy normally so let GB decide for once and I'm super-glad I did, because it was delicious. I had a chicken Pad Thai and it was incredibly light and fragrant. GB had lamb mossoman - the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a spoon, the sauce was sweet and light and full of flavour. Neither was especially hot and I am partcularly glad to report that the coriander was large and on top of the food so easy to pick off and discard. It's also family run and the ladies were hugely friendly and we can't wait to go back. I really want to try an Honest burger but really, if I'm going to eat a burger I'll go next door to Meatwagon so I think Kaosarn is the one for me at the Village. Not bad for a coriander hater.

So, ice cream, the point of the visit. They were out of salt caramel, which I don't mind as it means I'll HAVE to go back and so I went for panna cotta - happily one of my top-5 desserts. Creamy but not heavy in the way premium ice cream brands are, fresh, sweet, creamy. I wanted to wolf it down and in fact I did. There, I said it. I wolfed it down and I will be back for more without any question at all.

BV also has some great shops - vintage women's and menswear, interiors, young designers. It's a fantastic initiative which, while it has clearly brightened up a much unloved and rundown area, is so much more than a wishful-thinking initiative. And welcome much more than local hipsters, especially with children. Its not worth supporting just because it's a right on thing to do, to support local traders, but its worth supporting because they offer a unique proposition - good food, good places to eat and drink, nice things to buy, a fun place to do it, a buzz you want to enjoy.

With love

GG

An homage to Norway

As I have mentioned many times, both GluttonBoy and I have an abiding love for Norway and Norwegians. We have a couple of very close Norski friends and try to visit them in a couple of times a year. And there are a couple of reasons we love Norway so much, and a couple of stories illustrate it:

(The details might be a bit sketchy here) In WW2, the German fleet sailed a boat up the Oslofjord. Bearing in mind Norway had given shelter to Jews when other countries had simply handed them over, this was a big deal, so the boat was scuttled, with all souls on board heading for the icy drink. The Norwegians, fearful that sailors would drown, jumped into boats and rescued them. There were no 'Gotcha' headlines here.

A few years ago, we went to stay with our friends in Norway. We talked about immigration and other issues and he mentioned that there had been some incidences of assault in East Oslo, by immigrants. The media had taken the view that, while it was of course important that the perpetrators were punished, wider society had somehow failed them as they didn't feel part of Norwegian society. It was therefore the responsibility of Norway to help them integrate. Imagine the Daily Mail writing something like that. Now stop imagining before your head explodes.

While there are loons anywhere, it seems particularly hard that a trusting, open, truly just and equitable society should have something like this. And because I love Norway so much, and this is ostensibly a food blog, I'm going to list the many things I like about Norway, despite it not really having a foodie culture per se:

They are obsessed with hotdogs (polse). You can (and do) buy them everwhere. Every party or gathering includes polse. With mustard, ketchup and sometimes potato salad. And sometimes in a thin potato pancakey wrap called a lompe.

Their idea of a good night out is to take a cake to someone's house.

They make amazing cakes, buns and bread.

They have a mandated school bun. This is so no-one has a better or worse bun than anywhere else.

They believe in going for a long walk, uphill, in rubbish weather, then stopping off for a bun. Bliss.

There is a log cabin cafe/restaurant outside Oslo, up the mountain, that sells the most delicious apple pie with cream.

Holiday dip mix - a spice mix you put in sour cream

Waffles - always served with strawberry jam and sour cream

Kransekake - an almond ring cake served at Christmas

Milk chocolate, especially with Daim bar pieces

Jelly ladies - they have boobs

So, eat Norwegian, be Norwegian, you know it makes sense.

GG.

Doing it standing up

When I was a child, there were a couple of hard and fast eating rules. As my dad always had company cars, we were never ever allowed to eat or drink in them. Not even travel sweets. This has left me with an abiding memory of bolting down a mivvi standing next to the car (boiling hot), hopping up and down on roasting tarmac while dad impatiently revved the engine.
The second rule was that my mum thought eating on the move was 'common'. Even fish and chips at the seaside were eaten not (as I am now obsessed with doing) sitting on a sea wall out of the paper but in a restaurant, with a knife and fork. I used to sneak to the chip shop to get a bag of chips with my friend Jackie and eat them at the bus stop and felt ridiculously sneaky. Even now, eating on the run feels transgressive. I frequently bolt lunch while on the train, en route to meetings or whatever, and it doesn't seem right- like I'm not concentrating enough on what I'm doing.
It's fair to say then, that street food would generally leave me cold, although I love the idea of it - as I said, I love fish and chips at the beach and necking back an oyster while strolling along the harbour in Whitstable. However, I am clearly alone in this as London is in the grip of a street food frenzy, and apologies if I am late to the party.
We've been meaning to visit Meatwagon for ages, and when it moved to New Cross we had lots of plans to go. But both Mr Glutton and I are more lazy than we are greedy and it never really happened but when they moved into the pub next door, we were excited beyond words, particularly as the pub had previously been owned by people who were exceptionally RUDE to us! The Rye celebrated their opening by hosting Eat Street - a street food festival that featured lots of London's best loved vans and as an opener, we had Big Apple Hot Dogs. Now I love hot dogs, and these were beauties. Massive, grilled, covered in ketchup, mustard and sourkrout and wrapped in a soft and tasty roll- miles away from the bland pap rolls normally on offer. I only managed one (although it was ENORMOUS) but Mr G managed two as he is very tall and so has more space for gluttony. BAHD can also be found in Old Street but follow on twitter to find them.
Next up, and hotly anticipated, was Meatwagon. Burgers. Cheese. Buns. Seriously, what's not to like. In a week, we went three times. Excellent burgers, excellent buns. Cheese. I'll say no more except that Meatwagon is using the Rye's kitchen as a development kitchen , a state of affairs of which I heartily approve. Also, fries and their rightly-famous onion rings are also on offer so, again, follow on Twitter for more info.
We've been hearing a Twitter buzz (because we are seriously at the bleeding edge of food trends) about Pitt Cue Co - a food truck underneath Hungerford Bridge offering a frankly unbeatable combination of barbeque and booze. It was raining, it was cold, but barbeque and a brilliant busker crooning Vegas-era Sinatra is enough to lift anyone's moods so I didn't even mind eating standing up, for once. I had pulled pork (tender, porky) with barbeque sauce and red cabbage coleslaw. Unfortunately they committed the unforgivable sin of putting me within 2 feet of coriander by including it in the coleslaw but the pork was incredible so I am tempted to ignore that slip. Mr G had the 'pickle back and skin' - a shot of bourbon, a shot of pickle juice and a small cup of what I assume was deep fried crackling. I selflessly took some of the crackling off his hands but thankfully he didn't need any help with the bourbon and juice. He found it interesting.
Lastly in our street food odyssey has been a bit of Mexico with Buen Provecho. It was a hot day, I love Mexican food and I couldn't be arsed to cook. Tacos (pulled pork, chicken mole) and quesadillas - spicy, packed with flavour, light.

My conclusion? There are times when you want tablecloths and waiters and times when you want pork juice running down your arm in the rain. Just make sure you have plenty of tissues.

Lots of love

GG

Alright cupcake

So, as you may have realised, I am partial to a bit of baking and actually, I'm not half bad at it. But lately, what with me being on reduced rations and GluttonBoy being off-carbs, the old mixing bowls have started to gather dust. Plus, I am also used to being the queen bee baker and have had my nose rather put out of joint lately by the arrival in the office of a quite spectacular baker. Grr.

Anyway. An office birthday always needs a cake, so out came the new Hummingbird Cake Days and off I went. It's not everyday you make a cake with sodastream syrups in - but cola cakes and lemonade cakes demanded it.

And they were delicious! The sponge was light with just a hint of soda, the icing was sweet and light and there wasn't too much of it. I wanted to sprinkle with popping candy just before serving but there seems to be a popping candy drought in south London so that plan was thwarted.

The best thing of all was the chorus of 'mmmmms' all round the office. Baking is nice, but baking for other people is the nicest of all.

The recipe (slightly altered, sorry):

take 240g flour, 80g softened butter, 1/4 tsp salt and mix in a mixer until breadcrumb-like

Mix 2 eggs with 40mls whole milk and 1tbsp sodastream cola mix. With the mixer going like blazes, drizzle the liquid in and beat until light and fluffy.

This makes 16 cupcakes for me - fill cases 3/4 full and bake at 190 for about 20 mins.

Ice when cool:

500g icing sugar

140g butter

2 tbsp syrup

20mls whole milk

Beat like fury again until light. Top with a cola bottle for full effect.

Here's a pic -

With love - GG.

Settenden Mai

Now, as I may have mentioned, I love Norway. I have two very close Norski friends but our love of the frozen North goes much further. You would think, as two gluttons, that we wouldn't especially love Norway as it doesn't really have a food culture. But you'd be wrong. People have so much of a different life and different values - being outdoors, taking time, equality of opportunity - these seem to be intrinsic to their way of life. We go at least once a year to spend time with friends who live in rural Norway, in a wooden Captain's house in village on the Oslofjord. There must be about 50 people who live there year round but in the summer it swells. Summer is a brilliant time - we sit on the veranda overlooking the fjord, having a barbeque, swimming in the coldest water ever, drinking homemade cherry vodka. It doesn't get dark.

And any country that has a special word for cosy, warm companiable time you spend with friends is fine by me. And that word is Hyggle (pronounced higg-el-le).

I'll write another time about Norwegian baking, but 17th May is Norway Day, quite a big deal, so that is what we celebrated.

Anyone who's been to a Scandi country (or Ikea) will have noticed their obsession with hotdogs - in Norway called a Polse. Which they serve everywhere and at any time of day (on the beach, at parties), in either bread (brod) or my favourite, lompe - a sort of potato wheat pancakey wrap.

Mustard (sennep) and ketchup obligatory. Potato salad (potet salat) and onions are also common.

We finished with waffles - another Norge tradition, in the heart shape. Traditionally served with sour cream and home made strawberry jam, we settled for bonne maman and squirty cream. We're nothing if not classy. And, for breakfast, a cinnamon bun, but that is another story.

Good day for a wedding

I love a wedding, but after several hours of the royal nuptials, I was ready for some reality. GB and I headed over to Borough in search of something for dinner. Now I've gone off Borough, mainly because it seems to have become less of a place for fantastic producers and more of a theme park but despite that it is still a brilliant place to source more unusual ingredients like clams, wild mushrooms or Seville oranges.
I'm sure I mentioned that we're trying to be less gluttony than usual, so it was slightly unfortunate that one of the first stalls we came across was the French dairy man. Last time I came across this stall I shoved a delicious creme caramel down my neck in about 3 seconds. He also sells the most delicious Echire butter, which comes in, and this is very exciting, a very salty variety. He has also started selling ice cream, in particular a salted caramel variety. Regular readers will know that caramel ice cream is my desert island food but GB and I, rather modestly, shared just one scoop. God it was good- creamy and slightly savoury, almost chewy as it was so thick.

With love from GluttonGirl

Lunch en famille

One if my absolute favourite things is having people round for food. Being the long weekend, we'd invited my sister in law, her husband and two lovely daughters, plus a mutual friend and her two lovely sons. As I have a table for four, I decided to do buffet-style and be informal. Every buffet needs potato salad, which Glutton Boy made. We had a small argument as to whether he'd made enough- can you ever have too much potato salad? GB also made a retro waldorf salad, which I love- crunchy and sweet and sharp. He garnished it in a way reminiscent of his days working in a regional hotel:






I also roasted a chicken and for the veggies, a sticky onion and cheddar quiche. The highlight was a beetroot salad from Ottolenghi's Plenty- one of my favourite books. To be totally honest, I'm not a huge fan of vegetables, not unless they're cooked Vichy or smothered in hollandaise. But this salad takes beetroot and mixes it with a tomato and roast pepper dressing, red onion, dill and Greek yoghurt. The colour of this beauty alone lifts my spirit but it is ridiculously delicious and also impressive:






Lastly, I made a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake;






I don't think I've ever cooked for such effusive and appreciative guests- it makes my heart sing to hear people making happy-eating noises! We're all gluttons at heart!


Well, the washing up awaits...


With love from GluttonGirl

In honour of times gone by

If serving waldorf salad wasn't retro enough, GluttonBoy served it like this:



Please note the apple garnish. Love it!

With love from GluttonGirl

Getting competitive!

In my other life as a PR supremo/dogsbody, I have the great fortune to work with some brilliant people. And we had the idea recently to hold a weekly bake-off. It was decided as a one on one knockout style competition and as am known to be handy with a whisk I was, unfairly to my competitors, viewed as the one to beat. So after much stress and a rehearsal, I chose a fab cake from
Bbcgoodfood which is always reliable. Was a peanut butter sponge sandwich cake, filled with dulce de leche and peanut butter and topped with


With love from GluttonGirl

The right time and place

So much of food pleasure is about location and timing. The most obvious example is fish and chips eaten outdoors at the seaside. While I like eating them with my feet in the briney deep, I also like eating them while sitting in a bus shelter trying to keep out if the wind.
And I could think of tons more- cold beer on a summer Friday evening, outdoors. Hot crumpets after a cold long walk. Egg and chips on a Saturday lunchtime with the merest suggestion of a hangover...
To that I will add the first mr whippy of the year, in an urban park, while it is still a bit on the chilly side. For the benefit of any overseas readers I should explain that mr whippy refers to an ice cream bought from a van that plays music, decorated with strawberry sauce and a flake. It's soft in texture and ice cream snobs will tell you that it is high in whale fat and low in proper dairy and real ingredients, and they are right. I am in fact also an ice cream snob but I do love a mr whippy. Regular readers will know my love of the cheap and the processed and it has to be said that mr whippy offers a muted kind of pleasure. Still, on a coldish day in a muddy park in deepest SE London, it tasted pretty good. GluttonBoy had an Oyster- which is a bit weird but at least it wasn't a screwball.







With love from GluttonGirl

It's getting personal...

We have an office bake-off weekly. This week was nutella cake vs giant chocolate cupcake. Both great, but the nutella cake stormed into the lead. I'm competing next week, my fight name is 'the cupcake killer'.
GG









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Are we at war?

In an age of the finest this, the freshest that, the most sustainable/seasonal, it's easy to forget that food wasn't always this way. In the olden days, when food was simply fuel chefs were in the kitchen not on the telly, we ate out of tins.

Now, I love tinned food. With the exception of peas, which are rank. I have many happy memories of eating entire tinned meals on holiday with my dad and sister in Wales - tinned tuna, tinned potatoes and tinned carrots. To this day I love love love tinned carrots and tinned green beans. If you're feeling low on a Friday night, a tin of rice pudding (eaten cold, straight out the can) is just the ticket. Beans (eaten cold, straight out the can) and spaghetti hoops (eaten cold, straight out the can) are still some of my favourite things. A friend of mine, whose family is so genteel she used to be told off for pronoucing garage as garridge, has fond memories of her mother offering tinned peaches and evap for pudding. Which I also love. And my father in law has a thing for those tinned puddings you boil for hours. Also which I love.

Which brings me to my subject, in a rather roundabout way. Sometimes we just forget that old fashioned, simple things can be nice. I think I mentioned Jelly Whip a while ago - a pudding served by a friend of my mum's. I thought I'd have a go at this on Saturday night while Glutton Boy was out, and very delicious, in a kind of muted, manage your expectations kind of way:

take one small can of evaporated milk and leave in the fridge for a couple of days.
in the morning, whip it up in mixer until thick and creamy
Make up a packet of jelly, any flavour and add to the evap.
Whip until thoroughly mixed and creamy again.
pour into a serving dish and leave for about 3/4 hours.

The top of it becomes all moussy and the bottom half like creamy jelly. It won't win any prizes or anything but, at a push, when the shops are all out of hand made profiteroles, it isn't half bad.

Lots of love

GG

It's not all about the benjamins

It's been a bit of a red letter day chez Glutton. I've had an uncharacteristically successful day in my other life as a PR supremo/dogsbody and, best news of all, darling GluttonBoy's new job has been confirmed. Now darling GB is much more brilliant than he thinks and due to a horrible mix up not of his making found himself out of work in the middle of January.

He currently works in food retail (lucky for gluttons like us) an, luxury food not being an especially robust sector currently, it's taken him a bit of a while to get a new role. Actually, only six weeks but it is a bit of a confidence-sapper.

Why am I telling you this? We've had to be super-clever and keep a beady eye on expenditure lately, which isn't easy for those of us of a greedy disposition. Luckily, the slow cooker has been earning its keep and we've cut down massively on waste, which is a good thing from lots of perspectives. And while it will take us a few months to get back on a firm financial footing, I'm going to try to keep up some of the good habits. It's not as if we've eaten crap, or beans on toast. But if we've had a roast it's been pork belly rather than leg of lamb. And that kind of food is actually delicious if cooked in the right way. So, from me to you, here's some really obvious tips on saving money while still being a greedy glutton:

• Forgotten cuts of meat - pork belly (actually not that forgotten at all but worth banging on about how delicious it can be. Mmmm, crackling), pork cheeks (even if they do look like testicles), brisket, lamb breast, chicken thighs, chicken wings.
• Big packs of veg seem cheap, but they only are if you'll genuinely use them.
• Big shops, not small ones - right next door to Glutton Towers is a Tesco Express which I started popping in to on a daily basis, rather than getting a big shop from Sainsburys. Of course they only stock the most expensive cuts of meat (chicken breasts, steak, steak mince) and perfect veg in multipacks. None of your economy nets of mis-shapen courgettes here. Some weeks I get our weekly shop down to £50 for two, including ground coffee by the truckload and a fair bit of meat. A strict shopping list is the key!
• Go veggie for two days - makes a fair bit of difference to the food bill/planet/your colon
• Embrace the basics range. Ok, I won't buy basics mince or sausages. But canned tomatoes, cleaning products, chicken wings, vegetables, jelly(and I'm going to share a jelly delight with you later in the week) noodles, soft cheese (only if being used to stuff a chicken breast), ground coffee, stock cubes are fine. There are probably loads more and it is often just a packaging issue.

And with that, I'm off to celebrate with a steak and a bottle of sparkles.

Lots of love

GG

An update

So, who ever said 'the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there' probably didn't realise just how right he was. And that person had not just had a butterscotch Angel Delight.

Now, it's not as if I haven't had one in years. I probably have one every few months. But intoxicated by the excitement of buying 3 for £1 in Poundland I've have been literally whipped into a frenzy. And you know what, it isn't as nice as I remember. Much more watery, much less butterscotchy and also, I notice, much more prone to kind of melt into a sloppy, separated mess which, to be frank, puts me in mind of what happens when the cat eats something she shouldn't.

I also notice you no longer need to put it in the fridge. It also doesn't get so solified with whipping. Has something changed? I can only assume that namby-pamby food fascism has led to some fairly fundamental structural changes. Well whatever that chemical was, that has been taken out, I'm calling on Kraft to put it the fuck back in. You can make Smarties those new boring, less bright colours. You can make orangeade less orange. You can make pink shrimps less pink. You can even call cigarette sweets 'candy sticks'. But don't mess with Angel Delight!

Until next time

GG

You can't escape your background

So food is a strangely politicised element of our lives. Where you shop, what foods you buy - all means you are judged, put in a demographic group, assumed to have certain views or beliefs. Waitrose Woman is, after all, very different from Tesco Mum. Or so shops/politicians would have us believe.
I am, and always will be, a Sainsbury's Girl. It's were, largely, we shopped when I was a child, it isn't the cheapest or the most expensive, and in the main I think it is nice. I know Tesco is a bit cheaper, Morrison's is closer and Waitrose has better quality, but it will always be Sainsers for me. But that doesn't mean I'm not partial to a Findus Crispy Pancake or too. And this is where it all goes a bit strange.
If you think back to when you were a child, we all ate some odd food. My mum was a bean-loving hippy who didn't like us eating shop-bought cakes etc. But I still remember eating KFC and Angel Delight. Even people who were taken on holiday to France and given Fruits de Mer as children remember the odd bit of yellow breaded on their plate. But, if you listen to a bunch of thirty somethings now, you'd think Fish Fingers were only enjoyed ironically and sausages were always gourmet.
So I say, it's time to reclaim the reconstituted. And I don't mean reformed ham that hasn't seen a pig in years or Barbie-shaped turkey bits. That's just plain wrong. But the foods that seemed exciting and futuristic. That your cousins-who-were-allowed-fizzy-drinks would have and we would sometimes have on special occasions. Because food wasn't always Finest, hand-reared, sourced from Tuscany. Once it was just food.

My list would include:

Viennetta - but only the original flavour
Angel Delight - I'm sure you used to be able to get more flavours. Peach for one. And raspberry...
Those chocolate mousses that had swirls of cream on top.
Smash
Potato Croquettes or Noisettes
Frozen mousses that took ages to defrost
Tinned fruit cocktail. In syrup.
Findus Crispy Pancakes
Tinned ravioli

The theme seems to be: canned, frozen or will keep for years. Bliss.


Until next time

GG

Entertaining in Peckham

So we're firmly in our new flat and I have to say, we've been cooking up a storm. The kitchen may be tiny, but it's constantly in use. And it makes me wildly happy to know that MY kitchen is the heart of MY home. Or our home, really.
January is always marmelade month. I start full of enthusiasm and then, halfway through chopping peel finely, I start swearing never ever to make it again. This year was different. I made it. And I ate it. And I loved it. Sorry if this is old news, but the bitterness underneath the sweetness is a real pleasure. Not easy, not obvious, but definitely pleasing.
The girls came over for sunday lunch. And, as Glutton Boy would surely say, I bit off more than I could chew. With a veggie amongst the four of them, our meals tend towards the meat-free side and are, it has to be said, ever so slightly competitive, in a good way. Lovely Plenty from Mr Ottolenghi, while complicated, didn't let me down. We ate:

caramelised garlic tart with wensleydale cheese (hate goat's cheese) which was sweet and shart and soft and crispy and savoury and also looked quite fancy-pants.
Beetroot wedges with a relish of roast red peppers and slightly spicy tomato. I forgot to swirl in the greek yoghurt but it looked super-beautiful and jewelled pink and red. Was also sweet and sharp and I could have eaten it all day
Onions stuffed with tomato and feta - looked like little roast testicles but pleased to report tasted all lovely.

Now I recognise that proper food writers have lots of ways to describe their food and usually 'lovely' doesn't get used that much. But I'm not a proper food writer and it was lovely.

Pudding was a Baileys tiramisu - thanks Nigella! (was also lovely).

We've also had people over midweek (which I never normally do), and that's been a different kind of fun. The slow cooker has been invaluable for this - an all-day bolognese, all meltingly umami-ish and savoury seems to hit the spot well. And, I've discovered a lovely (oops!) easy pudding courtesy of Carnation, which I'll share with you:

whip 1 can Carnation condensed milk with 150ml double cream until thick ish.
Add the finely grated zest and juice of four lemons. Whisk again until proper thick.
Spoon into little glasses and chill.

Yummo.

I'm serving this next week, but making some meringue nests to pipe it on to, get me. It also occured to me that if you made a cheesecake-style biscuit base of gingernuts, this would make a nice filling for it. There. A little gift from me to you.

The meringue nest people are getting meatloaf to start. Stuffed with eggs, wrapped in bacon. No graces in Peckham that's for sure.

And Vicky B would say (who is a long way from meatloaf and condensed milk), in love and light...

GG