GluttonGirl

Counting your life in cake spoons

2011-10-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

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

Christmas in October

2011-10-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Hunkering in a Bunker

2011-08-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-24T11:36:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-06T05:12:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-25T12:56:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-25T03:58:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-03-16T14:43:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-13T10:27:00.001-07:00

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...

2011-03-11T06:13:00.001-08:00

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?

2011-02-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

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

An update

2011-02-22T10:06:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-21T09:41:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

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

In which GG learns about slow food

2010-12-31T03:10:00.000-08:00

This Christmas, darling Glutton Boy gave me a slow cooker. I'd been mithering about buying one for ages but two things had put me off: 1) I am a bit OCD about leaving things on 2) I have a very small kitchen. But on the understanding that slow cookers are designed to be left on for 12 hours I feel relatively comfortable with it. And I've already cooked in it - lamb shanks cooked in pale ale. And delicious it was too.

So this got me thinking about what sort of cook I am - I'm not the sort of cook that has a million hot pans on the go, that when people come round I'm plating up towers in the kitchen. And I don't know anyone else like that either. I am more of a shove-it-all-in-the-slow-cooker-and-pour-myself-a-gin kind of girl. Which is by far the better in my view. How much nicer to spend time with people I've invited than to stress that the souffle hasn't risen properly. Really, who needs that kind of stress?

And a slow cooker lends itself to the sort of cheap and delicious food I love. The mainstay of the Jewish sabbath is a casserole called a cholent. My grandmother cooked this as does my mum and she leaves it in the oven all day. It's a slow one so you don't have to do any work once the sun sets. Brisket, carrots, potatoes, butter beans, stock. Sometimes pearl barley but I find it sucks up all the moisture so not brilliant in some ways. And it is absolutely delicious in its simplicity. Plain, tender and nourishing in all kinds of ways. How lovely to come home from a crap day at work and find a dish of loveliness bubbling away on the counter top. How much would that make you feel that someone was looking after you, even if that someone is really you.

I have loads of people coming over in January as I've just moved house and I am planning a succession of slow-cooked delights. Pig cheeks, a good chilli, a daube of beef, oxtail for the more robust of stomach and adventurous of spirit. And, another blessing for January, a really economical way to cook.

Cheap, tasty, uplifting. Much like GluttonGirl herself.

Much love
GG

The ties that bind...

2010-12-21T05:05:00.000-08:00

It's blindingly obvious and been said before, but food is so much more than food.

I have a group of four girlfriends who I've known for years. I met one at university when I was 19 and the others were friends of hers. We used to see each other all the time and take turns to cook madly good dinners with ridiculous amounts of wine which more often than not ended up with us flashing our knockers at the neighbours.

As time has gone on, we've seen each other less - one has had a baby, two of us are married and two live with their partners, so life is very different to how it was when we first met. We've been through all kinds of terrible boyfriends, houseshares, jobs and for the last seven years, whatever else has been going on, there has always been Christmas dinner at Sharmin's.

Sharm is an amazing cook and a brilliant convivial hostess. There are pressies, drinks galore and bags of laughing. Boys are most definitely banned. This year we broke with tradition and held it during the day and it lasted around 8 hours. And it did my heart good to be with these girls who have known me so long, round a table, sharing a brilliant meal. If we didn't do Christmas at Sharm's, it wouldn't be Christmas.

So that's the holiday spirit - people you love, being together, having fun, sharing news. It's like a Hallmark card come to life but I won't apologise for that.

So thank you ladies, for another brilliant Christmas.

GGxx

In which I am quite tired but also quite exhilarated

2010-12-21T04:52:00.000-08:00

If you had to put together a bunch of stressful things that are inadvisable to do in roughly the same time period, they might look a bit like this:

buy your first flat and move house
Christmas
make cakes for friend's wedding
make cakes for boss's party
snow

Stupidly, I have done all these things lately. GluttonBoy said of me this weekend 'if you die before me, your gravestone will read 'she bit off more than she could chew.'

Let me explain - in early December we moved into our first flat - the finding and buying of said flat and the moving processes was so stressful I almost called it off. And then we were plunged headlong into Christmas, which due to family stuff is always a tiny bit on the fraught side. And I had been hired to make 80 wedding cupcakes for a dear friend's wedding on the 20th. That's fine, I thought to myself, I have the Sunday before to bake/ice. Except my annual girls' Christmas beano was then scheduled for the Sunday. And on the Saturday I agreed to make 80 cakes and deliver them to Camden. And then it snowed so there were no cabs and I don't drive. So much, so hellish.

But, when I saw the wedding cakes on the stand I felt unbelievably happy and proud it was all worth it. And I had a brilliant time with the girls for Christmas. So now, is just Christmas to cope with.

And actually, I love Christmas food. Not just the big day itself, but almost more the peripheral days. GluttonBoy always wants the same Christmas eve dinner - salmon, new potatoes and hollandaise. Smoked salmon, scrambled egg and bucks fizz for breakfast, the constant mince pie/quality street grazing and best of all in my book - the boxing day neverending gluttony.

I'm not at home this year for Boxing Day and neither is GB, but we've decided to make the 28th (our first full day together of the Christmas season in our own flat) a late Boxing Day. On the menu (or rather in the fridge) will be:

Sausages - rolls and in blankets
Cdld meat - turkey, ham, beef
Cheeses - english, french and boursin
Pickes and chutneys
Some fruit for the sake of appearance
Christmas cake (once I get round to making the bloody thing)
I would even go so far as to make vol au vents and potato salad

There will also be drinks galore, enough to ensure a low-level fuzzy head all day. And Mad Men series 2 and 3 which I intend to watch in full.

Christmas is suddenly looking up!

Much love

GG

GG thinks about what really makes a home.

2010-12-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

August was my last post. I know that's shocking. And also a blogging sin. So I'll get the excuses out of the way:

1) I've bought my first flat
2) The day job has been pretty stressful

So, that's that. What's been happening in the world of GG? In the last six weeks, mainly packing and unpacking. If only we'd unpacked half of our stuff, but luckily we have a garage so the vast majority of boxes have been shoved in there. Some of it I'll need but frankly I was appalled at just how much kitcheny type equipment I have. Some particular highlights were:

20 boxes of cookbooks. 20.
11 cake stands
14 heart shaped ramekins
6 small jugs
Two massive boxes of baking tins (normal and silicone)
20 cake forks (my excuse - they were my grandmother's)
A tiffin box
A trifle bowl
20 royal family themed shot glasses
Boxes upon boxes of jam jars (brand new ones for home made as well as empty bonne maman ones).

So we like cooking. And now I'm in my new flat I am loving it even more. It didn't really feel like home until we'd cooked a meal, and the first thing I cooked was Sausage Special. This was something my late mother in law cooked for Glutton Boy and his sister through their childhood. It comes from the Dairy Cookbook (I have her very dogeared and fragile copy) and was called 'Devilled Sausages' originally. I never tried it cooked by her and I used to laugh about it, due to it's slightly peculiar ingredients but after she died I gave it a go and it now makes a regular appearance at dinner time. I partly like it because most of the ingredients are in the cupboard and I usually just need to get a few things which, at a push, can generally just be found even at a corner shop but it is something I make when either GB or I is feeling a bit weary or fragile or low. And actually, I wouldn't make it at all if it wasn't delicious. So, as we drag ourselves towards a few blissful festive days off to fight with our loved ones and drink too many snowballs - I share with you, Gill's Sausage Special.

Fry off a pack of sausages in some oil till lightly browned (but not cooked through. Remove to a plate.
Fry one onions, sliced finely into half moons until soft.
Stir in two tablespoons of flour and cook for a bit. Add in 1/4 pint of water gradually to make a roux.
Chuck in (in any order) a can of tomatoes, a teaspoon of mustard, a teaspoon of vinegar, two teaspoons of Lea and Perrins and, the key ingredient, two tablespoons of Branston pickle. Now, GB thinks the small-chunk variety is a travesty, but I prefer it as you get the taste but it's less intrusive!
Add sausages back into the pan and simmer for roughly 20-30 mins (or, in my case, to the end of whatever programme I'm watching.
Traditionally served with spaghetti but we also like it with rice.

You may prefer 'gourmet' sausages, but trust me, works better with ordinary. Not horrible pink 'value' ones, though. They're vile.

Lots of love
GG

what I learnt this week

2010-08-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

I love food because I'm naturally greedy. But there are lots of other reasons why I like eating, and it's not only about the food. GluttonBoy recently got into an online argument with food bloggers about their obsession with photographing their dinner when eating out. It's a bit like spending your whole holiday filming, rather than actually particpating in the holiday - it kind of seems to be missing the point and it is breaks my heart a little bit to see people who should be sitting round a table tucking in, having a drink, talking to each other, all just engrossed in the photographing ritual.

The point of food is simple and was brought home to me by two very different meals - well I say different, but the food and setting were different but the point of it and the result were very similar.

My friend Louise had a birthday party recently, at a Chinese karaoke restaurant in Sheen. Louise is probably the essence of conviviality and is a great host. The restaurant was nothing special, but we had it to ourselves and the karaoke was free. The food was standard Chinese, but what made it a great night was the fun we had, the sharing, the atmosphere and the people. There's also something really nice about sharing plates, passing food round, making sure everyone has enough - it brings out everyone's inner altruist. And I had a brilliant time.

Today we had our friends Sim and Martine for Sunday lunch. Sim is a wine expert and Martine is a chef, so on paper a fairly stressful pair of guests. GB and I thought long and hard about what to cook and decided fairly early on that there was no way of competing, so better to do something delicious but fairly simple (although GB is an ex-chef so no slouch).

GluttonBoy made a fricking delicious pork terrine, so flavoursome and savoury I couldn't stop stuffing it down. We also made some bread and served it with home made damson chutney from last year. Our main course was osso bucco, served with mash and vichy carrots (also hugely tasty and umami-ish) and for pudding I'd made salt caramel and milk chocolate mousses and butter biscuits (my nana and auntie' brenda's recipes). We ate some much that I thought I'd have to and lie down for a couple of hours. We also drank 7 bottles of wine (two champagnes, two whites and two reds chosen to match the food, a sticky, sherry and gin and tonics). And although the food and wines were great, and I very much enjoyed them (and enjoyed the compliments), the best thing about this afternoon was having people over, talking, laughing and enjoying their company.

So sometimes food isn't just food - it's sharing, sociability, altruism. It's a reason to get round a table with people you love and enjoy their company. And that is something food bloggers with their cameras and individual experiences seem to miss.

Right, I'm off to have a bypass.

Lots of love,

GG

In which Glutton Girl learns a valuable lesson

2010-05-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

Assiduous GG readers will remember that a while ago, when Glutton Boy was working endless late shifts and so I was cooking every night for what seemed like a million years, I felt that the effort of putting a meal on the table every night was just too arduous. The last six weeks or so has seen a reversal of fortune in the -putting-dinner-on-the-table stakes.
A combination of colleague holiday and back to back pitches has meant that GluttonGirl has had to put in a serious amout of hours in the office lately and dinner (for me at least) has become peanut butter on toast schloffed down at 8pm in the office, while poor old GB has reacquainted himself with the joys of the fray bentos.
Lo and behold, the truth is that I have missed cooking like mad. On Friday, with the worst behind me, I made a sort of Spanish-y risotto with prawns, chorizo, roasted red peppers and my favourite ingredient of all, sweet smoked paprika. The satisfaction I got from putting a meal on the table was unparalled.
Darling GB cooking on Saturday - mac and cheese with bacon bits and roasted cherry toms. Delicious and eatable with a spoon - my main dinner criteria.
Sunday saw tapas and sherry with the girls, then weirdly, I felt like I had a cheese baby right under my ribs and had to go to bed early. And today, the last day of the bank holiday, I'm whipping up a quick puttanesca.
There it is. For me, cooking is just what I have to do, it's what I like to do. I like to make a lovely meal for husband/friends. I like to take a gorgeous cake out of the oven. I am a Glutton.

Lots of love

GG

In which GG states the bleedin' obvious

2010-05-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Now I know this probably isn't news, but this week I've been thinking about how much circumstance dictates what we want to eat. I order my shopping weekly online, as I can't bear the thought of shopping every day when I've been slaving away all day down the PR mines, but this does mean that sometimes I get it very wrong, dinner-wise. I try to think about my work week, whether I'll leave in good time or be wanting a quick meal having stayed late, if I'm likely to be stressed, what the weather is likely to be etc. Add in doing it on a budget, trying to be relatively low-fat, and it does make things complicated. So sometimes, I get it very wrong. A hot weather day, a work crisis which keeps me chained to the keyboard, an impromptu gin and tonic which goes on too long... all mean that plans go awry.
And as much as I try to eat well at lunch, sometimes the lure of a cheese and pickle baguette is just too much to resist (especially when Pret has just opened in the wasteland of Vauxhall and a cheese and tomato pickle on artisan baguette is MY FAVOURITE SANDWICH EVER). This is also true when we're in pitch mode, when the stress is building, deadlines are looming, clients are being juggled, I've been in the office for 8 hours with a few still to go and my stomach is rumbling. I can rip through a 'sharing bag' of peanut m and ms in seconds, followed by some crisps. Sometimes, only a tub of M&S chocolate miniroll bites will do.
Tomorrow is Norway Independence Day. I love Norway, and not just because two of my dearest friends are Norskis. I love the lifestyle, the landscape, the socialism, emphasis on doing things well. Most of all, I loved the baking. My Norwegian friend Ingrid is an incredible baker and has always made, amongst other things, School Buns. In Norway, these are the only buns you can take to school - talk about socialist principles in microcosm (no one has a better or worse bun than anyone else). A standard bun dough is a very lightly spiced and sweet dough, which you can then add raisins to, or make into cinnamon buns, or make into school buns with the addition of a well of custard. When baked, they are encircled with icing and dessicated coconut. After my father died earlier this year I went to Ingrid and Harvey's for a few days of sanctuary, to sit on their veranda on a clear, cold day and look out into the fjord, watching the big boats come past. We also made loads of buns. And today, just a few days after what would have been Dad's birthday and the day before Norway Day, I made a batch of buns to Ingrid's recipe. The taste of them was hugely evocative - instantly reminded me of long walks through the forest, rural Norway, cold fjord water.
When I make GB welsh cakes, they remind him of his late mum and his Welsh aunties - its like going to a 'happy place'. I guess eating anything that you loved as a child does the same thing. So what's the moral of this tale? Listen to your stomach and your mind - and eat to soothe your soul as well as your hunger.
Lots of love
GG

Back to your roots

2010-05-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

This week, I visited my mum for a couple of days, as she's about to go on hols. Regular readers will know I lost my darling dad in January, so I'm trying to see more of my mum now, partly to keep her company but partly as I only now have one parent, so want to look after the one I've got. My mum is a mad quilter/patchworker, inspired by GluttonBoy's late mother who made the most beautiful log cabin quilts. Before we got married, my MiL to be spoke to my mum to ask her to contribute to a wedding quilt for us. Sadly, she died soon after, and nothing came of it, except my mum was bitten by the quilting bug, which she has also passed on to me.
I went with her to her quilting group this week - and a lovely lady called Jenny talked to us about whole piece quilts and her collection of antique quilts, which were exquisite. Whole piece is where it is one piece of fabric (rather than patchwork) and incredibly intricate patterns are sewn into it, to make it quilted. She talked about the traditions of different regions and countries, and how, if you had a daughter, you made 12 quilts, with the 13th being a wedding quilt and the most beautiful. What has this to do with cooking? Ask almost anyone what their favourite meal is, and invariably the answer will be something their mother makes - 'my mum's roast lamb', 'my mum's chicken pie' etc etc.
Food has a way of tying us to our roots like almost nothing else. Why else do people with heritage come back endlessly to the dishes of another country? Why else is it so important to keep food heritage alive? And food, particularly dishes or recipes that remind you indelibly of a place or a person, have a life of their own that has more longevity than we do. Handwritten recipe books passed down the generations are a more potent reminder of a person or a time than any amount of diaries are.
And this is what I love about food. I love that the sponge biscuits and the honey cake I make are the ones my nana made. The welsh cake recipe I use was given to me by my mother in law and is the recipe Glutton Boy's auntie gladys and auntie bhopah used. And in each case, every bite reminds us of people we've lost but that we still carry with us. After my mother in law died, we found a batch of welshcakes in the freezer - thinking about her making them and putting them away to be enjoyed at a later date made us feel she hadn't quite gone.
And not to be too overly sentimental, a handmade quilt is the same - tying us to a place and a person who might be long gone and enveloping us in feelings that they wanted to pass on. I have some quilts my mum has made, and hope to inherit a quilt from my mother in law, and if I have children in the future, I will make sure they know where those quilts came from and who made them. Just like I'll make sponge biscuits and talk about my nana and her baking, like my dad's love of a baked cheesecake and auntie bhopah's legendary welshcakes.
Lots of love
GG

Weekend gluttony

2010-04-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

And a happy Sunday to you all. An update from the previous post - the teriyaki steak was lovely, as was the fennel slaw. I normally make rubbish steak as I don't get the pan hot enough but this time I bit the bullet and it was as tender as anything. I also don't normally like fennel but it was quite subtle so very fresh and light. And neither of us missed the potatoes element at all.

Saturday I cooked a spag bol - very dull I know but with tons of veg. GluttonBoy was out so it was a good thing to shove down in a rush when he finally got home.

Sunday, and the shopping delivery arrived, minus the bottle of Gordon's that had smashed en route, coating the tea bags, puff pastry and grapefruit with the subtle scent of juniper. In at attempt to cut down the carbs on Sunday, I turned to one of my favourite books - Ottolenghi. I love his approach - fresh, zesty salads, lots of herbs and super-fresh flavours. The recipes also largely feature one of my favourite flavours, sumac. I have a super-love of all things arab/middle-eastern/mediterranean/greek, so it pushes my buttons totally. A quick scoot round one of my two favourite local shops (hello, Oli Centre of Walworth Road, a brilliant 24-hour Turkish supermarket) and I was good to go.

So, what was for dinner? Chicken wings marinated in a mix of olive oil, lemon, sumac, allspice and cinnamon, served with a salad of fennel, feta and pomegranate. The salad dressing was olive oil, sumac, tarragon and parsley. It was DELICIOUS. And took a while to eat due to the winginess of the chicken, so very satisfying. Thank you Mr O.

And, as an afterthough - Mr G and I are looking to buy our first flat. We saw a flat today with such a small kitchen it only had a two-ring hob. It was miniscule. Hopeless.

Anyway.

Lots of love

GG

GluttonGirl makes a suprise return

2010-04-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in previous posts, it has been a busy few months for GluttonGirl, what with one thing and another. The only constant has been the need to keep food on the table and I have never been one for churning out the same few meals over and over again.

I've often wondered why it is that when husbands cook the 'special' meals, eg for dinner parties etc, they are congratulated, when in fact it is far harder to get a meal on the table night after night. And when you are trying to stick to a budget, eat relatively healthily and not cook the same thing in any two-week period, that makes it even harder.

And another thing I've wondered is this - on Masterchef, when introducing contestants, they often say something like 'Miss X has been cooking for 2 years.' So, unless Miss X is about 20, I'm confused.What do they eat? I've been cooking since I was 14, became veggie and my mother refused to cook two meals a night. I can't say that every meal was delicious or even eatable, or that I've never eaten toast for dinner (or worse, Smash and cheese or a Pot Noodle) but I've been cooking a while.

Which brings me to my masterplan and reason for bringing GG back - to document what we eat at home and elsewhere, day after day. Whether delicious or disgusting, a triumph or a tragedy. Because to me, what people who love food eat day after day, where they shop, what they have discovered, is far more interesting to me than what a chef eats on his day off (not that I'm not interested in chefs' eating habits either, but you get my drift).

So, to tonight. Teriyaki steak and fennel slaw. Two steaks are marinating in soy sauce, honey, lime and red wine vinegar, ready to be griddled as soon as GluttonBoy gets home from a busy day down the cake mine. Accompanied with a mix of shredded fennel, carrot and red onion with mayo and lime. Should be yummy.[

Lots of love
GG

In which GG explains long absence

2010-02-20T11:30:00.000-08:00

So, I'm aware it's been over two months since my last post and in the blogosphere (shoot me now for using that phrase) that is pretty much a capital offence. Here's a quick digest of what's been going on in Glutton-world.

Christmas - pretty much the high point of the glutton household's year. I went to Glutton sister for Christmas and ate my own body weight in roast potatoes. GluttonBoy went to Glutton sister in law and also ate his own body weight in roast potatoes. I also did my favourite boxing day meal - a buffet comprising a full range of pastry/pork/cheesy foods.

New year saw as at the lovely Darby household, for lovely curry. Less lovely was the Guinness and Drambuie cocktail. Sorry Mark. We'd brought Taittinger as it was on sale at Asda for £15 a bottle. That's us really - Taittinger tastes, Asda budget. I also made a pavlova and cranberry cheesecake cupcakes, which were hugely appreciated by the teenage boys present.

We were put onto this by our friends Sim and Martine. Sim is a barman with a taste for good wine, Martine is a chef and we have had some really great meals with them. They invited us for dinner and it was fantastic - great company, wine, food wasn't intimidating, they were v v hospitable. Good all round.

I made cranberry chutney. I am mad for cranberries and as they have such a short life I by them up and freeze so I can cook with them all year.

January wasn't a great month. My wonderful father had a heart attack and passed away. He was very fit and healthy and also a bit gluttony. He loved cheesecake and other cake and biscuits and chocolate but kept himself reined in. He also loved typical jewish food like bagels with saltbeef and latkes. He laughed at me many times for my sneery London foody ways, like knowing that the green leaves on the plate were Lollo Rosso. RIP Dad.

So, hence the GG silence. But, as I did last year, I am now trying again to combine a love of food with a relatively lowfat existence as GluttonBoy has inherited high cholesterol and I have a history of heart disease in the family. Jill Dupleix is my new heroine.

Anyway, expect to hear more of me from now on.

Lots of love
GGx

In which GG gets festive.

2009-12-16T08:02:00.001-08:00

Busy week in the Glutton household. Saturday saw the annual girls' christmas dinner. This has been a tradition for six years - me, Emily Jo, Ailsa and Charlotte congregating at Sharmin's for dinner. Lots has changed, including boyfriends, husbands and locations and in fact this year was the first year that a boy was allowed to attend - Emily Jo's new baby Jonah. So, we love it. Sharmin is a great cook and a brilliant host and for me, this annual dinner marks the start of Christmas - we have pressies and dancing and I wouldn't miss it for anything.

We kicked off with some spectacular canapes - pink devilled eggs (eggs dyed with beetroot) and blue cheese and apple in red chicory leaves. Dinner was amaze. A sweet onion pie had a lovely doughy crust and a really savoury/sweet filling. This came with roasted red peppers with capers (sharply flavoured, went brilliantly with the onion pie) and a salad of sprouts, green beans and

lettuce. Dessert though, was the star. Sharm has never really forgiven herself for serving, two years ago, a ready made dessert. The excuse (and it was one we all could get on board with) was that she had just hooked up with her new man and had more important things to do than make puddings. However, on that occasion she served mini pancakes as canapes, made from mixture left over from breakfast pancakes that the new man has suggested she save for us. We were disposed to like him. Anyway, back to 2009. The dessert was a chocolate and prune steamed pudding. The prunes were puree and it had the most velvet texture, was light and rich and I had to restrain myself from wolfing it. All in all, a brilliant night.

As we speak, I am steaming three Christmas puddings. I was so worried about them boiling dry I overfilled the pans so in the mad boiling frenzy the puddings may have become a bit waterlogged, which I hope isn't a huge problem. To be honest, I imagine that anything that has an initial 5 hour steam followed by another three hour steam can stand a bit of water, but any advice, as always, gratefully recieved.

Lots of love,

GG

In which I remind people who GG is

2009-12-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

You may be forgiven for thinking some disaster had befallen the Glutton household. The truth is I've actually been horrifically busy at work and at weekends, so I haven't really had much spare time lately. It's been quite a gluttonous couple of weeks though, and I have a lot to update on!
The nice people at Eurostar gave GluttonBoy a pair of first-class tickets to Lille. We went to Lille for our anniversary last year so we were looking forward to eating and not having to do any sightseeing. Lille, as you may well know, is a very foodie type of place and we'd earmarked a few places we wanted to go back to.
On arrival, we started with a cafe creme at Caffe Leffe before a recce in the best bookshop in town, Furet Nord. The cookbook section was of course HUGE, with emphasis on verrines (little terrines in glasses), macaroons and creme brulees. We earmarked future purchases before heading off into the old town. First stop, was Alice Delice - a lovely boutique cookware shop. Last time I bought some paper you put on buscuits to make a pattern. The shop was full of very professional serve-ware - mini creme brulee dishes, mini soup bowls and oversize spoons in which to serve canapes and amuse buches, on slate tiles. It got me thinking that the French have a very different approach to food and entertaining. They really value home cooking, regional cooking and are happy to go out for a bowl of casserole, but if they entertain at home, then it's really on - complete with professional level presentation and effort. Even things like jam making equipment were nicer - they don't use old jars from Lidl, but lovely new Bonne Maman style jars they've bought specially.
Next, was the search for Guillaume Vincent - we bought a box of ganaches last time in Lille, and they were, without exception, the nicest chocolates I've ever had. It look much walking to find it, but was worth it. The woman was being besieged by posh teenagers and look relieved to only have to deal with us and our sub-GCSE-level French. Loaded with ganaches we went off for lunch to the Estaminet we hadn't been able to get into last time. An estaminet is a traditionally Lille restaurant and this brilliant. Ooom-pa-pa music blaring, tables with checked cloths, everything came with cheese or cow innards. Really, GB was in his element, particularly when the 13% beer arrived.

He had andouillete with chips and I had chicken swimming in cheese (morailles) sauce, and chips.
You can see the horrific aftermath here:

So, sated, full of cheese, we stumbled out into Lille. We'll gloss over the horror what was the christmas market and instead dwell on Meert, which must be one of the prettiest tea rooms in Europe. Dark wood, gilt, elaborately beautiful displays, ribbons, exquisite cakes and sweets. We had a lovely tea and shared a Mervielleux and a Mille Feuille. Then, off to Carrefour for a quick scoot round for Mont Blanc chocolate pudding, vanilla sugar and some biscuits. And then home.

Lille is a brilliant place for a day out. I hate flying and being at the airport early, security etc etc, so the speed and efficiency of Eurostar is perfect for me. Add in that the staff are lovely and that you're in the centre of Lille less than 90 minutes after leaving London and it just seems like a perfect way to spend a day - stroll round the old town, have some nice lunch, and then home. Fab.

GluttonGirl

2009-11-25T09:53:00.000-08:00

So I know it's been very quiet on the GluttonGirl front, which is breaking the cardinal rule of blogging, but in my defence work has been mental, I've been doing lots of extra-curricular things and also been flat hunting for a bigger home for the Gluttons. The least said the better about the flat hunting but suffice to say I've not been doing a whole load of cooking. Having said that, I've done a fair bit of baking but still been struggling to find my kitchen love.

Hurrah hurrah though, that is all set to change. GB and I are off to Lille on Saturday for the day, courtesy of We Are Social. We went last year for our wedding anniversary and pretty much spent the weekend stumbling from food shop to eating place and back again. I also came home laden with all manner of yummy things culled from chic delis, chocolateries, bakeries and the large supermarket. A whole suitcase worth, in fact.

This year we are even more excited as the christmas market will be on and I particularly have my eye on gingerbread, some nice meat of some kinds and almost certainly cheese. I also plan to buy some more amazing chocolates, some foie gras of some kind and also again pop into Carrefour for all manner of french supermarket yumminess. We're taking lots of bags to bring it all back and also going to the bookshop to pick up some cookbooks, as if we don't have enough. I love Lille. It is big enough to feel like a proper town, is manageable in size and its the sort of food GB and I really love - meat, cheese, beer and potatoes. None of this mediterrean nonsense. Proper, cream-filled, rib-stickers.

On another note, I also uploaded my entry into the Carnation.co.uk podcast competition - I made some chocolate caramel muffins. The prize is the chance to film a podcast (or pudcast!) with Phil Vickery.

Will update on return from La Belle France.

Lots of love

GG

In which the Glutton household gets a new addition

2009-11-15T04:13:00.001-08:00

You may have noticed (or you may not) that all has been a bit quiet from GG lately. The house has been totally preoccupied with our new arrival, the most gorgeous new ginger kitten called, somewhat improbably, Whitney Houston. Our last cat, the beloved Polly, had been old when we got her and a sedate lady, happy to while away the days snoozing on laps. WH is only happy when she's climbing, biting, or sprinting round our small flat chasing ping pong balls. Lucky for her she's the cutest kitten we've ever seen otherwise it would be slightly dispiriting. Anyway, what with Whitney and GB working late shifts all week I haven't been doing a whole lot of cooking, and what I have been doing has been quick and not especially worth reporting.

The arrival of the cold weather though (and urrgh, wasn't yesterday vile?) means the reappearance of some Glutton household favourites, macaroni cheese, toad in the hole, pie... GB loves a pie and when he's been especially nice he does get rewarded with one - chicken and vegetable or cherry, depending on his mood.

On the subject of pie, I have three tins of pumpkin puree in the cupboard, waiting for thanksgiving. I plan a pumpkin pie (using the recipe on the back of the Libby's tin which, according to the bible that is Saveur magazine, is the best one of all and the most authentic) and possibly even some pumpkin cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book. While I think that book isn't the easiest to use, the recipes are fantastic and have elicited some great comments, so I'm persevering!

More soon, lots of love

In which Glutton Girl feels a bit sad, then a bit better

2009-11-04T10:24:00.001-08:00

So, as you can imagine, with a name like Glutton Girl, I'm not exactly sylph like. You don't need to take out a window to get me out of the house, but still. But my husband likes me and as much as I would love to be slightly slimmer, I love food too much to say no to a second helping. Or even a first helping. But, this week, the doctor was a bit mean and told me to lose weight and lower my blood pressure. Now I have no desire to become a diabetes-ridden hag, so have decided to take action before I'm forced to really give up what I love most. The question is, is it possible to be a low-cal Glutton Girl? Big flavours are the way to go, so I'm thinking pan-Asian. Vegetarian is good also so I'm thinking south Indian. Giving chicken some flavour would help, so I'm thinking Lebanese/Arab spicing. Actually, doesn't sound so bad. Tonight's dinner (planned before the advent of the new regime) is paella with chorizo, pork, spinach and peppers. Apart from the chorizo its not the worst thing in the world. And tomorrow the lunchtime walking club starts at work, Saturday is the first bellydance class and next Thursday is my first session... of boxing training! And not just to bop the doctor on the nose.
Will keep you posted on how it goes - fingers crossed I don't go too crazy...

Lots of love
GG

In which GG does not go to Norway

2009-10-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

So, I love Norway. I love the scenery, I love the people, I love the way of life. Mostly what I love are the two of my closest friends that are Norwegian - Barbie who lives here and Ingrid, who now lives back in Norway with her English partner Harvey and their beautiful beyond words daughter Molly.

And this weekend, after what hasn't been the easiest year in the Glutton household, I was due to spend a weekend in Norway with Ingrid, Harvey and Molly. Nothing fancy - some light baking (more on that shortly), a little bit of sitting on the veranda wrapped in blankets looking out onto the fjord and waiting for a big boat to come past so we can all shout Big Boooooat, some gentle strolling to the organic farm for the most expensive coffee in the western world. As I say, nothing fancy, nothing that's a showstopper, but just quiet, understated, good for the soul loveliness. And that is the essence of Norway right there. They don't boast, they don't showboat. They just have a nice life. And Ingrid's white wooden Captain's house on a hill, overlooking the fjord, in a little village called Hvitsten, is as nice as it gets.

So, GG and her husband don't go places without stuffing themselves. Norway, it has to be said, is not known for being foodie. But, what they do, they do well. Local, traditional, simple and plentiful. And really good sushi. There's lots of food things we look forward to when we go to Norway - here are the highlights:

Polse - Norwegians are mad for hotdogs. Every newsagent or cafe will sell them - you can have them boiled or grilled (grillepolse), in a bun or a kind of potato pancakey thing (lompe), with potato salad on top (potetsalat) and always with ketchup and mustard (sinep). You see how I'm picking up Norwegian? We love polse and it is the first thing we eat off the plane and the last thing before boarding.
Holiday Dipmix - this is a spice mix you stir into sour cream as a dip and I love it. Comes in packs of three, I have to stock up when there.
Jelly Ladies - In Norway, they have Jelly Men, Jelly Shrieking Children (modelled after the famous sculptures in Oslo's park) and, best of all, Jelly Ladies with boobs. Really.
Banse Mums - marshmallow bears covered in chocolate
Chocolate - there is something about the Norwegian national chocolate that I love - rich and creamy and available with almonds, fruit and nut and with bubbles. Also with bits of Dime bar in it. And talking of Dime bar, they do packs of Dime bar sprinkles.
Brunsaus - yummy gravy
Bolle - sweet buns of all descriptions. Ingrid is an incredible baker. Last time, in the summer, she whipped up a batch of three different sorts of bolle without breaking a sweat. These are the national buns of Norway and available with raisins, with icing, with icing and coconut and in the best variant of all, the School Bun. So named as it is the official bun school children take to school - so no one has a better or worse bun than anyone else (I might have that wrong but that is a very Norwegian kind of concept, so it may as well be right). A sweetish dough, with an indentation filled with custard, baked, iced and covered in dessicated coconut. I cannot get enough of them and just the sight of them makes me happy. Ingrid, for the record, is the sort of friend everyone should have - makes buns because she knows you like them.
Apple Pie - at the Oslo ski slope, near the top of the train station, is a restaurant in a beautiful log cabin. Both times I've been there the weather has been atrocious. The first time I was soaking wet and freezing with the wrong shoes for snow. The restaurant is heaving, full of people who've earnt good food, log fires, antlers etc. And a couple in traditional dress celebrating their wedding. It sells really delicious Norwegian food like smorgasbords etc but the star of the show is the apple pie. A square sandwich of crisp, dark puff pastry filled with juicy apples, topped with a whopping swirl of cream. The second time we went we walked for nearly 30 minutes through snow so vicious I couldn't see 2 metres in front. And it was worth every step.
Brown Cheese - I hate it, but is it the national cheese - eated with bread and honey. Uuurgh.
Cloudberries - yellow berries, picked by Ingrid's lovely parents who have to walk for hours in the mountains up north to find them. Frozen, served at Christmas. Love them

I'll post more about Christmas in Norway nearer the time. But for now, as I'm not flying North tomorrow, this will have to suffice. Saturday will hopefully see me visiting Scandinavian Kitchen in London and trying not to cry. And you know what I've learnt - if someone who has your passport offers to put it in the post back to you, insist on special delivery.

ha det from GG

In which GG regains her cooking mojo

2009-10-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

As I think I've mentioned, I am going through what might be called the seven year itch of cooking. I love it, I want to keep doing it, but the monotony of putting a meal on the table night after night is beginning to feel like a chore. And it is times like this that I have to do something which reminds me why I love food and what I love so much about cooking it, especially for others.

Typically Jewish, for me cooking is all about making something delicious for other people. When someone has gone to effort for you, baking you a cake or making you dinner, it makes you feel loved and cherished and looked after. And I like feeling that I am doing the loving, cherishing and looking after. And also I think it makes up for me being a grumpy old bitch most of the time.

The long-awaited rescheduled dinner with two very dear work colleagues finally arrived last friday. And being off work (a miracle in itself worthy of a celebratory dinner) I decided to spend the day in a gentle kitchenness. One of my colleagues is a vegetarian, which I always find a challenge, and the other most definitely not, so finding food that was filling and hearty and delicious and also, to be honest, a bit show-off-y was a tricky and the main course had kept me worried for weeks.

The starters were easy, I was planning mezze. While I wouldn't dream of doing tapas, as it means loads last minute and you spend the whole night in the kitchen, the mezze were done in advance. I made hummous (sprinkled with a light dusting of sumac), baba ghanoush, flatbreads (sprinkled with either nigella seeds or sesame seeds), various pickles (including pink turnips!), beetroot with yoghurt and parsley and labneh. The latter I had very fond memories of, from my brief stint in restaurant PR and a fantastic lebanese restaurant called Fakhreldine, which served it. I seem to recall theirs was quite creamy and unctuous but mine was more the texture of ricotta with the taste of a young goat's cheese. Whatever, it was de-fricking-licious and I've enjoyed the leftovers all weekend. It was made by mixing greek yogurt with salt and leaving for 24 hours to drain in muslin. Glutton Colleagues (and I mean that most affectionately) were hugely appreciative, made lots of delicious noises, couldn't believe I'd made it all myself. Honestly, you couldn't ask for better guests.

Main was a fairly standard spinach and ricotta cannelloni (yummy though) but the star of the show was the honey halva parfait. Now I take no honours for this - it's straight from my Jewish Princess Cookbook, but you know that anything from that is likely to be good. I've made it a few times now and it is failsafe, delicious and ridiculously impressive. It is also the sweetest foodstuff you'll ever put in your mouth so it was perfect for me and one of my guests who's Iranian. The other Glutton Colleague actually giggled as she ate it, which has to be a good sign. In an attempt to soften the blow, I served it with cinnamon poached pears, which turned out to be a perfect marriage.

And we had a shisha! And it was delicious!

With apologies to the JPCB, here is the recipe:

250g halva (any flavour but I use plain), crumbled into irregular chunks
300ml double cream, whipped to soft peaks
3 tablespoons runny honey
2 eggs
200g sugar

Beat eggs, sugar and honey together. Add Halva. Fold in cream.
Lightly oil small loaf tin and line with clingfilm
POur in mix
Freeze overnight.

The halva will sink probably, but I don't worry about trivialities like that.

So on a bus tonight going down Edgware Road, I wondered what it is about food from the middle east/Levant region I love so much. I love the savouryness of grilled meats off the griddle, dark, umami-ish, spicy and the fresh, vibrant salads and vegetables. I love the colour and the way that sort of food makes your mouth feel sparky and woken up and like it's excited. I like that its deeply satisfying but not stodgy and that it's social food - made for sharing, grazing, picking at with hands, that it has a much more sensuous quality that other types of food. Or maybe I'm being a bit of a cultural idiot and giving it an arabian nights quality it doesn't have. Of course, I love British food and food traditions too, but there is something incredibly enticing about Arabesque food.

And now I'm hungry and going to make some fishcakes. Ooh, if you aspire to be a food star - Carnation is giving foodies the chance to make a pudcast with top chef Phil Vickery and win a year's supply of Carnation (which, for the record, I love). Go to Carnation.co.uk for more info.

Lots of love
GG

Take a deep breath...

2009-10-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

It has been a bit of a food-mad weekend. On saturday GB and I went to my niece Ella's batmitzvah - a huge deal for us Jews and a really happy occasion. I am not religious in the least and almost haven't set foot in synagogue for donkey's years, but I really loved the music and the singing, hearing the words that were familiar and seeing the men in the tallits - the white prayer shawls. I felt very connected to my roots in East European jewry and will be exploring that in more detail the best way I know how- by eating. GB and the other non-Jews in attendance were very excited by the Kiddush afterwards - a buffet laid on for special occasions. Get jews in a room and there'll be bagels and I wasn't disappointed, especially when they are topped with chopped herring, which is a really piquant, sharp topping that I love. Soft, chewy bagels and sharp herring. And fish balls (slightly sweet, very light), pastries, bridge rolls, latkes. Lovely. The evening party broke with tradition by being vegetarian in honour of Ella. Normally veggie food brings me out in hives but this was lovely. Very Ottolenghi-ish! Quiches with sharp cheese, roasted squash, salsas, roast beetroot and carrots. It was lovely to have something fresh and light, with bags of flavours, rather than the usual party 'chicken breast in sauce/bad potatoes' options.

On Sunday, feeling the need to cook after three dinners of toast last week, I made the shepherd's pie from SaturdayKitchen. This was, to be honest, a total palaver but it was the shep's pie to end all shep's pies. Shoulder of lamb roasted for two hours with shallots, rosemary, stock and red wine. Shredded into large chunks with a mix of crispy chewy and softly shredded meat, topped with buttery mash and served with vichy carrots. Three hours of cooking filled the house with the most incredible savoury, tempting flavours, which made GB think of his Welsh relatives (esp. Auntie Bhopah). I had the leftovers for my lunch today and it warmed me from the inside and also made me feel a bit better mentally on a cold, grey Monday morning. Shepherd's Pie for the soul.

Today has also been a right glutton day in the office. In our team we love biscuits and often have a pack on the go. But today, it was something special. On the treats table, we had:

- homemade mini banana muffins (from me, using up some overripe bananas)
- chocolate digestives (from Fiona)
- jammie dodgers and ginger nuts (from James)
- Vietnamese snacks (from Reshma's holiday) - these are worth some explanation. The pack was astonishingly funny (it's foam, it's egg!), they looked like macaroni cheese but they tasted like boudoir biscuits with a lingering aftertaste of pork fat. Strangely unpleasant.
- Diwali snacks from Nisha's mum, including home made bombay mix; something that was like spiral webs which were essentially deepfried sugar syrup (but were delicious); a kind of smooth, not too sweet coconut ice; a condensed milk thing which candied fruit and a date paste thing. All delicious.

Crikey. Off home for a stir fry which will hopefully be light, umami-ish and full of vegetables.

Lots of love
GG

There was a huge sugar rush for about two hours, after which we have been unutterably miserable, like toddlers at a party.

2009-10-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a week of madness. I've worked late, gone to a bat mitzvah rehearsal and simply been plain tired. Tonight (Thursday) is the first night I'm actually cooking - salmon with a salad of cucumber and poppy seeds, from Ottolenghi.

I am desperate to get some cooking done. Cooking soothes me and there is something hugely satisfying about producing a meal that is tasty and looks good and makes other people happy. It must the Jew in me...

This weekend is a bit of a mad one - my niece's batmizvah on saturday, so I only really have Sunday to myself. I am making a Shep's Pie for dinner, using the recipe from Saturday Kitchen using a whole shoulder of lamb and cooking with vichy carrots. I have to say, when I was watching it being cooking I was actually drooling, which doesn't make me look great I know but it did inspire me to give it a go. Soft, tender lamb, caramelised onions and creamy smooth mash. Sitting now at my desk at work it's making me ravenous.

I also feel the need for cake. To bake a lovely, tall, sandwich cake - cut into fat wedges and eaten on sunday afternoon with a steaming mug of tea, watching a film. Hoping for a rainy sunday as hearing bluster, wearing pjyamas all day and with a vicky sponge waiting to be devoured has to be one of the nicest things imaginable. I also have a jar of dulce de leche begging to be used and The Guardian had a recipe for banana caramel cream pie that GluttonBoy looked quite excited by.

So, off home for steamed salmon with a cucumber and poppy seed salad. I don't really feel like salad but the alternative is a fray bentos pie and chips. Which, actually, I do like the sound of...

Lots of love
GG

The beauty of London

2009-10-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

I'll make this quick as I am in an internet cafe being slowly edged out by some french students. Funny, it's normally the french being taken over. Anyhoo.

So, sometimes I get fed up of London. Of the noise, the vastness, the expense, the madness and the sheer bloody effort it takes to live here. And then I have days like today. I schlepped to Stamford Hill to buy a bat mizvah card for my niece. To my enormous annoyance, all shops shut, so I walked down to Stoke Newington, more as an excuse to have something to do.

I have a love of Turkish/Greek/Iranian/Moroccan type food that knows no bounds (excuse the digression, will make sense). One of the reasons I love Camberwell so much is a shop called the Oli Centre, a 24-hour Turkish supermarket and Persepolis - a Persian shop in Peckham. So I popped into one of the many Turkish shops in Stokey and picked up some great herbs (to make my own Za'tar spice mix), some feta and some baklava. Lovely herbs too, but there was only so much I could carry. Then, a little more of a walk to pick up a bagel or too and I was on my way home. Partly cross at that stupidly I've been going to Damas Gate in Sheps Bush for supplies, when I could have gone to Persepolis or even made the trip north of the river, but it's the infinite choice I love. Any given day of the week, if I want to stock up on Japanese ingredients, Moroccan spices, the Jewish food of my roots - I'm only an hour away from the source, with shops usually full of people willing to give me some advice on what to choose.

Tonight I'm making my first foray into Ottolenghi, with chicken with sumac and za'tar and a salad of couscous and megrabiah - although I couldn't get megrabiah and have had to settle for another type of couscous that is about mid way between the two in terms of size. And oven-roasted tomatoes, which I love. And I'll be making my lunches for the week so I don't end up eating crap baguettes.

Les Francaises have finished looking at Michael Jackson online (il est mort encore, people) and I'm going to go to - will blog on dinner tonight. Maybe even pics! Ooh, too exciting I know.

Lots of love.

GluttonGirl.

I've got competition

2009-10-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

GluttonBoy also has a blog, called How The BBC Saved My Life. He doesn't work in an office or do much writing, but he has a very long-standing love of food and a knowledge of food history, chefs, restaurants that could only come from a true obsessive. He is also an ex-chef so has come through the ranks having to chop vegetables for years, knowing the mother sauces etc, which gives him a respect for great chefs and restaurant history.

He has also blogged about our adventures at Le Gavroche and you know what, he's pretty good and this writing lark. V annoying. So, if you want another take on our adventure there, google him and give it a read.

Lots of love,
GG

Le Gavroche. OMG

2009-10-07T22:48:00.000-07:00

It was our 3rd wedding anniversary, and unlike the previous two years we hadn't arranged to go away anywhere. It's been a bit of a tough year in the Glutton household, so we decided to throw caution and our credit card to the winds and to to Le Gavroche. Obviously, we were looking forward to some old-school service, maybe a cloche or two, lots of butter. But it was a million miles better and more lovely than either of us anticipated.

Cold, dark and rainy. The lit windows of LG glow in the darkness of Mayfair. Apologies if this is not news for people used to dining in 2* Michelin restaurants, but it was a treat from the minute I approached the door. On arrival, I was taken to the bar. Not shown where it was, taken. Once GB arrived, they brought some lovely treats - a shredded oxtail thing in puff pastry and a salmon-y thing on a sliver of crispbread.

The menu was brought to us in the bar and GB and I nearly exploded with excitement. As I'd booked, they assumed I was hosting, so without any further comment I got the menu with the prices (GB's menu was priceless) and the wine list. THe menu was as you'd expect - top quality traditional French, brought up to date.

We asked to speak to the sommelier, and expected him to be a bit supercilious about our £50 budget. Instead, he acted as is this was, of course, the ideal budget and suggested some great wines - the one we went for was delicious and well under budget. And his niceness set the tone. While the service was classic, old fashioned, top quality service, it was done with an incredibly light tough and a huge amount of charm - it was seductive and never did we feel uncomfortable, even when we didn't know what the flat spoons were for and the nice waitress explained it to us. The room was run by a set of formidable looking twins, and she was just lovely and sweet, as were they all. And when a lady gets up to go to the loo, they escort her. Really.

So, to the food - I started with a Souffle Suissesse, which turned out to be a floating island style poached egg white in a cheese sauce. Light as air and delicious, but only ate half as it was hugely rich. GB had langoustines and pig trotter in a mustard sauce, which came under a cloche! Also deeply savoury and umami-ish.

Lovely bread and two sorts of butter - salted and unsalted.

Onto the mains - I had veal with mashed potatoes and a morel cream sauce. It was carved and plated at the table and was, without question, the nicest thing I've ever eaten. The veal was tender and soft and the morel sauce was light, cream, woody. The mash was so soft and butter, melty and just salty enough. Chris had roast grouse, carved at the table, with three sauces and goose fat crisps. Bit gamey for my liking but he loved it.

Puddings - Chris had a caramel mousse with chocolate and pears. The caramel had the lovely, burnt taste that I love and the chocolate was dark and glossy. I had ice cream. Bearing in mind how much I love ice cream you can imagine my delight when an ice cream trolley arrived. Six silver ice cream pots for me to choose from. Three sorbets and three ice creams - I went for vanilla and white chocolate, which were soft and melty, tons of flavour, sweet, comforting. I had to be restrained from licking the plate.

Petit fours, coffee (which kind of coffee, milk or cream, would you like a top up) and we staggered into the rainy night, having had about 50 staff saying goodbye and thank you to us.

Eating somewhere like this is a much-anticipated treat for us and I was worried it wouldn't feel luck much fun, or, more likely, that the food would be great but we felt out of place. But the staff were so lovely, kind, friendly. I've never smiled so much during dinner and I hope they noticed how much we were enjoying it. Michel Roux jr also came over to the table to check how everything was - nice to know the chef actually cooks in the kitchen!

Anyway, lovely lovely lovely. Worth saving up for and can't wait to go back.

A surprising dinner

2009-10-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Monday is such an unpromising night, especially when it is cold and dark - the first time of the year. Glutton Boy was not especially looking forward to dinner - I'd planned a butternut squash risotto but by the time I'd got home he'd roasted it off with some garlic. And, it was delicious - sweet squash, creamy where I'd added in butter and a really lovely taste from the taleggio I stirred in. It was smooth, spoonable, unctuous in the extreme - a perfect comfort for a dark, autumn night and making the most of seasonal produce which I love doing. I get excited by seeing new things in the shops - the first pumpkins, parsnips which I can't wait to roast in sticky meat juices, dark green leafy veg begging for tiny shards of crispy bacon, the first tins of quality street...

I'm so looking forward to my week off next week - I need to cook for love, not for the sake of putting a nice meal on the table day after day. I plan to visit some shops I've wanted to see for a while - Maroc on Moscow Road, back to Persepolis in Peckham to treat myself to some gorgeous exoticness to tempt me back into the kitchen!

Lots of love

GG

A week of cooking

2009-10-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week in the Glutton household - I've been working like a trojan and GB is winding down in preparation for starting his new job. Weekday dinners have mostly been quick, post-work recipes - tried and trusted and ones I don't need to look at a recipe book for. On Saturday I wanted to make a nice dinner for GB and I, so made the first thing ever from Arabesque - a lamb tagine with pears. I have to say, I was slightly disappointed - thin sauce (made only from water), a bit grey looking. I guess lamb and onions are not really going to be especially vibrant. It tasted lovely, served with lemony couscous, so all wasn't wasted. I spent some very enjoyable time planning the meals for the week after next- I get shopping delivered as neither of us drive so I plan a week in advance. Ottolenghi is getting a fair few outings and I'm very much looking forward to chicken with sumac and za'tar. I absolutely love sumac, which I have in stock thanks to a recent trip to Damas Gate in Sheps Bush. I'm off work that week so plan another jaunt over there to buy Mograbia (fat couscous) and some za'tar, and maybe even treat myself to some lovely baklava - I particularly like the little semolina cakes and the filo diamonds too. Yum yum.
Next week is shaping up to be a bitch of a week, so have planned some quick meals - stir fries etc, which I can sling together when I get in exhausted. The most exciting thing though is that on Wednesday I am taking Glutton Boy to Le Gavroche to celebrate our third wedding anniversary. I don' know how long it'll last but we do something nice every year - first was a weekend in Whitstable and last year GB took me to Lille for a long weekend. And talking of Lille, GB thinks he has won a day trip for two, which we'll take before Christmas and stock up on some lovely food from the delis, cake shops and even the Carrefour. Just as well as I have just run out of Mont Blanc Creme au Caramel.

I can't wait for my week off - I want to cook up a storm and also bake some sourdough and get loads of things done for LAdy Cupcake - my fledgling cake business.

Anyway, ratatouille beckons (work lunches) and I'm also making toad in the hole for dinner. Hurrah for Autumn.

Lots of love

GG

Welcome to GluttonGirl

2009-10-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Fast facts:
Live in London
Married to GluttonBoy
Am greedy
Have a bit of a soft spot for bakers

I also think that we have in the UK a slightly odd idea about food, either fetishistic (the most expensive, rarest, local) or we eat Findus Crispy Pancakes. Now, I'm someone who is taking the GB to Le Gavroche for our anniversaries but I also love Findus Crispy Pancakes. Food is lovely and delicious and exciting - what it isn't is the Koh i Noor diamond. I love eating, thinking about eating, reading recipes, planning meals, shopping, travelling halfway across London to the Middle Eastern supermarket to buy pickes and preserved lemons. GB manages a boutique bakery so we spend a lot of time with bakers and chefs, which I love as they are all kerazy but also super-passionate about what they do.

This blog is a diary of what we are cooking, what we are enjoying and what we think about food. GluttonBoy has his own blog - the BBC Saved My Life, so have a look for him.

Tonight, however, no cooking. It's 8pm and still in the office. GB is at work so dinner may well be toast. Better than Crispy Pancakes though...

Lots of love
GG