Getting ready to grow up

Tonight I am on my own in the Kitchen. My partner in crime has decided to head to England for a few days so I was left holding the fort and today was wine bottling day.

We've had some wine on the go for the last 6-8 weeks or so and today was, according to the schedule, bottling day. So after work I have gamely steriles anything even remotely concerning bottling (except myself) and have put wine into 15 bottles and have filled 2 x 5litre containers awaiting the next arrival of bottles. The kitchen is strictly artisan.

I actually thought that wouold be enough for tonights menu but was caught myself having so much fun that I did a ready, steady cook with the contents of the fridge. So here is a classic after work, weekday dish.

Ingredients
Chorizo
Onion
Garlic
Peas
Chilli
Pasta
Parmesan
Salt & Pepper
Basil leaves

The basic principle here is that this dish should take no longer than it takes for the pasta to cook. So if it does you need to go back and try again.

Saute pan - cast iron, warm it up and then turn the heat down.
Olive oil
Chopped onions, garlic into the pan
Pasta on
Add chorizo to saute pan, brown
Add chilli - to illustrate how much of a cheats dish this is I took mine straight out of the freezer (yes you can freeze fresh chilli), chopped it and put it in
Add peas - whatever you have is fine, the best of course is straight out of your own garden. Tonight because of a stupid bet I used an out of date tin of marrowfat peas...it still tasted good.
Check pasta if cooked, drain and add to saute pan. Turn thge heat off. Good lug of olive oil and then onto the plate.
Pepper and cheese.
Last thing a few basil leaves, yes they struggle with the chorizo and the chilli but every now and then you just get something with them so I think it's worthwhile.

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I was thinking earlier today that I need to define what kind of cook I am, I have a leaning towards bistro cooking (French) and Italian (specifically risottos, dishes involving pulses and pasta with sauces so generally the penne, fettucine variety), Thai and I like the idea of home made burgers and bread. I am not a great cooker of Chinese, Jewish, Turkish, Norwegian (although I have dabbled in that). Right now I think I wan t to go deeper into the few subjects I know about rather than wider. I still have a few quests - pastry, mentioned before but the others are

To be able to make a really good omlette with my eyes closed and to make a really good poached egg. Not just once but time after time after time.

Simple hey?

Am I talking about love or food?

The Kitchen Re Opens!

Some of you may have noticed. Others might have missed it. The Kitchen closed in July and for some reason never got around to re opening in the summer. Life was being lived at a hectic pace, there were a lot of adventures, beer, food, travel and work. It was a work hard and play hard time but it didn't leave a lot of time to cook. Not in the way that inspires me to blog. It seemed like cooking was just another fuel stop on the way to the next horizon.

However now a cold coming at the end of the good summer weather, house hunting in Finland and big things at work have brought about a whopping great big full stop in my activities and actually allowed the kitchen to get a look in.

We will move to Finland in November which will necessitate the kitchen closing for a while but in the meantime I'm on a quest to find some wild mushrooms and to cook them with a nice juicy steak and a glass of red wine.

The home made wine will be ready for bottling in the next few days and that should be interesting and hopefully dreadfully alcoholic!

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In other sad news my auntie Ivy passed away late last week and I don't know if I will make it to the funeral next Tuesday. What I do remember is the time we made one of those awful choclate rolls that you cover with some kind of sugary spread and serve at christmas. I didn't quite remember the whole recipe so we used normal sugar instead of caster or icing sugar. You can imagine how we had to crunch our way through the most unappealing christmas roll ever...however she laughed with me and not at me and that is how I will remember her.

Pie

The Kitchen is doing well at the moment. Seems that whatever was weighing on me and taking the pleasure out of cooking has gone. There are still way too many balls in the air at the moment but at least cooking is no longer one of them.

We've been eating some good stuff lately and I need to talk about some pie filling I made recently.

I used,

Beef - cubed
Garlic - chopped (I view crushing it as some sort of betrayal)
Onion - chopped (I view chopping an onion as some sort of acid test of your attitude to cooking)
Mushrooms
Fresh tomatoes
Water
Salt, Pepper and Bay

I literally just bunged it all in a pot and let it go, no red wine, no tomato juice, no nothing I let the ingredients do all the work and it wa lovely. The key - time. This isn't one for people on a schedule...

Looking ahead I'm off to helsinki tomorrow...back on wednesday late. The kitchen is closed but the chef is plotting!

Just an update on my last entry...

No asparagus when out sourcing this morning so it will be grilled fennel and leek instead. I think that could be quite an exciting combination and certainly the presentation possibilities are good.

I bought my little brother one of Bill Granger's books for his birthday despite the fact I have never read one. It was the comment that he can make tired ingredients (in the sense that we can have chicken morning noon and night if we want) taste fresh again. I like that. In fact it plays into park of why I cook. I'm not systematic in my cooking. My blending of flavours is completely instinctive (with a dash of recall!)...I hope the book finds favour.

I'm also plotting one hell of a tour round Norway. Our walk over the weekend through Trollheimen just about killed us but it has whetted my appetite for exploring and I have to figure out how to get Deborah to Innderdalen...Norway's most beautiful valley. I'm not proposing any tough walks, just a trip to this most lovely place and a night or two under canvas. Real fire, homely food. Get the Monkey House Kitchen working in the wild.

Hills and menu plans

I love to cook. That much should be obvious to anyone who has stopped by this blog even casually. However I love to walk as well. The wilder the better. This weekend just gone the Kitchen was mothballed and we headed for the hills. Trollheimen, Norway.

2 days, 45 km, 1350m of vertical ascent and22hrs walking. Luckily for us we went high on Saturday and got the best weather (I have the sunburn to prove it) and as it has been unusally fry here in Norway over the summer months the way back was just about as bone dry as you can expect a bog to be.

I had a great time although my shoulders are stiff from the pack. I'd quite happily head out tomorrow but shan't as it is time toi get the kitchen going again.

In the week ahead we will be cooking

Mon - Parma ham, cherry tomatoes, mozarella and watermelon salad
Tue - Marinated salmon, grilled and served on noodles
Wed - Gammon steaks with grilled leeks and asparagus
Thu - Beef and mushroom pie with cheese mash
Fri - Thai spring rolls with tempura prawns
Sat - Spaghetti carbonara
Sun - Lamb shanks with roast potatoes

There's also a curry that needs making, some bread that needs baking ( I have a feeling it will be some sort of morrocan flatbread with a hummus and lamb kind of meal).

The kitchen is open. I need these kind of walks more often!!

Mozarella & Fennel

I've achieved something of a personal goal in the last week. I went swimming in a cold Norwegian Fjord. Ever since we've moved here I've wanted to plunge into the waters that surround us. Mostly to see if I can survive it. The dull fact is, of course, that the water was nowhere near cold enough for survival to be a question. Still it was refreshing and a feeling of 1-0 to me versus the world.

I'm quite a goal driven individual and cooking has often been a means of escaping, a chance to be creative, put on a different skin almost. However recently it has been something of a chore as the inevitable pressures of life seemed to manifest themselves in a bit of a spring tide. It was a little eat for fuel, get on with solving the puzzle and survive.

The big question challenge is whether to move on from Norway to Finland. I won't debate the details but it has hanging over me a bit. So it was great last night to cobble together a bruschetta and some salsa and have it with a bit of Makerel. It was almost as if the bruschetta was the best bit.

For those of you who think a piece of toast will suffuce, let me tell you in no uncertain terms it will not.

Bread, one day old is best. Grill in hot ridged pan. No oil.
When it looks right take it out, rub with garlic, add freshly ground salt and a dribble of olive oil.

Trust me, there is no going back and best of all it is true soul food. Nothing fancy but deeply comforting.

Tonight we borrowed liberally from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. We tried his Fennel and Mozarella salad which tasted of summer. I thought our version was OK but am heartened that it has a ton of possibilities to be developed according to what you have in the larder.

However more than that, with interesting deliberations ahead on whether to up sticks for Finland, it's good to know that I'm interested in food again as something other than fuel.

Tomorrow night will be a pea and prawn risotto - only a dish to be made if you love to cook! Roll on happy days - I'm back!!!

Confessions

It's been a while since I've posted - packing up a house, visiting Barcelona with work, packing up some more, visiting my parents in Spain, unpacking again, beginning to tame the jungle that pretends to be our garden - tends to take away time and opportunities to be creative in the kitchen and thus give something to blog about.

Tonight however I have something worthwhile to talk about - food wise.

I'm going to be 34 years old next tuesday and I am known in my family as the one who is serious about food. Both assertions are true but the second should be qualified with the supplementary information that I am a self taught cook, following where my taste buds take me and nowhere near the syllabus of a profesionnal and serious cookery school.

So tonight I have bizarre step foreward that probably can't be underestimated in terms of future cooking options and roads to explore.

I've discovered pastry.

I started cooking when I lived in London after leaving university, my father introduced me to the idea of cooking good food for yourself. He didn't do it in any explicit way but we were there night after night chopping onions, saving a bit of that for something down the line (soup) and adding a bit of that and just chewing the fat. So the lesson that cooking good food is a pleasure and a social thing was one I got at 17. Probably explains the discovery of pastry taking another 17 years!

I then have to thank two friends for developing my interest further. One is a serious foodie who makes me look like an amateur and the other bought me my first serious knife which I have carefully sharpened this eveing.

So that gives us the background and now to tonight.

Red Onion and Goat Cheese Tart.

We have a vegetarian friend staying with us this weekend so we're making this old favourite from a book we have. The way it's always been done in the past is that I would get to chop 1kg of red onions and then Deb would get to make the pastry and finish the tart off, the wierd girly voodoo of pastry been her domain.

Tonight Deb is out for a girly night out and we're going walking tomorrow and will want to eat when we come home after a long day in the mountains and won't want to have to wait forever. I said I'd cook the onions to shorten the process. So I did, went and worked in the garden, did some mindless surfing of the Norwegian post catalogue - it's up to date our new address is there, and came back held back for a while and then just went for it. I winged it, made it up, I had a vague idea there was something to do in respect of baking blind and then just played it by ear. The last part of the process is in the oven now and it looks lovely. Mission accomplished.

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While we were in Spain I made a lovely ailioli - eggs, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. We ate it with some butterflied prawns and some butter beans. Lovely.

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The cherries are coming to Norway which means it is time to try Clemfoutis again. Last time I tried this I burnt them, not this time. We ate them anyway as it would be a waste not to.

Remember cooking is about doing it from scratch. Never ever about the frozen ready meals. As to the bit left on your plate. It can be used for something later. Tonight the fridge received

*Rice (Egg fried rice?)
*Onions (left over from the tart - souptastic)
*Thai red curry sauce - tonights dinner and instant pick me up to something...or a marinade to some pork chops.