my life just got a little spicier! sainsbury's harissa paste and mini lamb burgers

sainsbury's harissa paste with
mini lamb burgers

If you have been reading this blog for some time, you may have realised that I do like to cook from scratch. It is not that I am all holier-than-thou about ready-meals; God knows that M+S cheese and tomato pasta bake has kept me fuelled on many occasions. And I cannot imagine life in the kitchen without Lea + Perrins Worcestershire sauce. 

But in my experience, most of the ready-made sauces and pastes on supermarket shelves just aren't to my taste. Before I began cooking I did used to use these sorts of products, but added so many ingredients to them to improve the flavour, that I realised I might as well as cook from scratch. I also find many of these ready-made products far too sweet, a little gluey in texture and many have a peculiarly cloying and synthetic aftertaste. 

primavera pasta with sea trout

sea trout with pasta primavera

I am clinging over-optimistically on to the summer-that-never-was. So much for an Indian Summer - even the plump wood pigeons plundering my garden for fruit are huddled together for warmth. Pah!

But a primavera sauce, so named for its use of young spring vegetables, can bring sunshine into even the most cantankerous of hearts, with its delicious, delicate flavour and flecked with jewels of pretty bright green colour.

a little burger - perfect party food, which slides right down!

mini beef burgers with capers

mini sour dough burger bun

  I had been playing around with my bread dough again. Often when I try to bake bread rolls, they spread in the oven and I end up with something that flat rather than rounded. What would happen, I wondered, if I plonked my rolls in a silicone bun tray? Mini burger buns by the looks of things! This means, I need to make burgers. A nice symmetry I think! 

Burger aficionados will have an opinion on the type and even the cut of meat included in their burger. I opened the freezer to forage and I discovered minced beef, which fortunately was on the fatty side (which I believe adds flavour and definitely stops the burgers from drying out). So that's what we had; no argument.

a glorious plum cake - with real plums!

fabulous plum cake!

It is one of those quirks of the English and of British food, that often when you see a recipe entitled "plum cake" or "plum pudding" - it doesn't contain any plums at all; this is a catch-all name which refers to all sorts of preserved fruits used in baking in earlier centuries.

But I right now I am a plum obsessive. It is the season, after all.  There is something rather beautiful and beguiling about all the plums boxed up at the market, from bright green greengages, deep red Presidents and pale purple Victorias. But like his Royal Greediness, I do not discriminate, I was just in the mood for baking a cake that was full of fresh, ripe and juicy plums.

gooseberry relish

gooseberry relish

One of my favourite discoveries this summer was that gooseberries taste a lot like tomatillos! Not that I had been feeling the lack of tomatillos in my life, but watching Thomasina Miers of Wahaca fame and Wahaca, Mexican Food at Home, made me curious about their flavour. 

But unless you grow tomatillos yourself, you are unlikely to find them in the UK. But since I had gooseberries in my garden, I thought I could make a gooseberry relish to go with some roasted chicken, inspired by one of Thommi's salsa recipes.

simple rocket salad with tomato vinaigrette

keeping it salad simple!

One of the things I have learned in twenty odd years of cooking that most things work when I try to keep them simple and don't over-complicate things. This is one of the simplest of salads, perfect for a later summer evening, when I would rather be in the garden drinking a cool glass of wine rather than in the kitchen cooking!

a jam for gluttons, all year around: plum jam

perfect plum jam

Kenny Hill was once an area entirely covered by jungle, just outside the city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Now known as Bukit Tunku, It was slowly tamed by man once plantation owners moved in and landscaped the hillside with terraces, to grow rubber trees and oil palms. By the 1970s, Kenny Hill was an affluent area for those who eschewed the hustle and bustle of downtown KL, and was filled with large houses and beautifully landscaped gardens. It is also where I grew up.

Towards the top of the hill, there lived a troop of wild monkeys, led by the most alpha male of all. His Fat Highness would sit in a clearing by the side of the road at dusk, surveying his monkey gang, to ensure that none of them had something that he didn't such as food; he looked like some kind of malevolent monkey Buddha.

chorizo and pepper stew

chorizo and pepper stew

One of my favourite comfort foods is a stew containing Spanish chorizo. I think it is something to do with the warming umami effect of smoked paprika, which satisfies in warm weather and soothes on colder days. This is one of my go-to, store cupboard recipes as I always have the ingredients to hand and it always seems to fit the bill, whatever my mood.

what's in season: september

plum wonderful!

September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
Geoffrey Hill - September Song
(New and Collected Poems, 1952-1992)

In theory, September is the pinnacle of perfection in terms of the vegetable patch; a truly excellent month for fruit and veg such as sweetcorn, broccoli, apples, blackberries, damsons and early pears. That's the theory anyway. But as a result of fluctuations in the jet stream, a high altitude wind that has really put a dampener on the party, seasonal fruit and vegetables have been badly hit! Bah! It has been a truly terrible time for Britain's fruit and vegetable growers with our near-Monsoon conditions and the lack of pollination of fruit (yes, bees don't like the rain either).

the last gasp of summer and a delicious seasonal salad: kisir (bulgar wheat salad)

kisir: bulgar wheat salad

When I am trying to be thrifty, frugal and healthy, I take my own lunch into work. It saves me money and I am less tempted to splurge on expensive sandwiches and junk food. (I say less tempted advisedly. It doesn't always work as a preventative measure!) But there are always days when I can't always be bothered to prepare lunch or think up new ways of tantalising my taste buds and when I am offered an alternative where someone else has come up with delicious ideas for lunch, then I am often tempted from the path of thrift!

a taste of summer all year long: pickled peppers

pickled peppers

There is a little fruit 'n veg market stall around the corner from where I live, on Kentish Town High Road, next to the Co-op. It is run by a lovely couple from Kosovo. While they don't have the widest range of fruit and vegetables, and it's not always local, it is always good quality. I also get to have fascinating conversations about the best Balkan jam (plum apparently) and interesting stuffings for chicken!

something for the weekend? pomegranate roasted chicken

pomegranate roasted chicken

I find that it is never too early in the week to think about what I am going to cook for Sunday lunch, so this is my suggestion for something you might like to try this Bank Holiday weekend.

London temperatures spiked last week as if the weather was trying to atone for all the appalling conditions we have had over the past few months, Olympic fortnight not withstanding. Since my kitchen can reach furnace-like temperatures even during winter, the last thing I wanted to do was cook a traditional roast lunch. It was just too damned hot.