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Welcome to the first food post of 2021. I want to start the year as I mean to go on: trying to cook tasty food, with vastly varying levels of success.

Crispy honey-roasted sprouts
Before we get into it, let it be known that I hate sprouts. I hate sprouts! There aren't many vegetables that I wholly dislike, but sprouts are one of them. They're like bitter balls of nastiness. But, welp, it was Christmas, and everywhere was advertising sprout recipes so I thought I'd try one. I managed to burn the sprouts (you can tell) because I left them in the oven for 25 minutes without checking on them. But actually, the burntness didn't add any bitterness that wasn't already there from the sprouts themselves. In fact, the hazelnut praline thing was sweet enough to combat the bitterness from all corners. It's surprising! I don't like sprouts and I don't like savoury food that's too sweet, but the two actually cancel each other out. These were edible! Edible as they were, this recipe could be improved by removing the sprouts altogether. That buttery hazelnut praline would be divine sprinkled on a dessert.

Potato and parsnip al forno
This Jamie Oliver recipe was a lot of effort for something that was, essentially, bad. It sounded so promising, and it looked really good when it came out of the oven all bubbling with the yellow melted cheese on top. But, for me, the taste was all wrong. It was far too sweet, and I've already mentioned how I don't like too much sweetness in my savoury dishes. You had sweet parsnips and sweet onions and sweet chestnuts all together. There was not nearly enough cheese and garlic to counteract all that sweetness. Plus, Jamie says to leave the skins on the potatoes and parsnips, but that just meant that the dish was horrible texturally as well, because amongst the soft creaminess of the vegetables you'd occasionally nearly choke on a long string of potato skin. Maybe if you like very sweet savoury dishes (and eating string), you'll like this one. But for me it was absolutely not worth the effort.

Mary Berry's Yule log
Faced with a sudden and unexpected Christmas by myself, I realised that I was now in charge of the Christmas food. And so I decided I was going to make the most of it and actually have a Christmas dessert that I like. My family normally has Christmas pudding after their Christmas dinner, which is not for me, and so I normally sit it out. Not so this year! My Christmas = my rules. And my rules say that the best Christmas dessert is a chocolate log. I chose this Mary Berry recipe because I figured that you probably can't go wrong with Mary. I was entirely correct! This recipe left me singing Mary Berry's praises oh my God. It contains fresh cream, and there's only one of me, so I was left eating this dessert after every meal (including breakfast) for a week, and yet I still looked forward to every serving. I made two changes to the recipe. One was that I could not find any caster sugar, so I substituted with granulated sugar; this didn't seem to affect the recipe at all. The other was that I forgot to make a note of what type of dark chocolate I was supposed to buy, so I ended up using 70% dark chocolate instead of the 40% given in the recipe. This would come to haunt me. Mary says to make the ganache topping in a rather unusual way by adding the chopped chocolate to the hot cream, rather than the other way around. I did as she said, but didn't stir it for long enough to melt my chocolate fully (which was more solid than hers anyway) because I was terrified of the ganache splitting in a hot pan. (The last ganache I made split terribly, and now I have ganache issues, or... gannissues.) So I was left with a ganache that was a bit lumpy. Mary then says to cool the ganache in the fridge so that it's thick enough to pipe. Alas, I did not realise I had used a more-solid chocolate than Mary, and so was very surprised when my ganache solidified completely in the fridge. Nevertheless I struggled on by putting the solid ganache in my piping bag and trying to warm it with my hands. This was a resounding failure: the ganache refused to become liquid enough to pipe and all the chocolate chunks left in it blocked up my piping nozzle anyway. In a fit of rage and panic, I took the ganache out of the piping bag, shoved it in the microwave to liquify a little more, then spread it on the cake with a palette knife and, as per Mary's alternate instructions, used a fork to create a bark texture. It turns out that little mistakes can become massive successes. Just look at the bark on that cake! It looks much more branch-like than it would have done if I had piped the ganache properly. And the little chocolate chunks, which had been the bane of my piping nozzle, actually helped to give a rough texture! Resounding success! In taste, Mary knows what she's doing, oh my word. The chocolate sponge was unbelievably moist and light, the whipped cream paired with it beautifully and the accidentally too-dark chocolate meant that this dessert wasn't too sweet (which can sometimes be an problem with these things). Instead it was a dessert that was light and rich with an almost-solid chocolate coating that was oh so chocolatey. It was good. I actually miss this cake now it's gone! I'm seriously going to have to consider making it again next Christmas, regardless of who's in charge of the food.

Barbecue tofu ramen
This recipe was a bit of a mission to make. To me it feels quite "chefy", meaning that it's one of those recipes that requires lots of multitasking. Almost every component of this dish was cooked separately, yet simultaneously, and with short cooking times so you don't have much time to think as everything is happening. I'm sure it's an easy dish to make if you're a chef and are used to these things. For me, I was "rabbit in the headlights"ing for a lot of it. Do you know what though? It's worth it. I was wondering if, as a vegan dish, this might be lacking in umami flavour, but not so. The broth is rich and savoury and creamy, the toppings lift it, and the tofu is super tasty (plus the charred, fried texture of the tofu makes it feel quite satisfyingly meaty). Disclaimer though: my dish wasn't fully vegan, because I bought a BBQ sauce that has honey in. My only complaint is how you're supposed to eat it. This is a dish for chopsticks. It's clearly not a dish for a knife and fork. So how am I supposed to eat that massive lump of pak choi? I tried picking it up and biting it, but because it was only charred it was still quite stringy and chewy. Not clever. I had to have a brief interlude with a knife and fork to cut the pak choi into chunks for chopsticks. Once I'd done that though, this dish was great. Takes a lot of effort, but makes a very good vegan dish.

Vegan mushroom carbonara
This recipe was written by the same guy as the previous one and I can tell. This one isn't quite as "chefy" but it's still clear that the person who wrote this doesn't care how many pans they use. What do you mean I have to put my sauce in a blender and then I have to put it into a fresh saucepan? Why? Is an absolutely chunkless sauce really worth cleaning another pan? (It is not.) My other issue with this recipe was the timing for the mushroom bacon. It may be because I greatly reduced the recipe from six servings to one, but my mushrooms got really overcooked in the oven. After 30 minutes they were husks of charcoal. I did them the next day for 20 minutes and they came out perfect. As for the taste of this recipe, it was ok. It was nice enough, and the mushroom bacon is a perfect substitute for the little bacon chunks you get in a carbonara, but the sauce wasn't right. I don't have a blender, so whizzed my sauce up in a food processor; I thought this might leave me with texture issues, but actually the tiny chunks in the sauce did a good job of replicating the egg you'd get in a normal carbonara. My problem with the sauce was actually taste rather than texture: the taste was fine, but it wasn't the creamy, umami explosion you'd expect from a carbonara. Without being able to use Parmesan, this dish was never quite going to be a normal carbonara, I suppose. But did we really need to make a roux for the sauce? The richness that you'd normally get from the cream wasn't there, because the creamy texture just came from flour instead. Is there not some kind of vegan cream substitute that could be used? (I have no idea, but it feels like there should be.) Anyway, this was good and all, but don't serve it to non-vegan folks and call it a carbonara because they will be disappointed. It must also be said that I'm not a fan of peas, and I left out the wine. Would this dish have been perfect if I had just taken out the peas and added the wine? No-one knows.

It's time for the obligatory post-Christmas post. How are you all? I hope you're doing as well as can be.

The beginning of 2021 is... well, it's very different to the beginning of 2020, that's for sure. Lots of people were glad to burn their bridges with 2020 and to welcome in 2021 and I'm not so sure I feel the same. For one thing, 2020 wasn't all doom and gloom, so I wouldn't like to lose everything that it gave us. The realisation of how easy it is to keep in touch with people through video calls is one thing I'm not going to forget in a hurry. And for another, I'm not going to welcome in 2021 until it has proved itself to me. As I've said to people, I'm not going to count my chickens until I see some chickens.

Christmas 2020 was weird, and like everything, there were last-minute changes to make it weirder. I had planned to go visit my parents, but a few days before Christmas London was plunged into Tier 4 restrictions due to a new covid variant. And so, like many people, I suddenly faced the prospect of my first Christmas alone. (As strange as it felt, I'm glad I didn't go visit my parents. The virus is surging right now, and I would have felt bad if I'd done anything to help speed it along.)

So that week, I went on my normal supermarket trip hoping to score some ingredients for Christmas dinner and some Christmas decorations, because I had nothing in. Alas, everyone was doing the same thing, with some added panic-buying on top because there was a temporary halt to vehicles leaving the country. That was probably my least favourite shopping trip from the whole pandemic, because not only was I faced with bare shelves, the whole place was full of stressed people, and trying to keep distant from them was almost impossible.

Still, I was able to buy potatoes and beef and cabbage and flour, and I was able to put those together with some leftover bits and pieces that I had to make a very passable Christmas dinner. We're talking roast beef; roast potatoes; roast parsnips; boiled cabbage (don't @ me, I love it); chestnut, thyme and pancetta stuffing; Yorkshire puddings; and gravy. And all of it, bar the gravy, was home-made. I felt very proud of myself. Although I also felt sorry for my parents, who I was in a Zoom call with all day, and who got to see me stressing out trying to get everything ready at the same time, and at the same time as the roast my Mum was cooking in her kitchen. All went mostly to plan, however, and we ate together over Zoom.

The day before, my parents had to watch me stress over making a chocolate Yule log. I won't go into the log details now, because it'll be in an upcoming food post, but suffice it to say that it was astoundingly delicious! And, thankfully, the supermarket sold me all the ingredients I needed to make it (well, apart from caster sugar, but I bought granulated sugar instead and it turned out fine).

I also bought a variety of snacks that I could munch on throughout the period, which the supermarket had plenty of. Now my task is to finish eating them. It is a very pleasant task.

When it comes to decorations, my experience at the supermarket was mixed. I wanted some standard tinsel that I could drape over a few bookcases, but the supermarket had none. So instead I bought some things from the plants section. We have:

A tiny, living Christmas tree. It is wearing the Christmas decoration that I got in a card from Steve and Heather years ago. It's such a tiny tree. I am in love. Hopefully it will last a while; I would like to have a new friend around.

A last-minute random purchase was a bunch of twigs! But it's a pretty festive-looking bunch of twigs, so it has livened up the place.

Unable to buy any more decorations, I ended up making a paper chain out of printer paper and wrapping paper. I was going to make more than one chain, but it took longer than expected and my enthusiasm ran out. Thankfully, I found an old piece of red ribbon that I had been saving (not pictured) which served as a paper chain substitute in my bedroom.

As always, I received some lovely Christmas cards. The Boris one at the top is very topical and I might keep it for future reference. I had thought that I would receive fewer cards than normal this year, but not so! I might have even received more than normal. It seems that people were very keen to celebrate hard and to celebrate together in the only way they could. I am very grateful.

In fact, on that point, I had thought that I wouldn't receive many Christmas presents this year. I had bought a load of presents for my parents, and they had bought presents for me, but the last-minute changes meant we couldn't get the presents to each other. I particularly did not want my parents to risk a trip to the Post Office just for the sake of presents. And so, I had expected to not have many presents and to instead have a late Christmas present-giving sesh in the spring. But, oh my word, my friends came through for me. So many lovely things arrived, and quite a few of them were completely unexpected! Honestly, despite not being able to see anyone in person, I feel so connected to all my friends and relatives. It really is lovely.

Deborah sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers which arrived on Christmas Eve.

Deborah also sent a bar of Cadbury's that is larger than my head. I haven't started eating it yet and I'm intimidated. The other two chocolate bars were from Mariya. I am very keen to know what the "Immunity" chocolate tastes like. Hopefully it tastes like delicious chocolate and not like "health". But maybe if it tastes like health I can pretend that it's good for me. The tiny little fudge bars came from my Mum. I had asked her to post me a 2021 diary that she had bought me. I told her only to post it if it would go in the post on a normal stamp, because I didn't want to send her the post office. And bless my Mum, she had weighed the package and realised she could fit two little chocolates in the weight limit.

Beauty products. We have a little bag of soaps from Mariya that smells so lovely. The kangaroo sheet mask and the lemon and ginger hand cream come from Mariya too. All very useful for pandemic times! My hands get so dry with all this sanitising and the face coverings make my face dry too, so I am hoping the sheet mask gives me a bit more moisture. The box behind is a box full of bath bombs and is from Asia; it smells really nice.

Finally we have a book from Mariya that I am interested to get into, and then a fake pot plant from Mariya that is actually a pen holder! Very useful for working from home, and if my Christmas tree doesn't last long I at least know I will have a new plant friend who will stick around. The Parker pen (also useful for working from home) comes from my Mum; she found that this would fit in the weight limit with the diary too.

Honestly, honestly. Everyone has been so nice. There's nothing like hard times to make you realise what you're grateful for. I love my friends and family. 2020 has been bad bad awful, but that shared experience? That connection with other people despite everything? That's one heck of a silver lining.

IT IS TIME! TO WRITE! ANOTHER FOOD POST!

Oh it's good to be back! So, even though the pandemic is far from over (I am currently writing this post from England's second lockdown - I hope you are all safe and well, by the way!) I feel ready to start trying new recipes again. There are two reasons for this: 1) Panic-buying has calmed down to the point where I am no longer worried that I won't be able to buy things like flour or eggs. And 2) I've been looking into stress management recently and one of the pieces of advice I came across was "make time to do things you enjoy"; it made me realise that I had put off this hobby for too long.

I adore trying new recipes. It is so much fun. And I have been greatly enjoying myself since I started again, even during the failures (especially during the failures?)

Let's get to it.

Peanut chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
When I made the Hainanese fried chicken legs from this recipe book a few months back, I had thought that that recipe was the final boss of the book, because it contained all the difficult parts of previous recipes combined. "Thank goodness," I thought, "I won't have to make a recipe this difficult ever again." Wrong! I was so very wrong! Turns out there was another boss to defeat and that was Peanut chicken legs. This recipe contained almost all the difficult parts of the last one, save that I don't have to bother cooking potatoes in the sauce. We have: to create 2tbsp of shallot juice and 2tbsp of ginger juice for a marinade; to do something with 3tbsp tapioca flour which the recipe doesn't deign to explain (I substituted cornflour because I couldn't find tapioca flour, and decided to use it to flour the marinated chicken legs before frying them); to deep-fry the chicken (which I, again, refused to do and so shallow-fried them followed by a stint in the oven); and to make a sauce from scratch, which must then be thickened with a random amount of cornflour solution (mine came out too thin with the previous recipe, so I added in extra cornflour this time, but it was perhaps too much because my sauce turned out very thick and pale). There was so much that could go wrong! Still, I bravely followed all the steps and only had one close call with the grater when attempting to juice the shallots and the ginger; everything else went smoothly. And so, hours (hours!) later, I had a presentable looking dish in front of me. However, unlike the previous boss Hainanese fried chicken legs, these peanut chicken legs were absolutely not worth the effort. Oh, the dish wasn't bad. But where the Hainanese fried chicken legs were delicious, the peanut chicken legs were indifferent. They were very peanutty, you see, and a bit too sweet because of it; there needed to be a sharper note or a more-savoury note to temper the sweetness that just wasn't there. Is this the time to mention that I don't really care for peanuts?

Iced berries with white chocolate sauce (recipe from "Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration" by Nigella Lawson)
This recipe was meant to be "Iced berries with limoncello white chocolate sauce" but I left out the alcohol. The limoncello is meant to make the white chocolate sauce more "sophisticated" and adult, but I like white chocolate so I don't really care about sophistication. I did consider adding a bit of lemon juice for flavour, but decided against it for fear that it would make the chocolate sauce (basically just melted white chocolate with double cream stirred in) split. The last time I tried to do things with cream and chocolate it split terribly so I am now scared to work with the stuff. This is also why I used Nigella's alternative method of melting the chocolate in a double boiler and didn't go with just melting it directly in a pan as Nigella "I do like an element of risk" gives as the first option. So, basically, this recipe is just frozen berries that are still frozen while you pour melted white chocolate and cream on top. For something that sounds so delicious it was oddly disappointing. (Maybe because I didn't go with the sophisticated limoncello?) The frozen berries were very frozen and were hard and very cold to bite into. They also cooled the sauce instantly, so I was left with a cold sauce that had re-solidified in places (the limoncello would definitely have stopped the re-solidification, I'm sure) and not the hot/cold mix I was promised. Did I spend too many seconds taking photos? I tried to be as quick as possible! Also, my berry mix turned out to be incredibly tart. There were lots of blackcurrants and redcurrants in there and the sharpness of them really made me wince. Like, this dish wasn't bad. Nothing made with fruit and chocolate and cream can be bad, but it was surprisingly lacklustre given how delicious those ingredients can be when given the chance.

Sweet potato and pepper enchiladas
I had never made enchiladas before this. I'd never even eaten enchiladas before this! And I am so glad I rectified that because these are delicious! They're a bit of a faff to make because you have to roast the vegetables beforehand, and then make a sauce that involves hauling the food processor out of the cupboard (I think you could also use a blender? But I don't have one of those), and then you have to assemble them and bake again. But it's worth it. The sauce tasted surprisingly delicious and non-homemade for something that is 90% tinned tomatoes, and it's got a chilli kick to it too. I was worried about how I would find the roasted veg and the lack of meat, because I normally find sweet potatoes too sweet and find recipes with these kinds of ingredients lacking in umami. I needn't have worried. The wholemeal tortillas and cheese give you all the umami you could wish for, and they balance out the sweetness of the veg perfectly. Did I mention that the edges of the tortillas got crispy in the oven? A delight! All served with a simple salad in a nice dressing. I had immense fun making this and eating it too.

Baked chicken legs with mustard paste and cheese (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
This... Guys, this is the last chicken leg recipe in the book. I have now made them all! (Give or take.) Thankfully this last recipe was easy and didn't require any shallot-juicing or deep-frying. Basically the chicken is marinated in a dry rub of salt and pepper, then baked in the oven, and finally topped with mustard (the specific type of mustard isn't mentioned, so I went for what was in my fridge, which is Dijon) and Parmesan and put back in the oven to brown. But, of course, a chicken leg recipe from this book is never as easy as that. You were meant to bake the chicken at 250°C (250°C!) for 25 minutes. I have learnt that the 25 minutes this recipe book always calls for is not long enough to cook my chicken, so I generally go for 50 minutes. I had never attempted to cook chicken at as high a temperature as 250°C before, but I decided to go ahead with the 50 minutes anyway, which did leave my chicken a little black on top. The recipe also says to leave the chicken to cool before putting the mustard and cheese on top. I let mine cool for 10 minutes (thinking that maybe if they were too hot the mustard and cheese would just slide off or something) but I didn't let them cool completely, because heating chicken then cooling it then heating it again just sounds like a recipe for food poisoning if you ask me. The result was: chicken legs cooked at this temperature have a very crispy skin, a juicy interior, and the meat falls off the bone perfectly, even if the skin did get a little burnt (and let's not worry about the oil spatters I will now have to clean from my oven). Mustard and Parmesan go surprisingly well together and taste nice with chicken. But the salt in the dry rub made this chicken far too salty for me, especially with salty Parmesan on top. The saltiness does give it a lovely American-fried chicken vibe, but it's a bit too salty to be truly on point.

***

And that's it! With my first food post after the pandemic-related hiatus I have finished "Chicken Leg"! It feels like the end of an era. I have now cooked every single recipe from this book save for the ones where a) I couldn't find the ingredients (like preserved bean curd or dang gui) in my supermarket, or b) I noped out of them, either because the main ingredient (like beer or cola) is not one I consume or because the recipe was too "out there" for me (see for example the Preserved chicken legs recipe, which involves rubbing the chicken in salt and saltpetre, then hanging it in the sun to dry for days thus creating some kind of chicken ham thing).

Of the recipes I did make from this book, some were superbly delicious, some were heinously bad (which I think is probably due to typos in most cases), and only a few were mediocre. And I have learnt so much! It's been great to follow Malaysian/Chinese/South East Asian recipes. I definitely now have new flavour combinations and techniques in my arsenal. I have also learnt that shrimp paste is an acquired taste that I very much have not acquired yet, and that chicken legs are a really great (and cheap!) cut of meat. Will I make any of the recipes again? Probably. Some of them were so delicious that I would be silly not to. Will I make them strictly to the recipes' instructions again? Probably not if it involves juicing shallots. I never want to juice a shallot ever again.

So, overall, working my way through this cookbook has been an experience. I have had a time! Larks have definitely been had.

As you may know, Susanna Clarke, author of "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" has just released a new book called "Piranesi".

I finished reading it last night. Before I go look for reviews and other opinions, I'm going to put down my thoughts.

Non-spoilery version: I really enjoyed it! It was a very good read and a real page-turner.

Spoilery version under the cut.

Full story »

Hi guys. I hope you're all safe and well. How is your pandemic going? (Oh God it's still going.)

Things are slightly different now to the way they were when I wrote my previous post. The death toll in the UK is now much higher at 46,500 (and in the world it's 728,000) but in the UK the daily death rate has slowed right down. It feels like we're now in control a bit more, even if local lockdowns in places around the UK have become a thing.

The world around me is opening up more. We can now go to shops and restaurants and pubs, and go on holiday, and visit people in their houses. I'm not working from home as much either. We're still not back to the way things were, but this whole new cautious way of life (washing and sanitising hands all the time; wearing face coverings; speaking to people from a 2m distance) is becoming kinda normal.

I had a birthday recently, so today I picked up my camera for the first time in months to show you what I got. Because I might have paused everything else during the pandemic, but thankfully birthdays are still a thing that happens.

Luckily I have formed a support bubble with my parents, which means that I can do things with them that I can't do with other people, like share cars and sit close together and HUG THEM. Let me tell you, when that relaxation of lockdown happened and I realised I could hug my parents again I burst into tears.

Even though you are allowed to take trains now, myself and my parents have been avoiding them for the most part. So when they came down to stay with me for my birthday, they drove down (thankfully it's not too long a journey for driving).

It was lovely to see them (only the second time I've seen them in person since the pandemic hit). We went for a walk in the park (in the pouring rain!) and ate fried chicken and watched "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (I had forgotten how good that film is). Necessarily, it was a smaller affair than normal (even if I keep my birthdays small anyway) but it was good.

Let's have some photos then, and pretend that this is a normal birthday post from a normal year.

Birthday cards. Not quite as many as normal, but did I mention that there was a pandemic on? Three of my cards had hand-drawn pictures on, by Alex and William and Rene, and most of the hand-drawn pictures were of cats (what can I say? These people know me).

Edible gifts. Here you see the largest box of chocolates known to man (which is no longer as full as it was when I received it). And a pack of Galaxy chocolate cookies, which I've never tried before but which look delicious. Not pictured: a really tasty lemon drizzle cake baked by my Mum (it was so good!) and fresh produce from my parents' garden, including courgettes, purple French beans, and tomatoes.

Toiletries. A really pretty rose-scented set from Marks and Spencer. It looks so luxurious! And I love the pink travel case that it comes in. The set includes talcum powder, which I haven't used in years (and was there some hoo-ha about it causing cancer?) Using it will make me feel like a child again (but I'll make sure not to use it in any areas that might lead to cancer, because smelling nice isn't worth that). And then a pack of mini hand-sanitisers. My God! I never thought I'd ask for hand-sanitisers as a gift, but here we are in 2020. I didn't have many hand-sanitisers that I could pop in my handbag to take out and about with me, so it's good to have some more.

In the other section we have a yoga mat. I've never been the sort of person to own a yoga mat before, but I started doing daily workouts while working from home and I really felt the lack of one. There's also a pretty Charles Rennie Mackintosh-ispired pen because working from home was making me use my own stationery a lot more. And "Simulation Theory" by Muse. I went on a huge Muse kick last year and the beginning of this year, because the use of one of their songs as the theme-tune for the excellent TV series "The Planets" reminded me that they existed. Listening to their stuff takes me right back to my teens; it's very nostalgic. As an aside, I love how all these gifts are purple; they match so well!

And that's it for this post. I hope you're all keeping well, and I'll see you... whenever I see you <3

Hoo boy. Guys, I hope you're all doing well out there and staying safe.

Not too long ago I wrote my New Year's resolution for 2020. It was:
"I just want to enjoy every day for what it is. That means no more worrying about what tomorrow might bring."
2020 is making that pretty bloody hard right now!

My goodness. When I started this blog fifteen years ago (and, actually, when I started my life a few decades before that) I did not once think I would end up blogging about the apocalypse. But apparently that's just how things go sometimes.

For future Janine (when you decide to reread this as part of a trip down memory lane) this is the coronavirus aka COVID-19 aka worldwide pandemic edition. You, future Janine, probably don't remember all the details of this time, so I'm going to write them down.

For the rest of you who aren't future Janine (meaning you are neither me nor from the future) I apologise for all these words before we get to the good stuff. This is a food post, I promise. (Just pretend you're reading a normal food blog, where you have to read the person's life history before you get to the cake.)

So, when I wrote my last food post at the end of February, I must have known that coronavirus was a thing. I was probably having to start doing things like washing my hands more often and disinfecting things at work. But things have changed so much between then and now that I can't really remember. Back in February coronavirus was scary but not yet a pandemic. I thought we'd have some tough times, but in no way did I forsee that our whole way of life would change, or for so long.

Future Janine, what's it like where you are? I mean, I'm hoping you're there in the future, somewhere. Have things gone back to normal? Do you even remember what normal is? Have things changed for the better? Or for worse? Or has everything reverted back to the way it was, so neatly that 2020 feels like it was a fever dream? Is the thing you're worried about most the fact that you need to write a report for work but you haven't had the time to do it yet? (aka as things were in 2019?) Is that the extent of your stresses? I hope so. (If not, then these words from your past self are probably not making you feel great. So, um, stop dwelling on what I'm saying and pull yourself together. This is a food post for God's sake.)

In March the tempo of the spread of the virus picked up in the UK. Things stayed kinda normal for a bit. Some meet-ups with friends were cancelled, but some weren't. I went to visit Steve and Heather in Bristol. Nick and Eva came over from Amsterdam and we watched Nick run the Bath half marathon. It was nice to see friends and chat and go for a Sunday roast in a pub. But even then these things were starting to feel strange, like we were only pretending at being normal. It was growing hard to buy toilet paper. James and Eppa couldn't come along because their son had a fever (unrelated to the coronavirus, I might add). I saw my friends but I couldn't hug them. I COULDN'T HUG THEM.

Maybe I shouldn't have gone to Bristol. The train there was only half full. Lots of runners at the marathon had pulled out. But I was content to follow government advice, which at the time advised staying home only if you had a cough or a fever. Government advice changed rapidly the next week when they advised everyone to practice social distancing, regardless of symptoms. By the following Friday unessential businesses were closed and almost everyone was working from home, and by the Tuesday after that the country was officially in lockdown, meaning you could get fined for leaving your house without a good reason. And that's where we are now.

Was it too late? The day after returning from Bristol I developed a mild cough. It was, I might add, ridiculously mild: so mild that I feel bad calling it a cough. But was it the virus? Had I unwittingly passed it to everyone in Bristol and Bath and on the train while I was asymptomatic? Maybe. As soon as I felt ill I isolated at home for seven days, as per the government guidelines, so at least I wouldn't have passed it on to anyone else. Looking back, I find it hard to think that such a mild cough was COVID-19, but you absolutely can't take chances with this thing. And I don't normally get coughs in March, especially when they come with no runny nose or cold-like symptoms. Future Janine, do you ever find out if you had this thing?

Before I went to Bristol people had started panic-buying toilet paper, so there was none in the shops. When I came back from Bristol and went into isolation, people had started panic-buying food. That was the hard part. That scared me. I had grown up, privileged me, with food security, so even the slightest wobble in that food security was suddenly an eye-opener. To think that only days before the panic-buying I had made the dishes that I am going to discuss in this post and my biggest worry then had been that the supermarket might not have pistachios! Suddenly I found myself worrying that the shops would have no food at all. In a panicked haze wondered if I could use the cornflour in my cupboard to make bread. I wondered how much vitamin C I could get from the candied peel I'd used to top cakes.

Being in isolation made it more scary. I couldn't go to the shops myself, so I was only receiving reports from others. "I was able to buy tomatoes and broccoli today," said my boss in a phone call, "tonight I'm going to dine like a king." I had visions of completely empty shelves. Folks who live in the UK, is that the way it really was?

Unfortunately I went into isolation on the day I'd normally do my weekly food shop. I only had a bit of store-cupboard stuff left and that was it. Online delivery from supermarkets was laughable in its unavailability. I cursed everyone who was receiving deliveries when they weren't in an at risk group and had the easy means to get to the supermarket. A colleague offered to drop food round to my house if I couldn't get any online, and I felt like crying at the kindness of the offer.

In the end I didn't need my colleague's help. I eventually found a local corner shop who delivered through UberEats and my food arrived 20 minutes after I ordered it. Thank you, local corner shop, you star. I felt like crying when the delivery guy arrived. I feel like crying now.

God, how first-world-problems this is. HOW PRIVILEGED I AM that even this slight blip in food security drove me to tears. There are people out there who live with this fear from week to week to week. The absolute worst-case scenario that I would have faced would have been having to order takeaways for a week instead of cooking my meals. That's it! Yet there I was, morosely watching "MasterChef" and being astounded at all this food that was being made just for a TV show instead of being made to feed and nourish people.

I feel a bit changed by the experience, but even now my attitude to food is returning to normal. Panic-buying has slowed and now the only thing it's hard to buy is flour. I am no longer in isolation, so each week I get the confirmation of seeing supermarket shelves laden with food. But I need to make sure I don't forget that fear I experienced; not entirely. Don't ever forget, future Janine, how privileged you are to eat well every single day. Don't forget that fear of an empty cupboard. Remember the people who experience it time and again. Do what you can to make sure that no-one has to feel that way.

So. The world is changed. Everyone who can stay at home is doing so. I haven't seen friends or family or colleagues for weeks, but I video call people every day. I leave the house maybe once or twice a week, so I am taking vitamin D supplements and doing YouTube workouts. I would like a hug, but it might be a year before I get one.

These are strange strange times, but staying at home is important right now. Nearly 28,000 people in the UK have died of COVID-19, maybe more. Nearly 240,000 people in the world have died of it. But, for the UK at least, we've passed the peak. Numbers are decreasing, and all we have to worry about now is making sure they don't start rising again. What will happen to the economy and life as we know it in the coming years is less certain, but maybe I should go back to my New Year's resolution on that one: "I just want to enjoy every day for what it is. That means no more worrying about what tomorrow might bring."

So, that was a long and rambling example of WRITING THINGS DOWN FOR POSTERITY. The main point for you guys who aren't future Janine is to let you know that this will be the last food post for a while. (Or the last post on any subject for a while, probably, because what is there to photograph and talk about?) Panic-buying has stopped and supermarket shelves are stocked, but they're not fully stocked. There are still quite a few things that it's hard to get hold of, and it's difficult to know, until you're in the shop, what those hard-to-get-hold-of things are actually going to be. I don't want to waste my recipe fun on weeks when I can't find half the ingredients. How can I possibly complain about having to make two tablespoons of ginger juice if I find out the supermarket doesn't have any ginger? It would sadden me to have to half-arse these recipes any more than I normally do, so I'm going to put them on hold until I can be more certain of getting the things I need. And who knows when that will be?

I am still cooking; don't worry. And I'm even trying out new things, but I'm seeing recipes as loose guidelines rather than things to follow precisely, and loose experiments are not really what I want to post here. (That's not to mention the fact that I can't do any baking at the moment, because I can't share the bakes with my colleagues, and I definitely can't eat that much cake all by myself.)

As an aside, I have to say how much cooking has helped my family through this lockdown. Every day we are sharing photos and videos of what we've made. Some videos have been silly and some have been sensible. My aunt and uncle shared video instructions on how to make their traditional curry, and half the family followed along and made the curry in their own homes on the same day. Almost every day I video call my Mum while cooking, so she and I can cook in our own kitchens together. It's lovely that we all have this shared hobby to bring us joy.

Future Janine, you'd better not be crying again. Have you done any baking recently? Why not? Put some effort in, godammit.

And so, in true food blog style, now you've had my life story, it's time for the food.

Jordan Bourke's creamy avocado pappardelle with pine nuts
Making this recipe was when I first started to realise that the world wasn't normal any more. I was going to make this for a visit from Deborah (she's a vegetarian who likes Italian food) so I bought vegetarian hard cheese instead of Parmesan. The recipe is actually for tagliatelle not pappardelle, but when I got to the pasta aisle in the supermarket there was very little pasta left: there were two types of expensive pasta, including this fancy pappardelle that I used here, and there were lasagne sheets. And that was it. A whole section, just blank. After I'd bought the ingredients, Deborah cancelled the visit. She didn't want to take crowded public transport to get to mine, which is completely understandable. So I made this just for me. It wasn't too hard to make, but anything involving a zester, toasting nuts, and using a food processor is more work than I really want to put into a bowl of pasta. In taste it was lacklustre. It was ok, and perfectly fine: lemony, cheesy, basil-y, pine-nutty, but for that amount of washing up afterwards I wanted it to be amazing. To be honest, all it was missing was a bit of sweetness. Add in a touch of sugar or some fried onions and it would have been wonderful. And, I tell you what, I may not want to spend £5 on 300g of pasta in normal circumstances, but my God it was really good pasta. In some things you can't taste a price difference, but in this you apparently can.

Beef, beetroot and butter bean stew with Stilton dumplings
Where the previous dish was lacklustre, this was everything I could want. You've got a bit of sweetness from the veg, but there's also savouriness from the beef and the stock (I left out the wine, as usual), and the green beans add a nice piquance on the side. And those dumplings. Those dumplings! They are to-die-for! I always love dumplings, but I don't normally like Stilton. Yet the Stilton in these dumplings counters the sweetness of the stew perfectly, and having gooey cheese ooze out of them was great. I do have a few issues with the dish though. The green beans are a faff to make, and even though they're nice, I'm not quite sure that they go fully with the stew; they feel a little at odds with it somehow. I've never made dumplings in the oven before, so I didn't know if you had to cover the oven dish to cook them or not. I decided to cover it, which meant my stew didn't reduce at all and was runnier than it should have been. My biggest issue, however, is that the original recipe (which I scaled down) says it serves eight people but only asks you to make twelve "walnut-sized" dumplings. I know dumplings expand, but they don't expand that much! Especially not with cheese inside! Who wants to have their stew with only 1.5 tiny dumplings per portion? That's sad, and it made me sad too.

Pistachio and cardamom cake with mango-saffron jam and Italian meringue buttercream (recipe from "Baking with Kim-Joy: Cute and Creative Bakes to Make You Smile" by Kim-Joy, which was a Christmas present from Mariya)
Look. At. That. Beast. Look at it! Maybe this picture doesn't do it justice. It had four layers and came to nearly 30cm tall. I had to buy a cardboard cake box and a cake board to transport it to work in, because none of my plastic boxes would fit it. The cake board nearly buckled when I lifted it! Why am I making a cake so huge! I've never made a cake so big before! (This, guys, is why I take cakes to work and don't eat them all myself.) A lady at work asked me if I was practising for a wedding (the recipe says you can decorate it elaborately or go for this uncoloured version with pistachios and flowers - I chose rose petals, because that's what I had to hand - on top). The answer is: no wedding, I just torment myself for fun. So, you ask, what's it like making the biggest cake you've ever made? An experience, is what I will say. You can see from the shoddy plastering (and the fact that I think it is called plastering; I've never covered a cake with buttercream before) that I don't really know what I'm doing yet. It was made more of an experience because on both days when I was making it (I made the jam one day, the cake and buttercream the next) the plumbers working on the flat upstairs told me they had to turn the water off in the whole building for two hours. On two consecutive days! On the first day they gave me five minutes' warning. On the second day I must have looked so upset and distraught that they decided to halt proceedings for an hour so I could at least get two of the sponges in the oven. Argh! I had legit booked a day off work to make this cake; I wasn't going to let some plumbing miscommunication stop me in my tracks. The sponges themselves were a pain to make. You have to roast pistachios, grind cardamom pods, use an electric whisk to add all the ingredients together including, for some reason, yoghurt, and then you have to separately whisk egg whites and fold them in! It didn't help that I refused to purchase the two extra cake tins needed to take me up to the required four, so I made and baked the cakes in two batches. I can see why the cake needed whisked egg-whites plus baking powder and self-raising flour though. The sponges didn't really rise at all; or rather, mine rose a bit, then sank back down. I think it's all the pistachios in the mixture weighing it down. The result was a cake that, while not being doughy and uncooked, was still dense. However, the flat cakes made it much easier to stack them on top of each other. Then you have to make your own mango, cardamom and saffron jam which, no big deal. Oh god. I made a half-hearted blueberry jam for macarons once and then made marmalade another time and both came out too runny. Because I didn't want runny again, and because the recipe explicitly asks for it, I bought myself a sugar thermometer. Now things couldn't go wrong! You would think. But the resulting mango jam was so runny that, once the cake was cut, the jam ran out of the cake, onto the cake board, through the gaps in the corners of the cardboard cake box, and all over the staffroom table. Great! I don't know what went wrong. Either mango (even unripe mango, like the recipe states) doesn't have enough pectin to make it set, despite using jam sugar, or the recipe misses out an important step, or I need a lot more practice in learning how to read sugar temperatures. I think it might be the latter. You then have to make the buttercream, which you use to sandwich the sponges together with the jam, and also to cover the cake. The recipe points you to two buttercream recipes that you can choose from: American buttercream (mix butter and icing sugar; job done) or Italian meringue buttercream (difficult, and requires a stand mixer or will become a living hell). I, of course, chose the Italian meringue buttercream. Look, there's method in my madness. I knew I wanted to try the Italian meringue buttercream at some point, so why not exorcise that demon immediately instead of having it loom over you? Plus, I know that American buttercream is often too rich for me, so I thought the Italian meringue buttercream might taste nicer. The Italian meringue buttercream recipe made a huge amount (it covered my cake and I still have half left-over in the freezer; when I'm going to be able to use that I don't know, because that amount of buttercream absolutely requires taking the results in to work) and the recipe was also terrifying. You start by weighing egg whites. I've done this before and I hate it. Separating eggs is always scary and I don't want to have to do it with up to eight eggs! (In fact, if you include the egg whites for the sponges, I separated even more eggs than that. Honestly, I was worried that someone in the supermarket would be worried that I was stockpiling eggs and butter when I bought the ingredients for this cake. At the time I thought the idea of stockpiling eggs was unrealistic and ridiculous; little did I know.) Then you whisk the egg whites while adding sugar slowly, while simultaneously also boiling a sugar syrup until it reaches precisely 115°C. You have to time these tasks so that you finish whisking the egg whites and boiling the sugar syrup at exactly the same time. I failed at this, and stopped whisking my egg whites while I still had 20 minutes or so to go on the sugar syrup, but I didn't notice any issues. You then taking the boiling hot sugar and pour it in a very thin stream into the egg whites while whisking constantly and trying not to spray boiling sugar over yourself (in that I was successful: I only sprayed it over the kitchen instead). Then you whisk the mixture for 30 bloody minutes until it cools down. And then you whisk in a mountain of butter. These instructions expect you to have a stand mixer, so that you have two hands free to deal with the sugar. I DO NOT HAVE A STAND MIXER. I used an electric hand whisk, so I had to keep putting it down to check on my sugar syrup. And then pouring in the boiling sugar while whisking was... Look, I had the whisk in my good hand, which meant I had the boiling pan in my weak hand and WHY DO I HAVE A HEAVY-BOTTOMED PAN. I kept getting tired and having to put the pan down, but the hand holding the pan wasn't near a heat-proof surface, so I kept having to do some complicated contortions to put the pan back on the hob. My God! And then, when you've done that and have successfully not blinded yourself with boiling sugar, you have to whisk the resulting mixture for 30 minutes. NO THANK YOU. The whisking is meant to help it cool down faster (can't add cool butter to hot meringue). In the end, I managed to keep whisking (my arm was so tired) for 15 minutes. At that point, the poor motor in my whisk seemed to actually be making the meringue hotter, so I left the meringue to cool down by itself. Then more whisking while you add shitloads of butter, ok. At this point my mixture curdled a little, I think because it was too warm for the cool butter, but a quick and frantic Google told me to keep on whisking, which I did, and I eventually ended up with something light and fluffy in texture that held its shape very well. The final step was to whisk in vanilla. Once all the cake components are complete (cake, jam, buttercream) and you're on the verge of a breakdown, all you have to do is put them together! This is why my final cake in the photo looks a bit rushed. It was also lopsided and had a bit of a jam-leakage issue, where my buttercream "dam" hadn't held on one of the layers. Despite the fact that my finished cake doesn't compare to the beautiful cake in Kim-Joy's book (I mean, I've never crumb-coated a cake before, so this is learning all the way) I am pleased with the result. And the cake seemed neat enough that the folks at work were impressed (or maybe that was just the size). The Italian meringue buttercream was a right pain to make, but it sets into perfect layers, which means that the cake looks great when you cut into it (and ignore the jam oozing everywhere). In taste it was absolutely delicious! There are lots of flavours there: pistachio, cardamom, saffron, mango, vanilla (even rose on the top of mine) but they all worked together. The buttercream wasn't too rich and actually tasted a lot like vanilla ice-cream, even if the amount of butter in it made it feel like you'd put lip balm on. Eating a whole slice was quite a challenge, because it's four layers high. But yes. It tasted great and it looked ok and I feel very proud of myself that I've achieved something like this. In a way, I'm glad this was my last recipe before lockdown, partly because I was able to end on a high, and partly because it was so exhausting that I had no desire to cook anything for a long time afterwards.

Stay safe, guys. I'll see you on the other side.

Welcome to the first food post of the future (aka 2020). Let's start this year as we mean to carry on: by eating.

Simmered chicken legs with sugar garlic sauce (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
The actual title of this recipe should say "rock sugar garlic sauce" but I couldn't find rock sugar, so I used caster sugar instead. I also left out the Shaoxing wine as is my usual way. This is now the second chicken leg recipe from "Chicken Leg" that starts with making a caramel. You then add marinated chicken legs, some water and let it simmer away (I went for 50 minutes of simmering, instead of the 30 minutes the recipe stated). The recipe also thinks that simmering this dish while covered will make the sauce thicken; unsurprisingly, that didn't happen. Regardless of consistency, the caramel turned the sauce and the chicken a lovely golden colour. I don't really like sugar in my savoury dishes, but due to the amount of sauce diluting the sugar, it was only after eating almost a whole chicken leg that I began to think the amount of sugar was slightly too much. This makes sense: rock sugar is meant to be less sweet than caster sugar, so if you actually used rock sugar in this dish like you're meant to, I think the level of sweetness would be perfect. In taste, the dish was sweet, garlicky and a little savoury; nothing to write home about, but pleasant enough.

Meatball, spinach and tomato risotto
There's a lot of cheese sprinkled on top of this risotto, which makes it look rather beige. Despite the cheese, the taste of the risotto was bland and beige too. I normally love risotto to pieces and, sadly, I think this is maybe the most boring risotto I've ever made. Oh, it was ok, but it was lacking in flavour. There didn't seem to be enough stock, cheese, sausage or salt to make it tasty. The tomatoes added some flavour, but spinach is so watery that I think it washed the other flavours out. If you're going to go to the trouble of making a risotto, and all the stirring that that involves, don't bother with this one.

Creamy chicken, tomato and chorizo pasta bake
Here we have another lacklustre Italian-style dish from the Tesco website. How can a recipe with three types of cheese in it manage to be boring? Somehow this dish does it. Again, we were lacking in umami and depth of flavour. All I could really taste was tomato and basil. But then maybe I shouldn't be surprised: chicken doesn't have a strong taste and I've never been a big chorizo fan. Some bacon, or the pork sausages from the last recipe, would have been much better. Or even some onions? Why aren't there any onions??? But maybe it's my fault: instead of adding one tin of cherry tomatoes and one tin of chopped tomatoes, I read the recipe wrong and added two tins of cherry tomatoes and no tins of chopped tomatoes. Would following the recipe correctly have resulted in a tastier dish? (Probably not, to be honest.)

Hainanese fried chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
A lack of flavour absolutely wasn't an issue here. Eating this dish (which is commonly known as Hainanese chicken chop; thanks Google) is like an umami punch to the face. But oh boy. Oh wow. What a lot of work to get to that end result. I'm coming close to the end of "Chicken Leg" (I'm cooking the recipes in order, front to back, did I say?) and this one feels like it ought to be the very last recipe in the book. It contains almost all the difficult parts of previous recipes; so much so that it feels as if this is the final boss battle you have to win to finish the game. "Everything you have learned so far will be put to the test, young squire." It took me like four hours. Oh God. You start by having to create two tablespoons (two tablespoons!) each of ginger juice and shallot juice. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY SHALLOTS YOU HAVE TO GRATE TO GET TWO TABLESPOONS OF JUICE? No, I didn't know either, resulting in me seriously over-buying shallots. The juice goes in the marinade for the chicken. After marinating, the chicken is floured (or at least I guessed it should be; the recipe called for three tablespoons of tapioca flour but didn't at all tell me what to do with it. So I decided to coat my marinated chicken in flour, but I used cornflour because I couldn't find tapioca flour). The chicken is then deep fried, which I am too scared to do, so I pan-fried it and finished it off in the oven. But don't rest yet. Now you have to make a sauce, which inexplicably contains potatoes, tomatoes and bacon. (The recipe also says the sauce should contain mixed peas. What the hell are mixed peas? I used frozen peas, and it was only when I later studied the picture accompanying the recipe that I realised that "mixed peas" seems to be the Malaysian term for frozen mixed veg: you know, peas, sweetcorn and carrots.) Finally, the sauce is thickened with cornflour (of an amount you have to guess) and then poured on top of the fried chicken. The only difficult thing the recipe didn't include was shrimp paste, and for that I'm very glad. Seriously; I was exhausted at the end of it. I felt like I deserved some kind of reward for turning out a presentable dish. But do you know what? The reward is in the taste. It was absolutely delicious! The chicken was crispy and had a lovely ginger and shallot flavour (that juicing works, guys; it works). The potatoes had cooked in a sauce made of chicken stock, soy sauce, oyster sauce and sugar, and so were sweet and tasty. And the bacon and the tomatoes in the sauce took it to another level. As to what the dish tastes like altogether? (Because it's impossible to tell from the picture alone.) It tastes, unnervingly, like a British roast dinner. It's chicken, peas, potatoes and gravy, only with a few extra things (plus deep frying) to make it extra crispy and tasty. I was very confused to find a British roast dinner in a Malaysian cookbook until I looked it up and discovered that this dish was first invented by Hainanese chefs in Malaysia for their colonial British employers. Well, what do you know? The effort involved means I won't be making this again, but I'm so glad I made it just once (even if I would prefer it without the peas; I'm not a pea fan). When this cookbook gets it right, it gets it really right.

Steamed chicken thighs with mashed ginger and mandarin peel (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
No chicken legs! My supermarket didn't have any chicken legs in stock so I had to use thighs instead! When I started this book, I thought I would have lots of difficulty finding chicken legs, but this is the first time the issue has occurred, three years in. But that's not the only thing I've changed about the name of the recipe. The recipe is actually called "Steamed chicken legs with mashed ginger and dried tangerine peel". I couldn't find dried tangerine peel, which I wasn't surprised about, but I was surprised to find that my supermarket had run out of fresh tangerines. I ended up buying mandarins, because that's what they had in stock. The mandarins were then peeled and and the peel shredded, but I didn't bother soaking the peel first (which is what the recipe had said to do with the dried tangarine peel) because that seemed a bit of a redundant step when you have fresh peel. I left the Shaoxing wine and glutinous rice wine out of the marinade, and I steamed the chicken for 50 minutes instead of the 25 minutes I was told to. In essence: I'm not sure there's any part of my dish that was cooked the way the recipe intended. The result was... God, steamed, skin-on chicken does not look appetising to a Western audience does it? Looks aside, it tasted orangey and a bit gingery (NO-ONE IS SURPRISED). I'm not normally a fan of fruit in savoury dishes, but orange chicken is always pleasant, and that's what this tastes like.

Happy 2020, all! How are you? Are you good?

I was going to do a round-up of the last decade but, really, what is there to say? Am I supposed to sit here and pretend that I remember it all? Well. Let's see. I lived in four different places, including moving back to London, for my sins. I worked in four different organisations, learned things and met people. I was able to clear up my mental health problems to a very satisfactory degree. I travelled to Asia for the first time. I started trying out new recipes and discovered a hobby that wouldn't let me go. I lost several grandparents and an aunt. They will be much missed.

In essence: time has passed and things have happened. I am happier now than I was, but that's down to the mental health stuff mentioned above. Honestly, if the next decade continued on much like the last (excluding the deaths in the family), I'd be very content.

My New Year's resolution this year is an attempt to cling onto that contentment. I don't want to do anything big or special; I just want to enjoy every day for what it is. That means no more worrying about what tomorrow might bring. If something is worrying me, then I'm going to set aside a time to plan for it, and sort it out then. I shall worry no more. If at the end of each day I am alive and fed and have a comfortable place to sleep, then there's nothing else I need. I will have done some enjoyable things that day, and I will have helped other people to have an enjoyable day too (even if just in the smallest of ways), and that's all I need to focus on.

So, thinking of enjoyable things: I went to visit my parents over Christmas. I'm not normally with them for so many days, so it was nice to have some quality family time. We watched lots of TV ("Moana" was very enjoyable, "The Goes Wrong Show" less so). We ate lots of snacks (all the snacks; so many snacks). And we saw some friends. We also visited my Dad's side of the family on Boxing Day for an enjoyable buffet, including my uncle's excellent samosas. Then on the Sunday after Christmas we went on a country walk with my Mum's side of the family (the mud! So much mud!)

Returning back to London, I went to see Deborah for New Year's Eve, and Esha came too. There I partook of more snacks, a visit to a local pub, and shameless karaoke pretending to use remote controls as microphones. The less we say about our attempt at "Despacito" the better.

As is traditional, let me show you my presents:

Lots of Christmas cards. The one at the top with the swans came from one of my uncles. I have never seen so much glitter come with a card before! It just poured out of the envelope! I don't think my flat will ever be free of glitter again.

Edible presents, including library tea from Mariya and some lovely chocolates from Asia. The medal is a large chocolate coin and is from my uncle. At the end of our family walk in the country, he handed one out to everyone. It was unexpected and silly and much appreciated.

Books and notebooks, including a signed Kim-Joy cookbook from Mariya. I am going to get stuck into those recipes soon. Every bake in the book looks so cute, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be able to recreate that level of cuteness in the slightest. I foresee some terrifying attempts coming out of my kitchen in the future. Be warned.

Toiletries, all from my parents. More wash-bags, because the ones I received for my birthday weren't entirely big enough for my needs (I don't travel light); a new perfume to try out (it smelled very nice in the shop); and the grey pouch is a tissue-holder, which was hand-made by one of my Mum's colleagues.

Finally, we have category: other. Featuring a lovely scarf and cute mouse purse from Mariya, and a photo frame from Deborah. The beige top is from my parents and the frog was found in my cracker; it's my friend now.

Not pictured is the scratch card I was given by my cousin (he bought a roll and gave one out to everyone). I won £2! Now I'm rich! No wonder I'm enjoying the start to this decade.

Have a good one, all!

As we draw closer to Christmas, I find myself thinking excitedly of Christmas foods: Yule logs, crispy roast potatoes, mint chocolate selection boxes, Cheeselets in the shape of Christmas trees, panettone. What I'm actually eating, however, is chicken legs. Are you surprised? Of course you're not surprised.

Steamed chicken legs with ginger and lime juice (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
This recipe was actually called "Steamed chicken legs with ginger flower and lime juice", with ginger flowers being the edible flowers from a certain type of ginger plant. I couldn't find ginger flowers at all, so I left them out. I didn't substitute the flowers with root ginger because there was already plenty of root ginger in the recipe. But do ginger flowers even taste like root ginger? Perhaps I will never know. Without the ginger flowers, the main ingredients we have are root ginger, chillies, shallots (the recipe asks for red shallots, but I never know what they are so I always use regular shallots) and lime juice. You're meant to whizz them all up in a blender (I don't have a blender, so used a food processor, which left my ingredients a little chunky), then use the paste to marinate the chicken, which is finally steamed (for 25 minutes according to the recipe; I went for 50 minutes to cook it thoroughly). The end result was not particularly tasty. Steaming the ginger and shallots leaves them with a sharp, almost-raw taste; nothing like the caramelisation you'd get from frying or baking them. Add in the sharp lime juice and all you can taste it sharpness and a bit of heat. Not my favourite thing. Would the ginger flowers have saved it? Who knows?

Apricot cashew granola (recipe from "The London Cookbook" by Jenny Linford)
I've never tried making granola before. How shameful. How on Earth can I claim to run a (mostly) food blog without having my own go-to granola recipe? So I was excited to give the recipe a try, and I was interested to know what the dried apricots and cashews would add to it, because I've never had granola with those in before. There are also sunflower seeds and sesame seeds in this recipe. The result? Look, this starts like most granola recipes (I had to research other ones in a fit of panic halfway through cooking) in that you heat honey and oil, mix it in with the other ingredients and bake it all in the oven. Only, most granola recipes seem to call for a baking time of 30 minutes or so, while this recipe says to bake it for 2 to 2.5 hours. The oven temperature in this recipe is really low at 140°C, but it's not actually that low against other recipes. I cooked mine for 2 hours as per the recipe (in case that's where the magic lay) but I reckon my granola was done by the 45 minute mark. After two hours, my granola wasn't blackened or burnt, but it was pretty dark and there was a slight burnt aftertaste that I could have done without. So, if I made this again, I wouldn't bake it for so long. But would I actually make it again? It was nice. It was an ok granola. But given the effort, and the fact that all those seeds, nuts and apricots are quite expensive, it's honestly so much easier and cheaper just to buy your granola ready-made. Oh, you might say, but if you make it, you know what's gone into it. Exactly, I reply. I know that a whole load of oil and honey has gone into this; it's not healthier than the shop-bought version. (Unless you buy the chocolate curl version from Waitrose, which isn't healthy in the slightest but boy will you enjoy every mouthful.)

Thailand baked chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
These are so tasty! They're the complete opposite of that last chicken leg recipe. There are too many ingredients in this recipe to name, but highlights include fresh coriander, fresh garlic, curry powder, kaffir lime leaves and oyster sauce. There's also fresh galangal, which I can never find fresh, so buy in paste form instead. And then there's the fish sauce. When mixed in with all the other ingredients, the fish sauce gave this dish a really appetising, savoury smell and taste. (The appetising smell will linger in your tiny flat - ok my tiny flat - for at least two weeks afterwards, but at least it's appetising.) You're meant to marinate the chicken legs then bake them in the oven for 30 minutes. I went for 50 minutes as per usual, which dried up the marinade a little but didn't make it any less tasty. It was salty, savoury, rich and fragrant. A win all round.

Classic fry-up (recipe from "The London Cookbook" by Jenny Linford)
It seems a bit weird to have a recipe for a fried breakfast. Surely you just cook all the components you want and then put them on a plate? I get the feeling that maybe this cookbook is aimed at an international market. But, well, I decided to follow the recipe anyway and see what it taught me. I do admit to side-eyeing the choice of ingredients. I know that a fry-up can be as individual as the person making it, but do you dare to call it a "classic" fry-up and not include sausages? And if you were going for the full English (which, admittedly, this recipe doesn't claim to be) I would put some fried mushrooms in there. But, you know what, I rarely have sausages in a fried breakfast when it's not a special occasion, so maybe I shouldn't complain. I was also side-eyeing the instruction to serve it with "lashings of brown sauce and ketchup". Ok, that's a normal thing to do, but it's not for me. I struggle with eating tomatoes and eggs together (something about the sweet tomatoes with the greasy, sulphurous eggs makes me feel a bit nauseous). I will allow myself to have the two on the same plate in a fry-up but the thought of adding extra sweet sauce, of either the ketchup or brown sauce variety? No thank you! (To be honest, I don't really like a fry-up much. It's too greasy for me, I'm not a fan of eggs, and I dislike starting my day with nausea. I'm also far too lazy to make one for breakfast, so I only eat them when visiting people or when I have guests.) But wait. Do you, gentle reader, see what I've done? I appear to have said, "This recipe is silly because it doesn't cook the dish the way I normally have it, but I also dislike the way I normally have it." Hmmm. So, it turns out that I really enjoyed the dish that resulted from this recipe. (Egg on my face, much?) I'm normally far too impatient to cook my bacon long enough for it to go crispy, so this bacon was some next-level stuff. I never season a fried egg or cook it in butter either, which makes the flavour better and not as salty as I was scared it would be. Fried bread is something I haven't eaten in decades, so that was a wonderful addition (although I could happily have had another slice, or maybe some toast on the side to fill me up). And it turns out that adding ketchup and brown sauce really works! I didn't eat them with my egg (don't be ridiculous) but they helped to give the beans and tomatoes an extra sauciness, and the sharpness helped to combat some of the grease that I normally have problems with. Lessons have been learnt here. My worldview has changed. In 2020 I'm going to have to have a serious think about who I am and what I believe in.

I haven't tried out too many recipes since my last post (instead I've spent ages working out what to do with that shrimp paste I had left over). Here are the few recipes I've given a go:

Enwezor's pumpkin and sunflower biscuits (recipe from "The Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking" by Linda Collister)
This is a recipe for pumpkin seed and sunflower seed savoury biscuits with a red onion chutney. Enwezor was one of the contestants in the 2014 "Great British Bake Off". He was eliminated in week two, so you might not remember him, but he was made infamous by using shop-bought fondant rather than making his own (cue horrified gasps. Mary wasn't impressed, and I wouldn't be either, if I actually knew what fondant was.) Anyway, I wasn't sure about making a recipe from someone who left the competition so early; would it be any good? The recipe looked suspect too. You're meant to roll the biscuit dough into a flat sheet, bake it, flip the sheet over, bake it on the other side, then cut out the biscuits using a biscuit cutter and bake them some more. It sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. I was worried about flipping my sheet of dough over to bake it on the other side, but actually it was quite strong and didn't show any signs of collapsing when I manhandled it. This became more of a problem when I went to cut out the biscuits because my biscuit cutter wouldn't go through the dough at all. It was so solid! In the end, I followed the recipe's alternative instruction of cutting the biscuits into rectangles with a knife (this was still a tough job, but I like that it used all of the dough without any of the waste that circular cutters would have left). The reason for all the nonsense with the baking makes sense when you bite into the biscuits. They are so crisp! And the taste is great too: as well as the seeds, there's rye flour, chives, mustard and sun-dried tomato purée in those babies. The recipe recommended eating the biscuits with cheese, but honestly the biscuits were so savoury and tasty by themselves that the cheese didn't add anything to them. Coming into this recipe I thought the biscuits would let me down, but it turns out that the part I didn't like was the chutney. I didn't add the red wine to my chutney, which is maybe where I went wrong. As well as red wine, red wine vinegar, and caraway seeds in the chutney, there is also blackcurrant squash and 50g sugar. The end result was too sweet for me. It tasted quite a lot like Branston pickle, which is also too sweet for me. Perhaps I could have stomached the chutney in smaller quantities, but with four large onions, I was left with tonnes of the stuff. In conclusion: the biscuits are a faff to make but are fabulous; just don't bother with the chutney.

Bombay butter chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
This dish smells so good. It smells like proper curry. Maybe it's the tomato and shallot base? (The recipe calls for red shallots but, as always, I don't know what those are so I just used normal shallots.) The tomatoes and shallots are meant to be whizzed up with cashew nuts in a blender to make a paste. I don't have a blender, so used my food processor instead, which resulted in a chunky paste. Then you're meant to fry the paste, add the chicken, seasonings, butter and water, cover with a lid, and simmer "until the chicken legs are cooked and the gravy is thick". I honestly don't know what it is about this book and thinking that sauces are going to reduce with the lid on. My sauce didn't get very thick, but I didn't mind it soupy. It turns out the only thing I did mind was that this recipe calls for 50g butter per portion. 50g! I think you can see the butter floating on top of the sauce in my picture. The resulting sauce was really tasty but incredibly rich. I couldn't eat much of it because it was so rich I actually found it sickly. Reduce the amount of butter however (to half a tablespoon or something) and you'd end up with a really excellent curry.

Petits fours (recipe from "Mother's Little Book of Home-Baked Treats")
As the name suggests, these are meant to be really dainty and pretty. I think you can tell from the picture that my "pretty" icing job on the top left a lot to be desired. The cake itself is a cherry chocolate brownie (and the brownie crust on top means there's no way to cut it prettily either). I'm not normally a fan of fruit in my brownies, but these brownies were so chocolatey that the cherries just added a nice moistness and didn't detract from the chocolate at all. The cherries were actually meant to be soaked in brandy, sherry or Marsala, but I ignored that part (because why would I ruin my chocolate with fruit and booze?) I found that the bake time stated in the recipe was off. You're meant to cook the brownies for 15 minutes at 170°C. Maybe it's because I couldn't find a 6.5 inch square tin as stated in the recipe and used a 6 inch one instead, or maybe it's because most other brownie recipes call for them to be baked at a higher temperature for longer, but after the baking time given in the recipe, my brownies were still pure, liquid batter. I mean, sure, maybe these brownies are meant to be fudgy, but I still don't think they're meant to slop out of the tin. So I shoved mine back in the oven and tested them every now and again until a skewer test suggested they'd be mostly done but still a bit fudgy. That turned out to be 30 minutes in total. I think I made the right call there, because these brownies were moist, dense and intensely chocolatey. Oh, they were good. Where I let myself down (as you can tell) was the decoration. The icing is a dark chocolate ganache, and I have never had any problems with ganache UNTIL NOW. The ganache was meant to be piped in pretty rosettes, but I don't think anyone can tell that I actually piped these. Basically, my ganache split when I was making it (in hindsight, I think I started stirring too quickly without letting the cream warm the chocolate first). I frantically Googled how to save split ganache and was told to add a little warm milk. Doing this did indeed save my ganache (hurrah!) so I left it to cool while I had a chat to my Mum on the phone. Alas, when I came back to the cooled ganache, I found that it had split again in my absence. So, I angrily heated it again and added more warm milk to save it for a second time. At this point I should have left it to cool for another hour or so, but I was so worried that it would split again when cooling (and I also thought that perhaps I'd made it more runny now anyway, with all that extra milk) that I waited for it to cool for only 15 minutes before I gave up and piped it into those pretty rosettes you see above. (Turns out that it didn't split again and it did firm up nicely in the fridge, but you live and learn.) The toppings are a mixture of candied ginger, candied orange peel, silver balls (the recipe asks for silver "dragees" which the internet seems to tell me are silver balls) and crystallised roses. I couldn't find the recommended additional gold dragees or crystallised violets. Come to mention it, I couldn't find crystallised roses either, but I improvised with a tub of dried rose petals, some egg white, and sugar. My rose petals took longer to dry than various recipes would have me believe, so perhaps submerging them in the egg white, rather than brushing it on with a paintbrush, was a bad idea. Still, they turned out crunchy, tasting strongly of rose, and nobody died of raw egg white poisoning (which is always a bonus). So, to sum up: these little brownies (they're like an inch square, guys) were not the pretty, dainty things that the name "petits fours" suggests, but my God did they taste good. Thankfully brownies are very forgiving; that much chocolate can never go too wrong.

Chicken legs simmered with galangal (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
This dish was rather underwhelming. It may be due to the fact that I couldn't find half of the ingredients: I was meant to include galangal (I could only find galangal paste, so that's what I used), rock sugar (I used caster sugar instead), a head of smoked garlic (I used a normal head of garlic, which I peeled, and then added some liquid smoke as well), and preserved red bean curds (I had no idea what I could use in place of these, so I just left them out). Hmmm. The cooking method is slightly odd. This is the only savoury recipe I've found where you start by melting the sugar to make a caramel. What?? You then add the other ingredients, 500ml water, chuck the lid on and simmer it all for 30 minutes. I simmered mine for 50 minutes to fully cook my chicken, but the gravy still wasn't thick like the recipe suggested it should be by that time. Am I getting déjà vu? I was worried that the resulting dish would be too sweet, even if it did smell good when cooking. It turns out that the 500ml water diluted the sweetness to make it bearable, and it also diluted the other flavours so you couldn't taste them much at all, not even the galangal. I'm wondering if the 500ml water was a typo, because you'd have to boil that much water with the lid off for a long time to get the sauce to thicken in any way. So this dish was edible, but not at all as tasty as it could have been. Was it the water or was it the missing preserved bean curd?

Last week I ventured into the countryside for a walk with my parents. Surprisingly, the weather refused to rain and it wasn't too cold either. We started the walk in cloud but the sun was shining by the time we were done. This walk involved some fields, some woods, some views, and a lane full of old farms. Also mushrooms everywhere!

I love getting out into the countryside. London can feel stifling if you don't get away once in a while.

I've been cooking a lot recently, so there are quite a few recipes to talk about today.

Blueberry, pecan and feta salad
This dish gets A* on presentation. The colours work really well together. The actual taste of the salad? Not for me. I normally side-eye nuts in salad, and I side-eye fruit in salad even more. Strangely, the pecans and the blueberries in this salad weren't actually the worst part. In fact, both added a necessary mellowness to the dish. My problem was that the feta was too salty (feta always is for me; I'm not a fan) and the raw onions and raw garlic were overwhelming with their strength and heat (and there are chilli flakes too, just for that extra hot kick). The first couple of mouthfuls had a nice balance of flavours, but a whole portion of this salad was too much for me.

Melaka stewed chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
Melaka is palm sugar. Other exotic ingredients in this dish are ketchup manis and coriander root. I was able to buy a bottle of ketchup manis; it's a thick, sugary version of soy sauce and where has it been all my life? Coriander root is more difficult to buy. I didn't even know you could eat coriander root! My supermarket didn't sell any coriander root, so I bought a living coriander plant and dug it up. The roots from my plant were probably smaller than the ones I was meant to use, because I couldn't taste it in the finished dish at all. Oh well. Digging around in the soil of a pot plant was kinda fun anyway (said pot plant then died two days later; I'm not surprised). So, the recipe says to simmer the chicken legs for 25 minutes, but I went for 50 as usual. The overall result? Meh. I was expecting the taste to have a really sweet, salty kick, but actually the taste wasn't very strong at all.

Rendang chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
I had never had rendang curry before. (Google tells me that the version served in Malaysia, like this one, is more saucey than the drier, original dish from Indonesia.) I was a bit worried that this curry was going to be too hot for my tastes. It contained five dried chillies as well as curry powder, and all for just two portions. I needn't have worried. It was hot, but more of a pleasant heat than an overpowering one (maybe that's because I deseeded my dried chillies to make it more bearable). The recipe calls for several things I couldn't buy: chicken curry powder (I used normal curry powder); turmeric leaves (I used extra kaffir lime leaves instead); chicken powder (??? I assumed it meant a chicken stock cube, because that's what I used); candlenuts (I used cashew nuts); and kerisik. Kerisik, it turns out, is grated coconut, which is toasted. And so I bought some coconut, grated it and toasted it. The smell when toasting coconut is gorgeous, by the way. The recipe says to simmer the chicken in the sauce for 30 minutes, but I went for 50 minutes as per usual (my chicken came out oddly tough, which I think must somehow have been an error on my part rather than the recipe). In terms of flavour, this dish has it all. Call me a rendang convert! It is rich, warming, creamy, tangy and full of flavour. My only problem is that texturally it was not fun. You're meant to use a blender to make the curry paste, but I used a food processor, which left my paste more chunky than it should have been. Add to that the kaffir lime leaves which are shredded (not finely enough on my part, clearly) and you end up with a mouthfeel that's mealy, chewy and lumpy. Not great, but the taste more than made up for it. The taste was also worth the inclusion of the fresh turmeric, which has, once again, left everything in my kitchen yellow.

Marinated mozzarella salad
This salad was nice but didn't wow me as much as it was meant to. The mozzarella is marinated in pesto, and then added to the tomatoes and basil, along with lemon zest and fennel seeds. I don't really know what the lemon zest and fennel seeds were doing in there; they were nice, but I think their flavours detracted from the main basil, tomato, mozzarella thing going on. Seriously, basil, tomato and mozzarella is a classic and excellent flavour combination; don't mess with it. Two additional points: the recipe said to serve the dish with one slice of toast, but I like my dinner to actually fill me up, so I added a second slice. Also, the recipe doesn't say what to do with the vine tomatoes. My vine tomatoes were far too large to use whole, so I chopped them into wedges.

Taiwan style five spices chili chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
This recipe could have been really good. It was so close to being absolutely delicious, but unfortunately it veered slightly into disaster territory. The theory: the chicken is simmered in spices for 20 minutes, then drained, deep-fried and finally covered in a spice powder. I dislike deep-frying, so after I had simmered my chicken, I shallow-fried it for a bit, then stuck it in the oven. That was all fine. The sauce for simmering the chicken contained star anise, cinnamon, garlic, soy sauce and rock sugar (I couldn't find rock sugar, so used caster sugar instead): this is pretty much a flavour dream-team and makes for both delicious chicken and a lovely smell while cooking. The spice powder dumped on the chicken at the end contained chilli powder, Chinese five spice, sugar, salt and pepper: also dream-team - it's salty, sweet, hot and fragrant. All of this added up to a dish that was nearly perfect. The only problem? In that spice powder (for only two chicken legs) is two teaspoons of salt. That's one teaspoon per serving. My God! Do you have any idea how salty that is? It makes me sad, because if you had only a quarter of the salt, this would have been amazing. That spice powder would be the best thing; I reckon you could have sprinkled it on anything (chips?) and it would have been really good. Just with less salt, please.

Digestives (recipe from "The Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking" by Linda Collister)
I made these just in time for the start of the new series of the "Great British Bake Off". (How's that for timeliness?) Thankfully they were an easy bake and not a "technical challenge". I hadn't even considered before that digestives were a thing you could make yourself; I thought they just came in packets. These didn't taste quite like the shop-bought version; the homemade ones are slightly less salty, slightly less sweet and significantly more buttery. The butteryness is nice, although it makes the biscuit texture quite short and crumbly to eat. According to the recipe, I should have made 20 biscuits, but my mixture only stretched to about 16. I might not have rolled them thin enough. The biscuits are big too. You're supposed to use a 7.5cm diameter biscuit cutter, but my cutter was about 7cm diameter instead. Turns out I needn't have worried, because the baking powder in these makes them grow in the oven (which, stupidly, I wasn't expecting). They came out huge! My finished biscuits were about 8-9cm in diameter. I'm not complaining.

Chicken legs simmered with chili shrimp sauce (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
I had been in fear of this recipe ever since I Googled "shrimp sauce", as listed in the ingredients, and discovered that it probably means "shrimp paste". Previous recipes in the book have asked for belacan, which looks to be a dried brick of shrimp paste, so I imagine that the "shrimp sauce" specified here is used to mean a more liquid type of shrimp paste (which more-liquid version is the only version I can actually buy anyway). I am not a fan of shrimp paste. It is an acquired taste that I still haven't acquired yet, and I can only stomach it if it's masked with lots of other strong flavours. That's why this recipe scared me: there weren't many other ingredients listed, and one of those ingredients is the only-slightly-less-pungent fish sauce. Oh no. Oh no! Couple that to the fact that it's been a few months since I last used either shrimp paste or fish sauce so I had forgotten exactly how strong they smell; opening the jar to the shrimp paste was not a fun reminder! So, I duly marinated the chicken, then steamed it (only I steamed it for 50 minutes, instead of the 20 stated in the recipe). The smell didn't mellow during cooking. It smelled bad. It smelled heinous. I wasn't particularly hungry that night (the result of an overly-large breakfast earlier in the day) and the smell wasn't doing anything to whet my appetite. Oh my God. I'm pretty sure that cooking a dish and setting it on the table shouldn't be followed by a wave of anxiety; I actually had to take a couple of minutes to steel my nerves before I started eating. But, do you know what? The taste wasn't anywhere near as bad as the smell. I've said that I can only stomach shrimp paste when it's masked with other strong flavours, and that's exactly what the copious amounts of chilli and garlic in this recipe do. All the shrimp paste did was give the chicken a salty, savoury taste in the background. I mean, it's still not my favourite dish ever, but it wasn't the horror I expected it to be. Thank goodness for that.

I had a birthday recently. Unlike last year, there were no deaths in the family on my birthday this year, so I'm counting that as a positive. Even if I am now technically closer to 40 than to 30. (But, I mean, turning 30 was great, so who's to say the upward trend won't continue when I reach my next big birthday?)

My parents visited the weekend after my birthday. We stuffed our faces with burgers and then went to admire a National Trust property. I love visiting big, old houses; they're so pretty. (Although I'm aware that my ancestors wouldn't have been able to go anywhere near them, except as servants.)

I got some nice cards:

Only two cards contained cats this year. But one was a Dutch cat!

I also got some lovely presents. Here I must give a shout-out to Mariya who sent me a package of gifts all the way from the States, only to have it go missing in the post. I'm so sorry it got lost, but I appreciate the sentiment regardless! (Mariya is always so good to me <3) My own little theory is that the parcel is sitting alone in some post office in the UK (without the post office having notified me about it) and that in a couple of weeks it will be returned to sender. We'll see.

Here's a rundown of the other gifts I was given.

Food and kitchen gifts, including sweets, a vegetable-washing brush (I didn't even know that was a thing, but apparently it's really good for removing the soil from celery), and a meat thermometer. I am particularly excited about the meat thermometer. My current method for checking that chicken is cooked (and you know I cook a lot of chicken) is to poke it with the tip of a knife to see if the juices run clear, then be uncertain as to whether the juices are actually clear or not, and then hack it open further. Meanwhile my current method for checking that beef steaks are cooked is to cook them for far too long. It's not big and it's not clever, and my new thermometer should change all that.

Books: all ones that I am looking forward to reading immensely, and only one of which I asked for specifically! The Queen Victoria book comes from Nick and Eva. Thank you! I had wondered why you were spending so long in Waterstones! The other two books were from my parents. The Medieval Women one sounds right up my street, and the Anne Lister diary is the book I requested. Did you guys watch "Gentleman Jack"? It was so much fun. I wanted to learn more about Anne Lister and her various girlfriends, so I thought her diaries would be a great way to go. It should also have some general information about the period too, which is always interesting.

You might see that there's a bookmark in the Anne Lister diaries. I've already read the introduction, and I'm going to start reading the diary entries proper on Wednesday (14 August) because, get this, the first entry in the diary is Wednesday 14 August 1816. Almost exactly 200 years ago and the days of the week even align too! My plan is to read each diary entry on the day it was written and so follow the romantic intrigues in real-time. Is that idea inspired or stupid? Who knows, but it'll take me about 4 years to get through it. I'm here for the long-haul! (To be honest, it was the only way I was going to allow myself to start reading the book immediately when I've already got so many other books on the go.)

Finally, we have everything else: socks, flamingo wash bags, and the blue bag contains a tiny heart necklace that my Mum got for herself but which didn't fit her. I don't mind a second-hand necklace, especially not if it means I get to think of my Mum each time I wear it.

Not pictured on the present-front are the following:
- Lottery ticket from friend-of-the-family John. He always gets everyone a lottery ticket for their birthday (which is a tradition started by his late-wife, Jackie, who used to work in a shop that sold lottery tickets). Unsurprisingly, I didn't win anything.
- 3 courgettes fresh from my parents' garden. I couldn't photograph them because I'd already fried them up and eaten them with pasta and pancetta. Yum yum.
- Money from my parents. I meant to pay it into my current account so I could spend it on something nice (which something had yet to be determined), but I accidentally paid it into a savings account instead. Whoops. Looks like I'll be saving it then!

Thanks all for the birthday wishes! Here's to a good year to come. (And, if you ask me, a year filled with chocolate and books is bound to be a good one.)

A little while ago I went on holiday to the south of France with Deborah and Claire. It was a rather last-minute thing, which I don't recommend, because the prices of the flights will sting you!

It's been about 15 years since I was last in France, and it's been even longer since I'd learnt to speak any French, so my ability to communicate was very clunky. To be fair, most people spoke English, but I still gave some French a go (and when that didn't work, I had a terrible habit of saying English words in a French accent, because my subconscious mind seemed to think that was just the same as speaking a foreign language????)

So, the holiday was nice, but not without some hiccups. They were, in order:
- Claire missing her flight out, and having to pay for another flight the next morning.
- Claire getting heat exhaustion of her first day in France because she hadn't slept well at the airport (see above).
- A freak wave on the beach catching Deborah's phone and Kindle. The phone later came back to life (I have yet to hear about the fate of the Kindle).
- Deborah missing her Eurostar home because her train to Paris was hugely delayed due to forest fires.

Forest fires! Yup. We went to France during the heatwave. Thankfully this was only a heatwave in the 30s, and not the ridiculous above 40C temperatures France has had on other weeks.

Despite everything, we had a fun time. It was great to eat well and enjoy each other's company. (Turns out Basque food is tasty. Gateau Basque, oh my.) We stayed in Biarritz, which is on the Atlantic coast in the Basque region. Biarritz has all the quaint little streets you could ask for, some old-school jet set glamour, and lots of surfing (and even if you don't surf - we didn't - it's still fun to watch the surfers try to catch the waves).

This is the view from our hotel balcony. The hotel wasn't air-conditioned, which made sleeping very difficult. It was such a relief to step out onto the balcony in the cool of the morning and enjoy the view over a leisurely breakfast.

There are quite a lot of beaches in Biarritz. This is the Grand Plage, which was the best beach for watching the surfing. Alas, this is also the beach where the wave/electronic device disaster struck.

I preferred this beach, called Port Vieux. It's smaller and so more manageable, even if the sand is stonier. Plus, on the right-hand side you get a view of the Virgin Mary statue on the Rocher de la Vierge.

Near Port Vieux beach is the Port Vieux area. As the name suggests, this was the old port (historically the town was known for whaling, before the tourists moved in). No whales are caught any more, but there must still be some fresh fish coming in because the Port Vieux area has some great seafood. My tuna salad was delicious!

Behind the harbour you can look up to see the church of St Eugénie, which was built in the 19th Century. We could see the distinctive bell tower from our hotel balcony.

The other thing you could see from our balcony is the lighthouse. Great, you might think, unless your bed is by the window and the flashing light is stopping you from sleeping (poor Deborah and Claire; I slept around the corner). For a small price you can climb up the lighthouse to the top. It's quite a climb, and the stairs get very narrow at the end. The view is worth it though. This photo is looking towards the Grand Plage.

Speaking of views, the sunsets in Biarritz were so beautiful that I took several photos.

<3

After the conclusion of my last food post, I have now been altering my oven temperature according to my oven thermometer. I can confirm that things come out a lot less burnt if you cook them at the right temperature. Not that everything has been successful, mind; it's just that I can't blame any mistakes on the oven any more.

Ugali (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
This is not a meal in itself, but a widely-eaten side dish from East Africa. Ugali is made from maize meal, which I think is polenta. At least, I used polenta, hence the yellow colour (the picture in the recipe book suggests that maize meal is paler than polenta). Most ugali recipes I've seen show it moulded into a mound by using a bowl. This recipe instead wants you to lovingly create quenelles. Having never quenelled anything in my whole life before, especially not solid polenta, I ended up with the "rustic", lumpy photo above. In taste, ugali is bland, like unseasoned polenta, because that's exactly what it is. The neutral taste makes it great for stews though. I had it with a curry, and while I failed at the attempt to eat it with my hands and use it to scoop up the sauce like you're supposed to, I can see how this could be a great comfort food. As a bonus, cooking this recipe has taught me that if you cook polenta on a very low heat, you don't get the chaotic bubbling that sprays polenta onto everything within a metre radius.

3-ingredient savoury cheese scones
Do you know I had never made scones before? I was beginning to feel rather foolish because of it. Time to set things right! What I learned is that making this scone dough is stupidly easy. I also learned that even if your oven is the correct temperature, the scones might not be fully baked when the time is up. How do you check for doneness in scones? I don't know. Mine were golden on the top but still a bit squidgy in the middle. I think they were probably underbaked, but the squidgyness could also have come from the cheese. There is a tonne of cheese in these scones, making them dense but very tasty.

Smoked chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
I fudged this recipe a little. Ok, a lot. You're meant to simmer the chicken legs in water with a number of spices, and then put the cooked chicken in a wok and smoke it by burning a mixture of sugar, tea leaves and star anise. Setting things alight in my kitchen sounded like more risk than I was willing to take for a piece of chicken, so I didn't. Instead of smoking the chicken, I bought liquid smoke, which I added in with the spices when cooking the chicken; and then when the chicken was cooked (I left it simmering for 50 minutes, rather than the 30 minutes stated in the recipe) I rubbed a little more liquid smoke onto the outside of the chicken for good luck. What I didn't realise is that liquid smoke isn't pure smoke, but has other flavourings added, like onion and things. Seeing as the liquid smoke I'd bought contained almost as much salt as soy sauce, and seeing as there was already a lot of soy sauce in the recipe, I went a bit light on the liquid smoke. The resulting salt levels were fine, but the resulting smoky taste was lacking a little. All in all, the chicken tasted ok, but it's probably a long way from what the original recipe intended.

Tomato and corn salad
This recipe was a great success. It's super easy: chop, mix, done. And the taste is bright, fresh and sweet; really yummy. I always love anything with lime and coriander in, and this was no exception. The raw spring onions added a nice flavour without being too overpowering and the chilli (I couldn't find red, so used green) was not too hot (in fact my chilli was bordering on too mild, because I could barely taste it). A lovely side dish and perfect for summer.

Tandoori chicken legs (recipe from "Chicken Leg" by Hoe Yee)
Look! Look at that! It is red. This time I bought bake-stable red food colouring and I am so happy with the way it came out (I had to use quite a lot of the food colouring to get a bright colour, but it's completely worth it for that proper tandoori look). After marinating the chicken, it is baked at a high heat (250°C). The recipe said to bake it for 30 minutes, but I left it in for 50 minutes so the chicken could cook fully. Normally this extra cooking leaves me with properly-burnt chicken on the outside, but now that I can adjust my oven temperature correctly, I only had mildly-burnt chicken! Thankfully tandoori chicken is a recipe that should look a little blackened on the outside, so I'm counting this as a win. In taste, this dish tasted just like tandoori chicken should; I was very impressed. Plus, the melted butter in the marinade means that it smells gorgeously buttery while cooking.