Generalising

I am not a great fan of salads as actual meals. In my view, a salad counts towards your daily calorific intake the way oxygen does, and I probably consume them both with the same enthusiasm.

(And while I’m here, a quick thought. Nightline, that bastion of journalism, did a televised debate about whether it’s “okay” to be fat. Er. Anyway, anti-obesity activist MeMe Roth said this:

“We’ve gotten ourselves to the point where we’re behaviorally and neurochemically dependent upon food.”

Seriously. Seriously, she actually said that. Dependent on food. Like, I am so dependent on food, I can’t go a whole day without a fix of it. Sometimes my physical and emotional health suffers because I haven’t had any!

…ah, you get it. That people can actually say things like that – yeah. This comes entirely courtesy of Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose, which, for what it’s worth, is one of my favourite feminist blogs out there. I’m not much of a fat activist – to my sorrow and exceedingly large dollop of privilege, I pretty much resemble the societal ideal for how women should look in terms of body shape, only shorter, smaller breasts and a bit too brown – but certainly I agree with the central tenet that the media preoccupation with obesity, and body size, and the purported health dangers of the former, is not value-neutral science but comes with its own assumptions and prejudices. At its worst, it’s a well-disguised way to damage women, to make them sweat and obsess over their bodies, to drive them to constant distraction as a means by which they can be controlled. (Hey, the population is fifty-one percent women, the patriarchy can’t be everywhere.)

And more than fat acceptance, Kate Harding writes well about feminism, really well – unlike the mainstream blogs, she doesn’t tolerate racism, ableism, or in the case of Feministing a couple of days ago, just plain information fail. Consider this a rec.

This was going to be a recipe, wasn’t it? Normally I don’t approve as salads as main courses. Normally. But this one has lots of protein, and is tasty, and just about passes muster if you weren’t that hungry to start with. And, hey, it is tasty and you can always have some cake after.

You need:

-one large pepper, preferably red;
-handfuls of rocket, or baby spinach, or both, or anything else green and leafy;
-feta cheese, about 100g;
-a couple of slices of good ham;
-cherry tomatoes, a few;
-pine nuts or sunflower seeds or both;
-a small red onion or half a big one;
-nice olive oil.

De-seed the pepper, chop into rough chunks, halve the cherry tomatoes, cut the onion into slices. Put them all in a baking tray, douse well with lots of the nice olive oil, stick them in the oven at 180 degrees Centigrade for twenty minutes. (You’re not trying to roast them properly – just till the onion is edible and the tomatoes a bit squishy.)

Cut the feta cheese into chunks and crumble those into a big bowl. Rip the ham into small strips, and after the twenty minutes, add the ham to the baking tray and put it back in the oven for another five minutes, until the ham is curling at the edges.

Then, pour the contents of the tray into the bowl with the feta, mix well and be sure all the oil gets into the bowl, it’s lovely. Stir well, pour in some pine nuts or sunflower seeds, add handfuls of rocket or spinach, keep stirring until it’s alll mixed. Presto, done. And have some cake afterwards for the carbohydrate.

On Friday, wandering through town after my haircut, I dropped into a butcher’s to buy a few sausages, or a bit of pork, or something. I came out with a rabbit.

I am not entirely sure how this happened. Still, never say die. What can you do with a rabbit? We thought for a bit, and decided on stewing. After consulting with the usual oracles (thanks, Ewan), this is what we came up with:

Ingredients:

• One rabbit, skinned and cleaned and rendered visibly less fluffy

• Several slices of bacon
• A handful of carrots, an onion, some garlic
• A bottle of cider
• Honey, some dried mixed herbs (or fresh thyme & bay, if you have it), salt, pepper
• A large casserole dish, with lid, and an oven at ~120 degrees

First, start the bacon frying; when it’s lightly done, decant into casserole, and start on the onion and garlic ditto.

Meanwhile, prepare the rabbit. (…I suppose there are people who don’t want to read this…)

End result : one pile of rabbit meat (small), one skeleton fit for stock or feeding to any carnivorous animals you have around the house (small), one sense of achievement (medium). I don’t know if you can actually feed rabbit bones to small carnivorous animals, so you might need to check that bit first. Or bury it in the garden, dig it up in a year, and present it to a small child who wants to be a vet.

Anyway, when we went into surgery the bacon, onions and garlic were lightly sizzling. Decant them into the casserole, leaving the fat in the pan, and then fry your rabbit with enthusiasm. Get it nice and golden, and in it goes too. Chop the carrots into lumps, and in they go; add a couple of spoonfuls of honey, the herbs, salt, pepper, stir it all around. Top off with enough cider to cover it all; if you’ve not enough, then a little warm water to suit. (If you’ve too much, have a drink. Thirsty work.)

Pop it all in the oven at about 120 degrees for about two hours. (A little warmer or a little longer won’t hurt at all, of course). Serve with rice or bread or potatoes – something solid and absorbent. Serves two to four depending on whether you remembered to eat lunch.

Next experiment: do it with wine. Rabbit in red wine does sound delightful…

Last night, we made pizzas. (This is now my favourite way of feeding a dozen people – the work can be shared out easily, it allows for complex democratisation of who eats what and how much of it, and you can spread it over an hour so you only need one oven.)

The problem was, we ended up with too much sauce. A small bowl of heavy, thick, gloopy passata-and-garlic-and-basil sauce which I salvaged for dinner today; nice and rich, but too thick to put on pasta.

So, take the sauce, bulk it out a bit with a small tin of tomato pureé and an equal amount of warm water; mix in chopped cooked sausages, chopped carrots, and some mushrooms. Cook for about thirty minutes at 200 degrees; stir, add some cheese on top, another twenty minutes. Serve with an enormous pile of rice.

Not bad, all told, but more filling than it looked at first! Two things that’d have improved it:

• parboiling the carrots before adding them, as they came out a little too crunchy

• using equal amounts of red wine and pureé, rather than water and pureé

We had red wine to hand, in fact, but vetoed using it because it seemed too nice to cook with and there wasn’t much left. I think that was the right decision, but it’s tough to say.

Easy as pie, this one, but surprisingly nice.

Ingredients:
-three sausages, good ones – I used pork and caramelised onion;
-one baking apple;
-one red onion;
-olive oil;
-honey.

Peel and chop the apple into rough chunks and throw into a deep baking tray. Add the onion, chopped into fair-sized chunks (not slices). Toss with olive oil, and stir some honey through it all. Put in the oven at 180 degrees Centigrade for twenty-five minutes.

In the meantime, grill or fry the sausages – I recommend grilling, because this is already a fairly oily mix. When done, the apple and onion ought to be done as well (check to see the apple is soft enough to turn into goo in your mouth). Chop the sausage into bitesized pieces, toss in a bowl with the apple and onions, mix well and add a sprig of parsley if you’re feeling decadent. Done.

This is enough for one hungry person, but it scales perfectly – just double everything. It really is rather nice.

I can cook quite well. If you ask me to rustle up a dinner for three with salad and dessert, I can do it. But – I cannot follow recipes. At all. Everything I have ever cooked was made up on the spot, or a variation on something I’ve previously made up on the spot. In the interests of the latter, this is what I had for dinner tonight.

Ingredients:
-three large baking potatoes, elderly, sprouting;
-one red onion;
-generic tomato sauce – the kind that comes in a jar, or one tin chopped tomatoes drained well and mixed with passata;
-peppered ham (or ordinary thick ham, and add black pepper to the finished product);
-stilton;
-niceish olive oil;
-sundried tomato paste.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Centigrade. Peel and chop the potatoes into thin slices, and toss into boiling water for five or ten minutes until softened (I forgot to do this, and regretted it). Drain, and put in a flattish ovenproof dish. Pour over tomato sauce, stir until potatoes are covered, add sundried tomato paste to taste and a splash of olive oil. Stick into oven for twenty minutes.

In the meantime, chop the onion into small bits and tear up the ham roughly, mix them together. Take the dish out, and (carefully! – I burned my fingers, as usual) stir them into the mixture so they’re also covered in tomato gloop. Put in the oven for another twenty minutes, go away and do some hoovering.

Crumble enough stilton to cover the top of the dish. After the twenty minutes are up, make a layer of it on the top of the potatoes, and put it back in the oven. After five minutes or ten minutes or however long it takes for the cheese to brown and bubble and sink, you’re done. Serve with green salad, it’s nice. And freeze the rest, if you’re only cooking for one, it’s perfectly defrostable.

I like it – but next time I think maybe more sundried tomato paste, and maybe I’ll stretch to cooked bacon rather than ham.