To make about 30 you’ll need:

Filling
Beef dripping to fry
12 oz onions, diced
12 oz waxy potato, cut into 1cm cubes
1 teaspoon ginger, diced very fine
5 cloves garlic, diced very fine
8 shallots, sliced thinly
1 lb minced beef
4 tablespoons Madras curry powder
1 can coconut milk
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons caster sugar
3 teaspoons salt

Pastry
1 lb flour
4 oz butter
8 oz lard
1 egg, and another to glaze
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of ½ a lemon
6 fl oz water

Start by cooking the filling. Stir fry the onions in a tablespoon of beef dripping until they are soft and transluscent. Remove them to a bowl and set aside. Add another tablespoon of dripping to the pan and fry the potato cubes in the same wok with a pinch of salt until they begin to take on a little colour, then pour over 4 fl oz of water and put the lid on, reducing the heat to a simmer. Cook for between five and ten minutes, until the potatoes are cooked through. Put them in the bowl with the onions.

In the same wok, stir fry the ginger, garlic and shallots in a little more dripping. When the spices are giving off their scent, add the beef and stir-fry for five minutes until well mixed. Add the curry powder and continue to stir-fry until all the beef is coloured. Add the onion and potato, stir thoroughly, then add the coconut milk, sugar, salt and lemon juice.

Reduce the heat to a low simmer, and reduce the mixture until it’s thick and glistening. Taste, adding more lemon juice and salt if you think it needs it. Cool and refrigerate. (This is important – you’ll find the puffs much easier to fill if the curry is cold. A warm filling will be slightly runny.)
You can make the pastry and fill the puffs on the same day you prepare the filling, but the filling is one of these things that really improves by being kept in the fridge for a day – the flavours deepen and meld.

To make the pastry, mix the egg, sugar, salt, water and lemon in a measuring jug and refrigerate until it’s nice and cold. Sieve the flour into a bowl, and rub in the butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Cut the lard into little cubes (about the same size as you cut the potato) and blend it well with the flour/butter mixture. Add the contents of the measuring jug and bring everything together gently with your hands. Rest the pastry in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm, for an hour.

Slice the pastry in two and roll out half into a thin rectangle. Fold the rectangle into three (as if you were folding an A4 sheet to fit in an envelope) and roll it out again. Repeat the folding and rolling four times. Cut out rounds about ½ cm thick with a large fluted pastry cutter and repeat the process with the other piece of pastry. (If you’ve scraps left over, just roll them out and use the cutter on them.)

Beat an egg and put it in a cup where you can reach it easily as you work.

Put a tablespoon of filling in the middle of each pastry circle, and wipe some beaten egg around half the edge. Press each edge together to seal and crimp the curry puff. Arrange the puffs on a baking tray and brush each with the beaten egg to glaze.

Bake at 230° C for the first 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 200° for 20 minutes. Cool (if you can bear to – ours usually go straight from the oven into slobbering mouths) on a cake rack.

From gastronomy domine:

This tomato salad recipe is the perfect, sunny, flavourful accompaniment to long summer’s evenings in the garden, basking by the barbecue and drinking silly amounts of Pimms. There’s no cooking involved; just some slicing which is easily done with a glass by your side and the sun pouring in through the kitchen window.

If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself with a glut of tomatoes late in the summer. This salad is remarkable in that you can make it again and again, and it doesn’t become boring. It brings out the gorgeous flavour of the sun all those tomatoes have soaked up; the basil, oregano and sweet balsamic vinegar all work together to make your tomatoes platonically tomato-ish.

Use whatever tomatoes come to hand. This salad is really pretty with a couple of yellow tomatoes scattered among the reds, or with large and small-fruiting varieties mixed together. Here, I’ve used small vine tomatoes and some baby plum tomatoes. To serve four as a side dish (or two as a lunch on its own with some crusty bread) you’ll need:

20 small tomatoes (see note above)
1 shallot
1 handful basil leaves
½ handful oregano leaves
1 small clove garlic
1 ½ teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons good olive oil
Salt and pepper

Slice the tomatoes and lay them out on a large serving plate. Slice the shallot into thin rings and scatter over. Roll the basil leaves into little tubes and slice them thinly to cut it into thin strips (chiffonade), and throw them over the salad with the whole oregano leaves.

Immediately before serving, drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar over, and season with salt and plenty of pepper. Crusty bread will come in handy to mop up the juices.

I noticed last week that although I’ve included roast garlic as an ingredient in a few recipes here (use the search tool at the top right of the page if you want to try some when you’ve made this), I’ve never dedicated a post to it. This needs to be addressed, because roast garlic, slipped out of its skins onto crusty bread and popped straight into the mouth, still warm, is one of those things that tastebuds were invented for.

Roast garlic is at its best when you use a bulb of fresh (or ‘green’) garlic – not dried, like the papery garlic you usually buy in the supermarket, but still cream, green and pink, with flexible, cool-feeling skin. Some markets and supermarkets carry it at this time of year and also around October. I’ve seen it in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and the main market in Cambridge, so with a bit of sniffing around (it is very pungent) you should be able to find some. If it’s out of season, never fear; you can also use a dried bulb, and it will still be very good indeed. If you do use dried garlic, try to find a variety that has big, fat cloves. The Really Garlicky Company do a fantastic product, and you can sometimes order fresh garlic from them as well (currently their website says it should be ready in July). As well as mail order, they have a stockists list on the page. Their Patagonian garlic is available in my local Waitrose, and it’s a very superior bulb with huge, juicy cloves which are fragrant and easy to peel.

Picking out herbs to cook with the garlic is fun. I’ve used thyme, oregano, parsley, rosemary and bay from the garden, but you’re not limited to these. Sage is also good, and it’s worth experimenting with whatever green herbs you have to hand. The odd chilli tucked between the cloves can also be good. I’ve used butter to lubricate here, but goose or duck fat is also glorious in this dish. If you decide to use some, use 200g duck fat and 200g butter.

We are greedy when faced with roast garlic, and can get through three bulbs each with some good bread. You may find that six bulbs will happily serve three, or want to keep a couple back as an ingredient for a later recipe. To roast six bulbs you’ll need:

Six bulbs green garlic
3 bay leaves
1 small handful each fresh thyme, oregano and parsley (reserve a little parsley to garnish at the end)
3 large sprigs rosemary
250g butter
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and pepper

Slice each bulb of garlic in half across its equator and arrange in a heavy-bottomed roasting tin, tucking the clean spices all around the garlic. Make sure some of the pieces of garlic have their cut sides in the air, and some against the roasting tin, for a lovely variation in texture and stickiness. Dot the butter all over them (I know this is a lot of fat, but you’ll thank me when you taste what’s at the bottom of the dish when you’re done cooking) and drizzle a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over to moisten any non-buttery bits. Sprinkle over salt and pepper.

Roast for 40 minutes at 180° C, opening the oven to baste the garlic with the juices three or four times. The house will smell strongly, so open a window. When the garlic is done, the ends of the cloves should be a gorgeous caramel brown. Serve the bulbs up immediately with some really good bread and a little salt for everyone to spike their own garlic with, keeping the cooking dish on the table for dipping in the juices (possibly the most delicious cooking liquid ever). You should be able to pop each clove out of its skin easily, and mash it onto the bread with the ends of a fork.

If you thought the hollandaise sauce recipe from the other day sounded like too much hard work, this asparagus recipe will suit you down to the ground. It’s very quick and easy, and this cooking method makes the most of the tender sweetness of the stems. It also looks posh, so you can serve it up as a starter (or as an accompaniment) to guests and feel smug when they congratulate you on something which, in reality, only took you five minutes to put together.

For a starter, look at serving between six and eight stalks of asparagus per person. You can get away with less than this if you’re making it to accompany something else as a main course, but it’s worth making plenty because roast asparagus is downright delicious.

To serve two as a starter you’ll need:

16 stalks of asparagus, as fresh as possible
½ teaspoon flaked Italian chilli peppers
Zest of a lemon
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
50g parmesan cheese
Salt (preferably something crystalline, like Maldon) and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

Snap the bottoms off the stems of asparagus. They’ll come apart naturally, with a lovely snapping sound, at the point where the woody part (which you don’t want to eat) begins. Arrange them in a single layer in a baking dish.

Sprinkle the flaked chilli and lemon zest over the asparagus, and drizzle with the olive oil. Roast the asparagus in the oven for 10-15 minutes until bright green.

While the asparagus is roasting, use a potato peeler to shave the parmesan into little pieces. As soon as the asparagus comes out of the oven, scatter over the parmesan, which should soften a little as it meets the hot asparagus. Serve the roast asparagus with crusty bread if you’re eating it as a starter.

My week was brightened no end yesterday when I discovered that Jean-Christophe Novelli was linking to one of the recipes on Gastronomy Domine. I’m cooking a lot of things like the aubergine caviar he mentions at the moment – it must be the weather. To make the most of the short English summer, it’s lovely to eat a cold al fresco supper with some good, home-made bread. This explains the bread-making binge I appear to be on at this week. Fresh bread tastes great, it makes the house smell fantastic, and there is something strangely soothing about pummelling the hell out of a wodge of dough as you knead it; not to mention the lovely feeling you get from poking your fingers into a baby-soft, freshly-risen batch to knock it down. Bread dough is deliciously tactile, but I shrink from describing the full puffy, silky, stretchy glory of it in case you all decide I’m some sort of dough pervert.

Focaccia is an Italian bread enriched with plenty of olive oil. The oil in the dough makes it a dream to work with, and although it has a long rising time to help it develop its lovely open texture, all you have to do is knead, then wait for the dough to rise a couple of times. I’ve flavoured this focaccia with rosemary and chillies stirred into the dough itself, and a caramelised onion topping slathered on top. It’s lovely cut into squares and served with some Mediterranean-style cold nibbles like caponata, aubergine caviar, hummus or panzanella, and a bowl of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip into.

To make one focaccia you’ll need:

Bread
500g strong white bread flour
1 packet instant yeast
275ml tepid water
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons olive oil (plus extra for oiling bowl and dough)
5 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons Italian chilli flakes

Caramelised onion topping
2 large onions
3 tablespoons olive oil
A few sprigs of rosemary to decorate
12 olives
Olive oil to drizzle and salt to sprinkle over

Put 250g of the flour in a large mixing bowl with the yeast, chopped rosemary and chillies, then pour in the tepid water – this should be around blood heat – and the olive oil. Beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth, then start to stir in the remaining flour, a handful at a time, until you have a soft dough. The dough should not be completely dry – a little stickiness is fine, and should have vanished by the time you have finished kneading because of the magical development of the gluten in the wheat. You may not find you need to add all the flour – the amount you use will depend on the flour you have bought and the humidity and temperature of your kitchen. (I had about 20g left to put back in the bag when I was done.) Knead the dough vigorously for at least ten minutes, until it is very smooth and stretchy. Oil the dough ball and put it inside an oiled mixing bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for two hours in a warm place.

The dough should have more than doubled in size. Knock it down to its original size and knead again for five minutes, then spread it out in a baking tin (mine was 25cm x 35cm), making sure the dough is even and pushed well into the edges and corners. Cover with the damp cloth again and let the focaccia rise for 45 minutes, then push the dough flat again and let it rise for a further 45 minutes while you heat the oven to 220° C (425° F) and prepare the onions by sautéing them in the oil over a low heat until they are sweet and golden (about 20 minutes), then putting them aside to cool.

Push 12 olives into the surface of the risen focaccia in a pattern with some rosemary sprigs, and spread the onions gently over the top (don’t push too hard when you spread, so the bread does not deflate). Pour over some more olive oil to fill the olive holes, sprinkle with coarse-grained salt and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden on top, then place on a rack to cool.

Talking food on the phone with my Mum last week, the subject got on to sauces. It turns out that we share a favourite – beurre blanc, a deliciously fatsome emulsion of melted butter suspended in reduced wine infused with herbs and shallot. After putting the phone down, I headed straight for the fridge.

Being fatsome, beurre blanc works best as a sauce for very lean dishes. I steamed trout en papilotte – inside a little bag made from greaseproof paper – in the oven, with more herbs and wine, then spooned the beurre blanc all over it. (I also spooned beurre blanc all over some home-fried potatoes, which are not pictured because only people who do not fear imminent death via clogged arteries should eat beurre blanc spooned all over home-fried potatoes.) It was ludicrously good.

To serve four, you’ll need:

Trout
Eight trout fillets
4 bay leaves
4 sprigs tarragon
4 sprigs parsley
4 thin slices of lemon (with skin)
2 shallots
White wine
Salt and pepper

Beurre blanc
225g unsalted butter
1 shallot
1 bay leaf
3 peppercorns
5 tablespoons white wine
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon double cream
Salt and pepper

Make sure the butter is chilled, and preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

Cut out four large squares of greaseproof paper and four squares of tinfoil. Lay the pieces of greaseproof on top of the tinfoil squares, and lay a bayleaf, half a sliced shallot, a slice of lemon and a sprig of parsley and tarragon in the middle of each. Place two fillets of trout on top of each pile of herbs and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of wine over the fish and fold the paper and tinfoil over to create a little packet, sealing it tight with the foil. There should be a bit of room for the steam to circulate in each packet, so don’t wrap the fish up too tight. Put all four little packets on a baking sheet and put in the oven for 20 minutes.

As soon as the fish goes in the oven, start making the sauce. Put the wine and vinegar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with the sliced shallot, the bay leaf and the peppercorns. Bring to a simmer and reduce until there is only 2 tablespoons of liquid left. Sieve the liquid to remove the shallot, bay and peppercorns, and return to the pan off the heat. Get the butter out of the fridge and cut it into cubes about the size of the top joint of your thumb.

Lower the heat, and put the pan back over the low flame. Add a teaspoon of cream to the wine reduction and use a whisk to incorporate it into the liquid. (A note here – adding cream is, strictly speaking, cheating. The cream stabilises the emulsion and will stop your sauce from breaking and splitting. Proper chefs will scoff and tell you that the addition of cream means your sauce is no longer a beurre blanc. Scoff right back at them, but make sure you take your time over it so that by the time they return to their own, cream-free beurre blanc pans, their own sauce will have split.) Whisking vigorously, add the butter to the pan, three cubes at a time. When they are half-melted, add another three, still whisking hard. Repeat until all the butter is incorporated and remove from the heat. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper.

The fish should be ready at around the same time you finish the sauce; if the timer goes before you’ve finished the sauce, don’t worry about it. The fish won’t mind an extra five minutes in the oven.

Some people like to open the little parcels of fish at the table – the burst of fragrant steam from the punctured parcel is a fantastic opening to the meal. Spoon over the beurre blanc and some fresh parsley, and serve plenty of new potatoes or mash to help you soak up all the delicious sauce.

I write this with two of my friends in mind – Francis, whose tofu disintegrates, and Simon, who, on hearing that I was making something with beancurd in, said: “Ewww! Tofu!” – the sod.

Now, unlike Simon, I’m lucky enough to have spent a childhood being exposed not to the vegetarian tofu-masquerading-as-meat school of cooking, but the Chinese sort, where tofu is a delicious addendum to meat. In this dish (whose name means ‘pock-marked old woman’s tofu’, just to put Simon off even further) the tofu isn’t treated as a blank sponge of protein to absorb flavour – instead, its own flavour, actually rather subtle, delicate and somehow cooling, is a contrast to an amazingly savoury, chilli-hot surrounding of soy, chillies and pork. Totally delicious, and it’s very easy to make – just make sure that all your ingredients are chopped and ready in bowls before you start to stir-fry, because you’ll have to move fast once you begin cooking.

To serve six, you’ll need:

500g pork mince
3 tablespoons dark soya sauce
3 teaspoons cornflour
1 teaspoon sugar
50ml Chinese wine
700g firm silken-style tofu (Blue Dragon is good, and it’s easy to find in UK supermarkets)
5 cloves garlic
1 piece ginger, about the length of your thumb
6 dried shitake mushrooms without stems
400ml water
3 red bird’s eye chillies (I like this hot – cut down on the chillies if you don’t)
2 tablespoons chilli bean paste
12 spring onions (scallions)
1 tablespoon sesame oil

In a large bowl, mix the pork (I like quite a fatty mince here) with one teaspoon of the cornflour, the dark soy, sugar and Chinese wine. Set aside for a couple of hours in the fridge.

While the pork is marinading, soak the mushrooms in the boiling water. Chop the tofu into cubes about 2cm on each side and set aside in a bowl. Chop the garlic and ginger into tiny dice, slice the chillies finely, and put them all in another bowl. Chop the spring onions into small pieces and put the pieces from the lower, creamy and pale green half of the stem in the bowl with the garlic, ginger and chillies, and the pieces from the top, dark green half of the stem in a third bowl. When the mushrooms have soaked for half an hour, chop them into dice about the same size as the spring onion pieces, reserving the soaking liquid, and put the chopped mushrooms in the bowl with the garlic, ginger, chillies and the bottom half of the spring onions.

When you’re ready to start cooking, heat a wok with a couple of tablespoons of flavourless oil in the bottom until it starts to smoke. Throw the pork and its marinade in, and stir-fry until the pork has browned and starts to look a little crusty. Add the contents of the ginger and garlic bowl, stir-fry for about twenty seconds, and add the chilli bean sauce. Keep stir-frying until everything is mixed well, and add the tofu with the soaking liquid from the mushrooms. Stir very gently to make sure everything is combined.

Turn the heat down low and bring everything to a simmer – the tofu should be distributed evenly through the mixture. Don’t stir (this instruction is especially for you, Francis), or the tofu will break up – as it is, you’ll notice it breaks up a little, but the vast majority should stay in firm cubes. Allow the mixture to simmer for ten minutes, then add the remaining cornflour mixed with a little cold water (the water must be cold, or you’ll get lumps), stir very gently and simmer until thickened. Throw in the green tops of the spring onions, sprinkle over the sesame oil, and transfer to a bowl to serve.

It has now been a week and a half of bringing in lunch every day, and although this is by no means a life-changing habit that has been formed, I can feel this being something good. Something that is not quite as hard as I thought it would be.

Something that *maybe* I could keep up with. Blogging about it, we will see…

In addition we’ve been eating at home nearly every night (except when social obligations intervene). I find a solace in cooking… it’s so fulfilling, not just the process, but the transformation of raw ingredients into something delicious, satisfying, and made by hand. I guess in some ways, I am very traditional: I see cooking as an act of service, an act of love.

A couple of things have changed in my life recently that is contributing to this propensity towards packing lunch and cooking at home:

1. The economy sucks.
2. I realized that between a venti chai every day, and lunch every day, I was spending easily $75-100 a week. Factor in dinner a couple times a week and I am spending over 10% of my weekly salary on food; sometimes 20%, and not very good food either!
3. The live-in boyfriend now has a day job, which means we are much more often at home, hungry, and twiddling our thumbs on what to eat. Shopping in advance and having a stocked refrigerator helps to avoid this.

There are three primary goals that I am hoping to reach by keeping this blog:

1. I am honestly not sure if this route saves as much money as we think it does. I am hoping to be more price-conscious of how much ingredients and things cost, and how much I am spending on groceries.
2. Part of this whole experiment is to help me to be more organized with my shopping and ingredients, and help reduce the amount of spoilage and food that we end up not using.
3. I am hoping to explore cooking in general. I’m a newbie, and while I am not confident enough to try the French Laundry cookbook or anything close, I do have some basic skills and knowledge. I see recipes online and in magazines all the time that I’d like to try, and I think I would if I had a general repository where I could go to “clip” everything together. So one thing I will be doing here is storing recipes that I find over the internets that I think I would like to try.

So, without further ado…

Tomatilla Salsa [Salsa Verde Cruda]

10 tomatillos, husked and well washed, quartered
1/2 bunch of scallions, roots and green ends trimmed, cut into big segements
5 garlic cloves, smashed
2 jalapenos, roughly chopped
Pinch of allspice
Salt to taste

Puree all ingredients together until very smooth either in a blender or food processor. Season with salt.

One year ago: Peanut Butter Brownies
Two years ago: Roasted Acorn Squash with Chile Vinaigrette

Beef, Leek and Barley Soup
Adapted from Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking

1. Trim two big, meaty short ribs and put them on the bottom of your soup pot.

2. Add 1/2 cup of barley, three big cloves of garlic shopped up, two chopped onions, and three leeks cut lengthwise and then into segments–use both the white and the green parts. You can also add mushrooms and any other vegetables you might like. Grind in a little black pepper.

3. Add about eight cups of filtered water or beef stock and let it simmer on the back burner for at least three hours while you go about your business. You can also add lima beans, cube potatoes, peas, corn, string beans and chopped tomatoes at any point, or the second day, should you have any leftover.

4. Before serving, skim off the fat–there will be a bit, as short ribs are quite fatty–take the meat off the bones, chop it and put it back in the soup.