Chocolate cream pie

Every Thanksgiving, I think I'm going to make my brother pumpkin pie. Not fake British pumpkin pie, butternut squash or sweet potatoes masquerading as their tastier relative, but proper childhood pumpkin pie, made with canned pumpkins and enough sugar to make your teeth fall out. Every year, though, I end up reaching for the sweet potatoes.

This year, though, I let the internet come to my rescue. Amazon sold three cans of pumpkin for £9, delivery by the 24th. Cutting it a little fine, but too good an offer to turn down. I ordered, and promptly proceeded to tell everyone that we were going to have the Best Thanksgiving Ever.

Thursday morning came, no delivery. We had to leave by 11 to get to my folks on time, so I checked my account, figuring that by refreshing a page I could make the box come faster. Amazon solemnly informed me that I had placed no such order. The Girlfriend's account said the same thing. The pumpkin was out of stock, and had been moved to my saved items.

The next hour was spent becoming a member of pretty much every supermarket in the UK, only to learn that they too were out of stock. Occado had organic pumpkin, but wouldn't deliver until December. The UK was facing a pumpkin famine.

Lesson learned for next year, then. But for now, we were dessert-less. A terrible prospect, close to a death sentence in my household. Hence, chocolate cream pie.

The first recipe I found was this one from Betty Crocker, which involves meting chocolate with half a bag of marshmallows. It was delicious, but unfortunately not great for my veggy step-father. So I improvised:

Ingredients:
Half a packet of digestives.
Half a block of butter.
2 1/2 bars of dark chocolate
1/4 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 cup double cream
Extra cream for the topping.

To make the cheesecake base, bash the digestives until they're in crumbs. A blender is probably very useful at this point, but if, like me, you have to do the washing up, you might prefer the method of putting the biscuits in a bag and bashing them with a rolling pin. It's also great for pent-up rage.

Melt the butter in the microwave, and add it slowly to the digestives, stirring, until the mixture can be molded into a ball without crumbling. You may need more or less butter depending on your cholesterol levels and the phases of the moon.

Line a pie dish. I lined a metal dish with cling film and it worked fantastically, but when I tried the same trick with a ceramic dish the cling film stuck. Parchment paper might work better. Or you could just use little ramekins for individual pies.

Fill the dish with the biscuit mixture, going up to the top of the pie dish. Try to keep this as thin as possible, or else people will just eat the filling, which is always a bit of a low blow.

Put the pie dish in the fridge to cool.

Heat the milk and chocolate in a saucepan, stirring constantly, until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is all smooth and lovely. Let this cool (I put it in the fridge for 5 minutes) and then stir in the egg yolks. Trying to stop the eggs scrambling is one of those skills that everyone seems to have a knack for- personally I try to make sure that the chocolate is warm rather than hot and stir quickly.

Once the eggs are stirred in, return the pan to the fridge to cool for about 20 minutes.

Whisk up the cream so that it's stiff, and then fold in the chocolate mixture until it's all blended in and there's no marbling, then pour the whole thing into the pie base. Return the pie dish to the fridge until it's set (this took about 2 hours for me).

When the pie is set, you can top it with more whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

Serve 4 over 2 nights, or one girlfriend over the course of an afternoon.

Really —ing Good Spaghetti Bolognese

Have you ever read The Truth?

Terry Pratchett once said that it's a universal truth that "if a gang has two members [...] one will do the thinking and the other will 'talk like dis'". Which explains his own Mr Tulip and Mr Pin. They are terrible, terrible people. They are Those Two Bad Guys. And it's a great running gag that Mr Tulip, the terrifying giant, swears like a motherf—er, something like this:

"It's not a —ing harpsichord, it's a —ing virginal," growled Mr. Tulip. "One —ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for —ing young ladies!"

Only he doesn't. We find out later that he is, in fact, saying exactly what Pratchett writes, and it's a brilliant Brick Joke moment. Mr Tulip, rather than swearing, simply makes a glottal stop followed by 'ing', and it conveys as much hatred and obscenity as any one syllable possibly could.

I'm telling you this for a reason, I swear.

Last night we had friends over, in order to play the world's most vexing boardgame, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. It was an unexpected occurrence, and as such, got an unexpected dinner to accompany it, which took the form of 'We Have Mince In The Fridge And Everyone Likes My Spag Bol'.

This recipe is an amalgam of all the bologneses I have cooked, eaten, read about and seen over the years, compiled out of the products of theft, like a magpie's nest.

It is amazing.

I genuinely cannot stress enough how —ing amazing this bolognese is.

Really—ing Good Spaghetti Bolognese

• butter and olive oil
• 2 carrot
• 2 large onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 sticks celery
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 rashers smoked bacon
• handful chopped mushrooms
• 750g beef mince
• glass of red wine
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp tomato paste
• dribble of Lea & Perrins
• pinch of dried basil
• salt & pepper to taste
• as much spaghetti as necessary
• cheddar or parmesan, to serve

Finely chop your onions, garlic, celery and celery, and fry these in a generous amount of butter and olive oil until softened to make a mirepoix base. Tuck in a bay leaf as you cook.

Dice your bacon in a rough, largeish sort of manner, and add it to the pan, letting it cook through. I have some friends who swear by using chorizo instead, which would give a nice paprika taste. Chuck in your mushrooms.

Brown your mince. Do not - and this is really very important - break it up until it has browned on the bottom. Leave it. Put down the spatula. Then break it up, and leave it again. And so on, and so forth. Once it's nicely cooked, deglaze the pan with half the glass of wine. 

Make and pour in the beef stock, bring to the boil and let it reduce. Be patient. You are making a —ing masterpiece here. Drink the rest of the glass of wine. Once reduced down, add your chopped tomatoes and tomato paste and simmer on a very low heat for a very long time. At minimum, one hour, ideally two.

Bet you're glad you opened that bottle of wine now, eh?

Once you're happy with your consistency, boil and salt the water for your pasta. Season your sauce with the basil, worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper, and anything else that strikes your fancy. It's quite nice to tuck a few basil leaves in here, but make sure that really is at the end.

Cook up your pasta, drain and toss with olive oil. Serve with a large heaping of cheese, and whatever is left of the —ing wine.

Serves 4.

That's amore

Another Nigella dish, this one, and one of my all-time favourite things to make.

I've found that Nigella's recipes don't take too well to adaptations; depressing as it is, you have to have faith in her and follow through to the end. Only once you've made it once will you understand where you absolutely must do as you're told and where you can make it up as you go along. Anyone who knows me will know that this is the antithesis of everything I stand for in the kitchen, and yet...

With the smells of rosemary and garlic, the steamy warmth of a simmering stew, and a chance to slowly putter about the kitchen while the hob gets on with it for you, making this soup is a really enjoyable experience. Always provided, of course, that you don't do what I did last night and grate your fingers instead of the garlic. Then it will be a really painful experience.

More to the point, you'll be in the awful situation of looking into your garlic and oil mixture and thinking 'did I not clean out the tomatoes from this properly? have I just bled into the dinner? will my girlfriend notice if I feed her my blood?'.

(I hadn't, and obviously, I wouldn't have. Don't do cannibalism, kids.)

The reason Nigella earns my affection with this recipe, although I've somewhat bastardised it with ideas from other sources and my own bloodless brain, is for the introduction of a pop-sock to replace the ubiquitous cheesecloth. Nobody I know has a cheesecloth, but just about everybody has a pair of ripped tights. Just don't do what I did the first time and think 'well, black tights can't be that bad'. It won't make any difference taste-wise, but you will end up with a bloody weird, vaguely Bridget Jones-esque black soup.

Pasta E Fagioli

Don't buy dried beans and soak them, because who in god's name has time for that? Two tins of borlotti beans from the supermarket will do just as well, and then you only need to drain them. Tip the beans, drained, into a very large saucepan, and put five peeled and bruised garlic cloves in with them. Then put one peeled and quartered onion and two large sprigs of rosemary (tied up inside a popsock or cut up tights) on top of them.

Cover them generously with cold water and bring to the boil. The key word here is generously  - not having enough water at this stage will lead to boiling dry and oversaltiness later, which is what happened to me yesterday while I was running around trying to find a plaster.

At this point, lower the heat and let it simmer for an hour. It will look really, really weird. What it will look like - what it is, in fact - is a pan of brown beans with an onion in a stocking floating on top of it. Do something else, something productive with your time. Read a book. Call your godparents and thank them for your birthday presents. Take extremely important and accurate Buzzfeed quizzes.

Once the beans are tender, you can salt the water (be very, very careful) and take out the popsock and, unless you want to keep a damp garlicky popsock for some strange reason, fling it away. Scoop out about a cupful of beans from the soup and blitz them in a blender with some tomato puree and another cupful of cooking water.

Finely chop or grate (but let's be honest, who grates garlic?) another clove of garlic and fry it up on olive oil with some finely chopped rosemary. Add in the mixture from the blender, cook for about a minute, and then add this strange glop into the soup. Boil it up, throw in some soup pasta (I generally use conchigliette because that's what I can get hold of, but honestly anything will do, even broken up spaghetti) and presto - soup n' beans!

Serve with a fancy drizzle of olive oil and a garnish of your own blood, just like Mama used to make.

Baked bacon and garlic oil spaghetti

Nigella, of course, calls this linguine with garlic oil and pancetta, but what does she know, I ask you? Tch.

The Best Goddamned Ten Minute Meal You'll Ever Make

Heat up the oven to about 220 degrees. Hotter than that is fine, but if your oven's as temperamental as mine - son, just don't. You'll need a pack of smoked bacon, diced.

Now, if you can use lardons, I would, but I find the best solution is cooking bacon. You know, those value packs you can buy that are usually vacuum packed and are mostly white fat? In this dish, the fat is an advantage. Go for it.

Peel, finely chop, and crush at least half a head of garlic. Add this, with a very considerable glug of good olive oil, to a large baking tray or oven-proof dish.

Boil some salted, oiled water, and when boiling, stick the dish in the oven. Shake after five minutes to ensure it's not sticking to the pan.

Cook your spaghetti, but retain a cup of the cooking water when you strain it.

And that's it! After ten minutes, take it out of the oven and tip the spaghetti into the pan. Add a few drops of the cooking water as needed to lubricate (heh) the dish. Trust me, it makes all the difference.

Nigella's idea of a bit of parsley on the top is a good one, but dried works just as well for me.

No parmesan. I cannot stress to you enough how little parmesan should make its' way into this dish, which is already the saltiest thing you can possible imagine. So goddamn good, but damn, so goddamn salty.

A quick dinner for one

On Tuesdays the Girlfriend has rehearsals and I have dance practice, so as of this week it's just me, home alone, with under an hour to cook, eat, change, and waste time on the internet. To start off, I thought I would ressurect a dish that got me through 5 years of University, and which remains a sort of injoke amongst my long suffering housemates - Cuscus Surprise.

Let me explain. My family went gluten free when I was 12, prior to which I think I had only encountered cuscus as 'that weird thing with raisins in.' It wasn't a part of my childhood, or my teenage years, and I think I only really encountered it when the local Sainsbury's had sold out of pasta.

I worked out cheesy veggy pasta (food of kings) fairly quickly once I got to Uni- cheap, easy, ticked off the three main food groups- but I rapidly got bored of Sainsburys Basics penne. So once I learned that cuscus could take the pasta's place as the base, fill you up quick, prime ingredient, a world of doors opened.

The glory of Cuscus Surprise is that anything can be mixed with the cuscus. Sausage and apple? Check. Stilton and beetroot? Check. The sky is pretty much the limit. And given how quick it is to make, it's also a great base for leftovers.


15 minute Pre-dance Cuscus Suprise:

I filled a bowl with enough cuscus for one serving (I am terrible with measurments, so I suggest you look this up) and filled with boiling water to just over the cuscus level. I put this aside to rest.

I put a bowl of frozen peas in the microwave and cooked them, and set aside.

I fried together half a red onion, a clove of garlic, and some rosemary, in rather too much olive oil until the onions were soft and sweet to taste.

I grated a handfiul of chedder cheese.

Once the cuscus had absorbed all the water, I mixed in a hunk of butter and some salt and pepper, and then simply stirred in all the other ingredients. And voila! A veggy-filled, tasty, unusual dinner, ready to be eaten with a healthy dose of internet and some tea. Total time from walking in the door (including petting the cat and avoiding the neighbours) to eating? 15 minutes.

Lamb bikinis

There is a legitimate reason for the title of this post. I promise.

Just - just bear with me, okay?

Lamb, the most expensive and delicious of meats, is not cheap at any time of year. I say this in open, naked defiance of those cooks who would have you believe that 'it's really very economical if you buy a large joint' and 'well of course if you buy it in spring it's going to be better value', because those cooks are talking out of their bottoms. It is an expensive thing to buy, and if like us you have been living on the literal breadline for some time, you will recall the taste fondly, but not vividly.

Morrisons, meanwhile, reduces meat down by an absurd amount if you get there late enough in the day, and so this week we had a lamb shank.

Writing those words is literally giving me shivers. Hashtag, I suppose, foodie problems.

Because we never buy lamb, I'm not exactly au fait with cooking it, but there are some things even I can work out. So I flicked through some cookbooks, mostly Nigel and Nigella, and then completely made it up.

Greek Lamb

Drenched in olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and dried oregano, seared in the same pan it was going to be cooked in over a hot stove and then covered with garlic and rosemary, tucked in with some halved, peeled onions, and shoved in the oven.

Our shank was about a kilogram in weight, and I over cooked it at nearly two hours on a low heat of 180 degrees. I would say it needed a good half hour less, and then twenty minutes resting time.

It was late, of course, because a) I got distracted by Strictly Come Dancing and b) as is always the way with a roast, everything else takes SO LONG. I made some roast potatoes which didn't crisp - top tip: make sure you spread them out in the pan, because otherwise they will sort of mush - and some carrots and spring greens, and then - oh, reader - then I made the gravy.

Lamb and Onion Gravy

I am really, really good at gravy. I make no apologies for this smugness. My mother has always been the Queen of Gravy, and as a child I was Chief Stirrer in our household, but I would even say, now, that I am giving her a run for her a money.

This week's gravy was less gravyish than normal, because of the sheer amount of fat coming from the olive oil. But the meat juices were mixed in with it, and so there was no point in wasting it. If I'd had some red wine, I'd have used it, but there's no way we can afford a bottle of wine and lamb in the same week. As it was, the onions had just melted into softeness, and I poured in about a tablespoon of chicken gravy granules (don't use beef, there's no point, you'll lose all the lamb flavour), some water, and then I just heated it up, complete with all the delicious seasonings from earlier. No additional flavours needed, though for god's sake any meat juices must go back in, and do scrape the trivet for additional gunky bits. I suppose you could include cream, but my advice with cream in gravy is don't.

It started bubbling, and then it was thick and gorgeous, and we poured it over the meat and potatoes and ate while watching The Village.

Lamb Bikinis

Back in university, I adapted and directed a production of Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere. It went well, and the cast were superb, but the actor who played Mr Croup - my dear friend Nick - simply could not say one of his lines.

What? No Mister 'I'm So Clever and Know Everything' Marquis? No 'Oh, didn't I tell you? Whoops! I can't go upstairs?' Hunter? Well, paint me grey and call me a dire wolf if it isn't two little lost lambikins, out on their own, after dark.

Except what Nick said, every single time, was lamb bikinis. And this sent him and all the other actors into hysterics. I don't remember if we had to cut it, in the end, but I do know that lamb will now forever make me chuckle.

A thrilling caper

There is a jar of capers in the fridge.

This is not a regular occurrence, for all that we are pretentious and unbearable foodies. Capers - those succulent, savoury, slightly spicy little flowers that come in jars - are not a staple of the grocery cupboard, whatever Nigella would have us believe. But there is, for me, something homely and comforting about capers. They were something my mother stocked and seemed to use with alarming regularity given that I never noticed them in my childhood meals. If I had, I would probably have called them 'funny green things' and carefully picked them out.

I only ever seem to use them, when we have them, in bolognese, or puttanesca, or something else tomato based that needs an extra tang.  Once, very daringly, I attempted tartar sauce. It's not something I would recommend as an experience - I ended up covered in a lumpy gloop that smelt like gherkins and down a pretty expensive group of ingredients. Buy the tartar sauce, if you, like me, wouldn't dream of eating fried fish without it. Much like puff pastry and barbecue sauce, it is proof that there are some things with which man was simply not meant to meddle.

But the caper deserves, I feel, a little more than to be knocked about the head by the beefy tomato. So I tried out something new.

This week, the capers were fried in a knob of butter alongside two mackerel fillets, which were first lightly patted with seasoned flour. I was pretty smug about the whole thing, not least because J made some chips to go along with it and with minted mushy peas you've got a meal fit for anyone.

More capers last night, with a Nigel Slater inspired pasta recipe. I say inspired, because much like Mr Slater, I don't really follow recipes and if I don't change at least one thing in it because I can't find it or I can't afford it or I think I'm cleverer than the writer then it's probably a hot day in Niflheim.

Pasta with Capers

Put some pasta on to boil in oiled, salted water. Nigel recommends capelletti, but I, because I am a savage and it's half price at Morrisons, found rigatoni worked equally well.

Stick a teaspoon and a half of capers, one crushed garlic clove, a teaspoon of mustard and a large handful of basil leaves in a food processor. If you, like me, have aphids living on your basil, for god's sake wash it first.

Turn the processor on and slowly pour in about two tablespoons of olive oil while it whizzes until you end up with a thick sauce. Pour in about 150 ml of cream, some salt and pepper, and whizz again.

Drain your pasta, put it back in the pan, and stir in the sauce. Serve with a large helping of Mark Ruffalo being exasperated over magical crime in 'Now You See Me', which is, incidentally, a lot of fun.

Probably improved with a large glass of white wine.