Cooking: Burgers with Love

May 21, 2012

I used to think there was no better way of eating a burger than in some hip, reconditioned gastropub near the shore, with a frothy bitter and a pile of hand-cut chips falling all over everything. I was wrong. The best way to eat a burger is to buy one raw from your butcher, even if it’s just the one in Tesco, and then pick up some big sesame seeded baps and a sack of potatoes and do some self-assembly.

Seriously. It’s brilliant, and you can have just as much mayonnaise as you want (for me, this is none). All you need to do is fry up your burger for 10 minutes, toast your baps under the grill (steady), and shove it all together with some fancy baby salad leaves or something. It’s honestly better than any pub.

And hand-cut chips! Hand-cut chips! What a swizz. Every time I slice an onion to cook literally anything I’m going to start calling it a ‘hand-cut onion’. Anyone with hands can cut chips. Especially you. Just cut potatoes into the shape of chips, then toss them in a deepish frying pan with lots of vegetable oil (LOTS – they need to be swimming. Think of it as a crossroads between deep frying and shallow frying) and plenty of salt.

Put a lid on and leave them to soften over a medium heat, trying not to turn them too often, so they don’t disintegrate. This will take around half an hour. Towards the end, move them around a bit to make sure they get nice and golden, then tip them into a colander to shake off the rest of the oil. Then plate up. It’s delicious. Yes there’s a lot of oil, but I won’t tell NHS Scotland if you won’t.

Sean also makes quite an inspiring salsa to go with this, but frankly that’s just showing off.

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Independent Edinburgh: Swish

May 20, 2012

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Swish is my favourite independent clothes shop in Edinburgh (not counting shops of the charity and vintage ilk). It’s been good to me over the years; I bought my first black Religion top with drapey sleeves and a bat motif in my moody early teens there, and I’ve also been a loyal patron in subsequent, less gothic times. Recently, for instance, I popped in on a lunchbreak only to happen upon the perfect dress to wear to my friend Zoe’s wedding next week.

So I thought I had a relationship with Swish that was based mostly on serendipity, but this week I looked at their website for the first time and realised that actually it’s not serendipity at all, it’s just that they sell really nice clothes all the time. Which makes sense as a business model.

They seem to be really into my current favourite colour palette (no, not spring pastels, but sludgey foresty shades, plus navy and cream – maybe the tweenage goth never really left), all while giving a subtle nod to the gung-ho country estate fabrics and cuts that have been doing the rounds over the last couple of years, without actually doing an Urban Outfitters and sticking a pair of antlers on everything.

Though the floral playsuit on the bottom left is the most sensible choice for a late Scottish spring, if it were autumn I would be all over the checked riding jacket. The blouse, cardigan and dress are pretty and ditzy without being prim, and that clutch is by Religion but doesn’t look like something a newbie witch might take to her first coven meeting. Truly, Swish grows with you. Their shop on Cockburn Street is a cavern of wonders – and not just because of the luxurious curtains in the fitting rooms.

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Cooking: Lemon, Pea and Mint Risotto for the Weekend

May 19, 2012

I’ve been cooking with lemons a lot recently. The lemon blondies were just the start of an ongoing obsession. There’s something invigoratingly spry about a lemon; they feel so game at this time of year, with all their vim and pep. Very cheering. Pablo Neruda wrote a poem about lemons, where he says they have ‘the diminutive fire of a planet’. They punch above their weight, as fruits go.

So they’re right for spring, though they don’t grow during it here. I’ve been putting lemon juice in everything, especially risotto, in which it gets down and dirty with some mint and peas. It’s become a bit of a weekend staple round our way, as it works well for rainy May evenings (lots of those in Edinburgh), when you want something comforting but also feel that by rights it should be balmy outside.

I usually make enough for two hungry people. What I do is, I heat a tablespoon of butter and another of oil in a pot, then soften a chopped onion in it for about 10 minutes. Pour in your risotto rice (I allow 100g per person for maximum comfort), turn up the heat and toast the rice grains for just a minute or two. Sloosh in a large glass of whatever white wine you have lying around from the last time you did this, and let the alcohol cook off.

(Top tip: don’t lean over the pot while this is happening, because you may get a little lightheaded. I speak from direct experience in the field.)

Once you’re starting to get a slightly floral scent off your risotto mixture rather than an alcoholic one, turn the heat right down and ease in a glassful of veg stock. Keep the risotto moving until it soaks up the liquid and the texture loosens up and turns slightly creamy. Keep adding stock until the rice is soft and swollen, tasting to make sure it’s not still nutty.

Five minutes before the end, tip in a job lot of frozen peas. Let them cook, and then add half a handful of chopped fresh mint, the juice of a lemon, an extra knob of butter and some parmesan if you like. Several generous twists of salt and pepper, and the job’s a good ‘un. Eat with some trashy variety show television, or a crucial football match.

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Lunchboxes for Grown-Ups

May 17, 2012

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Fairly recently I started a new job. I’m lucky in that I work in the centre of Edinburgh, permanently within grasping distance of a bacon roll or a panini, so at lunchtime it’s tempting just to reach for the nearest over-the-counter meal rather than bring in my own creative foodwork from home. It doesn’t help that I’m also really close to surely one of the funkiest delis in Edinburgh, The Larder. It’s full of imaginative salads, artisan meats and interesting ciders. Try their venison salami and Anster cheese roll. You haven’t lived.

Anyway, obviously eating on the go every day isn’t the most cost-effective way of lunching. I’ve promised myself I’m going to start bringing in stuff from home more regularly, because not only is it cheaper and healthier, it’s also got a good dose of retro charm about it – the romance of schooldays with a packed lunch and sharpened pencils, and all that sort of thing. Though, for the office, I probably wouldn’t go as far as getting my mum to put a note in with my banana.

But speaking of lunchboxes, here is a dilemma. While looking around for a practical and un-hideous means of carrying around provisions, I realised it’s almost impossible to find a lunch bag to take to work, as a grown-up, that isn’t either tooth-achingly twee or looks like the kind of thing one might haul up a mountain for a month of survival training. Surely, I thought hungrily, there must be a line between cutesy and macho in the lunchbox world?

It turns out there is, but you have to look for it. Here are six delectable packs that I’ve managed to root out – they’re pretty, handy, and just the ticket for brightening up rainy Scottish lunch hours. OK OK you got me, the owl one is quite twee, but also so much fun that it’s completely irresistable (you may remember how I feel about owls), so I couldn’t leave it out.

The Saffron Insulated Lunch Tote (top left) is eco-friendly, too, as it’s made from recycled plastic bottles, and the little turquoise tile-pattern lunch bag from Keep Leaf is made from organic, fairtrade cotton, so you can feel good about the environment while stuffing your face. Yum.

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Owl Encounter

April 11, 2012

At Easter weekend I had one of the most fun afternoons I’ve had in a while. I got to go and play with some owls at Dalhousie Castle! I love owls – I especially love that they have a reputation in folklore for being wise and a bit spooky, when in real life they’re quite silly. They also have stunning markings, especially when you see them up close, which I was so excited about doing. I’ve been after a date with an owl for ages.

I didn’t get such good pictures of the other owl we got to hold – the tawny – which is a shame, because I think tawny owls might be my favourite kind. There was one living outside my room when I was at university, and it was comforting to hear it hooting away every night.

But anyway, I loved all the birds we got to see and learn about. The whole experience made me want to go round putting up nesting boxes and learning how to train owls so I can have one of my own, though it wouldn’t exactly be practical in my rented flat… My mum and sister and I are already planning how we can get our next owl fix – suggestions welcome! I already own one owl t-shirt but am seriously considering getting another. Sigh – the obsession continues.

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Cooking in the fog

March 25, 2012

It was so foggy yesterday. Edinburgh is quite spooky when the fog rolls in from the sea and covers everything and anyone so you can’t see anything at all. People walking down the street peer at each other suspiciously and buildings you see every day completely disappear from sight, as though the whole city has suddenly developed cataracts. Even my walk to the shop at the end of the road felt really eerie. Definitely a good day to stay home and bake.

After my post yesterday about brownies, I wanted to take a few photos of my new kitchen, because I love it so much. It’s the first kitchen I’ve ever been able to fill with my own stuff, and I’ve been really enjoying just tending a pot of something with the BBC World Service on in the background, or doing the washing up to some pounding power pop.

I’ve also got some new cookbooks that just arrived yesterday making themselves at home on the top shelf. I’m especially enjoying Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries – even though lots of his recipes make me want a vegetable garden, which is dangerous thinking. Maybe I’ll just stick to a few herbs on the windowsill for now….

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Scottish Lemon Brownies

March 24, 2012

In my joy at finally having my own kitchen to mess around in, today I made this recipe for lemon brownies. I took some round to my sister’s this afternoon because she’s not well at the moment, and she loves lemony things, so hopefully they helped to cheer her up a bit. She definitely seemed to enjoy them a lot, and they’ve now all disappeared already.

I originally saw the recipe, which is from Rita’s Recipes, via Pinterest. These crazy little “brownies” (there’s no chocolate or nuts in them, so I suppose technically they’re little lemon cake slices) are totally delicious – dense, sticky, and with a tiny bit of zing. But the original recipe is all in American measurements, so I hope Rita won’t mind me posting my conversions here in a “Scottish version” just in case any other Brit bakers want to give them a go.

They’re a refreshing alternative to chocolate if you feel as if you have too much chocolate in your life (NB I’m not sure I ever feel like that), though I reckon you could also put white chocolate chips into the mixture for some extra sweetness. Quite a chic cakey companion to a cup of tea, no?

(Since making these I have been told by my friend Andy that non-brown brownies are actually generally called blondies – which is blowing my little baking mind. And he’s half-American, so when it comes to brownies he should know what he’s talking about. Call them what you like, they taste nice.)

“Scottish” Lemon Brownies (or Blondies)

for the brownies

100g plain flour
100g caster sugar
pinch of salt
115g butter
2 eggs
juice of 1/2 lemon
zest of 1/2 lemon

for the glaze

about 65g icing sugar
juice of 1/4 lemon
water as needed

1. Combine the flour, caster sugar and salt into a big bowl. Blend in the butter.

2. In another bowl, beat the eggs with the lemon juice and zest. Add all this to your other mixture. Add in a glug of milk or two if it’s a bit dry.

3. Pour into a greased baking dish – I used those disposable foil roasting tins you can get in Tesco. They’re good for brownies and anything else that can be tricky to turn out.

4. Bake for 25 minutes or just until pale golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in its dish.

5. Now glaze! Stir all of your glaze ingredients together – adding more water if it’s too sticky, and more icing sugar if it’s too runny – and pour over your baked mass of uncut brownies. Spread into all the corners with a spatula and leave to set. You might want to put the kettle on for some tea around now. When it’s ready, cut into slices and enjoy!

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Bath Lit Fest

March 21, 2012

A couple of weekends ago I was in Bath for the Independent Bath Literary Festival. It was so much fun! I was hosting an event on the Sunday, an interview with the poet Lavinia Greenlaw. She’s a brilliant writer and it was a huge privilege to meet her and ask her some of my burning questions about her work. There were some great questions from the audience, too. I encourage all of you to buy her most recent collection, The Casual Perfect, because it’s wonderful – full of difficult and beautiful poems that reveal more and more every time you read them.

In the event Lavinia said she didn’t see what was wrong with poetry that was a challenge, because crossword puzzles are a challenge and that’s exactly why people enjoy them. I completely agree – I think poems these days are a lot like riddles, and though you can’t always completely “solve” them, the puzzle-solver attitude can be a really rewarding one to have when you’re reading a new poem that doesn’t immediately seem “easy”.

 

I also managed to check out events with Sarah Dunant, who talked about how she writes historical fiction (mostly holed up in an apartment in Florence – sounds jammy), a debate about university funding and tuition fees, and an evening with Alice Oswald, who read an extensive extract from her new epic poetic reworking of the Iliad, Memorial – off by heart, which was pretty impressive. There was so much going on – it was book lovers’ heaven.

Over the weekend I also had the chance to sample some of the delights of Bath, a place I’d never been before. The Festival cafe at the Guildhall had some delicious Guinness cake and freshly-baked bread for sale, which you could munch while sitting on hay bales and getting your books signed, but though it was tempting to stick around drinking tea all day Sean and I also did the tourist thing and headed down to the Roman baths and Bath Abbey for a wander.

 

Of course, we tried the famous local Bath spa water. After all, it might have cured us of all our many nervous complaints (!). It was only polite to down the whole glass, but the taste did linger for quite a few hours afterwards, despite my best attempts to smother it in Guinness cake… I had a fierce debate with my mum over whether or not the water would have tasted better cold. Only time will tell, though, if the water has led to any improvements in our health…!

It was such a beautiful weekend, too – there were flowers and folk dancers everywhere and it really felt like spring. The weather has even so far held out back up here in Edinburgh, and fingers crossed it stays that way!

I didn’t manage to take my camera with me on the plane, so this post is an Instagram roundup in true blogger style. Sorry for the slow updates around here – I’ve been moving house (AGAIN) but am now safely installed my new place and will update you on my new living quarters asap…

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A Canterbury Tale

February 29, 2012

I’ve gone a bit AWOL recently, for which I apologise! I’ve been moving house, which means lots of packing and not enough unpacking so that everything is mostly still in boxes. But before all this happened, I did manage to sneak a trip to Canterbury for the day.

We went by the high speed train, which I was really excited about because a) trains are awesome and b) I’ve never been on the high speed line before, except to go on the Eurostar for a French exchange trip, and it seemed like it would be a bit of a thrill to go high-speed and stop in Kent.

Our plans were scuppered, though, by a gas leak under the railway line, so the high speed bit of the journey was short-lived and replaced by a very wheezy bus service. Hmm.

stained glass

But we got there! And it was worth the ambling, huffing, puffing, neverending bus to get there. The cathedral is beautiful. It’s quite confusing, with a rambling medieval layout and some tourist signs dotted around the place, which makes it all the more enticing to explore.

You find yourself stepping through wrought-iron gates into small dedicated chapels and candlelit crypts, and then all of a sudden you’re standing at the spot where Thomas Becket was murdered.

And then you push open some heavy wooden doors to find a cat hanging around on an old stone pew.

cat

(The cat was pretty camera shy.)

But anyway, after all that I’m in Edinburgh now and fruitlessly trying to sort through all my stuff. Who knew you could accumulate so much stuff in 22 years? It turns out I own three jewellery boxes. That is probably too many.

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Home again!

February 18, 2012

It’s so nice to be back in Edinburgh! I’m travelling around a lot at the moment (more on that soon!), but I managed to nab a few days back home to get some things done and see the family.

Mostly it was just relaxing to be back with all the familiar things that make a place home – some favourite books, a few little old ornaments, fresh flowers. And it feels like spring is just around the corner…

It may seem like I’m obsessed with door handles, but I really love this little bird one. I think it might be about 200 years old – or at least from about the same time as the other door handle in this post, the one with ’1905′ engraved on it. But the question is, who is J. B. Hotham, Esq.? A door handle mystery! (The best kind of mystery.) (Apart from mystery books.)

That last photo was taken on the train up to Edinburgh. When I was at university I found that long train journeys were the best place to get some proper reading done, as well as very romantic in themselves. I once got the Caledonian Sleeper from London to Inverness, and spent the whole time imagining I was in Poirot.

Coming soon: trips to Canterbury and Wales…

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