It’s goodbye, I’m afraid.

I was at the vet’s this week, and it’s not good news. As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader, it’s been touch and go for me over the past months. I’m eighteen years old and diabetic, with an overactive thyroid and a dodgy liver. They’ve had me on a special diet, but I’m still losing weight and becoming badly dehydrated. Martin and Annie have to take me to the surgery tomorrow, and I won’t be coming back.

I’ve been a very, very lucky cat. So many of us get run over by cars before we reach double figures, or drowned, or maltreated, or ignored. Whereas I have been housed in a succession of beautiful homes, fed excellent food, indulged, stimulated, and simply loved more than a creature has a right to expect. I’ve got through thousands of pounds worth of food, medicine, toys and ruined furniture, and Annie and Martin have never been cross with me for long. I don’t want to say goodbye to them and my sister Chutney, but I’ve got to go.

This is my last posting on the blog, though perhaps someone will take it over in the coming year. It’s been a privilege to write for you, and I wish you all the best for the future.

Yours, Dingo.

Heaven and Earth

This doesn't have anything to do with the dreadful God-slot programme with Gloria Hunniford on Sunday morning telly, you'll be relieved to read, but refers back to my last post, in which I mentioned the German Himmel und Erde combination of potatoes and apples. After mein freund Zero from Cologne told me about it, I decided to find a recipe for Martin on-line.

I found several, all of them in German. Fortunately my command of that language is excellent, at least by cat standards. Each recipe was slightly different, so I took what I liked from each. They all used sugar, but I suspected this might be because Germans use very sour apples (there was no mention of variety), and as M only had rather sweet Pink Ladies, I suggested he leave it out. So this is the version he prepared, and it was lovely. This is enough for two or three generous helpings, with leftovers for an apple-flavoured bubble and squeak the following day.

500gms potatoes
500gms apples
half an onion
two or three rashers of streaky bacon or slices of raw ham (smoked Schwarzwald Schinken is great if you can get it)
a splash of cider vinegar or lemon juice
a little bit of lard, salt

Peel, chop and boil the potatoes and apples until soft enough to mash, adding the vinegar or lemon juice and salt to the water. Meanwhile slice the onions and fry slowly in the lard until brown. Slice the bacon or ham and add to the onions in the pan - add the bacon early and cook until crisp, but if you're using ham just heat it through. Drain and mash the potato and apple, return to the pan and replace on the heat, allowing it to bubble away for a few minutes to lose a bit of moisture. Add the onions and bacon or ham, stir through, check seasoning and serve.

You could use a ring mould to get a nice, round serving, and top with a lovely thick slice of good black pudding and a poached egg, and serve it in an elegant restaurant stylee. Or just slap it on the plate and eat something nice and Germanic with it, like cabbage cooked with caraway seeds, and lots of mustard.

Mash it up.

Light, fluffy and smooth, good mashed potato is just like me.

Made with the right potatoes, such as Arran Victory, Maris Piper or Desiree, mash goes brilliantly with hundreds of dishes. Sadly, while the British embrace the flexibility of rice and cous-cous, they tend to think of mash as something you only eat with sausages. (Not that I have anything against bangers, you understand, it’s just that mash can do much more.)

North Americans like their mash, and serve it mostly with chicken and pork chops, and usually with gravy. The Irish have colcannon, where the mash is mixed with hot cabbage, and champ, with lots of spring onions. (Champ is great with salmon, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?) My friend Zero the cat from Cologne tells me that in Germany, they mash potatoes and apples together to make Himmel und Erde, which means “heaven and earth”, and they often serve it with black pudding. Brilliant.

Martin thinks a good smooth mash can be served on its own as a first course, like polenta, and should be dressed with some good olive oil, shavings of parmesan and lots of black pepper. (That sounds just a little poncy to me.) To accompany meat, he usually does a rougher version, more like Scots chappit tatties, leaving the skins on and roughly breaking the spuds rather than pureeing them.

Last night he made a spiced mash to go with kebabs. Clean a kilo of floury potatoes and boil them whole, with their skins intact, until done. Drain them and keep them warm. Melt two tbs of ghee in a large pan and add a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Fry the garlic but don’t let it burn. Grind a tsp of cumin and a tsp of coriander seeds and add them to the ghee and garlic, along with a tsp of chilli powder. Stir and fry for a minute, then add the warm potatoes. Mash them quickly into the hot, spicy ghee, adding a little milk or yoghurt if they look a bit dry. Check for salt and serve. You could add chopped green herbs, like coriander or dill, if you have them. A more refined and expensive version can be made with saffron - infuse some threads in warm milk and add to the spuds.

Mmm, d’you know, I keep thinking about that German Himmel und Erde combination. I think I’ll try to find a recipe on-line, print it out and leave it where Martin can see it.

Bamb or Meef?

The problem with freezing pieces of diced meat off the bone without putting a label on the bag is that you can’t recognise it when you take it out of the freezer. That’s how Martin came to prepare some beef shoulder steak thinking it was mutton on Sunday evening. He made up an African-inspired recipe, frying shallots and garlic with carrots, browning the meat, adding stock, tomatoes, chillies and plenty of peanut butter before finishing it off with some unrefined palm oil and serving it with polenta (or mealie pap if you’re being African; it’s the same, really). Of course by the time the stuff was partly cooked, we could all tell it was beef from the smell, and with an extra fifteen minutes in the pressure cooker (probably an extra 30 in a casserole) it was fine, and tasted great.

Personally I never really know what I’m eating – unless it’s fish, I can recognise fish all right. But my tinned cat meat could be goat, rat or Desert Orchid as far as I know. It’s still tasty.

What a Mess

As you may have noticed while reading my blog, two things we don’t often have at our house are pudding, and anything made by Annie. This is because Annie doesn’t cook, and Martin shows a kind of macho disdain for dessert, preferring to concentrate on manly, hunter-gatherer stuff like meat and fish.

While he’s rarely enthusiastic about making pudding, I haven’t noticed him turning his nose up when it comes to eating the stuff. And Annie is happy to “make” dessert, as long as “making” can be interpreted as “assembling”. She did Eaton Mess the other day, and here’s a recipe.

400g berries (frozen at this time of year)
Kirsch
1 tbsp icing sugar, optional
400g fresh cream for whipping
6 plain meringues or meringue shells, or ready-made mini-meringues

Dress the berries with a splash of Kirsch and the sugar if using. Mash them up a bit if you like. Beat the cream until stiff. Add the fruit to the cream and fold through. Shortly before serving, break up the meringues and add them, folding through again. The meringues will dissolve in the cream - eat quickly if you want a bit of a crunch. Lovely, and so easy, a cat could do it.

Smoke

I’ve never been a regualar smoker, although when I was little I did enjoy chewing the cellophane from cigarette packets, and I associated the smell of tobacco with Martin, so I had a certain fondness for it. He gave up fags years ago, though, and enjoys a cigar only rarely. Now that smoking is banned in all public spaces in Scotland, I don’t even notice it on people’s clothes. These days, if a visitor does smell of tobacco, I find it quite unpleasant.

As for smoking fish, I have mixed feelings. I’m not fond of a really strong cure, or the stuff that’s artificially coloured, but a mild smoking does something rather fine to a haddock. Like salting, it concentrates the flavour and firms up the flesh, making it denser and drier. The smell of a good kipper is enough to lure me right down to the kitchen from my vantage point on the second floor landing, even if I’m not very hungry. And smoked salmon always makes me purr contentedly, especially if it’s combined with scrambled eggs.

Last night, M. cooked a little smoked haddock that was left over from making the fish pie on Sunday, and topped each piece with a poached egg. He served it with a few potatoes, and preceded the dish with a salad of endives, garlic croutons and Stornoway black pudding. Quite an elegant combination for a Monday evening, I’d say.

They might have asked first….

As you’ll know if you’ve been reading my blog over the past six months, I was living almost exclusively on cod and coley until recently. Then I was diagnosed as a diabetic, and I’ve been put on special diabetic cat food that looks and smells not unlike wild boar paté. It’s very nice, and I can’t say that I particularly miss the fish. On the other hand, it was reassuring to know there were six coley portions in the freezer, just in case I needed them.

Note the past tense. Yesterday Martin made a fish pie when Annie’s parents came round for lunch. They only like bland food on account of being bonkers or something, so he used my coley - along with a little smoked haddock, boiled eggs, peas, parsley sauce and mashed potatoes - to create this nursery classic.

I don’t think that was fair. It’s not as if I eat their food. When I was a kitten I used to jump on the dining table for a nibble of this and that, and I still can’t resist stealing crisps on the rare occasions they buy them, but I don’t go into the fridge and consume WHOLE PORTIONS OF HUMAN DINNER. I suppose it doesn’t matter really, as I’m now on the new regime. But they should have asked me, just out of politeness.

Anyway, I went into a sulk and stayed upstairs throughout the visit, along with Chutney, who simply doesn’t like people. However, I was listening to the conversation drifting up from the dining room, and I couldn’t help laughing when, half way through lunch, Annie told her parents they were eating my dinner. They stopped chewing, mid-mouthful, thinking they were eating cat food!

If you’d like to deprive your own cat of his or her fish supper, here’s how to make the pie.

Heat the oven to 220 centigrade. Put 300gms each of fresh or frozen white fish fillets and smoked haddock (try to get the natural, un-died kind) into a dish and just cover with skimmed milk. Add a bay leaf or two. Put the fish in the oven for ten minutes. Meanwhile peel some floury potatoes and put them on to boil. Hard-boil three or four eggs.

Drain the fish and keep the milk. Break up the fish pieces and remove any skin or bone. Put the fish back in the dish with the quartered eggs and a couple of handfuls of frozen peas. Melt a tbs of butter and add a tbs of flour and mix to a paste. Strain the fishy milk into the flour and butter mixture very gradually, mixing as you go, to make a smooth sauce. Let this cook very gently for ten minutes, add a handful of chopped parsley and check for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the fish, eggs and peas in the dish, gently stirring or folding it all together. Mash your potatoes with butter and milk or cream. Spread over the top of the dish and put it into the oven for half an hour. That’s it, though if your dinner guests are not deeply suspicious of flavour, add a few prawns, some paprika or cayenne, or perhaps some black olives.

To truly appreciate this dish, it should be served in a small metal bowl on the kitchen floor and eaten by sticking your head straight in. Wash your whiskers carefully afterwards.

I'm amazing for my age....

I'm 126 years old, based on the calculation of seven cat years to 12 human months, and I've got all sorts wrong with me, so I'm on borrowed time. Make the most of me and pay attention, as I might not be around for much longer.

Having said that, I was at the vet's last Friday and he's pleased with my condition. My blood sugar seems to have stabilised, and I've lost a bit of weight so - hurrah! - I'm now on increased rations. My sister's not going anywhere in a hurry either, but unfortunately that's literally as well as metaphorically true, as she's suffering rather badly from arthritis. Now she's on yet another medication; a liquid painkiller that's applied in drops to her food. I think that's us on three each now.

I'm quite excited, because it's "Advent". I don't know what that means, but it's clearly a countdown to something. Whatever it's leading to, Annie is excited about it. Perhaps it's a special day when she and Martin won't have to go to work, and we can all play games together, or more realistically, all lie in front of the fire and sleep.

Come to think of it, in the recesses of my tiny brain, there are memories of something called "Christmas" at about this time of year. I think I recall that as a kitten, I once spent Christmas wrapped up in a net curtain in Annie's rented flat in Clarence Drive, and Santa brought me a chorizo. I think Chutney and I may have been in the cattery for Christmas once or twice, too. I can't see that happening this year, however, as A and M have been away abroad four or five times this year already.

Anyway, A is complaining bitterly that she hasn't got an Advent calendar, and that M won't let her have one. This also seems strangely familiar....

As for the human dinners this week, the wintery theme continues. M made beef stew with dumplings the other day; proper old-fashioned English dumplings with suet, and horseradish mixed into the dough. Of course at my age, I approve of anything old-fashioned.

Pineapple curry, anyone?

Last night, Martin made pineapple curry.

Perhaps you think of fruit exclusively as dessert. (Personally, I think of fruit as irrelevant, because I’m a small carnivore with a short digestive tract and vegetable matter has never held much allure for my species.) In fact pineapple and other fruit curries regularly feature on the dining tables of Southern India and Sri Lanka (if they have dining tables there. They may just eat from bowls on the floor, like I do.) Of course, meals in South Asia often consist of many small helpings of different dishes, and I doubt whether anybody ever sits down to a massive plate of pineapple curry and chips.

M told me curried fruit reminded him of his earliest exposure to ‘Indian’ food when he was little. His mum would make something called ‘curry’ with left-over roast chicken and raisins in peppery gravy, serving it in the centre of a ring of boiled rice. His dad, who was terrified of the slightest piquancy and believed in fruit as defence, would go through an elaborate ritual of peeling and slicing bananas and apples at the table as he waited for his dinner. He’d be wiping beads of sweat from his brow before the dish even made it through the serving hatch, and as soon as the stuff was before him, he’d throw his sliced fruit over it, take a timid mouthful and make exaggerated exclamations of the "pheewwhatascorcha" variety.

How times have changed. Hardly anybody has a hatch these days.

Pineapple curry
1 medium pineapple
1 small onion, chopped
6 curry leaves
½ tsp each chilli powder, turmeric, mustard seeds, fennel seeds
About 20mls coconut milk
Oil, salt
Peel the pineapple and slice it into rings. Remove the core if it’s tough and woody. Cut the rings into chunks.
Fry the onion in hot oil until transparent, add the curry leaves and the mustard seeds until the latter start to pop, add the pineapple, chilli powder and turmeric and stir-fry for a few minutes. Now add the coconut milk and taste. Add required salt and simmer for about five minutes, depending on how hard the pineapple is. Add the fennel seeds and let the curry bubble away for another minute or two. It’s ready. You might want to strew a few sliced fresh chillies and some coriander leaves over the top.

Winter Warmers

It's not particularly cold this week, but it is dark and miserable. At this time of year the temperature in the house lurches between extremes, as Annie regularly turns up all the radiators only for Martin to turn them all down again. It can get quite disconcerting for an old cat. On the food front, I am still enjoying my new diabetic dinners, while M has gone all old-fashioned and wintery. High points over the past few days have included ribollita, the Tuscan soup made with cannellini beans and cavolo nero, and devilled kidneys on toast.

For a big pot of the former, soak about 200 grams of cannellini overnight. Sweat finely chopped onions, carrots, celery, leeks and garlic in olive oil, then add tomatoes (tinned are usually the best), the beans and a head of chopped cavolo nero. (M keeps a handful of the dark green leaves back and adds them two-thirds through the cooking time to provide extra texture, but that isn't traditional.) You can add herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary) and a dried chilli or two if you fancy them, but don't put in any salt yet. Cover with water and cook for about 40 minutes in a pressure cooker, or 90 in a casserole dish. Check the beans - they should yield to the tooth but remain whole - and put some salt in. Cook a little longer if the soup needs it, and serve it with fresh bread. This is a dish that improves with keeping; "ribollita" means "re-boiled", so it's quite appropriate to bring it back to the table a few times, adding a bit of this and that (a potato, a glass of wine, fried bread) over subsequent days.

As for the kidneys, you devil them by mixing a little flour with some cayenne pepper and dried mustard powder in about equal proportions. Add salt and pepper. Slice lambs' kidneys in half, remove the hard white bits with scissors or a sharp knife and discard, then toss the cleaned kidneys in the flour, pepper and mustard mixture. Fry them in butter on a medium heat for a couple of minutes each side, until they're brown and crusty in places. Splash on some Worcestershire sauce and a bit of white wine, stock or water. Cover and simmer for a couple of minutes before serving on toast, with some mashed potato, or perhaps polenta.

Other than these winter warmers, there have been a few sausage dinners recently, a nice prawn curry, plenty of black pudding (one cooked with fried apples in a cream and mustard sauce that was sublime) and tonight was a Chinese hotpot of veal with peppers. As I write this, it's nearly time for Heston Blumenthal on the telly. He's making pizza tonight, and I expect M will be inspired to try all manner of molecular experimentation involving flour, yeast and, if Mr. Blumenthal's previous programmes are anything to go by, napalm. I fear the worst.

Acarajé.

Don't you love fritters made from pulses? Hot, crunchy little nibbles made from beans or peas which have been soaked, ground into a paste, formed into balls, patties or ovals, and deep fried? Things like falafel (chick peas), taamiya (from broad beans) and dahi vada (urid daal)? Couldn't you just eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day?

Well not me, because I'm a cat. However on Sunday Martin made a version that even I might enjoy, as it contains ground dried shrimp along with the pulses. It comes from Bahia in northern Brazil, it's very much a black (i.e. African-Brazilian) thing, it's based on black-eyed peas and it's called acarajé. Soak a pound of the peas overnight, and then soak 2 ounces of dried shrimp (available from Chinese supermarkets in the UK) for half an hour. Put the soaked peas and shrimp through a blender together with an onion and a little salt until you have a smooth paste. Form walnut sized balls (or flatten into patties) and deep fry. Fantastic with any spicy seafood stew, and especially anything flavoured with dênde (unrefined palm oil), such as the following môlho de acarajé.

For this, soak 2 ounces of dried shrimp for 30 minutes, then blitz in a blender with an onion, plenty of dried red chillies and a bit of salt. Heat 3 tbs of dênde in a small pan and add the paste, fry for a few minutes and serve with the hot acarajé. Spicy, fishy Bahian street food that will even get an old diabetic cat like me licking his little lips.

Britain's favourite.

My favourite dinner at the moment is diabetes-friendly tinned cat food, but for humans in Britain the number one dish is apparently chicken tikka masala. At the weekend Martin cooked a version of this that was quite extraordinary. It came from The Cinnamon Club Cookbook by Iqbal Wahab, founder of the Cinnamon Club restaurant in The Old Westminster Library - and one of the first Indian restaurateurs in London to get a Michelin star.

Now I'm only a cat, but even I know that chicken tikka masala is a made-up mongrel of a dish. In the book, Wahab tells an (apocryphal) story of its origins in the 1970s, when a British diner in an Indian restaurant ordered chicken tikka. The ignoramus was dismayed to be presented with a dry, grilled dish and demanded sauce, whereupon the chef opened a tin of tomato soup, warmed it through and poured it onto the chicken.

The Cinnamon Club version, Old Delhi Style Chicken Curry, is vastly superior. Marinate chicken (thigh meat, no skin or bone) with some garlic and ginger paste, a little salt, some chilli powder and lemon juice, for twenty minutes or so. Then add some yoghurt mixed with garam masala and leave for at least the same time again, while heating the oven to 220 centigrade. Roast the chicken until brown (or better, do this in a tandoor or over barbecue coals). Meanwhile put plenty of tomatoes (tinned are probably best, though Wahab doesn't say this) in a pan, and bring to the boil with some crushed ginger, garlic, whole cardamoms, cloves and a bay leaf. Simmer until the tomatoes are broken down, put through a blender (and a sieve if you want to be really smooth) and reheat, beating in a lot of butter until you get a glossy sauce. Put the cooked chicken and any juices in, simmer for five minutes, add more ginger, some cream, some crumbled dried methi leaves and garam masala and check the seasoning. You might (OK, you will) want to put some chillies in, too.

This is a spectacularly good dish. As you eat it, you're aware that it's a complete fabrication and has almost nothing to do with Indian food, but you don't care because it tastes like heaven. It's incredibly rich, though. I only had a pawful, and that was enough.

Sorry....

….but I haven’t been keeping you up to speed on the day-to-day dinners at our house, have I? Well, to be honest, they haven’t been particularly eventful. Personally, I’m doing fine on the feline-diabetes-friendly tinned food – in fact I’m loving it, and am feeling much better since I’ve been on it, thank you very much for asking.

As for human food, Martin has been revisiting a few old favourites this week. Sunday was faisanjan, an easy Persian dish that makes the most of pomegranates, which are still in season. To make it, you brown pieces of chicken (about a kilo of thighs with skin on and bone in, on this occasion), then fry some sliced onions with roughly ground walnuts (about 100grams). Remove the skin and pith from a pomegranate and put the seeds in the blender, whiz to a pulp and add to the browned onion and walnut mixture with the juice of a lemon and about 2 tsps of brown sugar (or honey). Replace the chicken and add stock, white wine or both to cover (the wine’s not traditional but helps the flavour), bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is ready. Sprinkle with some freshly chopped green herbs (coriander, flat-leaved parsley, dill, mint, whatever) and serve with your vegetables and carbohydrates of choice – M went for salad and mashed potato this time.

Monday night, they finished off the crab-cake mixture from Saturday (see Sunday 12th November for recipe), but without chips, it not being the weekend. Tuesday was a kind of bubble-and-squeak thing - as I wrote in my last post – Wednesday a bit of chicken curry was stretched out with some mushrooms (good combination) and then last night, M came home to find that neither the bratwurst nor the carne en salsa he’d taken out of the freezer had thawed, so he threw together some puttanesca sauce (see September 22nd for recipe) and boiled some pasta, as Annie was in a hurry to go to her Spanish class. Tonight it'll be one of the icy specimens that didn’t make it to the table yesterday, I would imagine.

Here’s a picture of spaghetti a la puttanesca – possibly one of the most impressive things you can make and serve from store-cupboard ingredients in less time than it takes to open a tin of cat food.

Before I sign off, I’d like to say “hi” to Zero, a cat from Cologne in Germany who left a comment on my blog back in September. Entshuldigung, Zero, dass ich vorher etwas nicht gesagt habe, aber heute war das ersten Mal dass ich deinen Komment gelesen habe. Vielen Dank, und es tut mir leid dass mein Deutsch so schreklich ist. (Aber vieleicht nicht so schlecht fur einen Katz, ja?)

Cannon and Bubble

Annie was working late last night, and with only himself to feed, Martin made do with left-overs. Clearly the better the left-overs, the better the resulting dish, and M’s mixture of mash with curly kale was excellent. Fluffy organic orla spuds had been pushed through a ricer and enriched with butter and Wensleydale cheese to accompany chicken at the weekend. The bright green, strongly-flavoured kale had been briefly blanched, then dressed with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. Last night, M mixed the remainder of each dish together and fried the combination in a small non-stick pan, combining the smooth, creamy texture of colcannon with the crispy texture and pleasantly bitter flavour you get from the almost-burned bits of bubble & squeak. He ate it with a fried egg and a bit of salad, and then watched Heston Blumenthal cook steak on the telly.
When I say on the telly, I don't mean that Mr. Blumenthal literally placed the meat on top of a television set and allowed it to absorb heat from the appliance, but as he put it in an almost-cold oven for 24 hours, he might as well have done. He started by blow-torching the surfaces of a huge forerib of beef, then placed it in a 50 degree oven overnight (helpfully adding that "if your oven won't go down this low, you can always prop the door open".) This virtually imperceptible "cooking" apparently breaks down the molecular structure of the joint while retaining the maximum moisture content, the result being meat that is incredibly tender and juicy, but equally full of flavour, thanks to it being taken from happy longhorn cattle fed on corn in an idyllic Herefordshire glade, and hung for four weeks to develop the faintest odour of blue cheese. He then took the meat off the bone, sliced it into thick steaks, and seared it quickly in a very hot pan, let it rest for a bit and served it with butter that had been kept “very close to some Stilton, so as to absorb the aroma but not the taste” (I’m not making this up), some mushroom ketchup, the making of which involved the nocturnal extraction of pure juice from said funghi, and a salad of decidedly retro-chic iceberg lettuce. Martin and I watched with a mixture of envy and incredulity as Heston tucked into what looked suspiciously like lukewarm, possibly bacteria-ridden and yet somehow perfectly delicious beef. "What are the chances of that, then?" we said to each other, in our best Harry Hill voices.
Come to think of it, Heston Blumenthal does look rather like Harry. I wonder if by chance they may be related?

Maryland Crab Cakes

I like crabs, I do. I've always fancied going to the seaside and playing with the little crabs that get stranded in rock pools at low tide. Unfortunately, being largely confined to the house for my entire life, I've never had the opportunity.

The nearest I ever came to realising this particular ambition was when Martin bought a couple of lobsters home from the fishmongers and put them in the bath, hoping to keep them happy until dinner-time that evening. Of course as soon as they hit cold, fresh water, they were revived from their torpid state and started banging around the avocado suite like there was no tomorrow. Which for them, there wasn't. Realising he was going to have to dispatch them fairly sharpish, M put a big pan of water on the stove. Meanwhile, my sister and I kept an eye on the vicious brutes, which continued to flip, flap and ping about the bathroom. Fortunately they had little elastic bands holding their claws shut, or I might have lost a whisker, or worse!

Anyway, back to crabs, which are like lobsters but even tastier, I think. Last night M made Marlyand Crab Cakes from a recipe given to him by his friends Vinny and Robin, who live in Maryland (Annapolis, to be precise), so should know what they're talking about. Vinny is one of M's best friends and so according to the anthropomorphic conventions they often use when they're talking to me, he's "my uncle". The recipe has been provided to Doug Hill at Lupe Pinto's deli (for all things Mexican, American and Mexican-American) who is meant to be publishing it, but there's no sign of the book yet, so make the most of this.

1 lb Jumbo Lump crabmeat (that's American specifications for you. We can't be so choosy over here, so fresh is best and try not to break up the chunks too much).
Saltine Crackers (8-10 crumbled) or 3 sliced white bread torn into fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg beaten
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp Old Bay Seasoning (see below)
1 tbsp baking powder
1tsp mustard
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leafed parsley
"In a large bowl combine the egg, mayonnaise, Old Bay Seasoning, baking powder, mustard, and parsley. Mix in the crumbled saltines or fresh breadcrumbs. Carefully add the crabmeat trying not to break up the lumps while mixing it with the wet ingredients. Shape crabmeat mixture into six cakes. These can be cooked one of three ways: Sauté in olive oil until browned on both sides, broil (that's US for grill) until browned, or deep fry until browned. We find sautéing to be the best but that depends on personal tastes. Serve with tartar sauce or cocktail sauce. These are also excellent as sandwiches."

Old Bay Seasoning (if you can't find it ready-made)

1 Tbsp Celery Seed

1 Tbsp Whole Black Peppercorns

6 Bay Leaves

1/2 Tsp Whole Cardamom

1/2 Tsp Mustard Seed

4 Whole Cloves

1 Tsp Sweet Hungarian Paprika

1/4 Tsp Mace

In a spice grinder or small food processor, combine all of the ingredients. Grind well and store in a small glass jar.

Invalid food turns out to be rather good....

Excellent news! My new diabetic dinner is fantastic! I just can’t get enough of the stuff, which is just as well because if I didn't like it, I'd die.

I confess that when they told me I was going on a medically approved diet, I imagined some bland, tasteless pap; you know, like the never-quite-specified gruel-type things they feed to invalids in Victorian novels. So imagine my delight when I saw the rich, dense, moist meat in my bowl! I wondered if they'd made a mistake and given me rilletes de porc instead.

To be more accurate, the meat is more like the wild boar pate Martin bought the last time the French market was in Glasgow. However, my diet can keep me alive indefinitely - or at least until the next bit of my ancient anatomy gives up the ghost - and I don't think you could say the same for wild boar. And my food is only about a pound for a tin, rather than £4 for a chi-chi little jar. Be honest, which would you choose?

You're stuck with me a bit longer...

...as it appears I'm not quite ready for the big litter-tray in the sky! The vet 'phoned today and the blood tests show that I don't have kidney failure! The bad news is that I do have diabetes, just like Martin's mum. (She's eighty and I'm only seventeen-and-three-quarters, but I am in fact older than her in cat years; about a hundred and something, I think. Not that I know what a year is, really, what with not having a firm grasp on the concept of time.)

Anyway, I'm delighted I've got a few more months of head-butts, purring, spider-chasing and inexplicable, doomed attempts to shag my sister ahead of me. Not to mention the wonderful prospect of all those hours and hours of sleep. Unfortunately my diet will be curtailed a little - they're going to try me on some special diabetic catfood. It looks like I've had my last Mars bar.

Intimations of mortality.

Oh dear, I’ve not been well. Not well at all. By Tuesday, I hadn’t eaten anything for two days and I was behaving very oddly. I kept thinking I wanted a drink, going over to the water bowl, and somehow forgetting I was thirsty. Then I’d just stare at my reflection like Narcissus, feeling confused. I’d stopped talking as well, hardly emitting so much as a mew all day, and I was a bit wobbly on my feet. Martin took me to the vet, who wasn’t optimistic. I got the usual thermometer up my bottom and blood tests, and then some great drugs that fair perked me up. By the time I got home I almost felt like my old self, and tucked into a small bowl of sardines in tomato sauce with some gusto. However, I understand this improvement may be a temporary reprieve - they’re waiting for the test results, you see. I’m afraid I may not be able to entertain you on this blog for much longer….

But let’s not be morbid. Martin’s cooking vindaloo tonight! I saw the pork going into its spicy, vinegary marinade yesterday evening, so it will be maturing nicely in the fridge ready for him to slap it in the pan when he gets home.

He's just showing off....

I'm feeling a bit poorly at the moment, and I don't have much of an appetite. Despite not being hungry, however, I've been pretty impressed by Martin’s output in the kitchen over the weekend. He seemed to be showing off for some reason, to be honest.

On Friday night he made falafels, or to be more accurate, taamiya. The distinction is that the former are usually made from chickpeas and hail from Palestine, Israel and the Lebanon, whereas the latter are Egyptian and made with dried broad beans. This Egyptian version is lighter, and the mixture holds together better, than the chick-pea variety. Here’s a recipe.
500g dried white broad beans, skinned
2 onions, very finely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 big handful of parsley or coriander leaves, or a mixture of the two
2tsp ground cummin
2tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp baking powder
Salt, pepper, chilli powder to taste

Soak the beans overnight. Drain and grind them in a blender or food processor with the rest of the ingredients until you have a smooth paste. The smoother it is, the better the taamiya will hold together. Take lumps the size of a wallnut and flaten them between your hands before sliding them gently into hot oil. Deep fry in batches until brown, keep warm and serve with salad, bread, tahini paste, harissa, yoghurt or whatever else takes your fancy. (Use the same recipe with chick-peas if you must, but it won't be as good.)

Saturday’s dinner was carne en salsa, or “meat in sauce”. It’s a singularly unhelpful name for a dish which in theory could be made with any carne en any salsa; but there’s no confusion in the Alpujarra (which is the bit of Spain where M and A go when my sister Chutney and I are “on holiday” at the cattery). There it’s pork, almonds, garlic and a few other bits and pieces. To make it, fry 50gms blanched almonds and 50gms of white bread until light brown. Set these aside and brown a kg of pork shoulder (cut into large dice) in a casserole dish or pressure cooker, then add a tomato, a head of garlic, and an onion, each sliced through the middle, and half a bottle of white wine. You can add bay leaves, saffron threads, pimenton (hot or sweet, depending on your taste), maybe a mild, dried chilli or two, and salt and pepper. Cover and cook on a low heat for about an hour, (twenty minutes in a p.c.). Now fish out the cooked garlic and what’s left of the tomatoes and onions from the stew and put them in a blender with the reserved almonds and bread, plus two fresh cloves of garlic. Blitz to form a paste and pour back into the pot. Cook gently for another ten or fifteen minutes, adding water if it gets too thick. Check the seasoning and serve with potatoes, or just bread and salad. If you’d like to be more precise, there’s a good recipe for this in Casa Moro, the excellent cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark of Moro restaurant in Exmouth Market, London. (The Clarks spend time in the Alpujarra, too. I wonder if their cats “go on holiday” when they’re away?)

M followed the carne with Hugh Fearnly-Whitingstall’s granny’s bramley-apple burned cream out of The Guardian. This is nice and easy. You need some ramekins that will happily sit under a hot broiler or grill, or stand up to a bit of blowtorch action. Peel, chop and cook some apples to a puree with a bit of sugar or honey. Whip some double cream until it’s stiff. Put the cooled puree in the ramekins, top with cream to come just below the rims. Stick them in the freezer for a bit, then cover the top with soft brown sugar and put under a hot grill until the sugar melts and bubbles. Then cool them again and serve with a glass of desert wine. (It’s important to get the cream cold before the grilling stage, or it will boil up and you won’t get a nice brown surface.)

The clocks went back on Sunday, whatever that means. Last week I was eating breakfast in the dark and dinner in daylight, and now it’s the other way around. Martin made a paella with cauliflower and bacalao (salt cod). It had a satifsyingly fishy flavour and a lovely fragrance thanks to a generous pinch of saffron threads. (I sneaked a mouthful when the pan was bubbling away on the stove, and I was quite surprised to find I like cauliflower. I’m a cat, after all! But the cauliflower had a rather soothing effect on my upset tummy.)

Tomorrow is Halloween and M has bought a bag of fun-size for the trick-or-treaters, but none of them will come round and we’ll be getting diminutive Mars Bars and Milky Ways for dinner for the rest of the week. So don’t expect any interesting blogs until next weekend.

Paris Hilton Naked

Martin tells me the way to get visits to your website is to pepper it with the key words and terms that people are currently searching for on the web. Then you have a good chance that your site will pop up “when they’re Googling”, he says. I was very interested in his comments as I’m a little disappointed in the traffic levels I’m getting for my blog.

I only have a small brain and much of this is beyond me, but let’s see if this little lot helps: Haloween, Guy Fawkes, YouTube, Wikipedia, Jordan, Jack Straw, veils, Eid-ul-Fitr, The National Lottery, cheap flights, Madonna, Malawi, adoption, Lily Allen, Prince Charles’ household accounts, Iraq, Heather Mills, Ruth Archer and Sam, pumpkins, Leeds United, cheap mortgage deals, penile enhancement, winter holidays, dead Fred off Coronation Street, lowest petrol prices, train times, Chantelle and Preston, the weather, and the Congressional elections.

As for my personal interests, there’s cod, coley, plaice, mackerel, tuna, sleeping, sole, huss, dace, prawns, incest, sardines, purring, anchovies, trout, flounder, salmon, biscuits, sprats and spiders.

I promised M that I wouldn’t try to mislead anybody by using provocative and misleading terminology just to get hits, but I can’t resist writing that I am a beautiful hairy pussy. Well, I am.

Bubble and Hash

As I may have mentioned, when Annie works nights and Martin is home alone, he tends to browse on toast, finish left-overs and eat stuff she doesn’t like, like eels, celery or tofu. Last night he used some cold, cooked potatoes in a corned-beef hash.

In the United States this is a noble dish (apparently - I wouldn’t know, I’m a cat) made with a superior meat that’s more like pastrami than the stuff we get in tins in the UK. They sometimes start with raw potatoes and add beef broth, stewing it down until the potatoes are cooked. The way most Brits (including M) make it, though, is more like bubble and squeak, with left-over boiled spuds browned with sliced onions on a high heat with just a little fat in a non-stick frying pan. He breaks up the potatoes as they sizzle away, then adds cubes of tinned Fray Bentos half-way through cooking so they crumble in the heat a bit. He likes to flatten the mixture and fold it over in a small skillet, serving it half-moon shaped, like a French omelette. But then he’s like that.

The ratio of potatoes to corn beef is either 5/3, or, within reason, the left-over spuds you happen to have/the contents of whatever size tin of corned beef is in the cupboard. Good things to add are other left-over vegetables, like carrots and beetroot, fresh or dried herbs, chillies, Worcestershire sauce and mustard. And of course, a runny fried egg on top is a quick and delicious way to make it into a substantial meal. Minor TV celeb and chef John Quigley of Red Onion in Glasgow used to do a nice one like this, finishing the dish with artful flourishes of HP Sauce. Posh.

Meanwhile, I had steamed white fish and cat biscuits again.

Porridge again

We’re just out of prison after a short stretch, and to be honest it wasn’t bad this time. We’ve been in the cattery three times in the past six months, so despite having small brains and short memories, my sister and I have worked out that when we go in, we’ll only be there for a week, or two at the most.

Now that I know I’m not going to be in there forever, I can relax and enjoy the novelty of having dozens of other cats to observe. It was busy last week, and nearly all the cages were occupied. Not everyone was as happy as we were. The poor chap in the photograph cried and moped the whole time we were there, and nobody came to pick him up at the weekend, so I suppose he’s in there for a while. I felt awfully sorry for him. There was also a Persian with unfortunate weepy eyes and a squashed-looking face. He had a strange accent when he mewed, and the rest of us could hardly make out what he was saying. As usual there were lots of sleek, bouncy young cats and kittens who made me feel old by comparison.

Getting back home was absolutely fantastic, of course. Once I’d run around and had a quick check on the property, I stretched out on the first-floor landing and purred as loud as I could for about half an hour. Then I was almost embarrassingly affectionate to Annie and Martin for a bit, before settling in for a good long sleep. Even Chutney was quite cheerful, and surprisingly hungry.

Fortunately, I didn’t really have to eat porridge in prison - I got the usual fish and biscuits. Helpings were more than adequate, though dinner was served rather late for my liking. As for A and M, they’ve been in Spain again, so I would hazard a guess that they’ve been living on ham and wine, though they probably ate fish as well, as they were in Seville and Malaga as well as the mountains. On their first night back, Martin made a brief visit to the shops before cooking simple lamb chops (with garlic, and rosemary from the back yard), and then yesterday it was the traditional post-holiday curry. Nothing too elaborate (rice with green lentils, kheema, greens cooked with mustard seeds) but hot as hell thanks to the addition of some naga peppers. They must miss the capsaicin when they’re away, as they’re dying for a fix when they get home.

Kinderessen

They had a curious tea last night, my humans. Namely black-eyed peas, parsnip chips, steamed carrots and broccoli, and a couple of Bernese sausages. The Bernese are not great; like Frankfurters wrapped in smoked bacon, they have something of the children’s food product about them, although apparently they are considered fit for adults in Germany. Martin bought them by accident (he wanted bratwurst, an altogether more grown-up sausage) and wouldn’t buy them again, but they’re not bad enough to throw away, so they will be used. Besides, Annie rather likes them.

Thick, crisp and slightly sweet, the parsnip chips were great. (Or so M told me. I’ll take his word for it. I’m with the French on this one and believe parsnips are for horses.) And the black-eyed peas seem to be a bit of an enthusiasm at the moment. This is probably to do with the prolonged honeymoon period Martin is enjoying with his pressure cooker, which does them in fifteen minutes. They will be back on the agenda tomorrow night in rice-and-peas (to go with peanut butter and chilli chicken). Tonight A is working so M will get home, feed and medicate my sister and me ineptly (he always has to peer at the labels and check the calendar before we get our pills and, more importantly, our tea), and then he will probably eat an inappropriate combination of leftovers, as he usually does when alone.

Nostalgia

All that talk about my Mancunian origins the other day ("Eeee, etc." Wednesday 4th October) has brought me out all wistful and nostalgic. So I'm including a picture of my favourite Manchester band, The Smiths. Morrissey came from Stretford, not far from where I was born in a cupboard under the stairs in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1989.

When I was born, one of four kittens in my Mum's first (and I believe only) litter, I was blind and very small, but I was easily distiginguishable from my siblings, as I was the ginger one. The others were my sister Chutney, who as you know is a dark tortoishell tabby, another girl who was a lovely matt grey finish and who was later given the name of Spook and moved to some godforsaken small town in Lancashire, and poor old black-and-white Bastard, who didn't really have much in the way of social skills (or any other skills) and got run over early in life.

I'd already been picked out before conception! You see Mart said to Fionulla (who owned our Mum, Zukie) that if her cat had kittens, he wanted "the ginger one". So I was all right. He chose Chutney to go with me because when we were little, we got on very well. How times have changed...

So six weeks or so after we were born, we went to live in Martin's house (which didn't have any furniture in it, but that's another story). We were so little then that we used to sit on M's feet, and when he walked around the house, we'd cling on for dear life. It was a classic Manchester two-up-two down, and I still remember the triumphant moment when I managed to climb the stairs for the first time.

We were only there for a month or so when he lost his job and got another one in Glasgow. We went to stay at M's sister Judy's house in Chester while he went living it up in Paris for a bit, then he came home, put us in a transit van with all his furniture, and moved us up to a rented tenement flat in Shawlands.

I just about remember my Mum, and I recall that she looked like Chutney, though not as fat. Before I was born, she used to stay at Martin's house when her humans were on holiday, and she did her best to destroy his yucca plant. Then when we came into the world and started to live with him, we finished the job! As for my Dad, I think he was a Jack Russel terrier called Zack. We used to scratch his face and bite his ears, but he was never cross with us, so I think he must have loved us, even if he wasn't our proper father.

A miss and a hit

The pressure cooker is not without its dangers. On Saturday Martin adapted a recipe from The Herald for lamb casserole with vegetables and black pudding. He used about 400g mutton, a couple of organic carrots cut into large chunks, some whole, peeled shallots, a large potato and a couple of slices of Stornoway black pudding. He browned the mutton in olive oil and gave it ten minutes at high pressure with about a quarter pint of stock, added the carrots and shallots (which had been coloured in a frying pan first) for a further ten, then put in the sliced spud and the pudding for a final ten at low pressure on a very low heat.

It sounds promising, don't you think? But inexplicably (to M), there was enough liquid to constitute soup, and both the black pudding and the potato had disappeared into the broth, while the carrots were as soft as baby food. (The meat and the shallots were excellent, though, and the whole thing tasted much better than it looked, to be fair.)

A more successful application occurred on Thursday, when M used the p.c. to prepare black-eyed peas in about fifteen minutes. There was no soaking, no skimming away froth, no changing the water and no boiling dry. What’s more, the peas retained a nice firm texture while being entirely cooked and fully digestible.

Of course as a cat, I wouldn’t thank you for black-eyed peas. I didn't even like Where is the Love.

Eeee, we like a mixed grill 'round our 'ouse...

...as they no doubt say in The North. Anyway, that's what us 'ad for us teas tonight. Martin grilled aubergines, courgettes, red peppers, serrano chillies, field mushrooms, haloumi cheese, Toulouse sausages and black pudding, and served it all with boiled new potatoes (six minutes in the pressure cooker, which is still enough of a novelty to be used even when not strictly necessary) and sliced runner beans with carrots (four minutes in aforesaid technological marvel). He forgot to make the salad, but with all those vegetables, and pears and dates for dessert, it wasn't needed. He uses a heavy, cast-iron, ridged grill pan, which is the best way to get those nice grill stripes on to food, save of course for a barbecue (and we won't be seeing one of those for eight months).

Me, I just had me flippin' usual. You may not know, but I'm a Northern cat, as it 'appens. Born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, I'll 'ave thee know. I could have been the cat in the title sequence on Coronation Street, but they flamin' moved us up to Scotland when we was kittens, like.

I do apologise. I have no idea what came over me. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible....

Under Pressure

After thinking about it for twenty-seven years, Martin finally bought a pressure cooker last week, and while it’s going to take a bit of practice for him to master it completely, first impressions are brilliant. He made a cassoulet-style dish of cannellini beans with Toulouse sausages (and some other dark cooking sausage from the French market, the name of which he’s forgotten), and while it wasn’t a classic, it was pretty good, and took about 17 minutes instead of two days. He used the pressure cooker to sterilise a couple of jars for chutney (apple chutney, not Chutney my sister). Then at the weekend he accidentally bought mutton instead of lamb at the Asian butchers, and even then the curry he made was ready in three-quarters of an hour. Nice recipe, too, called Badami Gosht (which would translate as “Almonds and Meat”). It came in a booklet with the cooker (a rather stylish Prestige 4.25 litre "curry pan" with a rounded base for easier initial shallow-frying of onions and so on, as in the photograph):

For 600g mutton, off the bone and cut into large dice, fry a chopped onion in the bottom of the pressure cooker with six cardamoms, a cinnamon stick and six cloves. After a minute or so add a couple of garlic cloves and a thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped fine. Add the meat and fry for a couple of minutes, stirring, until browned. While this is underway, steep a big pinch of saffron threads in a tbs of boiling water and add, together with a tsp or more of chilli powder, to three tbs of (preferably Greek) yoghurt, and beat. Separately grind 50g of almonds and mix with enough cold water to make a paste. Add the yoghurt and almond mixes to the pot (Greek yoghurt doesn’t split in the heat; if you use the thin stuff you’ll have to cool the meat first) and cook for a few minutes, then add half a pint of coconut milk. Simmer with the lid off for 15 minutes, then put the lid on the cooker, bring to full pressure, reduce heat to minimum and leave to simmer for a further 15. Release the pressure and scatter with coriander leaves (and chopped fresh chillies if you want some more heat). Serve with a vegetable dish or two, and home-made chapattis, or whatever flat bread you can manage.

This was exceptionally rich and fragrant, with the cooking method seeming to concentrate the wonderful flavours of saffron and almonds while producing tender, moist meat. It would work really well with goat, though that isn’t very easy to find in Glasgow, unfortunately.

What do you serve with bang-bang chicken?

Last night Martin made bang-bang chicken, a Chinese salad made by dressing the poached, shredded meat of two skinned chicken breasts with a tablespoon each of peanut butter, soy sauce, sesame oil and chilli-bean paste, plus half a tablespoon each of Chinese black vinegar and sugar. You mix all those things together and add enough water to get a thick liquid. Then taste and adjust the sweet/sour/hot/salt balance, if it needs it. Add the cold chicken and toss. Meanwhile tear up a lettuce and mix it with a handful each of chopped coriander and mint. Cover a large plate with these greens and add some cucumber slices (there are versions with shredded carrots on the web too) and pile the chicken on top. Strew a few finely sliced spring onions over the whole thing.

Unusually for Chinese food – or at least the kind of Chinese food we’re used to in the West – a salad like this doesn’t seem to suit steaming-hot rice or noodles, but as they were eating it as a main course, it needed something. “What do you want with your bang-bang chicken?” Martin asked Annie. “Boom-boom chips” she replied. He immediately set to peeling spuds.

M loved the cold salad, hot chips combination, and it reminded him of eating feta cheese salad with curly fries at a pub called Bar Bola he used to frequent when he still had money to eat lunch. Now all his money goes on medication and vet’s bills for two old cats.

Martin's Plums

A minor turn up for the books this weekend, as Martin made a pudding. He normally leaves that sort of thing to Annie, as he thinks he has enough to worry about with starters, main courses, packed lunches, weekend breakfasts, and a steady supply of home-made bread. However, plums are in season now and this mousse by Dan Lepard in The Observer caught his eye. You need

450g plums
50ml water
250ml milk
150g caster sugar
2 eggs, separated
2tbsp cornflour
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g preserved ginger
250ml double cream

Stone and chop the plums, put them in a pan with the water and simmer for ten minutes. Cool. Whisk the milk with 50g sugar, egg yolks, cornflour and vanilla extract. Bring to the boil, whisking continuously, stir in the cool plums and allow to get completely cold. Stir the egg whites with remaining sugar, heat in a double boiler until piping hot and beat to create a thick, glossy meringue. Chop the ginger into little nuggets. Beat the cream until thick, fold the plum mixture and ginger through the meringue, gently fold in the cream, spoon into tumblers and chill for at least four hours. This makes six according to Dan Lepard, or eight according to Martin. Excellent, but next time M would use a little less sugar and real vanilla.

My sister Chutney is getting fussier about her meals these days, and she is now on steamed cod and coley like me, rather than commercial cat food. This defeats the object of my leaving my own dinner half way through to muscle in on hers, but I do it anyway, out of force of habit.

A proper family dinner

For a change last night we all had the same thing for dinner - me, my sister and our humans, Annie and Martin. We all had cod. Granted ours was frozen block, zapped in the microwave and served with cat biscuits, while theirs was home-salted bacalao formed into croquetas, fried in olive oil and accompanied by a green salad, stewed mushrooms, patatas bravas and cornbread. And while Chutney and I had a bowl of tap water between us, A and M had gin and tonic, white wine, red wine and, I think, brandy.

The croquetas looked and smelled excellent. They're nothing like the fried potato nonsense the British mean when they talk about "croquettes", but instead they're made with a kind of stiff bechamel sauce. Salt cod is a popular ingredient, but they are often made with left-over chicken or cooked ham. The principle is the same in any case. To make about six you need:
- 1 tbs oil (extra virgin olive, naturally)
- 2 tbs plain white flour
- 150 gs of salt cod (or whatever else you're using)
- 1/4 litre of milk
- an egg
- breadcrumbs
- black pepper
- oil for deep-frying

Warm the tbs of oil in a frying pan and add the flour off the heat. Work it with a wooden spoon to amalgamate, put it back on a low flame, then add the milk, drop by drop (it works better if the milk is hot). You should end up with a thick paste, something like the consistency of cream cheese. Cook the bacalao in water or milk as normal, then drain and cut or shred into little pieces. Add a little pepper if you fancy it - but no salt, as the cod is salty already - and mix the fish in well.

Chill the mixture in the fridge. When it's cold and stiff, it will be quite easy to form into balls; or better still, oval shapes. Dip each one in beaten egg and breadcrumbs and deep fry until golden. Serve. This is only enough for a tapa for two people, and you can obviously multiply the ingredients to make more. However, these deliciously rich, salty little morsels are best served in small quantities alongside other dishes, as they would be in a Spanish bar.

Japanese chicken and tart's pasta

This week Martin made a couple of meals worthy of comment. There was a dish of roast chicken thighs (bone in and skin on) in a yakitori-teriaki style marinade of sake, soy, grated ginger and honey. M added the honey as he didn’t have any mirin (the sweet Japanese cooking wine you’re supposed to use). After twenty-four hours in the marinade, the chicken spent about forty minutes in a 200c oven, getting a basting every ten minutes or so. The result was beautiful glossy, fragrant, almost caramelised chicken, which was even better when M poured off the excess fat and deglazed the pan with more sake and soy to make a gravy to pour over the top. He served the chicken with green beans dressed with ground sesame seeds and a salad of baby spinach with soy and lemon dressing, and it was delicious. (I only got to chew on a little discarded chicken skin, but the flavour was great.)

The other new dish on the repertoire is puttanesca sauce for pasta. As you probably know, the name means “prostitute’s sauce”, apparently because it can easily be made on the single gas ring you get in the small bed-sits that Italian tarts traditionally call home. (Logically then, if it was British, it would be called “benefit-receiving underclass sauce”.)

Puttanesca is not new to M. Indeed he’s been making it since he was a student, long before he met Annie. However, he gave it up because A wouldn’t eat olives. Now she’s suddenly and inexplicably developed a taste for them, this fast, cheap and delicious dish is back on the menu.

It’s a store-cupboard standard, this. You need
- a small tin of anchovies
- two cloves of garlic
- a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, including all their juice
- about 100g of black olives, pitted and chopped
- about 75g of capers, chopped
- (optional) a dried chilli or two, olive oil, chopped parsley, black pepper
So with the exception of the garlic and (if you’re using it) the parsley, everything can be kept handy in a cupboard for many years, just like cat food. How convenient can you get?

To make it, put a pan on a low heat and put the oil and anchovies in. (You can either use the oil from the can, or drain the fish and use a better quality extra-virgin. That’s why I’ve listed olive oil as “optional”.) As they warm, they will start to dissolve. Help them along with the back of a wooden spoon and add the mashed garlic. When the garlic has softened a little, add the chopped tomatoes. Allow to bubble away for about ten minutes, then add the olives, capers and, if you’re using them, the chilli, black pepper and parsley (you certainly won’t need any salt). Cook until the olives are hot, and serve with freshly drained pasta. Spaghetti is traditional for this, but any pasta will do.

I’ve never considered selling my body, but like most cats, I love pasta alla puttanesca. And apparently “cat house” is a term for a brothel.

Nigella comes to stay

Annie bought Martin a copy of Nigella Lawson's Feast last week, in part because it was only a fiver (remaindered from £25). Martin wasn't unequivocal in his enthusiasm at first, but on exploring the book he rather warmed to Mrs. Saatchi's work. There's some daft stuff in there, it's true (left-over spuds fried up with bacon, eggs, cheese and frozen peas on return from the pub is not a recipe, it's an accident) but there are some very good ideas in there too. So far he's done:
- Crispy pork chops beaten out thin and coated in breadrumbs mixed with Parmesan (not so much a recipe as sense, but good).
- Green beans cooked with lots of butter, black pepper and lemon (ditto, but she does suggest chopping and using the whole peeled fruit rather than messing with just the juice or zest, which is both bold and very good, although not to my taste as a cat).
- Beef marinated in Worcestershire sauce, mustard and soy, grilled, sliced and served with a sauce made with more Worcestershire, mustard and soy, plus fish sauce and sake (lovely).
- Basmati rice with cadomoms (good, but doesn't work that well with the sake beef as she suggests).
She has an excellent way of cooking steak that entails giving it two minutes on a very hot grill pan, then wrapping it in two thicknesses of aluminium foil and leaving it on a pile of newspaper for insulation for ten minutes before carving. This produced perfect rare-but-not-too-bloody, still-warm meat, though M did use quite thick medallions and thought that with ordinary sirloin, half that time would do.
Personally I think M is a bit sniffy about Nigella. She seems like just the sort of glamorous, bosomy, posh lady I rather like, and if she came round to our house in person rather than in book form, she'd get plenty of head-buts and purrs from me. I would like to know if she's named after the tiny black seeds used in Indian cooking, or if they just put an extra 'l' and an 'a' on the end of her Dad's name (which would seem a bit unimaginative). What do you think?

A minor indignity

It was time for a check-up on Friday, so Annie took us to the veterinary surgery. This is a regular occurrence these days and we ought to be more relaxed about it, but it always makes us unhappy. I’m never quite sure if I’m about to spend a couple of minutes with a thermometer up my bottom or a fortnight in the cattery, as in my experience these are the only two possible outcomes of a car journey. So I cry in the car, especially when it’s sitting at traffic lights. (I know I can’t be heard very well over the sound of the moving vehicle, so I save my breath and start screaming when the hand-brake goes on.) Chutney is even worse than me, resisting arrest at home, and growling throughout the journey, with her ears flattened and her tail bushed out. Whichever of our human companions is driving us will usually say reassuring things like “don’t cry, babies, nearly there, poor babies” in a drippy voice, but that makes it worse. When they come out with that patronising crap, I suspect they’re going to have me put down.

Anyway, this particular visit wasn’t without its highlights, despite my anxiety. When we’d parked the car and entered the surgery, a number of people in the waiting room – ladies, naturally – admired me enthusiastically. One discerning woman said “what a beautiful ginger cat!” Another had a dog which showed a lot of interest in me, so she warned him off, telling the silly animal that “the kitten didn’t want to play”. The kitten! I’m nearly eighteen, and she wasn’t being sarcastic. Perhaps “kitten” is taking it a bit far - she was no spring chicken herself, and her eyesight may not have been 20/20. However, when it was my turn to see the vet (thermometer up the arse as usual, plus a good general manhandling), I was told that I was in “amazing condition” for such a mature gentleman. I do hope that was “amazing” as in “amazingly good”. I’m pretty sure it was, because there were smiles all round. Chutney didn’t get quite such a clean bill of health, though she’s “stable”, so she’s with us for a while yet.

So despite the indignity of the thermometer (haven’t they heard of lube?) it wasn’t such a bad morning. I almost forgot to cry in the car on the way home, and when I climbed out of my basket in the hallway, I celebrated with a quick run around the house and a long sleep. Chutney just went straight to bed, growling.

Cod Squash

Martin created a really impressive dish last night - or at least it was impressive for a Wednesday. I thought I’d share it with you.

Roast Cod with Butternut Squash

400grms fresh cod fillet in thick pieces
About the same weight of butternut squash (half a big one)
Handful of cherry tomatoes
Sprig of fresh rosemary
Olive oil, salt and pepper

Heat the oven to about 200c. Remove the seeds and stringy bits from the cavity of the squash, peel and slice to the width of a coin. Toss the slices in a splash of oil. Transfer to a roasting pan or ovenproof dish and put into the hot oven for twenty minutes, or until two-thirds cooked. Place the sprig of rosemary in the middle and lay the fish on top. Season with plenty of salt and black pepper. Spoon some of the oil in the base of the pan over the fish and throw the cherry tomatoes here and there. Put the pan back in the oven for ten minutes or until the fish is just opaque in the middle and a little brown around the edges, and the tomatoes have split in the heat, releasing some of their juices. Serve with a lemon-dressed green salad and good bread.

A and M thought the combination of slightly-sweet squash with the fish, perfumed gently with rosemary and lubricated by the hot tomatoes, was sublime. I, meanwhile, had frozen coley with Science Diet, which is what I always have.

Useless plaster cat!

Just inside our front door, sitting on a little shelf and pointing inwards towards the heart of our home in the approved Feng Shui position, sits a Japanese ceramic “lucky” cat like the one in the photo. This is meant to bring money into our household, but it clearly doesn’t work, because NOBODY EVER CLICKS ON MY GOOGLE ADSENSE LINKS. I’ve been writing my blog for four months now and the total payment accrued is less than $30! The damned plaster cat is worth more than that! Google won’t even send me a cheque until I reach $100, and I might be dead by then! (I’m not particularly greedy, but I would like to make a small contribution towards my veterinary bills just once before I go.)

Apparently though, nobody makes money out of blogging except for a few fashionable young women who write about sex. Unfortunately, as a neutered male cat, that subject is more or less beyond me. (Sometimes I get a bit of a residual urge, climb on top of my sister, grasp the fur at the back of her neck in my mouth, and sort of push my hips at her. Then she growls at me, spins around and hits me in the face with her paw. At this point I tend to forget what it was I was doing, and wander off for a drink of water or something. That's about as sexy as it gets in my life, I'm afraid.)

My blog may be more cats and cooking than shags and shopping, but there must be someone out there who can see a commercial opportunity in it. Any publishers thinking in terms of a nice little hardback for the Christmas market should e-mail Martin (see profile for address), and we'll get back to them.

Anyway, dinner last night for Annie and Martin was suppli al telefono, which is left-over risotto formed into balls around pieces of mozzarella, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, and deep-fried. You break open the balls and the melted cheese forms strings like telephone wires, hence the name. M served them with a home-made tomato sauce flavoured with garlic, a little chilli and some flat-leafed parsley from the garden.

To return to the ceramic cat before I sign off – Martin told me the other day that in Spain, instead of saying “as blind as a bat” they say “ciego como un gato de yeso”, or “as blind as a plaster cat”. I love that!

Sorry - I forgot all about the food!

I got so carried away reminiscing about kittenish scratching techniques and so on in my last post, I forgot to mention food – and that is, after all, what my blog is meant to be about! So to correct the situation….. I have been eating white fish fillets and Science Diet cat biscuits as usual.

Martin, meanwhile, has been keeping up a respectable if unremarkable standard in the kitchen. On Thursday he did a mixed vegetable curry, dhal, and aubergine pakoras. These fritters are made with a batter of chick pea flour (called “besan” in Asian shops) mixed with a little baking powder and sparkling water or beer until you get the consistency of thick cream. You add salt and pepper, and you can put in some finely chopped chillies, coriander leaves or dried spices too. Slice the aubergines finely, coat in the batter and deep fry in hot oil. On Friday there was risotto made with sliced chestnut mushrooms, white wine and chicken stock (from a cube, because there wasn’t any real stock in the freezer). Saturday night was gulas (or gulash, if you prefer that spelling) – a welcome rare appearance for this classic and the first time they’ve had beef in months – and then on Sunday it was back to vegetarian, with more aubergine pakoras, Sri Lankan red rice, an unusual carrot curry made with coconut, and a nice cold “chaat” dish of new potatoes with pomegranate seeds.

Pomegranate is a “super food”, apparently, and full of beneficial anti-oxidant things. It’s also quite bad for stains, as M found to his cost when he managed to spray juice over his shirt.

A note to anyone who might be wondering; that photograph of a ginger cat in the previous post isn't me, though the resemblance is quite close. (Our camera has a timer on it so I can, in theory, take my own picture, but I always make a mess of it.)

Free at last

For years my sister and I have been confined to the kitchen during the night. You see when we were kittens, we were always hungry, so we would wake Annie and Martin up at three in the morning to ask for our breakfast. We did this by scratching their toes (which would often stick out from under the duvet), or by climbing onto their bed and purring loudly into their ears. I had a particularly effective technique of inserting a claw into A’s nostril as she slept, and gently but firmly pulling until the pain woke her up.

Even better was the “diverging beds strategy”. M used to live in a rented flat with two single beds, which he would push together to create a king-size sleeping facility. Inevitably, these single beds would drift apart during the night. If I lay in wait under the two beds waiting for the crack between them to widen a little, I could swipe my paw up through the gap, and scratch M’s arse quite savagely. (This one wasn’t in the interests of getting my breakfast, though. I just did it for a laugh.)

Anyway, now we’re old cats and not nearly as greedy or malicious as we were, so occasionally they let us have the run of the house while they sleep. This happened on two nights last week, and on the first I enjoyed the novelty, padding around the house in the dark, checking on things. I was quite tired the following day, having had only about twenty hours sleep on Thursday instead of my usual twenty-two. Then on Friday, I quite honestly forgot the doors were open, and stayed curled up in my bed under the kitchen table as normal. What a wasted opportunity!

Marmitako!

As a curious cat, I’m very interested in Martin’s cooking. You see, I love my humans, and I naturally like to know what they’re having for their dinner. That doesn’t mean that I would always want to eat it.

This weekend, though, M cooked a dish any cat would be delighted to find in his food bowl. Marmitako (great name!) is a rough-and-ready Basque fisherman’s stew. To make it you throw onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes and potatoes into a pot (a “marmita”, which is where the name comes from), cook it all together until the spuds are nearly done and then – and this is the really good bit – add big chunks of fresh tuna. Another few minutes on a low heat and it’s ready. Now, with a dish like that, we could all eat together as a family! My sister and I would enjoy the fish, and Annie and Martin could tuck into the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and what-not. Perfect! (They didn’t see it that way, though and we got our usual – coley fillets for me and Felix for Chutney – while they ate the whole Marmitako combo, tuna and all.)

You can change the spicing and the quantities of supporting ingredients if you like, but stick with a 1x1 ratio of potatoes and fish. This is how M made it on Sunday, if you’d like to have a go.

For two people - or one person and two cats - you need:

250g fresh tuna steaks
250g potatoes, little new ones left whole or halved, bigger ones peeled and sliced
A small onion (or half a large one), sliced finely
Four cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
A sweet pepper, any colour, sliced
A fresh chilli, sliced finely, or a dried chilli, crumbled
About 75g chopped tomatoes (it’s fine to used tinned)
A glass of white wine
Paprika, preferably the smoked Spanish variety called “pimenton”, about half a tsp
Salt, pepper, to taste
Olive oil
A little water or fish stock if necessary

Fry the chopped onions in abundant olive oil in a stove-to-table pot until soft and golden. Add garlic, sliced pepper and chilli, and cook for a few minutes. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, paprika and wine, bring to the boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the potatoes are pretty close to done. Add water or stock, to keep the potatoes just covered, if and when necessary. Cut the tuna steaks into chunks (or leave whole, it’s up to you) and place on top of the hot stew. Replace the lid and simmer for five minutes. Turn off the heat and leave to rest for five minutes. Serve with bread, salad and wine, and eat with a fork or paw.

Separated at birth?

I was told recently that I was "the feline Nigel Slater". Now, as I had no idea who this Nigel Slater person was, I had a look at his book, The Kitchen Diaries, when Annie and Martin were out at work. It was difficult to get the book down off the shelf, but I managed it, and it has one of those old-fashioned ribbons sewn in to the binding to keep your place, and that made it relatively easy for me turn the pages with my little mouth.

It's true, there are some similarities between us. Mr. Slater's book is a compendium of everything he ate over a 12 month period, arranged in a calendrical fashion. There are recipes and comments on seasonal ingredients and so on, as there are on my blog. Out of interest, I thought I'd compare some of his dinners with mine.

August 24th.
Nigel: Seared beef with mint and mustard dressing. Red wine.
Dingo: Microwaved coley fillet and Science Diet. Tap water.

August 25th.
Nigel: Grilled squid with lime and thyme, then plum and apple crumble. White wine.
Dingo: Microwaved coley fillet and Science Diet. Tap water.

August 26th.
Nigel: Garlic prawns, followed by fresh raspberries and blackcurrants. Beer.
Dingo: Microwaved coley fillet and Science Diet. Tap water.

It appears that like other humans, Mr. Slater enjoys a more varied diet than I do. But between us, who would you say was the more handsome? You decide....

Rice is nice

Unlike cats, who are generally happy with the same thing twice a day, humans eat an extraordinary variety of dishes. (Or at least Annie and Martin do. I can’t speak for all humans, as I have seen people in television commercials eating Crunchy Nut Cornflakes at inappropriate times of the day and night, and nothing else. However, I think they may be paid to do this.)

Take just one staple - rice. Martin steams or boils jasmine, basmati, simba, patna and brown rice. He’s also fond of red, green, black and wild (this last one isn’t really rice at all, but let’s not get into that). Recently he tried sticky rice, which is soaked overnight, steamed and eaten with the fingers, rolled into a ball and dipped into sauce. Sushi rice is similarly glutinous, and you can keep it and just give me the raw fish, thanks very much. In our house, left-over rice is often stir-fried with onions, egg and soy-sauce, Chinese-style, or with peanuts, dried shrimp and coconut, or some similar combination, for a South-Asian effect. Then there’s a whole range of constructed dishes where the rice is cooked from raw with other ingredients - pilau, biriani, jambalaya and rice-and-peas, for example. Risotto is a subject in itself, and can contain mushrooms, ham, chicken, seafood, peas, chicory, wine, cauliflower, lemon zest, saffron, chicken livers, cheese, radicchio and several other things I can’t remember - although never all at once. Suppli - which are balls of left-over risotto formed around cubes of mozzarella, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, and deep fried – are a particular favourite of Annie’s. Then there’s paella; the classic one with rabbit, the touristy one with seafood, and any number of regional and seasonal variations on vegetables, fish and chicken. There’s even rice pudding.

Sorry if that sounds like Clement Freud on Just a Minute, but M prepares most of the above on a regular basis, so there’s not much he doesn’t know about or can’t do with rice. When he suddenly comes across a completely new and distinctive way of preparing rice, it’s quite an occasion. So it was at the weekend, when he tried Chelow, an Iranian way of preparing basmati that results in a fantastic chewy, crunchy crust together with light, fluffy rice. Here’s a recipe:

Wash basmati and soak in warm water for 3-4 hours, then drain. Boil plenty of fresh water in a large pan, add drained rice and salt to taste, and cook it like pasta, on a rolling boil, for just two or three minutes, until al dente. Drain in a sieve and cool immediately with cold water. Pour oil into a large pan and add rice. Make some holes through the mound of rice with the handle of a wooden spoon. Pour a little more oil (or butter) over the top of the rice. Cover the pan with a tea-towel and a tight lid, cook on high flame for two minutes, reduce the flame to an absolute minimum (use a diffuser if you have one) and leave to steam for 30-40 minutes. Dip the base of the pan in cold water in the sink (this helps loosen the crust). Now take the lid off and you’ll have fantastically fluffy, light rice and a delicious crispy layer of rice at the bottom of the pan. This crispy stuff is considered the best bit in Iran, and should be served separately.

This is rice-only Chelow. The technique is the basis for lots of layered dishes of meat and vegetables with rice; you just add half the rice to the pan, add your other (cooked) ingredients and put more rice on the top. Martin made one with cabbage and lamb cooked with turmeric, which was very nice (I know because I put my paw in the pot and pulled out a little bit when he wasn't looking).

Peas on Earth

I've just discovered peas! Before this week, I had no idea how much fun they could be! I wish someone had told me about them earlier.
Of course, I was aware of their existence - I'm seventeen, after all - but I only ever saw them in dishes and on plates; cooked on their own or in stews and curries, added to risotto or pilau, braised with lettuce and onions in the French style, or with ham and artichokes in the Spanish. Sometimes they were frozen, or tinned as "mushy" peas to go with fish and chips. When it's the season for English peas, Martin uses them in soups and pasta dishes, sometimes combining them with lemon zest and mint. So far so boring - I thought they were just another form of the green food that humans eat with inexplicable relish.

However, I experienced something of a revelation the other day, when M was busy peeling potatoes and asked Annie to shell the peas. She did this in the living room, sitting on the sofa and watching television, and this allowed me to get a close-up view as she split open each pod with her thumb and pushed the bright green bullets into a bowl. It was absolutely fascinating! She had quite a rhythm going - reaching into the bag, squeezing out the peas, throwing the empty pods into a second container - and I found it rather hypnotic. I could see my reflection in her spectacles, and noticed my head was moving in a triangular pattern following the movement of her hands between the bag and the two bowls for shelled peas and discarded pods. I knew I must have looked pretty silly, but I couldn't help it. Then - oh joy - when she wasn't looking, I managed to flick one of the little green jewels out of the bowl, onto the sofa and then to the floor, where I chased it all the way to the fireplace! I would have chased it some more, but it fell down a crack between the floorboards. I went back to the sofa to get another one to play with, but she'd finished the task and had taken the shelled peas into the kitchen, where M had them simmering in a pot with some shallots and chicken stock before I could tell him to stop. What a waste! There must have been about two hundred peas in that pot - enough for literally hours of entertainment.

So now I'm keeping my eye on the bags that come into the house from the greengrocers and the farmer's market, not to mention Tesco's and Sainsbury's. There must be a few more weeks left in the season, and I want to make the most of any raw pea action while I can!

Otterly delicious

My sister and I are clearly not cute enough these days. Annie and Martin ignored us on Sunday morning, and instead went to the Sea Life Centre at Loch Lomond to watch otters at play. M told me they were just like cats, but better at swimming. He said they were quite voracious and impatient for their lunch. Apparently they ran up and down their enclosure squeaking like mad, and then tried to bite the handler's boots while he was feeding them bits of chicken liver and slices of mackerel. I don't much fancy the raw liver, but the mackerel sounds delicious.

Dinner here has been fairly uneventful; keema curry with dhal, spinach and red rice on Saturday, soup made with pork stock and barley on Sunday, and tonight M made tagliatelle con fegattini. Now this last one is a really nice dish and very quick to make on a weekday evening, so here's a recipe.

Soak about 50 grams of dried porcini mushrooms in very hot water for 20 minutes. Take about 200 grams of chicken livers, clean away any fatty or bloody bits, and slice into slivers. Put the pasta on to boil, fry the sliced livers in a drop of olive oil in a non-stick pan, season and add the mushrooms, then a small glass of white wine. Boil fast and when the wine is almost evaporated, add the same quantity of chicken stock. Reduce while draining the pasta. Add the hot pasta to the sauce and toss, serving immediately with a sprinkling of chopped parsley and a grind or two of black pepper. Now that's what you're supposed to do with chicken livers, but you couldn't expect otters to know that, could you?