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....