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.