08:50: Wake up. I look at my phone and note the time. It's earlier than I woke up the day before, but it seems like I'm becoming less of a morning person. I'm no longer setting my alarm to half seven or eight, I'm just letting myself sleep until my body decides to. I'm probably getting more of the rest I need, but I do wonder what 7 o'clock in the midst of April would look like, or even what it would feel like? Never to worry; it's time to shower, get dressed and put a saucepan of porridge on the stove.
10:15: With everyone awoken, Owen, Rebecca and I come to the consensus that we should paint rocks. Rocks that were collected a few years ago, on a beach in Penzance that none of us know when we will be able to see again. We decide that we will paint them to represent characters from the TV show Steven Universe, as was our plan almost three years ago now. Owen faithfully adheres to the theme and Rebecca begins to embroider some wildflowers, but for me this eventually devolves into smearing my arm in shades of pale blue and blistered red. As a result, I come out of this creative session resembling some form of wraith. Another shower it is then.
12:50: I load up the rice cooker for Owen and I to have lunch. Rebecca is having a cheese and bacon melt, and Owen resolves to have some bacon in his rice. It's not a bad idea, and I ask him not to clean the pan after he's done so I can use the surplus fat to cook some mushrooms and some beansprouts. It's not a bad thing if it's an unavoidable by-product, right? The hitch comes when Owen checks the rice cooker and finds that I've added too much water. He says he isn't angry, but his countenance is enough to unsettle me. When the rice eventually absorbs the additional water, I take my bowl and my chopsticks into the bedroom and eat there.
14:40: After I've washed the dishes from lunch, I take a "scratch art" kit which pictures a unicorn standing in a forest out to the balcony with the intention of spending a few hours outside. When I go to do this, however, it starts to rain. It seems as if the ground hasn't seen rain for weeks, so I put down my clipboard and go to lean over the edge, hoping to establish contact with the incoming cascade. It falls thickly, yet briefly and after ten minutes has passed from our home. I retrieve the scratch art kit, and take it out to the still-dry balcony and sit down with it, only to be phoned by my parents a couple of minutes later. Apprehensively, I answer and spend the next 40 minutes talking to them. I'm relieved to hear them keep discussion of internal conflict to a minimum this time.
16:30: It's time to go for a walk, something that seems to have turned into more of an obligation where it was once a pastime. It took me a while to work out why this was. Having to be fully conscious and alert to your surroundings constantly while walking means that there is no potential for zoning out, no matter how pleasant the surroundings. Before the quarantine, I used to go on day-long walks with no destination in particular; I cut this one short after 20 minutes, becoming overwhelmed by the consistent concentration and the renewal of the sunlight.
17:10: I get back to the flat. I prevaricate for a while, yet there isn't much I feel like doing so instinctively I take a look at ingredients for dinner. It's a lot earlier when we would usually sit down to eat, but this is not a time of normalcy. We have three carrots. We have ginger, garlic, spices. We have an oven and we have roasting tins. I make up a spice paste that could potentially be described as Persian (question: do we still say "Persian" because Iranian culture is somehow geopolitically problematic?), score the carrots in a criss-cross shape as if they were one of my scratch art kits, and spread the paste thickly atop the carrots, ready to be roasted. All of this happened in the most leisurely of paces.
19:20: The roasting has finished, and the oven is just beginning to cool down. I place the carrots into large bowls, and accompany them with some farro. I bought the bag in Rome almost three years ago, and technically the grains expired in January; they taste fine and blindly I go forward. We sit down, and we put on a comedy show that my father used to like (The Vicar of Dibley - newly added to Netflix!) and we eat dinner. The carrots are sweet, and the spices are sour. The air feels convivial again, if not a little humid.
21:30: We're still where we were a couple of hours before, with the TV playing the same series. Perhaps inspired by a festive episode of the prior mentioned comedy, we decide to prepare one of the small Christmas puddings as well as a saucepan of custard. Rebecca doesn't really like Christmas pudding, so we make her a bowl of "microwave brownie" which I hope was not poisonous; she ate it with ice cream, as one naturally should.
23:00: Everyone has gone to bed. The comedy show has been switched off, as have all of the lights save from one lamp. I'm still awake, in the living room by myself. I've found myself staying up later recently. I'm aware that I should be regulating my sleep a whole lot more, but without being able to zone out while walking, I find that this is the only time I feel fully free to decompress. I read a book, I play a game and I try to phase out as much as possible.
02:00: It's been a new day for a couple of hours now, and I think to myself that I should probably go to sleep. I brush my teeth, get into bed, and prepare to repeat the process yet another time.
Persian Spiced Roasted Carrots
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 50-60 minutes
Serves: 2
Ingredients
2 large carrots
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, finely sliced
1 tsp fenugreek
1 tsp sumac
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp of fresh curly parsley, chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 220 C (for gas) or 200 C (for fan).
Peel each carrot, before slicing each in half along their lengths. Carefully cut criss-cross patterns into the carrots without slicing all the way through.
In a small bowl, mix the garlic, ginger, spices, salt, pepper, sugar, lemon juice and 1 1/2 tbsps of the olive oil together. This should make a coarse, yet spreadable paste.
Use the remaining 1/2 tbsp of the olive oil to grease a baking dish (or two, if necessary) and place each carrot on the dish, making sure that they have at least a centimetre between them.
Spread the spice blend evenly across each carrot and place in the oven for 50-60 minutes. Check after 40 minutes that the spice paste isn't starting to burn. If so, cover the carrots with foil and cook for the remaining 10-20 minutes.
Check the carrots at 50 minutes, and if necessary, keep in the oven for the remaining 10 minutes.
Once the carrots have finished roasting, take them out of the oven and scatter them with the chopped parsley.
Notes & Adjustments
I mentioned above that I had this farro. I don't have a fleshed out recipe for this, but just for reference, I sliced and caramelised quarter of an onion, before adding garlic, chilli and parsley and stirring in the farro. I added some paprika and some mace to the mix to give it a hint of *something* that I'm not really sure of!
The spice mix is obviously very changeable here, so don't worry if there is anything you're missing. Sumac used to be harder to find, but now you can pick it up in many supermarkets, same with fenugreek. Similarly, if you have a spice mix that you like in particular, you could also use that here.
Shockingly, you could also use a different vegetable to carrots. Sweet potato would probably be great, as would any kind of squash.
Comentarios