Since the beginning of the lockdown, I've been setting a pace for my writing that would eventually become unsustainable. It's been around two months now (please verify?), and for the duration I've been trying to post a new recipe here every two-to-three days. Sure, it sounds like a great rate of production, but similarly to an awful lot of productivity culture it ignored the aspect of my own human emotional and energetic capacity. If an idea hadn't come to me after a couple of days, I would feel neglectful. Even now, it's only been a week since my last post, but it was as if I expected to return to wild vines growing between the HTML; the site in the process of being reclaimed by the cyber-ecosystem.
This is clearly ridiculous.
In an ideal world, everyone would be comfortable to subject their work schedules to flexibility and wouldn't feel as if well-being is some kind of bougie luxury. However, the concept of something being enough is not compatible with the strain of late-stage capitalism that we currently live under. I could be happy with posting once a week, but surely I don't deserve to be if I could be posting three times a week, or twice a day? And, yes, I get that writing a blog post technically isn't anything to do with an economic system predicated on hyper-driven production and consumption, but it's a regime that violates our own psychological boundaries.
I get, as well, that as a furloughed worker who is struggling to write a food blog, I am in an incredibly privileged position. There are many people who are still working within a full-time role, people who don't have the luxury to pursue their interests right now, who will also be feeling as if their contributions are inadequate. Parallel to this, I also need to put myself in a head space where I'm not feeling lazy or guilty for not being one of those people. I've written a post already about the conflicted feelings that come from being furloughed (and being in a position that is deemed non-essential for the company), and it is just a product of individual circumstance.
I don't actually have a recipe to share today. In the week between my last post and now I did try something out (which I'll detail below) that just fell short of the mark for what I consider worthy of sharing here, but it's something I'll adapt and try again with. For now, I want to talk to you about other things I've made (or, tried to make) that haven't been geared towards the blog. I wouldn't say that there is a huge difference between the food I make for the blog and other times of cooking, but the process is a lot different and there isn't a huge amount of transparency there. Food blogs are primarily a repository of finished products, without a lot of attention paid to the less successful aspects of the cooking process.
What follows is by no means a list of failures, but it does encapsulate a fair amount of frustration, which is fine. Learning how to cook teaches you that, for the most part, everything can be salvaged. You don't have to be personally overjoyed with the finished product, but it doesn't have to be all for naught. Not everything here is something that I was unhappy with, but it does present the difficulties of being a home-cook trying to learn and judge what is of a good standard to present. There is a pretty wide range of things that take place outside the scope of this blog, and this'll aim to capture just a few of them!
Soy & Mirin Glazed Squash with Wasabi Chickpeas and Farro
This is what I attempted to make for the blog; it was delicious, but there were certain kinks that still needed to be ironed out.
The planning process behind a recipe involves brainstorming, and worrying about the cost of ingredients (both for my own virtual wallet and because I don't want to present something that is frivolous). Usually at the end of this I get a sense of whether I'm excited enough by an idea to want to develop it. Let me tell you, I was very excited by the idea of this.
I'm not a big fan of the term "fusion cuisine" in general, but this felt like a way to present Japanese flavours in a Mediterranean framework. I'd been feeling out for a farro recipe for a while that really presented it as an integral part of the dish, rather than just something you serve to fortify it; this seemed like the opportunity to do so. That aspect of the dish worked pretty well.
It turns out, it's kinda hard to glaze butternut squash. If you've ever sliced into the flesh of one, you will appreciate just how illogically smooth they are, making them less-than-porous. I tried to thicken the glaze with a dash of rice flour but this was a siren-caterwauling big mistake; it burned in to the bottom of the pan and came out looking like volcanic basalt. The squash itself was pretty good, but that I felt like I couldn't publish that advice. The chickpeas were burnt and tough too, and while it wasn't unenjoyable, by that point I knew it would need work.
The concept is there, and that's what made it pretty delicious, and I do know that once I've worked out the procedural shortcomings I'll be able to give it it's own post, but it is a bit disheartening all the same.
Momos / Dumplings
If I know anything with certainty from the past 25 and a half years of life, it's that I'm not very delicate with my hands. Even so, that's not a foreclosure; it shouldn't preclude me from giving things a solid go. I spent a few months in Nepal in 2017 (get yer' groans in now) and my most solid food memory is biting into an intricately folded and fluted vegetables dumpling, dipped into a spicy and savoury tomato chutney; this is known, pretty adorably, as a momo.
Naturally, I was desperate to try to make them as soon as I got back home and could cook for myself again. So anyway, three years later I gave it a shot! The first time went OK. I put too much celery into the filling, but other than that it was fine. The dumplings were structurally sound, but not neat, which I thought was fine for my first shot.
Here's where it goes downhill, and I come across like a terrible, terrible person.
Second time around, armed with the knowledge that I could produce something, I tried to do them again but make them a little bit neater. I made up the filling (which had no celery this time, and tasted all the better for it) and set it aside ready to make the dumpling wrappers. Attempting to work my way through a longer, yet still simple, folded pattern I encountered difficulties. Dumplings would tear even though I hadn't put much filling in, they would unfold and unravel, and then they wouldn't stick together as I tried to augment the mixture. This became very overwhelming, and I remember standing for at least 30 seconds (it felt much longer) not knowing what to do before taking everything and throwing it into the bin.
This is a big source of shame for me. I try to never waste food unless I absolutely have to. Dinners become leftovers, which then spawn other leftovers; my attitude is that if you can possibly eat it or save it, then you have no right to flagrantly throw something away. Yet, in that moment, that's exactly what I did. I know that I wasted flour, and vegetables, and halloumi cheese that could have gone to someone else just because my emotions got the better of me. I know that, as I type this, it will be decomposing in landfill and emitting methane gas. I know that we are currently in a time of relative scarcity. So, yes, I deserve to be ashamed about this.
I'm not the only one in the household to have undertaken dumpling making. After my first momo attempt, Owen also gave it go the difference there being that each batch of his were incredibly successful. I'm not a very territorial person when it comes to cooking, and generally it makes me happy for other people to do well at it and explore their own interests, but it was (and still is) difficult not to be a little bit resentful. I know that's dreadful, but I'm also kinda hoping it's something people can relate to a little bit. Maybe, or maybe not.
I'll try dumplings again, but it feels a little sensitive at the moment.
Black Beans with Braised Red Cabbage and Polenta
This sounds kind of fancy, but this was just a way of using up leftovers and store-cupboard ingredients without needing to go out and buy anything. A few days prior, Owen had knocked up a pretty incredible DIY sweet & sour sauce (reminiscent of the Chinese takeout variety) which we didn't use entirely, and therefore had been sitting in our fridge for a few days. We didn't have enough rice to go around, or really the right kind of vegetables to make something that would be coherently Chinese (takeout) style. But, what we did have were beans and polenta.
If I post something to the blog, usually it will have an underlying theme that ties everything together. After all, ingredients aren't a lottery and you've got to have some ideas about why they work well together. This was a very different kettle of fish.
The cabbage was shredded and oven braised in the sweet & sour sauce with some diagonally cut slices of carrot. For the black beans, the ended up in a thick and sweet tomato sauce that was probably on it's way to approaching barbecue. And, as for the polenta, well, it was just cooked in vegetable stock until it resembled a silky, savoury mash. It was incredibly mis-matched, but y'know what? It worked, and was very satisfying. We sat down and watched an episode of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with it, and while Samin might not approve of the balance of flavours, it was great despite being unplanned and thrown together pretty incoherently.
Interestingly, this also left me with some leftover polenta for lunch the next day (the aforementioned leftover of a leftover). Can I please sing the praises of polenta for a moment? It seems fancy, but it is incredibly cheap and forgiving. I bought a pretty large bag quite a long time back, and it has lasted given how little of it you actually have to use to produce something substantial. I always feel that I cook it a little too haphazardly to post a recipe for it, but I do have a post about a polenta cake from a few months prior if you want to give that a look!
Rebecca's Birthday Cake
I think it's a good idea to end on a positive, don't you?
Yesterday was housemate-of-the-blog Rebecca's 24th birthday (cheers all around please) and naturally I wanted to make a cake for her; it's the very least that she deserves! The trouble with being literally quarantined inside with someone is that there are very few reasonable windows of time to make surprise cakes for them. I know, this is the true tragedy of COVID-19.
The night before the big day, we went down to a sandy bank of the River Thames near our house with a few ciders, sat on a washed up log, played "never-have-I-have-you-ever-have-I-wait-sorry-what-was-it-again?", before shivering our way home. We got back at about half-past ten, and soon after that Rebecca went to bed. Now was the time.
I'm not sure why, but there's something incredibly enjoyable about making a cake overnight. There's something a little conspiratorial about it. Using the Smitten Kitchen cake builder from Smitten Kitchen Every Day (which I also used for Ellen's birthday cake) and a tub of Betty Crocker salted caramel frosting, I made a three layer chocolate and vanilla cake and got finished just as the sun was starting to rise. Okay, yes, clearly I didn't get a strictly healthy amount of sleep that night, but who cares; I got cake. I mean... Rebecca got cake.
There's something very non-threatening about making cake for friends. I don't feel that the end product is going to be scrutinised for imperfections (of which, there will be multitudes) or has to perform in any way; it just has to make people smile. Which, in turn, will make me smile!
Happy birthday Rebecca (for yesterday - even though I was there with you for the majority of the day!)
What now?
So, I'm not too sure when I'll be posting with a recipe next but I'm going to try to aim for it to be within a week. Perhaps I'll give the squash/farro/chickpeas another go? Or maybe one of the 592 recipes I have squirreled away in my neglected "bookmarked" folder on Google Chrome. We'll see.
I do have a blog post in the works which I'm incredibly excited about that was suggested by the font of wisdom and friend-of-the-blog Bee, however I'm currently waiting on an electric hand-held whisk (yes, I'm finally graduating from manual whisking) to be delivered in order to do this. That's all I'll say on that matter for now!
Until next we meet, dear readers - thank you for being patient.
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