At the day of writing, and probably of publishing too, I currently am on day three of working from home. Quite literally, too. While writing this paragraph I am technically on shift right now, however there isn't currently anything in my to-do-list so I thought I'd just dabble for the merest moment into my blog in order to steer my mind towards something more productive, work-wise. Yes, that's clearly what I'm doing; I'll just be writing for a few minutes! It emphatically won't be like that time I wrote almost an entire post while in the office. Did I not tell you about that? Whoops.
I've written previously about how difficult I find it to stay inside indefinitely on my days off of work, so existing within the flat throughout the whole 9-5 period has been a bit of a new experience, and a challenging one to say the least (I know, world's smallest violin). I haven't yet succeeded in following advice to create my ideal "workspace from home"; I've been too wracked with indecision about whether the sofa or the kitchen table makes for a better work station. I haven't yet tried the bed, but I can feel that this would be a bad idea. For those who were wondering, no I don't own a functional desk.
Even so, I have my small methods of getting by. Trying to settle into new modes of working has featured watching eight episodes of the Netflix show Dark while I answer emails, and a short-lived affair with a Spotify playlist entitled Medieval Party. I've also learned how to make an adequate dry cappuccino. As I said, I'm still trying to ease into the whole thing. Knowing that I can take a ten minute break to wash some of the dishes in the sink or to whizz the hoover around quickly is an additional bonus. Gee, I really hope that none of my colleagues end up reading this somehow. If you're reading this from (workplace redacted) please do know that when I say ten minutes I actually mean three, and that "washing dishes" is actually code for chasing up our intake levels. Huh, what's that about corporate integrity?
Another interesting byproduct of the home office (not the capitalised Home Office please do note, I don't have room here to detail their many and diverse byproducts) is the fact that it opens up an hour-long block of time where I have both a kitchen and ingredients at my disposal. Or at least, I currently have ingredients available to me. Let's see how that situation evolves over the the next few weeks. This means that the considerable time I spend in the morning daydreaming about potential recipes can actually be channelled somewhere, rather than floating into the ether. Admittedly, the past two lunch breaks I've had I've just thought UGH and trundled over to the shop two minutes from my doorstep to buy a plain white baguette. Not this time; I had a plan.
Over the weekend, Owen and I realised the hippiest visions of ourselves and visited a comfortingly rustic no-waste store, as well as an extensive fruit and vegetable market. One place was cosily shady, with everything in muted grey and brown tones, the other raucous and alive with the colours of fruits, vegetables and raincoats. To this end, we managed to get ourselves a bowl full of snow peas (I'm calling them this because I hate the way the word "mangetout" feels in my mouth) the volume of a large mixing bowl. An exciting prospect, yes, but it soon hit me that we had never cooked with snow peas in our flat before, and now had about ten (or more?) portions of the harlequin green pods to contend with.
Flash forward to the work-at-home-lunch-break, some of the snow peas had been cooked with but the majority still remained in fridge. It was almost as if they were taunting us, that we couldn't possibly eat all of them. The challenge was on. Looking through the store cupboards for what we had, I came across the half-used pack of dark brown sugar I bought to bake a variety of Smitten Kitchen's Fudgy Chocolate Sheet Cake for friend-of-the-blog Ellen's birthday last Saturday (will detail below, don't you worry). I came up with what I thought was the novel idea to fashion a coating for the snow peas out of some form of proto-caramel, because they aren't the most porous of vegetables. I then promptly remembered that this was not an original idea, and it was actually something I'd already incorporated into a recipe a couple of months ago. Visions of innovative grandeur aside, I ploughed on.
I'm calling this recipe Double Chilli Caramel Snow Peas, but don't fret that you're going to invite the fury of a crimson scaled dragon into your mouth; the "double" just refers to the use of both fresh chilli and chilli flakes. I also love the inherent elemental contradiction between fire and ice it teases at. This has a warming heat to it, certainly, but it's not going to leave you with a heat-seared tongue.
I don't usually like to be prescriptive about hardware, but I'm going to put my foot down here and strongly insist that you use a wok and a spatula that is ideally made from silicone. Usually, I'd try to be flexible but here I have my reasons. The radially sloped gradient of a wok is ideally suited for rapid-moving cooking with hot oil, and a spatula made from softer material will not do damage to your pan from frequent scraping. You do have to be quick with your hands with this recipe to avoid the sugar burning, so I would advise that you have everything prepared and around you to minimise the amount of back-and-forth required. I'm deeply sorry, but as a small mea culpa for my imperious ways I will tell you that I did in fact burn my sugar a little bit and it was still great. In fact, I might even add that the burnt sugar benefited the dish somewhat. Don't interpret this as an endorsement of caramel pyromania, but if you do end up with a darker coating than called for then all is not lost.
As a last note, please don't be put off by the fact that I've called for gochugaru (hot pepper) flakes and chinkiang black rice vinegar in the ingredient lists. This is just what I had around at the time. While these ingredients are very common and inexpensive in Korean and Chinese supermarkets respectively, I appreciate that not everyone has these kind of establishments local to them. As ever, I've specified substitutions below that are just as good!
Double Chilli Caramel Snow Peas
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 5-8 minutes
Serves: 2 people
Ingredients
100g snow peas
2 tsp of gochugaru flakes
1 tbsp of dark brown sugar
1 clove of garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1/2 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
1 fresh red chilli, cut into thin strips
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp chinkiang black rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp Salt
Heat the vegetable oil in a wok on a high heat and wait until it has come to a very high temperature. While the wok is heating up, make sure you have all of your ingredients to hand around you. Test the temperature of the oil by adding a small amount of garlic or ginger; if the oil sizzles upon contact then it is hot enough.
Add the the ginger, both types of chilli and the sugar all at once and briskly mix with the oil until everything has roughly combined. Add the snow peas and shuffle them around the wok until they have been coated with the oil and the sugar mix. If you feel confident enough, flip the pan a few times to ensure the mixture is evenly distributed.
Once the snow peas are coated, add the salt and the chinkiang vinegar and fry the snow peas on a high heat for about 2-3 minutes, keeping them moving with the spatula at all times. Make sure you scrape down the sides for any bits of sugar that might adhere.
Add the spring onion and the sesame oil and fry for a further 1 minute before taking the wok off of the heat. Once the wok has been taken off of the heat, mix the snow peas around the wok one last time to ensure that they are coated with as much of the mixture as possible.
Serve with white rice or stir into noodles.
Notes & Adjustments
The chilli caramel works well for snow peas both for their tender sweetness and because they don't require a long amount of cooking time. However, the recipe for the caramel coating would work well for any vegetable that doesn't need to be cooked for very long. I'm thinking asparagus, maybe? Perhaps even some tenderstem broccoli? Imagine the caramel coating caught between the fronds of the florets! Gee, fuck the snow peas (I'm joking, don't fuck the snow peas, they're very honourable).
If you don't have chinkiang vinegar to hand, then I would use 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar and 1 tsp of soy sauce.
If you don't have gochugaru chilli flakes then Aleppo pepper flakes are a nearly identical replacement. However, I do realise the redundancy of recommending another specialist item as a substitution so if you don't have either of these then use 1 tsp of regular dried red chilli flakes.
You could use light brown sugar for this as well if it's what you have in the cupboards; the taste won't be quite as caramel-esque but it will still produce a good coating for your snow peas!
Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for! Yes, it's Ellen's birthday cake! As mentioned before, this came from a Smitten Kitchen recipe which I've linked to above and when you put friend-of-the-blog Ellen and Smitten Kitchen together, you know you're in for a good night.
Isn't it gorgeous?
Although I imagine no explanation is needed for such a creation, I will provide one out of sheer courtesy. Ellen is a swimmer, and she swims in open bodies of water (AKA she is the next Wonder Woman, basically). So we made a cake with the four of us (housemates-of-the-blog) Rebecca and Owen included! I was going to say that you could try to find us, but I then remembered that the photo above is ripped directly from Instagram stories, where everyone is tagged. So, instead just marvel at our collaborative genius.
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