That soup-spoon feeling

I'll stop short of calling them failures, but I feel compelled to hold my hands up to a few kitchen-situated misfires recently. With a mind geared towards the relatively scant levels of flour (of all kinds) currently available in supermarkets, I did have the idea to try and produce a recipe for a flourless brownie; what better to sail us through this situation of scarcity? I took ground almonds as my structure, added espresso, dark brown sugar, browned butter, 85% cocoa chocolate and some other, more procedural, ingredients; what resulted was a devastatingly successful chocolate soil. Great with ice cream, not so good if a brownie is the anticipated result.

Another day, I found myself in the vegetable department of the supermarket not really knowing what to cook for dinner that night; I know, that's terrible etiquette in the world of Covid-19. I ended up with a handful of courgettes and no defined ideas regarding what to do with them. Naturally, my mind drifted on to braising; a long oven braise which in a bright tomato sauce, which would give the vegetables a chance to break down and intermingle. I'm certain that I must have just selected three courgettes of an incredibly rebellious temperament, but there is a smidgen of a chance that I could have mistaken how they would behave during their time in the oven. The very slightest of chances. Their juices wept into the sauce and they kept their bite. I also prepared some gnocchi from frozen, which remained less-than-structurally intact upon cooking.

The strange thing about cooking, especially when you are cooking for more than just yourself, is the gulf between your own opinions of a dish and how others perceive it. There was nothing explicitly disastrous about the intransigent vegetables, the slightly melted gnocchi and the Earthen chocolate; in fact, housemates-of-the-blog Owen and Rebecca both enjoyed all of it. It's hard to explain why you might be disappointed in something you've made that isn't objectively bad, or even pretty palatable, but expectation is quite a powerful weight on the mind. It becomes difficult to explain your own frustration in a way that doesn't come across as being petulant. I definitely wouldn't want to share a recipe on the blog that I didn't feel personally satisfied with as well.

Spoiler alert: I broke this slump (which, I hope was implied in the fact that this post exists at all). A couple of the days back, Owen made a soup that was so intrinsically comforting that I transcended my large cutlery prejudices and slumped fully back into the armchair with a soup spoon equipped. Oh, what are my prejudices? This will be controversial to admit, but I tend to gravitate towards teaspoons, cake forks and chopsticks when eating meals, perhaps with some kind of atavistic compulsion towards making a meal last longer. I know, I try not to shy away from highly-charged, contentious issues. Anyway, uh, should we talk about the soup?

He presented me with a very simple bowl of mung beans and yellow split peas in a horseradish-scented stock, stirred through with lightly cooked savoy cabbage. This was served with flatbreads too, because every soup strives to be a partner in a carbohydrate-based affair. Once I had emerged from an unfamiliar haze of serenity, the compulsion to attempt to make this with a few augmentations burned bright. I've never to hide my influences, from taking my ingredient ideas from the podcast Spilled Milk to absorbing everything Deb Perelman writes/says/posts on Instagram by osmosis, I have to say that there's something personally very satisfying from taking inspiration from those who surround you (or just audaciously editing their unwritten recipe, no biggie).

When it came to me recreating the recipe, I added a few aromatics (garlic, ginger, a bay leaf) and, due to my enduring fascination with sugar-burnt foods, caramelised some onions and the cabbage strips before adding them into the soup. The taste remains largely the same, but every so often you'll pick up on a sweetly tangy char from the onions. In terms of what pulses you used, where I used mung beans and yellow split peas you might amend this to reflect whatever is available in your cupboards. Do note that this may alter cooking times and liquid proportions, so I'll try to provide a note on substitutions below.

A note on flatbreads - yes, I did them too! While they're totally non-essential (especially given the flour situation mentioned above) they a lot of fun to make, and I've given a very simple recipe below. Please do note that these are meant to be irregular; the imprecise morphology is a sign of character, for sure. Some will be thinner and crispier, whereas others will have a doughier sturdiness to them, and it's always best to remember that the first of the batch will virtually never be the best so don't be discouraged. As the pan gets hotter, they will cook quicker. Also, pro-tip: in between each flat bread, quickly scrape any remaining debris out of the pan to avoid it smoking up your kitchen. Turns out I'm qualified to give out pro-tips now, and I will be flexing that as much as possible.

Much like the kimchi stew from last week, this really is a recipe built up from a very simple blueprint. Essentially, you could just make this with one variety of pulse and a stock; everything else is an extra added to taste, so don't get too worked up about leaving out any ingredients besides the three cornerstones. I feel like I have to note as well that, while I called this a soup, there is a very small amount of liquid; just enough to anoint each spoonful of pulses. If you did want it to be soupier, then you can increase the amount of liquid you use; the quantity I've stipulated can be treated as a minimum.

Mung Bean and Split Pea Soup

(served with Caraway Seed Flatbreads)

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Serves: 2 people

Ingredients

160g of dried mung beans

80g of dried yellow split peas

450ml of vegetable stock

1 brown onion, roughly chopped

5 outer leaves of savoy cabbage, cut into long strips

2 cloves of garlic, crushed and finely minced

1 tsp of fresh ginger, cut into thin strips

1 tsp of red pepper flakes

1 bay leaf

1 tsp of light soy sauce

1 tsp of dark brown sugar

1 tsp of horseradish sauce

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

1/2 tsp of salt

1/2 tsp of crushed black pepper

Flatbreads

100g of white flour

100ml of warm water

1 tbsp of vegetable/olive oil

1 tsp of caraway seeds

1/2 tsp of ground cumin

1/4 tsp of salt

Method

Add the mung beans and yellow split peas to a large saucepan with the vegetable stock, soy sauce and horseradish sauce, turn on to a high heat and bring to a boil. Once the stock is boiling, add in the garlic, ginger, pepper flakes, bay leaf, a 1/4 tsp of salt and pepper to the pan and turn down to a medium low heat. Cover the saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, heat the vegetable oil in a medium sized saucepan on a high heat. Once the oil is hot and sizzling, add the onions, the other 1/4 tsp of salt and the dark brown sugar and saute them on a high heat for 3 minutes or until soft. When the onions have softened somewhat turn the heat down to medium, and continue to saute the onions, stirring occasionally.

After the onions have been in the saucepan for about 10 minutes, add the cabbage strips to the pan as well as a very small extra sprinkle of salt and turn up to high. Stir them into the onions until softened slightly and coated very lightly with sugar. Turn the heat down to medium and continue to saute the cabbage for another five minutes.

Once the cabbage has finished, stir it into the soup mix along with the onions. Keep the soup mix on a low heat to simmer lightly while you make the flatbreads. This will allow the cabbage to absorb some of the juices without becoming soggy.

To make the flatbreads, combine the flour, water, caraway seeds, cumin, oil and salt in a bowl and integrate together by twisting it through your fingers until it forms a dough. You might need to knead it very slightly in order to get all of the straggly bits of flour to adhere, but it should come together pretty simply.

Divide the dough into four spheres that are around the size of a golf ball. On a lightly floured surface, flatten the spheres using your palm, before stretching the dough out with a rolling pin, around 6-8 inches in diameter. As long as the dough is relatively thin then it will be fine. I find it easiest to do this part one at a time while they're being cooked. So while one flatbread is in the pan, you will have the time to roll out the dough for the next one.

Heat a frying pan without oil on a high temperature. Cook the flatbreads on each side for one minute before removing to a plate. The first flatbread you cook may need about 30 seconds longer on each side as the pan comes to temperature.

When the flatbreads are done, serve them on a plate and decant the soup into bowls and serve.

Notes & Adjustments

• There are a few adjustments you can make to the pulses here. If you don't have any yellow split peas, you could use brown or green lentils in their place and add an extra 10 minutes on to the cooking time. You may find you need slightly more liquid for these too. You could use adzuki beans in place of the mung beans, however these need to be cooked for 1 and a half hours and will require more liquid.

• I understand the caraway seeds are controversial (if someone could tell me why this is, then that'd be fantastic) - if you're not a fan, then I would take out the ground cumin, and use cumin seeds for a more straightforward taste.

• If you don't have red pepper flakes to hand then use 1/2 a tsp of crushed chilli flakes.

• I think that savoy cabbage works best in this preparation, but the closest replacement to it would probably be a similar amount of white cabbage.

• You can use plain granulated sugar here to caramelise the onions; it won't have as toasty a flavour but will still work well.

A meaningful contribution

I was furloughed from my job today. It was nothing personal, of course; at least 90% of my colleagues were given a leave of absence as a cost cutting measure in the midst of the pandemic. I'm sure this is a familiar process to workers both in an out of the country as the systems we've always taken for granted cease to function in their usual capacity. With respect to this, I don't feel as if I've been singled out as having a particularly expendable role (though, let's be real...) but it still gives me cause to reflect on the work I do, and whether it really makes a difference to anything perceptible whatsoever.

Let's think about it; without wanting to give away too many of the specifics of my day-to-day work, I help to maintain the smooth running of the supply chain for the health & beauty department of a store with a fair few branches across the UK. If I make a mistake with something, it could potentially result in a few customers not being able to pick up their favourite exfoliating face mask, or... um, what do people buy from skincare departments? Seriously, there is some weird shit we sell, like time-bending yeasted clay or whatever else people use to promote an aura of youthful complexion. Anywhoo, long story short, if I click type 72 instead of 58 into a tiny little box and press "OK", then Mary in Coventry might not be able to get hold of the crystallised seaweed scrubs she likes to use every other morning (also, just as a gentle disclaimer; I don't work for Goop).

It's not as if Coventry Mary isn't important, it's just that I can't exactly perceive whether or not she's been able to maintain an intact skincare regime and what that means to her. Perhaps, and especially in times such as these, being able to preserve a small segment of routine is something she can do to get by. That's the best I can do for anyone; try to ensure that products are available to be bought for a fairly significant price. Beyond that, there isn't really anything else that my actions can lead to in terms of their directly human effects. It's a very binary sense of achievement, and I often come away from the working day feeling unsure of my own contribution. I'm sure in the very specific world of beauty and skincare it's an important one to maintain, and I don't want to seem patronising to anyone who does positively operate in that setting, but spending so much time on something that doesn't give me any visibility can be draining even if it casts a wider net than I necessarily perceive it to.

That's part of where this blog sprung from, it's a platform for expression and a place where I can set the parameters of what I want to achieve from it. This can be a little bit overawing sometimes, and each post I write represents about 4-6 (at least) hours of work which I have to vaguely hope will reach someone. Much of the time, I'll spend the those hours and have to blindly trust that it will reach someone and that person will derive some interest from it; I don't really have particularly ambitious goals, you see. But, in contrast to 50 people nationwide not being able to get their hands on some pearled titanium pollen (yes, I'm having a great time making up fake(?) skincare products), assuming that I've reached that one mysterious person is usually satisfaction enough to me. Occasionally, someone will give me some lovely feedback and it sends my heart immediately into overdrive. That's not to say it isn't difficult sometimes sending these little culinary capsules into the floating ether, but it's rewarding enough to patch over the more challenging aspects.

If you've read previous posts here, you'll also know that an express purpose of this endeavour is to continually remind everyone of my love for the blog Smitten Kitchen. In spite of this, I haven't yet written about any of her recipes with the exception of these blondies which went off-the-rails in protracted process of distraction and became a different beast entirely to their original incarnation. I'm happy to report that today I bring you bona fide, and very lightly adapted recipe from SK herself; Roasted Sweet Potato and Chickpeas with Yoghurt, which was adapted from a recipe from the cookbook Gjelina Cooks by Travis Lett.

The recipe stipulates that you can use either sweet potatoes or yams in this preparation; I'm not sure where to find yams in the UK, let alone during a global pandemic (anyone else find themselves using this phrase way more casually than they would have every anticipated?), but I've been able to get sweet potatoes with relative ease during this time of uncertain supply. Honestly, I'm not sure what the difference between a yam and a sweet potato is, so anyone who does know, feel free to give me the rundown.

The individual characteristics of this dish are so elemental, yet meet on the plate with an incredible synergy (I'm sure you've been hearing that word a lot if you've been working at home). There is something about roasting that really encourages the sweet potato to blossom, and the sharp coating stops it from becoming at all cloying. You may think that the coating is far too scant for how much potato you have, but I promise that, somehow, it is just the right amount. The chickpeas, taking their cue from the Earthen realm, anchor the dish with a mild smokiness and the acerbic tang of the citrus spiked yoghurt binds everything together pretty perfectly.

So, there are a few divergences from the original recipe I want to talk about before getting into it. SK uses canned chickpeas, I used ones from dried as that's what I had around; I'm going to say that you can use whichever are easiest for you. Additionally, I used vegetable oil for the roasting instead of olive oil (again, due to availability), but used olive oil for the yoghurt dressing - I'd probably recommend olive oil for the roasting too, but you do you! Lastly, I very much overestimated just how much juice was in one lime, so I only got about 1/2 of how much I needed and, actually, I thought this was fine. I probably could have done with a little more of a citrus zing, but this amount would be perfect for if you wanted a more subtle, sour kick.

Smitten Kitchen's Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Chickpeas with Yoghurt

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

3 large sweet potatoes, cut into segments of 4-6 dependent on size

1-2 tbsp of honey

1 tbsp of crushed red pepper flakes

425g of canned chickpeas, or 210g dried chickpeas

4 tbsp of olive oil

1/2 tsp of smoked paprika

125g of Greek yoghurt

2-4 tbsp of fresh lime juice

2 spring onions, finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees (gas) or 200 degrees (fan assisted)

Mix together 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of honey and the crushed red pepper flakes until combined. Taste the mixture, and if you would prefer it a little sweeter then add the extra tsp of honey (or just half). When the mixture is tuned to your liking, toss it into the sweet potatoes until combined and let them sit for 5-10 minutes.

Toss the chickpeas with 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1/4 of a tsp of smoked paprika and salt to taste.

Line two baking trays with foil. Spread the sweet potatoes out on one sheet and the chickpeas out on another. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle the remaining 1/4 tsp of smoked paprika over the chickpeas.

Roast the sweet potato for 30 minutes, before removing from the oven and turning the segments over and roasting for a further 10 minutes. Roast the chickpeas for 20 minutes, rolling them around lightly once or twice during cooking to ensure that they cook evenly.

While everything is in the oven whisk together the yoghurt, 2 tbsp of lime juice and season with a dash of salt and pepper. Taste the dressing and adjust if you think it needs the extra 2 tbsp of lime juice.

Arrange the sweet potatoes on plates or in large bowls and drizzle some of the yoghurt mixture. Add the chickpeas before sprinkling over the spring onions and some extra red pepper flakes if you wish.

Notes & Adjustments

• If you don't have red pepper flakes then I would suggest substituting this for 1 tsp of crushed chillis with an additional 1/2 a tsp of mild chilli powder or cayenne pepper.

• Golden syrup works in place of honey, however due to the viscosity you will have to mix this harder for it to combine with the oil. As it is a little sweeter, 2 tbsp may be too much, so make sure you taste before you add any more.

• You could experiment with the spice blends used on the chickpeas if you like. I imagine a pinch of cumin wouldn't go amiss. I think preserving the earthy characteristic they bring to the dish is important though, so don't spice them too heavily.

• Instead of yoghurt, you could use sour cream. This is a little less tangy, but might be good if you want to heighten the citrus flavour. Creme fraiche could work too.

• If you want this to be vegan, simply use a vegan yoghurt.

Make what you can of it

Have you been to a supermarket recently? Undoubtedly, this will vary by location but a recent trip I took to a local Tesco branch gave me cause for hope in these deeply trying times. Presently, we inhabit a world in the cradle of an invisible pathogen, blanketed by the amplification of dread and entropy. Given the ever-present anxiety that the fabric of society is potentially being ton asunder with the ease of a mother slicing through wrapping paper with a single scissor blade, any modicum of order encountered is a considerable relief. Now, it's very infrequent that I find myself feeling any sort of pride in being British, but boy howdy can we queue like champions.

This might be a familiar scene to anyone who has been shopping recently, but hear me out. It was pretty easy to imagine that I'd be met with scenes of banditry and lawlessness when going to pick up the essentials, but this was almost instantly dispelled by the sight of a line of equidistant people, waiting patiently to gain admittance to the supermarket. Every two meters lay a marker informing us how much distance to put between where we stood and the person directly in front; I had never felt so good about waiting in a queue. The noble retail workers became the gatekeepers of stability with their vigilance, their neatly maintained demarcations and their disinfectant wipes. Sure, you can't get everything (sorry for anyone who was hoping to get canned tomatoes or whatever variety of flour any time soon) you might want, and the experience of pandemic shopping will never be a pleasant one, but there are many people working incredibly hard to mitigate this and for that I am intensely thankful.

Now more than ever, I believe it is to make what we can of this situation. For the next few months, we're not going to be able to have everything we want readily available to us. As someone who has had the privilege of never meaningfully experiencing shortages of any kind, empty food shelves can be a very scary process. As a home cook, reading recipes now comes with the mental reminder that getting hold of ingredients at the moment may well be a challenge for now and the near future. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I feel like knowing how to cook is so important, given that it equips you with the required tools to refashion and augment based on necessity. That almost seems like a survival skill during times such as these.

With regards to you above I present to you a fully-formed recipe that is also an entirely exchangeable template based on what you have available; Kimchi & Brown Lentil Stew - yes, made with the kimchi from the last post! The very basic skeleton of this is a tin of tomatoes (okay, I realise the major impropriety in writing a recipe involving such a scarce commodity, but I will proffer alternatives below), a portion of lentils and any form of (suitable) liquid you have available to you. From there, you build upwards; your store cupboard supplies are your bricks, your cement and your ornamental crenelations. Or you can keep it as basic as the bare scaffolding, which may not be flavourful but it will be something to eat that contains a moderate amount of vitamins and protein. Sometimes all we need is to cover the necessary bases. With this in mind, please don't feel intimidated by the fairly lengthy nature of my ingredients list; for the most part, it's all negotiable.

I'm trying to take this attitude with me out of the kitchen and into every day life too. I'm still feeling pretty down about the whole "PhD that wasn't" situation, but I'm adapting. The time that could have been spent on preliminary research can now be put towards creating a proposal, and while that feels a lot less certain perhaps that's exactly what is needed after the last debacle. I've got the blueprint of what I want to do, it just needs to be filled in with the specifics. That could take a while, but we'll see.

Speaking of taking a while the recipe below does have something of a longer cooking time, but I'm assuming you're all looking for something to do, right? Though, much of that cooking time can be spent dreamily stirring the thickening stew every five minutes; this isn't a particularly high maintenance recipe (and parts of it can be eschewed if desired). There's something about a stew that's incredibly soothing to both eat and cook (unless you're in the midst of a invasive storm of 'will this work?' thoughts) which I think is feeling that many of us might just be in short supply of at the moment. Spend a moment chopping and slicing (or even skip that part), some time stirring and then slump disgracefully on the sofa with a bowl full of warmth.

Kimchi & Brown Lentil Stew (Kimchi Lenjeu Kong Jjigae)

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Serves: 3-4 people

Ingredients

1 brown onion, finely sliced

2 spring onions, finely sliced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped

1 1/2 tsp of fresh ginger, finely sliced

1 fresh red chilli, finely sliced

150g of brown lentils

150g of fresh plum tomatoes, sliced in half

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

100g of kimchi, coarsely sliced

400g of tinned chopped tomatoes

400g of coconut milk

2 tsp of hot pepper flakes or 1 tsp of chilli flakes

1 tsp of paprika

1/2 tsp of cumin

1 tsp of soy sauce

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

1 tsp of sesame oil

1 tbsp of rice vinegar

1 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of salt

1/4 tsp of MSG (optional)

Pinch of sesame seeds

Method

In a large saucepan, heat the vegetable oil on a medium-high heat. When the oil has come to temperature, add the onion and saute for 2 minutes. Once the onion has softened slightly, add the garlic, ginger and fresh chilli to the saucepan and saute for a further 1 minute.

Add the sliced fresh tomatoes to the saucepan along with the rice vinegar, the sugar and 1/2 the tsp of salt and turn the heat up to high. When it has come to the boil, cover the pan and turn down to a medium-low heat; cook like this for 10 minutes. This will allow the tomatoes to break down and sweeten slightly with the sugar and the vinegar.

When the fresh tomatoes have finished, add the sweet potato and turn up the heat to medium-high. Cook like this for 4 minutes, turning the sweet potato occasionally before stirring in the chopped kimchi to the mixture.

Once the kimchi has been stirred into the mixture, add the tin of chopped tomatoes, coconut milk, soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, paprika, cumin, MSG (if using) and the other 1/2 tsp of salt and stir to combine before adding in the brown lentils. Stir the lentils into the mix and turn the heat up to high. When the saucepan has come to a boil, turn the heat down to medium and allow the pan to simmer for 30 minutes. This will give the sauce the opportunity to thicken, and the lentils will have time to absorb the liquid. You can use this time to prepare something to go alongside the stew (I chose rice, obviously) or you could just take rest break; do not nap, however, as you will need to stir this every five minutes!

After the simmering is done, check that the sauce has thickened to the right consistency. If not, give it an extra 5-10 minutes. Check the seasoning is to your liking. Once everything is as you prefer it, add in most of the spring onion (leaving some of the green parts to sprinkle over the top of the dish) and the sesame oil and stir through, cooking on the heat for an additional two minutes.

Leave the dish to cool for a few minutes in the saucepan, before serving in bowls with a sprinkle of spring onions and sesame seeds. You could perhaps even add some extra kimchi on the side!

Notes & Adjustments

There are SO MANY potential adjustments here (as I've subtly hinted at previously) so I'm only going to go through a few here.

• If you couldn't get your hands on any canned tomatoes, you can use 400g of fresh tomatoes. You probably should peel and chop these (I say grimacing as I find this a laborious process - but maybe you'll find it easier than I do). Cut an X shape from the bottom of your tomato into the surface and throw them into a pot of boiling water for no longer than a minute, before plunging them into an ice cold water bath and lifting them directly back out. The temperature contrast should loosen the skin from the flesh (in a very Silence of the Lambs way) and hopefully you should be able to peel it away with ease. I hope my tone is inspiring confidence within you.

• Don't want to use sweet potatoes? Or can't find them? Literally any other root vegetable will do, chopped to the same size. If you are going to use something like a carrot or a parsnip however, I would check after the 30-minute simmer that they are cooked all the way through.

• This recipe has quite a bright and sweet flavour to it, so if you want more of a savoury taste then you could add 1 tsp of fish sauce (if you're not a vegetarian or if you're flexible about it like me - however you can find vegetarian fish sauce also) or an extra tsp of soy sauce. I would recommend not leaving out the MSG if you do this; I know a lot of people have objections to MSG being used as a seasoning but these are based more in racism and sinophobia than they are in science - just be moderate with it.

• I did have feedback that this is pretty spicy, so if you find yourself quite sensitive to heat then perhaps consider halving the amount of chillis. For me, this translated as a moderate warmth in the mouth, so it very much depends on your taste buds.