The food bloggers of 15-years past

I've mentioned Felicity Cloake a couple of times before here. Her food journalism has helped me shape varieties of chana masala and mung dal, as well as contributing to my not infrequent post-midnight immersions into recipe inspiration. She's been a contributor to The Guardian's food section for longer than a decade now, and has left a multifarious culinary trail that still continues to inspire. So, looking for something simpler to bake over the weekend, her recipe for the "perfect" chocolate biscuits seemed like a safe bet (and, yes, the resolution to make this was laid at approximately 2am of the night before baking).

Absurd as it sounds, I'm never sure how to feel about chocolate. This extends to chocolate flavoured foods, too. The world of ice cream is populated with numerous far-superior varieties, and I can't remember ever eating a chocolate cake that ever felt distinct enough to be memorable. That's not to mention that small aversion to hot chocolate that I continue to harbour. The sole stalwart ambassador is the noble chocolate brownie, but it's certainly a lonely specimen. So, what exactly drew me to a simple recipe for chocolate biscuits?

Part of this was based in my overwhelming trust in Cloake herself, however the rest can be explained away by an occasional compulsion to re-evaluate foods that I haven't greatly enjoyed in the past. I often find myself wondering whether coleslaw is truly terrible, or if I'm just scarred by a particularly haunting childhood recollection of knocking a pot of it off of a refrigerator shelf and splattering the viscous coating all over my bear toes. There is the occasional success story as well, with blue cheese, peanut butter and just about anything pickled (excluding eggs) being shining examples of this. Let's add these chocolate biscuits to the list.

Equipped with this revisionist zeal, I resolved to try out this recipe as soon as possible. My rationale here was pretty straightforward; if I'm going to open myself up to the promise of chocolate-based redemption, then where better to begin than with the perfect recipe? The only problem here, is that the skills of the baker must match the perfection of the recipe itself. Admittedly, my experience with baking biscuits, cookies and the like is a complex one; the results are rarely unpleasant, but there's a certain clumsy (let's call it "rustic" perhaps?) element which pervades it.

The first issue that I encountered, which could have been entirely mitigated through the radical action of reading ahead, was that I don't own a stand mixer, nor an electric hand mixer; just a sole balloon whisk with wires that are eager to be freed from their confines. Did this preclude me from creaming the butter? No, but it did take me a lot longer to do - both in terms of aerating the mixture, and the time it took to rest my overexerted arms. Below, I'm going to provide the original recipe with instructions for a stand/electric hand mixer, but don't let this discourage you if your appliance landscape is as sparse as mine! Just be prepared to get a little bit more involved.

Speaking of insufficient kitchen supplies, it also so happens that our weighing scales are currently out of service. Again, not an insurmountable stumbling block, but it did mean that I had to convert quantities from weight into volume and use a measuring jug for this purpose. Trying to line up a level dose of flour or syrup against line markers does invite a degree of imprecision into the process. Usually, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at such a quibble, but I wanted to follow Cloake's conception of the biscuits as faithfully as I could.

There is also the question of my dubious skillset. Not that this is a recipe that I would describe as challenging, however it does involve shaping, slicing and generally-keeping-things-in-one-piece; all things that my not-so-delicate hands are at risk of fumbling. You may be thinking, "this is your 25th post on a home cooking blog, surely you can make biscuits?" Firstly, I'd like to issue a long, shrill eek. Once I've been retrieved from my inadequacy panic, I'll make an impassioned defence of the intrinsic imperfection of home cooking, and the responsibility we have to write with honesty and sincerity.

So, anyway, it turns out that I'm not great at rolling dough into a perfect cylinder, so the biscuits were ended up being blessed with what I'm choosing to call a charming irregularity. Slicing said cylinder also just so happened to be an issue too, and a few of the dough semi-circles had to be encouraged back into wholeness. They did all make it on to a baking sheet though, and isn't that the most important thing here? Let's disregard the varying degrees of thickness and the provocative issue of spreading (I shuddered too, don't worry).

The process sounds fraught with disruption, yet it ended with 12 biscuits (okay, there would have been more had my knife hand been more deft) that bent slightly, before snapping cleanly and had a firm chew to them. Cloake's assertion of producing a biscuit which actually "tastes like chocolate" was entirely correct, and they were all the better for it. Did they all share the same shape, girth and circumference? No. Did anyone really care? Well, yes, I did. But only because it is now 2020, and there is the need for Instagrammability.

The point about needing food to look presentable has been re-hashed and repeated and reconfigured into oblivion, but it's something I've found difficult to get used to. In my very first post, I talked about establishing a blog in 2019, and online food writing has now taken a very different form from what it was 15 years ago. I'm not accustomed to presentability, and it seems somewhat contradictory for home cooking; some of the very best meals are the ones that turgidly slop into a bowl without a jot of self-consciousness. If you look at the pictures attached to food blogs from 2005, say, they're certainly not ugly, but there is certainly a more loose and carefree style to them. If you could define my hemispheric biscuits in a complimentary way, you might say they were "loose and carefree".

Aside from the questionable morphology of the finished product (which I take full responsibility for), this is an incredible recipe. If you have the merest ability to bake biscuits, I encourage you to do it. As a non-chocoholic, I am convinced. As an endnote, I have to mention that I, along with flatmates-of-the-blog Owen and Rebecca, used these to make ice-cream sandwiches. While these biscuits aren't exactly of the ideal consistency to make ice-cream sandwiches (their firmness results in much of the ice cream being squeezed out of the sides), I can't bring myself to not recommend this. You could even deconstruct the sandwich concept and use the cookies as a topping instead. Let me tell you, the possibilities are endless and I do encourage you to realise them.

Also, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but the dough is just sensational. I'm sure a spoonful of it won't go amiss in during the preparation process.

Last disclaimer (I promise) - my phone is currently broken, which is what I generally use to take pictures of the food I post here. I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to get a new one, so for the time being there might just be some somewhat dubious photography posted here as I'm using a pretty old tablet for this purpose. I'll keep the greats of 2005 food writing in mind here.

Felicity Cloake's "Perfect" Chocolate Biscuits

Preparation time: 1 hour

Baking time: 15-25 minutes (depending on your desired consistency)

Makes: 12-16 cookies

Ingredients

100g dark chocolate

150g butter

130g caster sugar

70g golden syrup

215g plain flour

45g cocoa powder

1/2 tsp of fine salt

Method

Roughly chop the chocolate into chunks. The size of the chunks is up to you. I prefer larger chunks, however the dough will be easier to slice if the chocolate is chopped more finely.

Put the butter in a food mixer and briefly soften it. Once the butter has been softened, add the syrup and the sugar and beat on a medium speed for 5 minutes until the mixture is aerated and fluffy. If you don't have an electric mixer, this stage will take longer but is by no means impossible!

Sift together the flour, cocoa butter and salt. With the mixer running on a low speed, add the dry ingredients until everything forms a dough. If you are mixing manually, then add your ingredients gradually before mixing together until it forms a dough.

Roll the dough into a sausage shape with a 5cm diameter, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes. This dough can also be stored in the fridge for up to 10 days (I've heard that the taste of biscuit dough gets better with age - but I'm not sure that I'd have the patience to test this!)

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 180 C (160 C for fan-heated ovens) and line two baking trays with grease proof paper. Once the dough has been properly chilled, remove from the fridge and slice thinly. Line each biscuit on the baking tray, giving enough space for spreading to take place.

Bake the biscuits for the amount of time corresponding to the kind of texture you'd like. If you want a softer biscuit, take out after 15 minutes, however if you'd like a snappier texture then bake for 25 minutes. I went for something in between and baked them for 20 minutes.

Leave to cool thoroughly on the baking tray before eating.

Notes & Adjustments

There are so many ways here I can think of so adjust the flavour here, and I'm going to name but a few.

• Replace a tbsp of the cocoa powder with a tbsp of instant coffee powder for a darker, more mature flavour. You could replace a tsp of cocoa with some chilli or ginger powder for a spicier taste to go alongside the dark chocolate.

• If you would like the biscuits to be slightly sweeter, then you could replace half of the chopped dark chocolate with chopped white chocolate. This would also give them more of a variable appearance. Including 1/2 a tsp of vanilla extract would also give it more of a homogenised sweetness. Feel free to experiment with all manner of flavours too!

• If you want to really intensify the chocolate flavour then melt some dark chocolate and dip one half of the baked biscuit into it, before chilling (either on the bottom half or just on one side). You could also spread the biscuit with peanut butter.

• One of my favourite things about these biscuits (besides the texture is the slight saltiness). If this is something that you like too, I think it would be great to sprinkle them with a small amount of coarse sea salt before baking. If you do this, you may wish to reduce the amount of fine salt in the mixture slightly.

• Replacing the caster sugar for dark brown sugar will give the biscuits more of an intense, burnt caramel taste if that kind of thing is to your tastes.

On a final note, I really do have to tell you about the pie that FOTB Owen made for FOTB Rebecca and I. It consisted of Quorn chicken replacement pieces, spinach, mushrooms, peas, green beans and sweetcorn bound together with butter, chicken stock and chilli flakes, encased within a little cottage of pastry. I've never made a pie before, and the idea of someone baking one for you is so homespun and quaint an image that I felt ready to settle down with a plot of wildflowers and a companionable cow named Bessie.

Now, a pie that holds it shape completely and ice-cream sandwiches that definitively do not; what more could you ask for, eh?

An archipelago of overwhelming proportions.

Over the past few weeks, I've been somewhat reluctantly engaged in the process of creating and populating a Pinterest page for this blog. I'm still acclimating to the platform, and my time on it has been marked by a few ups-and-downs. Take for example, just now I felt a pulse of thrill surge through my body as I received the news that a fellow Pinterest user (a Pinner?) had saved one of my pins (the Bran & Jam Muffins of a few posts back) to one of their boards. Gripped in the heady throes of excitement, I navigated on to their page only to find that my beloved muffins had been housed in the dubious category of "Health and Wellness".

I mean... it's just one. big. ugh, right? Rest assured, it gets worse. I clicked into their board, nervous anticipation rising in my like a particularly acidic bile, and uncovered a collection replete with colon cleansing tips, pictures of women with teabags in their ponytails (it prevents grey hair!) and a truly sensational piece of advice that instructs the subject to leave a piece of onion in their ear overnight. The "rationale" behind the latter is that the phosphoric acid will work to prevent ear infections. It makes me wonder what miraculous healing benefits were attributed to my humble mounds of sugared bran? If it is in any way related to the colonic purity, then that might just be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.

Fear not, for there remains a small pocket of hope that is yet to be quashed. Perhaps unbelievably, based on the above, I am here to report on a Pinterest-based triumph. Nope, I have not diagnosed an internal malady with the help of a teaspoon; I come to you with a recipe that I am eager to share! This comes from the blog Pisang Susu (which means "Red Banana"in Indonesian) which primarily contains food-writing and recipes about Dutch-Indonesian food. The recipe is for Semur Telor (Braised Eggs to you and I), and if anyone knows of my ardour for the two titular components of this dish then you'll probably appreciate the swiftness with which I saved this pin. O'Pinterest, thou walketh the path of redemption.

I think it's fair to say that Indonesian food isn't the most prolific when we think of Southeast Asian cooking (an incredibly non-homogeneous categorisation, mind). Thailand is the well-established culinary juggernaut within the Western imagination, and the star of Vietnam (the one in the flag, perhaps?) is definitely ascending at a rapid pace. The Philippines and Malaysia are present on the scene too with ube-topped ice cream and the bowls of steaming laksa respectively taking their places. I can't say that I even really knew much about Indonesian cuisine beyond my copy of William Wongso's Flavours of Indonesia.

Semur Telor represents the national food gloriously. It's an incredibly simply dish, relying on the flavours of fresh tomato, chopped leeks and nutmeg. The cooking process for this was peppered with intrusive thoughts, telling me that "this isn't going to be great" and pointedly asking "how is this going to come together?" Let me tell you, as well as being a perfect ambassador for Indonesia, it is also a testament for the alchemical properties of a stove, a wok and a set of ingredients. The dish was a perfect balance of sweetness from the tomato and the components hailing from the allium genus, savoury woodiness from the partnership of soy sauce and nutmeg, and creaminess from the safety-warning tinted rivulets of egg yolk extending their reach across the dish.

I'd like to say that, although I've used phrases above such as "ambassador for Indonesia" and made a few generalisations, Indonesian food (as well as all other aspects of it's culture) is mind-blowingly diverse. I did my Masters degree in Climate Change, and the first assessment I had was to write a report about the projected physical impacts on a country of my choice; after a lot of hand-wringing, I picked Indonesia. Sobering stuff, but I was overawed to learn that the country consists of over seventeen-thousand islands. Within this archipelago of overwhelming proportions are 264 million people (4th most populous country in the world), over 700 languages and more than 300 ethnic groups. I know that these are easily Wikipediable (not yet a word, but it should be) facts, but it says a lot about the multifarious nature of just about everything situated within the island-chain republic.

I have made a few marginal adaptations based on the drearily-dull nature of commercially available tomatoes in the UK (I think this extends to the EU as a whole too, but don't quote me on that). According to this article from The Independent, tomatoes are picked while green and allowed to ripen in transit, curtailing their potential significantly. Knowing this, I'm not sure that I've ever really had a properly ripened and prepared tomato, and this explains why I found the fruit unbearably grassy as a child. I've made a couple of additions here to boost the acidity and sweetness that would have been provided by a well-nurtured tomato. Of course, if you have access to a superior crop of whatever form this may not be necessary.

Another note is that I made this as a solo meal. If you do this also, I recommend cutting the amount of eggs in half, but using the same quantities of everything else. If you end up having too much sauce, then you can either save some to re-purpose or (even better) mop it up with some bread.

Pisang Susu's Semur Telor (Indonesian Braised Eggs)

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Serves: 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side.

Ingredients

4 eggs

1 leek

1/2 a small red onion

1 clove of garlic

1 large tomato

1 tbsp of butter

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

100 ml of vegetable stock or broth

1 tsp of lemon juice

1 tbsp of soy sauce

1 1/2 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of nutmeg

1/2 tsp of pepper

Salt to taste

Finely chop the onion, leek and the tomato. Crush the clove of garlic before finely mincing. Once all of the vegetables have been prepared, set aside for cooking later.

Add the butter and the vegetable oil to a large frying pan and melt over a high heat. Once the butter has melted and the oil has come to a hot temperature, add the four eggs and cook until they are almost done; there should be a little bit of white on the top that isn't cooked. Don't worry, I know this is a scary prospect but they will finish cooking when they are braised.

Remove each egg from the frying pan carefully (I broke the yoke of one of my eggs at this stage...) and add the onions and the leek to the frying pan, using the same oil that was used to cook the eggs. Saute over a medium high heat for four minutes, or until they have softened.

Stir in the garlic to the pan and saute for a further 30 seconds. After this, add the tomato to the pan and stir until it has integrated with the mixture. When all is combined, add the broth, soy sauce, lemon juice nutmeg, salt and pepper and bring to the boil.

When the pan has come to the boil, add the eggs and turn down to a medium heat. Simmer for 4 minutes. This will be just enough time for the eggs to cook and for the sauce to reduce very slightly.

Transfer to serving bowls and plates once this has done. You could eat this with rice, or on it's own; I had mine with a bit of simple baguette on the side to absorb the sauce. Pisang Susu's recommendation is to serve it with this Trancam Salad if you're thinking of making a couple of things.

Notes & Adjustments

Most of these adjustments come from the original blog post on Pisang Susu, so that's an extra assurance that they are tried and tested!

• If you can find it, substitute the soy sauce for kecap manis, which is an Indonesian form of soy sauce which has a greater sweetness and viscosity due to the use of palm sugar. If you do use this, however, reduce the amount of sugar you use by 1/2 a tsp.

• If you don't like leek, then substitute it for 2 large spring onions.

• Instead of fresh tomato, you could also use two tsp of tomato puree. This will probably result in a slightly thicker sauce.

• This can also be finished with the juice of a lime segment, for a brighter flavour. If you do this, reduce the amount of lemon juice used by 1/2 a tsp.

"capture my thoughts, and carry them away" (for a Sunday)

Do you know a word that makes me groan? Chill. It isn't the case that I hate it, but hearing it being used sends me into a rolling cycle of guilt and indignancy. Because, my dear reader, I am wholeheartedly not a chill kind of person. On my left shoulder, there's a bleach-blonde surfer dude telling me that I should be better at going with the flow (he's also telling me that I should chill). On the right, a tightly laced-up and held together guy in a tailored business suit is imploring me not to listen, that I've spent a long-time trying to be more easygoing and that it just isn't me. I think it's safe to say that I struggle to find the midpoint between these two extremists weighing down my joints.

This lack o'chill seems to manifest itself most cogently in the way I spend my time (as evidenced by my Wednesday travails). I tend to operate most comfortably if I know how my day is going to go, or if I have an idea of what I'm going to do that day. There's not much that seems unhealthy about that on the surface, but it renders me unable generally to respond to my mood in terms of what I want to do. I want to have something in place, lest I trigger a sense of distrust in my own ability to use time in a way that I won't regret. So, while I'd wager a weekend composed primarily of open-ended free time would be a source of calm to most people, it's quite an anxiety-provoking prospect for me.

This weekend, however, I found myself taking back Sunday (totally unaffiliated with the pop-punk band of course). The day prior had been full of headache-thwarted riverside walks, unexpected social discomfort and a pleasantly involving game of zombie-themed dungeons & dragons; understandably, Sunday needed to be the counterpoint to this. I'd had some notions of trying to make a cauliflower-based Kung Pao "Chicken", but a last-minute bout of financial trepidation put paid to those plans, leaving the day wide open once again (the Kung Pao Cauliflower will put in an appearance one day, however!)

There's something grounding about breakfast; although I am enamoured with breakfast food (primarily, but not exclusively toast) just the act of sitting down to eat it feels like you're laying the foundation stone of the day. So, sitting at the kitchen table; cheese-on-toast tumbled with sauteed broccoli and bell peppers accompanied by a steam brimmed cafetiere, it was easy to become taken by the complacent notion that the day would fall perfectly into place.

The rest of the Sunday felt a bit like a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. Having the ability to guiltlessly sit and play a game or read a book is nothing short of a blessing. However, I ended up taking two separate walks, which is just as symptomatic of a meandering head-space as anything else could be. So, while not an unpleasant experience, it's definitely the start of a long process of becoming comfortable and ignoring unhealthy compulsions.

I have to talk about one highlight of the day though; lunch. Reflecting on it, I find that occasionally I won't have lunch on an unstructured day because there seems to be no place for it to slot in. This Sunday, I was determined to change that. I am currently on the verge of committing myself into a full-scale radish cyclone thanks to a certain Orangette article from 2005. The day prior, I had initiated myself in the life-altering virtue of the humble white baguette, buttered and salted with slices white radishes. Now, on a Sunday afternoon, the time had come to shoehorn the remainder of my fandango pink roots into my current favourite cooking method; the braise.

Pillaging the need-to-use stores of the kitchen, including a half can of coconut milk, lashings of turmeric powder and a particularly bulky head of spring greens, the idea of the quick-braised and vibrant stew perforated by spears of buttered toast swiftly came to fruition. Would this have come into being on a day laden with structure? Perhaps. But there is something integral about the flexibility of the "go-with-what-you-have" attitude underlying the serendipitous inter-mesh of golds, greens and pinks resulting from this.

So, to return to the word that is perhaps no longer unspeakable; will I be this "chill" all of the time? Almost definitely not. Do I want to be? Same response. But, I can take these hour long interludes and savour them for the useful counterpoint they are. Perhaps they'll continue to be this fruitful too? I guess I'll have to wait until next Sunday to find out.

The version of this I made used half of the quantities specified below, however this is the kind of recipe where the amounts specified for each ingredient are all proportional to each other, and therefore can be easily doubled. Plus, I couldn't suggest you use half a can of coconut milk in good faith, now could I?

Turmeric & Coconut Braised Radishes

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients

400g of pink radishes, halved sideways

70g of spring greens, finely sliced

3 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced

1 tsp of grated ginger

400ml of coconut milk

2 tsp of turmeric

1 tsp of cumin

1/2 tsp of chilli flakes

1 tbsp of butter/vegan butter

Salt

Pepper

Method

Warm a medium sized saucepan over a low heat, before adding the butter and slowly melting it, taking care to ensure that it doesn't burn. Once the butter has completely melted, add the garlic, ginger and chilli, turn up to a medium-high heat, and fry for one minute to allow the flavours to infuse.

Add the radishes into the saucepan along with a pinch of salt and fry for three minutes. This will soften them a little and make them more tender when braised.

Pour in the can of coconut milk, turmeric and cumin, turn up to a high heat and bring to a boil. Once the pan is boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low and clamp the lid down. Leave this for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, stir in the spring greens to the mixture and put the lid on the saucepan for a further five minutes, letting the leaves soften somewhat.

Leave to cool for a few minutes, before serving with slices of bread or a bowl of rice.

Notes & Adjustments

• The taste of this dish is more creamy, than overtly coconut flavoured. If you wanted to boost this flavour, then take half a tbsp of desiccated coconut and dry fry on a medium-low heat in a frying pan until golden brown (this will take about five minutes). Add the coconut flakes into the mixture along with the spices.

• Alternatively, if you want more of a full-bodied tang then add 1 tsp of tamarind paste at the same time as the coconut milk.

• If you use a dairy-free butter for this recipe, then it will be vegan. You could also use a neutral oil.

I have the band Rush to thank for the title of this post. I've been listening to the song Mystic Rhythms all week, and was compelled to shoehorn it in somewhere!

Lastly, FOTB Keith suggests a Honey Bee cocktail to go with this. The ingredients are lemon juice, orange juice, honey and Jamaican rum (I'm sure you can be a bit loose with the provenance of your spirit here).