Comfort food – Page 3

10th November 202010th November 2020

Celeriac, potato, onion and courgette soup

Celeriac soup with caramelised onion, roasted pine nuts, browned courgette

The first thing I think of when autumn arrives is mushrooms. Then pumpkins. And then, celeriac.

But for some reason, they were not stocking it anywhere near us. I kept peeking at the vegetables section each time I visited the shops, and all I saw were sad swedes (the roots, not the people) and tiny squash and potato cubes. No! That will not do!

So I finally braved the rain and wind, walked to a supermarket further away, and found celeriac there. At last!

Celeriac soup with onion, courgette and pine nuts

This appetite of mine for celeriac soup is a bit of a recent thing though. I blame The Celeriac Soup that I had at Brunswick House once.

Have it once, try to mimic it forever. Such is my fate…

2nd November 20202nd November 2020

Skulls and bones (or: scones and scones)

Bone-shaped cheese scones in a baking tray

Is there anything funnier than making your own pastry and then baking a Poison Pie (like I did last year)? Yes—making skull and bone shaped scones!

20th October 2020

Lentejas (lentil stew)

Close up of lentejas served in a dish (lentil stew)

A traditional, cheap and comforting one-pot dish 😋

We’re having this quite often, now that the weather is starting to get dark and nasty.

I use a pressure cooker, but a deep pot with lid works very well too… although it will take longer to cook!

18th October 2020

Macedonia de otoño (autumn fruit salad)

Macedonia de otoño: manzana, naranja, plátano, granada (fruit salad with apple, orange, banana and pomegranate)

This is something my grandmother used to make for Sunday lunch… but only once a year! Maybe she got tired of peeling pomegranates and the rest of fruits for six people (and who can blame her!?) 😏

It’s nice to enjoy the new oranges coming into season, with their crisp and sweet flavour… yum! 😋

28th June 2020

Pseudo-isolation, week 15: in food, not photos style

I hope Devvers allows me the license to include one photo. Here’s food, not photos if you want to go for the text only experience!

Monday: Mushrooms, carrots and aubergines in a miso sauce with sesame seeds on rice. Socially distanced conversation with a friend in St. James’s Park. The grass tickled our legs. First sunset outside our home in many months.
Tuesday—the saint’s day for St John: My cousin declares “the good thing about masks is they hide a double chin”. A salad with endive, chickpeas, orange and dukkah. My fennel seedlings reach for the sky. It’s too hot to cook, let alone bake the Spanish sweet I wanted to make for St. John, a Coca de San Juan.
Wednesday: cocktails with Blu Hydrangea for Pride at work, via Zoom. It’s still very hot; we’re persistently sleepy all day. I make gazpacho with limited ingredients; I read out the ingredient list with delight. Devvers keeps asking if I’ve spiked it, like in the Almodóvar movie.
Thursday: we melted. Devvers goes to Bubbledogs to have a look at the new deli; inevitably comes back with grower champagne.
Friday: working from home at 32ºC+ is unbearably suffocating. There are no more windows left to open or fans left to run. We had a walk to cool down when we finished work. We saw an orphaned coffee machine in the street.
- Our train of thought was mildly eccentric:
  - “Can we have the champagne?”
  - “Only if we have popcorn first”
Saturday: it rained overnight and it was cooler during the day, so I finally had the chance to make the Coca de San Juan and some sort of baked butternut squash kofte. We found two ladies having a picnic in our very urban doorstep, because evidently it’s the best place to set up shop in the whole of Fitzrovia. We tried out the Great Thai for dinner (take away, obvs).
Sunday: it rained again. It’s chilly today. Devvers invented a chicken and cardamom pilaf style rice cooked in the rice cooker. It was extremely satisfying.