Merguez: Better rude than red

The problem with merguez is that they spit.

Which isn't always ideal.

The other problem with merguez is, bcause they spit, they dry up really fast.

And yet another problem with merguez is that it's much easier to find not-so-good merguez than it is to find the good stuff. The only way to find the latter, I've been told, is to locate a friendly halal butcher. Well, he doesn't necessarily have to be friendly. But halal is a must- because his will have the right ingredients, at least.

Notwithstanding this particular point, on Saturday, during our weekly shop, as I was feeling quite uninspired by what was on special offer (fricasee de porc? It's 25 degrees and sunny. I'm not cooking something that needs to braise in my Staub casserole for three hours!), and suggested to Peter that we fire up the barbecue (for the first time this summer), what went into the shopping trolley was.. a pack of merguez.

Nineteen of them, to be precise. Why they were being sold in packs of nineteen, I fail to understand. There's no way you can divide nineteen merguez and make it fair- unless of course you have nineteen guests. Not that one merguez each is fair either.

Sunday morning dawned... grey, cold, and rainy. A generally miserable day. A "curl up on the sofa, read a book, drink tea" day. Not a day fit to be the penultimate day of May. Nor a day to go pick elderflower and make jelly/syrup/champagne, which was what I'd wanted to do.

And when dinnertime came around... we didn't really feel like going out on the balcony and turning on the barbecue.

To go back to my initial point- in our last apartment, I'd ended up banning merguez from the balcony barbecue. Not only would Peter have to clean his glasses with industrial cleaning fluid afterwards (OK, a slight exaggeration, but not much of one!), but I'd then spend several days intermittently boiling water and pouring it on the balcony floor to get rid of the grease. I remember looking out there one evening to see fat swirling through the air- a sight which has not exactly remained one of my favourite memories! No wonder the merguez almost invariably proved to be dried out and pretty much tasteless.

Thus, the idea of having to start scrubbing the new balcony floor was not something that filled me with joy. Especially when I'm not going to be home much for the next three weeks.

I once fried merguez on the hobtop, on a similarly rainy day. Again, not something that I looked forward to doing again... as I had to employ cleaning solutions somewhat similar to a nuclear strike afterwards.

So, what were we going to have for dinner?

Merguez stew.

Ingredients:
- 1 pack of merguez, each cut into three
- 6 courgettes, chopped into thick slices
- 1 red pepper, in slices
- 2 onions, in thick slices
- 3 sweet potatoes, in chunks
- 1 bottle of passata
- olive oil

I heated the olive oil in the Staub casserole (!), added the onions and the red pepper, stirred, put the lid on for a couple of minutes, added the courgettes and sweet potatoes, stirred, put the lid back on for a few minutes, then added the merguez. Stirred them in, left the lid on again for a couple of minutes. (At this point, if I'd had any, I'd have added a tin of chickpeas, but, for some mysterious reason, I was out.) I then added the bottle of passata, a bit of water (to rinse out the bottle!), put the lid on until it reached a simmer, opened it, stirred it around, decided from the smell that I didn't really need to add any spices, and left the lid slightly open until the sauce was as thick as I thought it should be. After which the lid went back on tight, and I turned it all down, as Peter was putting Greta to bed.

I think that all in all, it cooked for about 50 minutes.

And very yummy it was- Peter had two bowls, I had the same, we left just about enough to make one bowlful, if eked out with some couscous and some extra fried onions! Next time, though, I'd add chickpeas and some salt.

As for the merguez, they were the best I've ever had. Soft, juicy, spicy... and no insane orange grease to spend days cleaning up!

Spanakotiropita!

I've always loved this word. Say it again. Spanakotiropita! And again! Spanakotiropita! Woo-hoo!

I'm quite fond of the actual thing as well. And it's something I've wanted to make for a long while.

Spotting feuilles de brik (really thin North African sheets of pastry) in the supermarket earlier in the week was all I needed.

I knew I had spinach at home, as well as feta, so I didn't get anything else. When I got home, I dug out Diane Kochilas' The Glorious Foods of Greece, a cookbook I've had for about 8 years, and never made anything from, despite the best of intentions. Why I didn't reach for Vefa's Kitchen is something that only crossed my mind half-way through cooking this evening. Who knows?

Brik, however, isn't quite filo pastry.

And Peter eating half the pack of spinach for lunch when I was out wasn't what I had expected.

Nor was the fact that Diane didn't actually have a recipe for ... say it again... Spanakotiropita! in her book.

However, I browsed through, and came up with a recipe for Scallion and Feta Pie (Kremmydopita). I then headed off to the supermarket again, with nothing more in my head than the fact that I needed more spinach and some spring onions. Needless to say, I didn't come home with the "2 pounds scallions or spring onions" the recipe required when I had a look at it this evening. Nor did I have 1 pound Greek feta cheese, nor 1 pound myzithra cheese.

I did have, however, 1 1/2 packs of spinach, a pack of rocket (300g each, I think), 2 packs of 220g each of not-feta, i.e. feta-like cheese made with 100% sheep's milk but not in Greece, 5 spring onions, and assorted other bits and pieces.

Thus, my take on Not Really Spanakotiropita!

Ingredients:
- 1 pack of brik containing 10 sheets
- 2 x 220 g pack of "feta" (maybe a bit too much. One and a half packs would have been better.), chopped
- 5 spring onions with lots of green tops
- (about) 1 cup milk
- 300 g rocket
- 450 g (approx) young spinach
- the greens from the radishes that I'd also bought- very satisfying, that as I've always hated throwing them away!
- 4 large eggs
- lots of butter
- pepper, salt

Chop the spring onions, greens and bulb and all. Soften in a frying pan with some of the butter. After a few minutes, when beginning to wilt, add the spinach, cook until wilted. My frying pan wouldn't take all the greens in one go, otherwise I'd have had them all in- so I then cooked the rocket and radish leaves in the same pan, then tipped the first batch back in, added the milk, freshly-ground black pepper, and cooked that for about 5 minutes.


Tipped it all into a bowl, left to cool for a few minutes (would you believe I was also making strawberry and rhubarb jam at the same time?), then add the beaten eggs and the chopped "feta".

Then, working fast, as all the books tell you too, I layered the brik in a dish (actually the lid of my Pyrex chicken roaster), brushing each layer with some melted butter, keeping the rest covered with a damp (clean) dishtowel. Ms. Kochilas' recipe had 12 sheets, I only had 10, it didn't really matter, did it? I layered 5, making sure that there was enough overhang to fold over, then put in my filling (I should have mixed it a bit better- there were bits where it was mostly cheese, and other places where it was mostly greens), then layered the remaining five over the top, brushing them with more butter.

Into the oven at 190C for 50 minutes. Of course, at 50 minutes, I decided to leave it another 5, and then my jam jelled (well, I took the sugar thermometer off the side and put it in the middle and found that I was well above jelling temperature, argh!), so I had to jar that in a hurry. But I turned the oven off and opened the door on the way past, after it had been in for about an hour.



Verdict: Well, there isn't much left. It was yummy. Even Peter liked it enough to say that I should make it again. Not twenty times a year, he hastened to specify, but again.



As I pointed out- now that brik is available, I can make all sorts of fillings... If only I could find ground lamb! I think I need to find a good halal butcher.

I Can Has My Dream!

Behold. A brand-new, copper, jam-making pan.

My jam brings all the boys to the yard...

Basics

Lunch: organic whole-meal bread, home-made mayonnaise, noix de jambon (ham from the centre of the joint), and raw milk, six months aged Abondance.

It almost made up for Greta only having a post-prandial nap of a grand total of 26 minutes.

I Am Insane: Two Birthday Cakes in one day

Greta's second birthday is next week- right in the middle of the week, which makes it awkward for people to come share some cake, bring her a present, and generally exclaim over how much she's grown since she took her first breath.

Therefore, we decided to hold it this Sunday. Which was made slightly awkward by the fact that it is Peter's brother's birthday.

Peter's brother, who is responsible for Greta turning up two weeks early (he had his birthday over three different evenings and three different parties, inviting us out to each one- with the result that in the early hours of the morning after the third dinner, I exploded), agreed to share his Special Day, on one condition.

He got his own cake. And it had to be chocolate. And have thirty-two candles. And have his name on it in pink frosting.

He thought he was being funny with the last one.

Well, he got what he wanted.

Giving it a second try, I turned once again to Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

This time, however, the Flourless Chocolate Cake (copyright as above, slightly amended by me) was what grabbed my attention.

Thus, on Saturday afternoon, after spending the day in town and doing the supermarket shop, at 4 p.m. I girded my loins, and dug out the blender again.

Ingredients:
- 300g black chocolate (i.e. three chocolate bars. I bought the Migros organic chocolate, as I like it's caramel-sugar taste)
- 140 g butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 7 large eggs, separated
- 3 vanilla pods, seeded (again, the recipe asked for pure vanilla extract, which I couldn't find)
- 1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Butter and flour the sides and bottom of a 9-inch/24cm springform pan. Melt the chocolate and set aside to cool. In the bowl of the electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together until pale, light, and thoroughly combined. Add the egg yolks, beating well after each addition (I did it in three batches). After they've all been incorporated, scrape down the bowl and beat again for a few seconds. Add the cooled chocolate, mix until thoroughly combined. Scrape down the bowl, add the vanilla, beat until just incorporated.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form (stiff, you got it?). Now here I again had the problem with the bowl of my blender being too small to add the egg whites to the chocolate mix, so I shoved my egg whites to the side of my very large bowl (having planned this one in advance), plopped in about a cup of the chocolate mix, then folded that into the egg whites, gently, with a spatula. I then added the rest of the chocolate mix, and continued, very slowly and gently so as not to knock the air out of the egg whites.

Pour the mix into the pan and don't bother smoothing the top, even if the book says to, because it will even out in a minute. Bake for 30-35 mns (I set the timer for 35), until the top of the cake seems set or firm to the touch. The book says "Be careful not to overbake this cake", so I took it out at 35 mns, although as the top was firm, it still seemed a bit jiggly to me. This caused a little bit of trauma until it was cut and I was sure it was indeed cooked through.

Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely before removing from the mold.


However, I also had Greta's birthday cake to make. And Betty Bossi had come up trumps again, with a recipe for Fraisier au yogourt.

Ingredients:
- 100g flour
- 60g sugar
- pinch of salt
- 55 g cold butter, in cubes
- 1 small beaten egg.

Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter, work by hand until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg, bring quickly to a soft dough, without working it.

Butter a 24-cm mold (I used a 20cm one), flour it. My recipe then said to roll out the dough- no way that this dough was going to be rolled out! So I just dropped it into the mold and smoothed it out with the backs of my fingers. Refrigerate for 30mns, says the recipe, but I didn't have time for this. Because we were going out for dinner at 6:30, and I was making two cakes at the same time!

Prick the base with a fork (erm... I did this, but I don't think it was necessary, mine was too soft!), bake for, according to the recipe, 15mns in the oven, preheated to 200C. I did mine an extra 5 minutes, because it looked undercooked. Leave to cool in the mold, then take out and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Yoghurt mix:
- 500g plain yoghurt
- 140g sugar (I used vanilla sugar, made from shoving de-seeded vanilla pods into the sugar and leaving them there)
- 3 vanilla pods, seeded

Mix the three together in a bowl. Leave to infuse.

At which point, with two cakes on the rack, we went out for dinner.

Which ran on much later than we'd thought it would- so I was back in the kitchen at midnight!


I unmolded the base for the fraisier, put it on a glass cake dish, then put the sides of the mold around it again.

Going back to the chocolate cake, I started the ganache.

Ingredients:
- 300 g black chocolate
- 1/2 cup creme fraiche epaisse
- 1/4 cup liquid sugar (the recipe asked for light corn syrup, which is unavailable in Switzerland)
(optional, and I didn't have any- 1 tbs coffee-flavoured liqueur such as Kahlua)

I started by making a mistake, putting the bowl of chocolate into the microwave to melt, then hauling it out fast after 20 seconds. Do not melt the chocolate!

In a small saucepan, combine the cream and liquid sugar/corn syrup, and bring just to a boil. Remove from the heat and pour the cream mixture over the chocolate. Let stand for two minutes (whilst doing things with strawberries for the other recipe), then stir the mixture together slowly until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Whisk for another few minutes to cool the ganache slightly. (Add the liqueur and whisk again.)

To glaze the cake, the book says to put the cake on the wire rack, and glaze there, then put on a plate. As I had to use three spatulas and Peter to get my cake off the base of the tin without it breaking up, I put it straight on my cake plate. No way I was going to mess around with such a fragile thing.

Pour 3/4 cup over the cake, and smooth out to the edges. Place the cake in the freezer for five minutes to set the ganache. Remove from the freezer, and then the book says to slowly pour the glaze over the cake, "it should run down the sides and cover the cake completely". My ganache was much too thick for this, so I took my spatula and glazed the sides carefully, then put the last two tablespoons of ganache on top, smoothed them out, covered the cake, and put it on the balcony for the night, as there was definitely not room for "chill the glazed cake for two hours" in my fridge!


During all of this, I had continued the Fraisier.

900g (says the recipe, I used about 600-700 g, I think) strawberries. Slice in half enough strawberries to go around the edges of the cake, points pointing upwards, and cut side on the outside. Then fill the inside with whole strawberries.



This is when it got noisy, especially for a Swiss apartment at gone half-past-midnight!

- 2 sheets of instant gelatine
- 1 dl warm water
- 2 1/2 dl cream, whipped into chantilly.

At this point, Peter turned up, told me I was making too much noise, and asked me to whip the cream quietly. Do you know how much muscle control it takes to whip cream as quietly as possible? Well, it's a good thing that I carry Greta around so much, and have consequently impressive biceps. I did my best, but was still a bit noisy for a few minutes.

Soften the gelatine in the water, add to the yoghurt and vanilla mixture with the whisk (I've never dealt with gelatine before, and I didn't get it quite soft enough, unfortunately- there were some bits of it in the finished cake, as I found out the next day! Also, as this was a first time, I spent the next 15 hours or so worrying about it setting properly.). Add the chantilly cream, gently. Leave to sit for ten minutes. Pour over the strawberries, smooth the top, and leave for at least three hours, covered, in the fridge.

Or, in my case, go to bed, it being 1 a.m.!



The next day I brought the chocolate cake in off the balcony a couple of hours beforehand, and, with a tube of hot-pink icing with sparkles, wrote the above on it. And managed to fit two candles, one in the shape of a 3, the other in a 2, into the cake without anything catastrophic happening. I was still worried about the inside/middle not being cooked, but it seemed OK...


I was very worried about unmolding the Fraisier, and did it very slowly and carefully, convinced that the whole thing was going to collapse- but it didn't, hurray! I was so proud of myself that I did a little dance.


Unlike her cake last year, Greta actually ate a few mouthfuls of her slice- in between busily running around and showing off her amazing cuteness skills.


As for the chocolate cake, my brother-in-law was very happy. And impressed, as was everybody else. He took the remains of the chocolate cake home, and the Fraisier is in the fridge for us.

Verdict:
The chocolate cake went down extremely well. Even Peter, who isn't a big fan of sweet things or of chocolate cake, loved it. It was definitely a keeper recipe. The inside was soft, gooey, chocolatey, and definitely not undercooked.

The Fraisier is also a recipe I'll hang on to, as it makes a nice, simple cake, perfect for strawberry season. I had expected the base to stay crispy, but it had soaked up quite a bit of moisture, and was all soft, without, however, being soaked to the point of collapse. Maybe next time, a little pre-soak in some strawberry liqueur?

Thank you, last summer, for the tomato sauce...

When you're home late, you're cold, you shouldn't be because it's mid-May, but it's been raining on and off all day... pasta with sauce made last August is all that anybody really needs.

Last summer, I made an utterly basic tomato sauce with tomatoes from the farm down the road. The pots had just sat in the cupboard all through winter, me periodically glancing at them, and thinking that winter hadn't got that bad yet.

Winter never did get that bad. But spring did. We had three weeks of spring, everything blossomed, flowered, there were drifts of petals swirling past our windows, then we had two weeks of glorious summer during which I got sunburned twice, and ... suddenly... it became early spring again.

By which I mean it got cold, started to rain, got colder, went on raining, and was generally unpleasant. Is generally unpleasant. I have had to put my sandals away and get my wellies back out! Brrrr...

And therefore, after spending the day outside at a barbecue, we were all cold, hoping that we hadn't caught cold, and craving something warm, smooth, and ultimately comforting.

There are few things more comforting than pasta. Pasta with lots of rich, oily tomato sauce. Pasta that you can bury your head in, and pull up over your cold feet like a lovely fleece blanket. Pasta that loves you, and loves your tummy, and doesn't care that it's been waiting in the cupboard for the last 9 months...

American Layer Cake- not Swiss enough!

Acting on a tip-off from David Lebovitz, who said it was one of the best cookbooks this year (or last year), I purchased (from abebooks, I'm cheap), Baked: New Adventures in Baking.

A few days later, reminded that Peter's Annual Family Reunion was coming up, and having been volunteered to make a first course (not a difficult task- my faithful tabbouleh came to the rescue) and a dessert, I opened it up at the cakes section (real cakes, not French cakes!), and came up with The Whiteout Cake.

Which looked pretty nice. A long recipe, longer than what I'd usually make, but a challenge is always good. And I need to break out of my usual habits and recipes I've repeated so many times...

The problem was... I didn't start until just before 9 p.m.

Nor did I realise that I was going to end up using my blender (and wishing I had a second blender), four mixing bowls, two measuring cups, two measuring spoons, numerous other spoons and forks, several knives, both spatulas, and a heap of other tools.

Yeah. Well. A professional kitchen would have been nice too.

Ingredients (copyright Baked, as above; slightly tweaked by me as indicated):
- 2.5 cups farine fleur (cake flour)
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1 tbs baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 115 g butter (my apologies, but although I have an American measuring cup, and am quite happy to measure things like flour and sugar in it, I'm not trying to cram butter into it! Hence, I convert, with a handy online tool)
- 1/2 cup vegetable fat for cooking (vegetable shortening- I had to figure this one out by cramming it into the cup, and very annoying it was too)
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 3 vanilla pods, seeded (my change- I couldn't find pure vanilla extract, so couldn't put it one tbs thereof)
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/2 cups ice cold water
- 3 large egg whites, at room temperature (I then made mayonnaise with the yolks)
(- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar- in brackets because I didn't have any and have no idea what it is in French nor where to get it, so I didn't bother)


Preheat the oven to 325F/170C. Butter three (two, in my case) 8-inch (20 cm) round cake pans, flour them, tip out excess flour.

Sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Set aside.

In the bowl of the blender, fitted with the paddle attachment (first time I've used that, and I've had the blender about 5 years!), beat the butter and vegetable fat together until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until fluffy. Scrape down the bowl repeatedly. Add the egg whites, beat until "just" combined, whatever that means. Add the flour mixture, alternating with the ice water, in three separate additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (read that twice- it means you add the water twice, and the flour three times). Scrape down the bowl, mix again.

In another bowl (!), whisk the egg whites (and cream of tartar) until soft peaks form. Just soft ones. Not firm ones. Not hard ones. Soft. OK?

Gently fold the egg whites into the batter. Which, in my case, meant using a fourth bowl, as the mixing bowl of my blender wasn't big enough for the egg whites to go in too, besides having the great big paddle thingy at the bottom.

Divide the batter into the pans, and smooth the top. I did this by weighing my bowl at the beginning, then weighing my batter, dividing it into three in my small but perfectly formed head (OK, I did it on the calculator), and spooning it into the tins one by one, as they sat on the weighing machine. And only doing two tins, as I'd only bought two, thinking that I'd just do the third one afterwards.

Bake the cakes for 40-45 mns (I did 45), rotating the pans half-way through, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Remove the molds, slide onto rack, allow to cool completely.

Aren't my cakes pretty? And the tops, when I cut them off, tasted really good too. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

White Chocolate Frosting:
- 175g white chocolate, broken up
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1 1/2 cups milk
- 1/3 cup creme fraiche
- 340g (three. hundred. and. forty!!!) butter, soft but cool (erm, yeah, right, I just left it out for half an hour), cut into small pieces (torn into them, more like!)
(- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract- I didn't bother at all, thinking the cake had plenty of vanilla in it)

Melt the chocolate however you think best (I use the microwave), stir, and set aside to cool.

In a saucepan, whisk the sugar and flour together. Add the milk and cream and cook over medium heat, whisking quite attentively or you'll burn the bottom the way I almost did (OK, did in one little edge, as I paid attention to the book's instructions to "whisk occasionally"), until the mixture has come to a boil and thickened, which takes as long as it takes, no matter the book saying "about 20 minutes", because it was nowhere near that.

Now comes the really annoying part. As you'll have read ahead, you will have washed up your blender, since you only have one. Because you now pour the mixture into the blender, fitted-with-the-paddle-attachment, and, wait for it, you're supposed to "beat on high speed until cool".

Erm, yeah, right. How long is that supposed to take?

And, in my case, there was no way that it was going to cool like that. I kept on having to take the lid off to let steam out. I found the best way was to leave it with the lid off for a few minutes, then whisk the cool layer into the hotter layer, and repeat. It took... oh, quite a while. A good 40 minutes. In the meantime, I baked my other cake, and let that cool.

You then add the butter, mix until thoroughly amalgamated. Increase the speed and beat until the frosting is light and fluffy, whatever that is supposed to mean. I made a stab at what I thought it meant- spreadable, without being concrete.

Add the (vanilla and) white chocolate, and continue mixing until combined. The book then says that if the frosting is too soft, put the bowl in the refrigerator to chill slightly, then beat again until it is the proper consistency. Which is what I did. It also tells you that if it's too firm, set the bowl over a pot of simmering water and beat with a wooden spoon until it is the proper consistency. Me, I'd just turn the blender on again...



Assembling the cake: Refrigerate the frosting for only a few minutes, until it can hold its shape. Place one cake on a serving platter, and trim the top to create a flat surface. Um. Yeah. Sort of. Evenly spread about 1 1/4 cups of the frosting on top. Add the next layer, having trimmed it first (the book says to do it second, no, bad idea), frost it, add the third layer.

The book then says to "crumb coat" the cake, i.e. to put a thin layer of frosting on it to catch the crumbs, then put the cake in the refrigerator for about 15 mns to firm up the frosting. I did, but my layer had no crumbs in it anyway, so I wasn't too bothered. Frost the top and the sides with the remaining frosting.


Now, I'd also bought white sprinkles, as the book called this "whiteout", and said to decorate with white sprinkles or nonpareils. Well, my cake wasn't white. If I'd have been being nice, I'd have said "cream-coloured", but it wasn't, it was butter-coloured. White sprinkles would have looked awful. So I didn't have anything to decorate it with. It would have looked OK with multi-coloured ones, but I didn't have any. So I left it as it was. And went to bed. Because it was gone 1 a.m.!

The verdict:
I'd use the cake base again. Definitely. It was delicate, it was moist, it tasted delicious.

The frosting I'd make again, if I had the sort of sweet tooth that would render me toothless by the age of 40, instead of being 35 and not having a single cavity. It was... rich, it was gooey, it was sweet, it was like eating butter and sugar together, and although some older members of the extremely extended family liked it, once they got over the way it looked (I heard two different people ask others "What on earth is that?!?" when the cloche was taken off), it was just far too sweet for most of them.

Besides the way it looked. It was... alien. Too alien for a good, Swiss family. Too much of everything, in fact.

But I will probably use the cake recipe, in two layers, sandwiched with some home-made strawberry jam, and a dusting of icing sugar over the top. Because that would give a much nicer fate to the cake- instead of what happened to this one.

Just under half of it got tipped into the garbage earlier this evening.

Feeding the Beast

If the kid is going to turn the food down... then it may as well look good.

And if you're going to eat your kid's dinner after they've gone to bed, you had better like lovely, buttery, young Gouda.

Pumpkin Gratin- when spring isn't living up to expectations!

As I've mentioned in recent entries- spring came, passed, summer came, passed, and we went back to it being late winter. It's been cold, it's been raining, it's been generally the sort of weather where you wish it weren't.


As such, a Sunday dinner of roast lamb, roasted courgettes with thyme, and a pumpkin gratin is definitely comforting.

I love pumpkin. I love buying big slices of it- thick, green and gold ridged skin, bright golden-orange inside. Mm, all the things that can be done with pumpkin! Pumpkin risotto and pumpkin soup are ones that spring to mind immediately- not least because pumpkin with bacon is definitely a happy-making combination.

And it's an easy thing to cook- you peel it (I either use a vegetable peeler or just chop bits off with a sharp knife, depending on the depths of the ridules between sections), chop it, and you're ready to do whatever you want to do with it.

In this case, obviously, gratin.

Now, some of my older French cookbooks say that the problem with pumpkin, and other vegetables such as endive/chicory, when you gratinée them, is the amount of water they ooze out into the surrounding cream, diluting it and making the whole thing taste rather bleah. They therefore recommend a pre-cooking, followed by much squeezing-out of water, followed by the gratin process.

I'll go with that on endive/chicory, but I've never had that problem with pumpkin. I just chop it, chop an onion, chuck them into my dish, stir them around, add black pepper, pour cream over until just below the edge of the dish, and stick it in the oven. In this case, for as long as the lamb took to cook- about 70-80 minutes at 200C.

Result- nice crunchy sweet burnt bits in a few spots on top, and lovely, sweet, creamy pumpkin underneath.

Perfect for an evening when you should have been out all day, but couldn't be without wearing a sou'wester. And I don't own a sou'wester.