Category: food

Happy Birthday Lee

Cherry, almond and coconut cake, rum and coca-cola and SIX BOOKS: The Conspirators lead us to the Precipice overlooking the Lake of Darkness which receives some Enlightenment from Gabriel’s Moon but ends in Death at the Sign of the Rook. Thank you A1. Sadly the family cannot join us because Gez is hors de covid. More cake for us.
Meanwhile A1 is rereading Holly by Stephen King and A2 is rereading Fatherland by Robert Harris, an alternative history set in 1960s Nazi Berlin which, like so many novels set in that place and polity, features a feisty American girl reporter.

Dish of the Day: G&T Cheesecake

Last week we were musing on the existence of gin and tonic cheesecake and the next day there was a recipe in the newspaper. So here it is. It was not bad and nor were the excellent pork chops in cider with garden beans and broccoli that began the meal (with cheese omelettes for the veggies). We did the 30-question summer quiz and scored an average of 10.75/15 and then scored 9 on this week’s quiz. Average still under 10 — just.
A1 is reading Banquet of Beggars* by Chris Lloyd, the latest of his Paris Occupation crime novels. Really well written, with an absorbing plot based on the black market scams under the Nazi rule. And the detective protagonist is so well-drawn you imagine him upbraiding the author — in his usual sarcastic manner — for piling so many troubles on him.
A2 is reading Fourteen Days* by 36 different writers; a Decameron for the time of covid.
August was the third coolest, second driest and fifth cloudiest on our records.

Dessert du Jour: Strawberry Cheesecake

A delicious and extremely filling pudding which we enjoyed with both our morning coffee and our evening meal of macaroni cheese, cheesy biscuits and salad, accompanied by delicious Swedish gin (tak Lena) We had two quizzes to catch up on and scored 8 on one and 9 on the other, dragging our average back below 10.
A1 is reading The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards, an unlikely and confusingly overpopulated crime novel. A2 is reading House of Silence* by Patricia Marques; a disappointingly dull story about a telepathic Portuguese detective.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

This cake suffered a bit from the cook forgetting the eggs and the accompanying mushroom stroggers was started far too early and came out somewhat overcooked. Luckily they were both edible. We had 2 quizzes to catch up on and scored 8.5 on one and 9 on the other. Oh dear.
A1 is reading The Unwanted Dead* by Chris Lloyd, French noir (appropriately), set in the immediate aftermath of the Nazis entering Paris in 1940. CL has an astonishing new take on the detective protagonist: he has inner demons, a failed marriage, drink and drug problems and an estranged child. How do they come up with these ideas? (OK, I’m being a bit unfair here — it’s actually rather good, well-written and involving, even though our hero does get battered a lot. Certainly worth seeking out the next two books.)
A2 is reading Resolution* by Irvine Welsh. The ex-detective protagonist has a serious drink problem , shedloads of inner demons and wreaks apocalyptic vengance on three men who assaulted him in childhood even though in the course of his revenge he gets stabbed, thrown from a height and buried in quick-setting concrete.

Monopoly Money

City centre publicity for a school holidays event.
We had chicken bacon and broccoli (with our garden broccoli which has all ripened at once) for our family dinner, with Manchester pudding for afters and scored a sad 8 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading The Missing Family by Tim Weaver. A2 is reading The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, which disappeared up its own arse.

Garden Raspberry Cake

Gez was cavorting at a festival in France this weekend so we were not sure if the family dinner was on the cards, but she arrived home in time and we slapped together a dinner of pasta followed by this slapdash cake and managed to score 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Gallows Rock* by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir. A2 is reading The Silver Collar* by Antonia Hodgson.

Damn Fine Cherry Pie and Damn Fine Coffee

A pre-birthday cake for the incomparable Chris.
Recipe: line a pie tin with shop-bought shortcrust pastry. Beat 100g of butter with 100g sugar, beat in 2 eggs, stir in 100g ground almonds and a dollop of Amaretto. Fill pastry case with this mixture, poke in 200g of stoned cherries, bake at 160 degrees for half an hour or until done.
We served this after our family dinner of spaghetti and sauces but sadly did not do the quiz because Dave was indisposed. Next time then.
Later, 23:00:
We were a bit dubious about these possible noctilucent clouds, but Space Weather seemed to think they were:

Dads’ Day

Happy Fathers’ Day, daddies! And a nice day at last with 11kWh of sunshine.
We had cottage pie and Aunt Celia’s lemon pudding for our family dinner, did this week’s and last week’s quizzes and scored 12 on each. Yay!
A1 is rereading Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. A2 is rereading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. “It’s not like anyone asks you for your passport at the polling booth,” it says. Yeah right!

Manchester Pudding

To celebrate our return from Manchester, A2 looked for a regional dish and found this pudding. Recipe adapted to our gadgets: warm milk, sugar butter and breadcrumbs in microwave, beat in egg yolks, air fry on bake setting for 15 mins, stir, give it a couple more minutes, slather on the jam, dollop on the egg whites beaten with sugar, nuke it at 200° for 4 minutes. Done and yum!
A2 is reading Undoctored by Adam Kay.

Fried Alaska

Our attempt at making individual baked Alaskas in the air fryer as a coda to our family lunch of porky veg and rice. It worked very well so here is the recipe:
Cut a shop-bought Swiss roll into 6 pieces and put each piece in an empty Gü pot.
Fill pots to top with shop-bought ice cream.
Beat 2 egg whites with 40g of caster sugar until stiff and spoon on top of each pot.
Put pots in freezer until after dinner, then air fry at 200° for 3 minutes.
Caramba!
We did 2 weeks’ worth of quizzes and scored 12 in one and 10.5 in the other so still in double figures.
A1 is reading Strindberg’s Star* by Jan Wallentin, a kind of halfhearted attempt at a Swedish version of Katherine Neville’s The Eight: a conspiracy involving ancient artefacts with many real-life characters and events dragged in (the titular Strindberg and his brother, Himmler, Fritz Haber, Nobel, Swedenborg, etc etc). But unlike KN’s splendidly enjoyable effort, JW gives us an incoherent plot and a useless and uninvolving protagonist, and poor writing (not helped by a US translation). Rubbish — but not entertaining rubbish, sadly.
A2 is reading Hazards of Time Travel* by Joyce Carol Oates; a boring and pointless novel in which a bolshy teenager from an ultra-authoritarian USA is punished by being transported to the 1950s.
What We Missed
Last night was one of the best aurora displays of the past 500 years, easily visible from here. But we slept through it.

2 Years On

A trifling gift of socks for the cotton anniversary, and a socking great trifle.
We had a belated and depleted (no Dave, no Faye) family dinner of Vinyl Detective Macaroni Cheese (qv), salad and the aforementioned trifle. The quiz has been postponed until next weekend.

Nagar Kirtan

A2 went to the Gurdwara to watch the Vaisakhi parade, which included a posse of orange-clad blokes on motorbikes, a couple of men beating a giant car-towed drum with sheathed swords (seen on right of photo), a detail of women sweeping the road with brooms, an orange flower-topped wheeled cage filled with young men (seen on left of photo) and, bringing up the rear, a lorryload of old ladies. A sunny morning and a happy occasion. Makes you want to be Sikh.
A2 is reading Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
For our dinner and to celebrate Record Shop Day, A1 cooked this delicious recipe from his current book (The Vinyl Detective: Noise Floor):

Vinyl Detective Macaroni Cheese

“Six hundred millilitres of milk,” I said, “three hundred of water, three hundred grams of macaroni, sixty-five of butter…”
“You understand that all of these ingredients have to be of the highest quality?” said Nevada.
“Of course,” said Lambert.
[…]
“Anyway, so you put it all in the same pot…”
“Right,” I said. “Milk, water, butter, macaroni. Cook gently, stirring so it doesn’t stick, until it begins to simmer. Then lower the heat and cook for ten minutes. Add three hundred and fifty grams of cheddar, grated.”
[…]
“And seventy-five millilitres of double cream,” I said.
“Then turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave it for a while to set. And then eat it at any time.”

We only had 150gm of macaroni, so we halved the quantities and it was ample for two.

Mother’s Day

A1 cooked a curry and baked this delicious coffee pecan cake for the mummies at our family meal, missed last week due to illness. So we had two quizzes to catch up on and scored 9 on one and 11.5 on the other.
A1 is reading Fearless by MW Craven. A2 is reading Vaxxers by Professor Sarah Gilbert and Doctor Catherine Green, which gives the inside dope on the AstraZeneca jab. Who knew that chimpanzee diseases and human embryo kidneys featured in its manufacture? Don’t worry though, it’s all gone by the time it reaches your arm.

恭喜发财

Happy Chinese New Year everybody! Here’s our festive spread of fried rice, Singapore noodles, sweet and sour pork, rainbow chicken, cha siu bao, jiaozi, har gow, siu mai, fish balls and tea eggs, with fruit salad for afters.
We were so busy digesting that our brains didn’t work so we only scored 7.25 on the GSQ; our worst this year.
A1 is rereading Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. A2 is reading The Prefect, also by Alastair Reynolds.

Brioche, Banana, Blueberry and Booze Bread and Butter Bake

A sell-by-date chocolate brioche loaf and a pile of sold-off-cheap bananas was converted to a tasty pudding to finish off our family dinner of baked potatoes and assorted trimmings.
A1 is reading Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds. A2 is rereading The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron.
We scored 10.5 on the GSQ.