Disappointment and Small Awesomeness

We keep getting disappointing tomatoes in our veg boxes - not terribly surprising, given that it's the winter.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the only way to deal with a disappointing tomato is to roast it and make it into a sauce (with lots of garlic, chilli and red pepper), so today that's what we did.

Husband and friend had theirs with pasta and I had mine with courgettes and grated cheese...




Far more exciting, though, were my extremely awesome advance preparation skills.

I made bento lunches for me and for husband (mine is the silver and his is the double layer black).
Chicken karaage, various fun veggie things and rice for husband.

Good, no?





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Saturday Katsu

We bought a big chicken.

Husband hacked it (very prettily) into eight lovely pieces and I pankoed up a couple of them and made us katsu curry...




I love katsu curry.

I'm editing this now, after the event, lest anyone wants to know how I made it.
It was very very easy:

First I made the sauce - I sweated a chopped onion, some whole garlic cloves and a diced kohlrabi (I guess pretty much any veg are fair game here - I think it usually has carrots and things) in some groundnut oil in a little saucepan with a lid on it for about ten minutes.

I then stirred in some (probably two or three tablespoons - I just dolloped it in) flour and a good dash of curry powder (generic - just whatever I had in the cupboard) and cooked over medium heat for another minute or two.

I chucked in some chicken stock (a bit at a time, so as not to be lumpy) and brought the whole lot to the boil before adding some soy sauce and honey to taste and simmering for ten mins or so to thicken a bit. Obviuosly more flour/less liquid would have made a thicker sauce and other tasty veg and spices would probably also be nice, but mine was a pretty convincing katsu curry sauce flavour.

I chopped a big chicken breast into chunks, which I dipped in seasoned flour, beaten egg and finally panko breadcrumbs and fried in hot oil in a wok-type pan.
I did it in a centimetre of so of oil, but deep frying might work better if one can be bothered.

Then it was just a matter of assembling and liberally dousing with Bulldog sauce (which is pleasingly similar to a fruity version of the Edinburgh chipshop 'sauce' which anyone who has ever lived there surely yearns for in the same way that I do) and hey presto - chicken katsu curry :)

The broccoli is optional - rice is probably more of a conventional option. Husband had both...

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The Straw Mushrooms of Happiness

With a bit of chilli, black fungus and fermented tofu stuff...






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The Dish of Dreams

A few days before Christmas, I was happily in the kitchen in my flat (washing up, I think) when a tousled husband emerged from the bedroom, demanding to know whether I had been "frying" (his word, not mine) eggs in coca cola...

Obviously, I looked at him open mouthed, with barely disguised horror etc...

It turned out that he'd been dreaming about it that morning, vividly enough that he really had no idea whether it had actually happened or not.

He remained weirdly obsessed (particularly weirdly, given that he usually refuses eggs in most of their forms) with it all day, despite my yucky-noises.

Kavey pointed us towards Oeufs en Meurette - eggs poached in red wine, which, I have to confess, also look rather revolting to me (and I say that as one who really really loves eggs), which made me think that maybe it wasn't quite so bonkers after all, so last night, we gave it a go...

On my way home from work on Friday, I bought these.

I boiled up a pan of the brown stuff.

I cracked one of my eggs into a thingummy - I'm not a great poacher at the best of times and supermarket eggs of unknown freshness aren't the best for poaching, and this is definitely more likely to result in success than cracking directly into the pan...

I chucked it in (making a whirlpool first, obviously) and waited for a few minutes.
And, hey presto, coke-poached egg.
I made husband eat it, obviously.
He did, and *said* that it was nice.

A bit sweet for my taste, but nowhere near as inedible as one might expect. Maybe I should work on some kind of sugary coke based reduction/sauce and serve it with ice cream for pudding :)

So there we go - the Dish of Dreams - never let it be said that we're not prepared to try anything once. And that includes the Oeufs en Meurette, which I shall definitely (*) make soon.


*Probably (**)

** Possibly

The Weapons of Marriage

I met my husband while we were both at university, many moons ago...
Obviously he wasn't my husband then.
In fact, while we were there, we didn't know each other that well at all.
We were on the same course, but we didn't talk much there as all the lectures were in the mornings and he doesn't really know how to make words before noon (I didn't know that then - I assumed he just didn't want to associate with me in front of Other People) and we had some mutual friends and acquaintances, so used to see each other at parties and the like from time to time.

When we finally moved on to Real Life (or, in his case, more university), we kept in touch in a vagueish kind of way, exchanging odd emails and things. I'm not really sure why, to be honest - obviously just one of Those Things.

Anyway, about half way through his PhD, husband-but-not-husband-then went to Japan for a PhD related whatnot, during a period when we were enjoying much entertaining email contact.
He asked me whether I wanted anything brought back and I (obviously) said "yes, a sword"...

Being the sensible young man he was, he did not, in fact, fulfil this request, but did bring this super sharp knife, which he (I think) posted to me when he got back, with the warning that both he and his flatmate had managed to cut themselves on his matching knife with in about 30 seconds of getting it home...

Nice, eh?
I didn't cut myself, but I did (and do) love the knife in spite of this (though it was, indeed, very sharp) and used it lots.

Anyway, one thing led to another, the rest is history and various other such cliches and we ended up, a few years later, married and living together in the sunny East of London.

For our first wedding anniversary, he gave me this.

It's from the nice people at Kin Knives and was the actual best thing I had ever owned (he's pretty good with presents).

It is super sharp and incredibly beautiful as well as being functional and has truly taught me the value of fingernails.
I use it every day and was utterly bereft in the summer when I sent it away for a few days to be sharpened.

Fast forwarding to December this year saw another (Jennie-free) trip to Japan and this amazing Christmas present.

Once again, super super sharp, and possibly the best one yet.
AND it has my NAME on it. In Japanese, obviously.

It's from Aritsugu in Kyoto, who are an awesome and very old (18th generation now) knife maker from Kyoto and, needless to say, I love it a lot and have been frantically chopping, dicing and slicing things since Christmas.

I'm not sure whether this story has a moral.
Maybe it's that knives are cool, maybe it's that I'm easily bought with sharp, shiny things or maybe it's simply that I have an awesome husband* - who knows...?

In any case, thank you for admiring my blades so nicely and with such appropriate ooohs and aaahs etc - as always, it has been delightful sharing with you.




*all of the above are, in fact, true...

After Christmas

You wouldn't know it from the (very very small) number of people on the trains this morning, but today is the first working day after Christmas.

As of last night, exacerbated by all the happy still-on-holiday people who don't even know what day it is, I was properly dreading it.

However, as is often the way with such things, the reality is really not too bad...

Along with the lovely empty trains and nice quiet office, I have been much cheered by the inaugural use of one of my lovely new Christmas stocking bento boxes...

Here it is - stylish, no?




And here's my lunch - leftunder (I made it last night, but it's *really* mostly for tea later today) ratatouille-style vegetables and some extra festive Stilton.




I have also painted my nails in the style of a packet of skittles for extra cheer-upping effect...




Hope everyone has had a nice Christmas!

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Lazy Lunch

I was far too lazy to make a proper lunch last night so today I ate leftover cauliflower and more cured salmon (we're almost at the end of the salmon now - it's been good).



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