Cook sister!

Venison pie (almost) like Mamma used to make

So... I have managed the unique distinction of being late for my own event!!  Aaarrrgh!  I put it down to two things:  firstly, the fact that my job is absolutely crazy busy at the moment, and secondly that when I finally got round to wanting to post, Typepad was unavailable yesterday.  Well, that's my story and I am sticking to it :)

But moving rapidly along. 

As I announced about three weeks ago, we are into the second edition of the sparkly new event "Waiter, there's something in my...", and in keeping with the chilly weather outside, the theme was chosen to be pies.  Now the funny thing about pies is that I like to eat them, but I never seem to make them - clearly it was time for a steep learning curve!  I did think briefly about making a double-crust pie and using the pastry that I normally use for my quiches as a base, with a puff-pastry lid.  But then I realised that I hardly have time to see my husband these days and that this was no time for culinary bravery beyond the call of duty ;-)  So no double crusts here then.

The easy part was what to put inside the pie.  When I was at school, one of the big treat meals my mom used to make (infrequently) was a venison joint.  Now although people seem to think that South African boys all grow up hunting, fishing and generally running riot in the African bush, nobody in our family was ever much of a hunter, so we had to rely on the local butcher and his supply was erratic.  In fact, I don't think I knew anybody that actually went hunting for venison until I met my husband.  His opening gambit in our relationship was to invite me over for a venison dinner as he happened to have a freezer full of meat from a recent trip - now how is a girl supposed to resist that?!  And clearly the trick worked as we're still together, 9 years after our first date :)

But I digress.  At home, we did eat venison often enough that I developed a real taste for it.  My mom used to cover the venison joint in bacon and roast it for dinner, to be served with dried peach compote.  I used to think this sweet-savoury pairing was the most natural thing in the world until much later in life when I encountered people who don't like the fruit/meat combination.  Apparently it is a very South African thing (see our raisin-flecked bobotie and yellow rice) and a culinary quirk that we share with middle-eastern cooking like tagines.  But the best was yet to come... The day after we'd had the venison joint (or maybe the day after that) my mom would make a meal of the leftovers, and more often than not this would take the form of venison pie or wildsvleispastei in Afrikaans (literally "wild meat pie"). The meat would be fall-apart tender from the slow roasting the day before, and she would chop it up together with any leftover bacon bits and peaches in a meaty gravy of its own juices before putting a pastry lid on it.  The smell would drive me totally insane with hunger long before the food was actually ready, and the taste was rich, spicy, meaty and sweet.  Heaven.

So when I was at Borough Market a couple of weeks ago and spotted some venison goulash, I didn't think twice about snapping it up for a treat for me and Nick - and when this theme came up I knew immediately what the goulash would become!  My (excellent) venison was fallow deer [!!Bambi alert!!  Sensitive readers, don't click!!] from a company called Mid-Devon Fallow.  The company is run by Peter Kent who sells venison products from his Keyethern Farm at Borough and can also be contacted on 01837 810 028.  Because I wasn't cooking a joint into melting softness, I had to take the next best option - a great stew to use as the basis for a great pie.  The aroma as I was browning the meat was very very gamey - more like liver than meat - but very appealing when combined with the spiciness of the cloves. 

And how did it turn out?  Oh. My. Word.  I was astonished at how much like my mom's version this tasted, because I made up the recipe as I went along.  Clearly there is something to this genetics thing ;-).  The meat was very rich and the pepperiness of the meat and the added cloves made for a heady combination.  But for me the key to the overall fabulousness was the peaches.  Their sweetness had infused the entire dish and balanced the meatiness perfectly. Oh yes, and there was a light and crispy crust on top.  It was one of those dishes that you want to eat in teensy weensy little forkfuls just so that you can make it last longer.

Just like I used to do when my mom made it.

VENISON PIE (WILDSVLEISPASTEI) WITH DRIED PEACHES

Ingredients (for 2-3 people)

500g venison, cut into goulash-sized chunks
1 large carrot, sliced in rounds
3-4 shallots, peeled and halved
olive oil for frying
about 10 dried peach halves, cut into smaller chunks and soaked in warm water if very hard
300ml red wine
2 bay leaves
2 cups beef stock
1/2 tsp ground cloves
a circle of puff pastry large enough to cover your pie dish (I used ready-made pastry, mea culpa!)

Method

Marinate the meat for about 24 hours in a mixture of about 150ml red wine, a glug of olive oil and 1/4 tsp of cloves.

Remove the meat from the marinade and reserve.  Heat a little oil (I used grapeseed) in a large pot and fry the meat until browned on all sides, then add the onions and shallots.  Fry for another couple of minutes.

Add the beef stock, 150ml of red wine, the marinade, bay leaves, dried peaches and the rest of the ground cloves. 

Bring to the boil and then cover the pot tightly, turn down the heat and allow to simmer for 3 hours or until the meat is very tender.  Much of the liquid should have boiled away by then, but if necessary, thicken the gravy with thickening granules.

Remove the bay leaves and transfer the meat, vegetables and gravy to an oven-proof pie dish (or in my case, to my beloved cast iron skillet!). 

Roll out the defrosted (preferably room temperature) puff pastry to a thickness of about 4mm and use a plate slightly larger than your pie dish to cut a circular lid.  Place the lid on the pie filling and tuck in around the edges or use a fork to crimp it around the perimeter of the pie dish.  Decorate the top as desired.

Place the pie in a pre-heated oven at 200C for about 40 minutes or until the pastry is nicely browned.  Serve with green vegetables - mine paired nicely with garlicky sauteed leeks and courgettes.

**STOP PRESS**  The Waiter, there's something in my... pie roundup has now been posted with an amazing 65 pie recipes featured!  Something for everyone.

Hasselback potatoes and the first braai of 2007

Since arriving in England, I have learnt that January and February are probably the worst months to be here.  Autumn lingers into November with wonderful crisp days and the smell of woodsmoke and the colour of the leaves.  Then it's December with all the magic of the Christmas build-up.  And then January dawns and you're broke and hung-over, and it's still almost three months till the clocks go back to summertume and you can go home in the light.  The daffodils and crocuses haven't poked their gorgeous heads up yet and the novelty value of infrequent snowfalls wears thin quite fast when it causes the entire public transport network to break down!  So there you are, trudging to and from work in the semi-darkness and fantasising that the weather will soon be getting better, but in reality it will be April before you see any real improvement. 

Glum, glummer, glummest. 

But this year, owing to global warming or heaven knows what, we had an unseasonally mild spell in January.  Not crisp or sunny or anything - pea soupy and grey and damp, but mild, and I'm talking 12-14C mild!  So what would any red-blooded South African do in the face of such a climatic bonus?  Haul out the Weber braai and get ready to grill some meat, of course! I must say, it is the first time I have even been remotely tempted to braai in London in January, but we had the weather, plus we had a reason (a visit from another South African couple based in Ireland) - so it didn't take long before Nick had the coals glowing and the meat sizzling.  The meat, by the way, was a deboned leg of pork, sliced into chops, much the same way that you would slice a rack of lamb into chops.  Something to remember for future reference!

To go with this, I made a big tossed salad and asked whether everyone wanted a potato bake or potato salad.  One of our guests suggested hasselback potatoes which I learnt from my school friend Alison many years ago and hadn't made in ages - but this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to make them again.  Now I had always thought these babies were called hackleback potatoes (something to do with your hackles rising?  Who knows!) and when I was Googling them today to find out about their origins, I came up with a blank.  The one result that did come up was "hassle back potatoes" (sic) - hahaha!  Yes, let's put the hassle back into formerly easy potatoes! But following Google's helpful suggested alternative spelling, I came across hasselback potatoes - and there they were, just like I remembered them.  The same thinly almost-sliced-through potatoes smothered in butter and baked till soft in the middle and crispy on the outside - oh baby, it's been too long!!

Anyway, reading through the recipes, I noticed that a number of them referred to this as a Swedish recipe, so I did what every self-respecting "Who wants to be a millionaire?" contestant would do:  I phoned a friend! More precisely, I e-mailed Anne who sent back the following:

"Hasselbacken" is a restaurant - in fact, the restaurant who invented the recipe. (Or well, so the saying goes.) So "back" has nothing to do with baking - even though that's what you do, of course. Hasselbacken translates literally into hazel hill - "backe" is a hill, whereas "baka" is to bake."

Now that I didn't see coming.  The recipe I learnt in South Africa in my teenage years is actually Swedish??  I'm amazed, but I guess not more so than Alison when she learns she's been disseminating Swedish recipes ;-)  There is, however, a slight regional variation to my recipe.  The Swedish version calls for the potatoes to be peeled and brushed with melted butter (possibly garlic butter) and sprinkled with breadcrumbs towards the end of the cooking period.  Another variation (Irish?? American??) names the dish accordion potatoes and calls for them to be brushed with olive oil (or butter) and sprinkled with breadcrumbs and cheese.  However, South African cuisine has a secret weapon and one that has already amply proved its potato-friendly credentials:  brown onion soup.  Yes - from a packet.  Don't laugh!  It is the secret ingredient that sets South African potato bakes apart from their foreign cousins and the base that launched a thousand sauces.  And in the hasselback potato recipe that I learned, it is what you sprinkle on the the potatoes once you've smothered them in melted butter and let me assue you it's goooooood.  You end up with potatoes that are soft and comforting and buttery at the base but coated in crispy onion bits in top.  Just fabulous!  They are easy (no peeling!) and great with braais (BBQs) but are pretty enough to serve at a more formal dinner too.  What more could one ask for?

HASSELBACK POTATOES, SOUTH AFRICAN STYLE

Ingredients

6 large baking potatoes, scrubbed
about 15g of butter per potato
1 pkt brown/French onion soup powder

Method

Slice the potatoes (skin on) as thinly as you can but do not slice them all the way through!  The potato should still retain an intact base  I always struggle with this, but Anne helpfully suggests placing them in a wooden spoon while you are slicing - the curve of the spoon will stop you from slicing through.  Thanks for the tip Anne :)).

Place the potatoes in an oven-proof dish which holds them fairly snugly.  Melt the butter and drizzle all the potatoes liberally with it.  Sprinkle each potato generously with the brown onion soup powder, making sure you get some on the skin and some in between the slices.

Place the potatoes in a pre-heated 200C oven (some recipes suggest loosely covering them in aluminium foil for the first 30 minutes, but I don't) for about 45 minutes, basting frequently with the butter that collects in the dish.  Remove when the potatoes are cooked through and the topping is crispy.

(If you are trying alternative versions using breadcrumbs and/or cheese, you only add the crumb/cheese topping in the last 25 minutes of baking.)

Easy chicken liver and cognac paté

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was thrilled recently to find chicken livers in my local supermarket.  Yes, yes, I probably should get out more... but it's just that I am always looking for them on our weekly grocery shopping trip and virtually never find them.  This is pretty weird - mainly because I grew up in a country where there are tons of frozen chicken livers in every single supermarket (although I guess you could explain their popularity as a cheap source of protein in a developing country).  It's also weird because the do sell them in other branches of the self-same supermarkets that I look in. Christina says she can get them at Tesco out her way (erm... west London?!) and I used to visit a friend in Wood Green and stock up on them at the local Sainsbury's.  So maybe you can argue that chicken livers are not a mainstream British food and only sell in areas where the population is suitably diverse?  But for heaven's sake, I live in E16!  It doesn't get much more multicultural than my suburb!!  Maybe somebody from Tesco or Sainsbury's reads this and can explain the lack of livers in my area...

Anyway, as luck would have it, I found my livers in Sainsbury's and knew immediately that my litle lunch party was going to have chicken liver paté for a starter.  When I was a student I used to make a version of chicken liver paté as my favourite party trick - I thought I was frightfully sophisticated!  The version I used to make was easy and fun but not really what I would these days call a paté.  It was chicken livers fried together with finely diced onion and garlic, chopped and mashed with a tube of liver spread (really!) and a tub of cream cheese.  Plus of course a generous glug of sherry and some black pepper!  It was the perfect snack for a classy student party as the ingredients were cheap plus you usually had some of them on hand (I'm thinking of Sedgwick's Old Brown Sherry in particular, without which no student party was complete!) and you didn't need a food processor - the rustic texture was part of the appeal. 

But I am no longer a student and I do now own a food processor (well, a Braun wand mixer and attachments!), plus I thought the rest of my lunch menu called for something a little more sophisticated and smooth.  If only I had remembered earlier, I would have used the Heston Blumenthal "posh paté" recipe that I clipped from the Sunday Times magazine, which intriguingly contains about three different types of alcohol.  But as it happened, I only remembered about this later and the recipe I ended up using was the ever-reliable Delia's recipe for chicken liver and cognac pate.  Clearly, I still retain something of a student mentality - no such thing as cognac in my house, but we did have some brandy, and I reckoned once you've smooshed it together with chicken liver, who will ever know the difference??  The recipe says it serves 6, but as a starter it fed five with masses left over for lunch the next day, so I would say the richness means it could probably stretch to a starter for eight with salad and bread.  Mine was served with dark German multigrain bread and my rocket, pear, fennel and pomegranate salad.  The paté itself was smooth and very buttery and the salad's crisp texture and sweet flavours were a perfect match - definitely a starter to remember.

CHICKEN LIVER PATE WITH COGNAC Serves 6+

Ingredients

8 oz (225 g) chicken livers, rinsed and trimmed
2 tablespoons Cognac (or brandy)
8 oz (225 g) butter
2 level teaspoons mustard powder
¼ level teaspoon ground mace
1 level teaspoon chopped fresh thyme, plus 6 small sprigs to garnish
2 cloves garlic, crushed
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Method

Melt about 25g of the butter in a medium-sized, heavy-based frying pan and fry the chicken livers over a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Keep them on the move, turning them over quite frequently.  Check for doneness by cutting into the largest pieces - you want them pink on the inside but not bloody.  Remove them from the pan using a slotted spoon and transfer them to a blender or food processor.

Melt 150 g of the remaining butter in the same pan and add this to the blender or food processor. Then pour the Cognac on to the juices left in the frying pan, making sure you scrape up all the flavourful bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, and pour that over the livers. Add the mustard, mace, thyme and garlic, season well with salt and freshly milled black pepper, and blend until you have a smooth, velvety purée.

Divide the paté between three large individual or six small ramekins/pots.  Melt the remaining 50g of butter and pour a little over each remakin to seal.  Press a sprig of thyme on top and leave them to get cold before covering with clingfilm and refrigerating until needed.

Announcing the 2007 South African Blog Awards

Yes folks, it's hard to believe, I know, but a whole year has passed since we last rolled out the red carpet and indulged in some mutual air-kissing and back-slapping.  You guessed it - awards season has rolled around again!  And it's not just Dame Helen Mirren who's in the spotlight this time - it's South African bloggers who are gearing up to celebrate the best of the South African blogosphere over the past 12 months. 

And I must say, I think that the quality and diversity of South African blogs improves year after year - apart from my own beloved Cooksister!, here is a selection of other possible nominees for your perusal before you plunge headlong into nominations (alternatively check the rather del.icio.us list of SA blogs or the Technorati list):

Apparently Nothing

Aquila Online

Beyond the Pass

BigRic

Cherryflava

Commentary

The Cru

The Fishbowl

KitschnZinc

SA Rocks

So Close

YBlog

Once you've had a browse and decided who you like, head on over to the 2007 SA Blog Awards site, read the small print and get nominating (the nomination form is at the bottom of the page and you will need to provide URLs plus your e-mail address).  Only ONE nomination per person is allowed, so do give some thought to your nominations.  Alternatively, click on the SA Blog Awards 2007 logo near the top of the left hand column on this page and follow the instructions.

Nominations are open until Monday 26 February 2007, after which a panel of bloggers and "celebrity judges" will review the nominated blogs (taking into account relevance and quality) in each category and submit their individual top 10 in each. The votes will be tallied and the top blogs resulting from this will go through to the finals.

Final voting will be open to the public from the Monday 5 March 2007 till midnight Friday 16 March 2007.

So off you go - do some proudly South African reading, exercise your democratic right to vote nominate, and sit back and enjoy watching democracy at work ;-)

Fish! restaurant, Borough Market

It's funny how you will cross town, brave weather and take time off work to visit certain restaurants, while others are very much on your beaten track, but somehow you just never get round to visiting them?  I suppose it's the same kind of thing as people who live by the sea but never go to the beach in their hometown.  Or people who've lived in London for years and never been to the Tower of London:  you kind of think it's always going to be there, so we can leave it for later. Although I've been going to Borough Market for almost as long as I've been living in London, I have never actually visited Fish! restaurant slap bang in the middle of the market.  That is, until a friend and I went out to dinner after work recently and found ourselves in the London Bridge area at a loose end on a chilly Wednesday night. 

Fish! opened in 1999 and is owned by Tony Allan (who incidentally also owns Jarvis Fishmongers in Kingston).  Its goal of serving fresh, sustainable fish, simply prepared and reasonably priced has remained unchanged over its lifetime, and it was nice to discover that it is one of the first restaurants to work with the Marine Stewardship Council.  This means that you can be sure the fish you are eating has been harvested from sustainable populations - and few garnishes taste as good as virtue these days ;-)  The building that Fish! occupies rather aptly resembles a fishtank - the walls are largely made of glass and you can see in while diners can peer out and up at Southwark Cathedral.  After a quick check of the menu on the door, I think I was finally enticed in my the promise of sticky toffee pudding on the menu - that and fish pie!  The space is sleek and modern with chocolate brown and orange accents providing a warmer contrast to the steel and glass, and an open kitchen so you can see your fish being prepared.  Although the tables were quite close together, we were seated by a window and never felt particularly encroached upon by our neighbours.  The menu is a reasonably straightforward affair - about ten starters and ten main courses, plus a selection of fresh fish which you can order steamed or grilled with your choice of sauce.  As you can see from the picture above, the menu consists of tickboxes so that you can see at a glance what fresh fish is available on the day of your visit.  Service was friendly and efficient and soon we were settled in with a bottle of wine, awaiting our food.

Neither of us had starters and for my main course, I simply could not resist the classic fish pie, while Olwen chose the fishcake with beurre blanc and spinach.  I must say, Olwen's fishcake certainly was one of the classier fishcakes I'd seen - a generous crumbed patty sitting atop a pile of wilted spinach - and she pronounced it excellent.  But for me, the winner was fish pie all the way.  Diet food it wasn't.  White fish and salmon in a creamy sauce (although I must say I missed the smoky taste of smoked haddock) with a smattering of prawns, topped with creamy mashed potato and then generously smothered in cheese.  Gilding the lily, I know, but who can argue about the irresistible deliciousness of potato and cheese?! If I have any criticism it's the general short supply of prawns in the pie, but other than that it would be churlish to complain about so satisfying a dish.  And the rocket and tomato salad that I ordered on the side in a vague attempt to combat scurvy was generously sized and made a nice counterpoint to the richness of the pie.

Despite having had more than an elegant sufficiency (and then some!) by the time we'd finished our main course, we felt that we needed some fortifying sugar before we braved the chilly night outside.  I had already snuck a peek at the dessert menu on the way in, so I knew it was the source of all good things - in particular sticky toffee pudding!  But at the last moment my resolve failed and I plumped for my old favourite:  the chocolate fondant.  I must say that I was a little dubious when it arrived - it looked pot-bellied but not at all moist, apart from the depression in the centre of the top crust.  But one poke from my spoon and it revealed its true colours with a river of bittersweet chocolate.  Really rather good.  Olwen on the other hand stuck with her first instincts and had the sticky toffee pudding.  This turned out to be a little individual pudding and it lived up to its description 100% - very sticky and very toffee-ish, surrounded by a little moat of custard.  The deep satisfaction of eating a warm pudding on a chilly night is, to my mind, almost reason enough to spend winter in the northern hemisphere.

Our bill with a bottle of wine and service came to £33 each which, although not bargain-basement cheap, was quite reasonable for the quality of food we had.  I would like to go back and try some of their fresh fish, maybe just grilled with lemon butter and a side salad.  And lightly garnished with a warm pudding ;-)

Fish! is a great place for a weeknight get-together with friends, or a long summer lunch when the sun comes out and the tables and chairs on the terrace come with a great view of the Southwark Cathedral.  If it's fresh sustainable fish you're after at prices that won't bust your budget, this is the ideal place.

Food: 7/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience:  6/10
Value:  7/10

Fish! 
Cathedral Street
Borough Market
London
SE1 9AL

Tel: 020 7407 3803
E-mail: borough@fishdiner.co.uk

The Hostess with the mostest

First, my little phallic chiles (there's a potential Googlewhack if ever I saw one!) and now this.  Anybody want to put two and two together (so to speak!) and guess what my this post is all about?

Let me start by saying that it's a good thing that the preferences we have when we're kids old aren't the preferences that stay with us for life.   And I'm not limiting that statement to things like a hatred of Brussels sprouts or olives - oh no, I'm including all sorts of preferences.  Like my childhood penchant for ceramic cats.  Good grief, I would have had an entire house full of the damn things by now, all needing dusting!  (We won't even discuss my collections of novelty erasers and writing paper!).  Or how much I loved Richard Clayderman with his floppy hair and his particularly successful brand of elevator music.  Or my heartfelt pleas to my father to buy me a pink Volkswagen Citigolf. 

But even before these, I had a long list of things I dearly desired, and this list was largely inspired by my obsessive reading of Archie and Richie Rich comics.  Anybody remember those?  Man, I loved them. At a time, South African kids were inundated with American comics - I graduated to Archie from my beloved Micky Mouse magazines - full of foreign concepts, like schools with lockers and plentiful television sets.  But even more fascinating to me were the advertisements for exotic foreign products featured in the back of the magazines.  Oh, how dearly I would have loved to own a bowl full of Sea Monkeys!  And oh, how I lusted after one bite of a Hostess Twinkie.  That golden sponge, that luscious cream filling - surely one bite would be enough to send me into culinary ecstasy?  But alas, the things we saw advertised were seldom on sale in South Africa and I was doomed to a Sea Monkey-less, Twinkieless childhood. 

Fast forward a couple of decades and here I am, living in London, earning a crust and entertaining myself by blogging about food.  As I've mentioned before, one of the great things about food blogging is the fabulous folk you meet - and they don't come much more fabulous than Moira.  Although Moira and I had corresponded since sometime in 2004, we only finally met up last year for the London food bloggers' salt and butter tasting - and Moira arrived bearing gifts! As a military wife, she had access to a store on the base that stocks all manner of American goodies and man, she had gone to town!  I think I've already mentioned the peanut butter chips and the chocolates, but she also bought an array of Hostess products for that all-American experience -  and to finally give me a taste of the stuff I craved so much in childhood.  Here's what she brought:

SUZY Q's

These are described as "chocolate cake layers with a creamy filling" - and they do exactly what it says on the box.  The package contains two squares about 8cmx4cm of dark, moist and not objectionable chocolate cake, sandwiched with tooth-achingly sweet and artificial-tasting cream filling.  Rest assured, no actual cream has ever been anywhere near this concoction, but I suspect it has an impressive array of E-numbers to its name ;-) To be honest, it doesn't taste too bad - the sweetness of the filling is somewhat offset by the cake.  Of course, you'd have to close your eyes and not think of the ingredients (I don't think "organic" or "natural" features much), but then if you're eating Suzy Qs, you're not doing it for your health!

HO HOs

These are described on the package as being "chocolate cake filled with creamy filling", but a more accurate description would be chocolate mini-Swiss rolls coated in chocolate.  They also come in a 2-pack and are probably also about 8cm long.  The cake component is somehow not as dark or as moist as the Suzy Qs and not as nice.  It also does less to counterat the filling, which is the same saccharine white goo as used in the Suzy Qs.  And the problem with coating any Swiss rolls with chocolate is that... it falls off at the slightest tap! As you can see in the photo, large chunks of my pack's chocolate coating had not survived the journey from America and struggled even more once I cut into the cakes.  This makes for a rather messy eating experience!  Overall, I didn't much like these.  The chocolate was grainy and awful, the cake not as good as the Suzy Qs and the filling... well, enough said.  For me, it's a "No, no!" to more Ho Hos!

HOSTESS CUPCAKES

Again, this is described as "chocolate cake with a creamy filling", but they neglect to add that there is a solid slab of icing on top too, which sets these apart (visually and taste-wise) from Suzy Qs).  Apparently, the spiral of white icing on the top of a Hostess cupcake is an identifying feature as distinctive as the Coca-Cola contour bottle - who would have known!  Taste-wise, I found these had more in common with Suzy Qs than with Ho Hos.  The cake was dark and moist and not too bad, with a blob of the usual creamy filling somewhere in the lower third of the cupcake.  But what put me off was the icing.  For a start, it looked like a thick silicone mat that had been cut to size and plonked on top of each cupcake - you could peel the icing off whole! And it was sweet enough to make my jaw ache which is never exactly a recommendation in a cupcake.  So on a balance, I don't think I'll really be having more of those either.

TWINKIES

And last but not least, we get to the confection that I first lusted after:  the Twinkie.  THis is described as "golden sponge cake with a creamy filling", and you can't deny, looking at the pictures that it is sponge and it is indeed golden!  As for the filling - good grief, there must be a gigantic vat of this all-non-natural-ingredients white stuff brewing all the time at the Hostess factory! It just shows up everywhere...  Of all the products I tried, this has the greatest ratio of filling to cake, so if you like the filling, go to Twinkies.  The cake is... well, it's plain sponge, no more no less, and the filling is white and sweet.  But somehow I have to admit there is something compelling about the little buggers.  It's rather like KFC - you know how bad it is for you, and yet... you can see the attraction.  Maybe it's the fact that they come in neat little fingers, maybe it's the soothing pale palette, maybe the yielding texture when you bite into them.  Who knows.  Maybe it's my unfulfilled childhood cravings clouding my judgement.  In any event, if I were to buy any of these again (and this is a big if!!), it would probably be Twinkies. 

And to finish, I will leave you with two esoteric pieces of information.  Firstly, do you know there is a host of recipes for desserts using Hostess baked products - up to and including Twinkie sushi?  Secondly, rumour has it that Twinkies contain so many preservatives and so few natural ingredients that they will survive a nuclear war.

So if you survive the blast, be sure to look out for giant cockroaches snacking on pristine Twinkies.

Pomegranate, pear, fennel and aragula salad

I have to admit that I am something of a salad slacker.  Not to say that I don't love salads - on the contrary, I do!  But the problem is that by the time I have finished faffing around with the main course, I am not in the mood for deaming up an exotic salad, so we end up having the absolute standard lettuce, cucumber, tomato, onion and bell pepper salad (and anyway, I think this is secretly the salad Nick prefers!).  I am also somewhat of a slacker when it comes to seasonal eating.  Partly, I blame this on a kind of seasonal jet-lag induced by living in a hemishpere where you didn't grow up.  I still remember strawberries as being associated with Christmas and being off the shelves by my birthday in March, or loads of oranges and satsumas being available in the chill of June - just in time for rugby players to get orange wedges to snack on at half-time ;-)  So let's just say that my food cravings are often out of synch with the northern hemisphere seasons!!  Of course, you can get any fruit at any time of the year in London, but I have discovered that no matter how tempting those imported December strawberries at Waitrose might look, they will disappoint you in terms of taste :-(  Not to mention the food miles issues!

A couple of weeks ago, I had some friends over for lunch and while wandering the aisles of my local supermarket seekign inspiration, I found a pack of chicken livers.  Yaaaaay!  I know, I know, I need to get out more... but you must understand that up to now our local supermarkets have stubbornly not sold chicken livers!  I am used to South Africa where chicken livers take up a yard-long stretch of the chest freezers in most supermarkets and are never a problem to obtain, but out in the wilds of E16, some marketing genius has obviously decided that there isn't enough of a market, so they don't stock them.  Until now!  I was so overjoyed at finding them in our local Sainsbury's that I bought a few packets and immediately decided to make a chicken liver paté starter for the abovementioned lunch.  The immediate next question was what to serve with the pate.  I definitely wander something light and salad-ish, but I also wanted it to have fairly strident flavours to stand up to the pate.  And maybe a touch of sweetness would work with the paté.  Oh yes - and a seasonal hat-tip would be nice too ;-) I found my sweet inspiration in the fruit aisles a few minutes later...

Pomegranates.  One of the fruits that evoke (in me, anyway!) visions of Arabian nights; of biblical stories; or Nazarene princesses languishing in the Alhambra.  And that's probably not far off, as it's an ancient tree that is mentioned in the Old Testament and has in fact given its name to the beautiful city of Granada (all the manhole covers have stylised pomegranate fruits embossed on them!).  Although it's not really grown in England, it does grow in nearby Spain and is in season in the middle of the European winter.  Perfect!  The fruits are probably about the size of an orange and (to me) look a bit like red guavas.  They have a range of uses - it seems the flowers, seeds, fruits and bark can all be used for something, but it is usually the red pulp surrounding the seeds that is eaten (or made into currently vogueish pomegranate juice).  I had never actually dealt with a whole fruit before but I had heard that getting to the seeds is quite a production - and they are not lying.  In terms of wasted "packaging", I would say the pomegranate is the fruit equivalent of the broad bean:  you discard a lot more than you eat!  First comes the decision of where to slice into the whole fruit (I elected to lop the top off till I had penetrated the rind and pith down to the seeds).  From then on, you have to go at it with your fingers, breaking open the polystyrene-like bitter white pith and carefully extracting the seeds, which come wrapped in an absolutely lovely ruby-red translucent pulp.  If you feel so inclined you can remove each teeny seed from its pulp but I would say it's like pipping grapes - really not worth the effort.  The taste is sweet but with an delightful astringency and the juice is as blood red as can be.  Just gorgeous.

The next question was what to add to these little ruby beauties to make my salad.  I wanted something crispy, something distinctly savoury and maybe something sweeter.  So in the end, I came up with the pomegranate, pear, fennel and aragula (or rocket) salad you see above.  The flavours and textures worked terrifically well together and oh man, it was pretty!  Plus I believe that English pears are also deemed to be seasonal at the moment, so I got in a second seasonal bonus point ;-) And drizzled with a little homemade raspberry vinaigrette dressing, it made a great partner for the rich paté.  Definitely a keeper!

POMEGRANATE, PEAR, FENNEL AND ARAGULA SALAD with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing (serves 6)

INGREDIENTS:

For the salad:
1 bag washed wild rocket
1 large (or 2 small) ripe pears
1 large bulb of fennel
seeds from half a large pomegranate

For the dressing: (makes a lot - keep some for later)
1/4 cup of grapeseed oil (or other fairly neutral oil)
3 Tbsp raspberry vinegar
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp honey
salt and pepper to taste

METHOD

Remove the seeds from half of the pomegranate.  Trim the fennel bulb and slice into thin slices.  Toss these together with the aragula.  Just before serving (so that it doesn't go brown), peel quarter and thinly slice the pear and add that to the salad.  If you plate the salad, make sure you scatter a few of the pomegranate seeds on top of each portion, just for decoration ;-)

For the dressing, shake all of the ingredients together in a tightly sealed bottle.  Taste and adjust any ingredient that you think might be lacking - dressing is such a personal taste.  Drizzle sparingly over the salad just before serving.

Waiter, there's something in my... pie!

Well, I must say that WTSIM seems to be off to a flying start - Andrew collected fifty (that's five oh, folks!) entries for our inaugural edition of my, Johanna's and Andrew's shiny new event.  I think it's pretty safe to say that the roundup is the definitive repository of modern (and ancient!) stew recipes in the blogosphere today...

Clearly, none of you have been able to sleep, what with the excitement of waiting for the announcement of the February theme.  Seeing as I'm not by nature a malicious person, I thought what the heck, let me hurry up and put you out of your misery.  The theme for February will be (drum roll...) pies!

Aaaaah, pie.  One of life's great joys when made well, one of life's great disappointments when not.  Sweet, savoury, chunky, dainty, warm cold... there really is a pie to suit every occasion.  Now, in keeping with WTSIM's spirit of inclusiveness, we have decided to leave the decision up to you as to whether you want to make a sweet or a savoury pie, so whether it's your Grammy's apple pie or your Uncle Basil's famous steak & kidney pie - either will do!  The only little limit we have set, though, is that it must be a closed pie - in other words, no flans or tarts or quiches.  The filling must be invisible when the pie is served.  So fish pie would be OK, but tarte tatin would not. Everybody clear?

Other than that, let your imagination run wild.  As always, it would be nice if you could make something that is connected with where you live or were born.  Think all-American apple pies, think English chicken pot pies, think Latin-American empanadas, think Italian calzone.  Or otherwise, how about something seasonal where you are at the moment (erm... Brussel sprout pie, anybody?!?).  Either way, you get the picture.  Anything goes - as long as its modesty is properly covered with some sort of crust.

Here is the small print:

1. Write up your pie (closed, remember!) and please link back to this announcement in your post.

2.  E-mail me.  Please make sure that Waiter there's something in my features in the subject line.

3. In the e-mail please include:

• the URL of your entry
• your blog's name
• the name of the dish
• your approximate location

4.  The deadline for entries is Monday 26 Feb and I hope to have the roundup posted by the end of that week.

So... what are you waiting for?  Go and roll that pastry, chop that filling and let your house be filled with the fabulous smell of golden, crispy, delicious, warm pies!