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This is Halloween … Aren’t you scared?

30 October 2021

This is Halloween, this is Halloween,
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night …
This is Halloween, red and black, slimey green
Aren’t you scared? …

I can’t think of Halloween without this song from The Nightmare Before Christmas dancing in my head. It is high up among our favourite Halloween films.

We were going to be away and miss it altogether this year, but an unexpected change of plans means that, instead, it is going to be a full weekend of Halloween (Hallowe’en!).

And so here are a few ideas — to make, to eat, to watch, to read…

I first made a prune spider nine years ago for this carrot cake. (Apparently, then, I didn’t take a photo?) I’ve upped the ante this year with a full attacking cluster (above). Carrot cake always whiffs of Halloween for me, but any cake would be great (the one here is a quince cake!), as long as there is icing.

I love these naturally dyed cookies of the deepest charcoal black. They could be made into any shape of course: bats, cats, rats, hats, …

As you will know by now, when it comes to decorating I prefer simplicity and minimalism (happy to call it indolence), and this RIP chocolate cake was so easy! Using Nigella’s quick almond and olive oil chocolate cake: two cakes baked in loaf tins, one cut in half and positioned around the other in the sign of a cross, some icing sugar sprinkled over a RIP paper cut-out. Voilà!

A few other great ideas from elsewhere:

Mummy sausage plait — can’t wait to make these
Ssslithering sssalad — very clever
Monster feet — so cool!

And there are more films to watch. Our list of indispensables also include It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and The Book of Life, Coco and Spirited Away.

I’ve just discovered the Children’s book club Instagram account showcasing illustrated books, apparently largely from the 1970s (though not only). It currently has a whole flight of books featuring witches!

But first, there are costumes to make(/unearth).

Wishing everyone a ghostly, ghoulish, ghastly Halloween!

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Posted in Children, Halloween, Holidays | Leave a Comment »

Lamb with hummus, salad, and tahini

18 September 2019
New photo from 13 June 2022

For the last days of summer, a few more weeks of tomatoes and, with luck, another dinner or two outside.

I am incapable of meal planning; rather the opposite. I rarely know in the morning what we will have for dinner tonight, and who can possibly know on a Sunday what they will want to eat on Wednesday? I realize it makes much organizational sense, but food here is not so much a practical matter as an impulse and a craving, even within the confines and limits of the daily humdrum of cooking for six.

And so the necessity for fast food. One could of course have made the hummus and the flatbreads oneself, but that hasn’t so far fitted into the picture of having dinner ready in twenty minutes.

It’s a family favourite, through the ages. We make it often, while tomatoes last.

Lamb with hummus, salad, and tahini
I’ve not made hummus in a long time, though I’ve had a fantastic recipe for years, which I must eventually share

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and flat leaf parsley
Red onion (optional)
*
Light tahini (sesame paste)
Fresh lemon juice
Water
*
Onions (about half an onion per person)
Garlic (one small clove per person)
Olive oil
Salt, freshly ground black pepper
Minced lamb (about 100g per person)
Cumin and fennel seeds, ground in a mortar
*
Hummus (home made or good store bought)
*
Sumac
*
Warm flatbread or other good bread to serve

For the tahini sauce: Put a few tablespoonfuls of tahini paste into a bowl, pour a little lemon juice, and stir. Incrementally add lemon juice and a little water, until the tahini has achieved a desired, runny consistency and just the right amount of acidity. **The tahini will initially thicken before it becomes runny with added liquid.**

For the salad: Wash and chop the tomatoes, cucumbers, and parsley into a salad. Very thinly slice the red onion, if using. Lightly season with olive oil and lemon juice.

For the lamb:
Peel and chop the onions. Smash, peel, and roughly chop the garlic.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Brown the onions over medium heat until just beyond deep golden, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and fry for a minute or two until translucent. Add salt and pepper. Remove the onions and garlic from the pan and set aside.

Turn up the heat to high and brown the meat, in batches if necessary. **The meat will release some liquid and start to stew rather than brown if the pan is too crowded.**drizzle

Mix the onions and garlic into the meat and season with cumin, fennel seeds, salt, and pepper.

To serve:

Slather the plate with a few tablespoons of hummus. Place the spiced lamb over the hummus, then the salad, and, finally, drizzle some tahini and sprinkle with sumac. Serve with warm pita or toasted bread.

 

Posted in Basic, Children, Easy, Lentils / Chickpeas / Legumes, Salad, Spring, Summer, Summer salad | Leave a Comment »

Notes from the kitchen | Monday chicken legs with spring onions and ginger

15 November 2018

Monday night. Eternal, tedious, domestic conundrum — what to make for dinner? Feeding six requires labour, always. The simplest thing — grating cheese for all the pasta — takes a while.

Forever torn between fantasies of heady stews and lack of time, I go into the butcher’s dreaming of oxtail and grab chicken legs instead. It’s the quickest path to a braised (style) dish. It requires little foresight or planning, barely a thought. There will at the very least be garlic and lemon in the house.

As it happens, today we also have spring onions and celery, ginger and tamari. What began as a resignation, an easy way to finish odds and ends at the bottom of the fridge, has become a legitimate meal, an instant favourite. And with Balthasar’s retro / disco playlist in the background, there may even have been some dancing around the kitchen table.

Chicken legs with spring onions and ginger
Serves 6

6 chicken legs (whole or separated into thighs and drumsticks)
A large chunk of ginger
One bunch — 6 or 7 — spring onions (scallions)
4 or 5 celery stalks
1 small lemon or lime
1 whole head of garlic
Neutral flavored oil
Toasted sesame seed oil
Light soy sauce (or salt)
Tamari soy sauce
Rice vinegar

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).

Remove the chicken from the refrigerator so it has time to come to room temperature.

Prepare the ‘vegetables’:
Peel the ginger and slice it into matchsticks.

For the spring onions, cut off the ends, remove one outer layer, wash, and cut into three.

Top and tail the celery stalks, wash, and cut into pieces of similar length to the spring onions.

Wash, halve lengthwise, and thinly slice the lemon (or lime) into half moons.

Smash the head of garlic with your palm to open it up. Crush each clove with the side of a large knife and remove the skin, which will come off easily.

Roasting:
Pour some oil at the bottom of an oven dish large enough to fit all the pieces of chicken with space to spare. *The pieces should not be too crowded or the skin wil not become crispy.* Scatter all the vegetables at the bottom of the pan, toss with a little oil, and roast in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Coat the chicken legs with sesame sauce.

Once the vegetables have been roasting for about 15 minutes, add the chicken legs to the pan and season everything with a few hits each of light soy sauce, tamari, and rice vinegar.

Roast the chicken for 40 to 45 minutes, basting occasionally with the juice, until brown and crispy on the outside and fully cooked (i.e. juices run clear) inside.

If possible, let the chicken sit for a few minutes. Serve with rice.

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Posted in Children, Easy, Fall, Meat / Poultry, Seasonal, Spring, Winter | Leave a Comment »

Tahini chocolate chip cookies

30 June 2017

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I had never made chocolate chip cookies. I am not sure I had ever even eaten a chocolate chip cookie. I exaggerate, of course, but only slightly. I have never found chocolate chip cookies very exciting. But hint at the addition of tahini, and I suddenly find myself ensnared in a cookie baking extravaganza.

You are enraged by my disparagement. But listen. Tahini transports that rather pedestrian cookie to a different place, another time, other scents, new flavors. Suddenly, I am traveling, just with the whiffs from my oven, all in that first bite.

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I understand your skepticism, why take advice from a self-declared chocolate chip cookie non-believer? Because, whether you love chocolate chip cookies or not, these are special.

Even David Lebovitz says so: ‘[They] were some of the best chocolate chip cookies that have ever come out of my oven…’ — See?

Salted tahini chocolate chip from Danielle Oron via David Lebovitz
Note: Plan ahead, the dough should rest overnight before baking

230 g dark chocolate (1 3/4 cups once cut into chunks)
115 g (8 Tbsps) butter, softened at room temperature
120 g (1/2 cup) tahini
100 g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
90 g (1/2 cup) packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
150 g (1 cup plus 2 Tbsps) flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
Fleur de sel or Maldon sea salt to sprinkle on the cookies at the end (optional)

Chop the chocolate into rough chunks (about 1/2 or 1/4 inch).

Make sure the butter is very soft. In a bowl or stand mixer, beat together the butter, tahini, and sugars until light and fluffy (a good 3 to 5 minutes).

Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla extract and continue to stir until the egg is well incorporated (another few minutes).

In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and sea salt.

Add the flour mixture to the butter/egg/sugar, mixing lightly until just combined. Add the chocolate, mindful not to overmix. Cover the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight (or up to one week if it’s more convenient!).

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F) and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

With a spoon or with your hands, form a small ball for each cookie. Place the balls on the baking sheet, at least 8 cm (3 cm) apart (the cookies will spread!).

Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes, depending on their size. Best to watch them like a hawk and remove the cookies from the oven as soon as they turn golden on the outside but are still pale and soft in the middle (I overcooked my batch!). Immediately sprinkle with few flakes of salt, if using.

Let cool before eating. The cookies will keep for a few days at room temperature in a cookie jar.

 

Posted in Baking, Children, Dessert, Year-round | 2 Comments »

After-school lemonade

26 June 2015

IMG_0533

One day I will write extensively about London weather, or rather the interesting relationship the English have to English weather. Today I am just enjoying another one of those glorious summer days we’ve had this year, hot afternoons that simply scream of cooling lemonades. I usually just wing it, here I paid attention as the proportions seemed just right.

4 lemons

3 tablespoons light brown sugar

Large sprig of fresh mint

Ice cubes

Sparkling water

Juice the lemons. Pour the juice into a large jug over a few handfuls of ice cubes. Add the sugar and stir until it’s completely dissolved. Add the mint and give it a swirl.

Pour the juice into each individual glass to about a third full and top up with sparkling water.

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Posted in Children, Drinks, Easy, Homemade and preserves, Seasonal, Summer | Leave a Comment »

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