Sag aloo

There was a bag of spinach in my veg box this week: normally I'm a spinach purist, cooking it down and adding a dusting of nutmeg and some butter. But I'd got some left-over egg and tomato curry, lemon rice and coconut chutney, so I had a hunt among the bookshelves for ideas. Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey came up trumps with a recipe from Bangladesh. I've adapted it a bit, partly because my spinach was definitely the grown-up kind that needed a brief cook before being added to the dish. The mustard notes are very Bengali.

Sag aloo (based on a Rick Stein recipe from Far Eastern Odyssey)

A good glug of mustard oil, or any light oil you have to hand

2 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

a knob of ginger, grated

1 green chilli, chopped

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 dried Kashmiri chilli

5 floury potatoes, cut into small chunks

1 leek, finely chopped

1 bag of spinach - or two good handfuls

1/2 tsp garam masala

If your spinach is mature, wash it then cook it briefly in only the remains of the washing water. Remove from the heat as soon as it's wilted down. Add the glug of mustard to a pan, then add the mustard seeds when it's smoking. Clamp on a lid to avoid the risk of being pelted with popping seeds. When the popping has stopped, add the cumin seeds a cook for a minute. Then add the garlic, ginger and chopped green chilli and cook for two minutes. Now add the turmeric and the Kashmiri chilli, followed by the potato chunks. Add about half a wine glass full of water - you don't want much - and a teaspoon full of salt.
Cook gently for around 15 minutes, shaking the pan every now and again to stop the potatoes sticking. Add a bit more water if you need to. Add the chopped leek, and when the pots are nicely soft, add the spinach and heat it through.

Turn off the heat, add the garam masala and gently stir it in.

This turned out very well, and provided a great lunchbox meal too.

Taste on trial: So Good soya drink

Last week, I got an email from Emma at Wild Card PR agency, asking if I'd like to try some So Good soya drink, as they're about to relaunch their range. Sure, I replied, if you're happy with some honest comments. No problem, said Emma, and she sent round two 1l packs of the milk in a dinky insulated bag. Included were some recipes and a fact sheet about the product. I'd asked Emma why people bought this stuff: mainly for health reasons, she said - the drink is lactose free and has no dairy ingredients but has plenty of added vitamins and nutrients.

Mouse took care of border control. I've often seen soya milk in the chiller cabinet, and I've never been tempted to buy it. My normal milk is organic unhomogenised full milk, delivered twice a week, so I wasn't sure whether to treat So Good as a milk substitute or an entirely new food substance. In the end, I decided to try to do both. So this is the first of several reports.

One of the recipes Emma sent was for goat's cheese and courgette cannelloni, so I decided to follow the cheese route as I'd had a beautiful Romenesco in my veg box. I stopped off at the International Cheese Centre at Liverpool Street Station and bought a hunk of hard sheep's cheese so that I could create a dish for those averse to cow's milk.

The Romensco cooked in boiling water for five minutes - it's a wonderful substitute for cauliflower as it stays a bit crisper. As with cauliflower cheese, I made a bechemel sauce using some of the veg cooking water as liquid. Then it was time to add some soya milk to the sauce...and as soon as I did, I could smell sweetness. It wasn't the sweetness of cow's milk but a much deeper, almost condensed milk caramel aroma. I was worried. And a quick taste of the sauce deepened my concern: the sugaryness was almost cloying. Ploughing on, I added a teaspoon of grain mustard and the cheese. The sweetness remained. I know that ewe's cheese has a sweetness of its own, but the soya was drowning that out.

After a quick blast in the oven, the dish was ready to eat. Oh dear. That sweetness was still very strong, and remained as a lingering after-taste. The Romanesco beneath was lovely, so I ended up forking out the florets and scraping off the sauce.

Hmmmm. Back to check the side of the pack. Sugar is the third listed ingredient (2.8g sugar per 100ml), followed by maltodextrin which is a starch sugar. Maltodextrin (if I understand right) can vary in sugaryness, so maybe the So Good folks have gone for a high sugar version?

My final verdict is that this milk is not usable in a savoury dish. The sweetness is really overwhelming and hangs along around long enough to drown out any other flavour.

I'll press on this week with some sweet things, but so far, I'm not loving it.

Heirloom recipe 3: Anglesey eggs

This is one of my favourite autumn and winter warmers, discovered in Jane Grigson's English Food, which I must have bought shortly after leaving university in the very late 70s. But it's not English, it's Welsh: Wyau Ynys Mon, or Anglesey eggs. Ynys Mon used to be known as mam Cymru, mother of Wales, such was the quantity of grain grown on the island. The dish is a deeply comforting mixture of leeks, potatoes, eggs and cheese sauce, so it's nice and frugal too. Leeks are now turning up in my veggie box and the nip in the air means it's time for the first Anglesey eggs of the season.

Wyau Ynys Mon - quantities here are for four people (what follows is half these quantities)

adapted from a Jane Grigson recipe

1 and a half lb potatoes

6 medium leeks

3oz butter

1 tbs plain flour

1/2 pint hot milk

4oz strong cheese - this time, I used Lincolnshire Poacher and Wrekin White

1 tsp whole grain mustard

8 shelled hard-boiled eggs

Boil the potatoes then mash them, or better still, pass them through a ricer. Chop the leeks finely, give them a quick wash then cook them very slowly with 1oz of the butter. Take off the heat when the crunch has gone.

While the veggies are cooking, make a white sauce. Let this simmer slowly for at least 10 mins, adding the mustard once the sauce has come together and thickened.

While the sauce is doing its thing, get the eggs on to boil. Mix together the leeks and the mash and add the remaining butter. I bunged in the remains of a bottle of pouring cream that was lurking in the fridge. Check the seasoning.

When the eggs are done and shelled, halve them and nestle them into the leeky potato mixture. Take the sauce off the heat and add 3oz of the cheese. Stir thoughtfully to amalgamate. Then pour the cheese sauce over the eggs and pop into an oven at gas mark 6 until golden brown - around 20 mins.

I normally serve this on its own, but a salad of leaves and toms would be great too.

My parents lived on Anglesey for many years - here's my dad on Newborough beach over Christmas in 2005, still active at 89. Dad died last year: still missed.

Buried treasure for next year

'Tis the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and seed catalogues...Marshall's arrived yesterday, Plants of Distinction is on its way and on Monday, Thompson and Morgan emailed me to say that next year's seed potatoes are now available. T&M have served me well this year, from the heavenly Highland Burgundy Red potatoes to tomato Rosada to the mini patio greenhouse, so I didn't need much encouragement to buy seed potatoes from them for next year. I don't know why they're not offering the heritage collection again, and Skerry Blue has disappeared from the list. But dear old Highland Burgundy is there, and it was first onto my order. The yield isn't big, but it's one of the tastiest and most beautiful potatoes I know.I've chosen Red Duke of York as a first early, along with Sharpe's Express, which I seem to remember reading somewhere (Alan Romain's potato book??) has a fantastic flavour. International Kidney (aka Jersey Royal, but you're not allowed to call it that unless you're actually growing it in Jersey) is my second early, to be followed by Blue Danube - another purple stunner, and the knobbly and delicious Pink Fir Apple.
The most intriguing potato on the list was a new introduction: Vitelotte. It's another coloured beauty. The pic below is from the T&M site...
T&M's blurb says: 'Vitelotte (aka Negresse and Truffe de Chine) is our own registered clone of this old French variety, date unknown but probably early 1800s from Peru or Bolivia. An earlier maturing potato and with slightly larger tubers than Congo (which was phenomenally popular as a minituber last season). Potato Vitelotte has the same rich inky purple-black skin and flesh of Congo, rich in anthocyanin, and similarly with all coloured fleshed varieties they retain their colour most prominently if steamed in minimal water and not boiled. Makes visually stunning mash, chips, crisps, jackets and roasties.'
My guess is that like other coloureds, it'll fall apart if you don't watch it carefully when boiling. Does anyone actually steam potatoes? It's an idea I've only ever seen in seed catalogues which translates as: Look, we think this is a great potato but it's a bugger to cook and if you turn your back it will suddenly look like an exploded pillow so DON'T BLAME US. Anyway, how could I resist? So Vitelotte is on the order form.

Heirloom recipe 2: kedgeree

The smoked haddock came out fighting last night, ready to be turned into my mum's kedgeree: a favourite supper dish. Almost all the recipes for kedgeree I've ever read are much more curry-ish than my mum's - my guess is that her recipe came from her trusty Good Housekeeping, circa 1960 and therefore probably written in a relatively spice-free era. Certainly she never put even a pinch of curry powder in it. So it's not your normal kedgeree - but I love it.
First, poach the haddock in milk, with a knob of butter, a sliced onion, a couple of bay leaves and a handful of black peppercorns. Once the fish is done, haul it out and strain the milk.
Put the rice on to boil with the milk, and top up with water. While that's simmering, flake the fish, chop up several spring onions and hard boil a couple of eggs. Once the rice is done, gently fry the spring onions in a generous knob of butter, then combine with the rice, flaked fish, and chopped hard boiled eggs. My mum's spicing is simply a very generous pinch of cayenne and the magic ingredient: lashings of chopped parsley.

Gently heat through, then turn into a pot and bung in an oven, gas mark 4, for around half an hour. Serve with salad.

I suspect my mother didn't like cooking very much but she was a very good 'plain cook', in the best sense of that phrase. I guess cooking twice a day, every day, for a family with three children when what you really want to do is teach music is an utter bummer.

Eight legs good

Moseying back to Tottenham via Essex Road yesterday, I realised I wasn't far from fabulous fishmonger Steve Hatt...at first, it was hard to make out who was queue and who was just pressing their noses to the window. I moved from the second group to the first, and spotted a tray of tiny octopi, fresh from Devon. I've eaten octopus in Cyprus and Portugal and loved it, but have nervously held back from cooking it myself. Time to give it a try. Two of these babies cost me two quid - and I bought some smoked haddock for a kedgeree later in the week.

This cartoon from 1882 gives us the very rare 11-limbed octopus, as England gobbled up bits of the globe in its imperial hunger. Meanwhile, back at home, I scoured the bookshelves for what to do with my catch. The first recipe that really caught my eye is from Tess Kiros' Piripiri Starfish, her book of Portuguese cooking. It's a slow cook in the oven - around two hours from start to finish.

I gave the octopi a good wash, then cut them into thick strips. Next, the sauce...

...some shallots and garlic gently fried off in olive oil, then a good slosh of homemade pureed tomatoes. I didn't have any piripiri pepper, so I added a shake of cayenne.

While the sauce is simmering quietly, chop up the potatoes (I thought my Burgundy Reds would go well with the colour scheme) and add the octopus. Pour over the tomato sauce, then add a glass of red wine - an inky Chilean merlot was what I had to hand.

Then the dish goes in the oven at gas mark 6 with a covering of foil for an hour. A sweet fruity scent began to waft through the house. The foil comes off for a final 45 mins in the oven - this is to get the slightly crusty texture that Tess recommends.

Bread is the traditional Portuguese accompaniment - and some tomatoes from the garden. It smelled deeply rich and had that lovely rich, savoury/sweet seafood taste. The octopus was meaty and not remotely rubbery. Yum. This is a great dish, and makes me wonder why we're not scoffing this eight-legged wonder on a regular basis.

Quick fixes and brownies

It's been a week of rushed suppers and adjusting to working out of a new office. The bit of west London that I'm in now is a food desert: there's a mega shopping centre with an Eat in it, and a row of restaurants, but no real food shops unless you want a 20-minute hike...which I'll start to do soon. Earlier in the week, I made a carrot hummous, based on a Maria Elia recipe. Roast carrots are added to chickpeas - and very nice it was too, and soon to be added to my '100 Things That Look Like Wallpaper Paste But Taste Jolly Good' cookery book.

There was an aubergine in the veggie box, so once again I made my beloved nazuktan of aubergine, pekmez, yoghurt, lemon juice, mint and toasted almonds.

By the end of the week, there was an array of small snacky-sized left overs to eat, including the last of my pizza dough, topped with some of my Turkish dried olives, and a few gigantic beans.

I made some brownies this morning for Brian and his band: Brian is back to repoint the outside walls of the house, re-render round the windows and repaint. The front door is now a lovely plum colour. The recipe for the brownies is from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which I picked up for a massively reduced price at a book stall, and frankly, it's not that reliable. The brownies took double the recommended time to cook, although they tasted fine. Brian immediately scoffed two in quick succession. I think I need to do some brownie recipe research.

Mouse is not at all impressed with the invasion of the builders - she's currently deep within the storage portion of the spare room bed. Here she is the other evening, taking the evening air.

Blackberry and apple cake

I have to show off these beautiful Burgundy Red potatoes, dug from the allotment yesterday. They're like little jewels, glowing ruby red. You have to watch them carefully as they boil, as they have a tendency to get very floury if they're left too long. They taste wonderful. What you lack in quantity you get back in flavour from this heritage variety.
On to pudding - this is adapted from a recipe in October's Olive magazine. Blackberry and apple cake

4 or 5 peeled, cored and sliced apples
About 20-30 blackberries, but not to worry if you have fewer
150g soft butter
150g sugar - I used 100g castor and 50g light moscavada
2 eggs
125g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
a pinch of ground cloves

Heat the oven to gas mark 4.
Put the apples in a pan with a knob of butter and a spoonful of the sugar and cook gently until the apples soften. Don't worry if you have cooking apples and they go a bit mushy. Turn off the heat and add the blackberries. Once they've cooled a bit, bung the apples and blackberries in a sieve and reserve the juice. Put the apple and blackberries in a buttered 20cm round deep cake tin - or, like me, use a paper tin liner.
Add the remaining sugar to the soft butter and mix. Then add in the eggs, then the flour, baking powder and spice. Next, stir in the fruit juices. Put the tin into the oven and bake for around half an hour. Let the cake rest for about ten minutes, then turn out.

Because of the blackberry juice, the cake looks very dark, but it tastes delicious. Serve with custard or cream.