Highs and lows of the Slow Cooker: Shin of Beef Chile con Carne

Working mainly from home means that from 4.30 pm each afternoon, I spend a lot of effort trying to resist the magnetic pull of the kitchen. In days of yore, I’d launch myself in there with gusto from about 3 pm to start crafting a feast for the family. However, that was when I didn’t have any responsibilities. None at all. But now I have an ever-growing reading list, and an upcoming PhD upgrade which isn’t keeping me awake at night, but still makes me a little nervous. In short, even my to-do lists are breeding, so I’ve been barring myself from the kitchen in order to get some work done.

A first time for everything: Marmalade

My parents eat a lot of marmalade. They like the dark stuff, not any of your Golden Shred nonsense. Real marmalade. Do young people eat marmalade, or even jam anymore? Breakfast, followed by a chaser of toast and marmalade, has been the standard morning routine in our house for as long as I can remember. Although seeing as I generally eat my body weight in potatoes, I’ve never joined in the marmalade ritual.

Fresh Ginger Biscuits

I think I’m allergic to history. I went to the National Archives for the first time a few weeks ago and caught a cold. Then last week, I went to the National Maritime Museum and now I have the flu. See what I mean? I’ll admit that both times I was more nervous than I should have been, which resulted in me being able to eat only a pear for lunch on one occasion. But still. It’s got to be all that history. Or maybe it’s the fact that I feel that I shouldn’t sneeze near archival materials, which inevitably makes me need to sneeze so badly! 

Crisps made in the Microwave, aka Magic Crisps

There is no savoury snack that I savour more than a crisp. Though nutritionists would need a lie down on hearing this, a fond childhood memory of mine consists of me standing by the side of our cooker as my mum cooked up thin slices of potatoes in a chip pan to make “crisps”. Yes, I was a chubby child but it was the nineties! Plus, my mum never really did anything like that, so it was a naughty, indulgent experience for both of us. In fact, I don’t even remember Amy being there, so perhaps the secrecy added an extra spice to our nocturnal proceedings. My impatient wait by the cooker as the oil came to temperature was nothing compared to the agony of allowing the cooked crisps to cool on a piece of kitchen paper. Sprinkled with salt and chewy in places, those crisps were divine. We’d eat them greedily as each batch came out of the pan and so never had enough for a bowlful.

Review: Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour.

With the news that I’m moving out in a few months, it’s time to buzz through the crap in the cupboards that I’ve left lying around the last few years and probe the forgotten depths of the freezer. Gone is the weird bag of dried mixed beans from the first time we went to the Otley Waitrose (pre-university, seriously). Used up are miscellaneous chutneys. Last weekend, the hour finally came to say farewell to one of my Mum’s impulse buys; a four pack of Lidl quails (I mean come on, just don’t buy food without me there, ok?). With the quails defrosting in the sink (and without my knowledge, a pheasant), out came a packet of yufka -essentially classy filo pasty- that I'd bought in December and frozen wonkily. Half a bag of chickpeas were soaked overnight and, having gone crazy in Leicester’s AMAZING fruit and vegetable market a few days before, there were also a lot of on-the-turn items queued up for a feast, namely tomatoes, cucumber, beetroot and weeny carrots. The avocados had succumbed to an early death and I was still recovering.

(Yorkshire) Tea Bread

I didn’t make this with Yorkshire Tea, but I am based in Yorkshire so there shouldn’t be a problem with the authorities, should they get in touch. Some good news; after a couple of years of grafting, I’m pleased to report that I’ve been given a place on a funded PhD! It’s a joint project between the University of Leicester and the National Maritime Museum and I am so very, very excited. Did I mention it’s on prison hulks? It’s on prison hulks. It’s got to be the coolest topic in the world, am I right? There’s this stupid little children’s book called “Victorian Crime” that I bought in a charity shop in Hebden Bridge during my home-schooling years; it’s full of amazing pictures and snippets of kids on hulks or getting hauled in by the police and I was completely obsessed with it. From there, I went on to a phase devouring Newgate novels, followed by an adoration of a series of books written by Andrew Pepper about an ex-Bow Street Runner called Pyke. This whole PhD project is just filling my head with stories but I really can’t wait to get back to some proper academic work. 

Grissini Torino, aka Breadsticks

You can keep Jamie or Nigella; Keith Floyd will always be my TV food hero. He’s downright bonkers and always just on the wrong side of tipsy; I watched an episode once where he was so drunk after cooking for a Rugby team that he slipped and dropped their entire meal on the way to the dinner table. Classic. Normally you can only catch snippets of his amazing programmes squeezed in between live slots on awful Saturday morning cookery shows. During a moment of sluggish TV watching I was therefore lucky enough to catch ten minutes of Floyd on Italy last week. In between complaining, cooking outside a grotty restaurant for a bunch of even grottier looking locals and catching nothing on a miserable fishing trip, the great man had time to whip out a huge newspaper-wrapped parcel of breadsticks and sing their praises. According to Floyd, Napoleon liked his “Grissini Torino” so much that he sent a man to Turin every week to pick up a batch, which he ate every morning before battle. They looked so good and sounded so crunchy that I immediately had to scout around to find an appropriate recipe. At last there was a chance to employ my Italian Level 2 Reading Skills! Italians across the net seem in agreement; the dough must be spiked with a gummy, moreish spoonful of malt extract.