friends

Squid and Friends

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

Apparently, hearing is the last sense to leave the body. Well, for me the last activity to leave the Covid lethargy, is cooking.

No surprise there then for anyone who knows me.

Meanwhile, it takes days to actually get round to cleaning the kitchen floor, I have been dithering and dathering about which Coursera course to sign up for – even though they are free and only require a minimum of concentration…..

All those things I did in April, have not been done since. 

I have no pictures of my culinary disaster so here are a few winter pictures.

So this, dear reader, if you are still with me and not off to do something more interesting, is a story of squid and friends.

Squid is cheap, and is best if you cook for a few seconds or a really long time, or both. ( I am sure there are other such ingredients but none spring to mind – mind you, not much ‘springs’ to mind these days.)

The Best Beloved was not a squid fan when he met me – mind you he was not a Labour voter, good at buying jewellery, hoovering, putting the washing on, enjoying long lunches with friends.

I converted him to squid stew with various adaptations of a Hugh Fearnley-Wittingtstall recipe.

You make a tomato sauce – a good one – fry the squid for seconds and put in the sauce and then both of them on a long slow cook. (Bottom of the Aga for those of us who live in Deepest Sussex).

You can add potatoes and fennel an hour or so in. 

I have made this, with variations, loads of times and so it counts as easy, familiar, comfort, not meat, cheap, flexible, appreciated – and most importantly to this story, whilst you are doing something else.

So, all was in hand when I realised I was approaching the time for a family call and went into the oven to check the stew.

Well the squid was nicely meltingly ready, but the fennel (always a tricky ingredient) was a bit hard.

(Dear reader, I know this is going on rather long, but there will be a nicely uplifting bit about friends soon-ish.)

So, I decided to take out the squid and put the rest back in the oven, though this time in the top (hot) oven of the Aga and get on with the call.

Call took longer than I thought and so it was the charred remains of a tomato sauce I pulled  out of the oven. Inedible, no I mean it, not possible to rescue.

I had squid, and a memory.

My lovely sis had returned from living in Milan.

She had spent time with staying with my ex-boyfriend, and various other people and then pitched up in Leeds to stay with me for a week. 

(She is still in Yorkshire – some many years later.)

If you are lucky, there are times in your life when you have a special group of friends. You spend time together, you do things together, you get along brilliantly –  you are caught up in a delightful web of friendship.

It has happened to me three times in my life, and I celebrate each of them.

This time was in Leeds and my sis was a pivotal part of it.

And, among many other things she brought us group of friends, a recipe.

Squid and peas and pasta.

In my memory it was summer and there were back doors open, our friends drinking wine and gossiping around the kitchen table whilst my sis cooked her meal.

So, here in winter, and lockdown, I looked at my cooked squid. Got some peas. Melted some butter and cooked the peas in it. Swirled them with the squid and the clinging bits of non-ruined tomato sauce and added them to some cooked spaghetti – using, of course, a splash of the spaghetti cooking liquid to meld the sauce.

I have to say at this point, this was not my sis’s way of making the dish but hey ho, I did what I could under the circumstances.

My BB duly appreciated supper – but I was back in a house in Leeds with my amazing friends, laughing, letting dogs run round the garden, swapping journalistic stuff, discussing politics, hearing stories of life in Millan, music on in the background.

There were BBQs, there were loves lost and gained, there was a sunny summer, and that was that very special time.

And no we are not all still in contact, but at the time I was pretty convinced I was living a very good life – and indeed, dear reader, I was.

Supper For Eight

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

I am never quite sure just how it happens that you do for a supper for just eight people and it is not fancy, so no implements for removing lobster flesh for example, but by the end of the evening they have created enough dirty plates and glasses to generously coat every flat surface in the kitchen.

Admittedly, at that stage of the evening my loading of the dishwasher can be a little less than perfectly done, ( it never is perfectly done according to my best friend and dishwasher-loading perfectionist).

And to be fair too, we don’t put our glasses or cutlery in the dishwasher as they are old, from various French flea markets, and go cloudy or tarnished.

Even so, it is remarkable how eight nice, polite, interesting people can wilfully create such a lot of dirty stuff and laugh cheerfully throughout the evening as they do it.

But, whilst I can throw several shades of a dicky fit over my best beloved’s inability to put everyday breakfast bowls and mugs into the dishwasher, I don’t actually mind the clearing up after a ‘do.’

Dog and husband have a very clear attitude that this should be left to another day and that anyone who wants to be awake at 1am loading dishwashers, is on her own.

But I quite like that wind down with the BBC World Service telling me what is happening in Nigeria or about Indonesian political scandals, whilst I go about my business.

And I like restoring order after the chaos.

You need to know at this stage, I am not complaining about the mess because we had a great evening.

It was a kitchen supper not because we are posh people trying to show that we can do casual and informal, but because we are not posh people and have nowhere to sit everyone except in the kitchen.

The mix worked well – always a lucky break and not guaranteed, though in this case was a pretty sure bet – and though I know I am repeating myself, we had a lovely time.

I am sure you couldn’t care less what we ate but I am going to tell you anyway so if you are not interested, time to leave.

Mushrooms chopped up by a whizz in the food processor and saluted lengthily ( you can’t overcook a mushroom) with tarragon and then mixed with a very tasty cream cheese from Cornwall via Waitrose. Put on bruschetta from Lidl.

Winter minestrone with chard and beans and carrots and celery and garlic etc. The secret is to keep the rind ends of parmesan in your freezer and put one or two into the soup as it cooks.

Thin lamb chops marinaded in pomegranate molasses, olive oil, garlic and lemon zest and then shoved under a grill or in a hot oven until they are rightly done – not overdone, mind.

And my current favourite recipe – slices of new potatoes cooked in water, olive oil, garlic and saffron, mixed with artichokes ( please note from a tin, rinsed and sauted, not done from fresh, you must be joking,) green olives , parsley and it all coated with creme fraiche – then put in a puff pastry pie – and no, of course, I didn’t make the pastry.

( If you want the real version of this google ‘Cranks artichokes puff pastry’ but Nadine makes you do stuff with real artichokes and adds nuts and stuff which I am sure is pretty delicious, but my easy version wins for me I am afraid.)

Can I just remind you at this stage that there is something in the make-up of parsley with counteracts the next day less-than-delightful garlic breath so it is a must add if you are using as much garlic as in this ‘menu.’

I don’t eat desserts and am rubbish at making them, so very kind friend/guest made lovely lemon mousse thing – it disappeared without touching the sides.

Cheese, chocolates and all that malarky – but to be fair, cheese and chocolates hardly add a smidgen to the washing up.

A non-invited friend, who is not a cook, was practically salivating when I told her about the pie and I (gaily) thought I would have plenty of leftovers because of a lifetime habit of over-catering – blame my Lancashire grandmother who instilled the idea that hospitality means lots of food.

I invited her, her husband, my best friend and her husband for Sunday lunch.

Dear reader, there was little in the way of leftovers but that is another menu story…….