Tales from the Ugly Kitchen

Have I already said that I'm crap at food photography? Well, here you are: I'm crap at food photography.
I was just browsing my homepage on that Totally Useless Social Network whose name begins with F (and which I only keep updating because 99% of my friends are overseas and I have almost no time to sit down and write as many proper e-mails as I'd like to), and came across a photo album from a girl with whom I went to school; well, you should have seen her cupcakes. And her cakes. Fucking amazing. I felt like crap just because my attempts at cooking decent food sometimes are actually a success, but god forbid that I can take anything near a decent picture.

That's quite frustrating, as I'm usually not that bad at photography (aka I'd lie if I said I'm good, but saying I'm rubbish wouldn't be truthful either. The discomfort of mediocrity, huh?). I can only blame my kitchen, which is, indeed, quite squalid: it is big, it does have almost all the kitchen tools I'd dream of (apart from my baking set, which I sadly had to leave in Italy), it even has a dishwasher (and no, I still can't believe it)...but, to be frank, it looks disappointingly dreary.
Another reason, I guess, why I'm so much looking forward to having my own home: I can only imagine the feeling of bliss and self-fulfillment I'll have when (and if ever) I'll be able to live in anything different than a house with awfully coloured carpets, year-old furniture from the charity shop's bargain aisle and poor lighting at any time of the day. Dream on, right.

I still don't know where I would like this next house to be. You have to choose carefully, if your goal is to find somewhere nice enough to want to stay for more than one convenient year.
Right, it's not going to be Saint John's Wood, or Chelsea - I really wish I could. But there must be a compromise between, say, Chelsea and Wood Green, and that's what I'm determined to find.
(What do I have against Wood Green? Well, I used to live in Wood Green, for one. Sometimes creepy was just not enough to describe the scenes that unfolded before my eyes when I walked back home from class at 10pm, and I still can't forget the sense of overwhelming fear I felt during last summer's riots, when no one but myself walking back fom the library was out on the streets after 4pm, and each and every siren, at night, woke me up with a start).

This said, I'll resume the Dream Home Quest in a few months, I suppose, when I'll have actually started my search. For now, let's just move on to food: you're probably not expecting a savoury recipe, but surprise, there it is!

Ricotta and Salmon Crepes

Let's be straightforward about this: I love crepes. I especially love sweet crepes, and particularly nutella crepes (which is not surprising, because I love everything sweet, and is surprising at the same time, because I'm not even a nutella fan); to me, they are somewhat like Proust's madeleines, an echo of when I was a child and my dad used to take me out in town for a snack: a lucky coincidence made us discover the only place in town where you could sit down and get one (and I usually had two), and that must have been well after my first trip to Paris, where my 10-year-old self first ate a crepe, but well before my awkward first date, as in one of my rare flashes of genius my 15-year-old self proposed we have a chocolate crepe, but the place had finally closed for good (Um, well, alright, let's have coffee then. Oh, you don't drink it. You surely don't mind if I get one, do you?).

As I can't cook the food I grew up with, because  my heart would break if the outcome didn't meet the memories and expectations, I can't get myself to cook sweet crepes at home. So I taught myself savoury crepes; and I learnt so well that, back in Italy, my mother would often ask me to cook them for family lunches, hoping to amaze my uncle, who's usually a far better cook than the both of us together. Needless to say, he turned out to be not a crepe fan. But the other Great Cook in our family tree, my grandma, would invariably giggle and say hoooney, I can't believe you cooked these crrrrepppps on your own!, and that was well worth the effort (at least for her hilarious attempts at French diction).

First of all, however, I had to learn crepe batter. And the credit for that goes to my flatmate back when I was in France; hope I'll soon gather the courage to try her Quiche Lorraine as well (after four years - it's never too late,right?).

For about 4 big or 6 medium crepes, you will need:

- 2 eggs;
- 1 pinch of salt;
- 100g flour;
- 1.5dl milk.
(add sugar if you want the batter to be sweet)

And the procedure is quite easy: you'll only have to beat the eggs and the salt together, in a bowl, and mix the flour and milk in another bowl. Finally, mix the contents of the two bowls together, and leave aside for 30 minutes, to rest: the batter is done!
The challenge is cooking the crepes: if you have a crepière - which I did, in Italy - and a special palette to spread the batter (it looks like this), it's fairly easy, as you'll only need to spread the batter evenly on the greased surface, wait until the crepe is solid enough for you to turn it, and cook it on the other side until it's ready.
If you don't have a crepiere and a palette, though - which is the case for me now -, you'll have to use a normal nonstick pan (always greased with some oil) and whatever kitchen tool you think will help you turn the crepes without tearing a hole in the middle (I usually do it with two forks; it took me a little practice and a lot of broken crepes and swearing, but I can assure you it works). Also, pans are usually smaller then crepieres, and without a palette it's harder to spread the batter, so it's very likely that, when you use a pan, you'll have thicker and more irregular crepes: far from 100% perfection, but still tasty.

Breathe easy, now, the hardest part is over! Let's crack on with the rest.
I tried many savoury fillings, but this is my favourite: ricotta and salmon are quite an unbeatable combination, as far as I'm concerned.

To prepare it, you'll only need to mix 150g ricotta cheese with a little skimmed milk, until you obtain a smooth cream, and then add 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 200g finely chopped salmon.
Assuming that you have already cooked the crepes, you'll then need to put each of them on a ramekin (again, greased with oil) - but not inside the ramekin yet.
Split the batter evenly, putting a few spoonfuls in the middle of each crepe, and then, very carefully, push the crepes into the ramekins, so that the borders remain out of it, like in the picture.
Last step, now: put the ramekins in the oven, which you will have pre-heated to 200°, and cook for 10 minutes, or until the borders turn into a golden brown crust. Serve very hot: the crepes are thin, and tend to cool down very quickly.

That's it, and that's a quite quick and easy idea for a main. I first tried it on a surprise lunch I had organised for my mother's birthday, and it worked almost better than the actual gift.
Should you happen to have any spare batter, and wonder what to do with it...well, I'll give you a hint: chocolate.
I don't think I need to say any more.

So this is the new year.

When does it start being too late to say happy new year?

I don' think I actually said it to anyone this time, apart perhaps from my parents, so when I got back to work (January 4th), and popped into the warehouse room to say hi to my colleagues, I felt a little puzzled to be welcomed with a joyous "happy new year!".

This new year is starting to sound too much like the old one. I'm glad I never make any resolutions, because I'd probably have failed at one or two of them already during these mere two weeks.
If I had been the resolution kind of person, I might have resolved to get rid of my fear of flying, for a start. Can you imagine how many places in the workld I would like to visit, and how many of them are too far for my 2-hour flight limited autonomy? No, you can't, because the number is too high even for myself to recall.
Well, my first flight of 2012 was an absolute nightmare. Later on, I have been told that England was undergoing a sort of tropical storm, and I have no doubts about it, if I go by the hellish turbolences that I experienced on the plane.
That reminded me of what I hate the most about flying alone: when something happens, if something happens, there's no one to hold your hand, or hug you close, or tell you that everything is going to be alright. Which is exactly what I needed that day, as I seriously thought that I would die - if not because of the storm, because of my own anxious cries, that I tried to repress all along (come on, there's people here), only managing to turn them into deep breaths and desperate, still-too-loud sighs.
I must have looked so frightened that the guy sitting beside me felt compelled to ask me if I was alright - and I, who usually reply everything's fine, thank you, even when I obviously look distressed, said something like no, and then something like I've done this so many times, and I still can't believe that these things can safely land.
You wanted to go to London, honey? Tough luck, you're doomed to fly.
In my next life, I'll choose anywhere else I can reach by train. Paris is 14 hours away from home, could be worse, huh?

No, I've got no resolutions for this year - certainly not becoming a better person (you're free to decide whether I'm implying that I'm already perfect, or that I don't give a fuck), or losing weight (who, me?), and not even, alas, learning Spanish, which I had taken up last year, and then abandoned because I had no time: now I have even less.

The only thing I'll seriously try to stick to is writing. I'd love, for once, not to fail.
I resumed carrying around my notebook, for a start. That seems to work, judging from the fragments I jot down while in the tube, glad that my efforts to keep hold of my passing thoughts throughout the day are rewarded by at least a few lines every day. However, everything still looks so messed up, so work in progress, so precarious: nothing that justifies my pride, for the moment, nothing that I have never done before. Those fragments need a thread, and it'd better be a strong one. My resolution, then, would be to find it. And yes, I'm always up for an improbable challenge, if you ask.

Speaking of way less improbable challenges, instead (speaking, that is to say, of absolutely feasible, totally possible, utterly worthwhile challenges), let me show you what I baked last week.

Make-believe Victoria Sponge

(looks like the real thing, doesn't it?)

 

This comes from my Indisputable Baking Bible, that is to say a huge (and, alas, too heavy for a Ryanair checked in baggage) cookbook that had been on sale at my town's biggest library for a couple of months a few years ago. I had been ostensibly perusing it quite a few times, hoping that someone would notice my interest -  and then, the following December, I found it nicely wrapped under the christmas tree, together with an enormous box full of kitchen utensils (my mom, who had been plotting the present for weeks, joked "see, now you've got the theory and the practice!". Now isn't she lovely, when she makes an effort?).

My cookbook collection has been getting bigger and bigger over the years, but this one is still my favourite. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring it over from Italy; in the meantime, while at home for holidays, I made do with some photocopies; this was the first one on the "to bake" list.

It does look like a Victoria Sponge, but it is not - mainly because there is no butter, and because I haven't used raspberry jam, which I didn't have at home. And it does look like an Angel Food cake, as well, but there are far less eggs than in the original recipe, and the yolks need to be used as well. So, what shall we call it? Angel Sponge? Victoria Food? Whatever, who cares about the name. Isn't the taste what really matters?

Ingredients:

- 60g plain flour;
- 60g self-raising flour;
- 4 eggs;
- 160g sugar,
- 4 tablespoons jam (that is, whatever jam you feel like using - if you're unsure, go for blackcurrant, I can guarantee that's a rather good choice);
- 125ml whipped cream.

Recipe: 

- Sift all the flour for three times (I did it twice - that becomes quite complex, when you have to use a grater instead of the sift that you wish you had bought beforehand).
- Beat the egg whites until stiff; add the sugar, gradually, until it melts with the whites, forming a thick and soft cream. Add the egg yolks, and continue beating for around 20 seconds.
- Add the flour to create the batter. Split it evenly into two greased cake tins - or, for the poor and resourceful, pour it all into one tin; later, instead of laying one cake above the other, you will simply have to cut the one you made in two halves, lengthways.
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°, and bake for 20 minutes, until soft and golden brown. Leave aside for 5 minutes, then remove the cake(s) from the tin and cool down.
- Prepare the filling: spread the jam on one cake (or one cake half), then spread the whipped cream on top. Cover with the second cake (or half), and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

By the seventh day, God had finished the work He had been doing. Lucky him, I have not.

I hate eating alone. Absolutely, completely hate it. Sure, I got used to it - you have no choice, once you leave home and start living on your own -, but I still hate it.

I hate cooking meals for one, mostly: I usually end up screwing up the quantities, and eat either too little or too much, which is annoying, either way. And I always fall upon the same dishes, over and over again, because there's no point in trying something different when no one can share it with you.

Tuesday night was one of those nights - and, to be honest, during the whole day I have caught myself dreading the thought of the empty house I would go back to at the end of my shift.

Empty house, empty pans, empty stomach.

Food makes me much happier, when I can cook it for someone; as a matter of fact, rather than having dinner alone I prefer not to have dinner.

Screw it, I thought, at least I'll have some time to write.

There's a short story I have been thinking about for weeks, actually, and I have written only half of it, so that night should have been a good time to write further. I thought, and thought, and thought about it - on the office, on the tube - and when I finally sat down in front of the screen, pop! My mind went completely blank.

Which is usually not a problem, as my rule of thumb for writing is "if you can't remember it two hours after having thought about it, then it wasn't worth it from the start"; but damn. The alternative to writing was finding a convenient pastime that didn't consist in sitting in front of a screen, and I didn't have one, so I can safely say that I wasted a consistent part of my ever-shrinking spare time on that Terrible Tuesday.

Well done, yay! As it always happens, the following day, while heading towards the train station praying god that the rings under my eyes were not that evident, all the clever things I wanted to write came to my mind again. And there was not going to be another girl's night in to catch up, because this week - hear this, guys - I was scheduled to work on a Saturday.

No, no, no. Let's be more specifical: yesterday I went to the office because I asked for it.

Yeah, right. File it under "things you are willing to do to get an extra day off and fly back home for a few days at christmas". My holiday'd better be awesome, cause I won't settle for less after such a week.

Speaking of which, here's how it went:

Day one: I try to send a parcel to Halifax, and miserably fail, because after devoting half of my lunch break to the quest for the post office (which was inside a Costcutter I hadn't even noticed - what's wrong with clear directions and signs?), I realise that the recipient's address is written in my daily planner, and my daily planner is on my desk, back at the office.

Day two: I try to go to the bank to cash a cheque, and miserably fail, because the bank is not where it's supposed to be according to the map (thank you Barclays Branch Finder, I'll surely trust you again).

Day three: I try my luck at the post again. I spend ten minutes arguing with the guy at the counter because he doesn't want to print a posting receipt for me, not even after being showed samples of receipts I got from every other single post office I have been to during the past two months. And I have to capitulate, because it's getting late, my break is almost over, and I still have to have lunch.

Day four: Dead calm, for once. Surprising, huh?

Day five: I suffer in silence every time I hear someone saying thank god it's Friday or I'm so much looking forward to the weekend!.  

And it's not actually a bad day, per se; however, I get home so tired that I'd rather shoot myself than wake up at 7 for one more day. But I still try not to complain, because I asked for it, right?

Yeah, Right.

Day six: I go to work, try to get something done at work - well, actually, I do get something done at work, but not all of it. I guess that on Tuesday I will risk being killed, as three of the four 300-page important invoices that had been left there for me to check are still untouched (ah, the perks of sharing the office with the company's Head of Finance!).
At the end of the day, heading to Soho to meet my friends is absolutely out of question for the human derelict I have turned into - so I flee back home for a much more relaxing pizza-and-football night, falling asleep 5 minutes before the end of Real Madrid vs. Barcellona.

Day seven: Despite having earned the right to stay in bed until 1pm, I'm up and dressed at 8am because my throat is [insert swear word here] aching for whatever mysterious [insert swear word here] reason it conjured up on its own, and I can't [insert swear word here] sleep. 

The plan for today is to pretend being in good shape and go meet my parents - who are here because tomorrow there is my awards ceremony, and they are still determined not to miss it, although they admittedly don't understand one word of English (guess who will have the privilege of translating?).
It's going to be...interesting, to say the least. Or it would be interesting, if it was happening to someone else. But it's happening to me, and I'd rather forget about the ceremony and the graduation and all the hype and enjoy my day off without a care.

You'll agree with me that, if I survived this week, that was only be because of what I knew I would find in my fridge at the end of the day.

Amaretti with coffee and mascarpone

(and welcome to today's guest star: my lovely* and amazing* boyfriend, who actually made these mostly by himself. Alas, how I wish I was the daughter of a former chef too.)

I'm not a big fan of mascarpone, actually. I was a little worried about how it would affect the biscuits' taste, especially since no sugar is involved in the preparation, but I changed my mind as soon as I had the first bite.

I should have known better, of course: how on earth can an otherwise reasonably smart human being have doubts about something involving amaretti?

Sorry, Lord Amaretto, I won't do it anymore. These biscuits are simply amazing, and I'm trying really hard to keep myself from rushing to the kitchen and having another one. Two. Three.

As for how to make them, there's hardly anything easier.

Just soak the amaretti biscuits with coffee (I poured the coffee in a bowl and then plunged them in - and that's all I did as far as this recipe is concerned, really), and divide them into pairs: put a teaspoon of mascarpone on the flat side of one biscuit, then attach a plain biscuit, making a sort of sandwich.

As soon as each biscuit is ready, roll it in grated coconut, and put it on a plate (we used the baking tin, and covered it with a plate to protect the biscuits). Finally, put everything in the fridge, and wait at least 4 hours before serving.

See, it's really easy to make. You have no excuses not to try - so buy those [insert swear word here]** amaretti, and head to the kitchen. Now.

(on air: The Cure - Friday I'm in love)

(* = these are not my words, of course. I certainly wouldn't attribute such flattering adjectives to His Remarkable Person*, if he hadn't agreed to pay me a fee of £20 per compliment; this is business, baby, how dare you call it love?)

(** = Yes, I swear a lot, in real life. And  I can't even convince myself that it's a bad thing. But then, you can't really grow up in a country village in North-eastern Italy and talk like a lady, can you?)

Forever alone - hey, that's me!

So we are having this party, tonight: a party that we have been planning for ages, since our former flatmate informed us that he would be moving out in two weeks that later became one whole month, and that, since no one was meant to replace him, we would finally be able to access the backyard, have a living room, and use the house like it's meant to be used: three bedrooms, three people, and one lounge.

Like all potentially good things, the living room craze lasted about one week: we barely had the time to clean up and put the PS3 gloriously beside the television screen, that our other flatmate asked the landlady to swap rooms and take the one downstairs. To which the landlady said yes, but you are going to pay a higher rent, and i'm going to find someone to take the small room.
And here we are: we will soon be four again, four and unable to go outside and pet the neighbours'cat. Or to have friends round and chill out outside the kitchen, for that matter. Yeah, sad story is sad. But what's sadder is that we organised this party, tonight - conceived as house-warming, turned into Farewell Living Room and Social Life - and no one's coming.

I invited my classmates from uni and a few other friends, and my boyfriend fueled my celebrative spirit by promising that all his ex-colleagues would be there; we came up with a list of little less than twenty people, which is a lot for a couple of socially awkwards as we are, and chances are that we will actually be no more than six, because all the others didn't even bother to reply.
Goodbye to my positive disposition and hope that everyone will have fun, then: I suspect that, as always, I will end up feeling responsible for my guests, which means feeling crap because I invited them to something they disliked.

Fuck, I hate organising parties. And I hate the emo-teen-like sensation that I always get in these situation, the kind of feeling that sounds like no one gives a damn about my party, which means that no one gives a damn about me, which means that I screwed up with everyone and I don't know why.
Seriously: why do most people in the world only have to say ah to be surrounded by friends, while I'm unable even to have the people I made friends with over the past year come and have a drink at my house?
It's frustrating; I hope, at least, that the dessert I invented from scratch this afternoon will taste good, but I guess you'll find out in my next post.

For this one, since we're talking about half-failures, let me introduce you to my half-failed muffins. They were supposed to be delicious - and they are, indeed - but they were not supposed to be so small.
Why are they so small, you ask? Well, because the chef is an idiot, for a start: I guess they would have been the right size if I had made eight of them like the recipe said, and not twelve.
They should have also represented my first serious try at decent food photography, but I discovered far too rapidly that my kitchen is the worst location ever for that. I guess I'll try again when I'll have the money to have my own house and my own lifestyle-magazine-like kitchen; for the moment, I cannot even afford Ikea, fancy that.

Ricotta and Chocolate Chip Muffins

(I found the original recipe on an Italian forum, so I guess there's no point in pasting the link)

Ingredients for 8 muffins (eight, understood?):

125g flour;
60g sugar;
50g butter;
50g milk chocolate;
125g ricotta cheese;
¼ glass milk (I use skimmed milk, but you can change that if you prefer);
½ sachet baking powder;
1 egg.

Recipe:

- Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl, over simmering water; remove it from the hob and mix it with the sugar.
- Add the egg and ricotta cheese, and beat well, until the batter is even; then, add the flour and baking powder.
- Pour the milk over the batter; mix well, and add the chocolate, which you will have previously chopped into not-too-small chunks.
- Pour the batter into a greased muffin tin, and bake for 20 minutes, at a temperature of 180°.


That's it, and it's terribly easy, if you are just a little smarter than me (which everyone potentially is, trust me).
In the end, the muffins were so tiny that I could have eaten all of them in one go; I'll definitely try them again, to experience the pleasure of having them full-size.

(On air: Delain - Frozen)

Still looking for god? Read here.

My first weekend after five whole days of work feels totally different from any other weekend I can get myself to remember. It is probably the first time that I can spend a whole Saturday morning sitting here, on my bed, writing on my laptop because I have no other significant plans...and not complain at all, not even one single time.

All in all, it's a much more relaxed feeling - which sounds strange, I agree, if we consider that waking up every morning at 7 is seriously putting my brain to the test, and leaving me dead tired and craving for sleep at just ten in the evening. But compare this to the disquiet, the despair of having little or nothing to do and feeling that you will have little or nothing to do for the rest of your life: whoever says that routine is hell, has probably never been unemployed, because once you finally build one it's impossible not to recognise that to a certain extent there's comfort in it.

My workplace is one hour away from where I live (unless the 7.33 train is late, unless I miss it, unless the tube gets stuck like it did yesterday evening), but even this is no big deal to me: I get to listen to some music, to read the papers, to read much more of the books I used to hopelessly carry around just to find that I didn't have time for them in the end. I plunge into human nature, search for the inspiration I feel I have lost as for my writing. And I relish the moment when I will be back home, looking forward to a satisfying dinner to make up for another tasteless Marks and Spencer sandwich.
Well, it would probably not be so tasteless, if I gathered the courage to go for full-fat tuna mayo or chicken and bacon and follow my colleagues to the checkout without feeling guilty. Forget having reduced fat food at lunch is definitely one of the lessons I learnt from my first week as a team secretary, but I'm afraid that it will take a lot of time before I actually put it into practice.
(The second lesson, if you ask, sounds like no matter how early you get up and dressed, you won't be really awake until you have your morning coffee. And as 7 a.m. is definitely too early to have breakfast at home, I don't manage to have my morning coffee until nine. )

You are free to warn me that I will start to loathe routine approximately at some point towards the middle of my second week, but I will say no more about the matter - not for now.
I guess all the above sounded plain boring, huh? I know, I know, you are waiting for the food; so be it.

There's a long story behind this cake.
I first heard about it from my mother, who had been going on for at least a couple of years about how good at baking this janitor at her school was, and about how amazingly delicious the cake she brought the teachers from time to time had proven to be, and about how much she regretted not being able to offer me a taster.
Give me the recipe, then, I used to reply. At least four times, if I remember well.
The first time she forgot to ask for it.
The second time she couldn't, because the janitor was seriously ill and off work for at least a couple of months.
The third time - well, the third time my mother did something really cute: she cut out a tiny slice of The Cake, sneaked it into a tissue and then into her bag, and brought it home. I remember I found it good. Yeah, well, the slice was too thin to actually call it by its name, which is no less than Divine Wonder. And no, I didn't get the recipe, not even then.
I got if the fourth time, together with another one (an apricot pie that I still haven't tried). So, to celebrate my depart to London, I baked it the week before leaving home, and felt as if I had just found the secret to recreate the most delicious dessert anyone had ever baked.

Since then, I guess I started associating it with celebration - as I didn't bake it again until last week, when I finally could fulfil my promise of making an amazing cake as soon as I got a job. I even took it to the office on Monday and Tuesday, for breakfast; you probably can imagine the pain I felt when I returned to my usual Weight-Watchers-yogurt-and-bran-flakes on Wednesday, but I surely don't wish you any of it.
What I wish you, instead, is to try this cake and go through the same epiphany that I experience any time I eat it. I'll certainly bake it again, one day or another: maybe when (and if) I get a pay rise?

Ricotta and amaretti cake

Base: 

- Mix 100g butter with 100g sugar; add 1 egg, 250g flour, baking powder and 1 tablespoon almond flavouring.
- Knead until firm and even, and spread inside a greased cake tin. 
Careful, though: you should not use all the batter, as you will need a little bit of it later, for the decoration. It's not easy to decide how much exactly to set aside: I tend to use about 3/4 of it for the tin, and my rule is that it has to be spread evenly on the bottom, but the borders should remain clear.

Cream:

- Mix 400g ricotta cheese with 2 tablespoons sugar; add 2 eggs and 150g amaretti biscuits, which you will have previously broken into crumbs.
- Pour the cream in the cake tin, over the base. 
- Decorate with another 50g amaretti crumbs, mixed with the batter you had previously set aside, broken into small pieces as well.
- Pre-heat the oven to 175°, and bake for about 30 minutes.
- MEET GOD. After it has cooled down, of course.