Spicy Black Eyed Beans

Pulses are always a good fall back ingredient I find. After our weekend away I needed something interesting for dinner that might go well for lunch next day and I had a packet of black eyed beans still unopened from my last trip to Taj Stores and I was curious. I have never eaten them before though I have seen them on store shelves a million times. They are a pretty little bean, creamy in colour with a black scar across the middle from where they are harvested.

They are hugely popular in the American south to the extent of being the main ingredient in 'Hoppin John' a traditional dish for New Years Day but were probably introduced by African slaves. They grow well in hot climates and are still a major food source in Africa and are used as well in Indian cuisine, spiced for curries or combined with rice for a meal rich in protein. Here they add a little sunshine to the end of winter.

Like most beans these need soaking for at least a few hours but this dish is very simple and tasty.

Spicy Black Eyed Beans

1 cup dried black-eyed peas
2 tsp grated ginger root
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp tumeric
1-2 green chilis, chopped
1 tbsp tamarind pulp or plain yogurt
1 tbspn ghee
2/3 cup sliced onion
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp garam masala
2-3 tbsp coriander leaves

Rinse and soak beans for a couple of hours then drain, rinse again and put into a pan. Cover with fresh water. Bring beans to a boil over medium heat then add half the ginger, the chili powder, and the tumeric. Reduce heat, cover the pan and cook gently for 45-50 minutes Add remaining ginger, chilis, tamarind pulp or yogurt, mix well and let it simmer uncovered for another 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the ghee in a small fry pan and fry onion over a very low heat until it carmelizes. Add the cumin seeds and garlic and stir, keeping the heat low. Remove pan from heat just as garlic begins to colour. Pour mixture into beans, together with Garam masala, stir and cook another 5 minutes. Check seasoning - it will need salt - then serve with some fresh cucumber slices and chapattis.

And this week ... I bought

No trip to Borough Market this week - spent the weekend in south-west France consuming many things duck amidst the snow and very pleasurable it was too. Though I did bring a string of garlic and some haricot tarbais back, that's not really the basis for a week's worth of food. So this week will be about what can be rustled up, mostly from the freezer, a process that began with cheesy peas Sunday night, with leftovers for lunch Monday.

Monday we were out to see Man of Mode at the National so Tuesday lunches were bought. Supper that night was an experiment - spiced black eyed beans - which was nice enough but needed more to go with it but was, nonetheless a good lunch cold on Wednesday.

Wednesday evening was time for Chinese with home cooked belly pork, peppers with black beans upon mounds of basmati rice - there was belly pork in the freezer from a few weeks ago and peppers came from the supermarket. Leftovers made for a fine lunch Thursday

Thursday night I was out, my sweetheart bought takeaway and we both bought lunch Friday. Supper will again come from the freezer, this time a tub of blanqutte de veau that we'll eat with rice

Spag Bol

Winter, summer, hot, cold I love spaghetti bolognese. It has been one of my favourite foods since I was a little kid - my mother makes great s'ghetti. It is a dish that gives great pleasure - lots of textures and flavours wrapped around long threads of pasta that are guaranteed to be messy and fun to eat. At the end of a bad day it will give you comfort, possibly even cheer you back to equilibrium. You come as close as it is possible to be that if you make this for dinner everyone will be happy. It goes well with a green salad and with garlic bread. Or you can simply eat it with nothing more than a fork and a generous sprinkle of fresh Parmesan.

Everybody is convinced that they make the best spag bol but they are wrong - I do! This version, in fact, would not pass muster with the culinary masters of Bologna. In 1982 the Bolognese delegation of Accademia Italiana della Cucina issued a recipe that confines the ingredients to beef, pancetta, onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and milk. One day I will follow it exactly and then I will have to re-name this recipe. In the meantime try this one - it's lovely. This is best thought of as a slow dish. It is always better the next day - try and factor that in if you can.

Spaghetti with a rich meat sauce

1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
4 slices smoked bacon, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
500g/1 lb coarsely minced beef
2 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
1 tbspn tomato paste
1 tspn tabasco
1 tbspn worcestershire sauce
1 bay leaf
Scant teaspoon dried mixed herbs
Salt and freshly ground pepper
500g/1 lb pack dried Spaghetti - the thicker the better
Grated Parmesan to serve

In a large pan gently fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil till it starts to soften then add the bacon and continue cooking over a low heat till the bacon gives up its fat. Increase the heat and add the beef and stir to be sure that all the meat comes into contact with the pan and browns. Add the sauces and herbs and stir through then add the tomato paste and the tomatoes, squeezing them to break them up before they go into the pan - or chop them with a sharp knife for a slightly less messy (and fun) solution. Season generously, bring the sauce to a simmer then put the lid on the pan, turn the heat right down and leave to simmer for a couple of hours. At this point it is best to turn off the heat and leave the sacue to cool, then refrigerate overnight to allow the flavours to develop.

Next day cook the spaghetti as directed on the packet and re-heat the sauce. Drain the pasta then return it to the pan and add the sauce and stir to thoroughly coat the strands. Leave on a low heat for 10-15 minutes to let the flavours meld and some of the sauce to soak in to the spaghetti. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan.

This recipe makes enough for four huge bowls - it willl freeze well if you don't fancy it two nights running - but who can resist.

And this week ... I bought

The market was remarkably quiet again on Saturday - lovely for us, less so for the traders. We started at Ginger Pig, as usual, and bought a good piece of boned, rolled shoulder pork to roast and John gave me an extra piece of rind to make extra crackling which delighted me because I am a greedy pig and simply love crackling, I also bought some braising steak, unsmoked bacon oysters and eggs - £17.50 We had a proper Sunday roast with the extra crackling going with cold slices of pork for lunchboxes

We bought Parma ham and buffalo mozzarella from the Italian stall - £7.50 Lunch Saturday was particularly fine with just some buttered ciabatta added

Carrots from Total Organics - 80p - Lunchbox crunch

I'm currently engrossed in Heston Blumenthal's book Perfect - a christmas gift from the lovely boyfriend who knows how to make me smile - and he talks about Yukon Gold being the perfect potato for roasting. Armed with this snippet I headed to Booths and asked the guy who owns it if he had any. He laughed and said you've been reading The Times. No, I said, Heston. Ah, he said, bloody big book for six recipes and no, I have no Yukon Gold. Had some last year for a while and couldn't sell them. I'm hoping he may reconsider. Onions, potatoes - red skins not gold fleshed, sugarsnap peas, cucumber, cavolo nero, green beans from Booths - £6.70 - Potatoes and cabbage as well as roasted butternut - that's been sitting in the vegetable rack for weeks - made a splendid supper Sunday night Cucumber and peas for lunchboxes

Scotch egg - big fat and round - from Ginger Pig - £3 - Snacking delight

Bread and milk from Neals Yard - £7.20 - One loaf for Saturday lunch and one a chewy wholemeal loaf for the freezer

Chocolate brownie and a croissant from Flour Power - £2.50 - That was breakfast sorted

A total of £45.20 - not bad at all

Penne with Zucchini and Ricotta

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey

When along came a spider

And sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away

Had she been Piccolo Signorina Muffetta she'd more than likely have started by making mozzarella and then, using the whey that remained after making the original cheese, she'd have recooked it to make some ricotta and grown up very, very beautiful, or at the very least unafraid of spiders.

Ricotta means re-cooked in Italian and it is, technically, not a cheese but rather a cheese by-product. The whey that results from the production of cheeses that are rennet, not acid, set - like mozzarella and provolone - is heated and then acid is added to the whey to make curd from the protein that still remains in the first production of whey. It takes about 24 hours to produce a fresh, fine grained, ever so slightly sweetish soft cheese that is frequently used in stuffed pastas. Its lightness means that it lends itself equally well to use in sweet things like cheese cakes and stuffed cannoli. Whipped it is lovely with some candied peel stirred through and spiced with a little nutmeg. The fresher the better, it is always wise to use it as soon as practicable.

I recently bought the River Cafe Pasta Book and, thoroughly smitten after trying a random few, I decided to simply work my way through the book - one recipe a week. The flaw with this plan was immediately obvious - it is January and the first chapter is 'raw sauces' - not a great time to be looking for sweet fat tomatoes. I have started on Chapter 2 instead - Cheese sauces - and the following was last night's supper. Most fine it was too.

Penne with Zucchini and Ricotta

200g/7oz penne

500g/1lb small zucchini, trimmed of stalks and tips

200g/7oz ricotta

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced

2 tbsp basil, roughly chopped

50g/2oz Parmesan, freshly grated

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the zucchini whole in boiling salted water for 2 minutes, then drain and slice at an angle 1 cm/ 1/2 inch thick.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a thick bottomed pan and fry the garlic gently till soft and vaguely golden. Add the sliced zucchini and toss over a low heat to combine the flavours. Season and add the basil.

Cook the penne in boiling salted water until al dente then drain. Add to the zucchini and stir to combine. Crumble over the ricotta. Serve with the Parmesan.

Simple, no? And delicious.

And this week ... I bought

This week was different - I had somewhere I had to be Saturday morning so the lovely boyfriend was entrusted with a list and the responsiblity of the weekly shop at Borough. He says it was very quiet.

What I found when I got home was a cornfed chicken from Wyndhams - poached with some warm spices like cloves and star anise and fresh chilli for lunch boxes though the original plan had been to marinate and roast it but after a 10 mile walk in the country on Sunday I was too tired to be complicated

Sausages and pork chops from Ginger Pig - sausages with mash and buttered cabbage for supper Saturday night with the other half of last weeks' savoy cabbage and potatoes from the week before and grilled pork and noodle soup Tuesday night

Ricotta from Gastronomica - for pasta and zucchini

Onions, garlic, sugarsnaps, aubergine, green peppers, cucumber, tangerines, basil, coriander from Booths - aubergine and green peppers made a lovely stir fry to go with puffed bean curd and steamed rice Wednesday night, basil for Monday's pasta, coriander for Tuesday's noodle soup, sugarsnaps and cucumber for lunch boxes as well as the tangerines

Milk and bread from Neals Yard

You may notice this is a much truncated version of the usual list of what I bought on Saturday. It is precisely what I had written on my list for my sweetheart - I had of course said as well that he should buy anything else he fancied and as he loves 'grazing' I was expecting a little cheese, perhaps some olives, a scotch egg, perhaps even a surprise purchase of something utterly unexpected but no - only the things on the list. Which gives me no wriggle room - I can pretty much only make what had seemed like a good idea when I made the list on Friday night so I have felt a bit constrained and without options. Because though we shop only once a week I normally pick up things that look nice or inspire me to make something or can be used in more than one dish. I shop with my senses - if it looks good and smells wonderful or feels perfect then I'll buy it. It is one of the neverending pleasures of Borough Market - the sensory overload, the temptation to try, the challenge to have something new.

Home Style Bean Curd

Tofu - bean curd - is made in much the same way that cheese is made. Soy milk, made by soaking, grinding, boiling, and straining dried soybeans, is curdled by the addition of a coagulant - either acid or salt that leave no perceivable trace of taste - and the resulting curds are then pressed to form blocks. Though it is known that tofu originated in China, anything more exact about its origins than that is, like the origins of cheese, lost in the mists of time.

Rich in protein, and also calcium if produced traditionally using calcium sulfate, it is hugely versatile. It can be eaten raw, simply dipped in something flavourful like soy and chilli flakes or with a little pale pink pickled ginger. It can be shredded into soup or firmed up with a brief meeting with heat then stir fried with intense or fragrant sauces. Deep fried, it puffs up into light gold crusted clouds that will take up the juices of stocks and perfumes of spices. There is little to taste with tofu on its own - in fact bland is a good word - making it ideal to partner with both strong and subtle flavours. If it seems sour or the water it is packed in is cloudy then it has gone off and will be unpleasant.

The first few times I attempted to cook with it were disastrous. I bought what I know now to be silken tofu - which has the highest water content and is like a fine set custard - and it simply disintegrated whenever I went near it and dinner ended up as sandwiches. Not entirely defeated but definitely wary I still ate it often in restaurants and wondered at what alchemy they used to stuff it or stir fry it in lovely chunks. Then, after I spent some time reading the detailed information in Fuchsia Dunlop's book, I decided it could be time to try again. And finally, armed with a little more knowledge, it worked.

The very first time I cooked an edible meal that included a tofu dish I was thrilled - it was like unlocking a secret code. Having made a few different tofu dishes occasionally over the last few months, I feel like I have made tangible progress in the kitchen. I have a new ingredient that I can use well. This time I was even confident enough to make a few changes to the original recipe and still it worked.

Home Style Bean Curd

2 dried shiitake mushrooms

1 block of firm bean curd, drained, about 550g/1 1/4 lb

2 thick rashers of smoked bacon, cut into fine slices

1 tsp shaoxing wine

1 tbspn chilli sauce with fermented black beans

1 tbspn finely chopped garlic

1 tspn dried chilli flakes

200ml/7 fl oz light chicken stock

1/4 tsp dark soy sauce

salt

3/4 tsp potato flour mixed with 1 tbspn water

3 spring onions, green parts only sliced

1 tsp sesame oil

6 tbsp groundnut oil

Put the dried mushrooms in a bowl, pout over enough boiling water to cover and leave to soak for 30 minutes. Drain, squeeze dry, cut out and discard the stalks and slice the caps thinly. Set aside.

Put the bacon slivers into a bowl and mix with the Shaoxing wine.

Cut the bean curd into large squares and then cut these into triangular slices about 1cm/1/2 inch thick. Heat the wok over a high flame until smoke rises then add 3 tablespoons of the oil. Lay the bean curd on to the surface of the wok and fry, turning over once, until golden on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper and set aside. You may need to do this in a couple of batches.

Clean the wok if necessary and re-heat over a high flame then add the other 3 tablespoons of oil and swirl it around. Add the bacon and stir fry until the slivers separate. Add the chilli paste and stir fry till fragrant. Throw in the garlic and mushrooms and continue stir-frying until it smells divine. Finally add the chilli flakes, stir briefly then pour in the stock.

Return the bean curd to the wok with the dark soy sauce and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for several minutes to allow the flavours to penetrate the bean curd, seasoning with salt to taste.

Add the potato flour mixture and stir to thicken the sauce, then add the spring onions. Finally, off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and serve.

We had this with steamed basmati rice and pounded aubergine and green peppers. Don't be put off by the length of the instructions - it is straightforward and pretty quick and definitely a great dinner. For a vegetarian version, omit the bacon and use vegetable stock - but I'd still throw in the little bit of wine.