h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

10 November
I made walnut bread. We make several kinds of bread: ordinary wholemeal, olive, walnut and soda bread. My husband has also tried making sourdough without much success. He makes a starter of organic rye flour and water and leaves it until natural yeast starts working, then feeds it with more flour. This seems as much like witchcraft as science, and it doesn't work very well!

I also went to Brighton and went shopping in the Taj. I like wandering round the Taj because it has spices and sauces from all round the world. It also has a range of unusual vegetables. OK, I can cook plantain and okra, but eddoes and yams would baffle me. I buy coriander in big bunches, take it home and freeze it. And my husband told me not to buy him any more Indian chutneys and pickles, because he had enough already.

[Amy P]

12th November. I missed yesterday!

Today was mushroom bake. Not any old mushroom, wild hedgehog fungi. We found masses of them earlier in the autumn: rings of creamy mushrooms with a spiny underside to the cap under trees.
Wild mushrooms cook down much more than cultivated ones, so you need a lot of mushrooms. I tossed them in butter and garlic, added a bit of nutmeg. Then I sliced potatoes and cooked them in the microwave. I made a cheese sauce, then spread layers in a greased dish: potato, mushroom and cheese sauce. Topped the bake with a bit of grated cheese and cooked in the microwave on combination mode.
I'm sure a proper chef would say I should have used cream rather than milk, and a mild cheese rather than cheddar. But it still tasted good!

[Amy P]

13 November
When I got up this morning, I found that my freezer was bleeping and its temperature had gone up to -5 degrees (Centigrade of course). For a while, I wondered whether it had gone wrong. Once we gave it a boost, it soon returned to its usual setting. I think the door must have been a little open.
This made me think how much our cooking habits have changed over my lifetime. My mother didn't have a freezer and, although she did have a fridge with a small freezing compartment, she also had a pantry. That's where she stored vegetables, tins, jars, anything that didn't risk going off too fast. We did have fish fingers but I don't remember much other frozen food.
But the main difference is the sheer variety of food available now. Main meals consisted of meat or fish, potatoes and a vegetable. I don't remember my mother using rice or pasta. There was nothing like the range of fresh fruit and vegetables. We had bananas and oranges, but fresh peaches and apricots were unusual and I'd never seen a fresh fig. I remember how delighted we were by the Charentais melons we ate in France. We didn't have aubergines (egg plant) or peppers,

Interesting thoughts, mvp!

Yes, my parents had a pantry, did they always have a freezer? I can't remember. I remember a freezer in later years, but in early childhood it could have been the freezer compartment of the fridge where the frozen peas were kept. I remember frozen peas. And fish fingers.

What other frozen foods? You're right. How interesting. There was much less variety. No pasta for sure, and white rice was only ever in a sweet creamy rice pudding, although I have no idea where the rice would have come from for that. I do remember seeing orange cardboard boxes of white rice on the shelf in the grocery store.

Same as you though, meat, fish, spuds and a veg. And Heinz baked beans and tomato soup. Good old Heinz. And toast with golden syrup.

Remember Lyles golden syrup? It came in a green tin, with a picture of a lion on it. Can you still get it I wonder?

My father was a farmer, so we'd have warm milk for breakfast, which he'd bring home in a churn, squeezed straight from the cow, sort of thing. It must have been totally unpasteurised. It was completely revolting, but you didn't question it, as you say, there was no choice.

I credit the development of my incredibly advanced scientific mind to having been raised on unpasteurised milk straight from the cow.

What scientific mind, I hear you ask. heheh. Oh, OK then, that's that theory out.

We didn't have unpasteurised milk but I do remember my mother growing runner beans in our garden in Rugby. If she had too many beans, she would slice them and pack them in salt to preserve them. No freezer.
I've tried growing mange-tout peas in my garden in Sussex but we only get a handful of peas. Courgettes are better because you only need a few plants to produce a reasonable harvest, in a good year. This year, I grew an artichoke plant. It only has leaves but it might have artichokes on it next year. Now that's not something I remember from my childhood!

14 November
I made gnocchi for lunch. Ordinary gnocchi are dull and need to be covered with tomato or cheese sauce. But these are made more interesting with the addition of herbs and cheese. The herbs are fresh parsley and chives, but I use chopped spring onions and frozen parsley.
Having cooked the potatoes in their skins for half an hour, I found it easy to peel and mash them. The recipe says sieve them but have you ever tried sieving potatoes? I mixed the potato with a little flour, cheese and herbs, then made the mixture into a ball. This I cut in half, then made it into long sausage shapes. I cut these into pieces and ran a fork over them to make grooves. Then I dropped them into boiling water. When they rise to the surface, they are done. We ate them with home made pesto.

[Amy P]

Did I miss one yesterday? I'm getting lost in my own conversation .
It's now 16th November and we went to visit my husband's niece and her new baby.
When we got home, we had the rest of a batch of samosas which my husband made. These aren't authentic Indian samosas but they're very nice. They're made with filo pastry which makes them light and crispy. The stuffing is potato, peas and another root vegetable like carrot or parsnip. I've never seen parsnip in a genuine Indian recipe but they go very well with curry spices. He's generous with the spices: chilli, coriander, cumin, turmeric, garam masala but you can make them milder if you like. They take about 15 minutes in a hot oven.

[Amy P]

17th November
There was a splendid cabbage in my box of Riverford vegetables, so I decided to do Yottam Ottolenghi's stuffed cabbage rolls. The cabbage leaves are lightly cooked, then rolled round a filling of basmati rice, vermicelli, ricotta, pine nuts and herbs. (I think you could leave out the vermicelli and use all basmati rice.) Then you pour a mixture of tomatoes and white wine on top and bake it. The result is tasty and warming.

[Amy P]

19th November

Today we had chick pea curry. This is one of the first vegetarian dishes I ever cooked but it's undergone all sorts of changes over the years.
I use dried chick peas, soaked overnight. I used to do this even when I worked in central London -- putting the chickpeas to soak in the evening, cooking them while I got breakfast, then making the curry when I got home in the evening.
I used to use ground cumin, coriander and turmeric. Then I tried a recipe for a chickpea curry, called cholet, in the Prashad book. There the spices were roasted and ground before use. I've got into the habit of doing this.
As well as tomatoes, I sometimes add other vegetables too. Today's curry had parsnips in it. It's never quite the same twice.

[Amy P]

20 November - stuffed aubergines.

There are probably lots of ways you can stuff an aubergine. You need to cook the aubergine first - cut it in half and either bake it, or put it in the microwave to soften it, then scoop the flesh out and chop it.
This recipe involves frying an onion and garlic, then adding the chopped aubergine flesh, two chopped tomatoes, cheese, a beaten egg, and flaked almonds. I suggest adding a tablespoon of parsley. Stuff the aubergine skins, then finish with more cheese and breadcrumbs. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

[Amy P]

Today was chickpea and butternut squash tagine. Tagines always include fruit and I put dried apricots in this one.
I fried an onion, added garlic, chillis, ginger, cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and tomato puree. I stirred a chopped butternut squash, 2 chopped carrots, and cooked chickpeas into the spice mixture. Then I added added stock and apricots and simmered the mixture for about 20 minutes, adding a handful of chopped coriander towards the end. It looked a lot for the three of us and I was thinking I would use the leftovers as the basis for a spicy soup tomorrow. But I served it with couscous and there weren't any leftovers.

[Amy P]

22 November

Today we had spanokopita, which I've written about before -A87820752. It remains one of my favourite vegetarian dishes but it's high in fat, so I don't do it too often.
You might think from all this food that I'm a natural cook. I'm not. I remember cookery lessons at school, at which I was hopeless. I got in a muddle and used the wrong ingredients,or I got in a tizzy and dropped things. My cookery teacher once said 'You rush around like a nymph that's been stung by a gadfly.'
But I've just kept cooking, year after year. Now, I have a wide range of main dishes I can do, soups and snacks, cakes and bread. I'm not going to enter any cookery competitions, but I can cook well enough. Which just proves the benefit of practice.