The Untidy Cook

Start the week

Flat white, raisen toast (I just can't spell that curranty little word) and the Fin Review. This little sea of calm before plunging into the ocean of the working week. Here goes .....

Pasta suprise

Wholewheat pasta twirls. Tinned tomatoes cooked until thickened with mangetout added at the end. Stirred together. Sliced bocconcini and a shower of shaved sheese. And for me some, quite simply, roughly torn leaves of coriander scattered casually over to serve.

Sausage sandwich

Long day at work, pleasing journey home on the bus staring at the people, sausage sandwich for supper.

Toasted white bread, re-fried sausages (having defrosted and cooked a big bag of them yesterday to go with a cauliflower cheese & peas), thin slice of cheese and tomato sauce.

The finishing touch is to lean heavily on the top of the sandwich and squish it quite hard.  Not so hard that it all oozes out of the side, but enough to subtly intertwine the contents into a heavenly sausagey creation.  Quality.

Double chocolate chip cookies

Something about the oven was calling me.  Time to do some baking.  I could feel the uncanny pull from a ghostly aparition of creamed butter and sugar.  I tried to control it.  I did.  But it was just too strong.  Just. Too. Strong.  This time I gave into the urge.  It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon and time for tea.

The problem with baking is that I just can't bung things in a bowl, stick in a slug of balsamic vinegar and serve it with a cheese sauce to cover any irregularities.  I need a recipe.  Then, annoyingly, I need to have the majority of the contents of the recipe to enact it.  And then, lovingly annoyingly, the result needs to be something that both The Loved One and I will fall on with gusto and consume.  That generally rules out: lemony things, orangy things, things that are too chocolatey (unless it's the right kind of chocolately),  desicated coconutty things (that's me, that one), bland things (me again), glaced fruit things ... I could continue.

Let's take the lie of the land and then make an assault on the recipe mountain.  I've got flour, butter, sugar, eggs - a good start. Currants and random dried fruit.  Lemons & limes.  Ah, some ancient chocolate chips which I think were once part of a rather posh couverture experiment by TLO. 

Recipe then.  To the old faithfuls first - Katie Stewart, nothing awesome; Delia Smith, nice things but with no bearing on the contents of the store cupboard; Nigella Lawson, fancied the lemon ginger slice; The Book of Afternoon Tea by Lesley Mackley, double chocolate chip cookies sound good.  I have cocoa and bicarb.  The stars are definately in alignment for this. 

Slightly odd measurements

• 115g butter
• 55g granulated sugar
• 55g soft brown sugar
• 1 beaten egg
• drops vanilla essence
• 130g plain flour
• 15g cocoa
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 150g chocolate chips

To kick off with, I don't have gran or much soft brown sugar to beat into the butter so swap it for some brown caster sugar with the fag end of the soft brown from the tub.  

Once beaten to a nice pale creamy brown paste, it's time to gently stir in the egg and vanilla.  I tend to put a tablespoon of flour in at the same time.  Something to do with stopping it curdling, possibly.  Having mixed it together a little bit, sieve/sift (which one, I wonder) the dry stuff into the mix. 

Mix together, then add in the chocolate chip cookies. 
 
I couldn't be bothered to measure them so I just put a smallish handful of a mix of dark and white chips.

Finally, having put greaseproof paper onto two baking sheets (I use a bit of spray oil to hold the sheets down) I put big teaspoon-sized drops onto the sheets.  About six to one sheet seemed to fit and it looked like these little suckers would spread.

Into a 180c oven for about 12 minutes - according to the recipe.  I left them for 15 by accident and it was just that bit too long.  They went a weensy bit blackish round some of the edges.

Left them to cool for a short while (I lie, I actually had to eat one when it had come out of the oven and it was excrutiatingly hot but I had to do it because of the voices ..).  Later, when they'd cooled to a heat less than the surface of the sun we consumed some with a nice glass of cold milk..

The cookies are friable - lovely if slightly sinister word, that - and sweet and, oddly, not enormously chocolately.  Good recipe this one.  Must try to remember it for next time I get a baking urge. 

Cake

Well, it was a nice cake. Peach and rose, apparently. Tasted mainly of sweet, to me. Served the purpose of a carbohydrate refill very adequately.

Mashed potato pancakes

Faced with the an arid expanse of carefully saved bits in the fridge - inspiration struck! A small bowl of cold mash (about a cupful), a very scant third of a cup of plain flour, an egg and a generous third of a cup of milk - all stirred together well and seasoned.

The mix was magically manifested into pancakes by dropping tablespoonsful into some shallow hot oil, turning when bubbles appear and them removing when browned underneath.

To top it all off - in a manner as yet short-sightedly unapproved by the British Heart Foundation - a fried egg, some truly crispy bacon and a shower of tomato sauce.

Omn nom nom.