It’s apple time. In fact, it was Apple Day last week, in case you missed it. My landlady has a big apple tree in her garden, and she gave me a big bag of them with the advice: “They’re not very good this year.” Nevertheless, I immediately conceived a plan.
After deciding that making cider was a bit too much work, I realised I could make Black Butter….
Under threat of legal action, I’m not at liberty to reveal the identities of the two fine gentlemen in this photograph, but I can tell you that it was taken on the banks of the Zambezi, about 10km downstream from Lake Kariba, which puts it somewhere round here. That’s boerwoers on the braai, and a bream about to go on. Plus two generous Pink Gins in true Cooking With Booze fashion.
At a good 5,000 miles as the crow flies, that’s the furthest a copy of CWB has travelled - so far. Let me know if anyone can beat it…
Not actually connected with CWB in anything but spirit (geddit?), but I recently came across The Soho Project, a collaborative challenge game thing taking part across Soho - one of whose strands is ‘Soho Picnic’. This is Team Gintastic’s entry, and gets a mention for doing ‘Potato Vodka Surprise’ in the middle of the street.
That was a pretty heavy weekend. After the Rugby on Saturday night, I was in need of some serious feeding by Sunday evening. This fat spinach pie, a bastard remix of Bulgarian Banitza and Greek Spanakopita, hit the spot.
1kg spinach, washed
200g feta cheese, crumbled
200g butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
Sheets of filo or similar ready-to-cook pastry
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Wilt the spinach in a pan and drain well, then layer a well-greased dish with a third of the spinach, cheese and melted butter, covering with a layer of pastry. Repeat twice, then pour over the beaten eggs (could have done with more than two, to be honest), and make sure they’re spread evenly and soak in a little. Then pop in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until lightly browned on top.
A real treat, and a fine restorative. Anyone want to share their hangover cures?
Today is veg day at Bone Towers - I’m a member of Growing Communities, a fantastic vegetable box scheme in North London. Every Wednesday I get a big bag of veg for the week, and go to work trying to polish it off. This veg is always so much better than the stuff from the shops - because it all came out of the ground in the last day or so. Some of it’s grown within a couple of miles of my house - and I live in Hackney…
Above is this week’s haul: potatoes, parsnips, onions, carrots, lettuce, broccoli and sweetcorn. I also picked up some fresh eggs and some mushrooms - and a pomegranate, because they’re lovely.
Yes! Cooking With Booze is officially out today. Check out this page for more info.
I made some more videos over the weekend. They were all pretty quick and tasty, but fine eating. Flambéing the mushrooms was particularly fun. If you’ve never flambéed anything, I highly recommend it.