Still greedy...

By: Mrs Robot

Even when our appetites for blogging wane, our appetites for food do not! We've new cookbooks to talk about, and lovely food to share. I shall whet your appetite – and hopefully summon the spirit of my blogging passion – with this little shot of today's lunch. Ma po tofu with rice for me (though I couldn't identify any meat in it, and usually I'd expect pork) and braised beef in udon noodle soup for Mr R, at Chili Family Noodle in Bath.

Chili Family Noodle is always really busy, especially during term times when all the students are back in town. It's an unpretentious little noodle bar at the bus station, and the food is really good. My tofu was packed with the tastes of black bean, chili bean sauce and Szechuan pepper, and I loved every mouthful. That said, I did envy those noods. Maybe we'll have to go back...

Lunch at Chez Dominique, Bath

By: Mrs Robot

Yesterday was my birthday (45 – might not be a 'big one' but it certainly feels big enough) so Mr Robot took me to Chez Dominique in Bath for lunch. Usually we go out in the evening for birthdays, but my workplace gives us our birthdays off so I'd booked a salon appointment in town that morning and we decided to make it a lunch date instead. Chez Dominique's a la carte menu is available all day, and we'd fancied going there for ages. It's just over Pultney Bridge, near our dentist, so we've both looked longingly at the menu on the way back from being savaged by the hygienist.

Mr Robot had booked the afternoon at work and said it felt very much like being on holiday, as we were eating nice food on a lovely day. It also felt a little like bunking off as he'd been in work that morning and then left it all behind.

But you're not here for tales of bunking off, you're here for food! I had smoked eel salad for a starter, and Mr Robot had a ham hock salad. Mine included chicory and apple, and both had a very nice dill dressing on that made us think yes, we really do need to grow some dill in the garden this year. The sweet crunch of the apple and bitter crunch of the chicory contrasted nicely with the soft, smoky eel and crispy smoky bacon.

For our main course we decided to share the chateaubriand from the Specials board. During our meal we heard the manager telling other customers the meat comes from Walter Rose – well, that explains why it was so good. We had it rare, because neither of us sees any point in having steak any other way. It came with fried mushrooms, salad leaves and frites. I'm fussy about mushrooms, only liking them when they're very fresh and very well fried, and these were perfect. (Honestly, stewed mushrooms are the worst.)

Mr Robot had the pear and almond tart for pudding, while I went for the cheese. This was good cheese. For one thing, there was an acceptable cheese-to-biscuit ratio. Too many places load up on (cheaper) fancy biscuits and stinge on the cheese, in my opinion. Chez Dominique makes sure that when you order the cheese, cheese is the star. And every cheese has a decent amount of punch.

I can't tell you how much it all cost as I didn't pay, but Mr Robot seemed to think the price was jolly reasonable, and we both agreed it's somewhere we'd go back to.

Telling porky pies

By: Mrs Robot

I had my first-ever go at making hot water pastry over the weekend. Mr Robot got me a 'Simple Simon' pie mould* for Christmas and I finally got round to testing it out. The mould is cunning because you can rearrange the dividers to make one big pie, six little ones, or all sorts of configurations in between.

I followed the recipe in the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook. I was a little apprehensive because of the time it said it took, but actually a good chunk of that was boiling two trotters to make the jelly. We had so much jelly left over I've frozen the leftovers – that should speed up any future pie making. The pastry was something else that seemed daunting but was surprisingly easy; I boiled the fats and water together and stirred it into the flour with the handle of a wooden spoon, by which time it was cool enough for my asbestos fingers to work with.

The recipe quantities were enough for three equal-sized pies in the Simple Simon, plus three more slightly smaller ones that I made in fancy metal cake/jelly moulds as that was all I had that looked the right size! The results weren't the prettiest, but I'm pleased with them nonetheless. When I make another batch I'll probably increase the amount of salt in both the pork and the jelly, and perhaps add more herbs or spices to the jelly too. These were nice, but with a little tweaking we could have pie magic.


*This blog is not monetised; the link is purely for information and we do not benefit from it in any way.

Our Thadingyut meal

By: Mrs Robot

We do a meal for Thadingyut each year. We started after visiting my grandfather McDonald's home town in Burma/Myanmar at Thadingyut some years back. We don't celebrate it in any traditional or religious way, we just cook Burmese food for it. (I guess in that way it's like our Christmas, which we also mark but not in any religious fashion.) 

In previous years we've made noodle dishes, but this year I made amethar hnat, a classic Burmese beef curry. I got the recipe from Easy Burmese Recipes, and tested it out in advance. We actually had Emily and Amy's version at their Rangoon Sisters supper club, and theirs was richer. As the writer of Easy Burmese Recipes states her version uses less oil and more onions, when I made our Thadingyut meal I left out an onion and added extra oil, and preferred the flavour, but it's good either way.

Alongside the curry I served boiled rice, two salads (tomato with crispy shallots and bean with toasted peanuts, though they were French beans not long bean, all dressed with fish sauce and lime), and chicken broth flavoured with garlic, coriander and a dab of yellow bean. 

The night I served it I was feeling pretty tired and not really in the mood to do the salads. The temptation to slap the curry on top of some rice and call it a day was strong! But I'm glad I didn't. If you're going to mark an occasion, it's best to make it special. Who knows what special dish I'll whip up next year?

Cat Bento!

 By: Mrs Robot

Working on games magazines for a living, I am surrounded by people who really love all things Japanese. And several of my favourite foodies are likewise obsessed with the place. Me? I'd love to go, though other places always seem to bump it from my travel list, and when it comes to cooking the food looks so elaborate. As much as I admire the precision and artistry involved, I'm too chaotic a person to make it.

Only now I have to control my chaos, because Mr Robot bought me a bento box designed like an adorable little cat, so it's bento lunches for me from now on.

He got me a Hello Kitty bento cutlery set and some sweet little animal-headed sauce bottles too. And, most helpfully of all, a recipe book. That was very reassuring, because the lunches in it didn't look half as elaborate as the ones I see online, which would probably take me half an hour or more to make – and I only have about ten minutes at most to cobble together a lunch. It's nice to know no-one actually expects me to recreate the hanging gardens of Babylon or the works of Studio Ghibli using rice and cherry tomatoes.

Monday's lunch was basmati rice plus beef, green beans and carrots in oyster sauce (leftovers from Sunday night), plus cherry tomatoes and cucumber as a snack, and today it's what I hope is a more correct rice* with duck in a sweet and slightly spicy soy-heavy sauce, plus cherry tomatoes, and melon and nectarine as a snack. The duck was left over from last night. Already a pattern is developing...

As I mentioned, I've never really cooked anything Japanese, and I suspect Cat Bento will end up full of confusion cuisine. I got some deep-fried tofu from the Chinese supermarket as until now I've been sticking to pure fruit and veg at lunchtimes, and while I'm prepared to introduce rice and possibly egg, I'm not sure I want meat in my lunch too often. The cookbook has a recipe for Japanese omelette, which I should give a go. I do appreciate the portion control dictated by the size of the compartments.

Anyway, watch this space for the continuing adventures of Cat Bento...

*The Chinese supermarket in Bath stocks Chinese and Korean foods, and this rice had Korean script on the bag but also a little English script calling it 'sushi rice'. As far as I know there's no Japanese shop in town. I also tried the Thai shop, but they just had jasmine rice or readycooked sushi rice. 

Yak Yeti Yak - I'll be back!

By: Mrs Robot

Last night I went with a few friends to Yak Yeti Yak, Bath's Nepalese restaurant. I'd been years ago and had liked it but not felt it was anywhere to rave about. Perhaps their food has changed in the intervening years, or perhaps I have, but last night's meal was excellent and has left me keen to go back with Mr Robot at some point.

The setting is lovely, in a little basement in the centre of the city. It's not at all dingy; there are windows onto an 'area' so natural light does get in, and the walls are painted white and the rooms are decorated with Nepalese art. We're currently experiencing a heatwave, so being below ground level is lovely and cool.

For a starter I had aloo dum. I know 'aloo' means potatoes and 'dum' to a method of cooking in a sealed pot. We had an incredible aloo dum with parathas on the way to Chandernagore when we visited India earlier this year, and I wanted to see how the Nepalese version compared. Well, it was completely different, but every bit as delicious! Cool potatoes, with herbs and onions. There was a fresh, sharp note that I couldn't identify – I'd guess some sort of fruit as it wasn't vinegary – that made the whole thing really refreshing. This morning I've had a look online and it seems there are as many Nepalese recipes for aloo dum as there are people who cook it: some with sauce, some without, most hot, and none with the sesame, but the online recipes for aloo ko achar look rather more like what I ate, with plenty of sesame and a souring agent. I guess I'll just have to keep going back to the restaurant and trying out recipes till I get it right... hard life!

My main course was a Dal Bhat Masu. 'Dal' is obvious, and from the menu I got the impression that 'bhat' means rice, so I'm guessing it all simply translates to 'lentils rice meat'. I chose black dal and pork bhutuwa for the meat. There was also a side dish of small dark chickpeas, a little pot of achar (chutney) and a mountain of rice. Oh, and a poppadom on the side. I didn't manage all the poppadom or rice, there was that much. The chickpeas and pork were the highlights, the former deliciously buttery, and the latter perfectly soft, spicy and savoury, but without chili-heat.

I really enjoyed the meal and definitely won't leave it as long before going back next time.

Zero dim sum game

By: Mrs Robot

Soooooo many good food things that I haven't told you about, from our trip to India to Mr Robot's birthday dinner at Henry's restaurant in Bath. So I am breaking my duck with a quick shot of today's lunch. 

The prawn and chive parcels are taken directly from Helen and Lisa Tse's book Dim Sum: Small Bites Made Easy, and the spring rolls are based on their recipe - s I didn't have any bean sprouts I subbed in julienne (not grated; I wanted bite) carrots and chopped water chestnuts.

I'm not sure whether there's something wrong with my portioning or the recipes overstate how many of each should be made, but I literally managed only 50% of the quantity each recipe should produce (yes, even when following the spring roll recipe properly). But they tasted great, and make a good al fresco lunch. It's a good job we have more chives growing, because those prawn parcels are going to become a robot family favourite.

Tasty New Year

By: Mrs Robot

And back to work we go! Back to work, with resolutions to be a bit less fat in 2018 than in 2017. But yesterday we had a day for one more slap-up meal. I was really in the mood for spice, as between Christmas and yesterday we'd kept things fairly British. We'd had roast turkey for Christmas, home-cooked ham, and roast beef, with leftovers of the three used in all sorts of ways, and okay one of those was curry, but curry made with leftover turkey isn't quite the same, even though I made a proper sauce base. (Thinks: maybe I should have got out the curry powder and made a retro-style British 'curry', the sort of thing my granddad doubtless suffered through for 50 years after leaving Asia!) Mr Robot  was definite that he wanted a lamb curry for New Year's Day, not a chicken one, and for some reason the lamb curries in most of my books really weren't grabbing me. I'd been meaning to make one of Bibi's recipes for ages, and Kathmandu-style mutton curry fitted the bill.

I don't have a mixie, so my marinade didn't come out as smooth as I'd have liked, though it still smelled heavenly. And in cooking my curry wasn't as red as Bibi's, but I put that down to not having Kashmiri mirch and making do with paprika and cayenne. Regardless of what you think about how it looks, it tasted utterly amazing; rich and deep and just the sort of thing you want in cold weather. I paired it with Meera Sodha's daily dal (our favourite dal), a cachumber made with cherry tomatoes and shallots, and roti. Is it possible to be addicted to a salad? I almost always do cachumber with curry nowadays as its freshness sets everything off so well. Really should try a different vegetable dish at some point...

I always make a trifle during the Christmas break, and this year left it right to the last minute. I probably wouldn't have bothered as I've been a lazy toad this holiday, but we'd bought all the cream and I'm a skinflint who detests food waste, so it needed to be used and eaten. But how do you make a trifle to follow a curry? With pistachio cake and fresh mango in the base, drizzled with fresh lime juice and triple sec, a luxurious home-made custard (six egg yolks and a pint of extra-thick double cream) flavoured with rosewater and saffron, and whipped cream lightly scented with cardamom, that's how. All those eggs and cream are why I only make trifle once a year - my arteries need 12 months to recover - but it's worth it.

Happy New Year to you! May it be filled with good food, and good company to eat it with.

Talking turkey

By: Mrs Robot

We had turkey for Christmas dinner this year.

"Yeah, yeah," you say, "everyone has turkey at Christmas." But we usually have goose, so this was a bit of a departure for us.

We also often have visitors on either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but this time it was just the two of us (plus two greedy cats). It made the whole thing much more relaxed than usual. Mr Robot took over cooking duties. We started with prawn cocktail. That can sometimes be a bit of a sad dish, with teeny little prawns and some sweetener-laden glop out of a bottle, but in this case the sauce was made from scratch, covering the big, beautiful prawns we had in the freezer, and it all felt really luxurious. The prawns were so large the six we had each felt almost too much. And the hint of smoked paprika in the sauce really benefitted the whole dish. I could eat a lot of that!

After that we moved on to the classic turkey dinner.

Hari Ghotra at Walter Rose

By: Mrs Robot

Chef Hari Ghotra was at our butcher, Walter Rose, last Saturday promoting her book Easy Indian. We had to go and get our weekly shop anyhow, so stopped and had a chat. She was really friendly, and the chicken dish she was cooking smelled amazing, though we didn't stick around long enough to try any of it as we thought it would be rude to monopolise her time.

We'll review the book properly once we've cooked a few things out of it. We're probably not the ideal readership as we don't actually own a slow cooker, which is what all the recipes are designed for, but I'm hoping some of the dishes will be the sort of thing we can leave in the oven on Low while we go to the gym. I also plan to try some of the recipes from Hari's website as they look really tempting.

Hari's also bringing out a range of spices-and-masala packets. We're big fans of Anjum Anand's 'Spice Tailor' range as an easy option when we're feeling lazy, and these look like doing the same job. They'll be in Morrison's, which we don't have, but if you shop at a Morrison's they'll be worth looking out for to keep as a cupboard standby.

Rangoonies (never say die*)

By: Mr Robot

It's been a busy, exciting time at Casa Robot lately. The other weekend for example we had the great joy of heading to London for a Rangoon Sisters Burmese supper club.

We've been Twitterchums with them for a few years so I'm not going to pretend to be objective here - best consider this more an extended gloat than a review - but while it was lovely to meet up with them, I can honestly say with hand on internal fluid-pump that the food alone was worth the trek.

And it's fair trek at that - from darkest Wiltshire to the big city, out into Zone 3, past Olympic Stratford (and what a corporate hell-hole that looks) to the charming Coffee7 at Forest Gate. Hosted, incidentally, by Masterchef hero Michael Sanders, who turns out to be jolly nice indeed.

Having sufficiently disrupted Emily & Amy's preparations, we settled down with very fine lemongrass-infused G&T's, and gently thudded the table in anticipation, in the manner of spoilt schoolchildren, which we basically are.

First up by way of an amuse, we had some delightful Shan tofu: essentially a chickpea batter that's been set and deep fried, and served with tamarind dipping sauce. This was great because when Mrs R attempted it she completely destroyed the fryer, so we've been waiting years to try the stuff. Unlike her basket-o-goop, these were light and crisp, mildly nutty and went very well with the tamarind. They disappeared in seconds amid the first of my many curses at being forced to share.

What is this "sharing plate" of which you speak?

The first course proper was Nangyi Thoke, a spiced chicken noodle salad with squillions of accompaniments (as is the Burmese wont) that I've had a go at making in the past. Not only was it absolutely delicious, it was gratifyingly close to my own efforts. 10 points to me.

More importantly it set us straight to reminiscing about the food we'd had in Burma: the little cafe on Sule Pagoda Road in Yangon; the breakfast curry in Pyin Oo Lwin; street food at a festival in Mandalay... Now you may say "I should hope so - that's kind of the point" but this was the most familiar dish of the evening and these are such happy memories for us it was wonderful to have them brought back so powerfully.

Nangyi Thoke - humbly suggesting you rethink your idea of chicken salad

In any case, the other guests around us - not familiar with Burmese food - loved it too, so there.

Main course was a three-pronged affair of smoked aubergine, the traditional pickled-tea salad (Laphet Thoke) and a fabulous deep, rich shin of beef curry called Amehnat we'd never had before - heavy with (I think) ginger and turmeric and which I WILL have the recipe for, or we shall have words. It was stunning. I know the photo's dreadful but if you could smell it you'd understand - you don't mess around with that in front of you.

Yes, yes - how could I be so mean to one so lovely?

The tea salad was a proper treat since it's uniquely Burmese and not easily found. To my mind this well exceeded the one we had in Burma (a tourist trap in Bagan - the guide let us down that day), though Mrs Robot managed to get bonus shrimp so struggled a bit. Frankly that just meant one less competitor for me.

More tea, vicar? Laphet Thoke

Pudding isn't really a thing in Burma but we weren't let down with a pavlova riffing on the Burmese favourites of mango and coconut, and the most extraordinary jaggery praline that's now top of my list of Swank Things To Put On Things. Pick any sense you like, it was as beautiful as it looks.

Mangoconut Jaggery-pokery

Amy and Emily popped out from the kitchen afterwards (along with their respective husbands who'd been on waiter duty) so it was great to be able to chat a bit afterwards. If I was a touch over-gushy in my praise, well what are you going to do? Anyway, there had been Wine.

All too soon we had to brave the TfL line and head back to the relative comforts of Zone 1, but given my way I'd still be there now.

I understand the next supperclub is planned for some time in September so keep an eye on their website - if you're even vaguely nearby, it's well worth it. Even in Zone 3.



*Mrs Robot insisted I did that in the hope it would make people watch The Goonies, which seems cruel and unusual. Besides, for all I know "die" could be something really sweary in Burmese, in which case they may well say it quite a lot.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Viva La Revolution

By: Mr Robot

No better welcome

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to get into a pre-opening night for the Bath branch of Omar Allibhoy's Tapas Revolution (the only time an email subscription has ever proved worthwhile, I might add).

Effectively a dress rehearsal for the staff, we were warned it may not be entirely perfect and in exchange given a frankly ludicrous discount, but of course given our love of all things Spanish we'd happily have paid full whack. They should have had no concerns, because it all went swimmingly and the staff couldn't have been more welcoming.

As we always do, we piled straight into the Jamon - promised genuine Bellota, I was expecting this to be excluded from the discount, but no, even that was included.

It was pretty much everything you could hope for. I've seen the odd negative comment since but honestly can't see why. Maybe it's not quite the stuff you find in the back streets of Extremadura, but that's only to be expected - they keep the best stuff to themselves. But it was clearly hand-cut (if I had to be critical, some slices were a little thick and so a touch chewy), deep, sweet and rich, and most importantly had that whiff of acorn that marks The Really Good Stuff.

Really, really good stuff

We went through a whole range of dishes with great happiness: croquettas were fat and crisp with a good ham level; a lovely salad of braised lettuce, peas and asparagus with runny egg; squid like armadillos (crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside); meatballs in a proper sauce done properly...

Through all of it the overriding sense was the absolute authenticity of the food - it took us straight back to our favourite experiences in Spain.

Not Armadillos

The meatballs in particular were exactly as our first encounter on honeymoon in Seville. That was a real moment of misty-eyed nostalgia.

Never mind the meatballs, here's the croquettas

Probably the highlight for me was bacalao (salt cod) with braised peas and sobrasada (chorizo goop) which was utterly lovely. When handled properly there's something almost magical about the way salty bacalao reacts with the other elements on the plate, and this was perfectly done.

The magic of Bacalao

The only real negative was the building. Like so many of these places (it's in the newish Southgate development), the units are multifunctional retail jobs modelled on - and with all the charm of - a warehouse.

While it's been managed well visually (I particularly liked the half-sherry-barrel lightshades) the atmosphere suffers: you don't get the cozy buzz of a busy bar, but instead it's just a bit loud and shouty.

Could be cozier

For drinks we opted to go Full Crass and have a jug of Sangria, which I'm sorry to say was more fruity than boozy (had an odd strawberry note) but I did manage some small hilarity in trying to order a bottle of Er Bocqueron beer and instead ending up with anchovies (boquerones). The waiter chastised me gently, as is only right, and it's the kind of linguistic snafu that marks every good  Spanish evening. I was very pleased to have achieved it.

Got there in the end

Being kind of snobby about these things, we're a bit suspicious of chains, expecting fakey plasticity and bland homogeneity over interesting excitement. Bath is the seventh iteration of Tapas Revolution which puts in that troubling genre: not a corporate monstrosity to be sure, but neither the romantically tiny, unique operation. That said, the similarly-sized Bistro Pierre is a favourite and even Wahaca has become a chain for goodness' sake.

Can't help suspecting that's plastic ham: 1. no little cups to catch ooze, and 2. health & safety would go MENTAL

In the same vein I'm happy to say that on our experience Tapas Revolution is not letting brand or consistency compromise quality, and long may that continue.

As a final thought, with Tapas Revolution alongside the truly outstanding Ole Tapas (shamefully yet to be written up) and as-yet-untried Pintxo, Bath now offers the prospect of a genuine tapas crawl. I sincerely hope they all find the space to accommodate casual walk-ups to make it possible.

All images (c) PP Gettins

A Simple Week

by: Mr Robot















I know we're extremely late to this party but earlier in the year we finally picked up a copy of Simple by Diana Henry, which is every bit as good as everyone says it is. Normally I'll pick one or two recipes to start with and slowly expand from there, but with Simple that was a hopeless task so in the end I had no choice but to devote a whole week to the thing.

So here are my six dishes (for, of course, on the seventh day He rested in the Pub).

Monday - Black Linguine with Squid & Spicy Sausage
Or, as it turned out, A Study In White since it turns out black pasta isn't a thing in darkest yokelshire. Which is a cursed shame because the dish looked much less dramatic but nonetheless tasted brilliant.

Now, I've never dabbled with squid before (one of the reasons I was so keen to do this recipe) but it's an exceptionally easy process and Henry is so blase about it, I had approached with confidence - and was rewarded by not cocking it up.



Fried off with our butcher's excellent Italian sausages and garlic, doused with lemon and parsley, and then tossed in pasta we ended up with a very light but hugely satisfying Monday dinner. In fact just writing this I count myself a buffoon for not doing it every week since.

Tuesday - Baked Sweet Potato, Chorizo, Mushrooms and Egg
Mainly because the vegbox was swamping us with sweet potato at the time, but also I could get a job lot of chorizo from Joe Le Butcher and partly because Mrs R has always found mushrooms challenging. Plus, it has A Egg on it.

This one, sadly, I did cock up in two ways:
1. I didn't give enough thought to the warning that the cooking time of sweet potatoes is variable, and
2. I did it on a night Mrs R was out on the lash so would turn up loudly demanding satisfaction, and demanding it now damnit.


Consequently my sweet 'taters, having roasted for only 50% longer than suggested, were still as hard as Vinnie Jones (this was also, incidentally, the final straw for the old cooker). So there was a fair amount of prodding and grumbling BUT the filling was a delight.

Fried chorizo will never make anyone sad and mixed up with mushroom, garnished with coriander and paprika, swimming in runny yolk was outstanding.

I kind of wish I'd left the sodding potatoes in the oven all night and served it for breakfast as I'm sure it'd be excellent with hangover.

Wednesday - Baked Sausages with Apples, Raisins and Cider


Look, if I have to explain it you'll never understand.


Just awesome. The only thing the title doesn't tell you is the raisins are soaked brandy. I know!

Beyond that it is exactly as amazing as it sounds. I'm actually kind of incoherent just remembering it, especially as the weather was perishing cold and this combined all the sausagey comfort of a toad in the hole, with the sweet/sharp apple promise that summer will be back before too long.

I served it up with some roasted (effing) sweet potato, baby spuds and spring cabbage but I'm kind of wishing I'd done about 4 kilos of mash.



Thursday - Parmesan Roast Chicken with Cauliflower and Thyme

In contrast I'd struggle to explain why I chose this dish out of all the other chicken ones available (there's even a Burmese one, riffing from the Naomi Duguid book we have - how did we resist that?) but I think the heart of it was when everything looks so very good, it can be a trigger to go somewhere you wouldn't ordinarily go.


Plus, the vegbox had delivered a LOT of cauliflower.

Like the sausage (OMG the sausage) dish above, this is basically a one-roasting-tin dish and in many ways I think the two recipes encapsulate what Simple is all about. There's little buggering around here - just the understanding that a little thought and attention, a few well-considered flavourings, can take the ordinary and turn it into a massive cliche.

So, chicken, spuds (not sweet, thank the lord), onions. Appropriately seasoned and roasted, topped with parmesan and roasted some more. Another one for a miserable evening when you can wait an hour or so for dinner because there's a good bottle on the go in the meantime.

Mrs Robot absolutely loved this, by the way, though she rejects the term Chick'n'Caul'n'Cheese.

Friday - Pork Chops with Mustard and Capers
This was the one I'd been looking forward to the most, since it's one of my favourite ways of cooking that perversely I've completely overlooked over the last few years. It is, in short, that classic French technique which (I believe) Escoffier codified as, "Put lumpy stuff in the pan until it's brown; put runny stuff in the pan until it's lumpy".

In this case the lumpy stuff is pork chops (and may I say how much I love the book just for having a chapter called Chops and Sausages), and the runny stuff is cream, vermouth, Dijon and capers.



At the risk of attempting double-insight, this too is Simple at its very best: one pan; maybe 20 minutes or so to make; ingredients you can probably get from a bloody petrol station these days; an old-fashioned (or perhaps unfashionably straightforward) technique that gives staggering pleasure. This is  the recipe I've used most, not in the following, but in the process. I've done any number of chops, or steak, or sausage, or fish, in a way I'd almost forgotten about. If nothing else, I'll be forever grateful to Diana Henry for that reminder.

Saturday - Orange-Oregano Roast Chicken, Olive Gremolata
Yeah, so I told a weeny fib earlier - I had to do at least two of the chickens. But like the Parmesan this is sort of outside my normal sphere. Mrs Robot raised an eyebrow but to me the it just screamed JOLLY EXCITING, and I was in charge.



I think I expected it to be Taste of Seville, which on reflection is stupid because the taste of Seville is jamon and jerez and other things beginning with j-pronounced-h. The oranges are only fit for marmalade and chicken is probably the protein they're least excited about. The element you're most likely to find is olives, and those as a standalone snack.

But don't take that to mean I was disappointed: this was a lovely, complex, multilayered dish and for that reason I think I prefer to the parmesan roast above. Or, as I write this on a sunny evening with a Bank Holiday looming, perhaps it just calls more to me now.

Sunday - Poorly a la Stallards
Told you so

This has been half-written for some months now and since then we've done any number of other things, not least the Balinese Pork which is oh-my-golly good. But one of the core premises of a book like Simple is that's everyday cooking and, implicit within that, Every Day cooking.

Well it was only for a week (good enough for BBC science programmes) but I did use it every day and by god we ate well, and with precious little fuss. There's a lot in the book we don't happen to have (pomegranate molasses haven't made it here either) but as I hope I made clear, there was equally a load of recipes suited for what was kicking around.

I have particular love of and gratitude for the double-page of sauces & relishes, which serves as either guide for dinner or starting point for play, depending on your mood. Looking at our recent cookbooks, this seems quite an old-fashioned thing to do; in some ways it's quite an old-fashioned book, though accommodating the huge growth in ingredients and cuisines that make us so lucky to be living now.

I can't tell you how much I love Simple. If you don't already own it, go and buy it now.

All images (c) PP Gettins

Something fresh!

By: Mrs Robot

We're still around and still cooking - but as it's been three months since I last posted anything, I thought I'd better put something up. Anything.

It's been culinary sadtimes in the House of Robots, as our beloved butcher has closed its Trowbridge branch. We always thought it was a bit odd that a butcher as prestigious as Walter Rose had their second store in Trow, and over the past decade business in the town has slowed to the point where they're focussing on the restaurant trade. They're keeping their shop in Devizes, though, so we're taking a weekly drive over there now.

Leaving aside my sadness about what this means for my town - every time an essential shop closes, all the others lose a little more business - it is nice going to the Devizes branch, as business there is brisker so they have much more stock in the shop; among the things we got this week were smoked mutton and smoked chicken. There's also a fish counter at the Devizes branch (it had to be preordered in Trowbridge, which we were never organised enough to do) and it's been enjoyable having that as an option.

These prawns were absolute monsters, and we wanted to do them justice, so Mr Robot did them following Meera Sodha's tamarind and honey prawn recipe from her book Made In India. Served on vegetable cous cous with a cucumber and yoghurt raita, they were refreshing and delicious. We'll definitely be having them again!

A Mumbai feast

It's a while after new year, but I thought I'd write about our New Year's Day meal anyway. (Didn't want to do another post too soon after Mr Robot's last one, you might have run away in shock at two in a week.)

Mr Robot gave me a couple of cookbooks for Christmas: Mr Todiwala's Bombay, by Cyrus Todiwala, and Fortnum and Mason: The Cook Book. I don't know if I'd have picked up the Todiwala book myself, but it's really good. My go-to Indian recipe books tend to be by Anjum Anand and Meera Sodha. Meera Sodha is a particular favourite because her food has personality; you can really see how her family history and the ingredients around her in Britain have impacted on her cooking. Mr Todiwala's Bombay also has personality in spades. There's a real sense of place and of the mix of cultures that make up Mumbai as he shares the food that he loves: the street food that everyone eats, restaurant food, and the sort of thing families eat at home. I wanted to go to Mumbai anyhow as I love art deco and it's got some of the finest art deco buildings in the world, but now I want to go there for the food too!

I decided to make a proper dhansak (or dhaansaak as it's spelled in the book), as made by the Parsee community that Cyrus Todiwalla is part of.

Dhansaks are a curryhouse staple here in the UK, but this was very different from the oily stuff they serve up. You start by making the spicy lamb, which is then added to a pot of dal. I found the dal particularly unusual compared to ones I've made in the past as it contains fresh dill and plenty of sugar – I guess that shows the Persian roots of the Parsee people. The dal is supposed to be pureed smooth, and I did that this time but in future I might leave some of the lentils intact for a bit more texture and visual interest. There's a low ratio of lamb-to-dal. I was really worried about how all the flavours would turn out, as the mix was so unfamiliar to me, but it still tasted like 'a curry' to me, just with different herbal notes to what I'd usually expect. And that's one of the reasons I like making Indian food at home - bought ones always seem to lack the fresh flavour of the herbs.

A gorgeous brown caramelised onion pulao, seekh kebab balls (raising the amount of meat in the meal to a level carnivores will be happy with), and cachumbar make delicious accompaniments. I'd happily make all three of those to accompany other things. Every Indian chef I own a cookbook by has a recipe for cachumbar; Todiwalla's is heavier on the onion than the others that I've seen but it works really well with the sweet, lentil-heavy dhansak. And usually when a recipe 'serves four to six' there's really enough for two greedy robots plus a little leftover. Not here! Even by our standards this recipe easily serves six. I've put two meals' worth of dhansak, pulao and kebab balls in the freezer.

The Fortnum cookbook is an oddity. I must confess, while I know Tom Parker-Bowles is a food writer, I've never read any of his food writing, I only know him as 'that bloke whose mum is the future Princess Consort.' Mr Robot got it for me because I love the funny old shop, and the history of things, and this book contains little bits of Fort Noms' history. It's also stuffed with illustrations from the company catalogues of the 1930s and 1950s. I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of the recipes in the book as they're really very simple and I have similar elsewhere, though in their simplicity they do mean you need to use the very finest ingredients – replace butter with marge and it'll be all too obvious.

I made the raspberry trifle. I did vary things slightly, using cream rather than milk for the custard, and making a fresh raspberry compote rather than using jam. You're supposed to layer it jam, sponge with chambord, raspberries, custard, whipped cream, sponge with chambord, raspberries, custard, whipped cream, but I have a wide dish rather than a tall one so the layers came out a bit scanty. I left out the middle layer of cream and had a mere drizzle for the second layer of custard, so I think if I made it again I'd use far fewer sponges and only one layer of each ingredient. Still, it was jolly nice. Not over-fussy, just a tasty, creamy, fruity treat.

So, that was our New Year's Day meal. I hope yours was as good, and wish you all the best for the rest of 2017.

Festive Ramen

by: Mr Robot

Christmas in a bowl

Most years we have a goose around Christmas - generally on one of the subsidiary days when we have friends over, because a whole goose for two would just be ridiculously extravagant. This year, however, we decided to go all out and keep Goosey to ourselves, not least because I had this follow-up dish in mind.

I don't know about you, but get l sick of quick & simple easy-peasy ideas for using up leftovers, usually around late October. But don't worry - this isn't one of those. Ramen isn't quick and, if not necessarily difficult, you should be careful. Or at least, full of care.

The first and hardest part for this is, don't eat all the goose. Obvious but trust me it's easier said than done. With incredible willpower we also managed to reserve a couple of pigs in blankets. I know. After depriving Mrs Robot so dreadfully, I really had to make this work.

Goose Broth
The well-scavenged carcass goes in a massive pot with some stock veg, along with a tub of homemade chicken stock and a guinea-fowl carcass I happened to have kicking around. You may consider those optional.

A small handful of peppercorns, a bayleaf and the half-orange I'd shoved up Goosey for roasting also went in, along with about 6-8 pints of water, and it all boiled hard for around 6 hours, scum-skimmed occasionally. Then it was strained and left to cool overnight.

Normally you'd never remove fat from a ramen broth but goose fat is so very oleaginous I didn't want to risk the final broth being overly greasy. So I removed about half the fat and kept it back in case I needed to restore some later. As it turned out I didn't, so that's gone in the fridge for future roasties.

From there I reduced it to about 3 pints in volume, which was the point it hit the richness and intensity I was looking for. I've learned to beware over-reducing so it's always a matter of tasting and judgment now, rather than target volume.

Once reduced I seasoned with a sachet of dashi powder, about 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper, a good couple of teaspoons of salt and, because it felt it needed something, a splash of mirin. I considered a dollop of miso too but in the end opted against - I know I have a tendency to overdo it, so held back. But it was a close thing.

Goose & Pigs
The reserved breast meat and pigs in blankets were sliced about 5mm thick. Half went into the broth for 10 minutes before serving to warm through, the other half fried in a little goose fat. I did that in the hopes of textural interest but frankly we couldn't tell the difference, so that's just washing up for nothing. Some spare goose skin crisped up in the pan and sprinkled on at the end worked a treat though.

Red cabbage
Because a ramen needs some cabbage and Christmas demands it be red. I'd considered pickling but then had a better idea (see below) so simply shredded and braised it gently.

Pickled Sprouts
Oh yeah. Sprouts separated into individual leaves which then sat in a mix of rice wine vinegar, mirin and salt for about 30 minutes brought a very welcome freshness and acidity to what is, after all, an absurdly rich bowl. Honestly I was surprised how well these worked.

Sprout Genius

The Egg
Now, we had a bit of an argument about the egg. My idea, nay my vision, was to take festivity to a new level with a Mulled Egg - steeped in red wine vinegar, cinnamon, cloves etc overnight - but Mrs Robot put her foot down like a steam hammer.

In the end we went with salted duck egg which was great but not, you know, my vision.

So that was all assembled over noodles and scattered with a few sesame seeds.

Things I thought of adding but didn't
I'd have loved to incorporate spuds but really couldn't think how to make it work so in the end had to leave them out. Parsnips, on the other hand, could make a great garnish as tiny crispy shavings.

Cranberry seemed an obvious candidate for garnish but Mrs R gets cross about it. I briefly considered a dollop of apple sauce too but since we hadn't had it with the Xmas dinner it didn't feel right.

I wish I'd done more sprouts because they were delicious and they went all too quickly. But if you've never tried it, separating sprout leaves is what's officially known as A Right Pain In The Arse. It could've done with more acidity though, so some fresh apple matchsticks might have made a nice alternative, or possibly a shaving of orange zest at the last minute. To be really swank, a few chunks of blowtorched orange segments would be cool.

My guide in all things ramen is Tim Anderson's Nanban and I thought long and hard about adapting his spicy miso butter to a spicy miso goose fat but ultimately felt I was already skirting the Fatty Event Horizon and as it turned out, I think that was the right choice.

The end result was everything I'd hoped: a lovely bowl of ramen feels perfect for those chilly, grey in-between days. It's deep and intense, but gentle and comforting. Bringing the Christmas flavours in felt very satisfying and, of course, was kind of fun. In fact I'm already plotting next year's Baked Ham Ramen.

Merry Christmas peoples

 All images (c) PP Gettins