'tis the season to be soppy

My happy place

by: Mr Robot

I think it's fair to say 2016 has been a bit of a stinker in many ways, so as I'm sat here reflecting and, to be entirely honest, have had a few, I thought it worthwhile remembering and thanking those who've improved and enriched my life over the last 12 months or so.

First off Tim Hayward, who I only really came across through the BBC's Kitchen Cabinet but have come to worship almost as a god. He has a manner that appeals to me on a very deep level, a casually authoritative voice imbued with kindness and decency - almost the definition of avuncular. I often think he's the culinary answer to Kurt Vonnegut.

Early in the year I tackled the week-long project that was his cassoulet from The DIY Cook. Sadly it didn't turn out to be photogenic enough for a post but was as delightful in the making as in the eating.

Hayward's Knife book was one of the highlights of my year, and may well have triggered a new and vastly expensive hobby. I read it in one enchanted sitting and it has a permanent, if disturbing, home beside the bed.

Always take a Knife to bed

Mr Hayward, I salute you.

Which brings us nicely to Sr Morales of Toledo who produces wonderful knives and was kind enough to sell me an absolutely beautiful Damascus steel blade at a price I'd never even considered paying, but don't regret a Eurocent of. This knife makes me happy to a ridiculous degree. When I can't be arsed to cook, picking up that knife enthuses me. When I'm feeling keen it's like having a superpower.

My lovely lovely Toledo blade

I've used it pretty much every day for six months and it still gives me a thrill.

Señor, gracias.

Sticking with the Spanish theme, our trip around Spain with our god-daughter (aka adoptive juniorbot) was more wonderful than we could have hoped. We've loved Spain for such a long time, and always wanted to share that experience with others. The opportunity to show it to her took us right back to that joy of discovery - and the real joy was that she loved it too. We created a tapas monster and are very proud.

Yes those are minihamburguesitas and they are free tapas. Thank you Granada

So thanks to Lillian for taking the (probably quite scary) plunge, and to all those amazing chefs in Segovia, Toledo, Seville and Granada who gave us such happy memories.

At the risk of becoming tiresomely stalkerish, I must always give thanks to MiMi Aye and Uyen Luu who remain our Asian mentors and, certainly in the summer months, are probably responsible for around 30% of everything we eat. This year they were joined by Ping Coombes whose Malaysia book is already shamefully bespattered from enthusiastic usage.

Goes some way to explaining, if not excusing, the waistline

If you're anything like us, there are many cookbooks you like to look at, or the idea of. There are lots that you use occasionally. And there's a precious few that you wonder how you ever managed without. These ladies went instantly and permanently into that latter group. On Mrs Robot's behalf I should add Meera Sodha to the list, and closer to home Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food remains essential - as does Katie Stewart who basically taught us to cook in the first place.

It's no exaggeration to say that just about every day, no matter how crappy, ends with happiness for us, and that's mainly down to these folks. That's pretty amazing when you think about it, especially with enough beer.

Of course you can't cook anything without stuff to cook. Walter Rose is our local butcher and gives us such brilliant meat week in, week out. We revel in being the folks they can sell anything to (always up for something exciting) and in exchange they only ever sell us amazing things. Walter Rose won the national best butcher award this year, and it came as no surprise at all. Louie, Ed, Cameron - cheers guys.

Best butcher in the land. Officially

Our veg come mostly from Riverford who likewise bring us outstanding food every week of the year. We're not obsessively green or organic or anything like that, but we very much buy into to the philosophy of growing with care, and for flavour. The first Riverford carrots we ever had were just so damned . . . carroty. Had you forgotten potatoes have a flavour? We had.

Best ever soup recipe: First, kill your Riverford tomatoes....

In fact it's probably Riverford's fault my veg cookery remains so unsophisticated - there's really no need to muck it about. Roasting some tomatoes before souping is about as jazzy as we get. When's the last time you cooed over a boiled vegetable? For us it's less than a week ago, and we're endlessly grateful.

Nearly finally, since they're in large part responsible for all this, I offer up thanks to Bacchus and all His Mates for Palmers Brewery who have made me so very very happy, and sad, and excessively affectionate, and wobbly, and filthily hungover so many times. I love you guys. No seriously, I do. 'ma best mate. y'fugger. ahahahahahaha...

And least last of all, of course my thanks to Mrs Robot for putting up with the failures, the mess, the swearing, the every-pan-in-the-housery and subsequent lack of washing up. For sharing the delicious things we have, and for being the person I gladly go to such lengths for (a WEEK making cassoulet, FFS) because she deserves nothing but nice.

Oh go on then - the 7-day cassoulet. Not pretty but OMFG

So, who's brought you joy this year?

All images (c) PP Gettins

A Culinary Memorial: Joan Gettins 1946-2015

by: Mr Robot

It's been quite a while since I last posted - at first just laziness and then, awfully, my Mother died suddenly in February. Not really conducive to light-hearted blithering, as you can probably imagine.

As I'm sure is the case for most people, Mum was my primary influence in all things foody, and with no father around I spent a lot of time hanging around the kitchen with her. So I was determined that my next post - whenever it came - should be a little tribute to her.

As it's turned out, there's a heavy Christmas influence here. Partly because that's when many of the family rituals got established but also, living 200 miles away, it was the time I saw her most consistently over the last 20 years or so.

So here we go, and forgive me if the keyboard gets a little soggy.

The Prawn Cocktail

Growing up in the late 70s and early 80s it's no surprise some of my fondest foods now fall into the naff-to-retro-chic category.

I'm never sure where on that spectrum prawn cocktail sits at any given point and, frankly, I couldn't care less.

This was Mum's go-to starter for any occasion  and never lost its appeal.

It very specifically requires frozen prawns (she couldn't abide handling fresh seafood) and iceberg lettuce, and must be served in these glass dishes - which I'm pretty sure have been around longer than I have - and the unwritten rule was that no matter how many were served, there must always be enough left over in the fridge for me to have two more helpings later on.

Beyond that, though, I couldn't tell you much about the making of it, and this is the first time I've ever made it. I never needed to before - it was always something Mum did. A Marie-Rose sauce is such a staple that everyone has their own tweaks to make it personal, but I'd never even asked about her recipe (I've riffed on a Delia here).

I guess it's testament to my childlike assumption that she'd always be there - despite her many health issues - that I never really expected to have to make things like this myself. And now I'll never know the true, home recipe. The best I can do is start working towards my own.

Eggs Benedict


Quite the opposite to a childhood tradition (in fact I have a feeling I introduced it to her), but eggs benedict became a little ritual over the last 10 years or so.

It is always to be had on Christmas morning while listening to Ed Stewart's Junior Choice on Radio 2 (I can't imagine how I'll cope with Puff the Magic Dragon this year) and just before opening presents.

The ham always comes from Walter Rose and the eggs are organic, but the muffins are supermarket standard, and I'm afraid the hollandaise is from a jar.

While I can and do make my own hollandaise at other times, Xmas Eggs need to be an easy, convivial start to the day, when there's enough kitchen nonsense going on already, and presents must never be delayed.

Eggs Benedict - a Christmas necessity

So our eggs benedict, like so many of these things, isn't the best in the world but it's the right one.

Gammon with pineapple, and peas and sweetcorn

Another much maligned dish and to be honest I veer towards egg and chips with my gammon but this was her standby.

A special occasion would pretty much always demand Duck a L'Orange (a significant project, as I remember it) but gammon with pineapple was more commonplace but always felt like a treat.

As often as not, it was what greeted us when we came to stay and was always served with new potatoes, and a massive dish of peas and sweetcorn - mixed together and well doused in butter.


Generally a bottle of three of chilled chardonnay or sauvingon blanc came alongside.

This is something we only ever had at Mum's. Actually when I was thinking about this post it was Mrs Robot who demanded I include it, just for the peas and sweetcorn which stand out as a uniquely Mum thing.

Peas and sweetcorn - so simple but distinctively her

Dated perhaps, but surely that's the point of nostalgia.

Christmas Pudding
Mum always made her own Christmas Pudding and I've shared it with many, many people over the years - it's always declared the best ever tried.

Mum's last Christmas pudding, getting a brandy wash

In this case I'm pleased to say I did pin the recipe down because Christmas without her pudding would be hard to bear.

It comes from an old Good Cooking magazine (a series she collected in its entirety), the page now well spattered with 30-odd years of goop and brandy drips. She typically made them a good year or so in advance, with regular doses of booze to keep them going. When she died it was horribly poignant to find two small puddings already prepared for this year.

April is obviously the wrong time to indulge in that kind of thing, so here I've taken one of the puddings and incorporated it into Tom Kerridge's Orange Cake with plum sauce and Christmas Pudding ice-cream. It's fantastic dessert and I think Mum would have loved it.

Tom Kerridge's Orange Cake, with Mum's Xmas pudding ice-cream

Chocolate Truffles
Another Christmas thing, but this going right back to my earliest memories. We lived in rural Norfolk but most of the extended family was in Lancashire so every year we would make the lengthy trek up north and west (this before the M62 was invented) with presents for my cousins and, for her siblings, home-made rum and brandy truffles.

They're from a loved and battered copy of Sonia Allison's A Pleasure to Cook and are incredibly rich, consisting purely of dark chocolate, butter, egg yolk and sugar. And alcohol of course, which, now I've made them myself, is severely understated in the book. I'd guess Mum was using 3 to 4 times as much booze, to the benefit of all.

I have distinct, unbearably warm memories of Truffle Day. Mum spends pretty much the whole day making them and I - maybe six years old - am hugely excited because a) this means Christmas is definitely on the way and b) there will probably be some treats coming my way later. It's grey and cold outside, warm and golden in the kitchen. She's wearing blue, and it's a day of laughter.

Nonsense of course, as I know she often found it hugely time consuming and I must've been a right pain in the arse, getting under her feet and demanding to lick the spoon every five minutes. But still, that's the picture in my mind and one I've had for a long time.

Just last Christmas, in fact, I'd talked to her about resurrecting the truffle tradition with the plan of making them for her this year. Appalling, then, that it can't happen - and how much more important they are to me now.

Rum and Brandy Chocolate Truffles. Need more rum. And brandy.

There are so many other things I could go on about: the wonderful seafood lasagne she made each Good Friday, the baked alaska and "chocolate mountain" (a pile of profiteroles a good 2ft high) that remain legendary within the family; pea and ham soup in the depths of winter; the travesty that was cold baked beans in a salad; her devotion to Ken Hom; the day Old El Paso reached East Anglia...

I'll finish with one of our best food memories, when the Icelandic volcano scuppered our planned flights and we ended up doing a last minute trip to Padstow instead. The weather was kind and we had a lovely week but the highlight for her was eating a Rick Stein's. The best food she'd ever had, she said, with possibly the biggest smile I'd ever seen on her face. For someone so reserved-to-cynical, the purity of her enjoyment was a treat to see, and I'm so glad we were able to give her that.

Food is a joy to me, and playing in the kitchen is one of my greatest pleasures. I owe all that happiness to Mum.

Remembering Thadingyut

By: Mr Robot 

Thadingyut: the festival of light at the October full moon.

M-O-O-N spells Thadingyut

We were in Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin) last time around, digging into Mrs R's heritage, and it was a wonderful experience.

We walked around the town as the sun set, and areas that were unprepossessing by day - and any other time - became magical this night. There were streets of wooden houses surrounded by irrigation ditches, with little wooden bridges across and balustrades around - all lined with dozens and dozens of candles.  Clearly there was precious little in the way of plumbing or electricity. It was dreadfully picturesque. Yet small children excitedly ran out to greet us, and everyone was smiles and goodwill.

It's the closest thing to a Dickens Christmas I've ever seen.

From our hotel. We bought our own candle elephant to remember this night

Amazing to think that was a year ago, but the moon says it must be. So we decided to mark this Thadingyut in our own small way, with some Burmese food and, of course, candles.

Since it's a 3-day festival we've had a couple of nights to play (sadly the third night - the big celebration - is logistically compromised) and turned as ever to MiMi Aye.

For the first night we returned to one of the first Burmese dishes we made: Mogok pork curry. This is a deep, dark, savoury dish, rich with soy and ginger, and soft, sticky pig. It's extremely simple to make and demands only the patience to let it simmer for an hour or so.

We're never entirely sure how runny to make it: it starts off very liquid - intuitively, too liquid - but I suspect my love of massively intense reductions pushes me a bit too far. Certainly all the curries we had in Burma were quite saucy (ooh!), no doubt to spread flavour across the customary ton or two of rice.

Mogok Pork Curry

Mind you, we hardly pretend to great authenticity but merely fudge our way through as best (and respectfully) we can. It's always jolly good anyway.

For the second night we picked up the first of MiMi's recipes we ever saw (Mrs R found it - big up her), and one of the funniest pieces of food writing I've ever read. Honestly - it's right up there with Jerome K Jerome's pineapple tin. Note, however, that this is probably not the moment to get the children involved in the kitchen.

Anyway, once you've got past the evisceration scene, there's the recipe for Gahlar-thar Hin, or Bachelors' Curry: a chicken dish presumably so called because the chances of a snog afterwards are exactly zero. It's VERY garlicky.

Actually that's unfair because I did a big fail: the recipe calls for a shed-load of garlic, onion, tomato, chilli etc to be blitzed into a paste and then cooked off. Guess who got impatient and, therefore, a load of raw garlic...

Bachelors' Curry. Enjoy it - it's the only hot chick you'll get tonight

So if you make this - and I urge you to - be sure to give it a good long time to cook the paste through properly. I mean, there's a lot of paste there. A LOT. It'll take longer than you (or at least I) think.

Happily I was making it a day ahead so was able to give it a good long time to cook most of that rawness out, and let the whole thing mature overnight to boot. This is, as MiMi says, quite a soupy dish with "rice swimming in rich gravy" which turns out to be an excellent idea. It's unusually spicy for Burmese food (in my tiny experience), not bonkers but with a decent hit, and extremely satisfying.

Oh, and if you have a stinking cold ignore all the cooking out stuff and keep the garlic nice and punchy: clears the tubes out a treat.

Happy Thadingyut everybody.

All images (c) PP Gettins