Cold Strawberry Soda on a Hot Summer Day

Michele and I are still mid-remodel, so this easy, breezy, strawberry syrup recipe was a welcomed addition to the video schedule. I have my friend Jen Yu from Use Real Butter to thank for that, since it was her gorgeous post that inspired this answer to all those “summer drink” food wishes I’ve been receiving lately.

Jen publishes one of the best blogs around, and if you want to see how this beautiful beverage should really be photographed, check out her original post. Jen's fine food blogging prowess is only eclipsed by her photography skills. Speaking of which, don’t miss her photos of the recent eclipse!

I can’t think of many summer drinks this wouldn’t be great in, but for me it doesn’t get any better than a simple strawberry soda. Give me a big icy pitcher of this blush brew, an Adirondack chair, a little SPF 100 for my bald spot, and I’m ready to happily take on any heat wave. Of course this is only going to be as great as the strawberries you use, so bide your time until you come across those perfect pints.

By the way, the long-lasting aroma that will envelop your home is so enticing, so heady that the syrup almost seems like an added bonus. Michele walked in just as the berries had finished simmering, and couldn’t believe how wonderful the flat smelled. I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Strawberry Syrup (makes about 1 quart)

Original recipe from Marisa McClellan’s highly regarded Food in Jars.

2 lbs very ripe strawberries, hulled and sliced
3 cups cold water
2 cups white granulated sugar

Breaded scallops

Before we got married Giles would, every so often, disappear off to have lunch with a friend, huffing and puffing as he bundled out of the house, always in a fluster, worried he was late, barking on about how he didn't want to go and god why did he agree to have lunch with anyone when he's so busy... the last thing he would say to me, as he returned for the fourth time for some forgotten item, was that he'd be home at 3.30pm and we'll have beans on toast tonight and watch an episode of whatever boxset we had on the go.

And then, without fail, he would go on a massive bender and not come home until 4am, calling at various points in the evening to say that he was just about to get in a cab, and then turning round and going back to the bar for another two hours before ringing again. "No really I am this time... I got distracted by that bloke, you know, that one with the face... I couldn't find a cab... I'm coming.. on my way... [muffled] one gimlet please, Geoff..."

I used to get incredibly pissed off about it. It made me feel like such an idiot. And also, when he rang at midnight to say he was getting in a cab and then still wasn't home by 2am, I would worry. Wouldn't you? My husband never tells lies usually - there was no reason why I wouldn't assume he was telling me the truth about the cab. I didn't have a problem with him going out all night - who cares? - but why not be honest about it and I'll make plans, too? Once or twice I'd even made him a nice dinner and had it waiting when I'd get phonecall no.1 of the evening from him, declaring that he was just getting in a cab and the dinner would sit there sadly until morning.

It took me a long time to get my head round how my husband really didn't think he was going to go on a bender, even though it would have been obvious to undiscovered pygmy tribes that that's where he was headed. I didn't understand how he could genuinely actually feel like he didn't want to go out and yet then, after merely spying a corkscrew tucked into a waiter's apron, find himself weaving his way home at dawn, usually having lost his shoes but with his pockets stuffed full of £50 notes, which he'd won on Blackjack, somewhere - he could never remember where.

In the morning, he would tear at his hair and tremble and shriek about what an awful time he'd had, how terrible he was feeling and how he was never, ever going to leave the house again. Wretched confessions rolled out; he'd passed out on the stairs, in a ditch, in a doorway, he woke up and someone was taking his photo with a bloody iPhone, he spoke for hours passionately to that awful bloke with the face.

He was reformed, changed. It was over between him and late nights. And then it would happen all over again.

After a good year of this sort of nonsense, I realised that the thing to do when Giles had finished his work for the week and was off out for lunch of a Friday, was to ignore his protestations that he'd be home at 3pm, make up the spare room, dig out some takeaway menus, pick a film to watch and settle in for a nice night in on my own. Once I went out with friends without telling him, got reasonably drunk myself, came back in the small hours and was STILL in bed before he stumbled in.

He's much better about all this since we had Kitty. But the thing is, unless my husband goes on out a bender every so often, he goes a bit mad.

He will claim, over and over again, that all he wants to do is bath Kitty, make dinner, watch something on the telly and go to bed and read his book. But after a straight 6 weeks of this, he starts to lose it and fray round the edges. If he was a parrot, he would start pecking out his feathers. He becomes catty, stroppy and unmanageable. He mopes about the house like a depressed King Kong. He starts wailing "Are we just going to go to bed at 9.30pm every night for the rest of our lives??"

At which point, I send him off out of the house and tell him not to come back until morning. Like on Thursday, when he left the house at 12.30pm for lunch and didn't come back until 3.30am. He'd had strict instructions to sleep in the spare room but he decided that this was not on and so came in and got into bed, waking me up. Then he woke me up further at 5am when he needed to wee, battering the door jamb with unsteady shoulders and stepping heavily on both outward and homeward journey on the really creaky floorboard that we both hop over in the night (when sober).

The next morning he was as contrite and pliable as a feverish child, his eyes trembling with pain as he tried to recall exactly what happened to him between 8pm and 3am. "And I think I've lost my black jumper," he said, sadly. "I'm sorry I'm such a terrible person," he added, wringing his hands together.

And just like that, he will be good as gold for at least a fortnight. Tee hee.

But when  he is not on a bender, or revving up for a bender - and is instead feeling uxorious, he often cooks for us. I am a terribly resentful cook, finding the whole thing an awful drag as I do it all the time, while my husband revels in it, when he has the time to do it, and cooks generously and imaginatively.

Anyway the other night he made us a starter of breaded scallops, which he found in Nigel Slater's fast food and they were really great

1 clove of garlic, crushed
finely grated zest of one lemon
3 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley
75 room temperature butter
black pepper
1 quantity of scallops - about 3 handfuls small ones?
1 beaten egg
fresh breadcrumbs or medium matzoh meal would work just as well
butter and groundnut oil for frying

1 Mix the garlic, zest and parsley into the butter and season with black pepper

2 Dip the scallops into the beaten egg and then roll them in breadcrumbs

3 Heat some oil and butter in a pan until you have about a cm in the pan. Heat until hot and then fry off the scallops for about 3 mins each side. Set aside

4 Chuck out the oil and butter and then heat your garlic/parsley/butter concoction and spoon over your scallops when midly frazzed and melty - about 30 secs.

Eat and wash down with an Alka Seltzer.

Man, That Looks Like One Fine Loaf

I probably would have shared this great looking turkey chipotle meatloaf recipe from my friend Sara at Average Betty anyway, but the fact that she’s calling it MANLOAF sealed the deal. For the written recipe and more info, you can check out Sara’s original post here. Enjoy! 

Baked Eggs Con Huevos

If you’re wondering why I called this recipe “baked eggs with eggs,” I didn’t. No, “huevos” has another meaning, and any of your Spanish-speaking friends will be happy to tell/show you what that is. Anyway, as I said in the video intro, don’t let the generic name fool you; this “baked eggs” recipe is way more delicious than it sounds!

If you enjoy huevos rancheros, you will love this. The way the spicy sauce mingles with just barely set eggs is very similar, and when you start scooping this up with toasted chunks of bread, it gets borderline magical.

If you happen to accompany this humble dish with copious amounts of ham and bacon, this would make for quite the Father’s Day treat. You can stay with my Italianesque version, but American, Latin, or Asian versions are only a couple tweaks away.

I gave a general time of about 12 minutes at 400 degrees F., but of course this is going to vary based on your exact dish size/shape, as well as how many you are making at once. I would start checking after 10 minutes, keeping in mind that the yolks will keep firming up even after they are out of the oven.

Anyway, whether you are trying to impress dad with your brunch skills (by the way, don’t call it brunch if it’s for Dad…go with “breakfast”), or simply want to shake up your personal egg recipe routine, I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 1 Portion:

Shallow oven-proof dish, just large enough for 2 eggs
2 large fresh eggs

1/3 cup marinara sauce

red pepper flakes to taste

salt and pepper to taste

fresh herb as desired

2 tsp olive oil

2 tbsp cream

generous dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano

lots of toast

Minor T-Bone Mystery Solved!

I received a couple complimentary steaks to try out from New York Prime Meats, which you can see here, before and after their appearance on my Memorial Day grill. By the way, if these guys think they’re going to get a mention on a high-traffic, award-winning blog for a few prime steaks, well, they’ve got another thing coming.

No, this post is not about how juicy and tender their gorgeous (free) beef was, it’s about me finally learning why the flat, bone end of a Porterhouse or T-Bone is always thicker than the opposite pointy meat end. This question has haunted me for decades. Not enough to actually ask a butcher, but still.

I always assumed it was cut that way so we’d have to pay $15 a pound for bone, and they’d grind the extra meat for those fancy red-leather-booth restaurant burgers. However, according to Ed Logan, Head Butcher at New York Prime Meats, the simple explanation is that once a thick steak is cut from the larger, primal sections, the meat contracts and shrinks up a bit, while the bone does not.

Makes sense! That’s the kind of foodie information that kills at cocktail parties. Trust me. Anyway, thanks to New York Prime Meats for the samples, and for solving this longtime curiosity of mine!

Spare ribs

I occasionally go on, what is known in our house as, "The Shitty Food Diet."

The Shitty Food Diet is very simple and very effective - if what you want to do is lose a lot of weight very fast and don't really care about the impact on your health.

What you do is eat INCREDIBLY shitty food - but hardly any of it. So on the downside you get quite hungry, but on the upside, you've got some sort of disgusting, shaming treat waiting for you and the thing about diets is that they're all about morale.

So a typical day's menu might go like this:

Breakfast: 1 latte with chocolate croissant

Lunch: nothing

About 2pm: McDonald's double cheeseburger and small coke

6.30pm: 1 packet peanut M&Ms OR 1 Krispy Kreme OR 2 Jacob's cream crackers

Dinner: 3 small glasses of oaky Chardonnay and 2 handfuls of crisps

This is the kind of menu I find myself eating quite often and I am thin as a rake. People say to me "You are so thin, what diet are you on?" and I say "The Shitty Food Diet" and they go "Ha ha ha, no really."

Except next-eldest sister. She said "You are so thin, what diet are you on?" And I said "It's called The Shitty Food Diet." And she said "Ooh really - what does one do on that?" But my sister lives in Notting Hill - nothing surprises her.

So this is what I do on my own time, but on my husband's time, it's a different story.

But as it happens, we are getting a bit slack about provenence in this house. My husband's strict rules about what, exactly, one is allowed to buy and eat basically allow for us to eat almost nothing except kale and roast chickens. He doesn't want to buy, from a supermarket any fish that isn't mackerel or any meat that isn't produced by Duchy Originals. So if we haven't been to the farmer's market recently (where one can buy, guilt-free, anything one wants), the menu round here gets a bit samey.

I used to observe these rules faithfully but recently I've got a bit loose around the edges with it. The other day I just wanted some spare ribs, damn it. We'd just been to a restaurant called Sonny's Kitchen in Barnes, which was AMAZING - just the best food I've had for a really, really long time and worth a trip if you're anywhere near it.

You would think that being married to my husband I get to eat a lot of amazing food, but it isn't so. A lot of new restaurants we go to aren't very nice and if you order wrong, well: yuk. Sonny's Kitchen genuinely stood out.

So anyway we had these spare ribs, which were like, out of this world and I wanted to re-create them, although nothing like as spectacular. But I couldn't find any free range organic spare ribs in Waitrose so I just thought - fuck it - and bought the essentials ones.

And they turned out gorgeous, drowning in a barbeque sauce, which contained the following:

5 tablespoons tomato ketchup
3 heaped teaspoons English mustard
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1tsp chinese five spice
the zest of 1/2 an orange if you have it
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablepoons veg oil to loosen
1 tablespoon vinegar, any sort

1 Mix together the sauce ingredients and leave the ribs to marinade for as long as you can - all day for preference but even 30 mins will make a difference.

2 Put in the oven at 180 for about 25 mins.

Black Onion Relish – I’ve Never Wanted a Hot Dog So Badly in My Life!

This quick and very dirty recipe for black onion relish was quite delicious on grilled salmon, but with every bite I became more and more agitated, thinking about how utterly perfect this would have been on a grilled hot dog.

If you’re one of these enlightened souls that enjoy grilled onions on their ballpark franks, you will love this sweet and smoky condiment. 

There’s something about how the onion roasts in its own charred skin, buried in the white-hot coals, which brings a goodness not achievable in a pan. Believe me when I say, my next hot hog WILL be wearing this relish.

As usual, I played it straight with the seasonings, but if I had a dollar for every way you could adapt this relish recipe, I’d have enough money to pay someone to think of a real ending for this post. Enjoy!

Ingredients for about 1 1/2 cups:
2 yellow onions

1 red pepper

chopped parsley, to taste

cayenne, salt and pepper to taste

*Dress with oil and vinegar to taste - I used about 3 tbsp olive oil and 3 tbsp vinegar

Taste and adjust!