Kitchen Witch: a farrago of obscene witlessness.
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Kitchen Witch - a farrago of obscene witlessness.
Kitchen Witchery
Kitch"en(k[i^]ch"[e^]n),
Witch"er*y,n:
1. [OE. kichen, kichene AS. cycene, L. coquina, to prepare food, and cf. Cuisine.]
2. [AS. wiccecr[ae]ft.] The practices or art of witches; sorcery; enchantments;
intercourse with evil spirits.
3. Cheerful chaos in deepest, darkest Devon, with PhD study and a very small person thrown in for added spice.
Mail me: kitchen dot witchery [at] gmail dot com
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A parting of the ways, or 'I've buggered off now'.1 October, 2008
Right, well, four years and a bit on, and I'm buggering off now - this blog will no longer be updated from the start of October 2008. The archives will still be here for your viewing pleasure, but pretty soon the pro access on this account will lapse, and with that goes any javascript, so don't go looking for haloscan commenting and whatnot because it won't be there. All clear?
Thank you for reading, commenting and generally making this a dialogue rather than the blogging equivalent of shouting down a large and slightly ferny well; if you'd like to stay in touch, then do drop me a line: kitchen [dot] witchery [at] gmail [dot] com.
TTFN!
4 comments... |
Of hypocritical blackberry loaves.26 September, 2008
So there I was, muttering dismissively about the excessive number of seeds that one encounters in the average blackberry, and saying how i thought they were only really fit for either looking at (they are exceptionally pretty berries, I think, with the little segmenty whatsits and the gorgeous purplyness, particularly in sunlight) or making into something seed-free like blackberry jelly, or wine - we had a particularly good batch of blackberry and elder wine a couple of autumns back, and lord, it put blackberries into perspective. (Everything else, of course, assumed a rather new aspect too due to the alcohol content being roughly equivalent to jet fuel.) Anyway, dismissiveness was the tone of the day, until I realised that the hedges surrounding the Witchery, and indeed all the lanes around here, are jam-packed (hur hur) with the little bleeders - it's neck and neck between blackberries and rosehips in terms of hedgerow domination at the moment, and my only fear is that the wretched hedge-cutting tractorman (because clearly, that is his name) will arrive and destroy them all before I get chance to get out there and pinch pick them for the good of humanity. In the meantime, I have discovered that blackberries make for a rather attractive cakey-loaf creation of an easy nature. Assume the position:
Autumn Blackberry Loaf
Ingredients
2 mugs of wholemeal self-raising flour (you could use white self-raising, of course, but the effect wouldn't be nearly so self-satisfied)
1 mug of dark brown sugar
½ mug of sunflower oil
1 mug soya milk (again, ordinary would do, but I can't vouch for the smug vegetarianness of that.)
2 eggs (free-range, naturally, Hugh)
Large sprinkle of cinnamon
Quick splash of vanilla
Grated zest of a lemon (I used a humdingerly large one without ill effect. Yet.)
As many blackberries as you can decently cram into the above mixture
Then...
Stick all ingredients bar the berries in a large bowl and mix the hell out of them, before folding the berries in and generally poking it all about a bit. Then whack the whole bally lot into a loaf tin (I used my fucking lovely bright orange silicone chaps, for ease of extraction and a less frustrating 'why won't you COME THE FUCK OUT?!' experience over all, but if you are naturally filled with self-loathing, are blessed with forty-eight old-fashioned metal tins which make the purchase of any new ones simply a step too far for world harmony, or simply aren't funky enough for bright orange silicone, then I expect you'll find a way to struggle on), and shove in a pre-heated oven (about 180°c) for about forty minutes. Again, time dependent on crapness of oven. Ours? V. crap indeed. Yours? Almost certainly better.
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Of beans. Which are the new black. Or something.22 September, 2008
Before I start blathering on about beans, I'd just like to say that the reason I still haven't emailed those of you who've kindly left your addresses in order to follow me to my new interweb lair is that my template there is still buggered. Thing is, I want to stay with Journalspace - I like the interface, and their pro access is cheap but flexible - but I've now been waiting over two weeks TO GIVE THEM MONEY. This is getting ridiculous. I mean, how many people can one think of where giving them money isn't sufficient incentive to get them to do, well, given the people I know, virtually anything? Yet still, it's not happening with JS. So, I'm going to give it a week or so more, and then I'll be looking at alternatives. Which brings me to a question, gentle reader - if you are of the blogging persuasion, which host do you use, and why? (As an aside: I once tried Blogger, but I couldn't really fathom it. For one thing, it appeared ridiculously tricky to edit your html for templates and so on. Stuff that, I thought. That said, at least they let me have a sodding account!)
Right. As you were.
Beans. Last night, Mr. KW and I scarfed down - for us - a reasonably modest portion of a rather delightful bean concoction, and having put very little thought into its creation, I felt suitably chuffed at the outcome as to note down roughly what I'd done for the benefit of the greater good. Or, er, to blog about it.
Three-bean tortilla wrap fajita thingies
Get sticky mits on:
Large onion, chopped with aplomb (If you haven't got a plomb... no - sorry - I really shouldn't go there, should I?)
2 tins of beans (I used a bean salad, and the black-eyed variety, with their dark charms and luscious good looks. Hang on...), one of which is drained
A fistful of herbs, dried or otherwise
About two tbsps of tomato purée
A slosh of soy sauce and Worcester sauce
Two ends-of-knife-jammed-in-jar-because-bloody-spoon-wouldn't-fit of harissa paste
A vegetable stockcube
A goodly shaking of smoked paprika
A pinch of mustard seeds
A quick squirt of honey (the runny variety)
A really quite respectable pinch of hot chili powder
More garlic than the human body is intended to contain, either fresh or in powder form (I confess: I used the powder. So sue me.)
A large wedge of feta cheese (By this I mean, say, an inch by four inches by an inch.)
Large and glorious fistfuls of spinach, chard or leaf beet
In my case, a packet of herby wraps purchased from that nice Mr. Sainsbury. You may prefer to make them, or steal someone else's.
Then...
Sling the onion in a reasonably large pan (of the non-stick, or at least quite resilient, variety) with some olive oil and fry it up until it reaches the requisite level of brownness. In go the beans, one tin drained, one tin still with water. Add the stockcube, the herbs, the tomato purée and all that other cobblers up there, barring the spinach and the feta. Give it all a good pokie (that was a typo, but I find 'pokie' so amusing that I'm going to leave it; can you tell I've not had much sleep?) and leave it to bubble away to itself for a while. (Incidentally, you could use dried beans but I am persuaded, quite firmly, that they are the stuff of the underworld: I have soaked and soaked until I was truly a very soaked thing indeed, never mind the bloody beans, yet still they remain stubbornly hard and worryingly are-they-still-poisonous crunchy.)
When you're quite sure that the beans aren't going to take your entire family out in a toxic symphony of woe, continue, adding the spinach and the feta, crumbled. Again, pokie. Again, bubble. Then, root out your wrap whatsits. I blitz them in the onde-micro (for some reason, we term the microwave the 'onde-micro' most of the time. Je n'ai aucun idée pourquoi) for a few seconds to make them nice and wrappable, and then divide the beany goodness between about five or six of the little buggers, putting them in an oven-suitable dish.
Any remaining sauce got poured over the top, before I put on some quite gratuitous grated cheddar with a fistful of sunflower seeds. Cook at about 180°c for roughly half an hour (or more if, like us, your oven makes sunlight look like a viable cuisine option). Whip out and scoff while really rather warm.
Coming up soon: an impromptu blackberry loaf, hypocritically made despite 'ah, but blackberries have too high a seed/fruit ratio' protestations made earlier that same day.
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A small announcement...18 September, 2008
You may now call me Doctor Kitchen Witch. Or something. My viva lasted about ninety minutes, and I managed to fool both examiners to the extent that I have passed, with a few corrections and revisions to make to my thesis, and the assurance that at least one chapter stands a good chance of being published.
In short, yay.
In fact, YAY!
If I was, well, someone else, I would be using a lot of exclamation marks at this point.
(Incidentally, the reason that I haven't yet emailed any of you who left me an email address in order to follow me to my new interweb home is simply that my template is buggered at the moment; as soon as I've got it sorted out, I'll be right on the case. Oh yes. Indeedy. So don't feel paranoid - as the old saying goes, 'it's me, not you'.)
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DIY blogging, or 'Some Assembly Required'.15 September, 2008
Blah-blah-blah: thesis revisions, viva on Thursday (THURSDAY! Thurs-fucking-day! And today is Mon-fucking-day! Sense the oasis of prepared calm, there, can't you?), meeting with Nearly-Always-Absent Supervisor later on today for sort of pre-viva scare-the-hell-out-of-candidate-type thing. Sounds fun, non?
Blah-di-blah-di-blah: went to an NCT sale on Saturday and picked up, I estimate with much smuggery, about £180-worth of small-person-related paraphernalia for about £42. (Why is smuggery not the word? I am merely following the excellent pattern set by bugger and buggery. Oh. Hang on. Smugger. Smug. Yes, well. Moving on.) This included four cloth nappies for £3 a pop, and shitloads (ha - what an appropriate collective noun for baby things) of clothing for the witchlet.
Tum-ti-tum-ti-tum: a walk round the lanes this morning makes me think that it's time to make a beverage of an alcoholic nature. Not that I'll be drinking it just yet, but hey - wine takes a while to, er, stop tasting like the foulest substance known to man mature. Sloes, perhaps, although equally tempting are the vast masses of rosehips flaunting themselves in the hedgerows around the witchery. What's that? Wait until the first frost? Balls, I say (with the greatest respect, of course) - last year we picked 'em about this time, and it were all fine, it were. Rosehip syrup - slaver.
And now, onwards.
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Beans, beans, and - yes - more beans.6 September, 2008
I've got something of a bean fetish going on of late. This deep-seated attraction (there ought to be a really bad-taste pun on offer at this point; my brains, however, are still in bed, asleep, so think of it as a DIY challenge) was prompted in part by the fact that a) the wholefoods aisle in Tesco's is normally empty, together with b) beans, they is cheap. So, we've had veggie chili, with, yes, beans, beans and more beans; we've had veggie curry, with beans, beans, and - nearly had you there - chickpeas for variety; we've had garlicky beans with roast 'taters and grated cheese on top; we've had beans in casserole form, with herby gravy for added interest; we've even had baked beans (tarted up by the addition of tomato purée, a large fistful of herbs, a spoonful of brown sugar and some chili powder) with sweet potatoes. I likes me some beans, I does. And what's more, I'm hoping to pursue a long and satisfying relationship with said beans. Thing is, I am starting to run a little low on inspiration. Ideas, anyone, out there? Also, a similar situation has arisen with lentils - lentil slices with cheese; lentil flans; lentils in casseroles; lentils boiled and served with spicy gravy. Now? All lentilled-out. Your thoughts, please, interweb.
In unrelated news, the plasterer is coming on Monday, which means the witchery is a hive of activity at present - Mr. KW has painted four windows, and is waiting to fit them tomorrow; as we speak, he is clearing the extension of the accumulated detritus of recent weeks so that he can fill in various gaps with a dollop of plaster so that the plasterer has a clear and easy job to do. This should make the extension look much more room-like - it will be genuinely exciting to see it. I keep meaning to post pictures, but they're probably best left to one large (and quite probably dull to everyone except, well, us) post, when things are a bit straighter.
In other unrelated news, cloth nappies. By gum, they take a while to dry. I have a kit on loan from East Devon Council; we are road-testing, as it were, some of the leading brands of nappy, and Christ, there are a lot of 'em out there. It's stuffable this, and washable that, and poppers and applix and nippas and lord only knows what else. And then, there is the coloured/white controversy, to say nothing of the complex and demanding hell that is Which Wrap Works Best. Ye gods. Bearing in mind that I've been reading about the little blighters since approximately January and have yet to work out what to do for the best, I think I am justified in saying that for once, doing one's homework isn't enough - you have to try the buggers out too. And why is it, I ask of no-one in particular, that so-called 'prefold' nappies, where you get a flat piece of something absorbable but - sophistication! - it comes with lines and foldy-bits already marked for ease of sleep-deprived parent use, are so much cheaper than 'shaped' i.e. no folding required - just stick on, and, er, go? I keep thinking there must be some big secret to which all but me are privy (forgive the pun), because otherwise, there isn't really much of an argument between the £3 - 4 payable for prefolds, and the £10 - 15 payable for shaped, is there? Especially as part of the reason I'd like to use cloth nappies now that the witchlet has achieved a suitable weight is that disposables cost a sodding fortune, both financially and environmentally; we are using 'eco-friendly' disposables (I haven't enquired too closely into their credentials, having been told that 10lb in weight is about the time when 'real' nappies become viable), but I am really looking forward to stopping, because £30 every few weeks gets old really quickly. Also, and this is quite sad, I am finding myself actually quite excited about trying out new nappies. Good god. What on earth has happened to me? If you'd told me that a few months ago, I would have laughed in your face. Laughed, I tell you. While thinking wistfully about alcohol. Did someone mention drinkies?
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Must try harder.4 September, 2008
I, er, appear to have forgotten when my viva takes place. Well, not entirely, I hasten to add - even I am not quite that crap. But I have completely lost track of the time. Day, yes. Place, yes. Time? No idea. I am hoping that this is simply because we had yet to agree a time, but of course the irony there is that that probably means I am even less with it, viva-wise, than if I'd simply forgotten the time - if you can't even remember if you agreed a time, you know you're in trouble. So, this morning, after days of prevarication, finds me printing out a copy of my thesis. See, when I submitted, well, a) I didn't submit personally - I sent Mr. KW (ah, the joys of having 'people'. If only it worked for every aspect of life), and b) I only printed out two copies, aka half a rainforest, rather than thinking of doing one for myself. Because, clearly, I wouldn't ever need to think about it again. Er... Might be a teensy flaw in my logic there, I fear... I have about two weeks left to read, familiarise, and generally work out how likely it is that I can hire someone very clever to pretend to be me for the duration of the viva without anyone noticing. I am certain that the only reason I have made it this far without someone realising that actually, I am a moron and should never have been admitted to the university, let alone the research programme, is that I never really said very much, or if I did, people thought I was joking when in reality I was perfectly serious, i.e. 'what's that? extra reading? Well, no, I was involved in some heavy-duty jam-making at the time, and couldn't look up in case I missed that all-important setting point'.
Goddy goddy god.
Ooooh, but one thing at which I must emphatically not try harder is the production of chocolate brownies. If I try any harder, I'll be making approximately one batch a day, which, in light of my desire not to blot out the sun and several small planetary systems with a rapid weight-gain to rival pregnancy with quadruplets, would not be a good thing. The thing is, I came up with quite a successful recipe. It goes thusly:
Chocolate Brownies for which you will sell your grandmother
Get mits on:
- Large bar of dark chocolate, i.e. 250g
- 2 eggs
- 4 tbsp self-raising wholemeal flour
- a fistful of mixed nuts (I the same quantity of nuts as chocolate, courtesy of an interesting 'weights? who needs weights?' experiment with my scales; thus, about 250g of pecans, walnuts, almonds and so forth), chopped and roasted in the oven for about ten minutes; you can also toast them in an oilless frying pan
- 4 oz dark brown sugar
- large pinch of cinnamon
- large pinch of chili
- large pinch of ground nutmeg
Then...
Melt the choc in the microwave, together with the butter. Stir the lot up into a surprisingly attractive pot of goo, and then sling in the other ingredients, leaving the eggs till last in case the chocolate is a bit warm (beware the overenthusiastic application of microwave technology, which can lead to odd things happening in the middle of chocolate, or so I am told by one of my stepsisters (!)). Turn the lot into a square tin about eight inches across, and stick in a preheated oven at about 180°c, for about twenty minutes to half an hour - basically, it's done when a knife comes out clean. Retire. Scoff, possibly warm with ice cream. I can thoroughly recommend
Search me, guv.
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