Cold Summer Soup

It's been a long time since I posted a recipe, and this time I want to post it so I have a record of what I made yesterday afternoon. In short, after reading three contradictory recipes for chłodnik, I just made my own.

Chłodnik (HWOD-neek) is a cold Polish beet soup, which I first tasted last Saturday in Ognisko, a Polish restaurant in London. If you think you don't like cold soups because you don't like starchy, cloying old vichyssoise, give chłodnik a try.

Seraphic's Chłodnik (Anielski Chłodnik)

for four, suitable for Fridays and vegetarians

You need two biggish bowls, and one is the serving bowl.

4 cooked beets
one cup veggie broth
half a lemon
half an English cucumber, diced very small
3 little radishes (or more, if you love radishes), diced very small.
a package of fresh dill (about 3/4 cup), chopped
a handful of fresh chives, chopped
500 mL (around 1 pint) of plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup (or half a small Tesco container) sour cream
3-4 cold hard boiled eggs, quartered

I suppose you could add salt, but I'd wait until the end because the veggie broth might be plenty salty. I used Marigold Swiss.

1.Into the big serving bowl, grate the cooked beets.
2. Pour into beets the veggie broth and the juice of half a lemon.
3. Into the second bowl, combine cucumber, radishes, dill and chives. Then toss them into the serving bowl and gently mix into the beets and broth.
4.Into the emptied second bowl, mix yogurt and sour cream. Gently fold into the veggie mixture in the serving bowl. It will become pink.
5. Taste to adjust seasonings. Gradually throw in more dill or chives or salt, as you like. Mix.
6. Add the quarters of hard boiled egg as a decoration on top or gently mixed in
7. Cover the serving bowl (my Polish one, which looks just like the photo, has a lid) and put it in the fridge to chill for at least three hours.

This is so good I rudely served myself seconds before offering seconds to guests. This was very bad behaviour, but the soup was soooo good. It doesn't need saltines or bread, really, although I served it with Polish brown bread.

If you don't have guests, I suggest making it for yourself and then eating it all weekend. Delicious!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, poppets. But, oh, so tired! I feel like I spent the last five days doing nothing but going to the gym, shopping, cooking, shopping, baking, laundering, washing dishes, washing counters and going to church for very long stretches of time.

We had Polish guests for Easter, so we had Polish Easter food as well as British Easter food, and everything turned out, even my hot cross buns which, ironically, were the most difficult thing to make. 

I also went along to the traditional Polish Holy Saturday blessing service with my guests to have their/our Easter basket (full of food for Easter Sunday) blessed. The Cathedral was absolutely packed, and I have not seen so many babies, children and perambulators in one place for a long time.

"You should be pushing a perambulator," said an irrepressible friend who has not quite worked out the relationship of age to fertility, and I heartily agreed. But meanwhile I had quite enough to do with guests and complicated recipes. To expand your culinary horizons (or flatter them if you happen to be Polish), here is how I made my lovely traditional Easter breakfast żurek (Polish sour) soup:

Seraphic's Easter Żurek 

500 mL bottle of kwas (also known as żur) from your local Polish shop. It is made of fermented rye flour and water. It keeps for a long time but have a look at the expiry date just in case. 

1.5 L of very good vegetable broth (I use Kallo cubes.)

4 white kielbasa sausages (actually pinkish)

bay leaf

1 Tbsp of marjoram

2 allspice grains

4 peppercorns

2 crushed cloves of garlic

1. Make up your lovely vegetable broth and throw in the herbs and spices. Bring to boil.

2. Boil the sausages for 15-20 minutes in the broth. Then fish them out and cut them up.

3. Continue to simmer the broth and lightly fry the sausage.

4. Pour in the kwas. Unless you know you love fermented soup, taste as you go.

5. Throw the  fried sausage into the broth-kwas mix and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.

5. Squish two cloves of garlic until they are extremely squished and throw them in the simmering broth.

5. Taste to see if you want to add salt.

6. Hard-boil two or three eggs.

7. Put half an egg into each bowl and ladle the żurek over it.  

You can make this dish a day ahead and put it in the fridge, but don't add the eggs until you are about to serve it. It will feed 4-6 people as a breakfast (if they compute soup for breakfast) or first course, served with proper rye bread and not white American/British supermarket bread, the horror. 

I am told every Polish family has its own way of making żurek. My way made both our guests and Benedict Ambrose happy, so it works for me. The amusing thing is that it started out as a recipe I found online but got changed quite a bit, for one of the guests kept making suggestions, some of which I took, and others I rejected. Also, the original recipe wanted juniper berries. Well, who in Edinburgh has got juniper berries anywhere but in their gin, I'd like to know!

The first time I ever had żurek it was made for me by a friend living with her granny in her granny's Warsaw flat. My friend is now a postulant in an enclosed Benedictine order. Goodness knows when I will see her again, but meanwhile żurek reminds me of her.

Beautiful Buttery Carrot Soup

And now for something completely different: a recipe for a great vat of carrot soup. It is very inexpensive if a bit labour-intensive.

This is a recipe that feeds at least twelve. You can give 11 - 12 people big bowls of soup, or you can give 11 - 12 people little bowls of soup and then offer them more later. It is suitable for vegetarians, the gluten-intolerant and Fridays.

You need two big soup pots or one big soup pot and a big frying pan. I use a hand-held blender, but I am sure you could use a normal blender or food processor.

Beautiful Buttery Carrot Soup

4 Tbsp butter
3.5 pounds of carrots (£1 at Tesco last week)
3.5 medium onions
3.5 teaspoons of sugar
3.5 teaspoons of garam masala
10 cups of good-quality vegetable stock (I use Kallo organic, gluten-free cubes)
fine sea salt
white pepper

1. Peel carrots and dice them. This will take a long time.

2. Chop onions.

3. Divide butter between two pots or pot and pan and melt over low heat.

4. Divide carrots and onions between the two pots or pot and pan and fry in butter on low heat until they are soft but not browned. This will also take time. Check on them every once in a while, giving them a stir.

5. When carrots are soft, put the mixture in the pot or bigger pot. It needs to be a very big pot.

6. Add the sugar, the garam masala and the ten cups of stock.

7. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.

8. Take your handy-dandy hand blender and blitz the soup until all the carrots and onions are pulverized. Alternatively, cool the soup and blend in batches in a proper blender. Blend and blend and blend until every bit of carrot is squashed. Then go through the soup with a slotted spoon to eliminate the stubborn bits of carrot that have escaped.

9. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

10. If the soup has cooled, either heat it up again to serve or put it in the fridge to be heated up tomorrow. Serve piping hot.

The garam masala adds "heat" but not "bite", at least if it is the garam masala one gets in jars at Tesco.

Using veggie stock instead of chicken allows the carrots to shine out like the sunny elixir of life they really are.

To make soup for 2-3, just use one pot, two Tbsp butter, one pound of carrots, one onion, one tsp of sugar, one tsp garam masala and 3 cups of veggie stock.

Cummings-McLean's Sweet and Spicy Chemo Curry

Hmm! Now doesn't that sound DELICIOUS? But as regular readers know, I am in Italy visiting Hilary, who has had two bouts of chemo and has a third one coming up. I do the cooking, and it is not easy finding my way around Another Woman's Kitchen, believe you me. Things aren't where I put them at home, and although the local produce is marvellous, Hilary's cookbooks are all for England.

Hilary, who believes very firmly in REALITY, does not want to be a fake Italian, but a real British (and Canadian) expatriate, and what is more British than CURRY? (Believe me on this.) And since I am married to a Scotsman, I know how to make a good curry from scratch. I generally follow the directions on the back of the curry powder jar.

That recipe I have memorized, but Hilary's kitchen did not have what I needed today, so I had to wing it. Normally I disapprove of winging it, unless one has made a dish so many times that one really can intelligently substitute this for that. And, happily, my noon-time experiment worked out so well that Hilary asked for the recipe.

Hilary, incidentally, does not believe in flattery.

The reason why I call this Chemo Curry is a chemo patient's abstention from pasta, bread, rice and potatoes. I served this on barley and various kinds of lettuce, and it really worked. The nuttiness of the barley substitutes for almonds, so this recipe really doesn't need almonds.

Cummings-McLeans Sweet and Spicy Chemo Curry*

one onion
chicken breasts (defrosted is fine) for two cut up
2 Tbsp curry powder with chili powder added to taste
1 cup yogurt
some cream if you have any, milk if not
1/4-1/3 cup chicken stock (made from powder)
big (2 Tbsp?) spoonful coconut cream
2 squirts tomato paste

1. Dice onion and cook till golden in olive oil.
2. Cook pieces of chicken for 2.5 minutes either side.
3. Throw in curry powder and cook for 2 minutes, coating chicken and onions with it.
4. Pour in yogurt, cream (or milk), chicken stock.
5. Throw in coconut cream and squirt tomato paste squirts.
6. Mix gently to incorporate tomato paste and coconut into sauce.
7. Bring to boil, lower heat and put on lid.
8. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Barley

1. Put 1 teacup of barley in 3 teacups of water and smidge of chicken stock powder. Set to boil.
2. Boil for 20-25 minutes. Test for chewiness.
3. If sufficiently yummy, pour off any water remaining.

In Italy, barley is called orzo.

Plating

If the chicken curry sauce seems a bit too thin, let boil for another 3-5 minutes with the lid off.

Put mixed salad greens in shallow soup plate. Heap barley in centre. Spoon chicken onto barley. Pour curry sauce over chicken.

The cancer patient should drink water with lemon. The cook-carer, however, should have a lovely cold glass of dry white wine.

*Not doctor approved. I am not a doctor! Heaven knows if chemo patients are really supposed to be eating coconut cream.

Chocolate Tart

Today, for something completely different, I am going to tell you how to make a lovely pudding (British for dessert) called Chocolate Tart. It is tremendously fun to make and nice to serve at a dinner party. Incidentally, although I think it a mistake to ask men out on dates or bring them baking, I cannot see anything wrong with inviting them to dinner parties of four or more.

This recipe is based on one from my baking bible Great British Puddings by Mary and Debbie Smith. It is a lie that British cuisine is terrible. British puddings have always been wonderful, and Britain had a food revolution in the 1950s that taught everyone not to boil their veggies to mush and their meat to string.

For this recipe you will need a 9 inch fluted tin tart with a removeable bottom, greaseproof paper (I use brown wrapping paper) and baking beans--either dried real ones or ceramic ones. A kitchen scales would be handy. Every cook in Britain has a scales. Mine is a big pink retro one.

The recipe has three parts: pastry, filling and meringue. It involves three separate bakings at gradually lower temperatures.

CHOCOLATE TART

Pastry

6 oz plain white flour (in Canada, Poland and the USA use pastry flour)
4 oz cold butter
2 oz caster (fine) sugar
3 oz finely chopped roasted hazelnuts (ground almonds will do)
1 small egg yolk

Filling

4 oz (a 100g bar) dark chocolate, broken up
16 fl oz (2 cups) cold milk
2 oz plain white flour (better use pastry flour in Canada, Poland and USA)
pinch of salt
2 oz caster sugar
big pinch cinnamon
1 oz butter
4 medium egg yolks, lightly beaten
3 tbsp rum

Meringue

4 medium egg whites
4 oz caster sugar


Making the Pastry

1. Wash and flour your hands.

2. Cut the butter into small pieces and then chop into the flour with two dinner knives until mixture has an oatmeal-like consistency. If this takes too long, get your fingers in there and squish the mixture to your will.

3. Stir in the sugar and the hazelnuts.

4. Drop in the egg yolk and mix it around and around with a knife. Then get your clean, floured hands in there and squish mixture into dough.

5. Drop half-formed dough onto floured board and knead until smooth.

6. Stick dough ball into the fridge for half an hour.

7. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. Roll pastry into a round, drop it into your tart tin, press sides into the fluting with the floured stick end of a wooden spoon, prick all over with a fork, line bottom with greaseproof paper and pour in baking beans to cover. Trim any edges that stick out over the tin with a sharp knife.

9. Put tart tin in the oven for 10 minutes. Then take the paper and beans off, and return tart tin to over for 5 more minutes.

Voila! Beautiful pie case. Take it out of the over, but leave it in the tin. Turn oven down to 325 degrees F.

Making the Filling

1. Put chocolate, milk, flour, salt, sugar and cinnamon into heavy bottomed saucepan and melt over low heat while stirring. Stir until smooth.

2. Simmer for two minutes. This will thicken it up nicely.

3. Remove from heat, mix in butter, and leave to cool a wee bit. It will thicken more.

4. Add the egg yolks and the rum. Stir.

5. Pour into the pastry case and put carefully (loose bottom!) into the oven for 15 minutes.


Making the Meringue Top

1. Put your four egg-whites (absolutely free from even the tiniest bit of yolk) into a cold bowl and whisk them until they are stiff (will make peaks) but not dry. If you are doing this by hand it could take five minutes. Il faut souffrir pour etre belle. Whiskie, whiskie, whiskie.

2. When there are peaks, whisk in half the sugar.

3. Fold in the rest with a spoon.

4. When the 15 minutes of baking are up, carefully take your precious pie out of the oven and pour the meringue over it. Start from the middle and cover to the very edges of the pastry to create a seal. Turn the oven down to 300F.

5. Carefully put tart back into the oven and bake for another half an hour. The meringue will turn a golden brown colour.

When it is cool enough, carefully pop it up out of the tart tin collar and slide it onto a plate. Serve at room temperature with single (light) cream or ice cream the day it is made. Eat the leftovers for breakfast.

This tart has the power to make even the most hardened of bachelors reflect that although he would rather die, marriage might not be so bad for other chaps.

Fighting the Blues

Poppets, this is the part where I tell you that I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist and that you should not be reading my blog as a subsitute for medical advice.

But I will also say that I know very well what it means to have the blues, not to mention the mean reds, not to mention a growing feeling that your school/workplace is, in fact, the anti-christ. If you are at the anti-christ stage, it is time to see a doctor. But assuming that you're not there yet, let's chat about tips for warding off depression.

The most obvious non-drug ways to prevent depression are nutrition, exercise and gazing at beautiful things, just so long as those beautiful things are not delicious marrieds or other cute people 15 years or more younger than yourself. I am thinking more in terms of the art gallery and Georgian architecture. I live near Edinburgh, so any time I want to look at Georgian architecture, I can take my pick of buses for £1.20 and gaze at classical symmetry all I want.

I found some great anti-depression nutrition foods listed in Redbook (UK, Feb 2009), so here they are:

1. Vitamin C (oranges, kiwis, sweet peppers, broccoli)
2. Omega-3 (salmon, mackerel, sardines, flaxseed)
3. Theanine (green tea or, in smaller amounts, ordinary black tea)
4. B Vitamins, esp. folic acid (leafy greens, wholegrains, seeds, beans, nuts, eggs)
5. L-tryptophan (turkey, chicken, beef, soybeans, cottage cheese)
6. Magnesium (almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds)
7. Vitamin D (oily fish, eggs, cod liver oil, liver)

And of course you get Vitamin D from the sun, so you should get outside into the sun when you can (but wear sunscreen).

From mediaeval times, scholars complained of melancholy and today grad students seem to pop anti-depressants like candy, and it's been suggested to me that it is because we readers-and-writers sit too long in one place for hours at a time. Moving around is a great mood booster, and back when I had a student (i.e. free) membership in a gym, I found that 99% of the time, if I felt lousy on my way into the gym, I felt great coming out.

I leave it up to you what beautiful things you have to gaze at. I got through a very bad time by watching every single episode of Sex and the City because it reminded me of my friends, although I hasten to add that none of my friends behaved like the characters on SATC and that I do not recommend it for young people.* But I also got through it by listening to Gerard Le Norman's Les Plus Belles Chansons over and over again and, alas, by eating a lot of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream, the effects of which my figure has still not recovered. (Woe!)

The Jesuits advise that you read sad things when you're happy and happy things when you're sad, to even you out. I think it works with music, too. Les Plus Belles Chansons is very happy, even "Voici Les Clés", a song about a man who is sending his runaway girlfriend the house-keys in case she decides to come back.

I listened to Les Plus Belles Chansons last night, not because I was depressed but because I was in a musical mood. Meanwhile, I try to walk four miles a day along the sea, which surely must be good for me in all kinds of ways, and I today I ate a menu practically guaranteed to make me euphoric:

Breakfast

Omlette (2 eggs, cheese)
Coffee (only 1.5 cups--apparently more is bad)
Orange Juice

Snack

6 Almonds

Lunch:

125 g deli turkey on 1 slice brown bread
Apple
glass 1% Milk

Snack
6 more Almonds

(4 Mile Walk)

Snack

Yogurt

Dinner

Roasted Portobella Mushroom
Tin of Salmon mashed up with yogurt on mixed Leafy Greens, Sweet Peppers, red onions, small tomato, 1 oz cheddar cheese chopped into weeny pieces
1 small glass white wine
Water

I don't actually feel euphoric, but I do feel well-fed.

*Two of my husband's friends watched every single episode and claimed that they only did so because they knew I had watched it, and they wanted to know what kind of woman B.A. was marrying. Every time they say this, I get really unseraphic indeed.

Magic Mushrooms

This is a fantastic recipe because you can make it for one or you can make it for twelve; there is not much of a difference. This is a recipe I got out of an Elizabeth David book. I served it at a dinner party, with some misgivings at its simplicity, but it was a great success

Grilled Mushroom

one large flat mushroom (like a portobello) from a store
salt
butter

1. Wipe clean your large flat mushroom and gently cut out the stem.

2. Sit it on a thin layer of salt on a plate until 12 minutes before you want to eat it.

3. Set the grill at a medium temperature. (Elizabeth David says you are going to "gently grill".)

4. Put a pat of butter in the centre of the mushroom and put it under the grill for ten minutes.

5. Periodically check the mushroom to see if it is drying out. If it is, add more butter.

6. Serve blazing hot on a little plate. It will have shrunk a bit.

According to Elizabeth David, the culinary apostle to the Anglo-Saxons, this is the very best way to cook mushrooms. It makes a splendid starter.

An Edible Book

Mothers are familiar with last-minute baking demands. They expect them more from small children then from gallumphing married daughters who bounce into their sitting-rooms shouting, "I have to make an edible book!"

I was invited to an Edible Book party, a recent trend meant to mark early April, and I forgot. Originally I had the clever but expensive and time-consuming idea of having a bakery print out a photo of the Seraphic Singles book cover in cake icing, as they now know how to do. (Photo-cakes look vile, but they could definitely look like books.) However, I forgot, so I cudgeled my brains this morning for another idea. Then it struck me that I could just spell out SERAPHIC SINGLES with cookies or iced cup-cakes or meat pies.

But the kitchen is not mine, and there is no meat around, and I hate making icing, so I decided to make letter-shaped cookies. As yet I don't know how they will turn out, for this is a rolled cookie recipe, and the dough is currently chilling in the fridge.

You have to use a rolled/icebox cookie recipe for letters. Whereas I had dreams of just pushing spoonfuls of sticky peanut butter cookie dough into letter shapes, I know very well that drop cookies just naturally turn into rounds, and if you try to make them look like something, they look like nothing on earth. So if you want nice shapes, you just have to start in advance, and make use of fridge and rolling pin.

Here is the recipe I used, but I can't guarantee it. It is from my dad's handy-dandy Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book (c. 1960) and is there called "Mary's Sugar Cookies". Let's hope it turns out!

Edible Letters

1 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar
1 cup butter
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

1. Cream butter and sugar in a bowl.
2. Mix in egg, vanilla and almond extract.
3. Mix dry ingedients and then add to first bowl and blend.
4. Refrigerate 2 to 3 hours. (But I only have one hour, so we will see!)
5. Heat over to 375 F.
6. Divide dough into two and roll out to 3/16" thick.
7. Cut with cooky cutter, says the recipe. (I am going to cut out letters with a knife.)
8. Sprinkle cookies with sugar and place on baking sheets.
9. Bake 7 to 8 minutes or "until delicately golden"

Makes 5 dozen 2-inch cookies, apparently. Me, I just need letters.

Don't make this recipe until I return with an update!

Update: They turned out quite well! The one caveat is that they are fragile, and you must take great care in packing them if you are taking them across town.

Cummings Curry-Glazed Carrots

Being at my Singlehood home in Canada, I have hundreds of time-tested recipes to leaf through looking for yummy things for you to eat. Now, sadly, most of these feed six or seven people because I come from a big family. Experiment freely to make them smaller, or invest in some nice tupperware and eat them for dinner all week.

One of my favourite family recipes is curry-glazed carrots, which is a marvellous addition to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Turkey stops being bland when it is paired with yummy, yummy curry-glazed carrots. You could serve this dish as part of a Lenten meal if you replace the chicken stock with veggie stock. I don't think you can ever go wrong with leek stock (simmer two chopped leeks in water for 20-30 minutes; strain).

This recipe comes out of a metal box over the kitchen sink. My guess is that it has its origins in Canadian Living magazine.

Cummings Curry-Glazed Carrots

12 carrots (eek! 1/2 lb)
2 Tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp chopped ginger root
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1 1/2 cups chicken (or veggie) stock
2 Tbsp honey

1. Peel carrots and cut into 1/4 inch slices.
2. In deep skillet, heat butter, garlic and ginger root over medium heat for 1 minute.
3. Add curry powder and cook 30 seconds, stirring.
4. Add carrots, stock and honey.
5. Cook until liquid evaporates and carrots are tender and glazed, 20-25 minutes.

At the bottom of the index card this recipe is written on, it says 160 cal/serving.

You know, in themselves I find carrots boring. But cook 'em, soup 'em, juice 'em, bake 'em in muffins and cakes, and a star is born. I wonder if anyone has made carrot ice-cream yet. It sounds so crazy, it just might work.

Economy Cake

I haven't forgotten you, my little Singles! In fact, I sat down yesterday at the computer, and it started to act funny, and as I struggled with it, jet lag set in, and thus I went to bed. So there you are.

Now that I am home in Canada, I have the run of my mother's cookbooks. The principle cookbook of my youth was (and don't laugh, pls!) Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book. My father brought it with him into his marriage. It was a gift from his mother, and his elder brother got a copy, too. After my uncle died, his pristine copy went to my brother Nulli. (Mum, I'll have you know, brought Chatelaine's Adventures in French Cooking and other sophisticated tomes.)

Dad's copy, used by all in the family except, perhaps, Dad, could be boiled to make a nourishing soup. But this leaves me with a dilemma: what recipe to choose?

I have decided to go with One-Egg Cake because it is economical, needing only one egg. Some days you have only one egg, but you want a nice cake, and so here one is:

Economy Cake

2 cups pastry flour
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 soft shortening
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg (1/4 cup)

1. Heat oven to 350 F.
2. Get out two 8" x 1 1/2" layer pans or a square pan measuring 9" x 9" x 1 3/4".
3. Blend flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
4. Add shortening, 2/3 of milk and vanilla.
5. Beat thoroughly: 2 min with the mixer or 300 "vigorous strokes by hand". (That's what it says.) Scrape bottom and sides of bowl often.
6. Add rest of milk and eggs.
7. Beat 2 more minutes, scraping bowl constantly.
8. Pour into pan or pans.
9. Bake layers about 30 minutes, square 30-35 minutes.
10. Cool.
11. "Frost with your favo[u]rite icing."

If you aren't feeling as economical as all that, I bet you could use butter instead of shortening. It's only a third of a cup, after all. Mmmm! Butter. Incidentally, I would never use anything except butter to make icing. Here's the simplest I know:

Fast Frosting

1/3 cup soft butter
3 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
3 Tbsp milk or cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
food colouring (optional)

1. Blend butter and sugar. Be careful or the super-light sugar will fly all over you.
2. Stir in cream (or milk) and vanilla until smooth.
(Optional)
3. Divide frosting into one big bowl and one little bowl.
4. Colour the frosting in the big bowl with a few drops. This is for covering the cake. Stir well until colour mixed in.
5. Colour the frosting in the little bowl with a few drops of a contrasting colour. Stir until colour mixed in. Stuff this icing into an cake decorating tube and write cheery messages or dab interesting designs on the cake.

I hear someone saying, "It would be even cheaper to get a mix from the supermarket." Well, I am shocked. Shocked! There is no substitute for real, homemade cake. Bake one and invite the girls around.

Chummy Cheese Omlette for One

Nancy Mitford, one of my favourite writers, wrote about trying to boil an egg for her invalid father. Unfortunately, she ruined quite a few eggs, and eggs were rationed at the time. What the divine Miss M did not know was that you cannot boil an egg by putting it into boiling water. You have to put the unbroken egg into a pan of cold water and then bring the water to a boil.

It is wrong, I think, to assume that everyone, even a talented novelist, knows the absolute basics of cookery. And that is why I am, without guilt, going to post my cheese omelette recipe. This recipe, another gem from Susan Mendelson's Let Me in the Kitchen, is so simple, it could be made by the 60-something husband of a stay-at-home mother of five. I think. Normally if left to his own devices, Daddy makes a jelly omlette.*

The secret to the perfect omlette, I believe, is a pan of the right size (small) and temperature (medium hot). Toast some bread while the eggs are cooking.

Chummy Cheese Omlette for One

2 eggs
3 dashes of salt
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp water
1/4 cup grated cheese

1. Make sure the cheese is grated already.

2. Break the eggs into a small bowl. Add salt and water. Whisk until well mixed. (If you don't have a whisk, use a fork.)

3. Put a small frying pan on medium heat. Wait a bit, add the butter and let it melt. When it starts to bubble, pour in the eggs.

4. The eggs will start getting hard along the edges first. Take a spatula and gently run it along the edges, tipping the pan a bit to let the uncooked egg run under the cooked egg at the side. Keep doing this until the centre is no longer runny. Be gentle, or you won't have an omlette but scrambled eggs.

5. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top of the egg.

6. With the spatula, lift half the omlette and fold it onto the other half. Turn heat down and wait for the cheese to melt.

7. Flip the half-moon shaped omlette to warm up the other side a bit.

8. Tilt the pan and slide the omlette onto a hot plate. Serve to self with toast and eat at once.

*If you want to make a jelly omlette, eliminate the salt and cheese and spread jelly on top of the eggs before flipping. I have no idea why you would want to do this, but Dad likes it. My grandmother used to eat scrambled eggs with tomato ketchup. I've put a dollop of salsa along with the grated cheese and enjoyed the result very much.

Deliciously Dark Chocolate Pudding

The principal cookbook of my Single Life was Moosewood Restaurant's Low-Fat Favourites.

Until I began my studies in the USA, I was most tremendously fit and slim. As long as I had a good-paying job, I had a gym membership. And as long as I was studying in Canada, I had access to the the university athletic centre. But in the USA, I discovered I couldn't really afford a gym and would have had to pay a heavy fee to use the school's athletic centre, so I worked out my frustrations with Messrs. Ben & Jerry instead. Alas. I got out of the fitness habit and can even be seen eating what my husband calls potato crisps which, believe me, never happened between 1996 and 2005.

During the turn of the century, when I was definitely Single but not yet Seraphic despite being most tremendously slim (which was not, it turned out, the secret to happiness), I worked out almost every day and ate very little fat indeed. And my principal dessert was Moosewood's Dark Chocolate Pudding.

The recipe says it serves 4, but actually I ate it in two big helpings of 218 calories each. I would pour half from the pot into a bowl and put the bowl in the fridge to cool. And I would pour the rest into another bowl and eat it hot. Yummy, yum, yum.

I can just see my skinny self sitting alone in my scrupulously tidy bedsit, crosslegged on my folded up futon eating that pudding. Gosh, I was tidy then too. Slim and tidy yet sad. Dear me. I did not have my big Seraphic Single Revelation until 2006, you see.

Well, anyway, here is one of the joys of my pre-Seraphic Single Life:

Deliciously Dark Chocolate Pudding

3 Tbsp cornstarch
3 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups skim milk*
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Combine cornstarch, sugar and cocoa in a saucepan.

2. Add the milk and stir until smooth.

3. Cook on medium heat, stirring CONSTANTLY (this is the boring part) until the pudding comes to a boil.

4. Lower the heat and gently simmer, stirring continuously, for 3 or 4 minutes.

5. Stir in the vanilla.

6. Pour the vanilla into bowls and either put the bowls into the fridge for 2 hours to chill and set, or eat the pudding hot. Garnish with raspberries, if you like them.

*If you are not madly calorie counting, you can use 1% or 2% or even whole milk.

Awesome Autumn Vegetable Soup

Darlingses, I am not even going to bother pretending this soup feeds only one person It feeds six or seven people quite well, which I know because my mum makes it for Thanksgiving Dinner every year. I love this soup dearly. So here it is, and you can experiment with making it smaller. You can even make it Lenten (if such a soup could ever be considered Lenten) by subsituting leek stock for chicken stock. If you do that, though, you might need to add a little more salt. The recipe comes from Canada's milk marketing board. You need a blender, a cuisinart or a hand-blender.

Awesome Autumn Vegetable Soup

2 Tbsp butter
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 medium carrots, coarsely chopped
2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
1 small zucchini (courgette), coarsely chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley (or 1 tsp dried)
2 cups chicken stock or leek stock (see leek stock recipe below)
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/4 tsp pepper
2 cups milk

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add onions and garlic. Cook until fragrant but not brown.

2. Add carrots, celery, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, half of the parsley, stock, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring to boil, cover, reduce heat and cook 25 minutes or until veggies are very tender.

3. Puree soup in blender, cusinart, food mill, or with hand blender. Return to heat. Add milk. Cook until heated thoroughly. Do not allow soup to boil. Taste and add more seasoning if you think it needs it.

4. Garnish with the parsley.

This is a simply heavenly soup. I haven't tried it with leek stock instead of chicken stock yet, but the leek stock recipe is easy: just wash and roughly chop 2 leeks, cover them with 3 cups or so of water, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 20-25 minutes, and then strain. Throw the leeks out. The clear liquid will magically taste amazing. Use 2 cups of it in this recipe.

Comforting Chicken Korma

This recipe is based on a recipe I read on the label of a jar of Tesco's Mild Curry Powder. Theirs is for four portions, but I only ever make two. Now, as most of you are Single, I will let you decide whether to cut my recipe in half to make one serving for yourselves, or to make the whole thing and save half as super-yummy Indian leftovers.

Comforting Chicken Korma

1 tsp butter or vegetable oil (don't halve this)
1 medium onion, diced
2 chicken breasts
2 Tbsp mild curry powder
70 mL single/table cream
2 Tbsp natural yogurt
50 mL chicken stock (I use a fraction of a stock cube in 50 mL hot water)
1 tsp tomato paste
10 g (or to taste) creamed coconut
2 Tbsp toasted almonds (optional)

1. Heat up ye oil or butter in a pan.

2. Fry the onions over a medium heat for ten minutes, at least until soft and yellow.

3. Add the chicken and cook for a further five minutes. I flip the pieces over at the 3 minute mark.

4. Add the curry powder and continue cooking for 2 minutes. It won't burn; don't panic.

5. Add cream, yogurt, stock, paste and creamed coconut. If you don't have creamed coconut, add 10g dried coconut. It makes the dish a little less rich.

6. Bring it to a boil, and then turn the heat down to simmer. Put a lid on the pan and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

7. Prepare some basmati rice now. The korma is also excellent with naan bread. I am starting to get hungry just thinking about it. Mmmm!

8. Sprinkle the korma with toasted almonds and serve with rice and/or naan and wilted spinach. YUM!

Not for Fridays in Lent!

If there are any Goans reading this, they might be a bit indignant since this mild korma is not a Goan dish. Goan food is firey! It is much too firey for me. But I want to acknowledge beautiful Goa because it has a big Roman Catholic community. I've met many wonderful Goans and Goan-Canadians in Catholic circles in Canada. I would love to visit Goa one day.

Update: This Single woman had an amazing Valentine's Day full of love. Woot! That's what I'm talkin' about!

Fabulous Friday Brussels Sprout Soup

Poppets, I am soooo tired. All I have for you Singles today is the revelation that you can make my Broccoli Cheddar Soup (see Recipes) with leek stock and brussels sprouts. This means you can have this yummy soup on meatless Fridays even without broccoli.

To substitute chicken stock, take two leeks, wash them throroughly, chop them into half-inch rounds and simmer them in a soup pot of water for 30-40 minutes. Then pour the leek stock through a sieve and chuck out the mushy leeks. Reserve the redolent leek stock. It is so delicious you could eat it alone.

To substitute broccoli, cut the ends off an equal weight of washed brussels sprouts and then cut the sprouts in half. Simmer them in the butter-onion-garlic-pepper-stock mixture until they are tender (about 7 minutes). Then whisk in the flour-water mix and the cheese. Salt to taste. (Check first, though, as the cheese itself is salty.)

This is the first recipe I ever invented all by my little self, so I am extremely proud of myself. And brussels sprouts are very good for you, says wikipedia.

Brilliant Banana Bread

This is a great recipe for Singles because it solves the problem of the bananas slowly turning black in a bowl on your counter. And it makes only one loaf, which I think will keep for a couple of days if you cover it in plastic wrap. (It's so yummy, I never found out for sure.) I got this recipe from my childhood cookbook Let Me in the Kitchen by Susan Mendelson. It is very easy.

Brilliant Banana Bread

2 ripe bananas
2 eggs
1/2 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil
1 cup (8 oz/250 mL) brown sugar
1 1/4 cups (10 oz/300 mL) flour
1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
dash of salt
1/2 cup (4 oz/125 mL) walnut pieces
butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).
2. Mash bananas on a plate with a fork.
3. Beat eggs in bowl, then add oil, sugar and mashed bananas. Whisk.
4. Sift (or stir, as I have no sifter) flour, soda and salt into the mixture in the bowl. Whisk until mixed
5. Add the walnuts to batter and mix.
6. Butter the bottom of a loaf pan. Pour batter into pan.
7. Bake for one hour.
8. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes.
9. Run knife around sides of pan, and tip bread onto a wire rack or plate for further cooling.

As I don't have a loaf pan right now, I soon will try baking this recipe in a muffin tin. I've tried throwing chocolate chips into the dough, but I think I like it better without.

Auld Alliance Pies

The "auld alliance", o ye who do not yet know, is an alliance between France and Scotland against poor old England, always so opposed and complained about. And France and Scotland have influenced each other, not just politically, but foodily.

French food and Scottish food met once more in the part of Canada known as Quebec. The newer Scottish influence on French-Canadian cooking can be seen in the addition of oatmeal in the classic Quebec pork pie recipe found in Julian Armstrong's A Taste of Quebec.

But there's a new Scottish twist to my favourite tourtiere: a hot-water pastry crust from a book I've been handed called Floyd on Britain and Ireland. And then there's my muffin tin. Lacking proper pie tins to make the small pies eaten as snacks all over Scotland, I've been making pies in a 12-muffin muffin tin.

These little pies are perfect for either a dinner party or a buffet. I prefer them at the French-Canadian temperature: blazing hot. But Scots are used to eating pork pies cold. Try them both ways and decide which way you like best!

Auld Alliance Pies

Filling

1 pound or so (500-600 g) ground pork
3/4 cup (175 mL) cold water
1/2 cup (125 mL) finely chopped onion
1/4 cup (50 mL) finely chopped celery (optional)
1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp (2 mL) dried savoury
1/4 tsp (1 mL) dried rosemary or throw in a two inch sprig of fres
1/4 tsp (1 mL) nutmeg
Pinch cinnamon
Salt (optional)
1/4 cup (50 mL) rolled oats

Pastry Crust

1 lb (500 g) flour
1 tsp (4 mL) salt
7 oz (200 g) lard
7.5 oz (225 mL) milk and water mixed together in equal proportions

1. In a large, heavy frying pan, combine pork with cold water and heat to boiling.
2. Add onion, celery, pepper, bay leaf, savoury, dried rosemary (if not using fresh), nutmeg and cinnamon.
3. Cook, covered, over medium low heat for 1 1/4 hours, adding more water if it all boils away.
4. At halfway point, add salt, oatmeal and sprig of fresh rosemary, if using. Take out bay leaf.
5. Take off heat when done and leave to cool a bit. Take out fresh rosemary sprig, if you used it. Don't worry if some of the blades have fallen off. Yummy yum!

6. Melt lard in milk & water mix over low heat until near boiling.
7. Mix flour and salt in a big mixing bowl and make a well in the centre.
8. Pour melted lard mix into the well and mix quickly. It might smell bad but keep on mixing.
9. Take small ball of dough, flatten it and put it in the muffin tin. Do this 12 times, and don't use all the pastry! Stretch the pastry around to make a proper cup shape.
10. Full the pastry-lined muffin tins with pork mixture. Stuff the pork mixture right in!
11. Take smaller ball of dough, flatten it and make it a lid for one of the pies. Do this 12 times. Crimp all the edges together, using a bit of water if necessary.
12. Poke a hole in the tops of all the pies.
13. Put pies in preheated 350 F (180 C) oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
14. Eat hot or cool on wire rack.

Enjoy! This is not a Single's recipe as much as a Single-with-many-friends recipe!

Marvellous Maple Syrup Chicken

Most of my books are packed in boxes waiting to be shipped over the ocean to my new home in Scotland. But I deemed a few volumes so important I packed them in my suitcase. One of them is my favourite cookbook, A Taste of Quebec by Julian Armstrong.

Traditional French-Canadian cooking is stick-to-the-ribs good, regional French fare adapted to the rigours of life and the local produce of seventeenth and eighteenth century Nouvelle France (now the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). One of the most famous ingredients of eastern Canada is maple syrup, and for a delicious, rich and unusual "fancy" dish, I like to make this recipe, adapted for two portions from A Taste of Quebec. Eat the first for supper, and wrap up the second for tomorrow's sandwich.

Real maple syrup (you cannot use the fake stuff in this recipe!) is available throughout Canada and the USA; in Britain, I've found it in Waitrose. So far savoury has been harder to find here, although it is of course plentiful in France. My mother brought me a jar of it from a Canadian supermarket this summer.

Poitrine de Poulet au Sirop D'Érable

2 chicken breasts
1/8 cup all-purpose (plain) flour
salt and black pepper
1 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/ tsp dried savoury (sariette)
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/8 tsp dried sage
1 small onion, sliced
1/2 cup water

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).

2. Dredge chicken in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

3. In a heavy, flameproof casserole, heat butter over the stove until bubbling and then quickly brown the chicken on both sides. Take off the heat.

4. Pour maple syrup over chicken, and sprinkle with savoury, thyme and sage. Then arrange the onion slices on top.

5. Pour water into the bottom of the casserole. Bake, uncovered, for 50 to 60 minutes, basting the chicken occasionally with the pan juices.

Serve with greens and potatoes on your best plate. Have a napkin and a glass of dry white wine handy. Yummy, yum, yum!

Fantastic Florentines

One of my favourite cities is Florence. Its proper name is Firenze, and for various family reasons, I spent my youth dying to go there. When I grew up and got a proper job, I saved up enough money to go to Italy and went. I had studied Italian in high school, when my brain was still pliable, and I had a good review for a year before I went on vacation. I used my knowledge in the Florentine pastry shop I bounced into as soon as I saw it. I was on a mission for a certain kind of cooky, and there it was:

"Two florentines, please," I said, in good Ontario Florentine Italian. Florentine is the R.P. of Italian, so that is what you learn in school.

"Va bene," said the lady behind the counter.

"My mother makes these at Christmastime," I said.

"Oh," said the lady. "Is she from here?"

No, in fact, but her florentines are the best in the world, and I should know because wherever I go, I try the local version. In most places (like Edinburgh) they are mostly candy and not enough cooky. This version, I think, has the right cooky-candy balance. They keep for weeks, so you can either limit yourself to one a day or share with neighbours, whichever you like.

Aged P's Fantastic Florentines

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated (white) sugar
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp honey
-
3/4 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup flour
-
1/3 cup coarsely chopped candied cherries
3/4 cup candied peel
1/2 slivered almonds
-
112 g chocolate (Aged P uses semi-sweet, but I use fine dark Belgian, 'cause I can.)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

2. Combine butter, sugars and honey over low heat in an ordinary (not non-stick) saucepan. When butter is melted, take pan off the heat and set aside.

3. In a bowl, thoroughly mix the ground almonds and flour.

4. Gradually stir the almond-flour mixture into the saucepan.

5. Gradually throw in the candied cherries, candied peel and almonds. Mix well.

6. Drop tablespoonfuls of dough on two non-stick cooky sheets, a dozen per sheet. Press each spoonful down with the back of a spoon so the cookies will have the right amount of crisp.

7. Bake cookies for 12 minutes, switching the trays from one rack to the other, and turning the trays around for even baking. When done, the edges will be golden brown and the middles will still be soft.

8. Cool cookies on their sheets for five minutes or so, and then put them on a rack.

9. While cookies are cooling, melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Then turn over all the cookies and paint their bottoms with chocolate. I use a spoon to do this. Aged P is enormously skillful and uses a knife to create zig-zag patterns. As yet I haven't mastered this awesome skill.

10. Let the chocolate harden before putting cookies in a tin.

If you eat too many all at once, you will get a tummy-ache. They are very expensive to buy in shops (1 quid 50 here), so if you bring them to parties, hostesses will think you are marvellous, which you are. The candied fruit screams "Christmas!" (or, perhaps, "Natale!"), and I eat them only in December, unless on a foreign-florentine tasting mission.

Beautiful Broccoli Cheese Soup

One should treat oneself with dignity and affection always, but especially when one is Single. If you're dining alone, it is best to do so from good china, with harmonious silverware and sparkling glassware.

When I was Single and living alone, my favourite cookbook was Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favourites. Because everything was made of veg, I felt comfortable making a big pot of any given recipe and then eating it over the next three or four days on my good china. Sadly, I lost my Moosewood moving from Boston to Toronto. I have no idea where it is. I was due for a new one, though, as the pages had started falling out.

The following is NOT a Moosewood recipe, but it is very good. It provides enough for two big bowls. If you are alone, divide the stock in two, use only half of the milk and flour and cheese in one portion, and refrigerate everything else until you want to eat the rest.

Beautiful Broccoli Cheese Soup

25 g (2 Tbsp) butter
1 small onion, diced
1 small clove of garlic, diced very small
big pinch white pepper
225 g (big handful) broccoli, chopped into trees
475 mL (about 2 cups) chicken broth (One chicken stock cube in 475 mL/2 cups hot water, well mixed, works fine.)
30 g (2 Tbsp) flour
175 mL (3/4 cup) milk
125 g (1/2) finely grated cheddar cheese
salt, if needed (If you use a stock cube, you probably don't need it.)

1. Cook the onion in butter until translucent.
2. Add the garlic and pepper, cook for one minute.
3. Chuck in your broccoli and stir in the chicken broth.
4. Bring to a boil, then turn down temperature and simmer until the broccoli is tender.
5. In a bowl, whisk milk into the flour. Whisk until there are no more lumps.
6. Stir milk & flour mixture into the soup until the soup thickens. The broccoli will break up, and that's fine.
7. Take the soup off the heat and pour in the cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted.
8. Taste to see if you need any salt. You might not, because of the cheese.

The measurements don't have to be exact. But make sure not to use too much flour, like I did this Thanksgiving, alas, alas, or you will end up with a thick broccoli cheese sauce instead of a nice soup. It is great on a cold winter's night. If you use veggie stock instead of chicken stock, it would make suitable Friday fare. I haven't made it this way yet, though.