Kitchen Blog 10th January

Muesli and assorted bran, nuts, raisins and pumpkin seeds with milk makes up my usual breakfast. Wolfed down with orange juice in the kitchen with one eye half shut and brain in neutral. The only way to enjoy a healthy breakfast I guess. Leftover single cream in my coffee is the first of today’s guilty pleasures.

Pick up some fresh fruit from the stall on the corner of Kendall’s on my way into Salford. Juicy clementines, couple of braeburn apples, a fat and fragrant pear (get one of these if you’re passing the stall, they’re massive and on form), and a punnet of blueberries as a treat for working hard. Seems to be a lot of cheap blueberries around at the moment, mostly from Argentina. That’s a long way to come on a plane, but I’ll have this guilty pleasure since I mostly drink beer made in Manchester…

The stallholder tells me the best way to eat the blueberries is to sprinkle brown sugar over the top, add a dash of brandy, and microwave for 30 seconds. Then spoon the resulting sticky mess over vanilla ice cream. For now I’m just going to give them a rinse and pick at them as I work.

Lunch is a chicken biryani with a chapatti on the side at the Shalimar restaurant in the Northern Quarter, followed by yoghurt. I’ve almost finished sampling all of the Northern Quarter’s ‘Curry Cafes’, so there will be a review on the blog in about February I would imagine. Who will be the winner of the prestigious ‘Experimental Jifflings Best Curry Café’ award? It’s a close run contest at the moment. I might have to have second helpings.

A portion of Sunday night’s spag bol is still lingering in the fridge in a blue plastic box. Sadly not enough to justify a quick-and-dirty lasagne.

Its a good spag bol, benefiting from a couple of days resting in the fridge, although using lamb mince instead of usual beef hasn’t really made the impression I thought it would. A very tomato-y spag bol this one, with plenty of sweetness from the cream and the rather healthy slosh of marsala I recklessly chucked in when I realised there was no red wine left.

Can’t face much more pasta so I just bung the whole lot on brown bread toast. Pick out the bay leaves, then apply a clumsy dash of Tabasco to lift things a bit and clear my sinuses. Total student comfort food, eaten in front of the Simpsons… Tomorrow I’ll cook something proper.