Everyone's least favourite month, February is blowing true to form, rolling out huge clouds of fog like polyester wadding bursting from a badly-made soft toy. It lines the base of the valleys, seeping into your very bones as you make your way up the damp hillsides. It chaps knuckles raw and seers pain against the delicate whites of your eyes as you struggle to focus on a 'view'.
'Here comes the Sun', I mutter, reminding myself of the old Beatles song and the much-drooled-over 'Holiday' programmes on the tele, when all my childhood holidays were spent in windy Whitley Bay on the east coast, pressing for sugar cones from my Dad from 'The Rendezvous Cafe' on the promenade; carrying a sticky, sandy bucket and spade made of rainbow-swirled rubber (not like the plastic ones that came later). I wore an aqua and chocolate striped towelling bathing costume that soaked up water like a sponge and sagged glaringly as I pretended not to notice, dripping a trail that could be wee behind me. I flicked my too short boys' haircut and ran away from my embarrassment across the hard ridges of sand, which jarred my feet with every footfall ; telling myself that only sissies cry. I always was more of a tomboy in those days. I remember my life in cine film; soundless, with the accompanying whirring/flapping noise that only those who remember cine film will know instantly.
I am perfecting another soup at home for the soup empire I aspire to make. Today we will be eating a sweet potato and orange soup. The thought spurs me on though the damp tears at my lungs and makes me wheeze as I walk. I am collecting all my best soup recipes together. My notes against them are so numerous now that I am quite severe in my criticism of even my own cooking. Last week's Roasted butternut squash soup, which took ages to make, was bland and boring, and I ended up pepping it up with some smoked paprika. It has been consigned to the back end of history together with the others that fell along the way. I am copying out the recipes from here, there and everywhere in a cookery journal dedicated only to soups. It appeals to my sense of order. I have another entitled 'suppers', and another for 'sweet things and puddings': It is not very scientific, but it seems to work for me.
My bookcases of cookery books have now reached the echelons of the far landing and I am in danger of losing Lindsey Bareham and Claudia Roden to the back bedroom. You are safe, though, on the main rungs of the kitchen bookcase, which takes the place of what probably ought to be useful cupboards in this pint-sized kitchen of mine. But we all have our priorities and books and a place to read them in is more important to me than where to store the food processor (which only comes out to make pastry, I've noticed). Even my new toy, a cordless hand blender, a Christmas present from my parents (to replace the much-loved old Braun one which lasted 30 years and was died orange with the sheer quantity of pureed carrot needed to feed seven hungry babies), has had to find a place in the other room under the DVD player in some pointless niche which I have yet to excavate. This one comes with a surgeon's battery of tools and lights up and speeds up to whisk and froth and chop nuts.
Right now, I just need it to blend soups without causing a huge fuss and demanding privileges it is not yet entitled to, like a place on the limited worktop where I like to put flowers because they cheer me up; and I can always chop underneath them and hoick them up to use the microwave, whose only use appears to be in softening butter these days. I hate to make my kitchen staff redundant, but it's a very large space for an employee who only softens butter, and occasionally reheats my cold coffee when I'm feeling especially lazy. I could consign it to the top of the fridge in the porch, except that the girls would probably require a small stepladder to make their hot chocolate, and that would have to live somewhere, I suppose. I never did like the idea of a 'work triangle'. It seemed to imply to me the idea that I would choose to walk back and forth in the same lines, wearing black rubber marks into the crinkles of the kitchen tiles, like some demented weather person in one of those little wooden alpine chalets that predict the sun and rain.
Supper tonight is 'Aubergine Fesenjan'. David and I are working at being part-time vegetarians. We keep resorting to meat, usually when we are eating out, and the Sunday Roast (which seems an almost impossible mountain to get around - and one which I'm not sure we want to venture: What would we do with all those trees of brussel sprouts which he keeps inflicting on me? I have one, to show support and to try and educate my uncompromising taste buds). The resulting dish is basically slices of roast aubergine in a lovely sauce and handful of pomegranate seeds on top. We love it. It tastes good and it's Persian background takes my cooking in a different direction. Then I sit down and read in Jane Baxter and Henry Dimbleby's 'Leon - fast vegetarian' that 'people often go one of two ways with vegetables. They either try to make them more approachable - more meat-like -...or they turn to the exotic, relying on specialist ingredients and fistful of pomegranate seeds.' I feel my hand slapped for daring to leave the leeks and kale in the ground today and wishing to be transported to a warmer, sunnier place. I like the tiny jewel-like pomegranate seeds that I have only recently learnt to liberate with ease (turn half a pomegranate over a large bowl and simply bang hard on the back with a wooden spoon). It saves the 'rivers of blood' look that used to be an afternoon feature in my kitchen on these occasions.
Sometimes, when the glumness outside chases you all the way back home to toast your toes by a warm fire and sit in over-large jumpers and ridiculous large 'home-knit' donegal socks drinking some 'winter tonic', you are looking for transportation of the senses. At least until the sun does deign to shine on us once more.
Love Martha x
Aubergine Fesenjan
120g walnuts
4 medium sized aubergines
rapeseed oil
1 pomegranate (seeded)
250ml vegetable stock
2tblsp pomegranate molasses
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chilli powder
11/2tblsp honey
3 cloves of garlic
2 large red onions
Fresh coriander
Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Cut the aubergines into slices, toss with the oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast on the baking tray for 25 mins until soft.
In a frying pan put 3tblsp. of oil, heat and add the the sliced red onions. Fry for about 15 mins, stirring regularly. Add the crushed garlic and fry for another couple of minutes.
Add the honey, chilli powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper, walnuts (blitzed) and the pomegranate molasses. Stir well . Add the vegetable stock and cook for around 10 minutes until it 'comes together' nicely.
When the aubergines are cooked, pour the sauce into a serving dish, put the aubergines on top and scatter with the pomegranate seeds and fresh coriander. Serve with rice.
(Your dish will come out looking much better than mine - I used a brown-looking vegetable stock I'd made and the result makes it look a bit sludgy. However, it still tasted wonderful, and that's the main thing.
The pomegranate molasses, which I'd never heard of before, I found in Waitrose. Hopefully, your supermarket will sell it too.)
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