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green & black’s chicken mole

4 May

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The only saving grace in drastically screwing up my holiday dates and arriving in England a week early for a planned holiday with friends was the book I had ordered, with the idea of savouring it on the beach in Cornwall. Luckily, I suppose, I didn’t make it out of London before I realised my mistake. My brother made me a cup of tea – “because I understand that’s what you do in these sorts of situations” –  I cried hysterically, bought three more Eurostar tickets and went back to Paris, and to the bakery for another week.

My colleagues teased me only a little, having waved goodbye to me and my overstuffed suitcase only 24 hours previously. The book went in my work bag along with neatly rolled apron, chef jacket and trousers.  It was Anne Lamott’s latest journal, about her grandson’s birth and her trip to India, ‘Some Assembly Required.’ On the way home after work I became so lost in her words I missed my metro stop and had to walk back, blinking at the bright sunlight.

Her honest open writing, her willingness and skill in describing her vulnerability, paranoia and love always amaze me, constantly make me laugh. Searching for a quote to read to a friend, I found a good one on every page. Liked a throwaway line about spring:

‘a few cool blue skies, new grass, wildflowers and I’m in love. You’re going to fall for that old magic trick again? Oh, yeah.’

Paris has welcomed me back with a scrubbed-clean spring face. She can be such a tease, playing it cold and distant for months, then just when you think you can cope without her, she magicks up some blossoms, begs for forgiveness. And I fall for it every time.

The sunshine makes all the difference, of course. Suddenly the words are unspooling in my head again, finally my desire to cook for myself has come back, long dormant. I love cooking for friends, guests, presents – but alone, tired, grumpy? Not so much. Rather like a good night’s sleep after a week at work, everything seems shinier in the spring. People seem more attractive. Or maybe the Parisians finally have smiles on their faces as they drink beer by the canal and swing their legs over the water.

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So I come home with energy and compassion, and fall on the recipe for Chicken Mole. Inspired by another book I received from a dear friend, ‘Like Water for Chocolate’  - a Mexican tale of magical realism, emotion poured into cooking – the casserole of chicken, tomatoes, paprika and chocolate transmitted all the love and warmth I had been missing over the winter.

Simple enough – you brown the chicken, cook some onions and garlic, add tins of tomatoes and beans and the final touch of chocolate and smoky chilis or paprika. (I snuck in a roasted red pepper and a little extra chocolate as well.)  Then stick the pot in the oven for the flavours to bind and deepen for at least an hour and a half. Today I served it over a plain accompaniment of brown rice and devoured half of it standing up by the window. It tasted earthy and wholesome, not specifically of chocolate so much as a complex blend of savoury flavour.  Tomorrow I will hunt for ripe avocados and corn tortillas as the recipe suggests, and I cannot wait. I am properly hungry again. It is a good feeling.

Next week I will be on holiday again, for real. The total cost of the aborted trip twists my insides a little, and it may well rain in Cornwall. But if I can hold onto the spring feeling regardless, and listen to the words and recipes growing … if I can weave half as good a story out of it – my seemingly endless screw-ups, my relationship with this tricky city – as Lamott does, then I will be extremely grateful.

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Chicken Mole

from the Green & Black’s ‘Unwrapped’ chocolate recipe book, as inspired by Laura Esquivel’s ’Like Water for Chocolate‘ - they advise serving with avocado salad and corn tortillas, or, if for vegetarians, replacing the chicken with an extra tin of kidney beans 

should serve 4 

1 large red pepper

4 chicken legs (thigh and drumstick)

2 tbs olive oil

2 large onions

2 garlic cloves

2 smoked, dried Jalapeno chili peppers, soaked in water

OR 2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

400g tin red kidney beans

400g tin chopped tomatoes

100g dark chocolate, min 60% cocoa solids

salt

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Stab the red pepper all over with a fork and bake in a 200C oven until soft and blackened.

Brown the chicken in the olive oil in a large oven proof casserole. After a few minutes, when the chicken has a little colour, add the onions and garlic. When they are translucent, add the beans (with all the liquid in the tin), the tomatoes, 50g of the chocolate. Either chop the dried and soaked chilis and add them in along with the soaking water, or use the smoked paprika. Bring to a simmer.

By this time the pepper should be done. Lower oven temperature to 150C. Remove pepper stalk and seeds, then roughly chop it and add to pot. Cover and place in the oven for at least 90 minutes.

Skim off any fat. Taste and add the rest of chocolate if needed, as well as some salt.

strawberries and shortbread

22 Apr

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Making fun of the French is all too easy. It has become a bad habit that I wear as easily as my shapeless duffel coat. What can I say? Their typically closed-off rule-following ways make for good anecdotes.

There was the time I went to the department store BHV and needed to ask five (famously snooty) shop assistants before one would deign to point me in the right direction for a cake stand. There are the continual awkward encounters with neighbours, who have made small talk about the weather with me for two years, who have all accepted free cakes from my bakery – but will never introduce themselves. I know that the couple on the 6th floor has a cat named Carlos. They have given me flowers to thank me for said cake. But they still don’t feel obliged to share their names.

Then there is the insistence on correct grammar, a reverence for words that I totally understand but still find amusing when upside in a hot yoga class and a student takes the time and breath to correct the American instructor: it’s la cheville not le. 

My first year in Paris, my year abroad, I wanted to integrate. I actively avoided anglophones. However this led to living and working with only Italians, a pleasant and unexpected consequence. I learned how to salt pasta water (heavily) and that una forchettata (a forkful) means a good 150g portion. I practiced some French, tangentially, with friends of friends or as a stilted common language with the rare German or Polish colleague, all confused and a little annoyed to find themselves in the crossfire of Italian chatter in that most French of institutions in the very heart of the city, in the Louvre.

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The second time around, a year later, I tried again. Granted, I was living with another Italian girl, the charming flatmate. But we made an effort to meet Frenchies, joined capoeira class, made small talk at soirees. Slowly slowly though, I started meeting English-speaking friends, an American, a couple of nice Canadians. Several girls from my tiny hometown of Hereford, all escaped to France in search of adventure. And I got to be myself a little more – my voice is squeakier and much more prissy in French, whereas in English (I hope) I am funnier, more relaxed.

Maybe my frog-mocking is just self-protection: it’s hard to fit in with the French. To break the ice without asking what someone does for a living, to slip in the subjunctive like it’s no big deal, to know how the latest thoughtful and depressing movie fits into the director’s back catalogue. It’s a little like tagging along with a sophisticated older sibling, trying to keep up. Just like brothers and sisters, the French and the English seem to be endlessly in competition, always making fun of each other more or less affectionately. That’s my excuse anyway, for pandering to stereotypes, which do nonetheless have a small grain of truth in them. And they do it too; how many times have I admitted to being English only to hear an often misinformed diatribe about how terrible our food/weather/national character is. (Oh dear, I am being a bratty little sister: ‘He does it too! He started it!’)

In the end though, the fact that I am still here has to count for something. I like all of the other cliched ideas about France, that its people take art and aesthetics, fine food and wine so seriously. I have become the Parisian who wouldn’t live anywhere else, wouldn’t give up all the city’s expos and vernissages, its street theatre, but still relishes a weekend in the French countryside with its rustic charm and simple meals. I love going to market and peering at the heaping mounds of produce, asking for that one to be ripe for tonight’s supper and another for three days time. Their care and attention when it comes to food is a kind of open-house hospitality, welcoming you in for the best they have to offer. You taste the cassoulet and mi-cuit foie gras from the farm next door and you notice immediately their pride in their culinary heritage.

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All the eating is part of a larger whole, the expectation that having followed those rules, paid one’s dues – the reward is rest and relaxation. Though the two hour wine-soaked lunch is becoming less common, the French have three bank holidays in May alone (in the sunshine of course) and still make the most of their five weeks holiday a year, preferably for a long August vacation. The state is very generous with unemployment benefits – which includes free entry into museums and cultural institutions – with health insurance and with help towards paying the rent for students and those on a low wage, even for foreigners like me. Provided you fill in all the forms of course, that is the classic stumbling block. Once you have cleared that hurdle, you are free to wander the streets and markets, pretending to be French, hoping that your charming accent will go unnoticed for two more minutes.

On the subject of fresh ripe fruit from the market, the gariguette strawberries are finally in season. I rather bossily ordered a friend coming to dinner to pick me up a punnet or two for dessert “and definitely not any of those Spanish monstrosities.” Gariguettes are small and delicate and sweet, a more translucent red than the aggresively farmed ruby berries from Spain that are available all year around. These ones come out around March to June, and are extremely sensitive. They must be handled with care for they bruise easily. (Here I could make an unflattering parallel with a prissy Parisian, but I won’t.) They collapse in a puddle of juice when bitten into, releasing a sweet perfumed flavour that I had forgotten over the winter. Like having Italian sun-ripened tomatoes after months of those tough supermarket orbs, you remember when eating gariguettes what strawberries are supposed to taste like.

Though I was planned to make a fancy mousse cake with a jelly middle, iced and beribboned, in the end I left the strawberries whole and fresh in all their glory. We ate the shortbread base plain with some icing sugar, perfectly crumbly from the subtle addition of rice flour. The fruit was dipped in melted chocolate and honeyed cream. I should be promoting the extravagant cake, but really there is nothing nicer after a big meal than sharing big bowls of fruit, reaching across the table to grab at chocolate, making a pile of strawberry, shortbread and mascarpone for each bite. It was very companionable. In fact, this improvised pudding has the best of France, England and even Italy in all its basic ingredients.

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Strawberries and shortbread

technically feeds six polite people at a dinner party, but I like the shortbread so much I can eat most of it in one sitting (full disclosure, it comes from my mother’s book Seasonal Secrets)

125g butter, room temperature

50g caster sugar

125g plain flour

50g rice flour

1/2 tsp salt

zest of 1 lemon

to serve:

500g fresh ripe gariguette strawberries

more sliced fruit – kiwis or mangoes are good for colour contrast

200g dark chocolate, melted

250g mascarpone (or clotted cream)

3 tbs milk

1 tbs honey

Heat oven to 175C. Cream the butter and sugar, stir in flours, zest and salt until it just starts to come together. Line a tin with baking paper – I used a 22cm ring on a baking sheet to make  it easy to emove when baked – and press the dough firmly into it. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden and just brown around the edges. Let cool.

When ready to eat, melt the chocolate gently over a pan of simmering water. Mix the mascarpone with the milk and honey to make a smooth dipping consistency. Cut the shortbread into diamonds and dust with icing sugar. Slice any other fruit neatly, serve the strawberries as they are. Plonk everything in the middle of the table and hand your guests skewers or fondue forks, let them help themselves.

goat’s cheese, walnut and chutney tartlets

2 Aug

For a summer evening by the lake in the artificially natural Buttes-Chaumont park. Little tartlets laid out on a tea towel, shoes kicked off. A panzanella salad to go with it. Ten minutes prep time, hours to lie on the grass.

Really just a mouthful of goat’s cheese, no frills. Make sure to use a rich, sticky-sweet chutney – mine was date and ginger.

Goat’s cheese, walnut and chutney tartlets

makes 12 bite sized tartlets

1 pack puff pastry (220g or so)

180g log of goat’s cheese

50g walnuts, broken into pieces

3 tbsp favourite chutney

2 eggs

1 tbsp milk

pepper

Preheat oven to 200C.

Roll out the puff pastry as thin as you can. Stamp out 12 circles with a large glass. Gently line a 12 hole cupcake tray with the pastry. Add 1/2 tsp of chutney to each, top with a few walnut pieces and a fat slice of goat’s cheese. Whisk the eggs with the milk and a bit of pepper, pour just a little over each tart. Enough to stick it all together, not as much as for a quiche. Bake for 10 minutes or so, until the pastry is puffed and brown, the cheese melted.

roquefort and artichoke crostini and/or tagliatelle

10 Jun

What could possess me to invite seven Italians over and serve them pasta?

I should know better: I always cede the pasta cooking to the charming Italian flatmate. I make soup and muffins and quiche, but stand back for the all-important question of al dente.

But I really wanted to learn how make pasta like a nonna. And I openly want to be a member of their loud ebulliant tribe. So I weighed the flour and counted the eggs, put the water on to boil. Made some crostini in case the pasta took ages.

When they arrived, poor things, they were hustled into the kitchen a few at a time to prod the dough, add a little water, catch the pasta sheets as they rolled through the machine. And I learned a few things after last time: that the ball of dough should be firm enough not to stick to the counter, that it should rest a little before rolling. That you can sprinkle the tagliatelle with flour and stack them without worrying about sticking, you don’t have to hang them over all the cupboard doors as my mum used to.

We had made an olive and tomato sauce that was used up on the first go-round. Still hungry but more skilled, we rolled some extra pasta. In place of a sauce, we used the leftover crostini topping: mashed roquefort, a spoonful of mascarpone, a tin of artichoke hearts, diced, and a squeeze of lemon. Keep a bowl of it in the fridge for dips, for sandwiches and crostini. And if you feel like pasta, just loosen the mix with a splash of pasta water. Extra pepper, parmesan for sprinkling and that’s it.

The more you learn about Italian food, the more you learn that there is no recipe. No weight, only handfuls, pinches. (It should be a good fistful of salt in the pasta water, by the way!) No “knead for exactly 6 minutes”, only until it’s smooth.

Practice, practice, practice. Plus a large troop of Italians and a bowl of roast chickpeas to stop them from going hungry while they cut infinite strands of tagliatelle.

green kedgeree

20 May


This is an aggressively green supper. Squeaky green, even – stuffed with leeks and green peas. (I’m a little obsessed with the tiny round things lately, just sauteed straight from the freezer with improbable amounts of bacon. They fulfil the mindless quality of popcorn for a TV dinner.)

This, this is proper food. A little wild rice, some smoked fish for brainpower with chopped hardboiled eggs on top. This is English food, bastardised of course, what some might call tea.  If you already have boiled eggs and cooked rice in the fridge, it’ll take just a few minutes. If not, half an hour. Either way, it’ll feel like someone is taking care of you – making sure you get your greens and proteins.

Green Kedgeree

for 2, but double the rice if you are really hungry

a drizzle of olive oil

a pinch of curry powder

1 large leek

1 1/2 cups cooked rice (a mix of basmati and wild rice is delicious)

2 cups frozen peas (straight from the freezer)

2 small fillets of smoked fish (haddock is tradition, mackerel is good too)

2 hard boiled eggs

a squeeze of lemon

salt and pepper

In a large frying pan on medium heat, drizzle some olive oil and a pinch of curry powder, not much at all. Cut leek down the centre, almost to the base. Wash in cold water, splaying out the leaves to get at the dirt. Cut into rounds. Cook in olive oil for a few minutes.

Add rice and peas and 2 tablespoons water. Cover and let the peas just turn bright green. Separate the fish fillets into big flakes, gently stir into rice along with a squeeze of lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Peel eggs and quarter lengthways. Serve arranged nicely on top of each plate, a wedge of lemon on the side.

apple cider chicken

16 May

This is the chicken I make when I need you to correct my homework.

When I need to say sorry.

When I need to prove that English people can cook after all.

When I feel a sneaking nostalgia for the apple trees in Hereford.

This is the chicken I make when I want to win you over.

A base of bacon and onions, a generous glass of cider (and one for the cook), stolen sprigs of rosemary and a long slow simmer. Then a dash of mustard, a bit of cream and some apple slices fried in butter.

This is good, simple chicken. I hope you like it.

Apple cider chicken

serves 4 – adapted from Diana Henry’s Roast Figs, Sugar Snow

4 large chicken legs and thighs

a little olive oil

1 small onion / 2 shallots

100g bacon or lardons

175ml cider

2 sprigs rosemary

2 crisp apples (braeburns or fujis are good)

1-2 tbs butter

1-2 tsp mustard

100ml cream

salt and pepper to taste

Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large frying pan, When very hot, add the chicken thighs. They should sizzle. Cook a few minutes on each side, until they start to brown. Remove from pan.

In the same pan, fry the bacon and onions together until crisp and translucent, respectively. Nestle the chicken thighs on top with the rosemary, tip in the cider. Cover and turn down to a low heat to simmer for half an hour so.

Core the apples and slice into eight fat pieces. Heat some butter in a smaller pan and cook the apples until golden.

When the chicken is cooked through, the meat just falling off the leg bone, stir in the cream, mustard, salt and pepper and let simmer for five minutes to combine.

Stir in the apples at the last minute. Serve with wild rice to soak up the delicious rich sauce.

lemon surprise pudding

15 Jan

I like citrus fruit, obviously. Just recently I sat down to breakfast with grapefruit juice, grapefruit cake and slices of fresh grapefruit. Then there was the lemon curd, the orange curd, the lemon and almond creme fraiche dip. Lemon drizzle cake. Orange and almond cakelets. I like the bitter twist, the masochistic pleasure that demands just one. more. bite.

The waiter politely announced, just as we slid into our seats, that the two-lemon soufflé would have to be ordered straightaway, should we want it. I did. He did. (Already, a restaurant that puts dessert first makes a good impression on me.)

Past the miniature parsley butter cannelés, past the regal lobster salad dotted with mango puree, past the rack of lamb carefully balanced over garlic cabbage, a crisp flake of chickpea socca just so, I thought I was full. Then they bullied us into a cheese plate. Then, finally, the perfectly circular soufflés appeared.

One large ramekin, the pastel soufflé floating a good two centimetres above the edge, alongside a little dish of fromage blanc sorbet adorned with a translucent wisp of candied lemon. So simple, so beautiful. It seemed a shame to demolish it, but we did.  The “two lemons” turned out to be lemon and lime. The sorbet provided a neat foil to the soufflé, cold and clear. (I was informed that this  followed the medieval tradition of balancing ‘humours’ for a healthy body: hot with cold, humid with dry.)

It reminded me of Granny’s lemon pudding (and the infamous occasion wherein I had seven helpings and Granny none) with its same light citrus perfume, delicate cloud-like sponge.

We asked a lot of questions, wondering if the chef used a kind of soufflé hat to make it rise so neatly – but the secret turned out to be a restaurant oven, precise timing and unning a fingernail around the edge of the dish before baking. We left, intrigued, more than elegantly full.

While it may take some time to recreate the most beautiful dessert I have ever had the pleasure to destroy, I did find a recipe for Granny’s lemon pudding. A little like a simple soufflé, but it has a fluffy top and a liquid lemon sauce hidden underneath. But it suffers from no pressure to be pretty – the grandchildren don’t mind. Seven helpings is proof enough, no?

Lemon Surprise Pudding

(adapted from Simon Hopkinson, serves 4 people or 1 grandchild)

50g butter, soft

1 lemon, zest and juice

90g caster sugar

2 eggs, separated

15g plain flour

300ml milk

Heat oven to 180c. Butter and flour a large pudding dish or 4 small ramekins.

Beat the egg whites until stiff. In a separate bowl, cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest to a fluffy consistency. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time. Add half the flour, half the milk, then repeat. Finally add the lemon juice and carefully fold in egg whites. Tip into dish or ramekins, and bake for 45 minutes until golden and springy. You should get a fluffy sponge with a rich lemon sauce underneath.

To serve: make an approximation of fromage blanc sorbet by mixing the juice of half a grapefruit with 250ml fromage blanc (or yoghurt if you prefer) and icing sugar to taste. Freeze until almost solid (but not a block of ice), then blend to a smooth sorbet texture. Serve immediately in little shot glasses.

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colourful and comforting curry – red beans, orange carrots and purple prunes

26 Nov

“Like the guy on the 50th floor? I’m not touching anything…not touching anything…”

Our professor tried quoting the cult film, La Haine, this morning. But he got it spectacularly wrong. The boys that fancy themselves a little street – our own disaffected baker youth – weren’t having any of it.

Jusqu’ ici tout va bien. L’important c’est pas la chute, c’est l’aterrissage.

Until you land, it doesn’t hurt to fall. Just keep telling yourself, everything’s fine. Maybe you won’t hit the floor.

Everything is fine, for the moment. Today we rolled croissants and iced a cake with shiny coffee buttercream. The cake – a mocha – was also soaked in coffee syrup, made with 20% rum. In the old days hygiene was poor and refrigeration non-existent so they killed germs with copious amounts of alcohol.

It was the most alcohol I have seen in weeks, apart from a couple caipirihnas one samba night. (Not conducive to getting up at 5.37 a.m.)

Someone very wise told me today that living is the hardest thing you can do. And that there is no such thing as growing up. That was somehow very reassuring. Sometimes I feel like this cartoon – excellent at life for a few days until I hit the ground.

But we are all muddling along – me, the sardonic professor who mutters putain, fais chier (literally, “whore, you make me shit”) under his breath each lesson; the cool kids in class who still blush when they are yelled at.

This is the food I crave at the end of this long day, my soul food. Something that does not require shopping – only tins, frozen bits and pieces and whatever neglected vegetables are languishing in the fridge.

A vegetable curry, of which I have probably already regaled you. This one is even more granny-like than usual: it’s got prunes in it. The most important thing is getting the right balance of colour and texture, sweet and silky with a dash of spice. I keep a block of coconut milk in the freezer and just break off a little each time. Please note: you can replace the beans with chickpeas, the aubergine with red pepper, the prunes with apricots. Take it as a start. And know that it only takes half an hour to make it into your mouth.

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Colourful, comforting curry

Dice one large aubergine and some carrots. Roast at 200C with lots of salt pepper and olive oil until soft  in the middle, crisp on the edge.

Meanwhile, in a deep saucepan, fry a clove or two of garlic with olive oil and a teaspoon of curry paste. (Madras is good for the strong-hearted.) Just as it starts to go brown and dry, tip in a tin of tomatoes (or fresh are fine). Add a splash of water and let it bubble happily until the tomatoes are sticky and sweet. Add a pinch of sugar to enhance.

When your vegetables are ready, stir into the tomato mix along with: a tin of red kidney beans, a handful of pitted prunes and a splash of coconut milk (I would guess 100-150g). Liberally apply more spices – concentrated tamarind is good for sour depth as is mango powder. Cumin for that extra curry taste. More chili. Pepper and salt.

For extra class, serve with bulghur wheat made with a handful of raisins and hazelnuts. Sprinkle with the frozen coriander you keep in the freezer. (Who manages to keep herbs alive? Really?)

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party food : starry devilled eggs and prunes in prosciutto

11 Nov

Food is better when it’s mini. The New York Times says so, it must be true.

Party food is instantly better when its mini, preferably on a stick. Like pineapple and cheese cubes. Anyone remember that? Instant edible kitsch. Failing the pointy stick, a cutesy star shape will do.

So I bring you, soft prunes wrapped in crisp salty prosciutto (on sticks) and starry starry devilled eggs with a touch of paprika.

Prunes in prosciutto

Make sure you buy the pitted prunes. Wrap each one in a strip of cured ham (prosciutto, jambon de bayonne, whatever). Spear with a toothpick. Continue until bored. Bake them on a sheet of foil for 8-10 minutes at 180C so the ham is nice and crisp.

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Devilled eggs

Boil lots of eggs for ten minutes. Leave to cool in a bowl of (ice) cold water. Peel. Cut zigzags around the middle and gently pull in half. (I may have a magic machine from the 80s that does this for me.) Take a sliver off the bottom so the egg halves will sit up straight.

Gently scoop out the yolks and mash in a bowl. Add yoghurt and olive oil to get a smooth but firm consistency. Like virtuous peanut butter.

Add salt, lots of pepper, some paprika and a dash of chili if you like it hot. Pipe the mixture back into the starry egg white cups. Serve just so, alternatively add a sprig of parsley, a sprinkle of seeds or even fried capers.

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It’s all in the presentation people! Display with artfully arranged baby tomatoes and more sprigs.

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toulouse sausage with roast figs, tomato and fennel seeds

30 Oct

Radishes and maple popcorn do not make a proper supper. Neither does pull-apart cinnamon bread doused in butter and sugar. Delicious; but inappropriate.

However every now and then my inner adult comes out to play. (I think normally I just have an outer child, one that constantly demands bubbles.)  Sometimes I put on a pretty dress and gold earrings and set the table neatly, with a folded napkin and just one wine glass. Although I do share that illicit feeling described in this funny Party of One podcast. Drinking alone, even with food, is odd.

One day last week, a week of smoothies and toast, I sat down to a one-person dinner party. Then jumped up again to light a candle.

Quite apart from the curious joy of my own company, of the shreds of jazz gently interrupting, this was so, so good. Coarse meaty sausages coiled around tomatoes bursting with juice. On top, sweet black figs made even more honey-rich by a quick roasting. Finally, olive oil, half-moon slivers of red onion and a scatter of fennel seeds to add a finishing touch worthy of a pretentious bistro.

Twenty minutes in the oven, time for a lazy shower, done. Every mouthful was a smug acknowledgment of my own invention, recognition that I didn’t have to share.

Don’t make this for someone else. Make it for yourself. Eat it in pyjamas or completely naked. Whatever is the most like you, your most grown-up and fickle you. (Next week it will be too late, you will be a spoiled child again.)

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Toulouse sausages with roast figs, tomato and fennel seeds

serves just one

Delicious chunky sausages, as many as you like

One fat juicy tomato

At least six black figs

Half a red onion

A pinch of fennel seeds

salt and pepper

Heat the oven to hot. Say 200C. On a baking tray (maybe with tinfoil for less washing up) make a loose circle with your sausages. Halve the tomato and nestle the halves in the circle. Cut the figs in half as well, slice the onion thinly and scatter both over the top. Finish with a generous slug of olive oil, salt, pepper and fennel seeds.

Bake for about twenty minutes until the sausages are cooked through and the tomato is nicely roasted. Try to resist eating directly out of the pan.

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