HOW TO MAKE SUNDAY MORE SUNDAY & MY VERY EASY HUMMUS

HOW TO MAKE SUNDAY MORE SUNDAY & MY VERY EASY HUMMUS 

Let’s make Sunday more Sunday again announced my partner, Stephen aka TheSconeman this morning.  

Something we can all relate to, though few surely more than he who works every single day baking scones for Sketch of Mayfair,  Sally Clarke’s, Farmshop et al.

So we started with coffee, piping hot, with all butter croissants (M & S quite acceptable though nothing on the real deal). A £6 croissant !!! yes, I know, crazily indulgent though think of how expensive all those nuts would be to purchase for home baking. It is a wonderfully rich blend of pistachio, hazelnut, almond and crunchy vermicelli from Apple Blue in Balham, long a favourite of mine, an, presumably, their riff on that viral chocolate bar with pistachio and kataifi. It was a real treat in the garden once The Sconeman had finished baking and cleaned up and summoned me from my repose reading the latest, Spain focused, edition of Delicious. 

SO many recipes in the June Delicious I want to try. Not least Jose Pizarro’s unusual roasted and chilled tomato gazpacho with roasted grapes whose sweetness is a marked balance to the savoury depth of flavour of the chilled soup. It’s good to be reminded about marmitako, a Basque tuna fish stew, I remember so well from visiting a San Sebastián Sociedad Gastronomica, secret cooking club many years ago with my son. The rules are slightly more relaxed now, though they remain strictly invitation only with a restaurant like set up complete with all the serious culinary kit and plenty of space for entertaining. They are so idea serious home cooks who like to host their friends. The Sociedads were all male memberships until very recently. It is claimed that in the Basque matriarchal society, it is the only place men can cook!!!)

I vowed not to open my laptop before midday and, instead, picked up the Sunday Times newspaper.  Yes, we have gone back to having the bliss of having a newspaper delivered. It is not from the local newsagent sadly but a central service, and, by car.   Cue Stephen reminiscing about the paper round he did aged 13 in rural Suffolk, by foot, before schoo).

Do read the sensitive interview with a reflective Jamie Oliver where he talks about how much dyslexia held him back at school and all manner of setbacks and how he and Gordon Ramsay are friends again now (though a bit more context to their fall-out rivalry would satisfy my need for tittle-tattle.

Then a bit of social planning for the next few weeks as I cautiously rememerge after several weeks of ill-health and rest.  A decision not to make my diary rammed with commitments, even though there are so many people I am longing to see and trips to plan.

A lazy bbq too which was only a muted success. It wasn’t me who did the shopping and  I wouldn’t really recommend horse mackerel (scud) as a substitute for the mild umami, slightly sweet with a hint of briny ocean joy of super fresh mackerel.  This was just ho-hum mild, though my fresh horseradish and lemony yoghurt did liven it up.  I would have bought red mullet as an alternative.  I’ve also long wanted to cook those small violet artichokes that always look so enticing on market stalls and bought a small bunch to grill on the BBQ.  I think they needed to be parboiled as they were too chewy after ten minutes on the grill, though I liked the Ben Tish garlic, cumin, red wine vinegar and parsley dressing and yes, we poured it on straight from the pan. I’m in full super slob mode.  Shock horror, I succumbed to the already purchased bought coleslaw and potato salad too that was to save my energy STRAIGHT OUT OF THE PACKET.  I didn’t even have to dress the potatoes up as the salad already contained chives and had a good mayo.  The coleslaw was faultless too, I won’t scoff. Perhaps, I’m not such a food snob after all.

This is surely the anti-thesis of table scaping which I frankly think is utter, pretentious nonsense, the food itself and the company should be enticing enough.

My one recipe success was a spur-of-the-moment hummus.  I discovered at yesterday’s ‘British Library Food Talks Big Weekend’ (the events always run through April-May and are always worth attending) that hummus actually means chickpeas.  In a talk ‘An A-Z of Language in Food: Why do we fight when we talk about what we’re eating’  brilliantly chaired by Jenny Lau @celestialpeach_uk with Sally Abé @littlechefsally, author of ‘A Woman’s Place is in the Kitchen’ who now runs The Bull at Charlbury and Olia Hercules @Olia_Hercules, her latest book, her memoir is ‘Strong Roots’, Salma El-Sahhar, @itsmiddleeats one half of the lively Egyptian partners, Obi and Salma in work and life.

MiddleEats chose the word hummus and railed against how misunderstood it has now become and used as a more authentic sounding alternative to dip when the base is anything but chickpeas, anything from broad beans to cannellini beans to lentils.  I do agree it is misleading and lazy and that hummus is so widely known that it wouldn’t be too hard to distinguish real chickpea and tahini based hummus from the many delicious variations now found. 

https://events.bl.uk

However, I was surprised that when Salma talked about how widely hummus is enjoyed in the Middle East, she seemed to forget to mention that chickpeas are an absolute staple in Israel, very much part of the Middle East. It is certainly where I first tasted hummus - dare I admit it - as long as 40 years ago in a pita pocket with falafel and crunchy, colourful vegetable pickles.  It was about the only dish we could afford and bursting with unfamiliar flavours.  It was also what we ate most of when we crossed, completely illegally, I discovered later via the Sinai desert, into Egypt and found hummus and falafel pitta wraps are mainstay as well as kasheri in Cairo and Alexandria, which we loved visiting too. 

Digressing still further, I still believe a visit to Paris is not complete without a visit to the now wildly popular pitta kiosk L’As du Falafel on Rue de Rosiers in the heart of the former Jewish area which I first visited in the 1980s. It is still home to several excellent, traditional patisseries serving the kind of baked cheesecake my Grandma used to make

I really want to try the much more modern and wittily named Chic Pois when I am next in Paris and hope it is more than a gimmick.

Back to my hummus recipe.  I used a jar of Holland & Barrett chickpeas, good quality, relatively creamy and costly only fractionally more than a can, far less than the very good Belazu, my favourite Perello and the Bold Bean Co equally excellent chickpeas that seem to have become a cult.  I added 3 tbsp Belazu tahini, 50 ml of By Organico Real Foods Spanish extra virgin olive oil I was very kindly and conveniently sent this weekend, a good grating of fresh lemon zest and a couple of tsp of lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Then, channeling a cookery demo Yotam Ottolenghi had done during lockdown I added half a small glass of iced water as I blended in my faithful pink Magimix.  My moment of genius was to add one extra small ice-cube for a last whizz which gave the hummus a marvellous whippy lightness. Excellent with By Organico sesame breadsticks whilst The Green Egg was heating up. 

But why do I end up with crumbs and sesame seeds all down my linen dress whilst The Sconeman remains spotless?

Returning to the hummus that truly isn’t hummus, I am keen to try the gut-friendly yellow pea recipe in Arket’s cookbook among many other simple, healthy creative ideas.  I had a lunchtime salad bowl there with miso aubergine, grains, pickled vegetables and an intriguing ‘sprinkle mix’ made up of cheffy dried vinegar powder, toasted onion and roast sesame seeds mixed with seasoning, truly zingy, vibrant, textured and generous.

Another positive remnant of lockdown was becoming familiar with sea shanties.  I loved that Dr Polly Russell, @the_history_cook founder of The British Library Food Season and her team found Cornish Femmes de la Mer to talk at the Hattie Ellis chaired talk ‘Fish Lives: Women in the Fishing Industry’ with The Female Fisherman, Ashley Mullenger from North Norfolk, and maritime historian, Dr Helen Doe.  I gather @femmes-de-la-mer have an album too and take liberties in adapting traditional shanties to incorporate notorious and feisty women connected to the Cornish fish industry.   https://www.femmesdelamer.com

I confess I wasn’t quite so taken by the musical interlude by the post punk band ‘Extradition Order’ who have created a whole album in homage to M.K. Fisher as part of their US series of albums. This one is cleverly called ‘Poet of the Appetite’ a term novelist John Updike memorably used to encapsulate her brilliant, pioneering, greedy, often arrogant and fearless writing. Still their performance was a highly original way to introduce the extraordinary and brilliant celebration of celebrated food writer ‘M.F.K. Fisher: ‘Oysters, Sex & Death’ with the total thrill of Kennedy Golden, M.K.Fisher’s daughter joining live on zoom from California.

Total fan Gurdeep Loyal @gurd_loyal, whose new book ‘Flavour Heroes’ is top of my new purchase list chaired with the always wise and eloquent writer and co-editor of Vittles, and author of ‘Small Fires: an epic in the kitchen’, Rebecca May Johnson.  I love that she shared that she went on a dating site a decade ago with the alias ‘Elizabeth David’ and, so improbably,  met someone with the alias  ‘M.K. Fisher’.  Better still this is now Rebecca’s life partner and father of her child!  I hadn’t realised how tragic and marked with death the early years of M.K. Fisher’s life had been, which makes her joyful prose all the more remarkable.  Plus, to set the record straight, Kennedy explained that though M.K. Fisher is often quoted as saying she loved washing up dishes, she would never do so straight after a meal.  She would always insist on going straight there to the living room to carry on the conversations and convivialty.  What she liked to do was to wash up as a prelude to an hour or more bashing, three fingers only, on her typewriter around 4 AM in the morning.

I am counting my blessings that I booked lunch with my school friends Cathy and Claire at Town, the new Drury Lane restaurant of Stevie Parle (whose Dock Kitchen at the top of Ladbroke Grove I’d loved) long before a series of rave reviews from William Sitwell, Giles Coren, Tom Parker Bowles and Grace Dent, who, remarkably, all agreed that this is a brilliant London newcomer in such a tough climate.  Will it live up to their rave reviews. I will report back. Though I would suggest booking with alacrity. https://www.town.restaurant

PS How did the rest of make Sunday, Sunday again pan out? No trips to the shops and cooking the lamb chops with cumin and peas from Ben Tish’s ‘Moorish’ which I return to time and time again plus a leisurely plunge into the Sunday papers, plus a long siesta. TheSconeman deserves a halo for truly thoroughly cleaning the windows in the kitchen in a way they had never been cleaned before. I can’t tell you much difference it makes. Now I can admire even more of my gorgeous pink garden whilst I am working at the kitchen table this coming week. Sorted.