My workshop in Sicily

when

may 1 may 6 2017

what:

A week spent sketching in the Sicilian hills, the better to take in all the beauty and inspiration.

We will cook and we will walk, and travel and eat and sit around in a beautiful garden. And all the time we will be keeping a sketchbook. Because everybody can draw, even if they think they can't. I will be there to nudge and encourage and advise, and it doesn't matter if you are a professional illustrator (like me) or somebody whose last drawing was handed in at the end of the 8th grade.

Sketching is a wonderful way to make the most of travel. It is a way to stay in the moment, to look around, to absorb, to sit still and really see what is in front of you. Call it mindfulness or call it therapy or just plain pottering around, it feels good to sketch. We will not concentrate on the result but on the process,  because it doesn't matter how each individual drawing turns out.  This will be just plain fun.

Who:

Ximena Maier is a Spanish illustrator. She works with the main publishing houses and magazines in Spain, both in children's and general books, including many on food. In 2006 she began "Lobstersquad, a food blog with drawings".

She is passionate about sketching and is often to be seen insisting that everyone around her take up pencil and paper too, and have a go.

Where:

At the Anna Tasca Lanza Cookery School

Cooking for crowds

My cookbook collection grows. When we moved into this flat four years ago, I brought with me a desert island stash. The bare minimum of books I needed for comfort and sustenance. Yes, you can look up the quantities for anything you want on the web, and this blog serves as my own aide memoire. But curling up with a cookbook is different. And then of course I bought a few, and then a few more, and there were so many finds at charity shops and book fairs, and that pesky free super-saver delivery. And they pile up. Literally. They are all over the house. And that’s all right. Right?

I used to justify a cookbook if I used three recipes. Then I whittled it down to one. Now I’m fine if I find a sensible tip, and fine, too, if I just enjoy reading it.  The right kind of cookbook gives you a window into other lives, like any other good book. I like the kind of books that make me feel as if I’ve been taken to somebody’s house, allowed to roam the kitchen, open the cupboards, rummage in the drawers, see the photos on the fridge, lift the lid on what’s cooking. And this I like to gather from the text, not from the photos. Most of my favourite cookbooks have no pictures, maybe a few elegant black and white illustrations. 

Right now, in order to qualify for staying on my bookshelves, I mostly have to like the author, and everything follows from there, because a likeable author will make me like the food in the book, and nudge me into trying something new, or making something old again.

Recently I was given a copy of Cooking for crowds, by Merry White, the 40th anniversary edition of the 70’s original. And it ticks all the boxes. The recipes look great, but mostly the author sounds like somebody I’d love to have dinner with. There are no photos, which is more than fine, as it has lots of sweet black and white drawings by Edward Koren.

As with all cookbooks, there is more than a touch of the aspirational. In this case, be the sort of (supercool) person who has 50 guests and is ready to cook for them. Wouldn’t you love to be that person? Not only do you have fifty people around, but you are unflappable enough to serve them big, generous bowls of homstyle, yet sophisticated fare. And if you burn the borscht? Call it Smoked Borscht.

It’s a wonderful book for building confidence. Cooking for crowds, White insists, is not more difficult, just more time consuming, so there’s no excuse. Even better, if you do not have to, or want, to cook for fifty, the recipes come with different quantities. For 5o, for 25, for 12, for 6. See how easy 6 sounds? Anyone intimidated by cooking for 6 will have to admit it’s not that big a deal, compared with lugging sacks of potatoes that will feed 50.

A sandwich

You know how sometimes you have to call a friend, and you keep putting it off, for good reasons, then bad reasons, then no reasons other than the thing is spiralling out of control, and you end up resenting this person you’re not calling? So it was with lobstersquad. I was looking for something I really wanted to blog about, and not really finding it, but then, reading the Wednesday Chef, I was led to a flummoxing article.

And then I thought, you know what, I might as well write something after all.

That post, which you can read here if you like, is about someone who has decided not to cook because she forgot to put salt in some galette she was making. The galette came out fine, but it was not the galette to end all galettes, and she had failed to make all her friends wither away in envy of her Instagram feed, and so she’s going to live on olives and prosciutto for ever and ever amen.

I can’t even begin on how crazy I find that. Instead, I will tell you about the lunch I made on Saturday. I, too, had decided not to cook, but just for that morning. But because I am the boy scout of fridge maintenance, and have become, now that I live in the North Pole, an avocado curator, I knew that a world class sandwich was within reach.

First I had to go to the shop and buy some fresh bread. Not mindblowing artisanal bread, of course. Supermarket mini ciabattas, of the sort that look a bit rubbery but come to life with a couple of minutes under the grill.

That, filled with thinly sliced leftover steak, wedges of avocado, pickled cucumber, a squirt of lemon and a dash of hot sauce, was all. A bag of salad was emptied onto a bowl, and dressed with the last of a bottle of vinaigrette I make in batches.

It was very quick, it was beautiful, and it made perfect sense, and if it wasn’t cooking, it wasn’t turning my back on it, either.

So there you are. 

A summer salad

You hear so much about  summer cooking, but over time,I’ve come to see that summer is as summer does. In Scotland, you can fire up the oven to cook aubergines and take a hamper full of porra on a picnic. And sit in a cold drizzle while you dip prawn crackers, and wonder, what, exactly, you were thinking about.

But now I’m in Madrid, and summer in Madrid is not kidding around. There is no turning on of ovens, and stoves, as little as possible, thank you. Gazpacho, wether real or Alvalle, is consumed by the gallon. Fruit is delicious and plentiful and so cheap it leaves me aghast, used as I am by now to the highway robbery up north. There are all sorts of lovely tins. And if you want anything else, there are plenty of bars and restaurants. 

So there you are. Where there is summer, there is no cooking, and vice versa.

Sometimes I go beyond slicing a few of the beautiful tomatoes. Here’s a salad I like. It’s the cocarrois insides salad, minus the pimentón, and it goes like this:

Chop some cauliflower, small, into bits the size of a chickpea. A lot of the florets will crumble into smaller pieces, which is a good thing.

Chop spring onions, very small. In Spain spring onions are huge, unwieldy things, and only the white bit is eaten, but you go ahead and use the green if it’s dainty enough.

Now dice a tomato or two, and add some chopped flat leaf parsley. You want a good mix of color.

Dress with salt, olive oil and vinegar. 

(The illustration is from a t-shirt I've done for Tío Pepe)

Spring

I won't bore you with all the million reasons that have kept me from blogging. It was nothing bad, just a classic case of freelancer's "all the buses coming at the same time" kind of thing. Plus, you know, Life.

So anyway. Here's to spring, which seems to be around the corner, with buds and flowers and birds building nests and all those pretty things, and a thing I've discovered. If you spread toast with peanut butter and honey, it tastes just like the praline paste nutellaey-thing they have in Le Pain Quotidien. Which is handy, seeing as how there is no LPQ in Aberdeen, and how you save approximately millions of pennies using this mix instead of the other stuff.

So all thanks to my son Pepe, who would be happy to live exclusively on this, dunked in milk.

And let's hope once I meet all the lots and lots of deadlines pending over my head, I'll get back to blogging.

A lazy post

Here's the thing. I have a million things to do, and it's cold and grey and gloomy and it's January and that mostly sucks. And soup makes it better. And I admire all those bloggers who write three new recipes a week, but the thing is, I make the same soups all time. More or less. They are never exactly the same. I might use sweet potato instead of carrot in a lentil soup, or add a spoonful of miso to some borscht, but that would not justify my calling something "Miso Borscht".
So I'm just going to link to the tag "soup" and you can browse it because, really, there is some very good stuff there.

Holidays

Despensa, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Enjoying our time with friends and family, of course. But the food...oh, the food. The constant parade of fantastic things I would never in a million years cook myself, the occasional walk in the olive groves to work up an appetite, lounging in the sunshine with a glass oloroso, and all those dolce far niente things.
Happy New Year, everyone.

Merry Christmas, everyone

I love Christmas Eve. It's the one day of the year when I can embrace my kitchen geekiness. Food crazies are in the mainstream for a day, so, rejoice!
There is a lot going on today. We stuffed our bird yesterday. It had apparently been deboned with a sledgehammer and had to be sown with extra care. For the first time my daughter took part in the proceedings, pointing out where feathers had to be pulled out, and cutting the thread. We made a pot of stock, for the gravy, and in case anyone wants a cup of broth at some point.
I also made jelly with some tangerines my father brought, sent from Valencia and picked that very morning.
This morning it's been custard, to top the jelly, and two batches of the pearl (onion) jam. Done in a bit sautee pan this time and much better for it.
Dried chestnuts have been simmered in syrup. Apples were supposed to be made into sauce but I forgot about them and they are now caramelized (ahem).
We only have to roast the bird and then the potatoes. There is a jar of goose fat waiting.
And because the kitchen is run over, lunch is every man for himself. Anyone not going out for tapas can find ham hock rillettes in the fridge, made last Sunday.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some cañas to catch up on.
I hope you have a lovely holiday, rain or no rain.

Chicken skin

Some months ago I wrote about the contents of my freezer, listing among them chicken skins. Someone asked me in the comments if they were for my cats. I felt too sheepish to answer. The truth is, I don't have any cats, and if I did, I would certainly not share the chicken skin with them. I could have shouted it out from the rooftops, though, because it seems chicken skin is The New Bacon.

Cooked chicken skin can be flabby, slippery and rather gross. Even if you take care to brown your chicken pieces, after braising the whole thing goes soft, and what's the point of that? I don't usually bother to brown anything, anyway. And please, don't talk to me about Maillard reaction. Bla bla bla whatever. 

I cook chicken without the skin, at least for everyday chicken things like rice or soups or a sandwich. But because I now live the suburban life of the supermarket chicken thigh package, I have had to learn how to deal with the skin myself. A deft pull and you have your skinless thigh. A few inept wiggles and cuts and it is now boneless. 

The meat for whatever dish I'm making, the bones for stock, and the skin? It pains me to say that I used to toss it. No longer. 

Now the skin goes, salted and cut into small strips, into a non-stick pan on a low flame. And if you have one of those things that look like the child of a strainer and a ping-pong paddle, put it over.

Leave it on its own while you make whatever else you're making. It starts to change colour, spitting a little, shrivelling and crisping and after a few more minutes and a bit of turning becomes crunchy and golden and irresistible. Properly irresistible. It is the most delicious thing, and I can't think of any chicken dish it doesn't improve. Sandwiches, soups, noodles, rice, anything, really. 

If you don't want to use it right away you can leave it in the fridge, and use it to enliven leftovers. My favourites: crisp some to crumble over soups of the heartier variety, like black beans. 

Let them cook til golden and use the rendered fat to cook fried rice, or to make a hash with cooked potatoes, or for the most heavenly ropa vieja.

Add them to poached chicken for  the whole foods, beak-to-tail answer to the Club Sandwich.

You can think of it as kosher chicharrones and serve it as a snack, but that is something I have never got round to. To me, they are simply a very handy way to make sure that I have the best of both worlds, crisp chicken skin and juicy, flavourful meat.

A review of Puro Fairtrade Coffee

Disclaimer: I have never in my life written a review, and it's been keeping me awake and away from the blog. But I said I would so now I have to write a coffee review.

Well. Not "have to" so much as "have to". I mean, I want to do it, but it's given me a bad case of blogger's block, and if I don't get it out soon it's going to dry up lobstersquad completely. Not that anyone would care, but still.

The thing is, a couple of months ago (!) I received a sweet email from someone who not only gave me a really good recipe for cabbage salad but also offered to send me some samples of Puro Fairtrade coffee to review.
And I blithely said "yes".  Like I had any idea how.

And have I enjoyed it? Of course I have. Of course. It really is lovely coffee. Fairtrade is really the only quality that I can't ruin with my coffee making methods, which are on the rough and ready side. The whole Puro coffee story is wonderful, and you can check it out on this video, which tells you the whole story much better than I could.

The best news in all this? Puro Fairtrade coffee only sells to coffee shops and other professional outlets. So it's not up to me (or you?) to ruin a good cup . I have recently found that a small café in my neighbourhood serves it, so I can get my fix in a much more convenient and delicious way.

I wish I could make an informed critique of the differences between the different coffees I received. The thing is, I like coffee very well, but I tend to think of it the Spanish way. For us "un café" is as much about the social occasion as about the drink. You can meet friends "for coffee" and end up drinking Coca-Cola, orange juice or hot chocolate, and nobody is a bit surprised. And at home I usually drink tea. So it isn´t up to me to detect how Puro Organic, with its 100% Arabica content, has a touch of citrus. I have never, ever, not once, detected a touch of citrus in anything other than oranges and lemons. Sad, but true. (Are you thinking about pearls and swine by now? I'm not surprised)
Likewise, Puro Fuerte, is a dark roast and makes me think that Puro Noble  is "medium" in this whole new universe. Like Tall Grande and Venti, except, of course, NOT, because in every way superior to that chainy mermaidy stuff.

There was also a sachet of hot chocolate that my children pronounced top notch. They are actually conoisseurs and can tell Cola-Cao from Nesquik a mile away. Perhaps they should have done the whole review?

So there you are. Watch the video, browse Puro Fairtrade Coffee, save the rainforest, see if you can find a place nearby that serves it because it really is good in every possible way.
And if you're really good and I get permission one day I'll post the recipe for the cabbage salad.

October holidays

Brits are different from every else. They love to make a point of this in every possible way and so here we are, with a two week school holiday in October. It is mysterious and not all that convenient, but on the other hand, it's a holiday, so let's not complain.

I'll be flying home to Madrid, of course. And I'm already daydreaming about all the things I want to eat there. I won't manage them all, but I will try. Having the kids along will be a great excuse, because it's all a part of their cultural education, see?

Here are a few, in no particular order:

Churros from the café in Santa Engracia.

Mountains of ice cream from La Romana. Like, loads. Every day.

Croquetas, salmorejo, tortilla at La Ardosa.

The pulled noodle soup in Cardenal Cisneros

Almost anything from Fide, but to start with, smoked sardines, boquerones, mojama.

The empanadillas in front of the Prado.

A good old bocata de calamares is never a good idea but looks like it.

The tortilla from the bar next door to the Iglesia metro stop.

Pinchos and champagne at Cuenllas.

The puntillitas at Plaza de Opera. And on the way back, get some of that great lewerwürst from calle Arenal.

Heaps of the mustard noodles and the aubergines at Buen Gusto.

Perhaps the Armando. Maybe. We'll see.

Camporeal olives. Salchichón de Vic. Picos de Antequera. Picnicking if at all possible.

Roast tomatoes, mangos, avocados, greengages if I'm lucky and they're still around.

Porra, because tomatoes right now are begging for it.

Empanada gallega, which I will make from the lots of tins nobody bothers with at my parents' after they've eaten the sardines and the tuna.

A Donoso burger.

Try the new Garriga on López de Hoyos.

Bread from Viena Lacrem.

Lots of cañas, of course (let's leave the kids home for that. Likewise, the Gin and tonic sampling).

Lemon meringue tarts from Embassy. 

That insane eggy airy thing from La Duquesita I tried last time whose name I can't remember.

Sushi.

Pancakes from Vip's. 

Also, dare I say, a relaxing cup of coffee in la Plaza Mayor? 

Ginger scallion sauce, again.

I wrote this post back in the summer of 2010. I basically hated that whole summer but this ginger scallion sauce is one of the few good things I remember from back then.

I still think it's pretty great, and make it often. A bit after reading Francis Lam's article, I saw a similar recipe in the  Momofuku cookbook. It's even simpler, just spring onion and ginger and salt and oil, with a small dash of Sherry vinegar. It's good, but I prefer the taste of cooked spring onion. I also find that it's so moreish that if I make a whole big batch that is supposed to keep in the fridge, it disappears in a single meal. And that's a lot of oil for a single meal. 

So here's what I do now. I cut up a few spring onions, just the green bits, until I have what I need. I chop or grate some ginger. Put both in a mug with some salt, cover with vegetable oil, not even enough to cover. And give it a minute in the microwave.

This is very fast, I don't need to bring out the machinery, there is no bubbling oil, and the sauce is still terrific. Have it on plain Chinese egg noodles, with a splash of hoisin sauce, as David Chang says in the book, or on anything, really. Best-fast-food-EVER. 

(Choice of illustration entirely random, a page I rather like from my current sketchbook)

Back to school

Late summer has hit me hard this year. Three books to finish on the same deadline, and my daughter starting school. With a method they use here in the UK whereby the parent spends almost as much time at the school as the child, carefully letting them go in such easy stages that the wee one will have no trauma whatsoever. The mother, of course, is sticking straws in her hair by that point. 

Still, that's over. And thanks to those lovely dinner ladies, you will not be having to endure me banging on about lunch boxes. We'll leave that to Amanda Hesser and her science fiction kids.

Thank goodness for the freezer, then. Full of good stuff, it gets you through anything, because even if you're making grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, cooking some frozen leaf spinach slowly with a bit of butter and garlic cumin and a few raisins makes it look like a proper meal. Which it is.

So there you go. Keep it full of spinach, green beans, peas, sweet corn, salmon, sausages, stock and of course ice cream, and you can take whatever editors and schools throw at you.  

Spiced peanuts

I am well aware that this post will sound barking mad to many people. The idea of tinkering with a bag of peanuts, when it's so delicious on its own, and when there are so many flavoured versions out there, is plain loony. I know. I see people who wear makeup to the gym with that horrified fascination. But what can I say? This is much better than anything you can buy, and it takes about three seconds to do. You don't have to turn on the oven, so it's quick, and summer-friendly. It also costs a fraction of the price on fancy flavoured peanuts, which is the kind of thing that makes me feel clever. That's who I am. Let it go.

So, heat a basic elemental bag of salted peanuts (or almonds, cashews, whatever). 

Heat a frying pan that will hold them comfortably. Now add a spoonful of garam masala. This is to taste, of course, and depends on how many peanuts there are. Suit yourself. When it smells toasty, add the peanuts, toss them until they're hot, and serve them in a pretty bowl. Everybody loves them, and they are impressive way beyond the effort they take. 

You can also try different spices. A pimentón/rosemary/garlic combo is great. Just add them to the hot peanuts and toss until you can smell them. That way they won't burn. A bit of sugar at the end gives a nice little touch, although it can catch and become caramel. Not that it's a problem, just don't bite into it if it's hot.

Cold beer is a very good thing with them. Or Sherry, of course.

Dolce far niente cooking

This post can be considered to close a trilogy dedicated to summer cooking.

There is non-cooking, almost non-cooking, and then there is get-out-of-jail-free-card cooking. By which I mean, tin opener cooking, or twist of the wrist cooking, which is, in fact, not doing anything cooking. Dolce far niente.

The stuff in your store cupboard. The special stuff that you buy on holiday or in that cute, expensive deli, and then don't use because it's, you know, special. And you like the look of those labels, sitting so prettily next to the rice and the garbanzos, and like to think they make your larder look like Elizabeth David's.

This is the time to go for them. Toast bread, slice tomatoes, open tin, and there you are, dinner.

I now have a box that is super extra special and that I really am rationing like a castaway. It came all the way from Sicily, from Fabrizia Lanza (you know her from this earlier post, and this one, and this one), and is chock full of gorgeous stuff. Dried tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, dried herbs, tangerine jam, all done with produce from the kitchen garden at the school. I did the drawings on the labels, so there's an element of shameless self promotion, but not much. This, like the best Italian cooking, is all about the ingredients.

I could only wish that it was still hot enough to warrant that kind of lazy cooking. I fear Scotland may be lapsing into its usual weather. Hearty soups are only around the corner. Sigh. Let's have some of that Sicilian sunshine in a jar, then.

Fresh and quick tomato sauce

Another recipe for tomato sauce. Well, I'm sorry, but there it is. They're not all the same. And while the jammy, concentrated, dark and savoury one I've grown up with is great, sometimes it won't do. It takes too long to cook down, and it tastes too strong for some things. 

This one, on the other hand, is fresh and summery. It tastes of tomatoes. And it is made with tomatoes that come from a tin. I stress this because I just don't understand when recipes insist on "the freshest, ripest heirloom tomatoes". The best use I have for those, provided I can find them, is to slice them and eat them just like that, with a bit of salt and olive oil. Silly food writers.

This is a sauce that you can make in the middle of a blizzard at the top of a mountain, and it takes all of five or six minutes to make, so it's perfect for eating with fresh pasta, or for topping shop bought pizza bases. It keeps for days in the fridge and freezes well. It's a friendly little thing, basically, and good to know.

So. Take your largest non-stick frying pan and put it on the hob with a generous splash of olive oil. Or mix some normal vegetable oil and a bit of good extra virgin. No one will know, except your wallet.

While that heats up, open two tins of whole plum tomatoes (and this is the moment when you'll be glad you bought Spanish or Italian tins, because they are easier to open).

Take out the tomatoes, careful to not spill their juice, and put them in a blender with a good pinch of salt. Blitz. Texture, to your liking; I go for a velvety passata, but chunky is lovely too.

Add oregano to the hot oil, or garlic if you like.

Now add the passata and a sprinkling of sugar and let it bubble away for a few minutes. 

You could let that reduce for as long as you like, of course, but it splatters and sticks and is no fun to look after. A few minutes is enough for me, and it keeps it light and zingy and, yes, I promise, fresh and summery. 

Summer non-cooking

You know that thing where you put off writing a thank you letter and then it's too late to send just a normal letter and it builds up in your mind until you sort of hate the person who did something nice in the first place? Or is that just me? Whatever.

I haven't written in a month, and feel that any old post will not do, but then I don't feel like writing something long, or a proper recipe, and oh, I don't know. The last thing you want is to resent your own blog. Really.

So let's just say it's all due to summer cooking. Because so far, and touch wood, we've had a lot of proper summer days. And that means the lazy kind of cooking. The tomato salad (with cherry tomatoes from Murcia). The steam-grilled asparagus. The bowls of strawberries and yogurt. The walks to the good ice cream shop. The bags of cherries.The picnics on the beach, the grilled sausages, the big salads, the tins of sardines with avocado toast and yes, the gazpacho. No kidding, it got to the point where one afternoon I thought I just had to have a bowl of the stuff.

No news here, but just in case anyone is in a hurry making gazpacho and has no room in the freezer for a quick chill, here's what you do.

Serves two, my children growing up Scottish and therefore shunning anything that might resemble a vitamin:

Take two heaping spoonfuls of cherry tomatoes (around 250 gr) and put them in a blender with a 5 cm chunk of peeled cucumber, a wedge of red pepper if you have it, and if not some tinned/jarred variety. A pinch of salt, a squeeze of lemon, squirt of Sherry vinegar and a good, generous pour of olive oil. No garlic for me but go right ahead.

Now blend until creamy. Normally you'd add water, but wait. Simply sieve this to get rid of the tomato skins and seeds.

And now for the cunning plan: leave it in a bowl on the counter and instead of water add ice cubes. In an hour or so it will be far chillier

than if you had left it in the fridge, and your butter will not smell like gazpacho.

Stir, taste for salt and vinegar, and there you go.

If you need an extra boost to deal with children on school holiday, add a shot of vodka for a Gazpacho Molotov.

The image is for a T-shirt coming soon to a store quite far from you, probably, but that you should certainly visit.

Kedgeree alert

I wrote about kedgeree a while ago, and now I have shortcut, and it comes from Simon Hopkinson. Gasp. 

I would never have expected it from him, but there you go. His books are full of things I'd love to eat but would never cook. Buckets of cream, stern instructions, a general expectation of ingredients individually wrapped in crisp paper packages by knowing artisan sellers...And above all, the assumption that if you want good food, you must cook it carefully, slowly and well, and behave as if you have no children, deadlines, or arteries.

Which makes for great reading, but, you know.

The man is also on TV. Where he is a calm, ever so slightly dull voice amidst the hysterical babble. No flirting with the camera, no licking of fingers, no jumping madly from hob to oven while chucking harissa, herbs, miso and vanilla at some poor unsuspecting piece of fish.

So behold my amazement when he starts to make kedgeree (min. 16)and instead of poaching the smoked haddock first and using the stock to make the rice, he put the whole piece of fish directly into the pot. Marvelous. No wonder he is often referred to as Saint Simon of Hopkinson.

You can see my recipe here, like I used to make it. Simply ignore the first bit and jump into cooking the rice. If you want to make it the normal way, and not as a risotto, simply use the same amount of water as you would of rice, and let the rice steam a few minutes, off the hob, so it's fluffier.

Spanish readers: please someone try this with salt cod and let me know how it goes.

The sprouting life

I love reading about polar exploration. No idea why, but I find accounts of bewhiskered Victorians tramping through the ice eating their shoes endlessly fascinating. All the more so now that I live within shouting distance of the Arctic Circle.

I was reading about William Edward Parry, and how he kept his crew fit by growing mustard and cress on top of the heating pipes inside their ice bound ship, and instantly decided to give it a go. 

Now, I won't pretend that scurvy is a clear and present danger in Aberdeen in 2013. Hardly that. But there are days when the wind howls and the rain pelts and everything is the exact shade of slate grey, when the last thing you want is to leave the house to buy plastic wrapped pasticky vegetables. And those days can fall on May 23rd, like today.

On those days it's just easier to take inspiration from a book of Polar exploration than from Elisabeth David waxing lyrical about the diet of the Mediterranean peasant.

Also, it dispels that weedy hippy image you can't help associating with sprouts. Not that Polar explorers are gourmands, but weedy? No.

Turns out, it's very easy to sprout stuff. Seeds just can't help themselves, they really really want to become plants. So this method works with anything, but to my taste, lentils are the best. They are quick and they are so delicious, you can't stop munching once they're out. Seriously. Forget about the health thing, these things are just plain irresistible.

You need a biggish glass jar, very clean, with no lid. Fill it about a third of the way with lentils.  Cover with water and let it soak eight hours or so.

Now drain it well. Cover the jar with a piece of muslin . I find the ones sold in pharmacies best for this. Snap a rubber band to hold it in place.

You rinse the lentils twice a day. This takes about three seconds. Simply pour water through the muslin, swirl it a bit, pour it out through the muslin, which acts like a sieve.

In a couple of days you will see little curlicues.  These are Polar times. I bet they sprout more quickly in warm climates. 

You can eat them like that, but I like to wait a bit more, until they look like tadpoles. 

Once they're ready, rinse and keep in the fridge, with a proper lid on. They keep for a few days like that, but I generally eat them pretty quickly. They make a perfect snack, with a little salt or soy sauce.

Picnic season

Picnic season is here. It doesn't matter if you are in the "sit on a nettle, eating a wasp" camp or constantly babble "everything tastes better outdoors".

 Like it or not, at some point between now and the end of September you will be balancing a sandwich on your knee.

I myself, am a big fan. I am so prone to picnics that I have several times dragged my children to our neighbourhood park in dead of winter, clutching a thermos of hot chocolate and some biscuits, the better to enjoy the too-early sunsets.

Scotland has that very British craziness of combining the perfect scenery with the worst possible weather. And yet we soldier on.

I won't post recipes, because really, all you need for a picnic is some sunshine, a bit of grass or sand, a blanket, cheese, bread, fruit and water. And if you can make sure the beer is cold, bless you. And nobody ever said no to chocolate.

And don't forget to pack a bottle opener, and a fresbee, or a ball, or a kite, or something that will lull you into a pleasant sense of having been active and outdoorsy as you drift off into a well deserved nap.

I was used to hot weather picnics, which mean coolers full of ice where you nestle the cherries and the chocolate. Where a blanket has to protect your bare legs from thorns and spiky dry grass. And where shade is of the essence.

Now I grapple with such issues as wind breakers, waterproof blankets and wellington boots. But I am free from the ghost of melted chocolate, and if I want a cold drink I only have to plunge a bottle into the icy sea for a couple of minutes.

I do have a bit of a problem with the props. I take a stand against tupperware, paper plates and napkins and plastic glasses. And I hate to see packaging marr the view.

So it's wicker baskets and inconvenient picnic tins for me. And tiffin boxes, striped tea towels, Swiss army knives and enamel plates and cups. It's annoying, but picnics aren't about convenience. They're about nostalgia and pretending to be a character in English literature. Up to you wether you want to be Sebastian with the teddy bear and the strawberries, or Ratty and Mole with the potted-ham-potted-tongue.