In the fridge today

Sometimes the fridge has not much more in it than a couple of bottles of milk, a few more bottles of wine and a tired looking half-lemon.  But mostly it is a good place - full of possibilities and tasty tidbits.
 

This morning it has the following in it:

• beef mince (uncooked)
• smoked streaky bacon (uncooked)
• three quarters of a roast chicken
• one portion of stewed fruit (blueberries and plums)
• 1 litre homemade chicken stock
• a box of cherry tomatoes
• 2 large pots homemade natural yogurt - one full and one nearly finished
• 5 sticks of rhubarb
• 4 leeks
• a bowl of leftover curried potatoes and onions
• a box of leftover chicken curry and spicy rice, for Graham's lunch tomorrow
• a head of celery
• a box of mushrooms
• 6 peppers
• 2 heads of broccoli
• a box of rocket
• 100g homemade shortcrust pastry
• 8 carrots
• 1 packet of feta cheese
• half a goat's cheese
• butter - 2 boxes of lurpak spreadable, and 2 blocks of the real thing
• 2 blocks of mature cheddar cheese
• 4 pints of milk
• half a tired looking lemon
• no wine

I am menu planning today - rummaging through my favourite recipe books and being inspired.  There's going to be a big pan of chilli-con-carne made tomorrow, and a rhubarb crumble baked at some point over the weekend.  I'm still undecided about what to do with the chicken stock and roast chicken - there are too many tempting possibilities to choose from.

And I need to buy some wine.

Show your love with pie

I have to work this weekend, and after a long summer of being with my family far more than I was at work or by myself, that feels hard. So for tea tonight, I made a pie.

Pie is about the most homey dish I ever cook. When I bake a pie, the children and G stop in the doorway when they get home to breathe in deeply the smell of baking pastry. That moment when they come into the house and realise what is for tea gives me so much satisfaction. When I've baked a pie, I feel as though I am at the heart of the home.

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Tonight's pie was an old favourite: sausage and sweet potato pie.

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Sausage and Sweet Potato Pie

For the filling:

• 6 good quality pork sausages, skinned
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 clove of garlic, sliced
• 1 pepper, deseeded and chopped
• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• big pinch of sugar
• sprinkle of black pepper and dried thyme or other herb

For the pastry:

• 200g plain flour
• 100g fat (I use 50g butter and 50g vegetable shortening such as Trex)
• splash of ice cold water

Gently fry the onion, garlic and pepper in some olive oil until starting to soften. Add the rest of the filling ingredients except for the tomatoes. Continue cooking, whilst stirring to break up the sausagemeat. Once the sausagemeat is cooked through (no more pink) then add the tomatoes.

Let the filling bubble away over a gentle heat for about 20 minutes until the sauce is thick and reduced, and the sweet potatoes are soft. Put the filling in the pie dish and leave to one side to cool while you make the pastry.

Put the flour in a large bowl and add the butter and trex, chopped into small pieces. Rub lightly into the flour with your fingetrips until you have a mixture which looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add ice-cold water a spoonful at a time, bringing the mixture together with a knife until you have a firm dough. Chill the dough in a plastic sandwich bag in the fridge for half and hour or more before rolling out and topping the pie dish. You don't need to be neat, or fancy at this stage - as you can see from the picture at the top, I rarely am. It will still taste amazing.

Bake at Gas 6 for approx 40 minutes. Serve to your family with love.

I lived in Virginia, in the USA, for 10 months when I was at University, and I think one of the reasons I love this dish so much is that I get to say "sweet potato pie" in a Southern Belle accent and make my children howl with laughter ("You sound like the cook in Tom and Jerry!" said O).

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In fact, tonight's version had squash in place of the sweet potato. I picked the squash at the PYO last week and had forgotten just how much I hate peeling squash and pumpkins - it takes forever! If anyone knows of a way of preparing squash that is less hateful, I'd love to hear about it.

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The cooking fear

I made another batch of jam last week, and experienced the usual moment of terror when the sugar reached boiling point and suddenly bubbled up perilously near the top of the pan.

I don't mind admitting that boiling sugar scares me witless. I've made quite a bit of jam and chutney this summer, and I still feel my pulse race when the temperature rises along with the level in the pan. I bark instructions to the children to "Get out of the kitchen NOW! There is boiling sugar in this pan!" - thereby ensuring that my boiling sugar fear will continue into the next generation.

My only other cooking fear that is stronger than boiling sugar, is deep frying. My cooking fear there is so fierce that I have never yet deep fried anything. I don't think that is a great loss to my lifestyle; if I want deep fried dim sum or bahjees I will go out for dinner, and the rest of the time my waistline will thank me for avoiding the deep fryer.

But there are also some cooking fears that I am proud to say that I have completely conquered. My biggest triumph is learning how to make pastry and love it. Pastry making is quite a common cooking fear I think. Nigella Lawson says this about pastry making in How To Eat:

"On the subject of pastry I am positively evangelical. Until recently I practised heavy avoidance techniques, hastily, anxiously turning away form any recipe which included pastry, as if the cookbook's pages themselves were burning: I was hot with fear; could feel the flush rise in my panicky cheeks. I take strength from that, and so should you. Because if I can do the culinary equivalent, for me, of Learning to Love the Bomb, so can you."

In my case, acquiring several cookbooks about pies is what drove me to conquer my pastry fear.

You could say that my desire for a homemade pie was greater than my pastry fear. It is true that once you have made pastry a couple of times it ceases to have any mysticism, and becomes something you can do without even getting the recipe books out.

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The fear of making a custard which curdles, a white sauce that is lumpy or feeding guests shellfish that is past its best, were all conquered some time ago and are almost forgotten now as I take more and more of my cooking skills for granted. By the end of this summer, my alarm at the sight of a boiling jam pan may lessen as well.