The Susanne

I awoke this morn­ing feel­ing fam­ished. And a little ill. After care­fully weigh­ing my options I decided to stay at home and write off today as an invest­ment in better health the rest of the week. After a few hours of relax­a­tion and Gilmore Girls I decided it was time to head to the super­mar­ket for some­thing to stave off the unbear­able hunger. I wanted to get fresh eggs, some bacon and maybe some veget­ables, although my fridge was already packed with the stuff. What I ended up buying was a kilo of mus­sels! Yum! Just from seeing the little nets of fresh, lovely mus­sels my stom­ach did a little flip and my mouth watered. I ran home and made Cozze alla Mar­in­ara. By the time it was done my hands were shak­ing so badly I couldn’t lift the spoon to my mouth without spill­ing. But some­how I man­aged to get a whole, deli­cious bowl down, the shak­ing stopped and I feel so good! There really is noth­ing like some fresh sea­food to turn a bad day around.

I had to make some slight changes to the recipe today as the market didn’t have any fresh pars­ley (what the?!) so I used a little dried pars­ley and then added some fresh cil­antro. I prob­ably should have left the cil­antro out, but the fresh chili I added with the tomato really gave the dish some lovely heat. In fact, I think I just might have room for one more bowl ;)

After a long day at uni filled with frus­tra­tions and with no oppor­tun­ity for eating (from 10 am till 4 pm) I got home crav­ing some­thing filling and autumny. A quick stop at the super­mar­ket gave me the answer: Shepherd’s Pie! Mmmm! I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe with a few alter­a­tions: I used twice the amount of both onion and carrot, as well as loads of green beans, as I wanted more veget­ables. I also didn’t grate the onion and carrot, but rather chopped them quite finely so that I had small pieces which still had some ‘bite’ to them. Lastly I changed the butter for non-​dairy mar­gar­ine. It turned out great! This is one meal I won’t mind eating night after night (as there’s so much it’ll prob­ably take me all week to finish)– no prob­lem at all with some­thing as good as this!

My oral exam for the phon­et­ics course went really well. It was basic­ally just a pro­nun­ci­ation test and I do have pretty good pro­nun­ci­ation. My lec­turer opened by saying it was really a little unfair to those of us who had to do the test this early in the semester as we haven’t covered the things we’re being tested in, but that she didn’t think I’d have any trouble as I’d prob­ably just get it right instinct­ively. Which I took as a com­pli­ment! And I did get it all right. She said she noticed a hint of my Aus­tralian accent as I pro­nounced the name ‘Carl’, and my Scot­tish accent as I said ‘Scotland’. I was intrigued by the fact that she was able to point it out so accur­ately and explain to me how and why she noticed it. I really like her, she and Juan (my lec­turer in Shakespeare) are my def­in­ite favour­ites this semester. I really love having lec­tur­ers that inspire me to do well. I notice it more and more, but espe­cially this semester as it’s the last semester of my BA — that extra little incent­ive to do well really does make a dif­fer­ence in the amount of effort I put down! Now let’s just hope my inspir­a­tion stays up until the end of the semester and through­out the exam period, and I’ll be look­ing at some pretty spec­tac­u­lar exam res­ults. Yey! (Yea please bear with me and let me toot my own horn a little. I’ve no one else doing it for me at the moment ;) )

As I made may­on­naise last night I had a couple of egg whites left over. Of course, this meant egg white omelette for break­fast! Quick, easy, yummy and good for you, what’s not to love about egg white omelettes? What I did was I sautéed some chopped green beans, added a little chopped leek and then the egg whites which I’d whipped up a little with some salt and pepper. I cooked it for a few minutes on each side then grated some parmesan over the top — good­ness me, it was deli­cious! And I don’t feel heavy-​full as eggs usu­ally make me feel. Lovely :) I feel ready for any­thing this day can bring! (Such as a four hour sem­inar on The Winter’s Tale, a quick pro­nun­ci­ation test for my phon­et­ics course and the biweekly edit­or­ial meet­ing of Filo­lo­gen. Life is good!)

These meat­balls are so good, they just might make you over­eat and leave you with a stomach-​ache! They’re per­fect with spa­ghetti, or even on their own (I’d ima­gine). I make mine with the accom­pani­ment of my Per­fect Roas­ted Tomato Sauce, let­ting them cook in the sauce in the oven on a low heat for 30 minutes. This leaves them soft, moist and lovely. I got the inspir­a­tion for this recipe from one of my Sicilian Cook­ery books, but I’ve changed it quite a bit.

Here’s my recipe for this amaz­ingly deli­cious Sicilian treat:

• 500g minced beef
• 2 small cloves of garlic, grated
• a big bunch of fresh pars­ley, chopped
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 dl bread­crumbs, soaked in
• -soy milk (about 1 dl when mixed)
• 1 dl parmesan, grated
• salt and pepper to taste
• Per­fect Roas­ted Tomato Sauce

Set your oven to 170 degrees celsius.

Begin the meat­balls by mixing all the dry ingredi­ents with the minced beef: the garlic, the cheese, the pars­ley, salt and pepper:

Then add the bread­crumbs soaked in soy milk:

Then add the egg:

-And mix well. Shape the meat­balls using a spoon (I use my reg­u­lar table spoon as I think it gives a great size and shape to my meatballs):

Coat them lightly in flour and brown them quickly in olive oil:

-Before adding them to the sauce in a roast­ing tin, taking care to cover the meat­balls with sauce. Place in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. During which time you’ve got the per­fect oppor­tun­ity to make the spa­ghetti or whatever you’re serving to go along with them. You could even eat them on their own, they’re so good.

Take the whole thing out after 30 minutes and it should look some­thing like this:

If you love your friends, invite them over. If you need a break from them, don’t let them taste this. You’ll never be rid of them, I swear ;)

This tomato sauce is so deli­cious you’ll be cheat­ing your­self if you don’t try it! It’s inspired by both Gordon Ramsay’s roas­ted tomato soup and my mum’s deli­cious roas­ted tomato sauce. Basic­ally all you do is roast toma­toes, onion, garlic and fresh herbs at 220 degrees celsius for about 45 minutes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally and mash­ing up the toma­toes a bit. Abso­lutely scrump­tious! I’ve taken it a step fur­ther here and used a blender to get that lovely smooth tex­ture that is per­fect for pasta dishes, and also used some red wine for that extra little some­thing. Here’s my recipe for the per­fect roas­ted tomato sauce:

• a splash of olive oil
• 1 kg fresh, ripe toma­toes (halve the large ones, leave small ones like cherry or plum toma­toes whole)
• 5 sun-​dried toma­toes, chopped
• 2 large cloves of garlic, halved
• 1 onion, sliced
• a medium-​sized bunch of fresh thyme sprigs (or any herbs you like, I guess)
• a splash of red wine (I use about 1-2 dl)
• a little tomato paste, to taste
• 1 tbsp sugar
  

Heat your oven to 220 degrees celsius.

Start the sauce by pour­ing some olive oil in a roast­ing tin, and pla­cing it in the oven until almost smoking. Take the tin out and add the toma­toes, onion, garlic and thyme. Sprinkle a little olive oil on top, and season well with salt and pepper.

Roast for about 45 minutes, stir­ring occasionally.

After 30 minutes, turn the heat down to 180 degrees, and mash up the toma­toes to get a sauce-​like con­sist­ency. Add some red wine, to taste. I use about 1-2 dl as I really enjoy the taste. Add some tomato paste if you want, and the sugar. Return it to the oven for the last 15 minutes.

At this point you have a deli­cious tomato sauce which is great as it is — unless you want it smooth.

If you want a smooth tex­ture, pour the sauce into your blender and blend on high for about one minute or until you get the tex­ture you want. Serve — or put back in the roast­ing tin if you want to add meatballs!

So I’ve been want­ing to make spa­ghetti and meat­balls for a while now, but some­how things have just got in the way. Such as the liver exper­i­ment. But today I had noth­ing else on my plate, so to speak. Well, except for the Joyce present­a­tion I’m pre­par­ing for tomor­row. Anywho, after seeing that funny clip of the kid doing the Gordon Ramsay impres­sion, I decided to look through my Gordon cook­book to see if he had a good recipe for meat­balls. There was none in there, but I did find a recipe for tomato soup which reminded me of the tomato sauce mum usu­ally makes. It’s basic­ally toma­toes roas­ted with onion, garlic and fresh herbs. Lovely. So I did that, and found a good recipe for meat­balls in one of my ‘Sicilian cookery’-cookbooks that I got in Sicily. Yea, I got two. I can’t help it, I’m a food nerd. Then I invited The Ex over for dinner — as I know he appre­ci­ates a good bowl of spa­ghetti. And boy, did he appre­ci­ate it!

I must admit I think this is my best spa­ghetti so far, and trust me, I’ve made many. Spa­ghetti has been my staple dish for a long time, the one I’ve turned to when inspir­a­tion was lack­ing and the one I’ve exper­i­mented with the most. Always with tomato sauce, by the way. Ser­i­ously, though, I don’t think I’ll need to exper­i­ment any fur­ther. This was abso­lutely scrump­tious! The sauce tasted divine, which I put down to the roast­ing. Roas­ted veget­ables just seem to have that extra little bam! about them. Will def­in­itely keep making tomato sauce this way — thanks mum and Gordon! The meat­balls were fant­astic: tasty, moist, and incred­ibly fla­vour­ful. Mmmmm! I’ll post the recipe for both the sauce and the meat­balls on the recipes page as soon as I get around to it. No time today — must pre­pare for my presentation!

Last night I was des­per­ate for a snack. I looked through the con­tents of my fridge, but to no avail. Noth­ing in there could tempt me. So I decided to run to the super­mar­ket and pick some­thing up. And I picked up a lot of stuff: a set of plates and cups (that I will prob­ably need at some point in the future, right?), a mix master, three pots of herbs, a packet of cured ham, some fresh toma­toes and a packet of sun-​dried toma­toes, and, wait for it, some beef liver!

That’s right. I’ve actu­ally been want­ing to try making liver for a while now so I’ve been look­ing out for it in the market. So when I saw it last night I couldn’t just walk past. I got home and decided 10pm was the per­fect time for cook­ing a lovely liver dish (I plead tem­por­ary insan­ity!) and so set to work. I’ve never made liver before but I’ve grown up eating it as mum used to make it every now and then. She’d make a lovely liver cas­ser­ole with onions and liver in cream — but as cream is off limits to me now I decided to try some­thing dif­fer­ent. I cut the liver into 1cm cubes and seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic, rose­mary and thyme and browned it lightly in a skil­let, then threw it in a pot with some bacon, red wine, sugar, Worcester­shire sauce and sun-​dried toma­toes. After let­ting it all sit, covered, on the lowest heat for a little while I had a little taste, but it wasn’t per­fect. I added a little tomato paste to it and boom! Deli­cious! I’d also roas­ted some more of the lovely green beans and sugar snaps to go with it, which I think just may have made the whole dish. I didn’t manage to eat much though as it was late and I’d already eaten dinner… (remem­ber, this was my ‘snack’!) So I’ve still got a huge meal left over which I guess I’ll be eating today. I don’t know how suc­cess­ful I’ll be at reheat­ing liver… it just might go dry on me in which case I’m not sure if I want to finish it at all. If so, at least I had the lovely taste of it last night.

Oh, and apro­pos, I’ve a little anec­dote from last night: Just when I’d fin­ished eating and was wash­ing my plate, my neigh­bour came home, exclaim­ing ‘ooooh, that smells wonderful!’ — to which I replied, ‘thanks, it’s liver.’

You should have seen her reaction… jaw dropped, and a ‘Really??! What on earth could induce you to make liver? That’s some­thing I’ve dis­liked every time I’ve tried it!’

I replied that I really enjoy cook­ing and had been want­ing to try making liver for a while. And that I actu­ally thought it’d turned out lovely, to which she told me she’d only ever made liver for her dog.

I mean, no wonder she’s never liked it. I don’t much like dog food either…