The Susanne

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 ;) )

The Boy­friend has given me the most won­der­ful gift I have ever received: The New Con­cise Larousse Gast­ro­nomique! Oh my lord! How can I study for exams with that abso­lute gem in my pos­ses­sion?! I tell you, it’s pos­sible but extremely dif­fi­cult.
Since my trip to the post office to pick up the mys­ter­i­ous pack­age I have per­used my treas­ure and am now in the pro­cess of making my first ‘real’ stock! It’s been sim­mer­ing for about three hours and has another three hours to go accord­ing to the Larousse. Well, I have noth­ing but time. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s dinner, just make a guess if there will be sauce…

Ok, so I was too impa­tient to wait until it was fin­ished before trying it. I used some for tonight’s dinner, which was sear-​roasted chicken breasts with a garlic and herb rub, and mashed pota­toes. I deglazed the chicken pan with some bal­samic vin­egar and then added about 2 dl of my unfin­ished stock. Reduced to about 1 dl and drained through a piece of muslin. And let me just say: wow! I really had no idea what I was miss­ing, muck­ing about with that store-​bought boul­lion all this time. No more! Here’s a pic­ture of my chicken dinner:

As usual I’m too lazy to write out the recipe, but I will share the secret of my amaz­ing mashed pota­toes! Being lactose-​intolerant I often have to think twice (and resign myself to some uncom­fort­able hours to come if I decide to indulge myself) before tuck­ing into food cooked by other people, and there are cer­tain foods I miss immensely such as pizza (oh my love, why must you hurt me so?). And I used to miss mashed pota­toes. But then I thought of a way to make them just as deli­cious but 100% dairy-​free.

What you’ll need is:

your desired amount of new pota­toes (I keep the skin on for its lovely taste and its nutri­ents),
some non-​dairy mar­gar­ine,
water
and salt.
(and some pepper if you like)

Here’s what to do:

Chop up the pota­toes before cook­ing to drastic­ally shorten the cook­ing time.

Then boil them in some lightly salted water until they are very tender and almost fall apart on touch.

Pour some of the water into a jug before drain­ing the pota­toes in a colan­der, and then throw them back into the pot (off the heat!)

Now add a big slab of mar­gar­ine, and mash away.

Pour in some of the water whilst mash­ing until you reach your favour­ite consistency.

Season with addi­tional salt and pepper to taste, and—

Enjoy!