Carrot, apple, cucumber, mint and ginger juice

I was at a party the other day with an Israeli model. We weren't there together, she arrived with someone else. But from the moment she walked in I knew that my evening was kind of ruined.

I'm not one of those tedious frauds who claims to suffer from low self-esteem. In fact at times I think I might suffer from a surfeit of self-esteem; but my cup rarely brimmeth over with it when I'm sitting next to an Israeli model.

Girls like that, with their long spindly limbs and butterscotch skin and almond-shaped eyes, make me really aware of my teeth, which are a mangled disaster, and my cheeks, which are always a tiny bit red close to the jawline - like a farmer's son. Suddenly everything disappears and all there is in my world is my wonky dentistry and giant ruddy face, with my ginger fringe pecking at my eyes, making me look like a gymkhana pony in need of some serious hogging.

But I tried to concentrate, because the Israeli model was nice, despite giving me the same old shit about how she was teased at school for being so tall and "geeky". Then she started talking about how much she loves her juicer. "When I was pregnant I juiced everything and drank it, beets and spinach. I mean, I had to hold my nose to drink it but it's so good for you."

I stared at her, as she held her tiny, tanned nose with her long, tanned fingers in demonstration. I hugged to myself her confession of five minutes' previously, that she couldn't drive. I might not be a six-foot, 9 stone Israeli model who drinks beetroots but I can drive a fucking car. I resolved to take up bulimia as soon as I got home but then realised that that would do nothing about my teeth or cheeks.

We gave the Israeli model and her husband a lift home after the party. My husband was so relieved that he had decided to take his BMW out that evening (a car I forced him to buy a while ago so that people wouldn't think that I was his mid-life crisis). "I don't think she would have known what the Fiesta was," he said.

Then we made fun of the juicer thing for a while, purely because we don't own one and felt threatened. "It's the national food of Israel," said my husband. "There are juice bars on every corner." I've always been suspicious of people into juicing. They're such fanatics. I mean, I'll drink a £4.95 juice in some wholesome cafe if I'm not in the mood for a Coca-Cola, or gin, but I don't feel zealous about it. I don't slum the juice around my mouth, vaguely chewing on the bits and going "Nnnnnnhhh" like some creep child sucking up to its parents and stitching up its siblings by loudly enjoying some broccoli.

"I suppose if you're a nation of almond-eyed models, your national food kind of has to be juiced beetroots," I said, pressing the tips of  fingers against my solar plexus as I felt the onset of some wicked heartburn.

The next morning I went straight out and spent £200 on a Magimix Le Duo Plus XL centrifugal juicer. There are models that you can purchase for less than £200, but don't expect them to be Israeli.


Carrot, apple, cucumber mint and ginger juice.

Makes  1/2 a pint

2 apples, rinsed and quartered
2 small carrots, rinsed and thirded
1/4 cucumber, rinsed and quartered
1cm sq fresh root ginger
2 large mint leaves
2 ice cubes

1. Turn on your juicer
2. Juice your stuff in a jug with the ice cubes in it

3. Try to ignore the fact that it looks like something you'd find at the bottom of a pond

4. Close your eyes and think of the Holy Land
5. Drink

Poppy Zucchini Salad

I know what you are thinking now: "zucchini AGAIN?". YEP! I adore fresh seasonal veggies a lot and of course you can get zucchini throughout the year, but the best ones appear during late spring or early summer time. Zucchini has a high water content, so it makes the perfect food for people on diet. Besides that, it contains good amount of vitamin C, and A, both of which are very important and necessary for good health.

• 180 g Zucchini
  
  
• 2 tbsp Walnut oil
  
  
• 1/2 tbsp Freshly squeezed lemon juice
  
  
• 1/2 tbsp Clear honey
  
  
• 1 tsp Garlic, crushed
  
  
• 1 tsp Poppy seeds©angiesrecipes
  
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Rinse and dry the zucchini. Cut both ends off and grate the zucchini into the long thin strips. Place them in a large salad bowl.
   
   
2. Whisk together the walnut oil, lemon juice, honey, crushed garlic, poppy seeds, salt and pepper in a bowl. Toss the zucchini strips with the dressing until combined. Serve as soon as possible.

Poppy Zucchini Salad

Bento Part 2; soba noodle salad and terikayi chicken

So, I'm trying to get my head round this bento box thing. There are, as you have pointed out in your millions (okay, in your tens) an awful lot of specialist bento websites, run mostly by shy but dedicated Japanophiles.

Looking at them, and thinking about them in general, it's hard to know whether a bento box is more an issue of style rather than cookery. 

I hesitate to say this, for fear of being ritually disembowelled the next time I go to Atari-Ya, but is this just a lunchbox? Isn't having a bento box just a sophisticated way of taking your lunch into work - traditionally a slightly hippy thing to do, practised by non-smoking, pacifist super-polite types, who are usually also the Union representative and cycle everywhere?

I suspect it is, because a bento makes that stereotype redundant. Because Japanese stuff is cooooooool. Unscrewing this bright pink, tactile cylinder from Aladdin (available here) complete with removable compartment, and second screw-on, screw-off tier, is a million miles away from unpacking a couple of cheese-and-pickles on brown from a Lock N Lock.

For example, how much cooler was Molly Ringwald than Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club when when she unloaded her sleek little bento box for lunch, while he unwrapped eight peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a carton of milk and a huge banana?

The bento is stylish. No question. But what do you put in it? It's been a while since I worked in an office but what I remember mostly about it was that a) you don't want to make your lunch first thing in the morning when you could be asleep, having paranoid dreams about being late for exams and b) you don't want to make your lunch the night before when you could be knocking back a lot of cheap white wine in front of Mary, Queen of Shops. Or asleep, having paranoid dreams about being late for exams.

But there doesn't seem much that will do a bento justice that doesn't require a bit of effort. For example, the arrangement above is a buckwheat soba noodle salad in one compartment with a pile of teriyaki chicken next to it. But it took me a while to make and it required a fair amount of ingredients, which I would not be arsed to shop for, if I had a lunchbreak.

So I've really badly failed my brief to make something easy or something that can be made in large batches. I guess you could make this in a large batch but do you want to eat the same thing two days in a row? Maybe you do if it's nice enough.

Just for laughs, this is how to make the soba noodle salad. All ingredients are available from Waitrose.

1/3 packet buckwheat soba noodles

1 handful coriander, chopped

1/2 chilli, chopped

1/2 spring onion, chopped

1/2 carrot, julienned

a sprinkling of sesame seeds

2 broccoli florets, quartered

1 tbsp sesame oil

juice of 1/2 a lime

splash of mirin (do I need to explain that this is rice vinegar?)

a sprinkling of sugar

1 Boil the soba noodles for 8 minutes and then rinse to remove the brown scummy stuff. Put in a mixing bowl and pour over the sesame oil immediately because what buckwheat soba noodles really love to do is stick to each other and then turn to cardboard.

2 Boil the broccoli for 4 minutes and run under cold water

3 Put everything in the mixing bowl and shift round a bit

4 Combine the lime juice, mirin and sugar and sprinkle over. I tried to find a small bottle that could hold the dressing separately but couldn't get one small enough. One of those little soy fish that comes with a Pret Sushi box would be perfect.

The teriyaki chicken went like this

1 Chop up some chicken brest or thighs into approximately 1in square pieces. Put in a bowl and shake over some bottled teriyaki sauce. Leave for a few minutes. (Normally I wouldn't recommend using some crapola bottled sauce, full of E numbers and shite, but I'm not about to make teriyaki sauce - although I'm sure one of you knows how.)

2 Fry the chicken pieces very hot and fast in groundnut oil.

It was all very tasty but would I cook it all at 9pm for my lunch the next day? Not a chance.

Back to the drawing board.

Bento Part 1

I'm not dead, I've just  been working very hard on a post about Bento Boxes. What happened was that I was in the middle of a peaceful reverie the other day when a text message came through from my sister, The Hamburgler.

It said: "On recipe rifle, can you come up with a series of yummy lunches that are either quick to make or can be made in large batches and i can take into work?  I'm eating ham sandwiches every day because mum doesn't understand how lunch at work is the only thing to look forward to all day and if it's shit it makes you want to cry."

And because I don't want my sister to cry. So I thought I'd investigate.

I was milling purposefully through Brent Cross shopping centre today, in search of a suitable bento box (really quite hard to find in a mainstream place like BC) and thinking about the contents when I got another text message.

"WHERE THE HELL IS MY BENTO BOX?" it read.

My sister, you see, was born in 1988. She is a child of Sky Plus and Facebook and isn't inclined to wait long for things.

Anyway, I was very nice, which was unusual. I said that I was having to do some research.

Which I am.

Twisted Wienerwurst Buns

There is absolutely nothing better than fresh, warm homemade bread! The smell that fills your kitchen and the taste makes all the effort worthwhile. These savory, satisfying soft bread are just wonderful for a potluck, a picnic, or even your lunch box! God knows how many times I have baked this twisted buns!

Dough	Topping
300 g Bread flour 6 g Instant dried yeast 30 g Sugar 6 g Salt 60 g Egg 65 g Warm milk 75 g Tangzhong Starter - Water Roux Starter via Starch Gelatinization 45 g Butter 4-5 Wienerwurst, halved	60-80 g Spring onions, chopped 1 Egg 1 tbsp Olive oil 1 tsp Black pepper powder 1/2 tsp Salt 1 tsp Sesame seeds

1. Add flour, yeast, sugar and salt in the mixing bowl fitted with a dough hook. Add in egg, milk, and water roux. Mix at slow speed for 1 minute until combined. Increase the speed to medium, and continue to mix for 3 minutes until the dough forms.
   
   
2. Add in butter mix at slow speed until incorporated. Then increase speed and knead until gluten is fully developed, i. e. elastic, smooth, non-sticky and leave from the sides of your mixing bowl, about 5 minutes.
   
   
3. Remove and form the dough into a smooth ball. Place it in a lightly greased bowl, covered with a plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place until dough is double in volume, about an hour. Press the dough down to release gases produced in the fermenting process. Divide dough into 9 portions, each is about 60-62 grams and round up and rest for 10 minutes at the room temperature.
   
   
4. Flatten each dough ball, with seam side down, and roll into a rectangle. The length of the dough should be the same as the sausage you are going to use. Now turn the seam side up, and place a sausage on the dough. Roll it up and cut into 5 equal portions, but DO NOT cut them through, leaving a thin joint between portions. Cross the first and the last joints, turn the cutting edges of 3 portions over to obtain a flower pattern. Place on a baking tray lined with a baking sheet and cover with a plastic wrapper. Leave to rise for 45-60 minutes.
   
   
5. To prepare the topping, mix spring onions, egg (reserve 1 tablespoon for brushing the tops) , olive oil, and black pepper in a bowl. Add the salt in just when you are ready to use it. When the buns have doubled in size, brush them with reserved egg mixture, then place some onion mixture atop. Finally sprinkle with some sesame seeds.
   
   
6. Bake in preheated oven at 175C/350F for 15 minutes or until golden brown. When done, turn the buns onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

Twisted Wienerwurst Buns

Lemon Surpise Pudding

The saddest day of my parents' lives was the day that I dropped out of Westminster School's Oxbridge preparation classes. I didn't really understand what was going on and I wasn't sure if I wanted three more years of not understanding what was going on. But my parents were very depressed about it: out of four daughters, they had only managed to hammer one measly one, my eldest sister, into the city of dreaming spires. And even then she got in second time around and had the temerity to neither marry a Duke nor get a First. And she read physics the square, beaky wonk.

I like to tell myself that it's not that I was too stupid to go to Oxford, it's that I was too lazy. But the fact is that I was too stupid AND too lazy. I got into Westminster to do my A Levels somehow - clerical error? - and when I was there I had to work all the time to keep up. And I mean all the time. I know for a fact that my friend Izzy used to go to the pub after school every day for a minimum of three hours - including Saturdays - and she got straight As and "Excellent" in red pen on all her homework. I sometimes woke up early before school to work a bit harder and I only got 2As and a B. Teachers would quite often say "How are you?" to me. It's tragic really.

Mostly for my parents, because my Dad was an academic and a tutor at Balliol, which is where young Communist PPE students go to wake up at 5am, perform 80 star jumps in the quad while reciting the Greek alphabet backwards, before departing for the library for the rest of the day for some light recreational long division. They can do this because they have plenty of free time, having written all of the current term's essays in the previous vac.

(I ought to point out that my father isn't a Communist anymore, although he remains an expert on Karl Marx. His book, "Karl Marx: His Theory and Its Context" is the only book you'll ever need to read on the subject. Some might say the only book you'll ever need full stop.) Thus, my academic dimness was an unprecedented blow.

It was also tragic for my mother, because it meant that I definitely wasn't going to marry a Duke - although marrying someone who is occasionally on telly runs a close second I think. Imagine Mrs Bennett from Pride and Prejudice in a pair of pink Crocs and you've got my mother.

So my point is that despite this avalanche of parental disappointment, I really try not to be bitter and chippy about NOT ONLY having fallen at the first Oxford hurdle, but then going on to spazz up my degree at Bristol University.

(Of the two people who did worse than me in my graduating year, one got glandular fever half way through the second year and only turned in 60% of her essays and the other went completely fucking mad before finals and was sectioned by the Bristol Royal Infirmary.)

But I have to admit that whenever I am able to do something better than someone who went to Oxford, a little piece of me rejoices. My husband went to Oxford and got a First - despite speaking almost exclusively in swear words, refusing to shave and dressing like a slobby graphic designer - and whenever I outsmart him, I internally give myself a little high-five.

For example: does he know all the words to 'Holiday' by Dizzee Rascal? No. Do I? Yes. *high five*

Can he do the whole talky-bit from the A-Team's opening credits in a convincing American accent? No. Can I? Yes. *high five*

And so it is with this Lemon Surprise Pudding.

An old friend emailed me, challenging me to make it as it had not worked out for her. Normally I don't make lemon puddings because I was traumatised by one as a child. But, you see, my friend went to Oxford - and the opportunity to DBTSWWTO (Do Better Than Someone Who Went To Oxford) was irresistable. Especially as she said that she would "weep" if it worked out first time for me. Oxford people: very competitive, you see.

I also ought to point out that I am a massive shitbag because I promised that if it did work out first time for me I wouldn't tell anyone. But it turns out that I LIED!!!!!! Redbrickers: prone to lying and gloating.

So the idea with a Lemon Surprise Pudding is that you have a sort of fluffy spongy top that you cut through to reveal a pool of lemon sauce. That's the surprise. I was expecting to have to source Semtex from somewhere, but cooking just isn't that exciting.

The things that can go wrong with this are:

a) You end up with a vaguely wet scrambled-eggy mess, which means your oven is on too high. This is quite common with modern ovens - I know that mine sets fire to pretty much anything I try to cook, so I often crank the temperature knob down half a centimetre if I'm cooking something sensitive.

b) You get the light meringue-y sponge bit on top but a thick lemon curd at the bottom rather than a lemon sauce. This is still very delicious, but not quite echt. This happens because you haven't used the right pie dish. For this recipe, you need to use a DEEP 1.5litre basin, not a shallow basin. It really does make a difference.

So here we go:

50g butter
110g caster sugar
rind and juice of 2 lemons
2 eggs, separated
50g sifted SELF-RAISING flour (might burn me once - won't let you burn me twice)
150ml milk

1 Pre-heat the oven to 180C OR if you have a very hot mega turbo fan oven, to about 175-170C and butter your 1.5pint/850ml deep baking dish

2 Beat the butter, sugar and lemon rind together until it's all combined. It won't go light and fluffy because there's too much sugar in it

3 Beat in the egg yolks a little at a time - perhaps a teaspoon each go.

4 Fold in the flour and alternate with the milk and the lemon juice - about a tablespoon each every go. The mixture will curdle and go gross - don't worry.

5 Whisk the egg whites to the soft peak stage and then fold in.

6 Bake in the MIDDLE of the oven for 40 mins.

If only school had been this easy.

Inside/outside living. But mostly inside

One of the results of losing all perspective in John Lewis while doing my wedding gift list the other day, is that now I have two of everything; one slightly less nice than the other one. But still, I have got two of most things - some things which you don't even really need one of. And yet, I haven't got a kettle, because it broke two days ago and I've been having too much fun boiling water in an egg pan for tea to go and get a new one.

Not really. Just too lazy. They don't sell kettles in Waitrose; at least, not in my Waitrose.

We've managed to only end up with one barbeque though and it's sitting outside, pristine and unused because by the time I've got home from the shops with barbequing supplies, it's raining so hard that the neighbours' cats are sailing little boats across the patio.

And so it was on Saturday. I bought a large rack of spare ribs by chance from the Farmer's Market in the hope that at some point this week we would have a sunny evening and barbeque them up. But no. So last night I decided to do them in the oven instead, to at least try out an easy-looking barbeque sauce I found in The River Cottage Meat Book.

It was brilliant and went like this:

2-3 large garlic cloves
1 level teaspoon salt
1 tbsp English mustard
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp soy sauce
ground pepper
2-3 tbsp of vinegar

1 Combine everything except the vinegar in a bowl. I was unable to do this without making a giant mess but you might be able to be tidier. Add the vinegar last, stirring in between 2 and 3 tablespoons of it until you get an emulsified sauce

2 Spread over your rack of spare ribs. Leave to marinate for as long as you can, turning and re-spreading if you're in that kind of mood. An hour's fine - all day is even better

3 Cook on the barbeque for 10-15 minutes or in the oven for 20 minutes at 210C

To go with it, I made some sweet potato wedges with a lime and lemongrass creme fraiche dipping sauce, a recipe from Plenty, Ottolenghi's new book (brilliant but entirely vegetarian... I mean, not that that's a problem or anything!!!!! You probably already knew that - but I didn't because Ottlenghi: The Cookbook, wasn't.)

For the wedges

Cut your sweet potatoes into 8 segments (people eat about 1/2 a sweet potato each as a side) and lay on a lightly greased baking sheet. Sprinkle over salt and dab with more oil of your choice (either olive or ground nut) and bake at 210C for 25 mins

For the dipping sauce

Combine a few tablespoons of creme fraiche with the juice and rind of 1 lime, a pinch of salt and 1 very finely-chopped small stick of lemongrass. Although this was nice, it was a bit pudding-y and next time I'm going to do it with yoghurt

I ALSO, because I was a bit hyperactive yesterday, made a rice salad, out of Ottolenghi: The Cookbook.

This is how I did it, which is not faithful to the exact recipe, but it was really nice:
(for 2)

40g quinoa
40g camarge or red rice
A handful of shelled pistachios
1 small onion, chopped
zest and juice of half a large orange
salt and pepper
about five dried apricots, chopped
2 tsp lemon juice

1 Put the grains on to boil for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, toast your pistachios on a baking sheet in the oven at 200C for 8 minutes. I know this sounds like a stupid hassle but it's worth doing as they don't taste of much otherwise. Fry the chopped onion very gently for about 10 minutes.

2 Once the grains, nuts and onions are cooked, combine everything a bowl and serve; you may find you need to add quite a lot of salt. You're supposed to wait until this gets down to room temperature but mine was sort of warm. It was still nice.

I've only just now realised, looking at the photos, that I made an entirely brown and orange supper. Christ... there's always something.