Cooking as a political statement

I like to cook. It is an activity that ticks lots of boxes.

• It's a great hobby for people who work from home a lot and have a hard time switching off.  I have to eat so I can justify taking a break  to cook.

• Mostly, it does not require 100% of my attention and because it takes place in stages, I can do something else at the same time. I can chat with a friend thanks to my magic earpiece or talk with my son about his day. Sometimes I catch up with a bit of Masterchef on the iPlayer.

• It saves me from constant back pain. Over the past 5 years, I have noticed that if I spend more than 3 consecutive hours at the computer my back aches. Everything slows down, I want to be somewhere else. When I cook I am on my feet. I dart around the kitchen, I climp up and down ladders, I stretch up to top shelves and I squat down to peer at cakes through the oven door. I scrub, quite vigorously, and roll and knead and chop and peel. Sometimes I can get quite hot and flushed. Being in constant motion and using different muscles in my body in lots of ways means that the blood is pumping through me and this prevents and relieves back pain. I am a happier, more pleasant, more productive person when I am without back pain. So cooking is good.

• After much reading, experimenting, debating and blog following, I can safely say that eating meals that I have cooked myself, from scratch, with as many fresh, natural products as I can find and afford is part of my Healthy Eating Definition. So cooking is is a way to eat the way I want to be eating.

• I like the end product. My cooking is nearly always tastier than the shop bought version. I like food, I like fresh, vibrant flavours and want my taste buds to sing. Processed food just doesn't do that. Good food brings me joy. And joy is a good thing. A very good thing.

• I learn new stuff all the time. New techniques new ingredients, new concepts and schools of thought about what we eat and how we make that decision. And with wisdom comes power, the power to make choices. When I feel powerful and in charge of my life, when I feel that I am making choices, I am happy. And happiness is a good thing. A very good thing.

It is this last aspect of cooking which I was reminded of the other day.  Quite by chance I happened to be in the car when Radio Four aired a 15 minute talk by Angela Saini as part of the Four Thought series (a sort of Ted Talks for radio). Saini is a witty and engaging technology and science journalist and although she wasn't specifically talking about cooking, a few things she said reminded me that picking up a frying pan can be something of a political statement.

Referring to the growing trend of DIY and recycling stuff she says: "That's why in a way making, knitting and crafting have become something of a counter movement to consumerism. They're not just fun things to do anymore, they're almost…subversive. Why should manufacturers tell us how our products should look? How long they should last and what we can do with them?"

It made me think that cooking, which is also in the realm of making and crafting can be  subversive. When I am in the kitchen, I'm doing my bit to stick my two fingers up at consumerism. When I cook, when I make meals from scratch I am not letting a food manufacturer tell me what a dish should look or taste like. When I experiment in the kitchen, I'm not letting anyone dictate portion size or ingredients, nobody is telling me how much or what to eat. When I make things to eat I don't have to compromise on quality for the benefit of profit or to pay for multimillion advertising campaigns. When I eat food that doesn't come in packaging I choose what goes in and what doesn't, the ingredient list is short. When I cook, the food is mine and I can do as I please. I am in charge. And that is a good thing.  When I am cooking as the Kitchen Fairy and showing other women how to make food I am doing a bit of grass roots politics and taking the battle out of the supermarkets and into the kitchens. The more women I can inspire to pick up a frying pan, the more powerful we become. And the more powerful we become, the better :-)

Are there any other political cooks out there who want to join in the frying pan movement?

Comfort cooking

I grew up spending all my summers in Italy and certain taste combinations take me right back to those hot, sunny days by the beach. You know when you take a bite of something and you are immediately transported back to another time and place... a bit like Proust and his madeleines?


The Torta della Nonna (literally "Grandmother's Cake") is a pastry case filled with a creamy concoction of ricotta and candied lemon peel and, for me, is the quintessential taste of Italy. It's sold in most bakeries and cafes and is one of my favourites. I've yet to come across a decent slice in London.


So as I stared out of my window at the miserable grey drizzle this morning I decided to transport myself back to summer with my tastebuds. I guess you could call it comfort eating...although it's more like comfort cooking! I don't have time to make pastry from scratch and faff around lining a tart tin so I took my trusty basic muffin recipe and tweaked it to make my own version of my favourite Italian cake.


They are delicious: light and fluffy like muffins should be but also dense with ricotta and studded with little bursts of lemony sunshine. They take less than 10 minutes to prep and 20 to cook so in half an hour you could be enjoying summer in your kitchen.


Lemon Ricotta Muffins

• 300 grams plain flour
• 120 grams caster sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 pot (250 grams) ricotta
• 100 mls milk
• 90 grams unsalted butter, melted
• 3 tbsp candied lemon peel
• zest of 1 large, unwaxed lemon
• 2 large eggs
• squeeze of lemon juice

1. pre-heat oven to 200C (180C FAN) and line 12 muffin tins with cases
2. sift the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and add candied lemon peel. Mix to coat peel in flour mixture (so they don't sink to the bottom)
3. whisk together all the wet ingredients plus zest in a another bowl or jug
4. pour the wet ingredients onto the dry ones and mix just enough to bring it all together
5. spoon into muffin cases and cook for 20 minutes

Fat is good

People really like my bacon and tomato pasta sauce - my bastardised take on the lovely Amatriciana which is made with cured pork cheek or 'guanciale' which is fried till golden and sizzling and then lifted out of the pan (leaving behind the rendered fat) into which onions and tomatoes are added to cook. The guanciale is then added back to the sauce at the very end so that it's still crispy. Really very good.

I can't actually call what I make an Amatriciana because that's not doing the original version any justice and if my Italian friends found out they would be horrified. My version uses streaky smoked bacon and I cook everything pretty much at the same time - Kitchen Fairy style. Which is why I stick to bacon and tomato sauce.

So what makes it good? Well, three things. The first is patience, giving the bacon and onions plenty of time to do what they have to do: mainly to crisp up and render some tasty smoky fat for the bacon and soften meltingly and  sweetly for the  onion. When I say patience I mean about 10 mins and you don't have to stand there stirring either. Just put them in a thick bottomed frying pan over a medium low heat and let them get on with it, checking only occasionally.   The second thing is to use whole tinned tomatoes instead of using the ready chopped ones. For some reason  chopped tin tomatoes are watery and thin and when the tomatoes are left intact they tend to make a thicker, creamier sauce. It takes about 1 minute to crush them into bits using a fork and the back of a wooden spoon. The third, and moist important,  secret ingredient is fat, both vegetable and animal. It's the generous use of olive oil and rendered bacon fat that make the difference to a really good tasting pasta sauce.

Fat keeps other foods moist and succulent, fat helps to caramelise, crisp up, emulsify, bind, seal and preserve other foods, enhancing  their flavour, texture and  lifespan. Fat is responsible for that wonderful mouth-feel certain foods deliver. Think chocolate melting on tongue - the "oooooh" inducing bit is the cocoa fat which melts at body temperature.

Anyway, I'm rambling. My point is that when I have a bowl of pasta with my Amatriciana sauce followed by a bowl of home-made Tiramisu - another great Italian favourite in which fats play a key role! - I feel 100% satisfied. I don't get 'cravings' afterwards. I don't need a square of chocolate  (or 7) after dinner as my 'something sweet', I don't grab handfuls of peanuts when I accidentally bump into them in the kitchen, I don't drink hot chocolate before bed time because I'm feeling  'a bit peckish'.

I have my pasta and my desert. I do some quick mental arithmetic to gauge the  quantity of pasta needed to satisfy but with enough room and enthusiasm left for the Tiramisu. I fill my bowls with just enough food. I savour and enjoy every bite. I stop when I've had enough.

Eating fat does not = weight gain. Overeating...anything = weight gain.

Beyond Chocolate and children - pancakes

It's Sunday night. My partner has gone out to watch men run after balls and I'm at home with my 3 year old son. He's been doing this thing of eating stuff like pasta and ham sandwiches at breakfast and typical 'breakfast' food at dinner time. Tonight was no exception. He polished off a serving of spaghetti with bacon and tomato sauce at 9am and requested pancakes at five. I love pancakes and we'd had a huge and lateish roast lunch so a couple of light, fluffy, fruity pancakes sounded perfect. I had a very mature banana which Oscar refuses to eat because it's got a 'bua' (an ouchie in Italian) so I thought I'd find a recipe to use it up in. I also had some half fat creme fraiche bought in the belief it was soured cream - the pitfalls of rushed online shopping...

I remembered Nigella having a banana pancake recipe in Feast and decided to experiment with those. When Oscar saw me putting the ingredients together (it's ridiculously easy, you put all the ingredients in a blender and whizz) he insisted we put some apple in it too so I grated one into the batter. We sat down to dinner 15 minutes later. We ate the pancakes with Greek style yoghurt through which I'd stirred some maple syrup. 

My son ate 3 and half of them, patting his tummy in between each one and saying 'mmmmh' emphatically. I ate 3 too. There are half a dozen left which I've packed away and will propose for breakfast tomorrow. Because it's fine for Oscar to be eating pasta at breakfast and pancakes for dinner and it would be even finer if we all ate the same thing, most of the time. Makes life easier if I don't have to whip up some pasta at dawn and all that.

They were very good. In fact, they were so good that they went on the "favourites" list in my special Kitchen Fairy notebook. I'm sure I will be making these often. I made a note about substituting buttermilk for creme fraiche which I'd watered down with milk and the addition of a grated apple. As I did so I noticed that this easy, store cupboard recipe which my son had devoured also happened to cover the 5 major food groups and had only a teaspoon of  sugar per 12 pancakes. A lot less than contained in most breakfast cereals. Brilliant.

The Recipe

Nigella Lawson's Banana and Buttermilk pancakes - adapted

For approximately a dozen pancakes (it depends how big you make them...)
150 g of flour
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of sodium
200ml buttermilk (or creme fraiche with a bit of milk to loosen it up)
1 banana (very ripe)
1 egg

30grams butter melted

Put everything except the butter into a blender (or tall jug if using hand held blender) and whizz everything together until you get a smooth batter. Set aside until ready to use and add melted butter at last minute. Get a large non stick frying pan, brush with a little of the melted butter left in the bowl or with some flavourless vegetable oil and fry little rounds of batter for 1minute on the first side and a little less on the other. Transfer to a heated plate or warm oven while you make batches.