How To Eat A Dead Houseplant

Rosemary is a wonderful herb. Unfortunately it absolutely hates me. I have tried to grow it in my garden, twice. Both times, it withered away and died. This year I thought I would try something different, so I bought a wonderfully healthy looking plant in a pot, which was designed to be kept inside.

It was a good looking plant, in a fancy terracotta container. There were wood chips scattered on the surface of the soil, and the rosemary had been clipped into a twee ball. It looked like the herb equivalent of one of those children who take part in pageants –all pretty and dolled up, yet quietly ambitious and determined to take over the world. I kept it near a window, watered it, talked to it, but almost instantly it started dropping its needles over the floor. Within three months it was a sad, miserable skeleton looking accusingly back at me from the kitchen windowsill.

I decided to strip the branches of their needles and keep them to use as a dried herb. As for the branches, well I have wanted for some time to experiment with alternative ‘skewers’ for grilled meats. Everyone loves meat on a stick. But even better than meat on a stick, is meat on a scented stick, which adds flavour to the meat from within during the cooking process.

A few months ago I interviewed a very nice Vietnamese chef, who produced a beautiful and fragrant chicken skewer. He had marinated the chicken before cooking and served it with a delicious and light dipping sauce for a second flavour hit. But the thing he had done to the chicken, which instantly made me think ‘I am definitely stealing that’ was to skewer it on lemongrass stalks, which would then impart their light floral oils to the centre of the chicken as it cooked. I started thinking about other effective methods of skewering and flavouring meat, and the rosemary branch was an obvious candidate. With lamb, of course. Both herbs make perfectly effective skewers to hold the meat and release delicious flavours into the flesh, but neither ‘skewer’ was particularly useful at actually making the initial hole in the raw meat cubes. So, I used a regular wooden skewer to pierce each cube of meat, before threading them onto my delicious herbal sticks, ready for cooking.

Chicken on a broomstick

6 lemongrass spears

About 20 cubes of chicken breast or thigh (thigh has more flavor)

For the marinade:

2 tablespoons groundnut oil

2 tablesoons mirin (rice wine)

4 kaffir lime leaves shredded

1 handful dried chilli flakes

6 cloves garlic sliced thinly

1 tablespoon palm sugar (white sugar or honey if you don’t have any)

½ tbsp. fish sauce (optional)

Juice of one lime

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl. Place the chicken cubes into the bowl and turn until they are well coated. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour, overnight is preferable, turning the chicken pieces from time to time.

Heat the grill or the barbecue so it is really hot. Take a wooden (or metal) skewer and push through a chicken cube one at a time.. Remove, then thread the cubes onto a spear of lemongrass (about 4 to a spear). Brush with any remaining marinade and then cook under the grill/on the barbecue, turning until they are cooked through. Best when the outsides are slightly browned.

 

chicken on a very fancy stick

Rosemary-impaled lamb

4 branches from a poor, dead rosemary tree, or 4 long strips, needles removed and crushed

2 lamb rump steaks, cubed

Red wine

2 tbsp. olive oil

10 cloves garlic sliced thinly

Salt

 

Place the red wine, olive oil, crushed rosemary needles and sliced garlic in a bowl and stir well. Add the lamb cubes  and stir until well coated. Leave to marinate for as long as possible (ideally overnight) before threading onto the rosemary branches and then cooking under a very hot grill. Make sure the outside of the lamb is nicely seared to make a contrast with the softer middle. If you cook it on too low a heat, this cut of lamb can be rather chewy.

Mother’s Pride Soup

Number Two Son is very bad at Full Moon Parties. Last year his ‘drink was spiked’ and he fell asleep at midnight, waking when all the festivities were over. This year he made it to just after midnight, before some ruffian rugby-tackled him, he fell off a twenty foot platform and landed on a sharp light fitting.

‘I’ve just had twenty stitches in my leg. It just missed my femoral artery’ he said triumphantly down the phone to me, from a hospital in Koh Samui, where he had been speed-boated back along with a girl who had broken her arm. I was very grateful that he had not injured himself more seriously, but was cross with him for getting into a scrape.

When boys are eighteen – they think they are invincible and they are quite hard to discipline and manipulate into doing what a mother wants. I have  two large sons, two brothers and lots of male friends and think I am quite adept at ‘influencing’ men. I have found with younger ones, only two things work – two threats that will get them off their argumentative backsides and doing whatever it is that you want. These two things? Dancing and ‘talking street’.

I am very fond of Koh Samui, so I decided to take action. The only way to stop Number Two Son maiming himself again, would be to embarrass the life out of him. So I hopped on a plane and appeared at his guest house, where I found him, still covered in body paint and blood from the night before, seething and furious. ‘Why are you here’ he growled. ‘Why didn’t you just get me a plane ticket and bring me home. It’s so embarrassing having you here. I won’t be seen in public with you. You have just come here, but we aren’t together. I’m not going out in public with you’.

‘I was worried, darling’ I said. ‘You have hurt yourself and I wanted to see for myself what was going on’. His leg was completely hideous – a semicircle of stitches that looked like the doctor had been nipping at the morphine, and a large lip of flesh standing proud of the wound. Number Two Son graciously invited me to accompany him to the hospital to pay (so he could retrieve his passport), which we did, dodging the many cats that wove in between patients legs in the waiting room. We then went for dinner, where he ate like a wild man and expounded on how embarrassing it was having me there. ‘Look – people are staring’ he grumbled ‘They think you are my cougar’. ‘That’s the very reason I became a teenage mother’ I answered ‘So I could win glamorous granny competitions – you know that. It was never about children – I don’t really like children that much’.

The woman behind the reception desk gave me a wink as I checked in. She clearly thought I was doing awfully well with such a tall, handsome toyboy. I did nothing to disabuse her of the idea. She can’t have thought I was that lucky, as he had a face on him that was more ‘curdle milk’ than ‘adoring’ but then some people’s faces are like that all the time – think of Kanye West.

My finest hour came on the Saturday night, when after taking myself off to a beachside party, I bumped into my son and his friends in the Green Mango. His friends were delighted, as I plied them with drinks and gave them my views on Daft Punk. ‘You are not to dance’ said Number Two Son. ‘I will leave. You must go home and not dance’. His friends didn’t agree and within a small amount of time I was on a stage with nine teenage boys throwing my finest shapes. Number Two Son dragged me off the stage and my work was done.

In between embarrassing my child, I bought some very ‘Mutton’ clothes, spent time on the beautiful beach and stuffed myself with the most delicious Thai food. I honestly did not want to come home – I could live there forever. In honour of my beloved Koh Samui, here is a recipe for a delicious soup. It’s not the really famous one with shrimp –Tom Yum Goong – incidentally I think river shrimp are better than sea shrimp in that recipe, as their brains disperse so beautifully into the broth, leaving tiny creamy dots on the surface. This is a chicken soup. For veggies – use the firmest tofu you can find, cut into strips.

Tom Kaa Gai

Galangal and Kaffir lime leaves give this light, fresh soup a delicious fragrance. For a real flash-harry touch, add a couple of kaffir lime leaves just before you serve – so the scent as you put the soup in front of your guests is truly intense. It’s very easy too.

3 cups coconut milk

4 stalks lemongrass, bruised (as in wallop them with a rolling pin) and chopped

5-6 thin slices of galangal (it looks a bit like ginger. If you can’t find it – but here it comes in those ‘thai herb packs’ all the supermarkets carry, ginger will do at a pinch)

10 kaffir lime leaves torn in half

300g boneless chicken cut into strips OR firm tofu cut into strips

115g rice straw mushrooms (they are fleshy and a bit like little pudgy things. Any mushrooms will do if you can’t find these)

4 tablespoons lime juice

3 tablespoons (less if it’s not your thing so much) fish sauce

10 chopped hot chillies (again, if you are a baby about spice – don’t use as many – but this soup really is meant to be hot)

chopped spring onion and coriander leaves to garnish.

Heat the coconut milk in a saucepan until it comes to the boil. Add the lemongrass, galangal and half of the kaffir lime leaves. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for about ten minutes. Strain it and return the stock to the pan. Return to the heat, add the mushrooms and chicken or tofu. Cook for a further 5 -7 minutes until the chicken is nicely poached.

Stir in the lime juice, fish sauce and the rest of the kaffir lime leaves. season. Ganish with chillies, spring onions and coriander leaves.

How To Cook For Children Without Going Insane, Or Boring Everyone Witless

My friend Amanda is trying to finish her second book, whilst dealing with three children at home during the school summer holidays. She asked if I would write something about how to feed children when you are in an awful rush, or utterly preoccupied with something . I thought that was a great idea. We are all, from time to time, preoccupied with something. It could be something worthy- like writing books, or intellectually stimulating – like watching Made In Chelsea

What you actually feed children is another question, and one that I find causes a reasonable amount of conflict and argy bargy between otherwise quite sensible people. There’s the perfect  Mummy crew, harping on about how many raisins it is actually OK to give a toddler, before type 2 diabetes sets in. There’s the ‘sustainable and organic’ crowd who like to bang the drum and hold emotionally charged conversations about mechanically reclaimed meat. Most of these people being so god-awfully boring about food, were raised on a diet of Ribena and Angel Delight. The only damage I can see that those artificially coloured products have caused, is generating fearful sanctimony and doom-mongering in the middle-aged. These moaning biddies are all still alive, have most of their teeth and very active consciences.

Every mother hopes not to outlive her children, but there is a balance between being careful about giving them a balanced diet and being a neurotic mess. That said, although it may feel irritating and bourgeois, to flap about feeding children,  feeding children has to be done, however inconvenient the timing and unrewarding the task. Rather than seeing it as a minefield that could cause children terrible damage, a gruesome chore, or an emotional battlefield on which to fight culinary war with one’s offspring, the less stressy you are about it, the easier it will be. I find the following three rules a key to remaining sane.

Rule Number One: No child died of starvation or malnutrition from skipping the odd meal. If they won’t eat what you cook them, don’t give them anything else.

Rule Number Two: Like dogs – if they smell fear on you, children will mess you about. Remain calm –or take tranquilisers

Rule Number Three: Be organised, however counterintuitive it feels. If you think about supper at breakfast time – by the time the evening rolls around, you will have it under control.

I’m afraid I don’t care much for ‘knees under’ dining and Little Lord Fauntleroy table manners when in a rush. If you want children to actually eat their food and not disrupt your work, it is easier to leave them to it. Picnic style foods that give them a choice (which clearly you control – I’m not suggesting offering them a choice between chocolate biscuits and quinoa) always go down a storm. If you sit them on an enormous old sheet to eat, then clearing up isn’t a drama either – it’s a lot of fun for them and for once, no one is breathing down their necks, squeaking about grubby faces or eating with hands. And even better – you don’t have to be put off your dinner by their moronic conversations about  nursery school or their unfortunate noisy chewing. Everyone is a winner.

It’s worth having large supplies of seedless grapes, thin ham, mild cheeses and brown bread. Nutella is a bit of a magic thing too. I don’t think a nutella sandwich on brown bread is going to have Social Services arriving on the doorstep. I feel terribly sorry for children who are made to eat rice cakes,  as I think they smell like sewage and taste like packaging – but if yours don’t mind, they have flavoured ones which could be a healthy treat. My secret weapon when my two boys were small, was a packet of ready cooked cocktail sausages from the supermarket. Guaranteed silence until the last one was destroyed. I told them they were the fingers of Amazonian pygmies  – and they still ate them.

Frozen food isn’t all prawn rings and horrible eighties style gateaux – it can be your friend when feeding children if you can get over any snobbery about it. Fish fingers baked in the oven and stuck between two pieces of brown bread make a marvellous quick supper. Frozen petits pois are heaven and better than the real thing in a pod. Frozen corn on the cob (especially over here – the fresh stuff I have come across I would not feed to my cow, if I had one) is genius and usually goes down a storm with children. But if you can’t face channelling Kerry Katona – here is a recipe that even the hardest to please  Yummy Mummy will like.

Spatchcocked Poussin with home made wedges

Poussin are midget chickens. The Americans call them ‘Cornish game hens’ despite them being neither from Cornwall nor game birds – they are just small chickens. When they are butterflied, or spatchcocked, they are (forgive me) crucified, like little feathered messiahs, on two sticks. The brilliant thing about spatchcocking, apart from providing an opportunity to make blasphemous remarks, is that the chickens cook very quickly. Most supermarkets in the UK sell ready spatchcocked poussins,  sometimes smeared with herby marinades, which don’t seem to bother most young eaters. I haven’t seen them in Hong Kong so much – but spatchcocking really isn’t that hard to do. I have done it, and although chopping out the backbone did make me heave slightly, it really only was about 30 seconds of my life.

If the poussins aren’t already marinated – rub butter over their skin and squeeze with a little lemon, to make it juicy and crisp. One poussin will feed two small children or one greedy one. Children seem to like having an entire poussin to themselves  — it makes them feel like giants.  Once they have picked the poussin carcass clean, shove it in a saucepan with a peeled chopped onion, carrot and some herb stalks and use it to make stock, which can be the basis of a delicious, child-friendly risotto (on a day when you have more time)

Potato wedges are easy to make and the frozen ones you can buy often have hideous stuff all over the outside of them, which tastes overpoweringly of garlic salt – a Seventies abomination. Chop largish potatoes in half, then slice each half into six wedges. Toss in olive oil, salt and depending on how old, or how nails your children are, a little paprika or chilli powder. Microwave for ten minutes, then stick in the oven at 200c along with the poussin, for around half an hour (check the poussin is cooked, by poking a skewer into the fattest bit of its leg and seeing if the juices run clear) Turn the potatoes over from time to time to ensure even cooking. Serve with whatever vegetables you can get them to eat.

Noah and the Japanese Chicken

When I travel to the airport, I go in a taxi. The airport express is so incredibly cold, that my body is in the early stages of rigor by the end of the forty minute trip. I don’t take a lot of notice of my surroundings on the car journey. Not because they are not interesting – it’s a fascinating trip through container ports, over glorious suspension bridges, past tiny green islands, with fishing villages tucked into their corners. I am simply too busy being terrified about the flight ahead,  imagining how it will actually feel, when my body is blown apart by the force of a terrorist’s knicker bomb, or whether my charred remains will be of any comfort to my grieving family, if they are ever recovered from the depths of the sea. I don’t like planes.

But as you cross from Tsing Yi to Lantau, there is a slip road that leads off to the tiny island of Ma Wan, distinctive for being the site of prehistoric remains, including two neolithic skulls, and having an enormous life sized Noah’s Ark attraction, beached on the shore. We took Number One Daughter to Ma Wan last weekend, as we had heard that there was a very good Japanese restaurant there, which we consoled ourselves would be a good reward, after traipsing around a boat-shaped, indoor zoo.

The Ark wasn’t a zoo at all, unless you count the presence of a toucan, three slightly peculiar looking lizards, and a bizarre, hairless guinea pig, which made me remember to book myself in for a bikini wax. It was a very well laid out exhibition, with plenty of interactive games, and a little movie theatre, but the theme was definitely focusing more on Noah, than the animals going in two by two, if you get me. I’m not sure how gaga I must have been, actually, to have assumed that the place was a zoo. The name kind of gives away that it probably isn’t going to be the most secular of places to visit. Nonetheless, apart from one rather evangelical tour guide, who was dying to make us watch a film about Mount Ararat  -it was jolly interesting and not too pushy on the religious front.

The top of the ark is a hotel, and a very reasonable one at that. Well worth a gander, if you have visitors looking for a cheap, clean and different place to stay.

We went to the wonderful Japanese restaurant Chi Dori Tei for lunch, just adjacent to the beach as you walk from  the ark towards the residential complex, where Number One Daughter threatened to kick off about the food – eyeing crispy crumbed oysters, sashimi and curried pork cutlets with deep suspicion, until a delicious soy chicken dish was presented to her. Made from chicken thigh, she even forgot to whine about the skin still being on as the sauce was so very splendid, They used thigh meat for a bit more flavour, but if you are on a diet, or peculiar about skin/thighs, I don’t see why a skinless chicken breast couldn’t be served the same way although it would be a lot less exciting. But then soy chicken isn’t for the culinary adrenalin junkie. It’s good, reliable and kids will eat it. Here’s the recipe

Japanese Soy Chicken

4 boned chicken legs with their skins on

4 tbsp soy sauce

1 inch piece of ginger grated

2 gloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp sake (dry sherry will do if not, or Chinese rice wine)

1 tbsp mirin (but another tbsp sake and  a tsp honey will do as a substitute – mirin is basically a sweet low alcohol rice wine)

a little pepper.

Take the chicken legs and prick them all over on their non-skin side with a fork. This will help the marinade to penetrate. Take the skin at the thigh end and (sorry this is hideous and it makes me shudder to write it) peel it back almost to the chicken’s ‘ankle’. Don’t take it right off, you want it like a big flap. With the skin peeled back, prick the thigh flesh all over with the fork on the upper side too.

Place the other ingredients into a large bowl and mix well with a fork. Place the pricked legs into the marinade and leave for at least one hour turning from time to time, or spooning the marinade over the top. Switch the oven on to 200. Place the meat on a rack, if you have one, inside a meat tin, skin side up and when the oven is up to temperature pop them in. Keep checking on them until they are cooked. It depends on the size but start looking after about 15 minutes and keep a close eye after that. Alternatively you can grill them – I would start by grilling the underside, then turn over and blast the skin side. It wouldn’t even hurt to pop them on the barbecue. Serve sliced elegantly into morsels, so you can eat them with chopsticks, along with rice and salad. Or, just pick them up and eat them like Noah would have done, with hands.