Winging it

So I promised to report all flops and failures as well as the romping successes. Well, one has snuck in this week--see if you can spot it. All of the dishes have a running theme this week: I didn't have a recipe for any of them. I know, I know it says on the top of this blog that I'll be trying out recipes, but if you think I am so anal as to keep strictly within semantics so rigidly you must either never have met me, or this is your first time here--if so, welcome. ANYWAY, these were all things I hadn't made or cooked before.

Sam and I were going out on Saturday night, poverty had decreed that this week we would try and live on our stores for a bit (we were well-stocked), and what we had in the house was sausages and potatoes. However, sausages and potatoes are not the foods for the warmest day we had had in WEEKS. So I created a hot sausage and potato salad. I did start Googling recipes for this, but really...it's a salad: the point is you put in bits you like and think will go well together, then eat. Now I am rather cautious about feeding Sam salads. Not because he will dash it to the floor, tell me salad is the food of girls, and enquire where his manly pie is, but I worry that it won't fill him up, and I'll see him apologetically hunter-gathering in the kitchen for digestives. I thought, though, a salad that contained both sausages and potatoes might do the trick. And it did: I just served sliced grilled sausage with new potatoes on a bed of spinach and baby plum tomatoes, in a mustardy, vinegary dressing. I can't think why I hadn't done this before: I am not an unadventurous cook. I think this is the best way to eat sausages and not feel filthy afterwards!

Now for the failure. This blog is a sort of shit sandwich--as in the uncouth term for being in the office and having your less-good feedback embedded in the better stuff--I am doing this to hope that this one slips in here between two things that really work so you'll forget about it. So this week's flop was an artichoke. I've long been a fan of these on top of pizzas and eaten with a fork straight out of a jar, and I was curious to see what a freshly cooked one would taste like, so when I saw them on sale in a branch of a certain Northern chain of supermarkets, I bought one; it cost £3, but nevermind, I thought, it is gigantic.

Not so: after I had removed stalk, scary-looking outer leaves and choke (horrid fluffy looking stuff which sticks painfully in the throat if eaten), and blunted a knife and generally made a mess, I was left with the teeny tiny heart, which I rubbed with lemon juice in an attempt to stop it browning. I then boiled and boiled for just over half an hour as advised by friends and the patronising woman on this video. Having fished out the brown mess I poured over some dressing and served. It was mushy down the bottom, and tough round the sides. I came as close as I have done to producing something utterly inedible. Even Sam, who is a gent at all times, deemed it a failure and looked relieved when I followed it with a soup he likes.

Anyway, I want to divert your attention from that failed attempt at cooking vaguely unusual vegetables and tell you about my marvellous frappucino cake. The last time I had anything to do with coffee cake I was still living at home, and made it with something called coffee essence which came from an ancient bottle of my mothers--and tasted NOTHING like coffee. So I brewed some strong coffee and made a three-egg cake batter (replacing half the butter with vegetable oil--in part for health reasons, in part due to a lack of butter) and sloshed about two tablespoons of coffee in. It did rise in rather an odd way (producing a slightly off-centre dome) but I suspect this was down to using self-raising flour as much as anything.

To give it the feel of a frappucino coffee, I split the cake and put a layer of caramel in--I do have a penchant for summer coffee drinks, and I thought this would do quite well to emulate them. I then finished it off by plastering it with a thin layer of butter-cream, again with some proper coffee in it. It was very nice, though I say so myself, moist, coffee-tasting and completely made by the layer of caramel.

So it's goodbye for a couple of weeks now: I want to go away, refresh what I'm doing here, and come back with something good to read!