How fast do you chop vegetables?

This is a worry I’ve had for a while now. Are any of you out there the type of people who chop vegetables at five hundred miles an hour? And your hand is a blur. And all your vegetables are small and perfectly shaped? Anyone? Well, can you please show me how to do it please?

On Monday, I am taking a tentative step into the world of food and kitchens and chefs jackets and sharp knives. I am excited. Without a doubt. Because it’s a chance to see whether I really want to work with food properly or whether I just like cooking at home and should stay there.

It’s busy there. Very busy. It’s constant. There’s no standing about and looking around for things to do.

But do I chop vegetables fast enough?! I’m nervous that I don’t. When I pick up a vegetable, there’s no blurred hands or roses carved out of turnips. I just chop it with a knife at an average speed and hope the slices are even. You can definitely see the movement of my fingers. No blur.

I also don’t drink or smoke. At all. Which seems to be the biggest trait of most chefs. On my trial shift last week, the chef expressed surprise that I don’t smoke.

And wine. Wine is a thing I’d like to know about. It’s quite an impressive thing to know about wine. I’d love to be a sommelier. But I don’t want to drink it. I just want to know about it. I mean, what kind of chef doesn’t know about or drink wine?!

I also don’t do well with heat. I get sweaty and uncomfortable. And kitchens are sweaty places. Especially in the summer.

You see? You see how these things worry me?

Monday is the big day. Will I be able to chop a tomato fast enough? That is question on everyone’s (my) lips…

I confited a rabbit!

This is exciting. It is very exciting. Why? I hear you ask. Well, because I can pretend I am on Masterchef, of course! They are always making a confit of something. A confit of duck, a confit of vegetables, etc etc.

So, using my fabulous new cookbook I got for Christmas, I bought a rabbit, something I have never done before and followed Michel Roux’s recipe for rabbit confit. It was fascinating. Well, actually, it was opposite of fascinating. I just stood and watched a pan do nothing. You have to keep the temperature at 70 degrees the whole time, which is quite low. It bubbles a little at first, then it just sits there, doing nothing.

So far as I can see, it is a more chic, French way of deep fat frying, minus the batter and bubbling. It is cooked really slowly and then preserved in the fat/oil and will last a few weeks in the fridge.

The rabbit was amazing when I used it to make a cassoulet the next day. Really soft and moist.

Last night I also made tomato confit and garlic confit and used them in my lamb and Mediterranean vegetable dish, from the same cookbook.

I am like the confiting queen now! I will just say one thing though, I’m buying more oil every time I go to the shop and it could work out to be an expensive hobby, this confiting thing.

P.S. Danda would like me to tell you the confit joke he and I came up with…. How do you make a duck confit? Lay it down on the sofa and put a pillow under its head.

An Italian feast – the carb light version

On Wednesday it was Halloween. Last year on Halloween, I got some sweets in and waited for the kids to come trick-or-treating.

They didn’t come.

I ate the sweets.

Apparently the thing you’re supposed to do is put something Halloweeny in the window or somewhere visible, to show you’re in on the fun. So this year, I got a few little pumpkins, put them in the window and planned to bake some goodies, flapjacks or something.

Well, then I got cooking for dinner as I had a friend coming over and didn’t get time to bake goodies for the kids, so good job no-one knocked! (I think I might be feeling a bit offended though. Why didn’t they want my sweeties?)

So I was back in the kitchen with my favourite cookbook, Polpo, by Russell Norman. My friend and I are both ex-Dukaners so try to not to go too mad on carbs. I definitely don’t avoid them, you can’t really, when eating like an Italian, but I just try not to have loads of them.

The antipasti was the carb-heavy part but I kept it out of the mains. Here’s the antipasti plate.

Top centre are my signature grissini sticks, wrapped in prosciutto and pickled chicory. To the left are music paper crackers. To the right is one of my favourite things in life ever, truffle butter, and just behind that, black truffle oil. In the white dish to the left is homemade basil pesto, in which I used pecorino and black truffle oil. Right at the front, the little pink squares are ham hock terrine and to the left are cherry tomatoes with a little shred of mozzarella and some torn basil on the top, then sprinkled with truffle salt. In the middle are little crostinis with ricotta, mint and broad bean on half of them and goat’s cheese, roasted walnut and grape drizzled with white truffle oil and thyme on the other.

For the mains, they unfortunately don’t photograph well so I will just have to tell you about them. I made a parmigiana with aubergines and courgettes, in which I used fresh basil and oregano where I usually use dried as the flavour is more concentrated. After having used just fresh this time, I think I will go back to using dried as the lovely oregano smells you usually get with a parmigiana definitely weren’t as strong. I also made a duck, black olive and tomato ragu which was far tastier than I expected. You spend about two and a half hours just slowly cooking the tomato sauce so the flavours are really strong and lovely. I also steamed some kale, spinach and fresh basil together as a side dish.

The dessert was vanilla panna cotta with blackberry coulis on top.

I also made something called a chocolate salami for having with the espressos I decided were a good idea at 9.30pm.

It is chocolate with egg yolks whipped into it, with crushed up sponge fingers, chopped dried fruit and loads of nuts. You just fridge set it until it is hard enough to cut in slices and have as little biscuits.

We then proceeded to have a super long chat about my visit to Mr Red Wine’s house. I must just add that I washed quite thoroughly, thirteen times, in between visiting Mr Red Wine and preparing this food!

Theatres, baths and lunch on the Tiber

The last day of the trip was my favourite. That is possibly something to do with the fact that I started it by eating tiramisu. Maybe. We packed our bags ready to leave and left them in the apartment til later.

We started out with coffee, obviously. I was doing a great job at attempting to develop a coffee habit. Their cappuccinos don’t come hot, which confused me. I think it could be to do with the fact that coffee is very functional there. People don’t walk around with huge coffees in takeaway cups. You have a small cup standing at a bar or sitting in a cafe and you drink it quickly before going to work in the morning, hence it comes lukewarm, instead of hot. Anyone know anything about how Italians drink coffee who can prove or disprove my theory?

Anyway, after coffee and tiramisu, we headed around the Colossuem to the Palatine Hill, where all the rich people and emperors lived.

The weather was beautiful and I think the area surrounding it is still quite upmarket. Something about it felt different, nicer. There was a sports ground near the ruins on Palatine Hill where tanned older gentlemen ran around the track in pairs, looking like retired film stars.

We went to the Baths of Caracalla, the ruins of the world’s largest leisure centre. It is so immense, you can’t quite take in what you are seeing.

The entire thing was for bathing. It had all those cold rooms and hot rooms and parts where you swim and parts where you plunge before going into a different room, etc. The complex was on two floors and also had shops and other things in the building.

Entire sections of the mosaic floor are still in place and there are huge chunks of mosaics from the second floor dotted around from when the upstairs sections collapsed.

After this, we kept following the Palatine Hill down to the Circus Maximus, where the chariot races used to take place. It was the world’s largest arena. (There are lots of ‘world’s largest’ things in Rome.)

Both ends have building work going on, which looks a bit like reconstruction work on the ruins of the seating area but we couldn’t see for definite. This is what the chariot race scene in Ben Hur is based on, if any of you have seen it.

After this, we headed through Roman Holiday territory, past the Mouth of Truth that Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn go to, and to the Teatro Di Marcellus. This might have been the thing that I liked the most, in terms of old and new Rome meeting. The two thousand year old building has a new section built on top if it, two floors of apartments.

I really REALLY want to live there. How amazing would that be?

Once we had spent a while wandering around the old porticos, we were in what had once been decreed a Jewish Ghetto and the Jewish people who lived there had all their rights as citizens taken away from them. There didn’t seem to be a reason apart from that the emperor at that time had decided it.

We were right next to the Tiber by this point so we stopped for a quick espresso and ice cream break. I had tiramisu flavoured ice cream. Danda had an ice cream who’s flavour we couldn’t read on the label and that he loved. He said it was the best ice cream he had ever tasted.

We headed to Tiber Island next, which has always had a connection with medicine. Even now, it still has a hospital run by nuns. On the other side of the river is Trastevere, where we had lunch. Friends had recommended the restaurants in this part of town so we stopped in the first place we saw, Ristorante “la Cornucopia”.

We shared a tomato and mozzarella salad then had a sea bass dish, which looked a bit normal but tasted phenomenal.

There we were, the sun was shining, we were surrounded by greenery, street musicians were serenading the diners and my lunch was amazing. That was probably my favourite moment of the trip. I was just revelling in the luxury of being able to do nothing for a while.

Soon after this, we had to think about making our way to the airport so we walked back to the apartment to get our bags and headed to the tube station next to the Colossuem.

What runs through my head when I’m working in the kitchen

Ok, 8am, we’re open. I’m in the kitchen. Great. I love working in the kitchen. All the food! Right, get set up, chopping board, knives, tongs, ready to go. Come on, where are the orders, the customers? Come on, come on! I’m ready! Let’s do this!

Ermmm… what should I do now? I guess I’ll wash a few dishes. La lala. Wash, wash, wash. A plate, some mugs, a spoon. Done. What now? O! Ok! There’s an order! I can hear someone making an order. Great. I’m ready. Let’s go.

It’s a full breakfast. Woop! Hob on, bacon in pan, crack two eggs in another. Sausages, tomato and mushrooms in oven. Heat the plate a little. Toast in. Which toast? White! Ok, it’s in. We’re on. Check the eggs. Turn the bacon.

O wait a minute, another order just came in. Scrambled eggs and bacon. Two more peices of bacon in the bacon pan. Another peice of bread in the toaster. Crack some eggs into another. Bit of cream. Salt. Pepper. Whisk whisk whisk. And on the heat. Keep whisking, don’t let it stick to the bottom. O wait, the sausages and tomatoes and mushrooms are ready for the first breakfast. But the toast hasn’t popped up yet! It ages from being done. And the fried eggs still aren’t ready to go. Ok, swish the oil around a bit to cook the top of them. The bacon is done. O man, half the first breakfast is done. Ok, no probs. Keep everything hot. O wait, stop swishing the fried egg oil! The scrambled eggs need whisking so they don’t stick. One hand doing that, the other hand doing everything else which needs doing.

Can I hear someone else making an order at the till? What?! No! O no, it’s a bacon sandwich to go! I haven’t any hobs left and no space in the bacon pan! Why? Why couldn’t they just get a croissant or something?! O my goodness! Why are they all here? I don’t understand why they can’t just time themselves so there’s a little space in between?

Ok, eggs done, toast done. Get plate with free hand. Everything on the plate for the full breakfast. Need to take it out. But can’t leave the scrambled egg pan! O wait, everything’s ready for that one. On plate, quickly, butter toast, cut in half. On plate. Both breakfasts done. Go go go!

Back to kitchen. Bacon in pan. Sizzle sizzle sizzle. Bread out. Butter, HP. Bacon on bread. Cut in half. Wrap up. Give to customer. Phew! Breathe out. Done. Clean up a little bit. And now I’m ready to go again. So where are the customers now? Stare around a little bit and look for things to do. Done everything. Where are they? I wish the customers would come back. It’s good when there’s lots of them. It makes time go faster and keeps me busy.

Is that one?! Is it?! No, they just want coffee. O…. I miss the customers.