Bad Cook

Giles has gone skiing and I’m in the house all by myself. Actually, he hasn’t gone skiing because he doesn’t like skiing; he’s just gone with some people to Switzerland who are skiing and he’s vowing to stay inside and read books. But he also took some emergency ski kit with him. No, I don’t understand either.

It’s always the way when Giles goes anywhere: I rather look forward to having the place to myself without his constant clattering, singing, shouting, cackling and raging, conducting his professional feuds and world-domination strategies in his office next door to mine, fielding phone calls and hammering away at his laptop, which always sounds, when he is in full-cry, like a troop of teenaged boys galloping down the stairs.

He leaves the house after consulting me eight times about every single thing he’s packing:‘Are you sure? Are you sure the red socks and not the striped ones? Sure? They’re going in … Sure?’ and looking briefly miserable on the doorstep. After I close the door I punch the air and shout ‘YES’ and vow to leave the bed unmade, do no washing up, watch Judge Judy all day and drink the kind of cheap white wine that burns holes through carpet.

Within an hour I’m a gibbering wreck, wide-eyed at my spooky, silent house and jumping at small noises.

And I don’t know what the hell to eat. Working within Giles’ strict things-we-can-and-can’t-eat thing means a trip to Waitrose is a logistical assault. Nothing non-organic, basically no fish at all because it’s all endangered, nothing processed, nothing from abroad. It’s why we’re constantly eating roast chicken. Sometimes I think to myself ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be easy to go shopping if I didn’t have to cook for Giles and all his arseholish ways’ but then I GO to Waitrose as I did just now and I can’t find, or think of, anything that I might want to eat. Not one thing.

So I’m going to make a chocolate cake instead. Definitely something I can’t do with him around what with his terror of sweeties.

This is a really fantastic chocolate cake. Like something you might buy in a shop, which is my highest accolade. It’s dark and rich but also springy and light at the same time. Bliss.

Chocolate Cake

225g plain flour

350g sugar

80g cocoa powder

1½ tsp baking powder

1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 eggs

250ml milk, any sort

125ml veg oil – I used groundnut

vanilla essence, two drops (I do not like a lot of vanilla essence because I think it makes things taste very plasticky)

250ml boiling water

1 Put everything except the boiling water into a bowl and stir until smooth.

2 Gradually add the boiling water and incorporate, stirring each sploosh in – it’ll end up very wet and this is normal.

3 And that’s it! Pour into a deep 23cm tin (this is important, so do make sure you have a tin the right size) and bake for between 30–35 minutes at 180ºC.

What you do with this after cooking is up to you. You can stick it together with a chocolate ganache if you like (I don’t like chocolate ganache with chocolate cake … bit sicky … which is why I haven’t done it) or with cream, or top it with cream and fruit, or sandwich together with raspberry jam or whatever, really. But it’s quite interesting on its own.

Cheat’s Mayonnaise

In my head, most other people survive on crackers and mousetrap and dismal bowls of soup, allowing me to congratulate myself endlessly for doing as little as opening a packet of mince and making bolognese. But whenever I delve any deeper, I discover that actually people are making their own mayonnaise and knocking up giant Ottolenghi-style feasts for 15 people at the weekend.

I have made my own mayonnaise in the past but, going forwards, I don’t think I will any more, having discovered a way to tart up commercial mayonnaise that is so effective that, in fact, I no longer feel intimidated by people who make their own mayonnaise. I just feel slightly sorry for them wasting all that time, all those egg whites.

Anyway, what you do is take a few dollops of Hellmann’s mayonnaise and add to it a glug of olive oil, some turns of the pepper grinder, a healthy squeeze of lemon juice, a dash of garlic (just put an unpeeled clove into a garlic squasher and squeeze through a few scrapings, you don’t need any more than that) and, if you are having this with shrimp, a small squeeze of tomato ketchup. And maybe a sprinkling of chilli powder on the top, just for decoration?

Baba Ganoush

I’ve started thinking that cooking is a bit like getting dressed. You CAN just wear a pair of jeans with a white T-shirt and some flip-flops. Or you can wear a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt and some Christian Louboutins. OR you can wear jeans, white T-shirt, Louboutins, massive necklace, sunglasses and, like, a Kelly bag or something.

But that doesn’t mean to say that you looked any the less fabulous in your plain jeans and T-shirt outfit. It looks good, it’s simple and it basically sends the same message.

I take this approach in the kitchen quite often these days. If I’m making something and I don’t have all the ingredients specified in a recipe I just sort of gloss over it and make a more basic version of whatever the recipe is suggesting. Similarly, if I’m making something and I happen to have a jar of kaffir lime leaves, an avocado, or some sour cream hanging about, whatever I’m cooking takes on a more spruced-up, Louboutins-and-Kelly-bag attitude.

And so it went last night while making baba ganoush, which as you all know perfectly well is a Mediterranean dip made with mashed grilled aubergines and tahini. But I didn’t have any tahini. So I stood there looking at this damned aubergine that had been sitting in my larder for ages and needed to be eaten somehow and thought ‘Maybe I ought to just do a jeans and white T-shirt thing with this’.

The resulting dip was so unbelievably delicious. Yes, okay, salting aubergines is boring but it’s not labour-intensive and it’s worth it, although a lot of people say not to bother. One aubergine makes more than enough dip for 2 people. I’ve split the ingredients up into things that are essential for this dip – the jeans and white T-shirt, if you like – and the added extras that will turn heads.

Jeans and T-shirt

1 aubergine

2 glugs olive oil

salt

lemon juice

paprika

Jeans, T-shirt and Louboutins

The above ingredients plus:

1 tbsp yoghurt

¼ tsp ground cumin

Jeans, T-shirt, Louboutins and Kelly bag

The above ingredients plus:

garlic clove

small bunch flat-leaf parsley

small bunch mint

1 So if you want to salt your aubergines now’s the time to do it. I cut mine into rounds, but you can cut them lengthways if you like. Sprinkle both cut sides with salt, sandwich them between two chopping boards and then pile a few heavy cookbooks on top of the boards. Leave them for as long as you like, minimum 35 minutes.

2 Now grill your aubergines. I fried mine on a griddle, but you can also stick them under a grill. It should take about 20 minutes for them to be soft all the way through and burnt and sticky on the outside.

3 The recipe I was working to said to take the skins off but this was too fiddly, so I just chucked them in, skins and all, to a food processor with all the rest of the ingredients. If you do it, you may find that you need to add more or less of certain ingredients depending on how much you like paprika and raw garlic.