Life Less Literary

I’m back in another food phase.

It started three or four days ago, when I decided to take a more serious look at the copy of Delia Smith’s Vegetarian Collection which we got as a wedding gift (still haven’t worked out who gave it to us - the label came off somewhere between the Earth Centre and our house).

So I forget exactly which recipe I started off on, but over the last few days I have made, among other things, semolina shortbread, black-eyed bean burgers (except I didn’t have any black-eyed… substituted black turtle beans instead) with an amazing ginger-onion marmalade, a plum grunt-type crumbley-sconey-topped dessert, red onion and balsamic vinegar tart, pesto risotto salad, a few other things which I must’ve forgotten but I’m sure they were very nice. It’s a better cookbook than I at first thought, but it still annoys me with its acres of photos of baskets of apples and punnets of whitecurrants (yes, I know what the raw materials look like… why the hell don’t you show me pictures of the finished product?) and the measurements given in imperial, with the metric equivalents in brackets, as if to make a point.

And then today I got back to using the absolutely amazing wonderful Vegetarian Bistro (OK, so the measurements are in fucking CUPS, something which I thought we got over shortly after the stone age). Ahh… delicious gorgeous super-wonderful. We had a kind of soufflé-ish gratin for dinner - mashed courgettes and arborio rice mixed with spinach, basil, parlsey, parmesan, onion, garlic and egg, a few salads and some creamy mushrooms to go with it. And then for dessert… well, get this… absinthe soufflé!!!

Dissolve a quarter of a cup (how big a cup?) of sugar in half a cup (ditto) of water over a low heat, then turn it up and boil for ten minutes until it’s syrup. Meanwhile take three egg whites (or in my case, seven) and whisk them to hell and back with a pinch of salt. Once they’re hard and peaky, drizzle in the syrup while still whisking, then drizzle in a little (two tablespoons?) absinthe. In another bowl (I hope somebody else is washing up) whisk up some (a cup?) double cream until peaky but soft, then whisk in some more (another two?) absinthe. Fold together the egg mix and the cream mix and stick it in the freezer for six hours or more (if you’re me, you might stick some mint leaves on top or something poncey like that… or will that make it taste even more toothpastey?). Eat. But not too much, or you’ll get very drunk.

Mmmm. Absinthe ice-cream. Whod’ve thought it?