Foodiness

For the Annual Dinner of the Reading Writers - which takes the form of a pot luck supper in recent years - I made some cheese and potato pierogi and some spicy tomato sauce to go with them.

The pierogi - a Polish speciality somewhere between ravioli and a cornish pasty - were well-enough liked, but the tomato sauce went down a storm.

I suppose you want the recipe, don't you?

Oh, all right then...

SPICY TOMATO SAUCE

You need:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 dried chillies, seeds removed
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 400g tin of tomatoes
150 ml vegetable stock
1 Tbsp tomato purée
A pinch of brown sugar
1 Tbsp dried basil (a handful of torn fresh leaves is better if you have them)
salt and pepper to taste
1 shot glass dry vermouth

Cook the onion and chilli gently in the hot oil for 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and garlic, cover and simmer for 10 minutes

Add the stock, tomato purée, basil, sugar, salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Tip the lot into the blender and whizz until smooth.

When ready to use, add the vermouth and reheat.

Do you want the pierogi as well?

CHEESE AND POTATO PIEROGI

For the Pierogi:
150 g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 egg
water to mix

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and break the egg into it. Mix it up together from the middle out, adding water a little at a time until you have a dough that is soft but not sticky. Cover with a damp cloth and leave somewhere cool for an hour or so.

For the filling:

150 g potatoes, peeled
1 Tbsp ricotta or other curd cheese
Lashings of grated (proper) cheddar cheese (the more the better)

Boil the potatoes. Drain and mash with the ricotta and CHeddar.
That's it.

Now:

Take a small amount of the dough and roll it out very thinly on a floured board. Cut out circles with an 80mm (or thereabouts) pastry cutter. Repeat until the dough is used up.

Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each circle. Moisten the edge of the circle. Fold over and seal with a fork.

Add the pierogi a few at a time to briskly boiling water for 5 minutres. Remove with a slotted spoon when done.

Serve with tomato sauce.

Enjoy.

This week's veg box

It's a Small box this week. It contains

• 1 bag of potatoes (variety Orla)
  
• 1 bag of carrots
  
• 1 lettuce (but I never know what to do with these)
  
• 1 bag of cherry tomatoes (nice!)
  
• 2 leeks
  
• 1 cauliflower
  
• 1 bag of spring greens
  

The leeks and cauli are destined for soup. The spring greens will find themselves cooked up with onions and some Polish sausage.

Any other ideas?

Literacy in the Landscape

IT 'literacy' is fine, then. But not, I suppose, the other sort.



I'm rather touched by this one. The writer has, I think, gone to some lengths to get 'owing to' right. But oh dear - Butt me no Butt's!

To be fair, the writer has also got this right in the body of the text but once the stable door is open...

I also like the pedantic way the writer has given St a full stop (not in normal British usage) and given bus an apostrophe (rather quaint).

[What do you mean, the idea of closing St Mary's Butts is funny? I don't understand. 'Butts' was the name given to an area of open space used for archery practice and the road - which is very wide as it was laid out for trams - is named after the butts that once stood there.]