Py+Tips:Hangovers

Now, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I have discovered the cure for a hangover. Well, maybe discovered is the wrong word. And maybe ‘cure’ is a little dramatic. But otherwise it is true.

‘So what is this miracle cure?’ I hear you cry. Well, it is Heuvos a la Mexicana. To the uninitiated, that means Eggs the Mexican Way. To the even less initiated, that means scrambled eggs with spring onion, chili, tomato and tortillas. Oh yes. The perfect balance of stodgy (thanks tortillas!), healthy (hey tomatoes, with all your vitamin C!), and spicy (kick my arse out of bed, chili!), this dish is like a band-aide to the self-inflicted sore soul.

You will need…

As for a recipe, I follow Nigella Lawson on this one, as she doesn’t even call for a knife; fearing a sharp implement with a head like cotton wool and the reaction times of a turtle, I simply chop everything with scissors. Even the tomatoes.

No knife required…

He ain’t pretty, he’s my saviour.

Let me know if this cures you. Any other pieces of advice that I should be following?

Py xxx

Py Talks…Lunches

Lunch

Each week I sit down with pen, paper, cookery books and my computer and work out a few new recipes that I am going to have a go at in the following days. To me, somebody as likely to chew my own hand off as jump out of a plane in the sky, this seems like quite an adventurous thing to do. To my mind I am Beryl Markham of the culinary world; an imaginative risotto is my solo flight across the Atlantic. However, even I am not so delusional as to see my lunch choices as pioneering. Every single day I have a Heinz Cream of Tomato soup (300g Mug-size), Ryvita Mini’s and a piece of fruit. Sometimes I go really crazy and add some carrot sticks and hummus. Wild.

What do you guys have for lunch? And what are the meals that you always seem to fall back on?

Perhaps this calls for some sort of series on quick, easy and cheap lunch-boxes…

Py x

Bagels, Lunch, and Dan Lepard.

So here is a post all about how my lunch got flipped turned upside down,

I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, to tell you how I became the prince of a 

town called…um, bagel… 

Lunch can be a tricky time for a vegetarian. Shops, cafes and coffee shops seem to believe that we subsist on a diet constituted solely by cheese and tomato sandwiches and their egg mayonnaise siblings. Neither float my boat.

This does:

This is homemade bagels, with guacamole and fried halloumi. Oh yes.

And so to the bagels. My meditations on mid-day meals led me to a place that almost all my thoughts lead me: Dap Lepard and his life-enhancing, perhaps even life-affirming, ‘Short and Sweet’.

Nestled amongst the mouthwatering array of breads that could lift any lunch to one fit for veggie royalty, I saw a couple of little doughy rings, and I knew they were for me. And my gosh were they divine. I urge you to try this recipe.

The recipe is available here; due to the Guardian’s strict contract with Dan Lepard I cannot reproduce it.

However, I did make a number of changes: I increased the ingredients to make 8 bagels; rather than simply sticking my finger through the middle of the dough balls, I shaped them into snakes then joined the ends, so they at least looked a little more authentic; I left the bagels to poach in the poaching water far longer than the article suggest (around 30 seconds per side); and, finally, I found that my bagels needed around 5 more minutes than the recipe advised.

All that was needed was some fillings…

I had: Guacamole (mashed avocados with the juice of 1 lime, 1 chopped chilli, 1/2 diced onion) with fried halloumi.

Other ideas:

Stilton and mango chutney

Grilled artichokes and hummus

Cream cheese studded with capers and roasted peppers

Goats cheese and grilled asparagus

Nutella, peanut butter and banana

Let me know your favourites!

See; vegetarian lunch time can be fun!

MY EXPERIENCE:

I was actually at home when I cooked these (home being a farm in North Yorkshire); the oven could not have been any farther removed from my tiny gas cooker…

…but, having returned to Cambridge, I can once again but dream of such culinary luxury…