A methi business

Cooking simply doesn't have to be cooking boringly. A fresh piece of wild fish or some high-season asparagus doesn't need much doing to it. Meals like this are quite often the best, in terms of flavour, sustainability and time. Vegetables at their freshest and most seasonal take almost no time to cook and with something like a flavoured butter or herb oil to complement them you are going to eat very well.

You can make many of these things in advance, butter freezes well to use as and when you like; spice mixes; freshly toasted and ground, will keep well in a jar in the cupboard for a couple of weeks to sprinkle over a finished dish. Try this gunpowder recipe for roast squash or this za'atar one to add to stems of tender broccoli or to sprinkle over.

Flavoured butters are one of my favourite way to add flavour and excitement to a dish and -- contrary to the advice given by the idiots in charge of dietary 'guidelines'-- it is good for you. Why on earth you would substitute a natural and delicious ingredient for an industrially produced trans-fat laden 'spread' which is one step away from plastic is beyond me.

Last week I made a batch with wild garlic as well as a harissa-laden one. I used them liberally to cook salmon, melt into a butter bean and chorizo stew and pour over fried eggs. This version, using a bunch of fresh fenugreek leaves (I threw the stalks into the blender too) is an elegant pale jade colour. Its maiden voyage is going to be with cauliflower, the florets first boiled until just starting to soften, next a coating of turmeric powder and mustard seeds, then caramelised in a pan and poached in the butter until ready.

Ingredients
250g softened unsalted butter (homemade from pasture-raised cows milk would be best, but failing that, Yeo Valley butter is a good supermarket one, if you must use those vile warehouses of sugar, food-type products and palm oil)
5g Maldon salt
1 bunch of fenugreek, well chopped
1tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Method
Melt 25g of the butter with the olive oil and add the salt. Throw in the fenugreek and stir well. Cook for about five minutes, until everything is well wilted then remove from the heat and leave to infuse for half an hour.
If at the end of the infusion the butter has started to solidify again, gently heat it.
Strain the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl, discarding the leaves then add the remaining butter and whisk well until it all comes together.
Pour into a jar or dish and chill until firm.

Figment of the imagination

The sky was yellow, a Saharan dust covering London. A strange light and a weak red sun poking through. Perhaps this was a new and rather full-on marketing push for the new Bladerunner film, or maybe we are hurtling toward apocalypse now. I met a friend for supper that evening and the gloom meant we all scuttled indoors a little quicker than usual. We eat steak tartare, prepared tableside by a crisp black and white linen-ed and desiccated waiter then hurried back to our homes.Summer is now well on it's way to the other side of the world and autumn has properly pulled the duvet over us. Soon, the woolly hats and gloves will be on and we can be justified in not leaving the house until March.It's a strange feeling, the desire to go to bed at six in the evening and the sure mistake of the alarm going off at what seems like the middle of the night. The clocks will soon change, giving us a little more light in the early morning for about a week before we sink ankle deep into winter. I hope the farmers are grateful as we all finish our afternoons with night vision goggles on, stepping over the bodies of run-over school children.There are still some green leaves clinging desperately onto the branches of the tree today as I look outside the sitting room window. Most of the other branches around are bare and I swear I just saw a pigeon with a scarf on. But as civilisation comes to an end around us and turnips are the only thing that will still grow, I still insist on serving a green salad at almost every meal. The children have a bowl of it tossed with mustardy vinaigrette to eat before I give them their supper. We don't live in an American restaurant, it just keeps them quiet for a bit and they wolf it down. I should stop wearing a frilly apron and serving them bottomless mugs of coffee though.This week saw me grate half a clove of garlic into my usual dressing. This is what is passing for excitement in our house at the moment. We are all pretty tired now, and half term hasn't come soon enough. The children need a rest and we are grateful for the change of pace it brings. Although we now find ourselves, with unbelievable inconvenience, having to feed them three meals a day plus occasional snacks and seek out entertainment.This Sunday morning though, the children let us sleep until quarter to nine before waking us up to complain of hunger. They then retired to their room to tidy their drawers for two hours, as if possessed by Mary Poppins. Ours was not to reason why, so I read the paper alone in peace while Bee read her book in bed drinking tea. Unsettling.But by the time evenings come around and the children are in bed, supper sometimes seems a huge effort. It's more often than not something I can throw into one pan and leave to do it's thing, such as the hearty haricot and chorizo stew we had early in the week. or a tray of chipped sweet potato, sprinkled liberally with garam masala and chilli flakes, roasted in the oven with a couple of bream, olive oil, fat garlic cloves and cherry tomatoes that had started to explode in the heat.One night, I found a bag of figs, now perfectly ripe (one overly so and destined for the bin), some very ripe Rocamadour goat's cheese that you could smell from France and some slices of a sourdough loaf. A little honey, olive oil, salt and pepper and a pinch of fresh parsley was enough to satisfy the evening hunger. Simple, good ingredients made something far more than the some of their parts and figs, well they are practically the flavour of Christmas aren't they?This week:Watched: Finally getting around to Fargo season three. Perfectly wintery, and the Minnesota accent is so great.Read: Still reading Middlemarch. And I fear I shall be for some time yet. Lincoln in the Bardo sits on my bedside table and the pile of books I want to read is growing longer than there are years left to read them.Listened to: The Omen on Radio 4 iPlayer. A perfect example of an epic child's tantrum.Eat: Steak Tartare in 1980s Toremolinos, or rather La Barca, Lower Marsh. Methi chicken at Lahore Karahi in Tooting. Pakistani canteen food better than most, quick, friendly and a great place to top up the spice levels. They promise a "genuine spicy taste", so you'd hope they deliver. And they do.

Not the outdoor type

What if something's on t.v. and its never shown again?*

So that's it. Summer's almost gone. Any warm weather from now on is a bonus, not an Indian summer. As far as I'm concerned, it's autumn and time to light even more candles and draw the blinds and curtains shut, delighting at the dying of the light.We have just ended the summer holidays with a week in a field. And although we had a spacious yurt to stay in, it was still in a field. This meant a four hour walk with a wheelbarrow to do some bad washing up and a full blown existential crisis while even contemplating washing of bodies.Not keen on walking to the loo in the middle of the night, which to be honest was little more than a sawdust-filled hole surrounded by a fence, I may or may not have gone really back to nature. And it was a lovely way to check on the stars, which were out of this world, even if half naked and glasses-less may have made me rush my normally contemplative astronomical gazing.But there really is something wonderful about sausage, egg and bacon eaten with your bare feet in the mid-morning dew. The warmth of the gas barbecue ring for the kettle defrosting all of us like mammoths found beneath the ice. I honestly can't remember ever having been so cold, and I've been to Newcastle.A fire each night kept us warm for a while, we toasted marshmallows. No-one but me liked them, which I don't understand. They are like really trashy creme brulées on a stick. Sort of. And obviously the heat is enough to remove fingerprints. Still, you need your kicks when sleeping in a field.When the rest of the family left me to go inside, complaining, I stared at the sky for some time, thinking big thoughts, watching the moon slowly move through the night and the three constellations I can recognise slowly appear. Then, when I could no longer feel my limbs and face, I went inside and we listened to the episodes of The Archers we managed to download in the nearby town.Food had to be simple. One night we had steaks, cooked directly on the flames (which, in a huge chest beating moment of manliness I had managed to get going by using dried corn husks as kindling thanks very much). An onion tossed fully skinned into the embers came out soft, sweet and smoky and the mushrooms, cooked quickly with sage went down very well with Noah. Maya had chopped them all for us, but refused to eat them.We stewed some rhubarb too, for pudding. Noah chopped it and loaded it into one of the big cast-iron pans. How I love them. (The pans. Quite fond of the children too I suppose). Apart from the stringy fibres, which I forgot to remove, it was delicious. I used an indecent amount of sugar, but you have to really.We made mint and sage tea while the children learned to build shelters and light fires. Noah didn't think much of it, but at least he tried it. Maya looked at me from under suspicious eyebrows and backed silently away. And I kept thinking "these are the good old days."But, there is a certain relief of a whole night spent in your own bed, once back home. Even if there are no hooting owls. And to be honest, I can do without the moos in the middle of the night too. Perhaps it was the cows getting their own backs for the steaks we had eaten.*Evan DandoThis week:Watched: Despicable Me 3. I liked it. It was ok. I didn't like it. The children did though, and to be honest, a rainy day in Norfolk needs some diversions.Read: Halfway through A Tale of Two Cities. Each page is an exercise in perseverance, but on I go...Eaten: Steaks on a fire, marshmallows, lots of crisps and shortbread, a screaming drive down to our favourite Indian restaurant the moment we arrived home...Listened to: The Beatles 1967-70 that Noah found in a record shop and Miles Davis while I drank coffee and read the New Yorker on our sofa marvelling at electricity and having a sink inside.