Katie Butcher

Not actually as odd as it sounds – chilli and chocolate have a natural affinity and go together very well. The chilli heat adds a unique richness to the chocolate, it doesn’t burn, just adds a very slight zing.

This is another recipe from my Bart Spices recipe book – Nigel liked this, and Bytey and Andrea said they did too.

Chilli Chocolate Chip Brownies

• 115g butter
• 115g dark chocolate (ideally cocoa solids content of 70%), broken into pieces
• 250g golden caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 large eggs
• 115g plain flour
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp chilli powder
• 100g chocolate chips

Vanilla Mascarpone

• 250g mascarpone cheese
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 1 vanilla pod

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/ Gas 4. Butter and line an 18cm square cake tin. Put the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering until melted.
2. Stir until smooth and cool slightly. Stir in the sugar and salt and gradually beat in the eggs.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa, cinnamon and chilli powder into the mixture and beat until smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips then pour the mixture into a prepared tin and bake for 25-35 minutes until the top is a paler brown but the middle is dense and dark. Allow to cool slightly.
4. Meanwhile, make the vanilla mascarpone. In a bowl, stir together the mascarpone and icing sugar. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape the seeds into the mascarpone. Mix together thoroughly.
5. Remove the brownies from the tin and cut into squares and serve with the mascarpone.

Nigel and I don’t usually bother with St. Valentines day, but I saw a cheeky card that seemed so appropriate I had to get it (I’m not going into details!). Nigel bought a bottle of Barolo which was a lovely surprise – we’ve long been meaning to buy a bottle, but with a pricetag of £13 a bottle in Morrisons, we never have quite got round to it.

I cooked ‘Albondigas’ (Spanish meatballs) from my Bart Spices recipe book. Although meatballs are a bit fiddly and the took a while to make, it was worth it because they were absolutely delicious and (through more luck than planning) the Barolo went fantastically with them. We had a really nice evening and spent about 2 hours eating, talking and drinking the wine, which for me is a perfect Valentine’s night.

The Bart Spices recipe book is a quite good and you can get it free from their website.

I’ve found the secret to get good meatballs is to make sure the onion is very finely chopped; I use my Braun handblender with the chopper attachment to chop the onions quickly and finely. It was also handy to make the breadcrumbs.

Spanish meatballs are usually served on their own, but we had them with tagliatelle or you could have rice.

Albondigas

Meatballs

• 450 – 500g minced pork
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 50g fresh white breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp Bart Garlic in Sunflower Oil / 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 1 small egg, beaten
• flour for rolling
• oil for frying

Tomato Sauce

• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp Bart Garlic in Sunflower Oil / 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 400g can of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tsp Bart Hot Chilli in Sunflower oil / 1/2 tsp chilli powder
• 150 ml beef stock
• dried parsley to garnish

1. In a bowl, mix together the pork, onion, breadcrumbs, garlic, oregano, cumin, salt and pepper. Mix together thoroughly then stir in the beaten egg. On a floured surface, roll the mixture into walnut sized balls. Place on a plate and chill for 15 minutes.
2. To make the sauce, hear the oil in a pan, add the onionand cook for 10 minutes until soft. Add the garlic, tomatoes, chilli and stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil then simmer gently, stirring occasionally, while you cook the meatballs.
3. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the meatballs in batches, for about 5-6 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned.
4. Drain the meatballs on kitchen paper and transfer to a shallow oven dish. Pour the sauce over and heat through in the oven at 180/ Gas 4 for 15-20 mins until bubbling. Scatter over a little parsley and serve immediately

My sister Claire came up for the weekend. It was nice to see her and spend some time on our own together, something we’ve probably not really done since I left home for university in 1999. She managed to get some bargain coach tickets and came up to Bradford on Thursday night. On Friday morning we went over to the White Rose Shopping Centre. I managed to get a few more bits for the bathroom from Debenhams, and we both bought a top from Burtons for the boyfriends, but that was about it really. Not particularly successful.

We got some lunch at Morrisons – unfortunately probably one of the worst meals I’ve had there. I ordered a dish – “We don’t have that at the moment” – so I hastily ordered salmon fillet salad instead. It was the worst piece of salmon ever – microwaved from frozen, soggy and smelly – looked a bit like something you might give the cat. I couldn’t really eat it, but on the plus side the sight of it stopped me being hungry anyway so I didn’t need any lunch in the end.

In the afternoon we went over to Owlcotes Marks and Spencers. We were there hours and hours (mainly because Claire was trying on the whole of the underwear section) but we did get quite a bit of stuff. By the time we left it was tea time so on the way home we stoppped at Aagrah and got a curry to take away. Yum.

On Saturday morning we went back to M&S as Claire want to take some bits back again, and then went to Matalan for a few more hours shopping. In the evening I had a concert so we went over to Leeds Grammar School for that.

Sunday morning I had to do my Morrisions shopping but Claire came along to and we were only there about an hour. I took Claire to catch the coach back at 4:00pm on Sunday.

I may be wrong about this, but I’m sure that people are misusing the word ‘ignorance’. I always thought that it meant ‘lacking of knowledge’, but I’ve noticed in the past few years (mainly since I’ve moved to Yorkshire) some people using the word supposedly to mean ‘rude’. All the dictionaries I’ve looked in describe the definition as the former and not the latter (see dictionary.com example below). Thus I’m a little confused as to whether when people use it to mean ‘rude’, they are using the word correctly or not. Since I’ve noticed the ‘rude’ usage fairly frequently, I’ve been reluctant to accuse people of ‘ignorance’, but I’ve been unable to find a definition which says they’re not incorrect.

ig·no·rant
adj.

1. Lacking education or knowledge.
2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.
3. Unaware or uninformed.

It’s been a while since I finished reading ‘The Olive Readers’ by Christine Aziz, but I feel I should write a bit about it as it’s a unique novel and was the winner of Richard and Judy’s ‘How to Get Published’ competition.

The story is set nearly 300 years in the future. Earth no longer has countries, instead it is made up of Companies. Each company focuses on the production of one particular product e.g. The Water Company manufactures water (and as a result overpowers all other companies) and The Olive Company farms olives. The Company’s populations are the workforce and are completely subservient; books are banned (and possession of one is punishable by death) and as a result people have no no knowledge of their history, nationalilty, ancestory or of any language except the language of the Federation – Federese.

In the Olive Company, Olea, there is a clandestine group who call themselves ‘The Olive Readers’. Collectively they look after a secret library which is kept hidden away deep in the house of Jephzat, the main character of the story. Jephzat gets involved with the ‘The Olive Readers’ and later a complex plan to allow populations to escape the oppression of the corporate world.

I did quite enjoy this book, but I’m not a fan of science fiction, and it was a bit too ‘science fictiony’ for me. Maybe I lack imagination, but I really couldn’t imagine the world being like it is in this book (well not to that extreme anyway). It was interesting and thought-provoking and certainly something different for me to read as I can’t really remember reading a futuristic novel before. Basically, this book didn’t exactly excite me greatly, but I would say it’s worthwhile read.