No Self Pity Phyllo Pie (With Spinach, Feta and Pancetta Filling)

Two posts in a day? Ah well. I couldn't resist the perfection of that video, but I have cooking to report on. So there you are.

You’ll probably notice, at least in these first few weeks, that the recipes will have a pretty pronounced vegetarianish slant. That’s because if there is anything my stomach hates more than food when I am sad, it’s meat. The only exception to this is cured fancy ham. I don’t know why. Maybe because it is wahfer thin. (Sorry.)

One of the difficulties of cooking for one is that little tiny recipes don’t use up whole things. The stuffed squash I made the other day only used half an onion, half a pepper, half a block of feta. And I still had a big bag of baby spinach starting to wilt in the fridge. I hate wasting food at the best of times, and during the worst of times, when every penny counts, it’s a straight up sin. So what to do? I don’t want to eat the same thing for days in a row. While I am sure it’s possible to love oneself through leftovers, it’s not much fun, and it kind of defeats the purpose of this blog.

So I pondered what to make with my odds and ends, and the idea of phyllo (or filo, or fillo, or  φύλλοfilo) pastry popped into my head. I love pretty much anything encased in phyllo, but I’d never used it myself before. I trundled off to the shop and picked up a packet of frozen phyllo dough and let it defrost on the counter for a few hours. With a few other odds and ends, I came up with this:
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No Self Pity Phyllo Pie (With Spinach, Feta and Pancetta Filling)

small handful pine nuts
100g (half a package) feta cheese, crumbled
finely grated zest of one lemon

2 large knobs of butter.
½ an onion chopped
½ a red pepper chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed and then minced
most of a bag of baby spinach, torn
100g pancetta, chopped

4 eggs

freshly ground salt and pepper

1 package filo pastry
⅔ cup finely grated parmigiano reggiano

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan over medium high heat, until golden and fragrant. Put them aside in a medium mixing bowl. Crumble the feta in on top of them. Grate the lemon zest into the bowl as well.

Swear a lot because you left your nice sharp grater behind in the Kitchen Of Shattered Illusions, and the crappy flimsy dull grater you found in the cupboard of the Kitchen Of New Hope and Fresh Horizons is freaking useless. It will take a long time and the lemon will suffer. So will you. Resolve to buy a new grater. When you get utterly sick of attempting to zest the lemon, just grate a tiny little bit more onto a saucer and set it aside for later.

Put one of the knobs of butter into your frying pan and add the garlic, onions and pepper. When things start to soften and the colours change, add in the pancetta and let it start to shrivel and crisp. Add the spinach and cook down until limp and dark green. Take off the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

Beat 4 eggs until mixed and frothy. Combine everything you’ve done so far into one bowl, and mix thoroughly.

Stick the second knob of butter in the microwave to melt. Once it has, brush a bit of it all the way around the inside of a large pie tin. I didn’t have a brush, so I used my fingers. It was kind of gross, but nobody died.

Open the phyllo pastry (don’t open it before you need it, or it will dry out and break and make you unhappy all over again, just after you’ve gotten over the f*cking grater.) unroll it gently, and working quickly, drape two sheets of it onto the pie pan and gently pat it down. You just want to cover the tin, so overlap them as much as you need to. Loads will hang over the sides, which is fine. Leave them be and don’t trim them.

Brush all over with butter and sprinkle with a few generous pinches of parmigiano reggiano. Grind salt and pepper all over. Repeat this sequence with the rest of the phyllo dough, angling it slightly differently each time so that the hangovers are more or less even. Keep a few pinches of parmigiano aside.

Dump the egg/veg/cheese mixture into the centre of the pan and smooth it out evenly. Start folding the hangover edges in gently, using bits of melted butter as glue to make it stick together. Eventually all of the filling will be covered. Brush the whole thing with the last of the melted butter, and sprinkle it all over with the last of the grated parmigiano, the lemon zest, and a few more twists of the pepper mill.

Stick it in the oven at 150c for about 30 mins, checking occasionally to make sure it’s not browning too quickly.

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Wow. This came out so beautiful looking it would break your heart all over again. I wish I had a stupid camera and could give you a beautifully styled photo of it, but then, I wish a lot of things. You’ll just have to trust me on this. It looked like a million million dollars, all golden and crispy and speckled. Perhaps soon I will have to love myself with an expensive smartphone with a great camera. It could be a plan.

It tastes great too, and the lemon zesting really was worth all the heartache. It added an important layer to the flavour.

This pie was HUGE. It could have fed me for a couple of weeks, and the whole idea was to avoid samey leftovers. If I’d had a cookie sheet to bake them on (alas, mine still lingers in the Kitchen O. S. I. probably having group therapy with the good grater) then I would have made parcels instead. A couple would have made a nice sized meal, and uncooked, they would freeze brilliantly, ready to be popped into the oven whenever I like. Next time.

As it happens, I have 4 boys as housemates now, and they were only too happy to help me dispose of the excess. Handy.

Bucket Of Mussels With Prawns On The Side OR Socialization

No, I didn’t miss a day. I was out. I still cooked though! A lovely friend and I met up with a big pot of mussels and a few handfuls of prawns. We didn’t really have a recipe. It went something like this

Bucket Of Mussels With Prawns On The Side

1 big bucket of mussels, well cleaned
2 handfuls of prawns

An unholy amount of garlic, chopped
An obscene amount of butter
A bottle of white wine

Divide the garlic and butter between a pot with a lid and a small frying pan. Use your judgement. (Clue: more goes in the pot.) Gently saute the garlic until soft and fragrant. Dump the mussels in the pot, pour in half the bottle of wine, and cover. Start drinking the other half of the bottle, obviously. Dump the prawns in the frying pan and keep stirring until lovely and pink.  Check to see if the mussels are opening, it shouldn’t take more than six minutes or so. Throw out anything that hasn’t opened and pour the mussels and the lovely winey broth into bowls. Stick the prawns on a plate and wish you'd bought more, because those mothers shrink like nobody's business.

Eat everything with a large amount of crusty white bread. Suggest buttering the bread and shamelessly stare your friend down when she gives you a horrified face because “there’s all the butter already everywhere all over everything!” and just go ahead and butter it. Dip your buttered bread into the buttery sauce.

No vegetables were harmed in the making of this dinner. An undisclosed further amount of wine may have been consumed.

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After our extremely healthy seafood dinner, we headed out to see a play that was entirely in a language I don’t understand. It was fascinating to try and figure out what was going on just from facial expressions and gestures and tone of voice. I don’t think I’ve ever paid such close attention to a play. I was sitting forward in my seat and staring, and it occurred to me that this may be why small babies look so bugged out all the time. “GIVE ME SOME CONTEXT, GUYS!!!” I enjoyed it. Didn't understand a single word, but there were a few puppets and a couple of minor explosions and really that’s all it takes for me to call it a good night out.

The boys of the group were heading to a bar, but my pal and I were feeling lazy and full of seafood, so we may or may not have stopped at the off licence for another bottle of wine before heading back to her house. She offered me some of her Reese's Pieces and suddenly the only thing to do was to watch E.T. So we did exactly that, after purchasing an undisclosed further amount of Reese's Pieces. I have to say I do not suggest pairing Reese's Pieces with a young Cabernet Sauvignon. Both elements suffer somewhat.

As homesick as I am right now what with the broken heart and the holidays coming up, it might not have been the best choice of film. We were just getting to the really sad part of the movie and were sniffling sad peanuty/winey scented sniffles when the boys arrived back in. If they had shown up five minutes later I am pretty sure they would have found us weeping into the carpet. They kind of ruined the last ten minutes with their ceaseless mockery, but that is probably just as well. 

Oh Grumpy Cat, You Make My Life Better

We spent the rest of the night talking and laughing and making plans for projects, and when I fell asleep on their couch it was as a slightly less broken-hearted girl. Loving yourself is easier when you take the time to see and appreciate how much other people love you.

The Last Lamb Shanks OR The Saddest Food Blogger In The World

A week ago today, my fiance called it all off.

It wasn’t a total surprise. It was a long and difficult relationship, and this wasn't its first iteration. We’d been struggling. I didn’t think we were finished trying. He did. Anyway, on that day it felt like a total surprise. I guess it always is when something finally ends.

Earlier that afternoon I’d gotten off work with a few hours to spare. It was freezing cold and raining and the most November-miserable day imaginable. Before going home, I decided that today would be a great day for cooking lamb shanks. Old fashioned, rich, slow-cooked, nourishing and comforting. I hadn’t ever made them before, but in my head it was a perfect wintery wet day dinner. I did a bit of googling, synthesized some idea of a recipe in my mind, and headed out to the shops. I trotted around to the butcher, the wine merchant, and the grocer, (Yes, I live in Quainty McYuppieville) joyfully and recklessly slinging ingredients into my bag. I may even have been humming. I felt like a very competent little housewife with a serious case of the warm fuzzies already, and I hadn’t even opened the wine yet.

I got home and started chopping and mixing and cooking and tasting, full of love and hope. Sure, things had been tough. Sure, there was work to do. But we loved each other so much. We had couples therapy scheduled later that night, and I knew when we came home from that, these lamb shanks would be a metaphor for all the good things we still had going for us, for a future full of warmth and deliciousness and good smells. When he tasted these lamb shanks, he’d be inspired to do whatever it took to get us to that future. I was supremely proud of myself, envisioning how much praise and affection I would get from my man when he got home and tasted what I had wrought. I put the casserole into the oven with a self-satisfied glow. Now it just had to cook for three hours.

Well, in those three hours, my world fell apart. After some very, very, very, very unpleasant scenes, which I will spare us all, he reheated some lamb shanks. By all reports they were incredible. I couldn’t eat. In what I think was an attempt at humour, he asked if he could have the recipe.

In the fog of red wine and snotty crying and passive aggression that followed, I typed this up:
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The Last Lamb Shanks
(Adapted from this less emotional recipe)

4 lamb shanks
Fresh ground salt and pepper
Glug olive oil
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 large onion (sliced)
4 stalks celery (roughly chopped)
2 large carrots (sliced into ¼ inch rounds)
8 cloves garlic (minced)

2 bottles of red wine (one for the recipe, one for you)
2 cups beef stock
3 tbsp soft brown sugar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Season the lamb shanks with huge amounts of salt and pepper and sprinkle all over with flour. Brown them in the oil in a frying pan over medium high heat until well browned and sealed. Think about the past. Open one of the bottles of wine, and pour a large glass.

Move the shanks to a large casserole dish and forget about them for a while. Forget the past for a while, too. If you are having trouble, pour another glass of wine and neck it.

Put all the veg and bay leaves and rosemary into the pan you were browning the lamb shanks in, and consider all of your possible failings and how they have led you to this sorry state of affairs. Remember to include things that you did by accident and things that you did long ago when you were young and f*cked up. Wonder if having been omniscient would have changed things. Give up, because there are no rhetorical questions in this recipe.

Check if the onions and stuff are caramelizing. If they are then pour in the whole bottle of wine you haven’t opened yet. Resist saving some for yourself. You already have a bottle. If you really want a drink, pour another glass from that first bottle. If you run out, the off-license is open until ten.

Add the beef stock, sugar and vinegar. Let it all boil gently for a few minutes to think about its sins. Think about your sins. Drink.

Is there any wine left in the first bottle? Drink it. You should probably go to the liquor store. Because this shit has to cook for three hours and that’s a long time. Despair a little bit. Stir the stuff in the pan for a very long time but not as long as the years you have invested in this relationship. Don’t think about that if you can help it. If you can’t help it then drink the rest of the first bottle or if it’s already gone, come back from the off-license with a new one and open it. Drink.

Are you back?
Okay, pour all this stuff over the lamb shanks in the casserole dish.

Put it in the oven at 160c and cook that shit for three hours, turning occasionally.When the meat falls off the bone, your relationship and the lamb shanks are finished.

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Okay, it was dark, but it made me laugh a little bit. I couldn’t believe that I was laughing in one of the worst moments of my life.

The next few days were a blur of vodka and cigarettes and apartment hunting and relationship autopsies and moving all your shit around in your new ex’s car in black plastic bags and crying very quietly in your new rented room and all the other usual grotesque fug of a break-up. I didn’t eat. Couldn’t eat. Was not interested in eating.

Eventually I had to eat. Lightheadedness, irritability and headaches all add depth and authenticity to the broken-hearted experience, but eventually the body rebels and tells you to get a grip and put some food into it before it gives you something to REALLY cry about. I went and got some food. Stupid, tasteless, crappy cheap food that I didn’t have to waste any time preparing. (I had a very busy schedule of misery planned, you see.) I shoveled it into my mouth resentfully, choking it down, with a hateful kind of pentameter chanting in my head:

Get IT in YOUR face YOU useLESS butt-HEAD
Eat THE stooPID food. (YOU will DIE aLONE)

And so on. Rinse/repeat every meal. That’s kind of how it's been all week, up until now. My friends (and therapist, natch) have all been amazing. They all have variations of the same great advice, that advice that you generally hear after breakups. One friend stated it particularly well:

“I wonder what you could accomplish if you redirected that passion into caring for yourself...you need to give yourself the love that you’ve been giving to other people, and you need to give yourself the space to learn how to do that.”

Which, yeah, makes a lot of sense. But to be honest, I just couldn’t think of HOW, practically, you’re supposed to go about that. I can’t just order myself to love myself. I could sit in front of the mirror and declare my undying devotion and adoration for myself, but I would feel stupid. I can’t sit beside myself on the couch and hold myself close, whispering sweet nothings into my own ear. The more I thought about it, the creepier and more insane and useless it all started to feel.

And then, a little voice said: food.

To which I said: shut up. Haven’t I already made it clear that I am not a comfort eater? That sadness makes my stomach crunch up into an angry bald ferret, twisting itself over and over with fury, biting its tail and spitting bile through its jagged little yellow teeth? I don’t WANT food, stupid. Food won’t make me feel loved. And just because I am turning thirty next month doesn’t make me Bridget Jones. So shut up.

And the little voice said: food. Just think about it, okay? And no one has mentioned your age, or Bridget Jones. Anyway, she was eight years older than you.

Which was nice to hear and made me feel a little better.  

So I did think about it.

I thought about how I’ve always made a joke about how much I hate cooking for one, that there’s no fun in it. How I’ve sneered at “Cooking for One” books, smugly shaking my head, thinking: Sad.

When I have no one to cook for, I eat yogurt and potato chips and cereal from the box. Not a whole lot else, really. Toast sometimes. 

Sad.

I thought about the passion and joy that I’ve always brought to cooking for people that I love. The thrill of planning it, preparing it, and serving it. The love and forgiveness and hope for the future that I had poured into those f*cking lamb shanks last f*cking Wednesday.

And I didn’t even eat them. 

How’s that for a metaphor, self? Got it? 

Okay then. I’ll cook for me. That’s how I’ll show myself how much I love myself. Every night that I am home, for the next, say, six months, I will plan and cook and eat a proper dinner. With proper ingredients. And I will eat it.

And I every day I will write about it, because that’s what I do. And because my sister told me to, and my sister is smart.

Bon appetit, self.