Only the Lonely

Midweek the Dear Leader was away overnight on teaching duties (Fortifying Your Secret Island 101), and Sternest Critic was staying an extra night of his 'reading week' at university before venturing home for his version of R&R, S&S (sleep and steak). I was thus left alone, and was just looking to make a quick and simple supper, and to enjoy something that I would not have cooked if enjoying company.

There are some things that are best eaten alone: curried sprouts probably head that list, with the sauce I made for penne pasta - a sort of reformed putanesca - not far behind. Olive oil was warmed with sliced garlic (lots), and a red chili snipped into it in the vain hope of avoiding chili-eye, then a whole tin of anchovies chopped and added with their oil. When they were all melted together and vaguely cooked through three fresh tomatoes minus their skins were grated in and the lot heated to bubbling point. With lots of pepper and salt and a generous amount of grated parmesan it was utterly delicious, but must have given me breath like a particularly unhygienic medieval French peasant's.

Kippers I feel qualify for the best eaten apart list, unless both of you indulge. When we were on Islay and Jura last summer I opted for kippers at breakfast a couple of times, while DL went for something that when we were in the car later in the day was less assertive. But these foul smelling things (sprout curry apart) do tend to be very tasty. The exception is durian. I had heard much about it so when given the chance to try some (in Johor Bahru, just over the causeway from Singapore into Malyasia) I did. The smell, people said and wrote, is vile, but the taste sublime. They were right about the smell - think a long untended septic tank - but not the taste, which I'd describe as mildly mucal watered down mango. That is something best eaten by other people.

New Year and Using Stuff Up

The usual suspect Christmas leftovers are long gone - a turkey crown means that the meat is a memory well before it becomes a recurring nightmare, and what was left of our sirloin transformed into the traditional cold cuts on Boxing Day, fabulous butties the next, and a stir fry and Chinese soup another. Others remain, or remained, yesterday's main meal a determined effort to make the best of them.

Thus a chicken carcase (am using the alternative spelling in the hope a friend keen to help me mend the error of my orthographical ways will correct it - curses, think she may spot that trap now) sitting in the fridge after a weekend festive meal with mates became stock yesterday afternoon that then made minestrone in the evening (the rest for tonight's risotto). And the dog-ends of cheese, some of it rather fine cheese, flavoured a sauce that helped stretch the tinned salmon (how very 1970s again) and kippers in a fish pie topped with mash from same weekend repast.

When the good-housekeeper stuff of using up Christmas bits before they are only fit for the bin is done I will turn to my foodie New Year's resolution, which is to have at least two vegetarian evening meals a week, and one based on fish. The inspirations behind this are several: environmental guilt about using too much meat and meat-farming using too many of the earth's resources; economy; health matters; and stretching my culinary abilities and repertoire - it is too easy to fall into the routine of planning a meal around a slab of bloody protein.