Dry toast.

I have just returned from the doctors and been signed off sick for the next two days due to a rather nasty bout of gastroenteritis.  Short of gout, this is literally one of the worst things to happen to you if you’re a food lover (other than being told that you need to cut salt out of your diet, the horror). I don’t know how I got it, nobody else I know has it, and I don’t know how long I will have it. But the long and short of it is that;

1. I can’t go back to work until Friday, and

2. I am in a terrible mood because I can’t really eat anything other than a bit of dry toast and some clear soup.

I would far rather be at work, believe me. Not being able to eat is my worst nightmare. What do I do to cheer myself up? Eat. What am I allowed to eat at the moment? Toast and ‘clear soup’. What do I want to eat right now? Hot toast and Nutella, melba toast and homemade chicken liver pate with dill pickles, warm chocolate brownies and ice cold milk, sausage beans and chips, fillet steak and béarnaise sauce (all which I cannot eat), ANYTHING that isn’t dry toast and clear fucking soup.

Rightly or wrongly, I am consoling myself with reading about food instead of cooking and eating it (I could just cook it, but I honestly don’t trust myself not to take the next obvious step). It’s probably not the most sensible of ideas because It’s just making me more hungry, but I have to do something to cheer myself up, and in actual fact, I’ve been discovering a whole load of things that I’d been meaning to cook but just forgotten about - most of them contained in ‘Kitchen’ by Nigella Lawson. I love this book, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I know she’s a bit of a sexy mental, what with the silky dressing gowns, crazy eyes, massive jugs and after hours fridge sessions, but I think she’s great. Her writing is witty and funny, and her recipes are easy follow, they always work, and they are genuinely tempting. There are at least five or six things that I want to cook immediately, and what I really like is that her writing gives me inspiration to try things I wouldn’t otherwise, even if I don’t end up sticking to the recipe as she writes it. If you don’t own ‘Kitchen’ I think you should.

One such recipe that I am very familiar with is the one for ‘Sweet and salty crunchy nut bars’. On reflection, I think that this is the reason that I buried this book deep in amongst the other books on the shelf in the first place. After I made it the first time, I made it again and again, and then quickly realised that if I didn’t stop making it I wouldn’t stop eating it and if I didn’t stop eating it, before long I wouldn’t manage to fit through my front door. I did try this out on other people, and some people (whose opinions I greatly respect) rather disappointingly thought it wasn’t that nice. However, I unashamedly love it. It is so, so, so easy to make it almost feels ridiculous giving you a ‘recipe’ but I will do, because if it turns out that you’re a lover, I rather selfishly want to be the one you think of when you’re rolling about on the floor mid foodgasm, eyes rolling back in your head and dribbling. For me, this is the food equivalent of cocaine. I’m not sure whether it is because of the salty sweet thing, my love of all things honeycomb, or what, but whatever it is, no matter how much I have, I always want more. You have been warned.

.....Dry toast anyone?

Sweet and salty crunch nut bars

300g good quality dark chocolate (60% coco solids are best for this, but you should absolutely get the best quality you can.

125g unsalted butter (it’s not the end of the world if you only have salted)

3 x 15ml tablespoons of golden syrup (don’t worry about being exact. If in doubt, err on the side of ‘more is more’)

250g salted peanuts

4 x 40g Cadburys Crunchie bars

Line your tray (square or round, it matters not) with foil, or use a tin that has a detachable base for easy removal. Break up the chocolate (not including the Crunchie bars) and drop into a heavy based saucepan. Add the butter and syrup to the chocolate and gently melt together (don’t rush or you run the risk of burning the chocolate). Tip the peanuts into a bowl and crush and crumble the Crunchie bars into the same bowl. Leave some bits bigger than others. Add all this to the chocolate and take off the heat. Mix a bit, then tip into the tray and smooth the top (not essential). Put in the fridge to set, and about four hours later cut into slices and eat. For your own entertainment, if you live with other people, you could always make them fight to the death to decide who gets to lick the bowl out (optional).