Week 34 - Food or Drink - Andrew

Picture the scene. It's 4pm Sunday evening. The fear of work is seeping through the air of your living room. Spiritually, you, and anyone you love are a spacemen, drifting without a tether, further and further away from the world. 

Here is my solution, in two meals from one supermarket shop. It's a roast dinner, amped up to bring you back to earth. 

Ingredients:

1 Chicken, 1600g. The best you can get at 5pm on a Sunday. Like, you would probably buy a better chicken at a farmers market on a Saturday morning, but this is a dinner of healing and comfort, not inadequacy. Buy a chicken, feel good about it.

Garlic, you'll need a lot - at least a whole head.

Fresh Thyme - I grow and kill those supermarket fresh herb plants. This is because I want to be the sort of person who grows fresh herbs. Instead, I am an architect of herbal genocide.

A lemon - no notes, just buy a lemon. Lemon and thyme and garlic is probably an ancient remedy for unease and depression.

Two sticks of Celery

A carrot

a couple of small onions.

Salt

Pepper

Olive Oil

Potatoes. Take as many as you think you should eat, multiply by the number of people and add more.

Some Goosefat - it keeps forever, buy a jar, use it when you make roasts, ignore it the rest of the time. If you ever make duck, keep the fat in a clean jar and use that here. If you don't want to do this, use olive oil. Remember, this is a dinner for comfort.

Peas, frozen. (I'm not going to mention these again, just do them per the bag, boil them up and throw them on a plate. If you're really feeling bereft, mid-boil, strain the water out of the pan, then throw a half-teaspoon full of butter back in with the peas.)


Now, you're back from the shops. You should be ready to go. Take a minute, make some tea. If you're sensible, you bought some sort of fizzy water, or a coke, or something cool and non-alcoholic while you were in the shop. Drink that, and think about the task ahead of you. This will be all right. It's a comforting job. People have done this for millions of years. Look at your loved ones. They are, much like you, in a state of chaos. 

Preheat the oven to 200. You've begun!


Potatoes

1) Peel the potatoes. That's the worst part, and now it's done.

2) Bin the peels, cut the potatoes in half, and chuck them in a microwave-safe bowl, with a half cup of water in the bottom, cover and nuke them for 5 minutes.

3) Heat the goosefat in a roasting tray.

4) When the potatoes are nuked, take them out of the bowl, let them steam for a moment, then put them into the roasting tray. Shake them around, to cover them in the oil - then, bam, back in the oven.

Chicken

1) Roughly chop your carrot, celery and onion. You're not going for fancy, just a pile of cubed vegetables. Make the veg into a pile in the roasting tray. You'll put the chicken on top of this, presently.

2) Cut your lemon in half - around the equator. Stab one half of the lemon with the tip of a knife. Over and over again. Smell it. Zest the other (non stabbed) half. You might go ahead, and chop that into bits, and throw it into the bottom of the roasting tray. Why waste anything?

3) Chop, or press, or mush, or grate your garlic. I have a grater, use what you want. Throw that in a bowl, with a load of salt, a good chunk of thyme leaves, the lemon zest and some pepper. Pour in some olive oil, and stir it to make a paste of deliciousness.

4) Rub the paste all over the chicken. Jam a lemon up its arse, jam some of the thyme sprigs up there while you're at it. Look at it, all tied up, covered in oil with a lemon up its hoop. More comforting than it should be, right?

5) Put the kinky chicken on the pile of veg, and put it in the oven.

6) Here's how I do it, but lots of people do it differently. 20-25 mins at 200, then down to 160 for an hour. The chicken on one shelf, the potatoes on the shelf below.

7) Once the chicken is done, take it out. Take it out of the roasting tin, cover it with foil, and it let it sit. I bet it smells amazing.

Finishing up

1) Jam the temperature way, way up on the potatoes. They will be creamy and delicious in the middle. Going in at a high temperature now will just add a final colour and crisp to the outside.

2) After ten, fifteen minutes, start to carve the chicken. This is easy to fuck up, but here's what you're looking for at the end:

- 2 wings
- 2 drumsticks
- 2 Thigh joints
- 2 large breast pieces (you can half these)

You'll need a really sharp knife. To start, cut the wings off, then the legs (at the hip joint). Separate the drumsticks and the thighs (the knee). Here's the hard part. Run your knife up the spine. Then cut the breasts off. Go as deep as you can, before you hit bone.

3) Take your potatoes, peas, and chicken. Put them on a plate, and give them to people you love. You'll start to feel human. This is home. You are alive. Everything is ok.

Postscript.

Do this right, and you'll be left with a chicken carcass. That chicken died so you could eat it. You owe it to the chicken to eat every single bit of it. Even if it was a weird Tesco battery chicken.

Here's what you do:

Get your biggest pot.

Take your chicken carcass, and that vegetable mountain that you had, and any juice lying around the bottom of the roasting tray, and throw them in the pot.

Grab some fresh herbs, throw them in the pot. Cut up an onion, throw that in there too. Salt and pepper. Any garlic you have around, give it a wallop with the side of a knife and throw it in. A glass of white wine, if you have a bottle open, will do nicely - don't open one especially though.

Fill the pot with water, stick it on a low heat until you're about to go to bed. Then strain it. Voila, chicken stock.

Tomorrow evening, saute an onion and a grated carrot, pour in the chicken stock, throw in some of the leftover chicken and a handful of noodles. Simmer the lot of it until the noodles are soft. That'll cure you of the worst of a Monday.

Week 34 - Laura - Food or drink

This dish is a favourite in my house. If there's any around we'll have it with homemade brown bread; otherwise any kind of delicious, crusty, fresh bread works just as well.

Chicken and chorizo stew

Ingredients

Chickpeas (whatever size tin you fancy)

A dash of oil

Chicken fillets, roughly cubed (I usually use two, but throw in more by all means)

Chorizo, sliced (I think the original recipe calls for 125g, but just use up the whole thing to avoid waste)

3 garlic cloves, chopped or crushed

1 onion, chopped

2 teaspoons ground coriander

100ml sherry

1 tin of tomatoes

200ml chicken stock

Salt/pepper

Method

Boil a kettle. Heat the oil in a pan. While that’s heating you can chop the onion and garlic, cube the chicken and slice the chorizo. Once the kettle is boiled add 200ml of hot water to half a chicken stock cube, and stir it whenever you think of it.

Fry the chicken, then put it to one side.

Fry the chorizo on a low to medium heat, making sure not to burn it.

Add the onion, garlic and coriander to the chorizo and fry for a few minutes. Add the sherry to the pan, turn up the heat and let it bubble for a minute or so.

Add the tomatoes and stock to the pan, and bring the mixture to the boil.

Add the chicken and chickpeas, and simmer for about 20 minutes or so.

During that 20 minutes you can set the table.

Season and serve.

Worth noting: This dish is also great for making ahead and freezing once it's fully cooled.

Week 33 - Andrew - A childhood memory

So, I’m not sure if this actually happened. It’s not fiction, and I’m not sure how I’d make this up. It is a childhood memory, though.

One christmas or birthday, my Auntie May and Uncle Tom gave me a toy aeroplane. The wing was made of white polystyrene and the body was made of black, shiny, moulded plastic. (I learned the word ‘fuselage’ from the instructions on the box of this toy) There was a wire undercarriage with tiny plastic wheels. The wire was poorly constructed, so the wheels weren’t free to turn.

Through the centre of the fuselage, there was a thick rubber elastic band. This attached to the propellor. Holding the fuselage with one hand, with one finger of the other hand it was possible to wind the propellor counter-clockwise. This would twist the elastic. It was then possible to release the aircraft, from an elevated position, or from a smooth surface. (This may be a quote from the instructions).

I was old enough to know how to read, but it was before we went to France. I’d peg this at around five years old. The wingspan of the aircraft was longer than the length of my leg. It was too big to fly in the sitting room of our semi-detached house.

All that part is true. There are photos of the toy aircraft, I had an uncle Tom and an aunty May. Here’s where it gets fuzzy, and strange.

As I mentioned, the house was too small to fly the aircraft either indoors, or in the garden. My brother was in a buggy. He’s a 29 year old surgeon who drives a BMW now, but then, he was in a buggy. I think it was autumn, or maybe early spring (spring would fit with the timing of a christmas present).

Near where I grew up, there’s a church. There’s a big car park in the church. At that point, it would have been covered in fresh tarmac - a smooth surface for those wire and plastic wheels. My mother wheeled the future surgeon and I down to the church to fly the aeroplane.

It turned out that winding the propellor took forever. The tarmac wasn’t smooth enough, and the plane would tip over on take-off. I thought the answer was to wind it harder. I wound for a very long time (until my finger was sore). I held the plane over my head, it accelerated into the wind, caught a gale, and crashed directly into the wall of the church.

Here, the fuzz sets in. This is where the modelmaker entered the scene. I’m not sure how long he had been there. He had the plane in his hand. It was smashed.

He offered to fix it. He said he had the stuff at home.

He started to tell me about how he built models. He was an old man - I’m not sure how old, but certainly older than my mother, and probably the same age as my grandparents, when I was five. In my head, he had a navy jacket. I genuinely can’t picture him.

He described the front room of his house, where he had built a model town, with trains and cars. He even had an airport. He said this would be perfect for my aeroplane. I remember wondering how he could maintain scale (the idea of toys being in proportion with each other was important to me then), given that a scale aeroport (even a small aerodrome) for that aeroplane would be bigger than most living rooms.

This image stuck out in my mind, of the town in his living room. I can still picture it, as he described it, a waterfall made of strips of cut sellotape. He invited me to come and visit it, since I liked models. (he was still holding onto the aeroplane)

My mother was there then, and as I remember, she thanked him for telling us about his models. She asked could he give me back the plane, and we went home. Me carrying the broken plane, her pushing the surgeon.  I was disappointed we couldn’t go to see the model town, with the disproportionate airport.

Now. Let’s think about this from an adult’s perspective. This man, presumably in his fifties, told a five year old child about some models he had in his living room. He invited the child (without the mother) to come and see the models, on his own in his living room.

It emerges that this isn’t a story about models, it’s a story about how I was nearly taken by a paedophile! Now how will I ever find out if this is true - ‘hey, mam, remember that time I was nearly kept as a child sex slave by a miniatures enthusiast?!’

Also - was this a thing back then? Were there just paedophiles roaming around church grounds, waiting for kids?

What the hell?

Also, that aeroplane never flew right.

Week 33 - Laura - a childhood memory

“I really should have done a dry run of this in the rehearsal,” I think, flippantly, as I both hear and feel the Chantilly lace overlay of my wedding dress tear on the latch of the vestry window.

It's all very well knowing exactly how long it takes - in steps, actual time and bars of music - to walk up an aisle, but it’d be a whole lot more useful to me right now if I knew whether my five foot six inch frame could physically fit through this window. And if so approximately how long it might take to do so.

“It’s not like you didn't know weddings were a scary business,” I chide internally, as the memory of my first brush with matrimony pops into my head.

I was only five at the time. A damn sight younger than the paint that’s currently flaking off the shutters as blithely as I’d sailed past poor old Ben at the altar just now and getting cosy with the raw silk material the torn lace has exposed. I know they say rebound relationships don’t last, but I’m willing to bet even a Stain Devil won’t be separating those two anytime soon.

My brother and I were allowed to go to my uncle Mick’s wedding. I can’t for the life of me remember where it was. Dublin, I guess. Geography wasn’t my strongest subject back in the mid- to late-80s. Or a subject at all, actually.

All I can really remember about the day is shoulder pads and fear.

The bride’s nephew Nigel - an older man at the age of seven or so - took a shine to me. He told his dad he was going to marry me, and proceeded to spend the day chasing me - actually chasing me - around the wedding venue.

Either the adults didn’t notice what was happening or didn’t think me being hunted into an underage, forced marriage by a seven-year-old with coiffed blonde hair and a pink satin cumberbund was a priority.

I was running for my life though. I’m getting sweaty again just thinking about it.

“Maybe it’s not my fault,” I muse, trying to remember back to my first year psychology lectures in college.

“Maybe that early trauma set up some weird ass neural pathways or something, which mean that weddings scare the bejaysus out of me. And in this instance leave me with no option but to try and escape by attempting to squeeze my generously proportioned arse through this minuscule window."

Something’s happening!

“God bless sweat,” I rejoice, as I feel the window frame finally ease past my hips. “I think it’s effectively oiled me past the tipping point.”

And with that I fall in a happy heap on the gravel pathway that surrounds the church, only a borrowed car and a hotwire away from freedom.

Week 32 - Andy - Fighting

Dear Niamh,

I’ve stopped fighting. You’re ten now, and I think about nothing but you. Mothers should be with their children. I should know how you’re getting on in school, and what foods you like, and don’t like.

I tried to keep you safe by sending you to live with my Mam. Sean was killed before you were born, and then there was just me. I couldn’t bring you with me, running and hiding. You were what I was fighting for, you weren’t meant to be the fight.

So all those years, getting tip-offs just before they kicked in the door, all those fake names, I was only thinking of you. You lived under your real name, with an address that didn’t change month to month. Hopefully you never stood at a motorway layby, burning your identity.

I had you in a hospital, and I called Mammy as I went into labour. She got a ferry and a train to London. I told her the ward, and the unit. Then you were born. I held you once, looked in your eyes, and tried to give you a lifetime’s worth of love in a few minutes. Then I handed you back to the nurse, and once I saw a chance, I put on my coat, and walked out the door of the hospital.

I recovered in a squat in Brixton. A Palestinian - he said he was a doctor - helped get me get some medicine and back on my feet.

When I started fighting, it made so much sense. Every day, we could see what they were doing to us, our families, our community - we saw the kind of country our kids would be born into. The only thing that seemed to make a difference was hitting back.

I was a driver - I’m not proud of what I did, but you should know the truth. Cars and motorbikes. Our unit was me, Sean and O’Kane. O’Kane was the leader, Sean was your dad. O’Kane would follow a target, and let us know when. I’d drive, Sean would pull the trigger. We did it more times than we should have, and it never made a difference.

Then we were ambushed, O’Kane was arrested, Sean was shot dead. I drove. Your Dad died fighting - he’d have liked you to know that.

I’ll die as well, but i’ve stopped fighting. When you live like this, you can’t go to hospitals, not really. You can’t get things checked out. It started as a lump in my breast.

I see other sick women wearing pink, their friends shaving their heads and wonder what that’s like. Would you come with me to my treatments? Would we tell each other secrets?

I’ll die either here, or somewhere like here.

My mam may or may not give you this letter. If she does, I hope you’re ready to read it. I thought I was fighting for you, for your future. I wasn’t. I lost you as soon as I started fighting.

Somewhere, you, and Sean and me are together. He’s playing music, and we’re dancing.

I love you, and always have,

Fidelma Leahy

(It’s so strange to actually write my name - It feels naked)

Week 32 - Laura - Fighting

I know the day and its chores will win in the end, but sleep isn't giving up easily today.

Slumber mostly just meanders away on sparkly summer mornings, good-naturedly admitting defeat to the sunshine.

Winter mornings like this are another story.

Fighting to untangle myself from the grips of sleep’s closest allies - what during the night has somehow turned into the perfect pillow and the cosiest duvet ever made in China - my hand finally breaks free.

Feeling its way towards where my memory and my rudely awoken ears suggest my phone, and its particularly alarming alarm, is, it succeeds in shutting off the interminable noise.

Not before the first collateral damage of the morning is recorded though, and once more I question the sense in bringing a glass of water to bed.

Peeling open my eyes is as challenging as separating kissing teens. Stomach crunches are nothing compared to the effort it takes to sit up.

In summer my legs swung noiselessly over the bed’s edge; now I groan in solidarity as I push them to the precipice and leave them with no option but to fall off the cliff and onto the Siberian floor.

With an almighty effort I lift myself into a standing position, and sleep’s hold is broken.

The fight is won.

I am up.

Week 31 - Laura - peas

For my niece Molly, who at four months is already partial to a bit of rhyming, and my sister Avril, whose earliest innocent rhyme, aged two or so, was 'Get into the ditch, bitch'.

I like peas
I like cheese
What are these?
Let's give them a squeeze

I like grapes
They sometimes escape
I like making them into shapes

I like greens
I like beans
I even quite like tangerines

I like bread
So does Ted
Just two slices and we're fed

I like gammon
I like salmon
I'm glad there is no gammon salmon famine

I like shakes
I like cakes
I like everything my Mam bakes

I'm not complete
without a sweet
but that's only for a treat

Week 31 - Andy - Peas

Dear 6 year old me,
It's nice to meet you. A couple of things about me - I'm married to Aoife. You'll meet her, she's the greatest. I'm not a helicopter pilot, I'm afraid - I work for the internet. That's a thing. It's computers, but it's also the most amazing thing in the world. It's like, imagine all the knowledge in the world, but on a little glass tile in your pocket. And you can talk to anyone you ever met, and listen to any song ever recorded, or watch any piece of film ever made, from that glass tile.

Anyway, leaving aside the world changing, true love, future technology stuff, I want to talk to you about something very important.

If I have timed this letter correctly, you'll get it at six forty-five on a Tuesday evening. You're sitting at the kitchen table. In front of you, is a plate decorated with pheasants. On top of the plate is a grilled lamb chop, some boiled potatoes, a pile of peas and some greyish cauliflower.

I want you to know two things. 1) It gets better.

You're going to eat unbelievable things, in wonderful places. Right now, you have a world map on the wall of your bedroom. You'll spend time colouring that in, with places you've visited. You'll eat a piece of fish that will haunt you, grilled fresh in a Chilean market. There is a bistro in Paris that you will try to eat in every year. You'll eat frog in San Francisco, and the best curry of your life in a London suburb called Tooting.

2) You need to pace yourself. There will be more chips - you don't have to eat all of the chips every time you see them. Focus on quality, not quantity. Please. Just because you can eat five burgers at a barbecue doesn't mean you should. Eating until you're stopped is just a foolish way to live. One day there won't be anyone to stop you - and that's not a good thing!

Anyway, there's a bunch of other stuff I'd love to tell you, but I'll have to leave you with this:
Invest in Apple.

Take care,
Older me.