Jottage from Cambridge – The Art of the Kitchen

When I was about eight months pregnant my bump suddenly started to grow in size by the day and, before long, it was almost impossible to get past my husband in our tiny kitchen. Cooking is something that we’ve always enjoyed doing together (n.b. Hugh’s Chicken Curry is a fabulous recipe to make with another person as there are lots of components (each complicated in their own way, and worthy of admiration by your other half) which are thrown into the same pot), but given the size of our kitchen it was always going to be a challenge in this house – even without a bump! So, imagine my delight when we started looking to buy a property in Cambridge and the place we agreed on had an enormous kitchen – in fact it was the biggest kitchen I had ever had the pleasure of using on a daily basis. So, this made me think about some of the kitchens I have had to contend with, and how they compare. Also, from writing this post, I have realised that over the past ten years I have switched loyalties (from Delia, to Jamie and now to River Cottage) depending on where I’ve lived and personal circumstances. 

Unsurprisingly the kitchen I encountered at my University Hall of Residence wasn’t up to much, and Baked Bean toasties were probably the extent of my culinary repertoire for those three years. I do remember buying packets of Safeway Savers fish fingers too so perhaps I did use the oven. (Like everyone else I had a Student Cookbook, though I’m certain I never used it.) It wasn’t until I was studying for my second degree that I discovered pesto. It was a perfect match and, after a night out or a day of dull seminars, nothing quite compared to spaghetti mixed with pesto and tomatoes and sprinkled with parmesan. I lived with three girls that I didn’t get on with at all so, although the kitchen in our shared house was ok, I didn’t want to spend any more time in it than I had to  another reason why I consumed so much pesto. 

Moving to London for my first job in 2000 I lived in a cheap flat in Cricklewood with a surprisingly large kitchen. Suddenly I had sophisticated friends who weren’t afraid to attend private views at the Serpentine Gallery with arty types. They invited me round for homemade pizzas and meals that didn’t come out of a packet. It was all very frightening, especially when one of my very best friends described coming round to another person’s house and being served pizza from a box! I was that very friend, though she had clearly forgotten it was me and I didn’t confess to such a faux-pas. However, I didn’t really take advantage of this big kitchen (and I was fairly terrified of my landlady who lived with me at the time and I didn’t want to spend too much time weighing out ingredients in our shared space), so going out to Pizza Express or Wagamamas became an almost weekly event. Also I never went out with anyone for long enough in those early years to need more than one recipe, so experimenting in the kitchen was hardly a priority. When I invited a boy round for dinner I would always give them pasta served with roast veg, passata and bacon. This was exactly what I gave to Theo (my now husband) when he first came round. It was quite frightening when I realised we were becoming more committed to each other, and a second invitation would be necessary. I didn’t know what on earth to serve up that would impress him (though my pasta dish probably didn’t win his heart so a good cook probably wasn’t top of his criteria for a girlfriend). Delia came to the rescue. Over the following months I served him up all kinds of meals which I printed out at work from Delia online. We also discovered that cooking was something we enjoyed doing together so some of the burden was taken off my shoulders. He adored cooking with fish, not something I had eaten much of previously – see ‘A Fishy Dilemma’ – and the stir fry became the fast-food option rather than pizza.  

I’m part of the generation who adores Jamie Oliver. I doubt that I have any friends who don’t have a pile of his books stacked up on their kitchen counters with well-worn pages. Moving to Manchester in 2007 I bought one of those characterless flats in the ‘trendy’ Northern Quarter, and Jamie became part of the furniture. All painted white (the lease actually forbids the tenants from painting the walls any other colour) the kitchen was an add-on to the main living space. Although it wasn’t very big, I found it perfectly suited my needs. The trick was not to make anything too complicated (which is where Jamie really comes in) so that when friends came round for dinner they wouldn’t see me getting all flustered in the kitchen. Instead I would pour them a glass of wine and try and keep myself sober while I made a recipe I knew by heart. I invited various new acquaintances round for dinner, and a risotto of some kind, or indeed homemade pizza (see Jamie’s Italian), was always on the menu. 

From Manchester to Cambridge, and I have already described the contrasting kitchens I have experienced here. As you can see from the photo I now have ample space – Tristan is at the centre of things and around him are cupboards, and a huge stove which have eight hobs, and two ovens! I even have a shelf in one cupboard for my expanding collection of Tupperware. I will definitely make the most of my new fancy kitchen and, in the spirit of this blog, will endeavour to concoct as many things as possible from my River Cottage cookbook. Living just off Mill Road with a wealth of food shops surrounding me I should be able to source all the ingredients and, with dinner parties becoming rare treats, it feels worth venturing beyond Jamie and Delia and into new territory. 

Too small for me and a bump...

Big enough for all of us and more...

Jottage from Cambridge - Polenta and How Much Does it Cost to Feed a Baby?

I have managed to get through the first thirty-four years of my life without using polenta, or indeed knowing what it is. Yet when I typed ‘polenta’ into the recipe finder on Epicurious, 173 recipes were returned, including a dazzling array of cheesecakes, stews and lasagnes. Thanks to Hugh I now have a large packet of the bright yellow stuff sitting in my cupboard, having used it to make the polenta chips (Baby & Toddler Cookbook) for Tristan. Polenta is ever such a funny thing. Made from yellow cornmeal it quickly thickens up into a grainy paste if you add a splash of water. I don’t find the taste particularly pleasant, and most of Tristan’s chips ended up on the floor – though the quantity of leftovers is by no means a measure of how much Tristan likes or dislikes something. More about that later.


Polenta is considered ‘peasant food’; perhaps less so now though as again I had to go to Arjuna to get a packet as it wasn’t stocked in the supermarket. It’s pretty cheap though (see photo) which leads me on to the next section of this post about the cost of feeding a baby.

All you really need in the first week of weaning is a carrot and a packet of baby rice (£1.64). In the next week you might introduce apples and pears, but the baby isn’t really going to eat anything which might break the bank. Within a couple of months though, when the baby is on three meals a day, the costs start rising and tins of sardines and mackerel, as well as unsalted butter, whole milk and yogurt (I have just acquired a yogurt maker – more on this coming soon), quickly become staples. However, although there are a few more packets in our larder (along with polenta, we now always have  Weetabix, porridge, baby pasta, and peanut butter, as well as the above), Tristan generally eats our leftovers. This, of course, saves time and money and means that I only really need to think about what to give him on toast for lunch as the other meals are covered. However, what if I had succumbed to all the brightly coloured pots and pouches which even the dinkiest Tesco and Sainsbury’s stock? Even Annabel Karmel who, judging from her Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner appears to encourage home cooking, has her own range of baby meals at £2.29 a pop. Heinz probably rule the school though with a range strangely called ‘Mums Own’, even though all Mum has done is open up her purse and gotten a few Clubcard points.  So imagine a typical day as below:


Breakfast: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Apple & Banana Breakfast 128g = 65p
Lunch: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Cheesy Tomato Pasta Stars 200g = 62p
Dinner: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe Vegetable Hot Pot with Chicken 250g = 84p + Heinz Egg Custard Dessert, 128g = £0.42
Total: £2.53


So each week you could be spending nearly £18 on baby food. (n.b. Sainsbury’s prices in November 2011)


Now, I don’t know anyone who actually feeds their little ones Heinz pots for every meal, but I bet some do. If you choose to be organic and buy the Ella’s Kitchen range or anything branded Plum you would be even poorer - in some stores each pouch costs £1 or more. These meals do serve a purpose though and, when you’re out and about, it’s really handy having a nutritious meal on hand (I know one baby who will only eat Hipp Porridge though which must be quite frustrating!) and I did have a variety of Ella’s Kitchen meals when we holidayed in Cornwall. In fact, in these days of baby-led, there’s a bit of a fear of being judged with a baby ready meal. In the café at Cambridge’s Botanical Gardens last weekend I had a box packed with peanut butter on toast cut into fingers, a banana and a pouch. I noticed the woman sitting across from us was trying to give her little girl of approximately the same age a few pieces of bread, and slices of cucumber. She also had spoons filled with some concoction laid out on the table for her daughter to pick up and put in her mouth. As Tristan didn’t seem to have eaten many of his peanut buttered fingers and the café floor was looking worse for wear, I contemplated opening my pouch of Ella’s Kitchen butternut squash, carrots, apples and prunes, but feared disapproving looks. I enviously looked at the other woman, though her daughter wasn’t making progress either and, as I was leaving, I noticed her getting out a little pot of Heinz baby food from her bag! That made me feel much better. So not only, in these austere times, can people still afford expensive baby food, but it also seems that many people are willing to follow Rapley up to a point and then succumb to puree which, if it comes from a pouch, has the texture and gloss of Pantene Pro-V, though hopefully tastes nicer.

Jottage from Cambridge – Season and Unseasonality

Food is not something I know much about. I have never been one of those people who buys fruit and vegetables in a particular season – I’ve even been known to eat Cadbury’s Cream eggs at least two months either side of Easter. So, when my mother gave me a copy of River Cottage Everyday I thought it would sit snugly with my other reasonably untouched cookery books. It still might be between Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith but for the fact that suddenly food has become much more important in our household. This is all down to ‘weaning’ – that very daunting process between your baby only consuming milk and them eyeing up the sweetie counter at the supermarket.


My sister assured me that weaning was great fun, and indeed I have loved every minute blending up bits of carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash and all the other amber coloured vegetables that Annabel Karmel (the guru of weaning) suggests you puree into a mush and feed your baby. However the market for blenders has no doubt been damaged irreparably by Gill Rapley. Rapley is synonymous with ‘baby led’ weaning - the latest fad of new mums who assemble with their Pumpkin Patch kids at the Cambridgeshire Childrens’ Centres. In fact the first question anyone asks now after that all important ‘is your baby sleeping through the night?’ is ‘are you doing baby-led’? Anyone who hasn’t heard of this latest phenomenon is looked at disdainfully, and an assumption is made that their baby will be an impossibly fussy eater who won’t be able to hold a spoon until their second birthday (Rapley claims). 


There are great assumptions made for ‘baby led’, and I was certain that Tristan would be the perfect candidate. However, owing to the fact that at five months he was still waking every couple of hours, I was advised to start weaning early to save my sanity. Because baby-led means that you only give your child solid food (you can give them soups, yogurts etc. but you never give them the instruction to open their mouth while you shove a spoon in, instead they take the spoon from you and feed themselves) – which they don’t have the ability to digest until they’re six months old – I began to puree instead. When Tristan hit six months I began to give him solid foods, although still relying on my blender, and very rarely having the courage to let him take the spoon for fear of the walls, carpet, furnishings etc. being forever porridge stained in our rented accommodation. 


My freezer is now full of little pots (I have become fairly obsessive about Tupperware recently) of lamb stew, minced beef mixed with baby pasta and salmon risotto. New inspiration came with the acquisition of the River Cottage Baby & Toddler Cookbook which sits beside River Cottage Everyday not on a dusty shelf, but within easy reach on the kitchen counter. I have got through a huge number of recipes already, and Tristan just as easily wolfs down the Chicken Curry (see p.223 of Everyday) as the Apple & Spelt Stars (see p.234 Baby & Toddler). So, food is now very important and the some of my trials and tribulations of feeding my baby son will be recorded in this blog. In addition I hope to tell our readers about the amazing food stores on Mill Road, a thriving shopping street to the east of the city centre.

Jottage from Cambridge/Lancaster

We just thought of it - one Friday night; to write a blog about our experiences cooking using the River Cottage Everyday recipe book and the River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook.


How this came about and our thoughts and experiences along the way will be the subject of this blog and we are just writing it for our own amusement.


Firstly Tristan's lunch of cheese and apple on toast....

and Tristan eating it...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Cromwell Rd,Cambridge,United Kingdom