Bitter Sweet

Thursday 27th January

Day 281

I’m making lunch to share - my contribution is something with rice or pasta. There will also be a crunchy colourful salad and a creamy lettuce soup with homemade bread. I choose quinoa for the grain and because the wind is blowing bitter from Siberia today I want hot spices in my recipe to keep us simmering warm. I remember a rice dish we used to make at Sharwoood’s with coconut and mustard seeds. I adapt it for my quinoa dish - fry an onion, stir in the black seeds and the white grain. Pour in double the quantity of hot vegetable stock and dissolved coconut cream and cook till all the liquid has absorbed. And it smells like you can’t wait to taste it.

When I do taste it, it’s horrible. Bitter in my mouth. I suspect I overdid the mustard seeds. I stir in the other half of yesterday’s Hallumi cheese, grated into salty strands and mounds of chopped parsley. But there is no disguising it. Maybe a hot sweet relish to accompany it will do the trick. I slide chestnut mushrooms and aubergine cubes into the holy trinity of chilli, garlic and ginger frying gently in a skillet with red onion and roasted cumin, and leave the flavours to meld on a low fire. Finally two dollops of September’s green tomato chutney add a sticky molasses highlight.

Sitting round my friend’s table and laughing in the warmth of such dear company it’s easy to forget the biting cold outside and gloss over the disagreeable quinoa. She says the chickens next door will gobble up the leftovers. They won’t recognise the bitterness. Which could turn you sour if you bathe in it too long, and forget there’s always a sweet relish nearby. If you know how to look.