of cabbages and queens

i keep promising myself i’ll keep a diary. not a diary where i write down my thoughts, but a notation of what i did from day to day – can’t remember it otherwise. i’ve forgotten what i did every single day of the past month, and twitter isn’t much help since i don’t really tweet things that i did. i can’t even remember when i made molly’s chickpea-tomato soup (though it was when A came over) – which, by the way, is totally delicious. it’s a gut-warming concoction of tomatoes and nutty chickpeas, an undercurrent of rosemary tempering the acidity of the tomatoes, and i don’t even know how else to describe something so perfect for a winter night in a tropical country, except that even my little sister who hates all the “strange things” i cook up loves it. she actually does.

this term has been fairly insane. not that i’m working very hard or anything, but that i’m not. it’s almost as though i’m trying to cram about 18 years worth of not-slacking into as many hours of the day as i can – actually watching TV for a change, finishing Seasons 3, 4 and 5 of House M.D. (where will i get my binge fix now?!), scrolling through pages and pages of MLIA (and copiously reblogging them), and spending this afternoon reading Steinbeck’s East of Eden in one sitting. reading feels fabulous. and i’m having a life that isn’t work for a change.

most days i get to eat really good food – some meals are good while you’re eating them, and nothing to complain about, but some of them are the kind of meals you mention a few years later and set off half-hours of reminiscing. like Aunty K’s shepherd pie, the secret of which apparently lies in the Lea & Perrin’s sauce, and most definitely the 1:1 ratio of mashed potato to meat filling . or the char siu at Overseas, dark, intense, sticky chunks of meat, sweet-savoury and caramelly, yielding slowly to the bite and dissolving on your tongue.

i may profess to try and eat anything and everything, but i really am boring in food choices – i return to the same few delicious things over and over again, just because they’re really good. i mean, i’ve made these chocolate chip cookies twice thrice within the last month. scads and scads of them. the last few times i ate Japanese, i ordered some variant of raw fish. then there’s the turkey-spinach wrap i have every time i go to Marmalade, because their lamb kofta is overwhelmingly large and flavourless, the lasagna is a wobbling tower of too much cheese, and their Oreo cheesecake is definitely made with gelatin. why would anyone make a cheesecake with gelatin? the mind boggles. and hey, that turkey wrap is good stuff.

and for a week in october, i was eating braised cabbage every day. every day. i pretty much vegetated that whole week. that was the week R, the girl who’s modeled for my art pieces for the past two years, came over and cooked lunch with me. we made cumin-lentil soup, which she and my sister hated (“that’s dhal! you can’t drink it!!!”) but i rather liked.

we made brownies, cookies, grilled chicken and the eponymous braised cabbage, another molly-orangette recipe. there is a certain brilliance about molly, especially when she can persuade R to eat the first carrots that she’s ever liked, which is no mean feat. the girl hates her veggies.

truth be told, i wouldn’t be able to resist the cabbage on sheer aesthetic value. it’s right there, that humble stack of leaves perched on the plate next to the grilled chicken. sure, it’s no Keller creation, but it has a rustic, homely loveliness to it – the multi-layered mellow-looking curves softened in the heat of the oven to yield perfectly to the teeth, nestled closely in crinkly, golden-brown wedges. and the taste – subdued, comforting, like curling up under a blanket, the intense chicken-salty juices and the sweetness of the cabbage mingling, its bitterness dissipated through long braising.

seriously, you have no excuse: it is dead easy to make, as long as you have two hours to spare. so do yourselves a favour, and make it. the poached egg sounds as though it would be fabulous. it’s gorgeous with a grilled chicken thigh, rubbed with sea salt and black pepper, grilled for 20 minutes at 170C and another 10 at 200C for the skin to crisp up.

for dessert, hot and cold brownies – the brownie component from Fran Bigelow’s Chocolate, the recipe for Truffle Brownies (or something along the lines thereof), and R’s contribution, Tin-Roof Ice Cream. chunks of brownie in the ice cream make it feel as though you’re eating the same thing at different temperatures, which is oddly addictive and lovely. and that brownie is no joke – that is rich stuff.

it’s days like these i love most – slow, fabulous lunches with friends, long leisurely chats about everything and nothing. trying to get R to eat vegetables, discussing the ins and outs of life in england with A&Z. that’s one type of day. the other type of day is today, where everything proceeds normally, but is then punctuated by euphoric surprises. like finding out i received two CIE awards for Lit and Art (World). followed by MY SISTER JUST GOT ENGAGED CHYEAHHHHH!!

over and out until the endorphins wear off