MAYONNAISE
Use the blender.
Use a proper teaspoon, the sort that you use for giving children medicine. Use the little end and overfill it. Excess is better than moderation.
Drop in three eggs, four halves of sun-dried tomatoes, two teaspoons of salt, two teaspoons of dried garlic, four teaspoons of vinegar, four teaspoons of lemon juice, and three good size teaspoons of mustard.
Do the mustard last because it makes a mess of your teaspoon. Add more if you like mustard.
Blend it thoroughly.
Once it is blended, whilst the mixer is still running, add about three quarters of a pint of oil, maybe a bit less. Less oil means a thicker mayonnaise. Three quarters of a pint is the maximum.
Add it really slowly, a little bit at a time.
It should become really thick and creamy. If it curdles you have added the oil too fast. Really slowly is the key.
Get somebody else to wash the blender up if you are not rich enough to throw it away. It is horribly messy.
Alternatively, hose it off first.
CURRY
Roast a chicken.
Eat the chicken.
If this proves problematic, I recommend either sandwiches with lots of home made mayonnaise and Wensleydale cheese, or alternatively just leave it in the fridge on a prominent shelf when your children are home.
Once it is cool scrape the white fat and jelly up from the bottom of the roasting dish.
Chuck the jelly, bones and skin and any other leftover bits, obviously except the elastic that it was tied up with and the tin foil, into a pan.
Add water, salt, pepper, dried garlic, turmeric and paprika.
Boil for ages while you do something else.
Tip through a sieve and collect the water in a jug. This is now called stock.
Of course you can get stock in a small cube from Asda if you are so inclined. This works just as well but you miss out on the sandwiches with the Wensleydale, which would be a shame.
Give everything in the sieve to the dogs, they don’t choke on the bones because they have been cooked too much, and you can always get another one if they do. Also you might remember that chickens get eaten at a much younger age than they did when that advice was issued in the last millennium, and their bones are softer. Poor chickens.
Go in the garden and cut three or four bay leaves. Check carefully for bird poo and slugs, this is not a discovery you want to make after you have added them to the pan.
Measure as much basmati rice as you want into a cup. I usually use a pint mug and fill it to the top, this lasts us for two or three meals, or can be fried with egg or shoved in the freezer for emergencies.
Add about a flat teaspoon of salt, a large teaspoon of dried garlic and a large teaspoon of cumin to the rice. Mix it in.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a pan. Don’t bother measuring it, obviously, I said that to give you a rough idea how much oil to use. I wouldn’t want you to have tablespoons to wash up as well as everything else. If you bothered to save the fat from the chicken then throw that in as well. Boil the kettle.
When the oil is just starting to smoke chuck the rice in and stir. Stir it for a few minutes.
Make your stock up to a pint and a half with boiling water. You need one and a half times the amount of liquid as you had of rice.
Take the spoon out of the rice. Turn the heat down as low as it will go.
Holding the lid in one hand and the stock in the other, quickly tip the stock into the pan and stick the lid on quickly. This is because it will sizzle and spit and give off a huge cloud of steam and make you feel like a real cook. When it has slowed down a bit lift the lid off and give it all a quick stir, chuck your bay leaves in and jam the lid back on.
When you take the lid off again about 15 – 20 minutes later all the water will have gone and you will have very nice fragrant rice.
For the curry you need a liquidiser. Put these things in it and then switch it on, obviously with the lid on.
Two onions
Two bananas
About half a large bulb of garlic
About half a tub of honey yoghurt
About half a tub of cream
Tablespoon of peanut butter
Some cashew nuts
Then as much as you like of the following: salt, chilli, turmeric, paprika, coriander, fenugreek, fennel seeds.
If the curry is for smart visitors you might want to add saffron, if it is just for your husband you needn’t bother because he will never notice. Your smart visitors won’t notice either but you will have a sense of superior virtue.
Cut chicken up into pieces and fry it. Liquidise the onion mix and chuck it in the pan.
Rinse the liquidiser out with milk afterwards and tip that in as well in order not to waste anything.
Crack three cardamom pods and chuck those in, also some bay leaves, some split almonds and some desiccated coconut. Simmer it all for ten minutes, add more milk if it starts to dry up.
This is very rich. You might want to add some water towards the end, taste it and see. It will do as many meals as the rice does.
You can vary the ingredients by adding mango and tomato purée if you like. This is also divine.
BISCUITS
For the interested.
Four ounces of brown sugar, six ounces of yoghurt, two ounces of oil.
Shove in the wonderful Kenwood and mix.
Add four ounces of chopped cherries, two ounces custard powder, four ounces of coconut, ten ounces of wholemeal flour, salt.
Flatten in large baking tray and wash your hands several times.
Gas mark five for twelve minutes.
For the chocolate. Melt 250g milk chocolate with about half an ounce of either butter or equivalent health-enhancing grease, 100g really dark chocolate, maybe the 90% cocoa sort, and a good sprinkling of salt.
When it has all melted add a large spoonful of yoghurt. Mix together and spread on biscuits. Put in fridge to set.
I know I have used both metric and proper weights in this recipe. That is because you measure stuff like flour but chocolate comes in packets with grams on, which makes it much easier. If you are American and usually measure things in cups, I have never got the faintest idea what you are talking about either.
MORE BISCUITS
Eight ounces of butter and four ounces of icing sugar. Sieve the icing sugar.
Cream these together in the mixer until they are white. I mean really cream them, not just your usual couple of minutes and that will do. Do something else whilst the mixer is on. Hanging up the washing should do it.
Add a few drops of vanilla essence, not the pretend stuff, the real one, which is more expensive but tastes better.
Sieve in two ounces of custard powder, two ounces of rice flour and two ounces of cornflour. Add salt and eight ounces of plain flour.
Mix.
The mixture should be dry enough not to stick to your fingers when you touch it, if it is sticker than that add more flour.
Roll into twenty four round flat biscuits.
Bake in the oven at gas four for about twenty minutes, but possibly longer. The tops of the biscuits should be firm when you touch them.
These are like shop biscuits but nicer.
(Shhhhh) I strike again. There is always the tuck Draw sitting as the bottom Draw in the kitchen Counter. There are Jammy Dodgers in there.