January 2025 favourites list

Happy New Year to you all!

Welcome this first Favourites list for 2025. January is wintry and cold, and spring seems a long way away. My food preferences prefer snuggly and warming bowls of comfort at a time like this. Therefore it is no surprise many of my recipe choices here are soups. One thing British food does very well is comfort food. A classic is, of course, the Sunday roast. This week’s pictures are from a recent pub lunch at the Bickley Arms in Kent. 

 

I hope you enjoy this month’s selections. 

Food writing

I found a full scan of a vintage salad recipe book available online. The art nouveau cover is to die for. There is a salad for each day – check what your birthday/anniversary/saint’s day holds in store for you. There are also lots of dressings in a section at the end: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015094333583

This cheeky little bit of food/cooking satire made me laugh – on social media outrage about posting recipes online: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/did-you-even-consider-every-possible-lived-experience-before-recklessly-posting-your-chili-recipe-on-social-media

Food writer Courtney Pochin from London newspaper Metro tells us what the 10 best things she ate in London in 2024 were: https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/19/im-a-food-writer-10-best-things-ate-london-2024-22385455/ 

Food and science

Food and where cooking, science, and considerations of authenticity collide... Cacio e Pepe receives scientific analysis. It appears that the secret to Cacio e Pepe is starch control, and scientists found that using the pasta water is too uncertain, and suggest the use of cornflour or potato starch. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.00536

I don’t think bay leaves are a con. But that’s because I’m lucky enough to have a small Mediterranean bay tree in my back garden for fresh leaves, and dried Indian bay leaves (which are slightly different) can be found which are not too ancient in Indian grocery shops. This article discusses bay leaves, what they add, and how to use them: https://www.livescience.com/health/food-diet/do-bay-leaves-actually-add-flavor-or-is-it-all-a-con

 

Food advice and kitchen tips

Some people hate cooking, others just don’t feel like it every now and then. If you are feeling like feeding yourself has become a chore, here are some ideas on three mindsets to make it easier. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/18/nx-s1-5226105/hate-cooking-3-mindsets-to-make-it-less-of-a-chore

Olive oil is expensive right now and can go rancid before its best before date – to stop this, think carefully about where you store it – don’t keep it by the hob and keep it away from light: https://metro.co.uk/2024/12/31/rancid-reason-shouldnt-keep-olive-oil-next-oven-22273515/

Recipes

Gochujang is having a moment – the Korean chilli paste is a super versatile ingredient. Here is a recipe for a sweet potato and gochujang soup with crispy chick peas. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/recipes/sweet-potato-gochujang-soup-crispy-chickpeas-recipe-b2671982.html

Nigella Lawson’s golden soup, made from yellow courgettes, is what she calls her “Happiness Soup”: https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/food-drink/nigella-lawsons-incredibly-easy-golden-34425254

With the flavours of Spain, this Mediterranean fish with orzo and tomatoes is like a flex on Fiduea: https://spainonafork.com/mediterranean-fish-with-orzo-and-tomatoes-recipe/

If you’re looking for soup inspiration but are looking for immune system boosting ingredients at a time when everyone seems to have caught some bug or another, this is for you: https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/immunity-boost-soup-recipes-winter-3471022

What you might have missed at Snig’s Kitchen

As many of us withdraw from unethical and dubious social media platforms, I rescued my Cauliflower and potato pakora recipe thread from Twitter and brought it to my blog: https://snigskitchen.blogspot.com/2025/01/cauliflower-and-potato-pakoras.html

 

Music

From last January’s Celtic Connections, this Songs of Modern Scotland concert brings together many of Scotland’s best loved musicians play some of Scotland’s best loved songs with a full orchestra. The Hamish Hawk version of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out and Roddy Hart and the Lonesome Fire’s version of The Blue Nile’s Tinseltown In the Rain are magical.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w4mh/songs-of-modern-scotland-celtic-connections

Please note: as with every monthly Favourites List, all of these items have been selected by me simply because I love them. I do not receive any money, benefits in kind or other incentive for posting these links or recommendations.

Cauliflower and potato pakoras

Cauliflower and potato pakoras

Many years ago, a friend recommended I join Twitter to share my food blog. For many years, I enjoyed being there and sharing my various thoughts, news, and other stuff. One thing I did was post "cooking threads" setting out dishes I was cooking, with ingredients, instructions and photos. This pakora recipe was originally one of my cooking threads. Sadly, for *reasons* Twitter isn't such a nice place any more, and therefore I am rescuing this old recipe thread and sharing it here as a blog post. 

 

 

Serves 2 as a light lunch or 3-4 as a side dish

 

Ingredients

 

1 large potato, peeled

Half of a cauliflower, cut into florets

3 cloves of garlic

1”/2.5cm piece of ginger (use the thicker part of the rhizome)

Half a teaspoon of Chaat Masala (you could also use Garam Masala or Kitchen King)

Freshly ground black pepper

Half a teaspoon of salt

1 red or green finger (or birds eye) chilli, very finely diced (deseeded if you prefer)

1 cup (240 ml) gram flour (besan/ chick pea flour)

Water – please see instructions below – from 120 to 180 to a limit of 240 ml

2 tbsp cornflour

Ground nut or Rapeseed oil for frying

Optional (to serve): Mango chutney, chilli chutney, coriander chutney,  tamarind sauce, Freshly ground black pepper, Amchoor.

 

Variations:

 

For extra crunch/crispiness, leave out the cornflour and add a little finely ground semolina. If you don't have cornflour, either substitute with rice flour or leave it out altogether.

 

Some people might want to add a little bicarbonate of soda to add a little air to the batter. I don't do this, and neither does my Mum. But feel free to experiment. Another way of adding air to the batter (which isn’t authentic, but would work) would be to use either fizzy water (good) or beer (even better) as you might for Tempura batter.

 

Other vegetable suggestions: - Onion - Bhindi (ladies' fingers)  - Courgette - Aubergine - Bell pepper - Chilli - Lau (bottle gourd) – Spinach leaves.

 

If you like bitter flavours and want to try something really different, you could try Karela or bitter gourd. No need to take the seeds out.

 

Method

 

1. Finely grate three cloves of peeled garlic and a peeled 1" piece of ginger. Add to a jug or bowl, with half a teaspoon of Chaat Masala, a touch of freshly ground black pepper, half a teaspoon of salt and a very finely chopped chilli.

 

2. Add a cup of gram flour (besan) and a couple of tablespoons of cornflour and mix well.

 

3. Slowly add water, starting with half a cup, working up to three quarters of a cup (maximum one cup), mixing as you go until you have a batter the consistency of double cream. Your batter is ready.

 

Pakora batter

 

4. Parboil your potato for 10 minutes, drain and run cold water to arrest the cooking. Slice into thin slices. Then coat in batter. (If you slice and then parboil, you will have to dry the slices before battering to ensure the batter sticks.)

 

5. Cut up half a cauliflower into florets and parboil for 4 minutes. Drain well and either dry off or give it a spin in a salad spinner. Get them as dry as you can to get maximum batter cling.

 

6. In a wok or karhai, heat up either rapeseed oil or groundnut oil (about 2" of oil will be ample).

 

7. Coat the veggies in the batter, batch by batch. Fry until golden brown, again, batch by batch. Don't overcrowd the pan or the oil will become too cool. Fish out with a slotted spoon or wire spoon.

 

8. Try to get rid of excess oil by drying on kitchen paper. 

 

 

 

9. Season well. Serve with Indian chutney or sauce: Mango chutney, chilli chutney, coriander chutney or tamarind sauce. For extra zing, you could sprinkle a little Amchoor.

 

Potato pakoras, seasoned generously

 

10. Enjoy as a snack or lunch, or as an accompaniment to your favourite Indian. Pakistani or Bangladeshi dishes. 

 

 

Cauliflower and potato pakoras