My friend Jean gave me a (subtle, of course) nudge last week, about the dearth of recipes bursting forth (or failing to burst forth in this case) from aviewfrommykitchen. Hmmm, must do better.
I have no excuse for this, other than terminal inertia, brought on by having no fixed timetable for anything at all. Not to mention that our meals of late have not exactly been inspiring – there are only so many recipes you need for cheese on toast or bangers & mash.
I haven’t been entirely idle – I signed up for sourdough-baking school and my sourdough starters have never been so well-tended, or so well-used. Our kitchen is permanently coated with a light dusting of flour, and I seem to endlessly have chewing-gum-style dough stuck in my hair. We have home-baked bread almost all of the time, and our next door neighbour also gets to share – she is a key worker and deserves treats; a girl’s got to keep body and soul together in these difficult times. I also feel guilty every morning when, from the safety of my duvet, I hear the sounds of her de-icing her car, something I admit that I have never done in my 57 years until last week (even then I managed to re-ice the windscreen by very foolishly using the screen washer when we were part way down the drive to the main road – the water froze on contact with the screen, completely obscuring my view, and I nearly smacked straight into the guy from two doors down – ooops).
Continue reading “‘Dal’ soup with spinach”
Who remembers spring vegetable soup? It was a mainstay of the 1970s – I remember it being served at practically every wedding we attended, presumably because its delicate nature meant it wouldn’t offend some long-lost great aunt’s fussy palate (or mine – I was a complete nightmare to feed when I was younger – something that many people would find hard to believe now). Unfortunately, most of the time it was straight out of a tin, so tasted of a mixture of metal, dried herbs and fake stock. 
We’ve just about recovered from our horrible Monday dinner experience, so 
I am very excited because tomorrow we are off on an unexpected jaunt to the Jurançon wine district in France and then travelling back here next week via Amsterdam – a city I have always wanted to visit. Getting to places from here is never simple, so we are going by a very convoluted route, which involves four different airlines. (*Sighs dramatically*) The route was originally going to involve the TGV, but in view of the strikes, we’ve decided to avoid that option. 
It’s Tuesday so it must be diet day. Hey ho, that also means Don Draper Day, though we’ve just reached the end of Season 6, so not long to go now. I am not sure where we will spend our evenings when we are no longer gadding about in 1970s Madison Avenue, though it will soon be too warm for sitting inside after dinner, so perhaps the timing is excellent. 
We often have these flatbreads on a diet day, as they don’t tempt us to add butter and they are really delicious when freshly cooked. The leftovers are perfect to use as wraps for walking sandwiches or re-toasted, spread with hummus and sprinkled with toasted seeds or leftover chicken or lamb. They freeze perfectly when cooked, and you can also freeze half of the uncooked dough (knock it back after rising, then wrap tightly in cling film before putting into a freezer bag – this stops the dough from rising too much while it is thawing out). The dough can also be used as a pizza base. 
We’re back in Turkey following two weeks in the UK, main-lining pork products, rhubarb crumble and hot cross buns, not to mention quite a lot of Old Speckled Hen in Robin’s case!
First of all, a confession – I got so carried away with the need to eat this that I completely forgot to photograph what I was doing as I went along. But it is all pretty simple – I am sure you can visualise chopped veggies – so I’m going to give you the recipe anyway, as it is pretty yummy, particularly served with hot garlic bread.
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