A starchy mood set in

A steadying diet, with recipes and eating notes

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about a starchy mood, with recipes and eating notes.

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A starchy mood set in

I hoped to find something out about myself via an unforeseen appetite. But no cravings appeared. I felt somewhat cheated out of a hidden portion of self. How might it have tasted? I wanted to know. Pregnancy has brought about an altered relationship with eating, though. After a previous miscarriage I have been more inclined to follow the list of rules about foods pregnant people should avoid, even though many are backed up by poor (or apocryphal seeming) evidence. Within this new framework has been how I have actually eaten.

Pregnancy is a wobbly state that is is often thrown into doubt by scans and blood tests, among other things. The initial weeks were physically reminiscent of seasickness, a feeling enhanced by the fact I was travelling a lot. I turned to a remedy for seasickness, too, of eating plain carbohydrates, frequently. A friend, H, messaged me with a list of foods to help me develop sea-legs for this period: 

cheese and ham supermarket sandwiches
dairylea
crackers
salt & vinegar crisps / hula hoops
mini cheddars
plain biscuits 
jacket potatoes
spaghetti hoops
beans on toast

Even reading her list felt good. I was in Edinburgh when the message arrived and I ate buns from a Scandinavian bakery and macaroni cheese pie and an empire biscuit, as well as lots of toast. During dozens of train journeys I took to bookshops in the weeks after this, I found my own version of H’s list. Shop-bought egg and cress sandwiches featured prominently, as did bags of ready salted crisps and pots of fruit salad that I began buying in a benevolent gesture towards my digestion.

The starchy mood endured.

A few weeks later in Margate (as documented here) I got seriously into baked potatoes with tuna after another friend, S, made me one for the first time. Baked potatoes have since become a dish cooked often (like last night, with baked beans, butter, and cheddar cheese). In Newcastle, where I travelled after Margate, I yearned for a simple soup with a ham and pease pudding stottie (the flat white roll whose shape was defined by the practice of throwing the dough on the bottom of the oven – I believe – and whose name comes from the ‘stotttt’ sound it produced). I went with some urgency to the caff in Grainger Market where I had eaten stotties several years ago, but it no longer served them. I was distraught, but they recommended a deli a few yards away that while it did not do stotties, made white rolls with ham and pease pudding and soup made with ham stock, split peas and vegetables. I bought both of these to take away and had the soup sitting on a bench waiting for a delayed train and the roll on the train and was made very happy by both.

And so it continued. By far the worst sandwich I had during my train travels was an inedible tuna panini from a Starbucks in Exeter St Davids, which I had to dispose of after two bites and after which I had a terrible stomach ache.

Soup has become a strong theme. In New York in early December I was ill with flu and longed for soup and made chicken soup (as mentioned in my eating notes here) with buttered toast, and bought borscht from a Ukrainian shop to eat with dumplings. In Michigan the following week, still ill, I ate many portions of Pozole made by my friend Dani’s partner Alex. It was the first time I’d had it and the soft white corn, strands of meat and garnish of fresh herbs and lime made it both comforting and reviving. In January S and I have made so much soup – mostly old fashioned, starchy-smooth soups with no garnish, served with toast or scones and cheese. In recent weeks I have also got into honey nut mini shredded wheats, which aren’t too sweet, but are also not entirely dull.

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And so, in this starchy vein, two dishes I have eaten this week –

Porridge

How I make it at the moment
A ratio of 1:2 ½ oats to water using porridge oats such as Flahavan’s. Simmer water and porridge together so that it’s bubbling, stirring until it thickens and the oats are cooked – don’t panic if it seems too watery at first, it will work! Towards the end add a pinch of salt.

To serve
A small piece of butter and if you have some, a splash of double cream on top.

Then, each person adds to taste
Dark muscovado sugar on top, with whole milk poured round the edges.

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Soup again.

I made soup using the same method as that for the carrot soup a few weeks ago – but with a potato rather than carrot emphasis. Potato and leek-ish soup! It was very good. I also made cheese scones to have with it, working from an excellent recipe by Felicity Cloake for her column in the Guardian.

Ingredients

5 medium sized potatoes
1 fat leek
1 medium sized carrot
1 medium onion
1 garlic clove
40g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
c.1 litre of chicken/ vegetable stock (or enough to come 2cm above the vegetables when they are in the pan)
100ml double cream

How to make

Trim the leeks of one or two outer layers and cut off the dark green top. Split the leek in two lengthways and rinse well under the cold tap, making sure there’s no mud or grit between the layers, especially towards the top. Cut the leeks into 1/2 cm slices. Peel the carrot, potatoes and onion and cut into roughly 1cm x 1cm pieces. Peel and slice the garlic clove.

Melt the butter in a large heavy pan with the olive oil on a medium heat. Add all the vegetables and garlic and a pinch of salt and cook until the onion is softening – for 5-8 minutes, stirring now and then. Then add in the stock. Simmer for 50-60 minutes on a low heat, just bubbling. Blitz until very smooth with a hand (stick) blender. Taste and season well with salt and black pepper. Stir in the cream. Serve with cheese scones or hot buttered toast.

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Eating Notes

A tart of caramelised chicory baked into a cream-egg-cheese mix in a puff pastry shell in my new cast iron American pie dish brought back from Ann Arbor. With a salad of lettuce, apple, pecans and a few cubes of smoked cheddar.

Hibiscus drink and black beans at a new Mexican inspired cafe called Maiz in a town near where I live. It was all freshly made and very good.

A chocolate eclair eaten alone at Maison Bertaux in Soho; could not be improved.

The makings of lunch: garlic yogurt warming over a pan of water; chickpeas cooked in their liquid with tomato paste, garlic and cumin; wilted greens. Assembled and eaten with a fried egg on top.

A small portion of meatballs with mashed potato and peas at IKEA in Lakeside. Side of lingonberry sauce and ketchup. To drink I mixed from the raspberry and lemonade taps of the self-service soda fountains.

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Other things

I have written a series of texts including a very short story called ‘Jam Tomorrow’ for the book by artist Magali Reus Red Roses, out early February.

I have an essay in the forthcoming Daunt Books anthology By the River published in April