Notes on last week

Eating notes on midweek meals and meals made for the baby

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This newsletter is some eating notes on midweek meals and meals made for the baby.

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Notes on last week

Tuesday

End of pasta pasta for two people

I supplemented our scant pasta supplies with some chickpeas making for a pleasing textural mix of starches.

160g leftover pastas
100g cooked chickpeas
200g chard, washed and sliced
4-6 anchovies, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 mild red chilli, de-seeded and finely sliced
c.80ml double cream
3-4 heaped tablespoons of very finely grated parmesan + extra to serve

I boiled the kettle and filled a pot with the water, salted it, and put in to boil 100g of orecchiette and 60g of fregola. Meanwhile I melted some butter in a deep frying pan on a gentle heat with two tablespoons of olive oil, 4-5 chopped anchovies, two cloves of sliced garlic and one sliced and de-seeded red chilli. I cooked this gently for a couple of minutes, so it was softened but not browned and so the anchovy had disintegrated into the fats. Then I added 200g washed sliced chard with a splash of water and stirred it around to coat in the aromatics and put a lid on to steam it in the pan. I looked every couple of minutes and stirred it to check it wasn’t catching. When it was quite wilted, I added in half a tin of chickpeas and stirred in well. I turned off the heat and added around 80ml of double cream, two small ladles of pasta water and a generous handful of finely grated parmesan, then put the heat on again low-medium, shaking the pan and stirring to incorporate the cheese, simmering for a minute and tasting for salt. Then I added the cooked pasta and tossed it all together thoroughly. I served with more parmesan and seasoned with black pepper.

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Wednesday

Fun things with rice

I put on the rice cooker after Ursula had gone to bed and plotted a selection of jolly accompaniments:

2 cups sushi rice, cooked + unsalted butter and soy sauce to serve
1 pack smoked Japanese sausages (as in the image below)
200g cavolo nero, leaves stripped from the stems, salt, chilli flakes and oil (as per Felicity Cloake’s instructions)
seared portobello mushrooms in a ginger dressing (recipe below)

For the mushrooms:

2-3 portobello mushrooms sliced 3/4 cm thick
1 tablespoon oil
1 heaped teaspoon tablespoon finely grated ginger
1 small grated garlic clove
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon water
to garnish, sesame seeds and snipped spring onion greens

First, I put the oven on and followed Felicity Cloake’s recipe for cavolo nero chips tossed with olive oil, chilli and salt for crunchy savoury seaweed-like greens.

Then I sliced two big portobello mushrooms about half a cm thick and heated a cast iron pan really hot. I tossed the mushroom slices in a little oil and salt then placed them cut side down in the pan and did not move them for a few minutes until they were seared and caramelised brown on each side. I didn’t overfill the pan to keep it really hot. I cooked the mushrooms in two batches.

I made a dressing of: a teaspoon of finely grated ginger; 1 small clove of finely grated garlic; 1 teaspoon of light soft brown sugar; one tablespoon of soy sauce, a splash of toasted sesame oil a splash of water. I tossed the mushrooms in the dressing and left it to soak in while I cooked the sausages. Before serving I garnished the mushrooms with sesame seeds and a few snipped spring onion greens – though these were not essential.

Finally, I made ‘octopus sausages’ – that is, small smoked Japanese sausages, with two cuts in a cross shape going halfway up the sausage, tossed in a hot pan until the ‘legs’ curl looking a bit like an octopus. I began making this during the pandemic after seeing it on Midnight Diner, one of my favourite food-related shows.

We had the rice with butter and soy sauce (also a touch from watching Midnight Diner) and had some sriracha with the sausages.

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Eating Notes for a Baby

We refer to Emmental as ‘baby cheese’ as it’s not too salty and grate Ursula little heaps of it to pick up with her fingers.

My mum made her mashed butter beans, tuna, onions softened in olive oil and spinach for her packed tea for nursery. She didn’t eat it on the day mum made it – she got sent home as a bug was going round. But the next day after a very good long morning nap she picked up fistfuls of it and ate almost all of it with a few halved cherry tomatoes on the side.

For her tea I made her macaroni with passata and cannellini beans, with red onion, garlic and olive oil and some mild cheese grated on top. I made enough to save some for her packed tea at nursery the next day.

For a breakfast I made her porridge, stirred in some pureed mango from the freezer which melted in the heat of the porridge, and added a tablespoon of Greek yogurt. She really enjoyed this and ate it next to me as I ate my porridge with dark muscovado sugar and milk. I loaded up her spoon, she picked it up and ate it, I did the same again until she’d had a good amount of the porridge.

For a lunch, I used up the rest of the tin of cannellini beans my mum used the other day and heated in a pan with some baby spinach and mashed it with a fork and stirred in a heaped tablespoon of hummus for flavour. She ate a decent amount of this with some sliced cherry tomatoes which she puts in her mouth, extracts the liquid form and then spits out the skin. She does the same with blueberries!

When we go swimming, I bring a bag of cheesy baby crisps to feed her while I change her for entertainment and energy.

Sam made us eggs scrambled with Turkish pepper and tomato paste, sliced green pepper, softened onion and served with yogurt and before seasoning with salt we gave some to the baby for breakfast and she loved it.

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