This was definitely the longest hiatus in We Are Never Full history (bear in mind our history is only a measly 27 months) but, finally, we’re back! (exactly a month to the day since we went away) You may not be as excited as we are to be slowly getting back to normal, but if you visited us right now in our new apartment you’d notice how far from normal our living conditions are.

After almost 3 weeks of eating take-out and restaurant meals, we spent our Labor Day doing hard labor. A day in a North Korean Labor Camp would’ve felt better to my legs and feet than a day trying to set up shop in our new place. Oh, and a tip to anyone moving after accumulating five years of crap (along with a fear of throwing things away), PAY PEOPLE TO PACK FOR YOU or at the least pay people to move everything you own for you. Maybe it was our youth, maybe our naïvete, maybe our pride, but we really thought it was a great idea to pay movers to move only our furniture because we could “get the rest ourselves”. Let’s put it this way, my thighs look like this after walking box after box (after box) up to our new 3rd floor walk-up over the past few weeks.  Oh, and did I mention my three-days of shredding a 30-gallon garbage bag  full of “I’ll get to shredding it next weekend” bills/credit card statements/etc.  Guess what, Amy? 2004 was five years ago – you didn’t shred it “next” weekend.

But, the craziness is almost over now. In a few weeks, we’ll be more settled after we buy a few more pieces of furniture and put those last few clothes away. The kitchen, of course, was the first thing we worked on. Our new kitchen has a bit less cabinet space than our last one and a smaller refrigerator, which isn’t great given the many, many dry goods and countless bottles of condiments we own, but we’ve just about found a home for everything, and we’ll be okay going forward if we make sure to limit our worst excesses at the grocery store.

So,the first meal we made in our new apartment was a simple, seasonal farewell-to-summer cream of corn and crab soup with a chile emulsion using much of what is readily available in our neck of the woods. Corn is coming out of our wazoo and is about 15 cents an ear;  the bay at my parents’ shore house is full of crabs; our pepper plants are almost ready to die, but have given us many, many spicy cayennes, cowhorns and red hots. And the yucca, well, it’s not exactly local and may not be as easy to get depending on where you live, but substitute a potato and you’re good to go. Strangely, a soup was actually very satisfying since the weather, coinciding uncannily the start of the school-year, has actually turned kind of cool.

Thanks for sticking with us through our hiatus. We hope you really enjoyed your summer and we can’t wait to start cooking some cool-weather meals for you. Until then, crack open a cold one and enjoy the last few days of summer.

Similarly, in the American imagination, the British are all highly genteel, pale-skinned folk, who sip tea out of dainty bone china cups at exactly four p.m. every day, and take tiny bites out of their cucumber sandwiches to avoid baring their horrific teeth. Of course, most Brits are more likely to be swigging gin or alcopops from a tin mug than Earl Grey by the time four o’clock comes around, but as with French and Mexican stereotypes, these outdated notions retain an element of truth.

In this case, the Victorian era high-tea of, well, tea and various sandwiches and cakes isn’t a tradition that has survived intact. However, the summertime practice of taking ones tea (meaning the meal here) out of doors in a kind of impromptu and slightly lame picnic is still going strong, particularly since the tea (meaning the drink here) is commonly replaced by another Victorian era stalwart, Pimm’s.

As I wrote last year, prior to the industrial revolution, London’s East End and Docklands area was known for the quality of its shellfish. The large tidal range on that part of the Thames revealed great and healthy mudflats at low tide from which bushels of cockles, mussels, winkles, razor clams, and oysters were pulled. This bounty of shellfish meant that oyster bars were as much a part of East End life as rhyming slang, and it was typical for your working man to wash down each mouthful of crustacean with a jigger of dry gin. Now, if you’ve ever drunk cheap London dry gin neat, you’ll know that the bitter flavor can turn even the toughest Cockney’s mouth inside-out and have him clutching the Betty Grable for support.

A Little of the Back Story
So it was that in 1823, East End oyster bar owner James Pimm began serving a drink that mixed gin with quinine, citrus fruit, and spices to make it more palatable. Pimm’s cocktail, or No.1 Cup, as it became known after the small tankard it was served in, quickly became a hit, and before long even the posh folks of London’s West End were quaffing it as “The Original Gin Sling”. So popular was his beverage, that James Pimm introduced two other kinds of Pimm’s cups to London drinkers: numbers 2 and 3, based on scotch and brandy, respectively.

Indeed, by the late 1880s, Pimm’s had established itself such a following that even when the Pimm family sold their business – to no less than Sir Horatio Davies, member of Parliament and (at the time) Lord Mayor of London – the purchaser decided to keep the name. Davies expanded the Pimm’s brand to five new oyster bars around the city and succeeded in making his drinks such an integral part of Victorian life that throughout the empire from Delhi to Khartoum, Pimm’s was refreshing the British troops, tommies and officers alike. And, until the outbreak of the second World War, Pimm’s was the drink of choice for any self-respecting Britisher. This enduring popularity bringing forth a 4th “cup”, this time based on rum.

Pimm’s Gets Groovy
During the 1960s, when Britain, and particularly London – with the arrival of the Stones, Kinks, Beatles, and The Who – became cool again, sales of Pimm’s, which had dipped in the post-war years, took off. Daring to reinvent itself as the drink of the trendy, swinging classes instead of the stuffy, buttoned-up Victorians, the company launched two new cups, numbers five and six, based on rye and vodka, to great acclaim.

Ever the fashion-conscious beverage purveyor, Pimm’s capitalized on the latest era of Brit-pop cool – the mid-1990s – when Blur and Oasis were kings of indie rock, to release its ready-mixed cans of Pimm’s & Lemonade, and in certain places, Pimm’s on tap. Sadly, throughout it’s long, chameloenic history, Pimm’s has been out of fashion as often as it’s been groovy. Between 1970 and 1990, many of Pimm’s cups were phased out, with only numbers 1 and 6 currently still in regular production. The no.3 cup, based on brandy, is still sold but only seasonally nowadays as Pimm’s Winter Cup.

Personal History
In my lifetime, Pimm’s has mostly been associated with watching a cricket match, or watching things float by from a beer garden by the Thames, while scorching my pinkish skin scarlet under sunny skies. However, you don’t have to be British, in Britain, or even interested in British mod-style music to enjoy Pimm’s. Wherever the sun is shining and it’s approaching Pimm’s o’clock, there’s an opportunity to slice-up some fruit (strawberries, apples, and oranges are good), cucumber (not just for sandwiches), and mint leaves, mix yourself a large jug of Pimm’s and lemonade (lemon/lime soda is fine), and watch the sun fall into the sea.

And, lest you wonder why we’re promoting a British drink on America’s no.1 (pun intended) holiday, I should remind you that every year on or around Independence Day I am asked, by more Americans than seems possible, how we celebrate 4th July in England.

Initially, I was skeptical that it was worth wasting a perfectly beautiful sunny day at some ridiculous-sounding shack in the woods trying to relive someone else’s childhood, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. I’m here to tell you that the Mystery Spot is a must-see and it would be nothing less than a travesty if it were left out of any travel itinerary to the region.

The story goes that in the early part of the twentieth century (no exact date was given) someone was interested in purchasing the sloping area (now known as the Mystery Spot) from its owner to build a summer house. The owner refused to sell the slope without the adjacent level ground – now the parking lot. Eventually, the newcomers bought the entire property and built a small wood shed on the steeply sloping part (in itself a poor decision from an engineering perspective) and immediately began noticing certain “bizarre phenomena” which science, despite repeated attempts, has never satisfactorily explained. (see campy 1960s advertising paraphernalia showing this phenomena here.)

Our guide around the Mystery Spot was the well-informed and sparky young buck, Carl, who, if I’m honest, was the most unintentionally hilarious person I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter. From his skinny, disheveled appearence to the way he accidentally dead-panned his delivery of the ironic sections of his schpiel - ”this is no ordinary plank, it is the plank of mystery!” - he was absolutely first-class and had me in virtual paralysis of laughter for the duration of the tour.

Strangely though, no-one else on the tour found him to be so funny. Even after we had left the Mystery Spot I was sitting in the back of the car giggling to myself. What could have caused this outbreak of the mirth, you ask? Well, the Mystery Spot, of course.

Carl had warned us at the beginning of the tour that not only were peculiarly inexplicable reversions of the laws of physics known to occur within the confines of the “spot”, but weird physical symptoms were also commonly experienced by tour-takers, including changes in height, loss of balance and confusion. Clearly, my inner-ear was playing up because I very nearly experienced incontinence on more than one occasion and even Amy reported dizziness and light-headedness. And, as, I think, this (below) photograph demonstrates perfectly, the Mystery Spot can do some terrible and awesome things to one’s coiffure.

Later that day - when I had recovered much of my former composure - I noticed that the madness brought on by the Mystery Spot was spreading throughout our group. I watched transfixed in horror as Amy’s mother and aunt, sporting the hideous grins of the criminally insane, began laying out what they described as “dinner”. Before us lay a motley selection of three-day-old and poorly-kept Chinese food, a few scraps of the previous nights’ pasta that appeared to have been scraped off people’s plates, a greying mess of geriatric cold-cuts, some random bocconcini mozzarella sprawled in an ugly dish, a paper plate of wilting Sun-Chips, and a hollowed-out watermelon.

I have rarely seen a less appetizing spread of food in my life and, at the sight of it, I immediately began to experience those same feelings of light-headedness and vertigo of earlier in the day. I fear what might have become of me had I been forced to eat any of this, for in those who, amazingly began attacking this dreadful buffet with gusto, there developed an almost instantaneous malaise of disappointment and depression that lasted the remainder of the evening and into the following morning, until only stout breakfast of eggs and bacon managed to restore their spirits.

Interestingly, and this phenomenon I must report to the owners of the Mystery Spot one day because I suspect they are blissfully unaware of this perilous and hitherto undocumented reaction, neither my mother-in-law nor Amy’s aunt were with us on the tour that day. In fact, the former had never once even visited the “spot”, so just how they managed to contract this mania may become yet another of the secrets of the Mystery Spot that remain unsolved by science.

We literally just walked in after spending our Labor Day afternoon at the annual WIADP (West Indian American Day Parade) on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, but to describe what we just witnessed as simply a parade would be akin to saying that scotch bonnet peppers are sometimes a little spicy, i.e. an enormous underestimation. The parade is the largest in New York City with upwards of 2million people flocking to it annually.

It was an unbelievable assault on the senses - the sights (thousands upon thousands of dancing people all decorated with their national flags and some astonishing costumes), the sounds (hundreds of different sound systems all turned up to 11 and all competing with one another as they slowly rumbled by on floats, accompanied by the ever-present encouragements for the dancers from some very vocal MCs), the smells (a myriad stalls selling Caribbean favorites, some better known that others), and the atmosphere (it is about 90F here today and there were some enormous smokers pumping out clouds of jerk-scented smoke, as well as many other “personal” smokers pumping out clouds of the other kind of smoke Jamaica is famous for).

Of course, apart from soak up the atmosphere, we did our best to sample the wares from as many of the stalls as possible. Sadly, our eyes were bigger than our bellies, and we frequently had the unfortunate experience of having to walk past many a stall not physically being able to eat anymore. Let’s face it, Caribbean food is not exactly light at the best of times, and on a scorching summer day, goat curry with roti, fish cakes, bake and salt-fish, all smothered in fruity hot pepper sauce, and washed down with spicy ginger beer, then shaken up and down with booming soca and dance-hall, is a recipe for a lot of sweating and the need for shade and a sit-down. Intense. Seriously intense.

My only touchstone for a carnival like this, is, well, carnival – the Notting Hill Carnival in London to be precise. And, not to offend anyone involved with that fun, enormous, crazy and, occasionally, violent Caribbean festival, the WIADP is a major step-up. The food, the sounds, the people, the culture, it’s all as much as you can take and more. It’s as close to being in a foreign country as I’ve ever experienced in America (note that, for me, America is a foreign country). It’s such a radical departure from what the area around the Brooklyn Art Museum usually looks like and where you usually see white couples jogging along behind three-wheel baby-chariots, that at first it takes you aback. Then, and suddenly, it just sucks you in, but, just as quickly, it spits you out again. It’s a lot to take and we had to retire for some shade and cold water, but we’ll be back. You should check it out next year, for once a year is enough to last you a while. That said, we’ll definitely be exploring more of our local Caribbean restaurants and trying to recreate some of their dishes and the ones we ate today now we’ve got a taste for it.

Nothing says summer to this Philly girl more than ‘going down the shore’ (translation: heading to southern New Jersey to go to the beach), grilling, horseshoes, and soft shell crabs. The first time I was asked to taste a soft shell crab I had to ask my dad what the f it meant. “You mean to tell me that seemingly normal-looking crab doesn’t need to be cracked and the meat picked out? You’re telling me I just eat the freaking shell? I take a bite out of it?” It was just difficult to wrap my head around this idea. I moved in cautiously… very cautiously. I could begin to hear imaginary bits of my teeth chipping off as I bit into it. But then it happened – I bit and my love affair with this seasonal delicacy officially began.

So, if you’ve never really had a fresh soft-shell or even saw one in person before (and if you are still reading), you may be curious as to what the hell is going on here. Well, a soft-shell crab is a crab that has been caught right after they have molted, or shed, their hard shell in order to grow a new, bigger one, and this only happens during a very short time each year. For a really intelligent explanation of this, please listen to our brilliant podcast associated with this post (note: we were a bit drunk on wine when we recorded this one).

Even though I feel that soft-shell crabs are all for me, only available in my neck of the woods (the Mid-Atlantic US), I am happy to report to all of you that they are also available in many parts of Asia. There is one big difference – the crab. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, our soft-shells are from the sweet, meaty and popular blue claw crab. In Asia, soft-shells mean using the mangrove crab.  Maybe you’ve been offered various types of fried soft-shells at your local Thai or Japanese restaurant?

When you buy a fresh soft-shell crab, you will notice that it has either been cleaned or not. If you’re squeamish, stop reading now. Basically the fishmongers remove their gills and (gasp!) cut off their faces. Ok, they cut off their face first in order to kill them – poor soft-shells. If you can’t get your fishmonger to do this for you, follow these instructions and do it yourself.  Do you have the heart? According to this article, people don’t often make soft-shells at home because they think it takes a long time to prepare. I’m here to assure you, they don’t. Grab your sharp knife or you kitchen shears and git down to cuttin’ off some faces!  Go on, girl (or boy)!

As I mentioned earlier, soft-shell crabs are very seasonal as their molting time only happens between May and July (at the latest). So, hurry and get yourself some fresh soft-shell crabs soon and please give this dish, one I consider one of the best and most simple preparations, a try.  Serve it with a side of long pasta – our choice is olio e aglio, or pasta with olive oil and garlic. Just make sure to slowly infuse your garlic on medium-low heat in the olive oil for about 20 minutes or more for the most strong garlic flavor!  You could also give our Soft Shell Crab Sandwich with Pepper Aioli and Capers a try!  We used our leftovers from this dish to make it.  Now, get out and ask for soft-shells!

SOFT-SHELL BLUE CRABS IN BUTTER AND GARLIC (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 4 soft-shell blue crabs, cleaned
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 5 -8 cloves (depending on your love of garlic) of garlic, thinly sliced
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup of flour
• some pepperoncino

What to do:

1. Dredge your crabs in a bit of flour and pat excess off and allow to rest until needed.
2. Put butter and olive oil in a pan and heat on medium to medium-low.
3. When butter melts, add your thinly sliced garlic and saute lightly until the garlic gets a bit golden in color. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon and reserve on the side.
4. Add your soft-shells to the pan with the butter/oil mixture and saute on medium until the crabs are red all over. Make sure to flip them on to both sides to allow to evenly cook – about 4 or 5 minutes each side.
5. Remove crabs from oil and place on plate. Add the garlic back to the pan, add a pinch of salt and then drizzle the crabs with the garlic/butter and oil. Sprinkle with some peperoncino.
6. Serve with some pasta olio e aglio (spaghetti with garlic and olive oil) or pasta with red sauce. Enjoy!

****Stay tuned for another recipe using the soft-shell leftovers!

• FRITO MISTO DI MARE (FRIED MIXED SEAFOOD AND VEGGIES)
• POLLO EN PEPITORIA “KINDA” (HAZELNUT CRUSTED CHICKEN IN A FINO SHERRY, SAFFRON AND HAZELNUT SAUCE)
• CUBAN SANDWICH
• MORCILLA (SPANISH SAUSAGE) STUFFED GRILLED SQUID WITH A SPICY SAUCE

A few summers ago we were very fortunate to spend a long vacation traveling through northern Spain and southwestern France. It was our first real vacation alone since Amy and I had met, and was especially well-deserved because we had spent the previous 12 months going through the traumatic process of immigrating me to the United States and all the crap that goes along with moving to a new country and finding gainful employment. Even now, after ten or more trips overseas in the interim, we still look back on that wonderful trip with great nostalgia. In fact, so formative was it for us and our relationship together, that we might not be so passionate about food (or even have this blog) were it not for having driven those rural highways and byways eating and drinking our way through the small towns of Spain and France. So this post and podcast are a sort of belated paen to the mental tranquility we rediscovered on that trip.

As we planned it, we read-up on destinations en route from Barcelona to Bilbao and decided that Carcassonne should be amongst them. Quite apart from its culinary pedigree of being one of the three towns in that part of France which lay claim to having been the birthplace of the famous pork and bean dish cassoulet, it also, reputedly, has the best Bastille Day firework display anywhere in the country outside Paris. Judge for yourself in the video below.

Bastille Day or Fête de la Fédération (July 14th), is the French equivalent of the American Independence Day, and marks the storming and fall of the Bastille (Paris’ central prison where French political prisoners and fictional characters, including Dumas’ The Man In the Iron Mask were imprisoned) during the French Revolution that signified the ‘birth of the modern French nation’. It’s the biggest national holiday in France with celebrations and demonstrations of fidelity to La Patrimonie all over the country.

However, like many national holidays around the world, in spite of the ostensible patriotism of the day, good food, amazing fireworks and fun, drunk times are the thing that most people focus on. So, to line our stomachs before a night of drinking wine out of the bottle on the street (like everyone else), we, almost like Moses in the wilderness, followed the pillar of smoke towards the heady smell of grilled meat. There we found a lined, toothless, Algerian man, squinting against the smoke and spitting fat of his blackened grill, cooking huge merguez sausages (a spicy North African sausage made with beef or lamb) over hot coals. In exchange for a couple of euros, he nestled a couple of these sausages snugly into a crusty baguette alongside a load of salty, golden french fries, and smeared the whole thing with dijon mustard and ketchup. That’s what I call street food!

The sandwich is exactly what you’d imagine, and after a couple of drinks, it’s even better. The spiciness of the merguez along with the salty, crispy french fries, well, it just doesn’t get any better. We’re not actually going to post a recipe for this one, only a quick pictorial step-by-step below – you’ll have to listen to the podcast for a detailed how to – but anyone with half a brain (and we firmly believe our readers are in possession of somewhat more than that) should be able to make their own sandwich de merguez with ease. As you can see from the photos, we added some fried leeks as a topping in what can only be described as a petty bourgeois touch, which the French revolutionaries of old would certainly have disproved of, but that’s freedom for you, right? In a similarly middle-class stylie (or sans culottes for those of you who’ve fought your way through Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen), we attempted to make our own version of a harissa sauce, combining ketchup, 1 clove of roasted garlic, 1 fire-roasted habanero (yes, the sauce was a f***in’ wildman), and a pinch or less of ground coriander, cumin, mustard powder, black pepper and kosher salt in a food processor, but you could use dijon mustard and ketchup as your condiments, as we did that hallowed night in Carcassonne. Enjoy the sandwich whenever you like, but why not give it a try during the next national holiday wherever you are. After all, you don’t have to be French to appreciate spicy sausages and fries in a crusty roll!

Thanks to Zach at Serious Eats for featuring this sandwich in his weekly Serious Sandwiches column. THANK YOU!

SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ – A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1. Grill some merguez sausages on an indoor or outdoor grill.

2. Thinly slice some leeks.

3. Toss thinly sliced leeks in 2 tablespoons of flour PLUS 2 tablespoons cornstarch and fry in some veggie oil for about 1 minute.

4. Thinly slice 2 or 3 potatoes.

5. Heat up some vegetable oil and double fry your thin-sliced potatoes until golden brown. Allow to drain on some paper towels and sprinkle with salt.

6. In a fresh baguette, brush some dijon and spicy ketchup on each side of the bread. Add your grilled sausages, nestle some french fries between the sausages and the bread and then top with some fried leeks. ENJOY and feel free to keep dipping sandwich in some more mustard and ketchup.

Here is a picture of the meal at Summertime:

Recently, Jonny and I were looking through our pictures and I saw the one of the meal I had in Capoliveri and decided to try and recreate it.

Here’s a picture of our recreation:

It turned out great!! We didn’t have a recipe, but what I made was pretty close to the real thing. The main difference is the pistachios – we used white pistachios, hence the difference in color. This recipe I’ve come to learn is Sicilian in it’s roots where they grow and use them often in cooking. The Sicilian pistachio is much greener, stronger and sharper in flavor. Have you ever tasted the pistachio gelato in Italy? You’ll know what I mean about the flavor being different if you have.

I’d love someone else to try this recipe at home. It’s super easy (except the hour it takes to shell those freaking pistachios!!) and it’s extremely rich and filling. You could use the sauce on any type of pasta, but I love it on a long, thick pasta. The flavor may not be pleasing to everyone due to it’s sweet and saltiness, but to me it was an extremely eye-opening and surprising dish.

BUCATINI WITH PISTACHIO SAUCE:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. box of bucatini (you can also use any other long, thick pasta)
• about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of whole, shelled pistachios PLUS a large handfull, roughly chopped, reserved for the garnish
• 6-8 anchovies (I’m telling you, I hated anchovies until about 6 months ago… the saltiness of them make this dish. You can omit the extra 4 I ask you to add at the end if you really don’t like the flavor of anchovies, but please try using them when making the sauce)
• 1 small onion
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (we love garlic, so we usually add more than necessary)
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups of toasted breadcrumbs
• grated parmigiano reggiano
• one anisette-flavored biscotti (this was the ‘secret ingredient’ I figured out in the dish I ate in Italy)

How to Make the Dish:

1. Boil water for your pasta – make sure it’s salted heavily and you put a bit of olive oil in it too!
2. Dice up your onion and chop your garlic (don’t worry too much about the size cause your gonna end up blitzing it)
3. Heat up 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan
4. Saute your onion until translucent, add your garlic and saute until soft (about 1-2 minutes)
5. Whip out your handy mixer/food processor. Add your sauteed onions and garlic in there along with all your pistachios (not the ones I asked you to reserve for the garnish). Add a half of cup of olive oil to start. BLITZ IT – pulse it if you want. You’ll want it to resemble a thick sauce… almost like a pesto. If you need to add more olive oil so that it’s not exactly a paste, but more like a thick sauce, please do.
6. Add your bucatini to the boiling water and cook till al dente (I’ve recently figured out that if you subtract one to two minutes from the cooking directions on the box of pasta, you’ll almost always get perfectly al dente pasta!)
7. Pour yourself a glass of wine and relax for a few minutes
8. Rough chop those extra handful of pistachios
9. Heat up another pan and lightly toast your breadcrumbs – reserve on the side after they are toasted
10. Add your pistachio sauce back to the sautee pan and put heat on low-medium. When the sauce is warming, add 3 anchovies. Watch them melt into to sauce and stir.
11. When your pasta is finished cooking, add the pasta with a slotted spoon to your warming pistachio sauce. Toss in a tablespoon or two of the pasta cooking water.
12. Add a pinch of salt if necessary (taste first, those ‘chovies can be mighty salty as is) and pepper, a decent handful of parmigiano cheese and the toasted breadcrumbs. Rough chop 3-4 extra anchovies and add them to the pasta. TOSS the pasta.
13. Plate your pasta. Sprinkle some of the roughly chopped pistachios on top and then using a cheese grater, grate some of your anisette flavored biscotti on top. VOILA!! Enjoy with a nice bottle of vino.

And that’s it! A rich, satisfying dish.

The point of bringing this up, though, was not to provoke an outpouring of pity from you, as I’m sure many of you also work in dreadful places, confined all day to a cubicle, on a squeaky chair with no access to even the most inoffensive websites, but rather to explain why, when I return to my desk from the kitchen with my lunch everyday, I have to walk past everyone else.

As I stroll past these folk, happy that I shall soon be enjoying a hot, delicious meal, they often stare mournfully at me, sniffing the air like tom-cats in heat, before gazing pitifully upon the damp and insipid sandwich they just paid $8 for. Sometimes, they will inquire what it is I am carrying because it smells so good. At other times, they’ll half-stand-up to peer at my plate. I feel their envy, and yes, it feels good.

Because, apart from having had the patience and, to a small degree, the imagination and skill to make an interesting and delicious meal for myself the night before, and boxing up the left-overs to bring in, I did nothing that they could not. And it is this, I am sure , that irks them most.

This week, it was grilled coconut milk and chilli marinated shrimp (a recipe riffing off one found in Steven Raichlen’s BBQ University cookbook for Brazilian-style shrimp skewers) and roasted vegetable rice. This dish is more expensive to make than the last “At the Desk Gourmet” because of the 2lbs of shrimp, but for a total ingredient purchase price of $41.36, we fed seven adults and had enough rice leftover for two other meals. And, at a shade under $6/head, even if my colleagues weren’t eying my lunch jealously, it would still be good value to me!

Here’s how to do it:

Ingredients:
2lbs of 26-32 shrimp, shells on, but split down the back
1 can coconut milk
2 medium-sized red cayenne peppers, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
8 tbsp fresh cilantro leaves/storks, roughly chopped
Juice of 3 limes
1/2lb long grain white rice
1 cube chicken bouillon dissolved in 1.5 pints boiled water
1 large onion, halved, grilled, then sliced
2 large bell peppers, roasted whole, then sliced
4 medium round tomatoes, roasted whole, skinned, then sliced
2 green/spring onions, finely chopped
2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 package of wooden/bamboo skewers

Recipe:
Put shrimp, 3 cloves of crushed garlic, chopped cayenne peppers, 4 tbsp of the chopped cilantro, half the lime juice and the whole can of coconut milk in a large, non-reactive bowl to marinate for at least an hour, but no more than three hours.
In the meantime, soak your bamboo/wooden in water. I often use a vase for this.

Then, saute the remaining two cloves of garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil until tender before adding the rice. Saute rice until it begins to color, but only a little, before pouring in enough hot chicken stock to cover the rice by about an inch and half. Cover and bring to a boil. Set timer for ten minutes.

Put the tomatoes, bell peppers and halved onion on a hot grill. Keep turning tomatoes and peppers on grill until blistered all over. Onion will take longer to cook all the way through.

Place tomatoes and peppers in paper bag and let sit for 10 minutes, then remove the skins, and chop into whatever sized chunks/strips you like best.

When oven timer beeps, turn down flame under rice to low and set timer for another ten minutes.

Thread shrimp on the skewers and pre-heat grill to med-high.

When oven timer beeps again, switch off flame, but do not look at the rice. Keep covered for a further ten minutes.

Grill shrimp until deliciously pink and firm.

Stir in roasted vegetables, scallions and the remaining cilantro into the rice, and squeeze in the rest of the lime juice.

If you have it, and if not, you should seek it out, Jamaican Choice Papaya Hot Sauce is the perfect condiment for this dish. Otherwise, any fruit-based spicy salsa or sauce would work well. Enjoy!