January at The Disco

It’s January, and suddenly it feels as though the whole world has gone back to work at once. The weather in the UK - just a few short weeks ago, sharp, sparkly and properly winterish - has gone back to business as usual too: grey, dreary and bone-chillingly cold, some days it feels as though even the daylight can’t be bothered to do its thing. Some people have embarked on diets, others have given up drinking, more are attempting to give up smoking, and coughs, colds and other nasty, bitter bugs are rife; for me, the only light on the horizon is in the kitchen.

The Family Disco treated ourselves to both a bread maker and a slow cooker in the January sales; ah, what bliss! As I write, I’m eating a bread maker bread roll filled with slow cooker Seville orange chutney and a wedge of cheddar cheese while chicken and barley melt into each other in the electric pot in the kitchen (aided and abetted by a few sprigs of sage). Last night I made slow-cooked goulash and rosemary ciabatta; the day before, beef curry and flat breads (you don’t need a bread maker to make flat breads, but I couldn’t have done them without the help of a recipe from River Cottage Everyday, a Christmas present that I intend to have eaten my way through by the middle of February). Okay, I do know that neither a bread maker nor a slow cooker are absolute kitchen must-haves; both bread and stew have been around for longer than electric wall sockets, and I’ve been comfortable around both yeast and a traditional crock pot for years. But still, there’s something nice about convenience that doesn’t negate creativity. This weekend, I intend to slow cook either lamb shanks or oxtails until the bones are close to dissolving, and I’ll be adapting both sourdough and bagel recipes until I’m satisfied with the result. With the oven freed up for other projects, I’m going to make Nigel Slater’s coffee and walnut cake tomorrow (in the ‘traditional’ manner, natch) and there’s a lemon tart in the freezer that I rustled up yesterday ‘just because’ but haven’t been presented with an occasion on which to serve it.

The other bonus that the current blast of kitchen creativity is that it’s inspired me to get blogging again; Happy New Year to all.