Street vendors

In developing nations across South America and Africa, it is common for travellers on buses and trains to be offered snacks by street vendors. Fresh fruits and packaged confectionery are generally the safest option, followed by home made crisps (potato or plantain) and savoury parcels (empanadas or samosas). For those with sturdier stomachs there are 'meat' kebabs.

But in Asia, where space is at a premium, vendors set up market stalls right by the train tracks. How close? This close.

Sunday recipe: sausages and lentils

Sausages and lentils

On Saturday mornings, I like to go to the street market on North End Road. For one British pound, you can get a large stainless steel bowl of fruit or vegetables. In one bowl, I collected 15 red tomatoes on the vine, 8 avocados in another and 2 large shiny aubergines in a third. £3. It is cheap because everything is seasonal and ripe. Quid pro quo, you have to go shopping without any particular recipes in mind, be a little flexible and inventive and make sure you eat or cook everything within a couple of days. Weekends are perfect for market shopping because there is time to cook and invite friends round.

I decided to make three dips: salsa bruschetta, baba ganoush and guacamole. I dunked the tomatoes into a saucepan of boiling water for a minute so I could peel and deseed them for the salsa. I discarded the skins and chopped the flesh for the salsa, but I had some left over, as well as all the seeds and tomato juice. I didn't like to waste them so I put them in the fridge, not yet knowing what I was going to do with them, and got on with making my dips.

On Sunday, Jemma went to the supermarket for things that you can't get at North End Road market, like nappies and baby wipes. She came back with two packets of sausages which were on special offer. I now had sausaged, some lentils in the store cupboard and the leftover tomatoes. so I decided to make a recipe I initially found in Delia's Frugal Food. It has become a favourite meal because it is a tasty comfort food, cheap and quick to prepare.

Delia's recipe serves 4 and takes about an hour to make, but I think you can make it inside 30 minutes and add more lentils so that it makes 6-8 servings. The extra servings can be frozen and reheated in the microwave later in the week.

Serves: up to 8 (depending how many sausages in a pack)
Time: 20-30 minutes
Cost: About £1 per serving

Ingredients:

2 packets of sausages
1 packet (500g) of green or puy lentils (I used half and half)
1 litre of cold water
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tin of chopped or plum tomatoes (I used my left overs)
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of herbes de Provence (or mixed herbs)

1. In a frying pan, brown the sausages in a little oil over a medium heat.

1. Brown the sausages in a non-stick frying pan

2. Rinse the green or puy lentils in a sieve and put them into a large saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil then turn down to simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Finely chop the onion and garlic. Add to the sausages.

3. Add the onions and garlic to the sausages.

4. Add the tomatoes, sugar and herbs to the lentils. You should notice their sweet fragrance as they warm up.

4. I used half green lentils and half puy lentils.

5. By now, the sausages should have browned and the onions softened. Cut the sausages into half and tip them into the saucepan with the lentils.
6. Deglaze the frying pan with a glass of water or wine. This will help collect all of the caramelised flavours and also starts the washing up process! Add this to the saucepan.
7. Turn the heat down to low and cook for at least another 10 minutes.
8. Taste and season, but there should be enough salt from the sausages and the lentils are naturally peppery.

As I am slightly obsessed with using up left overs, I also threw in some roughly chopped red peppers for a speck of colour and extra sweetness. I think it is best served with some crusty white bread and butter, preferably cold and unsalted.

Banana and chocolate loaf

Banana and chocolate loaf

For various reasons, mostly Hector-related, we didn't make it to the supermarket this week. So by the weekend, I faced a Shrove Sunday situation. I had some over-ripe bananas, some flour and some eggs which our friend Chompo had brought us from his hens at home, so I decided to make a chocolate and banana loaf. It took about 10 minutes to prepare and 45 minutes to bake.

Over-ripe bananas

1. Preheat the oven to 180 celsius.

2. In one bowl, mix the following dry ingredients together:

300g flour, sieved
75g caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

3. In the other bowl, mix the wet ingredients together:

3-4 ripe bananas, mashed with a potato masher
2 eggs
50g butter melted in the microwave
50g melted white chocolate

The wet ingredients

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. It should remain pourable, like cake mix, rather than stiff like dough.

5. Butter the inside of a smallish (15-20cm) loaf tin and fill it about 2 cm deep with the mixture.

6. Divide the rest of the mixture between the two bowls. Add 50g of melted dark chocolate to one of them and combine well. You should now have one 'white' mixture and one 'brown' mixture.

7. Add the 'brown' mixture on top of the base layer in the loaf tin and throw in some chocolate chunks which will reset as nuggets once the loaf has cooled. Next, use the remaining 'white' mix to sandwich the dark chocolate layer in the middle. Don't fill the loaf tin right to the top, as it will need room to rise.

Leave some room at the top because it will rise.

8. Put it in the oven. Take it out after 30 minutes and test it by putting a skewer into the centre. If it comes out with mix still on, bake for a further 5-10 minutes.

9.  If the skewer comes out clean, remove the loaf from the tin and put it on a cooling rack.

10. Enjoy a slice at breakfast, with afternoon tea, or at 3am while feeding the baby. 

I didn't leave enough mix for the top sandwich layer!

Canapés and snacks

I warn you now that the title of this blog is misleading. I had wanted to tell you about the canapés at the wedding of our friends Lydia and Timmy.

We took Hector to his first wedding on Saturday. As any new parents know, adapting to life with a new dependent requires advanced logistics. We are roughly following a Gina Ford routine of feeding him every three hours. This meant that by the time we'd fed him at lunchtime, driven to the wedding and had the service, it was time to feed him again. Although he slept through four hymns and Widor's Toccata, by the time we got to the reception after feeding him, we'd missed the canapés and could grab only a few minutes with the bride and groom before the guests were ushered to sit down.

So we set off back to London, ruing the missed canapés. Fellow guests assured me that they were delicious. Instead, Jemma and I stopped at the Sainsbury's by Junction 12 on the M4 and had a meal deal. After much deliberation, Jemma chose a Cheese Ploughmans and a Roast Chicken with Stuffing. Fortunately she also chose my favourite Monster Munch: I find Pickled Onion too eye-wateringly acerbic, Roast Beef too salty but, as Goldilocks might say, Flamin' Hot is just right.

Which are your favourite crisps? Vote in the poll, above on the right.

Foods that make you have a baby

Curry. Pineapple. Raspberry Leaf Tea. All are supposed to induce labour in a pregnant woman. Jemma loves pineapple but she wasn't prepared to pay £3.50 for one at Union Market, which has replaced TGI Friday in Fulham Broadway. Who are they kidding? The same people that are prepared to pay £8 for a rabbit, presumably.

A pineapple and a rabbit buys you two main courses at Cafe 209 on Munster Road. We went to this local institution last Friday night. Jemma had a Thai green curry (as she always does) and I had a beef stir fry (I normally have the lamb massaman).

By the same time the following night, we were in the labour ward of Chelsea and Westminster hospital. In fact, the last meal to pass Jemma's lips before Hector was born was sausage roll, chips and beans on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately it passed her lips again in the early hours of Sunday morning when she felt nauseous during labour. The midwife offered her an anti-emetic, but the horse had bolted.

At 8.45am on Sunday 26 September 2010, Hector Aubrey Kojima arrived. We'll never know whether it was the curry, the raspberry leaf tea before bed, or the sausage roll, but my suspicion lies with the fact that Hector was already at 41 weeks' gestation.