Is it me, or is it hot in here?

To answer my own question, yes, it is a trifle warm.  Not summer though, is it?  Not time for wearing shorts yet, is it, young man in the street?  Not really ideal temperature for flip flops, is it, silly girl on the tube?  Come on now, everyone, stop getting ahead of yourselves and accept it - it's still a bit nippy.  Yes, spring is on its way, yes, birds are tweeting, yes, I'm just happy as you are that the sun is shining a bit more and that the evenings are getting lighter, but really now.  No thank you, I don't want an ice cream.

While I may be tentatively edging towards lunchtime salads of roasted veg and pulses, or am starting to feel that my soup would be nicer made with greens rather than roots, dinner definitely still needs to be hot and bolstering.  It's February, it's still winter and quite frankly, I mainly want melted cheese.

Not in the morning though.  No no, morning is porridge time.  Inspired by the tweetings of so many foodies, I produced this little number to persuade my flatmate that getting up at 9am is not really one of life's hardships:

Raisin and cinnamon porridge, topped with demerara sugar and toasted flaked almonds

Yes, I was rather surprised that I thought of all this that early too.

Harking back to my previous post about wanting colour at this time of year, this old recipe popped into my head one evening: tomatoes simmered with garlic and chorizo, then stirred through penne pasta, along with mozzarella, parmesan and rocket:

And so the melted cheese begins...

Once a year, there comes that day when the stars have aligned so that you have sausages in the fridge, enough milk to make a batter and an after-dinner tea, and a lonely splosh of leftover red wine, only fit for onion gravy.  Then, and only then, is when you make toad in the hole in your lovely enamel Christmas present:

Sans gravy, which was basically a plate of brown stuff

All these delicious things aside though, there is one ultimate, one king of cosy cuisine.  The Baked Potato.  With Baked Beans AND Cheese AND Worcestershire Sauce.

Kneel down before your sovereign, wot is on your lap anyway, for all four of them art great

I ate it all.

Hey, Mr Hockney, try this on your palette

Ah, I do love a good pun.  Especially a really specific pun.  I read a review recently of David Hockney's current exhibition of landscape paintings at the Royal Academy, where the reviewer was desperately trying to find something wrong with an exhibition that she had clearly enjoyed - my favourite attempt at a damning comment was "it looks like what it is".  Oh no!  How awful!  A painting of something that represents the something!

Truth be told, I'm not a massive fan of modern art as I find that a lot of it is rather self-conscious and earnest.  You have to rummage around to find some joy in both the process of making art and in the end result.  However, two artists that seem to have this joy are Anish Kapoor and David Hockney.  Kapoor seems to be fascinated by the different ways you can make art and so many of his pieces seem to be an expression of this fascination - how big can I make it, how precise can I make it, how simple can I make it, how pure can I make it - and a whole room of his most recent exhibition at the RA was dedicated to little piles and shapes of colour pigment.  Hockney is famous for his use of colour, in wide, exuberant swathes of the stuff, lavishing it over massive areas of canvas.  So it is total genius on the part of the RA to stage his current exhibition over the months of January, February and March, precisely when we are all seeking colour, warmth and joy.

Hence my pun.  Hockney likes colour, he's an artist so he probably uses a palette, but hey, that sounds like palate, and a man's gotta eat, so he'd probably like this food because it's colourful.  Boom!  Clear as mud.

I was making a vegetable curry recently (from a Cinnamon Club recipe in an Observer Food Monthly magazine) and I was struck by just how much the vivid colours of the ingredients were cheering me up.  It wasn't just the smell of the spices, the promise of a warming, healthy dish and the satisfaction of making a curry from scratch that lifted my wintry spirits, but also the intense freshness of the colours:

Green globes from the Green Giant

Almost festive chillis and tomatoes, and earthy spices and ginger

Lush coriander and a lemon so juicy it reflects the light

The resulting bowl of zingy freshness

A few weeks later, and I was craving more clean flavours, but this time a little less curry-ish and a little more stir-fry-ish.  In actual fact, what I really wanted was just a plate of pak choi, but I thought that I should probably have something to go with it.  Apologies for the bad lighting, which has somewhat dimmed the perky pink prawns and sunny yellow baby sweetcorn that accompanied the green pak choi and mange tout:

However, not all joyful colour comes from healthy veg.  I still harbour fond memories of my yearly Christmas treat, although it already seems like so long ago that I was lured in by these shiny beauties...

Let us revel in our winter of dark nights and cold winds, for the colours of art and food shine all the more brightly against them.