>> PLEASE BE MY STRENGTH

It’s been a hard weekend for a lot of us here in Oxford. This helped put things in words a bit better this morning:

 

>> BECAUSE HE LIVES

Ah, David Crowder Band. You’ll be sorely missed when you finally hang up your banjos later this year. There’s a new album out at the start of December, on top of the Christmas album that I’ve already plugged on this blog a couple of weeks back, but what got me today is this completely wonderful version of an old hymn called Because He Lives.

Acoustic and heartfelt, it’s a beautiful thing. And goes a long way to explaining why they’ll be missed:

 

>> SAUSAGE AND BUTTERBEAN POT

It looked a little bit like this - only with less tomato

There are an awful lot of cooking blogs out there, and they are a strange mixture. Some people post endless photographs of what they have been eating, demonstrating their skills in photography by portraying aubergine from 9 different angles, while others jet off on trips and record their experiences at restaurants in New York and Shanghai, which is great so long if you happen to be in New York, but not all that much use when you need to cook dinner.

But the reason they perk their blogs up with travelogues, photo journals or long, rambling monologues like the one you’re reading now, is because cooking regularly ends up being quite repetitive sooner or later (or maybe that’s just me). And I think I’m coming to the conclusion that most of us just have one main dish that we just re-do in a variety of different ways, whether we’re aware of it or not. Even Jamie Oliver does, clearly, because his new cookbook of “British classics” does look suspiciously like a number of his other books – and he was a man who I thought would never run out of ideas.

This is, then, apparently my staple dish, which involves onions, peppers, pulses and sausage of some kind, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you may have seen it before. But hey, I cooked dinner for ten last night, and nobody except a Masterchef finalist is going to even attempt to cook a decent steak for ten – let alone be able to afford one – so you get something that was cooked in a roasting tin instead.

If that doesn’t sound like it’s for you, then you can always go and read Ottolenghi’s blog instead, I suppose, but if you can afford to buy sumac and zahir on a daily basis then I’m surprised you’re even reading this, or maybe you’re just paying somebody else to read it for you…

What am I talking about? Ah yes, Sausage and Butterbean Pot. This came from The Ginger Pig Meat Book, which is incredible, but all the recipes in it take about four hours, £50 and an aga to complete, and I don’t currently have any of those things, so I cooked my staple dish instead. It was delicious, though.

Here’s how it’s done. This feeds 6, and you’ll need four red peppers, two large onions, some fresh thyme, 12 decent sausages with good flavours (buy chorizo or toulouse or merguez, because they add flavour), 500g butterbeans, which were supposed to be dried but I used tinned, some tomato puree and some olive oil.

Heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius, and when it’s hot put a roasting tin with two teaspoons of olive oil into it. Meanwhile, heat up your butterbeans in their liquid on the hob for four or five minutes and then leave them for a while.

Chop up your onions and peppers pretty finely and then put them, with the sausages, in the hot oil of the roasting tin, making sure they’re coated with a bit of black pepper and some wild thyme if you have it. That goes on the middle shelf of the oven for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes later, turn your sausages over, add the butterbeans and their juice and some tomato puree, more spices to taste, fresh thyme and anything else you want to put in (I’m sure I put a bit of paprika, some sage and some sugar). Cover with foil, put it back in the oven.

Twenty minutes after that, take the foil off, turn your sausages, put them back in the oven for ten minutes to crisp it up – I actually put them back for 30 minutes because I wanted the sausages a bit crispier – and serve with decent bread and mashed potato.

I shouldn’t do this down, as it was actually really tasty, and didn’t taste exactly like everything I always cook – for one thing, it was a whole lot less spicy, and also surprisingly light. It was good autumn food, especially because yesterday was freezing, but it was definitely a meal to share with friends, and one that was really completed by company…

 

>> DORITOS AND BRAN FLAKES

That’s what my dinner consisted of last night. And not for the first time, I might add (although admittedly, not together). I was warned before becoming a youth worker that it would disrupt the way I ate, but I thought that they were just referring to the cake.

No, as it turns out, these days I’m cooking dinner a whole lot less than ever before – although I did cook a rather good paella on Friday night, courtesy of Giles Coren, which I’ll post a write-up of some time soon.

I say all of this by way of an apology, and to say that normal service will return soon.

Jesus once told his disciples, “my food is to do the will of the one who sent me.”

It’s a good job that, really, because a diet of Doritos and Bran Flakes just isn’t good for the soul.

 

>> OH FOR JOY

I know it’s only the 11th October, but if you’re not planning on going out and buying what is almost certainly going to be the most eccentric Christmas album of the year, then perhaps you should listen to David Crowder Band‘s utterly mad cover of Angels We Have Heard on High and let yourself be convinced otherwise.

It has a banjo, as all good Christmas albums should:

 

 

>> BURIAL SCENE

I’m grateful to Tim Swann, who you should follow on Twitter here, for putting me onto this new song by 65daysofstatic, who have apparently put together their own soundtrack to a 1971 film called Silent Running.

I’ve never seen the original, and didn’t actually have any idea that this was happening, but this is surely the most beautiful thing you will hear all year. It is mesmerisingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Listen to it on soundcloud below:

 

>> PLEASE FORGIVE ME

I’m feeling a bit retro today, so here’s David Gray‘s classic tune Please Forgive Me – which is one of those songs that I have yet to get bored of, despite having played it literally hundreds of times.

It seems to me like White Ladder is just one of those albums – everyone has them – that sticks with me, even over a decade on from first hearing it. I don’t know what yours are, but at least for me, this seems to have, over time, defined an era, a mood and, in hindsight, the moment when I discovered that I really loved music. What was it that did that for you?

I think this is a radio edit with slightly more strings, which differs a little from the album version:

 

>> THE TURL STREET KITCHEN

It scarcely even needs mentioning, given that it’s clearly going to be some kind of culinary juggernaut, but if you are anywhere, anywhere at all, near Oxford then you simply have to try The Turl Street Kitchen, which should be your number one destination if you need to get coffee, lunch or late-night drinks any time in the next few weeks.

The place is gorgeously decorated and the menu (which changes by the day, so tonight was offering Ham Hock Terrine and Beef Cheek Cottage Pie, Roast Squash and Goat’s Cheese Salad and more) looks top-notch, with fine ingredients and seasonal flavours. Sadly today I couldn’t get a seat, which is always a good sign I suppose, and if you’re going to give it a shot then I’d go in prepared to share a table – which is something which certainly adds to the atmosphere. I’ll try and post a more comprehensive review in the next few weeks.

Affiliated with charity The Oxford Hub, you can find out more about the building on the BBC website here, follow them on Twitter here (worth doing, as they post menus on it) or by simply walking in on the street, if you’re feeling particularly retro – it’s just off Broad Street. As I say, the food looks rustic, hearty and delicious and the decor is fantastic, managing to transform a building which never felt particularly classy or intimate in the days when it used to be the QI club into an environment where you’d be happy to spend your evenings staring out onto Turl Street. It’s open late as well.

It’s one to watch, so get in fast.