Week 52: Farmhouse Supper

The book: How To Boil An Egg (Jan Arkless)

The recipe: p102, "Farmhouse Supper"

And so... the end is near...

I can't quite believe it, but here we are. It's very nearly the end of 2016, and this post marks the fifty-second time I've used an online random number generator to pick a recipe from my underused cookbooks for me to make and subsequently blog about. A final summary post or two will follow, of course - but for now let's just give ourselves a hearty pat on the back for getting this far.

And while random.org doesn't always exhibit a sense of occasion (still no meringue swans, folks!), it does seem rather apt that we're ending this project where we began it, namely with Jan Arkless and her timeless guide to solo student cuisine. Even though this inevitably means a fairly pedestrian bit of cuisine for me to wax lyrical about.

Underwhelming though this conclusion to proceedings may be, the chosen recipe this week, "Farmhouse Supper", still feels like something of a bullet-dodge considering what other delights haunt the pages of How To Boil An Egg, from "Quick Kidney Special" and "Pork In A Packet" to, well, this:

I'm not sure whether to be more offended by the concept of "Potato Bolognese" or the concept of people who don't like pasta...

Whereas this final dose of randomness appears to be a reasonably tame weeknight concoction that - in addition to actually involving the titular eggs (albeit not boiled) - might actually require a quantum of skill and result in a hint of flavour. That'd certainly be a step forward for Jan.

Not that one

The prep: With How To Boil An Egg being aimed at students cooking for themselves on a budget, the first thing to do is double the quantities of everything so that it actually feeds both of us.

Jan describes this dish as a "tasty way of using up cooked potato", so the next thing is to cook some potatoes ("3-4" each - I go for 4, natch) then pretend they're leftovers. I also buy some smoked back bacon ("1-2 rashers" each - I go for 2, natch), a green pepper, and some eggs ("1-2" each - I go for 2, natch).

Other than that, it's all stuff I have in the house, as I suppose one might reasonably expect from this tome. Being outfoxed by a student cookbook would be an ignominious end to the random year and no mistake.

The making: Right from the start there are two things I like about this recipe (insofar as something so straightforward can even be called a recipe). Firstly, it lets you cook things in stages so only one pan and one dish are required - student kitchen-friendly, see? And secondly, the method starts with all the peeling and chopping instead of burying it away in the ingredients list in order to give the impression that things are a lot simpler than they actually are. Good on you, Jan.

I start, then, by slicing and dicing the potatoes, peeling and chopping the onion, de-rinding and dicing the bacon, and coring and chopping the pepper. And that's just the first two-line paragraph.

Ready and waiting

Oil is heated in a decent-sized frying pan and the bacon is fried gently for a few minutes before being removed to a saucer. I then fry the onion and pepper in the oil and bacon fat until they're starting to soften...

Superfluous illustration

...before adding the potato and sautéing (not that Jan calls it that, because that'd be too complex) until browned. The contents of the pan are then combined with the bacon and transferred to an ovenproof dish.

Next, a knob of butter is melted in the same pan and the eggs are fried. I make sure they're barely set before taking them off the heat, since I know the next step is to carefully slide them on top of the vegetables in the dish. Grated cheese is sprinkled on top - I go for Red Leicester solely because it's what we happen to have in the fridge, although it also adds a nice touch of colour - and the whole thing goes under a hot grill for a few minutes until the cheese is bubbly and welcoming.

I may have gone past "bubbly" to "slightly burny". Typical student.

And there we have it. Fifty-two weeks of random cookery, and the very last dish ends up being simplicity itself. Despite my earlier care, the eggs still end up more set than I'd like, but otherwise everything is as it should be. It's essentially a variation on bubble and squeak, a breakfast hash but served in the evening. And why not? It's about as much "cooking" as I ever managed in four years of university.

The eating: For some time now I've been concerned about, well, running out of words to describe food. Not that the Random Kitchen project has become a chore per se, but there's only so many times you can use phrases like "mouthfeel" or "pleasing texture" or "stuff swimming in other stuff" before it starts to get a bit samey.

So all I'm going to say about this is it tastes exactly as you'd expect it to.

Mm, farmhouse-y

It's deeply unambitious, as we've come to expect from Jan, but I suppose the teenagers of 1986 had less experience of exotic concepts like seasoning. If nothing else, nowadays you'd surely chuck in some cubed chorizo or another shop-bought ready ingredient to brighten things up a bit.

But honestly, for all it's necessarily straightforward, I'd have been happy enough to come up with something like this even as a late-90s student. It looks decent and feels substantial, there's even some actual nutrition hidden away in there, and you wouldn't especially need the grilling phase as the cheese melts into the whole thing anyway, so it's essentially an easy one-pan dinner. And even my more developed 38-year-old palate welcomes this as a basic interlude between the rich excesses of Christmas and NYE.

So while I'm not denying it's a bit of a downer on which to conclude The Random Kitchen in some respects, I'm happy enough. This project has always been about going with the flow and taking things as they come, after all - such is chance.

And hey, worse things have happened in 2016 than a "Farmhouse Supper".

Now that's what I call a happy ending.

One-word verdict: Mundane.

Supplementary words of reassurance: Regardless of whether I continue The Random Kitchen next year or not (and if I do, lord knows it won't be on a weekly basis - I am greatly looking forward to being allowed to cook what I want again!), I couldn't possibly allow this blog to peter out without a final visit to the pages of Everyday Novelli for a non-random encounter with some meringue birdlife. It will happen. Of course it will. Just give me a few days to work up the courage...