Solid food for surreal times

There is usually no crisis to which I won't respond by cooking. It turns out that Liz's death is the crisis that proves the rule, and I've had almost no interest in the kitchen since Wednesday. Fortunately the chap has stepped into the breach and has been keeping home and hearth together.

For those times when your mettle is being tested, here are two recipes that are quick, easy, tasty and feel like Proper Food For Looking After Yourself With. May there be as few days as possible when you need them.

Mackerel bake

This is a BBC Good Food recipe and is very little work for a satisfying result. You parboil potato and onion together, then stick them in an oven dish and add smoked mackerel chunks, dill (or chives, or other green herb, or chopped green spring onion), and a sauce of stock (the recipe says fish stock, but veg stock cube is fine), cream and horseradish. Bung it in a hot oven until brown on the top and nice throughout. Meanwhile you can reuse the saucepan to prepare A Vegetable: broccoli is good because it mops up the sauce, but frozen peas would be fine. They're easier, after all.

Chocolate microwave cake

This one's all mine, based on the principle that you can make a standard sponge surprisingly well in a microwave provided that you're going to eat it right away. You make the cake batter in the same dish you cook it in. Whether you decant into a different bowl to eat it is entirely up to you. Serves 2.

Put 2 oz of butter in a microwavable dish, and heat it gently to melt. Stir in 2 oz of dark sugar, 1 oz of cocoa powder, 1 generous oz of plain flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1 tsp of vanilla essence, and a splash of milk. If you have chocolate chips, or some chocolate you can chop into chunks, they're a welcome addition. Microwave on medium-high for 3 minutes. Cooking time will vary on dish size and shape, and on your microwave. You want the cake only just set, but it's pretty forgiving.

Eat it warm, and it certainly doesn't mind if you serve it with cream.

***

Liz had been one of the few constants over this last baffling year. Being as we were both marooned (carless) in the same village, we pooled out resources against the vagaries of pandemic provisioning, sharing the mundane (potatoes, lemons, mask elastic...) and splitting deliveries of the exciting (spring bulbs, Things From Wilko, cheese...). To be honest, I remember Liz being far more generous than me, not at least in supplying me with a stack of knitting books, but I hope she appreciated the bag of out-of-date kasza, and latterly the steady stream of fennel bulbs that her Sainburys deliveries were mysteriously and stubbornly reluctant to provide. 

Liz was also the only person besides my chap whom I'd seen in person with any regularity during All This. Aside from the semi-regular doorstep shopping bag exchanges, we managed several delightful, if often chilly, lunches on a bench on the village green. Accompanied by flasks, woollies to wear, woollies to knit and the occasional baked good, we watched the world go by like a couple of cackling old biddies, pointing out local characters, a motley collection of village huskies, and as many as three (3) different buses an hour. 

She longed for the return of a life where the arrive of the number 19 to Landbeach wasn't the most exciting thing to happen in the day, but she was damn fine company in the interim.

Liz Marley: fancy tulip enabler.