Twinkle, twinkle, little tomato

Have I told you about my arbitrary garden? For Christmas I was given a lovely wooden windowbox, containing nursery-bought thyme and sage, transplanted chives, mint and rosemary and a completely rogue tomato seedling.
The thyme and sage fell early victims to my habit of forgetting to water them. The chives, mint and rosemary have survived but bear the ravages of the ordeal. The rogue seedling is trying to take over our flat.
The tomatoes have even turned a lovely dark red, so I decided to override my own mild dislike for the fruit (and the Man's much more deeply held belief that Tomatoes are Evil) and use them in supper.
This was helped by my having brought back from Ireland some lovely floury potatoes and sweet carrots from my uncle's garden.
A couple of sea bass fillets seemed like a good idea when passing the fishmongers'.
I did have a bit of a Ready Steady Cook moment when I considered the menu, but it turned out surprisingly well.
The outcome was grilled seabass with tomato and fennel coulis, carrot gratté and steamed potatoes.
The seabass I rubbed with salt and pepper on the skin side and honey, balsamic vinegar and pepper on the flesh side, then put skinside up under a hot grill for seven minutes. (Hat tip to Jane for the honey and vinegar idea)
For the coulis, I softened garlic and fennel seeds in olive oil and butter, then simmered the skinned and chopped tomatoes in the fat for about 15 minutes. Then (struck with inspiration at the last minute - never very convenient) I sieved the sauce and put it back on the heat to reduce.
Fresh garden carrots are so delicious and unlike bought carrots that I simply grated them very finely with a microplane grater and sprinkled some window-grown chives on them for the colour. This left them light, fluffy and juicy all at once, as well as allowing their sweetness to display itself to admiration.
The steamed potatoes I just steamed.
I thought the whole was excellent, although the Man was less than enthusiastic about the carrots. I think he noticed there were vitamins in them.

Bland, bland, bland

Although the Kitchen Accomplice loves spicy food, it is never a good idea to try pleasing her with curries, because she just compares it with her grandmother's and dismisses our poor efforts as 'bland, bland, bland'.
This is particularly sad for the Man, who is quite proud of his tarka dal (not in the least bland to my mind).
My plan is that we should have a cook-off - each of us has to produce a dal, to be tasted blind, all at one meal.
Given how competitive I am, it should come as no surprise that I am practising madly. Luckily this is a delicious and healthy meal - although I'm not sure I'd like to eat only this, I'm happy to eat it once a week.
For supper tonight, the Man requested "some green vegetable", a rare request from him. So I went for the greenest I could think of. Baby spinach leaves, washed and dried, then thrown into a hot pan where I had fried grated ginger, mustard seeds and kalonji (onion seeds).
This with basmati rice and tarka dal made an easy, delicious, balanced meal.
Here's the dal recipe I'm currently using - bear in mind that you can alter the spices as much as you like. The amounts given below feed four not very spice-tongued eaters.
PS the 'tarka' is the fried spice mixture that flavours the dal.

300g red lentils (masoor dal)
850ml water or stock
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp coriander

30g butter
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp asafoetida

4 garlic cloves chopped
1 medium onion chopped
2 chillis chopped

2 tomatoes finely chopped
1tsp curry leaves
1/4 tsp chilli powder

1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp fresh coriander for garnish

Method:
1 Bring the water or stock to the boil and add the lentils.

2 Add the turmeric and ground coriander, stir and simmer for 20 minutes or until lentils are soft. Cook until the water is absorbed; if the lentils go dry and are not soft, simply add more water.

3 Add the butter to a large frying pan and cook gently with the cumin seeds and asafoetida for a few seconds, add the chopped onions and garlic and fry until the onions just start to brown. Add the chopped tomatoes, curry leaves and chilli powder and continue cooking for another few minutes. (This is your tarka).

4 Add the dal to the tarka and stir well.

5 Continue cooking and add the garam masala and salt (to taste) and stir in well.

6 The finished tarka dal should be soft and runny - if necessary, add more water.

7 Serve with a few knobs of butter on top of the dal and sprinkle the fresh coriander leaves on top to garnish. Serve with basmati rice or plain naan/chapatti breads.

My dog has no nose. How does he smell?

The morning after a delightful evening at which my wine-writer friend supplied the drink and my affineur friend the cheese, I opened the fridge to get butter for toast. Even though the fridge door was only open for perhaps thirty seconds, this was long enough for an invisible fume of dank, drain-like smell to escape, hover a minute or so in the kitchen, then wind its poisonous way through the flat to the bedroom, where it woke up the Man quicker than I’ve ever seen him come to consciousness on Sunday morning before!
The cheese, wrapped though it was in several layers of waxed paper, was not asleep.
What is the relationship between smell and taste? The theory is that we have tastebuds for just five flavours: salt, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. All the other delicate arrangements of flavour that we experience while eating are actually through the olfactory bulb in the nose.
If this is the case, why do we experience the smell of so many food stuffs as so different from their flavour?
As a child, coffee seemed repellent to me to taste, but I used to go out of my way coming home from school in order to sniff the air next to the coffee stall on the market. Durian fruit is notoriously bad-smelling, but pleasant to eat. And cheese can smell like a teenage boy’s gym kit but be absolutely delicious.
I think (and this is based on nothing more than personal observation and wild speculation) that there must be some change in how we perceive things that are inside our mouths. The smell may be the same, so the olfactory experience is technically the same, but it is now combined with a mouthfeel (cool, salty, fattiness in the case of cheese) and our expectations of the sensation is altered.
By this latter, I don’t just mean that we expect the époisses to taste good, but that it fills our sensory horizons so we no longer have a standard of non-smell to compare it with. When I worked in the cheesemongers, many customers (not all under 8) would wrinkle up their noses on entering the shop and perform amusing mimes of themselves vomiting at the smell. If they didn’t immediately flee in fits of laughter, we were always able to cure their nausea. A taste of cheese, ideally Montgomery’s Cheddar, would instantly dispell the tyranny of the air heavy with the aroma of dozens of cheeses.