"Higham on the Hill, Stoke in the dale; Wykin for buttermilk, Hinckley for ALE." - Shakespeare.

Inkymole and Factoryroad sponsored an ale apiece at this year's CAMRA Real Ale Festival. We've never done it before, but what an adventure. You see, you don't know what ale or cider you're going to be allocated…till you get there, dry throated, with tokens and £2 beer glass in hand.

Mole's beer could not have been more perfect. Holden's Old Ale is brewed 'by a woman' (to the handlebar-moustachio'd barman's shock and awe!), and it was dark, slightly rough and chocolatey - and a whopping 7.2%. Had I been that woman who'd brewed it, I couldn't have designed a more perfect spec. Not a good one to start off with though - had to have a volumetric climb-down with a 6% and 4% to follow. Either that or roll home uphill, blind. Check the cheesy pun on the cask - (my own literary skilz) and the fact that they left off my logo!

The Factoryroad beer was disappointing and weak, with a funny after taste. Its rubbish taste though was slightly offset by the magnificent punuendo in the name of the beer, so all wasn't lost. Check Factoryroad's label. Again the creators had clearly been on the sauce while they got the labels printed out, sat no doubt at a creaking PC with one eye on their glasses, mis-spelling, as they did, the word 'how' and casually inverting the logo so it sat in a weird black box.

Still, we're not (for once) here to crit the visuals. Who cared once the first couple were sunk?

If you want to find a real ale event where you live, you'd do no worse than to look here: http://www.camra.org.uk/

Holden's Brewery: http://www.holdensbrewery.co.uk
An alphabetical list of real ales and independent brewers in the UK: http://www.quaffale.org.uk

Booze for free.

I've just got a copy of this book I did the cover for earlier this year, by Andy Hamilton.

We're a long way from self-sufficiency, but we're working on it - we've had the gas disconnected and we heat the house and water with wood instead. We've been buying our vegetables from a farm half an hour down the road for the last ten years or so, always organic, always amusingly miss-shapen,  always delicious, we did the biodiesel thing for years, and I make my own skin cream…well, like I said, we're not there, but we try to make the right moves in that direction!

The book tells you how to make intriguing-sounding brews such as Broad Bean Wine, Pine Needle Cordial and Nocino, an Italian green walnut cordial. None of them are complicated, or fussy; you just need to focus, keep your kit clean (most of which you'll have at home) and most importantly have some space at home to store the fermenting oceans of potential goodness. Our friend Simon' does this already, and his recent birthday cider was impressively cloudy and delicious, needing maybe a little longer in hibernation, but certainly a shouder-softening testament to what can be done with some foraged apples, water and patience.

Here's the artwork for the book, along with an alternative version which didn't make the cut, and a place to buy it!

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781905811700

October.

Autumn is finally here!

We know this because of three things:

1) I'm wearing a jumper and boots.

2) There's horseradish coming next week.

3) We carried two enormous pumpkins (a Tom Fox and an Atlantic Giant - we think) out of Rickards' farm gate today and dropped them into the back of the car. These are for pumpkin soup for the upcoming show, but we'll be back next Sunday with a few quid to invest in some big beasts for Hallowe'en (we always eat those too!)

We also got a pocketful of their home-grown chillis too, for the soup which always has to have a little bite to it.

In addition, check these carrots, who've been hiding in the ground ready for All Hallow's Eve...

Just thought we'd share the love.

Nature guffaws at us.

Went strawberry picking with Dad recently.

How nature knew I needed my spirits lifting, I'll never know, but she did, like when she sends bonkers frogs one centimetre in length to our pond where they do irrational things way too risky for something that's only just lost its tail.

Yep, on this day Nature outwitted me with a display of accidental vulgarity that would rival the most energetic Facebook photo collection. How did they get like this? I'm not sure I want to know - I didn't SEE a Monsanto lorry anywhere - but they had a sweetness that belied their robust and manly appendages.

Enjoy.

Mole's Dirty Tofu.

We've been asked twice in the last few days what to do with tofu, so I am sharing my recipe for super-easy but filthy-tasting baked tofu here.

Now I can eat tofu straight from the packet, but the key to making it appealing to omnivores as well as giving it Sunday-dinner levels of satisfaction is to bake it. Stir-frying is OK, but you need to get the timing and heat just right in order to get that crispy outer/soft inner and it can too easily go wrong.

Neither an apologist substitute for those rectally-infused eyelid tubes known as sausages nor a fake-meat cross-dresser of a vegan stand-in, this is full-on juicy, oily protein with plenty of B vits, herbs, salt and crackly edges.

We do this - but feel free to adlib, maybe with a little black pepper or chillies for some extra excitement!

Take one pack of tofu, smoked or plain, your choice (don't do this with the flavoured ones).
Good olive oil, tomatoes, Engevita, Marigold vegan bouillon - Holland and Barrett (or your local health food store should) sell both of these - smoked paprika, black pepper. You won't need salt.

Wash the tofu well and pat it dry. Leave it, preferably, to dry off for a bit wrapped in a towel (makes edges crispier when cooked).

Take a shallow metal dish - not silicone, but glass is OK - and swill plenty of olive oil into the bottom.

Cut the tofu into thickish slices (half an inch) and lay the first layer of slices - we have two here, but that depends on your dish and tofu size. Keep it one-layer-deep only.
Gently score the top so the juices can get in.
Rub a teaspoon of bouillon over the surface, then sprinkle a heaped teaspoon of Engevita over that. Sprinkle with a little smoked paprika.
Drizzle with olive oil.

Lay the next layer, and repeat what you just did.

Do it again for any further layers till all the slices are used.
Make sure the top is nicely oiled.
Lay sliced tomatoes around the edges, sitting in the olive oil.
It should look something like this!

Bake for 30 minutes at 180C; it should come out bubbling around the edges with melted, brown-edged tomatoes and sizzling tofu corners. Like this:

http://www.inkymole.com/recipes/sizzlingtofu.MOV

We ate ours with a giant turnip boiled whole in salted water, then sliced and baked in the oven and served with salad and raw courgettes. Meaty eh? If you cook this and anyone fails to see what a juicy filthy treat this is, either they're blind with no sense of smell, oh and no tastebuds, and possibly no tongue, or you haven't done it right. Man up, take whatever punishment is due to you, then go back and cook it again.

Download the recipe as a PDF here:
http://www.inkymole.com/recipes/dirtytofu.pdf

All Tomorrow's Bellies.

it's unusual to be so well catered for at a festival. For many years, festival food for vegan people meant falafels or noodles, handled by greasy 'yeah I just picked up your food with the meat spoon, so what?' servers.

So it was with an inordinate amount of relief that we read the line-up of food choices for ATP's Portishead-curated 'I'll Be Your Mirror' at the weekend. David Bailey who runs the raw-food cooking courses for Saf - more on that later - was there in his handsome grey 'Wholefood Heaven' H-Van supplying Buddha Boxes - a quality-carb loaded box of brown rice, tofu, Thai curry and fresh crisp kale with an omega-based crispy topping. This, dear readers, sustained us through all of Saturday night's leg-challenging performances. Sadly, we were so busy shoving this down our throats we didn't get a picture. Oh well. You'll have to imagine it.

Alongside him was a pair of Antipodean chip-makers in floral aprons and pink sandals, offering 'Chunky Chips' in three sizes. Here is one of them, proffering fried potato. These were served with the usual array of condiments, but could also be served with vegan-safe gravy, mushy peas, beans or curry sauce (the vegan-ness of which I've never been able to verify - can anyone else?) We chose butterless chip unbutties. I'll willingly buy chips from a man who's comfortable wandering a festival for two days in one of these.


Round on the other side of Alexandra Palace stood the Taco Truck. It sold only two types of taco, the queue for which, like everything else, was big but not Glasto-hellish. Offering only two options seems like a good move - keeping it simple and light, with only one ingredient's difference - makes economic sense, surely. The tacos were fresh-made with either chicken or black beans, guacamole, salsa, onions and tomatoes, and sour cream and cheese which was not for us of course. But, for once, my request to make up the missing ingredients with something else was not ignored and seen as a chance to save a few pence, but was honoured with an additional generous spoon of guacamole. You'd be stunned at the frequency of rudeness this request is usually met with - as if the server is saying 'well, YOU'RE choosing not to have it - it's not our fault you're going to go without!'

Finally both days of the festival were begun with this slightly-better-than-adequate porridge made with soya milk from Jo and Al's in Finchley, en route to the Palace. Their range has expanded a bit since we last went in there about six months ago and were met with surly staff and a shaken head response to 'which of your things are vegan?' (you get used to this, but it doesn't make it any more acceptable). This time, there was porridge, pies, salads, a tart and massive fairy cakes with mountainous icing. So, if that little list is your idea of a good breakfast, head there.
We wish all festivals and big events had the carefully-curated choice of food spots that this one had, but we realise everyone isn't Barry Hogan, Geoff Barrow or Adrian Utley. There was something for everyone, and it was totally devoid of repugnant sponsorship and in-your-fucking-face beer advertising. Instead, just the gentle sense of the curators actually wanting us there, warm, fed and watered, and thus able to stand comfortably for the duration of every carefully-chosen band, and not broke and malnourished at the end of it.

Saniya from Suriname's Dal Recipe.

We live a few doors down from Saniya and her three children and husband, who began brightening our bellies with gifts of food when we were having our building work done last year. She'd bring meals for the builders, usually containing meat, so we couldn't partake. She asked why, we told her it was because of the things we couldn't eat, and a look of concern crossed her face. But eventually the builders left, and so did she - for a while.

We'd always said hello and had little chats at the door, then one night she brought round three hot little foil-wrapped packages of deliciousness. I returned the dishes, and the next day she asked for some emergency onions - I had only three, but was happy to let her have them, since whatever she made was bound to be better than the future I'd got planned for them. I got to find out for sure, because she brought round a dish full of it - hot fresh dal, with bread and pickle, again in hot foil packages.

This was repaid in cakes, and thus began an interchange in which the latest transaction was this gift of a recipe for her special dal. It's not hot, or particularly spicy - she's sniffy about the way Pakistanis 'over-complicate' their dal recipes! - but is deliciously smooth and creamy, and just melts in the mouth. She showed me this first hand and I wrote it down, so it's from the cook's hand, direct.

I doubt very much this will be the last recipe we post from Saniya!

It's here as a PDF if you'd like to print it off and cover it in oily pawprints in your own kitchen.

Read about Suriname and read about dal in general.



Take 3 mugfuls of Mung Dal (yellow).

Wash THOROUGHLY in running water, till water runs clear
(important, gets rid of dust and starch).

Put in a large pan with a lid, and add 3 x mugfuls of water to each mug of Mung Dal.

Make a separate mix of the following spices, one teaspoon of each:
- Fenugreek
- Cumin
- Nigella seeds
- Coriander

Then add to the water:
- 1 x teaspoon turmeric (turns it good and yellow)
- 1.5 teaspoons of the above spice mixture
- 3 teaspoons salt
- 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
- Half an onion, sliced (you'll need the other half later)

Bring the water to the boil.

As it’s simmering, carefully scrape off with a big spoon all the bubbly starch that forms on top. This is really important, as 'This is the bit that contains the flatulence', as Saniya put it, 'and the starch, which is mainly sugar, which make you...' (at this point she pats her stomach!) Get rid of it all and you get a much smoother, milkier mix.

When the dal is cooked - you'll know as all the dal will be really soft or 'melted', as Saniya calls it. Keep tasting and checking and stirring.

Cooking it in her pressure cooker took about 30 minutes, but I reckon it needs to cook on a normal stove-top for about an hour.

In the meantime, chop the remaining half of the onion and another two garlic cloves.
Put them in a small saucepan with sunflower or veg oil - nice and deep, so the onions is nearly covered.
Cook the onions in the oil till gently browned and soft - add the garlic right at the end, just so it cooks transparent and doesn't burn.

As soon as it's cooked, turn off the heat and tip the whole lot including the oil into the Dal.
Stir, and it's ready to serve! Serve with freshly cooked rice or bread of any sort.

Freezes and keeps in the fridge - but as always best fresh!