Wherefore art thou, boneo?

Two years ago, we took Barney to his first puppy class. A rather tightly-wound woman pulled a little bag out of the pocket of her quilted jacket, explaining that she only gave her poodle puppy organic liver treats she made herself. I whispered to Séan ’If I ever start baking for my dog, shoot me.’ Well, I’m still here. He’s a very kind man.

This isn’t something I tell everybody. A visit to Unconfidentialcook’s blog, with her daughter’s charming recipe for pupparoni pizza, has nudged me out of the closet, or kennel.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m going to tell you I first made these for the Dog Christmas Party in our park. I know. While I was making chocolate crackle cookies and chorizo sausage rolls to share with the human revellers, I found myself eyeing the larder – a big bunch of parsley, a dried up end of Cheddar, half a bag of spelt flour. Before I could stop myself, Doggie Breath Bones were born.

One particularly blustery morning last December, a couple of dozen people and even more dogs assembled by the ponds for mince pies and carols. Rachel even brought a camping stove so we could warm up with mulled wine. Food and gossip were shared, bones were handed out.

Suddenly, I understood how the Pied Piper felt. Grateful, often drunk, friends sometimes say my cooking makes them drool. On this occasion, it was true. I was ridiculously, pathetically touched by the dogs’ seal of approval. Ridiculous, as they’re hardly discerning. Between them they have been responsible for the ingestion of many socks, several shoes, bits of vacuum cleaner, cat litter, sofa cushions, ipods, mobile phones, countless remote controls, money (they’re not fussy, they take cheques, cash, credit cards – that’ll do nicely) and enough Lego bricks to provide Battersea Dogs’ Home with a sizeable extension.

I’ve cooked for lots of happy people but Jess the Great Dane, Linus the Beagle, Gomez the Basset, Polly the Labradoodle, Tigger the Toy Terrier, Duffy the black Lab, Elliot the Cocker Spaniel, Malcolm the Schnauzer and the rest of their cheerful, unruly gang are perhaps my least knowledgeable (though that’s debatable) but most enthusiastic audience. They loved them. I hope your dog does too, but let’s not tell anyone about it, shall we?

Doggie Breath Bones

Parsley is very good for digestion and sweetness of breath. Apparently.

Makes about 32 bones

A big bunch of parsley, about 120g, finely minced, stalks and all
1 large carrot, grated
60g Cheddar, or whatever cheese you have left in the fridge, grated
3 tbsps olive oil
300g wholemeal flour- I used wholemeal spelt
2 tsps baking powder
130-200 ml of hot chicken stock or water

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4 and line a couple of baking sheets with baking parchment.

Stir together the parsley, carrots, cheese. Trickle over the oil – at this point it looks like a rather attractive salad. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder. Tip the parsley mixture into the flour and mix everything up with your hands until well combined. Gradually add half of the stock or water, mixing until you have a nice dough – you may not use all of the liquid, you don’t want it to be too sticky. Knead it together gently with your hands, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out until it’s about 5mm thick. Cut them out with a 4-5cm pastry cutter (ok, so by now I have invested in a bone-shaped cutter. This means that I am officially barking). Knead the offcuts together, roll them out and cut them out too.

Bake for about 25 minutes until the biscuits have browned and hardened a bit. Cool on a wire rack. If you have a tall dog, make sure the rack is on a high shelf. Stored in airtight tin, they’ll keep for quite a while.

Dog day afternoon

Barney’s epicurean hopes and dreams are cruelly dashed. He’s back to snuffling out fried chicken bones, so festively strewn along the High Street by Stoke Newington’s jeunesse dorée on Friday night. He’s all about free range foraging.

I’m addicted to your charms

There’s a great Anatolian restaurant near us. My friend Ali used to live next door. Early one evening, her boyfriend Brendan managed to julienne his thumb while preparing dinner so Ali dashed round to her neighbours to see if they had a first aid kit she could plunder in an attempt to stem the bleeding. The chefs, busy prepping for that evening’s service, didn’t really understand what she was saying, ‘My boyfriend’s nearly cut his thumb off, do you have a plaster or a bandage?’ didn’t feature heavily in their Turkish-English phrase book, especially when delivered in a high-pitched, increasingly frantic New Zealand accent.

In desperation, she started miming, throwing out odd words here and there ‘Boyfriend’, ‘knife’, alongside lots of hacking and sawing motions. Suddenly, a dawn of recognition appeared on one of the cook’s faces ‘Ahhh, I know, I help you!’. He came back with the biggest knife she’d ever seen, carefully wrapped in a tea towel. She was very touched to have found such a willing and gracious accomplice in what he clearly thought was her plan to polish off the luckless Brendan.

If they’ll go to such lengths to help their customers do in their other halves, just imagine how seriously they take your dinner. They make the best grilled onion salad ever, one about which I fantasise when far away from home. It’s not on the menu – it comes free with your main course. I’ve been known to order a nicely grilled quail or sea bass or a couple of juicy lamb chops just to enjoy its spicy, sweet and smoky charms. It’s a side dish with aspirations, in this case the understudy is the star, it’s the Peggy Sawyer to the kebab’s Dorothy Brock and it’s getting to be a habit with me.

Turkish grilled onion salad

This is my attempt at recreating the ‘Salad of Dreams’ – if you make it they will come. One of the ingredients in the dressing is şalgam suyu, described as turnip juice, but really a combination of turnips and violet carrots, pickled and fermented in barrels. As well as using it in salads, it’s a popular drink, served very cold with a dash of paprika sauce. It’s supposed to be a good hangover cure. You’d be forgiven for thinking that, like the Prairie Oyster, that fiendish combination of raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, it works on the principle that you can distract yourself from your wretched state by drinking something completely disgusting.

I know, I know, I lost you at turnip juice, but please persevere. If you can’t get şalgam, you can use a few spoons of the juice from a jar of pickled gherkins to get the essential sourness.

3 medium yellow onions, peeled and cut into 6 wedges
A BIG bunch of flat-leaf parsley
4 tbsps pomegranate molasses
4 tbsps şalgam suyu
A good squeeze of lemon juice
2 tbsps olive oil, plus a little more for brushing
A good pinch of smoked paprika
½ tsp sumac
½ tsp chilli flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Prepare the grill and get the coals nice and hot, so they are glowing red underneath with a fine coating of grey ash on the top. While the grill’s heating up, whisk together the molasses, şalgam, lemon juice and olive oil to make a lovely glossy, red dressing, the kind of thing that might tempt a health conscious vampire. Season with the paprika and a little salt and pepper.

Thread the onions onto a skewer and brush them with a little olive oil, sprinkle salt over them and grill for about 4-5 minutes per side until gently charred around the edges. Carefully remove them from the skewers and toss them in the dressing. It seems like a lot of dressing – don’t worry, you want lots so you can mop it up with chunks of bread.

Remove the leaves from the parsley and roughly chop them. Sprinkle over the onions with the sumac and chilli flakes and toss together well. Serve warm, with steak, kebabs, grilled chicken or by itself.

TIP
If you’re using wooden skewers, you need to soak them in water for 30 minutes before cooking so they don’t burn. In the summer, I soak loads and keep them in a bag in the freezer for those moments when I need some instant grill gratification.

APOLOGY
Sorry to ladle heaping spoonfuls of 42nd Street references into a piece about onions, but there are things you should know about a person before you embark on a serious relationship, like a passion for paint balling or a propensity for cross dressing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m addicted to show tunes. There, I said it.