It is Cora’s birthday tomorrow again so of course some time has been given over during the last few days for preparations.

That preparation started, in part, on Saturday morning with the purchase of the biggest pumpkin they had from the greengrocers on Oxton Road. Time was then spent on Sunday morning looking for a suitable face to first of all be marked out on the side of the pumpkin in black ball point and then carefully carved by father and children with a variety of sharp knives.

There was, of course, some friendly discussion between father and children as to who should do what. No fingers were lost and we now have a proud pumpkin.

This evening we had Cora’s favourite supper – noodles.

For Cora all she really needed was a plate of noodles in broth – anything else would be a distraction and extraneous to the noodle eating to be done.

That would have been boring for the rest of the family so peppers and baby corn were sliced, garlic, ginger and spring onions diced  and chicken breasts chopped. Similar chopping was applied to a lump of tofu for the vegetarian option.

The woks were taken up from the basement, cleaned off and put on a high heat with a glaze of corn nut oil.

Ten minutes later we were done and sat down slurping at the table. The sauce was a combination of bottles that needed using from and cupboard – mostly fish sauce and plum sauce and a teaspoon or so of red curry paste that has been lurking in the fridge and looks like it needs eating up.

It was not quite all finished and there should be enough left for me to have cold for lunch tomorrow.

We listened to the dream pop of Beach House – not that anyone else in the family noticed.

Earlier in the week I mentioned that I had picked up some bags of Moghrabia from a middle-eastern food shop on the Cowley Road in Oxford. You don’t see Moghrabia very often in your local Sainsbury so if I spot some bags on a shelf I like to stock up. Earlier this year I bought five kilos from a shop on Edgeware Road.

I first came across recipes for Moghrabia or Moghrabieh in the first Ottolenghi cookbook. It is also known as giant couscous and that is basically what it is, made out of durum wheat and water and dried to a small hard nut. Like couscous it is a food of the Middle East but it features in cooking along the North African coast.  You are most likely to come across recipes for it books of Lebanese or Morroccan cooking.

Shortly after I was given the Ottolenghi book for Christmas we went to Australia for the first time and I came across Moghrabia on a menu in a restaurant in Melbourne. It was our first lunch in Australia have flown the night before over  25 hours in a plane. We had been up early and had spent the morning walking around the city in a daze. Bar Lourinha http://www.barlourinha.com.au/menu.php was the first mention in the guide book and although it was a further walk out of the centre we headed there for lunch.

It was mid afternoon by the time that we got there and and we took our seats at one of the high tables. Having had my curiosity piqued by the mention of Moghrabia in the Ottoleghi book I was obliged to order it when I saw it on the menu. It was served with a lamb stew and was delicious – small nuggets of forgiving pasta that took up the juices of the stew. When we got back to Sarah’s later that afternoon she told us we had been lucky to get a table at Bar Lourinha as it was normally packed at lunch time.

Back at home in England I was determined to track down a source for Moghrabia. On the internent I came acrss a site that specialised in Morrocccan food and was able to order a supply from there but it was expensive. Matta’s http://www.mattas.co.uk/on Bold Street would sometimes have it but only in small 500gr bags. So I was very happy when I came across the shop on the Edgeware Road that had countless bags of it on its shelves and even more pleased when I found it in Oxford last week.

I will have to speak to the people who look after The International Store on Oxton Road to see if they can get it in.

We had Moghrabia last night. I made one of the recipes I had seen in the Ottolenghi book – barbecued quail with mograbiah salad. I substituted the quail with chicken as I knew that quail would be too much to get past the children. It was all very simple. I started by making the marinade in a large heavy pestle and mortar. Cumin seeds, ground cinnamon, cardamon pods, all spice berries, tumeric, paprika and salt were all ground to a fine powder before I added garlic, ginger honey and olive oil. Once this was thoroughly mixed it was slathered over a chopped chicken. A vegetarian option was made by chopped aubergines and peppers being mixed with the same marinade.

It is not necessary to cook Moghrabia. All it needs is to left to soak for half a day. The small hard nuts take up the moisture and expand, softening but retaining some bite. As an alternative you can boil them for a few minutes but you need to be careful not to overcook them.

Once we were almost ready to eat the chicken pieces went into a hot oven for 40 minutes. The Aubergine and peppers followed 15 minutes later. To make the salad I chopped some good handfuls of parsley and coriander which was then stirred into the Moghrabia together a good squeeze of lemon juice, the half dozen red tomatoes I had rescued from the greenhouse and more oilive oil. I heated this in a pan before we ate it with the chicken and vegetables.

There are still about 5 large bags of Moghrabia in the basement which should hopefully do me until I next come across it.

This evening I cooked the last of the Gubbeen chorizo sausage left from the cheese fair we had at the end of September. I had smuggled it out at the end of the afternoon, the last pack of sausage in the basket. Since then it had lurked at the back of the fridge, not quite forgotten, waiting for a Friday evening when I was feeling the pinch.

It was simple enough to pull together. Chorizo always loves lentils. So I started with some finely chopped onion in olive oil to which I had a couple of squashed, crushed cloves of garlic and a small carrot cut into pieces not much bigger than a lentil.

After that had cooked through on a high heat for a few minutes I emptied into the pan the lentils, two good handfuls from one of the two packs in the cupboard. All it needed then was a bay leaf and lots of water before being left to boil until the lentils were cooked.

Whilst the lentils were cooking I fried off a chopped rasher of bacon in some oil and allowed the chorizo sausage to gently cook through. The lentils took about half an hour. There can be a tipping point with lentils between a mush and a small forgiving pod with some bite left. We got to the right side of that point this evening, the liquid almost cooked down.

So the lentils were added to the pan with the two sausages, seasoned with salt and pepper and left for a few minutes more for the flavours to mingle. Just before serving I stirred in some chopped parsley.

On a side note I spoke to Dad this morning from the Cottage in Ireland. He had just come from the pier where he had been scrapping off the thick folds of mussels which had gathered on the bottom of the pontoon over the last few years. They must have looked so good to eat, perfectly sized nuggets of seafood. He had been warned against them and I reminded him of the harvest we had taken two years ago; they had been as sweet a bowl of mussels you could hope to come across and left some us four hours later criss-crossing the Cottage to the toilets for relief.