End of week 20...summing up

Last week was my 20th week on this project, which seemed like the ideal time for a summing-up.

Biggest revelations:

Homemade Goats cheese
Pickled Pears

Recipes which have made the 'regulars' list:

Gallettes
Stroganoff
Goats Cheese Souffle
Eggs Benedict
Porridge

Dan's Favourite:

Its a close-run thing between
Apple and spice red cabbage
Dauphinoise Potatoes
Yorkshire Pudding

My Favourite:

Salt and pepper Squid

Most disgusting meal:

Venison stew (its the stuff of the devil)

Recipes which require some fine-tuning:

Parkin
Steamed Treacle sponge

Things I have made more than once:

The ever-expanding list of recipes to try doesn't seem to leave room for many repeat appearances of the high-effort dinners. However, I have made the following at least twice:

Cuban meatballs stuffed with quail eggs
Cannellini bean and mint dip
Duck with Mango
Italian chicken spirals
Gujerati Cabbage and Carrots
Balsamic Baked sprouts
Homemade pasta (for spinach and ricotta cannelloni)

Recipe I have been putting off:

Lobster Thermidor
(worried about murdering a lobster in a needlessly painful fashion due to inexperience and/or ineptitude)

Requests I need to fulfill:

Sweet-potato pie
Cake (unspecified type) for office colleagues
Beef Wellington

Childhood nostalgia to relive:

Chocolate Steamed pudding with custard
Rice Pudding with jam

Surprises:

I like some cheese
I don't mind avocado

Here's to the next 20 weeks....

Persia and the Middle East

I'm at the stage in this project where I've made quite a few curries, a few Italian recipes, some Spanish and Latin American dishes and I'm craving something a bit more unusual.

Middle Eastern cooking is something I would love to investigate: I love the subtle warmth of spices in middle eastern and north-African cookery, and the subtle balancing of couscous, dried fruits, nuts, lamb. Beyond houmous and pitta bread its not all that easy to find good examples of food from the region in the UK. Actually, I think that the pitta and houmous you can generally find over here probably isn't that good when you compare it to the real thing.



I recently discovered that my local library has a rather good selection of recipe books, which gives me wonderful chances to experiment with new recipes without making my bank manager cry.

Last week I unearthed an old Middle Eastern cookery book by Claudia Roden. Its crammed with fantastic sounding recipes, so I've been struggling to choose where to start by experimenting.



This weekend I finally made a decision and attempted Spinach with Almonds, Terbiyeli Kofte (Turkish Lamb meatballs in lemon sauce), and steamed rice. Served with a small bowl of kalamata olives it all felt suitably authentic!

Terbiyeli Kofte

For the meatballs:

250g lean minced lamb
1 slice white bread (crusts cut off)
1/2 beaten egg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
salt

For the sauce:

1 egg yolk
juice 1/2-3/4 lemon
100ml water
salt and pepper

First make the meatballs.
Soak the bread in a splash of warm water, then squeeze the liquid out and combine with all the other ingredients, mixing well with your hands until it is all smooth and well-combined.
Form the mixture into marble-sized meatballs. Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil, reduce to a simmer and poach the meatballs for about 15-20 minutes.

Put the rice on to cook at this stage if you are having it as an accompaniment.

When the meatballs have about 10 minutes left to go make the sauce:
Bring half a pan of water to simmer point.
In a heat proof bowl (which will fit over your pan of water) stir the egg yolk until pale, then gradually add the lemon juice stirring as you go.
Once the lemon is incorporated add the water and season with salt and a little pepper.
Place the bowl on top of the pan of simmering water and warm through. DON'T let the sauce get to simmering point or it will curdle.

When the sauce is warm fish the meatballs out of their water with a slotted spoon. Put them in the lemon sauce and gently stir them round to coat them.

Serve.

I think that poaching meatballs is a fantastic way to cook them. I make a pasta recipe where the meatballs are poached in tomato sauce. They come out soft and flavoursome, and its a healthier way to cook. They really don't need to be fried.

The lemon sauce may sound like a wierd thing to put with meatballs, but trust me - its unusual but gorgeous.

This went well with spinach. Its definitely making it onto by 'make again' list, and I'll be working my way through more recipes from the same book in the coming weeks.

Strawberries and dreaming of summer...

Now then, I'm not sure if its wierd or not that I've never made meringues before. It could be quite normal I think. On the otherhand, is it the kind of thing that everyone makes at some point in primary school cooking classes?

Either way, this weekend I made meringues for the first time. I suppose its not the classic time of year to have meringues and strawberries (Wimbledon and July evenings spring more obviously to mind), but I had an egg white left over from another recipe.



I expect everyone except me already knew how to make meringues, but here's the recipe I used anyway:

Meringue (enough for 2 servings, with about 100g strawberries each)

1 egg white
40g caster sugar (I used unrefined caster sugar, which is why my meringues aren't bright white)

Whisk the egg white with an electric beater until it holds soft peaks.
Add half the sugar and whisk again until its mixed in properly.
Add the remaining sugar and continue to beat until it forms stiff peaks. My recipe said to keep going until the mixture stays in the bowl when you hold it upside down. It struck me that this test probably was a bit counter-productive!
Place dessertspoons of mixture on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
Cook in the oven at about 120C for 1 hr 40 mins. The outside will be crispy and they will come away from the paper easily, but they should still be a bit chewy in the middle.
Set aside to cool.

Elizabeth David was a bitch

Which makes me like her so much more!

See this article.

By all accounts she was also quite scandalous for the time:
See?!

I love the fact that someone I had always imagined to be rather fusty and stuffy was actually extremely badly behaved.

I clearly got "bossy" right though; although it would appear that I should have multiplied just how bossy by a factor of at least 100.

Here's the wiki page for anyone who doesn't know the name.

Snow snow go away

When its cold outside and I'm housebound because of the state of the roads I always feel like baking.
When I was snowed in last year I made shortbread, and last week when I was snowed in I got some yeast out of the freezer and turned to my trusty old Carluccio recipe book for foccacia. It turned up trumps with instructions for a rosemary and salt topped version - Handy as I had some rosemary sitting in the fridge which was getting rather ancient and needed using up.

So, I got the woodburner going so that at least one room in the house was warm enough for bread to rise, and set about bread-making. Just the smell of baking bread and the waft of rosemary was enough to make the house feel more inviting. The bread was fragrant from rosemary with a lovely salty top.



This is a bread to be eaten super fresh. It was wonderful warm from the oven, but not so good the next day, although it might reheat or toast well.

Also this week, a curry bonanza! Prawn boohna (just what I needed after a long run), spicy rainbow trout (lovely flavours, but I overcooked the fish a bit so it was slightly on the dry side), pakoras (I hate deep frying things but I don't suppose there's any other way of doing these, and they are a great addition to a curry dinner).

A good food week!

At the weekend I went to see the film of Julie and Julia . Since the book inspired me to cook in a more varied way I thought I should definitely see the film. It was amusing and engaging, and made me realise that I still haven't attempted lobster thermidor. That was the first thing onto my recipe list, and I haven't yet steeled myself to dispatch a lobster in boiling water.

I feel I need to face up to it fairly soon.

Although, my 6 month marker is in sight so maybe I can put it off until then.

Julia Child must have been America's answer to Elizabeth David, although I'm not sure who came first. My mum tells me she has 2 copies of Elizabeth David's French Cookery book and has offered to donate one to me. Until now I haven't taken up the offer, as whenever I browse through it it has VERY bossy instructions, and VERY daunting looking recipes. However, I think the time has come to stop being a scaredy cat.

UPDATE:
Ooooh...Meryl Streep just won Best Actress at the Golden Globes for her portrayal of Julia Child.

Amusement

Apparently Dan's food has been attracting comment at work.

Boss 1: What have you got there? Chicken and mayonnaise?
Dan: No, pheasant and pickled pear
Boss 1: Uuummmm....Ok then

I think I have developed a distinctly unusual approach to our meals over the last few months. But I've sort of gradually edged into it so it doesn't seem odd.
But now Dan tells me that he is regularly asked what's on the dinner menu as he leaves the office in the evening and comments on the contents of his lunchbox are getting more frequent.

I suspect this is mainly because he boasts about the good stuff, particularly to his boss who considers himself a bit of a foodie and the other one who's wife never cooks, but keeps quiet about the bad stuff.

This week's dinner menu:
Monday - goats cheese souffle with smoked haddock and leek and baked potato
Tuesday - pheasant casserole with braised red cabbage, new potatoes, and pickled pear
Wednesday - Steamed plaice stuffed with carrot and courgette, with broccoli
Thursday - Spiced rainbow trout with sticky rice and cauliflower
Friday - Pasta with black olives, courgette, goats cheese, red onion and pinenuts
Saturday - Grilled chicken with harissa and couscous
Sunday - Prawn boohna with chupati. (I hope to make onion bhajis and/or pakoras too, but may not have time or energy to make them as I'm doing a 12km race.)

When I look at a list like this (despite the fact not every week is as varied) I do see why Dan's mates think we're a bit of a curious case.

Still, if I'm going to be a talking point there are worse things people could be gossiping about!

Paris, snow, and the best laid plans...

Back in October I booked a couple of train tickets to Paris for my Mum's birthday. We headed off on our jaunt on the first week of the new year, had a lovely time being culture-vultures in the biting cold, hoping from museum to cafe to museum. Then we tried to get on our train home.



It was cancelled.

The queue for the 3 previous departures went all the way round the Gare du Nord. There was no way we were getting back to London that night. But, you know, Paris isn't such a bad place to be stranded for a day longer than anticipated! We sauntered back to our hotel, which fortunately still had a room available, had a lovely meal of houmous, olives, tapenade and fresh crusty french bread, a couple of glasses of red wine in the cafe round the corner, and resolved to try again the next day.

I was convinced we would spend all day queueing for a train, so we fortified ourselves with coffee and croissants, bought quiche and biscuits from the bakery on the corner, and headed back to face the Eurostar.

Finally arriving home through the snow at 8pm (not too late considering the circumstances), after a magical mystery tour of northern France I realised we had virtually no vegetables and because of the thick snow no vegetable box had been delivered. That left us with a cooking apple and some red cabbage until I next felt ready to tackle the snowy roads. Still, the red cabbage looked like a nice one, and I'd been meaning to try out a braised/pickled red cabbage recipe for a while. Recipe of the week was decided by default.



Dan was really enthusiastic about how this turned out. It was delicately spiced, fruity, with enough sharpness to keep it interesting. Often when I've had red cabbage cooked in this way the fruit and spice have overwhelmed the flavour of the cabbage, but the quantities in this recipe didn't do that.

We had it with roast chicken, and the next week I reheated it to have with pheasant casserole. I've had it with turkey in the past, and Dan tells me it goes well with beef too. I think it would also be tasty served cold, so all in all quite a versatile recipe.

Apple and spice Red Cabbage

1 dessertspoon olive oil
1/2 a red cabbage, finely sliced
1 medium sized cooking apple, peeled, cored and diced
3 tablespoon apple juice
Dark brown muscovado sugar
Cider Vinegar
Cinnamon
6 cloves
1/2 handful of raisins or sultanas
salt & pepper

Put the olive oil into a heavy bottomed saucepan and swirl it around until it coats the whole base. Put 1/3 of the red cabbage into the pan and spread it out to form an even layer. Put 1/3 of the apple in a layer on top of this, add about 2 teaspoons of sugar, then pour over 1 tablespoon of apple juice, drizzle over a small amount of cider vinegar, scatter on a couple of cloves and a shake of cinnamon, and season with salt and pepper. Repeat for 2 more layers, then sprinkle the raisins over the top and add a good slosh of cold water.

Bring to the boil over a low heat, then cover and simmer for about 2 1/2 hours. It doesn't need any attention to speak of during this time. I actually went out for a run and left it for a good 45 mins, but it might be a good idea to check it every half an hour or so and give it a good stir so that it doesn't dry out on top.

Enjoy.

PS look what a beautiful cake display we spotted in the Saint-Germain district of Paris! Pretty pretty....

Fulfilling a promise

A year ago I promised Dan a meal of calamari and chips with prosecco.

A YEAR AGO.

I finally made it for him just after Christmas.

The chips were rubbish. They were meant to be thin and crunchy rosemary roast potatoes but didn't crisp up properly.
Moral of the story? Never try to cook potatoes in a hurry, and certainly never try to cook potatoes in a hurry after a cold run in which the sadists at running club have made you run up lots of hills while it snows.

HOWEVER, the squid was perfect.

I deep fried it after coating it in a mixture of cornflour, salt, pepper, and szechuan pepper. I'd never deep fried anything in my life before, but after draining the squid on kitchen paper it wasn't greasy at all. It was great with french beans and garlic mayonnaise. We had Cava rather than Prosecco, but I figured the principle's the same.

A very similar recipe to the one I used can be found here, but mine was actually from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day book.

It was almost good enough to makeup for the rubbish potatoes. I'll substitute warm crusty bread next time.

A couple of classics and an unsuccessful experiment

In the spirit of tieing up loose ends before the end of the year, and also because my mum bought too many eggs over Christmas, I decided to try a couple of eggy classics over the Christmas break - homemade custard (without Birds custard powder) and homemade mayonnaise.

My custard recipe was great on flavour but didn't thicken as much as I would have liked. Not sure if that's how the recipe is, or whether I went wrong, but I thought I'd try it again in future with a different recipe. I bought a River Cottage cook book in the January sales so I'll try Hugh's recipe next time. It has a bit of cornflour in it so I imagine it would thicken more successfully. We'll see.

The mayonnaise was good. I'm not usually a fan of mayo. Its that old condiments thing - I just don't really see the point of drowning food in layers of cheap nasty processed sauce. But homemade mayonnaise was great.

I made a garlicy version, as we had it with squid so I thought that would go well. I put too much garlic in but otherwise it was a great success. At least it kept the vampires at bay for the evening! I would use a little more lemon juice or some white wine vinegar to give it a bit of bite if I was makig a 'straight' mayonnaise, but the garlic was more than enough flavour for this.

Mayonnaise

100ml extra virgin olive oil
1 egg yolk
a few squeezes lemon juice
1/2 clove garlic (crushed)
salt and pepper

Stir the egg yolk with a wooden spoon until it thickens. Add the garlic and stir.
Pour the olive oil in a drop at a time, keeping stirring all the time with the wooden spoon.
Take your time or the mixture will curdle. Add the olive oil VERY gradually, stirring all the time. Add the odd squeeze of lemon as you go.
Once the mixture starts to stiffen you can speed up the oil a little, but don't rush.
If it curdles (mine did, so I know this works!), take another egg yolk and put it in a clean bowl. Stir it until thickened then gradually add your curdled mayonnaise mixture, stirring all the time. This will fix it.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The unsuccessful experiment was pastry made with wholemeal flour and olive oil, instead of plain flour and butter. It came out with a bready texture and was rather hard. It also didn't keep or freeze as well as normal pastry and was much more difficult to roll out. I think I'll stick to the traditional pastry recipe in future.

Christmas catchup

Apologies for the rather long Christmas break between posts. I won't bore you with a super long post but here's a brief run down of my new recipes over the Christmas period:

1. Christmas cake!



I was really pleased with this. I made it from Nigel Slater's fruit cake recipe and it turned out with just the right amount of citrus and fruit. Lovely.

I'd made fruit cakes before but never one that was such a high proportion of fruit to flour. The recipe was quite free and easy with the fruits you should use which made it easy to tailor to your own tastes. I used my new favourite dried fruit - figs! I had dried figs for the first time this past spring when we went to Croatia. They were served with coffee and schnapps absolutely everywhere and I liked the sticky grainy texture of them. We bought a bag from the market - you can just about see them for sale in the picture, bagged up with bay leaves.



They appeared in Sainsburys just in time for my Christmas cake. Marvellous!

I also made the marzipan (a bit fiddly to get onto the cake) and the royal icing (took longer to set than I'd anticipated). I felt I had make both in order to keep in the spirit of the recipe challenge; shop bought would have seemed like cheating.





2. Mulled white wine

I think the recipe for this needs a little tweaking as it tasted more like mulled cider, and I would definitely have preferred a winey-er taste. I think next time I'll put a lot less apple juice and less sugar too (the quantity here is half the recipe quantity and it was still a bit sweet for my tastes). Don't get me wrong, the flavours were nice and it was a lovely warming drink, but it seemed a shame not to taste the wine much. Didn't stop us drinking it all of course!

Here's the recipe:

Apple & spice white wine

1 * 750ml bottle white wine (I used Riesling)
400ml apple juice
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
50g demerera sugar
a few strips of orange rind

Put all the ingredients in a pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse, but don't allow the mixture to boil or you will lose all the alcohol content.
Serve.
Easy peasy.

3. Pickled pears

I made these a couple of weeks ago after catching a bit of the Hairy Bikers Christmas cookery special. They need about 10 days pickling time before you can eat the pears, so we had our first taste of them shortly after Christmas with cold meats, oatcakes and cheese.

Yes, you read correctly - I did eat cheese. I bought some Manchego cheese to have when we had my younger sister and my Dad up for lunch, and I discovered I actually liked it. In very small quantities.

Anyway, I digress - the pears were tasty, although my sister thought it was distinctly wierd that I would pickle pears.
She may have a point.

4. To go with the Manchego cheese - hazlenut and black pepper cookies.

I came across the recipe for these on a blog called Chocolate and Zuccini. Its written by a French lady (in English although there is a French version). They sounded interesting and she mentions that they go well with figs. Since I had a few figs left over from the Christmas cake it seemed the ideal time to make these biscuits.

They turned out to be a semi-sweet biscuit, and did go well with the dried fruit. The black pepper added a pleasant zing but I think I would use cinnamon instead in future, just because I prefer the warmth of cinnamon.

5. Brussel sprouts

I know these are a love-them or hate-them vegetable, but I definitely fall into the love-them category. Which is just as well as we've had them in our vegetable box quite a lot recently.



A colleague at work suggested baking them in the oven in a parmesan cream sauce. I liked the general idea, but thought all that cream and cheese would probably disagree with my stomach. Instead I found a recipe that suggested baking the sprouts in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a good way to do them. I would imagine that a scattering of grated parmesan and a sprinkle of pinenuts would be a tasty addition.

Here's the method:

Balsamic Brussels

Mix 1 dessertspoon of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Peel and quater your sprouts then toss them in the oil mixture until well coated.
arrange in a single layer on a baking tray or roastig tin and cook for about 20 mins at 180-190C.