Daring Cooks August Challenge

So this was this month's Daring Cook's Challenge:
Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

I had mixed success with the dishes. Sadly I couldn't get my appam's out of the pan in one piece! They kept sticking (not sure why; I'll have to try again to find out). Most of them came out like this:



Not exactly flat breads! The flavour was lovely though, so definitely worth another try in the future.

I did manage one partially successful flatbread on the final attempt. Even though its a bit rubbish it felt like an achievement!


The Shrimp in Coconut milk curry that I served with the appams was delicious. I added spinach and sweet potato to the recipe provided by Mary to make it go a little further. That recipe's definitely a keeper.



Now if only I could master those dratted Appams!

Kasmiri prawn curry

On sunday night I was in the mood for a curry. I'd run a 10k race, not as fast as I wanted to, also cycled 5 miles, and had a good walk round the grounds of Blenheim Palace. I was hungry for comfort food. Even if I was inclined to eat one, take aways are few and far between in our area - far easier, quicker, and nicer to make my own curry.
So, out came the Curry Bible and after some debate a Kashmiri prawn curry was chosen.

The curry was basically a korma-style curry, but the kormas I make are much spicier, less sweet and creamy than the variety you would get in a jar or from a takeaway. The dish has a good blend of spices, a small amount of coconut milk, onion, garlic, and red and green peppers, as well as the king prawns. The recipe called for the addition of four canned lychees, and suggested garnishing the dish with sliced bananas.


Trust me, this was WAY nicer than it looks!

This definitely was a very beautiful curry to eat. It feels like a meal for a maharajah - indulgent, creamy, rich, fruity. For my palate it was a little sweet for a regular dinner. Nice as a one off though. I would make this again for an unusual dinner for anyone with a slightly sweet tooth, but I think I'll generally stick to tomato-y, spicier dishes (except when comfort food is needed; then this is ideal).

Coming over all Cornish

Dartmouth Harbour

Last week we extended our weekend by a couple of days on either side and took a little road trip.



We meandered down through Dorset and Devon to St Ives in Cornwall, then back via the north Devon coast and a flying visit onto Exmoor. It was lovely to have some time to explore our own country, and made us remember that the UK is a lovely place and that its great to spend time just chilling out together.



To get into the spirit of the trip, the recipe I attempted this week was Hugh's curried trout pasty, from the River Cottage Fish Cook book. The pasties would make great picnic food, although they perhaps were not the perfect dinner - I couldn't come up with a very satisfactory accompaniment. Given that Dan sampled a real, home-cooked, Cornish Steak pasty while we were away I was glad to have attempted a lighter interpretation. I think I'd still be living off one of those 3 days later!


St Ives

One or two mini pieces of cookery inspiration from the trip:
Seville Orange Tart - an amazing dessert served up with creme fraiche at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. A little bit bitter and fresh. We had a really lovely, rather over-indulgent Sunday lunch there - this is Dan with his Lobster and Prawn Tourte, which was delicious too:


Leek and Walnut quiche - a surprisingly brilliant combination.
Also, fantastic cake from a bakery in Dorchester in Dorset - we sampled half a slice each of Rhubarb and Ginger loaf cake and Chocolate, Pear and Almond loaf cake in our beachside picnic that day. Yummy scrummy. Glad I don't live close to that bakery - I'd definitely end up over-eating every day!


Padstow

Eggs eggs eggs

Guess what I've been cooking this week?.....

Yep. Eggs indeed.

Having acheived the roaring success that was Eggs Benedict (with a little help from Mr Oliver) it this week seemed like it was time to go beyond the omelette/fried/scrambled egg options once more.

So after a trawl through the recipe shelf two interesting options presented themselves. Although both billed themselves as breakfast dishes I thought they would do very well for week-night dinners.

And so, we have had Rick Stein's pithily titled Mildly spiced potato curry with cumin, black mustard seeds and coriander, topped with a poached egg, which was what it said really. A pretty good, quick, mild curry. I added a couple of handfuls of spinach (got to get in those 5-a-day somehow!) and I think it would be better with chopped boiled egg rather than poached.
And also Silvana Franco's Saucy Eggs and tomatoes.

Both were pretty good options for Veggie dinners, but I did prefer the Tomato Eggs.

And see - it even looked like the picture in the book!


Here's the method for the tomato eggs (for 1 as a dinner)

Take 1/2 can tomatoes and put in a heavy saucepan or deep frying pan
Add 1 clove of garlic (finely chopped)
Also add about 100ml boiling water, salt and papper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
Heat through stirring frequently until the tomatoes start to break down a bit.
Then add about 3/4 of a red bell pepper, cut into strips.
Allow to heat through on a gentle heat for about 15 mins, or until the peppers start to soften (the recipe directs you to grill the peppers then peel off the skin - I couldn't be bothered).
Make to hollows in the sauce mixture and break in the eggs. Leave on the medium heat until the eggs are cooked. I had the oven on anyway, so just finished off the eggs for 5 mins at 180C which sped things up a little.
Serve with bread or toast.

curry for comfort

Families....who'd have'em?!

Last night I felt in the need for tasty, spicy comfort food. We had chicken in the fridge, rice in the cupboard, so chicken biriani was the decision. The BBC website came up with the recipe for me (simplified to aid preparation when feeling slightly befuddled), and it did the trick far better than a large slab of chocolate would have done (that was my fall back solution).

Here's the recipe. It was quick and easy. Perfect for a quick week-night supper. The only downside is that my hands still smell of curry spices.

Chicken Biriani for 2 people (fairly generous portions)

1 dessertspoon vegetable oil
125g basmati rice
1 medium onion (chopped)
4 garlic cloves (chopped)
2 teaspoons grated root ginger
2 chicken breasts (cut into bite sized chunks)
1/4 teaspoon hot chilli powder
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
generous pinch grated nutmeg
150g sheeps yogurt (or any greek-style yoghurt)
60g sultanas
Handful of fresh coriander leaves (chopped)
salt to taste

Heat oil over a low heat and gently stirfry the onion, garlic and ginger until the onion softens.
In a separate pan pour boiling water over the rice (add a shake of salt if you like), bring back to the boil and simmer until nearly cooked - about 10 minutes.
Add the chicken pieces to the onion and garlic and stir fry for 4-5 minutes until there is no uncooked meat showing on the chunks.
Drain the rice and then rinse with a kettle full of boiling water.
Add the spices to the chicken mixture and stir for about 1 minute, then add the yogurt, sultanas, rice and salt to taste.
Stir to mix everything together, then cover, turn the heat down as low as it will go and leave for 4 or 5 minutes.
Add the coriander leaves and stir.
Remove from heat and allow to sit for another 5 minutes before serving.
Serve with yoghurt and mango chutney on the side. You could have some chopped up tomatoes and cucumber on the side too if you fancied them.

Tonight is Pancake Day! Hooray! I have made my pancake batter in readyness, so its pancakes for tea. With sugar and lemon, of course.
I suspect my pancake flipping will not be up-to-scratch, but I will be having a try anyway!

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.