Sarah Discovers How to Eat

NEW POST!

2008-04-23T17:48:00.003+10:00

Hello!

It may have been 22 months since my last post, but I haven't forgotten my little How to Eat blog. I'm not sure how many people (if any!) read this any more, but I do have a couple of friends who still look through this blog for How To Eat references, or reminders when they're cooking. I know I do!

So, in order to help me and anyone else who may still be reading (Notably Clarice!! - HI!), I've reorganised a bit. I've gotten rid of that old index of mine, and labelled my posts - all 318 of them! This should make things easier. There's a list of labels on the sidebar to the right, underneath the blog archive. I've categorised the posts according to chapters and ingredients. If you can't find what you're looking for through there, then simply use the search box on the top left hand side of the page.

Ciao for now!

xox Sarah

Where to from here?

2006-06-18T02:46:00.000+10:00

Hello!

Now that The Project is well and truly over, you may (or may not) have been wondering what I'm up to. I'm currently on holiday in England (aka the sunny land of Nigella), taking a much-needed break, and will be away from home until the end of July. As of yet, there are no plans for a new cooking project, but I am open to suggestions.

In the meantime, check out my Sarah Cooks blog for some overseas cooking and eating action, which has been updated, and which I will endeavour to keep updated while I am overseas. I also have links to other cooking blogs at Sarah Cooks, all of which are worth checking out, in my opinion.

For other cooking project blogs, there is the lovely Ilana, with her When Ilana met Pantry project, which is still going strong. There's also The Next Nigella, a Melbourne lady who is cooking a selection from all of Nigella's books. You should definitely check this one out if you've been missing reading about Nigella cooking!

xox Sarah

Thank-you, arigatou, merci, danke, gracias, terimah kasih, obrigado

2006-06-12T03:25:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone!

Yes, my project is over, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank some people who helped me out along the way.

Firstly, of course, is Nigella - for writing a wonderful book, full of great recipes and engaging prose. It was definitely worth it for me to devote a year of my life to cooking out of this book.

I have to give a special mention to the good folks at Rendinas butchery - the best beef in Balwyn!

I would also like to thank all my friends who have sampled my cooking throughout the year - especially Markii, Uncle Mike & Aunty Helen, Frances, Georgina, Adriana, An, Bonnie and Liam.

And of course there is everyone who has been keeping up with my blog and leaving me messages of encouragement - including, but not limited to Ilana, Lisa, Annauk, Randi, Niki, Gemma, Lotta, Julie, Meg, Snowdrop, Spot, Kirstendk, Rachelak, Foodcrazee, and Ange.

I'd like to especially thank my good friend DG, for hours of culinary discussion, encouragement, advice and general late night chats and e-mails to help me throughout this project.

Most importantly, I have to say thank-you to my family - Mum, Dad and Daniel - who have always supported and encouraged me, and without whom there would be no reason to cook.

Thank-you and goodnight!

xox Sarah

Recipe List

2006-06-07T20:13:00.000+10:00

Well everybody, I've had a week to recover from my project, and have decided to present a list of all the recipes I made, in order! You will note that I actually ended up making 395 and not 385 - when I made the Pheasant with Gin and IT, I accidentally counted it as "355" and not "365", so I had been counting incorrectly after that. Whoops!

1. Duck with Orange Salsa (Fast Food)
2. Noodles with Spring Onions, Shitake Mushrooms and Mangetouts (Fast Food)
3. Icecream with stem ginger or figs (Fast Food)
4. Squid with Chilli and Clams (Fast Food)
5. Ricotta with Honey and Toasted Pine Nuts (Fast Food)
6. Tagliatelle with Chicken from the Venetian Ghetto (Dinner)
7. Ice-cream with Dark Chocolate (Fast Food)
8. Basic Roast Chicken (Basics Etc.)
9. Plain Salad Dressing (Basics Etc.)
10. Summer fruits and cream or ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)
11. Sunday Night Chicken Noodle (One & Two)
12. Pasta with butter and stock cube juices (One & Two)
13. Dijon Mustard Dressing (Low Fat)
14. Pea Risotto (One & Two)
15. Chicken with Spring Onion, Chilli and Greek Yoghurt (Fast Food)
16. Cherried and Chick Pea’d Couscous (Fast Food)
17. Steak Mirabeau (Fast Food)
18. Lacquered Quail (Low Fat)
19. Japanese Flavoured Sour-Sweet Cabbage (Low Fat)
20. One-Pan Chicken (Dinner)
21. Basic French Dressing (Basics etc.)
22. Pasta with Unpestoed Pesto (One & Two)
23. Spaghetti Carbonara (One & Two)
24. Breadcrumbs (Basics etc.)
25. Anglicised Involtini (Dinner)
26. Chambéry Trout (Fast Food)
27. Salsa Verde (Fast Food)
28. Spinach Soup (Fast Food)
29. Cinnamon-hot rack of lamb (Fast Food)
30. Beef and Beans with Pasta (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
31. Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
32. South Beach Black Bean Soup (Cooking in Advance)
33. Mushroom-Steak Sandwich (One & Two)
34. Steak and Kidney Pie (Weekend Lunch)
35. Banana Custard (Weekend Lunch)
36. Lemon Chicken (Weekend Lunch)
37. Sticky Chocolate Pudding (Weekend Lunch)
38. Basic Roast Chicken with roasted garlic and shallots (Basics etc.)
39. Clementine Cake (Basics, etc.)
40. Basic Vanilla Ice-cream (Basics etc.)
41. Fish and Porcini Pie (Weekend Lunch)
42. Chicken & Chick Pea Tagine (Cooking in Advance)
43. Pancakes (Basics etc.)
44. Salmon Fishcakes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
45. Anna’s Chick Pea and Pasta Soup (Cooking in Advance)
46. Roast Cod with Upmarket Mushy Peas (Fast Food)
47. A Moorish Cake (Basics etc.)
48. Onion Tart (Dinner)
49. Rich Shortcrust (Basics etc.)
50. Pumpkin Purée (Dinner)
51. Mixed mushrooms (Dinner)
52. Pea and Garlic Crostini (Dinner)
53. Roast Pepper with Green Olive Paste Crostini (Dinner)
54. Roast Monkfish (Dinner)
55. Mackerel in Cider (Fast Food)
56. Cabbage with Caraway (Fast Food)
57. Buttered Apples (Fast Food)
58. Scallops with Bitter Oranges (Basics etc.)
59. Canard à l'Orange (Basics etc.)
60. Petits Pois à la Francaise (Cooking in Advance)
61. Seville Orange Curd Tart (Lunch)
62. Shortcrust Pastry (Basics etc.)
63. Victoria Sponge (Basics etc.)
64. Mayonnaise (Basics etc.)
65. Seville Orange Marmalade (Basics etc.)
66. Spaghetti Aglio Olio (One & Two)
67. Oxtail with Mackeson and Marjoram (Cooking in Advance)
68. Rhubarb and Muscat Jelly (Dinner)
69. Chicken with Pesto (Fast Food)
70. Canned Pulses (Fast Food)
71. Rhubarb, Muscat and Mascarpone Trifle (Cooking in Advance)
72. Pasta with Cream and Truffle Oil (Fast Food)
73. Aromatic Chilli Beef Noodle Soup (Low Fat)
74. Braised Dried Shiitake Mushrooms with Soba Noodles (Low-Fat)
75. Steak (Low Fat)
76. Mackerel Teriyaki (Low Fat)
77. Vegetable Curry in Vegetable Sauce (Low Fat)
78. Rhubarb Ice-Cream (Dinner)
79. Braised Pheasant with Mushroom and Bacon (Cooking in Advance)
80. Pig’s Bum (Weekend Lunch)
81. Real Custard (Basics etc.)
82. Salmon marinated in Den Miso (Low Fat)
83. Brown Rice Salad (Low Fat)
84. Seaweed and Noodle Salad (Low Fat)
85. Restrained Mushroom Risotto (Low Fat)
86. Roast Garlic and Lemon Dressing (Low Fat)
87. Mushroom Udon Soup (Low Fat)
88. Beef Braised in Beer (Low Fat)
89. Vegetable Miso Broth (Low Fat)
90. Red Wine, Cumin and Onion Gravy (Weekend Lunch)
91. Seville Orange Cream (Weekend Lunch)
92. Shortbread (Weekend Lunch)
93. Sugar-Spiced Salmon with Chinese Hot Mustard (Low Fat)
94. Vegetables with Ginger and Garlic (Low Fat)
95. Shredded Beetroot Salad with Yogurt (Low Fat)
96. Roast Poussin with Garlic and Shallots (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
97. Beet greens with buckwheat noodles (Low Fat)
98. Braised Fennel (Low Fat)
99. Poisson au Poivre (Low Fat)
100. Lemon Pie (Weekend Lunch)
101. Foolproof Rice (Weekend Lunch)
102. German Leeks and Wine (Weekend Lunch)
103. Cauliflower with Cumin (Low Fat)
104. Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad (Low Fat)
105. Beetroot Soup (Low Fat)
106. Half Coq-au-vin (Low Fat)
107. Fine Pasta with Crab (Low Fat)
108. Venison in White Wine (Cooking in Advance)
109. Marsala Muscovado Custard (Dinner)
110. Muskily Spiced Prunes (Dinner)
111. Minestrone (Weekend Lunch)
112. Affogato (Fast Food)
113. Stem-Ginger Gingerbread (Cooking in Advance)
114. Mushroom Risotto (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
115. Chicken with Lemon/Oil/Garlic (Fast Food)
116. Thick Miso Dressing for Beans (Low Fat)
117. Warm Spinach with Lemon (Dinner)
118. Spanish Stew (Dinner)
119. The World's Best Chocolate Ice-cream (Basics etc.)
120. Lemon linguine (Weekend Lunch)
121. Irish Tarte Tatin (weekend Lunch)
122. Lentil and Chestnut Soup (Basics etc.)
123. Blakean Fish Pie (Dinner)
124. Rhubarb Crumble with custard, damn straight (Basics etc.)
125. Tarragon French Roast Chicken (Weekend Lunch)
126. Steak au Poivre (One & Two)
127. Tomato and Rice Soup (Fast Food)
128. Pea Soufflé (One & Two)
129. Marinated Chicken Drumsticks (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
130. Macaroni Cheese (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
131. Butternut and Pasta Soup (One & Two)
132. Children's Chocolate Mousse (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
133. Langues de Chat (Basics etc.)
134. Shepherd’s Pie (uncooked meat) (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
135. The Biscuits (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

136. Fairycakes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
137. Pasta with Anchovy Sauce (One & Two)
138. Pea Orzotto (Weekend Lunch)
139. Roast Leeks (Weekend Lunch)
140. Poached Pistachio-sprinkled apricots stuffed with crème fraiche (Weekend Lunch)
141. Beef Stroganoff (Fast Food)
142. Corner Cut Topside of Beef (Weekend Lunch)
143. New Potatoes with Truffle Oil (Weekend Lunch)
144. Rice Pudding (Weekend Lunch)
145. Special Meatballs (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
146. Shepherd's Pie (Cooked Meat)
147. Moules Marinière (One & Two)
148. Exceptional Salmon (One & Two)
149. Clove-Hot Chilli Con Carne (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
150. Escalopes of salmon with warm balsamic vinaigrette (Fast Food)
151. Quickly-scaled mont blanc (Fast Food)
152. Lamb with Garlicky Tahina (Fast Food)
153. Passionfruit Fool (Fast Food)
154. Lidgate's Chestnut Stuffing (Basics etc.)
155. Chicken with Morels (One & Two)
156. Linguine alle Vongole (One & Two)
157. White Tiramisu (Cooking in Advance)
158. Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor’s Salad (One & Two)
159. Pea Soup (Fast Food)
160. Children's Couscous (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
161. Roast shoulder of lamb (Weekend Lunch)
162. Ratatouille (Cooking in Advance)
163. Green salad with green beans (Weekend Lunch)
164. Sweet Pastry (Basics etc.)
165. Translucent apple tart (Weekend Lunch)
166. Apple and Walnut Crumble (One & Two)
167. Scallops and Bacon (One & Two)
168. Roast-Sugar Sprinkled Peaches (Fast Food)
169. The Tenderest Chicken (Dinner)
170. Blini (One & Two)
171. Mascarpone, Rum and Lime Cream (Fast Food)
172. Butterscotch Sauce (Weekend Lunch)
173. Garlic Mushrooms (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
174. Bean and Pasta Soup (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
175. Gigot Boulangère (Weekend Lunch)
176. Frittata (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
177. Chicken with egg and lemon sauce (Dinner)
178. Chicken Pie (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
179. Spinach, Bacon and Raw Mushroom Salad (Weekend Lunch)
180. Baked Sea Bass with Rosemary (Weekend Lunch)
181. Strawberries in Dark Syrup (Dinner)
182. Proust's Madeleines (Dinner)
183. Linguine with Lardons (One & Two)
184. Chicken with Salsa Verde (Fast Food)
185. Miso Mustard Dressing (Low Fat)
186. Almond and Orange-Blossom Cake (Cooking in Advance)
187. Prawns with Garlic and Chilli (One & Two)
188. Onion Mush (Cooking in Advance)
189. Aubergine Moussaka (Cooking in Advance)
190. Cawl (Cooking in Advance)
191. Roast Pork (Weekend Lunch)
192. Swedish Rhubarb and Horseradish Sauce (Weekend Lunch)
193. Seven-Minute Steamed Chocolate Pudding (Fast Food)
194. Baked Aromatic Spiced Plums (Cooking in Advance)
195. Barbados Cream (Cooking in Advance)
196. Chicken Liver Crostini (Dinner)
197. Grilled Pepper Salad (Dinner)
198. Marinated, Butterflied Leg of Lamb (Dinner)
199. Garlic Potatoes (Dinner)
200. Watercress & Raw Mushroom Salad (Dinner)
201. Poached Peaches (Dinner)
202. Sauternes Custard (Dinner)
203. Tonno e fagioli (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
204. Italian Broth (Cooking in Advance)
205. Gnocchetti di Semolino (Cooking in Advance)
206. Veal, Liver and Bacon Mince Pie (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
207. Cream of Chicken Soup (One & Two)
208. Risotto-Inspired Rice Pudding (One & Two)
209. Consommé (Cooking in Advance)
210. Kafka-esque or Soft and Crispy Duck (Cooking in Advance)
211. Christmas Eve Goose (Basics etc.)
212. Red Cabbage Cooked in the Viennese Fashion (Weekend Lunch)
213. Mini star-topped mince pies (Basics etc.)
214. Frangipane Mince Pies (Basics etc.)
215. Lidgate’s Cranberry and Orange Stuffing (Basics etc.)
216. Turkey (Basics etc.)
217. Gravy (Basics etc.)
218. Roast Potatoes (Basics etc.)
219. Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts (Basics etc.)
220. Bread Sauce (Basics etc.)
221. Cranberry Sauce (Basics etc.)
222. Brandy Butter (Basics etc.)
223. Iced Rum Sauce (Basics etc.)
224. Bubble & Squeak (Basics etc.)
225. Ed Victor's Turkey Hash (Basics etc.)
226. Basil Oil (Weekend Lunch)
227. Tabbouleh (Weekend Lunch)
228. Hummus with seared lamb and toasted pine nuts (Weekend Lunch)
229. Garlic chicken (Weekend Lunch)
230. Aubergine slices with pomegranate juice and mint (Weekend Lunch)
231. Rhubarb meringue pie (Weekend Lunch)
232. Beans wrapped in prosciutto (Dinner)
233. Meringues (Basics etc.)
234. Pasta Sauce with Sausage (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
235. Chicken Patties (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
236. Salmon baked in foil (Weekend Lunch)
237. Pea, avocado and mint salad (Weekend Lunch)
238. Duck Liver Sauce (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
239. Cod with Clams (One & Two)
240. Taramasalata (Weekend Lunch)
241. Crab & Saffron Tart (Weekend Lunch)
242. St. John’s Salad (Weekend Lunch)
243. Baked Caramel Apples (Weekend Lunch)
244. Home carpaccio of beef (One & Two)
245. Golden Root-Vegetable Couscous with Chorizo (Weekend Lunch)
246. Harissa (Weekend Lunch)
247. Great Aunt Myra's Moroccan Orange and Date Salad (Weekend Lunch)
248. Red Slump (Weekend Lunch)
249. Red Mullet with Garlic and Rosemary (Fast Food)
250. Little Gems with Green Goddess Dressing (Dinner)
251. Young Grouse with Mascarpone and Thyme (One & Two)
252. Sweet and Sour Cabbage (Dinner)
253. Pavlova (Dinner)
254. Ham in Coca Cola (Weekend Lunch)
255. Cherry Pie (Weekend Lunch)
256. Lemon Curd (Basics etc.)
257. Braise-roasted lamb with Caper Sauce (Weekend Lunch)
258. A Summer Lemon-Meringue Pie (Weekend Lunch)
259. Bread & Milk (One & Two)
260. Ham & Turkey Meatballs (Feeding Babies & Small Children)
261. Liver with Sweet Onions (One & Two)
262. Gooey Chocolate Puddings (Fast Food)
263. Baked Semolina (One & Two)
264. Baked Sauternes Custard (Weekend Lunch)
265. Chicken Stew with Couscous (Weekend Lunch)
266. Coconut Crème Caramel (Weekend Lunch)
267. Lamb & Bean Braise (One & Two)
268. Apple Crumble (Basics etc.)
269. Zabaione (One & Two)
270. Garlic Fried Potatoes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
271. Fried Prawn Cakes (One & Two)
272. Christmas Queen of Puddings (Basics etc.)
273. Duck with Pomegranate (One & Two)
274. Greek Lamb Stew (Cooking in Advance)
275. Birthday Cake (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
276. Cheese Stars (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
277. Bakewell Tart with Fresh Raspberries (Weekend Lunch)
278. Periwinkles (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
279. Kale with Chorizo and Poached Egg (One & Two)
280. Chick Peas with Sorrel (One & Two)
281. Macaroons (Basics etc.)
282. Hollandaise (Basics etc.)
283. Hollandaise with Saffron (Basics etc.)
284. Flattened, Marinated Quail (One & Two)
285. American Breakfast Pancakes (Basic etc.)
286. Crepes Parmentier with Smoked Haddock (Weekend Lunch)
287. Poires belle Hélène (Weekend Lunch)
288. Beef Stew with Anchovies and Thyme (Cooking in Advance)
289. Fresh Horseradish Sauce (Weekend Lunch)
290. Treacle Tart (Weekend Lunch)
291. Pink Fish and Beans (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
292. Mashed potatoes, truffle oil and warm Santa Barbara shrimp (Basics etc.)
293. Baked figs (Fast Food)
294. Rosemary-Infused Oil (Weekend Lunch)
295. Cold Roast Fillet of Beef (Weekend Lunch)
296. Rosemary and Anchovy Mayonnaise (Weekend Lunch)
297. Warm Cannellini or Borlotti Beans with Garlic and Sage (Weekend Lunch)
298. Tomato Salad (Weekend Lunch)
299. Yorkshire Pudding with Syrup and Cream (Weekend Lunch)
300. Baked Veal and Ham Pasta (Cooking in Advance)
301. Fancy Cake (Basics etc.)
302. Steak Béarnaise (One & Two)
303. Béarnaise sauce (Basics etc.)
304. Ham cooked in cider with leeks, carrots and potatoes (Weekend Lunch)
305. Yoghurt, honey, passion fruit and cream (Weekend Lunch)
306. The Irish Club's Irish Stew (Dinner)
307. Birthday Cake (Basics etc.)
308. Fillet of Beef with Red Wine, Anchovies, Garlic and Thyme (Dinner)
309. Garlic roast potatoes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
310. Thai-Flavoured Mussels (Low Fat)
311. Damson Fool (Basics etc.)
312. Béchamel (Basics etc.)
313. Cheese Sauce (Basics etc.)
314. Vegetable Soup (Basics etc.)
315. Parsley Sauce (Basics etc.)
316. Tagliata (Dinner)
317. Pea and Lettuce Soup (Basics etc.)
318. Lamb with Chick Peas (Dinner)
319. Couscous Salad (Dinner)
320. Turkish Delight Figs (Dinner)
321. Pistachio Crescents (Dinner)
322. Parsley and Ham Patties (Basics etc.)
323. Ragoût of wild mushrooms (Weekend Lunch)
324. Oven-cooked polenta (Weekend Lunch)
325. Cheeses with bitter salad (Weekend Lunch)
326. Stewed apples with cinnamon crème fraîche (Weekend Lunch)
327. Duck Meatballs (Feeding babies and small children)
328. Gypsy Toast (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
329. Stock (Basics etc.)
330. Elderflower Cream with Gooseberries (Basics etc.)
331. Guacamole with paprika-toasted potato skins (Dinner)
332. Cod wrapped in ham (Dinner)
333. Sage and onion lentils (Dinner)
334. Digestive biscuits (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
335. Lemon ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)
336. Lemon meringue ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)
337. Duck (Fast Food)
338. Gorgonzola, Marsala and Mascarpone Crostini (Dinner)
339. Choucroute Garnie (Weekend Lunch)
340. Quince Syllabub (Cooking in Advance)
341. Salade Niçoise (One & Two)
342. Thai Clam Pot (Low Fat)
343. Mostarda di Venezia (Basics etc.)
344. Chestnut and pancetta salad (Dinner)
345. Roast venison fillet with apple purée and rosemary sauce (Dinner)
346. Quinces poached in Muscat (Dinner)
347. Proper English Trifle (Cooking in Advance)
348. Hazelnut cake (Dinner)
349. English roast chicken with all the trimmings – plus some (Weekend Lunch)
350. Onion sauce (Weekend Lunch)
351. Chocolate raspberry pudding cake (Dinner)
352. Roast Loin of Pork (Weekend Lunch)
353. Roast Leeks (Weekend Lunch)
354. Clapshot with Burnt Onions (Weekend Lunch)
355. Custard Tart (Weekend Lunch)
356. Lettuce and Lovage Soup (Basics etc.)
357. Chicken strips marinated in yogurt and honey (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
358. Jam Tarts (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
359. Basic White Loaf (Basics etc.)
360. Sole with Chanterelles (Fast Food)
361. Apple Butterscotch Tart (Weekend Lunch)
362. Raspberries and Cream (Fast Food)
363. Pheasant with Gin and IT (Dinner)
364. Tataki of Tuna (Low Fat)
365. Quick Foolproof Custard (Basics etc)
366. Passionfruit Curd (Basics etc.)
367. Egg mayonnaise (Basics etc.)
368. Lentil and black olive crostini (Dinner)
369. Prawn and aubergine crostini (Dinner)
370. Hollandaise sauce with Seville orange juice (Basics etc.)
371. Panchporan Aloo (Basics etc.)
372. Sauternes and Lemon Balm Jelly (Dinner)
373. Good, thick winter pea soup (Weekend Lunch)
374. Char Siu 1 (Low Fat)
375. Char Siu 2 (Low Fat)
376. Latkes (Basics etc.)
377. Potatoes (Basics etc.)
378. Pecorino and Pears (Weekend Lunch)
379. Loin of pork with bay leaves (Dinner)
380. Rhubarb custard (Dinner)
381. Caesar salad (Dinner)
382. Roasted garlic and shallots (Dinner)
383. Mint, orange and redcurrant jelly (Weekend Lunch)
384. Ceviche with hot garlic potatoes (Dinner)
385. Sauce Verte (Basics etc.)
386. My mother's white sauce (Basics etc.)
387. Gingered Chicken Salad (Weekend Lunch)
388. Cod & Peas (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
389. Chicory and Mustard Salad (Dinner)
390. Mushroom crostini (Dinner)
391. Duck liver crostini (Dinner)
392. Marmite Sandwiches (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
393. The Roast Beef (Weekend Lunch)
394. The Gravy (Weekend Lunch)
395. The Yorkshire Pudding (Weekend Lunch)

The Final Lunch for this blog!

2006-05-31T19:02:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone. Well, the time has finally come. Today is the last day of my project!

THE SUNDAY LUNCH

Now, I'm sure that many people out there have negative memories associated with the ritual of "The Sunday Lunch". I've read Toast, I've seen Eat Drink Man Woman, and I've read lots of articles in culinary and trashy magazines on this subject. However, I think the negative connotations surrounding the Sunday Lunch are more about familial pressures and obligations, rather than the food itself. (Although having read Nigel Slater's wonderful descriptions of not-so-wonderful food in Toast, this is not always the case). And thankfully, I was not brought up with the idea that it was a Good Thing to have the family sitting around the table at a regular time every week, regardless of inclination or hunger. I admit that I am extremely lucky in that, more often than not, eating day-to-day meals together with my family was a natural, enjoyable, and desirable experience. It was especially great that we could have the entire family (Dad, Mum, Daniel and myself) home today to eat this special lunch.

393. The Roast Beef
394. The Gravy
395. The Yorkshire Pudding

I served it with roast potatoes (they don't count as a recipe, as I've made them heaps of times before), and baby beans (from a freezer packet).

In the book, Nigella writes out a Sunday Lunch timetable - for a meal like this, with so many elements that require precision timing, you really have to plan everything out like a "military operation". However, by this stage in the project, I've made over 350 recipes, dozens of dinner parties and lots of lunches. It may be immodest of me to say, but I was confident that I could just wing it, and everything would be fine.

This is our beef, check it out. It's an aged piece of rib-eye, about 2.45 kg. Mum bought it at Rendinas (where else!), and the butcher assured her it was a lovely, lovely piece of meat.

I cooked it at 210C for 90 minutes in total. Whilst it was in the oven, I boiled the potatoes, and made our dessert. I've actually already made all the desserts in How to Eat, so I decided to revisit one of my favourites, the rhubarb meringue pie. As I've made it before, I won't tell you how it was made. (Click on the above link if you're interested, as you should be - it's an amazing pie). One thing I do want to show you though, is Nigella's amazing pastry. Her freezer-processor method is a very valuable tip that I've learnt from this book, which almost always results in a fabulously easy to roll pastry.

This the the excess pastry - just look how elastic and pliable it is!

I cooked the rhubarb meringue pie in our microwave convection oven in the pantry, to leave the big oven free for all the hardcore meat and potatoes cooking.

Next was the gravy. You start off by cooking a thinly sliced onion until soft, then adding sugar and Marsala, and letting it cook slowly until caramelized and very, very soft. (Note: I'd recommend using a large onion, and doubling, or perhaps even tripling quantities. Gravy is good.) Then you add some flour, and then beef stock, stirring it well, and letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. At this point, you can push it through a sieve or put it in a processor, and then leave it on the stove until it's time to eat.

Once the beef was cooked, I took it out of the oven, and let it rest, covered in foil, on Mum's big carving board. Then, I put the potatoes in the oven, made the yorkshire pudding (same method as the sweet yorkshire pudding, but with added salt and pepper), and added it to the oven for the last 20 minutes of cooking time. Whilst they were cooking, I boiled my beans and added the pan juices to the gravy.

And then it was time to eat!!!

Check out that lunch! I'd describe all the dishes, but I think the photos speak for themselves. Mmm... everything was delicious. Nigella's gravy recipe is fantastic, as is her roast potato one.

We sat around the table talking, laughing and eating. We only got through about half of that food, but considering that I'm in study mode and not going to be cooking for a while, this is a good thing.

While Mum, Dad and Daniel were cleaning up the kitchen, I finished off the pie.

Here's what it looks like baked. I really, really wanted to decorate it with some words, so as it was cooling, I melted a bar of dark chocolate, scraped it into a zip-lock glad bag, snipped off the corner and piped out some free-form words onto parchment paper (not very neatly, I'm afraid). I let them set in the fridge, and then arranged them haphazardly on top of the cooled pie to form a kinda Louis Vuitton graffiti pie. (Yes, I'm sticking to the "Louis Vuitton graffiti" description, and not, for instance, "a hyperactive 2-year old's art project").

Again, I don't really need to describe the pie. Y'all know I love pie, and the rhubarb meringue pie is my favourite pie out of the whole book. I'm sure you can deduce that I loved eating it. I should just add that rhubarb and dark chocolate is a winning combination.

But even more exciting than pie (and it's not often you'll hear me saying that), I finally opened that big brown mysterious envelope I received last month! And guess what it was! A signed photo of Nigella!!!!!!!!! Omg omg omg Yay yay yay!!!!! It is totally like the most awesomest thing ever!!

And just in case you were wondering what I wrote on top of the pie...

Thank-you everyone!

"Welcome Back Daniel!" or "I come from the land down under..."

2006-05-31T16:38:00.000+10:00

My brother Daniel came home from Japan today! Yay! My parents went to pick him up at the airport at, like 6:00am, and I was woken up about an hour later with him running into my room and joyfully yelling, "SARAH! Wake up wake up wake up wake up!!!". I woke up.

If you have a look at the bottom my last post, you'll see that last night, I was hunkering down for an intense late night essay-writing session. And I didn't get to bed for another 3 and a half hours after writing that post. So naturally, I was tired. But not too tired to whip up some "welcome back to Australia" sandwiches as Daniel unpacked and showed us all the kick-ass Japanese stuff he bought. SUGOI!

392. Marmite Sandwiches (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

These appear in the Party Food section of the Kiddies' chapter, and are so easy to make. The point of the recipe is not the ingredients, (I mean, who needs a recipe for marmite sandwiches?), but Nigella's method. She instructs you to cream butter until soft, and mix it with some marmite (before you ask, I used vegemite, of course).

Mmm... mushy - I made the butter-vegemite mix dark and salty, as I usually don't even have butter with vegemite.

The soft, creamy mixture is then very very spreadable, which is useful when you have to make dozens of sandwiches, quickly and with plastic white bread. (I used Wonder White, in the delightfully comic-book-camp pink packet). You'll need to slice the crusts off and cut them into quarters.

sandwiches

These are GOOD. Even my mum ate one and liked it, despite not having acquired the taste for vegemite during her Malaysian childhood. I'm not exactly sure why, but they taste miles better than normal vegemite-on-toast. After the sandwiches were made (I only ate 1), and Daniel had finished showing us his awesome stuff, I went back to bed. When I woke up, everyone had polished off the remaining sandwiches, which made me very very happy. Ee... oishii sandoichi! SAIKOU!

I wanted to procrastinate so badly i went to make duck liver crostini

2006-05-30T23:07:00.000+10:00

I was hoping that my essay would be done by this time tonight, but I know now that that was just wishful thinking. It's 11:05pm and I'm only 27.53% of the way through it. And it's only my first, of 4 essays due within a week. Argh!!

Anyway, about an hour ago I took a study break and made some crostini.

391. Duck liver crostini (Dinner)

The method for these crostini is pretty much the same as the chicken liver crostini. The only difference is that Nigella says to omit the capers and anchovies, add some orange zest, and to use Grand Marnier in place of Marsala. It took about 30 minutes to make, whilst listening to Rod Stewart's Greatest Hits. (Yes, it's still in my CD player, and it still ROCKS).

crostini duck liver

Ok, back to the essay now. Duck liver crostini is totally a normal thing to be eating late at night during essay time.

They're pretty good actually, despite my aversion to liver and my stress-induced lack of appetite. And I guess I should mention here that the mushroom crostini and chicory and mustard salad were really, really good. My parents and I have been picking at them all day, and Dad declared the salad dressing "delicious".

Discuss Jean Rhys' treatment of personal cultural dislocation in a postcolonial context in Wide Sargasso Sea.

2006-05-30T12:06:00.000+10:00

Now remember the sauce verte? It looked pretty gross, and I had no idea of when we would eat it. But, I made it on Sunday afternoon, went to work on Sunday night, and came back to discover that my parents had eaten half of it on bread, and were raving about it! Cool! Yesterday afternoon, Mum surprised me with a packet of chips and a latté. (You can see the leftover gingered chicken salad in the background). We ate the chips with the sauce verte and it was deelicious. It tastes sharp and vinegary like a salsa verde, but with the artery-thickening power of mayonnaise. You really can't go wrong.

chips, coffee, sauce verte

Today, before I get properly stuck into my literature essay (hence the weird title of this post), I got through a couple more recipes.

389. Chicory and Mustard Salad (Dinner)

Chicory is out of season at the moment, so I used witlof. (I always used these 2 terms interchangeably; I didn't realise they were 2 different things, but according to the dude at Leo's, they are).

The dressing is Dijon mustard, crème fraîche, cider vinegar and salt, whisked to a thick emulsified dressing with olive oil.

dressing

Then simply toss the dressing through the leaves and you're done.

chicory mustard salad

390. Mushroom crostini (Dinner)

This recipe looks a lot fancier than it really is. The topping for the little crunchy bread rounds simply consists of chopped thyme, garlic and mushrooms, cooked until soft, to which you add grated parmesan. A light sprinkling of chopped parsley completes them. Easy.

mushroom crostini

I'm a bit stressed at the moment with essays, finishing off the project and other not-quite-related antipodean dramas, so don't have much of an appetite (yes, I'm shocked too). However, the mushroom crostini smell really, really good, and I'd be happy to pull them out at a dinner party. The salad looks pretty good too - I'll get my mum to do a taste-test for me later on.

Now I'm back to immerse myself in the world of 1830's Jamaica. Yah man.

Cod & Peas

2006-05-29T18:58:00.000+10:00

388. Cod & Peas

Kids chapter. Quick meal. You cook peas in butter and a bit of liquid (water & lemon juice, or white wine, or vermouth), then add bite-sized cubes of fish (Nigella says cod or trout; I chose trout) and let it cook for a couple more minutes. That's it.

Trout & Peas

It was really easy and quick to make, so if you expect that your kids will like this kind of stuff, then you should definitely give it a go. Personally, I was nonplussed - I thought it was pretty bland, but chacun à son goût, as the French say.

Goodbye to Basics etc.

2006-05-29T17:46:00.000+10:00

I have finished the Basics etc. chapter, woohoo! Lots of good recipes in there - man, it makes me tired just reading through that huge list! I loved all of the Christmas recipes, the cakes, the pies, the crumbles! Nigella's pastry method is fantastic, as is her custard, both of which I can now make without the recipes.

8. Basic Roast Chicken
38. Basic Roast Chicken with garlic and shallots
329. Stock
356. Lettuce and Lovage Soup
64. Mayonnaise
375. Sauce Verte
357. Egg Mayonnaise
282. Hollandaise
283. Hollandaise with Saffron
360. Hollandaise sauce with Seville orange juice
303. Béarnaise Sauce
233. Meringues
281. Macaroons
133. Langue de chat
312. Béchamel
313. Cheese sauce
315. Parsley sauce
322. Parsley and ham patties
376. My mother’s white sauce
314. Vegetable Soup
24. Breadcrumbs
9. Plain Salad Dressing
21. Basic French Dressing
63. Victoria Sponge
307. Birthday Cake
301. Fancy Cake
47. Moorish Cake
359. Basic White Loaf
256. Lemon Curd
356. Passionfruit Curd
81. Real Custard
355. Quick Foolproof Custard
40. Basic Vanilla Ice-cream
119. The World’s Best Chocolate Ice-cream
43. Pancakes
285. American Breakfast Pancakes
62. Shortcrust Pastry
49. Rich Shortcrust Pastry
164. Sweet Pastry
268. Plain Apple Crumble
124. Rhubarb Crumble
59. Canard à l’orange
58. Scallops with Bitter Oranges
65. Seville Orange Marmalade
330. Elderflower Cream
311. Damson Fool
343. Mostarda di Venezia
211. Christmas Eve Goose
154. Lidgate’s Chestnut Stuffing
215. Lidgate’s Cranberry and Orange Stuffing
216. Turkey
217. Gravy
218. Potatoes
219. Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts
220. Bread sauce
221. Cranberry Sauce
222. Brandy Butter
223. Iced Rum Sauce
213. Mini star-topped mince pies
214. Frangipane Mince Pies
224. Bubble and Squeak
225. Ed Victor’s Turkey Hash
367. Potatoes
372. Roasted Garlic and Shallots
366. Latkes
361. Panchphoran Aloo (Potatoes in whole spices)
122. Lentil and Chestnut Soup
272. Christmas Queen of Puddings
39. Clementine Cake
292. Mashed Potatoes, Truffle Oil and Warm Santa Barbara Shrimp

Gingered Chicken Salad

2006-05-29T14:29:00.000+10:00

387. Gingered Chicken Salad (Weekend Lunch)

According to Nigella, if you roast a chicken with ginger rubbed into the skin, the leftover meat will lend itself nicely to an Asian-style salad. I didn't want to go to the bother of roasting a whole chicken, so I just rubbed a breast with bottled minced ginger, cooked that in the oven, and let it cool overnight.

For lunch today, I shredded the meat, and tossed it through some mixed lettuce with water chestnuts and a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar. I notice now that I forgot to add toasted sesame seeds, and intentionally omitted raw sugar snaps, but it didn't seem to make a huge difference to the salad. It tasted quite lovely as it was. The only thing I noticed was that the breast meat was a bit tough, so I'd probably go for thigh next time. Theoretically, I prefer thigh. However, I acknowledge that circumstance and my ever-changing moods usually dictate what I actually end up eating.

Gingered Chicken Salad

Quiet Sunday Afternoon

2006-05-28T15:07:00.000+10:00

Both these recipes are in Basics etc., and are both variations on a basic recipe. I'm not really planning on eating them, but thought I'd better get through them while I had some time to myself at home.

385. Sauce Verte

This is a mayonnaise, with dijon mustard added at the start, as well as some chopped herbs, and blanched spinach. Nigella says you can add capers, gherkins and anchovies, treating it like a salsa verde, but with mayonnaise instead of oil as the binding agent. I like anchovies, I took this option.

sauce verte

386. My mother's white sauce

This one is, unsurprisingly, a variation on the white sauce recipe. In it, Nigella says to crumble a bit of a chicken stock cube with the flour at the start, to add a rounded salty savouriness to the sauce. My one turned out a bit brown, which I think is a combination of the stock cube, and the fact that I overcooked the flour at the start. It smelled pretty good though.

Nigella's mother's white sauce

Goodbye to Low Fat!

2006-05-28T14:19:00.000+10:00

I’ve finished the low fat chapter! I don't think I made the most effective use of this chapter (remember August? Sheesh!). It's a bit outdated to be eating low fat food these days anyway - recent buzzwords include "Low GI" and "low carb". But there are some lovely noodle recipes in here, and the stews are generally pretty good too.

Here are the recipes.

98. Braised Fennel
103. Cauliflower and Cumin
94. Vegetables with Ginger and Garlic

Quick Stuff, or Suggestions for Almost-Thrown-Together Suppers
75. Steak
99. Poisson au Poivre
354. Tataki of Tuna
93. Sugar Spiced Salmon with Chinese Hot Mustard
83. Brown Rice Salad
73. Aromatic Chilli Beef Noodle Soup
87. Mushroom Udon Soup
74. Braised Dried Shitake Mushrooms with Soba Noodles
84. Seaweed and Noodle Salad
76. Mackerel Teriyaki
82. Salmon Marinated in Den Miso
104. Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad
310. Thai-Flavoured Mussels
342. Thai Clam Pot
89. Vegetable Miso Broth
18. Lacquered Quail
19. Japanese Flavoured Sweet-Sour Cabbage
97. Beet Greens and Buckwheat Noodles
95. Shredded Beetroot Salad with Yogurt
105. Beetroot Soup
85. Restrained Mushroom Risotto
107. Fine Pasta with Crab

Salad Dressings
185. Miso Mustard Dressing
13. Dijon Mustard Dressing
116. Thick Miso Dressing for Beans
86. Thick Roast Garlic and Lemon Dressing

Cook and Freeze-Ahead
77. Vegetable Curry in Vegetable Sauce
88. Beef Braised in Beer
106. Half-Coq au Vin
364. Char Siu 1
365. Char Siu 2

I can’t find the link for the “roast garlic and lemon dressing”, but I know I’ve made it, as I’ve crossed it off my list. (It’s not in my index – I checked). Anyway, if anyone knows where it is, please let me know!

Ceviche with Hot Garlic Potatoes

2006-05-27T22:09:00.000+10:00

Tonight for dinner my good friend Frances came over, as well as my Uncle Sonny.

384. Ceviche with hot garlic potatoes (Dinner)

Yes, it's potatoes again.

Ceviche is a South American (I think) way of preparing fish, in which very thin slices of super-fresh fish are steeped in an acidic marinade (citrus juice, vinegar etc), until cooked. "Cooked" here is a chemical term rather than a culinary one. You see, when you cook meat (a protein), you apply heat to it, which denatures the protein molecules (i.e. changing the meat from "raw" to "cooked"). When you make ceviche, the same protein denaturing occurs, but it is caused by a change in the pH levels rather than by heat. It takes longer and doesn't denature the proteins as much as heat would, but I suppose that's the point.

(By the way, please excuse any confusion in my explanation of protein denaturization - I did do chemistry at high school, but that was 5 years ago, and now that I'm an arts student, the mind does tend to get a bit fuzzy).

Nigella says to use a combination of salmon, scallops and turbot (huh?). I didn't know what turbot was, and certainly wasn't in the mood to Google it - I'm currently working on all my final essays for the semester, which means I'm getting a bit sick of our good friend Google - so I omitted it. I was quite keen to try scallops, but am suspicious of their freshness. I once saw super-fresh ones, the little muscles still quivering, on Nick Nairn's program, but that's Scotland. I'm sure I could find properly fresh scallops if I really tried, but at any fishmonger or supermarket close by, they're frozen and watery and quite feral. So we just used salmon.

Luckily, my friend Frances who was coming over for dinner offered to go buy me salmon at a market close to her house, and delivered it to my house in the early arvo. (As I was preparing lunch.)

I sliced it up, arranged it in a dish, and poured over the marinade - a mixture of lemon, lime and orange juices, and balsamic vinegar. It needs about 6 hours to marinate.

About an hour before Frances was due to arrive, I cooked the hot garlic potatoes. I'm not going to explain them. You've seen them (and I've eaten them!) enough in this past week. But goodness, they are delicious. I'd always recommend making a few extra for you to munch on as you finish preparing your meal.

When I took the salmon out of the fridge, I couldn't tell if it was sufficiently "cooked" to be ceviche, because it still looked quite rare.

salmon

However, upon closer inspection, I saw a small bit of fish that had not been covered by the marinade, and it still looked totally raw. Thus, I concluded that the rest of the fish was indeed, cooked enough. Take a look.

look closely

The fish is served tossed through watercress (I used rocket, my usual substitute), with the garlic roast potatoes, and some of the marinade as a dressing.

Ceviche with hot garlic potatoes

It was good! So light and refreshing. The salmon was rich and tender, the potatoes were crunchy, the rocket was peppery and light. A wonderful combination.

Lamb is good

2006-05-27T15:01:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm feeling a lot better than I did last night, and the food we ate today improved accordingly.

I made Nigella's caesar salad, roast lamb racks with mint, orange and redcurrant jelly, roasted garlic and shallots, and grilled asparagus.

381. Caesar salad (Dinner)
382. Roasted garlic and shallots (Dinner)
383. Mint, orange and redcurrant jelly (Weekend Lunch)

Nigella's Caesar salad is different from what I'm used to - there is no bacon or anchovies, the eggs are muushed up into the dressing instead of poached and separate, and she uses potato croutons.

The croutons are made in exactly the same was as the cubed potatoes I made on Thursday. You chop them up, and roast them for an hour in a dish with garlic and oil.

While they were cooking, I made the shallots and garlic. You peel the shallots and bake them for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, you boil some garlic cloves, then peel them, and add them to the oven with the shallots for the last 20 minutes of cooking. (This was done, again, in the microwave convection oven living in my pantry).

Next I made the mint, orange and redcurrant jelly, by stirring some freshly chopped mint and orange zest into some store-bought redcurrant jam.

By this stage the potato croutons were ready, so I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool while I put the lamb racks in (30 minutes at 220C). I put in a tray of asparagus towards the end of cooking time.

To finish off the salad, I had to tear up some cos lettuce leaves, and toss through olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, parmesan cheese and 2 eggs which have been boiled for exactly 1 minute. (This means they're just cooked, but still very liquid). This mixture of ingredients forms a thick, sharp and tasty dressing. All that remained was to add the potato croutons, and lunch was ready...

lamb racks, asparagus and mustard

roasted garlic and shallots

table

closeup of caesar salad

mint and redcurrant jelly

It was a fantastic lunch. The unmarinated lamb (bought from Rendinas, as usual), was tender and tasty, and the redcurrant jelly was a great accompaniment. We all loved the Caesar salad, especially my Dad who thought the croutons were deelicious. The only thing we didn't love were the shallots and garlic - even though they'd had their garlicky-oniony acridness cooked out of them, they were still a bit too hardcore for our palates.

I have never felt less like cooking than right now

2006-05-26T21:22:00.000+10:00

379. Loin of pork with bay leaves
380. Rhubarb custard

These two recipes are from the first menu in the Dinner chapter. There is supposed to be a Casesar salad as a starter, but I was tired and it was cold, and I couldn't be bothered going out to buy fresh free-range eggs for the dressing (they're supposed to be eaten almost raw, so really fresh eggs are necessary).

I cooked this all after I returned home from work.

The pork loin is rubbed with a mixture of olive oil, bay leaves, peppercorns and garlic. (Mum, thankfully, went out to buy the pork for me during the day - I am so grateful.)

marinated pork

Then you place thinly sliced onions around the pork, and bake it at 200C until done.

While it was baking, I made the rhubarb custard - the final of How to Eat's many rhubarb recipes. The recipe says to stew some fresh rhubarb, but I had a bag of frozen pulp in the freezer, which I defrosted for the recipe. To make it, you whisk up eggs, egg yolks and sugar, then add pour over warmed milk and the rhubarb pulp. Pour it into a dish, and it needs to be baked in a waterbath at 160C for 1 hour (or until set). I did this in our rickety old microwave convection oven (which lives in the pantry and is hardly ever used for the oven purpose).

raw custard

So this is the cooked pork... mmm... golden and crunchy.

cooked pork

As it was resting, I made the side dish - tinned butter beans (Nigella says to soak and cook pulses from dried, but I was seriously not in the mood), warmed through with oil and garlic. Then I made the sauce by deglazing the pan with white wine and water.

You serve the pork slices with sauce drizzled over and surrounded by bay leaves.

pork slices

butter beans

Dessert time. This is what the rhubarb custard looks like when cooked.

cooked custard

Now, although it seemed quite set and not-liquid when I shook the dish, when we cut into it, most of the inside was still liquid.

mmm soupy

The edges, however, were set, and the liquid centre was warm and tasted like ordinary pouring custard (i.e. DELICIOUS), with the soft fragrance of rhubarb permeating through. It was quite lovely indeed.

Pecorino and Pears

2006-05-25T20:52:00.000+10:00

378. Pecorino and Pears (Weekend Lunch)

This isn't really a recipe, which I discovered upon actually reading it, but I'd already bought the pecorino and the pears, so I'm counting it.

This combination is a suggested alternative to the sticky chocolate pudding in one of the menus in the Weekend Lunch chapter.

A sharp, crumbly wedge of pecorino cheese, and slices of sweet, crunchy pear. You might not think it, but it's a taste sensation.

I made this in the afternoon, not to eat, but simply to photograph and count in my recipes. Mum and I ended up eating all of that pear and about half that cheese. I wasn't even hungry. It's that good.

Potatoes, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

2006-05-25T14:07:00.000+10:00

Ok, so this is the 2nd of the 3 extra potato recipes I whined about the other day.

377. Potatoes (Basics etc.)

Again, this recipe is suggested as an accompaniment to leftover Christmas cold cuts. It's tiny cubes of potato, cooked in oil with thyme and garlic cloves in a hot oven for an hour.

potatoes

Mmm... delicious. I had these with that split pea soup I made on Tuesday night, which I indeed have thickened out with extra boiled split peas. The soup was pretty good, actually, and the addition of the extra split peas really balanced out the flavour and texture.

Hot Jewish Potato Pancakes

2006-05-24T13:54:00.000+10:00

Here is what Mum and I had for lunch today.

374. Char Siu 1
375. Char Siu 2
376. Latkes (Basics etc.)

Nigella has 2 recipes for char siu (AKA glazed roast pork loin, Chinese style) in the Low Fat chapter. She suggests making up char siu in advance, slicing it, and stashing it in the freezer to use when you want to add some meat to your low-fat supper. (e.g. soup noodles etc). I made both char siu marinades last night, and let the pork loins marinate overnight.

The first marinade contains:
- soy sauce
- tomato ketchup
- hoisin sauce
- sweet sherry
- honey
- dark muscovado sugar

I had all these ingredients in my pantry.

Marinade ingredients (1)

The 2nd marinade seems to just be made up of random shit that Nigella had lying around her fridge. It contains:
- soy sauce
- prune juice
- mushroom ketchup (huh??)
- miso
- mirin
- sesame oil
- garlic
- light muscovado sugar

I used regular ketchup instead of mushroom ketchup, and coca cola for prune juice (it was a long shot, but I just wanted something sweet. And hey, it worked for the ham).

char siu marinade (1 on the left, 2 on the right)

Today, I put the loins in the oven (200C for 15 minutes, then 160C for 30 minutes), and got on with the latkes. I do realize the total inappropriateness of having latkes (i.e. a hot Jewish potato pancake) with roast pork… but I just really, really need to get through these recipes right now. Besides, a latke is a “hot Jewish potato pancake” – there is nothing I don’t like about that description. How could I resist?

So to make latkes, you need to grate up a few potatoes (using a processor, natch)…

grated potato

...then drain the potato pieces, and mix them with some chopped onion, flour (or matzah meal), egg and salt.

Then you just gotta fry the pancakes in hot oil for about 5 minutes a side. I love frying food, it is just so much fun.

I believe I can fry

Latkes!!

Here’s the char siu. Both marinades were pretty decent, even the weird one with the coke in it. I wouldn’t ever use them as a substitute for the real, red-glazed, deliciously greasy char siu that you find in Hong Kong BBQ shops, but for the purpose they were intended (addition of protein to low-fat meals), they are fine.

char siu

Ooh, but those latkes! They’re fantastic! So crispy and oily and totally compulsive.

Lunch

They’re good plain, but I also served the latkes with cream cheese and smoked salmon, which was brilliant. Cream cheese + fried potato and onion = the same flavour combo as in sour cream and onion flavoured chips. In other words, I was in flavour country. It’s a big country.

smoked salmon on latkes

Check it out, I folded the smoked salmon pieces just like I used to at my old job at the buffet restaurant. Man, I remember having to fold hundreds of pieces of salmon a night, and arranging them on huge expensive glass platters to feed the greedy greedy crowds. It was such a crap job.

But onto dessert - the lemon balm and Sauternes jelly which I made last night. After lunch, I unmoulded the jelly, and ate it with my mum. We drowned it in cream, and it was lovely. Very refreshing and light. However, it was unexpectedly alcoholic, which is why I think it didn’t set very hard. Maybe next time I’ll use more sugar syrup and less alcohol. Either way, it tasted good.

sauternes and lemon balm jelly

Cooking on a Tuesday Night

2006-05-23T23:08:00.000+10:00

As of 6:15pm tonight, I officially finished classes for the semester! Yay!

When I came home, I just ate what my mum had cooked - rice and stirfried veggies, and then got on with ploughing through more recipes.

372. Sauternes and Lemon Balm Jelly (Dinner)
373. Good, thick winter pea soup

The soup appears in both the Cooking in Advance chapter, and in the Weekend Lunch chapter. Basically what you have to do is save any stock you have from boiling a ham, and boil it with split peas, a potato and some leek to form a soup. I used a tub of frozen stock I had leftover from the ridiculously salty ham in cider, (watered down substantially) and let the whole thing bubble away as I got on with the jelly.

First step is to make a syrup with sugar and water, and steep some lemon balm (or lemongrass) in it.

syrup

Next, you strain the liquid into a jug, and add some Sauternes. Then you dissolve gelatine leaves in some extra, warmed, Sauternes, and pour that into the jug. Finally, you add lemon juice to make up the volume. I was almost worried that we wouldn't have any lemons (we renovated and expanded our kitchen 3 years ago at the expense of our lemon tree, and now I never remember to buy them), until I saw this...

do we have enough lemons?

My dad has a guitar student, "Reese", who has a grandmother, who has a very fertile lemon tree. She offloaded a whole bunch of them to my dad last week. How lovely and generous of her!

Nigella says to use a 2-pint ring mould, but I only made a half-quantity of the jelly, and decided to use the randomly sized mini-mould that my Aunty Anne gave me.

jelly in moulds

The jellies are now in the fridge; they need to set overnight. Check back tomorrow for the verdict!

And here's the thick pea soup. I basically let it keep cooking until it looked like the picture of the yellow split pea soup in the New Years chapter of Nigella's latest book, Feast. It smelled pretty good too. And I think some sliced frankfurters (proper German ones, from a deli) would be lovely in it.

a good thick winter soup

I tasted it, and it was nice, but still ridiculously salty. I probably should have poured some of the stock away at the beginning, rather than adding water and then letting it bubble back down to its original saltiness. Whoops. I watered the completed soup down, and put the whole thing in the fridge. So now the soup is not too salty, but it's watery, and not "good and thick". If I can be arsed tomorrow, I'll boil up some more split peas in water and then add that to the soup.

I think it defeats the purpose of this soup if it's not like one of those "wonderful grainy, tobacco-tinted purées eaten in Amsterdam - thick, puddingy... smelling of sausage". Although I don't remember ever seeing soup like this on my trip to Amsterdam. To be fair, however, I don't remember much of my trip to Amsterdam at all.

You'll be pleased to know that I also made both marinades for Nigella's low-fat char siu recipes. The pork loins are defrosting as we speak, and I shall cook them tomorrow.

Night night.

Arse damn hell crap!

2006-05-22T23:34:00.000+10:00

I just realised, there are 3 MORE potato recipes just before the panchporan aloo, which I hadn't written on my list!! Latkes, baked cubed potatoes and roasted garlic and whole shallots!!!!!!

Crap crap crap. How am I gonna fit this in?

Hmm... maybe I can just cancel all my shifts at work this week ("DaVinci Code? What DaVinci Code?!... It can't possibly get busy, that's crazy-talk!") and postpone all my essays... ("Sorry, I can't hand in my literature essay because I have potatoes to cook").

I'll work it out.

Grrr...

Panchporan Aloo

2006-05-22T22:31:00.000+10:00

371. Panchporan Aloo (Basics etc.)

This Indian recipe, for cubed potatoes fried in whole spices, appears in the Christmas section of the Basics etc. chapter, and is recommended as an accompaniment for any cold cuts remaining from the Christmas feast. It's been a while since Christmas, but I seem to have missed this recipe. Oh well.

I made it suprisingly quickly, in the 45 minutes between the time I arrived home from uni and the time Desperate Housewives started. In fact, upon reading the recipe it sounds like it would take ages, but the cooking is surprisingly fast, and the eating is disproportinately gratifying.

You cut some potatoes into small cubes (I cut them very small - figuring that the smaller they were cut, the faster they would cook), stir fry them in some oil, and then turn the heat down and cover them. Nigella says to leave them until they're "a little more than half done", which I guestimated would be about 8 minutes. At this point, you remove the lid and add turmeric and red chilli powder, followed by various whole spices. The seeds the recipe calls for are fenugreek, nigella, black mustard, white cumin and fennel. I didn't have fenugreek, so omitted it. I did have nigella (naturally) and fennel seeds, but no black mustard or white cumin seeds. I substituted ordinary mustard seeds and powdered cumin.

Once all the spices are added and stirred in, you have to put the lid back on and let the potato cubes cook through. This took, again, about 8 minutes. I love the way that the addition of tumeric (that's the way we spell it at home, none of this "turmeric" business) instantly dyes everything a vibrant golden yellow.

panchporan aloo

I ate the potatoes sprinkled with freshly chopped coriander, and served with leftover chicken, vegetables and hollandaise sauce from last night's dinner.

dinner

The potatoes are extremely delicious - crunchy and spicy and salty and golden, and so easy! I highly recommend them; they hardly take any time or effort to make, and they're just so good!

Breakfast for a Sunny Day

2006-05-22T22:24:00.000+10:00

As you know, I made passionfruit curd yesterday. And this morning, Mum surprised me by buying a couple of lattés, some croissants and a brioche to have with it for breakfast!

Yum yum yum... I daresay that this curd is better than the original lemon curd. Full of yellow passionfruit goodness!

Dinner

2006-05-21T20:27:00.000+10:00

More recipes…

The way I’m picking the remaining recipes is by looking at my list (typed out, size 12 Times New Roman font), and just going for whatever I haven’t crossed out yet.

This was dinner tonight. It was just a casual meal, for the parentals and I, but it turned out to be quite nice and special.

368. Lentil and black olive crostini (Dinner)
369. Prawn and aubergine crostini (Dinner)
370. Hollandaise sauce with Seville orange juice (Basics etc.)

I started on the lentil and black olive crostini while I was cooking this afternoon, by cooking 30 grams of puy lentils until soft. You gotta process the lentils with some black olive paste / tapenade (available at any supermarket these days), a bit of water to bind, and a teaspoon of Cognac. (Once again I turned to my parents’ surprisingly handy stash of mini-bar bottles, collected over years and years of overseas travel). The mixture can be left in the fridge until needed.

The prawn crostini are pretty easy too – you bake an eggplant in the oven until soft, and cook some prawns in a pan with garlic and chilli. Then you process the eggplant flesh and the prawns together. Ba-da-bing ba-da-boom, second crostini topping.

I had some leftover slices of baguette, all bagged up and ready to roll. They just need to be toasted on each side in the oven, takes about 8 minutes a side from frozen. (See below for the photos).

Now, as for the hollandaise sauce, Nigella says it could be a treat as a “once-a-year accompaniment to plain, baked or grilled white fish and broccoli”, but to treat this deviation from the classical with caution. (Even though I don't really understand why, the result is pretty damn tasty).

In keeping with my use of the retro egg-slicer, I pulled out my mum’s super retro double boiler to make the hollandaise sauce in. I also had Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits blaring, but that’s another story.

retro double boiler

It’s the usual deal, egg yolks over simmering water, into which you gradually whisk cubes of softened butter until it’s all emulsified and sauce-like. At the end, you add a squeeze of Seville orange juice instead of lemon juice. Pretty simple. Hilariously, I got distracted singing to Rod Stewart while using the retro double boiler, and curdled the stupid sauce! So I had to start again, and this time I used my usual bowl suspended over simmering water dealy, and concentrated properly. And that worked fine. I served grilled chicken breasts, and steamed asparagus and brocolli with the sauce.

So here are the crostini. The light ones are the prawn crostini, topped with chopped coriander. The dark, lentil crostini are garnished with a teeny slice of cherry tomato. (Nigella says to blanch, peel and de-seed the cherry tomatoes, but I said "stuff that" and just left them raw).

crostini

Both were quite delicious, but I loved the prawn one! Prawns! Chilli! Garlic! Eggplant! It's like all my favourite flavours conveniently spread on a single, easy-to-eat crostini.

sauce and vegetables

chicken

That is some tasty, tasty sauce. I did have to warn my parents that "this is a mega-fattening sauce", just so that we wouldn't immediately drown all our food in that deliciously buttery-rich sauce. I've liked all of Nigella's variations on hollandaise, and feel no qualms about deviating from the classical.

Wow, I'm amazed that this mish-mash of random recipes resulted in such an elegant dinner! Lucky me.

Ah the randonimity!

2006-05-21T18:23:00.000+10:00

It's crunch time.

10 days to go.

Time for me to do all the random recipes. Ones that I have no idea when I'm going to eat, but just need to be made. I had a free afternoon and an empty house. Time to cook!

366. Passionfruit Curd (Basics etc.)

This is just like the lemon curd, but with passionfruit pulp in place of the lemon juice (unsurprisingly). So you stir eggs and egg yolks, sugar and butter with strained passionfruit pulp over a slow heat until thick and curd-like. At the end, you add one extra passionfruit (including seeds). I used one 170g tin of passionfruit pulp (don't hate me! Passionfruits are ridiculously expensive now... with fresh passionfruit, it would work out at more than $8 for one quantity of curd!)

Anyway, I made it, no hassles... and here's what it looks like.

passionfruit curd

Gorgeous! I tried some on toasted Turkish bread, which was delicious. I'm not sure what to do with the rest, but I suspect that we will get through it very quickly, just eating it for breakfast on toast.

passionfruit curd on toast

Next I thought I'd make egg mayonnaise.

367. Egg mayonnaise (Basics etc.)

Egg mayonnaise is described very simply by Nigella, as "hard-boiled eggs, sliced and masked with light mayonnaise, with or withot a criss-crossing of anchovies on top". Easy!

So I boiled an egg, and pulled out my favourite kitchen gadget - the egg slicer! This one has lived in the 2nd drawer of the kitchen since before I was born, and I've always had a fixation with it. It's just so cool!

egg and slicer

egg in slicer

egg in slicer 3

Hmm... but for some reason, it didn't cut the egg cleanly! Perhaps I was too impatient, slicing the egg while it was still warm. Or maybe it's cos my egg slicer is older than I am.

squished!

sorta sliced

So I salvaged the egg pieces, and arranged them as best I could on a plate, spooned a bit of mayo (from a jar) on top, followed by some anchovies. How I love dem anchovies.

egg mayonnaise

It looks gross on the plate, but it tastes so good!! Eggs need salt, anchovies are salty! And mayo's just good, full stop. It's a no brainer. Mum and I ate this as a mid-afternoon snack.

Now I gotta cook dinner... more recipes coming...

Pig’s bum and tuna

2006-05-20T17:37:00.000+10:00

For lunch today, we had a lovely low-fat griddled tuna dish. Followed by a steamed pudding with lashings of custard. Ooh yeah.

364. Tataki of Tuna (Low Fat)
365. Quick Foolproof Custard (Basics etc)

I chose to reprise the pig's bum because I needed a pudding to go with the second custard recipe in the Basics etc. chapter, and I seem to have already completed all the other puddings and crumbles. The pig's bum is without a doubt my favourite pudding from the whole book.

Just in case you forgot…

The mixture for this steamed sponge is equal parts butter, sugar and flour, with 2 eggs, some baking powder, vanilla extract and milk (so just a normal sponge-cake mixture), with a rhubarb puree mixed through. And apart from the cooking of the rhubarb (which takes a scant 5 minutes), it’s all done in the processor.

pig's bum mixture

pudding in basin

Steamer

You have to put the lid on the pudding basin, and let it steam for 2.5 hours. And in the meantime, I made the custard.

The quick foolproof custard is good for the custard-o-phobes among us (aah.. I remember when I used to be one of them!) because it dispenses with that whole nerve-wracking “stirring over low heat” stage. What you do is whisk some egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a bowl. In a pan, you heat cream with a vanilla pod, and “allow the cream to rise in the pan”, before pouring it over the eggs, and whisking for a good 10 minutes until thick. I had no idea what allowing “the cream to rise in the pan” meant, so I just let it bubble a teensy weensy bit before adding it to the eggs. The custard took about 10 minutes with a KitchenAid mixer on medium heat.

Upon reflection, I don’t know why I didn’t try this custard back in the days when I couldn’t make custard, as it would have saved a lot of bother. But in the end, I guess it’s good that I forced myself to learn how to make custard with old fashioned stirring. Because even though this custard tasted fab, it did have a lot of tiny little air bubbles in it from the whisking, so it didn’t have that lovely voluptuous gloop of real custard.

Nigella says to have cold custard with the pudding, so I set the custard aside while I made the main.

Tataki of tuna is ideally, a long round tail piece of tuna, seared on all sides, and sliced thinly. I had to substitute tuna steaks, as they were all I could find, but the result was still good. I dusted the sides with wasabi powder, and cooked them briefly on a high heat in a cast-iron frypan.

Nigella says to serve with thin slivers of spring onions and a sprinkling of coriander, as well as a side salad of cucumber slices. As for sauces, she suggests a paste made of wasabi powder mixed with soy, or a mixture of soy, sugar and lime juice. I made both, just to try each one.

I also served it with cold soba noodles, dressed with a mixture of all the Japanesey sauces from my pantry – mirin, soy, rice vinegar, and honey.

tuna and cucumber salad

Table

wasabi powder mixed with soy

one bowl

It was a fabulous lunch. The noodles, the tuna, the cucumber, the sauces – all lovely. After plowing through so much of the rich, meat-and-potato heavy food that Nigella favours, this was a refreshing contrast. Goodness, how I love soba noodles! It was so healthy and delicious, and not in that resignedly virtuous way – it actually tasted good, irrespective of its being low-fat.

Mmm… now check out the dessert. I think words are superfluous in this instance; just check out the photos…

Pudding

Custard

one delicious plate

Pig’s bum is totally the best.

Pheasant Fun #3 - [Eating]

2006-05-18T12:03:00.000+10:00

I butchered the pheasant on Sunday night, cooked it on Monday, and we ate it for dinner on Wednesday!

I was working all day, and got home around 6:30. I'd cleverly already asked my mum to heat up the stew and make mashed potato so that dinner was ready when I came home.

Mmm... check it out! How good does that look! It's so cold outside, and this was so warm and comforting. It was miles better than the braised pheasant with mushroom and bacon - I think it's partly because this recipe has much more detailed instructions, so it's harder to screw up. For instance, in this one Nigella instructs you to reduce the sauce to make it thicker. In the original braised pheasant recipe, she doesn't say to do so, and I remember that stew being distinctly unpleasantly watery. Also, marinating the pheasant makes it less tough. Ooh, and the braised pheasant with mushroom and bacon has red wine in it, which I think is gross in stews (e.g. coq au vin, and any other stew... it just makes everything soddenly purple and smelly). This stew has delicious gin and Martini Rosso in it. Here, the sauce is rich and thick and tasty, and just generally gorgeous.

Hurrah for pheasant!

Pheasant Fun #2

2006-05-18T11:33:00.000+10:00

The day after you marinate the pheasant pieces, you can get on with the cooking.

What you do is wipe the marinade off the pheasant, and brown them in a pan with butter. Then you set them aside and cook mushrooms in the buttery-pheasanty oil before again removing these to a plate. Next you brown some baby onions and remove them to yet another plate. (The "baby" onions I got at Coles were suspiciously large, so I used half the number of onions the recipe says to, and cut them into quarters).

Ready to be cooked

At this stage, you chuck some cubed pancetta into the pan, and let it cook until crisp, at which point you add flour, stirring until incorporated into the liquid in the pan. Then you slowly add Martini Rosso (AKA red vermouth), game stock (I used chicken, but don't tell anyone), and the strained marinade liquid, stirring well to make sure it's all incorporated.

Then you return the pheasant, mushrooms and onions to the pan, and cook in the oven slowly for 2 hours. I found, that with my very reduced quantities, the pan was so large that the pheasant pieces were not submerged in the liquid. So, I carefully transferred everything to a smaller ceramic dish, and covered it with foil to cook.

Out of the oven, it looked like this...

Here, you strain the liquid off, and reduce it in a pan until slightly thickened and no longer watery. Then you put the liquid back in the dish, and you can leave it in the fridge for a couple of days until ready to eat.

Pheasant Fun

2006-05-17T21:13:00.000+10:00

What seems like eons ago, I made the fateful dish, braised pheasant with mushrooms and bacon, which I hated. So much so that it took me 9 months to work up the courage to make Nigella's 2nd pheasant stew, the "pheasant with gin and IT". The last time I made pheasant stew, I made it in full quantities (i.e., THREE whole freakin' pheasants), which, at $25/kilo, cost an absolute bomb. This time, wary from my first pheasant experience, I did it in vastly reduced quantities (i.e. only 1 pheasant), and was much more careful about following the recipe to the letter.

363. Pheasant with Gin and IT (Dinner)

This one is, in fact, pretty much the same as the hideous braised pheasant, with a couple of differences - notably, the pheasant is marinated before being cooked, and gin and red vermouth are used instead of red wine.

This is a stew to be made in stages, over a few days. The first step is to joint the pheasant, and put it in its marinade. I probably could have got the butcher (from Prahran Market) to do it for me, but I was tired that day, and I do love a challenge.

WARNING: This process is quite disgusting. Don't look at the photos if you're not comfortable with pheasant carnage.

I used a combination of kitchen scissors, a sharp knife, and my mum's biggest meat cleaver. I must admit, throughout the whole process I felt very badass - like Lucy Liu in Kill Bill, including, disgustingly enough, a delightful incident of pheasant blood splattering across my face.

But back to the task at hand. I took the pheasant out of its bag, only to discover that its head was still attached!! GROSS.

whole pheasant

The first thing I had to do was cut the head off. Then, remembering Nigella's instructions for spatchcocking poultry (haha, "spatchCOCKing"), I cut down either side of the backbone.

Then, I slowly worked the bones away from the meat, to loosen what I would describe as a maryland piece from one side. Then I did the other side.

Next I cut the 2 breast pieces away. And there it was, 4 pieces of pheasant!

neat pieces

Here are the guts. I admit that there are a lot of guts and offcuts. I assume that with skill and experience, I'll be able to do this much faster, and with a lot less wastage, like a real butcher would.

I washed the pheasant pieces, and submerged them in the marinade - gin, Martini Rosso, an orange, peppercorns, juniper berries, an onion, bay leaves and oil.

You have to leave this for 24 hours before cooking it.

I stashed the clingfilmed bowl in the fridge, and set about cleaning my (now very messy) kitchen. And you know, after 15 minutes of concerted dishwashing and bench-scrubbing, it was eerily quiet. You'd have never known about the carnage that had taken place only minutes before...

Check back tomorrow for the remainder of the cooking and eating!

Goodbye to Fast Food!

2006-05-17T19:58:00.000+10:00

I have now completed the Fast Food chapter. Wahoo!

Reminders of and Ideas for Hasty Improvisations

159. Pea Soup
127. Tomato Soup
28. Spinach Soup
72. Pasta with Cream and Truffle Oil
70. Canned Pulses
115. Chicken with Lemon/Oil/Garlic
69. Chicken with Pesto
184. Chicken & Salsa Verde
337. Duck breasts
112. Affogato

Quick After-Work Suppers for Four

249. Red mullet with Garlic and Rosemary
262. Gooey Chocolate Puddings
141. Beef Stroganoff
168. Roast Sugar-Sprinkled Peaches
4. Squid with Chilli and Clams
5. Ricotta with Honey and Toasted Pine Nuts
360. Sole with Chanterelles
171. Mascarpone, Rum and Lime Cream
152. Lamb with Garlicky Tahina
153. Passion Fruit Fool
46. Roast Cod with Upmarket Mushy Peas
151. Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc
1. Duck with Orange Salsa
2. Noodles with Spring Onions, Shitake Mushrooms and Mangetouts
3. Ice-cream with stem ginger or figs
55. Mackerel in Cider
56. Cabbage with Caraway
57. Buttered Apples
26. Chambéry Trout
27. Salsa Verde
7. Ice-cream with dark chocolate
150. Escalopes of Salmon with Warm Balsamic Vinaigrette
29. Cinnamon-hot rack of lamb
16. Cherried and Chick Pea’d couscous
293. Baked Figs
15. Chicken with Spring Onion, Chilli and Greek Yogurt
193. Seven-Minute Steamed Chocolate Pudding
17. Steak Mirabeau
362. Raspberries and Cream

Even though the "Quick After-Work Suppers for Four" are generally made up of a main and dessert, designed to be eaten together, it appears that I didn't always follow these menus. I found that most of the desserts weren't too exciting, but that the main dishes were in general, really good (especially the non-seafood based ones). The "Reminders of and Ideas for Hasty Improvisations" were all great too.

3 chapters down, 5 to go!

Raspberries and Cream

2006-05-15T23:17:00.000+10:00

362. Raspberries and Cream

I've been um-ing and er-ing about whether or not to include this recipe in my list of recipes. It's a suggestion, right in the back of the Fast Food chapter. Nigella says to serve beautiful fresh raspberries with double cream as a dessert (this definitely would not count as a recipe). She also adds a variation, to use if "raspberries aren't absolutely as they should be at the moment", which is all the freakin' time in Australia.

She says to mash up some frozen raspberries, and to fold them through whipped cream, with icing sugar. A crumbling of shop-bought meringues is optional. (But obligatory for me). It's a very simple recipe, no? So like I said, I wasn't sure whether it counted as a proper recipe. However, I remembered that back at the start of my project, recipe number 7 was the obscenely simple vanilla ice-cream with pulverised dark chocolate, also a dessert from the Fast Food chapter. So to cut a long story (somewhat) short, it's being counted.

I chose to make it because Mum and I were in alone tonight, and I happened to have all the ingredients stashed in various places around the kitchen - a tub of double cream, half a packet of frozen raspberries, icing sugar, and the last meringue from a packet I bought months ago, covered in the sugary crumbs of its departed brothers.

I made this during the always too-short news break just before Desperate Housewives, taking heaps of shortcuts. I mixed the still-frozen raspberries with the unwhipped but delectably thick cream, and some sifted over some icing sugar. Then I scraped it into 2 champagne glasses and crushed the meringue on top. I let them sit on the kitchen bench until the first ad-break, by which time the raspberries had thawed sufficiently to be eaten.

raspberries and cream

What a treat! I adore the raspberry & white choc combination, and the similar combination of raspberries and cream works really well - sweet, rich cream against the tart berries. It was super-easy too, and a rather classy dessert to be eaten whilst we were sofa-bound and doona-covered.

one delectable spoonful

And to answer the most important question... Desperate Housewives was awesome - Gabrielle had a catfight with Sister Mary, a nun. It totally rocked.

Happy Mother's Day / Happy Birthday Dad!

2006-05-14T20:36:00.000+10:00

Dad's birthday was on Saturday. Mother's Day is today. Dinner tonight just had to be special.

360. Sole with Chanterelles (Fast Food)
361. Apple Butterscotch Tart (Weekend Lunch)

The justification behind putting these 2 recipes together is that Dad loves apple pie, and Mum loves mushrooms. The sole only takes about 20 minutes in total, so I started by making the tart.
This tart has pastry on the bottom, then a layer of thinly sliced apples (I used granny smith), then a butterscotch paste on top. Nigella stipulates ordinary unsweetened shortcrust pastry, which is a doddle to make. The butterscotch paste contains light muscovado sugar, flour, eggs and cream, and looks like this...

walnut-coloured paste

Given the occasion, I went for dinky presentation and used these super-cute heart-shaped pie tins that my aunt gave me for my birthday.

pastry with apples

w paste

They need to be baked for about 30 minutes in total, which gave me just enough time to make the fish.

Now, even though the recipe is called "sole with chanterelles", I could find neither sole nor chanterelles. When I went to Prahran market on Friday, I went to Damien Pike's wonderful mushroom stall, and got these pine mushrooms, which are yellow like chanterelles. The lovely guy running the stall (which I'm pretty sure was Mr. Pike himself) said they'd intensify in colour when cooked and be lovely with fish. FYI, chanterelles are only available in Australia in August, imported from Scotland. Mr. Pike at the stall says they're his favourite kind of mushrooms in the whole world.

But back to the pine mushrooms.

ooh mushrooms!

You have to cook the mushrooms down in a lot of butter, remove them to a plate, and cook the fish fillets in the mushroomy butter. Another substitution, I used flake instead of sole because I couldn't find sole at Box Hill at 5:45 on a Sunday afternoon. I figured it didn't matter as long as the fish was white, to contrast with the mushrooms.

So, when the fish is cooked, you remove it to a plate, and return the mushrooms to the pan, sizzling it down with white wine and a squeeze of lemon. The mushrooms and their delicious thick yellow sauce go on top of the fish, with parsley to garnish.

Flake with pine mushrooms

This dish was delicious! I really can't fault the mixture of flavourful mushrooms, a buttery brown and yellow sauce and fish. It requires a bit of specialised shopping, but it's just so easy and fast to make! It simply must be tried.

Here are the little tartlets, fresh out of the oven. One thing I noticed was that even though the filling was cooked, the pastry wasn't completely cooked. I had to cover them with foil and put them back in the oven until the pastry was ready. I'm not sure if this is because of the individual tins, but at any rate, I'd definitely blind-bake them next time.

baked pies

apple pies - this was Dad's idea for presentation. Cute, huh?

One heart, with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream

These pies were delightfully cute, adorable even. Despite the name, they weren't sweet at all. Add more sugar if you want it to be properly sweet and butterscotch-like, although I found that vanilla ice-cream added sufficient sweetness.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Birthday Dad!

I love Bread

2006-05-13T16:59:00.000+10:00

As I mentioned previously, yesterday I went in for a huge session of bread baking.

359. Basic White Loaf (Basics etc.)

I am, as a rule, scared of yeast cookery. There’s a reason why the basic white loaf is recipe number 359, and not, say, recipe number 8. In the past, when I’ve tried, I get hard lumps of inedible “bread”, which are more like instruments of torture than breakfast treats. The best I’ve done are Nigella’s soft white dinner rolls, which usually turn out really nicely. But a whole loaf has always eluded me.

But in actual fact, the only scary thing about this recipe was sourcing the fresh yeast. I went to Delicatess deli in Prahran Market yesterday morning and plucked up the courage to ask “do you sell fresh yeast?”. They did, and I got about 125 grams. You might only need 30 grams, but ask for anything less than 100grams and they’ll look at you funny. But don’t worry, it’s mega-cheap. I only paid, like, $1.50 for the piece I got. And trust me, once you start successfully baking with yeast, you won’t want to stop. (See How to be a Domestic Goddess for a massive expansion on this theme).

As I mentioned in my last post, I went the whole hog and made a cinnamon babka (a sweet yeasted Jewish twisty bread) at the same time – kneading the babka dough while the bread dough was proving, kneading the bread dough while the babka dough was proving and so on. It’s a fab upper-body workout.

Here’s Nigella’s method for white bread. It was longer and more tedious than I expected, but not too difficult. Just make sure that if you make it, you read all the timings correctly and leave yourself enough time for all the provings.

The first step is to tip flour onto a worktop, and add yeast, salt and sugar.

mound of flour

Then you slowly pour in tepid water with one hand, mixing it to a dough with the other.

ball of dough

Then you knead the dough for 10 (strenuous) minutes until it’s smooth and less sticky, before letting it sit, covered, for 30 minutes.

ball of dough, proved

Now it needs to be kneaded (hah!) for 3 minutes, before another 30-minute proving session. Once that’s done, you have to squish all the air out of the dough, then “Fold it in half, then in half again, and again, and keep folding the dough over itself until it feels as if you can fold no longer”. Then you need to let it prove for another 10 minutes.

At this stage, you shape the dough, and prove it for a final hour before baking it. By this stage, it was late and dark, I still had my cinnamon babka in the oven (pictures to come soon on Sarah Cooks), and Mum needed to use the oven to make dinner. So, I put the plain bread dough in the fridge and let it prove overnight, as Nigella says is perfectly possible (and often desirable) to do.

loaf of bread before final proving

She says that you may need more yeast if you choose the overnight proving option, but this dough seemed to rise without a problem.

risen in the morning

So, after I got up this morning, I baked the dough at 220C for 25 minutes, and the weird squishy white dough became a loaf of bread!

whole loaf - Yay! It looks like real bread!

sliced

With jam

It was great! It looked like real bread! It tasted like real bread! And it was warm and crusty and fresh! I was ecstatic, and my parents liked it too.

I definitely recommend this recipe, and the overnight proving method if you want a delightful breakfast treat.

Happy Birthday Bonnie!

2006-05-13T11:37:00.000+10:00

Bonnie’s 22nd birthday party was last night. She had a tea party (and by “tea”, I mean alcohol served in teacups), and my contribution to the festivities was some little jam tarts.

358. Jam Tarts

These tarts appear in the Feeding Babies and Small Children chapter, as part of the Cooking-with-Children–slash-Children’s-Party-Food section. And once you’ve made pastry a zillion times before (thank-you Nigella), they’re a total breeze.

You just make the pastry using Nigella’s freezer-processor-ball-fridge method, with flour, butter, yogurt and water. I used half butter, half vegetable shortening because I didn’t have enough butter. Then simply roll out the pastry, cut it into crinkly circles, and line mini-tartlet tins with it. As for the jam inside, Nigella says to use super-cheap strawberry jam, “the sort without one iota of fruit in it”, and to heat it with a bit of water before spooning it into the waiting cases.

jam tarts

They take 15 minutes to bake at 210C, and boom boom, they’re done!

jam tarts

I let them cool, and transported them to Bonnie’s place in little plastic takeaway containers with a piece of greaseproof paper in between each layer.

Bonnie had heaps of delicious little treats...

Mmm... mini toasts

Food - scones, jam, pikelets, biscuits...

Food and teacups

Here's a closeup of the jam tarts on a pretty plate.

Bonnie with jam tart

I thought they were pretty good. The pastry was nice and flaky, and the tarts were the perfect size - one small, sweet mouthful. Bonnie’s mum really seemed to like them; she declared them “the best jam tarts I’ve ever eaten”. Yay! Bonnie’s mum rocks.

And as I seem to be in the mood for immodesty, I may as well mention that this afternoon’s baking session didn’t only involve the jam tarts. It was more of a hot and heavy hardcore baking session.

You see, I finally found yeast at a deli this morning, which meant I was finally able to make Nigella’s basic white loaf (Basics etc. chapter). And, seeing as I don’t know the meaning of “enough is enough”, I also got to work on a South African Jewish sweet cinnamon babka. That one isn’t even in How to Eat - I saw it when I was browsing through Falling Cloudberries at Borders the other day, and just had to have it. Besides, you can’t buy fresh yeast in single-use portions, so you may as well bake a lot of bread at once before the yeast dies.

Stay tuned to both my blogs for pictures and descriptions of both breads. I’m not really used to all this yeast cookery and kneading - such tiring work. My wrists are killing…

Being a cop is ok, but celery soup is pretty exciting too!

2006-05-08T19:34:00.001+10:00

It's cold, it's dark, I'm tired, and all I want is takeaway. But there are only 23 days left of this project, and I really, really need to get through the random and obscure recipes.

356. Lettuce and Lovage Soup
357. Chicken strips marinated in yogurt and honey

Neither of these 2 recipes are too difficult, or contain weird ingredients. The only reason I left them so late is that I could never think of a time to eat them. The soup appears in the Basics etc. chapter, and is suggested as a way to make lovage (a celery-flavoured type of leaf, apparently) the star focus of a soup. As for the chicken, it's from the Feeding Babies and Small Children chapter. Nigella says that marinating chicken helps to make it less tough and fibrous for children to eat.

I decided to make these 2 recipes tonight to boost a dinner of leftovers. The leftovers were, if you're interested, fried rice with salt fish, diced chicken and beanshoots from Minh Xuong on Victoria Parade. Mmm... tasty! Mum also decided to blanch some gai laan (aka Chinese brocolli) to pad out the meal.

I marinated the chicken breast strips it in yogurt, milk and honey after coming home from uni, and then got on with the soup. You basically have to soften a whole lot of green leafy things with butter in a pot (spring onions, lovage, lettuce), then add stock, and let it simmer. If you don't have lovage (which I didn't), you can use celery leaves (which I did).

lettuce soup

Then you blend it, and it's soup!

blended

I have to be honest, I wasn't very keen on this soup. It just looks gross, and for some reason I thought it tasted like cigarettes. (I blame the celery leaves). But Dad didn't seem to mind it, and as he pointed out, significantly, "at least it's full of vegetables... it must be good for you".

The chicken was ok, nothing extraordinary. It wasn't dry or tough though, so I guess it fulfills its purpose of being soft enough for kids to eat.

chicken strips

chicken strips, gai laan, fried rice

So many vegetables! I feel so virtuous and healthy.

Calming Winter Lunch

2006-05-06T16:06:00.000+10:00

I think everyone in my house was in need of a bit of calm today, so I pulled out Nigella's CALMING WINTER LUNCH.

352. Roast Loin of Pork
353. Roast Leeks
354. Clapshot with Burnt Onions
355. Custard Tart

Mum and Dad went out in the morning to buy all the ingredients, and I got to cooking when they came back. The first thing to make was the custard tart - it needs to sit, out of the oven, for a couple of hours to reach "tepid heaven".

So the pastry is Nigella's sweet pastry (see the Basics etc.) chapter, which is simple to make in a processor. It needs to be blind baked (using my fab ceramic pie weights!), then brushed with egg white, and baked for another 5 minutes to set the glaze.

cooked pastry

The "custard" part of the custard tart contains eggs, an egg yolk and vanilla sugar, into which you beat some warmed cream and milk. Then you pour this custard mixture into the baked pie case (being careful not to fill it too high, lest it spill), and bake it for 45 minutes.

pastry with custard

I had HEAPS of custard leftover, so I took Nigella's suggestion of making some mini baked custards, putting them in the oven on the shelf above the pie.

teacups with custard

While they were in the oven, I got on with the pork. Dad bought this lovely piece of meat at Rendinas this morning - they boned the loin, removed the rind, rolled it and tied it... "like an artist", said my dad.

Porrrrk

You can season the loin (Nigella gives 3 options), or leave it au naturel... I chose the ginger & garlic option, as I already had jars of minced garlic and ginger in the fridge, thus making it the easy option.

with ginger and garlic

If you choose the garlic and ginger option, Nigella says to sprinkle the rind with ground ginger before cooking it, for "hot crackling".

Crackling

I stashed the leeks in the oven as well. For Nigella's roast leeks, you slice some leeks into squat logs, cover with olive oil and sea salt, and cook for 30 minutes in the same oven as the pork.

While they were all slowly sizzling away in the oven, I made the clapshot. This is basically equal quantities of swede and potato, which you boil and then mash. To make the burnt onion topping, you slowly cook a thinly sliced onion until soft and brown and slightly crispy (about 20 minutes), before adding a teaspoon of sugar, turning up the heat and cooking for 3 minutes until very dark and crispy.

clapshot with burnt onions

roast leeks

roast pork

The pork was delicious! And it was perfect for a cold Saturday afternoon. This lunch is, indeed, very calming.

Here's the custard tart.

custard tart

And the baked custards...

baked custards

slice of pie

The pie was lovely - just slightly sweet, light and delicate. It wasn't too heavy following the pork, thank goodness. And the baked custards were good too, even though I definitely prefer the pie. Mmm... I hadn't had pie in ages! I didn't realise how much I missed it!

Goodbye to Cooking In Advance!

2006-05-06T11:17:00.000+10:00

I have now finished the Cooking in Advance chapter!!

I have to say, I think that this chapter is my favourite out of the whole book. I mean, it's just got such a high proportion of hit recipes! Those stews! That chick pea soup! The trifles! The baked ham pasta!

The only ones I didn't like were the South Beach black bean soup, the incredibly feral pheasant stew, and the baked spiced aromatic plums. 3 not so good recipes out of 26, (or 23 out of 26 great recipes). That's an 88.46% success rate. Those are pretty good odds.

Here's a look back at all of them...

45. Anna’s Chick Pea and Pasta Soup
32. South Beach Black Bean Soup
209. Consommé
204. Italian Broth
205. Gnocchetti di Semolino
300. Baked Veal and Ham Pasta
210. Kafka-esque or Soft and Crispy Duck
67. Oxtail with Mackeson and Marjoram
190. Cawl
274. Greek Lamb Stew
108. Venison in White Wine
42. Chicken and Chick Pea Tagine
288. Beef Stew with Anchovies and Thyme
79. Braised Pheasant with Mushrooms and Bacon
162. Ratatouille
189. Aubergine Moussaka
60. Petits Pois à La Francaise
188. Onion Mush
71. Rhubarb, Muscat and Mascarpone Trifle
347. Proper English Trifle
157. White Tiramisu
340. Quince Syllabub
113. Stem-Ginger Gingerbread
186. Almond and Orange Blossom Cake
194. Baked Spiced Aromatic Plums
195. Barbados Cream

I really, really love Nigella's stew recipes. In fact, recently I've been craving stew pretty badly... but I've already done them all! I'll have to console myself with another delicious roast for lunch today. *Sigh*... life is tough.

Sarah Discovers How to Eat – Progress Report #11 [April]

2006-05-06T10:34:00.000+10:00

Facts & Figures

Having completed 34 recipes in April, I am now up to 351 recipes, and on the home stretch of my project.

Hits

Pistachio Crescents (Dinner)
Ragoût of wild mushrooms (Weekend Lunch)
Cheeses with bitter salad (Weekend Lunch)
Elderflower Cream with Gooseberries (Basics etc.)
Guacamole with paprika-toasted potato skins (Dinner)
Lemon ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)
Digestive biscuits (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
Duck (Fast Food)
Choucroute Garnie (Weekend Lunch)
Salade Niçoise (One & Two)
Chestnut and pancetta salad (Dinner)
Proper English Trifle (Cooking in Advance)
Hazelnut cake (Dinner)
English roast chicken with all the trimmings – plus some (Weekend Lunch)
Onion sauce (Weekend Lunch)
Chocolate raspberry pudding cake (Dinner)

Misses

The only thing this month that I didn’t like was the lemon meringue ice-cream, because it was insanely sour. But my friend Frances said I’d talked it down too much, because she really liked it. So give it a go and tell me what you think.

My progress

I’m so close to the end of the project! My list of recipes is almost completely crossed off. I can’t believe it. In fact, I have no idea how I’m going to go back to normal cooking and menu planning, but I guess I’ll just take it as it comes.

Now, a piece of (possibly) exciting news. A couple of weeks ago, I received a mystery brown envelope in the mail, postmark UK, with no return address, and the instructions “Do not open until May 31!” on the back. Naturally I think it has something to do with my project… or maybe someone just got my birthday really wrong. Hmmm…

We're having roast pork for lunch today... YAY!

xox Sarah

Happy Birthday Me!

2006-05-03T12:15:00.000+10:00

So like I said, on Saturday night I went out drinking to celebrate my 22nd birthday. However, Sunday was my real birthday, and this was the night of my enormous Nigella-based feast. (How else would you expect me to celebrate?). I went a bit nuts with the food, because I forgot how many people I invited, and kinda just kept telling my friends to “come, come and eat, it’ll be so fun!”. I was a bit paranoid that I wouldn't have enough food, so kept adding more.

The whole menu was…

2 roast chickens, with a mushroom and breadcrumb stuffing
Onion Sauce
Roast Potatoes
Beef sausages
A large rump steak (what the hell, it was already marinated and in the freezer, so why not)
Proper English Trifle
Hazelnut Cake
Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake

So in addition to the trifle and hazelnut cake, which I’d made in advance, I added the following 3 recipes to my list.

349. English roast chicken with all the trimmings – plus some
350. Onion sauce
351. Chocolate raspberry pudding cake

The first thing I made in the afternoon, was the stuffing for the chickens. Nigella’s recipe include bacon, but a few of my mates don’t eat pork, so I left it out. What you do for the stuffing is cook onion (and bacon, if you’re including it) in oil, then set it aside, and cook finely chopped mushrooms in the same pan. Once everything’s cooked down and fragrant, you mix the onions and the mushrooms with breadcrumbs, parsley and thyme.

stuffing

2 of my mates, An and Jess, were spending the day with me, so whilst I was making the stuffing, I delegated the task of peeling 2 kilos of potatoes to them. I then parboiled them in readiness for roasting later that night.

Next thing to do was the chocolate raspberry pudding cake. This can’t be made in advance because it needs to be served warm. And although microwaving the finished cake back to warmth it is an option, it’s easy enough to be made on the night of your dinner itself. To start, melt butter, raspberry liqueur, sugar, dark chocolate, and coffee in a pan until smooth and combined. Next, beat this liquid into sifted flour and cocoa, followed by two eggs. A warning: this mixture is extremely tasty, so don’t be too pedantic about scraping it into your cake tin.

choc raspberry pudding cake mixture

Speaking of which, you pour half the mixture into a lined and greased springform cake tin, cover with raspberries (I used cheaper frozen berries to no detrimental effect), and then the rest of the cake mixture.

choc raspberry pudding cake raw, in tin

Then it needs to be baked for 45 minutes. Now, another word of warning – the mixture is extremely runny, and Nigella advises not to panic or to add more flour. But that’s not the problem. The problem, for me, using my Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen 23cm springform cake tin, was that the bugger leaked on me!! Cake mix was dripping through the sides of the tin and onto the floor of my oven. Luckily, crisis was averted when I shoved a baking tray directly underneath to catch all the drips. And after about 10 minutes in the oven, the cake had firmed up enough to stop dripping, so not too much mixture was lost. Phew!

I should add here, that all the time I was cooking, it was my parents who were cleaning up the house and making it presentable for company. Thank-you!

As soon as the cake was done, I shoved the stuffed chickens into the oven.

raw chickens

The trifle needs some finishing touches a couple of hours before you eat it. You cover it with whipped cream, and a caramel made by boiling orange juice with sugar, and some flaked almonds.

And I started on the onion sauce. It’s a béchamel sauce, with the water used to boil some onions added, as well as the chopped boiled onions themselves. It was at about this point that my friends started arriving.

Here’s Bonnie helping out with the sauce.

Bonnie - "I'm cooking"

roasted chickens

Aren’t they gorgeous? I shoved the potatoes in the oven as soon as the chickens came out. I think roast chickens are such a great food for entertaining - they're easy, delicious, and impressive. Every one of my guests commented on the warm and inviting smell of roast chickens as they entered my house.

And while the potatoes were in the oven, I grilled a steak and some sausages.

why not add a steak?

As might have been expected, my dinner was running a bit late - people started arriving at 7, but we only ate at about 8:30. Sorry guys! At least they had Big Brother to keep them entertained.

I delegated the task of chopping the chickens to my mum - she's an expert.

The key to remaining goddess-like

chicken inside

Chicken chopped up Hainanese style

My mum very cleverly chopped up the chickens into small pieces so we all could get some. Only my Malaysian mates realised this though.

Georgina: Hey, it looks like Hainan chicken rice!
Mark: Yeah! Your mum rocks, she chopped the chickens Chinese-style! Where's the rice and the soup and the cucumber?

Here's the spread.

the spread

Onion sauce - it looks like a vast bowl, but trust me, it gets eaten!

Toni: Can I get the recipe for this sauce?

Sausages

Stuffing

Roast potatoes - not quite as brown as I would have liked, because I pulled them out of the oven slightly early. But we were hungry, dammit!

It's a buffet!

I can't believe it, almost ALL the food got eaten. This hardly ever happens with Nigella-portions. I think we had, like, 3 pieces of chicken, 2 potatoes and half a sausage left at the end of this meat-and-carb orgy. I see now that I forgot to add any vegetables, but no-one seemed to mind. I was pretty stuffed at the end of the meal though.

And here are the desserts. I really loved how they all looked together, similar in shape, yet different in colour, taste, and presentation. In fact, it kinda reminded me of my days working at that buffet restaurant, but without the creepy co-workers.

3 desserts

finished whole choc raspberry pudding cake

hazelnut cake, finished

finished proper English trifle

Inside of choc raspberry pudding cake

The raspberries look fab, glinting red inside the dark cake. But I'd suggest using more raspberries than you think you need - they seemed to become a bit sparser after baking.

This is my dessert plate below, but don't worry, even I wasn't able to finish the whole thing.

one big plate

All the desserts were delicious! We cut the cakes into teensy-weensy pieces so we could all share them and try some of everything. The hazelnut cake was gorgeous, nutty and fragrant, and my dad particularly loved it. He had 3 pieces. The chocolate cake was also beautiful - deep and rich and chocolatey. The trifle went down particularly well, especially amongst my Jewish, challah-loving friends, who were really excited at the prospect of a challah-based dessert. It wasn't too alcoholic, too rich, or too sweet. It was just right, a big bowl of cream-and-berry-swathed deliciousness.

Friends

What a lovely way to celebrate my birthday!

Haha, check it out!

2006-05-01T20:26:00.000+10:00

I went out drinking with some mates on Saturday night to celebrate my birthday, and look what we found in the magazine rack at the bar! Remember that article in Australian Gourmet Traveller a few months back about food bloggers?

How funny!

Happy Birthday to Me in Advance

2006-05-01T20:22:00.000+10:00

It was my birthday on Sunday, and I had planned a mega huge super special feast to end all feasts, which included, naturally, 3 desserts. But being the planning and social-function addict that I am, I had also planned a big night out drinking on Saturday night. So naturally, I had to do some things in advance.

347. Proper English Trifle (Cooking in Advance)
348. Hazelnut cake (Dinner)

I thought that these were good desserts to prepare together, because the trifle requires 8 egg yolks, and the cake needs 8 egg whites. I made the trifle first.

Trifle is a dessert made up of layers, which is served from a bowl. The first layer was made of challah... AKA Jewish bread.

challah

So you start by slicing the challah and cutting off the crusts, then making little sandwiches with the challah slices and raspberry jam. Then you soak them in a Grand Marnier/Marsala/orange juice mixture, and layer them in the bottle of a glass bowl.

The next layer is raspberries. Nigella stipulates fresh, but they're extraordinarily expensive, so I used frozen.

trifle layers - raspberry

The next layer is a custard, made with the 8 egg yolks, sugar, and cream which you infuse with orange zest.

custard layer

At this point, it can go into the fridge and wait overnight. The next day, you put the final touches on the trifle and eat it! I stashed it in the fridge and got on with the hazelnut cake.

The hazelnut cake is, as Nigella might put it, hysterically easy. Simply whisk 8 egg whites until stiff, then fold in ground hazlenuts, castor sugar, lemon zest, and some flour. Spread into a springform cake tin, and bake for an hour. Ta-dah!

hazelnut cake, raw

Stay tuned for photos of the finished products...

The falling leaves… drift by my window…

2006-04-27T01:27:00.000+10:00

Or not, as the case may be. Even though today was the day I designated for Nigella’s DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8, and it’s been bitingly cold for the past 3 weeks, today we were blessed with clear skies, bright sun, and unseasonable warmth. Dang.

DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8

344. Chestnut and pancetta salad
345. Roast venison fillet with apple purée and rosemary sauce
346. Quinces poached in Muscat

The venison is served with peas, and a potato and celeriac mash, whilst the quinces are served with lemon ice-cream.

This dinner is for 8 - I halved all quantities to feed myself, my parents, and my very good friend Frances.

So this afternoon, I poached the quinces. You peel, core and quarter them first, reserving the peel and trimmings (this will help the syrup thicken, you see). To make the syrup, boil up some muscat with water, sugar and spices. Then you put the peel and cores in an ovenproof dish, cover with the quince quarters, and pour the syrup over. They need 2.5 hours cooking, well covered, in a 160C oven.

raw quinces

In the oven - don't worry, I covered them with foil.

After cooking, they should look like… well… Nigella describes this point with the singularly most disgusting image I have ever read: “When you take them out, the quinces will be the colour of old-fashioned Elastoplast”.

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. When I read that, all I could think of was manky old bandaids, all dirty and wet and peeling off injured fingers. How disgustingly munting.

Thank goodness, then, that they actually looked pretty good.

After they cool properly, they go a bit darker.

deeper and darker coloured

While they were cooking, I marinated the venison fillet. The marinade consists of red wine, celery, carrot, onion, juniper berries, peppercorns, thyme and bay leaves. You boil the whole lot up, let it cool, and dunk the venison in it.

marinating venison

I did this early in the afternoon, and then went to uni to hand in an assignment, (2 days late, whoops). But after I came home, there was still sooo much shit to do! I still had to make the rosemary sauce for the venison, the apple sauce, the mashed potato and celeriac, the peas, salad and syrup for the quinces! This is when I realized what a high-effort menu this really is.

I mean, 3 separate wine-based reductions? (In the venison marinade, rosemary sauce, and the quince syrup). Ahem!

Anyway, getting back to it… the rosemary sauce is pretty similar to the marinade, but with the addition of beef stock and some different vegetables. You boil it all up, reduce it, and then add some of the marinade before boiling it again.

The apple sauce involves simply peeling and coring apples, and cooking them until pulpy with butter, sugar, cloves and lemon juice. Maybe I could have just used a SPC jar of apple sauce…

For the venison, you take it out of the marinade, sear it all over, and then put it in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes. It needs to rest for about 30 minutes, so remember to factor that into your timings.

While it was cooking, I peeled, chopped and boiled the potatoes and celeriac for the mash.

Celeriac – what a funny looking vegetable!

It was at about this time that Frances, my dinner guest, arrived. And as a short digression, look at this lovely gift she bought me, prefaced with the comment, “I hope you appreciate the joke”. (I did).

elderflower cordial

You can get it at freakin’ Ikea!!! So yeah, I really didn’t need to get my elderflower elderflower concentrate shipped from Tasmania. D’oh.

I was so tired by this stage, and I hadn’t even made the peas yet. Dammit.

Me: Frances, you don’t really want peas tonight, do you?
Frances: Ooh, I love peas!

Ok, ok. I boiled some peas.

The last thing I made was the salad, which involved frying up pancetta until crisp, then tossing in some chestnuts (thawed frozen, saved from Christmas) and warming it through. Then you toss it through lettuce with a Dijon mustard and vinegar dressing. Boom boom, done.

I didn’t bother serving the salad as a first course, but just plonked everything down on the table together.

pile of mash

venison slices

peas and sauce

chestnut pancetta salad

applesauce

applesauce and meat

This menu, despite all the work, was great! I loved the unusual tastes of everything. The highlight of the menu, for me, was the salad - the mealy and sweet chestnuts contrasted fabulously against the salty pancetta. The flavour of the venison was very unusual but not unpleasant, and was lovely and tender. But that mash was really delicious! There was heaps leftover (as expected), and I’m very excited about eating it for lunch tomorrow with leftover rosemary sauce. And even though I nearly gave up on the peas, I'm glad I made them because they really enhanced the menu, visually and taste-wise. (Imagine how brown everything would have been without them!)

And here’s dessert. To finish it off, you have to strain the liquid away and boil it until thickened, then pour it over the quinces. (See, that’s the 3rd wine-based reduction in this menu).

poached quinces

I served it with the lemon ice-cream, which worked out well, as Frances’ favourite flavour is lemon. Nigella recommends half a quince per person, but we were satisfied with a quarter each. This was a lovely dessert, and finished off the meal perfectly.

quince and ice-cream

Overall, I really enjoyed this menu. But if you were to make it for company, make sure you make it for people who you can count on to appreciate the time and effort and expense. (Like Frances, of course).

Leftover quinces are going to become breakfast, with yogurt. Woohoo!

Mostarda di Venezia

2006-04-26T21:20:00.000+10:00

343. Mostarda di Venezia (Basics etc.)

Now, this recipe is definitely one of those that has been freaking me out for the past 10 months. Even after reading the recipe innumerable times, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be. A jam? A chutney? Some sort of preserve? Well, either way, it’s a way of using quinces, and I finally got around to making it last Thursday.

These are the quinces. I got them at Leo's, naturally.

quinces

You start with 1.8 kilos of quinces, then peel, cut and core them, and cook them with a bottle of white wine, some lemon rind and lemon juice until soft and pulpy.

puréed quinces

At this point, Nigella says to push the mush through a food mill, but they were so soft that a good beating with a wooden spoon was enough to purée them sufficiently. Then you weigh the pulp, and add to it the same weight of sugar, before returning it to the pan and adding candied peel and mustard powder.

glacé orange - I found this at Leo's, the good stuff, "whole, in large jars"

So this mixture goes back on the heat until denser and deeper coloured, "about 20-30 minutes". My mostarda was only on the heat for about 10 minutes when it started to burn and catch, so I immediately took it off and let it cool. It looked deeper coloured and denser, so I felt that it was cooked enough.

cooked

And the next day, I put them in dishwasher-washed jars. Now I've got to leave it for a month before I get to eat it. Nigella has some serving suggestions for it, so I'll see y'all back here in a month's time.

jarred

Thai Clam Pot

2006-04-23T12:13:00.000+10:00

342. Thai Clam Pot (Low Fat)

Clams are surprisingly difficult to find. On Saturday morning, I asked Dad to take me to Prahran Market (the only place where you can ALWAYS find clams). However, he thought it was too far, and said we'd be able to find clams in Kew or on Victoria Parade (the Vietnamese district), both of which are much closer.

Well, there were no clams in Kew. (But on the upside, I did buy the most fabulous egg and bacon baguette at the wonderful Convent Bakery on High street. The baker also gave us a free loaf of light rye and a latté. Sweet!)

egg & bacon baguette (emphatically NOT low fat)

We then headed to Victoria Parade, and started looking at their fishmongers. There were mussels, crabs, pippies, all sorts of fish... but no freaking clams! It was only at the third fishmongers we visited that we found clams. I didn't think looked like clams, but Dad assured me these were clams - the kind that he used to eat growing up in Malaysia. And seeing as I was making an Asian dish, I thought they'd be appropriate.

So I took them home, and soaked them, then drained them, ready to use.

asian clams

This dish is pretty straightforward. Cook noodles in boiling water and set aside. Then heat through garlic, spring onion and dried chilli in a little oil, before adding sake and water, allowing it to boil and then chuck in the clams. I'm used to cooking clams until they open, so I hovered near the stove, watching the boiling liquid, waiting for the clams to open. 5 minutes passed, and not a single one opened. Shit. I got more and more nervous, until Dad came in and told me, "They're not supposed to open, don't overcook them!". Whoops. I guess I'm just not used to handling Asian clams.

So I quickly finished off the dish by taking the clams off the heat and adding fish sauce and coriander, and tossing the whole lot together.

thai clam pot

It was very tasty, although opening each clam individually proved to be a bit annoying. (This is ok if you're eating a big bowl of chilli clams with no accompaniment, but not when you're eating them with noodles.) Next time I make this dish, I'm sticking to ordinary vongole clams!

Goodbye to "One & Two"

2006-04-22T15:56:00.000+10:00

With my making the salade niçoise, I have now officially completed the One & Two chapter!

Here's a look back at all the recipes...

33. Mushroom Steak Sandwich
156. Linguine with Clams
239. Cod with Clams
147. Moules Marinière
148. Exceptional Salmon
341. Salade Nicoise
167. Scallops and Bacon
187. Prawns with garlic and chilli
271. Fried Prawn Cakes
158. Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor’s Salad
261. Liver with Sweet Onions
273. Duck with Pomegranate
284. Marinated, Flattened Quail
155. Chicken with Morels
302. Steak Béarnaise
126. Steak au Poivre
244. Home carpaccio of Beef
267. Lamb and Bean Braise
14. Pea Risotto
128. Pea Soufflé
207. Cream of Chicken Soup
131. Butternut and Pasta Soup
11. Sunday Night Chicken Noodle
66. Spaghetti Aglio Olio
183. Linguine with Lardons
23. Spaghetti Carbonara
12. Pasta with Butter and Stock-cube juices
22. Pasta with Unopened Pesto
137. Pasta with Anchovy Sauce
279. Kale with Chorizo and poached egg
280. Chick peas with Sorrel
251. Young Grouse with Mascarpone and Thyme
170. Blini
269. Zabaione
259. Bread and Milk
263. Baked Semolina
166. Apple and Walnut Crumble
208. Risotto-inspired Rice Pudding

The main important things I've taken from this chapter are some cracking pasta recipes, how to prepare shellfish, and how to enjoy food when it's just for myself. (Although in many instances I have doubled or tripled the recipes with no detrimental effect on the food). In general, the food from this chapter has been highly flavoured, satisfying to eat, and fun (if sometimes very fiddly and time-consuming) to prepare.

Salade Niçoise

2006-04-20T11:51:00.000+10:00

341. Salade Niçoise (One & Two)

I made this for my mother and I for lunch today. This salad involves a lot of fiddly effort. But persevere, because it is so worth it! I got all my ingredients at Leo's supermarket (bar the fresh tuna, which I got at a nearby fishmonger).

I found the method for the recipe in the book to be a bit confusing, so I've decided to itemize it here for your convenience. You have to prepare each of the ingredients individually, and then mix them together at the end.

1. Steam potatoes (I used kipfler, because this is what I found at Leo's. I was ecstatic to see an unusual species of potato and really wanted to try it). Then slice them into thick coins, sprinkle with pepper and olive oil.

kipfler potatoes

2. Marinate tuna strips in olive oil, red wine vinegar and soy sauce.

3. Cover cherry tomatoes in boiling water, peel and quarter.

4. Soak salted capers in water.

5. Blanch green beans. (We happened to have fresh ones which our neighbour gave to us from her garden. Score!)

6. Boil eggs (Nigella says the eggs are optional, but when my mum is eating, eggs are not optional, they're mandatory).

7. Wash salad leaves (I used baby spinach)

8. Get out some anchovies (Nigella says to use proper fresh ones, but we couldn't get any. And I just love the super-salty hairy little anchovies from the jar)

9. Make your dressing. (I pounded a garlic clove with salt, white wine vinegar and olive oil)

ingredients

Once that's all done, you can sear the tuna, and toss all the ingredients together.

Salade Niçoise

It was so beautiful! Every element of the salad melded together so well to form a complete and filling meal. It was just gorgeous. I think the dressing really made it. Delicious!

Check out that egg yolk. Just how I like it.

mega closeup... mmmmmm.....

“Serves 4 fat bastards”

2006-04-18T18:00:00.000+10:00

The choucroute garnie and syllabub form Nigella’s SERIOUS SATURDAY LUNCH FOR 8 – NO HOSTAGES. I added the crostini to the menu because I wanted to use up some gorgonzola which I had lying around.

338. Gorgonzola, Marsala and Mascarpone Crostini (Dinner)
339. Choucroute Garnie (Weekend Lunch)
340. Quince Syllabub (Cooking in Advance)

I have to admit, choucroute garnie, (AKA a big fat German stew), counts as one of those recipes which I’ve been avoiding due to, well, everything. I mean, it’s the pig-heavy ingredients (frankfurters, bratwurst, gammon knuckles), the fact that I’d have to do some special shopping to find them all, and simply because I couldn’t imagine what it would look like or taste like at all. Anthony Bourdain has a recipe (and photo!) of it in his fabulous Les Halles Cookbook, which gave me an idea of what it should be like, and eased my nerves a little bit. However, his recipe is different from Nigella's in that it's more cheffy (naturally) - he tells you to plate it up prettily, specifies smoked pork loin, salted pork belly and boudins blancs, and includes a duck confit and foie gras variation. Ahem. His recipe also has a lot more swearing in it. For instance, the Anthony Bourdain choucroute garnie "serves 4 fat bastards".

I finally made it last night, and served it up to some family friends who I knew would appreciate the effort, even if the food sucked.

We had Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen over, (who have had roast goose, Blakean fish pie, rhubarb crumble, steak & kidney pie and banana custard with us before), as well as Uncle Francis and Aunty Wendy. I haven’t cooked for them before, but they’re really, really cool. In fact, it was Uncle Francis who bought me How to Eat for my 21st birthday last year!

Ok, so here’s the meat. We got it all at Prahran market on Saturday. There’s bratwurst, frankfurters and some ham knuckles. I used less meat than Nigella suggests – she says it doesn’t matter how many sausages you use, as long as everyone can get a piece of each sausage. So you can use less and cut them into smaller pieces.

pile of meat

The choucroute garnie sounds fiddly, but doesn’t really involve that much effort. To start, I softened finely chopped onion in goosefat, then added carrots, the ham knuckles and a bouquet garni. Nigella says to use a popsock to make it, but I only have very very dark ones, and didn’t want a Bridget “dickhead” Jones blue soup happening. I just used a tea strainer.

bouquet garni

So you chuck the bouquet garni in the pot, then add sauerkraut, stir it up, top it with more goosefat, and let it simmer slowly for 2.5 hours.

Pot

While that was simmering, I made the syllabub. You’re supposed to make it a couple of days in advance, but I was short on time and did it all today. The recipe says to steep lemon zest and juice in the alcohol for a day, then strain it, before mixing it with cream and sugar and whipping it up. Once you’ve spooned the mixture into individual glasses, you can leave it in the fridge for 2-3 days. What I did was steep the lemon zest in the morning, and finish it off while the choucroute garnie was cooking. I used a mixture of rosé and quince liquer, which resulted in a lovely dusky pink mixture.

syllabub table

Next, I did the crostini topping, which just involves mixing gorgonzola, marsala and mascarpone (I actually used crème fraîche, because I already had some). This can be stashed in the fridge until it is needed. For the bread part of the crostini, you need to slice up a baguette, brush the little slices with olive oil, and toast them in the oven. They need to be cool before putting the topping on.

So all that was left to do was to boil some potatoes as an accompaniment, and to finish the choucroute garnie. In the recipe, Nigella says that you have to remove the ham knuckles and slice the meat off, but I found that after the 2.5 hours simmering, a gentle prod with a wooden spoon was all that was needed to remove the meat. Then I had to grill the bratwurst and add them to the chourcroute garnie with the frankfurters. 30 minutes gentle simmering later, and the sausages are all heated through and the choucroute garnie is done.

And it was dinner time!

Gorgonzola, Marsala and crème fraîche crostini

These were pretty good. Even my dad liked them, despite the includion of blue cheese.

choucroute garnie

Mmm... it smelled great, and tasted good too. It was pretty salty and sour, but not inedibly so. I think I was supposed to rinse the sauerkraut before adding it (well, Anthony Bourdain says to), but Nigella's recipe doesn't say to do so, so I didn't. If I were to make this again, I'd definitely rinse the sauerkraut. The stew was really rich and tasty - those frankfurters were delicious! I now understand why the German woman at the deli recommended them to me so enthusiastically.

As I said, the stew was really salty, but it went well with the bland potatoes - unbuttered boiled potatoes sprinkled with crushed juniper berries.

Potatoes

Uncle Mike: The potatoes are delicious!

We all ate 1-2 potatoes each, but Uncle Mike greedily ate at least 5 of them. Tsk tsk.

Plate

I brought out the syllabubs (or should that be syllabi?), after dinner, and they looked suitably impressive.

quince syllabi

Quince syllabub - check out the lovely pink colour!

It tasted good, despite the short steeping time. And they're good for dinner parties as they're easy, impressive, tasty, and can be made in advance.

After dinner, Uncle Francis had a flick through my How to Eat book...

Uncle Francis: I think we're going to have to book ourselves in for this "Deeply Autumnal Dinner for 8"... it sounds good... chestnut and pancetta salad, roast venison fillet...

Usually when I have my friends over, we watch DVDs after dinner, but tonight they pulled out a guitar and started playing. Aah, those wacky adults!

guitar time

Boosted by Breasts

2006-04-17T22:08:00.000+10:00

337. Duck (Fast Food)

In the Fast Food chapter, Nigella suggests duck breasts for a quick and easy meal. She gives 3 types of marinades which you can brush onto the breasts, before baking for 20 minutes at 200C. My parents and I had these for lunch today to boost a lunch of leftovers.

1. Honey and Seville Orange (retrieved from the depths of my freezer)
2. Ginger marmalade and soy sauce
3. Grainy mustard with pineapple juice and brown sugar

marinades

marinaded breats

Lunch: Duck breasts (honey & orange at the back, ginger & soy in the middle, and mustard at the front), with leftover penne alla vodka (from Feast, I made it for lunch yesterday), guacamole, lentils, and fish wrapped in parma ham.

We basically sliced the duck breasts up to share, so we could try each flavour. They were all great! The honey and orange one looked the best - the honey in the marinade made the breast go lovely and brown - but they all tasted lovely. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to choose just one. If duck breasts weren't so damned expensive, I'd be eating these all the time!

Ooh, how nouvelle!

A couple of extra things to add...

2006-04-17T15:48:00.000+10:00

First, I forgot to give a description of the digestive biscuits from yesterday. They were nice! But very, very different from the McVitie's original, to which I am hopelessly addicted. The homemade ones aren't crunchy and sweet, but more chewy and plain. (Not a bad thing). They taste more like those Scottish oat biscuits that you might have with cheese. I didn't expect anyone apart from me to like them, but when we ate them after lunch yesterday my parents loved them. And the next day, when my friend Danielle came over, she tried my biscuits and said she really enjoyed them. She had 2.

Secondly, you may remember that my brother's in Japan at the moment. I chatted to him online last night.

Sarah says:
Daniel, read this
http://sarah-discovers-how-to-eat.blogspot.com/2006/04/arriba.html

Daniel says:
ok
nice
the venison sounds so good
the fish on lentils look great

Sarah says:
venison? i haven't made it yet

Daniel says:
hence "the venison sounds so good"
cos I remember we had it last time and it was nice

Aww! What a great bro. The last time we had venison was the venison in white wine, which was indeed very nice.

And finally, in response to Ilana's question about the silver tub which held the lemon meringue ice-cream, it's from Trampoline Gelato. When you buy a 4-flavour take-home pack, they give it to you in one of those spunky metal containers. Trampoline Gelato is, in my opinion, the best ice-cream in the world. I might just have to keep going back and buying more ice-cream to get more of those metal containers. Oh, life is tough.

Arriba!

2006-04-15T20:47:00.000+10:00

This morning my parents and I went to Prahran Market and spent a bomb on exotic ingredients – bratwurst, frankfurters, duck breasts, venison fillet, smoked ham knuckles, puy lentils and so on. The market is closed every day of Easter except Saturday, so I had to get in while the getting was good.

We got back at around midday, and I started on lunch.

331. Guacamole with paprika-toasted potato skins (Dinner)
332. Cod wrapped in ham (Dinner)
333. Sage and onion lentils (Dinner)
334. Digestive biscuits (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
335. Lemon ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)
336. Lemon meringue ice-cream (Weekend Lunch)

Now, I know that looks like a lot of recipes, but I only made the first 4 today. The 2 lemon ice-creams were made last week when I had some free time, and I felt like pulling them out today.

The plain lemon ice-cream is simply lemon juice and zest, icing sugar and whipped double cream. All you do is stir it together, put it into a shallow container and chuck it in the freezer.

As for the lemon meringue ice-cream, you whip some cream, add yoghurt, lemon curd, lemon juice and zest, and some crumbled meringue nests. You fold it all together into a big billowing pile of deliciousness.

lemon meringue ice-cream

In fact, at this point it was hard to put it in the freezer – it tasted so good, I could have eaten most of it right then and there!

Anyway, that was Tuesday. Today, Saturday, I made the meal that preceded the ice-cream.

This menu is basically Nigella’s EARLY-AUTUMN LUNCH FOR 6, with ice-cream and biscuits in place of the hazelnut cake she suggests for dessert. I halved all ingredients to feed my parents and I.

I started by putting the potatoes for the potato skins in the oven. Next were the lentils. They need to be simmered for 45 minutes with an onion, some sage and a couple of garlic cloves.

While the potatoes were baking and the lentils were simmering, I made the digestive biscuits, which were very easy. In fact, the most difficult thing about the recipe is sourcing the main ingredient – spelt flour. This has been my main obstacle in making this recipe for the past 10 months. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a packet of organic wholemeal spelt flour at the market in the morning. Score!

So to make the biscuits, you put the spelt flour in the bowl of a KitchenAid, with sugar, baking powder and oatmeal, and then rub in butter and shortening. Then you bind it with a bit of milk, and roll it out.

rolling out

They take about 15 minutes to bake.

The fish fillets are simply brushed with melted butter, wrapped in Parma ham, and brushed with butter again. I couldn’t find cod at the market, so I used rockling fillets. You can prepare the fillets in advance and bake them at the last minute.

fish on tray

Ok, so once the potatoes are baked, you cut them in half, scoop out the fluffy middles, sprinkle the skins with salt and paprika, and bake them until crisp. Nigella says to mash the scooped-out potato flesh to make another side dish.

By this stage, the lentils were cooked, so I finished them off by turning them in a pan with some oil, softened and chopped onion, and sage leaves.

lenticche in a pan

The guacamole has to be made at the last minute, to prevent brownage. All you need to do is mash up some avocado with lime juice, salt, spring onions, green chilli and coriander.

potato skins and guacamole

This was the first course. I put the fish in the oven whilst we were eating this.

I loved the potato skins! I haven’t eaten potato skins since I was a small, potato-obsessed child. And because they don’t need to be eaten hot, they’d be great made a few hours in advance for a cocktail or dinner party.

And onto the second course…

fish on lentils

lunch plate

The ham was quite salty, but it went well with the bland fish, mashed potatoes and mealy lentils. They also looked extremely impressive, which was a bonus.

Here is our dessert. It's lemon meringue ice-cream in the metal container, and the plain lemon ice-cream in the tupperware container.

ice-cream and biscuits

Surprisingly, I much preferred the plain lemon ice-cream - it had a much better texture and flavour. The lemon meringue ice-cream was ok, but it had a lot of ice-crystals in it, and was very, very sour. It must have become more sour as it froze, because it was perfect before I froze it. Even though Nigella says "it needs an edge to it", I think that adding a bit of extra sugar wouldn't hurt. Or if not adding extra sugar, definitely take Nigella's sugestion of serving it drizzled with honey or extra lemon curd.

ice-cream and biscuit

Delighfully refreshing!

Elderflower Creams with Kiwiberries

2006-04-13T01:02:00.000+10:00

330. Elderflower Cream with Gooseberries

Elderflower panna cotta with stewed gooseberries - it sounds like a very exotic and complex recipe, no? Something to take the whole day to slave over and then to serve up to a crowd of appreciative guests, all suitable impressed by your culinary prowess.

Well, it's not. And you'll just have to believe me when I tell you how pathetically easy it is to make. I basically made these in the morning, thinking "I may as well get through a recipe", and ate them late that night with my parents, for "a little something with coffee". Who knew it would turn out to be such a spectacular dessert!

The recipe is in the FOODS IN SEASON section of the Basics etc. chapter, and in it, Nigella naturally urges you to use fresh heads of elderflower, and steep them in warm cream to form the base of the dessert. However, I didn't know where to get fresh elderflower, and I couldn't even find elderflower cordial anywhere. Help was at hand though, when my friend DG pointed me in the direction of the Ashbolt Farm website. They're a Tasmanian farm who make, among other things, elderflower concentrate! So I ordered some bottles a few weeks ago, in preparation for making this.

So, to make the creams, you infuse some double cream with fresh elderflowers (or in my case, I used a 1:10 ratio of concentrate to cream), then add some sugar and stir it through. Then you soften some gelatine leaves in water, squeeze them out and whisk them into the cream. Finally, you pour them into clingfilm-lined teacups, and stash them in the fridge.

It took about 15 minutes in total (plus 30 minutes steeping time), and some basic stirring, pouring and whisking.

Here's what they looked like once set. Lining the cups with clingfilm makes them very easy to unmould.

set creams

The accompaniment is stewed gooseberries. You may remember that in December I had gooseberries with Uncle Mike and Aunty Helen, but I haven't seen them in the stores recently. I was planning on substituting with kiwi fruit, as they taste pretty similar to gooseberries. However, last week I found these little babies at Coles - kiwiberries! They're like kiwi fruit in the shape of a berry. Perfect!

kiwiberries

So I treated these just like Nigella does the gooseberries - cooking them on a medium heat with sugar and water, and then reducing the syrup to thicken it.

kiwiberries

Once that's done, you can eat!

beautiful!

The elderflower creams were incredibly beautiful! And the combination of sweet, smooth, softly-set elderflower cream and sharp kiwiberries was fantastic. It was so simple to make, but tasted brilliant. I'd be ecstatic if I received something like this in a restaurant. It was just gorgeous.

Stock

2006-04-12T23:59:00.000+10:00

Nigella makes no secret of her use of stock cubes, and she reassuringly encourages us to do the same. However, she does have some crackin' recipes for home-made stocks and broths.

204. Italian Broth
209. Consommé

I suppose it might seem strange to make the complex stock recipes before making the basic one, but oh well.

329. Stock (Basics etc.)

Nigella suggests making a basic stock out of leftover carcasses from roast chickens. I fossicked around in my freezer, and found both a chicken carcass, and a goose carcass, which looked pretty good. So, you get your carcasses, put them in a pot with carrots, celery, an onion stuck with 2 cloves, peppercorns and parsley stalks. Then you cover it with cold water, bring it to the boil, skim the scum off the surface, and let it simmer for about 3 hours.

stock

I found that the goose/chicken combination resulted in a very golden, gelatinous broth. At this point, Nigella says to let it cool, strain it into measured containers, and then freeze it. I didn't want to make this stock, only to have it languish, forever forgotten, in my freezer, so I thought I'd use some straight away. (And besides, it smelled way too good not to eat!)

I couldn't think of any How to Eat recipes that needed stock, and for which I had all the remaining ingredients close at hand, so I looked to Giorgio Locatelli, and made his Radicchio and Red Wine Risotto. This also enabled me to use the sole radicchio which I'd bought at Leo's last week.

So basically this risotto is a very normal one, except that you sautee thinly sliced radicchio with the onion at the start, and use red wine instead of white. Then it's just a matter of gradually ladling in hot stock until the rice is cooked.

stock + risotto

Giorgio says to serve the risotto with a couple of grilled wedges of radicchio on top, which I did.

red wine and radicchio risotto

It was lovely! And a good, simple dish to show off the fabulicious stock. I have heaps of stock left... can't wait to use more of it!

Gypsy Toast

2006-04-12T13:03:00.000+10:00

Gypsy toast, AKA French toast, AKA eggy bread, AKA bread dipped in egg and fried, has always been known as "Bombay Toast" in my household. We were first introduced to it by my grandfather, who himself first tried it in Bombay.

me and ah kong

That's my grandfather there, holding me when I was 1 year old... did you know that in addition to showing us Bombay Toast, he introduced me to coffee. Right after that photo was taken. Seriously. Little Sarah was given her first sip of coffee at the tender age of 1. No wonder I'm totally addicted now!

328. Gypsy Toast (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

Nigella suggests giving Gypsy Toast, cut into funny shapes with cookie cutters, to children. Easy peasy.

I used a bell, a tree and a mini gingerbread man shape, as well as a couple of grown-up whole slices, for a grown-up appetite.

frying toast

My breakfast - with a cup of coffee. My grandfather would be proud!

It seemed like a waste to just check out the bread scraps, so we decided to fry them up too.

frying scraps

Yum yum.

Must've been a pretty big duck!

2006-04-09T19:04:00.000+10:00

We had a relatively simple dinner tonight - spaghetti and meatballs.

327. Duck Meatballs (Feeding babies and small children)

This is the last of Nigella's 4 meatball recipes.

31. Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
145. Special Meatballs
260. Ham & Turkey Meatballs

For the balls, she says to mince up a duck breasts with a chopped, cooked cooked onion (fried in the rendered duck fat, naturally), milk-soaked bread, orange zest, an egg and cinnamon. I actually used meat from other parts of the duck - duck breasts are very expensive here, so the last time I needed duck breasts, I bought the whole duck (much cheaper per kilo), used the breasts, and froze the remaining carcass for this recipe. I defrosted it last night, and cut off as much meat as I could with a very sharp night tonight.

The meatball mixture turned out quite soft and gloopy, but they didn't break up or fall apart at all. You form the mixture into balls, fry it, and then drop the balls into a gently simmering tomato sauce.

I know that Nigella likes her meatballs with rice, but we always prefer it with pasta.

duck meat ball pasta

It was very nice, and perfect for a freezing cold night. But you know, after having tried all of the meatball recipes, I truly believe that the original (plain beef) was still the best.

Autumn Lunch for 3

2006-04-08T15:38:00.000+10:00

A quick note: on Friday morning last week, my brother Daniel left on a trip to Japan. It's going to be very quiet around my house for the next 9 weeks. Not to mention the mountains of leftovers that are inevitably going to pile up. Aaah...

Anyway, today for lunch my parents and I had Nigella's AUTUMN LUNCH FOR 6, in halved quantities.

323. Ragoût of wild mushrooms
324. Oven-cooked polenta
325. Cheeses with bitter salad
326. Stewed apples with cinnamon crème fraîche

In my most recent progress report, I mentioned that unusual ingredients will be featuring strongly in the next couple of months. For today's lunch, we needed a few: crème fraîche, gorgonzola, assorted mushrooms and chicory. I had initially planned to get up early on Saturday morning and go to Prahran Market with my dad, but I kinda stayed out late on Friday night and ended up sleeping in… whoops. (In retrospect, I have no idea what part of my brain thought it would be conceivable for me to get up early on a Saturday morning).

So Dad, with all his quick-thinking intelligence and endless patience, suggested we go to Leo’s supermarket, a mere 5 minute drive away from home. We used to go there quite a bit when I was younger, but not so much recently for some reason.

And oh my god, Leo’s was awesome! They had all the best ingredients, in the one convenient supermarket. They’re a bit pricier than Coles or Safeway, but so much better!

We got chicory, gorgonzola dolce, proper French crème fraîche, interesting mushrooms (photo below), quinces, chicory, radicchio, marinated octopus, dolmades, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. Leo’s rocks! And because it’s so conveniently located, we managed to get back home in time for me to cook lunch.

This recipe for polenta doesn’t involve much work at all. All you have to do is heat up some stock, gradually whisk in the polenta, then stir it over heat until it boils and thickens.

Polenta

Then you spread it into a buttered dish, cover with foil, and shunt it in the oven for an hour.

Polenta

Now, the mushrooms. These are the ones I got from Leo's - button mushrooms, swiss brown, and a "3-in-1 gourmet pack" with enoki, shiitake and pink oyster mushrooms.

Mushrooms

Chopped Mushrooms

To transform these mushrooms into ragoût you need to cook onion, garlic and celery until softened, then add red wine, marsala, a bay leaf and some thyme. In a separate pan, you cook the mushrooms in lots of butter and oil until softened, before adding more wine and marsala and letting it simmer. Once the wine in both pans has simmered away, you add the onions to the mushrooms. Then you add flour and hot stock to the now empty onion-pan, cook it until it's a bit thicker, and then pour that into the mushrooms before letting the whole thing simmer for 10 minutes.

And if you think that sounds confusing - it was. I was extremely glad when I got to the "simmer for 10 minutes" stage, after having used at least half my pots, pans and utensils.

While it was simmering, I made the salad. Very simple and delicious it was too. It's just chicory leaves tossed with gorgonzola cheese, and a strong dressing (oil, vinegar and a couple of anchovy fillets). Actually, Nigella says to use lemon juice, but I had none, so white wine vinegar it was.

Chicory - not available at all supermarkets, but conveniently packaged and sold at Leo's!

Gorgonzola dolce - Oh my god DROOL.

I have to admit, all the time I was making lunch, I kept picking at that gorgonzola - cutting off little pieces, putting them on a chicory leaf and eating it. Amazing. Actually, it was so compulsive that I think it's amazing we had any left for the actual lunch.

mushroom ragout

Polenta

chicory salad

Plate

Mmm'hmm... this was an absolutely gorgeous lunch! I never really liked polenta before, but this version, strongly flavoured with vegetable stock, was delicious. I'm always a big fan of mushrooms, and I loved the different textures and mushroom flavours in it. Obviously, I adored the salad, but not my parents - they get spooked by blue cheese and don't like the strong flavour. Such a shame, I had to eat most of the salad by myself. Sigh.

We cleaned up the kitchen while I prepared the dessert. This one's very quick and simple. The apples are peeled, cored and cut into pieces, and then stewed with sugar, a cinnamon stick and orange juice. You only need to cook them for a couple of minutes until slightly softened. As for the crème fraîche, all you need to do is stir in some calvados and cinnamon.

apples and crème fraîche

It was a very light, non-stodgy dessert. The perfect way to finish off a lovely lunch.

Béchamel's Variation No. 3

2006-04-07T15:46:00.000+10:00

322. Parsley and Ham Patties

Nigella gives this recipe as a suggestion for using up leftover parsley sauce. Basically, you mix up cold mashed potato, leftover ham, parsley sauce and an egg, and form them into patties. In the recipe, she doesn't actually say what to do with these patties, but I figured that she meant for them to be crumbed and fried, much like the salmon fishcakes.

I had no breadcrumbs at home, but cannily made some out of wholemeal toast.

These ham cubes are leftover from that inedibly salty ham in cider that I made a few weeks ago. In my salt-induced despair, I was ready to chuck the whole lot out, but thank goodness my mum had the presence of mind to take the leftover slices, and soak them overnight in water, before chopping the de-salted slices up into little chunks and freezing them. Thank-you Mum!!

mash potato

frying patties

I ate them with peas.

lunch

They tasted good, but the salmon fishcakes are much, much nicer. Also, I'd recommend not being too generous with the parsley sauce, as it really softens the potato mixture and makes it hard to shape into patties.

Sarah Discovers How to Eat – Progress Report #10 [March]

2006-04-06T16:35:00.000+10:00

Facts & Figures

I made 31 recipes in March, and I am up to 316 recipes. I’ve got 2 months to do about 80 recipes. Easy!

Hits

Baked figs (Fast Food)
Cold Roast Fillet of Beef (Dinner)
Yorkshire Pudding with Syrup and Cream (Weekend Lunch)
Baked Veal and Ham Pasta (Cooking in Advance)
Fancy Cake (Basics etc.)
Steak Béarnaise (One & Two)
The Irish Club's Irish Stew (Dinner)
Birthday Cake (Basics etc.)
Vegetable Soup (Basics etc.)
Tagliata (Dinner)

Misses

Ham cooked in cider with leeks, carrots and potatoes (Weekend Lunch)

My progress

Most of the remaining recipes fall into 3 categories – those that I’m saving for a special occasion (e.g. the chocolate-raspberry pudding cake), those that contain hard-to-find ingredients (e.g. poached quince, and those that just plain freak me out (e.g. the second pheasant stew and the mostarda di venezia). However, 10 months into the project, I’ve been able to source almost all of the hard-to-find ingredients, or at least think of suitable alternatives. So I think that we’ll be seeing a lot of interesting and unusual recipes over the next 2 months!

xox Sarah

Arctic Summer Lunch for 4

2006-04-02T11:52:00.000+10:00

How ironic, that my cooking of Nigella's INDIAN-SUMMER DINNER coincided with the first truly cold day of the year. With a maximum of 18C, bitingly cold Melbournian winds and patchy rain, I was freezing! But on the upside, I got to wear my new red duffel coat from Dangerfield when I went to Rendinas to buy our meat.

317. Pea and Lettuce Soup
318. Lamb with Chick Peas
319. Couscous Salad
320. Turkish Delight Figs
321. Pistachio Crescents

And what a beautiful piece of meat it was. In the recipe for her lamb with chick peas, Nigella specifies "lamb noisette", which you slice into individual rounds and arrange atop the chick peas. Lamb noisette is not a cut of meat commonly found in Australia. The last time I was supposed to use lamb noisette was for the Cinnamon-hot rack of lamb, and there I substituted rack of lamb. In this case, though, I thought I should have a go at finding some actual noisette. According to a random butchery website, noisette is a "rolled saddle of lamb, wrapped in a thin layer of fat".

The fab butchers at Rendinas didn't know what noisette was, but were happy to improvise. Sadly, they were out of loin to make a noisette roll, so they got a lamb leg for me, tunnelboned it, and gave me a spiffy cloth-netting thing in which to cook the lamb. This was to prevent it from unfurling during cooking. How wonderfully helpful of them!

lamb!

Just before I start to describe the cooking process, let me just say - I only had 5 hours sleep the previous night, so I was kinda walking around the kitchen in a goofy daze, creating a huge disorganised mess as I went. So forgive me if this post follows the same pattern.

To start, I boiled my pre-soaked chick peas in water, to which I'd added an onion, and some garlic cloves. I then marinated the lamb in a mixture of chilli, garlic, and a finely chopped red onion.

The next stage was to make the pistachio crescents, because I wanted them to be out of the oven before the lamb went in. (Because I was cooking a lamb leg, and not noisettes, I figured that I'd just have to cook it for as long as a normal roast - about 1 hour for that amount of meat). The pistachio crescents are just like those fabulous almond shortbread biscuits that my mum's Greek friend makes, which are delightfully crumbly and blanketed in icing sugar. To make the pistachio crescents, you beat butter with a wooden spoon until very very soft, and then add sifted icing sugar, flour and ground pistachios (which I ground in the processor). Then you shape them into crescent moons, and bake for about 25 minutes. You're supposed to get 12 out of the mixture, but I could only manage 8.

crescents

So, I baked the cookies...

baked crescents

And once they came out, I turned up the heat and put the lamb in. Placing the stocking on the lamb was a 2-woman job - one to hold the stocking open, one to put the meat into said stocking.

stocking'd lamb

It was during all that baking time that I got on with the side dishes. The pea and lettuce soup contains oil, peas, spring onions, peas (duh), iceberg lettuce and stock, cooked until soft, then puréed in a blender. It's meant to be served chilled, so I just stashed it in the fridge.

Next was the couscous salad - soak couscous in boiling water, add olive oil and vinegar, and then stir through finely chopped cucumber, tomato, red onion and parsley.

It's advisable to prepare the figs before you eat the main course, because this gives them time to cool to room temperature before youe at them. To make them, you make a syrup out of sugar, water, rosewater and orange flower water, and pour the hot syrup over the figs.

From here, all I had to do was finish off the chickpeas and slice the lamb. Once they're cooked and drained, you turn the chickpeas in oil and dried chilli pepper until oil-slicked and warmed through. At the end, you stir in some blanched, peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes.

cooked stringed lamb

And finally (after what seemed like an age for me), lunch was ready.

table

chick peas on plate

couscous salad

lamb on chickpeas

pea & lettuce soup

Dad really loved the pea and lettuce soup, which surprised me, as he is not usually a fan of cold soups. The rest of the meal was lovely as well - the flavours and textures of all the different dishes meld very well together to create a satisfying but not too heavy lunch.

And onto dessert...

Mum has, in recent times, become a huge fan of figs (especially the baked figs of the Fast Food chapter), and she was very excited to try these ones. And they were very, very nice.

crescents and figs

But even better were these amazing pistachio crescents! They were light, crumbly and full of pistachio-flavour. These were, without a doubt, the highlight of the meal. And definitely a recipe worthy of frequent repeats.

on plate

Mum: You only made 8?!?!?!

What a magnificent rump

2006-04-02T01:47:00.000+11:00

Tagliata, or versions thereof, were my dinner party staple, B.P. (that is, Before Project). It’s so simple and delicious, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be everybody’s dinner party staple. A huge piece of steak is marinated overnight, then quickly grilled, allowed to rest and then sliced into delicious rags of meat. I used to make it with the Thai-influenced flavourings of Jamie Oliver’s carpaccio recipe (Return of the Naked Chef), and serve the meat on a bed of mixed lettuce.

316. Tagliata (Dinner)

This recipe is hidden away as a suggestion in the MIDSUMMER DINNER FOR 8. Nigella’s recipes involves marinating a large rump steak in olive oil, lemon zest, peppercorns and thyme. I got my mum to buy steaks for me, and she came home with these two magnificent (and massive) steaks...

magnificent rump

I thought they might be a bit much for just the two of us, so I marinated them both and stashed one in the freezer for future consumption.

one for the freezer

I marinated them late on Thursday night, and grilled them for lunch on Friday.

grilled steak

While the meat was resting, I made a thin sauce by deglazing the pan with marsala and water. Then I sliced the meat, arranged it on a plate, and drizzled it with the sauce.

sliced tagliata

I served them with oven-baked fries (not a contradiction, I'm sure), and some mixed lettuce.

Lunch

Ordinarily, at this point I'd provide my opinion of the dish, but I think in this instance, words are unnecessary. Just look at the total gorgeousness of our lunch!

Beautiful!

Béchamel's Variation No. 2

2006-03-30T15:08:00.000+11:00

315. Parsley Sauce

The second variation on the béchamel recipe is for parsley sauce, which is "heavenly... to blanket broad beans". To turn ordinary béchamel into white sauce, you infuse parsley stalks with the milk, and add blanched and chopped parsley leaves when you pour the strained milk into the butter-flour mixture.

We had the parsley sauce broad beans thing for lunch today, to bulk out a lunch of leftovers (vegetable soup and Clarice's cheesy aubergine bake).

parsley sauce

I used one frozen packet of broad beans, boiling them for a couple of minutes, letting them cool, adn then removing the tough outer skin from each bean. You'd think that this would be the type of kitchen task that I'd avoid like the plague. However, I really, really love broad beans. The tough skin would simply impede the swift enjoyment of the tender bean within.

Broad beans in bowl, discarded skins in LK coffee cups.

And here is our lunch - crusty bread, broad beans and parsley sauce, leftover aubergine bake and vegetable soup. How delicious! And vitamin filled!

lunch

broad beans blanked in parsley sauce

The parsley sauce was really good on the broad beans, but it seemed a bit of a palaver - I don't know if I'd bother making the whole thing just for a regular lunch. However, for an occasional meal, it's a nice change from the usual.

megacloseup

Soup and Béchamel

2006-03-30T02:09:00.000+11:00

So here comes the first variation on béchamel – cheese sauce. It’s the same thing as béchamel, but with a pinch of cayenne added at the start, and grated cheddar added at the end. Boom boom, no sweat. Nigella gives the cheese sauce recipe, but doesn’t suggest a use for it, so I looked to another domestic goddess, my friend Clarice, (a.k.a. DG) for an idea. She has a recipe for a cheesy aubergine bake, which sounded too delicious to pass up. I made it for lunch today, and in addition, I decided to make Nigella’s vegetable soup, which directly follows the béchamel recipe in the Basics etc. chapter.

313. Cheese Sauce (Basics etc.)
314. Vegetable Soup (Basics etc.)

The vegetables in the vegetable soup are an onion, carrots, a turnip, a parsnip, a potato, a stalk of celery, and a leek. On the page, it looked like a lot, but fabulously, when I walked into Coles, I discovered this thing called “Soup Mix”, which contains all of those vegetables (except the leek), in correct quantities, neatly shrinkwrapped and arranged on a Styrofoam tray, for only $2.97. SCORE! I did buy a separate leek though; it was $1.28.

soup mix

Anyway, the soup is very easy to make. You start by peeling and chopping all the vegetables…

cut and diced

…and then chopping them medium-fine in a processor. From there, you cook the vegetables gently in some oil and butter until softened, add a litre of stock and a bouquet garni. Then you can just leave the pot alone, letting the soup simmer for about 40 minutes.

While this was simmering, I got on with DG’s aubergine bake.

This dish has 3 components made in 3 different pans (aubergines, tomatoes, white sauce), which can either be done all at once or one after the other depending on how dexterous and confident you are! The cheeses do make a difference, but feel free to substitute them depending on what you have in the fridge!

I was feeling quit dexterous today, (and hungry too!), so I made it all at once. DG says to use mozzarella cheese in the cheese sauce, but as Nigella's cheese sauce uses cheddar, I felt that I had to go with that option. Basically, for this recipe, you fry eggplant slices and tomato slices until slightly softened, and then layer them in a baking dish with cheese sauce and feta cheese.

cheese sauce

1st layer

cheese sauce and tomato

Feta

Ready for oven

Clarice says to finish with a layer of aubergine slices, and then sprinkle with grated parmesan, before baking at 200C for 20-30 minutes. When it was cooked, it looked all hot and bubbly, so I let it sit, out of the oven, while I finished off the soup.

To do this, all you need to do is add a bit of sherry to the pot, and then process the soup until it reaches a desirably soup-like texture, (which all depends on preference). I like mine to be smooth enough that you don’t see the vegetables, but chunky enough for you to feel them. If that makes any sense at all. I was kinda scared whizzing up piping hot soup, but I did it on a low speed, and covered up the processor chute, so luckily there were no dangerous spurts of hot liquid anywhere.

piping hot soup

And then it was time to eat.

Baked bake – served with balsamic salad

Soup bowl

Nigella’s vegetable soup is amazing. Daniel only took one spoonful before declaring it “instantaneously brilliant”, and I must say I totally agree with him. What a simple and delicious way to eat your vegetables.

I absolutely loved Clarice's cheesy aubergine bake, but I knew all along that I would. I mean, a recipe by Clarice? Containing aubergines? Tomatoes? 3 cheeses? You can't go wrong with that!

Back to basics...

2006-03-30T00:49:00.000+11:00

As I reach the home-stretch of my project, each day I find myself reading and re-reading my list, searching for one of the few remaining recipes that I can cook and then cross off.

Today, I found a recipe which I could cross off without actually cooking.

312. Béchamel

Béarnaise may be my favourite sauce, but béchamel is unquestionably the most useful.

I have to admit, that upon first seeing the recipe, I was a bit confused - yes, Nigella says it is the most useful, but she doesn't actually suggest any uses for it! There are a whole bunch of variations though, for which she has serving suggestions.

But then, when I read the actual recipe again, I realised that (duh!), béchamel is white sauce is béchamel is white sauce... More importantly, I've made it at least half a dozen times before, in various recipes... I just never counted the béchamel itself in my list of recipes which I've made.

41. Fish and Porcini Pie
123. Blakean Fish Pie
128. Pea Soufflé
178. Chicken Pie
207. Cream of Chicken Soup
257. Braise-roasted lamb with Caper Sauce
300. Baked Veal and Ham Pasta

There you go.

Meanwhile, stay tuned. The variations on a theme of béchamel will be coming over the next few days!

How pretty, the fool!

2006-03-28T21:36:00.000+11:00

311. Damson Fool (Basics etc.)

Nigella writes, "damson fool is the recipe for which I wait most greedily". It's in the FOODS IN SEASON section of the Basics etc. chapter, which comprises suggestions and recipes for "the foods whose short season it would be criminal to ignore". Naturally, she refers to the seasons in England, so the chapter has almost no practical application for me down here in Australia. Firstly, as I'm in the southern hemisphere, our seasons are back-to-front from England's. Secondly, and more importantly, many of the seasonal foods Nigella writes about are totally unavailable in Australia - purple-sprouting broccoli, for example.

This is not to say that I have abandoned this section completely, though. When Seville oranges were in season, (in July), I went a bit nuts and made the Seville Orange Marmalade, canard à l'orange and scallops with bitter oranges and a Seville orange curd tart. And as for those seasonal foods which never appear in Australia, I've made some substitutions so that I can, at the very least, try out the recipe. For instance, for Nigella's Young Grouse with Mascarpone and Thyme, I substituted quail for the grouse.

Similarly, when I made the damson fool tonight, a bit of clever engineering was required. In the recipe, Nigella says to cook 500grams of damsons, then stone them, and mix them with sugar, spice, and whipped cream. Damsons do not exist in Australia, but damson-related products are technically available. That is, if you have a generous friend, who doesn't mind finding some and sending them to you specially from England. Thank-you DG!!

As you can see in the photo below, I am now the proud owner of a small bottle of damson gin, and a jar of deeeeelicious organic damson preserve. The damson preserve is by Duchy Originals, bought at Fortnum and Mason's, and the alcohol is from this company called Bramley & Gage, which make a wide variety of fruit liquers.

damson products

By the way, I also got a couple of bottle of quince liqueur, and one of raspberry liqueur. Can anyone guess which recipes I'll be making with those?

alcohols

Ok, so back to the recipe. In the absence of fresh damsons to cook, my method of choice was to whip up the cream with the sugar in one bowl, and mix the jam with some cinnamon, and some damson gin in another bowl. Then I folded both together.

mixture

I was basically making this recipe just to taste it, not to serve as a proper dessert, so I made it in approximately half-quantities. This was mainly because we've never had fool before, so I wasn't sure if we'd like it. Also, I didn't want to be too extravagant with the damson preserve, as it's hard to come by. In total I used about 150ml cream, a couple of big spoonfuls of the preserve, 2tsp of icing sugar, a pinch of cinnamon and just a few drops of the gin.

This made one large glassful, which I shared with my parents as a snack tonight.

How pretty, the fool!

It was lovely - sweet and creamy and full of damsony goodness. Honestly though, it might have been a bit much in larger quantities. Surprisingly, my parents really really liked it. I thought they might find it a bit too rich or sweet, but they didn't think so at all. Then again, they didn't see the half-tub of double cream that went into it...

Mmm... I love eating mussels!

2006-03-24T22:23:00.000+11:00

Mussels fall into that category of "things Sarah tries to avoid cooking". This may seem bizarre, as I love to eat mussels, and they're not that hard to cook. But the thing is, really, really fresh mussels aren't easy to come by. At Box Hill they can be pretty hit or miss, and I never really feel like driving all the way to Prahran or Fitzroy just for mussels. But when I went to Box Hill this morning, the mussels I saw there this morning looked good, so I was in business.

310. Thai-Flavoured Mussels (Low Fat)

This dish took a grand total of 10 minutes to make. The first stage is to finely chop up some Thai-style flavourings - garlic, ginger, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves - and cook them in stock until soft. I used dashi, but Nigella says you can use anything you like. Then you add finely chopped chillies, then the mussels themselves. Finally, you pour over a mixture of boiled water, lime juice, mirin and fish sauce, and let it cook until the mussels are steamed open. To serve, you throw in some chopped coriander.

It smelled absolutely heavenly! Before the How to Eat project, my cooking repertoire relied heavily on mod-pan-Asian flavours, which were so popular throughout the early years of this decade. Since starting the project, I've not been eating this type of food so much. I've missed it!

Just one note - Nigella's recipe feeds one, and I doubled it to feed my mum and I tonight. This wasn't nearly enough! I don't think you need more mussels, but adding vegetable or noodles would really help, especially considering how fragrant and strong the broth was.

But overall, this tasted absolutely lovely! And to think, there's no added fat in the dish at all. Great stuff.

Friday Lunch

2006-03-24T22:20:00.000+11:00

Nigella must really love garlic-roasted potatoes. They appear at least 3 times in this book, off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are more references to them scattered throughout. They also reappear in Feast, and probably in many of her New York Times and Delicious Magazine columns. I've made one of the How-to-Eat-versions already - for a dinner party in which the garlic potatoes accompany a butterflied, marinated leg of lamb.

308. Fillet of Beef with Red Wine, Anchovies, Garlic and Thyme (Dinner)
309. Garlic roast potatoes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

These dishes aren't intended to be paired together, but following on from that dinner party, I thought meat and roast potatoes would make a good combination. (Indeed, garlic roast potatoes with anything makes a good combination). I started off by making the potatoes - chucking potato chunks and whole unpeeled garlic cloves into a baking dish, covering with oil and then shunting in a 200C oven for 45 minutes. While they were cooking, I did the beef.

The fillet of beef sounds very fancy on the page, but is more homely and simple on the plate. (And no less lovely for that). What you do is cook some aromatics - shallots, garlic, anchovies and thyme - in olive oil and butter, and then remove them from the pan. In the fragrant oil you sear a fillet of beef, and pour brandy and red wine over, letting it bubble up. Then you return the aromatic garlic-thyme mush to the pan, cover it, and let the beef cook on either side for about 10 minutes. In this way the beef is "braising, frying and steaming all at the same time; as it cooks it breathes in flavour".

Once the beef's done and it's resting, you deglaze the pan with a bit of water and butter, before adding the beef juices that have seeped out of the beef. Slice up the meat, pour the sauce over, and it's done!

meat and potatoes

Meat - the sauce turned out a bit chunkier than I'd serve to company, so if you're planning this for a dinner party, don't be lazy like I was. Pull out your processor and get the shallots minced fine.

I served it with some designer lettuce for a lovely lunch.

plate

It's quite obvious why Nigella loves garlic roasted potatoes so much - they're delicious! I improved on them from last time, cutting them slightly larger so that they wouldn't be so tooth-breakingly hard.

The beef and sauce had a really deep flavour, thanks to all those anchovies and the red wine. The flavours really complimented the beef well, and infused into the meat itself because of the cooking process. It was quick to make as well. I highly recommend this dish, this combination of dishes, for a casual-yet-special family lunch, for a dinner party, for any occasion!

The Chocolate Cake Verdict

2006-03-24T00:56:00.000+11:00

So, the Chocolate Birthday Cake. As I said previously, I took a slice to work on the day I made it (Sunday) to share with my workmate Daniel. Mum & Dad also had a slice each that night. But this still left about 75% of the cake which needed to get eaten. Over the next few days, I ate a few more slices, but I also brought it around to share with people.

I took a couple of slices to uni the next day to share with my mates. We ate it at our favourite cafe, while discussing diets, exercise and healthy eating. (Irony!)

Adri gives it the thumbs up!

On Tuesday, my brother ate a slice.

Daniel: Sarah, this cake is fantastic. It's not dry, even though it's a few days old.

And on Wednesday, I brought some to work to share with Bonnie and Michael...

Michael eating cake

It was ok, but I think it was getting a bit dry by this stage.

Tonight I polished off the last slice. In order to salvage it from 5-day old dryness, I took a tip from Nigel Slater's 24-Carat Brownies, which I have yet to make, but really, really want to. For complete and utter indulgence, he suggests serving his already "dense and fudgy" brownie with vanilla ice-cream and warm chocolate fudge sauce. I microwaved the last slice for about 20 seconds, topped it with a scoop of Connoisseur vanilla ice-cream, then heated up some leftover chocolate sauce (from the poires belle Hélène), and poured it over the cake and ice-cream.

I ate this and watched David Lynch's Lost Highway on DVD. Perfect end-of-week relaxation!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2006-03-19T23:04:00.000+11:00

I trust that by now you're all nursing your post-post-St. Patrick's Day hangovers. And here is, in this author's humble opinion, the perfect, hangover-salving meal.

306. The Irish Club's Irish Stew (Dinner)
307. Birthday Cake (Basics etc.)

The choice of Irish stew is a pretty obvious one, I must admit. But the birthday cake is more of a stretch. You see, in the run-up to St. Paddy's day, my friend DG made a dreamy-looking version of Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake. Ever since she showed me the gorgeous photo, I'd been craving it. Bad. I didn't have any chocolate cake. And unfortunately for me, the Chocolate Guinness Cake is in Feast, not How to Eat. Help was at hand though, with Nigella's chocolate birthday cake, in the Basics etc. chapter of How to Eat. Phew!

The birthday cake is a pretty basic double-layered chocolate cake, covered in a ganache. To make the cake, you melt butter, chocolate, sugar and condensed milk together, and then stir it into sifted flour and cocoa together, followed by 100ml recently-boiled water and 2 eggs.

cake mix

I put the cake into 2 sandwich tins, and baked it at 180C for 25 minutes. While it was baking, I got on with the stew.

Nigella's Irish stew consists of layers of ingredients. Firstly browned lamb chops, then vegetables (carrots, onions, parsnips), then par-boiled pearl barley. Between the layers you sprinkle a mixture of parsley, sage and rosemary.

pre-potatoed stew

Then you pour some warm stock over, and cover the whole lot with thinly sliced potatoes.

potatoed stew

It only take 1.5 hours in a 160C oven,which is a lot less than some of the other stews I've made. After it's cooked, there's the option of browning the potatoes under the grill, which I chose to do. Nigella says that the whole point of the stew is that it needs no accompaniment, except for a lot of bread and butter.

Lunch

Cooked

Open

Oh my goodness, I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loved this stew! I love a stew at any time, but this one was especially divine. The meat had softened during cooking, and all the flavours melded together fantastically. Even the parsnips, which I normally don't like, tasted good in this context. Both my mother and I ate heroic quantities, and went back to dunk our bread in the delicious sauce. There's just something about the richly flavoured, fattily gelatinous sauce coating the pearly grains of barley which keeps you going back for more.

one plate

Fortunately, the dessert was just as good, although I didn't end up eating it until much later at night. I iced the cake while the stew was in the oven, and left it sitting, majestically, on our kitchen bench. The icing is a chocolate ganache - equal quantities of chocolate (half dark, half milk) and cream. You chop up the chocolate into fine rubble, then heat up the cream and pour it over. Let it sit for 5 minutes, and then beat it with an electric mixer until thick and smooth. Ideally, I imagine that you would start by slicing the cakes flat, leaving you with a perfectly flat surface upon which to pour your ganache, letting it set glossily with minimum interference from a spatula. In this way, the finished product would be a hat-box shaped, "sachertorte shiny" affair.

However, I never bother to slice the domed top of my cakes flat. (That's laziness and greed in equal measure). And putting two domed cakes together results in some excess space which needs to be filled. I poured most of the ganache on top of the cakes, and then whipped up the rest quite stiff before spreading it around the sides to fill in the gaps.

So as you can see, the result isn't a perfect one, but I hardly think that you'd turn your nose up at it. In fact, when you really, really need chocolate, any old thing will do.

Cake

As I said previously, I didn't get to eat any cake until a bit later that evening. As soon as lunch was over, I had to dash to the train station to get to work. I cut a couple of slices, stashed them in an old tofu container, and took them to work to eat on my break. One for me, one for my friend-slash-workmate Daniel (emphatically NOT my brother), who just loves to eat chocolate cake. We ate them out the back, on nice serving plates, sprinkled with cocoa from the cocoa duster we use for cappuccinos. Rocking.

sliced cake

Daniel: That is an amazingly chocolatey cake.

Too right. I'm taking the cake around to share with other friends and family, so stay tuned for another post on the verdict of the cake!

Salt, Salt, Salt

2006-03-16T16:53:00.000+11:00

304. Ham cooked in cider with leeks, carrots and potatoes (Weekend Lunch)
305. Yoghurt, honey, passion fruit and cream (Weekend Lunch)

I have recently discovered that you can buy pickled pork at Box Hill! I can't believe I never noticed it before. Last time I made a ham, I went out all the way to Blackburn to get the meat. Box Hill is much closer, and is the place I always do my grocery shopping. But it was only last week that I noticed that Meat Inn had a huge sign, reading "PICKLED PORK $6.99 a kilo!" hanging near their store. Whoops!

Before cooking the ham, you have to remove the salt. I used Nigella's method of covering it in cold water, bringing it to the boil and then discarding the water. It worked for the ham in coke, so I thought it would work this time.

magnificent piece of meat

To make a ham in cider, you boil it in cider with some aromatic vegetables.

pot

Towards the end of cooking time, you remove the vegetables and add new carrots and sliced leeks. And here is what it looks like once cooked.

cooked

I thought it looked quite impressive, all sliced up.

sliced - with locally produced "Henry of Harcourt" cider in the background

However, upon eating it, I realised that the de-salting method had been completely ineffective! The ham was still so salty, to the point of inedibility and we couldn't eat more than a slice. Gross.
Luckily, the dessert more than made up for it. This dessert is simply Greek yogurt, honey, passionfruit and cream layered in a glass. And it's delicious. We ate it with Hobnobs and Chocolate-coated teddy bear biscuits.

Dessert

Steak Béarnaise

2006-03-15T18:08:00.000+11:00

Of steak, Nigella writes...

The essence of eating for two exists in just one word: steak... there's something solid, old-fashioned and comforting about the two of you sitting down and eating steak.

I made a steak béarnaise for lunch today, which is the last remaining steak recipe in the book. Upon making it, I realised that I've never actually made a steak for 2. When I made the low fat steak, it was for 3 of us, and when I made steak au poivre, I made it, greedily, for myself. And today's steak béarnaise was for the whole family. But I'm so glad we all got to eat it, because it was certainly the most delicious out of all the How to Eat steaks!

75. Steak (Low Fat)
126. Steak au Poivre

302. Steak Béarnaise (One & Two)
303. Béarnaise sauce (Basics etc.)

A steak béarnaise, made well, is one of life's great pleasures. Bérnaise sauce is similar in method to hollandaise sauce, but with different ingredients.

You start off by reducing white wine vinegar with shallots, tarragon and peppercorns.

reduction

Then you strain out the bits, and whisk the liquid with some egg yolks and water in a double boiler. After this, you whisk in softened cubes of butter, one cube at a time, until it is all thick and emulsified. I fried our sirloin steaks while this was going on. In the recipe, the only instructions Nigella gives are to fry a steak "as a steak is fried". So, I used the method I recently saw Giada De Laurentiis use on her program, Everyday Italian. That is, you oil and season the steaks, and then fry them for a 5 minutes a side on a very high heat, thus giving the steaks a delicious brown crust on the outside. And I let them rest as I finished the sauce.

To finish the sauce, you add some lemon juice to the emulsified mixture, followed by more fresh chopped tarragon.

sauce

The traditional accompaniment for steak béarnaise is french fries, but Nigella suggests baguette with salad, which is a fine accompaniment. Besides, home-baked chips are pretty gross, as are the chips from the fish and chip shop around the corner.

table

I really cannot describe how lovely this lunch was. The steaks (thank-you Rendinas!) were great, and the béarnaise sauce was just incredible. The method for the béarnaise may be very close to the hollandaise, but the flavour is just on a completely different level.

We kept on using our bread to scrape up the remaining sauce, long after the steaks were finished.

plate

Daniel: Thank-you Sarah, that was brilliant!

Fancy Schmancy

2006-03-14T21:05:00.000+11:00

Do you ever get a sudden, irrepressible urge to bake? I did this morning, at about 9am when I was supposed to be getting ready to go to uni. Instead, I baked a cake which took longer than expected, and ended up missing my first class. Whoops.

301. Fancy Cake (Basics etc.)

The fancy cake is yet another one of Nigella's citrus-flavoured almond-based cakes.

39. Clementine Cake
47. Moorish Cake
186. Almond & Orange-Blossom Cake

It is basically the same as the Moorish Cake, (in fact, the Moorish Cake is a variation of the basic "fancy cake" recipe), but with different proportions of ingredients, and without the orange syrup. It's called "fancy cake" because it is made in a brioche tin, giving it a fancy shape. The actual cake mixture is quite simple - you beat egg yolks with sugar until light, then fold in almond meal, lemon zest and beaten egg whites.

I didn't have any lemons to hand, so I used the zest of a seville orange, retrieved from the icy depths of my freezer. Furthermore, whenever I make this sort of cake, I whisk up the egg whites first, and leave them, in their stiff peaks, to the side while I get on with the rest of the cake. This is to save washing up. You see, I use my KitchenAid mixer for all stages of this cake, and when you whisk egg whites, you need your equipment - the bowl and the whisk - to be scupulously clean. Doing the egg yolks first means that you need to wash and dry the equipment before beating the egg whites. Egg yolks, on the other hand, require no such lavish attention. If you do the egg whites first, you don't need to wash anything before you beat the egg yolks. You can just scrape the beaten stiff whites into another bowl, not worrying about the bits that remain on the equipment.

I've found that egg-whites don't come to too much harm if left out for a short period of time. In fact, back at my old job as a cook at Crown Casino, our soufflés were made up and portioned into ramekins in the afternoon, in the pastry kitchen on the opposite side of the complex. We'd transfer trays of ramekins of the raw mixture from the pastry kitchen to our own kitchen (none too delicately), and cook them to order in the evening, which could be as late as 10:30pm. They always turned out fine.

Anyway, the egg whites for this cake only stayed out for about 15 minutes. No worries.

Those of you with sharper memories will remember that when I made the Moorish Cake, I had a bit of drama going all over town trying to find a tin. In the end, I didn't use a proper brioche tin, but a brioche-shaped ceramic pudding dish. As you can see now, I have a proper brioche tin. And it was ludicrously easy to find. They're actually sold at The Essential Ingredient, only about $12, in the right size, and with non-stick surface. I found it, by chance, about a week after I made the Moorish Cake, and I felt quite the douchebag when I saw them.

So, the cake takes an hour to bake in a 160C oven.

After cooling in the tin for 10 minutes, you have to turn out the cake, which is not that easy, considering how many crevices there are on the tin. My only advice is to be patient and gentle with the cake. I used a butterknife and a plastic chopstick to wedge it out, slowly, and in one piece.

le gateau upside down

When I made the Moorish Cake, I served it upside down, which I think looks better, but Nigella does stipulate turning it up the right way, immediately.

I let it cool in the kitchen whilst I spent the day at uni, and ate it in the evening with my parents. I assume that you're supposed to serve this type of cake plain, but I couldn't bear the plain brown top (and was afraid the cake would be dry), so I topped it with strawberries which I'd macerated in castor sugar and orange flower water. And served it with crème fraiche, just as I did with the Almond & Orange-Blossom Cake.

It was fabulous, and not dry at all. There was a fantastic contrast between crunchy top and the fragrantly dense moistness within. I do believe you could make any egg-white leavened cake in a brioche tin to get the "fancy" thang happening, but I can't honestly see why you'd want to go past this one.

My 300th Recipe!!!

2006-03-12T14:08:00.000+11:00

Wow! I can't believe I made my 300th recipe tonight. That's 300 recipes I've made. In 284 days. Out of the one book. Depending on how you look at it, it's either a big achievement... or concrete evidence of insanity. I think we all know which way I'm looking at it.

For your interest, here is what my 100th and 200th recipes were:

100. Lemon Pie
200. Watercress & Raw Mushroom Salad

300. Baked Veal and Ham Pasta

This recipe is undoubtedly one of the obscure ones. It's tucked away in the Cooking in Advance chapter, between the soups and the stews. And the long list of ingredients and instructions make it look a lot more complicated than it really is. That is to say, I probably wouldn't have thought to make it if I weren't undertaking this project.

I'm actually curious as to whether anyone else has made this, because I can't recall anyone talking about it or posting photos of it on blogs or photo-sharing sites. Anyone who's made this please let me know!

But in reality, making this recipe isn't hard at all. There are 3 components to it:

a mixture of finely chopped vegetables cooked with marsala, pancetta and minced veal

500g of cooked penne

a large quantity of white sauce with parmesan added

So, you make these 3 things, and then stir them together, reserving some white sauce to pour over at the end. Nigella suggests mixing them in the baking tray itself, but there wasn't nearly enough room. I stirred them together in the pot.

big pot

At this stage it smells pretty damn good. And it tasted good too. In fact, you could eat it straight out of the pot and not bother with baking it at all. After my little taste test, I was severely tempted to immediately polish off the rest... but restrained myself.

Once it's all mixed up, you pour it into a buttered baking dish, and then pour the reserved white sauce over. Then you put some dots of butter and more grated parmesan on top before baking it. As you can see, I didn't reserve enough white sauce, so it's sparsely dotted over, rather than blanketing the pasta.

dishes

Actually, once the mixture is all prepared and put in the dish, you can let it cool, cover it and leave it in the fridge for a few days until you want to bake it. (Hence its position in the Cooking in Advance chapter). But I wanted to eat it straight away, so it went directly into the oven.

baked

Yum! Mum and I ate this for supper, late on Saturday night, with a glass of red wine, watching Only Fools and Horses on TV. It was fantastic comfort food - all that carb and cheese and meat. It's like a grown-up macaroni and cheese, but not one of those pretentiously elegant grown-up versions, containing 5 different expensive cheeses and super-spesh dry-cured bacon air-freighted from a tiny Italian village. All the ingredients were available at Coles. And most importantly, it just tasted good.

2 plates

Late-Summer Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding for 8

2006-03-12T01:58:00.000+11:00

This menu is, obviously, intended for entertaining. The main event is a cold roasted beef fillet (AKA eye fillet). Nigella suggests up to 2.5 kilos of beef for 8 people. Eye fillet is $40 a kilo. Ahem. Now, you know that I do love to entertain, but I am also a poor student. There are very few people who I love enough to spend that much money on. There are also very few people who I can count on to appreciate this food. Luckily, I know some very special people who fall into both these categories. And 3 of these very special people live right under this roof.

I halved the quantities of this extravagant lunch, and made it a special one, just for the family.

LATE-SUMMER ROAST BEEF AND YORKSHIRE PUDDING FOR 4

294. Rosemary-Infused Oil
295. Cold Roast Fillet of Beef
296. Rosemary and Anchovy Mayonnaise
297. Warm Cannellini or Borlotti Beans with Garlic and Sage
298. Tomato Salad
299. Yorkshire Pudding with Syrup and Cream

This menu is pretty simple to put together. The first thing I did was soak the cannellini beans overnight in water. Then in the morning, I drained them and boiled them in water for 1.5 hours with an onion, a carrot and some sage leaves.

While they were boiling, I made the rosemary oil, which both anoints the beef, and goes into the mayo. All you need to do to make this is sizzle some rosemary needles in olive oil…

rosemary oil

…and then strain out the rosemary needles.

rosemary oil

You could either rub the rosemary oil onto the beef by itself, or add some mashed anchovies to the oil before rubbing it on. I adore anchovies, so there was no question about my taking this option.

This is a $40 piece of meat.

After being rubbed, it goes into a 210C oven for 10 minutes per 500g plus 10 minutes.

Then I made the mayo. This mayo has pounded anchovies added to the egg and garlic mixture at the start, and also includes a potion of rosemary infused oil.

start of mayo

As you probably know, making mayonnaise is a really annoying process. You need to slowly and patiently whisk the oil, drop by painstaking drop, into the egg mixture, taking care not to get too enthusiastic with the pouring, lest it curdle. I have to admit that I only bothered with about half the quantity of oil before I gave up on the idea, and left the mayo-sauce as it was. With only half the required quantity of oil added, the “mayo” was rather thin and runny, but still tasted good.

And here is what the beef looked like when it came out of the oven.

cooked beef

While it was resting, I made the batter for the sweet Yorkshire pudding. It has three ingredients – eggs, milk and flour. First you whisk the eggs and milk together, and let it sit for 15 minutes before adding the flour. The pudding has to be cooked at the last minute, so I left the completed batter to the side until we finished eating.

batter

After this, I finished off the beans by draining them, removing the vegetables, and stirring it over a low heat with olive oil, garlic and sage. I then made the tomato salad, (sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt, oil and vinegar) and sliced the beef.

sliced beef

"if you weren't looking I'd be licking the board"

All the components of the lunch were thus completed, and it was time to serve.

lunch

tomato salad

close up of beans

That beef is awesome! It was rare and gorgeous and meltingly soft. The flavour of the anchovies really complements the beef well, and the sharply salty mayo was an addictive accompaniment. The tomatoes were ripe and full of summery tomato goodness. As for the beans, the sage-garlic flavour was very nice, but I didn’t cook them very well and they were still quite tough. Overall, I thought the menu was lovely as it was, but my dad said he would have liked some lettuce or green salad to go with.

The logistics of the pudding requires a bit of precision timing. You see, the pudding needs 20 minutes in the oven, and has to be eaten as soon as it comes out. Furthermore, both the oven and the baking dish need to be very hot when you pour the batter in. I did it like this: as we were eating, I turned the oven up to very hot and put in the oiled baking dish to get very hot. When we finished eating, I poured the Yorkshire pudding batter into the sizzlingly hot dish, and let it bake for 20 minutes as we cleared up the kitchen.

Despite the total simplicity of this pudding (3 ingredients, a bit of light whisking, a very hot oven), it smells divine and looks totally impressive. I couldn’t believe how much it rose! It’s so cool; you can actually see it rising, millimetre by millimetre, in the oven. I was really happy with the way it turned out – it looked just like the drool-inducing one that I saw Nigella make on the Nigella Bites program a while back.

I set out all the possible accompaniments on the table – honey, golden syrup, maple syrup and vanilla ice-cream.

yorkshire pudding

On that program, Nigella described the pudding as, “a cross between donut and pancake… which is my idea of heaven”. She was right!

Check it out! Did someone say, FOOD PORN?

sweet yorkshire pudding

The crunchy sides are the best part of the pudding. As for accompaniments, I do think that cold vanilla ice-cream is definitely the way forward. I personally like maple syrup the best, but my mum preferred the thick gooiness of the golden.

A low-key lunch

2006-03-11T02:31:00.000+11:00

It was quiet at work yesterday, so I thought I’d better get started on my pledge to assault my friends with invitations to eat. I messaged Mark…

Yo. U free tomorrow? Wanna come over and eat lunch? Nothing special or fancy. (Seriously)

He was free, and he did want lunch.

Later that night, we caught each other online…

Sarah says:
Hey, u like prawns yeah?
Cos i'm thinking either steak or prawns but steak is dependent on my finding tarragon at safeway tomorrow

Mark says:
yeah
LOL
u are FUNNY

Sarah says:
wot

Mark says:
"low key lunch"
in ur words i believe
and now its turned into surf or turf!
lol

Sarah says:
haha
nah it's low key because the COOKING is easy
in fact, i could probably just sit back and make you cook the lunch...

Mum and I went to Box Hill this morning, and based on the available ingredients, this is what I cooked for lunch. (Sadly, I couldn’t bring myself to force Mark to cook the lunch).

292. Mashed potatoes, truffle oil and warm Santa Barbara shrimp (Basics etc.)
293. Baked figs (Fast Food)

The prawn dish (in Australia, “shrimps” are miniature prawns) is inspired by one that Nigella once ate at a restaurant in Los Angeles. Simply, it comprises whipped potatoes, topped with barely poached tiger prawns and drizzled with truffle oil. Easy. The recipe appears in the "Freezer" section of the Basics etc. chapter, and is one reason why we should all keep raw tiger prawns in our freezer.

The figs need 15 minutes in the oven, so I put them in just as we were sitting to down to lunch. What you do is arrange the figs in a dish, “cut each one as if in quarters, only leaving the base intact”, and then pour over a syrup made of honey, red wine, cardamom pods and butter. From here they go into the oven.

raw ficchi

And then we ate!

sarah & markii

This dish was really nice, and an unusual combination. I would never have thought that simply pairing mashed potatoes and prawns would result in such a satisfying and complete meal. The final drizzle of oil does help, though. (I used a combination of extra virgin olive oil and truffle oil).

After lunch, my mum took all the leftover prawn heads and shells and used them to make a fragrant, vibrantly orange stock.

Now, dessert. I was a bit apprehensive about the baked figs, for two reasons. First, I’d never eaten cooked figs before. Whilst, nominally, they seemed very appealing, I was unsure about how I’d react to the actual taste. Second, the wine-cardamom-honey combination was used in the baked wine spiced plums, which I didn’t really like.

But I needn’t have worried. These figs were fabulous. Check out Mum and Mark’s reactions after I put the figs down on the table.

yum! figs!

The syrup was absolutely lovely, and after eating dessert, Mum suggested that we go out and buy more figs (at $9.99 a kilo!) just to use it all up. It was also a great light dessert, considering the warm weather and the heavy mash that preceded it.

Fichi

I served it, as Nigella insists, with Greek yogurt. I do love that authentic Greek taste. The creamily tangy yogurt is the perfect foil for the soft and sweet figs.

Yumm close up

We finished the meal with coffee…

It was a lovely warm and sunny day today, the cooking was easy, and the company was (as always) lovely. What a fab lunch!

If I ever had a cat, I'd call it mackerel

2006-03-11T00:57:00.000+11:00

291. Pink Fish and Beans

This recipe, from the children's chapter, is suggested as a quick and easy meal to feed a child. Nigella says to poach Pink fish (trout), then chop it up roughly and add it to a tin of borlotti beans. Thankfully, she also says you can use smoked mackerel for the fish (thus dispensing with the need for cooking at all!). I went for the smoked mackerel option, not only for the ease of execution, but because I had a packet of it left in the fridge from when I made the crepes parmentier. She concedes that this is a "radical substitution... but can be successful".

I made this for lunch on Thursday, adding some mixed salad leaves, and ate it on the bus to work. It was very nice - "fish and beans" is indeed, a good combination.

pink fish and beans

However, I'm not sure if children would go for this. As Nigella acknowledges, the texture of smoked mackerel is quite dense and oily, and the flavour is very smoky. It could be a bit strong for a childish palate. Furthermore, the mackerel I bought had bones in it. Eek! So, I'd only advise using the smoked mackerel if you're happy to really get your fingers in there as you break up the fish, making sure to get out each and every last bone.

Sarah Discovers How to Eat – Progress Report #9 [February]

2006-03-09T22:28:00.000+11:00

Sarah keeps plugging along. And finds lots of those really random little recipes, hidden away in chunky paragraphs of text.

Facts & Figures

By this stage, I conclude that it is pointless to be calculating recipe rates – as of 1st March 2006, I have completed 285 recipes and 3 months left of the project. So I’ve got 92 days to do about 115 recipes. It’s totally doable. I think…

(What does it say about me that 9 months into my project, I still haven’t figured out exactly how many recipes are in this book?!)

Hits

Gooey Chocolate Puddings (Fast Food)
Baked Sauternes Custard (Weekend Lunch)
Apple Crumble (Basics etc.)
Garlic Fried Potatoes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
Zabaione (One & Two)
Fried Prawn Cakes (One & Two)
Christmas Queen of Puddings (Basics etc.)
Cheese Stars (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
Bakewell Tart with Fresh Raspberries (Weekend Lunch)
Kale with Chorizo and Poached Egg (One & Two)
Chick Peas with Sorrel (One & Two)
Macaroons (Basics etc.)
Hollandaise with Saffron (Basics etc.)

Misses

Nah… it was all pretty good this month.

My progress

Tsk tsk tsk. I really did not entertain enough this month. That’s gonna change. As of tomorrow, I do believe. My friends should brace themselves for a barrage of emails, phone calls and text-messages. I'll be inviting them over, we'll be co-ordinating schedules, and all the while my one and only, constant request will be for them simply to "eat... eat... eat...".

xox Sarah

Four things...

2006-03-09T21:47:00.000+11:00

This is that "Four Things" meme that Helen tagged me for. Enjoy!

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:
1. Checkout Chick at Safeway
2. Sales Assistant at Bottom of the Harbour seafood, David Jones Foodhall
3. Entertainment Service Provider at Rivoli Cinema
4. Buffet Runner at The Conservatory at Crown Casino

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
1. The Ref, starring Dennis Leary
2. West Side Story
3. Sin City
4. Casino

Four Places I've Lived:
1. Melbourne, Australia
2.
3.
4.
No, that’s it. I’m well travelled but have never lived anywhere apart from right here.

Four TV Shows I Watch:
1. Desperate Housewives
2. Family Guy
3. I’m Alan Partridge
4. Only Fools and Horses

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:
1. Le Cinque Terre, Italy
2. Bangkok, Thailand
3. Penang, Malaysia (MALAYSIA BOLEH!!!)
4. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
1. Hotmail
2. Blogger
3. Nigella.com
4. University Email account

Four of My Favourite Foods:
1. Pie
2. Rice
3. White Chocolate
4. Eggplant

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. Bed
2. Ipanema beach
3. A bar on Gertrude Street
4. The fish market in Japan

Four Tags to Continue This Meme:
1. Cindy
2. be_zen8
3. FooDcrazEE
4. Indiechef

I'm back

2006-03-06T13:35:00.000+11:00

Hello!

I've just come back from spending the weekend in Sydney with some friends. (This is why the last two posts took so long to be published). We were staying in a fully-contained serviced apartment complete with kitchen... but I only got the opportunity to cook once. (The rest of the time was spent frequenting Bill Granger's restaurants, see here for details). On our first night there, my friend Matt & I made spaghetti carbonara for the group. It was easy to make, even without my copy of How to Eat on me, and it went down well.

matt cooking

I made up the sauce - stirring together egg yolks, cream, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper - while Matt did the more strenuous boiling of the pasta and frying of the bacon.

pot of pasta

bowl of pasta

bowls of pasta

We only used a 500gram packet of pasta for 5 of us (4 hungry boys and a greedy girl), but after spending the whole day wolfing down Krispy Kreme donuts, we were happy with that amount of pasta.

WELCOME BACK FRANCES! (AGAIN)

2006-03-06T11:15:00.000+11:00

Just 1 short hour after my friend Frances and I had recovered from lunch, I started on dinner.

ONE MORE BEEF, STEWED, FOR 6-8

288. Beef Stew with Anchovies and Thyme
289. Fresh Horseradish Sauce
290. Treacle Tart

I chose to make this stew for dinner because it includes thyme, and there always seems to be a supermarket packet of thyme in my fridge which is going borderline feral. I wanted to make use of it before it crossed over.

The method for the stew is the standard one – brown the beef shin cubes (Frances chopped it up, thank-you very much), fry up vegetables and herbs, re-add the meat to the pan, then add stock and wine, and cook in a low oven for a few hours.

Frances had to leave around 6:30pm to go visit some family friends, by which stage the kitchen was (relatively) clean, and the beef stew was in the oven. I then put potatoes on to boil and made up the horseradish sauce. The sauce is meant to have fromage frais in it (whatever that is), but we don’t have it in Australia, so I took Nigella’s substitution of half crème fraiche, half yogurt. And to this crème-yogurt mixture, I added creamed horseradish (again, I couldn’t find fresh), and chives.

The next stage was to make the treacle tart. I’d never had treacle tart before, but much like Niki, had read all about them in Enid Blyton’s books. The filling for treacle tart is golden syrup, breadcrumbs, lemon juice and cream.

treacle tart – raw

Nigella says to eat it hot, so I assembled the pie and put it in the oven as we were sitting down to dinner.

beef stew

mash, raita

The stew was very delicious, and mash is always good. The most memorable part of the dinner, however, was the horseradish sauce. Nigella was right, it is “staggeringly good”, and a refreshing contrast to the warm and heavy stew.

While we were eating dinner, I got a phone call from Frances again, saying that she’d accidentally left her cardigan at my house and could she come over to pick it up? Of course, as the good Doctor Freud says, there are no “accidents”, and I chose to interpret Frances’ “forgetting” of her cardigan as a subconscious desire to return and sample some of the beef stew. And this time, she brought her lovely mother with her.

Frances did indeed try some beef stew, as did her mother. Her mum really, really liked the horseradish sauce. She’s Polish, you see, and apparently horseradish is really big over there.

And then we all (Mum, Dad, Daniel, Frances, Frances’ mother and myself), shared the treacle tart. It was very, very sweet, crisp on top and chewy within. I thought it was only ok, but everyone else seemed to love it.

treacle tart on rack

pie slice

WELCOME BACK FRANCES!

2006-03-01T23:50:00.000+11:00

I had lunch today with my very good friend Frances, who has recently returned from a year abroad. Frances has been keeping up with my blog, but as she was overseas, had not yet been able to try any of the dishes.

THE SMALL BUT PERFECTLY FORMED LUNCH FOR 4-6

286. Crepes Parmentier with Smoked Haddock
287. Poires belle Hélène

We had an extremely leisurely lunch – Frances arrived at about 1:00pm (complete with issues of Spanish Cosmo!) and I only started cooking then, very relaxedly, chatting away to Frances as I chopped and stirred. It was one of those convivial, companiable lunches that Nigella often writes about.

I did the shopping in the morning before Frances arrived. As you might expect, I couldn’t find any smoked haddock, and had to substitute. Nigella suggests smoked salmon as a substitute, but warns that it can signify “no-effort”. I happened to find a packet of smoked mackerel at the supermarket, which was cheaper than the salmon, so I went for that.

smoked mackerel

The crepes are similar to blini – small pancakes served with a soured cream (in this case, crème fraiche) and smoked fish, which you assemble as you eat. These crepes, however, contain mashed potato as the prime ingredient, which gives them a different taste and texture.

The fish (which my mum sliced for me) is marinated in lemon juice and oil, whilst you fry the crepes.

You serve fish and pancakes with crème fraiche and chopped chives. Nigella suggests St. John’s salad as an accompaniment, which went very nicely.

lunch

This was a lovely lunch. All the components complement each other perfectly – the pancakes themselves are quite bland, but with the smokily salty fish, they’re just right. And it was a decent amount of food – we were satisfied after lunch, but not bloated.

Dessert was poached pears. You peel and halve pears, and poach them in a vanilla sugar syrup until tender, and serve them with a chocolate sauce, vanilla ice-cream and crystallized violets. Truth be told, I was quite hungrily impatient with the pears. I removed them from the pan before they were quite ready, so they were a bit firmer than they should be, but not unpleasantly so.

pears belle helene - delicious!

Pears

one serve

Frances really liked the chocolate sauce - I think the inclusion of espresso really adds a nice, rounded flavour to it. We weren't mad on the crystallised violets, however. $17.28 for a teensy jar? Waste of money!

We cleaned up the kitchen together, and then I immediately started on dinner…

Oh Pancake Day… Oh Pancake Day

2006-02-28T22:57:00.000+11:00

I went back to uni on Monday. This semester, I've cunningly arranged my timetable so that I only have 2 days of classes a week. This gives me more time to work, to go to the gym, and most importantly, to cook and to blog! The downside of this, though, is that I have super-long days. Think 9:30am - 7:15 pm on Monday, and 11:00am - 7:30pm on Tuesday. Eek!

Last night, Monday night, just as I was about to doze off, I remembered that today was Pancake Day. I decided to set my alarm an hour early so that I could make pancakes for breakfast. I have made the delicious basic crêpes-style pancakes once before, but luckily for me there was a variation suggested in that recipe which was perfect for a Pancake Day breakfast.

285. American Breakfast Pancakes (Basic etc.)

The method for these is exactly the same as for the crêpes, but with an extra egg, double the amount of flour, some sugar and a bit of baking powder. I’m pretty sure these are the same as the breakfast pancakes in Nigella Bites that she makes in a KitchenAid blender, but they’re not difficult to make in a bowl with a wooden spoon. And there’s less fiddly washing up.

While the batter had its 30 minutes obligatory resting time, I thought about how I should serve them. Nigella suggests eating them with maple syrup and crispy bacon, but we didn’t have either in the house, and I didn’t exactly feel like walking up to the shops to get some. Furthermore, didn’t think I could handle such a heavy breakfast. I was reminded me of the episode of I’m Alan Partridge, Season 2, where Alan’s 33 year old Ukrainian girlfriend Sonja makes him a full English breakfast…

Alan: That… that was the best full English breakfast I've had since Gary Wilmott's wedding.
Sonja: It was bloody superb?
Alan: Oh yeah... I would have that three times a day if I could… but… I’d be dead!
Sonja: It kill you?
Alan: Yeah… it’s cholesterol. Scottish people eat it. Few of them reach 60.

And if Alan says it, it must be true! My first idea was that bananas and alternative sweet syrup would be the go. However, as I was looking through the pantry for the alternative toppings, I realized that golden syrup or honey just wouldn’t cut it. I hurriedly changed, and ran to the corner store to get a bottle of proper Canadian maple syrup. And while I was up at the store, I thought, "Fuck it, I'm already up here, so I may as well go the whole hog", (so to speak). I bought some bacon rashers from Rendinas.

I came home, fried up the pancakes, and then fried one rasher of bacon each. (For my mother and I).

Pan

Rendinas butchery bacon is very meaty and tasty, but not very fatty at all, so it doesn’t go crisp that easily. For whatever reason, apparently most of their customers prefer lean bacon. (I've asked them for fatty fatty bacon before, they don't do it). Their bacon still tastes awesome though.

breakfast - coffee in silver pot

closeup of plate

my plate

Yum, yum, yum! Mum loved it too, even though she'd never tried the bacon-maple syrup combo before. Because I was quite restrained with the bacon (or was it that I was generous with the pancakes?), we still had pancakes left once we'd eaten all the bacon, so I whipped out a banana to go with the rest of them.

Look, it's a healthy breakfast!

Happy Pancake Day!