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

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.

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.

Dinner

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.

“Serves 4 fat bastards”

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

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, everybody! We had some quiet new year's eve celebrations, with Daniel & I going to our friend Symone's house for drinks and nibbles. For my contribution to the nibbles side of things, I decided to wade deep into the land of dinkiness, with canapés (from How to Eat) and cupcakes (from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook). Additionally, seeing as it was quite close to Christmas, I thought I'd make her a pie as well, just as a gift. What can I say, sometimes your inner domestic goddess just needs to be let loose.

231. Rhubarb meringue pie (Weekend Lunch)
232. Beans wrapped in prosciutto (Dinner)

I made the cupcakes the day before, and iced them in the afternoon. Then I got started on the pie. It's not really that hard, it's just very time consuming, and involves a lot of steps.

1. Make the pastry and blind-bake it - It's just Nigella's simple shortcrust pastry, with orange juice in place of the water.


blind baked

2. Fill with poached rhubarb - rhubarb's not exactly in season now, but I had a pulpy bag of cooked rhubarb in the freezer, probably from the rhubarb ice-cream, which I happily used.


rhubarb filling

3. Top with a mixture of egg yolks, sugar, and orange juice


egg filling

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until set


cooked filling

5. Make a meringue - Spread it over the hot filling, before baking again for 15 minutes until brown


Raw Meringue


Cooked Pie

I know that Symone loves rhubarb, so I typed out the recipe for her... it took a whole page of single-spaced size 10 font. Don't you just love Nigella's eloquent verbosity?

And then the beans. Nigella writes that this is her "most-relied-upon-starter-stand-in". This dish is quite easy too - just top and tail some green beans (Nigella stipulates "French" beans but I honestly don't know what that means), cook them in boiling water, then dip them in balsamic vinegar and wrap in prosciutto. As I said, it's nothing complicated, but watch out, as you will most likely end up with balsamic vinegar splashed all over the kitchen. Which is bad at anytime of year, but spectacularly gross on a 43 degree day (that's 113 Farenheit). Bloody hell.


beans wrapped in prosciuto

So then it was a simple matter of getting myself ready, packing things carefully on plates and in tins and boxes, and going to Symone's.


ready for transport


Food


Symone with beans

The beans were lovely, and I give all the credit for that to the lovely prosciutto which we purchased (or should I say, "sourced") from Cardamone's supermarket for lunch on Friday. And I must admit, they do look rather nice all piled up on a big white plate. We didn't eat the pie last night, but I will update you on the verdict as soon as I hear about it.

Wishing everyone all the best for a wonderful year ahead!

DINNER PARTY

Now this really is the “look at me I’m so fabulous post”. Excuse me while I wallow in my own crapulence. During my exams, (which I passed!), I took a break from cooking and blogging. To this entry, the lovely Ilana posted a wonderful comment of encouragement…

awww, sarah, i'm going to miss your posts... but school comes first, girlie! best of luck and you will do GREAT!!!!!! don't worry about catching up; you are a trooper and you could knock off six recipes in one dinner party!
ilana xoxo

I wouldn’t say I did “GREAT” in my exams, but she was right about the dinner party. Last night, I did SEVEN recipes. On reflection, I actually have no idea how I pulled it off, but somehow it all came together. I suppose some things just work out better when you don’t think about them too much.

When I got my roster for work last week, I noticed that I was working seven nights straight! Like, hello? I mean, yay for pay but what how bad would this be for my recipe count? But wait, on closer inspection, I noticed that I was working on Saturday during the day, not at night. Could I perhaps arrange a dinner party for that night? It was tenuous; Saturday’s a busy night, but there was a chance…

I emailed my friends Georgina, Mark and Tim, on Tuesday, inviting them for dinner at my place on Saturday. George told me yes Wednesday, and Mark and Tim told me the same on Thursday. Yay! I’ve wanted to cook for Mark ever since his birthday in September, and I knew the perfect menu.

SUMMER DINNER, WITH WINTER POSSIBILITIES, FOR 6

196. Chicken Liver Crostini
197. Grilled Pepper Salad
198. Marinated, Butterflied Leg of Lamb
199. Garlic Potatoes
200. Watercress & Raw Mushroom Salad
201. Poached Peaches
202. Sauternes Custard

I slightly scaled down quantities for 5 of us (Me, Mark, Tim, George and Mum).

Mark messaged me the day before, asking me what wine he should bring. This was very exciting, a serious dinner party guest! Most friends my age don't even think about wine or dinner party guest ettiquette. They usually just rock up, sometimes with nothing in hand, somtimes with flowers (good move) or chocolates (bad move - it ruins my menu!). Once, one of my friends asked me if I "would be requiring assistance in the kitchen". HRMPH. Needless to say, she hasn't been invited over again. "Requiring assistance", my ass.

But about the wine, I just said "well, it's lamb, so I'd guess red... but in the recipe book they suggest a rich white burgundy or Californian chardonnay.... your call". I'm not really fussy about wine, and actually, this was the first time I even noticed John Armit's Wine Recommendations which accompany each Dinner menu. I'll pay closer attention next time.

So, dinner was scheduled for 8pm on Saturday night, and I was working Friday 5:30 – 10:00pm, and Saturday 9:00 am – 6:00pm. One advantage of this menu was that most things could be done in advance, and everything else could be done on the night itself.

Friday:

After lunch on Friday I made the sauternes ice-cream, which is a runny custard that you can make in the oven (i.e. no stirring on the hob, and less fear of curdling!) Dammit, I wish I'd discovered this back when I couldn't make custard. Because now that I have the ability and confidence to make custard on the stove (as normal), this whole oven thing seems like a bit of a palaver. You warm the cream and sauternes in separate pots, and then whisk them into eggs and sugar. However, at this point, rather than stirring the mixture over a low heat until it thickens, you put it into a bain marie, cover it with foil, and bake it for 1.25 hours. The whole foil-water-dish fandango seems a bit complicated compared to 15 minutes of unenergetic stirring. But, if you are afraid of custards, or have a tendency to curdle them, like I used to, then this method is definitely the way forward.

Whilst the custard was in the oven, I walked up to Rendinas Butchery and bought the lamb leg, which I got the butcher to bone and butterfly. I can't tell whether the butcher likes me or hates me. One one hand, I spend a shitload of money there. On the other hand, I'm always buying weird cuts of meat (lamb neck, lamb shoulder, beef flank, un-minced topside) and asking them questions and making them do things to the meat. Stuff like, "Look, can you bone and cube the lamb shoulder? What's your sausage skin made of? Do you have any bacon with MORE fat on it? Can you score the pork rind, then cut the fat and rind off in one piece and drape it back over the meat?". This time, I asked for "a small lamb leg, and could you please bone it and flatten it out?" He looked at me funny and asked me if I wanted the fat removed from it. Sarky bugger.

Anyway, I brought it home, marinaded it as per the recipe - olive oil, lemon zest, garlic, rosemary and peppercorns - and shunted it in the fridge.

And shortly after it was time for the custard to come out!


Baked runny custard

The ironic thing is, even though this method is supposed to alleviate the fear of splitting and curdling, when I took the thing out of the oven and poured it into a fresh bowl to cool, it had started to split and curdle anyway! This was alleviated by plunging the bowl into a larger bowl of iced water and whisking furiously. Phew, crisis averted.


Custard - cooking it in the oven meant it got thicker than I'd ever dare let it do on the stove. However, because of the fact that it almost curdled, it ended up slightly grainy. At this point, I put it in the fridge to cool completely, and put it in the ice-cream maker when I got home from work on Friday night.

I delegated the task of roasting the peppers to my mum, and marinaded them myself when I got home.


Saturday:

I awoke at the ungodly hour of 7:00am, so that I could get to work in the city by 9:00am. The city is practically deserted at this time - all the normal people of the world are at home, in their nice, comfy beds. Anyway, there weren't very many customers, so my manager said I could leave early - instead of staying until 6:00pm, I left at 3:30. SWEET. This meant I had time to make crostini! I'd defrosted the livers the night before and bought a baguette just in case, but if I hadn't finished work early, I wouldn't have had time to make them.

I sliced up and toasted the baguette, and then worked on the topping...

I chopped up the chicken livers, and cooked them with onion, celery, garlic, parsley, tomato ketchup (I'd run out of tomato purée, and had to improvise, but don't tell anyone!), then whizzed them up in a processor, and cooked the mixture in butter with anchovies and capers.


Raw chicken liver - now, I'm not one to be squeamish or precious, but these were pretty bloody gross.

In the meantime, I chopped up the potatoes, tossed them in the marinade that the lamb had been sitting in, chucked them in the oven, and lighted the barbecue for the lamb. You can cook the lamb in the oven if you want, but let's not forget that it is summer, and I am Aussie Sarah, mate. I then assembled the roasted pepper salad and sprinkled it with parsley. (And I should mention that whilst I was cooking, my mum, the doll that she is, cleared up the kitchen and made it presentable for company. This is no mean feat, considering what a grub I am).

Then I assembled the crostini, and just as I was finishing them off, Georgina arrived!


Crostini - soon-to-be-poached peaches in background

She was shortly followed by Mark, with whom came something quite lovely - the wine! Oh yeah, and some bloke named Tim. Hehe. The wine was a delicious Evelyn County Estate "Tierra Negra" 2004 Tempranillo.

Mark: Oh my god, you MADE paté?!

The crostini, despite my fears of gross-out factor, went down very well.

I chucked the lamb on the barbecue outside, and got Mark to chop up the mushrooms for the watercress and mushroom salad. I actually substituted rocket for watercress, because they both taste peppery, and only rocket is available in ready-washed supermarket packets. All it is is the salad leaves with mushrooms, tossed through a dressing. Nigella says you can use the marinade from the lamb, but the idea of eating the oil that raw meat had been sitting in turned me off, frankly. So, I just used oil and lemon.


Mark & I

The lamb was taking longer than expected, so I poached the peaches too - in a mixture of sugar, water and sauternes. I found these cute, cute little mini peaches, which I thought would be perfect, and only needed a bare couple of minutes poaching. You have to let them cool before peeling them, so I decanted them into a bowl...


Poached peaches

... and finally it was time to eat! I brought the lamb in off the barbecue to a round of appreciative oohs and aaahs from my patient friends.


MEAT


Dinner - with a chux cloth to catch delicious drips


MEAT sliced

Me: Oh, I hope these potatoes aren't too hard.
Mark: No! You know chips, the dark, crunchy hard ones are the best! This is like a WHOLE BOWL of them.


George


Mark & Tim

Dinner was so awesome! And by "dinner" I mean the company and the atmosphere, not just the food. You know how sometimes, just preparing the meal is so draining that you have no energy left to talk to your friends? This totally did not happen tonight! It was just very relaxed, with good atmosphere and great conversation. (For some reason, we started talking, in great detail, about mosquitos and other bodily parasites, which was hilarious... and luckily no-one got turned off the food!)

After we finished eating, I got up and peeled the peaches, whose skins slipped away easily, revealing the gorgeously toned pink and white flesh beneath.


peeling peaches

To finish them off, you boil down a ladleful of the syrup until thick and sticky, and pour it over the peaches. I couldn't believe how beautiful they were, just like a stained-glass window.


Peaches


Peaches and sauternes ice-cream

I just loved how lovely and perfect they looked! With their blushing pink colour and peach shape, I thought they looked just like the mythical peaches that Monkey Magic ate in heaven to give him immortality. And the combo of peaches and ice-cream was just wonderful.

After dinner we came into the loungeroom to watch some Futurama (why is it that all the best dinners/lunches end with us watching Futurama?) before calling it a night.

And what a great night it was! It was so awesome just to relax after 6 hard days of work with good food and in good company. I dare say this is the best menu out of How to Eat that I've made so far. All the elements just complement each other so well - the peppery rocket, the sweet and soft capsicums, the crunchy potatoes, the juicy lamb - and it wasn't too heavy. For once, I wasn't left in an uncomfortable "topor of post-prandial bloat"! Furthermore, this menu is perfect for the hot weather, and it's deceptively simple to put together!

Nigella, you rock!

Happy Birthday Mum!

SARAH'S MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY DINNER FOR 11

Pea and Garlic Crostini
Roast Pepper with Green Olive Paste Crostini
Onion Tart with Green Salad and Sourdough Baguette
Roast Rockling, Pumpkin Purée and Mixed Mushrooms
A Moorish Cake

This is the birthday dinner I made for my mum. I spread out the workload over two days. Yesterday I made the cake, prepared the pastry and onions for the tart, roasted the pumpkin, and roasted the garlic for the pea crostini. And today, I did the rest!

48. Onion Tart
49. Rich Shortcrust (Basics etc.)

The first thing I did for this was make the pastry, following Nigella’s method in the Basics etc. chapter for rich shortcrust pastry. There’s really not that much to say about the pastry-making process, except that Nigella’s method is really stress free. (Although to be perfectly honest, sorry, I’ve never found making pastry to be intimidating, and I’m not exactly sure what all the fuss is about. Maybe I’ve just been very lucky and always come across very well written recipes, with clearly set-out instructions.) Ooh, but I did cut my finger opening the plastic crème fraiche tub.

Now, the onions. They’re sliced very finely and cooked to a fine brown mush. When you pour some Marsala over and let it bubble away, the smell is amazing.


Delicious Tangle of Onions

So, if you do this the night before, on the day itself, all you have to do is blind bake the case, add the onions, pour over a mixture of eggs and crème fraiche, and bake again. Easy! For blind-baking, I used an old packet of lentils which I bought a few years ago and never used.

50. Pumpkin Purée

The recipe says to wrap each piece of pumpkin, buttered, in foil and bake them. I had wrapped about half my pumpkin pieces when I ran out of foil. Disaster! But luckily we had some plastic Glad Oven Bags, so I put the rest of the pumpkin in them. I’d never used those bags before, but it says they’re ovenproof on the packet. They were fine, better than the foil, in fact.


Pumpkin in Glad Oven Bag. (Actually, it's butternut squash, because I'm too uncoordinated to chop up a large pumpkin.)

Once they’re cooked, you scrape the flesh out and beat it with a wooden spoon. I cooked the pumpkin last night, puréed it this morning, and re-heated it just before we ate it.

51. Mixed mushrooms

I cooked these this morning, and reheated just before serving. It’s a mixture of porcini, button, Swiss brown, shitake and field mushrooms, cooked in butter, with garlic, shallots and sherry. (I have no idea where to find chanterelles or trompettes de mort, despite a lengthy Google-search last week!)


Look at this enormous field mushroom in my hand!

After cooking it, it looked like an intensely-flavoured ugly black sludge, which was quite worrying, as I wasn’t sure how fussy my parents’ friends were. Or if they even liked mushrooms for that matter. Breathe, Sarah, breathe!

52. Pea and Garlic Crostini

All the crostini recipes (there are eight) involve thinly sliced, oiled-dabbed slices of baguette, which are toasted in the oven and then covered with a topping. My bread of choice was sourdough baguette from Laurent (bought yesterday), which I transformed into crostini at about 6pm (guests arriving at 7:30pm).

This filling is sorta like the upmarket mushy peas. But this one has oven-roasted garlic (done last night, with the pumpkin) in it. How I love peas!


Pea & Garlic Crostini – how very GREEN... it's a Miss Sixty shirt in crostini-form

53. Roast Pepper with Green Olive Paste Crostini

I chose this because my mum loves roast capsicum (aka peppers). And it’s supposed to be easy.(Nigella says to use store-bought roasted peppers and olive paste). However, I enjoy roasting peppers, so I did them myself. Furthermore, I couldn’t find any olive paste at Coles! I’ve since learnt that you can get it at Harrods, in London. Useful. It is my dream one day to be have the means to do all my food shopping at the Harrods Food Hall. But for now, I’ve got Coles Box Hill to deal with. What I could find, however, were these tins of green olives stuffed with anchovies, made by Carbonell. So I bought a couple of them, drained them and whizzed them up with a few teaspoons of crème fraiche (thus undercutting the sharp saltiness), to approximate what I imagine to be green olive paste. It looked khaki, and tasted fabulous.


Roast Pepper with Green Olive Paste

So, people arrived around 7:15-7:40, and were standing up, talking and munching on crostini until about 8:15.

Uncle Eric: You know ah, I don't like this green thing... peas. And I don't like capsicum.

Er, thanks Uncle Eric.

Uncle Richard: Aiya, you should try it. You don't know what you're missing. These are nice... munch... I like the capsicum, I like the peas.

Aw... let's invite Uncle Richard over more often!

Then, it was time to eat the pie. I stuck the eight grown-ups in the dining room, whilst the “children” – my brother (23 years old), our friend Tim (22) and I (21), were a bit more laid back in the kitchen. Stashing the guests in the dining room instead of the kitchen (which is where we usually eat) also meant that I could prepare the main course without being under the watchful eyes of my parents’ friends.

Aunty Ee-Ling: Sarah, you cooked all of this yourself? Wow, we should introduce you to my sister-in-law's sons, quite cute you know.


Dining room table set for grownups (8 of them) – baguette & bread rolls, onion tart, salad with basic dressing


Onion Tart close up

The onion tart is nice. The pastry is quite light and flaky, if a bit floury (my fault, probably), and the onion flavour is lovely. Also, because there were eleven of us, we only got small pieces – which I think was a good move, as I think it could get a bit rich in larger quantities. Mum absolutely loved it though - success!

Anyway, whilst everyone was eating my pie, I got started on the main course.

54. Roast Monkfish (I used rockling fillets)

According to the recipe, you fry the fish on either side before chucking it in the oven. I tried frying the first couple of pieces, and after two minutes of painful oil splatters and my fish not getting brown at all (so what’s the use in frying?), I gave up and just bunged all the pieces straight in the oven.


Removing fish from oven... check out my shoes

OK, so huge apologies to everyone… I was so frazzled (moi, frazzled?) but I didn’t get a picture of the whole table with the fish, pumpkin and mushrooms on it. And it did look lovely. Imagine me, graciously placing down the plate of white fish, the dish of orange pumpkin and the dish of black mushrooms on the table, smiling, saying “Enjoy your meal!”, and teetering delicately back into the kitchen in my high heels…

…then picture me, thirty seconds later, running from the other end of the kitchen, bursting into the dining room, exclaiming, “OH SHIT! I FORGOT TO TAKE A PHOTO! Mum, quick! Your plate still looks good! Give it here!”, and yanking it from her to quickly snap a pic.


Fish with parsley, mushrooms, and pumpkin puree


One plate - love the colour combo

Fish good. Pumpkin good. Mushrooms… incredible! It’s all about the porcini flavour. Despite my earlier doubts about our guests’ possible reactions to the mushrooms, they were the most popular thing all night. Everyone went back for seconds, and the dish was cleared. The clearing of a plate is always a good sign, and it’s even better when Nigella-quantities are finished!

Ooh, and don’t forget when you make this yourself, to use bread to mop up the black and delicious mushroomy juices. Preferably do this alone, straight from the pan once you’ve transferred the mushrooms to a serving dish – cook’s treat.

Dad: Oh that fish was fantastic. But you know what was really good? Those mushrooms! You know me and mushrooms, I can either take it or leave it… but those were good!

Aw, shucks Dad!

So after eating, everyone just sat around, talking, drinking and laughing. And then it was time for cake. The cake was very moist, and absolutely delicious! I actually think it's better than the Clementine Cake. And that blood orange syrup is absolutely insane...


Look at that red, red syrup


Mmmmmm – how I love that syrup.

My brother was unusually quiet all night. Well, he was up til 4:30 last night playing Tekken 5(tsk tsk), and had to get up early this morning for our tradition of birthday breakfast noodles, and then had an eight-hour shift during the day. But when he ate that cake...

Daniel: AWWWWWESOME cake. Well done.

So, despite all the "adventures" of trying to get all our supplies for the night, it was a fun and relaxed dinner! Phew!


Mum & I – Happy Birthday Mum!