Arriba!

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!

Leftovers? I have leftovers coming out of the wazoo

On Sunday night, after finishing my 7th shift in as many days, I came home, totally knackered, and scrounged around my fridge for some food.

Dinner was a salad made from leftover lamb, the roast pepper salad, rocket and mushrooms. But dessert was even better! It was the seven-minute steamed chocolate pudding, with some sauternes ice-cream.


Beer and cake - such a good combination!

And today for lunch...

203. Tonno e fagioli (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

This is just a suggestion really, from the children's chapter, to quickly feed children - tinned tuna mixed with tinned beans and a bit of olive oil. I ate a salad on the side (more rocket and mushrooms) to bulk it out a bit.


Beans & salad

The bean and tuna combination is fantastic, and the olive oil tastes great; it really binds everything together, flavour-wise. It took a grand total of 2 minutes to put together, and it was delicious.

The world's best chocolate ice-cream

I'm obsessed with ice-cream. My love for ice-cream is the sole reason I spent the bulk of my time in Europe last year in Italy, and why, before leaving Australia, I learnt to speak (basic) Italian.

C'è una buona gelateria vincina a qui? Vorrei un gelato perfavore! Vorrei un cono con due gusti, limone e fior di latte! Quanti viene? etc.

Yesterday, I made some ice-cream.

119. The World's Best Chocolate Ice-cream (Basics etc.)

The title tells no lie - this is the world's best chocolate ice-cream. It is intensely chocolatey, with a smoky bitterness and a smooth, smooth texture.

In fact, I think that this ice-cream is so fabulous, that I'm going to give you the recipe, in the hope that every one of you will try it as soon as possible. (And then go out and buy How To Eat, please). I did it in a slightly different order to the recipe, partly because I was doing it whilst making yesterday's Spanish Stew, and partly because I was petrified of it curdling.

Here is a sort-of step-by-step pictographic demonstration of its process. (You will see, however, that I only took photos of things I found significant - so I didn't bother with photos of the actual custard-making-part, but most definitely took photos of the ready-to-lick utensils.)

Ok, so melt 100g 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate (I used one block Lindt) in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Meanwhile, in a KitchenAid, whisk up 4 egg yolks with 130 grams of granulated sugar until you get to the thick moussy ribbony stage. Then heat up 500ml full-fat milk until almost boiling, then whisk it gradually into the eggs, followed by the melted chocolate and 40g cocoa. (I would say, after whisking up the eggs, to switch to a fork. I continued using the electric mixer, and the mixture became superfoamy, much like the cappucino I was drinking...)


Froth

Stir it over a low-to-medium heat until it is smooth and slightly thickened. Plunge the pan into a sinkful of cold water, and stir it a bit until it's cooled down. Then, put 2 tablespoons sugar with 2 tablespoons water in a small pan on a high heat, swirling and heating until it is bubble and very brown. (Watch out, this happens quickly). But don't be too timorous - as Nigella says, "Live dangerously here: you are after the taste of burnt sugar".


Burning sugar

Then immediately whisk the burnt sugar into the chocolate custard (and be careful, it will fizzle and crackle loudly) until it is all dissolved, and refrigerate for about 20 minutes before churning in an ice-cream maker. (I transferred it from pan to a jug, because the hole on my ice-cream maker is small, and I didn't want to spill any).


in churn


Mmm...

And just as with the rhubarb ice-cream and the vanilla ice-cream, much licking of all the utensils ensued. Chocolate is messy, and I ended up looking rather like Alan Partridge in that episode where he gets together with the old tart and they have chocolate mousse together in an intimate situation, if you know what I mean. The mess is worth it though, it tasted amazing.


Ready to lick!

Then pour into a suitable container and freeze overnight. This is a Peter's 2 litre vanilla ice-cream tub.



Smooth

I gave my brother a spoonful as he was leaving the house today, and he said, "Woah, what is that? That's intense!"

Then my parents and I had some after a lunch of leftovers. Mmm... it's so good. It's extremely rich, however, so try to take only small portions. My mum added some strawberries, but my dad and I preferred it plain.

Dad: Ok, put it away now, otherwise we're just going to eat it all.
Me: as I take another spoonful straight from the carton... Yeah, that's a good idea... taking yet another spoonful straight from the carton...
Dad: Ok, put it away, put it away!
Me: Yeah, yeah I will in a minute!

The perks of work...

The other night, when a couple of us were training at work, (in the bar of my cinema), my trainer said, "Hey you two, practise making an affogato and an ice-chocolate". So we made them. Then she said, "Ok, very good. So I guess now you should throw them out. Or eat them." Tough choice.

I'm including the affogato towards my recipe count because:

a) Nigella has a recipe for it
b) I made it
c) I took a photo of it (on my mobile phone)
d) I most definitely ate it!

112. Affogato

Nigella's affogato recipe comes from her Fast Food chapter, as an idea for a quick and easy dessert. Simply, it's a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, with a shot of espresso poured over.

The way we do it at work is to put three scoops of ice-cream into a martini glass, and serve a shot of espresso on the side, for the client to pour over as he or she receives it.

















I ate mine out the back, slurpingly, with a long spoon. I haven't had an affogato since I was about 16 (thus, pre-coffee-addiction), when I thought it was absolutely feral. Now, I see the magic of it! The strong, almost liquor flavoured coffee is just fabulous with the meltingly soft vanilla ice-cream. Having tasted it, I think it would be perfect with a shot of real alcohol (Frangelico, Drambuie etc), but unfortunately, we're not allowed to drink on shift.

Pink things

Tonight I tried yet another of Nigella’s three beetroot recipes from the Low Fat chapter. Given that we had a decent amount of last night’s shredded beetroot salad left over, we ate that as well. And seeing that both items were pink, I thought we should have a pink dessert as well (the rhubarb ice-cream that I made ten days ago). Who cares about the fat content? This meal was all about the aesthetic, and when it comes to bright colours, for me, too much is never enough.

97. Beet greens with buckwheat noodles

This dish is undemanding and stress-free – you cook up some chopped beet greens (which look just like rhubarb) in a pan, and toss in boiled soba noodles with bottled sukiyaki sauce. The noodles turn a fantastic shade of magenta.


Beet greens with buckwheat noodles

We’d never tried beet greens before, and now that we have, I can’t say we’re mad about them. The leaves are ok, but the stems (even the little, thin ones) have this really weird salty taste and feral woodsy texture. In fact, we ended up just picking out all the noodles and leaving most of the beet greens on our plates.

Onto dessert – remember when I made the rhubarb ice-cream? I loved the mixture so much I had a good ten minutes of serious, concentrated licking – no bowl, utensil or beater was safe. But I think something went wrong in the churning process, as the final result was slightly icy. Tasty, but icily hard. Perhaps a 40 minute period of ripening in the fridge would have helped, but there was no way we were going to wait that long. I served it with some leftover chocolate sauce (from the recipe for Poires Belle Hélène), which I made to go with homemade vanilla ice-cream seven weeks ago. And just to let you know, it was still good. So if you ever make this chocolate sauce, and for some reason, don’t finish it immediately, an extended stint in the fridge will do it no harm at all.


Ice cream

Cooking on a Friday Night...

Look, I know that I'm only 21 years old, and probably shouldn't be settling so happily into domesticity just yet. Perhaps it would be more normal for someone my age to be out drinking or clubbing on a Friday night (and I do love to dance), but sometimes the lure of the kitchen is just too strong.

I did a lot of cooking tonight. So much, in fact, that I didn’t have time to make dinner. My brother ended up having 2-minute noodles before leaving for work, whilst Mum made the rest of us some proper noodles later on out of leftover chicken and random vegetables.

This afternoon, I made the braised pheasant with mushrooms and bacon from Cooking in Advance for tomorrow’s lunch. Yes, with the bacon in it – and I’ve decided that I’m even going to eat it! Gasp! (More on this tomorrow, though).


Pheasant ready to go in oven.

We ate dinner after the pheasant was cooked. Then I made some den miso…



…and marinated some salmon fillets. This needs 2-3 days sitting in the fridge before grilling it. (I'll explain the process of making both the pheasant and the salmon when we eat them.)


Salmon marinating in den miso (Low Fat)

After this, I went to the gym (yay!), came home and made rhubarb ice-cream and a chocolate malteaser cake simultaneously. The chocolate malteaser cake cake comes from Feast, not How to Eat, but I’m making it for my friend Adriana’s graduation dinner tomorrow night – it’s her favourite out of all the chocolate cakes I’ve made, you see.

78. Rhubarb Ice-Cream

The ice-cream is for an unspecified future date; I just thought I should make it whilst I have the time and whilst rhubarb is still in season, gorgeous and intensely scarlet-hued.

You start off the ice-cream much like the vagina jelly (aka Rhubarb and Muscat Jelly), that is to say, poaching some rhubarb with vanilla sugar in the oven for an hour.


Poached rhubarb on the right, liquids for the Chocolate Malteaser Cake on the left.

After draining the rhubarb, you beat it with a fork to form a pulp. Then you make a custard (with 3 egg yolks, 45 grams of castor sugar and 300ml single cream). I really think now that I've overcome my custard problem, as this is the second custard I've made successfully. (The first was vanilla ice-cream). This one thickened surprisingly quickly and didn't turn feral or grainy at all. I've concluded that this is due to two factors - firstly the pan that I'm using, and secondly, my new-found confidence.


Yellow and Pink

Anyway, you then let the custard cool, and beat in the rhubarb pulp, followed by 300ml of whipped double cream. However, the double cream I buy (Gippsland brand), is basically solid, so I don't bother whipping it. Then you churn it in an ice-cream maker.


Rhubarb Ice-cream (pre-churning) on the left, chocolate malteaser layers on the right.

Look, I did make them at the same time! I am super-woman, hear me roar!

Ooh, another thing I have to report – Low-Fat August took a serious beating tonight, whilst I was making the ice-cream. I tasted a teensy spoonful for sweetness, and it was so gorgeous I couldn’t help myself and after churning it, obsessively licked the pot, bowl, and every utensil clean. Well, I guess it’s ok… I went to the gym today, I’ve been eating very healthily this week… but really, what justification do you need apart from the taste?

A Comforting Lunch for 4

It’s Melbourne, it’s June, it’s freezing. A really dense fog descended on the eastern suburbs last night as we were coming home on the freeway. In fact, it was so foggy we could barely see 3 metres in front of us. Scary stuff. Thankfully the fog cleared by morning, but it was still well cold… the perfect weather for a comforting lunch.

41. Fish and Porcini Pie

To make this pie, you start by poaching some fish in milk, fish stock and porcini mushroom soaking liquid.


Poaching fish – the recipe asks for cod, salmon, and smoked haddock, but Nigella says, “You can change the fish as you want”. I went with salmon, flake, smoked cod, because cod was the only smoked fish I could find, and I thought the colours were so pretty together.


Fish in dish

Then you use the poaching liquid and mushrooms to make a white sauce. You put the fish, then the sauce, in a dish, top it with mashed potato and bake it.


Ready for oven

During baking time, the filling got a bit excited and erupted over the sides and onto the floor of the oven. Whoops.


Dirty oven


Peas and Pie


One plate

This was well tasty! It was so good, definitely a keeper. You'd think it'd be a bit rich, what with all the butter and full-fat milk and potatoes, but it was just perfect. Smooth, lush, and very flavoursome. (By the way, I used milk and butter in the potatoes instead of double cream). My dad loved it, and he usually doesn't go for this type of stodgy English nursery food.

Dad: Make this again. Are you going to make this again? You have to make this again. I don't care if you don't put it up on the blog. You going to make this tomorrow?

You know how Nigella recipes are usually extremely generous in portion? When we first looked at my pie we didn't think we could finish it, but it was so delicious and easy to eat. We could have easily finished the lot, but restrained ourselves for the sake of our collective waistline. It was so yum my brother even got some leftover challah from the kitchen bench to come and mop up the juicy sauces.

But dessert, oh my god the dessert! As per Nigella's suggestion, it was ice-cream, cherries (Morello from a jar), flaked almonds (Lucky from a packet) and chocolate sauce.

I made the ice-cream yesterday, and did the chocolate sauce after we ate my pie. The chocolate sauce recipe comes from Nigella’s Poires Belle Hélène, so doesn’t count as a separate recipe. It’s very easy, you melt 2 blocks of dark chocolate with sugar and coffee and stir through some double cream in the end.

Daniel: Eats one spoon of ice-cream without sauce… This is orgasmic! Orgasmic! Orgasmic!

Dad: Oh my god this ice-cream is so smooth! You don't need the chocolate sauce with this, this ice-cream is fantastic by itself!

The sauce was lovely, but extremely rich! We’ve got heaps left over… what am I going to do with it?

Dad: Don’t worry, I’ll eat the chocolate sauce.
Me: But I thought you said you just wanna eat my ice-cream by itself, that adding stuff would interfere with the taste…?
Dad: Yes yes, but I’ll put the chocolate sauce on the cheap ice-cream we've already got. That ice-cream NEEDS chocolate sauce!

Ice-cream


Choc sauce and cherries - the ice-cream is in that jug on the right


Best ice-cream ever! The most important thing, I think, is just to use the best ingredients - a proper vanilla pod, fresh eggs, good cream. I love its golden richness, and the little vanilla seed flecks all the way through. It's sublime. I'm a total ice-cream junkie, and this was just heaven. And I definitely recommend adding the extra double cream when you make it. Bliss!

Go Nigella!

See, this is one of the reasons I'm glad I started this project - I probably wouldn't have even tried making the pie otherwise (like I said, we don't go for this type of food much as a family), and that would have been a real shame. Because it was a joy to eat.

A little light Tuesday afternoon cookery

39. Clementine Cake (Basics, etc.)

Clementines, I’m told, appear in England only at Christmas, which is one reason why this cake is a fixed item in Nigella’s Christmas repertoire. Being both seasonal, and English, I wasn’t sure if we could get them here at all. I mean, these English cookbooks I love reading are full of strange words like “clementine”, “damson”, “greengage”, “gooseberry”, “elderflower”... exotic items that I’ve heard of, but never seen in the flesh. (Actually, though, when I went to England last year on holiday, I had the pleasure of trying fresh gooseberries, and the misfortune of trying elderflower cordial. Yurgh.) Back here in Melbourne, most of these foods remain firmly stuck in the literary realm, not the culinary one. However, the other day at Safeway, what did I see but a huge pile of CLEMENTINE MANDARINS! Score! It’s Clementine Cake time!


Clementines

Nigella says to boil the fruit for 2 hours, purée them and mix them with eggs, sugar and almond meal. But, following a tip I picked up on the Nigella.com forum, I just microwaved the fruit in water for about 8 minutes in total, turning them over every couple of minutes. It was so much easier and faster!

Such a shame - you're supposed to bake this in a 21cm springform tin, and I wanted to use one of the Living Kitchen springform tins that I got for my birthday, but there isn't a 21cm one!! There's 20cm, 23cm and 25cm. Dang. So I pulled out an old and extremely battered 21cm springform from the bottom of my drawer, and lined it extremely carefully with Glad Bake. (Such fabulous stuff, I couldn't bake without it!)


Batter

I'd also heard horror stories on Nigella.com about the cake being too moist, needing longer cooking and leaking out everywhere, but luckily nothing of the sort happened. This was one of the reasons why I was so anal about using the right size tins. But also, I think you've just got to be careful and measure out the correct weight of clementines, as opposed to going by number of clementines.


Cake cooling in tin - It smells heavenly…

Whilst the cake was baking I started on some ice-cream.

40. Basic Vanilla Ice-cream (Basics etc.)

Nigella’s vanilla ice-cream is just her custard, with a lot more sugar (apparently freezing things kills the flavour). And you know what, after all my worrying about making custard, there were no dramas with it. I used a different pan, a very large, wide one with a thick base – which I think made all the difference. After about 10 minutes cooking, it didn’t get super-thick like powdered custard gets, but it had thickened, and did smell custardy, so I stopped cooking at that point, and let it cool it in the sink.


Custard – cooling in the sink


Cream in custard – Nigella suggests adding 300ml double cream, if you want it creamier. I wasn’t too fussed about how creamy it was, but I added the cream so that I’d end up with more ice-cream! Double-bonus!


Yummmm

It was so delicious… after putting the ice-cream into the freezer, I skipped yoga and spent the next half hour licking out every bowl, pan, spoon and utensil that had come into contact with the lovely, lovely custard….

I don’t have a verdict yet for the cake, as we haven’t eaten it yet. Apparently it gets better if you leave it. But we will eat it tonight – my parents are going out for dinner with their friends, and will come home for cake…