The Final Lunch for this blog!

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!

Happy Mother's Day / Happy Birthday Dad!

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!

Happy Birthday Bonnie!

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…

Calming Winter Lunch

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!

WELCOME BACK FRANCES! (AGAIN)

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

Desperate for a slice of Bakewell Pie

Monday night is Desperate Housewives night in my house. No questions. At 8:40pm, the TV is on, my phone is off, and my arse is parked firmly on the couch. [We're only up to episode 3 of season 2, NO PLOT SPOILERS please!!!] In the excitement tonight, I didn't make dinner (Mum made us a chicken curry and a vegetable stirfry with rice), but I felt a touch of the Bree Vandercamp coming on, so between dinner and Desperate Housewives, I rustled up a little pie.

277. Bakewell Tart with Fresh Raspberries (Weekend Lunch)

Pies take a lot less effort to make than it seems. Perfect for when you want to look Bree Vandercamp but without the hard work or the ski-slope hairdo.

As far as I can make out, Bakewell Tart is a tart with a pastry base, a layer of jam, and almond frangipane on top. Nigella's version includes fresh raspberries.

When I travelled to England 2 years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the town of Bakewell itself, but I declined. You see, I was staying with some friends in Manchester, and on that particular day, my hosts offered me the choice of either driving up to Bakewell (pie city), or spending the day shopping in Manchester city. At the time, the choice was easy. Even though I was already interested in food at that stage, I guess I wasn't quite as pie-obsessed as I am now. Today I'd be hard pressed to choose between a day of shopping and a visit to pie-central.

But back to the task at hand. I have decided to show you the pie in its layers.

1. Pastry [This is a rich shortcrust, with the addition of an egg yolk, icing sugar and ground almonds]


empty pie shell

2. Raspberry Jam


pie shell w jam

3. Fresh raspberries [Devilishly expensive in Australia - $6 for a 150gram punnet!]


pie shell w raspberries

4. Frangipane [A mixture of melted butter, beaten eggs, sugar and ground almonds]


frangipane filled

5. Flaked almonds


pie shell w almonds

Then you bake it at 200C for 35-45 minutes. In the recipe, Nigella specifies quantities for a 26cm pie dish. I didn't think we'd be able to handle all that pie, so I used my beloved 20cm pie dish, and reduced quantities by one-third. The filling ended up being the exact right amount, but I did have a decent-sized ball of pastry leftover. Which meant it was time for...

278. Periwinkles (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

I am such a douchebag - I must have made at least a dozen pies by this stage, and always have leftover pastry, but it had never occured to me, until tonight, to make the freakin' periwinkles! I usually just toss the extra pastry out.

The periwinkles are designated as a recipe to be cooked with children, but I have no children, and don't intend to bring any in, just for the sake of it, so I made these myself.

You get your leftover pastry, roll it out, spread honey over it, followed by brown sugar and cinnamon. Then you roll it up, like a sticky bun, and slice it crossways, before baking the slices for about 15 minutes.


honey drizzling


Dough

rolled up

Annoyingly, the pastry log wasn't nearly firm enough to be sliced and kept squishing as I tried to slice it. Slightly perturbed, I decided to stash the log in the freezer for about 20 minutes and then was able to slice it with slightly less drama.


Prebaking periwinkles

Once they baked, they spread terribly. I thought that they might be a failure, and thus destined for a repeat-try, but after they cooled down, they actually tasted really good.


baked

whole baked pie

Both periwinkles and pie came out of the oven during Desperate Housewives, and cooled in the kitchen for the second half of the show. And if Desperate Housewives wasn't exciting enough, following that show was the BAFTA awards, hosted by the impossibly fabulous Stephen Fry. So we brought the pie and its accompaniments to the lounge room to eat as we watched the awards. The ceremony was so cool - I love Stephen Fry's wittily verbose delivery style, and awesome actors/filmmakers like Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Steve Coogan, Kristin Scott Thomas, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ang Lee all made appearances. How delightful!


pie + accompaniments


pie slice

And here are the remains of the pie, some raspberries, and 2 large periwinkles on the footstool in front of the TV.

Bakewell Pie is awesome. I can't believe that Laurent patisserie charges exorbitant prices for their similar mini raspberry & frangipane tarts, when they're so simple to make yourself. And so good! Almost as tasty as Jake Gyllenhaal...