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.

Gingered Chicken Salad

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

Ceviche with Hot Garlic Potatoes

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

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.

The falling leaves… drift by my window…

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!

Salade Niçoise

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.....

Arctic Summer Lunch for 4

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?!?!?!

Late-Summer Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding for 8

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.