191: Poached pears with ice-cream and chocolate sauce, p337

Pudding for tonight's dinner party was an easy recipe to finish off the meal. Simple, quite nice but nothing particularly to write home about. The syrup was very thin and watery - not sure about using a whole litre of water to simmer the pears in, or not reducing it down considerably after the poaching, so it was more of a syrup. But it was quite nice to leave the pears quite plain and fresh, instead of using wine or cider. The chocolate sauce seemed wrong... to melt good chocolate by mixing in boiling water? Normally one tries to keep water/steam out of melting chocolate at all costs, or it seizes and goes grainy. This surprisingly worked as a thin (albeit watery...) chocolate sauce, but once it cooled down, the chocolate when grainy and the leftover sauce (of which there was lots, should have halved the chocolate/water combination) doesn't look/taste to be reusable. I used good fairtrade Divine chocolate, so a bit of a shame to waste so much of it. Ho hum. The Haagen Daz pralines and cream ice-cream was delicious (the only praline ice-cream I could find, it's a hard job, but someone's got to do it...).

Only two recipes to go!

190: Mushroom lasagne with basil and cream, p348

Wow! A truly yummy, tasty, filling vegetarian main - and it was absolutely delicious! I'd been saving this one for my ex-boss from work since she's a vegetarian and I've been trying to get a good date for her to come round for dinner for most of the last year... finally made it, with a day to spare before the end of the challenge - phew!

And what a success. Will definitely repeat this recipe - even the confirmed non-vegetarian husband really liked it. I actually made the mushroom layer and the pesto last week whilst I had plenty of time, although both were quick and easy to make, and popped them in the freezer until assembling the dish and popping it in the oven this evening. The mushrooms went deliciously velvety, and the porcini mushroom liquor almost tasted alcoholic, like brandy or Marsala, whilst we were eating I actually thought the recipe had included alcohol and was surprised when I checked the book later on and found it hadn't. As per the book, I cheated a little and used bechamel sauce from a tub, although again I'd popped this in the freezer and it looked revolting - as though it had split - on defrosting, so I was a bit worried about it, but it was absolutely fine when cooked. The pesto was easy and lovely, can't beat homemade pesto, nothing like the bought stuff... although 50g basil seemed like an enormous amount - I bought a living pot of basil and used that (maybe 15g at a push, when I defoliated it and weighed the leaves), bought another (seemingly bigger) pot (which only added another 10g, annoyingly), and gave up there...

Excellent. Definitely a keeper, and one for all veggie guests in the future, at least once...

**Disaster! I know I took a picture of this one, but it seems to have gone awol. Rats**

189: Cheese bubble and squeak, p391

No leftovers here - Christmas was spent as ever at a moveable feast of relatives' homes, so I made some mash and steamed some greens for these bubble and squeak patties. Never really been a fan of bubble and squeak but then boiled up cabbage and Brussels sprouts mashed up and reheated don't really do much for me. But with lightly steamed greens, and a good helping of Cheddar cheese, these were rather tasty... But they didn't make firm little patties which could be browned and turned easily in the frying pan, maybe I should have used some flour to soak up some of the moisture, or popped them in the fridge for a bit to firm up. Oh well! They were hot through and tasty, that'll do!

Merry Christmas everyone! Unbelievably - only four recipes to go!

188: Lemon ice-cream tart with gingernut crust, p375

A pudding was required to take to the inlaws for Christmas Eve and this fitted the bill nicely - after a rich dinner, the freshness of the icecream and the sharpness of the lemons made a welcome palate cleanser. The gingernut base was incredibly solid, maybe I didn't need to pack it in quite so tightly, but I was worried it would be too crumbly and wouldn't cut properly when sliced. Halving the recipe made a shallower tart, in one of my smaller springform tins, but it was plenty for five of us to each have a generous slice and there to still be nearly half left over for another day.

187: Slow-cooked duck with star anise and ginger, p345

I was really looking forward to this one, served with the Chinese broccoli. Unfortunately, although tasty, it didn't quite live up to my expectations... I think I was expecting a thicker, richer sauce/stew - it was actually rather thin and (unsurprisingly, with duck cooked with its skin on) rather oily. The duck was cooked beautifully though, pink and moist, but cooked through. I think I'd want to reduce the liquid down by about half, maybe thicken it, and definitely leave it in the fridge overnight to solidify and remove a lot of the fat (and/or remove the skin from the duck, but then you wouldn't get the lovely crispy bits from browning the meat at the start).

186: Chinese broccoli, p97

An easy, quick side/main dish which is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. I wasn't sure about using this much ginger and garlic for a relatively small amount of veg, let alone only chopping it into matchsticks rather than chopping finely, but it works and neither was overpowering. Worked well as a simple, light lunch, during a week of lunches out with various teams at work, and also as a side dish with the slow-cooked duck we had the other night. Yum! Definitely to be repeated.

185: Christmas pudding, p361

Finally made the Christmas pudding! Like the Christmas cake, this is the first time I've made my own Christmas pudding - and the first time I've steamed a pudding. I didn't have a suitable basin to use, so I ordered one from the wonderful Lakeland, but it only just arrived - the terrible weather having messed up deliveries over the past couple of weeks. Better late than never! I'm hoping it doesn't affect the pudding too much, not having so long to keep before Christmas. I'm probably going to save it for the day after New Year's Day when lots of the family are coming down to visit us - so made during 2010 but not actually consumed this year :) 

Easy peasy to make, but I halved the recipe - which called for 2x 1.5L pudding basins. Lakeland do a 1L and a 2L basin, so I decided that ordering the 2L and halving the recipe would be okay. One very shiny, scrubbed 50p tucked in the pudding, and it's currently bubbling away steaming for 3.5hrs in the biggest pan I've got. Fingers tightly crossed!

 **UPDATE 02/01/11: Absolutely spot on - definitely a recipe to repeat! Verdict from the massed family was that it was one of the best Christmas puddings they'd ever had :) And it also set light rather pleasingly (see below)...

184: Baked salmon, p234

I didn't have a 'vast piece' of wild salmon, but substituted with a couple of large fillets instead, which I wrapped side by side in foil, pretending they were a larger piece... Easy as pie this one, and we ate it warm (too impatient/hungry to wait for it to be cold) with lashings of homemade mayonnaise, and new potatoes. I wasn't going to buy a whole bottle of Pernod for 'the merest drip' to add to the mayonnaise, so I used vermouth as suggested by Maggie Don, who used the online version of this recipe, with vermouth instead of Pernod. Took c.20-25mins to cook through, but cooking en papillote (well, wrapped in foil at least) meant that the fish stayed moist. A light dish which I should have gotten done much earlier in the year - Spring or Summer, as in the book - rather than on a day of the year when we have a good four inches of snow on the ground!

183: Warm soused mackerel, p68

Last mackerel recipe ticked off the list - but not our favourite, unfortunately. The fish was beautifully moist, being soused in the vinegar and wine, and lovely herby flavours came through, but we both decided we prefer the crispness given to mackerel when grilled or pan fried, rather that letting the skin end up a bit soggy. Plus T hated the smell of the vinegar, thought it smelt like old socks, bizarrely (I didn't think it did, but the smell was very vinegary, almost eye wateringly). Hey ho. Lovely served with the sauteed potatoes, but again, one fillet was enough for each of us, not two as suggested.

Only 10 recipes left to go!!

181: Baked red mullet with saffron and mint, p124, and 182: Baked red mullet with pine kernel stuffing, p370

Oooh, a bit behind with getting these written up from the start of last week...

Okay. Red mullet. One of the most expensive fishes to buy? 'Buy grey mullet, it's much cheaper and really nice!' cried my boss when I moaned about the price, on more than one occasion... 'Yes but Nigel doesn't use grey mullet in the book, it's always red mullet that is specified, and besides, red and grey mullet aren't even related to each other' - so I'm not convinced I can substitute one for the other.

Anyway, back to the recipes. The first one called for four medium sized mullet to serve two people. The second called for four large red mullet to serve four people. Yikes. I decided to do as I've done in the past and cook even for one person for two recipes at the same time, then the hubby and I swap plates halfway through. Kinda silly but it saves a lot of money and gets the recipes done! Bit concerned about the lack of dinners left between now and Christmas/New Year, and the deadline for finishing the book!

I went to the excellent Sandy's, where they always have red mullet (all pretty big ones), and asked for two. The chap threw them on the scales and they came to over £22 together. I gulped and asked if I could just have one, and then tried to figure out if I could still do both recipes... Taking my one, fairly large red mullet home, I surmised that I could maybe bodge it by chopping said mullet in half (to give a head end and tail end - the pine kernal stuffing needs to be stuffed inside the fish, so this was the only way I could think of doing it) and baking each separately in the oven in my little oval Denby dishes.

The fish halves fit snugly in the oval dishes, and it worked just fine. Although it did look a little odd...

I have to say, the first recipe, with saffron and mint, didn't really bowl me over... but then it is supposed to be a light Spring day meal, not a depths of Winter dish! The saffron and mint were perhaps a little too subtle for the strong, meaty fish, or maybe I should have used more of each, but the fish was cooked to perfection (although it did need another 5mins in the oven, even chopped in half).

The second recipe was by far the better, with a lovely fruity, crunchy, interesting stuffing, which worked beautifully with the strong, meaty flesh of the fish. I'm not a big fan of raisins in savoury dishes, but here they worked a treat, although I did chop them up a bit smaller than they were whole, so they gave little bits of fruity, sweetness to the dish, not bigger lumps. Lots of scrummy Mediterranean flavours. Definitely one to repeat. Should we buy red (or grey) mullet again!

Incidentally, half a decent sized mullet, plus potatoes on the side and some tomatoes, was fine for each of us. The idea of having two whole mullet each seems a little excessive...

180: Roast duck with pancetta and potatoes, p372

I've never cooked a whole duck before. What an odd shape they are! This was a Gressingham duck, so a nice chunky bird, but they are rather... flat chested? And dumpy :)

The skin crisped up beautifully and I collected the excess fat midway through and at the end of cooking, so the potatoes wouldn't go too soggy. The potatoes directly under the duck did understandably go a bit soggy - in hindsight I should have pushed them out from underneath earlier in the roasting time, but they were delicious - meaty, herby, crispy in places, and cooked to perfectly.

The duck was a bit of a pain to carve, not being used to the funny shape of a duck (!) but I managed, just about, lucky we didn't have guests for dinner! Portion size was intriguing here - we had a bird which was slightly over 2kg in weight, which fed us both plenty for dinner plus enough leftover meat for another meal for the two of us (plus the carcass for stock), whereas the recipe specifies a 2.5kg 'duckling' - serve two people?! First of all, that's a jolly big duckling, and secondly - a bigger bird for only two people?? Wow!

This is supposed to be a festive pre-Christmas dinner - not exactly usual Monday night fare for us but time is pressing - so many main courses left, and not enough dinners to do them in if I'm not careful...

Only 13 recipes to go! 18 days left this year (albeit three are taken up with visiting rellies...).

179: A squid in the fryer, p276

I like squid a lot, but this wasn't a success. I don't have much luck when recipes call for ingredients to be tossed in flour - worse still when they are coated in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, turns into a sticky cleggy mess. A Cleggy Mess being nothing to do with the current government, of course. Ahem.

These (not so) little baby squids were fresh from the fishmongers two bus rides away, to whom I dashed away from work early tonight (red mullet tomorrow, hurrah!). Undercooked squid is disconcerting, overcooked is pretty horrid (like eating rubber bands, as Nigel says in the book), and I skillfully managed a bit of both here. The combination of ingredients promised much but sadly my execution of this recipe was a bit of a let down. A lighter touch, no flour, stirfrying, and a good squeeze of lime would have made all the difference. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

178: A stunning orange sorbet, p134

Another sorbet, and bizarrely another orange sorbet - after the orange yoghurt water ice made in November. Not wildly different - just missing the yoghurt out, but this time I used our icecream maker (a wedding present which lives at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, because there's hardly ever room for the bowl in the freezer - but there currently it, hurrah!). Normally whenever I've tried using the icecream maker it's ended in tears and tantrums - in spite of freezing the bowl for >24hrs - with the mixture refusing to freeze, but this time the churning worked and it was definitely sorbet after 40mins (not the 15-30mins on the icecream maker instructions and it was quite a soft sorbet, but just about there) - and firmed up properly once it was in the freezer. A much smoother texture than the previous handmade attempts, and super flavoursome, but, as with most of the other sorbets, a bit too sweet for my liking. Would definitely make this again - although probably the yoghurt version - but would reduce the amount of sugar made into the syrup at the start.

177: Christmas cake, p364

My first Christmas cake. Don't really like fruit cake, like Christmas cake and wedding cake, too dry and heavy I usually find, but maybe this will be the exception! Fingers crossed. The mix was very stiff and difficult to stir, once the flour was added, so I 'had' to slosh in a good extra glug of brandy to loosen it up a bit. It was only after I had baked it that I realised I missed out the second lot of dried fruit listed in the ingredients - ooops. Am trying to keep hoping that 350 missing grams of fruit isn't going to have made too much of a difference... Eek. Will keep fingers crossed and keep feeding it brandy until Christmas Eve when I ice it...

 **Update on 26/12/10: well, it sure is dense... even without the extra fruit... In the end I didn't ice it. My parents liked it, but none of us are big Christmas cake eaters so it's going to be taken into work next week to be finished off :)

176: Walnut and candied peel tartlets, p379

More pastry I didn't make and got out of a packet instead! :) Ah well, that's one thing I haven't mastered during this year...

I wasn't really looking forward to these too much, not being a fan of candied peel, but these were really rather yummy - like a nutty alternative to mince pies. The golden syrup and the candied peel melted together to make a chewy filling to the little tarts. Yum!

174: Inspiration for a lamb chop, p83, and 175: A carrot salad, p308

Oooh, I wasn't expecting this for the lamb chop recipe - only really properly realised it was a salad when I was reading through the rest of the recipe whilst the lamb was marinating. Just using soy and garlic for the marinade worked brilliantly, the lamb was lovely and tender and soaked it all up, and mixed with the spicy, hot, sour, sweet leaves, was delicious.

The carrot salad sounded like it would also be rather dull, but turned out to be really rather nice! Again, don't much like eating nuts raw but slightly toasted in a dry frying pan something happens to them which suddenly makes a big improvement... The dry peanuts, plus the lemon and walnut oil, stop the grated carrot making the salad end up a sodden orange lump. Not really enough for a main meal but a good side dish or maybe even a starter?

173: Roast partridge, p316

Gosh, partridge is gamey. This was a really strong tasting little creature - could only find the one (again in Sainsbury's, bizarre!) so had to do this recipe when T was out, hehehe. Not much fat on a partridge, so it dried out a bit on top (even with the bacon, which went quite dry), I'd have liked to have roasted it breast down but must try and follow the instructions for this challenge!

172: A deli sandwich, p167

I do find sandwiches dull, particularly ones I make, so tend to avoid... but this one was really really good! Oooh, I would have paid good money for it infact. But then anything with parma ham has to be good. Scrummy scrummy. Nice fresh ciabatta, a good handful of rocket, and sundried tomatoes - aaall good. I might have to make this on a regular basis...

171: Roast pork sandwiches, p286

Sainsbury's sells pork belly - who knew? I've been popping to the butcher, going into Waitrose, searching for the damned stuff - and then happen to go into a branch of Sainsbury's whilst on a shopping trip, off my normal beaten track, and there it is - not even on the butcher's counter! Hurrah!

It's tasty but not convinced I like it... it seems so wrong to eat so much fat...

Not the easiest recipe, although it seemed simple enough - the herby oniony mix smelt amazing (and tasted pretty good at the end) but didn't want to stick to the meat and, after halving the recipe, 'tucking' it around the meat didn't really work, I had to kind of squish it around one side of the piece of belly. It still started to burn a bit, even with stirring. But hey, how wrong can a roast piece of meat, sliced up and served hot in crusty rolls with a handful of leaves go?

170: An English cheese salad, p74

This sounded a bit dull and dreary but actually was really rather nice and worked well with the pork steaks, last weekend. Didn't have any Wensleydale and after the trauma of getting some Lincolnshire cheese a few weeks ago, I was a bit lazy and didn't try to hunt any down. We're also ending up with a fridge full of half used lumps of different types of cheese - some people's idea of heaven, but it's taking up a lot of space!! I'm not that keen on nuts normally but I do rather like what happens to them when toasted and incorporated into these yummy salads of Nigel's...

169: A herb butter for grilled chops, p24

Apologies for the lull - been a busy few weeks, but I have been chugging through the recipes, promise!

Lovely jubbly, easy peasy, most difficult bit is remembering to have the butter out on the side in the kitchen so that it's not too solid to mix up with the other ingredients. Lashings of flavour, and all the juices make a delicious sauce which stops the pork from being too dry... if like me you accidentally leave it under the grill for a bit too long... :)

168: Green curry of prawns and Thai aubergines, p118

'Small purple Thai aubergines' and 'pea aubergines available from Chinese and Thai grocers'? Hmm. Not round here, I'm afraid. Like Maggie Don, I eventually gave up on trying to find either, having looking and looked, and used a normal aubergine. Love aubergines, love their almost meaty texture and the way they make dishes taste rich but at the same time balance out lots of rich flavours. T doesn't like aubergines :( But he did try and actually ate quite a lot of this (and all the prawns and cherry tomatoes, of course).

Lots of lovely Thai-inspired flavours, and an easy peasy recipe, just need to make sure you have a little mini-blitzer/processor to whizz up the spice paste quickly and you're away. I skipped the coriander root in the ingredients list too, I'm afraid. Oh well :)

167: Lemon trifle, p140

A triumph! This one will definitely be repeated. Many times. It's already been requested by several people who were at the party in the Cotswolds we went to this weekend, for future parties. 

And I don't like trifle! I really don't like soggy cake/biscuit bases/etc in desserts and have never 'got' trifle and have therefore always avoided it... but this really was something else. A relatively small amount of the sponge fingers, with the inspired addition of lemon curd, and then the lightest, most delicious lemon custard on top, and a thick covering of whipped cream. The custard was wonderful - creamy and light but the acidity and zestiness of the lemon cut through and stopped it being too sweet or fatty. I could eat bowls of just the custard. Yum.

Decorated with orange zest and some little yellow and white sugar flowers I found in our Aunt's pantry, it was the first pudding to be finished at the party, out of a dining table full of desserts, and the people at the end of the queue for desserts didn't even get to see it. Hurray!

166: Raspbery vanilla ice-cream cake, p316

Hmm, not convinced about this one... used nice buttery Madeira cake and vanilla icecream from Waitrose, and lots of raspberries and mixed summer fruits (moo, miscalculated and didn't have quite enough raspberries so added some berries from the freezer). Perhaps the late substitution was part of the problem, but the fruit was rock solid when it came to serving - even after over 30mins on the work surface before slicing as per the directions. The fruit shattered as the cake was being sliced, the icecream was very nice (mmm, Waitrose...), the Madeira cake was, well, just very cold Madeira cake which started to crumble when sliced. Posh Arctic Roll gone a bit wrong.

165: Lamb-filled flatbread, p238

High praise from T, "You've certainly learnt how to cook lamb well during this [recipe challenge foolishness]" as he inhaled one of these wraps... :)

Wraps, or flatbreads? I was initially thinking of flatbreads as went with the taramasalata recipe last month, or perhaps pitta breads, until I read the recipe through and found that the last direction is to 'roll up' the flatbreads. Wraps! Or tortillas! Not flatbreads, surely? I used sandwich wraps. But think pittas would have been good too. 

Couple of pieces of lamb shoulder fillet, marinated in garlicky loveliness and then griddled on each side for a few minutes, before resting - leaving it beautifully pink inside and super tasty on the outside. With simple lemony rocket leaves, garlicky herby yoghurt sauce, and the meat, wrapped in tortillas and served. Messy (I can never work out how to fold these - I know the theory but in reality I always either tear them or they just keep falling apart and dribbling meaty juices and yoghurt all down ones front), but delicious. The sweetness of the meat, and the acidity of the lemon and peppery leaves, refreshing sharpness of the yoghurt, lovely jubbly, and a very nice Friday night supper.

164: Orange yoghurt water ice, p254

Another sorbet-y, granita-y, water ice from the book and this one, like the strawberry water ice which I made back in September, was a winner. Intensely fruity and sweet but not too sweet like the melon sorbet was. Easy to make, and like the strawberry water ice, it had a much better texture than the melon sorbet. Curious. I like the addition of yoghurt, giving a little creaminess to the ice, but without losing the tartness of the orange. Could try adding yoghurt to the strawberry recipe...

163: Stilton, onion and potato pie, p354

I hadn't read this recipe properly until now and had for some reason been thinking this was going to be an actual pastry pie or perhaps layered slices of sauteed potatoes at best. As a result I was thinking this would be a bit of a meh, vegetarian heaven recipe, but it turned out to be... super lovely creamy cheesey oniony yummy mash potato - yum! Blue cheese isn't my favourite - I've always wanted to like it more, but always seem to find it too tangy and strong, so I wasn't convinced about using stilton - or having to buy a chunk twice the size of what we needed... but glad I did - on serving the cheese had effectively completely melted into everything else and the flavour wasn't overpowering at all. The onions went deliciously sweet and gooey, and the potatoes super creamy and buttery. Not a low cal option but the most lovely comfort food... It didn't quite pass the 'complete meal' test for T though, but with the addition of a couple of grilled sausages and some steamed greens, it made the grade. I think I agree with him. Yum.

162: A lime tart, p32

Lots of limes! Lots of eggs! Lots of cream! And lots of sugar! Blimey... another low-cal pudding from Nige :)

I didn't even try to make the pastry. I feel no shame... However, I did miss the clues in the recipe, specifying that the pie tin should have 3.5cm high sides, so that even using my big pie tin and a large sheet of pastry the lime mixture was enough to have filled two pie tins. Which I don't have. So I baked the rest in small bowls to eat as little puddings, which seems to have worked :)

The tart was scrummy, although it looked worryingly like a cheese and chive quiche on serving - T prodded it suspiciously, thinking I was trying to con him into eating something from the banned list...  A custardy texture, with lots of zesty bits, but I have to say, I prefer my own lemon tart which is much simpler (2 lemons, 2 eggs, 150ml cream, 150g sugar), fits in one regular pastry case, and has a smooth, crisp filling. No bad at all, just not as good as mine :)

161: A pot-roast pheasant with celery and sage, p25

Recipe six this weekend, and the shops are stocking pheasant again, now it's in season - hurray! Unfortunately they all seem to come wrapped in bacon, so after searching for a naked one everywhere, I gave up, bought one with the bacon, and peeled it off before cooking. Don't think it affected the flavour of the meat in the recipe though.

This recipe called for browning the meat and then cooking up the other ingredients in a casserole dish before putting it in the oven... after the disaster of the pot-roast pigeon where one of my two Denby casserole dishes shattered into pieces, with about two litres of ingredients and stock flooding the kitchen, and therefore me discovering that Denby dishes aren't hob proof (doh!), I very carefully used the second one for this - I really need a Le Creuset dish for Christmas - if I can find anywhere to store one!!

There wasn't an enormous amount of liquid in this so although I pushed the pheasant down as much as I could, it was mostly sitting on top of the other ingredients so I was worried the meat might end up a bit dry but it didn't seem to and after 40mins in the oven seemed to be cooked just right - cooked through but still a little moist. The potatoes were perfectly cooked, the celery still slightly crunchy, and plenty of lovely yummy, vermouthy, sage-y gravy. Yum!

159: Seared beef with mint and mustard dressing, p271, and 160: Garlic prawns, p272

Oh my... the seared beef was amazing. Dedicated carnivores that we are, it was always likely to be a winner, but this really was divine! Our budget rarely stretches to fillet (or steak at all - it's usually a special occasion treat, much to T's dismay) and I couldn't justify the quantity this recipe uses, just for the two of us, so got a much smaller piece of fillet, around 200g. Wasn't sure how long to cook it in the oven for, 10mins for the larger piece in the recipe, so tried 5mins, then a couple more, and then a good 10mins resting and it was perfect - rare in the middle, with a thin roasted layer outside. And it cut like butter with my super sharp filleting knife. Gorgeous.

The dressing was a success too, creamy and minty, love making these mayonnaises now I've found they are so easy. Used my little mini processor so couldn't drizzle the oil in continuously, instead stopped every minute or so to drizzle another tbsp over the top of the mixture before blitzing again and it seemed to work just fine. Despite using lots of fresh mint, the mint flavour didn't really come through, so might try more in the future, or less mustard, but still delicious!

Finally for the evening, we had the garlicky grilled prawns. Again, the budget, and the number of covers, didn't quite match the recipe's requirements but I decided not to scrimp on quality and got four enormous fresh sea king prawns, each a good four inches long, from the Waitrose fish counter. Hardly need a recipe for this one and it's one of our favourite combinations, although normally if we add red chilli to add a fiery kick, so not much to say other than it was easy (no more than 5mins under the grill) and delicious - especially with lashings of melted butter and lemon juice on top!

158: A supper of grilled mackerel and more tomatoes, p222

The Nigel Slater Marathon weekend continues! Last night's dinner comprised no fewer than three new recipes, plus the leftover remoulade from last night. Rock on! I made no more than a half quantity of each recipe and T and I shared. This could be the solution to finishing the book by the end of the year!

First up was another mackerel recipe. Easy peasy and really rather nice - definitely one to repeat, for a light supper. The skin of mackerel is so beautiful, and these fillets popped under the grill for about 5mins were perfectly cooked, meaty but not heavy, with the skin crisped around the edges, and the acidity of the lemon cutting through their slight oiliness. Lovely. Worked very nicely with the creaminess of the leftover remoulade on the side.

156: Celeriac and walnut remoulade, p355, and 157: Hot and sticky roast quail, p353

Sorry about the break in service - we moved house! From a two bed flat to a two bed house - yippee :) Kitchen isn't enormous, but it's definitely bigger than the last one, and much better laid out - and at last we can actually fit all the food AND the crockery AND kitchen bits and bobs in there, with no need to use the spare room as a pantry anymore. Phew!

So... getting a bit behind on the book, oh dear... but must crack on! So - tonight we had two recipes, the first of which I wasn't really looking forward to - every time I've had a celeriac root in a veggie box it's gone terribly wrong... but it was another revelation! The creme fraiche, grain mustard and lemon mixture gave the matchsticks of celeriac a really nice tangy kick. Of course I couldn't get 'paper thin slices of Bayonne ham' so I used some nice thin slices of English ham, and instead of serving the remoulade on top of the slices of ham, I sliced it into thin strips and mixed it into the celeriac mixture. Only real fault was that I wouldn't add any extra salt if I made it again, as I found it didn't need it, but with the ham mixed in (partly so that T wouldn't just eat the ham and leave the celeriac...) it had all the saltiness it needed.

Served with the quails on the side, just one each, this made a nice, light dinner for us. The quail recipe was easy as could be and twenty minutes in the oven was perfect. The basting sauce was delicious - not too hot at all, sweet and sticky, and scrummy - and a nice foil to the crisp, refreshing zing of the remoulade. A success all round!

155: Orange jelly with lemon and cardamom, p106

The pudding for tonight's dinner party of errors... non-vegan* unfortunately, but another one ticked off in the book... I didn't have quite enough oranges for just under a litre of juice so I added some orange juice from a carton to the mix as well, and it seemed to work still. I thought it was going to be incredibly acidic and sour as there is no sugar or anything sweet in the ingredients, but amazingly it wasn't, once it was set (another worry, but it did actually set - hurray, and phew!) it was a really nice zingy finish to the meal, and the cardamom was subtle and not too strong at all. Sometimes I find cardamom a bit overpowering but it wasn't too much at all in this, especially with such a strong citrus flavour to counter.

*The new vegan friend seemed happy with a bowl of peach slices and a jug of cream-substitute made out of oats. Which we all swiped as well - rather nice, and agreed is much better than soya cream-substitute :)

154: Courgette and lancashire cheese crumble, p378

I'd not been looking forward to making this one... T was planning to be out for it, no matter what, so I needed to find some folk who like veggie food upon whom I could inflict it. It turned into a bit of a comedy of errors after I invited a group of friends round for dinner including one of the friend's new housemate who was moving in that day (Saturday).

We had hardly any food in at all and I stupidly thought, at least one of the three little grocery shops up the road will definitely have courgettes and Lancashire cheese. Everywhere has courgettes at the moment, you can't get away from the damn things. And I'd got Lancashire cheese confused with Leicestershire. Rats. Silly me. No courgettes and no cheese anywhere to be found, and I stupidly had left it too late to get to any more useful shops and manage to get the flat in order enough for the four visitors who were en route. Massive fail. Phoned one of the guests, who has a car, to see if he could pop to Tescos quickly for me, only to find out he had left his car at work, and was rather... hungover... Anyway, the darling man hopped on his bicycle and wove his wobbly way to Tescos.

Meanwhile, a phonecall from one of the other guests revealed that the new housemate is vegan! And I'm halfway through making a main course with lots of cheese in it and a pudding which uses (pork) gelatine. Aargh. If I'd had a bit longer I'd have definitely made something vegan for everyone, hate making anyone feel 'different' and not as welcome as the others, but had a minor meltdown. But she was ever so sweet and adamant that she didn't want to be a problem and had a big pot of chilli beany stew which they could bring, which was fabulous. And we sent the Tescos-rescue friend a message asking him to try to find a vegan pudding :)

The others all arrived, but the Tescos-rescue friend was nowhere to be seen, until he called to say he'd gotten all the way through the supermarket, through the checkout, and... found he'd forgotten his wallet. Argh! At which point I told him to give up and just come on over - bean stew for all! But he managed to persuade one of the others to hop in her car and come and rescue him, and quarter of an hour later they made it back, with the rather fundamental courgettes and cheese. Phew! Quick finish off of the recipe, popped in the oven, and we could have nibbly bits and some lovely garlicky tear-and-share bread the others brought with them for a starter.

And the result? It was pretty good! A miracle - I was firmly convinced it was going to be horrid, especially after the farce of the rest of the evening... but it wasn't at all. The potatoes had turned to mush (not sure if that was how it should have been, but the extended delay mid-cooking might have made them squishier than they should have been) but the courgettes were al dente and the stock and cheese mixed in was scrummy. Not as much cheese in the recipe as I'd have put in, could definitely have been cheesier and I'm not sure it really needed to be Lancashire cheese rather than cheddar or something else, but the crumble on top really worked - added a completely different texture to go with the mushy crunchy veg underneath, and the walnutty-ness and rosemary came through really nicely. Definitely a goodie, and one to repeat in the future for veggie friends :) Not the vegan ones though. Although missing out the cheese completely would probably be good too.

Served with a very simple salad, rice, and (vegan) chilli beany stew :) 

Phew.

153: Roast fillet of lamb with anchovy and mint, p90

Not a fillet, made this with a boneless rolled shoulder joint (been sitting in the freezer since Tesco's delivered a near random selection of cuts of lamb which weren't the ones I'd ordered... So I didn't follow the timings given in this recipe, for a much smaller piece of meat. Worked well though - I gave the c.900g shoulder c.65mins in the oven at 180degC (fan oven) and then let it rest for a good 15mins before serving - with the marinade on the outside not burning to a crisp and the meat itself very moist and deliciously light pink inside. Lovely jubbly.

T (who keeps rolling his eyes at yet another lamb recipe, as he doesn't really like lamb very much) actually declared this the best lamb he'd ever had, so it definitely passed muster with him!

The new potatoes were good too - and ended up covered in deliciously crispy tasty bits of the marinade, left after the meat. Yum!

40 recipes to go! Will I make it by the end of December?? We're moving house middle of next week, so I might blitz a few more this weekend before another quiet chunk when I might not be able to do too much in the way of cooking. Only 11 done so far this month - must do more! Planning a couple of dinner parties/soirees once we're into the new place, which will let me tick off quite a few... fingers crossed!

152: Lemon amaretti pots, p162

An easy peasy, quick pudding to make - a good one for future dinner parties when there's not much time... and anything with lemon curd in it has to be a winner! I don't particularly like crumbled biscuits/cake mixed in with softer ingredients, find it an odd texture, especially when they get soft themselves - ick, so I think if I did this again I would put a layer of crumbled amaretti biscuits on the bottom of the glasses/ramekins and/or on the top of the cream/yoghurt/lemon curd mixture. And swirl the lemon curd in last, so you get streaks of lemon curd throughout the creamy mixture - think that would look prettier too.

151: Blackberry and apple pie, p343

Rats. I can't make pastry. This is a well documented fact. Here. And here. And here. And many other places, no doubt. But I keep trying. This time it was all going well, until I retrieved the pastry from the fridge and found it had turned into a rock solid, dry lump. It was not going to become malleable in time to be able to bake the pie and leave to get to my parents' in time for lunch, so I cheated and used the emergency jus rol. The shame. No, I don't care. Pastry and me are not meant to be. It's a good thing really, if I could make the stuff, I'd eat it all the time...

Good pie though! Unusually for a Nigel pud, I didn't find this overly sweet, which was nice, even though some of the apples I used were quite sweet already. Of course my sister thought it wasn't quite sweet enough - but ho hum, I liked it. Not rocket science, no real deviations from the basics of such a pie, so an easy one to tick off, pastry-making excluded...

150: Plum crisp, p286

Another day, another crumble. Of sorts :)

Godda cold. Needed comfort food. Crumble. What more does one need? It's a bit of a half hearted crumble - maybe I should have used a smaller dish as the plums were kinda spaced out, with the crumble sprinkled over, but it looked rather rustic and thrown together in a haphazard sort of way. And it tasted pretty good... still got the cold though :(

149: An almond and greengage crumble, p282

Where am I going to find greengages? Hmm, poss a farmers' market, but I always get up too late... or I don't get up too late because I'm off somewhere but by the time whatever I'm off to is done, it's too late. And sod's law, everytime I actually would make it, they wouldn't have greengages, and the once a year when they do, I'd definitely be fast asleep... Anyway, the recipe says 'or plums' - so plums it was. Plus I was at a friend's, after a long day trapsing around the enormity of the craft fair that is The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, and with serious headaches, and feet and credit cards burning, we needed some blood-sugar-raising asap, and only CostCutters was open. And it sold plums! No greengages though. Unsurprisingly.

Thus, this was made in someone else's kitchen, without the aid of a food processor - argh! Luckily there was a willing friend who inexplicably DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO RUB BUTTER INTO FLOUR. Madness. But she seemed keen to learn, and since I loathe rubbing butter into flour and have done since being forced to make scones at school week after week in the 80s (bizarrely in lovely lovely Mason and Cash mixing bowls - which I adore and have coveted ever since, which is why I now own four of them all in different sizes) I quickly showed her how and delegated the task to my new (temporary) kitchen slave. Hurrah!

Otherwise, easy peasy, throw it all in, bung in the oven and then yummy crumble 40mins later. Very slightly blackened on top, because we kinda forgot about it whilst we were eating dinner and it prob got a bit longer than 40mins, and the oven may have been a bit hot still, but not overly cremated at all. Perhaps a little oversweet - less sugar for plums vs. greengages, maybe? But lovely crumbly powdery topping, and fabulous with friend K's amazing homemade custard - wow, who knew it was so easy to make amazing homemade custard?!

147: Slow-roast lamb with chickpea mash, p62, and 148: Cheese-smothered potatoes, p17

Tescos delivered lamb shanks instead of another leg of lamb (as the recipe says) the other day, but the shank is part of the arm of the shoulder, and includes part of the leg, so that's not that far from being a leg of lamb, right?

Three and a half hours of roasting and I was worried they were going to be wrecked, as they'd got rather crispy on the outside inspite of the hourly basting with the juices - the juices were starting to disappear in the ether so there wasn't that much to baste with towards the end. But luckily it was just the outside, the layer of fat over the meat and the spice rub over it, and the meat underneath was  perfectly tender and the cartilage and connective tissue had melted away just as it should - much better than the last time I cooked lamb shanks...

Served with the cheese-smothered potatoes, which were easy peasy, and must have been virtually calorie free... not... and the chickpea mash, which T described as 'revolting', and refused to eat after trying a teeny bit. I kinda had to agree with him on that, it wasn't very nice... glad I divided the recipe in half so we didn't have enough for six... :)

145: A simple flatbread, p77, and 146: Taramasalata - the real thing, p77

Oooooh, this was a revelation for both of us! Me, because I hadn't realised how easy taramasalata is to make and love recipes where something curious happens to the ingredients and they change into something completely unexpected, and T because he never knew taramasalata was a fishy pate-type of gloop. How? Who knows... but he'd always apparently regarded it as a suspicious pink relative of hummous or tzatziki.

The flatbreads were great. We make all our bread in our breadmaker so I wasn't really looking forward to making these by hand, but it was easy and didn't need too much kneading at all. It more than quadrupled in size after being left for an hour, but started to deflate pretty quickly when being divided up into pieces. The main problem was that it was still pretty sticky and difficult to handle - so I had to use a lot of flour to manhandle it into pieces to bake, let alone form them into 'slipper' shapes. They puffed up like footballs in the oven, so I squished them down onto the baking tray to flatten them out a bit but they weren't very 'flat' flatbreads... I thought flatbreads weren't supposed to use yeast, hence the 'flat', but hey. And they were yummy - I love different types of breads, especially doughy ones like these with very little salt or sugar in them.

Located a lump of cod's roe in the wonderful Sandy's - it wasn't as expensive as Nigel seems to suggest in the book (but the red mullet made up for that...) - rather revolting looking solid sausagey type brownish lump with a hard, plasticky skin which the recipe states to peel off. Yum! Blitzed with the rest of the ingredients it curiously changed from the brownish colour and turned pale pink like the bought taramasalata. Bizarre! Then with the gradual addition of the olive oil it suddenly changed from a fishy slurry into a thick cream - like mayonnaise, as it says in the book. T loved it.

144: Strawberry mascarpone tart, p207

 

Om nom nom! Another  scrummy low-cal (ha!) pud from the book... and easy too, no pastry (hurray!) but a base made from crushed up oatmeal biscuits and butter. Wasn't sure it would set hard enough to hold together out of the tin, but it did after half an hour or so in the fridge. The mascarpone mixture was a bit of a faff, comprising a cheese and egg yolk mixture and whipped egg white - the egg white deflated quite a lot on folding into the cheese mixture but it didn't seem to affect the final result, which filled the biscuit case nicely. I made a bit of a mistake in not pushing the biscuit base up the sides of the tin a bit, and it was too late when I realised so I wasn't sure it would come out of my springform tin without splodging everywhere, but after another half an hour or so in the fridge it had firmed up enough that it was fine and I didn't have a biscuit base with a lake of squishy filling flooding out all over the place. Phew!

And the result was delicious - really light filling and not too sweet. Would make a very nice pud for a summer BBQ... even if the rain was lashing down on Saturday night after a gloomy grey day, when we had this :)