32: Pork ribs with honey and anise, p300

Oooooh, proper meaty tasty Chinese ribs, with sticky very-star-anisey sauce.

Made a bit of a boo-boo, after defrosting the ribs last night, and getting all the rest of the ingredients in the bowl, I found that the big bottle of oyster sauce in the cupboard was actually another bottle of thick dark soy sauce. There's a fantastic Asian supermarket not far from us in Richmond, and they sell great big bottles of soy, nam pla, oyster sauce, sesame oil, etc which I stock up on from time to time - and which last ages, hadn't realised that one had run out. Ooops... So I improvised with nam pla and soy sauce, so fingers crossed it wasn't too far from the actual recipe.

It's a really easy recipe, mixed up the marinade this morning and coated the ribs with it, leaving them in the sauce, and roasting the ribs this evening for an hour. Served with basmati rice and steamed winter greens, that was it! Scrummy.

31: Salmon and dill fishcakes, p161

Yummy yummy yum yum... Scrummy little fishcakes, Nigel IS the king of such creations. I've never made fishcakes before, but I know that they tend to contain potato... but these don't, just egg white, mustard, dill, lemon, bit of flour, and a lot of salmon. When I scrunched them into little cakes to fry, they seemed very wet, possibly because the salmon came out of the freezer rather being fresh, so I thought they might fall apart and be a bit of a disaster, but they didn't, and they made lovely little cakes, golden brown on each side.

Served with new potatoes and steamed sugar snap peas, it's definitely worth making the very simple sauce to go with the fishcakes - I used some homemade yoghurt, mixed up with a good teaspoonful of grain mustard, but forgot to add any dill - oh well, the fishcakes were very dill-y!

30: A herb and barley broth to bring you back to health, p41

Don't really need to be brought back to health, but hey, can't beat a bit of broth... uses up lots of veggies too, which is useful because I slightly over-bought in Tescos yesterday and the fridge is overflowing...

Essentially stew without the meat, very similar in delicate sweet taste to the lamb stew earlier this month. I'm not sure that the specially-purchased goose fat really adds that much, but c'est la vie...

29: Stir-fried mushrooms, spring leaves and lemon grass, p100

More winter leaves than spring leaves, so perhaps not as tender as Nigel intended when he made this in March, but resulted in a simple but tasty, garlicky stir-fry, served on basmati rice. Easy peasy and virtuous too - lots of greenery and no meat! And the bunny rabbit enjoyed demolishing the stems/midribs from the greens...

28: Toasted chocolate brioche, p137

This isn't a recipe!! Definitely an excuse for a decadent breakfast though... Actually, toasting the brioche in a ridged pan, melting the chocolate inside, did create something greater than the sum of it's parts... I'm used to having brioche warm and soft, but not toasted, and I think it was actually better! I cheated a little - used brioche rolls instead of slices, and chocolate chips as I just realised I used up all the dark chocolate in the chocolate puddings on Friday - they used a LOT of chocolate... Yum...

27: Mushroom pappardelle, p283

Not really a recipe this, very similar to the kind of thing I do for a quick mid-week super, garlic 'shrooms on pappardelle (actually the fresh linguine I made last week, dried now). Chestnut mushrooms gave it a nice nutty taste, and the parsley and Parmesan added a little extra flavour.

26: Orange and ricotta pancakes, p156

Feeling a bit bad about making T eat squash again, and having been a bit grumpy and snappy at him for no real reason, I decided to make another pudding (two, in one weekend! No wonder we're getting podgy...) and made these pancakes for a late pudding/supper. T got a jar of gourmet handmade chocolate fudge sauce in his Christmas foodie hamper, so I thought these might go nicely... and use up the pot of ricotta in the fridge. An unusual pancake recipe - no milk! And the egg whites are whisked separately until firm and then folded in, eugh. It was 10pm and my initial enthusiasm started to wane slightly, especially when I split the egg whites all over the place when I started whisking. Damn damn damn. But they were whisked, and folded, and dolloped in the frying pan four at a time. Because of the egg whites they are fluffy and thick, and the cheese makes them very soft too, so it's difficult to tell when they are cooked - let alone turn them over. I'm not very patient waiting for little pancakes to cook, and couldn't quite get them at the right point - not cooked enough and they splurge on turning, too long and they're a little over-brown on the pan-side. Unfortunately I seemed to keep getting a combination of the two, even with the pan on the lowest heat. Hey ho! What's a bit of aesthetic carbonisation and raw egg between husband and wife? Eek.

The orange zest wasn't too strong and the pancakes soft and fluffy still at the end, if a little brown on the outside, and the chocolate fudge sauce melted gorgeously all over them. Yum! Happy T, and me, order and calm restored.

However... although they were extremely good, and it was a novel use for ricotta, I can't say I'd honestly be likely to bother to make them again - partly because I love normal crepe-style pancakes (which are so easy and quick anyway), and partly because if I want to make little scotch-pancake-style pancakes, a couple of months ago I discovered Jamie Oliver's recipe for apple pancakes and they are so so quick and easy, I'd make them instead. Sorry, Nigel!

24: Chicken patties with rosemary and pancetta, p39, and 25: Roast pumpkin and spicy tomato sauce, p47

More little patties - Nigel does like his patties, burgers, meatballs, fishcakes, etc. I don't often make them as I like to prepare food quite quickly and simply, and chopping everything up, mincing the meat if it's not minced already, mixing, chilling, shaping, then cooking... always seems like a lot of extra steps and extra washing up to do for an okay return, but just as good as doing something simpler. Maybe when I've got a decent sized kitchen, with more than 2ft of half-depth worksurface and a dishwasher, I'll change my mind! Or maybe some more of these recipes will start to convert me... the pork patties from a few weeks ago were mighty fine...

These chicken ones were very tasty, but not as good as the pork patties - I think we like our chilli too much! Not being able to find minced chicken anywhere, and preferring to use slightly better quality chicken anyway, I used the breast meat from the chicken I jointed on Friday and minced it up in the chopper pot of my Braun Multiquick. Love my Multiquick - had it for years, and got the metal one instead of the plastic one for about £20 when Boots clearly made a mistake and mispriced it, it was selling for about £70 at the time. It's perfect for when you need to chop/blend/mix slightly smaller amounts than if cooking for more than 2-4 people, or just dealing with one ingredient. I make breadcrumbs, blend soups, whisk egg whites, mince meat, chop herbs/onions etc (if doing more than a few).

The raw mixture was quite crumbly and wasn't holding together very well (bits of onion falling out everywhere) so I was worried they wouldn't keep their shape, but after making little patties and leaving them to one side for 30mins as in the recipe, they did actually firm up fine and could be popped in the pan easily. I quite liked the method of browning them quickly on the hob and then braising them in the oven, in some of the chicken stock made the other day, which gave a thin gravy to serve.

Served with the roast pumpkin (actually butternut squash - the half leftover from the pumpkin soup last week), roasted in the oven with tomatoes, garlic and chilli. I left the tomatoes pretty much as they came out of the oven, very slightly mashed, rather than chopping them too much as they were so hot and we were hungry!! Very yummy indeed, but T's squash aversion continues. He did have a little though and ate the tomatoes (doesn't like cooked tomatoes, unless in a tomatoey sauce), but he left most of the little heap of squash I gave him. Luckily I think there's only one more squash/pumpkin-based recipe left...

23: White bean and tarragon soup, p158

A bit of a meh recipe for us, 'too beany' according to T, who doesn't like beans. Unless they are of the baked variety. Too tarragony for me, and I think I prefer soups with beans to be chunky rather than blended, as I don't like the texture of the resulting liquid after blending, too coarse and thick for me, like eating pureed watery potato... or beans... Hey ho, used up the last of the limp but still green and tarragony tarragon at last, and a lonely looking carrot that's been kicking around for a bit.

21: Chicken stew and mash, p80, and 22: Hot chocolate puddings, p52

Oh my... the pudding, the pudding!! But before that... the main...

I was going to make this yesterday, thinking it would be a nice warming tummy-pleaser to pop in the oven before going to the gym, but when I went to put the chicken in the marinade early afternoon, I realised the recipe said to leave it for 4-5 hours minimum, preferably overnight, before browning the meat and softening the leeks etc etc, and then two hours in the oven. Not really enought time, oops. So I popped the meat in the marinade and then left it in the fridge until this evening - and boy, did the orange infuse into the meat!!

I didn't use a whole jointed chicken in this, as per the recipe, since it's only the two of us and I'm rather enjoying cooking more recipes rather than having lots of leftovers... this may change once my new job starts on the 1st February :)

I always buy a whole chicken instead of chicken pieces/fillets and joint it - saves a lot of money, can buy better quality chicken in the first place instead of nasty water-filled pieces, and get the carcass at the end to make stock with. Yum! It's a bit of a faff but when I'm at work all week, it makes me feel productive on a Sunday afternoon, to joint a chicken, pop some in the fridge to use in the next couple of days and the rest in the freezer, and brew up a litre or two of good stock and then make soup for lunches during the week...

This recipe made a very tasty stew indeed, with the meat falling off the bone, with soft leeks and melting garlic, and cannellini beans breaking up the richness. It's always a good sign when T eats the pulses/lentils in a dish! There's a good amount of gubbins* left in the pot, which I will probably eat as a soup, I think, but not as much as in the lamb shanks dish the other night.

And then on to the pud... Which was a bit of an afterthought actually. I decided T needed a treat after a busy week, along with the bottle of Cab Sav to go with dindins. I've had some upsetting failures with whipping egg whites in the past - teeniest bit of grease/yolk in the bowl with the whites and they won't whip up... so didn't tell T that I was making a pud until it was definitely looking like it might work... But it did, and a lot of top notch dark chocolate, butter, and a blob of chocolate spread later, mmmmmm!!! Perfect gooey melty chocolate fondants out of the oven for afters! They were incredibly rich though, so maybe a dollop of fruit on the side, raspberries or something, perhaps gently stewed up, would be rather nice...

Update: The next day, the chocolate fondants are actually even better cold! They've sunk in the middle, but have taken on the consistency of dense chocolate fudge cake... mmmmm!!!! 

* gubbins - another family technical term, referring to the bits and bobs, veggies, oniony pieces, sauce, and juices, left in the dish after a casserole/pot roast.

20: Chicken with mushrooms and lemon grass, p107

OOOOOOOOOOOOhhh, this was good. The name of the recipe is somewhat uninspiring and does this little stirfry a great disservice - it's a scrummy, zingy, fresh-tasting mixture, with lots of garlic and ginger, plus a little red chilli and a good kick of lemongrass, and that delicious but-don't-inhale-too-deeply salty-meatiness given by a good glug of nam pla. Served on steamed basmati rice, and many contented 'mmmm's all round...

 

Tarragon Vinegar update...

So, the homemade tarragon vinegar is halfway through brewing and according to the recipe I found online, the clove of garlic had to come out last weekend - but weirdness, look at the colour this perfectly normal clove has turned after a week in a bottle of cider vinegar!!

19: Lamb shanks with mustard and mash, p44

Hmm, a mixed reaction to this one... I've never cooked lamb shanks, and I don't think I've actually had them in a restaurant either. The meat was amazingly tender and fell away from the bone after just an hour and a half in a low oven, and was beautiful, but there was still a bit too much connective tissue - meltingly soft but slightly slimy as T put it.

Smelt amazing whilst it was cooking away in the oven, and the juices were meaty and red winey but I think I'd prefer to thicken them up a bit. And although you need lots of liquid to slowly braise the meat in, because there's only two lamb shanks (yes - it's for two people!), there's about a pint of liquid left, which I guess I'll freeze to use in a gravy at some point.

I would probably also put in a good dollop of cranberry sauce or similar to add a fruity sharpness to cut through the soft, gelatinous tastes if I did this again. But not a disaster at all - nice warming, filling Winter food!

18: Spiced pumpkin soup with bacon, p58

Another easy one, and super scrummy it was too. I don't normally add cream to soups, nor blend them until smooth, but this one will definitely be repeated. No pumpkins around at the moment (even though this is from the February section of the book), could only get hold of butternut squash, but hey, that's close enough :)

Addition of bacon should hopefully make it hubbie pleasing too...

Update: And it did!

17: Roast aubergines with tahini, p322

Oh no! The first duff one, I'm afraid :(

Didn't like this. Had a few minor disasters en route - slightly overdid the aubergines so not exactly 'toasted', and then got distracted reading whilst the pine nuts were toasting - and burnt them to little black bullets, filling the flat with cremated pine nut fumes... second attempt at toasting the pine nuts was much more successful - I didn't leave them unattended for a second.

 
But the final dish was just a bit odd and has given me a tummyache ever since. The jar of tahini (whilst still being in date!) has been sitting on the shelf for a while unopened, and I'd actually forgotten how peanut buttery tahini is, even mixed with the other ingredients it still tasted overwhelmingly peanut buttery, and I think that's what my tummy objected to. The pine nuts* were nice though!

Curious.

T's out this evening, I saved him a little bit to try, but think the chances of him liking it are almost certainly zero... 

* Is it just me, or does anyone else think toasted pine nuts taste a bit like un-popped popcorn kernels, when they've browned and gone a bit crumbly?

16: Orecchiette with roast tomato and basil sauce, p197

A very very easy one this, but a nice twist on a tomatoey-sauce on top of pasta - by sticking the tomatoes and some garlic in the oven for a while to roast first, they go deliciously sweet and bring out the flavour of the basil, and adding a little bit of cream just makes it darn scrummy. Will definitely do this many times over the next year.

 

15: Lemon and basil linguine, p150

There are a few relatively simple pasta suppers in the book which give me a good excuse to make homemade pasta. Sometimes making pasta is a disaster and I think whenever I've had a problem it's because the dough hasn't been chilled for long enough - 30mins isn't enough, 1.5hrs seems to be much better. So a happy afternoon making dough, letting it chill, then rolling it out to make lots of lovely linguine (some of it nearly a metre long!) and a couple of bowls-worth of orecchiette ('little ears', so sweet!)...

 

 

 

Once dry,  a couple of minutes in a boiling pan of water, and then a creamy (but no cream!) lemony basily Parmesany sauce, and voila!

14: Haddock with crumbs and tarragon, p315

Fish and chips!!

Have come to the conclusion that it's pretty much safe to assume that Nigel's recipes make enough for twice the number of people he says - I didn't have two 200g pieces of haddock fillet, but I did have one 220g piece of haddock fillet that definitely looked like it would feed two - and it did! Halved the rest of the quantities as a result and used up some more of the seemingly-small-bunch-which-actually-turns-out-to-be-an-endless-supply-of-fresh-tarragon...

Can't say the tarragony-anchovy flavour of the crumbs came through that strongly, but the crumbs were nice and light and went pleasingly crispy with only a tiny smidge of oil in the pan (oops, missed the oil/butter combo for frying in the recipe).

Served with homemade oven chips (heat a tbsp oil in a pan in the oven, c.180degC fan oven, add potatoes chopped into chunky chips, sprinkle with paprika, shake to cover, and bake for c.30mins, shaking once or twice during cooking) and steamed green beans.

And now relaxing with a glass of Shiraz and the DVD of 'Sideways'. Good times.

13: Baked mushrooms with tarragon mustard butter, p279

He's trying to kill us!! With butter!! I thought this would be less cardiac-arrest inducing than 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' but I'm not so sure... :)

These are yummy, really like the combination of butter, tarragon, mustard, lemon, and 'shroom... and worked well with nice simple basmati rice and tomatoes sprinkled with balsamic. But soooo much butter mix - have popped the rest (c.50%) in the freezer, will either make these again, or use it when roasting a chicken.

12: A velvety soup for a clear, cold day, p18

Essentially leek and potato soup... with parmesan rinds added during the brewing stage. I'm not sure if it added that much, a faint parmesany tang/whiff to the finished soup, but hey, leek and potato soup is always good, and there's loads for lunches this week. Also put some in the freezer for when I go back to work in a couple of weeks.

I think the most difficult thing with this challenge is stopping myself cooking things how I'd normally do them or how I would adapt recipes instead of following them really strictly - so I made a soup for what must be the first time without starting off by cooking up garlic and onions, and I blended it until smooth at the end. Strange times!

T thought it was quite okay too, which is high praise from a man who abhors vegetable soups (except tomato), but then I think it was sufficiently akin to a vichyssoise not to repulse, and he's being soooo supportive of this daft idea of mine (I think he's looking forward to the lamb shanks, duck, pheasant, etc later on...after a run of veggie meals, he might not be so keen).

11: Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander, p81

Ooooh, we are diiiiining finely this year!! Scrummy scrummy fiery little munchkins these. Lots of garlic, lots of chilli, lots of ginger... Easy peasy. I used the food processor as in the recipe, but I think next time I'd just use the handheld chopper as the whole mix doesn't go in (spice paste made first, then the bacon - no pancetta I'm afraid - whizzed up separately, and then the whole lot mixed up by hand in a bowl).

Even did the lettuce dressed with lime, coriander, mint, and salt, as in the intro, but baked some paprikay wedges in the oven instead of rice (T's request, two nights of rice in a row seemed a bit much for him).

10: Sauteed chicken with spice, fennel and cream, p367

I bought a fennel bulb last weekend, hoping to make 'a salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan', the second recipe in the book. I've scoured the shops and searched online and it looks like I'm going to have to buy some online which will take weeks what with the lack of post at the moment (serious ice here, and no post for 4-5 days now)... unless I make some! I have tarragon, I have cider vinegar/red wine vinegar/white wine vinegar. many many recipes for tarragon vinegar online, but they all take a couple 2-3 weeks minimum so the salad recipe will have to wait for a while (and another bulb of fennel). Trekking around West London seems like a lot of effort for 1 tbsp of tarragon vinegar, but it's used in the 'Chicken with vermouth, tarragon and cream' recipe later in the book, and I'm not going to substitute! So I've got a bottle of tarragon vinegar brewing gently in the wine cupboard... ready in a couple of weeks :)

So, what to do with a spare fennel bulb, Nigel? He clearly likes the stuff - there are 5 recipes using it in the Diaries. Unfortunately I don't like fennel - toooooo aniseedy - so it's going to be fun. Maybe I'll start to like it during the course of this year!

Tonight's dinner therefore, a mild spicy/mustardy creamy chicken dish. Very easy - well seasoned chicken legs/thighs panfried in a little oil until scrummyly crispy and golden, sauteed fennel, lightly cooked spice paste, and a good dollop of cream. Lovely jubbly. And the fennel added a nice texture and it's very distinctive flavour was definitely there but wasn't too overpowering. Success!

I didn't have any chilli powder (I have a huge range of spices and herbs, but only dried chillis, chilli flakes, cayenne pepper etc) - so I ground up some tiny dried chillis in the pestle and mortar, along wit the other spices. Probably made it a bit hotter than chilli powder would have done, oops!  

I also took the opportunity to try out my new toy from Lakeland. I love Lakeland :) It's a microwave rice steamer - woohoo! Okay, I know rice isn't exactly difficult to cook, but I find is a bit stressful trying to make it really nice and fluffy (ie. weighing and using the right volume of water, yadda yadda) as I'm often in the middle of something else and get distracted so it gets stuck to the pan... or if I do the loads of water and drain it at the end option, it just ends up a bit soggy and disappointing... All this is is a big clear pot with a removable pot inside, slightly raised up and with holes in it, and a lid. Rinse the rice in the inner pot, pop it in the larger pot, add boiling water from the kettle to just cover the rice, pop lid on, stick it in the microwave for 10mins, stirring halfway though. Ta-daaaaa! And it works perfectly! Nice light, fluffy rice, perfectly cooked, no mess, eaaasy peasy :) Am I lazy, or am I lazy?

9: Double ginger cake, p15

Got a cake craving last night. Must have been the pilates class and 'light' dinner...

Potential problem is that I don't actually much like ginger. Not in sweet foods, anyway... It's supposed to be really good for nausea but I tend to feel a bit nauseous after eating sweet gingery things... But, it's in the book, it's got to be done!

Curious batter this, very fluid... Recipe says 'mixture should be sloppy' and Maggie Don's blog says that the ginger/fruit sank to the bottom because the batter was so floppy, but still a bit worrying... and it took a good 10mins longer in the oven that the 40mins in the recipe (maybe Nigel does have a fan oven after all). Ho hum. It smells delicious and hopes are high... if only one didn't have to wait for it to cool down a bit before diving in!!

No gym class this evening, in-case you hadn't guessed...

Cake-related disaster! Got a little bit stuck in the tin and so sides look a bit... eroded...

It is a nice, light, moist texture, has risen really nicely, but unfortunately, as predicted, it's a bit too sweet and super super gingery (that'll be the double ginger) for me to really like.

EDIT: actually, on second tasting (and a proper piece instead of all the overcooked crumbly bits that fell off/were left in the tin), it's actually quite nice! The ginger bits and raisins did sink to the bottom, and aren't for me, but this leaves lots of nice lightly gingery cake on top, hurrah!

7: Chicken salad with watercress, almonds and orange, p85, and 8: Bulghur wheat with aubergines and mint, p19

Dinner tonight is going to finish off the roast chicken in a meaty, wintery salad, with one of the veggie recipes as an accompaniment, as T's going to be home from work late, with lots of snow still around and bulghur wheat and aubergine alone wouldn't exactly be likely to enthrall :) I'm off to pilates beforehand so looking forward to something a bit lighter and refreshing for dinner.

Why is Nigel Slater not fat??? Leaving aside the number of cake recipes in the book, the quantities, the quantities!!! Both recipes today are down as serving two (albeit with seconds for the bulghur wheat with aubergines...) - you'd have to eat huge portions to eat either of these in one sitting, but hey! They went together well, as T said, although the almonds in the salad seemed a bit pointless (and enormous) what with pumpkin seeds in there already adding crunch.

The bulghur wheat recipe will make a good lunchbox meal in the future, and the salad will definitely be one to make again in the summer with leftover roast chicken...

6: Sausages with salami and lentils, p29

Yuuuum! Thick snow here, and even though I'm off for nearly a month in between contracts at work, I knew T would be very cold when he got home from work and today would not be a good day to make a start on Nigel's vegetarian recipes... especially not the veggie soups... Had everything for this one to hand, except for the salami.

Sister and brother-in-law gave T a basket of lovely foodie things for Christmas, including several smelly cured sausages, but unfortunately no salami. Considered chorizo but thought it might be a bit overpowering, and in the end went with a curious smoked sausage from Austria called Kase Cabanossi - 'air dried hot smoked seasoned sausage with cheese'. Tried a bit of it before, just in case, and it's pretty good - not as spicy as salami but not as greasy either, and I've no idea what we'll do with the rest of it so might as well try it out in this recipe... and it worked very well, luckily!

Exactly as it says in the recipe, this one 'gives the impression of having been cooked for hours but is pretty much ready to eat in forty-five minutes' - I guess it's the sausages and (not-)salami which help give it a bit more weight and depth of flavour. I love sausages which have been casseroled (browned first in a frying pan), it stops them drying out or getting tough on the outside, leaving them perfectly cooked and tender, and super tasty. And T ate green lentils! He did say he didn't know they were lentils til I told him, but he still carried on eating them, and even ate the steamed cabbage-of-guilt* I'd optimistically heaped at the side of his bowl.

* cabbage-of-guilt is a technical term, and an inadvertent family tradition which I have come to recognise after years studying my family...For some inexplicable reason, those of us who do most of the cooking/food shopping (guess who they are, right?) always seem to be compelled to buy a cabbage in the weeks before Christmas. Said cabbage sits in the fridge looking enormous, green, and slightly angry, for weeks. Pre-Christmas, it's the last thing anyone wants to eat. During Christmas it's the last thing anyone wants to eat. And post-Christmas, it's absolutely definitely the last thing anyone wants to eat, especially after wading through Moz's special red cabbage... The only time any of us eat cabbage is when Moz makes her stewed red cabbage as a side for Christmas dinner, which is quite nice really but in the industrial quantities she makes it in (I think one red cabbage makes approx 2L of the stuff) combined all the other food options piled on the groaning dinner table doesn't tend to get done justice too. It's nice, it really is, it's just there's sooo much of it... and given the choice between cabbage, and more turkey and roasties, which would you pick?

So the cabbages remain in our fridges looking less angry, and more sad and unloved, and we all separately feel guilty for buying them in the first place. Why on earth did I buy that damned cabbage? We don't even like cabbage? The waste!! The waste!! This year my sister cunning booked a ski holiday at the end of the first week of January so she had to get rid of all the leftover food in the house post-Christmas/New Year - and palmed me off home with half a brie, a slab of cheddar, a chunk of emmenthal, two packs of smoked salmon, two lemons, four limes, two boxes of mince pies, 1/3 of a yule log, and one cabbage-of-guilt. We popped in to see my parents en route home. Guess what I left? I'd already got my own cabbage-of-guilt - and Moz had clearly just used hers up in a frenzy of red cabbage stewing, what was I supposed to do??

I'm sure other families do the same... it can't just be us...?

5: Chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint, p22

Using up the rest of the chicken broth and some of the roast chicken from Sunday - really zingy, quick soup, which was really rather nice - will definitely make this again, and will have to because I forgot to take a piccie of this one. Apparently the recipe is 'enough for 2 as a main dish' but I made half the volume and it was plenty for both of us for lunch - and more meat than I'd normally put in a soup, so a happy carnivorous hubby, even with though it included coriander, which he hates.

Clear soups like this remind me of 'UFO soups' from a family holiday to Austria many many years ago. We stayed in a little family run guest house in Soll, Tirol, where every night they served a different (?) very salty consomme/broth with what we termed 'Unidentified Floating Objects' which became a family game each evening trying to work out what they were (tiny mushrooms, spring onions, croutons, minestrone...).  If not extremely salty, the UFO soups unfortunately had a tendency to taste rather like one imagines dishwater with lemony washing up liquid might, so unfortunately this recipe triggered this memory-association slightly... although I thought it was best not to mention this as we were eating in case T refused to eat any more...

4: Stew, p10

Not the most exciting of recipe titles, 'Stew', but an opportunity to buy meat over the counter for the first time, woohoo! After lurking in the vicinity of the meat counter, and spying nothing labelled 'neck of lamb chops' - only 'neck of lamb fillet', and 'lamb chops' (which I knew were definitely not from the neck region) - I finally gave in and told the chap I wanted 'neck of lamb chops' for a recipe, and was that possible? He said this would definitely be the neck of lamb fillet, which looked rather nice, but we had some discussion over what volume '8 thick ones' entailed... either one fillet chopped into 8 thick medallions, or eight fillets... deciding that the latter would be a huge amount of meat for a meal described as 'enough for 4', I went for the former - even though T didn't think one fillet was enough for two - on the basis that stew is essentially a means of bulking out a relatively small amount of meat :) Have I mentioned what a carnivore my husband is? He's not looking forward to the many vegetarian dishes in the Diaries...

Pot barley was substituted with pearl barley - it's a slippery slope, and I feel bad for making substitutions already... but hey, it's what's a bit of husk between friends?

Only just squeezed the ingredients into my Denby casserole dish, but just about managed, and used the chicken stock I lovingly made with yesterday's roast chicken carcass this morning (tub of picked chicken in fridge waiting for 'chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint' in a day or two, and maybe 'chicken salad with watercress, almonds and orange' too if there's enough). Brought to the boil on the hob, froth skimmed off, disc of greaseproof paper on top, and then popped in the oven for a couple of hours whilst T's parents visit and take us out for a chinese up the road. It's a hard life...

Recipe says to leave it overnight, skim off the fat, and reheat slowly before serving.

Next day: a success! Definitely enough to feed four, and a lovely thick, meaty stew. Inspite of it's heartiness, it has a surprisingly delicate, slightly sweet, slightly spicy taste, even after spending nearer three hours in the oven as dinner out went on until rather late... And plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow and Thursday, hurrah!

3: Roast chicken with cheese mash and garlic gravy, p342

An easy peasy one now, although the difficulty is stopping myself roasting the chicken with the little bits and bobs I'd normally do - like rub the butter under the skin instead of on top, mixed with a little orange or lemon zest and juice and some chilli flakes, and popping the remains of the zested fruit up the bird's whatnots... I like Nigel's idea of popping the chicken upside down for the first 45mins, and the garlic halves tucked in the roasting tin are smelling gorgeous.

Because the recipe includes cheesy mash, I've skipped roasting potatoes around the chicken as well, fearing potato overload. Although I'd prefer roasties,  the 'with cheese mash' does seem to be an integral part of the recipe, so I'm sticking to that.

I've halved the quantities since it's only me and T eating. Ooooh, lots of lovely leftover chicken!! Very pleased about that - I usually only roast a bird when we've got guests so there's only usually enough left to do a chicken risotto and the carcass to make a great vat of stock. I may have to start doing roast chicken for two more often...

I love roast chicken. It can't possibly go wrong :)

...and it didn't, as predicted. Super crispy skin, meat cooked to perfection, and scrummy mash. Halfway through I realised I'd made a bit of a booboo, supermarket chickens (even the better quality ones) don't come with giblets so couldn't make the gravy with them, damn damn damn. So I snipped the wingtips off the chicken quickly, and brewed them up as per the recipe before adding them to the roasting tin (when the chicken was ready, and removed). Good save, I think.

Served up with a good serving of our family's classic 'Mozzie's Acid Leeks'. Nice bit of vitamin C to cut through those cheesy tatties. And a glass or two of a chardonnay-chenin blanc-viognier blend. Note my utterly in-expert carving...

1: Spiced crumbed mackerel with smoked paprika, p24 and 2: Grilled zucchini with basil and lemon, p259

Bought fish from the (supermarket) fishmonger's counter today for the first time ever, was a bit of a bargain and filleted for us in front of me. New-found confidence in buying over the counter - hurrah! If only we had a local fishmonger instead of having to use the one in the supermarket...

Nigel seems to adore mackerel, there are five recipes using it in his book, and he says he's on a one-man mission to make the world eat more of the stuff, and I've never cooked mackerel, so here we go...

...mmmm, midway through cooking and the flat is filled with a gorgeous fried onion and smoked paprika smell - I hope it tastes as good as it smells...

To accompany it we're having boiled new potatoes (with a smidge of butter) and recipe 2 - grilled zucchini (Nige thinks it sounds like more fun than courgette) - much to T's disgust. Poor T, there are three courgette recipes - and I'm not sure which he'll hate more: courgette and Lancashire cheese crumble, or zucchini cakes with dill and feta...

...and the verdict...

MMMmmmm!!! Mackerel went down very well, and hubbie really liked it. The crispy oniony paprika crumbs were lovely with the oily fish, and the acidity of the courgettes stopped it being too heavy. Yum! Amazingly T even ate the three/four little strips of courgette I put on his plate completely unprompted (hoping he'd at least try a few bites as promised). Only downside were a few pin bones in the mackerel fillets - having been traumatised by having a fishbone properly stuck in my throat when I was 16 in France, I get a bit nervous about fishbones...

Happy tummies all round.

Hmm, got a chicken to roast tomorrow...

New Year!

It's 2010 and it's time to start the Kitchen Diaries challenge proper!

New Year's resolution: to cook every recipe in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries over the course of the next year.

I'm going to stick to the 193 recipes fully written out in the book, not all of the little extra entries Slater makes throughout the year (a la 'Grilled mushrooms tonight, slathered with some of that garlicky French cream cheese from the corner shop and stuffed inside a soft burger bun'), mixing and matching as works for us, tweaking ingredients a little as absolutely necessary - but endeavouring to find oxtail, fresh clams, patridge, Saint-Marcellin, pigeon, sorrel, etc, in a part of West London with no decent little local butchers, greengrocers or fishmongers shops (only very very expensive ones in chichi Richmond, Kew, and Chiswick) and on a lowly botanist's salary...

So... 2nd of January (we were at the sister and brother-in-law's and then my parents until quite late yesterday evening), the kick-off...