46: A curry of aubergine, tomatoes and lemon grass, p132

Partway through, this looked like it was going to be a terrible disaster, as the aubergines just floated on top of the simmering curry below, looking like they'd never cook, but again, the final result was really surprisingly tasty. Creamy coconutty sauce, with a good garlicky kick, and perfectly cooked aubergine. Oddly the mushrooms seemed to vanish... and I made a cheat by using a tin of tomatoes instead of fresh as somehow I completely underestimated how many tomatoes I needed in the supermarket the other day... instead of counting for this recipe, plus the other curry I did tonight, I just counted the one tomatoey recipe. Doh.

So, with the chickpea curry, spicy potatoes, dal soup, and naans, this made a pretty fab meal. And a total of four Nigel recipes done in one meal. I did manage to use every single pan and dish we own in the process though...

45: Chickpea and sweet potato curry, p102

Not the most appealing selection of ingredients, and definitely one to make T's toes curl... but this turned into a really rather tasty dish. This is one of the great things about this challenge - it's making me make recipes I wouldn't normally do, and surprising me with things like this. Who'd have thought (apart from an ardent curry-loving vegetarian...) that this would be greater than the sum of its parts?

I should have reduced the quantities, supposed to fed four as a main, with the other curry made tonight this served all four of us and left a good four lunches-worth for laters... Although perhaps the leftovers weren't a bad thing...

43:Dal and pumpkin soup, p4, and 44: Spiced roast potatoes with yoghurt and mint, p42

Dinner party with another set of girlie-friends tonight - and one is a vegetarian, whilst several of the others quite like to eat veggie food, so thought it would be a good opportunity to get some of Nigel's veggie curries out of the way - esp since T doesn't really consider a meal without meat to be a meal, or much like curries...

This soup made a very easy starter which went down well... I made it a few days before so just heated it up before serving. A deceptively mild start with a tangy kick to it, with the ginger and a little chilli not blowing your socks off, and the sweetness of pumpkin (butternut squash). Bit naughty of me but I did miss out the fried onion topping, as I had so many other recipes to juggle tonight - the kitchen is tiny, and with hardly any worksurface, so it all got a bit frantic...

The potatoes were super - lovely yellowy mildly spicy roasties with crispy oniony, garlicky, chilli bits on top, and a drizzle of homemade yoghurt and sprinkling of mint leaves on top. Definitely worth repeating in the future.

Served with the potatoes were two curries and homemade naan breads...

42: Thai fishcakes with a deep sweet dipping sauce, p114

Back to the scrummy little patties again last night - how many more can there be?? This time much lighter ones, made with haddock, and they held together absolutely fine, contrary to the recipe which said they'd be quite fragile. Wasn't sure about the sauce to start with, incredibly gingery and hot (I did leave the chilli seeds out, inspite of the recipe, but it was still rather strong...), but it worked really nicely with the fishcakes. Served with basmati rice and the rest of the spinach salad from Friday.

40: Grilled chicken with harissa and mint, p203, and 41: A tomato curry, p292

Had two friends round for dinner on Friday night and even though one brought the starter and the other brought the pudding, I managed to get two recipes in. Think they were initially a bit bemused about the challenge but they liked the idea, and the food was definitely a success. The chicken was very simple - I'd normally marinate the chicken overnight but the recipe said just to roll the boned chicken legs in it before grilling. Yum yum yum. Very simple, but good grub - especially with the simple salad suggested in the book - spinach dressed with toasted pine nuts, lime juice and oil, and the tomato curry on the side. The tomato curry was easy too, and tasty, although it came out a bit more liquid than I expected. If I'd had a bit longer, and I wasn't following the recipe to the letter, I'd probably have reduced it down a bit. I like the idea of adding the fresh tomatoes whole and letting them cook and collapse down by themselves, saves some chopping! Served with some homemade naan breads (not a Nigel recipe, but out of the book for my breadmaker) - another new recipe, and soo easy, and really scrummy. Nearly forgot to take a photo - hence the 'half-devoured' pictures below...

39: Pork chops, mustard sauce, p51

Very simple, pan-fried pork chops - but nice chunky ones, fried in a smidge of butter, and plenty of seasoning. Then the juices used to make a sauce, with cream and lots of mustard. Lots of mustard! Bit much for me, but T liked it. Didn't have any cornichons but decided some capers mightn't be too dissimilar to use instead. Served with the salads in the previous post.

37: A salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan, p7, and 38: Fennel, watercress and pear salad, p303

Another bunch of wretched fennel recipes out of the way... and a surprise! These weren't too bad at all - pretty good in fact!

The first one, with croutons and Parmesan, was the best - the dressing was delicious, even though I forgot to add the lemon juice :( and T really liked it, even though it was quite Parmesany - success! I've never made, or liked, croutons before but these were very quick, I used only the tiniest bit of oil so they were essentially just toasted rather than fried, and they really added something. The combination of the leaves and crunchy (very thinly chopped) fennel, crispy bread, and creamy dressing was lovely. And it used the tarragon vinegar! A whole tbsp of it!

Like.

Second salad was good, but not as good as the first one. Couldn't find any pears (it is February...) so used Nigel's suggested substitute of a sharp apple, and again, it balanced out the aniseedy flavour of the fennel really well. The dressing wasn't as good as the first salad, but was super simple, just lime juice and olive oil.

Went well with the pork chops in the next post...

36: Chicken with mustard seed and coconut milk, p110

Another deceptive recipe title - this one is a lovely spicy, creamy chicken curry, with quite a kick to it! I reduced the quantities (a whole, jointed chicken, for a recipe serving three?), so used two red chillis instead of three, but it was still rather fiery. Gorgeous tumeric yellow sauce with chunks of red from the chillis and tomatoes, and dark green from the curry leaves. I used the legs/thighs/wings/the inner fillets from a whole chicken, saved the main breast meat for another day, and used the carcass to make a few bottles of good stock for the freezer (I use empty coke/juice bottles to store stock/thin soups in, fit nicely in the freezer and divides it up into c.500ml aliquots nicely). Apart from the fact there's only two of us, I couldn't fit a whole jointed chicken, plus all the other ingredients for this recipe, into my biggest casserole - a large Denby one. Nigel must have some pretty hefty dishes in his kitchen!

35: Pork and lemon polpettine, p126

Oh gosh, the meatball/patty things strike again and these may have been the best yet... Scrummy meaty, lemony, Parmesany (although T didn't notice the presence of the Parmesan, probably due to the very lemony nature of the patties) and golden and crispy on the outside. Served with the juices from the pan made as per the recipe, rocket and tomato with balsamic dressing, and steamed rice.

These will definitely be made again...

(The anchovy fillets no doubt made them extra meaty-tasting, but is it just me or do the little bones in anchovies freak anyone else out? There just seem to be so many of them, and they crunch, ick! Luckily, the recipe called for them to be chopped so I did so crossways, so the bones were very very short... Ick ick ick)

34: Pan-fried sausages with cream and mustard mash, p325

Yummy yummy! Nice and simple one for the end of the week, after a few days without having done any recipes - first week in new job and a lot to get done, so it's been a bit tricky. I was going to get three done yesterday as some rellies were coming round for dinner but it didn't happen in the end so it was looking like it wouldn't be a very productive week... oops.

But this was easy peasy, just bangers and mash with lots of mustard and single cream essentially, and served with some rocket, tomato, and balsamic dressing. Good Friday night comfort food.

Oh, and an interesting but slightly gross and embarrassing aside... I found a pot of single cream at the back of the fridge, unopened, but with a 'best before' of '10th Dec 2009'. Only 2 months out of date then... A sniff and a taste, by me, and by T, and it seemed fine... and indeed it was. Hmm... it was unopened, but still... 2 months??

33: Prawn and coriander rolls, p94

Another bottle-misidentification mistake tonight - rice vinegar was actually another bottle of white wine vinegar. Damn damn damn. Got to have a good look at what's in the cupboard and what's not... Annoyingly I can picture the label on the bottle of rice vinegar, and could have sworn it was there, but knowing me it ran out a couple of years ago and the bottle went in the recycling...

Not bad at all these, but still not a patch on the pork patties... Oddly, inspite of being chiefly king prawn, and containing no potato and just a smidge of flour to help bind them together, they had a strangely potatoey texture, more like traditional fishcakes. More chilli and lemongrass I think next time. The sauce was a bit sweet for my taste on its own but drizzled over the rolls and accompanying noodles worked much better.

The enormous iceberg lettuce which has been taunting me from the fridge for its bland wateriness, and which was purchased particularly for this recipe, was finally pressed into service, but we only needed about a third of the thing and now I've got to think of something else to do with the rest... And no, Kingsley the bunny cannot have it as bunnies cannot eat lettuce, it makes them sick, with horrid stomach cramps, and they can die. So there. Bet you didn't know that. Plus Kingsley is such a fusspot, I'm sure he'd think it was below him to eat such a thing.

I always remember my dad telling us how iceberg lettuce was developed specifically for McDonalds, for its texture and shelf-life in the fastfood business. Yum.