96: Marmelade cake, p10

Another cake to take to work - am feeding up the team, trying to get them to all put on some weight... Another one of Nigel's super easy pound cakes, and another success. People grumble that they can't make cakes, or don't have time to make them, and yet these recipes are so so easy - esp if you've got a food processor. Just bung the sugar and butter in to cream, mix everything else in, splodge it in the cake tin, and bake for 40mins. Easypeasy! And I have two shocking cheats, to horrify the purists out there... firstly I don't bother sieving the flour most of the time (started when I bought that McDougall's 'so fine it doesn't need to be sieved' flour, and then went back to normal but forgot, and found it didn't actually make much difference...), and secondly I don't bother cutting out baking parchment to fit the tins, I just tear a piece to large than the whole inside area and scrunch it in, with the leftover uneven edges sticking straight out the top. Seems to work fine! And the added bonus is that you can just lift the cake straight out of the tin, no more turning out disasters, cool it in the paper, and wrap it straight up to take into work with the leftover edges. Lazy, moi?

95: Passion fruit roulade, p389

AAArgh. I don't make roulades. But had to make this one at some point... damn damn damn. Stupidly promised to make it for a team BBQ, the day after we got back from hols, which turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far, so ideal for making a roulade!!

First (minor) problem was that I suddenly realised the recipe specifies a 30x36cm tin, which I don't have in my collection of bakeware, damn damn damn. But I do have two 30x16cm tins, so I improvised and made two, thinking I could roll them together.

Recipe otherwise started off okay, egg whites whipped up fine, as did the cream, roulade cooked and rose gorgeously, and then it started to go wrong... roulade stuck to the baking parchment (which was specified - not greaseproof) and started to tear, but I stayed calm and managed to remove the paper from the cake, bit by bit... Spreading on the lemon curd, then the cream, and then the passionfruit seeds and juice, all fine... and then the rolling was the real disaster. How does one roll a roulade, filled with squishy stuff, without all the squishy stuff splurging out?? I didn't manage to stop this happening, and joining the two together just wasn't going to happen. The roulades kind of collapsed into squidgey messes - and ended up looking like a pair of a frogspawn omelettes!! It was too late to make/find another pudding, and we took them to the BBQ, very apologetically... where everyone was very sweet and said they looked lovely (ha!). But they all ate the pavlova that was offer first, before trying the roulade... And phew, it tasted better than it looked, and the whole lot disappear pretty quick. Phew. Phew. Phew. Not to be repeated though... Way too stressful...

94: Cannellini beans with coppa, spinach and mustard, p257

Yummy yummy, another spicy, meaty salad - with butter beans substituted for the cannellini (oops, thought the tin on the shelf was cannellini beans but it wasn't when I went to get them...), and pancetta instead of coppa (well, the recipe does say 'thinly sliced coppa or other cured meat').  As ever the mustard gave a heck of a kick, and the beans gave a nice simple background to the strength of the dressing, pancetta and spinach.

93: A soup of roasted summer vegetables, p220

This looked little it might be a bit of a meh soup, as Nigel says getting 'rid of a whole heap of vegetables', but roasting the veggies in the oven first, like the tomato soup last week, really made a spectacular difference to the depth of flavour - and surprisingly, the fennel, which I don't really like, added a further depth, and the broth with the soup is almost meaty it's so rich. There's nothing about blending the soup at all in the recipe, so I slightly mashed the roasted tomatoes, which had collapsed in the roasting tray but still stayed in two large tomatoey lumps. Yum. And a good way to use up that cabbage of guilt...

92: Mozzarella with grilled fennel, p261

Oooh, an interesting one... I'd never pick this - don't really like fennel, don't hugely like black olives... But did quite like this! Wasn't quite sure how to slice the fennel into '£1-coin thick slices' so it wouldn't fall apart in the griddle pan but it just about worked. I probably could have griddled it for longer, as it was still a little crunchy, but the combination with the creamy (couldn't-find-buffalo-anywhere) mozzarrella and sweet olives was really rather nice. A surprise success!

91: A refreshing salad for a hot day, p231

Good times, I had ALL the ingredients for this one, and thus, lunch was made :) And jolly good it was too. I made it in the morning to take to work and considered putting the bits in different containers and mixing them at work, before abandoning that idea and bunging it all together as per the recipe... The rocket wilted a little bit and the melon and mozzarella went a little bit soggy but not bad at all.

Mmm, lovely lovely parma ham. Cutting through the sweetness of the melon and the creaminess of the mozarella, offset with a little zing from the lemon and the mild spiciness of the rocket. This one was another recipe that was better than I thought it would be. Yum.

90: Broad beans in their pods with dill and yoghurt, p191

Again, not too bad at all... I think I put too much water in, missed the '250ml water' in the ingredients, and boiled the beans in more than that and had to pour quite a lot out near the end, oops. Was very dill-y, a bit too much for me - a little is good, but it's a very strong, overpowering herb and without any other strong flavours to go with it, rather overdominated...

I did all of these last three recipes in one evening, making c.1/4-1/3 of each recipe, which was enough for a little bowl of each, and a dinner for me  - T was out again this evening, but on his return tried the tomatoes (which he quite liked), and the orecchiette (which he thought was odd), but turned his nose up completely at these yoghurty beans :)

89: Orecchiette with ricotta, broad beans and mint, p194

Hmm, there are three broad bean recipes here... and it takes a LOT of whole broad beans to get more than a teeny palmful of beans post-podding. And I don't really like broad beans.... :( Or do I? These weren't too bad actually. A tip from a friend, which Nigel mentions too, is to remove the outer skins from all beans larger than a thumbnail, and it worked - not bad at all. Not great. Not amazingly tasty. But not the icky, grey tasting little pellets I remembered from when I was little.

88: Roast tomatoes with anchovy and basil, p236

Baked these tomatoes at the same time as those for yesterday's tomatoes with cheese, but these ones are served at room temperature, so left them for part of today's dinner. Mmm, yummy they were too. Tasty basily, roasted tomatoes with meaty, fishy goodness of the anchovies mixed in.

Why did Nigel Slater have so many tomatoes during the summer he wrote this book?? There are five recipes in July alone involving roasting large quantities of tomatoes... I've been cutting the quantities down massively so I'm not eating each one for days on end for lunch...

87: A really fast cake with blueberries and pears, p163

Oh wow. This is a supreme cake, and a definite keeper of a recipe... Nigel's puddingy cakes are amazing. And so easy! They tend to make a very small amount of batter though, which I always have a mini panic about as I'm scraping it into the tin and try to cover the bottom with it, and they don't make enormous thick wedges of cake, but they still rise and make a lovely light texture, and I suppose more elegant little slices of cake. This one is just a batter with a pile of fruit heaped on top before baking, and so looks like it's not cooking whilst in the oven, and is all gooey and a bit of a mess, but ooooh boy... It's been promised to the folks at work tomorrow but it looks and smelt so good, I've had to test a bit, purely for research purposes... maybe a another, very small, sliver won't hurt...

86: Saint-Marcellin with tomatoes and basil, p237

Ooooh, deceptively scrummy this one! Essentially just roasted tomatoes, with a blob of cheese melted on top, but oooooh these were wolfed down with some lightly toasted homemade bread. And I wish I'd made more...

I substituted the Saint-Marcellin (which I've tried unsuccessfully to get hold of) rest of the Taleggio, from the Taleggio and parsley cakes, as the recipe says any creamy, easy melting cheese can be used. And it was goooood :)

85: A cooling crab salad, p206

Oh dear, another dud for my tastes... It's partly my fault. I trapsed around Richmond looking for crab meat and all I could get was brown, which I thought/hoped would do. Then got home and found the bit in the recipe where Nige says 'I would normally suggest a mixture of both brown and white crab meat but with the melon it is best to stick to white meat'. Damn. Fail. And it didn't work. Maybe it would have worked with white. But I didn't like the other flavours in combination anyway - ginger and watercress and melon? Hmm, didn't work for me. The ripe melon was so sweet, it ended up quite sickly. Ho hum.

Another cake tomorrow, I think...

84: Roast tomato soup with basil and olive oil toasts, p251

A supreme recipe! This has to be one of the best - and it's SOOOOOOOOO EASY, you wouldn't believe. Definitely a keeper. And I don't like tomato soup! I don't! Can't stand the bought stuff, don't much like it in restaurants, but this was something else. Mmmmm. And it's a cold, chilled soup. And it's still super tasty, full of flavour, and filling, doesn't have much in common with a light, gazpacho-style palate cleanser.... It's such an easy thing to do, but I'd never have thought of adding the stock to the roasting dish and boiling it up on the hob like when making gravy (added bonus of cleaning the dish at the same time, and not losing all those tasty bits...). Tasty tasty tasty.

83: A radish, mint and feta salad, p195

Nope, didn't like this. Glad I only made a quarter of the recipe. Blurgh. Don't like radishes. Wish I did, they are one of the few things I can grow in the garden without fail, everytime, but they aren't for me. T turned his nose up at proferred bowl of salad, declaring that there was nothing of interest to him there... Me neither, even with the use of very cute British 'purple' radishes. So pretty. So radishy. Ick.

82: Demerara lemon cake with thick yoghurt, p91

A really moist, puddingy cake, this. Took it to my parents' this weekend for my mum's birthday and it went down very well after a BBQ and with strawberries and fruit salad (and yoghurt) and then with icecream and more fruit at lunchtime the next day.

Very easy to make, with the only faff being to make the sticky lemon slices to pop on top, which to be honest, I probably wouldn't do again... Lazy? Moi? Noooo, just that everyone peeled them off and left them on the side when the cake was served!! The ground almonds made the cake definitely more of a pudding, and the hubbie really liked it, having seconds, and even asking to bring a slice home with us. Result :)

80: Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper, p138, and 81: Sweet and sticky chicken wings, p323

Two-in-one here - two recipes using chicken wings in the book, so I made both, and roasted the chicken wings (and thighs) in two separate roasting tins. Scrummy, tasty, sticky wings, as promised, but would definitely have benefited from being left to marinate for a few hours as the flavour was mainly on the skin and so the meat underneath was fairly plain - especially the lemony ones, where the lemon was a bit too subtle, we both thought.

Served with mangetout and homemade new potato oven chips.

79: Lamb chops with oregano and tsatziki, p255

More nice fresh, summery flavours again tonight - not exactly complementing the grey storm clouds and drizzle that's accompanied the rest of the day, but we can try to pretend it's summer. Sitting inside in jumpers.

A simple tsatziki recipe - T surprised me with a revelation when I served this, saying 'I really do like tsatziki'. Which I immediately took as being sarcastic. Bizarre. Turns out he was being serious. Yoghurt? My husband likes a dish made mostly of yoghurt? Wonders may never cease.

The tsatziki of revelation was served with the very simply griddle pan fried lamb steaks, which were quite thick and the packet said '8-12mins', turns out 8mins is more than enough, and pinkness just about lost :( but the fat did go deliciously sticky and crispy. Served with steamed green beans and new potatoes. And a glass of white wine. It IS summer!

77: Grilled chicken with lemon and couscous, p258, and 78: Zucchini cakes with dill and feta, p228

Another nice, fresh tasting, summery salad to go with recipes 75 and 76. I didn't have a preserved lemon. I did have some - I bought a whole jar of the damn things some time ago (they only come in huge jars...) but the wretched things had gone a little... furry... at the back of the fridge (note to self: look inside jars at back of the fridge when cleaning aforementioned fridge...), so ditched that idea midway through the recipe (too late to turn back now!) and added a bit more fresh lemon, in the form of a bit of the flesh, not just the juice. I can imagine the salty, intense lemony flavour of the preserved lemon would have been better and would have been good, but there are limits. Esp when grilling chicken, roasting aubergine, frying zucchini cakes, and toasting pine nuts, all at the same time...

Now, the courgette cakes. Not great. Ultimately I wouldn't make them again. Nor choose them on a menu. However, if served them at a vegetarian friend's house, I believe I would be able to eat them. They weren't as bad as I thought they might be, so was pleasantly surprised. Too courgettey, too dill-y, and too feta-y, if I was asked for specifics, but that rules out all the main ingredients, which is a shame... On the plus side, they didn't fall apart as easily as the recipe suggested and I made nice little round cakes, only slightly 'chargrilled' on the one side (see above mentioned multi-tasking issues). The chutney they were served with was a good thing, went really well, but possibly because it disguised some of the courgette taste. And feta. And dill. Apricot jam probably would have had a similar effect.

75: Marinated feta and artichoke salad, p369, and 76*: Baked aubergine with sheep's cheese and mint, p245

Oooh, how did I get to 29 years old without discovering artichokes? No, seriously? Mmm! No deli open this afternoon near us so had to make do with a jar of artichokes, and whilst waiting for the bus home I was starving... spying the 'ready to eat' bit on the jar, I had a nibble... yummy yummy!
Anyway, enough of them made it home to be included in the first of these salads, a veritable marathon of Nigeing whilst the hub was out. Feta, artichokes, aubergines, cous cous, courgette, none of these are recognised foodstuffs in his eyes, so I took advantage of the situation to blitz four recipes in one evening, in a Mediterranean festa of food. And a heck of a lot of olive oil and mint. I halved or quartered the recipes to make enough for me and some leftovers which got all mixed in together to make a very nice packed lunch for work...

Got a bit frantic in the kitchen though, with four recipes on the go at once, but I made it... slightly cremated aubergine or not... These two salads were easy peasy and jolly yummy, and will be repeated - I'm imagining nice swanky al fresco dinners with friends, in the garden we don't have, on the BBQ we don't have. One day :)

Roasted/grilled/baked aubergines are one of my favourite unexpected food pleasures. T would not agree, but something quite amazing happens to aubergine when it's cooked it one of these ways. It dries out slightly on the outside and then the moist insides spontaneously collapse, and it creates a delicious silky, almost meaty taste. Love it. Toasted pine nuts too. Another unexpected food pleasure - how can something so simple and unassuming, and frankly not that exciting looking, add so much to a dish? And they have to be toasted! Madness. An untoasted pine nut is a definite disappointment, and is a mistake never to be repeated. Feta is good stuff too, but needs to be used in moderation as it's such a strong, salty, sour taste, which can overdominate other flavours too easily.

*This is one of the 9 'extra' recipes, listed in the start of month recipes but not set out as a 'proper recipe' like the other 184