141: Lemon ice-cream, p172

Oooooh my, this was REALLY good. Wow. Definitely to be repeated. Yum. Yum. Om nom nom nom.

Easy peasy to make, even using the freezing-stirring method - this froze to a soft ice-cream with only two rounds of stirring during an evening.

Wasn't sure how much to crush the meringue, left some quite big lumps, but I think they got crushed up a bit more during the stirring, and couldn't detect them in the finished ice-cream. Curious. But it was delicious! Sweet but not toooo sweet, sharp and rich and supremely creamy. Yum. More please!

140: Lemon-frosted pistachio cake, p146

Om nom nom. Macmillan Cancer Support Coffee Morning at work this morning - so needed a cake to take to work, had the ingredients for this one, so another recipe to tick off the list!

The picture in the book looks fabulous, big thick cake, beautifully decorated, but unfortunately, even using the same sized cake tin specified in the recipe, the cake I produced was all of an inch/inch and a half thick. Ho hum, admittedly there are no raising agents in the ingredients - so there's no way it could have risen, but still, it looked rather flat... I'd recommend using a smaller cake tin, if making this! Perhaps that what was used in for the cake in the photo - either that, or twice the volume of ingredients!

Pistachio nuts turn out to be damned expensive too - £7 for 300g! Shelled, luckily, that's not including shells, but still. Who knew?

The cake ended up deliciously squidgy and moist though, with lots of flavours - the orange and lemon coming through particularly nicely. Lots of compliments - and it was one of the first cakes to vanish from the tea table - within 30 minutes!

(I skipped the (optional) crystallised rose petals to decorate... life is surely too short?)

138: Cabbage with orange and juniper, p385, and 139: Potatoes with duck fat and garlic, p377

A Christmassy veggie side and potatoes to go with the pork served for dinner tonight. I made a full batch of the cabbage, foolishly, using a whole (small) red cabbage. I'm going to be eating it all week, since T almost certainly won't... Enough to serve 12 as a side, not 6, but anyhow... :)

The juniper berries weren't too overwhelming which was a good thing and the lemon and orange juice added a lovely citrusy zing which stopped the cabbage being too dull. Not sure about the function of the celery, didn't really add much, but the apple was a good thing and onion always is.

I cheated with the potatoes. The recipe says duck fat, and I used goose fat. Well, I needed it earlier in the year for a recipe, and bought a jar, which has been sitting untouched in the fridge ever since. I didn't really want to go out and buy another jar, this time of duck fat, which would also sit untouched in the fridge... so I cheated... duck/goose, how different can the fat taste? Is that cheating too much?? The garlic knocked your socks off - only one clove, but still, immediate repetitions all through dinner, curious! I wasn't sure about sauteeing the potatoes in so much fat, they took forever to cook and then suddenly started to brown which was a bit alarming, and I had to drain them on kitchen towel before serving. But they were rather tasty...

So the pork was served with the red cabbage and sauteed potatoes, with some gently sauteed baby courgettes on the side, and delicious gloopy winey oniony gravy. Yum! Finished off the strawberry water ice, and some more of the melon sorbet for pudding.

137: Roast leg of pork with onion and Marsala gravy, p383

A friend was round for dinner last night and so I decided I really needed to get a few more recipes under my belt... so a roast dinner it was! Christmas recipes in Nigel's book, but hey ho - it's turning wintery!! Had to pop into the supermarket on my way home to grab a leg of pork - and only boneless available, so I decided since it was a short-notice dinner, boneless it would have to be - inspite of the recipe specifying a leg of pork on the bone. Tough. Sorry :) Delicious crispy skin, but the meat took a bit longer than I thought it would to cook though (pink pork = bad...). The gravy was amazing. Yum yum yum. Onions softened, with a little flour cooked up with them, and then stock and Marsala added. Delicious. Om nom nom.

136: Strawberry water ice, p217

Mmmmm, a slightly more successful sorbet this time - and soooo strawberry-y. Very easy to make and a good way to use up a punnet of very ripe strawberries you nearly forget about in the bottom of the fridge... :)

135: A warm summer fruit compote, p209

...so, after the pigeon disaster and having cleaned the hob once this evening, I decided this would be an easy pudding to tick off. I substituted blackberries, sorry... hey, they are one of the parents of loganberries (blackberries x raspberries = loganberries), and I added some more red currants to the mix to try to balance the acidity as per the recipe a bit more. In the fairly large saucepan I used, the volume of berries plus very small amount of creme de cassis looked like there was no chance it would bubble up too much. Hah. I left the kitchen for a couple of minutes and came back to see they'd boiled and frothed up so much that the hob was flooded again, this time with lurid blood red juice, streaked all down the sides of the pan. The berries were still all in the pan, luckily... But it resulted in a second round of cursing. Followed by cleaning. Nice compote though - I thought it would be a bit sharp but it wasn't, and the juices were glossy and rich. Delicious. Would be excellent with some nice vanilla icecream...

134: Pot-roast pigeon with luganega sausage, p307

This is days late - a) been very busy and haven't had a chance to write it up, and b) it's taken this long to get over the disastrous evening that it involved... Bad day at work, home not too late, both of us in, I decided to treat us to two Nigel recipes for dinner to destress. Hah.

I've used my Denby casserole dish on the hob many times, as in so many recipes, to brown meat / boil up ingredients with wine/stock before putting it in the oven. This time, after browning the sausages (not luganega, but the recipe says herby chipolatas are fine) and then the pigeons, and softening the onions, I added the stock, and two minutes later there was the most almighty crack from the kitchen and my lovely casserole dish had shattered on the hob into a dozen pieces, depositing two pigeons, six sausages, a chopped onion, and 500ml of hot stock all over my hob. After much swearing, the solid ingredients were chucked into my mum's old pot-roast pot and a fresh batch of stock poured in and the whole lot shoved in the oven, ignoring the 'bring to the boil on the hob first' instruction. Clearing up the stock that was everywhere wasn't quite as easy...

Unfortunately I messed up again though and giving the pigeons an extra 10-15mins on account of the lack of boiling first stage was too long and they were a bit overcooked. Rats. And they are a bit of a sod to eat, fiddly little bony things, but the herby sausages and gravy were delicious, especially with a heap of mashed potato.

Unfortunately, the disasters for the evening didn't stop there...

133: Roast lamb with cumin and fresh mint, p198

Monday night treat! I made the spice paste in the morning before work and left it to marinade in the fridge all day, and all the garlicky cuminy minty loveliness soaked into the meat, and after 45mins in the oven this evening, it was absolutely delicious and most, and still a little pink (I always overcook lamb by accident...). Can't beat a gravy made entirely out of meat juices and white wine either. Why don't more people make their own gravy - it's sooo easy, so tasty, and cleans the roasting tray at the same time. Genius!

132: A wonderfully moist, fresh plum cake, p287

'Wonderfully moist' - ha - sticky messy slodge 'o' cake this was - perhaps not the best one to take into work... We ended up eating it with spoons :) But it was lovely, if a little gooey and more like a cakey crumble. The almonds, as ever, gave the cakey part a nutty, rich texture, and the walnuts worked better than I thought they would - I'm not a big fan of lumps of nut floating around in cake. The English plums I got at the weekend were just right - a little sweet, but also a little tart - but made it very gloopy on top. Definitely took longer than 45mins to cook, more like 1hr 10mins and because of the gooey plumminess on top had to have faith that it was cooked underneath. Phew...

131: Melon sorbet, p233

A confession. I made this over a month ago... just hadn't summoned up the desire to serve it. I don't like melon :( It's a secret shame, everyone always seems to rave about melon, but I find it quite a sickly overpowering soapy flavour. And don't like it on it's own. Mixed with other flavours, like in this salad, it's okay, but not on it's own.

Anyway, this had been lurking in the freezer... partly because it took ages to set, and then set like concrete... The texture is more like a granita than a sorbet - I stirred it a lot whilst freezing it (partly because it took so long to freeze - everytime I checked over the course of a day it hadn't frozen and I stirred it again) so I'm not sure why. I should dig out our icecream maker, there are lots of icecream recipes still to go in the book. It's just a pain finding enough room in the freezer to freeze the bowl of the icecream maker for +24hrs, and whenever I've tried using it, it's not frozen properly and has made a complete mess. Ho hum. Time to try again soon...

So, the melon sorbet. T liked it. Said it was very melony. Wasn't sure about the texture. Whereas I quite liked the texture, but wasn't sure about the melony-ness :) He's got about a litre of the stuff to get through...

130: A salad of red mullet with lime and ginger, p246

Delicious! What a weekend for food! Along with the clams, I also purchased two red mullet from Sandy's. Quite pricey, and with four red mullet recipes in the book to get through, lets hope red mullet doesn't have a short season...

I was a bit nervous about this one, and probably will be about all the red mullet recipes actually, it being pricey and me not having cooked it before - it's a bit worrying, trying not to ruin it! However, this was easy peasy, and the fish took 2-3 mins on each side in a pan before it was cooked just so - was very pleased! The 'salad' comprised a cooked up Vietnamese style mixture of thinly sliced carrot and onion, with allsorts of lovely flavours - the lime juice, chilli, white wine vinegar, ginger and star anise being particularly notable. It went beautifully with the fish, which was meaty enough to hold it's own against the salad, yet delicate at the same time. And again, T, who I expected to leave most of the salad (not liking carrot or onion much, in any form), cleaned his plate!

129: Clams with ham and sherry, p211

Ooooh, another excellent use for those lovely juicy clams from Sandy's. Steamed with sherry and some browned cubed pancetta and garlic, making a rich (possibly a little too) salty broth which was hoovered up in record time, including by the hubby who doesn't like clams. Again, definitely to be repeated. Perhaps with a little less pancetta, so it's not quite a salty.

128: Linguine alla vongole, p52

Apologies for the break in service, been in Singapore at a conference, and just got back to cooking this weekend. Mmm, chilli crab at the East Coast Park in Singapore has to go down in history as one of the best meals I've ever had. Elbow deep in sauce, bits of shell flying everywhere, and zero conversation as we all chowed down. Bliss! Don't get crab like those over here...

Om nom nom!!

Linguine alla vongole is one of my favourite dishes, I love clams and I love pasta with oil and garlic and chilli. Happy! Even better news is that my boss tipped me off about a wonderful fishmonger/butcher in Twickenham, 10mins down the road by bus, called Sandy's - and I finally made a trip there yesterday, only to find it's as close to foodie heaven as I've encountered in a long while - full of the most amazing selection of seafood, fishes, game, etc etc. And perfect for Nigelling! Big juicy English Venus clams purchased for this recipe and the next one, and not a single dud amongst them. Even T, who claims not to like clams, agreed that these were rather nice... The addition of the vermouth to the recipe gave it an interesting sweetness, not a bad thing, but unexpected - and you wouldn't get that if you used the alternative suggested, white wine. An excellent chilli hit too from the freshly ground dried chilli, lovely! To be repeated...