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... :)