168: Green curry of prawns and Thai aubergines, p118

'Small purple Thai aubergines' and 'pea aubergines available from Chinese and Thai grocers'? Hmm. Not round here, I'm afraid. Like Maggie Don, I eventually gave up on trying to find either, having looking and looked, and used a normal aubergine. Love aubergines, love their almost meaty texture and the way they make dishes taste rich but at the same time balance out lots of rich flavours. T doesn't like aubergines :( But he did try and actually ate quite a lot of this (and all the prawns and cherry tomatoes, of course).

Lots of lovely Thai-inspired flavours, and an easy peasy recipe, just need to make sure you have a little mini-blitzer/processor to whizz up the spice paste quickly and you're away. I skipped the coriander root in the ingredients list too, I'm afraid. Oh well :)

126: Baked lamb with tomatoes and rosemary, p285

A lovely, super easy, throw it all in one dish and bake meal this - essentially roasted vegetables and potatoes, with the meat put on top halfway through so the juices run down onto everything below. Very tasty too - the rosemary came out really strongly. The lamb neck was delicious - tender and sweet, and I always find neck much less fatty than other lamb cuts, so was pleased that's what was specified in this recipe. 30mins was a bit too long though, not much pinkness remained, I should have checked it earlier but then the potatoes might not have been done. Ho hum. Definitely one to repeat.

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

66: Chickpeas with harissa, basil and ham, p153

Mmmmm, another scrummy salad of sorts - again, no leaves! Except the basil, which again, damn, I forgot :( I also only used one tin of chickpeas - the tomatoes and aubergine roasted down to a really small volume and two tins would have made the dish mostly chickpea (one can definitely have an excess of chickpeas...), so took the executive decision to use just the one.

Tasty tasty roasted tomatoes and aubergine, with lovely oily cuminy juices. I think a little more chilli would have been a good idea, maybe roasted with the vegetables, or maybe my pot of harissa paste isn't a very strong one? Definitely too much oil for the amount of vegetables, at least twice as much, but the crispy prosciutto on top - mmmmm!! Lovely jubbly. And enough for lunch tomorrow!

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...

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?

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...