193: Nigel's delightful trifle, p234

The final recipe, and fit for a celebratory meal with friends, on New Year's Eve, to follow the goosehttp://mousemeals.blogspot.com/2011/01/192-roast-goose-juniper-sauce-and-apple.html! I still don't much like trifle, so wasn't looking forward to this one, but other people seem to love trifle, so I decided safety in numbers... and the Limoncello trifle from the book was amazing and the first trifle I've ever liked, so maybe, just maybe...

And it was a hit. Inspite of not being able to get blackcurrants (doh, it was December of course... I should have gotten some ages ago and popped them in the freezer if I wasn't going to do the trifle straight away), darling hubby whilst on his goose chase, found some mixed 'black forest fruits' in the frozen section - blackcurrants, blackberries, cherries, and black grapes. So we used them instead. Near enough :) How slapdash I have become!

The cream mixture on top, all though a faff (three bowls required - mix egg yolk and sugar in one, whip the cream in another, whip the egg white in another...), was divine - not too sweet, but light and fluffy, and picked out by several guests as being particularly noteworthy. And the cake below was a mixture of berry juice soaked and dry and fluffy. Very good indeed, and seconds all round.

Phew. So, it is done. Finished. The whole book, 193 recipes, in 365 days.

159: Seared beef with mint and mustard dressing, p271, and 160: Garlic prawns, p272

Oh my... the seared beef was amazing. Dedicated carnivores that we are, it was always likely to be a winner, but this really was divine! Our budget rarely stretches to fillet (or steak at all - it's usually a special occasion treat, much to T's dismay) and I couldn't justify the quantity this recipe uses, just for the two of us, so got a much smaller piece of fillet, around 200g. Wasn't sure how long to cook it in the oven for, 10mins for the larger piece in the recipe, so tried 5mins, then a couple more, and then a good 10mins resting and it was perfect - rare in the middle, with a thin roasted layer outside. And it cut like butter with my super sharp filleting knife. Gorgeous.

The dressing was a success too, creamy and minty, love making these mayonnaises now I've found they are so easy. Used my little mini processor so couldn't drizzle the oil in continuously, instead stopped every minute or so to drizzle another tbsp over the top of the mixture before blitzing again and it seemed to work just fine. Despite using lots of fresh mint, the mint flavour didn't really come through, so might try more in the future, or less mustard, but still delicious!

Finally for the evening, we had the garlicky grilled prawns. Again, the budget, and the number of covers, didn't quite match the recipe's requirements but I decided not to scrimp on quality and got four enormous fresh sea king prawns, each a good four inches long, from the Waitrose fish counter. Hardly need a recipe for this one and it's one of our favourite combinations, although normally if we add red chilli to add a fiery kick, so not much to say other than it was easy (no more than 5mins under the grill) and delicious - especially with lashings of melted butter and lemon juice on top!

144: Strawberry mascarpone tart, p207

 

Om nom nom! Another  scrummy low-cal (ha!) pud from the book... and easy too, no pastry (hurray!) but a base made from crushed up oatmeal biscuits and butter. Wasn't sure it would set hard enough to hold together out of the tin, but it did after half an hour or so in the fridge. The mascarpone mixture was a bit of a faff, comprising a cheese and egg yolk mixture and whipped egg white - the egg white deflated quite a lot on folding into the cheese mixture but it didn't seem to affect the final result, which filled the biscuit case nicely. I made a bit of a mistake in not pushing the biscuit base up the sides of the tin a bit, and it was too late when I realised so I wasn't sure it would come out of my springform tin without splodging everywhere, but after another half an hour or so in the fridge it had firmed up enough that it was fine and I didn't have a biscuit base with a lake of squishy filling flooding out all over the place. Phew!

And the result was delicious - really light filling and not too sweet. Would make a very nice pud for a summer BBQ... even if the rain was lashing down on Saturday night after a gloomy grey day, when we had this :)

125: Orange and lemon cheesecake, p129

Marathon weekend of cooking is at an end! This was the finale to Sunday lunch, and nearly finished us all off... I was worried it wouldn't set properly, and it was awfully soft, but held it's shape when cut, hurray! Extremely creamy, and not as lemony or orangey as I though it might be, but Dad managed to polish off a good quarter of the whole thing. Not sure it's the best baked cheesecake recipe around as Nigel describes it (my friend Kirsty wins that prize), but it was jolly good nonetheless :)

121: Goat's cheese puddings, p166

Yum! My first souffle! And they worked! The 'soft' goat's cheeses I bought weren't exactly what I'd call 'soft' and took a lot of mashing until they were soft enough to mix into the egg yolks (thank you lovely husband for sitting down and doing this so well...), so I was a bit worried this wasn't going to work... but they did! Hurrah! And they were scrummy. Took about 15mins to bake in the oven and were puffed up and golden brown on top, and the crisp sweetness of lettuce heart salad went very nicely with their creamy cheesiness. Definitely to be repeated in the future...

110: Chocolate almond cake, p99

An emergency pudding required for a picnic at Glyndebourne... and this leapt out of the book at me. Even though we were out of dark chocolate... It's hubbie's fault that we need an emergency pudding, so he went out to get dark chocolate with the instructions to get 200g fine quality, c.70%+ dark chocolate. He came back with dark cooking chocolate (54% cocoa), which was at least better than the galaxy dark he came back with at some point in the past... Poor hub. He slunk off embarrassed when I pointed out the difference. But he got everything else on the shopping list spot on!

The egg white whisking fest continues - 5 eggs this time, separated, whites whisked to stiff peaks (I'm getting good at this!). I must have used over a dozen eggs so far this week...

Difficult to fold the heavy gloopy choc/butter/egg yolk/flour/coffee mix into the light, fluffy egg whites but managed without knocking all of the air out...

Took c.10-15mins longer than the cooking time in the book, before the knife stopped coming out covered in cake mix, and on removal the top of the cake broke slightly, showing that the top had risen slightly above the rest of the cake, and had formed a little crisp layer. Yummy.

Cake survived the car journey to Glyndebourne, and with the leftover mascarpone cream from yesterday, slightly flatter now the egg whites had lost a lot of their froth, went down very well. A very rich, fudgy chocolate cake, with only a couple of embarrassingly albino bits where I clearly hadn't mixed the egg whites in well enough...

109: Gooseberries with mascarpone cream, p187

Oooh, a surprise! These gooseberries came from the allotment of another reader - thanks! - and were hand picked by her lovely hubby and biked over to Waterloo just in time for the opening night of The Railway Children at the old Eurostar terminal (actually on the tracks!), to which we'd all been invited. What a sweetheart! I don't think I've ever prepared/cooked with gooseberries before... funny little things, like incredibly full water balloons, looking like for all intents and purposes that they are about to burst rather explosively, their translucent skins bulging ominously, and their veins stretched tight in their perfect little spheres. They looked like more like cartoon gooseberries than what I'd imagined real ones would. But soooo tart they are! Ouch! I wasn't actually looking forward to serving them - not a dish to savour when you've got a mouth ulcer... But gentle stewing with a bit of sugar worked a treat - no water added, the little balloons started to collapse and released plenty for them to bubble away in - and served with the sweet, soft mascarpone cream, they really weren't too sour at all. The mascarpone cream was definitely better than the fromage blanc earlier in the week - the mascarpone, egg yolks and vanilla giving the cream a delicious richness, and the whipped egg whites added in at the end resulting in a little, sweet froth. Lovely jubbly. Made to much of course, really should have halved the recipe again. Silly me... Might take the leftovers into work, wonder if the cream will be completely flat and inedible by tomorrow morning?

107: Raspberry ricotta pancakes, p330

Meh, these are annoying... a variation on these pancakes from earlier in the year, this time with fresh raspberries from one of the readers of this blog, they are a lot of faff for a pudding which we'd probably both prefer made with normal crepe style pancakes, instead of all this whipping egg whites and folding it all together carefully so as not to lose all the air... They are a nightmare to turn over in the frying pan as well - too early and they just mush, too late and they are blackened. Grr! Tasty, but the ricotta gives a slightly odd grainy texture which isn't my favourite. Nah, luckily no more of these pancake recipes in the book.

104: Grilled monkfish with rosemary, served with garlic mayo, p251

I've never cooked monkfish - and judging from the price of it, it's not really a surprise - £12.75 for a good sized fillet (which was plenty for the two of us, esp with how meaty monkfish is), I was terrified that I was going to inadvertently render it inedible... But no, Nige saw us through again, and marinaded for a couple of hours and then grilled for 5mins on either side didn't destroy it at all. Even the extra 5mins wait in the warm oven whilst the new potatoes finished cooking (grr!!) didn't seem to do it any harm. Lovely jubbly. The lemon in the marinade part cooked the fish on the outside, and was deliciously fishy and garlicky and lemony. Yum.

And another first, homemade mayonnaise. Blimey - it's easy! Hah, maybe that's beginner's luck and I'm now forever more cursed wrt mayo-making... Starts to make your wrist hurt, whisking away, whilst dripping the oil in bit by bit, but then all of a sudden it's thickened and just gets better and better. Magic! I didn't use all the oil at all though, I made half of the recipe as it was just the two of us, so measured out 150ml oil, but can only have used 50-75ml in total - the mayo was the right consistency and thickness (and volume!) by this point, and it seemed like it might be tempting fate to go any further. Or would have left us with an enormous amount of fresh mayo to use up quickly... The recipe was actually for garlic mayo, so had a couple of cloves of garlic crushed and mixed in. Jeepers - we're now both experiencing serious garlic repetitions... hope that they fade overnight...

68: My very good chocolate brownie recipe, p325

Oooooh, these were, and still are, very good indeed. Incredibly rich, dense, fudgey brownies, without any interloping ingredients like chopped nuts, just chocolatey cocoay goodness. This is supposed to serve 12, but I cut it into 24, and having tried a half a piece, this is definitely the sort of brownie one can only eat one small piece of at a time...And then need a bit of a lie-down...

Wasn't the easiest of instructions, to fold the flour and cocoa in to the butter/egg/sugar/chocolate mix in the bowl of the food processor, but managed, nonetheless, and soon the flat was full of chocolatey baking smells, making for happy hubby.

Only real problem was that for some reason, inspite of greasing the tin and lining the base with baking parchment, it was a bugger to turn out and I ended up cutting it in the tin and prising out the first few pieces. A few bits crumbled in the process, so it's not a neat brownie, but it was worth it...

Apart from a few pieces, sequestered for T, these are destined to accompany me to work on Monday as it's my birthday, and one must bring cake for morning tea if it's one's birthday.

**Aha, and I've done more recipes in the last week than I did in the whole of April - oh dear!!**

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...