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!

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?

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!

106: Vietnamese beef salad, p191

Fiery!! A hot, sweet and sour salad to knock your socks off on a Tuesday evening. Yummy though. Wasn't sure about the choice of cut, sirloin is quite thick, but it did mean it stayed deliciously pink inside when griddled. Not so sure about the lime leaves - I couldn't get fresh leaves, and thought a jar of finely chopped lime leaves in water would do, but they were pretty tough and although they added the right flavour, also added the feeling that somehow lots of bits of dried grass cuttings had got into the salad. Ho hum.

97: Grilled chicken with garlic and lemon butter, p262, and 98: (A lunch of) baked tomatoes, p221

And I'm over HALFWAY!!! :)

184 recipes - 98 done! And it's only just July - phew!

The recipe specified poussin, irrespective of the title, and poussin is what I got! Albeit one poussin instead of four, only me home for dinner this evening.

Ooooh, poussin! A revelation! So sweet, and succulent. 30mins under a fairly low grill and it was perfectly done. Scrummy. Probably didn't need the herby lemon butter, as it was plenty moist enough (grilled with the skin on, oil in the marinade), but that was good too. Spatchcocking was easy ('ask your butcher to do it' Nigel?) - easy peasy couple of snips with a poussin, didn't need to have got the poultry shears out.

And the tomatoes were scrummy - very simple, and very similar to these ones from last month, just with parmesan (or Grana Padano...) on top. Like the rosemary too.

71: Pumpkin and tomato laksa, p333

Scrummy stuff, this! Full of flavour, quite hot (!), creamy, and zingy with the lemongrass and ginger, and the squash and tomato cooked just right - still a bit firm and fresh tasting, al dente. Annoyingly, I found I'd run out of lime leaves, so had to miss them out... and where on earth can I get coriander root in West London?? The specialist oriental supermarket in Richmond doesn't have it... The 'only' other substitution was some very ripe, tasty vine tomatoes instead of the cherry tomatoes specified - in the interests of me actually managing to complete this challenge, I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a little less strict about following everything to the letter... :)

65: Chicken and rice salad, p187

Am on a roll! Today used up some of the roast chicken from the other night in another salad to take to work. This one certainly didn't look very special - predominantly being rice and chicken, it was rather beige, and only a few bits of red chilli to jazz it up - no leaves*! Not even coriander (which I don't have anyway!). The fish sauce and lime went beautifully together, as always, but I would put more chilli in in the future as there wasn't as much kick as I'd have liked. And some coriander :)

*Except the mint, there was a small amount of mint in there... which went rather nicely with the savoury/sweet/zinginess of the other ingredients.

60: A clear, hot mussel soup, p26

A disaster! Possibly the most disastrous meal I've ever cooked - I don't know what possessed me! Home from work late on a Friday, hubby away for a conference,  and fridge almost empty, I suddenly remembered the suspicious bag of frozen mussels I had in the freezer. Bad call. Buying them in the first place. And using them now. I remember thinking in the supermarket 'I love mussels. Surely if they sell them frozen, they aren't that bad frozen? It'd be nice to have mussels whenever I want...'. Doh. They are horrid. Nasty little morsels which either have the consistency of chewed up cardboard or little pieces of bicycle inner tube. Why do they sell frozen mussels if this is what happens to them?? Ick. Ick. Ick. This recipe should have been lovely. A nice simple, Tom Yum style soup, zingy and hot and sweet and sour all at once. And the broth was. But the nasty little defrosted nuggets in it were revolting and I managed to eat two before my better nature saw the next one trigger my gag reflex. And into the food waste recycling bin it went. Along with the rest of the soup. And the rest of the bag of mussels. Oh to have a nice, affordable fishmongers nearby... Will I try this again? It'd be nice to, but the year is racing by already, and I've got a lot of recipes to get through, so I'm not sure...

52: Five-spice quail, p169, and 53: A hot, sour bean shoot salad, p163

Quails. Possibly the most anthropomorphic little carcasses to cook with - especially when their little legs aren't tucked/trussed up as in a chicken you'd roast, but instead are sticking out in a slightly disturbingly human way - with little knees and calves - making them look like little decapitated bodies...

But oh so yummy when marinated in a garlicky chinesey spicy mix, and then roasted...

Very easy little recipe and surprisingly the meat didn't dry out at all and was deliciously moist, and the coating had quite a kick to it.

Went really well served with another lovely crunchy hot Asian-style salad (we're really liking these salads) with spinach and bean shoots, and a good dollop of chilli and nam pla.

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...

45: Chickpea and sweet potato curry, p102

Not the most appealing selection of ingredients, and definitely one to make T's toes curl... but this turned into a really rather tasty dish. This is one of the great things about this challenge - it's making me make recipes I wouldn't normally do, and surprising me with things like this. Who'd have thought (apart from an ardent curry-loving vegetarian...) that this would be greater than the sum of its parts?

I should have reduced the quantities, supposed to fed four as a main, with the other curry made tonight this served all four of us and left a good four lunches-worth for laters... Although perhaps the leftovers weren't a bad thing...

43:Dal and pumpkin soup, p4, and 44: Spiced roast potatoes with yoghurt and mint, p42

Dinner party with another set of girlie-friends tonight - and one is a vegetarian, whilst several of the others quite like to eat veggie food, so thought it would be a good opportunity to get some of Nigel's veggie curries out of the way - esp since T doesn't really consider a meal without meat to be a meal, or much like curries...

This soup made a very easy starter which went down well... I made it a few days before so just heated it up before serving. A deceptively mild start with a tangy kick to it, with the ginger and a little chilli not blowing your socks off, and the sweetness of pumpkin (butternut squash). Bit naughty of me but I did miss out the fried onion topping, as I had so many other recipes to juggle tonight - the kitchen is tiny, and with hardly any worksurface, so it all got a bit frantic...

The potatoes were super - lovely yellowy mildly spicy roasties with crispy oniony, garlicky, chilli bits on top, and a drizzle of homemade yoghurt and sprinkling of mint leaves on top. Definitely worth repeating in the future.

Served with the potatoes were two curries and homemade naan breads...

42: Thai fishcakes with a deep sweet dipping sauce, p114

Back to the scrummy little patties again last night - how many more can there be?? This time much lighter ones, made with haddock, and they held together absolutely fine, contrary to the recipe which said they'd be quite fragile. Wasn't sure about the sauce to start with, incredibly gingery and hot (I did leave the chilli seeds out, inspite of the recipe, but it was still rather strong...), but it worked really nicely with the fishcakes. Served with basmati rice and the rest of the spinach salad from Friday.

40: Grilled chicken with harissa and mint, p203, and 41: A tomato curry, p292

Had two friends round for dinner on Friday night and even though one brought the starter and the other brought the pudding, I managed to get two recipes in. Think they were initially a bit bemused about the challenge but they liked the idea, and the food was definitely a success. The chicken was very simple - I'd normally marinate the chicken overnight but the recipe said just to roll the boned chicken legs in it before grilling. Yum yum yum. Very simple, but good grub - especially with the simple salad suggested in the book - spinach dressed with toasted pine nuts, lime juice and oil, and the tomato curry on the side. The tomato curry was easy too, and tasty, although it came out a bit more liquid than I expected. If I'd had a bit longer, and I wasn't following the recipe to the letter, I'd probably have reduced it down a bit. I like the idea of adding the fresh tomatoes whole and letting them cook and collapse down by themselves, saves some chopping! Served with some homemade naan breads (not a Nigel recipe, but out of the book for my breadmaker) - another new recipe, and soo easy, and really scrummy. Nearly forgot to take a photo - hence the 'half-devoured' pictures below...

36: Chicken with mustard seed and coconut milk, p110

Another deceptive recipe title - this one is a lovely spicy, creamy chicken curry, with quite a kick to it! I reduced the quantities (a whole, jointed chicken, for a recipe serving three?), so used two red chillis instead of three, but it was still rather fiery. Gorgeous tumeric yellow sauce with chunks of red from the chillis and tomatoes, and dark green from the curry leaves. I used the legs/thighs/wings/the inner fillets from a whole chicken, saved the main breast meat for another day, and used the carcass to make a few bottles of good stock for the freezer (I use empty coke/juice bottles to store stock/thin soups in, fit nicely in the freezer and divides it up into c.500ml aliquots nicely). Apart from the fact there's only two of us, I couldn't fit a whole jointed chicken, plus all the other ingredients for this recipe, into my biggest casserole - a large Denby one. Nigel must have some pretty hefty dishes in his kitchen!

33: Prawn and coriander rolls, p94

Another bottle-misidentification mistake tonight - rice vinegar was actually another bottle of white wine vinegar. Damn damn damn. Got to have a good look at what's in the cupboard and what's not... Annoyingly I can picture the label on the bottle of rice vinegar, and could have sworn it was there, but knowing me it ran out a couple of years ago and the bottle went in the recycling...

Not bad at all these, but still not a patch on the pork patties... Oddly, inspite of being chiefly king prawn, and containing no potato and just a smidge of flour to help bind them together, they had a strangely potatoey texture, more like traditional fishcakes. More chilli and lemongrass I think next time. The sauce was a bit sweet for my taste on its own but drizzled over the rolls and accompanying noodles worked much better.

The enormous iceberg lettuce which has been taunting me from the fridge for its bland wateriness, and which was purchased particularly for this recipe, was finally pressed into service, but we only needed about a third of the thing and now I've got to think of something else to do with the rest... And no, Kingsley the bunny cannot have it as bunnies cannot eat lettuce, it makes them sick, with horrid stomach cramps, and they can die. So there. Bet you didn't know that. Plus Kingsley is such a fusspot, I'm sure he'd think it was below him to eat such a thing.

I always remember my dad telling us how iceberg lettuce was developed specifically for McDonalds, for its texture and shelf-life in the fastfood business. Yum.

29: Stir-fried mushrooms, spring leaves and lemon grass, p100

More winter leaves than spring leaves, so perhaps not as tender as Nigel intended when he made this in March, but resulted in a simple but tasty, garlicky stir-fry, served on basmati rice. Easy peasy and virtuous too - lots of greenery and no meat! And the bunny rabbit enjoyed demolishing the stems/midribs from the greens...

24: Chicken patties with rosemary and pancetta, p39, and 25: Roast pumpkin and spicy tomato sauce, p47

More little patties - Nigel does like his patties, burgers, meatballs, fishcakes, etc. I don't often make them as I like to prepare food quite quickly and simply, and chopping everything up, mincing the meat if it's not minced already, mixing, chilling, shaping, then cooking... always seems like a lot of extra steps and extra washing up to do for an okay return, but just as good as doing something simpler. Maybe when I've got a decent sized kitchen, with more than 2ft of half-depth worksurface and a dishwasher, I'll change my mind! Or maybe some more of these recipes will start to convert me... the pork patties from a few weeks ago were mighty fine...

These chicken ones were very tasty, but not as good as the pork patties - I think we like our chilli too much! Not being able to find minced chicken anywhere, and preferring to use slightly better quality chicken anyway, I used the breast meat from the chicken I jointed on Friday and minced it up in the chopper pot of my Braun Multiquick. Love my Multiquick - had it for years, and got the metal one instead of the plastic one for about £20 when Boots clearly made a mistake and mispriced it, it was selling for about £70 at the time. It's perfect for when you need to chop/blend/mix slightly smaller amounts than if cooking for more than 2-4 people, or just dealing with one ingredient. I make breadcrumbs, blend soups, whisk egg whites, mince meat, chop herbs/onions etc (if doing more than a few).

The raw mixture was quite crumbly and wasn't holding together very well (bits of onion falling out everywhere) so I was worried they wouldn't keep their shape, but after making little patties and leaving them to one side for 30mins as in the recipe, they did actually firm up fine and could be popped in the pan easily. I quite liked the method of browning them quickly on the hob and then braising them in the oven, in some of the chicken stock made the other day, which gave a thin gravy to serve.

Served with the roast pumpkin (actually butternut squash - the half leftover from the pumpkin soup last week), roasted in the oven with tomatoes, garlic and chilli. I left the tomatoes pretty much as they came out of the oven, very slightly mashed, rather than chopping them too much as they were so hot and we were hungry!! Very yummy indeed, but T's squash aversion continues. He did have a little though and ate the tomatoes (doesn't like cooked tomatoes, unless in a tomatoey sauce), but he left most of the little heap of squash I gave him. Luckily I think there's only one more squash/pumpkin-based recipe left...

20: Chicken with mushrooms and lemon grass, p107

OOOOOOOOOOOOhhh, this was good. The name of the recipe is somewhat uninspiring and does this little stirfry a great disservice - it's a scrummy, zingy, fresh-tasting mixture, with lots of garlic and ginger, plus a little red chilli and a good kick of lemongrass, and that delicious but-don't-inhale-too-deeply salty-meatiness given by a good glug of nam pla. Served on steamed basmati rice, and many contented 'mmmm's all round...

 

11: Pork burgers with lime leaves and coriander, p81

Ooooh, we are diiiiining finely this year!! Scrummy scrummy fiery little munchkins these. Lots of garlic, lots of chilli, lots of ginger... Easy peasy. I used the food processor as in the recipe, but I think next time I'd just use the handheld chopper as the whole mix doesn't go in (spice paste made first, then the bacon - no pancetta I'm afraid - whizzed up separately, and then the whole lot mixed up by hand in a bowl).

Even did the lettuce dressed with lime, coriander, mint, and salt, as in the intro, but baked some paprikay wedges in the oven instead of rice (T's request, two nights of rice in a row seemed a bit much for him).