154: Courgette and lancashire cheese crumble, p378

I'd not been looking forward to making this one... T was planning to be out for it, no matter what, so I needed to find some folk who like veggie food upon whom I could inflict it. It turned into a bit of a comedy of errors after I invited a group of friends round for dinner including one of the friend's new housemate who was moving in that day (Saturday).

We had hardly any food in at all and I stupidly thought, at least one of the three little grocery shops up the road will definitely have courgettes and Lancashire cheese. Everywhere has courgettes at the moment, you can't get away from the damn things. And I'd got Lancashire cheese confused with Leicestershire. Rats. Silly me. No courgettes and no cheese anywhere to be found, and I stupidly had left it too late to get to any more useful shops and manage to get the flat in order enough for the four visitors who were en route. Massive fail. Phoned one of the guests, who has a car, to see if he could pop to Tescos quickly for me, only to find out he had left his car at work, and was rather... hungover... Anyway, the darling man hopped on his bicycle and wove his wobbly way to Tescos.

Meanwhile, a phonecall from one of the other guests revealed that the new housemate is vegan! And I'm halfway through making a main course with lots of cheese in it and a pudding which uses (pork) gelatine. Aargh. If I'd had a bit longer I'd have definitely made something vegan for everyone, hate making anyone feel 'different' and not as welcome as the others, but had a minor meltdown. But she was ever so sweet and adamant that she didn't want to be a problem and had a big pot of chilli beany stew which they could bring, which was fabulous. And we sent the Tescos-rescue friend a message asking him to try to find a vegan pudding :)

The others all arrived, but the Tescos-rescue friend was nowhere to be seen, until he called to say he'd gotten all the way through the supermarket, through the checkout, and... found he'd forgotten his wallet. Argh! At which point I told him to give up and just come on over - bean stew for all! But he managed to persuade one of the others to hop in her car and come and rescue him, and quarter of an hour later they made it back, with the rather fundamental courgettes and cheese. Phew! Quick finish off of the recipe, popped in the oven, and we could have nibbly bits and some lovely garlicky tear-and-share bread the others brought with them for a starter.

And the result? It was pretty good! A miracle - I was firmly convinced it was going to be horrid, especially after the farce of the rest of the evening... but it wasn't at all. The potatoes had turned to mush (not sure if that was how it should have been, but the extended delay mid-cooking might have made them squishier than they should have been) but the courgettes were al dente and the stock and cheese mixed in was scrummy. Not as much cheese in the recipe as I'd have put in, could definitely have been cheesier and I'm not sure it really needed to be Lancashire cheese rather than cheddar or something else, but the crumble on top really worked - added a completely different texture to go with the mushy crunchy veg underneath, and the walnutty-ness and rosemary came through really nicely. Definitely a goodie, and one to repeat in the future for veggie friends :) Not the vegan ones though. Although missing out the cheese completely would probably be good too.

Served with a very simple salad, rice, and (vegan) chilli beany stew :) 

Phew.

150: Plum crisp, p286

Another day, another crumble. Of sorts :)

Godda cold. Needed comfort food. Crumble. What more does one need? It's a bit of a half hearted crumble - maybe I should have used a smaller dish as the plums were kinda spaced out, with the crumble sprinkled over, but it looked rather rustic and thrown together in a haphazard sort of way. And it tasted pretty good... still got the cold though :(

145: A simple flatbread, p77, and 146: Taramasalata - the real thing, p77

Oooooh, this was a revelation for both of us! Me, because I hadn't realised how easy taramasalata is to make and love recipes where something curious happens to the ingredients and they change into something completely unexpected, and T because he never knew taramasalata was a fishy pate-type of gloop. How? Who knows... but he'd always apparently regarded it as a suspicious pink relative of hummous or tzatziki.

The flatbreads were great. We make all our bread in our breadmaker so I wasn't really looking forward to making these by hand, but it was easy and didn't need too much kneading at all. It more than quadrupled in size after being left for an hour, but started to deflate pretty quickly when being divided up into pieces. The main problem was that it was still pretty sticky and difficult to handle - so I had to use a lot of flour to manhandle it into pieces to bake, let alone form them into 'slipper' shapes. They puffed up like footballs in the oven, so I squished them down onto the baking tray to flatten them out a bit but they weren't very 'flat' flatbreads... I thought flatbreads weren't supposed to use yeast, hence the 'flat', but hey. And they were yummy - I love different types of breads, especially doughy ones like these with very little salt or sugar in them.

Located a lump of cod's roe in the wonderful Sandy's - it wasn't as expensive as Nigel seems to suggest in the book (but the red mullet made up for that...) - rather revolting looking solid sausagey type brownish lump with a hard, plasticky skin which the recipe states to peel off. Yum! Blitzed with the rest of the ingredients it curiously changed from the brownish colour and turned pale pink like the bought taramasalata. Bizarre! Then with the gradual addition of the olive oil it suddenly changed from a fishy slurry into a thick cream - like mayonnaise, as it says in the book. T loved it.

119: Smoked mackerel on toast, p90

Fishy fishy pate-type foods a happy husband make... I mentioned this to T just before he went to work this morning and apparently he's been looking forward to it all day :) I was hoping the cheese in it wouldn't put him off too much though...

I don't really like smoked foods, and smoked fish in particular, but smoked mackerel is rather tasty. Very meaty and moreish, I always end up picking little bits of it as T makes his sarnies, if I've bought it, and it is rather nice in a kedgeree (dry not sticky and wet though) and in the occasional salad. Hmm. I think it's lack of bones is one of the biggest things that make me able to like it though :) Hurray!

This recipe was very easy, no real cooking, just a little grilling at the end, and hey presto - maximum wife points for minimum effort! And it was scrummy too. A definite one to repeat...

61: Treacle tart, p65

Yum. Yum. Yum.

What a weird concept for a pudding... and so easy! Breadcrumbs, mixed with syrup, baked in a pastry case. That's it! Wow! Scrummy. Especially with a good dollop of cream - even scrummier!

I cheated though. Bad me. I hope the shortcut taking is not becoming a habit... I didn't make the pastry case :( I used a bought one... Was in a bit of a hurry mid-week and I'm so bad at making pastry (warm paws, melts the butter and makes it greasy and crumbly and an all-round disaster), I decided not to risk it tonight. There's lots of pastry in The Kitchen Diaries, so plenty of other opportunities to practise!

We've had two long term visitors at work for the last month or so, one from Egypt and one from Indonesia, and they are both going back this weekend, and I'd promised them a 'proper English dinner' - so this was part of it! Roast chicken and all the trimmings, and treacle tart for pudding. And they did seem to like it! Must be odd staying in a country so different from home, and living in a B&B for weeks on end, but never really getting to try to food from that part of the world... Fine if you want to go to a restaurant serving Chinese, Indian, Italian, and any number of other countries' food, but where do you go (other than the Fish and Chip shop) for English food, other than someone's home?

Slightly complicated by the fact that both visitors are Muslim and so only eat halal meat - so I went to Hounslow specially to get a halal chicken. Odd cultural note about halal chickens: they look rather odd compared to our normal chickens for eating... they seem to have great big thighs and not much up top, if you know what I mean. Not very well endowed. Which makes them a rather different shape to regular ones...

Pudding also went down particularly well with my boss, whose little girl is coeliac, so he very happily overdoses on gluten when not at home (pastry filled with bread? Definitely a gluten overdose...).

50: Onion soup without tears, p17

Oh yum, yum, yum, yum, this is a winner! Love french onion soup, and this is the super easy version!

Baking the onions, cut into halves, instead of chopping them up finely (hence, the tears of the title) makes it sooo easy, and gives the soup the loveliest caramelised tastiness, as well as a lovely dark, honey brown colour.

Didn't have fresh french bread, but did have a freshly baked regular loaf, which I cut into two big rounds using a cookie cutter, covered in grated Emmental and grilled, before floating on top of the soup.

Will definitely do this again. Tastes much more complicated than it is...

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...