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 :)