Jul 22 2008
Quick Cocktail and other non-recipes
The challenge states that there are 189 recipes in Nigella Express. However on close reading, there are in fact a few more. The preamble to some of the chapters, and indeed some of the recipes (more on that later) is a great hiding place for a sneaky wee recipe suggestion.
The White Lady is a classic cocktail- I may have enjoyed on at Tigerlilly only this year- but until we acquired some fancy glasses and a bottle of Cointreau it hadn’t been a drink we’d considered at home. It was amazing:
In fact Dougal made this with a recipe he found online. Nigella states one part lemon, two parts gin, four parts cointreau. Firstly, don’t make the mistake I did of assuming that a ‘part’ equals a measure, otherwise you’ll end up with one hell of a cocktail! Secondly, we reckoned the online recipe had a nicer balance, so we shall amend to: 25ml lemon juice, 25ml gin, 50ml cointreau and remember boys and girls, this is still a generous drink.
In addition to cocktails, Nigella suggests some dips to use as easy starters to turn a meal into a party. I made both of these at our recent flatwarming: garlic mayo was good in principle but you really don’t need very much garlic! On the other hand whilst the hummous+greek yog+cumin+lemon juice+ drizzle of lemon juice was a yummy dip, Nigella’s suggestion of scattering a few pomegranate seeds on top really put my friends off. They just didnae dip! Dougal said he thought people probably assumed the dip was in some way sweet. So chaps, unless your pals are into sophisticated Georgian dining, avoid the pomegranate seeds (pretty as they were).
